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April 24, 2025 - Triggered - Donald Trump Jr
57:29
Interview with CIA Deputy Director, Plus FBI's Major Maduro-TDA Discovery | Triggered Ep236
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Welcome to another huge episode of Triggered.
I'm on the road traveling, but wanted to make sure I hopped on to delve into all of the latest headlines.
So we'll get into all of the latest news, everything that's going on in the world, and we'll be joined today by Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Ellis.
Deputy Director Ellis previously served in the White House Counsel's Office.
And before that, he was actually the General Counsel over here at Rumble.
So definitely someone who loves free speech, believes in it, has fought for it, and probably under John Ratcliffe, some of the exact kind of leadership that we need to change so much of what's going
Under the leadership of CIA Director Ratcliffe and Deputy Director Ellis, the CIA is taking major steps to restore credibility to the agency to get the CIA back to its true mission.
of taking on our adversaries.
Okay, that's a big one.
And obviously protecting the American people.
So this is a special episode where you'll learn a lot and hopefully will inspire a lot of confidence on the direction our country is headed.
Guys, make sure you're liking, make sure you're sharing, subscribing, downloading the Rumble app on your smart TV so that we can keep getting the message out.
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Let's get it all out there.
For all of the headlines that we spotlight here on the show, go over to my news app, MXM News, where you can get the mainstream news without the mainstream bias.
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So guys, with that, let's get into all of the top headlines.
We begin with debunking the latest round of fake news.
From the failing propaganda regime media.
Because they still can't let go of their Russia, Russia, Russia obsession.
As someone who did countless hours of congressional testimony based on this line, I take it personally.
I don't want to have to deal with that one again, although I'm sure they'll be starting that next nonsense over.
But the latest culprit is Politico.
Not surprisingly, leftist propaganda regime Politico, who put out a fake story claiming the Trump administration is considering lifting sanctions again.
Now, that obviously doesn't stop them from writing because fake news is going to fake.
But the story raises a few questions.
How do they get away with continuing to run these fake stories?
They quote these anonymous sources, people who aren't willing to put their names on it, even if they had direct on-the-record quotes from the people in the room saying that it's a lie.
And why are so many in the swamp and the press hysterical over the prospect of peace?
Why do they not want peace?
I don't understand it myself.
I've been watching that food for a long time.
Starting with my father's CNN town hall during the primaries when he just said he wanted to stop this death.
I mean, it seemed pretty reasonable to me.
But the notion that these guys are hysterical over the prospect of peace is pretty insane.
Why do they continue to pretend like Ukraine is winning this war?
We should at least be honest about the facts.
And the circumstances.
That's the problem.
Regime media has made it seem like Ukraine is winning.
Zelensky put out this statement this week that he really wants to get Crimea back on the table as part of Ukraine, just so we're clear.
And they lost that 10 years ago.
A bullet wasn't even fired.
The people who lived are ethnic Russians and were totally fine with all of it, and now they want more?
I mean, no one's had this bad of a losing hand.
No one continues to be in constant retreat, losing thousands of people a day.
And they want more than even the start of the war?
It's not reasonable.
It doesn't seem like Zelensky even wants to entertain peace because he knows peace means elections.
Elections means he's out of office and he's no longer the darling of Hollywood elites for their obligatory Zelensky selfies.
Again, guys, the irony here is that my father has been tougher on Russia than Obama or Biden ever were.
Remember, it was Biden.
Biden. Who openly defended lifting sanctions and allowing the construction of Russian pipelines.
But the left and their endless war allies never, ever let the facts get in the way of a good story.
And we're seeing the same thing play out at the Defense Department, where the D.C. foreign policy establishment is getting desperate.
But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is doing exactly what he was appointed to do.
Putting the warfighters first, not the warmongers.
Peace through strength.
We gotta be ready.
We gotta be fit.
But we don't have to fight every possible war imaginable.
We can actually have peace as a deterrent.
Strength, really, as the deterrent and peace as the outcome.
But again, there's no money in peace.
There's only money in war.
And that's why the D.C. Beltway wants to keep fighting, have people dying.
As long as it's not their kids, they couldn't care less.
And that includes, guys, righting so many of Biden's wrongs that weakened our military, like kicking some of our best soldiers out of the service for refusing to take the vaccine.
But now, Pete Hexeth is welcoming back over 8,700 service members.
Check this out.
We're also welcoming back former service members who were wrongly forced to leave the military.
More than 8,700 service members.
We're not taking an experimental COVID-19 vaccine.
Others were more informally pushed out or decided to get out.
We are welcoming actively back those warriors of conscience.
We've sent letters out.
We're seeking them out.
We want them back.
They never should have been forced.
Come back.
Quickly. Personnel and Readiness Department is working in real time to make that process more and more efficient, more and more direct every single day.
And remember, guys, Biden and the Democrats made our country less safe and less secure in some of the worst ways imaginable.
And that includes welcoming into our country foreign narco terrorists like Trinidad and Cartel de los Soles into a nation that takes the lives of innocent Americans each and
every day.
And the FBI is now confirming just how destructive all the people are.
In a groundbreaking intelligence assessment, the FBI concluded that Maduro, the leader of the Venezuelan government, that Maduro government officials facilitated the migration.
of Trindle-Aragua gang members from Venezuela to the United States to advance the Maduro regime's objective of undermining public safety in the United States, which, as we've all seen play out, included killing American citizens like Lincoln Riley.
And Biden and his auto pen enablers allowed this to happen.
Remember, guys, they were the ones that ended the sanctions on Maduro.
They cut a secret deal with Chevron, the gas company, and emboldened evil in the worst ways imaginable.
And it continues to get worse.
According to the assessment and multiple reports, the FBM believes the Venezuelan government will likely attempt to leverage these cartels and narco-terrorists in the United States as proxy actors to threaten...
And kill Americans and Venezuelans alike who are critical of the regime.
I guess I could be in a lot of trouble here.
But thankfully, we have my father in office.
And it's a new era for American strength and an end to the cobbling of evil dictators in our backyard.
Just yesterday, guys, the FBI announced terrorism charges against an alleged high-ranking member of TDA, Trendlerawa.
The case sparks the first instance of a Trendel-Naragua member being charged under terrorism-related crimes.
And as President Bukele of El Salvador recently said, and my father and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have also said, we're not tolerating this narco-terrorism oppression and destruction any longer, guys.
We're locking up these criminals one by one.
Under my father's leadership, it's a bad day to be a bad guy.
Democrat judges?
Democrats in general?
They'd rather make these bad hombres the face of their new resistance.
They're saying they're great people, they're family men.
Who cares if they're murdering innocent Americans?
It doesn't matter.
Because we're also learning that the Maryland man, you know, the guy who's a Maryland man, he's a super good guy, great father, great guy, great husband, you know, he only beat his wife a few times.
This 13 gang member who Democrats are in love with was also previously pulled over by Highway Patrol officer back in 2022.
Huh. How is he driving a car tied to a confessed human smuggler?
Add to that the revelation that Abrego Garcia was accused of domestic violence, has MS-13 tattoos all over his hand that he paraded around while meeting with Democrat senators.
Okay, minor details.
This is who Democrat and activist judges care about.
They don't care about innocent Americans.
They don't care about you.
They don't care about your children, your family, your friends, and your loved ones.
This is their resistance.
This is their hill to die on.
Defending, violent, life-beating, murderous, drug-dealing thugs.
It's beyond disgraceful.
Here's Vice President J.D. Vance laying it all out very clearly.
Omar Abrego Garcia's wife has been very vocal about how she doesn't think he's getting due process, and she now also fears for her safety.
Do you have a message to her specifically?
Well, I don't have a message to his wife.
I mean, look, I just disagree with the idea that he hasn't been offered due process.
He had a couple of immigration hearings.
He had a valid deportation order.
I think this idea that somehow that we couldn't deport an MS-13 gang member, and he was an MS-13 gang member, is preposterous.
And I think there's actually a deeper issue going on, which is that you see some radical judges at the district court level who are trying to layer so much quote-unquote process on top of the immigration.
system that it makes it impossible to function.
We have over 20 million illegal aliens in the United States of America.
Are we not allowed to deport them?
Because if we're not allowed to deport them, then what these district courts are saying is fundamentally they reject the will of the Americans.
We just reject that.
I believe the American people elected President Trump to do many jobs, but perhaps the most important job was to bring down the number of illegal immigration in this country.
That's what he's trying to do.
We're gonna keep on doing it.
And guys, we're also gonna get into all of this with Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Ellis, in just moments.
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Well, guys, joining me now, Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Ellis.
Michael, how are you?
Hi, Don.
Thanks for having me.
Doing well.
It is a busy day here, as always, but there are no shortage of issues to dig into as we work to ensure the CIA is serving President Trump's agenda.
Well, we really appreciate that.
And for those of you watching, if you notice a little bit of a delay, there's a reason for that.
Everything through the CIA has to be sort of scrubbed and checked.
So I'm hearing myself about five seconds after I say it.
So we're not incompetent.
It's just procedure, which, you know, at the CIA, I probably totally understand.
You know, at the CIA, I probably totally understand.
Yeah, security comes first for everything we do and for good reason.
Well, no, totally, and I get that.
Deputy Director Ellis, thanks first and foremost for joining.
Deputy Director, what are your core responsibilities inside the CIA right now?
Well, you know, it's really the honor of a lifetime to be here as part of President Trump's administration.
And my role is to help Director Ratcliffe ensure that this agency is helping the president achieve his foreign policy goals.
We want to make sure that when your dad is going face-to-face with any other foreign leader in any negotiation, that he has a decisive intelligence advantage over America's adversaries.
And our priorities for that, it starts with, I think, the greatest national security threat and one that President Trump deserves a huge amount of credit for, for realizing before the rest of Washington did, is China.
China is the top...
Our top priority.
And realizing that that competition with China is fundamentally a technological competition.
And we have to be better positioned to take on China in artificial intelligence, in quantum computing, in robotics, in a whole host of areas.
So China and technology are where we start.
And another emphasis area, all tracking from the president's policy priorities, is the total elimination of the cartels.
And that's another area where we are turning CIA, along with the rest of the intel community, as part of a whole government effort to take on and destroy these cartels.
Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of amazed that that hadn't been a priority really prior to this, because I can't think of much more of sort of a clear and present danger, so to speak, to the United States.
When you think of 100,000 Americans dying of fentanyl traffic, most of that coming across the southern border, but also through China, working with the cartels, etc.
It seems like you can kind of, you know, proverbially kill two birds with one stone, taking those on directly.
Now, you're absolutely right that it's a little shocking this wasn't a bigger priority historically.
You know, I think for too long the intelligence community viewed the counter-narcotics mission, viewed the fight against drugs.
As really more of a law enforcement problem, we said, oh, that's what FBI and DEA, that's what DHS, that's what these other parts of governments are doing.
The intelligence community is worried about China and Russia.
We weren't worried about these threats closer to home.
But we're changing that now.
Again, under President Trump's leadership, starting with that goal of total elimination of the cartels, this is a whole of government fight.
And the intelligence community has an important role to play.
As you noted, You know, these fentanyl precursors, they start in China.
And so there is an important intelligence mission of identifying where they're coming from and helping to disrupt and stop those flows of the chemicals.
And then, you know, you move to south of the border, you know, in Latin America.
That's where these chemicals are being synthesized into the deadly drugs that are killing Americans.
So, you know, working with our law enforcement counterparts, but also working with...
With our partners overseas, working with the Mexicans.
You know, they don't want the cartels dominating their country either.
And that's where, you know, for too long, the intelligence community neglected that mission.
But we're changing that now.
I mean, one of the funny things I noticed when I got here is our counter-narcotics folks, I went for a meeting with them, and their conference room, you have to go through a kitchen to get to their conference room.
I said, wow, like, is this some sort of, like, high security?
Like, super secret room?
Like, we hid it behind the kitchen?
Like, no.
It's just because they got the worst conference room because this was not a mission that was prioritized by the IC.
And that's what's changing.
That's what's changing now under President Trump's leadership.
I mean, that's wild.
I mean, obviously, China's the biggest long-term threat to us.
But when you think of 100,000 Americans dead a year because of fentanyl, I mean, that's two Vietnams, basically, a year.
It's hard to believe, you know, that wasn't a priority.
So, like...
I guess, without discussing specific operations, under the leader of yourself, Director Ratcliffe, has the CIA restructured those priorities pretty significantly?
And what kind of organizational shifts are really necessary to effectively balance the need to maintain institutional credibility while also enacting probably some much-needed reform?
Yeah. So, you know, CIA.
CIA has been very successfully prosecuting the counterterrorism mission since 9 /11, really, right?
We have built a finely tuned machine for identifying and then disrupting and destroying terrorist networks.
We are taking that same tradecraft, those same tactics that we have really, I think, honed and perfected
terrorist networks, and we are turning them against the cartels, right?
We can apply that same playbook.
Now, you know, there are obviously some key differences between terrorist networks and drug trafficking networks.
You know, the motivations are different.
The geography, you know, where this is all happening is different.
But many of those same techniques we can use to disrupt the drug traffickers' networks as well.
And one structural change...
You know, I mentioned the counter-narcotics folks were hidden behind the kitchen.
We recently merged our counter-narcotics mission center into our western hemisphere.
We merged them together to make a new America's and counter-narcotics mission center, bringing that regional expertise together with the experience of fighting narcotics traffickers and empowering them to really take the fight to the cartels.
It's good to hear.
So, you know, I guess, obviously, over the last, let's call it eight years or so, we've heard so much about, you know, the dangers of weaponized intelligence.
What does that mean to you?
And how does it relate to how you approach this position inside the CIA?
Yeah, well, you know, we saw firsthand in President Trump's first administration, the dangers.
Of a politicized intelligence community, the dangers of the weaponization of intelligence against political opponents.
It's something that I saw when I was at the NSC.
And I know my old boss, Chairman Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee, saw when he was investigating what went on with the Russia collusion hoax.
And it really shows the importance of keeping politics and that kind of political bias out of the intelligence community, because there are very powerful authorities that CIA and other intelligence agencies have.
We have to ensure that those authorities are turned outwards towards our foreign adversaries and not inwards towards the American people.
So that's, you know, that's the
We want to make sure that we lean forward and identify that many of the bad actors have left.
I think there have been a lot of reports on some of those folks.
But that if there are still folks that need to be accountable, that we make sure there's accountability for that.
And we make sure that these things can never happen again.
That there are forms that have been put into place, forms around the FISA process, that all of this ensures that intelligence community cannot be politicized in the future.
So the people watching understand, I mean, you work for Devin Nunes.
Devin was the first guy when he was a congressman to really go after Russia, Russia, Russia.
Turns out he was right about all of it being a hoax and a setup.
You then went on to work in the public sector.
You worked at Rumble, so sort of a free speech absolutist.
How do you sort of calm some of the natural fears that so many people, at least on my side of the political spectrum, feel?
Because that political weight, that weaponized intelligence was definitely...
Really only used against one side of the country and not the other.
You hear about the high-profile guys either losing their clearance or losing jobs.
I imagine there's quite a bit of skepticism still about some of the lower levels and just how entrenched all of that is.
How do you combat that so that people actually have the faith that these institutions do what they say they're going to be able to do?
No, it's a great question and something that we are thinking about every day of how we can make sure we change the culture here and, again, ensure that the abuses of the past don't happen again.
You know, part of it, again, starts with strong leadership at the top.
You talk about, you know, the president's executive orders.
We are faithfully complying with those and ensuring that, you know, whether it's...
Turning off security clearances or investigating past bad acts that we hold people accountable for what has happened in the past.
But, you know, there's also just a broader cultural point of we have to make sure that everyone at CIA knows that, again, we have to keep the work free of politics, free of bias.
One thing, you know, it's a small little thing, but one thing that I ask for is that every CIA officer, when they come on duty, when a new employee joins CIA, they get a copy of the Constitution.
Because that is the lodestar for our work here.
And, you know, violations of Americans' constitutional rights, that is just, you know, absolutely something that we can't have.
And if we discover that any abuses happen, that there will be accountability for those individuals.
And they won't be here anymore.
So, I know you can't speak to anything classified, but how would you describe this job in these first few months?
What stands out, sort of, you know, given the inherent secrecy of intelligence work and historical controversies that, again, sort of fuel that public skepticism I just sort of talked about, how do you navigate your duties to the agency along with the duties to the American people more broadly?
Yeah. Well, You know, I mentioned that there were some bad actors here in the past, and that's certainly the case, right?
Like, there's no denying that.
But there's also a lot of phenomenal people here.
There are some true patriots working at the CIA.
And, you know, of all the parts of the government, I think the CIA actually can be the most responsive.
I like to say, the CIA is a powerful sword, and one approach to the passive uses could be to beat that sword into a plowshare, but we don't want to neuter that weapon for the president.
We want to give it to him and let him pick it up and use it to carry out his foreign policy agenda, because there are great people here who can do amazing things.
They just have to Michael, can you talk a little bit more about the threat of cyber warfare?
Obviously, that's something that's sort of really in people's minds right now.
You see China in the AI race.
How are our adversaries using AI and what can you tell us about how the CIA itself is integrating AI and machine learning into its analytical processes?
Yeah, I mean, you're right.
The threat is real.
China has been attacking us on the cyber front for decades.
And, you know, again, it's amazing to me that really until President Trump entered office in 2017, The U.S. government was largely asleep at the switch on this, right?
Every national security strategy prior to President Trump's, whether it was Republican or Democratic administration, Bush or Obama, our stated national security strategy was to enable the peaceful rise of China.
Well, that changed the Trump administration, and cyber is one of those areas where I think we made some significant strides in the first administration, but there's a lot more work to do.
It starts with having better defenses, in part, right?
Making sure that our networks are hardened, that we counter the threats in as near real time as possible.
But it is also an offensive component here.
We have to create deterrence.
And I think that's something that President Trump saw that his predecessors did not.
If you continue to let foreign adversaries carry out cyber attacks with impunity, They will just continue to do so, right?
If there's no cost to them.
So that is where things are changing.
And you're right that artificial intelligence tools, these advanced technologies are critical to that fight.
And really, the American private sector is critical.
Most of the innovation in this space is not happening inside of the government.
It's happening out with the genius of American enterprise.
And we want to harness that and use it to give the United States a decisive advantage against China.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I've been reading about that for, you know, decades at this point.
You know, China and the theft of, you know, American corporate IP.
How does the CIA sort of work with corporate America to shore up those systems?
Because, you know, they spend probably trillions of dollars innovating, coming up with stuff.
China just goes in, steals it.
They've put, you know, zero basis.
They get, you know, a trillion dollars worth of information for free, and then they just work to improve it a little bit, you know, rather than actually create it.
Is there some sort of public-private partnership that can do that?
Yeah, so there is.
You're absolutely right when you talk about the Chinese have been stealing intellectual property for decades.
When you see the Chinese fifth-generation fighter jet that looks an awful lot like the F-35, right?
It's like, yeah, I wonder where they got that idea from.
You know, the public-private partnership, you know, most of that, it's not within the IC.
You know, DHS has a big role to play there.
But the role we can and do play is in collecting the information about Chinese and other foreign adversaries.
The Iranians are, the Russians, North Koreans, you know, they're bad actors in this space as well.
And sometimes even just, you know, criminal gangs and ransomware hackers.
We can collect information, and then even if it's collected in the classified form, the goal is to produce versions of that intelligence that can be shared with the private sector in, again, as near real-time as possible, whether it's through DHS or through other mechanisms,
to give the private sector that defensive information it needs to protect itself.
You know, if Chinese bombers or missiles were,
You know, blowing up American factories.
No one would say, well, gosh, like, you know, the factory owners should build air defenses, right?
No, the government has a role to stop this.
The government has a role to play here in helping the private sector defend itself from nation-state threats.
And that's what we need to do.
You know, I love that you sort of brought up bringing up also sort of the offensive capabilities, not just playing defense and trying to shield them, and then they figure out a way around that, and we're constantly...
You know, just on the defense.
I'd sort of always, in my heart, hope that, hey, maybe I just don't know about what we're doing back, but hopefully there's, you know, the offensive capability as well to, again, as a deterrent from them stopping doing that.
Meaning if they do something bad, there's going to be something back.
There's a repercussion, you know, and, you know, people learn.
Let's call it, you know, education through pain.
You know, how do you build up those kinds of systems?
And get them implemented.
Because, again, I don't know anything about it.
I'm probably not allowed to know anything about it.
But it does not seem like we've ever taken that offensive approach like the other side.
We've been on defense.
They've been on offense.
And even if they get 10% of what they could, it's still a significant net loss to us.
Yeah. Yeah.
And, again, it starts with building credible deterrence.
And that starts with strong leadership from the top.
Because if you just...
Talk about responses, but never actually carry them out.
The adversaries, they noticed that, right?
So, you know, to take an example outside the cybersphere, right, the strike that took out Qasem Soleimani in 2020, right, that President Trump ordered, that established deterrence, right?
Iran knew that he meant business, and that if they continued, you know, attacking Americans, that they would pay a price.
It's the same in the cyber realm.
You have to establish credible deterrence, and that means imposing costs on your adversaries.
Again, there's clearly a defensive side.
The defensive side is important, but it's not sufficient because the adversaries, again, these are highly capable adversaries that will always be looking to stay one step ahead of the defensive protections you can put in place.
So, Michael, you referenced it a little bit earlier, but can you talk more about what really seems to be a very deliberate and powerful effort?
into the Western Hemisphere to combat that cartel violence.
What can you tell us about that?
Because, again, that's on our border.
That's really the immediate threat.
The others are very real threats, probably larger threats, but certainly longer term.
I understand there's been a merger of the Western Hemisphere Mission Center and the Counter-Narcotic Center.
I think that was great, rather than having them in a break room past the kitchen into a singular unit.
What is the significance of all of that?
Well, you know, I think the significance is that we're finally going to be giving this problem, this, you know, again, one you mentioned is killing tens of thousands of Americans.
We're finally giving it the attention, the resources, the expertise it deserves.
Again, CIA has some great patriots who want to take on this fight, who want to stop the deaths we're seeing on our streets.
And, you know, we are opening up the aperture.
For them to be able to help dismantle and destroy those drug trafficking networks.
You know, again, it's part of a broader government effort.
It's not solely CIA.
It's not solely the intelligence community.
There's a role here for law enforcement.
There's a role here for the military.
You know, we're talking about the 10,000 troops along the southern border.
You know, this is a broad government effort.
And it's one where, again, you know...
The people of these countries in Latin America, the people of Mexico, the people of El Salvador and Colombia and Panama, they don't want these drug traffickers in their countries either.
They don't want the violence and the corruption that comes with this drug trade.
So it's helping them rid their countries of it, but doing so, and again, in a way that...
I think the U.S. government just really, really hasn't prioritized the issue in the past.
And it wasn't until we got that direction from President Trump that the total elimination of the cartels is the priority, that we really, you know, turn this machine, right?
Again, the well-oiled machine that has dismantled terrorist networks onto the narcotics traffickers.
So, you know, I think we've always sort of looked at, you know, some of the bad actors, authoritative dictatorships around the world as sort of, you know, one-offs.
But can you connect the dots for us between those authoritarian dictatorships in Latin America to China and to the Iran threat directly?
Yeah. Well, you know, we talked a little bit before about the fentanyl networks.
They start in China with the precursor chemicals.
We've seen that before.
Venezuela, there's a long history of them also collaborating with other bad actors, with Iran, with Russia, with Cuba.
I mean, this is all well documented.
But again, I think what we're already seeing is a response to strong leadership from the White House that just wasn't present in the past.
Our adversaries notice when When there's a change of administration and there's a different tone and a different aggressiveness that wasn't present in the past.
And I think, again, whether it's on China and not accepting the unfair competition that they've practiced for so long, or on Venezuela on not accepting the migration streams, the criminal gangs that they have been sending to our borders.
You know, you start to see it in the adversary behavior once they get that very clear message from Washington.
So, you know, obviously the CIA's job is, you know, functioning, you know, prevention and or perhaps now offense against, you know, our foreign enemies.
How do you coordinate those efforts?
Obviously there's an incredible brain trust there.
You have incredible information.
How does that work with some of the, you know, you mentioned DHS, perhaps on the drug side of things.
How do you work with sort of the US-based counterparts to be able to attack this fully so that, you know, two groups sort of aren't functioning in a vacuum without then sort of negating sort of some of those protections that the CIA isn't supposed to be functioning in the United States,
you know, proper?
Yeah. Well, you know, it starts with the White House giving the same strong direction that the president has given to all departments and agencies that, you know, they need to take on this problem.
So, you know, we've got DOJ.
Attorney General Bondi is highly engaged on this issue.
Director Cash Patel at FBI, you know, he is turning FBI's agents toward border security, towards counter-narcotics.
And with the assistance of my counterpart there, Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who...
It's a real delight to have a chance to work with him now with our past working together at Rumble.
But recently, to your point about the other parts of the government, I recently went out to the southwest border.
I went down to San Diego to visit with Customs and Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations.
And I also stopped at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs, which, again, they've got 10,000 troops now along the border, making sure that we secure that border and stop the flow of deadly drugs
into our country.
So, you know, it's a whole of government effort and one where we stay very, very closely aligned with our counterparts in law enforcement and the military.
So what specific role could the CIA have in that border security?
Is that giving them the information about the cartels?
How does that exactly work?
Again, within the confines of...
Yeah, you know, again, I analogize it a little bit to the counterterrorism mission, which starts, you know, the terrorist threats, historically, they start abroad, right?
But then you're worried about when the terrorists come into the United States to carry out an attack, right?
So you have to have, you know, intelligence sharing.
You have to have strong relationships between the foreign intelligence side and the domestic side.
And some of these are reforms from after 9 /11 to make sure that there's no gap, there's no wall between the foreign and domestic side here.
So it's a similar dynamic, I think, for drug trafficking networks, right?
These are cartels that are located overseas, right?
So there's information that we can collect.
There are authorities that the CIA and other parts of the intelligence community can use to take on those cartels overseas.
But then we have to share it.
We have to have close working relationships with our domestic counterparts so they can make use of that information in their mission.
All obviously following the appropriate legal protections to make sure that American civil liberties and privacy are protected at all times.
But it's making sure that we have that fusion of intelligence between the foreign and the domestic side.
We've got the foreign part of that mission.
But we need to make sure that we stay very closely aligned with DHS and FBI, the agencies and domestic authorities as well.
Does the same apply for some of the fairly common sense concerns that so many Americans have about the porous border over the last four years, where allegedly, and not even allegedly, we know they arrested people on terror watch lists.
We know, I'm sure, plenty got through.
As it relates to the terror threat beyond, again, the cartel, drug trafficking side of things?
For people who are currently in America right now?
Yeah, I mean, that's...
Obviously, it's related to the border threat, right?
Because that's how we know some of these terrorist networks were able to enter the country was through a porous southwest border.
When you look at some of the threats that were disrupted over the past year, I believe there's...
Others have talked about how there was a bombing that was disrupted in Oklahoma City on Election Day of 2024, last year, where there was a foreign nexus to that threat and was disrupted thanks to intelligence community working together with domestic law enforcement to save American lives.
So that threat is still there, and it's one that Director Ratcliffe and I are very closely attuned to.
We can't take our eye off the ball when it comes to terrorism because while the threat may be different than it was 20 years ago, ISIS, al-Qaeda, they are still out there and they still want to send people into or inspire people inside of this country to kill Americans.
Yeah, so for those tuning in a little bit late, like I said earlier, you sort of have this incredible background.
You were at the White House Counsel's Office.
You were with Devin Nunes then when he was in Congress.
You went into the public sector at Rumble, obviously, a champion of free speech, sort of absolutism, working directly with Chris Pawlowski.
You were even a Jeopardy champion, so kind of a big one.
What have you learned in each step of the way, and how does it apply to that work at the CIA?
What did you glean from each of those things, whether it was public sector, private sector, government work, or Jeopardy?
Well, you know, at least on the professional front, you know, working with good teams, good people has really been the most important thing.
You know, you can have the best job in the world, and if the people around you that we're working with are lousy, then, you know, you'll be miserable.
But, you know, having a good team, and I think, again, with Director Ratcliffe, we have one here at CIA.
Having good people around you.
You know, having the opportunity to work with people like Devin Nunes and Chris Pavlosky, you know, that's really a special thing.
And small teams that are highly motivated by mission, whether it's at Rumble or in Congress or at the White House or here, can do an amazing amount.
And that, I think, is something that I've always tried to seek out.
On the Jeopardy side, you know, that was a great experience.
I was lucky enough to win one show and then went down in flames on the second one.
So, you know, I had to go big and give it a shot.
Ran out of random knowledge?
Well, it just went all in on Final Jeopardy and got it wrong.
Actually, on a question about how many states there were in Mexico, believe it or not.
Well, hopefully you're learning that one now.
In hindsight, you could go back and win that thing.
31 states and Mexico.
I'm not going to forget that one.
That's funny.
I imagine that one's now ingrained in perpetuity into your head right now.
Yeah, yeah.
But no, again, really phenomenal experiences.
I'm lucky to have had them.
And I can't thank the president enough and Director Ratcliffe for...
Give me the opportunity to serve once again.
Well, we appreciate that.
I got one last question.
I want to see, you know, since you understand what the actual threat, you know, of these gang members, whether it's Trendel Aragua, whether it's MS-13, you know, what do you think of some of the lawfare being waged with some of these district judges that seem to have the ultimate authority in America these days?
They have more power than the president of the United States.
They're able to...
On a whim, and they're always seemingly cherry-picked with the most radical leftist appointees, but they're seemingly able to overrule not just the President of the United States, but the will of the people who certainly elected my father in part because of what he was going to do in terms of eliminating that domestic threat of criminal illegal aliens.
Some of these rulings have really been outrageous, and I'm glad that the Department of Justice has been vigorously litigating them and appealing.
I think, you know, one of the things that I've seen in Congress to deal with this is these nationwide injunctions.
I think they have to stop.
They were abused in your father's first administration as well.
You know, the second executive order is issued that the left-wing groups run to.
You know, a particular judge in San Francisco, a particular judge in Seattle.
And, you know, litigants shouldn't choose their judge, I think, as a fair principle.
And, you know, a single district court judge should not be able to enjoin a policy nationwide.
It's not our system of government.
It deprives the president of his constitutional authority to conduct the foreign relations and serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
And I think it has to end.
Well, I'm glad you feel that way.
So, Deputy Director Ellis, thank you so much for joining us.
Keep up the good work.
Make sure we turn this machine around and we start going after those adversaries that perhaps we've been a little too asleep at the wheel for a little bit too long.
Thank you so much for having me.
Enjoy the conversation and look forward to delivering the results.
We look forward to seeing you, man.
Thanks a lot.
Talk to you soon.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
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