| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Talk to us about the Pentagon's reaction to yesterday's strike on Hamas leaders in Qatar. | ||
|
unidentified
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It was one of surprise. | |
| We waited for hours to get a good sense of who knew what when. | ||
| And did Israel actually notify the Pentagon or were our own military assets in the region the reason that we knew that something was headed towards Qatar and was able to at least relay a message, although it didn't land in time. | ||
| The Qatar has said that basically they got the warning from the U.S. as the missiles were falling on them. | ||
| So is it typical for Israel to notify the United States? | ||
| This is not the first time that they have gone after Hamas in other countries. | ||
| Is it typical for them to notify the United States ahead of the attack? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The Pentagon has relied on an extremely close working relationship with Israel. | |
| And the notification goes both ways. | ||
| When the U.S. has been taking action, let's say against the Houthis, we have notified. | ||
| What caught everyone by surprise in this particular instance is that Israel gave the Pentagon a heads up that these strikes were happening, but did not say where they were taking place or what country. | ||
| And it was up to the Pentagon to quickly try and ascertain where this was going to take place. | ||
| So that was intentional. | ||
| Why do you think that is? | ||
| I mean, do you have an opinion on that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I don't have an opinion on it. | |
| But I can say that it was a source of frustration. | ||
| The various people that I talked to throughout the building yesterday, different offices were wondering what sort of impact this is going to have. | ||
| You know, Qatar is home to one of our largest bases in the Middle East and has been an invaluable partner in negotiating hostage releases. | ||
| You know, he saw with Trump yesterday that he seemed rather incensed that these missiles fell on such a close, major non-NATO ally of the United States. | ||
| They also, Qatar does buy a lot of U.S. weapons. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It does, and just provided a 747 to the president. | |
| They are a major U.S. buyer. | ||
| The idea is that they have a lot of Western weapon systems. | ||
| They use our same platforms. | ||
| It provides some interoperability. | ||
| The U.S. has been trying to build up that relationship for years. | ||
| It's always a complicated one, but basically as the last two years or after the October 7th attacks, our relationship with Qatar has been more complicated, but they have also been a leading partner in trying to secure hostage release. | ||
| Their critics, of course, say, yes, they are doing that, but at the same time, they are harboring Hamas leadership and giving them safe haven. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, with the U.S. knowledge. | |
| And part of that was that, you know, to be able to negotiate, to be able to try and eventually get to a peace deal, there have to be people to negotiate with. | ||
| And I think that the sentiment at that point was to have them operating somewhere where there could be communication. | ||
| You can be in touch with them. | ||
| The Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Kane, were in Puerto Rico. | ||
| They made an unannounced trip there earlier this week. | ||
| What was that about? | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this happened on the heels of the U.S. military strike on the drug boat off the coast of Venezuela. | |
| It was a show of force. | ||
| It was signaling. | ||
| The U.S. has maintained a military presence. | ||
| There's about 10,000 National Guard troops, obviously, U.S. territory. | ||
| And they are looking at options to further build up that military presence. | ||
| We have bases that have been closed for years. | ||
| There's still a port of Viecas. | ||
| There's an Air National Guard base at Muniz. | ||
| There's a lot of possibility there to station troops, station ships, station aircraft, if this is actually going to escalate into something larger with Venezuela. | ||
| Can you talk a little bit about what that military hardware is that is being stationed in the Caribbean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, there are eight warships right now. | |
| There's a cruiser, there's three destroyers, there's a number of landing dock ships, which are important for their ability to carry helicopters, so they can transport troops onto shore easily, they can resupply. | ||
| There's also an amphibious warship that's got about 2,500 Marines on board. | ||
| All of these ships together are in the mostly in the Caribbean. | ||
| There have been a few that have gone onto the Pacific side, but have been basically doing patrols presence. | ||
| In the past, that would be, I mean, having eight ships in U.S. Southern Command, and I've covered U.S. Southern Command for years, they never have that many warships there. | ||
| It's usually a Coast Guard presence, it's the Navy hospital ship, maybe a destroyer makes, you know, a port tour. | ||
| I mean, eight warships. | ||
| There's F-35s, which is America's premier fighter jet. | ||
|
unidentified
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Is this overkill for drug cartels? | |
| Well, it may be a larger move than just the drug cartels, and that's the bigger question that you're seeing Maduro raise in Venezuela. | ||
| Is this going to be a military overthrow? | ||
| And it wouldn't be the first time Trump has thought of this if that is indeed the administration's thinking. | ||
| In 2018, he was actively suggesting that the U.S. military be used to overthrow Maduro and looked for options, and he got talked off of it by his advisors at the time. | ||
| But as we've seen in the second term, a lot of this is about Trump's unfinished business. | ||
| And so you have to raise the question, does he consider this part of that unfinished business? | ||
| If you'd like to talk to Tara Kopp about anything happening at the Pentagon, she's the Pentagon correspondent for the Washington Post. | ||
| You can give us a call. | ||
| The lines are by party. | ||
| So we've got Democrats on 2028-8000, Republicans 202-748-8001, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| We also have a line set aside for active and former military members. | ||
| You can call us on 202-748-8003. | ||
| Use that same number to text us, your comments, and we're also on Facebook and X. | ||
| So this all follows that deadly strike on the vessel in the Caribbean Sea. | ||
| 11 people were killed. | ||
| The Trump administration says that they were carrying illegal drugs bound for the United States and that they were members of Venezuela's Trenda Aragua. | ||
| What's your reporting on how all that went down and what's the intelligence that you've seen that would confirm that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Hardly anyone has seen the intelligence to confirm that, not even members of Congress, and they've been asking for it for more than a week. | |
| There was a briefing yesterday that didn't go particularly well with members of Congress, and we're still trying to report out details of what was briefed. | ||
| But the general assessment from there and from our own organization and others is that it still has a lot of unanswered questions on the authorizations used, the authority used, the process for this. | ||
| Typically, when the Navy interdicts or even the Coast Guard interdicts a vessel, there's a process to a warning shot to getting them to slow down. | ||
| From everything that has been provided to us to see to date, you just see a vessel speeding along and then you see an airstrike, whether it was a missile or a drone, you know, a drone-fired missile or a helicopter-fired missile. | ||
| We don't even know that, and the administration has been very tight-lipped on how this was actually carried out. | ||
| I want to show you what Senator Paul said. | ||
| This is Senator Rand Paul. | ||
| He's quoted in a semaphore about this. | ||
| Said, it says, Paul said, the U.S. government needs, quote, some kind of process before you kill people. | ||
| He acknowledged, however, that he didn't expect any other Republicans to join him in speaking out about the subject. | ||
| Quote, people are very much afraid to have opinions right now. | ||
| I doubt anybody else will. | ||
| I know you don't cover Congress, but what have you been hearing from Republicans specifically about this? | ||
|
unidentified
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Very little, as the senator noted. | |
| I think right now the main question is: under what authority was this carried out? | ||
| And you saw on Trump's very first day in office, he identified the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. | ||
| That opened a pretty wide door to use the 2001 AUMF potentially. | ||
| And administrations have been using that particular vehicle for now almost 25 years. | ||
| This is authorization for use of military force that we used against terrorists in the Middle East. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, to respond to Al-Qaeda directly in response to the September 11th attacks. | |
| And ever since then, we've seen this authorization be used to target terrorist cells in Africa, in the Sahel. | ||
| We've seen it in targeted strikes in Yemen. | ||
| I don't know exactly if this specific authorization was used for this, but it would be the first time I think it would be used in the Western Hemisphere. | ||
| Are you hearing anything about possible strikes within Venezuela? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a lot of chatter. | |
| There's a lot of chatter that it could potentially be strikes against cartels in Venezuela or that the mission will expand and strike cartels in Mexico and that this is really a paradigm shift for how the military is operating in the Western Hemisphere that now that it has identified these groups as foreign terrorist organizations, the reins are off a little bit, so to speak, and that if they have a target of opportunity, they can take it. | ||
| I think that Congress is going to probably weigh in because that could very easily engage the U.S. in a wider conflict here in our very own hemisphere. | ||
| And Maduro's allies are, of course, Russia and China, adversaries of the United States. | ||
| What are we expecting, or have we heard any reaction from either Russia or China? | ||
| I mean, Venezuela, China buys about 90%, I understand, of Venezuela's oil. | ||
| So how are they responding to this? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think there's two diplomatic back channels right now. | |
| It's kind of a wait and see. | ||
| This was one boat, the first strike. | ||
| We have signaled through both Rubio and through JD Vance that this won't be the last strike. | ||
| So I think that the response right now is muted as there's kind of a wait and see what is the U.S. really going to do here. | ||
| Let's talk to callers. | ||
| We'll start with Wayne Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Republican. | ||
| Hi, Wayne. | ||
| You're on with Tara Cop. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| How are you doing today? | ||
| Good. | ||
| We've been having a war against drugs for the last 40 years, right? | ||
| And y'all haven't put a dent in it. | ||
| But, you know, this is what I want to say, right? | ||
| I'm going to go off the tough topic a little bit, right, for one second. | ||
| If the President of the United States, Donald Trump, would go up on a minimum wage, $20 an hour, people in the inner city wouldn't be selling drugs. | ||
| And this is what y'all say. | ||
| Y'all say if you go up $21 an hour, the small businesses won't make no money because they won't be able to hire. | ||
|
unidentified
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The people in America, they spend money on garbage. | |
| Still up that they don't need. | ||
| So they will buy, right? | ||
| Now, the inner city is the problem. | ||
| I don't know why they don't want the National Guard, the FBI, ISIS. | ||
| I don't know why they don't want them in the cities because we need it. | ||
| Like Donald Trump say, the inner city need peace in the neighborhood. | ||
| All right, Wayne. | ||
| The deployment of the National Guard in American cities in D.C., what has been the, has there been a strain on the National Guard and their resources? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There was already a strain on the National Guard even before this. | |
| You know, it's actively getting ready for this hurricane season. | ||
| It has been used non-stop for the last 20 years, not only to support operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but then Syria and then COVID and then response to January 6th and response to domestic unrest. | ||
| This has been a non-stop churn on the National Guard. | ||
| So this latest iteration of how can we use the National Guard, how can we put more National Guard troops in cities across the U.S., that's going to have to be considered in the wider, these units have to train, they have to be prepared to deploy overseas. | ||
| If you've got, if you're polling, you know, right now in D.C., there's about 2,200 troops and they're coming, 900 of them about are D.C. National Guard. | ||
| And then, you know, you've got some states that are sending as few as 12 or some states that are sending a couple hundred. | ||
| But that all pulls those guys and women from what their scheduled training was going to be and what their unit was preparing for them to do. | ||
| And that has a ripple-down effect. | ||
| And from their jobs. | ||
|
unidentified
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And from their jobs, all their lives. | |
| I mean, you know, the troops that have been here now for 30 days, they missed their kids' first day of school. | ||
| The troops that are coming in from D.C., they all live in the wider area. | ||
| And some of them are commuting as much as two hours just to get here, to do the mission, and then drive home. | ||
| That starts to weigh on things, and that ultimately factors into conversations around dinner tables: can we really sustain this? | ||
| And how long is it expected to be sustained for DC? |