WATCH: Trump Claims of Iran Deal to End War “Lacks a lot of Credibility” Schiff Says on CNN

Schiff:"One thing is perfectly clear: a tremendous amount of damage has been done, and American families are paying the price in higher gas and higher food prices, and the president's promise to keep us out of foreign wars…he has broken both of those promises spectacularly."

Washington, D.C. - Yesterday, U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) joined CNN's The Source with Kaitlan Collins to call out President Trump's failing negotiations to end his illegal war with Iran.

Schiff also spoke on President Trump's nomination of Jay Clayton for Director of National Intelligence, saying he will give the nomination a fair consideration but that the nomination does not eliminate the concerns he has about the installing of Bill Pulte as Acting Director.

The Senator also called for the Senate to continue advancing the War Powers Resolution he co-led which would direct Trump to withdraw all U.S. forces from Iran. A vote to move forward on the resolution is expected to occur in the coming weeks.

View the full interview here.

Key Excerpts:  

On the Iran deal:

I think they clearly feel they have the upper hand. They have demonstrated they can take a massive military campaign by the United States and still keep the Strait of Hormuz closed. They realize what a chokehold they have on the world economy. And every time the president talks about how eager Iran is for a deal, it's basically a reveal that he's talking about his own eagerness for a deal. And all I can say is, I hope that he has more to show for it than an Iranian promise not to develop a bomb. That is something that we could never rely on in the past, it's not something we can rely on in the present. And I fear what may come out of it is some face-saving announcement to agree at a later date by the president, that would be a terrible strategic loss for the country.

On hope for the end of the Iran war:

[…] They just lack credibility. So, at this point, it's not really clear what to believe. Are we going to have another round of tit-for-tat fighting in the days or weeks to come? We just don't know, but at the end of the day, this is not a war we should have gotten into to begin with. I fear Iran is coming out of this with more leverage than they had going into it. And it just underscores, I think, the importance of Congress playing a role in deciding whether to go to war or not. The president never came to Congress, never got the buy-in of the American people. The American people don't believe in this war, and he goes into these negotiations with a very weak hand.

On Trump's nomination of Jay Clayton for Director of National Intelligence:

I certainly will give him fair consideration. I'm going to want to know what kind of experience he has. He was the chair of the SEC, he's been serving as U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York. Neither of those jobs give a lot of experience within the intelligence community. He's never served in the intelligence community. So, I want to know what kind of experience he has, but I also want to know what kind of work he's been doing in those offices, in particular in the U.S. Attorney's in New York, did he bow to political pressure from the White House? Is he likely to bow to political pressure in the intelligence community? These are critical questions, I think, because the current director did bend over backwards to essentially politicize the intelligence agencies, caused analysts to rewrite conclusions that didn't support the president's policies, got involved in election interference by participating in a ballot box seizure in Georgia. We cannot afford to have another Director of National Intelligence politicizing and weaponizing their role the way the current one has.

On Jay Clayton's comments on the California elections:

[…] But this is the exact kind of thing that really causes questions about whether people have the stomach to stand up to pressure, improper pressure to do immoral things by the President of the United States. Clayton is smart enough to know that there is no massive fraud, as the president has been alleging, in the California elections. Yes, we take a long time, too long to count ballots, that's not evidence of fraud, and for Clayton to suggest something pernicious about it is disingenuous. So that doesn't breed confidence. But again, I'm going to give them fair consideration. But I certainly don't want a Director of National Intelligence that's going to play fast and loose with the facts, as you just saw there.

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