WATCH: Gallego Calls Congressional Republicans “Cowards” for only now Condemning the Iran War

NEW YORK – During his visit to the United Nations General Assembly, Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) joined MS NOW and slammed congressional Republicans for speaking out against the Iran War only after Speaker Mike Johnson sent members home until after the November midterm elections, denounced Trump’s imperialism in Venezuela to enrich American corporations, recapped his meetings with world leaders, and gave his reaction to President Trump saying he will “annihilate” Iran. MS NOW: All in with Chris Hayes On cowardly Republicans only now speaking out against the Iran War: “Courage is found when session is out.  All three of those Republicans literally are saying this as soon as Speaker Johnson has said we’re not coming back to vote anyway. There’s even no way to actually test them, right? “Let’s just be honest, they’re just a bunch of cowards. They’ve been literally living in this cowardly way this whole time. The American public have been hurting the whole time. Our families have been hurting, especially those that serve overseas. “And now when it’s convenient, now when they can’t actually be called to the carpet to actually answer for this, they are seeking kind of the last-minute reprieve to be able to say, look at me, I am now independent of this man. On Trump using the United States military in Venezuela enrich American corporations: “As someone who, unfortunately, had to see the outcome of really bad wars, a war that we are chasing just for profit—a war that only benefits a bunch of big oil executives and anyone else whose family ends up using insider trading to actually pump up their own portfolios, it’s disgusting. “When we’re using our military to basically enrich ourselves and enrich our rich, crony oligarchs who are in charge of this country, then we actually don’t have the friends we need when things really go bad. “So, when we’re attacking a country to basically be colonial, to bring back this imperialistic point of view that some of Latin America is very, very used to and pretty aware of, it only makes sure that we have fewer and fewer friends going into the future, when we need more and more friends going into the future—especially if we want to actually deal with China.” On the Pentagon’s disregard for the lives of our service members: “They’re not actually looking at these men and women as actual human beings. They’re looking at them as numbers and as political tools. That’s the grander problem. “But the fact is, the way they’re treating them, it reminds me of what I dealt with and the fact that, you know, my friends—the way they died, how we died—we were basically treated as just kind of a side spectacle to this bigger issue, this bigger war. And this is what’s happening again.” MS NOW: Morning Joe On if the United States will come to aid Poland, a NATO member, if Russia invades them: “So if you talk to Poland, they do believe we’ll come there. But what they’re afraid of, because of this kind of inconsistency from this president, is that Russia’s going to make a mistake. They’re going to make a miscalculation, and that’s how most wars start, actually, is through massive miscalculation. “Now, the Polish government — the military is the strongest it’s ever been. It’s actually one of the fastest-growing economies. Their military is modernizing very quickly. They will be able to defend themselves, but the best wars are the ones that you never start, or you never have to get into. And they’re afraid that this president’s instability, his lack of leadership, his inability to actually stand up to Putin, is actually going to encourage them to actually attack or anything else.” On what the United States needs to end the war in Iran: “There is no way out of this unless we go really, really deeper and deeper into war, which the American public doesn’t want, and I don’t think it actually ends up getting us where we want. “The problem is you have [Steve] Witkoff, right? Witkoff is a real estate lawyer—like, salesman, zoning training. Why is he and the other son-in-law negotiating for the United States right now. “These are not the best negotiators we should be sending to. We need to sit down and have long-term negotiations, and we’re not getting that right now. We’re not getting the smartest people in the room. Actually, we’re getting part of the dumbest people in the room. And we’re going against some of the best negotiators that Iran has offered.” On Senator Gallego’s reaction to Trump saying he will “annihilate” Iran after he dodged serving in the Vietnam War: “Well, there’s a lot of people that avoided the Vietnam War, but there’s very few people that avoided the Vietnam War and then look at war in such a positive manner and use terms like ‘annihilation.’ “You know, seeing 18, 19-year-old boys having to make some really hard decisions, some life-and-death decisions at the last minute, and then seeing some of these politicians, when I got back, kind of treat us as if we’re just like toys and that somehow our decisions didn’t have consequences. And we have consequences. I still carry the consequences from the war. “It’s going to affect these men and women forever, and it’s going to affect our country forever. And not just, obviously, our men, but even there, as much as I tried to help the Iraqis, certainly there was a lot of downsides, and there were some bad effects that happened there. I can’t imagine we want to do that to another society willingly, especially people that just aren’t even involved in this war, just civilians.”