At a press briefing, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) answered questions about the Signal leak.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Thank you, Frank. And thank you to all of the correctional leaders and officers that we have here today to advocate on behalf of the cell phone jamming reform bill. I'm now happy to open it up to questions. Yes.
00:18Thank you, Senator. On this bill, in fact, here, in an effort to address the cost of meds, because obviously some people do so much because of the cost of meds, and I'll get to that in a moment.
00:28On your second question, no, I haven't read the story yet, but my
00:57aides have shown me what was apparently released this morning. There was no locations listed there. There were no sources of methods. There's no specific targets. Certainly, there was nothing called war plans, which was an embellishment and exaggeration by a known left-wing partisan opponent of the president.
01:14On your first question about landlines, do you mean landlines inside of prisons? So I'll defer to some of our technical experts here, but the unique problem of cell phones, obviously, is that they're movable. They can be hidden.
01:28They can be used, therefore, to target other inmates, correctional officers, or innocent civilians outside. Rather than force correctional officers into arduous, almost impossible daily, even hourly routines of searching for cell phones, the bill would allow them to put a jamming mechanism over housing units only to ensure that cell phones are not being used in an inappropriate way inside of those housing units.
01:55Hey, I'm Brian Sterling. To answer your question, I'm a director of South Carolina Department of Corrections. In South Carolina, a cell phone costs about $7,000 to $8,000. A minute phone call costs $0.05. You can talk to your family for $0.85 a day for 25 years before you would get to that $7,000 or $8,000 number. So that just doesn't hold water anymore. That argument is just not factual.
02:21We also have tablets now so they can talk to their family members in their cells. So that's not a problem either. Thank you.
02:31Any other questions? Yes.
02:33I think we're still, obviously, we're still getting facts. I've got faith in Secretary Hedgepeth. I know the men and women in uniform do. And most importantly, President Trump does.
02:52And I would just add, I think Secretary Hedgepeth, and more importantly, President Trump, acted appropriately in finally taking action against outlaw rebels in Yemen. I know many in Washington are scandalized by this story. What I'm scandalized by is that for 15 months, Joe Biden left our sailors on the Red Sea like sitting ducks. And he allowed these rebels to shoot continuously at Israel.
03:15And I think what we shall focus here on is not the way this was communicated, but the effects that were achieved against adversaries of the United States and Israel who are also a cat's paw of Iran. That's what I think was appropriate. And that's what I applaud not only Pete Hegseth for and Mike Waltz for, but most importantly, the Commander-in-Chief, Donald Trump.
03:46I don't think so. As we discussed yesterday at our hearing, to the extent there was any allegation of classified information here, that was not information that was coming from either Tulsi Gabbard or John Ratcliffe. So as far as I know, it's outside of our jurisdiction. Again, I haven't reviewed every single line that's been posted this morning.
04:07I'm sure that many people will be calling for investigations. But again, what I think is most important here is not the way this information was communicated, but the actions that were taken to actually attack the Yemen rebels who had been targeting our sailors and international shipping and our friends in Israel and Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates for more than a year without any serious repercussion from Joe Biden.