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Lindsey Graham was on the receiving end of a smack-down from one of his Senate colleagues on Sunday after going on "Meet the Press" and declaring Donald Trump had every right to launch an unprovoked attack on Iran on Saturday.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) bluntly claimed the Republican from South Carolina needs a refresher course on the Constitution.

During his Sunday appearance, an upbeat Graham claimed Trump "was within his Article II authority” to begin bombing that cold lead to a war.

He added, "Congress can declare war or cut off funding,” Graham continued. “We can’t be the commander in chief. You can’t have 535 commander-in-chiefs. If you don’t like what the president does, in terms of war, you can cut off the funding. But declaring war is left of the Congress. We’ve declared war five times in the history of America. All of these other military operations were lawful.”

Asked to comment after watching the cli, Merkley suggested, "I'd encourage him to actually read the Constitution."

"Our founders were so concerned about the impact of war that they said, this is not a decision that can be left to a single individual," he lectured. "And that's why the Constitution vests that authority with Congress. The president absolutely failed to follow the Constitution and now we're in war without congressional authorization ––we should debate a war powers resolution."

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not take kindly to a suggestion on "Face the Nation" that the Donald Trump administration jumped the gun by bombing reported nuclear facilities in Iran in a surprise attack on Saturday.

Dispatched to explain the administration's rationale for possibly putting the U.S. on the brink of another war in the Middle East, the former Florida senator ended up butting heads with host Margaret Brennan when she pressed him on what intel was used.

"Let me follow up on a phrase you just used, 'weaponization ambitions,'" she prompted her guest. "Are you saying there that the United States did not see intelligence that the Supreme Leader had ordered weaponization?"

"That's irrelevant," Rubio shot back. "I see that question being asked in the media all the -– that's an irrelevant question, they have everything they need to build the weapon--."

After speaking over each other, Brennan pressed, "That is the key point in U.S. intelligence assessments. You know that."

"No it's not," he snapped to which she replied, "Yes it was," before she continued over his protestations, "The political decision had not been made."

'No, no," he protested. "Well, I know that better than you know that, and I know that that's not the case. You're not –– you don't know what you're talking about--."

"But I'm asking you whether the order was given?" Brennan pressed.

"And the people who say that –– it doesn't matter when the order was given," Rubio insisted. "They have everything they need to build nuclear weapons. Why would you bury –– why would you bury things in a mountain, 300 feet under the ground? Why do they have 60 percent enriched uranium? You don't need 60% percent enriched uranium. The only countries in the world that have uranium at 60 percent are countries that have nuclear weapons, because it can quickly make it 90. They have all the elements they have. Why are they –– why do they have a space program? Is Iran going to go to the moon? No, they're trying to build an ICBM so they can one day put a warhead on it."

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Despite triumphant proclamations from Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the surprise attack on Iran was a rousing success, there are concerns within the White House that blow-back is coming.

According to a report from Politico, not everyone in the administration was on board with the bombing of three sites in Iran linked to uranium enrichment.

Add to that, Trump made some broad statements about the damage done and now it falls to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to make it look like the president came out on top.

As Politico's Dasha Burns, Nahal Toosi and Jack Detsch reported on Sunday, "President Donald Trump was triumphant Saturday night during his Oval Office address but within the administration the mood was less sanguine as officials braced for a potential Iran counterattack."

According to one insider, “We don’t know how much this is going to get us into something protracted. Right now the message is we want to get rid of the nuclear capacity and focus on negotiations.”

Another person who took part in the White House debate offered that there are legitimate fears of a retaliatory "mass casualty event," and confessed, "There’s a lot of risks here for escalation,” before adding, "there’s going to be more pressure on the United States to get involved.”

As for Hegseth, the ball is now in his court

According to Politico, "Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth 'is going to feel pressure and somehow prove that the strikes are as successful as Trump claimed they are,”'the person added, saying that the Pentagon assessed this year that the U.S. military would need to do 30 days of sustained strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities, owing to their underground depth and spread out layout."

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Immediately following a Sunday morning Pentagon press conference regarding the Saturday bombing attack on Iran ordered by Donald Trump, longtime New York Times Pentagon reporter Helene Cooper noted the wording used for one site by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine.

Sitting on a panel on MSNBC's "The Weekend," Cooper was asked for her takeaways from comments made by Caine and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Despite Donald Trump's claim after the attack that, "Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated," Caine seemed to disagree.

Ac Cooper noted, "Some of my independent reporting now –– this is not coming from either Hegseth or Caine obviously –– but it's not, there's some indications now that people are not so sure that this site has been completely destroyed, that it was severely damaged."

She then added, "And Caine did say 'severely damaged,' but he did not use the word 'destroy,' and I think that's quite significant."

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Donald Trump's decision to launch an attack on Iran without approval from Congress was hammered by a Democratic senator on MSNBC early Sunday morning as he accused the president of a "double cross" perpetrated on U.S. voters.

Speaking with the hosts of "The Weekend," a fuming Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) harshly criticized the president for exceeding his authority which could put the country on the path to yet another war after making campaign promises to not go down that path.

Asked about a bill he is sponsoring that would deny funding for "any use of military force in or against Iran without specific congressional authorization," Welch replied, "Number one, this was Trump at his most impulsive. Number two, Trump lied to the American people and to his voters promising he would not get us in yet another Middle East war."

"Number three, his own intelligence came to the conclusion that while Iran was enriching uranium, it didn't have the capacity to deliver a weapon," he added. "Number four, [Israeli Prime Minister Bibi] Netanyahu sabotaged the negotiations and Trump willingly acceded to the Netanyahu agenda, which is also about regime change in Iran."

"So this is an astonishing double cross by Donald Trump to his supporters and to his pledge to Americans," he continued. "In my view the last thing we need is a war, another war in the Middle East and I'm one of the many in Congress that are going to be demanding that we vote on this."

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