SCOOP: Why Sen. Deb Fischer backs Trump's Golden Dome missile defense system
The Nebraska lawmaker went to the west coast to explain why President Donald Trump's Golden Dome is a core part of American national security.
President Donald Trump’s Golden Dome missile defense system is a key strategy of deterrence, Sen. Deb Fischer (R., Neb.), a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), said. The Nebraska lawmaker took her missile defense message to the west coast, telling an audience at the 12th annual Reagan National Defense Forum (RNDF) about why she backs the Trump proposal.
“This transfers to providing for a safer world, to be able to serve our allies, our partners, the world as a whole,” Fischer, the chair of SASC’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee, said. “And it is a deterrent. It is a deterrent. People, our adversaries, need to think twice before ever taking any action against this country.”
Trump’s Golden Dome, Fischer explained, has “kept our country safe. It’s like our nuclear triad. It’s kept our country safe. How do you measure the safety of this nation, and what kind of price tag do you put on it?... We have bright, qualified people that are working on this to be able to have a system in place to identify, to discriminate incoming [threats] for the United States of America. That’s a deterrent in itself to our adversaries. It protects the American people, and I think, equally important, it gives the President of the United States time to be able to make decisions in how to respond if you have a missile defense system that works in that way.”
Both former President Ronald Reagan and Trump heavily prioritized American missile defense during their time in office. The former’s work was credited with bankrupting and ultimately defeating the Soviet Union.
Fischer laid out America’s current threats as being primarily “two peer adversaries: Russia and China, who have a nuclear triad and all the platforms as well. The Russians have completed modernization,” she warned, “and the Chinese are advancing at a breathtaking speed.”
She added that her “mission” is to complement the Trump administration’s push for mass document declassification.
Government transparency, she said, “has been my mission for many, many years as a member of the Armed Services Committee — to try and un-classify a lot of the information that we receive as senators, so that we are then able to talk to the people of this country about the threats that we face. So we can talk about that we have two peer competitors.”
Following the summit, Fischer emphasized that many of her points are bipartisan. Sen. Tim Kaine (D., Va.) joined her for a Fox News sit-down in which the duo emphasized bipartisan support for increasing sanctions on Russia, among other topics.