ICYMI: Kelly Warns Trump Is Sending Americans into Harm’s Way Without a Plan or Goal

"We have six dead Americans who paid the ultimate price, and we have a President… that I have serious concerns about whether he understands his role here."

"There's no strategic plan, there's no timeline. And what this is likely to lead to is a long war with a lot of dead Americans and no rationale for how this is helping the American people."

In case you missed it, Arizona Senator Mark Kelly joined MS NOW's The Briefing with Jen Psaki to warn that the Trump administration has no clear strategy, goal, or timeline on the war with Iran. Drawing on his own experience as a Navy combat pilot, Kelly underscored the gravity of Trump's shifting explanations as American servicemembers are being put in harm's way.

Sen. Kelly speaks on The Briefing with Jen Psaki.

Watch the full interview here. See key excepts below:

On what real leadership looks like when lives are on the line…

"I started thinking back to 1991, when I was on an aircraft carrier heading across the Indian Ocean to get into the Persian Gulf. At the beginning of the first Gulf War, and I remember my commanding officer, I was in an A-6 intruder squadron. I was 25, 26 years old. And I remember my commander, one day before my first strike, talking to us about how they expect us to lose half of the airplanes. Now, that didn't come to pass, but I just remember that leading up to that period of time, how stressful this was for him. He was our boss. He was the commander of the squadron. He was only 39 years old at the time. I remember when he turned 40. He was such a great guy, a great leader, and he was under so much pressure, and he wasn't even the guy that made the decision to send us there. But you could just feel just in his core that he was he understood how significant of an issue this was that some of us might die. And he took it so seriously, and he wanted our airplanes to be ready. He wanted the entire team to be ready. And he wasn't sure that was going to happen.

"And I watch this group of people who were supposed to be leading our country, not just the President, Secretary of Defense and others, the five people that were on the background on the slide here. And I'mthinking you could pick a random group of people off the street tonight here in Washington, D.C., just a random group, and they could probably do a better job than our government is doing right now with this. They don't have a goal. There's no strategic plan, there's no timeline. And what this is likely to lead to is, again, a long war with a lot of dead Americans and no rationale for how this is helping the American people."

On the administration's shifting justifications for going to war with Iran…

"I've been keeping a list. The reasons we went to war with Iran. I'm up to nine. You just talked about five of them. I have four more. […] I'm keeping a running list because this is almost getting comical. But what isn't funny about this? We have six dead Americans who paid the ultimate price, and we have a President, and I'm not going to go into things he said in the past about the military, but we have a president that I have serious concerns about whether he understands his role here.

"His ultimate job is to protect U.S. service members, protect U.S. citizens. He talked about it the night of the State of the Union. But why didn't he talk more about this? I mean, he could have discussed this and tried to explain to the American people how is this going to help them with their cost of rent and groceries and health care, which by the way, he made much, much harder for millions of Americans."

On the families who pay the price…

"When you think about the age of military service members. They have spouses, they have kids. There are kids at home. There are kids that are just going to hear who the sixth person is. They're out there. They're going to grow up without a mom or dad. And they're going to be thinking their entire lives, well, what was that for? What did we get out of it? What did they get personally out of it? What did our country get out of this? A year ago, the president, well in 2024 when he was running, he said, 'Well, we're not going to go get into another war.' And he has no explanation for why we are here. And this is not making Americans safer."