President Donald Trump has put another Democrat in his sights by threatening legal action over political differences — and this time, his arguments are particularly ridiculous.“Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and made clear that he was unimpressed,” wrote MS NOW political analyst Steve Benen on Tuesday. “Indeed, the Rhode Island senator made clear that the U.S.’ interests were far better served by the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA], which Donald Trump abandoned in 2017.” Reed specifically pointed out that President Barack Obama’s plan forced Iran to have so little uranium that it would take them 12 months to assemble one, whereas they will only need one week under Trump’s deal.“We are negotiating against a country which its leadership has been eliminated. Now we have even more fanatical leadership who has much more invested and much more to leverage their position,” Reed continued. “Abandoning the JCPOA was a bad mistake by the president.”Trump replied to Reed by calling for his impeachment, arguing that the “Dumocrat” had “lied when stating the the [sic] Deal we just made is not as good as the Obama disaster known as the JCPOA. Reed is either an outright fraud, or incompetent.” After describing Obama as “Obuma,” Trump responded, “Impeach Jack Reed!”As Benen pointed out, Trump’s missive against Reed is ridiculous for three reasons.“First, the idea that a U.S. official should be impeached for arguing one policy is preferable to another policy is ridiculous, even by 2026 standards,” Benen wrote. “Second, Trump keeps calling for members of Congress to be impeached despite the inconvenient fact that, at least in this country, members of Congress cannot be impeached.” This is particularly striking because Trump has been president for six years and has had abundant time to understand these political rules.“But perhaps most important is why the president responded so furiously to Reed’s comments in the first place,” Bene concluded. “The senator was letting Fox News viewers in on a secret that Trump desperately wants to deny: The Obama-era deal with Iran was a generational success story, which Trump abandoned for reasons he has struggled to explain and which created the very problems Trump’s war set out to solve.”Trump has used his presidential powers to politically target a number of perceived Democratic opponents including California Gov. Gavin Newsom, California Sen. Adam Schiff, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly and New York Attorney General Letitia James.Yet Trump’s targeting of Reed stands out for another reason: Even many conservatives have accused Trump of coming up with a bad Iran deal.“There’s no denying that Mr. Trump is retreating from his main goals as political pressure has built at home,” The Wall Street Journal wrote on Tuesday. “While he has attempted to portray the deal as “peace in our time,” most recognize it for what it is: “a strategic retreat short of achieving his war aims.” They added that he has essentially abandoned his objective of stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, ignores that Iran is still charging ships for passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
