President Donald Trump on Tuesday shared a generous statement from one of his longtime foes, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who praised the president over his decision to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities.
“Thank you to Jeb Bush — Very much appreciated!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, posting screenshots of Bush’s statement.
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Bush, who traded attacks with Trump as rivals during the 2016 Republican primaries, hailed the president for recognizing the nuclear threat that Iran posed and acting accordingly.
“President Trump’s decision to neutralize Iran’s regime’s nuclear program is a watershed moment. It reasserts U.S. strength, restores deterrence, and sends an unmistakable message to rogue regimes: the era of impunity is over,” Bush said in a joint statement released by United Against Nuclear Iran, which he leads. “Where others delayed and wavered, President Trump acted.”
Bush’s comments arrived one day after Trump ordered the successful bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities in Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. The targets sustained significant damage, setting back the Iranian regime’s nuclear capabilities.
Iran had stockpiles of uranium enriched to 60%, which wasn’t enough to make nuclear weapons. But if further enriched, the uranium could have posed a danger to Israel and the United States.
“Today the world is safer as Fordow is gone,” Bush said. “And history will remember those many men and women in our U.S. military, intelligence community, and economic sanctions community who worked for so long to make this moment possible and to ensure the destruction of Iran’s regime’s nuclear program. We applaud them and give them our thanks.”
Other Trump critics in the Republican Party have praised Trump’s successful execution of “Operation Midnight Hammer” against Iran, including former vice president Mike Pence, former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, and former national security adviser John Bolton.
“President Trump Made the Right Call to deploy American Forces to strike nuclear sites in Iran and he should be commended for his decisive leadership. Iran could never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon,” Pence said.
“Well done,” Haley wrote.
Bolton told CNN that Trump’s move was “clearly the right thing to do.”
Many Democratic lawmakers argued Congress should have had a say on the strikes, claiming Trump violated the Constitution by approving an act of war without congressional authorization, despite precedent from former Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) suggested the alleged violation of presidential war powers could be used as justification for a third impeachment against Trump.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) disagreed with his Democratic colleagues.
“For me, that’s not a war. That was a very limited military exercise, and it struck that, and then that’s where we’re at,” Fetterman said on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom. “It really wasn’t about unconstitutional or it’s anything like that. It was like a very, very limited military engagement.”
Breaking with the majority of the GOP, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) called Trump’s strikes on Iran unconstitutional. Last week, Massie introduced a bipartisan war powers measure designed to prohibit military involvement in Iran.
The congressman told reporters he would withdraw the measure if the Iran-Israel ceasefire that Trump announced Monday evening holds.
Many Trump supporters initially opposed any U.S. military involvement in Iran but have since come around following Trump’s handling of the strikes.
For instance, Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk previously said a foreign policy issue on Iran “will cause a massive schism in MAGA and potentially disrupt our momentum and our insanely successful Presidency.” He later told Politico’s Playbook that the “civil war” was overblown. Days later, Kirk praised the operation.
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“Iran gave President Trump no choice,” he said. “For a decade he has been adamant that Iran will never get a nuclear weapon. Iran decided to forego diplomacy in pursuit of a bomb. This is a surgical strike, operated perfectly. President Trump acted with prudence and decisiveness.”
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon likewise approved of the strikes but remains wary of the U.S. deploying troops or pushing for a regime change in Iran.