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[Music] From Democratic congresswoman to staunch Trump supporter, both loved and heavily criticized for
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her independent thinking. She won't be bought. She won't be bullied. The director of national intelligence, Chelsea Gabbard.
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Aloha. It's just BS. I've always been a very fiercely independent-minded person.
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I know exactly what I need to do here and how deep the rot is within the intelligence community. that has to be rooted out. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
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Tulsi Gabbard. Hello. Nice to see you, Chelsea. Thanks for coming. [Music] Thank you for being here. Thank you.
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Aloha, everybody. Aloha. Um, we were all clamoring to kind of frame this and then Sach said, "I really just
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need to do the kickoff because he really wanted to tee this up. So, I'm going to seed my responsibility in introducing
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you because everybody knows who you are, but David just there's just too much red meat. David's been frothing."
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Tulsi doesn't need a a big introduction, but everyone knows she's a director of national intelligence. And um in the
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words of President Trump is the the hottest member of the administration. I think he means in the the sense of
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having released the biggest news story of the year and specifically files. Uh you declassified and released a series of files related to the whole Russia gate hoax and many of the documents are
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just stunning. I'll I'll let you speak to it. But I think you know there's still maybe a few holdouts out there in
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the world. Not that many who still don't Who are you looking at right now? Who are you talking? in particular, but
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uh who don't seem to understand what this Russia gate hoax was about. Can you just maybe this is the place to start
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and then we can drill into some of the details. But just at a very high level, what exactly happened? I mean, I think
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we saw for years there were all these accusations that somehow that that Trump was a agent of Putin of Russia. Was that
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all just made up? And who made it up? How did that happen? Yeah, I think just just setting the baseline of like why
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should you care? Why should people at home care about this? And this really speaks to the power of the intelligence
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community and the power of quote unquote uh intelligence is that as you know these these headlines were turning out about you know Trump is a Putin puppet or he is colluding with Putin in order
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to get elected. We're going back to the 2016 election here. You know, if you're just watching the headlines from home,
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you got to believe that there's some credibility here, that there's some intelligence that's actually driving
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this. And that really is the significance of the documents that we uncovered, uh, declassified, and
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released that shows how intelligence and information can be actually manipulated
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intentionally so that it shows something that is not reflective of the truth at all. Uh, and how it can be done. um in a deeply impactful way politicizing it and
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what we essentially saw throughout President Trump's candidacy in 2016 and throughout his four years in office. uh the documents we uncovered really
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served as the foundation for the weapon that was used to undermine his presidency to try to undermine the outcome of that 2016 election and really
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uh usurp the will and the voices of the people who elected Donald Trump. So, I'll try to run through this timeline uh
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in the top lines just to paint the picture of as you asked David like where and how did this
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start? When we go back to that 2016 campaign, President Trump went through what was a very crowded primary at the
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time. Almost no one thought that he could win. He became the Republican nominee going up against Hillary
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Clinton. And during that time, Hillary Clinton kind of seated the um allegation that there was some collusion happening between Trump uh and Putin and Russia, that Putin was somehow trying to get
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Trump elected. What we saw then play out was now known as What does it mean she seated? How did
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what does that There there were a lot of different ways um that that occurred. If you go and
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look at some of the documents that the FBI declassified um uh that Durham uncovered is now known
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as the Durham annex, there were a lot of different ways um that it happened, but we saw early signs of the weaponization
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of this when the FBI under Comey um basically got illegal, they got warrants through the FISA court to illegally surveil Americans, Carter Page uh in
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Crossfire Hurricane and others around President Trump and his campaign at that time. November 2016, President Trump
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shocks the world and wins the election. the intelligence community and the assessments and all these documents
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we've made public already throughout this period of time during the campaign leading up to the general election. The
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intelligence community almost uniformly assessed that uh Putin did not have either the intent or the capability to hack the outcome of the US election.
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There were different assessments that said this but but this trend was there. President Trump wins the election.
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members of the intelligence community then go and brief members of Congress post election and their briefing was
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consistent with the intelligence reports that basically said there's no evidence
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that nothing to see there's that Russia or Putin had any kind of impact on the outcome of the US
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election. Fast forward to December 8th. Uh, one of the organization, one of the elements that's under my oversight in the intelligence community creates this product for the president every day
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called the president's daily brief. The numbers of people who within the cabinet
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even who are uh able to access this brief is a pretty small number. This is built for the president and it's it it is a product of contributions from
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across the intelligence community. This December 8th president's daily brief was
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consistent with all of the other assessments, essentially saying there was no interference in the outcome of
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the election by Russia. That brief was pulled. It was never published. It was pulled back from publishing uh hours before it would have hit then President
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Obama's desk. The next day, December 9th, the Obama administration calls a National Security Council meeting. all the senior leaders within the Obama administration. The topic of discussion
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was Russia. The tasks that came from that meeting that were delivered to then Obama's DNI
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James Clapper and we have the emails that we declassified around this said this is a pus tasking on Russia meddling
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with the election. And what you'll see in those documents was not President Obama asking
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uh look into the intelligence and see if Russia meddled the election. It was provide me with an assessment saying how Russia meddled in the election.
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John Brennan, James Clapper, uh Comey and the FBI, they all got their folks together then to start building this
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document that was an intelligence community assessment that would and so just to be clear, was
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this in the sort of that lame duck window between the election and then President Trump taking office that like
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two or three month period. Okay. Right. Post November 2016, President Obama's last day, January 20th of 2017.
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So this document was being created by a very very small group uh of people within these three agencies. They got
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the NSA involved and ultimately that document would state what President Obama wanted
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it to say which was that Russia and Putin aspired to help President Trump win the election and did so through uh cyber means. and and the briefing doc
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you mentioned the daily the president's daily briefing doc you can see that there was a draft written that then got
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pulled back yes and that still sits somewhere so we know that that's what was written and someone said pull that back we don't want to
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have evidence of this in the on the going going into the over exactly and the these were the docu some of the documents that we released it's
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all it's all on odni.gov gov where we have the draft finalized president's daily brief from December 8th and then the email saying pull this back and it
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was never published until we Oh, that was pull it back. Yes. Oh, so there my So they're also stupid.
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Would you like to apologize like No, no, no. I mean, no. There there's a there's a few more pieces here. So
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No, no, no. I mean, I'll have the receipts. We'll go to those in a moment. Okay. This January uh 2017 assessment was
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published on January 6th. It was very quickly leaked out uh to different uh members of the media, Washington Post, New York Times, etc. Then it was briefed to Congress. But the key thing here is
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that the most classified and and compartmentalized pieces of intelligence they used as the basis for this total 180 uh intelligence
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assessment that was basically contradicting what the intelligence community had assessed leading up to the election. They hid those sources even
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from the vast majority of members of Congress uh because based on intelligence community tradecraftraft standards they were deemed even at the time to be not acceptable.
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We had senior officials in the CIA who were tasked to work on this who objected to then CIA director John Brennan using
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these as sources because they were not credible. One of them was the steel dossier. this manufactured political uh
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document that was filled with falsehoods. So then you you see after that this assessment again leaked to the media, briefed to Congress. This was the document that then led to everything
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that happened in the four years uh that President Trump was in office. What we declassified and released provided further reinforcement of how
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politicized this document was. It showed a few things. For example, that in those
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sources that were hidden, uh, that Putin didn't believe Trump would win the election in 2016. He thought Hillary
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Clinton was going to win. Uh, he thought that, hey, we know who she is. We know how she operates. we can try to figure out a way to deal with a Hillary Clinton presidency. Russia and Putin claimed
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that they had extremely derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, her health, her state of mind, uh allegedly um illegal bribery act, you illegal
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activities going on. If Putin and Russia were trying to help Trump win the election, they would have
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done so at a critical time in October of 2016 in order to try to push him over the top. they didn't believe he could win. There is so much evidence that disproves this manufactured
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uh politicized intelligence assessment ordered by President Obama that was very conveniently hid by John Brennan, James
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Clapper uh and James Comey. So again, why why does this matter? We have seen a trend in some of the biggest intelligence failures around politicized
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intelligence. And I I'll just give this one example because it goes back to the creation of my this organization that I
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lead, ODNI. James Clapper was an intelligence community leader during the time uh the before our country went to war with Iraq. James Clapper wrote in his book about
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how Dick Cheney was telling the intelligence community, I need you to come up with intelligence basically that
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will just create the narrative for us to go to war with Iraq. that will give Colin Powell what he needed to go to
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bring to the UN as evidence of weapons of mass destruction of evidence that that Saddam Hussein is is colluding with
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al-Qaeda. And in James Clapper's own words, he said that he and his colleagues were so eager to do what Dick
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Cheney told them to do that quote, "We created something that wasn't there." This is as someone who served in the Iraq war along with so many of my
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brothers and sisters in uniform. You can see the devastating consequences of politicized intelligence, the difference between war and peace,
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the difference between in this case of of President Trump with his first administration. Uh this threatens the
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integrity of our republic uh and the voices of the people being shown through an election. Chelsea, you must position absolutely enraged. Absolutely. Because we were
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lied to then. We were lied to in 2016 and 2017 and over and over again. You see how people in these positions of power act with impunity, putting themselves, their political interest,
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their ambition ahead of the Constitution of the United States and the the responsibility uh and trust that they have to the American people. Is the ambition this sensation that they
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are puppet masters that they can sort of control and shape outcomes yet they're sort of in the shadows and they're not
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accountable? Like what what is it? The lack of accountability, I think, is what drives
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them believing that they can get away with anything. Because if you control information, you control intelligence,
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then you can control an outcome. Yeah. What was the incentive or the objective to Chimat's question about doing this after the election because it
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seems so destabilizing? I think that was I don't have paper evidence of it, but one could surmise that the intention was they all thought Hillary Clinton was going to win.
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President Trump won the election. That was uh uh President Obama, you can imagine the feeling amongst the Democrats. I remember I was a Democrat in Congress at the time. Absolute
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devastation. What's the reaction to that? Let's see how we can completely them. How how could they completely
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undermine and and destabilize and destabilize and uh in in their minds disarm of President Trump while he's in office. And this is some of the twisted
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thinking that I witnessed when I was uh in Congress at that time was that they believed many many of these Democrat leaders really believed that they were
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doing the right thing for our country by trying to protect the American people from the guy that they actually voted
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for to be president of the United States. Right. I mean, I think part of it was to undermine Trump and then part of it was sort of um exculpatory towards the fact
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that they had supported Hillary and Hillary turned out to be a bad candidate and they lost and they wanted to find a reason why she lost that didn't blame
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the Democrat party for choosing the wrong nominee. I think that was like part of the motivation as well. But just to be clear, in in this um national
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intelligence assessment that you know you found in the documents, um the career staff,
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they said there's nothing to support this theory of Russ of Trump somehow being an asset or agent of Russia. So they did their jobs. They some of them did, some of them didn't.
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But it was the leadership, the political appointees who are obviously hyperartisan because they're appointed
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by the president. So, they're the ones who overruled their own career staff. Okay, just be clear. That's right. And and just to sorry, last point, just to put a bow on this,
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uh we discovered some emails that were printed out literally in the back of a safe. I think they had been sitting there since 2017. that that showed an email exchange
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between then Obama's DNI, James Clapper, and then the head of the National Security Agency, uh, Mike Rogers. And
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the the DNI Clapper, he really wanted to get the NSA to sign off on this manufactured intelligence document. And Mike Rogers at that point in his email
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saying, "Hey, you're giving us too short of a deadline. we don't have enough time to vet what is in this intelligence
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assessment in order to add our name to this and if you don't want to give us more time then we just won't be a part
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of it and the response that James Clapper sent and you can find this again online uh was he essentially said Mike
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this is a team sport this is the time where you just have to say yes and sign off on this didn't didn't he say we're we're um going to stand behind the support in the
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a spirit of quote this is our story and we're sticking to it. Exactly. So Tulsa,
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um, while I don't believe Trump was a Russian asset, is your position that the Russians did not try to interfere in the
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2016 and 2020 elections because the FBI and the and Trump himself, they they all
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conceded that they did try to interfere the the intelligence documents and again this is what we released was their
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intent was to try to seow chaos. Got it. So in the election and that that that was throughout the assessments. So,
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just to parse this, there was a group of people who believed he was an asset. Trump asked on stage
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during the election. Russia, if you're listening, please hack Hillary's email and send them to us and release it.
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Donald Trump Jr. then met with the Russians at Trump Tower hoping to get that information. The FBI
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proved and a DC court indicted Russians for interfering in the election. So, interference occurred. The Trump family engaged with the Russians, but Trump
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himself was not a plant. We all agree. He's not a Manurian candidate, but the Russians have been absolutely, you agree, trying to interfere in our elections. Correct.
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That that has not been disputed at all. I just want to be clear here on level. Well, well, the all of the other stuff
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you said, I mean, about what happened, uh, that stuff has all been litigated and and and unfortunately, the reality
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is when we say, oh, the FBI said this, we're we were dealing with a very highly politicized FBI at the time that was so politicized, they were willing to use what they knew was false information to
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obtain illegal surveillance warrants from the FISA court to spy on members of the Trump administration. When you actually look through it, there was nothing actually there. Okay. Now, if you put yourself in the
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FBI shoes, Donald Trump Jr. says, "I hope I can't wait to get what you have. I hope it's what you're saying it is." And Trump literally asks Putin to release Hillary's email.
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Would the FBI not actually take a look into it? Would you want them to Hold on. I'm talking to
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Tulsi. You had your chance. You think You think you can be quiet for one moment, Sax, and let me finish.
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Tulsi, would it not be the FBI's absolute duty to look into that? Yes or no? An honest FBI. Yes. This was a dishonest FBI FBI. It is all of the FBI. You have
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to look at things within within the bigger context. Anyone who watches Donald Trump, he makes jokes every
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single day. Should the FBI look into serious issues? Yeah, of course they should. But again, we're dealing with an
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FBI that has been proven time and time again during that period of time to break the law. They are supposed to
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enforce the law. They broke the law because of their efforts to try to undermine President Trump's candidacy.
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So they already had an objective clearly in mind. So tell us a little bit about what you learned about Paul Maniffort and his
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conviction, subsequent pardon and what his role was as the campaign manager for Trump the first time and his giving information to foreign.
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I'm I'm not familiar with the Maniffort case. Okay. what I have laid out is the truth
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of what has been uncovered uh through the declassification efforts. Let me ask then the generalized question. The question is about President Trump quickly clean up and the question is about the
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intelligence community asked the Russians to do something. I would urge everyone who actually believes that to go back and watch the
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video of the rally. It's a joke. This was the context was that Hillary Clinton was being investigated because she had used a private email server and was supposed to be turning over thousands of
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emails, but she didn't because they destroyed the hard drive and they broke it with hammers. They bleached it and all the rest of it. And he made a joke about if the Russian I hope you can find
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the emails. Yeah. Yeah, I just think everybody laughed and you have to be, I don't know, kind of dumb or or super
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partisan or hate Donald Trump to think that him telling a joke on stage was the basis for a grand conspiracy with Russia. Yeah. Okay. Let me let me ask this question.
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No, I would think that the the FBI investigating the Russians and us 30,000 people, he's going to say, "Hey, Vladimir, can you do the following?" That's not how conspiracies work. I'm
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sorry to break it to you. Let me let me let me ask the Let me ask what are you doing to me?
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But Chelsea, what are you doing to to clean it up? She just told you she to release the files and so the first I want to look on
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a go forward basis. Well, the first step really is and this is an essential thing is is about transparency uh and accountability. So,
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we've we have referred all of the documents that we've uncovered uh to the Department of Justice because uh the two
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have to go together in order for uh there to be uh real real change. Let me um build on Jason's question. Um 12 years from now, um there could be a
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Democrat. Um maybe it's AOC, you know, four more years of Trump and then eight years of JD. But, you know, you know, I'm getting to the point. Um uh
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and you know some people may not like the AOC candidate but that doesn't mean as you said that some nameless faceless
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person can subvert the will of the American people. So what needs to happen so that there's checks and balances
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here? How how do we make sure that people can't just not like somebody and then decide to try to basically destroy them? How do we make sure that that doesn't happen?
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It it's a good and important question and ultimately the the ultimate accountability has to come from the
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American people and who we choose to vote for. Uh who we have in these positions of leadership actually matters. And so for the United States Senate for example have the
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responsibility of confirming people uh to serve in the position that I hold and and the CIA director, the FBI director
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uh and so on. Uh we have to be very cleareyed about the tools and the tactics that are used that ultimately fundamentally are undermining uh our
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founding documents uh and the constitution, the integrity of our republic and ultimately our ability as
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we the people to determine who we want to serve uh in in our government. um you know the the the weaponization politicization unfortunately uh it
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continues there there is a lot of um there there is still rot within our intelligence community and those again who believe that they know better for the American people uh than than we do
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for ourselves and and that's really a dangerous thing. This is not something that's easily solved. It's not one
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institutional change that that can occur. uh we have to remain vigilant on all fronts in order to protect ourselves and to protect our democratic republic
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uh from these kinds of uh abuses. How do you how do you lead that change, Tulsi? You're you're going into work and
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you don't know who to trust. You don't know who is part of the institution that you were up against when you came in to
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take this role. How do you grapple with that and how do you think about prioritizing and see
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kind of filtering the workforce, the people that report to you, the information? the information
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uh by being vigilant. Yeah. Um you know, it's I I've I've made some pretty big changes within uh the Office of the Director of National Intelligence itself.
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Uh finding uh those pockets and those places that have been weaponized and and politicized uh and and really ultimately bringing a a mission focus uh to the organization.
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uh trimming down and slimming down our manning and personnel count so that we have the right people in the right
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positions who focus on the mission itself. Um, ultimately every day it's just about doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do and setting that culture of leadership that focuses
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on our responsibility, the American people, to the constitution and uh holding people accountable when they are not fulfilling that responsibility that
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they have been entrusted with. When when you were a a Congresswoman, um, you must
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have had a different mandate. You were a different political party. um when you go back home, what's the conversation
00:26:06
like about the transition? I don't know if you've talked about this publicly much, but what's it like in talking about your evolution changing parties
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and and having this role today with the people that you used to represent? You know, Hawaii has um it's been a
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strong democratic state for a very very long time, but it's not uh it's a unique
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state uh with a very unique culture. Um people tend to be honestly a little bit more just aloha live and let live. I just want to live my life and you know raise my family and and um it it's you
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know mixed bag for me when I go home. Uh but I've been pleasantly surprised at times. I was waiting in line one day at like a FedEx to go ship something and
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there was an older Japanese American man who was the manager and he came out and he pulled me aside and he just said, "I
00:27:00
really really love everything you're doing. Keep speaking the truth." Uh, you know, there are others who um definitely have Trump derangement syndrome and
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can't wrap their heads around how, you know, I represented Hawaii for eight years in Congress as a Democrat and now
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I'm President Trump's director of national intelligence, but it also that's got to warp people's brains. it
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is it maybe on its surface but the thing is and look I mean I've listened to your
00:27:28
guys podcast for a long time and I think there's a lot of folks who are having probably not like the cerebral kinds of
00:27:36
conversations you have but the conversations around how the Democratic party has drastically changed
00:27:42
drastically changed I I hear you talk about it as well I mean for me I I was you know 21 when I jo I
00:27:48
made a decision to join the Democratic party in Hawaii uh I was running for the state house and had to choose a party.
00:27:55
And for me at that time, the Democratic Party still represented uh you know the the values of fighting for the little
00:28:01
guy, fighting for working people, protecting the environment, and you know, standing up for free speech even
00:28:07
if you didn't like that speech. And to to fast forward from then uh to to now, it's um you know, the party is is unrecognizable in just about every way. And um I I
00:28:22
ended up writing a book about why I left the Democratic Party because fundamentally and it's not about well what do you believe about healthcare?
00:28:28
Should we take this approach or that approach? It it really is foundational how the Democratic Party has um completely gone away from the party of
00:28:38
JFK and and Martin Luther King. And the good news is you get to work for somebody who's a former Democrat himself. Exactly.
00:28:43
President Trump. There are there are a number of us. It's all Democrats. That's how Trump won his second term was he rallied all those moderate Democrats like yourself to
00:28:54
become his cabinet, but I think there's some truth to it. And it was, you know, Bobby Kennedy and
00:29:00
I uh for the last few months of President Trump's campaign, we went and traveled uh all across the country
00:29:06
together. And the final event that we did uh together was in Wisconsin, I don't know, a couple weeks before the election. And it was really incredible because it was in a district that
00:29:18
normally votes pretty solidly Democrat. We were in this big beautiful barn and there were there were probably at least a thousand people there, maybe more. And
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at at a certain point I asked the crowd, I said, you know, raise your hand uh if you're a Republican. Whole bunch of hands went up. Raise your hand if you're an independent or a libertarian.
00:29:41
You know, a few hands went up. raise your hand if you're a Democrat. And and the reaction was so fascinating because
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first there was like one or two hands that went up very timidly and they're kind of looking around and then more
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hands went up and then more hands went up and then the whole crowd got on their feet and just started cheering and
00:30:02
looking at each other and and folks came up to me after and just said like I felt
00:30:08
like I was getting a hug from everyone that was there and that we there was no separation difference between us. You um thank you for your service uh and you
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spent a lot of time uh serving the country. You had reservations about bombing Iran and uh we did it anyway.
00:30:28
How do you reconcile that today? And uh did we do the right thing? I served in a medical unit in Iraq uh back and I was there for um all of 2005
00:30:42
and was in a position where every day was confronted with the high cost of war. And ultimately that's uh what drove
00:30:50
me to eventually run for Congress to be in a position where I could help to influence and impact those uh those
00:30:57
decisions. And ultimately one of the things that I found um to be true and very detrimental to our country and our own national interest is very rarely uh
00:31:09
did leaders in our country ask the fundamental question of what is our objective? What is our objective? What are we
00:31:15
actually trying to accomplish? If we're discussing a potential military operation or an act of war or any policy
00:31:21
for that matter, what is our objective? Is it achievable? Does it serve the best interests of the United States? And if
00:31:28
it's a military operation, what's what's our what is winning? How do you define winning? What's our exit strategy? And so, uh,
00:31:39
those are things that I've brought to every foreign policy question and every aspect of my professional life and
00:31:46
personal um, you know, kind of considerations of these different policies. And and this is where, you
00:31:53
know, I appreciate President Trump's leadership in his approach to Iran. You know, I my position has always been that
00:31:59
Iran cannot have a nuclear weapons capability, period. President Trump was very clear,
00:32:06
but the reports were you were not in favor of the reports. There were a lot of [ __ ] reports out there. My job is to provide
00:32:13
the president with intelligence uh so that he can make the best informed decision. Ultimately, what we saw in
00:32:21
that operation, Midnight Hammer, was a president who made a decision and executed a very precise military operation with a very clear objective
00:32:34
that was accomplished in the best possible way and a very clear exit. Seems to have turned out okay. But Telsey, don't worry because Sax also But by the
00:32:44
way, Sax also was against bombing around. He was absolutely did not want Nikki Haley to become president because
00:32:51
his fear was and he talked about it on the podcast that he didn't want to start up with Iran. Just speak just use the precise words. I
00:32:58
didn't want a war with Iran. I still don't want a war with Iran. What is what is the condition that you can share with us the public
00:33:05
um on the strength the fortitude in Iran today with that that government? What is the state on the ground that that that you can share and what do you think the paths ahead are?
00:33:17
Well, I mean, you know, their nuclear capability was destroyed. Uh much of their infrastructure destroyed, much of their military capability destroyed. When you look at Israel's actions, uh
00:33:30
throughout that 12-day war, uh their economy is tanking. Uh their uh energy sector is tanking. So it's it's a it Iran is facing a very challenging
00:33:45
position. Um what what we saw is that the Iranian people at least then and at this point have not risen up against their own government.
00:33:58
But you can imagine and this is this is uh openly talked about by a lot of experts is when if you're facing a
00:34:05
failing economy, lack of basic necessities, water, uh uh basic infrastructure, um there is there is legitimate concern about how people will ultimately react
00:34:17
and how they will react to their own government. I um and and what sorry do you have a point
00:34:22
of view on where that takes us? What what steps into the void there? There there are a lot of different factors. Um
00:34:28
such instability in the Middle East historically has not gone as we thought it would or hoped. Exactly. Exactly. Which is which is why
00:34:35
it's so important to look at this from from uh taking the uh regime change in Iran kind of history lessons learned uh into account. uh but but really
00:34:45
recognize that these things we we cannot be simplistic as we look at this challenge as well as any of the others
00:34:51
that we face because there are always complexities uh and so many different elements that
00:34:58
are involved that could turn things one way I was in favor of that strike if it was strategic because I do not think they should be
00:35:09
allowed to have a bomb. I was in favor of it. Great questions guys. Um Go ahead. I want to talk about the southern border for a second. Very early into the administration, you guys declared cartels as terrorist organizations.
00:35:22
Can you walk us through the logic of making that transition and what it enables America to do and why we did it,
00:35:28
what the goal of that is? President Trump saw, as you heard, anybody who attended even a single one
00:35:35
of his rallies during the election, uh he saw very clearly the devastating effect that, you know, MS-13 and Trend Ara and these other cartels were having
00:35:46
in our communities and on our streets in this country, making the American people less safe. uh and and exacting a kind of
00:35:53
violence and um criminal activity that that was only getting worse. Uh and I this was the main thing that drove his decision to
00:36:05
designate the worst of the worst of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations uh because of their
00:36:12
activities here uh within our own country. Uh so this then opens up the door for um
00:36:21
uh the ability to use different authorities to be able to protect the safety and security of the American people. Uh you look at the you know
00:36:33
obviously the trafficking of fentanyl is a is a huge thing. So within my organization uh we have the National
00:36:39
Counterterrorism Center who's you know for the last 20 plus years has been focused on Islamist terrorism, ISIS,
00:36:46
al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab and others who may be plotting against America and our people and our interests. Now that has
00:36:54
been expanded to look at, you know, the the counter narcotics effort, the counter cartels effort. And what it's
00:37:00
doing is is actually bringing in and and focusing on, hey, how are we engaging with, you know, yes, it's the Customs
00:37:07
and Border Protection folks, it's the DEA, uh, but it's also your local police and your sheriffs who are on the ground
00:37:13
there working in these border states and dealing with the very real effects of these cartels. I remember I was in uh
00:37:21
Texas visiting one of these border communities with the vice president a few months back and and the local
00:37:27
ranchers there came in and talked to us. Secretary Huggth was there as well and they were talking about how these
00:37:33
cartels are using such sophisticated weaponry. The kind of stuff that yes we experienced some of IEDs. For example, there was an IED that was planted on on
00:37:45
uh one of the roads on this guy's ranch and one or two of in Texas and one or two of his ranch hands were were killed
00:37:52
uh because of this. We're seeing that these cartels um intelligence collection capability, their counter inelligence capability, their use of drones for both
00:38:03
surveillance as well as using armed drones to go after those who are threatening their operations. It's it's
00:38:09
a it's a serious uh adversary that is highly adaptable uh and ultimately will do what they feel is necessary in order to continue um their illegal uh
00:38:22
activities at harm of the American people. We lost 3,000 people on 9/11 tragically from al Qaeda. We're losing 100,000
00:38:28
Americans to fentinyl. If they're not a terrorist organization, please tell me what one is. I mean, I am 100% in favor
00:38:36
of you crossing the border and [ __ ] killing them immediately with prejudice. I applaud the administration for doing that. It's far too many. When we talked about this issue with Rick Caruso of the
00:38:48
people who are on the street over here, they're on the street because of fentinel, not because they don't they can't get home. I applaud you guys for
00:38:53
doing that. It takes true courage to do it. Yeah. The the historical context of this is, you know, if you if you look back at
00:38:59
what happened with Britain and China in the 1800s, there was a period where, you know, Britain wanted to desperately
00:39:05
weaken the Chinese. And what they did was they started the Opium Wars. And it's it's it's incredibly analogous to
00:39:12
this moment where you see all of these foreign actors that are trying to weaken the United States from within. And so
00:39:19
this is why I think the the cartel thing is not talked about enough. Closing the southern border was critical, but
00:39:25
designating these organizations as the organizations that they are allows exactly as you said a really 360 degree
00:39:31
view of what is going on because they are sophisticated. They have incredible capability. They have an unlimited
00:39:37
balance sheet. It turns out bad intent. Do you think this is a strategic um issue at in China? Are they making this decision to support fentinel supply chains because it's destabilizing to the
00:39:48
United States? I'm I'm reviewing in my mind what I can say and what I can't say uh of wi with regard to classified intelligence. Um th
00:40:00
this is a a point um uh so so I have not seen intelligence that that reflects uh
00:40:07
the statement that you just made. um this the the the precursor issue uh coming out of China
00:40:15
with regards to fentanyl continues to obviously be a point of of negotiation and the president's ongoing negotiations
00:40:22
uh with China ultimately um you know getting after and and China is not the only one that's providing precursors but what we're seeing is a downstream uh or or maybe like a down tick in
00:40:35
fentanyl coming across our borders as well as the cartels in Mexico struggling to create fentanyl because they're not
00:40:42
able to access these precursors as easily as they have been over the last uh several years. So when you look at that, President Trump going after the precursor issue as well as um uh secure
00:40:56
actually securing our borders, I mean the the significance and the impact of that really cannot uh be overstated in how it's positively affecting again the
00:41:08
ability for people to um live here in our own country more safe more safely. Folks, on that I just want to thank Telsey Gabbard, director of national intelligence
00:41:19
people. Thanks, Telsey. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Got a lot of Tulsi fans out there.
00:41:32
You got to stay standing up. Standing up. Thank you. Well done, Telsey. Thank you.
00:41:41
Appreciate you. That was awesome. Thank you. Thanks everybody. Absolutely incredible.