Tulsi's Hearing Exposes Bipartisan Rot of DC Swamp
Tulsi Gabbard's DNI confirmation hearing exposed the bipartisan rot of the security state, as she was relentlessly pummeled by members of both political parties over her support for Edward Snowden and her willingness to meet with U.S. adversaries.
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Welcome to episode number 400 of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, Tulsi Gabbard appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee today, a committee that is specifically constructed to feature only blind supporters of the U.S. security state.
And she was, unsurprisingly, relentlessly pummeled by members of both political parties as part of her confirmation process to become director of national intelligence for Donald Trump.
I don't want to make any predictions.
The vote will probably be held in secret after a secret session.
But there is a real chance that some Senate Republicans will defect and her nomination could be in serious jeopardy.
What matters is the reason these committee members were so enraged by her.
her.
They focused almost the entire session, four hours in public, on two and only two issues.
One, that Tulsi has in the past expressed support for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, heralding him as a courageous whistleblower.
And two, that she has expressed opposition to laws, specifically Section 702 of FISA, which allow the FBI and the NSA to spy on American citizens without the warrant required by law.
In other words, these committee members were furious with Tulsi Gabbard, For having opposed U.S. government abuse of its spying power and their lies about it to the American public.
So much of this hearing today so vividly illustrates exactly what is so destructive and grotesque and deceitful about the bipartisan D.C. establishment, what Donald Trump has so aptly referred to for eight years now as the swamp.
I really can't think of a day that more viscerally demonstrates who these people really are and why their dogma has been so damaging.
And so we're going to take the show tonight to really break down what happened today.
There's so many components to it, so many dimensions that are really worth analyzing.
And because it was bipartisan, it says so much about the real way Washington works.
Before we get to that, a few programming notes.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Yesterday, I sat through the entire confirmation hearing, almost the entire confirmation hearing of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to become Donald Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary, where he was relentlessly almost the entire confirmation hearing of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to become Donald Trump's Health and Human Services Secretary, where he was relentlessly attacked,
The same exact thing happened today with Tulsi Gabbard in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, although she was attacked by members of both political parties, not just one.
And it also happened in the Senate Judiciary Committee where Kash Patel appeared for his confirmation hearing to become director of the FBI. And what all three of those nominees have in common, the most controversial of the Trump nominees, is that they were all put into these agencies because Donald Trump believed and said during the entire campaign and for many years now that he believes.
That these agencies are fundamentally corrupted, fundamentally broken, do not work for the benefit of the American people.
And he therefore wants to put people in charge of these agencies, not who will continue the way things have been done, not to perpetuate the dogmas, the bipartisan D.C. dogmas that have created such terrible results, but to dismantle them, to radically challenge them, to reconstruct them.
And he won, Donald Trump did, based on that message.
If there was any message that everyone agrees on, That the 2024 election delivered, it was that the American people are deeply, radically dissatisfied with how Washington works.
They know there's something fundamentally wrong in its institutions and that it needs to be dismantled.
That's why they've now twice sent an agent of chaos and destruction named Donald Trump to sweep into Washington, not because they want to preserve these institutions or continue them.
But because they want to destroy them, they want to radically alter them.
And several of his cabinet members, especially these key positions, FBI director, director of national intelligence, health and human services secretary, are put there to go and confront the D.C. establishment and to subvert it, to take it apart and dismantle it.
And the reason they're so angry about these nominees is because the whole point of an establishment, a D.C. establishment, It's been very good to them.
And you would think listening to them and their anger and rage at these three nominees in particular for daring to question the intelligence community, daring to imply that the FBI has acted corruptly, daring to suggest...
That our regulatory system that oversees the healthcare industry has become captured by the very industries they're supposed to regulate, that somehow this is offensive because these institutions are working so wonderfully.
They're filled with people of integrity who are providing, quote-unquote, public service to our country.
You would think that they, that the entire country, that Americans as a whole, love these institutions and therefore are angry at anybody who would challenge them.
When exactly the opposite is true, imagine.
Being on the Senate Intelligence Committee and having presided over and endorsed and supported and defended every single one of the lies that have emanated from that community.
The lies, the destruction, the wars, the illegal spying.
And then somebody for the first time in decades comes before the committee to be appointed to run those agencies who says, I have fundamental radical critiques of these institutions and you react to them as though they're the ones who are crazy.
When you're the ones who have overseen the Iraq War and the lies that justified it, oversaw all of the lies told by James Clapper and John Brennan, all of the lies that were told as part of Russiagate in the 2016 election and the Hunter Biden laptop in the 2020 election, the lies that were told about COVID, you're responsible for all of that.
So, of course, anybody who comes to you and says, I'm here to indict these institutions.
I've been put in charge of them by a president who just won an election.
Not to continue them and not to preserve them but to dismantle them.
Of course, as the guardians of the status quo, as the protectors and perpetrators of that ideology, of that dogma that's under attack, you're going to be extremely angry.
And nobody is doing that more so when it comes to challenging bipartisan dogma.
than Tulsi Gabbard.
And I think it's so important to note that the media narrative about the Republican Party is that they're all marching lockstep behind Donald Trump.
This is utter nonsense.
It's complete garbage.
The reality is that, especially in the Senate, especially in the Congress, the majority of members of the Republican Party who serve in the Senate and the House Hate Donald Trump's ideology.
Hate the ideology on which he ran.
Hate his foreign policy.
They have to pretend that they're behind him because they know he's the most popular person by far in their party.
And they know that they can't get anywhere inside the party if they say the truth.
But you look at people like John Cornyn or Tom Cotton, none of these people have been aligned with the Trump foreign policy as he articulates it and expresses it ever.
They're radically opposed to it.
They're all vehement supporters of the war in Ukraine.
They still think the war in Iraq was a good idea.
They generally support everything that was done under the war in terror.
And so you have this mismatch of their pretense and their branding versus their reality.
And they were able to take out that anger at Donald Trump by directing it at Tulsi Gabbard.
And for that reason, her nomination is definitely in jeopardy.
I don't want to jinx her, I don't want to make predictions, but if Forrest to bet, I'd be surprised if she gets out of this committee, especially given the possibility that the vote to confirm her might be in secret.
I believe that's in the discretion of the chair, who is Tom Cotton, the Republican from Arkansas, in his defense.
defense.
He is now a vocal supporter of Tulsi Gabbard, trying to do his best to shepherd her nomination through the confirmation process.
So that's her main asset.
If it gets confirmed, it likely will be because of that reason.
There's a possibility that maybe one Democrat on this committee, Ron Wyden, who has devoted his career to defending the privacy rights of Americans and objecting to the abuses of the NSA and CIA will vote for her, though we'll see.
But the exchanges that happened today were really so remarkable.
It was like, if somebody said to me, just show me where I can go, And spend three hours trying to understand how Washington works and the reason that it has produced so much destruction and wreckage and why it's lost so much of its credibility and trust among the American public, I would direct them to this confirmation hearing today.
Let's take a look at some of what was said.
First of all, when she gave her opening remarks, Tulsi Gabbard was anticipating the attacks on her as a traitor, as somebody who serves Foreign regimes is somebody who in particular doesn't have any real autonomy in her head and is instead controlled by a series of men who direct her what to do, who tell her what to say, whose interests she serves because she's incapable of thinking on her own.
And here's what she had to say about that.
Before I close, I want to warn the American people who are watching at home.
You may hear lies and smears in this hearing that will challenge my loyalty to and my love for our country.
Those who oppose my nomination imply that I am loyal to something or someone other than God, my own conscience, and the Constitution of the United States, accusing me of being Trump's puppet, Putin's puppet, Assad's puppet, a guru's puppet, Modi's puppet, not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet masters.
The same tactic was used against President Trump and failed.
The American people elected President Trump with a decisive victory and mandate for change.
The fact is, what truly unsettles my political opponents is I refuse to be their puppet.
You know what's so amazing about what she said there?
That was her opening remark.
Most of the trouble that she had throughout the rest of the day Was created by her refusal to jump through the hoops and read from the scripts they demanded she jump through and read from.
In other words, exactly as she said, I'm not a puppet of anybody.
The reason I'm controversial, including in this committee room, is because I refuse to be anybody's puppet.
And they repeatedly spent the day demanding that she say things she didn't believe, making clear that if she doesn't say them, her nomination will be in jeopardy, and she refused to say them, which is incredibly rare in Washington.
Most people there will say anything they need to say in order to gain a little bit of advancement in their career or some additional power.
And the fact that they couldn't control her, the fact that they couldn't force her to affirm these pieties, that she simply doesn't believe enraged them all the more.
I have to say, you know, I've gotten to know Tulsi not great, but over the years I've had conversations with her.
I've interviewed her.
I've gotten to know her reasonably well.
There's things that she believes that I strongly disagree with.
I've challenged her on those things when I've interviewed her about foreign policy and other things that's not relevant for the moment.
You can go watch my interview with her that I did in, I think, 2020, 2019. But...
The impression I came away with, and I'm very convinced of this, is that she's not only very smart, and she's very smart, she is very smart, she's extremely strong-willed.
She knows what she believes, she says what she believes, she changes her mind about what she believes if she becomes convinced that things merit that.
And I'm not even saying that she was perfect here, that she hasn't been willing to be Pushed some and pressured some to say things she doesn't really think.
Republicans on the committee made clear to her that if she continues to oppose Section 702 warrantless eavesdropping powers on American citizens, she has no chance to be confirmed.
And she did tell them in private they claim that she now believes that 702 has been adequately reformed and is an important intelligence tool.
Although today...
She went back to saying it's almost like a muscle memory.
She's just not constitutionally constructed to say things she doesn't believe, even if she should for her own interest.
She went back to saying that she thinks 702 is dangerous and needs a warrant requirement to spy on Americans, and it enraged several Republican senators on this committee whose vote she absolutely needs in order to be confirmed.
Part of what she also said was what I was just alluding to at the beginning.
Which is putting somebody in charge of the intelligence community who comes from the intelligence community, who believes the intelligence community has largely been doing a great job, who believes that their pronouncements are entitled to be believed simply because they come from the U.S. intelligence community, is the most preposterous step imaginable given how many lives and how many errors and how many...
Destructive policies have emanated from this faction of our government.
Here she went through just some of them.
The American people elected Donald Trump as their president not once but twice.
And yet the FBI and intelligence agencies were politicized by his opponents to undermine his presidency and falsely portray him as a puppet of Putin.
Title I of FISA was used illegally to obtain a warrant to spy on Trump campaign advisor Carter Page using a Clinton campaign-funded false dossier as their so-called evidence.
Biden campaign advisor Tony Blinken was the impetus for the 51 former senior intelligence officials' letter dismissing Hunter Biden's laptop as disinformation specifically to help Biden win the election.
Former DNI James Clapper lied to this committee in 2013, denying the existence of programs that facilitated the mass collection of millions of Americans' phone and Internet records, yet was never held accountable.
Under John Brennan's leadership, the CIA abused its power to spy on Congress, to dodge oversight, lied about doing it until he was caught, and yet has never been held responsible.
Under Biden, the FBI abused its power for political reasons to try to surveil Catholics who attend traditional Latin Mass, labeling them as quote-unquote radical traditionalist Catholics.
Personally, just 24 hours after criticized Kamala Harris and her nomination, I was placed on a secret domestic terror watch list called Quiet Skies.
Sadly, there are more examples.
The bottom line is this.
This must end.
It's absolutely remarkable.
And I would even go so far as to say historic, understanding that's a very heavy word, to watch somebody nominated by a president of the United States just elected who ran on a platform of dismantling these agencies, arguing they're corrupt and politicized, go before the Senate and read the litany of lies that the intelligence community has spouted with the American people as their victims, if that's exactly what Tulsi Gabbard just did.
And I think what's most remarkable about that is that That view, that worldview she just outlined, that the intelligence communities are out of control, that they are unto themselves, that they have no democratic accountability, that they lie constantly to interfere in our politics, that they spy on people abusively and unconstitutionally, used to be foundational to the American left in the United States.
I don't mean the Democratic Party, I mean the actual American left.
But even some people in the Democratic Party, the Church Committee in the 1970s, which is what...
We discovered all these abuses and led to reforms like the FISA court, saying that the government can no longer spy on Americans without the warrants required by law.
They don't have to go to a normal court.
That might be too burdensome, so we're going to set up this FISA court that's like a quasi-court.
That all came because Democrats wanted to investigate the CIA and the FBI and the rest of those agencies in the wake of what happened in the 1960s and especially during Watergate.
That was a foundational cause of liberals and the Democratic Party.
And now here you have somebody going for the first time, nominated to run these agencies who agrees with that critique.
And you don't have a single prominent liberal pundit standing up and supporting her.
Nor do you have any member of the Democratic Party doing that.
Because this critique is now associated with Donald Trump, which means it has to be invalid.
The Democratic Party has become aligned with these agencies.
They are the core allies of the U.S. security state.
So much of what the U.S. security state does in the way of lying is designed to help the Democratic Party and sabotage Donald Trump.
So it's just disappeared from American left liberal politics.
I don't remember the last time I got invited on a left liberal show to talk about the evils of the CIA or the U.S. intelligence community or the security state that only happens on shows that are more on the right.
That's the realignment that has happened.
When I did the Snowden reporting, it was so notable that so much of the support came from the left and the right.
Predicted predominantly the anti-establishment populist parts of the right and the anti-establishment populist parts of the left.
They thought Snowden was a hero.
They were highly supportive of the reporting we were able to do.
The people who hated Edward Snowden and were enraged by his disclosures and ours, as the journalist reporting on that archive, were the establishment wings of the Republican and the Democrat parties.
So you would think that those people who just a decade ago were cheering Edward Snowden and saying that it was vital that he revealed what he revealed would stand up in defense of Tulsi Gabbard, given that she was battered all day for having praised Edward Snowden and say, no, we want somebody like that.
As the director of national intelligence, because if she's not confirmed, the next person who's going to sit in that seat is going to be someone who's going to say, yeah, of course, Edward Snowden is a traitor.
He deserves to be electrocuted in a death penalty case.
He was a traitor to the country.
He betrayed us.
The CIA and the NSA are crucial.
They're doing a great job.
We need to strengthen their...
That's what's going to happen.
But again, there's no more concern about the intelligence community, about the U.S. security state and left liberal politics, so they really don't care about any of this.
They just look at her and see a traitor to the Democratic Party and somebody Donald Trump picked, and therefore they hate her.
Even though she's not just saying things that had been so central to left liberal politics for so long, but is in a position where she can actually do something about that.
I think one of the most extraordinary exchanges And one of the most extraordinary changes I've seen was the one that she had with the Democratic senator from Colorado, Michael Bennett, because it was really just unhinged.
Actually, we're going to get to that in a second.
I want to start, first of all, with the ranking Democrat on the committee, Mark Warner, who is a telecommunications tycoon, the richest.
Democrat in the entire Congress, the third richest overall, one of those people who's going to fight the oligarchy, and he's the ranking Democrat in the Senate Intelligence Committee, a longtime defender of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, etc.
And I was surprised because he began by attacking Tulsi Gabbard.
He went first among the Democrats as the ranking member.
The first thing he raised in the focus of the hearing was on her prior support for Edward Snowden, and here's part of that exchange.
Do you still think Edward Snowden is brave?
Mr. Vice Chairman, Edward Snowden broke the law.
I do not agree with or support with all of the information and intelligence that he released, nor the way in which he did it.
There would have been opportunities for him to come to you on this committee or seek out the IG to release that information.
The fact is he also, even as he broke the law, released information that exposed egregious, illegal, and unconstitutional programs that are happening within our government that led to serious reforms that Congress undertook.
Do you notice how he didn't want to let her say he did not want to hear that Edward Snowden revealed egregiously unconstitutional and illegal programs?
Because the Mark Warners of the world were the people who were endorsing those sorts of things when they were being done.
Edward Snowden didn't betray the American people.
He served the American people.
What he betrayed were the criminals inside the government who were allowing our government to spy on us in unconstitutional legal ways, and they would have gotten away with it if not for him, and that's why they hate him so much.
I don't think it's amazing that he's contesting her praise for Snowden as being quote-unquote brave.
You can hate Edward Snowden all you want.
You can think he's a traitor.
You can think what he did was some sort of betrayal of the United States, somehow sorry that he forced you to realize that your government was spying on the Internet and spying on you without warrants in ways that are illegal and unconstitutional.
He's deeply apologetic for that.
You can think all those things you want.
The one thing you cannot deny is his bravery.
This is somebody who sat inside the NSA for months.
And very systematically and carefully picked up their documents that he believed should be in the hands of journalists so we could report them.
He did it right under their nose.
And then when we met him in Hong Kong, a place he chose because it's a symbol of resistance and liberty, not part of mainland China, often opposed to mainland China, he was working under the impression, as were we, That he was going to spend the rest of his life in prison.
It was 98% in my mind that once we left Hong Kong, the next time we were going to see him was on the television inside a courtroom wearing shackles and an orange jumpsuit.
How can anyone contest that Edward Snowden is brave?
You can contest a lot of things about what he did, but not his bravery.
It reminds me of when Bill Maher got fired shortly after 9-11.
From his Politically Incorrect program on ABC News because he said, look, obviously you can think what the terrorists on 9-11 did was despicable.
I do.
But there's no denying their bravery.
They hijacked planes and flew a plane that they were piloting into a building knowing they were going to die for their cause.
That's not cowardly.
You can't deny their bravery.
And he got fired for it because nobody wanted to hear that.
Nobody was ready to hear it.
Here's the rest of this exchange.
We've got five minutes.
So I take your answer, you know, and these are your quotes.
Brave.
Please join my bipartisan legislation calling for charges to be dropped against him.
Do you disagree that legislation was not appropriate?
Do you believe he is brave or not?
Yeah, it went back those words.
Once again, Senator, Edward Snowden broke the law.
He also released information that exposed the United States government's illegal programs.
I really can't stand in these hearings the way they ask a question and then two words into it, they start interrupting.
He asked multiple questions there.
He didn't just ask one question.
And so she was trying to explain what her view was, which is presumably what he was asking for.
And he just cut her off.
And it happened over and over and over today.
And your words are still your beliefs.
Yes or no, please.
I'm making myself very clear.
Edward Snowden broke the law.
He released information about the United States government's illegal activities.
If I may just finish my thoughts, Senator, in this role that I've been nominated for, confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, I will be responsible for protecting our nation's secrets, and I have four immediate steps that I would take to prevent another Snowden-like leak.
She basically went on to say, February,
December of 2012. And we were meeting with him by the very beginning of June, the end of May, beginning of June in Hong Kong.
And that was the precipitating event.
And what she's saying is, look, if I'm the DNI, I'm going to make sure we don't break the law.
We don't lie to the American public.
We don't violate the Constitution.
And therefore, we won't need any more of these types of leaks.
All right, let's continue with this.
With this next video.
And by the way, just to underscore the point, and I know most people who watch this show already know it, but just to be absolutely clear, here from The Guardian in September of 2020, the NSA surveillance exposed by Edward Snowden was illegal.
The court rules seven years on.
The...
The spying program that the NSA was doing to spy on American citizens without warrants was illegal.
It was a violation of the Constitution and it was being done in secret.
The only reason we know about it is because he had the courage to sacrifice his liberty to come forward and make us aware of it.
And he knew that if he had gone to this committee, the first call they would have made was to the FBI. The only way he could have blown the whistle on this was by doing what he did.
And I just want to, I'm going to let you see this next clip because this is really, for me, the crux of what actually happened, which is this exchange that Tulsi Gabbard had with Michael Bennett of Colorado because he became incredibly unhinged during the course of this exchange and he became very shrill, very upset.
And he, to me, is the kind of living, breathing representation of what the Washington establishment is, of the reason why it's so hated, the reason why it's so destructive.
It all became so manifest, so viscerally apparent in how he was speaking to her and the things that he was saying.
So let's take the time to look at this exchange.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to repeat my colleague's question to you.
Thank you for being here.
To answer these questions and for your service, was Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?
Senator, I will also repeat my answer.
He broke the law.
You said earlier that you were offended by a question that my colleague from Kansas asked.
Which I think was his duty as somebody on this committee to fulfill his responsibility to advise and consent.
We are not here to be a rubber stamp for the president of the United States.
So let me ask you again, do you believe, as the chairman of this committee believes, as the vast majority of members of our intelligence agencies believe, that Edward Snowden was a traitor to the United States of America?
Senator, I've confirmed as Director of National Intelligence.
I will work with you to make sure that there is not another Snowden-like lead.
This is not a moment for social media.
It's not a moment to propagate theories, conspiracy theories, or attacks on journalism in the United States.
This is when you need to answer the questions of the people whose votes you're asking for to be confirmed.
As the chief intelligence officer of this nation, as my colleague said, this is not about you.
It's about the people that serve the intelligence agencies of the United States.
Is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?
That is not a hard question to answer when the stakes are this high.
Senator, as someone who has served in uniform...
Your answer, yes or no, is Edward Snowden a traitor to the United States of America?
As someone who has worn our uniform in combat, I understand how critical our national security is.
Apparently you don't.
Apparently you don't.
Let me ask you, I've worked very hard to...
So let me just stop here and say this, on this question of...
I demand that you denounce Edward Snowden as a traitor.
It's not enough for you to say he broke the law, that you don't agree with certain things that he did.
You have to say he's a traitor.
First of all, Tulsi Gabbard and Edward Snowden both did the same thing after 9-11, while the people on this committee and those like them were voting for the United States to go and invade in Afghanistan and voting for the United States to go and invade Iraq and bomb multiple countries all over the world.
Tulsi Gabbard and Edward Snowden both answered that call.
They both went to enlist in the military and volunteered to go fight in those wars because they believed their government when they said they were necessary to protect the United States.
They went to risk their lives in defense of the United States.
Tulsi Gabbard has been in the military ever since.
She continues to be a lieutenant colonel in the reserves.
She has access to all kinds of classified information and always has, and her background check is completely clean as a whistle.
She's never once gotten near any kind of...
Breach of classified information.
Edward Snowden went to defend his country.
He then ended up in the CIA because he broke both of his legs in basic training and couldn't deploy.
He went to work for the CIA overseas.
He went to work for the NSA. And it was only then did he discover the truth of what our government was actually doing to American citizens.
The whole point of the U.S. security state, the central taboo on which it was constructed.
Is that the powers of the U.S. security state were never supposed to be directed inward and used against the American people.
They were only supposed to be directed outward.
In fact, it was Frank Church, the liberal senator from Idaho, who oversaw the Church Committee in the 1970s that investigated these abuses, who said they have already developed such a potent technological means of surveillance that if it were ever directed inward...
It would be turnkey tyranny, as he described it.
We would have, quote, no place to hide.
That became the title of my 2014 book that I wrote about my work with Edward Snowden.
That was what he was saying, that the surveillance already in the 1970s was so sophisticated that if they ever turned it inward on the American people, you couldn't evade it.
You couldn't escape it.
There'd be no place to hide.
And after 9-11, people like Edward Snowden and many others who were inside the government discovered the government was doing exactly that.
And he came forth to alert the American people to the fact that that was taking place.
Now, maybe you don't agree with everything Snowden did.
Maybe you think he should have done this or that.
But the question of whether someone is a traitor to the country requires an intent to harm the country and to benefit America's enemies.
And...
Think about once Edward Snowden had this archive in his hand filled with top secret documents, classified material, material about our spying.
Think about all the things he could have done with it if he had wanted to harm the country.
First of all, he could have sold it quietly to some other government or governments or to non-state terrorist groups or actors of any kind and profited greatly and then gone off to some other country and hidden with his wealth and been wealthy for the rest of his life.
He didn't do that.
He could have secretly passed it to America's enemies, just quietly as well.
He didn't do that.
He could have just dumped it all on the Internet without the slightest regard for what its implications would be.
He didn't do that either.
Instead, he came to American journalists, myself, who was at the time working at The Guardian, Laura Poitras, who created a partnership with The Washington Post, and he said, here's the archive.
The people who are going to make the decision about what gets released and what doesn't is not myself, it's you.
And he gave us very conservative instructions about how he wanted us to treat the archive, that we don't publish anything that may put people in harm's way, that we only publish enough to show people what they ought to know in the public interest.
He was an incredibly conservative and careful whistleblower.
He could have done so much more.
If he had been a traitor to his country, somebody trying to aid and abet America's enemies in times of war, which is the formal definition of treason in the Constitution, I don't think any of these people have read.
He could have done all of that and he did it.
And so to sit there and suggest that somehow Tulsi Gabbard is sympathetic to treason or that Edward Snowden is a traitor and so many of them spent all day doing exactly this.
Think about all the things wrong with our intelligence community and the only thing they were focused on all day was demanding that she call Edward Snowden a traitor because to them Edward Snowden is the root of all evil.
Like Julian Assange is.
Not because Edward Snowden harmed the country but because he harmed them.
Because they're the ones who endorsed and supported and still support illegal and unconstitutional spying on American citizens.
Here's the rest of this.
You put your own words here in front of the committee.
Not, you know, fake news, not conspiracy theories on the internet, but the actual things that you have said on February 23rd, 2022, at the very moment.
That Russian tanks were rolling across the peaceful border of Ukraine for the first time.
You tweeted at 11.30 p.m.
your time.
This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden administration slash NATO had simply acknowledged Russia's legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine's becoming a member of NATO. Did you say that, yes or no?
I believe you're reading my tweet, Senator.
Yes, is the answer.
A few months later, you said on your podcast, and I quoted it, But this regime-change war against Russia that the U.S. and NATO are waging via their proxy in Ukraine didn't begin when Putin invaded Ukraine.
They had their eyes set on this objective long before that.
Did you say that, yes or no?
I believe you're reading my tweet.
Thank you.
The answer is yes.
You're quoting a podcast that provided much more context.
I'm happy to have a conversation with the chairman about whether I'm taking anything out of context.
I don't think I am.
And your answer is yes.
Are you aware that your comments about proxy wars and Russia's legitimate security concerns, to quote your own words, I'm
shocked to hear you now say that, you know, you are agreeing.
I'm not shocked because I know you said it.
You are agreeing that you basically said that Putin was justified in rolling over the peaceful border of Ukraine the first time since World War II that a free nation had been invaded by a totalitarian state.
And you were there at 11.30 p.m.
that night to say that you were with them, not us.
Now, this is what sickens me right here.
This is such an important exchange.
First of all, pretty much everybody on this committee agrees on all these issues.
It's pure groupthink.
They're just drowning in nationalistic propaganda.
They always think the United States is noble, that all our wars are great.
He said to her, you are with them, not with us.
Why?
Why was she on the other side, a traitor to her country that she served in uniform for now 20-plus years?
And he hasn't.
Why?
Because she pointed out something that has been pointed out in Washington at the highest levels of government for many years, which is that NATO expansion up to the Ukrainian border is regarded by everyone in Moscow, not just Vladimir Putin, but all of his most liberal opponents as an existential threat but all of his most liberal opponents as an existential threat to Russian
Just this week, the Estonian foreign affairs minister of the EU gave an interview and she was talking about how important it is to go into Russia and change the government and smash it and turn it into little pieces, little countries, so that it's no longer threatening little countries, so that it's no longer threatening to the West.
you're just Everybody in Washington knows that if you expand NATO up to the Ukrainian border, the Russians are going to consider that to be a grave and even existential threat to their security.
So if you point out...
Not that Vladimir Putin was justified in invading Russia, but that maybe things that we did were misguided because we were provoking them and creating an environment where they felt threatened, something that Washington has been describing in memos for ages.
In other words, if you critique your own government, now you're on the other side?
And if your critique of your government happens to align with some other country, it means you're a propagandist for that other country.
By that rationale, People who were opposed to the invasion of Iraq and were criticizing the U.S. government for evading Iraq must have been Iraqi propagandists or Saddam Hussein propagandists.
Do you see the idiocy of this mentality?
But this is fundamental to Washington discourse.
In other words, the only way Tulsi Gabbard could have been a patriot is not by serving her country in the military for 20 years, not by volunteering to go fight in the wars that these people all endorsed for their own self-interest.
And all the other words that they've been cheering on as well?
No, that has nothing to do with patriotism.
Patriotism means that when your government does something or says something, you stand up and you clap like a trained seal.
And because she didn't do that, because she didn't mouth everything that all these people in unison believe, Republicans and Democrats on this committee all throughout Washington, the people whose foreign policy has been so completely devastating to the United States, to our financial security, to our national security, to the world, To our standing in the world?
If you don't stand up and applaud everything they say and recite every one of their decreed pieties, it means you're a traitor to your country.
It means you're on the other side with them.
And you're unfit to serve in the highest levels of the U.S. government.
Shouldn't we want people with different views inside the U.S. government advising the president based on different perspectives of our foreign policy?
But they don't want that.
There's homogeneity that's required and you cannot criticize the U.S. government or its war policies based on this bipartisan rot.
If you want to be considered to be a position of director of national intelligence or something like it, and this is what you're hearing here.
Let's listen to the rest.
You don't know because you don't read Russian propaganda.
Russian state TV then aired your comments.
Did you know that?
Senator, I think you should also quote the statement that I made.
What I would say, Mr. Chairman, it's up to all of us.
We're the Senate.
We get to decide whether we're going to confirm this nominee.
Obviously, we didn't select this nominee.
But can't we do better than somebody who doesn't believe in 702?
Can't we believe that somebody who can't answer whether Snowden was a traitor five times today?
Who made excuses?
For Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine?
The first time that I'm aware of any American official has done that?
I'm questioning her judgment.
That's the issue that's at stake here.
And as you said, and I totally agree, this is about our intelligence officers.
And you cannot answer.
Most of what we do here is in secret.
This is one of the very few opportunities that you will ever have to have a conversation with this panel in public.
And the record is going to be very clear about the position you took with regard to Edward Snowden and the record is going to be very clear about your reaffirmation of the statements you made in the middle of the night when Russia was invading the free country of Ukraine.
Your time has expired.
Just look at the compartment alone between Tulsi Gabbard, who's sitting there conducting herself with dignity and self-possession and confidence in the things she believes, and this rambling, unstable, warmongering maniac who thinks that any deviation from Washington establishment foreign policy, notwithstanding how destructive it has been, notwithstanding how much it has been driven by lies.
Somehow renders you unqualified.
And again, he's speaking for most of the people on this committee, Republican or Democrat.
Even though these people were the ones who were just rejected in this election, even though these people are the ones that have caused Americans to hate their own government and hate Washington, and keep sending people there who promise to destroy it, it's why Obama got elected, it's why Bernie almost got elected, it's why Trump got twice elected.
To go to Washington and burn it to the ground, these people continue to believe with such pomposity that they are the guardians of all things noble and that nobody should question or challenge anything they do.
All right.
I think we have a little bit more of Senator Bennett.
He came back for another question.
And so we're going to listen to that right before we go to a quick break, and then we're going to examine the rest of this hearing.
Thank you again for hanging in there with this discussion.
Colonel Gabbard.
The House Intelligence Committee review of the Snowden disclosures found not only that he was a traitor, but that since Snowden's arrival in Moscow, he has had and continues to have contact with Russian intelligence services.
You can see the deep concern on both sides of the aisle here.
You had in your opening statement all kinds of complaints about The
question I guess I have...
How, if you can't say that, you feel that the concerns that this committee has, that we need somebody here who will actually honor their oath, as you said.
Edwin Snowden did not honor his oath to the Constitution, which is what you just said was the most important duty, most important obligation that you have in this role.
Okay.
The government on its face was violating the Constitution by spying on Americans in secrets without warrants.
Edward Stodan took an oath to the Constitution, not to the NSA. And he discovered that the government was violating the constitutional rights of American citizens and he honored the Constitution and his oath to it by blowing the whistle on what they were doing, just like Daniel Ellsberg blew the whistle during the Vietnam War when he discovered that the U.S. government was deliberately and consciously lying to the American public when it kept saying, we're about to win this war, we need six more months, while internally they knew that they could never win the war.
That's what honorable, courageous people do.
Why is he being treated like a folk hero by you instead of the traitor that he was?
Senator, as I said, my focus and what should be of relevance to all of you and everyone watching is...
What I will do as Director of National Intelligence to work with you to make sure there's not another Snowden-like leak, given the paramount importance of our national security, and keeping our nation's secrets.
I've laid out a number of ways that I intend to do that, if confirmed, in fulfilling my responsibility in this role.
Now, I was on Megyn Kelly earlier, and we were talking about this exchange, and she asked me, look, why didn't Tulsi just say what's obvious?
Which is, no, I don't think he's a traitor.
And then defend that case.
I don't think it's hard to defend that case.
I think it's easy to defend that case.
By the way, he's not even charged with treason in the indictment that the Obama Justice Department handed down.
But I guess no one cares about that.
But the problem is that, and she knew this, is that had she said...
I do not think Edward Snowden is a traitor, and the reason is that he acted with good intentions and he exposed programs that were illegal and unconstitutional.
Her nomination would have been over.
So what good would it have done?
Same thing with her opposition to 702 at warrantless spying.
They told her, if you don't defend 702, if you don't acknowledge that there have been reforms on it that have been adequate, you have no chance to be the nominee.
And I guess, on the one hand, you can say, well, she should have just done it and let her nomination be destroyed at that moment.
And then somebody else would have just come in like a Mike Pompeo type and affirmed all those things and we'd have everything worse.
I'd rather her make rhetorical concessions if it means she gets confirmed.
But you can see the whole reason she had a problem today.
Is because, as she said at the beginning, the reason you don't like me is because I refuse to be your puppet.
Not because I am people's puppet, but because I refuse to be anyone's puppet.
And then, for the rest of the day, they were saying to her, dance to this tune, jump through this hoop, read from this script, be our puppet.
Let me puppet master you.
Traitor.
He's a traitor.
And she refused to do it.
And it's so rare in Washington to watch somebody refuse to affirm something they know they have to affirm or should affirm to advance further, but that they don't really believe.
It really speaks well to her character and integrity that she refused.
And part of the reason why they were so angry, why they were so emotional about it, was precisely because they couldn't control her.
They couldn't force her to submit, and it was driving them insane.
And I think that that might end up derailing her confirmation, but at least she will.
Exit there with her integrity basically intact.
We're gonna continue with a lot of the key exchanges of this hearing because there's a lot more I wanna cover and we're gonna be right back after this short message from our sponsor.
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All right, so as you see, the bulk of today focused on the issue of whether Tulsi Gabbard is somehow a bad person because she thinks the government should have a warrant before they can spy on our communications and because she praised Edward Snowden for letting us know about unconstitutional and legal spying programs.
A lot of it also focused on these claims that she's sort of a Russian propagandist because she questioned and even expressed opposition to the Biden administration's Posture of fueling and funding the war on Ukraine, questioning whether we did anything to provoke it, like a lot of other members of Congress have, primarily found on the populist wing of the Republican Party.
But people all throughout the world believe that if you leave Washington's bubble.
And here is that video that Senator Bennett was so enraged by that she posted on February 27, 2022. Presidents Putin, Zelensky, and Biden.
It's time to put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love for the Ukrainian people by coming to an agreement that Ukraine will be a neutral country, no military alliance with NATO or Russia, and therefore alleviate the legitimate security concerns of both U.S. and NATO countries as well as Russia, because there'd be no Russian or NATO troops on each other's non-Baltic borders.
This would allow the Ukrainian people to live in peace.
Aloha.
I have to say, first of all, when somebody who has been in combat, who has been in the middle of a war and sees the horrors of it, speaks about the desire to avoid war and to bring about peace, there is an extra credibility to it.
I don't mean, obviously, that they are entitled to have everything they believe to be accepted, but I know for Tulsi in particular, she speaks with a certain kind of credibility and authenticity about that view.
This is what I mean, is that had her perspective been heeded in February of 2022, hundreds of thousands of people who are now dead would be alive.
Huge parts of Ukraine that have been destroyed would not be destroyed.
And the solution that she suggested, agree that NATO won't be part of NATO, it'll be a neutral country, which is what Vladimir Putin was demanding.
That's going to happen anyway.
There's no chance that there will be a resolution of this war without that being part of it.
And that was something Putin was willing to agree to to end the war back then, which was NATO is a neutral country.
It won't be part of NATO. There'll be greater rights for the people in the eastern part of the country that identify as culturally Russian who have been discriminated against and abused.
And this war could have been avoided.
And it was the Michael Bennetts of the world who said, no, we have to pursue this incredibly destructive, bloodthirsty war that we got nothing for and that we lost.
Huge amounts of human life and massive amounts of money in order to prosecute yet again.
And she goes to that committee and they act like they're the ones who were right and she was the one who was somehow a traitor for saying that.
Even though it turned out that she was right and they were wrong.
Here's Senator Martin Heinrich, who's a Democrat from New Mexico, just one of those people who stays in the Senate forever.
You never hear about him.
No one ever knows him.
He's just a lifer there.
He actually, along with Ron Wyden, for a while, several years, had devoted himself to the privacy rights of Americans, to objecting to the NSA's spying abuses.
You would think he'd be friendly to Tulsi Gabbard if he really believed in any of that.
But at the end of the day, what he is above all is a Democrat, and therefore he attacked her, especially for...
That trip that she made to Syria where she met with President Bashar al-Assad in 2017, based on the view, I guess, that members of Congress should vote for wars, but they shouldn't talk to the people in the country who live in the country or who lead the country of the country that they're supposed to vote for the wars in.
Here's this exchange.
You traveled to Syria and Lebanon in January 2017. Bassam, Kuwam.
You personally paid for that trip, and Bassam and his brother Elias accompanied you to both Lebanon and Syria.
The Qawam brothers have links to the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, an ally of Hezbollah.
And in fact, in 2008, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party participated in the assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister and assisted Hezbollah in Beirut.
When did you become aware of the links between the Kawam brothers and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party?
Senator, thank you for your question.
Just a point of clarification.
I paid for my own expenses and travel on that trip.
I was not aware of any accusations of these two Lebanese-Americans associations until after the trip occurred.
And that's when you reimbursed?
Correct.
Correct.
Not because of...
I wanted to make sure that there were no perceived conflicts of interest.
I addressed this specific question to these Lebanese Americans who had organized the trip and they vehemently denied any associations with that group.
There is not a great deal in the public record about what you and Syrian Yes,
Senator.
Upon returning from this trip I met with people like then-leader Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, talked to them and answered their questions about the trip, and quite frankly, I was surprised that there was no one from the intelligence community or the State Department who reached out or showed any interest whatsoever in my takeaways from that trip.
I would have been very happy to have a conversation and give them a back brief.
I went with former Congressman Dennis Kucinich, who had been there many times before and who had met with Assad before.
A number of topics were covered and discussed.
And to directly answer your question, yes, I asked him tough questions about his own regime's actions, the use of chemical weapons and the brutal tactics that were being used against his own people.
Were you able to extract any concessions from President Assad?
No, and I didn't expect to.
But I felt these issues were important to address.
Just in complete hindsight, would you view this trip as good judgment?
Yes, Senator.
And I believe that leaders, whether you be in Congress or the President of the United States, can benefit greatly by going and engaging, boots on the ground, learning and listening and meeting directly with people, whether they be adversaries or friends.
Last question.
It is really unbelievable that that's even controversial, but it is.
Most devoted cold warriors, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, went to Russia.
The Soviet Union met with Soviet leaders.
Soviet leaders came here.
Our television networks interviewed them.
We heard from them all the time.
Nancy Pelosi went to Syria herself in 2007 at a time when the Bush administration's formal policy was to isolate Syria's punishment for, quote-unquote, interfering in Iraq.
I used to love when the United States would accuse Syria or Iran of interfering in Iraq when we were occupying that country.
But in the 2008 Democratic primary, in a debate, Barack Obama stood up and he said, and here is the summary of that event from the Jerusalem Post in 2008. He stood up in a debate and when asked about whether he would meet with the leaders of countries like Syria, North Korea, and Iran without preconditions, he said, yes, I will.
And that became a major attack point for Hillary Clinton, saying this shows how reckless he is.
You don't go and meet with the bad people.
And he was saying, like, of course you have to go and meet with the bad people.
That's how you avoid wars.
That's how you open dialogue.
That's how you understand their perspective.
And Obama won and Clinton lost.
And Donald Trump also met with Vladimir Putin.
Spoke with Kim Jong-un in North Korea.
Had open communication with the Iranians, with the Venezuelans.
Because he too believed so obviously that if you need to avoid war and want to avoid war, which most sane people do, though not the people on the Senate Intelligence Committee, of course you have to go there and find out for yourself what's happening in that country.
Are you supposed to be a member of Congress?
Are you supposed to vote for a dirty war that Barack Obama is allowing the CIA to unleash?
Fighting alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS. After we were told for 12 years we have to dismantle our country because we have to defeat the al-Qaeda and then ISIS, now we're fighting alongside with them in Syria to remove Bashar al-Assad.
So Tulsi Gabbard is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, as a member of the Congress, being told to fund that, wanted to go there and meet with the leaders of Syria.
You would hope she would do that.
You would want her to do that.
And yet in this environment, that's now considered treasonous.
Here from April of 2007, Nancy Pelosi shrugs off Bush's criticism and meets with Assad.
There you see her with her legs crossed talking to Bashar al-Assad in 2007 at a time when it was the official position of the Bush administration that they should isolate what NBC News called the hardline Arab country.
By the way, notice how when people on the Senate Intelligence Committee refer to Bashar al-Assad, they say the Saudi, the Syrian dictator.
And you never hear them say the Saudi dictator.
Mohammed bin Salman or the Egyptian dictator.
General Sisi, because those are our dictators.
So they get called president or crown prince.
Very respectful, honorific.
This is how Washington discourse also functions.
If you are somebody who lives in the United States, I know we're all told there's free speech in the United States, there's a free press in the United States, but if you confine yourself to corporate media diet and you only listen to what people in Washington think, you will be among the most propagandized populations in the world.
It is a completely closed information system.
They all agree with one another on everything.
We constantly hear how the Democrats and Republicans are parties on each other's throats.
They can't get along with anything.
The whole day, they all agreed with each other on everything.
In fact, Democrats on the committee, as we'll show you, attacked Tulsi Gabbard for being too soft on China as evidenced by her opposition to the ban of TikTok.
All of them thought Edward Snowden is a traitor, maybe except for Ron Wyden.
They all support the war in Ukraine.
It's complete homogeneity.
And that's why Tulsi Gabbard seems so bizarre to them, even though she's expressing views that huge numbers of Americans and people all throughout the world share.
I want to show you this clip, which is an exchange she had with the Democratic senator from Arizona, Mark Kelly, because this is about her views on Syria and why she opposed the Obama-CIA dirty war in Syria to remove Bashar al-Assad.
And we heard this before, that if you criticize the U.S. government in a way that other countries also criticize the U.S. government, it means that somehow you're a propagandist for those foreign countries regardless of whether what you're saying is true.
And even more to the point, they really do believe, these people really do believe, these people in Washington who make our foreign policy, that the only patriotic posture It's to support everything the United States government does, all of its foreign policy, every one of its war postures.
And if you do anything other than cheer for them, other than support them, other than endorse their view of the world, if you question it, if you criticize it the way Tulsi Gabbard has, it means that you're a propagandist for enemies, you're a traitor, you're on the other side.
It could not be clearer in this exchange about Tulsi Gabbard's view of the dirty war and the regime change war that Obama waged unsuccessfully in Syria.
Just listen to this.
Senator Kelly.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Colonel Gabbard, when Russia was denying us use of chemical weapons, they accused the U.S. of supporting terrorists.
This is a line that Putin used frequently during the Syrian civil war as he supported Assad.
Syrian officials made similar comments.
They did it repeatedly.
They did it in public.
They did it at the United Nations.
In 2016, you gave an interview in which you said, and this is a quote, The U.S. is providing direct and indirect support to terrorist groups in order to overthrow the Syrian government.
And in 2019, on the Democratic presidential debate stage, you said of President Trump, this is a quote, this current president is continuing to betray us.
We were supposed to be going after al-Qaeda, but over years now, not only have we not gone after al-Qaeda, our president is supporting al-Qaeda.
So I'm interested to hear, what was your goal in saying these things?
And did you consider, before saying them, the motives of Iran and Russia, what their motives might have been before making these claims?
Senator, as someone who enlisted in the military specifically because of...
Al Qaeda's terrorist attack on 9-11 and committing myself and my life to doing what I could to defeat these terrorists, it was shocking and a betrayal to me and every person who was killed on 9-11, their families and my brothers and sisters in uniform.
When, as a member of Congress, I learned about President Obama's Dual programs that he had begun really to overthrow the regime of Syria and being willing to, through the CIA's timber sycamore program that has now been made public, of working with and arming and equipping al-Qaeda in an effort to overthrow that regime, starting yet another regime change war in the Middle East.
DoD Train and Equip Program, again, begun under President Obama, is widely been known, looked at, and studied, that ultimately resulted in over half a billion dollars being used to train who they called moderate rebels, but were actually fighters working with and aligned with Al-Qaeda's affiliate on the ground in Syria.
All to move forward with their regime change and not acknowledging what was obvious at the time and what has unfortunately borne true, which was that a regime change war in Syria, much like the regime change wars in Iraq, the toppling of Gaddafi and Mubarak, while these are all dictators, would likely result in the rise of Islamist extremists like Al-Qaeda taking power.
I shed no tears for the fall of the Assad regime, but today we have an Islamist extremist who is now in charge of Syria, as I said, who danced on the streets to celebrate the 9-11 attack.
Who ruled over Idlib with an Islamist extremist governance and who has already begun to persecute and kill and arrest religious minorities like Christians in Syria.
Why that should be acceptable to anyone is beyond me.
It shouldn't be.
I appreciate your answer and thank you.
My concern has to do with the tendency to repeat Russian and Syrian, and even in some cases, I think we'll get into in the closed session, Iranian information, and to discount what comes from our intelligence Iranian information, and to discount what comes from our intelligence community. - Senator, every American deserves to know that people in our own government were providing support to our sworn enemy, Al Qaeda.
That should not be acceptable by anyone.
Thank you.
So did you hear what he said?
He didn't even contest anything that she said.
And really, how could you?
Jake Sullivan wrote a memo inside of the administration, while part of the Hillary Clinton campaign, and as part of the Obama administration, saying that we are fighting on the same side as al-Qaeda.
And huge numbers of American weapons that we paid for and sent into Syria ended up in the hands of al-Qaeda, the group that we were told for a decade we had to go to endless war in order to destroy.
He didn't contest anything she said.
He said, I'm just concerned that that aligned with the views of China and Syria and Iran, because they were saying, hey, the United States is fighting alongside al-Qaeda.
So what does that mean?
If Iran says it, if Syria says it, if Russia says it, if China says it, you're no longer allowed to say it, even though it's true, because now you're aligned with the views of those governments, all you can do, again, is clap for...
U.S. government policy.
That is their view.
And they barely hide that at all.
Now, I want to show you an exchange that Tulsi Gabbard had with Senator Ron Wyden.
I'm not sure if we have this, actually.
It appears that we don't.
Okay, actually it's this one right here.
It has Susan Collins at the very start, but I think it's because she's done and now it's moving to Ron Wyden.
Because this is very interesting in that there were reports prior to this confirmation hearing that Senate Republicans demanded that Tulsi Gabbard abandon her long-standing opposition to 702's warrantless eavesdropping provision that allows the government to spy on Americans without warrants and that she said she would do that.
And she did rhetorically retreat a little bit on it by saying she thinks some of the reforms that were implemented were good.
And yet Ron Wyden is somebody, as I said before, who has been an outspoken advocate of enhancing privacy protections for Americans, putting safeguards on NSA spying.
And you would think he would be overjoyed that President Trump sent as a DNI nominee somebody who shares that life cause of his.
And I was very skeptical whether he would consider voting yes Yes, because at the end of the day, he's a Democrat.
But this exchange was really interesting in that he was trying to get her to reaffirm that longstanding view she's had about the need for warrants before our government can spy on our communications, sort of like the founders and the Constitution insisted.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Welcome, Ms. Gabbard.
I'm going to try to get four questions in, so I'll be brief, and if you can reciprocate, that would be very much appreciated.
We've been talking about Section 702, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and I believe it's critical that the DNI support additional reforms to protect the privacy of law-abiding Americans.
In your written response to committee questions you wrote, and I quote, warrants should generally be required before an agency undertakes a U.S. person query of Section 702. Is this your current position?
Yes, it is, Senator.
And as you'll note in that written response, I noted some exigent circumstances with which there may be other options.
But I also want to make a note that a simple warrant requirement is ultimately going to be a policy decision that all of you will make.
I would point to history, to some examples.
Time is short.
I'm glad you answered in line with your written answer that you support a warrant.
Now, it went on like that for pretty much the whole five minutes where he was saying, Look, you've been somebody who has advocated for very reasonable limits on how the government can spy on us.
Namely, they have to go get a warrant before they can.
And I know there's been pressure on you to abandon that view in order to get confirmed, but in your written response to the committee, you actually said you still believe in a warrant requirement, something that she really didn't abandon.
Do you still think that?
And she said, yes, I do.
And he said, I'm glad to hear that that's aligned with my views as well.
There are definitely...
Republicans on this committee, especially if the vote is in secret, who are likely to vote no on her nomination, or at least who very well might.
Senator Lankford from Oklahoma, Senator Rounds, even maybe Susan Collins.
She can only afford to lose, she can't really afford to lose any Republican votes if all the Democrats vote no.
If Wyden votes yes, she can afford to lose one.
If she doesn't get out of this committee, it won't go to the floor.
And I thought this was an extremely interesting exchange because, again, she refused to abandon the positions that she has long believed in, even though she was being pressured to do so, which, again, I think speaks to her integrity.
Now, I just want to show this last clip here because I just want you to understand how much full agreement there is when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.
And civil liberties between both political parties, especially on this committee that oversees the intelligence community, because this is what I think is so important to understand, is what happened in the 1970s when the Church Committee investigated and discovered all these abuses is they were supposed to implement safeguards and reforms to prevent those abuses from repeating.
One was the FISA court, but they made it such a joke of a rubber stamp court that it doesn't provide much, but at least it provides something.
And these members of Congress don't even want the NSA to have to go to the FISA court to get a warrant before they spy on us, even as easy it is to get it.
Another reform was they created the Select Committee on Intelligence, which was supposed to oversee the intelligence community.
Before that, they had no congressional oversight at all.
Everything they did was in secret.
And ever since they created this intelligence committee and said, oh, look, we now have an intelligence committee to oversee the security state.
The only people who are really allowed on this committee are people who are...
Totally loyal servants to the U.S. security state.
Dianne Feinstein ran it for many, many years and nobody was a more loyal servant than she.
And you have all these people on it who don't believe in the deep state, don't think there's anything wrong with the U.S. security state, which is why they're so hostile to Tulsi.
Here is Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of the very blue state of New York.
You would think she'd be happy about Tulsi Gabbard's concerns about warrantless eavesdropping and the abuses of the U.S. security state.
You'd be absolutely wrong.
Here instead is what she decided to attack Tulsi Gabbard on.
Some of your past statements that are relevant to China are concerning because I don't think it fully appreciates China's perspective towards the United States, for example, with regard to TikTok.
Your past statements have essentially said that requiring domestic ownership of TikTok is a violation of civil liberties and the national security concerns are complete BS. Can you explain why you have this view on TikTok?
The position that I previously made, obviously not as a member of Congress, as you consider the TikTok legislation, were centered around the protection of Americans' First Amendment rights Privacy legislation, frankly, that would apply to TikTok, Facebook, X, all of these different social media applications that collect on us as users of these applications.
There were other provisions within that legislation that granted very vague and serious Grandiose authorities to the president on deciding which private companies are or are not a national security threat.
So let's talk about China.
So, I mean, they're all interchangeable, these people.
It doesn't matter what party they are.
And she says, I'm concerned about your views on China.
You don't seem to take the threat of China seriously enough.
You expressed concern about our TikTok band that we all believe in together.
We all believe in everything together.
We all believe in the war in Ukraine together.
We all believe in Snowden being a traitor together.
We're totally unified on everything.
And we're concerned that you don't have the same views as all of us.
These geniuses up there that have done such a great job for our country and empowering a security state that has been so wonderful for Americans.
And the other thing I wanted to say about this, before I show you just one last video that's actually from the Kash Patel hearing, and I wanted to make a couple comments on that quickly, is that so many of the views that Trump's most controversial nominees have expressed that are causing these committees to attack them, RFK Jr., Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, are views that Donald Trump himself...
Holds and has repeatedly offended and in fact campaigned on and won an election on quite decisively.
But these Republicans on these committees are not allowed to question Donald Trump.
They're not allowed to openly criticize him.
They have to pretend that they're aligned with that ideology even though they're so plainly not.
They're far more aligned with the establishment wing of the Democratic Party than they are with anything having to do with this new right or MAGA ideology.
So they're taking it on these nominees.
So, attacking Tulsi Gabbard for questioning a TikTok ban when Donald Trump himself is trying to prevent the TikTok ban from being implemented, or for questioning NATO policy in Ukraine when Donald Trump has done that himself, or running on all the health issues that RFK Jr. stands for, or questioning the FBI and whether it's been politicized, as Kash Patel has vowed to do, which is the line of attack on him as well, is just so anti-democratic.
We just had an election two months ago.
In which the American people made themselves clear that they hate the dogma these people are defending.
But they will defend it to their graves because that's what the establishment does.
Now, in Kash Patel's hearing, we're probably going to cover that tomorrow, it was very hard to focus on one.
I tried and then I realized I had to focus on just one and I chose to focus on Tulsi's hearing.
But I did watch some of the Kash Patel hearing and basically...
They were attacking him primarily on the claim that he would, if confirmed, politicize the FBI, use it to go after Trump's political enemies, impose retribution on the poor, innocent people inside the FBI who had abused the power of the FBI to interfere in our elections.
And it'll never stop being amazing watching Democrats with a straight face accuse other people of getting ready to politicize law enforcement or the U.S. security state when they've spent eight years unleashing these agencies on Donald Trump in the Russiagate investigation, in interfering in the 2020 election with that Hunter Biden lie, trying to indict or indicting Trump four times in four different jurisdictions explicitly because they knew.
And said that their best chance for winning the 2024 election with Joe Biden was to make sure Donald Trump was behind bars before Election Day.
And now those same people turn around with the audacity to pretend that they don't understand the irony and say we're concerned about you, Kash Patel, because you're going to weaponize the Justice Department.
You're going to use the FBI for retribution.
When all he's really saying is that has already been done and we want to clean that up and make it apoliticized again.
And they spent.
A lot of time, angry Akash Patel, Democrats did because he said he wants to close down the J. Edgar Hoover FBI headquarters building in Washington because he believes that our resources in the FBI should be dispersed throughout the country because if you keep it all in Washington, it'll naturally become politicized like everything in Washington is.
They were defending the J. Edgar Hoover building.
Think about what Democrats have been defending over the past 48 hours in order to sink Trump's most anti-establishment nominees.
They have defended The war in Ukraine.
They've defended the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building.
They've defended the entire security state and the fact that everybody has to accept their pronouncements and not question them or just trust them.
They've defended Russiagate.
They've defended the idea that Edward Snowden is a traitor.
They've defended basically the entire foreign policy apparatus.
They've defended Big Pharma in order to tell RFK Jr., how dare you question the pronouncements of our big pharmaceutical companies?
This is the Democratic Party.
It is the party of the status quo.
They are the party of establishment D.C. That's why they just got crushed.
And there are a lot of Republicans right there with them who are pure establishment lackeys.
Fully fledged and in good standing members of the swamp.
It is pure bipartisanship.
That's what Donald Trump ran against in 2016 and 2024. Not the Democratic Party, but the bipartisan swamp.
And so many of these people are still very much part of it, and that's why these nominations are in jeopardy.
I would say Tulsi's first, RFK Jr. second, Kash Patel probably will get confirmed because I don't think any Republicans are willing to vote against him.
I just want to...
Point out, and we may talk about the Kash Patel hearing more tomorrow, but I just want to point out one amazing thing that was said.
It was said by Tom Cotton.
This was actually at the start of the Tulsi hearing in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee where he was laying out his vision for what the intelligence community is, what foreign policy is.
Tom Cotton has become a local defender of Tulsi Gabbard, which on one hand discomforts me a bit, but...
It's your only chance to get confirmed, and you'd obviously rather have him on your side than against you.
And he explained how he sees U.S. foreign policy and how it not only is but should be in a way that is so true, so critical to understand, and yet so rarely admitted in Washington.
I don't know why.
It was a moment of great candor.
I'm going to use this forever.
But here's how he described American foreign policy.
In a fallen world, we have to take our friends where we find them.
No question, stable democracies make the most stable friends, but what matters in the end is less whether a country is democratic or non-democratic and more whether the country is pro-American or anti-American.
I'll confess that those views may be somewhat unconventional, but look at where conventional thinking has got us.
So, he's right that conventional thinking, which is all this committee defends, and why they're angry at the unconventional nominees, conventional Washington thinking has been the most disastrous way of thought that you can possibly concoct.
And it's why, even if you have doubts about these nominees, you should still support people who are going to go in and shake things up and offer different perspectives, because nothing is worse than the preservation of the Washington status quo.
But what Tom Cotton admitted there is something that I just wish people would admit all the time.
Stop saying that we go to war in places like Ukraine or Iraq because we want to liberate people or go to war against tyranny or spread democracy.
That is not what U.S. foreign policy is about.
The United States has been and always is extremely close allies with the most savage, brutal dictators on the planet.
Sometimes we overthrow democracies and install dictatorships.
And the reason is because of what Tom Cotton just said there, which is foreign policy is not about which country is anti-democratic or pro-democratic, which country is democratic or authoritarian or tyrannical.
The consideration is which country is pro-American and which country is anti-American.
If they're pro-American, we don't care at all if they're democratic or tyrannical.
And if they're anti-American, we also don't care if they're democratic.
We'll be happy to overthrow them and get rid of that democracy, as we've done so many times.
I'm not even talking here about whether that should be our foreign policy.
I actually don't think we should go around the world changing governments.
I just would like there to be some candid acknowledgement of what American foreign policy is, and I don't know why, but Tom Cotton decided to offer it there, and although I have lots of negative things to say about Tom Cotton, credit to him for doing that, and I think the biggest takeaway here...
Is that despite Donald Trump's victory, despite the message that the American people think, the guardians of the Washington establishment are still very much in control in Washington.
They have not opened up control.
They are not weakened.
They are people who continue to have to be battled and fought against because establishment power, ruling class power...
The power centers that control society by their nature don't give up power easily.
They fight and fight and fight until the very end.
And I think what today showed more than anything is why it can't happen fast enough to witness their crumbling and crushing and defeat.
All right, so that concludes our show for this evening.
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