President Donald Trump floated Wednesday night that he wasn’t calling the Iran war a ‘war’ because that would trigger the need for him to seek Congressional approval, which he hasn’t.
The President made the comments during a glitzy dinner at D.C.’s Union Station that raised cash for the National Republican Congressional Committee, the political group that helps elect Republicans to the House of Representatives.
‘I won’t use the word “war” because they say, if you use the word war, that’s maybe not a good thing to do,’ Trump told the crowd. ‘They don’t like the word war because you’re supposed to get approval.’
‘I’ll use the word military operation, which is really what it is,’ the President added.
Later, he referred to the Iran war as an ‘excursion into hell.’
The President peppered his speech with Iran war updates as he spoke to lawmakers and donors for an hour and five minutes.
Trump pushed back on denials from Iranian government officials who say negotiations with the US aren’t happening.
‘And they are negotiating, by the way, and they want to make a deal so badly, but they’re afraid to say it,’ Trump said. ‘Because they figure they’ll be killed by their own people. They’re also afraid they’ll be killed by us.’
‘There’s never been a head of a country that wanted that job less than being the head of Iran,’ Trump joked.
He wove between talking about Iran and bashing his enemies – the Democrats and the ‘fake news’ – or all of them at once.
‘They want chaos,’ he said of the Democrats, referring to what’s ensued amid the partial government shutdown, which has left Transportation Security Administration employees unpaid, and thus airports chaotic.
‘There are great military triumphs against Iran that can’t be displayed on television because they’re displaying airports,’ the President complained.
Trump also pressed Republicans on how important it was for them to win the midterm elections.
‘I think we’re going to have a great election,’ he said. ‘We’re going to do it, we’re going to do it.’
Later in the appearance, he got more animated when talking about the midterms, after admitting he had ditched his pre-planned speech.
‘You don’t mind if I go off this crazy teleprompter?’ he had asked the crowd. ‘It’s boring, the teleprompter thing.’
He said Republicans needed to win the midterms ‘because we are competing against lunatics and the public knows it!’
Trump said this after impersonating former President Joe Biden trying to find an exit.
‘This guy, that couldn’t walk off a stage. See the stage, see how many stairs … he could never find the stairs. And people don’t want that. People want a President that’s able to walk off and find the stairs,’ Trump said.
‘Do you ever see that? Where he looks out, “ohhh I’m finished,”‘ the President continued. ‘First of all, his speeches were extremely short. They lasted a matter of seconds and then he’d walk out.’
Trump then said of Biden, ‘he was probably a nice guy.’ ‘I couldn’t stand this guy,’ he added.
The President also suggested that he would spend a lot of time campaigning ahead of the November elections.
‘I’m going to personally campaign for every one of you,’ he told the large crowd.
The NRCC announced that the group had raised a record $35.2 million from the dinner.
