Florida Republicans offer full-throated support for Trump’s strike on Soleimani

Florida Republicans spent Thursday evening and Friday morning doing a victory lap after a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad killed Qassem Soleimani, one of Iran’s top military figures, even as Democrats warned that the action by President Donald Trump without congressional authorization could have vast repercussions across the Middle East.

Sen. Marco Rubio re-posted a picture of Soleimani he originally tweeted in May 2019, with the caption “this has been brewing for a long time.”

Rep. Brian Mast, R-Palm City, tweeted out a meme from the 1980s TV series “The A-Team” with the show’s catchphrase, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

Even GOP critics of U.S. military intervention in Iran, like Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, praised the decision.

Gaetz said Trump “correctly responded to violence and ongoing threats against U.S. personnel after repeated warnings and admirable restraint.” Gaetz authored a congressional amendment that would restrict Trump’s ability to strike Iran without congressional approval, but it failed last month when the House and Senate excluded it from a military funding bill.

The praise by Florida Republicans stands in contrast to the response of congressional Democrats like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, who said “this action was taken more in President Trump’s self-interest rather than our national interests,” calling it a potential distraction from impeachment.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was more restrained in his remarks, saying Friday, “I anticipate and welcome a debate about America’s interest and foreign policies in the Middle East. I recommend all senators wait to review the facts and hear from the administration before passing much public judgment on this operation.”

But Trump’s decision to kill the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, a unit responsible for U.S. deaths and intelligence operations across the Middle East, quickly turned into a partisan fight.

Rubio attacked former vice president and 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden, who said “our world has been set on edge by an erratic, unstable and dangerously incompetent commander in chief.”

“It is a FACT that Soleimani spent the last several days traveling the Middle East coordinating imminent attacks by Iran and its proxies against our troops,” Rubio said. “The fact that every Democrat running for president would have done nothing about it is reason alone to vote against them.”

He did not provide any proof of those allegations.

Adding to the consternation of Democrats was Trump’s decision not to inform top Democrats like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of his plans in advance even though Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is not a member of congressional leadership, said Friday he was told about the attack in advance, while visiting Mar-a-Lago — the president’s Palm Beach residence — this week.

A spokesperson for Rubio said the senator was not informed of the attack in advance, but Rubio has long argued that military actions against Iran without the approval of Congress are constitutional because Trump “has an affirmative duty to defend against and if possible prevent such attacks.”

Sen. Rick Scott also praised the attack in partisan terms.

“President Trump was faced with a choice: continue the Democrats’ preferred strategy with Iran of sending them pallets of unmarked bills and asking them nicely to stop killing Americans or take action,” Scott said in a statement. “He chose the latter, and the result was the death of one of the world’s worst monsters.”

Scott and Rubio were part of a group of 40 senators, all Republicans, who voted against a bill in June 2019 that would have required Trump to get permission from Congress before striking Iran. The Senate bill, a separate legislative effort from Gaetz’s House amendment, failed to pass because it only received 50 votes in favor and needed 60 votes to pass.

In response to the drone strike and recent protests at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the U.S. Army announced Friday an additional 3,500 soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, would be deployed to the Middle East to protect U.S. personnel and military bases in the region.

Mast, who was the victim of an improvised explosive device attack in 2010 while serving in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan, said Soleimani was responsible for placing IEDs on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan, killing and injuring soldiers like him.

“This was the commander in charge of going out there in the theaters of war in Iraq and Afghanistan and trying to put the explosively formed projectiles into the battle space to blow holes in our Humvees, ripping off the legs of our service members like myself,” Mast said in an interview on Friday. “That’s not hyperbole. ... This is the leader of those actions.”

Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Winter Park, a former national security specialist at the Pentagon, said “Soleimani met his just end,” but she added that she wants to see a clear path forward from the Trump administration.

“I am concerned that the administration does not have a clear strategy to deal with the potential short-term and long-term consequences of this strike, including possible retaliation against American citizens and allies,” Murphy said.

Some Florida Republicans specifically backed Trump’s decision to strike without informing Congress. Rep. Michael Waltz, R-St. Augustine Beach, the first Green Beret ever elected to Congress, said “there was actionable intelligence that he was plotting to continue killing Americans after they just did kill someone last week.”

“You don’t go to Congress and say, ‘Mother, may I?’ You take action,” Waltz said.