The Exchanges

Q When, when you were a, uh, congresswoman, um, You must have had a different mandate. You were a different political party. Um, 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 what's it like in talking about your evolution, changing parties, and having this role today with the people that you used to represent?

A You know, Hawaii has, um, it's, it's been a strong democratic state for a very, very long time, but it's not, uh, it's a unique state, uh, with a very unique culture. Um, people tend to be, honestly, a little bit more just aloha, live and let live. I just want to live my life and, you know, raise my family and, and, um, it's, it's, you know, mixed bag for me when I go home. Uh, but I've been pleasantly surprised at times. I was waiting in line one day at, like, a FedEx to go ship something, and 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. Keep speaking the truth. Um, you know, there are others who, um, 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.

AI assessment note: “it's, you know, mixed bag for me when I go home.”

Q Great questions, guys. Um, I want to 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, what the goal of that is?

A President Trump saw, as you heard, anybody who attended even a single one of his rallies during the election, uh, he saw very clearly the devastating effect that, you know, MS-III 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, uh, and, and exacting a kind of violence and, um, Criminal activity that, that was only getting worse. Uh, and this was the main thing that drove his decision to designate the worst of the worst of cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, uh, because of their activities here, uh, within our own country. Uh, so this then opens up the door for, um, uh, the ability to use different Authorities to be able to protect the safety and security of the American people. Uh, you look at the, you know, obviously the trafficking of fentanyl is a, is a huge thing. So within my organization, uh, we have the National Counterterrorism Center, who's, you know, for the last 20 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. 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…

AI assessment note: “opens up the door for, um, uh, the ability to use different Authorities”

Q 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. So what needs to happen so that there's checks and balances here? How, how do we make sure that people can't just not like somebody and then decide to try to basically destroy them? How do we make sure that that doesn't happen?

A It's a good and important question, and ultimately the, the ultimate accountability has to come from the American people and who we choose to vote for. Uh, who we have in these positions of leadership actually matters, and so for the United States Senate, for example, have the responsibility of confirming people, uh, to serve in the position that I hold, and, and the CIA director, the FBI director, uh, and so on, uh, We have to be very clear-eyed about the tools and the tactics that are used that ultimately, fundamentally, 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, uh, in, in our government. Um, you know, the, the, the weaponization, politicization, unfortunately, uh, it, it continues. There, there is a lot of Um, there, there is still rot within our intelligence community and those again, who believe that they know better for the American people, uh, than, than we do for ourselves. 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. Uh, we have to remain vigilant on all fronts in order to protect ourselves and to protect our democratic Republic. Uh, from these kinds of, uh, abuses.

AI assessment note: “ultimate accountability has to come from the American people and who we choose to vote for”

Q about. Can you just, maybe this is the place to start, 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. Was that all just made up, and who made it up? How did that happen?

A Yeah, I think just, just setting the baseline of, like, why 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, uh, intelligence. Is that as, you know, these, these headlines were turning out about, you know, Trump is a Putin puppet, or he is colluding with Putin in order to get elected. We're going back to the 2016 election here. 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, uh, declassified and released that shows how intelligence and information can be actually manipulated intentionally so that it shows something that is not reflective of the truth at all. Uh, and how it can be done, um, in a deeply impactful way. Politicizing it in what we essentially saw throughout President Trump's candidacy in 2016, and throughout his four years in office, uh, 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 2016, Election and really, uh, usurp the will and the voices of the people who elected Donald Trump. So I'll try to run through this timeline, uh, in the top lines just to pai…

AI assessment note: “Hillary Clinton kind of ceded the, um, allegation that there was some collusion happening”

Q Thank you for your service, uh, and you spent a lot of time, uh, serving the country. You had reservations about bombing Iran, and, uh, we did it anyway. How do you reconcile that today, and, uh, did we do the right thing?

A I served in a medical unit in Iraq, uh, back, and I was there for, um, all of 2005, and was in a position where every day was confronted with the high cost of war, and ultimately that's, uh, what drove me to eventually run for Congress, to be in a position where I could help to influence and impact those, uh, those decisions. And ultimately one of the things that I found, um, to be true and very detrimental to our country and our own national interests is very rarely, uh, 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 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? What's our exit strategy? And so, uh, Those are things that I've brought to every foreign policy question and every aspect of my professional life and personal, um, you know, kind of considerations of these different policies. And this is where, you know, I appreciate president Trump's leadership in his approach to Iran. You know, I, my position has always been that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapons capability period. President Trump was very clear.

AI assessment note: “this is where, you know, I appreciate president Trump's leadership in his approach to Iran.”

Q So what does it mean she ceded? How did, what is that?

A There, there were a lot of different ways, um, that that occurred. If you go and look at some of the documents that the FBI declassified, Um, uh, that Durham Uncovered is now known as the Durham Annex. There are a lot of different ways, um, that it happened, but we saw early signs of the weaponization of this when the FBI under Comey, um, Basically got illegal, they got warrants through the FISA court to illegally surveil Americans. Carter Page in Cross Bear Hurricane and others around President Trump and his campaign at that time. 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, ah, Putin did not have either the intent or the capability to hack the outcome of the US election. 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 nothing to see. There's that Russia or Putin had any kind of impact on the outcome of the US election. Fast forward to December eight…

AI assessment note: “There, there were a lot of different ways, um, that that occurred.”