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Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a blistering rebuke to critics on Capitol Hill Monday, dismantling claims that the Trump administration failed to properly notify Congress before launching decisive military strikes against Iranian targets.
While leftist pundits and some grandstanding members of Congress have suggested the administration acted unilaterally, Rubio set the record straight.
Speaking to reporters, Rubio revealed that the administration followed established protocol by notifying the Gang of Eight, the group of congressional leaders and intelligence chairs, well in advance of the operations.
Rubio said that U.S. officials knew Israeli action was imminent and knew retaliation against American forces would follow. The only strategic option, Rubio argued, was to act first.
“Within an hour of the initial attack on the leadership compound, the missile forces in the south and in the north, for that matter, had already been activated to launch. In fact, those had already been prepositioned.”
“If we stood and waited for that attack to come first before we hit them, we would suffer much higher casualties,” Rubio explained. “The President made the very wise decision.”
Speaking to reporters ahead of his classified briefing with lawmakers on the escalating conflict, Rubio made it crystal clear: the administration followed the law.
Rubio didn’t hold back when addressing the logistical absurdity of notifying every single member of the House and Senate before a sensitive military operation.
He also addressed the controversy surrounding the War Powers notification process, pointing out that the administration complied with the statutory 48-hour reporting requirement.
Marco Rubio:
We did. We notified Congress. We notified the Gang of Eight. We notified congressional leadership. There’s no law that requires us to do that. The law says we have to notify them within 48 hours after beginning hostilities. We’ve done that. I think the notification went today, but we did notify members of Congress in advance.
But we can’t notify 535 members of Congress… Congress can vote on whatever they want, but there’s no law that requires us to do that.
I want to say something because I see people on TV—look, that’s fine. If they want to take a War Powers vote, they can do that. They’ve done that. They’ve done that a bunch of times. But people keep saying there’s a law that requires the President to have done something with regard to this.
To begin with, no presidential administration has ever accepted the War Powers Act as constitutional— not Republican presidents, not Democratic presidents.
That said, we followed the 48-hour notification requirement, and we’re here today. I’ve done more Gang of Eight briefings now than I got in the four years that Biden was President—and I was a member of the Gang of Eight.
All of that said, we’ve complied with the law 100%, and we’re going to continue to comply with it.
WATCH:
REPORTER: Why not notify Congress about this?
SECRETARY RUBIO: We did. We notified congressional leadership. We briefed the Gang of Eight twice. We have complied with the law 100%.
pic.twitter.com/wh299X3DaE
— Department of State (@StateDept) March 2, 2026
The post Rubio TORCHES “Clueless” Critics: Slams Idea of Notifying All 535 Members of Congress — Reveals Gang of 8 Was Informed — ‘No Presidential Administration Has Ever Accepted the War Powers Act as Constitutional’ appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.