00:00:00
[Music] From Democratic congresswoman to staunch Trump supporter, both loved and heavily criticized for
00:00:07
her independent thinking. She won't be bought. She won't be bullied. The director of national intelligence, Chelsea Gabbard.
00:00:14
Aloha. It's just BS. I've always been a very fiercely independent-minded person.
00:00:21
I know exactly what I need to do here and how deep the rot is within the
00:00:28
intelligence community. that has to be rooted out. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
00:00:35
Tulsi Gabbard.
00:00:45
Hello. Nice to see you, Chelsea. Thanks for coming.
00:00:50
[Music] Thank you for being here. Thank you.
00:00:56
Aloha, everybody. Aloha. Um,
00:01:01
we were all clamoring to kind of frame this and then Sach said, "I really just
00:01:07
need to do the kickoff because he really wanted to tee this up. So, I'm going to seed my responsibility in introducing
00:01:14
you because everybody knows who you are, but David just there's just too much red meat. David's been frothing."
00:01:21
Tulsi doesn't need a a big introduction, but everyone knows she's a director of national intelligence. And um in the
00:01:26
words of President Trump is the the hottest member of the administration. I think he means in the the sense of
00:01:31
having released the biggest news story of the year and specifically files. Uh
00:01:38
you declassified and released a series of files related to the whole Russia gate hoax and many of the documents are
00:01:44
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
00:01:50
the world. Not that many who still don't Who are you looking at right now? Who are you talking? in particular, but
00:01:56
uh who don't seem to understand what this Russia gate hoax was about. Can you just maybe this is the place to start
00:02:02
and then we can drill into some of the details. But just at a very high level, what exactly happened? I mean, I think
00:02:08
we saw for years there were all these accusations that somehow that that Trump was a agent of Putin of Russia. Was that
00:02:15
all just made up? And who made it up? How did that happen? Yeah, I think just just setting the baseline of like why
00:02:22
should you care? Why should people at home care about this? And this really speaks to the power of the intelligence
00:02:30
community and the power of quote unquote uh intelligence is that as you know
00:02:36
these these headlines were turning out about you know Trump is a Putin puppet or he is colluding with Putin in order
00:02:43
to get elected. We're going back to the 2016 election here. You know, if you're just watching the headlines from home,
00:02:49
you got to believe that there's some credibility here, that there's some intelligence that's actually driving
00:02:54
this. And that really is the significance of the documents that we uncovered, uh, declassified, and
00:03:00
released that shows how intelligence and information can be actually manipulated
00:03:08
intentionally so that it shows something that is not reflective of the truth at
00:03:13
all. Uh, and how it can be done. um in a deeply impactful way politicizing it and
00:03:20
what we essentially saw throughout President Trump's candidacy in 2016
00:03:25
and throughout his four years in office. uh the documents we uncovered really
00:03:30
served as the foundation for the weapon that was used to undermine his
00:03:35
presidency to try to undermine the outcome of that 2016 election and really
00:03:41
uh usurp the will and the voices of the people who elected Donald Trump. So, I'll try to run through this timeline uh
00:03:49
in the top lines just to paint the picture of as you asked David like where and how did this
00:03:54
start? When we go back to that 2016 campaign, President Trump went through what was a very crowded primary at the
00:04:01
time. Almost no one thought that he could win. He became the Republican nominee going up against Hillary
00:04:06
Clinton. And during that time, Hillary Clinton kind of seated the um allegation
00:04:13
that there was some collusion happening between Trump uh and Putin and Russia, that Putin was somehow trying to get
00:04:20
Trump elected. What we saw then play out was now known as What does it mean she seated? How did
00:04:26
what does that There there were a lot of different ways um that that occurred. If you go and
00:04:31
look at some of the documents that the FBI declassified um uh that Durham uncovered is now known
00:04:37
as the Durham annex, there were a lot of different ways um that it happened, but we saw early signs of the weaponization
00:04:45
of this when the FBI under Comey um
00:04:51
basically got illegal, they got warrants through the FISA court to illegally surveil Americans, Carter Page uh in
00:04:58
Crossfire Hurricane and others around President Trump and his campaign at that time. November 2016, President Trump
00:05:05
shocks the world and wins the election. the intelligence community and the assessments and all these documents
00:05:11
we've made public already throughout this period of time during the campaign leading up to the general election. The
00:05:18
intelligence community almost uniformly assessed that uh Putin did not have
00:05:24
either the intent or the capability to hack the outcome of the US election.
00:05:30
There were different assessments that said this but but this trend was there. President Trump wins the election.
00:05:36
members of the intelligence community then go and brief members of Congress post election and their briefing was
00:05:42
consistent with the intelligence reports that basically said there's no evidence
00:05:48
that nothing to see there's that Russia or Putin had any kind of impact on the outcome of the US
00:05:53
election. Fast forward to December 8th. Uh, one of the organization, one of the
00:06:00
elements that's under my oversight in the intelligence community creates this product for the president every day
00:06:06
called the president's daily brief. The numbers of people who within the cabinet
00:06:11
even who are uh able to access this brief is a pretty small number. This is
00:06:16
built for the president and it's it it is a product of contributions from
00:06:22
across the intelligence community. This December 8th president's daily brief was
00:06:27
consistent with all of the other assessments, essentially saying there was no interference in the outcome of
00:06:34
the election by Russia. That brief was pulled. It was never published. It was
00:06:40
pulled back from publishing uh hours before it would have hit then President
00:06:45
Obama's desk. The next day, December 9th, the Obama administration calls a
00:06:51
National Security Council meeting. all the senior leaders within the Obama administration. The topic of discussion
00:06:57
was Russia. The tasks that came from that meeting that were delivered to then Obama's DNI
00:07:05
James Clapper and we have the emails that we declassified around this said this is a pus tasking on Russia meddling
00:07:13
with the election. And what you'll see in those documents was not President Obama asking
00:07:19
uh look into the intelligence and see if Russia meddled the election. It was
00:07:25
provide me with an assessment saying how Russia meddled in the election.
00:07:32
John Brennan, James Clapper, uh Comey and the FBI, they all got their folks together then to start building this
00:07:39
document that was an intelligence community assessment that would and so just to be clear, was
00:07:44
this in the sort of that lame duck window between the election and then President Trump taking office that like
00:07:49
two or three month period. Okay. Right. Post November 2016, President Obama's last day, January 20th of 2017.
00:07:58
So this document was being created by a very very small group uh of people within these three agencies. They got
00:08:05
the NSA involved and ultimately that document would state what President Obama wanted
00:08:12
it to say which was that Russia and Putin aspired to help President Trump
00:08:17
win the election and did so through uh cyber means. and and the briefing doc
00:08:22
you mentioned the daily the president's daily briefing doc you can see that there was a draft written that then got
00:08:29
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
00:08:36
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
00:08:42
all it's all on odni.gov gov where we have the draft finalized president's
00:08:48
daily brief from December 8th and then the email saying pull this back and it
00:08:54
was never published until we Oh, that was pull it back. Yes. Oh, so there my So they're also stupid.
00:09:04
Would you like to apologize like No, no, no. I mean, no. There there's a there's a few more pieces here. So
00:09:10
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
00:09:18
published on January 6th. It was very quickly leaked out uh to different uh
00:09:25
members of the media, Washington Post, New York Times, etc. Then it was briefed to Congress. But the key thing here is
00:09:32
that the most classified and and compartmentalized
00:09:38
pieces of intelligence they used as the basis for this total 180 uh intelligence
00:09:44
assessment that was basically contradicting what the intelligence community had assessed leading up to the election. They hid those sources even
00:09:52
from the vast majority of members of Congress uh because based on
00:09:59
intelligence community tradecraftraft standards they were deemed even at the time to be not acceptable.
00:10:06
We had senior officials in the CIA who were tasked to work on this who objected to then CIA director John Brennan using
00:10:13
these as sources because they were not credible. One of them was the steel dossier. this manufactured political uh
00:10:21
document that was filled with falsehoods. So then you you see after that this
00:10:28
assessment again leaked to the media, briefed to Congress. This was the document that then led to everything
00:10:35
that happened in the four years uh that President Trump was in office. What we
00:10:40
declassified and released provided further reinforcement of how
00:10:46
politicized this document was. It showed a few things. For example, that in those
00:10:52
sources that were hidden, uh, that Putin didn't believe Trump would win the election in 2016. He thought Hillary
00:10:59
Clinton was going to win. Uh, he thought that, hey, we know who she is. We know
00:11:04
how she operates. we can try to figure out a way to deal with a Hillary Clinton presidency. Russia and Putin claimed
00:11:11
that they had extremely derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, her
00:11:16
health, her state of mind, uh allegedly um illegal bribery act, you illegal
00:11:23
activities going on. If Putin and Russia were trying to help Trump win the election, they would have
00:11:28
done so at a critical time in October of 2016 in order to try to push him over
00:11:34
the top. they didn't believe he could win. There is so much evidence that disproves this manufactured
00:11:41
uh politicized intelligence assessment ordered by President Obama that was very conveniently hid by John Brennan, James
00:11:49
Clapper uh and James Comey. So again, why why does this matter? We have seen a
00:11:56
trend in some of the biggest intelligence failures around politicized
00:12:02
intelligence. And I I'll just give this one example because it goes back to the creation of my this organization that I
00:12:08
lead, ODNI. James Clapper was an intelligence community leader during the
00:12:13
time uh the before our country went to war with Iraq. James Clapper wrote in his book about
00:12:21
how Dick Cheney was telling the intelligence community, I need you to come up with intelligence basically that
00:12:26
will just create the narrative for us to go to war with Iraq. that will give Colin Powell what he needed to go to
00:12:32
bring to the UN as evidence of weapons of mass destruction of evidence that that Saddam Hussein is is colluding with
00:12:39
al-Qaeda. And in James Clapper's own words, he said that he and his colleagues were so eager to do what Dick
00:12:47
Cheney told them to do that quote, "We created something that wasn't there."
00:12:54
This is as someone who served in the Iraq war along with so many of my
00:12:59
brothers and sisters in uniform. You can see the devastating consequences
00:13:05
of politicized intelligence, the difference between war and peace,
00:13:11
the difference between in this case of of President Trump with his first administration. Uh this threatens the
00:13:20
integrity of our republic uh and the voices of the people being shown through
00:13:26
an election. Chelsea, you must position absolutely enraged. Absolutely. Because we were
00:13:33
lied to then. We were lied to in 2016 and 2017 and over and over again. You
00:13:39
see how people in these positions of power act with impunity, putting themselves, their political interest,
00:13:46
their ambition ahead of the Constitution of the United States and the the
00:13:52
responsibility uh and trust that they have to the American people. Is the ambition this sensation that they
00:13:59
are puppet masters that they can sort of control and shape outcomes yet they're sort of in the shadows and they're not
00:14:05
accountable? Like what what is it? The lack of accountability, I think, is what drives
00:14:11
them believing that they can get away with anything. Because if you control information, you control intelligence,
00:14:17
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
00:14:24
seems so destabilizing? I think that was I don't have paper
00:14:30
evidence of it, but one could surmise that the intention was they all thought Hillary Clinton was going to win.
00:14:36
President Trump won the election. That was uh uh President Obama, you can
00:14:41
imagine the feeling amongst the Democrats. I remember I was a Democrat in Congress at the time. Absolute
00:14:47
devastation. What's the reaction to that? Let's see how we can completely them. How how could they completely
00:14:54
undermine and and destabilize and destabilize and uh in in their minds
00:15:01
disarm of President Trump while he's in office. And this is some of the twisted
00:15:07
thinking that I witnessed when I was uh in Congress at that time was that they
00:15:13
believed many many of these Democrat leaders really believed that they were
00:15:18
doing the right thing for our country by trying to protect the American people from the guy that they actually voted
00:15:24
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
00:15:32
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
00:15:39
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
00:15:45
intelligence assessment that you know you found in the documents, um the career staff,
00:15:51
they said there's nothing to support this theory of Russ of Trump somehow
00:15:56
being an asset or agent of Russia. So they did their jobs. They some of them did, some of them didn't.
00:16:03
But it was the leadership, the political appointees who are obviously hyperartisan because they're appointed
00:16:09
by the president. So, they're the ones who overruled their own career staff.
00:16:14
Okay, just be clear. That's right. And and just to sorry, last point, just to put a bow on this,
00:16:19
uh we discovered some emails that were printed out literally in the back of a
00:16:25
safe. I think they had been sitting there since 2017. that that showed an email exchange
00:16:32
between then Obama's DNI, James Clapper, and then the head of the National
00:16:38
Security Agency, uh, Mike Rogers. And
00:16:44
the the DNI Clapper, he really wanted to get the NSA to sign off on this
00:16:49
manufactured intelligence document. And Mike Rogers at that point in his email
00:16:54
saying, "Hey, you're giving us too short of a deadline. we don't have enough time to vet what is in this intelligence
00:17:01
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
00:17:06
of it and the response that James Clapper sent and you can find this again online uh was he essentially said Mike
00:17:15
this is a team sport this is the time where you just have to say yes and sign
00:17:22
off on this didn't didn't he say we're we're um going to stand behind the support in the
00:17:27
a spirit of quote this is our story and we're sticking to it. Exactly. So Tulsa,
00:17:33
um, while I don't believe Trump was a Russian asset, is your position that the Russians did not try to interfere in the
00:17:40
2016 and 2020 elections because the FBI and the and Trump himself, they they all
00:17:47
conceded that they did try to interfere the the intelligence documents and again this is what we released was their
00:17:54
intent was to try to seow chaos. Got it. So in the election and that that that was throughout the assessments. So,
00:18:02
just to parse this, there was a group of people who believed he was an asset. Trump asked on stage
00:18:09
during the election. Russia, if you're listening, please hack Hillary's email and send them to us and release it.
00:18:15
Donald Trump Jr. then met with the Russians at Trump Tower hoping to get that information. The FBI
00:18:23
proved and a DC court indicted Russians for interfering in the election. So,
00:18:29
interference occurred. The Trump family engaged with the Russians, but Trump
00:18:37
himself was not a plant. We all agree. He's not a Manurian candidate, but the
00:18:42
Russians have been absolutely, you agree, trying to interfere in our elections. Correct.
00:18:48
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
00:18:54
you said, I mean, about what happened, uh, that stuff has all been litigated and and and unfortunately, the reality
00:19:00
is when we say, oh, the FBI said this, we're we were dealing with a very highly
00:19:05
politicized FBI at the time that was so politicized, they were willing to use what they knew was false information to
00:19:12
obtain illegal surveillance warrants from the FISA court to spy on members of
00:19:17
the Trump administration. When you actually look through it, there was nothing actually there. Okay. Now, if you put yourself in the
00:19:23
FBI shoes, Donald Trump Jr. says, "I hope I can't wait to get what you have.
00:19:29
I hope it's what you're saying it is." And Trump literally asks Putin to release Hillary's email.
00:19:35
Would the FBI not actually take a look into it? Would you want them to Hold on. I'm talking to
00:19:40
Tulsi. You had your chance. You think You think you can be quiet for one moment, Sax, and let me finish.
00:19:45
Tulsi, would it not be the FBI's absolute duty to look into that? Yes or
00:19:50
no? An honest FBI. Yes. This was a dishonest FBI FBI. It is all of the FBI. You have
00:19:58
to look at things within within the bigger context. Anyone who watches Donald Trump, he makes jokes every
00:20:04
single day. Should the FBI look into serious issues? Yeah, of course they should. But again, we're dealing with an
00:20:10
FBI that has been proven time and time again during that period of time to break the law. They are supposed to
00:20:16
enforce the law. They broke the law because of their efforts to try to undermine President Trump's candidacy.
00:20:23
So they already had an objective clearly in mind. So tell us a little bit about what you learned about Paul Maniffort and his
00:20:30
conviction, subsequent pardon and what his role was as the campaign manager for
00:20:36
Trump the first time and his giving information to foreign.
00:20:41
I'm I'm not familiar with the Maniffort case. Okay. what I have laid out is the truth
00:20:47
of what has been uncovered uh through the declassification efforts.
00:20:52
Let me ask then the generalized question. The question is about President Trump quickly clean up and the question is about the
00:20:58
intelligence community asked the Russians to do something. I would urge everyone who actually believes that to go back and watch the
00:21:04
video of the rally. It's a joke. This was the context was that Hillary Clinton
00:21:10
was being investigated because she had used a private email server and was supposed to be turning over thousands of
00:21:15
emails, but she didn't because they destroyed the hard drive and they broke
00:21:21
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
00:21:26
the emails. Yeah. Yeah, I just think everybody laughed and you have to be, I don't know, kind of dumb or or super
00:21:32
partisan or hate Donald Trump to think that him telling a joke on stage was the
00:21:37
basis for a grand conspiracy with Russia. Yeah. Okay. Let me let me ask this question.
00:21:43
No, I would think that the the FBI investigating the Russians and us
00:21:52
30,000 people, he's going to say, "Hey, Vladimir, can you do the following?" That's not how conspiracies work. I'm
00:21:57
sorry to break it to you. Let me let me let me ask the Let me ask what are you doing to me?
00:22:03
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
00:22:10
a go forward basis. Well, the first step really is and this is an essential thing is is about transparency uh and accountability. So,
00:22:17
we've we have referred all of the documents that we've uncovered uh to the Department of Justice because uh the two
00:22:24
have to go together in order for uh there to be uh real real change.
00:22:31
Let me um build on Jason's question. Um 12 years from now, um there could be a
00:22:38
Democrat. Um maybe it's AOC, you know, four more years of Trump and then eight
00:22:43
years of JD. But, you know, you know, I'm getting to the point. Um uh
00:22:49
and you know some people may not like the AOC candidate but that doesn't mean as you said that some nameless faceless
00:22:56
person can subvert the will of the American people. So what needs to happen so that there's checks and balances
00:23:02
here? How how do we make sure that people can't just not like somebody and
00:23:08
then decide to try to basically destroy them? How do we make sure that that doesn't happen?
00:23:14
It it's a good and important question and ultimately the the ultimate accountability has to come from the
00:23:19
American people and who we choose to vote for. Uh who we have in these
00:23:25
positions of leadership actually matters. And so for the United States Senate for example have the
00:23:31
responsibility of confirming people uh to serve in the position that I hold and and the CIA director, the FBI director
00:23:38
uh and so on. Uh we have to be very cleareyed about the tools and the
00:23:45
tactics that are used that ultimately fundamentally are undermining uh our
00:23:51
founding documents uh and the constitution, the integrity of our republic and ultimately our ability as
00:23:56
we the people to determine who we want to serve uh in in our government.
00:24:02
um you know the the the weaponization politicization unfortunately uh it
00:24:07
continues there there is a lot of um there there is still rot within our
00:24:12
intelligence community and those again who believe that they know better for the American people uh than than we do
00:24:20
for ourselves and and that's really a dangerous thing. This is not something that's easily solved. It's not one
00:24:26
institutional change that that can occur. uh we have to remain vigilant on
00:24:31
all fronts in order to protect ourselves and to protect our democratic republic
00:24:36
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
00:24:43
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
00:24:48
take this role. How do you grapple with that and how do you think about prioritizing and see
00:24:54
kind of filtering the workforce, the people that report to you, the information? the information
00:25:00
uh by being vigilant. Yeah. Um you know, it's I I've I've made some
00:25:05
pretty big changes within uh the Office of the Director of National Intelligence itself.
00:25:10
Uh finding uh those pockets and those places that have been weaponized and and
00:25:16
politicized uh and and really ultimately bringing a a mission focus uh to the organization.
00:25:24
uh trimming down and slimming down our manning and personnel count so that we have the right people in the right
00:25:30
positions who focus on the mission itself. Um, ultimately every day it's
00:25:36
just about doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do and setting that culture of leadership that focuses
00:25:42
on our responsibility, the American people, to the constitution and uh
00:25:49
holding people accountable when they are not fulfilling that responsibility that
00:25:54
they have been entrusted with. When when you were a a Congresswoman, um, you must
00:26:00
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
00:26:13
and and having this role today with the people that you used to represent? You know, Hawaii has um it's been a
00:26:21
strong democratic state for a very very long time, but it's not uh it's a unique
00:26:26
state uh with a very unique culture. Um people tend to be honestly a little bit
00:26:34
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
00:26:42
know mixed bag for me when I go home. Uh but I've been pleasantly surprised at
00:26:48
times. I was waiting in line one day at like a FedEx to go ship something and
00:26:53
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
00:27:06
know, there are others who um definitely have Trump derangement syndrome and
00:27:11
can't wrap their heads around how, you know, I represented Hawaii for eight years in Congress as a Democrat and now
00:27:16
I'm President Trump's director of national intelligence, but it also that's got to warp people's brains. it
00:27:23
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,
00:28:14
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
00:28:33
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.
00:28:48
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
00:29:12
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
00:29:24
there were there were probably at least a thousand people there, maybe more. And
00:29:30
at at a certain point I asked the crowd, I said, you know, raise your hand
00:29:35
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
00:29:48
first there was like one or two hands that went up very timidly and they're kind of looking around and then more
00:29:54
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
00:30:13
separation difference between us. You um thank you for your service uh and you
00:30:20
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?
00:30:34
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
00:31:03
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
00:31:33
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
00:32:27
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.
00:32:39
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?
00:33:11
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
00:33:23
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
00:33:38
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
00:33:52
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
00:34:11
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
00:34:40
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
00:35:03
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
00:35:15
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
00:35:41
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
00:36:00
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
00:36:28
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
00:37:39
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
00:37:58
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
00:38:17
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.
00:38:41
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
00:39:42
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
00:39:55
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
00:40:27
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
00:40:47
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
00:41:01
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.
00:41:13
Folks, on that I just want to thank Telsey Gabbard, director of national intelligence
00:41:19
people. Thanks, Telsey. Thank you so much.
00:41:25
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.
00:41:49
Absolutely incredible.
