During remarks on the Senate floor on Friday, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) spoke about President Trump's meeting with Laura Loomer at the White House.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Senator from Virginia.
00:04Thank you, Mr. President.
00:05First of all, I want to thank my colleague from Nevada and agree with her comments about
00:12how we need to not just pay lip service to our veterans or the fact that for 70 years
00:18America has used soft power through organizations like USAID in ways that have been incredibly
00:25important and has kept our country and the world safe.
00:30Thank you for those comments and frankly the others who've been on the floor who've been
00:36talking about I think unfortunately the myriad ways the Trump administration is undermining
00:41our security and quite honestly making Americans less safe.
00:46Now as vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I have some additional thoughts to add about
00:52the way this administration is endangering our national security with its reckless, sloppy
01:01mishandling of classified information.
01:04By firing people who keep our country safe and by abandoning and alienating the very
01:11allies whose support is crucial for our security, prosperity, and global influence.
01:18Now, Mr. President, let me not go way back in time.
01:24Let's just look at what we've learned in just the last 24 hours.
01:29Yesterday we learned that President Trump apparently had a meeting in the Oval Office
01:34with a self-described pro-white nationalist, proud Islamophobe, and conspiracy theorist
01:44who was called 9-11 an inside job carried out by the United States government.
01:52Residings officers from Pennsylvania were many of the victims of 9-11, took brave actions
01:59and then on flight 93 crashed.
02:03Many of the victims of 9-11 were in my state as well when the Pentagon got attacked.
02:09So the idea that someone and that any administration would let anyone with these kind of views
02:17and it's not just 9-11 was an inside job, she questioned Governor DeSantis' wife's
02:25breast cancer, if anyone would let that kind of individual within 100 yards of any White
02:31House in the past, we would have all said this is beyond belief.
02:39But according to press reports, the President is actually taking staffing advice from a
02:46person whose rhetoric is steeped in hate, misinformation, and dangerous conspiracy theories.
02:53First yesterday we learned that the President dismissed several members of his National
02:59Security Council staff because this person who is so far out that even the MAGA crowd
03:06thinks she's extreme, Laura Loomer, told him to do so.
03:12Some of these staff are actually well known to Republican Senators because they work for
03:19them. So I implore my colleagues to just judge for themselves whether they think it's good
03:26for our national security to have these staff members thrown out of the building at the
03:33behest of a podcast host who, as I said, has actually accused First Lady Casey DeSantis
03:39in Florida of exaggerating her struggles with breast cancer.
03:45The same individual claimed that school shootings are staged and suggested that the deep state
03:52use an atmospheric research facility in Alaska to create a snowstorm over Iowa.
04:01This is wacky even for MAGA World, yet this individual is in the White House giving staffing
04:08advice to the President and it appears the President is acting on that advice.
04:16And if that wasn't bad enough, and this is again the last 24 hours, the Senate Intelligence
04:24Committee received notification that in the middle of the night the President has fired
04:31the Director and Deputy Director of the National Security Agency.
04:37General Timothy Hawk and Wendy Noble are career officials who spent decades working to protect
04:43our country, serving under both Republican and Democratic administrations alike.
04:49Wendy Noble joined the National Security Agency in 1987, working her way up to become the
04:56top civilian leader of the NSA. And throughout his distinguished career of more than 30 years
05:03in the armed forces, General Hawk has amplified the very best of military service. Dedication,
05:11integrity and an unwavering commitment to our country.
05:17Again this morning we learned that these firings too were done at Loomer's behest. An unprecedented
05:28politicization of our intelligence community. I ask my Republican colleagues, how much longer
05:35will this go on before you find the courage to speak up and say enough? How much longer
05:44will we permit this administration to politicize, attack and hollow out our intelligence agencies?
05:52If we go back to the beginning of the administration, I guess we maybe shouldn't be surprised because
05:58one of President Trump's first acts in office was to fire some of the most experienced agents
06:05at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including top leaders in counterintelligence, cybersecurity
06:11and counterterrorism. Now in a move that was even hypocrisy by modern political standards,
06:21a few weeks ago in his joint address to Congress, President Trump boasted about the recent capture
06:29of the architect of the 2021 Abbey Gate bombing at Kabul airport in which 13 American service
06:36members were killed. This welcome achievement was the result of extensive investigative
06:45and intelligence work. But when President Trump was boasting about this, he made no
06:51mention of the fact that just a few days earlier he had literally fired the FBI leader responsible
07:02for overseeing that investigation. I ask anyone who is listening, how is America made more
07:10secure by that? How is America made more secure by firing the staff responsible for overseeing
07:18the safety and security of our country's nuclear stockpile? How is America made safer by firing
07:25the people responsible for responding to cyber attacks like Salt Typhoon, where the Chinese
07:33have literally infiltrated all of our telecom networks? How are we made safer by firing
07:38the researchers and scientists responsible for preventing diseases like Ebola from reaching
07:45our stores? Now this is in addition to firing hundreds of intelligence officers who have
07:53received specialized training, been subjected to extensive security vetting, and I might
07:59add considerable expense to the taxpayer, so they can actually carry out some of the
08:05nation's most sensitive classified work, often in spite of the fact that they are not
08:15of great personal danger, as 140 stars carved into the CIA's memorial will attest. Can anybody
08:25tell me how firing probationary officers without cause and apparently without regard for merit
08:35or accomplishment, recognizing that in virtually every one of these cases the taxpayers spent
08:41literally hundreds of thousands of dollars getting them security clearance and then putting
08:45them through training, how is that making us safer, or for that matter, making us more
08:53efficient use of taxpayer dollars? I believe this administration just simply doesn't take
08:59protecting our national security very seriously. Tell us to explain their sloppy, reckless
09:07behavior with classified information. It's been more than 10 days since we first learned
09:14that President Trump's Trump advisors were using an unclassified commercial messaging
09:21app to discuss details of a planned military strike while U.S. pilots were flying into
09:29enemy air defenses. And the remarkable thing is, it's been 10 days. No one has been held
09:38accountable. And I can assure you, men and women flying those planes were in danger if
09:49that information had been disclosed. The one thing I know, and I saw this in the news,
09:59last weekend when I was down in Virginia Beach in Chesapeake, Virginia, that region is called
10:05Hampton Roads, and it is where the Norfolk Naval Station is, it is where the USS Truman,
10:14the aircraft carrier which the planes launched from to attack the Hooties, is home ported.
10:21Folks in that community knew, and they let me hear it. They knew that their friends and
10:27loved ones' lives had been put in danger because of the sloppy, careless treatment
10:35of this classified information. They also knew very well, if any rank and file enlisted
10:43military or intelligence officer had so carelessly jeopardized our national security, they would
10:51have lost their security clearance and their jobs, no questions asked. A remarkable kind
10:59of irony and hypocrisy here is a nearly identical event involving a homeland security employee
11:06who accidentally included a journalist in an email chain with even less sensitive information
11:13resulted, and that employee being punished immediately. So level, level employee, no
11:21one, the rules apply to, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence,
11:28the National Security Advisor, they bear no responsibility. No one has been held accountable.
11:39Not Waltz, who initiated the group chat, and as we've now come to find, this one signal
11:46chat was not the one-off. It was a series of at least 20 of these chats, which we don't
11:53have full background on. Not Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, who gambled with the
12:00lives of our fighter pilots by sharing the details of weapons, targets, and timing nearly
12:07three hours before military operations were scheduled to begin. Sherzack, not Tulsi Gabbard,
12:15who is Director of the National Intelligence, is charged with keeping our nation's secrets
12:20safe from our adversaries, but appears to have boldly lied about this incident before
12:27my committee. What is so frustrating is that this is just part of a pattern for this administration,
12:37which during its first few weeks in office, exposed the name of CIA officers over an unclassified
12:45email. Those men and women can't serve abroad anymore. The same group, driven by the Doge
12:52Bros, who publicized the classified headcount and budget of a U.S. intelligence agency,
12:59and posted online the location of a classified government facility. We spend a lot of money
13:07trying to keep certain things secret, and yet they post this as suddenly or supposedly
13:15a property up for sale. All of this sloppiness is deeply damaging, not only to the morale
13:23of the men and women who serve in the military and the intelligence community, but it is
13:28deeply damaging to the intelligence-sharing relationships upon which our security depends.
13:35The intelligence we gather to keep America safe is frequently contingent on friends who
13:43tip us off, or who have access to sources that we lack. Israel, one of the best sources
13:50of intelligence in the Middle East, is, according to public reports, furious that the Signal
13:57Gate breach exposed a sensitive intelligence source on the ground in Yemen. Now, this is
14:05not a joke. There is nothing that requires Israel, or for that matter, any of our allies
14:10to share this kind of intelligence with the United States. These are relationships that
14:17depend on mutual trust. The truth is, other countries, and I already started here, may
14:24now be reluctant to share information knowing that the Trump administration can't be relied
14:31on to protect sensitive sources and methods. And whether it's the President's bellicose
14:40threats to annex Greenland, the trade war that he's launched that's melting down the
14:45market and robbing people of their retirement funds, or this sloppy, reckless mishandling
14:52of America's classified information, the one thing that's true, without a doubt, is
15:02that America's credibility around the world is being severely endangered. Already, long-standing
15:09allies like Canada, Australia, and Portugal have said they are reconsidering buying American-made
15:16F-35 fighters because they no longer feel they can count on the United States, or for
15:23that matter, American businesses, to stand by our commitments. Does anyone realize, and
15:31I've got to believe my Republican colleagues realize this, how unimaginably foolish and
15:38short-sighted it is to have a policy where you piss off Portugal, Canada, and the United
15:45States, and Australia like this? How does that make us safer? And the amazing thing
15:53about these relationships is even if they reverse course as they've done so many times,
16:00that trust you can't put back in the bottle when the trust has been broken. We've already
16:06heard that from the Prime Minister of Canada. I fear that we will feel the ripples of the
16:12erosion of trust from our workforce, from American businesses, from our international
16:20partners for many years to come. And make no mistake about it, all these actions will
16:27make America less safe. And unless we stand up and take back the powers that were granted
16:35in the Constitution to this body, unless we stand up and demand that our intelligence
16:42community not be politicized and still able to speak truth to power, unless we stand up
16:49and say to our friends around the world, 70 years plus of allies that have kept our world
16:57safe, if we allow these actions and others to go unabated, we are shirking our duty,
17:06making America less safe, and making the world less safe. In a moment, Mr. President, I'm
17:11going to yield the floor because I see my friend, the Senator from California, and I
17:16just want to commend him. He was chair of the Intelligence Committee in the House before
17:21he came to this chamber. And he has suffered for speaking truth to power, for standing
17:28up for rule of law, a level of attack and abuse, oftentimes personal, that no American
17:36elected official should have to stand for. If we allow that kind of behavior to continue
17:42as well, we're made less safe. And let me remind you, especially the folks listening,
17:49this is not a partisan issue. We have seen Republican members of the Senate threatened
17:53to the point where they had to go get higher security for their family because they decided
18:01to speak truth. Our country is better than this. We just need some of the good Americans
18:09who we work with on a day-in and day-out basis to find their voice and say on these matters
18:16of national security, there is no partisan divide. There is no MAGA version that makes
18:22our country safer. We'll have a chance to debate and talk about this and have a men's
18:27month this tonight. I hope our colleagues will find the strength to finally speak truth
18:31to power themselves. With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.