President Trump just overruled Congress as tensions mount in the Mideast. Trump just invoked his lawful emergency powers to push through an arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
Look, Reagan and George W. Bush all used the same powers to sell arms to Saudi Arabia so it is not unprecedented.
Please know that when the left goes crazy over this and the media slants this and create a phony narrative - this has been done before.
We sell plenty of arms to our allies and while the Saudi’s can be brutal, in that region we will take what we can get.
Remember, if we don’t sell them arms someone else will… From The Hill: The Trump administration has invoked an emergency provision of the law governing arms sales to immediately sell Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies weapons without congressional approval, senators said Friday.
The approval comes amid heightened tensions with Iran over what the administration has described as increased threats to U.S. interests in the region, and the senators indicated that Iran was used as justification for the emergency sale.
The administration on Friday also announced the deployment of 1,500 U.S. troops to the Middle East to protect U.S. forces already there from Iran.
State Department spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the arms sale.
The package Congress was notified of Friday is composed of more than 20 separate deals and is valued at $8.1 billion, a Senate staffer told The Hill. The weapons include precision guided munitions, others bombs and ammunition, and aircraft maintenance support, the staffer said.
The arms are being sold to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, with the UAE then transferring some to Jordan, the staffer said.
The State Department informed relevant Senate and House committees and offices of the decision in a call and also sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s determination that an emergency exists requiring the sale in U.S. national security interests, the staffer added.
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said he received the notification and is reviewing the legal justification.
“I have received formal notification of the administration’s intent to move forward with a number of arms sales,” he said in a statement. “I am reviewing and analyzing the legal justification for this action and the associated implications.”
Democrats had warned earlier this week the administration was on the verge of using what they described as an “obscure loophole” in the Arms Export Control Act to finalize a long-stalled arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
Friday’s formal notification drew immediate condemnation from top Democrats.
In a four-paragraph statement, Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) slammed the administration as failing “to even identify which legal mechanism it thinks it is using,” adding the notification “described years of malign Iranian behavior but failed to identify what actually constitutes an emergency today.”
“As I repeatedly warned the Trump administration in the lead up to this ill-informed decision, I will fight any effort to further erode congressional review and oversight of arm sales,” Menendez said.
“I am in discussion with several Democratic and Republican colleagues, and I hope the Senate Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs Committees will soon be able to expeditiously address this latest attack on our constitutional responsibilities,” he added. “The lives of millions of people depend on it.”
