You can listen to the Tulsi Gabbard on Russiagate Hoax Evidence and How She’s Reforming Politicized Intelligence Agencies using Speak’s shareable media player:
Tulsi Gabbard on Russiagate Hoax Evidence and How She’s Reforming Politicized Intelligence Agencies Podcast Episode Description
(0:00) Introducing Tulsi Gabbard, US Director of National Intelligence
(1:21) The Russiagate Hoax Conspiracy and the dangers of highly politicized intelligence agencies
(17:31) Russian interference in 2016, cleaning up intelligence agencies, increasing accountability
(25:54) How Tulsi is received in her home state of Hawaii after switching parties, the drastic change of the Democratic Party
(30:16) Thoughts on bombing Iran, what impacts her views on foreign policy and war
(35:15) The impact of designating drug cartels as terrorist orgs, safety at the Southern Border, China
Thanks to our partners for making this happen!
Solana: https://solana.com/
OKX: https://www.okx.com/
Google Cloud: https://cloud.google.com/
IREN: https://iren.com/
Oracle: https://www.oracle.com/
Circle: https://www.circle.com/
BVNK: https://www.bvnk.com/
Polymarket: https://www.polymarket.com/
Follow Tulsi:
https://x.com/tulsigabbard
Follow the besties:
https://x.com/chamath
https://x.com/Jason
https://x.com/DavidSacks
https://x.com/friedberg
Follow on X:
https://x.com/theallinpod
Follow on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod
Follow on TikTok:
@theallinpod
Follow on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod
Intro Music Credit:
https://rb.gy/tppkzl
https://x.com/yung_spielburg
Intro Video Credit:
https://x.com/TheZachEffect
This interactive media player was created automatically by Speak. Want to generate intelligent media players yourself? Sign up for Speak!
Tulsi Gabbard on Russiagate Hoax Evidence and How She’s Reforming Politicized Intelligence Agencies Podcast Episode Top Keywords
Tulsi Gabbard on Russiagate Hoax Evidence and How She’s Reforming Politicized Intelligence Agencies Podcast Episode Summary
Based on the provided context, the phrase “has joined the group” refers to someone becoming a member of a group, band, club, or team. Throughout the conversation, there are multiple references to joining various groups, inviting members, and welcoming new people. Specific examples include:
Continue reading the full guide (click to expand)
– “we joined the band”
– “He should’ve joined the…”
– “Join the team.”
– “Welcome to the club.”
– “add one more bestie.”
– “they’re in, they’re in.”
– “invite you to…”
These statements all indicate the act of someone joining or being added to a group or collective. However, the context does not specify exactly who “has joined the group” in a particular instance. The general meaning is clear: it signifies the addition of a new member to a group. If you are looking for a specific individual who joined a specific group, that information is not explicitly provided in the context.
This summary was created automatically by Speak. Want to transcribe, analyze and summarize yourself? Sign up for Speak!
Tulsi Gabbard on Russiagate Hoax Evidence and How She’s Reforming Politicized Intelligence Agencies Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
Speaker: 0
00:00
From Democratic congresswoman to staunch Trump supporter. Both loved and heavily criticized for her independent thinking. She won’t be bought. She won’t be bullied.
Speaker: 1
00:10
Want to run this on your own file?
Upload audio, video, or text and get a transcript, summary, and insights in minutes.
Free trial includes 30 minutes (60 with a work email)
The director of national intelligence. Chelsea Gabbard.
Speaker: 0
00:14
Hello, ma’am.
Speaker: 1
00:15
It’s just BS. I’ve always been a very fiercely independent minded person.
Speaker: 0
00:21
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, Tulsi Gabbard.
Speaker: 2
00:45
Hello. Nice to see
Speaker: 0
00:46
you, Chelsea. Thanks for coming. Yeah. Hello? Yeah.
Speaker: 2
00:53
Thank you
Speaker: 3
00:54
for being here.
Speaker: 0
00:54
Thank
Speaker: 1
00:54
you. Aloha everybody. Saloni.
Speaker: 2
01:01
We were all clamoring to kind of frame this and then Zack said, I really just need to do the kickoff because he really wanted to tee this up. So I’m sana cede my responsibility in introducing you because everybody knows who you arya, but David just there’s just too much red meat. David’s been frothing.
Speaker: 3
01:21
Chelsea doesn’t need a big introduction, but everyone knows she’s a director of national intelligence. And, in the words of President Trump is the the hottest member of the administration. I think he means in the the sense of having released the biggest news story of the year And, specifically, ai, you declassified and released a series of files related to the whole Russiagate hoax.
Speaker: 3
01:42
And many of the documents are just stunning. I’ll meh you speak to it. But I think know, there’s still maybe a few holdouts out there in the world, not that many, who still
Speaker: 4
01:51
don’t Who are you looking
Speaker: 1
01:52
at right now? Who are you talking
Speaker: 3
01:54
about? In particular, but, who don’t seem to understand what this Russiagate hoax was about. Can you just maybe this is the place to start, and then we can drill into some of the details. But just at a very high level, what exactly happened? I mean, I think we saw for years, there were all these accusations that somehow that that Trump was a agent of Putin of Russia.
Speaker: 3
02:15
Was that all just made up, and who made it up? How did that happen?
Speaker: 1
02:18
Yeah. I think just just setting the baseline of like ai should you care? Why should people at home care about this? And this really speaks to the power of the intelligence community and the power of quote unquote, intelligence, is that as, you know, these these headlines were churning out about, you know, Trump is a Putin puppet or he is colluding with Putin in order to get elected, we’re going back to the twenty sixteen election here.
Speaker: 1
02:46
You know, if you’re just watching the headlines from home, you gotta believe that there’s some credibility here, that there’s some intelligence that’s actually driving this. And that really is the significance of the documents that we uncovered, declassified, and released that shows how intelligence and information can be actually manipulated intentionally sai that it shows something that is not reflective of the truth at all, and how it can be done, in a deeply impactful way.
Speaker: 1
03:18
Politicizing it in what we essentially saw throughout president Trump’s candidacy in 2016, and throughout his four years in office, the documents we uncovered really served as the foundation for the weapon that was used to undermine his presidency, to try to undermine the outcome of that twenty sixteen election, and really, usurp the will and the voices of the people who elected Donald Trump.
Speaker: 1
03:46
So I’ll try to run through this ai, in the top lines just to paint the picture of, as you asked, David, like, where and how did this start? When we go back to that twenty sixteen campaign, president Trump went through what was a very crowded primary at the time. Almost no one thought that he could win.
Speaker: 1
04:03
He became the Republican nominee going up against Hillary Clinton. And during that time, Hillary Clinton kind of ceded the, allegation that there was some collusion happening between Trump, and Putin and Russia. That Putin was somehow trying to get Trump elected. What we saw then play out was now known as So what what does
Speaker: 2
04:24
it mean she seeded? How did What does that mean?
Speaker: 1
04:26
There there were a lot of different ways, that that occurred. If you go and look at some of the documents that the FBI declassified, that Durham uncovered, is now known as the Durham Annex. There were a lot of different ways, that it happened, but we saw early signs of the weaponization of this when the FBI under Comey, basically got illegal they got warrants through the FISA court to illegally surveil Meh, Carter Page, in Crossfire Hurricane, and others around President Trump and his campaign at that time.
Speaker: 1
05:02
November 2016, President Trump shocks the world and wins the election. The intelligence community and the assessments and all these documents we’ve made public already throughout this period of time during the campaign leading up to the general election, the intelligence community almost uniformly assessed that, Putin did not have either the intent or the capability to hack the outcome of the US election.
Speaker: 1
05:29
There were different assessments that said this, but but this trend was there. President Trump wins the election. Members of the intelligence community then go and brief members of Congress post election, and their briefing was consistent with the intelligence reports that basically said there’s no evidence that
Speaker: 2
05:48
Nothing to see.
Speaker: 1
05:49
There’s that Russia or Putin had any kind of impact on the outcome of the US election. Fast forward to December 8. 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 called the president’s daily brief. Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
06:08
The numbers of people who, within the cabinet even, who are, 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 across the intelligence community. This December 8 president’s daily brief was consistent with all of the other assessments, essentially saying there was no interference in the outcome of the election by Russia.
Speaker: 1
06:35
That brief was pulled. It was never published. It was pulled back from publishing, hours before it would have hit then president Obama’s desk. The next day, December 9, the Obama administration calls a National Security Council meeting, all the senior leaders within the Obama administration. The topic of discussion was Russia.
Speaker: 1
06:58
The tasks that came from that meeting that were delivered to then Obama’s DNI James Clapper and we have the emails that we declassified around this, sai this is a POTUS tasking on Russia meddling with the election. And what you’ll see in those documents was not president Obama asking, look into the intelligence and see if Russia meddled the election.
Speaker: 1
07:23
It was provide me with an assessment saying how Russia meddled in the election. John Brennan, James Clapper, Comey and the FBI, they all got their folks together then to start building this document that was an intelligence community assessment that would
Speaker: 3
07:43
And and so just to be clear, was this in the sort of that lame duck window between the election and then President Trump taking office? Yes. That, like, two or three month period?
Speaker: 1
07:50
Ai. Post November 2016, President Obama’s last day, 01/20/2017. So this document was being created by a very, very small group, of people within these three agencies. They got the NSA involved and ultimately that document would state what President Obama wanted it to say, which was that Russia and Putin aspired to help President Trump win the election and did so through, cyber means.
Speaker: 1
08:21
And and the briefing doc you mentioned, the daily the president’s daily briefing doc, you can see that there was a draft written that then got pulled back.
Speaker: 4
08:30
Yes. And that still sits somewhere. So we know that that’s what was written and someone said pull that back. We don’t sana have evidence of this in the on the going on going into the oval.
Speaker: 1
08:39
Exactly. And these were the doc some of the documents that we released. It’s all it’s all on, 0dni.gov where we have the draft finalized president’s daily brief from December 8, and then the email saying pull this back. And it was never published until we Oh, that
Speaker: 2
08:56
was that was an email
Speaker: 1
08:57
pull it back? Yes. Oh,
Speaker: 2
08:58
so they’re oh my. So they’re also stupid. Would you like to No, no, no. I ai, it’s No, no, no. I mean, it’s No,
Speaker: 1
09:08
no, no. I speak, it’s No, no, no.
Speaker: 0
09:10
I mean,
Speaker: 1
09:10
this I’ll have the receipts.
Speaker: 0
09:12
We’ll go to those in a moment.
Speaker: 3
09:13
I’ll go here.
Speaker: 1
09:14
This January, 2017 assessment was published on January 6. It was very quickly leaked out, to different, members of the media, Washington Post, New York Times, etcetera. Then it was briefed to Congress. But the key thing here is that the most classified and and compartmentalized pieces of intelligence they used as the basis for this total 180, intelligence assessment that was basically contradicting what the intelligence community had assessed leading up to the election, they hid those sources even from the vast majority of members of congress, because based on intelligence community trade ram standards, they were deemed even at the time to be not acceptable.
Speaker: 1
10:05
We had senior officials in the CIA who were tasked to work on this who objected to then CIA director John Brennan using these as sources because they were not credible. One of them was the Steele dossier. It’s manufactured political, document that was filled with falsehoods.
Speaker: 1
10:23
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 that happened in the four years, that president Trump was in office. What we declassified and released provided further reinforcement of how politicized this document was.
Speaker: 1
10:48
It showed a few things, for example, that in those sources that were hidden, that Putin didn’t believe Trump would win the election in 2016. He thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. He thought that, hey. We know who she is. We know how she operates.
Speaker: 1
11:05
We can try to figure out a way to deal with a Hillary Clinton presidency. Russia and Putin claimed that they had extremely derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, her health, her state of mind, allegedly, illegal ai, act illegal activities going on. If Putin and Russia were trying to help Trump win the election, they would have done so at a critical time in October 2016 in order to try to push him over the top.
Speaker: 1
11:34
They didn’t believe he could win. There is so much evidence that disproves this manufactured, politicized intelligence assessment ordered by president Obama that was very conveniently hid by John Brennan, James Clapper, and James Comey. So again, why why does this matter? We have seen a trend in some of the biggest intelligence failures around politicized intelligence.
Speaker: 1
12:02
And I’ll I’ll just give this one example because it goes back to the creation of my this organization that I lead, ODNI. James Clapper was an intelligence community leader during the time, the before our country went to war with Iraq. James Clapper wrote in his book about how Dick Cheney was telling the intelligence community, I need you to come up with intelligence basically that will just create the narrative for us to go to war with Iraq.
Speaker: 1
12:29
That will give Colin Powell what he needed to go to bring to the UN as evidence of weapons of mass destruction, of evidence that that Saddam Hussein is is colluding with Al Qaeda. And in James Clapper’s own words, he said that he and his colleagues were so eager to do what Dick Cheney told them to do that quote, we created something that wasn’t there.
Speaker: 1
12:54
This is as someone who served in the Iraq war, along with so many of my brothers and sisters in uniform, you can see the devastating consequences of politicized intelligence. The difference between war and speak, the difference between, in this case of of president Trump with his first administration, this threatens the integrity of our republic, and the voices of
Speaker: 0
13:23
the people being shown through an election. Chelsea, You must be in the position.
Speaker: 1
13:30
Absolutely enraged. Absolutely. Because we were 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, their ambition ahead of the constitution of The United States and the responsibility, and trust that they have to the American people.
Speaker: 2
13:57
Is the ambition this sensation that they are puppet masters, that they can sort of control and shape outcomes meh they’re sort of in the shadows and they’re not accountable? Like what what is it? The lack of accountability, I
Speaker: 1
14:08
think, is what drives them believing that they can get away with anything. Because if you control information, you control intelligence, then you can control an outcome. Yeah.
Speaker: 4
14:18
What was the incentive or the objective to Chamath’s question about doing this after the election? Because it seems so destabilizing. I think that was
Speaker: 3
14:27
That’s ai.
Speaker: 1
14:28
I don’t have paper evidence of it, but one could surmise that the intention was they all thought Hillary Clinton was gonna win. President Trump won the election. That was, President Obama, you can imagine the feeling amongst the Democrats. I meh, I was a democrat in congress at the tyler. Absolute devastation. What’s the reaction to that?
Speaker: 1
14:49
Let’s see how we can completely them. How how could they completely undermine and
Speaker: 2
14:56
And destabilize.
Speaker: 1
14:56
And destabilize ai in in their ai, disarm of president Trump while he’s in office. And this is some of the twisted thinking that I witnessed when I was, in congress at that time
Speaker: 3
15:12
And also
Speaker: 1
15:12
was that they believed, many many of these Democrat leaders really believed that they were doing the right thing for our country by trying to protect the American people from the guy that they actually voted for to be president of The United States.
Speaker: 3
15:26
Right. I mean, think part of it was to undermine Ram, and then part of it was sort of, exculpatory towards the fact 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 the Democrat party for choosing the wrong nominee.
Speaker: 3
15:40
I think that was like part of the motivation as well. But just to be clear, in in this, national intelligence assessment that, you know, you found the documents, the career staff, they said there’s nothing to support this theory of Ram somehow being an asset or agent of Russia.
Speaker: 3
15:59
So they did their jobs. They
Speaker: 1
16:01
Some of them did.
Speaker: 3
16:02
Some of them didn’t. But it was the leadership, the political appointees, who are obviously hyper arya because they’re appointed by the president. So they’re the ones who overruled their own career staff. Okay.
Speaker: 0
16:14
Just to
Speaker: 3
16:14
be clear.
Speaker: 1
16:15
That’s right. And and just to sorry. Last point. Just to put a bow on this, 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 between then Obama’s DNI, James Clapper, and then the head of the National Security Agency, Mike Rogers.
Speaker: 1
16:41
And 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 saying, hey, you’re giving us too short of a deadline. We don’t have enough time to vet what is in this intelligence assessment in order to add our name to this.
Speaker: 1
17:03
And if you don’t sana give us more time, then we just won’t be a part of it. And the response that James Clapper sent, and you can find this again online, was he essentially said, Mike, this is a team sport. This is the time where you just have to say yes and sign off on this.
Speaker: 3
17:22
Didn’t didn’t he say we’re we’re, gonna stand behind the support in the best spirit of, quote, this is our
Speaker: 1
17:30
story, and we’re sticking to it. Exactly.
Speaker: 0
17:32
So, Chelsea, while I don’t believe Trump was a Russian asset, is your position that the Russians did not try to interfere on the 2016 and twenty twenty elections? Because the FBI and the and Trump himself, they they all conceded that they did try to interfere.
Speaker: 1
17:50
The the intelligence documents, and again, this is what we released, was their intent was to try to sow chaos
Speaker: 0
17:57
Got it. Sai
Speaker: 4
17:58
in the election.
Speaker: 1
17:59
And that that that was throughout the assessments.
Speaker: 0
18:01
So just to parse this, there was a group of people who believed he was an asset. Trump asked on stage during the election, Russia, if you’re listening, please hack Hillary’s email and send them to us and release it. Donald Trump Jr. Then met with the Russians at Trump Tower hoping to get that information. The FBI proved and a DC court indicted Russians for interfering in the election.
Speaker: 0
18:28
So interference occurred, the Trump family engaged with the Russians, but Trump himself was not a plant, we all agree. He’s not a Meh candidate, but the Russians have been absolutely, you agree, trying to interfere in our elections. Correct?
Speaker: 1
18:48
That that has not been disputed. Okay. At all. Ai just wanna meh clear here on levels, sir. Well well, the Ai all of the other stuff you said, I mean, about what happened, that stuff has all been litigated. And and and unfortunately, the reality 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 obtain illegal surveillance warrants from the FISA court to spy on members of the Trump administration.
Speaker: 1
19:18
When you actually look through it, there was nothing actually there.
Speaker: 0
19:21
K. Now if you put yourself in the FBI shoes, Donald Trump Junior says, I hope Sai can’t wait to get what you have. I hope it’s what you’re saying it is and Trump literally asked Putin to release Hillary’s email. Would the FBI not actually take
Speaker: 2
19:39
you want
Speaker: 0
19:39
them to hold on. I’m talking to Tyler. You had your chance.
Speaker: 3
19:41
You think you think you’re gonna be
Speaker: 0
19:43
quiet for one moment, Sachs, and let me finish. Telsey, would it not be the FBI’s absolute duty to look into that? Yes or no?
Speaker: 1
19:51
An honest FBI? Yes. This was a dishonest FBI. All the
Speaker: 0
19:55
FBI’s agenda. Hold on.
Speaker: 1
19:56
It is. It’s All of the FBI’s outlets. To look at things within within the bigger context. Anyone who watches Donald Trump, he makes jokes every single day. Should the FBI look into serious issues? Yeah. Of course they should. But again, we’re dealing with an FBI that has been proven time and time again during that period of time to break the law.
Speaker: 1
20:15
They arya supposed to enforce the law. They broke the law because of their efforts to try to undermine president Trump’s candidacy. So they already had an objective clearly in mind.
Speaker: 0
20:25
So tell us a little bit about what you learned about Paul Manafort and his conviction, subsequent pardon, and what his role was as the campaign manager for Trump the first time and his giving information to foreign
Speaker: 1
20:41
I’m I’m not familiar with the Manafort case.
Speaker: 0
20:44
Oh, okay.
Speaker: 1
20:44
What I have laid out is the truth of what has been uncovered, through the declassification efforts.
Speaker: 2
20:52
Let me ask them the generalized question.
Speaker: 1
20:54
The the question is about President Trump.
Speaker: 0
20:56
Let’s
Speaker: 3
20:56
quickly clean up
Speaker: 1
20:56
the Trump administration. About the intelligence communities.
Speaker: 3
20:59
Ask the Russians to do something. I would urge everyone who actually believes that to go back and watch the 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 emails, but she didn’t because they destroyed the hard drive and they broke it with hammers.
Speaker: 3
21:21
They bleached it and all the rest of it. And he made a joke about, if the Russians are listening, I hope you can find the emails.
Speaker: 0
21:27
Yeah. I just think there’s And
Speaker: 3
21:28
everybody laughed and you have to be, I don’t know, kind of dumb or or super partisan or hate Donald Trump to think that him telling a joke on stage was the basis for a grand conspiracy with Russia.
Speaker: 2
21:41
Yeah. Okay. Let me let me ask this this question.
Speaker: 0
21:43
No. I would think that the the FBI investigating the Russians and us convicting them in court.
Speaker: 1
21:50
We keep fixing them
Speaker: 2
21:51
in court. We keep fixing
Speaker: 3
21:51
them in court. Thousand people. He’s gonna say, hey, Vladimir, can you do the following? Conspiracies work. I’m sorry to make it to you.
Speaker: 2
21:59
Let let me let me ask the let me ask the What are you doing to to clean it up? She just told you she’d release the files
Speaker: 1
22:08
in the So the first step I wanna look on a go forward basis. Well, the first step really is, and this is an
Speaker: 3
22:15
essential
Speaker: 1
22:16
thing, is is about transparency, and accountability. So we’ve we have referred all of the documents that we’ve uncovered, to the Department of Justice because, the two have to go together in order for, there to be real real change.
Speaker: 2
22:31
Let meh, build on Jason’s question. Twelve years from now, there could be a Democrat. Maybe it’s AOC. You know, four more years of Trump and then eight years of JD. But you know you know what? I’m getting through the book. And, you know, some people may not like the AOC candidate, but that doesn’t mean, as you said, that some nameless, faceless person can subvert the will of the American people.
Speaker: 2
22:58
So what needs to happen so that there’s checks and balances here? How how
Speaker: 0
23:03
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? It’s a good and important question and ultimately the ultimate accountability has to come from the American people and who we choose
Speaker: 1
23:21
to vote for. Who we have in these positions of leadership actually matters, and so for Ai States sana, for example, have the responsibility of confirming people, to serve in the position that I hold and and the CIA director, the FBI director, and so on, we have to be very clear eyed about the tools and the tactics that are used that ultimately meh are undermining, our founding documents, and the constitution, the integrity of our republic, and ultimately our ability as we the people to determine who we want to serve, in in our government.
Speaker: 1
24:01
You know, the the the weaponization, politicization, unfortunately, it it continues. There there is a lot of, there there is still rot within our intelligence community and those, again, who believe that they know better for the American people, than than we do for ourselves.
Speaker: 1
24:20
And and that’s really, a dangerous thing. This is not something that’s easily solved. It’s not one institutional change that that can occur. We have to remain vigilant on all fronts in order to protect ourselves and to protect our democratic republic, from these kinds of, abuses.
Speaker: 4
24:39
How do you how do you lead that change, Tulsi? You’re you’re going into work, and 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 take this role. How do you grapple with that and how do you think about prioritizing and sai kind of filtering the workforce, the people that report to you? The information.
Speaker: 1
24:58
The information. By being vigilant. Yeah. You know, it’s I I’ve I’ve made some pretty big changes within, the office of the director of national intelligence vatsal. Mhmm. Finding, those pockets and those places that have been weaponized and and politicized, and and really ultimately bringing a a mission focus, to the organization, trimming down and slimming down our manning and personnel count so so that we have the right people in the right positions who focus, on the mission itself.
Speaker: 1
25:33
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 on our responsibility, the American people, to the constitution, and, holding people accountable when they are not fulfilling that responsibility that they have been entrusted with.
Speaker: 1
25:56
When when
Speaker: 4
25:56
you were a congresswoman, you must have had a different mandate. You were a different political party. When you go back home, what’s the conversation like about the transition? I don’t know if you’ve talked about this publicly much, but Yeah. What’s it like in talking about your evolution changing parties, and and having this role today with the people that you used to represent?
Speaker: 1
26:17
You know, Hawaii has, it’s it’s been a strong democratic state for a very, very long time, but it’s not, it’s a unique state, with a very unique culture. People tend to be, honestly, a little bit more just saloni, live and let live. I just sana live my life and, you know, raise my family.
Speaker: 1
26:38
And and, it’s it’s, you know, mixed bag for me when I go home. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised at times. I was waiting in line one day at, like, FedEx to go ship something. And there’s an older Japanese American man who was the manager, and he came out. And he pulled me aside and he just said, I really, really love everything you’re doing.
Speaker: 2
27:03
Keep speaking the truth.
Speaker: 1
27:05
You know, there are others who definitely have Trump derangement syndrome and can’t wrap their heads around how, you know, I represented Hawaii for eight years in congress as a democrat, and now I’m president Trump’s director of national intelligence. Right. But it also It’s gotta It We’re people’s brains.
Speaker: 1
27:23
It it maybe on its surface, but the thing is and and look, I mean, I’ve listened to your guys’ podcast for a long ai, and I think there’s a lot of folks who are having probably not, like, the cerebral kinds of conversations you have, but the conversations around how the Democratic party has drastically changed.
Speaker: 1
27:41
Drastically changed. I I hear you talk about it as well. Ai mean, for me, I I was No disagreement. ’21 when Ai I made a decision to join the Democratic party in Hawaii. I was running for the state house and had to choose a party.
Speaker: 1
27:55
And for me at that time, the Democratic party still represented, you know, the the values of fighting for the little guy, fighting for working people, protecting the environment, and standing up for free speech, even if you didn’t like that speech. And to fast forward from then, to now, it’s, you know, the party is unrecognisable in just about every way.
Speaker: 1
28:19
And, I 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? Should we take this approach or that approach? It really is foundational how the democratic party has, completely gone away from the party of JFK and Martin Luther King.
Speaker: 0
28:39
And the good news is you get to work for somebody who’s a former democrat himself. Exactly. President Trump.
Speaker: 1
28:44
There are there are a number of us who have done that. President Trump. President Trump.
Speaker: 0
28:48
30 Democrats.
Speaker: 3
28:48
30 Democrats.
Speaker: 2
28:48
It’s all democrats. That’s what
Speaker: 0
28:50
Trump won his second term, was he rallied all those moderate Democrats ai yourself to become his cabinet.
Speaker: 1
28:55
He was really a kind of
Speaker: 0
28:56
a guest, but I think there’s some truth
Speaker: 2
28:57
to it.
Speaker: 1
28:58
And it was, you know, Bobby Kennedy and I, for the last few months of President Trump’s campaign, we went and traveled, all across the country together. And the final event that we did, 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 normally votes pretty solidly democrat.
Speaker: 1
29:21
We were in this big beautiful barn and there were there were probably at least a thousand people there, maybe more. And at vatsal certain point, I asked the crowd, I said, you know, raise your hand, if you’re a republican. Whole bunch of hands went up. Raise your hand if you’re an independent or libertarian. You know, a few hands went up. Raise your hand if you’re a democrat.
Speaker: 1
29:44
And and the reaction was so fascinating because first there was like one or two hands that went up very timidly, and they’re kind of looking around, and then more hands went up, and then more hands went up. And then the whole crowd got on their feet and just started cheering and looking at each other.
Speaker: 1
30:03
And and folks came up to me after and just said, like, I felt like I was getting a hug from everyone that was there, and that we there was no separation or difference between us.
Speaker: 0
30:17
Thank you for your service, and you spent a lot of ai, serving the country. You had reservations about bombing Iran, and, we did it anyway. How do you reconcile that today, and, did we do the right thing?
Speaker: 1
30:34
I served in a medical unit in Iraq, back, and I was there for, all of 2005 and was in a position where every day was confronted with the high cost of war. And ultimately, that’s, what drove me to eventually run for congress, to be in a position where I could help to influence and impact those, those decisions.
Speaker: 1
30:57
And ultimately, one of the things that I found, to be true and very detrimental to our country and our own national interest is very rarely, did leaders in our country ask the fundamental question of what is our objective? What is our objective? What are we actually trying to accomplish?
Speaker: 1
31:16
If we’re discussing a potential military operation or an act of war, or any policy for that matter, what is our objective? Is it achievable? Does it serve the best interests of The United States? And if it’s a military operation, what’s what’s our what is winning how do you define winning?
Speaker: 1
31:33
What’s our exit strategy? And so, those are things that I’ve brought to every foreign policy question and every aspect of my professional life and personal, you know, kind of considerations of these different policies. And and this is where, you know, I appreciate president Trump’s leadership and his approach to Iran. You know?
Speaker: 1
31:58
I my position has always been that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapons capability, period. President Trump was very clear. But the reports were you were not in favor of it. Reports there were a lot of bullshit reports out there. My job is to provide the president with intelligence, so that he can make the best informed decision.
Speaker: 1
32:19
Ultimately what we saw in that operation ai hammer was a president who made a decision and executed a very precise military operation with a very clear objective that was accomplished in the best possible way and a very clear exit.
Speaker: 0
32:39
Seems to have turned out okay, but Ai, early,
Speaker: 1
32:41
it was really important.
Speaker: 0
32:43
Because Sacks also but by the way, what Sacks also was against bombing around. He was absolutely did not want Nikki Haley to become president because his fear was, and he talked about on the podcast, that he didn’t sana to start up with Iran.
Speaker: 4
32:54
What ai What
Speaker: 3
32:55
is I just speak just use some precise words. I didn’t want a war with Iran. Right. I still don’t want
Speaker: 4
32:59
a war with Iran. What is the condition that you can share with us, the public, 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?
Speaker: 1
33:17
Well, I mean, you know, their nuclear capability was destroyed, much of their infrastructure destroyed, much of their military capability destroyed. When you look at Israel’s actions, throughout that twelve day war, their economy is tanking. Their, energy sector is tanking.
Speaker: 1
33:40
So it’s it’s a Iran is facing a very challenging position. What what we saw is that the Iranian people, at least then and at this point, have not risen up against their own government. But you can imagine, and this is this is, openly talked about by a lot of experts is when if you’re facing a failing economy, lack of basic necessities, water, basic infrastructure, there is there is legitimate concern about how people ultimately react and how they will react to their own government.
Speaker: 2
34:20
I, and
Speaker: 4
34:21
I And and what sorry. Do you have a point of view on where that takes us? What what steps into
Speaker: 0
34:25
the void there?
Speaker: 1
34:25
There there are a lot of different factors.
Speaker: 4
34:28
Such instability in The Middle East historically has not gone as we thought it would or hoped to be.
Speaker: 1
34:32
Exactly. Ai. Which is which is why it’s so important to look at this from from, taking the, regime change in Iran kind of history lessons learned, into account, but but really ai that these things, we we cannot be simplistic as we look at this challenge, as well as any of the others that we face, because there are always complexities, and so many different elements that are involved that could turn things one way.
Speaker: 1
35:00
Plus
Speaker: 2
35:00
you wanna make
Speaker: 1
35:01
sure that I really don’t want to
Speaker: 0
35:02
ask ai question. I was in favor of that strike if it was strategic ai I do not think they should be allowed to have a bomb. Ai was in favor of of
Speaker: 2
35:11
it. Great questions, guys. Ai ahead, Steve. I wanna talk about the Southern border for a second. Very early into the administration, you guys declared cartels as terrorist organizations. Can you walk us through the logic of making that transition and what it enables America to do and why we did it and what the goal of that is?
Speaker: 1
35:31
President Trump saw, as you heard, anybody who attended even a single one of his rallies during the election. He saw very clearly the devastating effect that, you know, MS thirteen and Trende Aragua and these other cartels were having in our communities and on our streets in this country, making the American people less safe, and exacting a kind of violence and, criminal activity that that was only getting worse.
Speaker: 1
36:00
And this was the main thing that drove his decision to designate the worst of the worst of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, because of their activities here within our own country. So this then opens up the door for, the ability to use different authorities to be able to protect the safety and security, of the American people.
Speaker: 1
36:31
You look at the, you know, obviously, the trafficking of fentanyl is a huge thing. So within my organisation, we have the National Counterterrorism Center, who’s, you know, for the last twenty plus years has been focused on Islamist terrorism, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, and others who may be plotting against America and our people and our interests.
Speaker: 1
36:52
Now that has been expanded to look at, you know, the the counter narcotics effort, the counter cartels effort. And what it’s doing is is actually bringing in and and focusing on, hey, how are we engaging with, you know yes. It’s the customs and border protection folks. It’s the DEA, but it’s also your local police and your sheriffs who are on the ground there working in these border states and dealing with the very real effects of these cartels.
Speaker: 1
37:19
I remember I was in, Texas visiting one of these border communities with the vice president a few months back, and and the local ranchers there came in and talked to us. Secretary Hegseth was there as well. And they were talking about how these cartels are using such sophisticated weaponry.
Speaker: 1
37:37
The kind of stuff that, yes, we experienced some of IEDs, for example. There was an IED that was planted on on, one of the roads on this guy’s ram, and one or two of in Texas. And one or two of his ranch hands were were killed, because of this. We’re seeing that these cartels, intelligence collection capability, their counterintelligence capability, their use of drones for both surveillance, as well as using armed drones to go after those who are threatening their operations.
Speaker: 1
38:08
It’s sai serious, adversary that is highly adaptable, and ultimately will do what they feel is necessary in order to continue, their illegal, activities at harm of the American people. If
Speaker: 0
38:23
we lost 3,000 people on nineeleven tragically ram Al Qaeda, we’re losing a 100,000 Americans to fentanyl. If they’re not a terrorist organization, please tell me what one is. I mean, I am 100% in favor of you crossing the border and fucking killing them immediately with prejudice. I applaud the administration for doing that.
Speaker: 0
38:44
It’s far too many and when we talked about this issue with Rick Caruso of the people who are on the street over here, they’re on the street because of fentanyl, not because they don’t they can’t get a home. I applaud you guys for doing that. It takes true courage to do it.
Speaker: 1
38:55
Yeah.
Speaker: 2
38:56
The the historical context of this is, you know, if you if you look back at what happened with Britain and China in the eighteen hundreds, there was a period where, you know, Britain wanted to desperately weaken the Chinese and what they did was they started the opium wars. And it’s incredibly analogous to this moment where sana see all of these foreign actors that are trying to weaken The United States from within.
Speaker: 2
39:18
And so this is why I think the cartel thing is not talked about enough. Closing the southern border was critical. But designating these organizations as the organizations that they are allows exactly as you sai, a really three sixty degree view of what is going on because they are sophisticated.
Speaker: 2
39:34
They have incredible capability. They have an unlimited balance sheet, it turns out. They have
Speaker: 0
39:38
bad intent.
Speaker: 4
39:39
You’ve been giving this specific strategic, issue at in Ai. Are they making this decision to support fentanyl supply chains because it’s destabilizing to The United States?
Speaker: 1
39:53
I’m I’m reviewing in my mind what I can say and what I can’t say, with with regard to classified intelligence. This is a a point, so so I have not seen intelligence that that reflects, the statement that you just made. This the the the precursor issue, coming out of China with regards to fentanyl continues to obviously be a point of of negotiation and the president’s ongoing negotiations, with Ai.
Speaker: 1
40:22
Ultimately, you know, getting after and and China’s not the only one that’s providing precursors. But what we’re seeing is a down stream, or or maybe ai a downtick in fentanyl coming across our borders, as well as the cartels in Mexico struggling to create fentanyl because they’re not able to access these precursors as easily as they have been over the last, several years.
Speaker: 1
40:48
So when you look at that, president Trump going after the precursor issue, as well as, secure actually securing our borders. I mean, the the significance and the impact of that really cannot, be overstated in how it’s positively affecting, again, the ability for people to, live here in our own country more safe more safely.
Speaker: 2
41:13
Folks on that, I just sana thank Kelsey Gabbard. Amazing. Our director of national intelligence. Thank you. Thanks, Kelsey.
Speaker: 0
41:22
Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We got a lot of Chelsea fans out there. You got to stay a lot.
Speaker: 2
41:33
Standing up.
Speaker: 0
41:34
Thank you. Well done, Chelsea. Thank you. Appreciate you. Good to see you. That was awesome. Thank you. Thanks, everybody.
Speaker: 2
41:46
Absolutely
Speaker: 4
41:50
incredible.