Rep. Peter King (R-NY) doesn’t have a problem with the content of the letter that 47 Senate Republicans sent to Iran in the hopes of undermining the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons negotiations. Rather, the New York Congressman just thinks it was a bad idea to send the letter to Iran’s leaders.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t have done it,” King said on the John Gambling Show, which Buzzfeed flagged. “Now, I agree with everything that’s in the letter, I just don’t believe that the members of Congress, either House or Senate, should be negotiating or contacting directly a foreign government which is negotiating with the president. I think it undermines the office of the presidency.”
King had previously said he was unsure if he would have signed the letter.
There’s been a fair amount of blowback since the letter, spearheaded by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), was sent. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also sounded a similar note to King saying that his only “regret is who it’s addressed to.”
“No matter how I would feel about the Obama administration, I wouldn’t have done the letter,” King continued in the radio interview, “and I think what it’s done also is, there was really the chance of a solid partisan coalition to enact legislation requiring that Congress have to approve this agreement. This is going to make it harder to get that bipartisan support. Whether it should or not, the reality is that it does because it makes it more of a partisan issue.”
President Barack Obama also took a jab at the Republicans who signed the letter saying he was “embarrassed” for them.
