Senator Mark Kelly
Appearances
IHIP News
Trump Bends Over For Dictators
Anderson, it's shocking, you know, that after 80 years, in a few days, Donald Trump just blew up the Western alliance. I mean, completely. And you have the Secretary of Defense on TV over this weekend talking about how this is a complicated situation. It's not complicated. It's very clear who the aggressor is. It's clear who the war criminal is.
IHIP News
Trump Bends Over For Dictators
And this vote today in the U.N., where the United States of America is siding with the North Koreans, and with Russia and Belarus. I mean, even after this first month of this administration, I'm still kind of shocked of what happened over the last several days. And make no mistake, Anderson, this makes our country look weak, and we are less safe because of it.
IHIP News
Trump Bends Over For Dictators
Zelensky, a dictator, would you use the same words regarding Putin?
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
December of 2014 at the CBA Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt at Washington, D.C., you were noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to your room. Is that true or false? anonymous smears. Another time a CVA staffer stated that you passed out in the back of a party bus.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Well, Tim, when I went in there yesterday morning, that was not the line of questioning I had planned on. I had this plan to talk to him more about his management experience at Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans of America and how he managed these organizations and his financial management and the state that he'd left them in when he
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
moved on, which is still unclear exactly how that happened. Was he asked to leave or was he removed? So that was, you know, what I had planned.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
And then after some of my colleagues asked some of these other questions about personal issues, you know, became, you know, kind of clear to me that there was a little bit of a conflict between him saying that he has these personal issues, but when asked about things that I think all of us would consider would be significant personal issues.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
He would just say smear, you know, that he's being smeared. So that's when I went in there and I, you know, I said to my team and we, we just kind of went and pulled all these specific cases. So the thing that concerned me more than what you've just, you know, said about the last question was that he couldn't say if these things were true or false, right? It's a very simple question.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
If you feel you've been smeared, it would be obvious you would say, well, these are false.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Exactly. At the end, that is true, but just stepping through all these things. I gave him more than one chance. I said, hey, I'm asking you, just tell me if this is true or false. And he wouldn't give me an answer. So, you know, obviously, I'm still concerned about this because the enormity of this job cannot be overstressed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
It is perhaps the besides maybe being president of the United States is it's one of the hardest jobs on the planet. And you got to be ready all the time. This is not a nine to five job. This is 24 seven, 365 days out of the year. You need to be available and ready.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
We've had cases in our country's history where Secretary of Defense has woken up in the middle of the night, actually often, but some rather disturbing situations, you got to have a person there that's ready to go.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Well, that, but also the whole thing about, we're talking about two different jobs. I mean, being a U.S. Senator, being the Secretary of Defense are on different planets. I mean, they're different, a different kind of experience. I mean, you're not in the nuclear command and control structure in the U.S. Senate.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
And what Mark Wayne was saying, he didn't play it, but about like seeing people on the floor of the Senate, you know, with the same kind of issues. I've been there twice as long as he has, only four years. He's been in the Senate two years. That's, that is... Not something I have ever witnessed.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Not once. Pulled off the floor or not pulled off the floor. I've never seen that on a single occasion. Maybe he's talking about his experience in the House. He was a House member.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Yeah, I don't know what goes on there, but you're right. I mean, Pete Hegseth, nothing against folks in journalism, right? I mean, we've got a lot of folks up here. You know, on Capitol Hill, it's a very important place. you know, role that you have, especially when it comes to keeping people like me, you know, politicians, folks in the Congress accountable, very important role.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
I just don't see how that nine years or, you know, six or seven, whatever he was there at the Fox Saturday morning show has prepared him to walk into this job here potentially in a couple of weeks and run this enormous agency where the consequences of your job performance are so significant. We've got well over a million service members and then there's government employees.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Now I served in the Navy for 25 years. The person at the top of the organization always matters. It matters a lot. If he messes it up, He puts people's lives in danger, or he could wind up screwing up some acquisition program that costs the taxpayers multiple billions of dollars more because he was unprepared for the job.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
And my Republican colleagues in this case, as you point out, in my view too, I don't think they address some of the more serious issues that we have with this nominee for this job.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Well, I haven't spoken to them since yesterday. At the committee hearing, I spoke to the chairman about having another round of questions. I think it's I think it's sort of unprecedented, you know, how abbreviated this hearing was. This is the first one I've done for the Secretary of Defense. We should have had an opportunity to ask more.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
And I had a bunch of policy questions I wanted to ask him on specific programs, on CJADC2, on Sentinel, on SLCMN, on the state of our maritime industry, which is related to shipbuilding. Couldn't get to it because we're not allotted enough time. And you're talking about how significant this job is.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
And I just cannot stress more how important it is to have somebody there that's incredibly competent. to do this. And it's an incredibly hard job. And I don't expect every nominee to check every box, but I'm trying to figure out which ones he does check.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Well, I would say on other nominees, because I did go through this experience with some of the other lower DOD nominees at the beginning of the Biden administration, there is not a lot of significant coordination. But the seriousness of this hearing and the consequences of this hearing were such that we did ahead of time, talk about it, you know, sort of come up with a plan.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Every senator kind of views them, not me, but might view themselves as, hey, they got the most important stuff. And you're kind of like a lone ranger out there. But for this, we did. And I asked, actually asked the, you you know, Jack Reed, I said, Hey, we, we have to kind of coordinate because we don't all want to be asking the same exact thing.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
And in Hegseth's background, there is a lot of stuff to cover and we have a limited amount of time. So we did, but I would say real time for a number of people, you're making adjustments, you know, on the fly and, And kind of rewriting what you're going to do. I was sitting next to Alyssa Slotkin. I was the junior member on the committee for a while.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
And, you know, during the whole time, she was actually writing down what she was planning on asking. And I thought what she covered was really smart and she was really effective in doing it.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
No, I think that was it for me. Obviously, him not being able to answer my questions was a tell, and it was significant. If he gets to the job, we're going to all understand that he is going to be very reluctant to push back, even possibly when given an unlawful order from the President of the United States. He might be very hesitant to push back against those. That's concerning.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Well, I know they do. I mean, just from my conversations I've had with them already. So there are some concerns about FISA. She has changed her position dramatically on this issue. And this is the collection of foreign intelligence that we do through a program called FISA. It's 702. It's the authority to be able to listen.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
to foreign nationals when they're in another country, not in the United States. And there is some incidental collection issues if that foreign national happens to be talking to an American and how all that stuff is handled. So she's done a 180 on this. That's a concern.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
I think some of my Republican colleagues, just like the concern I have about how she views Snowden, you know, and what she thinks, you know, should happen with regards to a pardon of him. Yeah. My view is he did incredible, long-lasting, and serious damage to our national security, and he's a criminal, and he should be prosecuted if we're given the opportunity.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
She seems to still think that he's sort of some kind of hero and should be pardoned for these actions. I know some of my Republican colleagues are concerned about that, but I think just like Hegseth, there's going to be tremendous pressure on them to confirm all of these nominees.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Yeah, we talked about that a little bit. She was in my office last week, so we got to touch on a number of these topics. Were you at all assuaged by her? I still have concerns about, you know, her taking on this role. I mean, she's, she's her background.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
And as a member of the house is not with the intelligence community, you know, same thing with her service, even though she holds a, you know, I think a secret or top secret clearance, it is not the same as working with intelligence agencies. When I was on an aircraft carrier, I had a top secret clearance on the A6 intruder. We would,
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
We were able to carry nuclear weapons and also in targeting, we got to see sometimes top secret intelligence, but it's very limited. It's not like your job where you're dealing with and trying to manage the intelligence. And the biggest issue I think I have right now with Congresswoman Gabbard is just this predilection to go down the rabbit hole of misinformation.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
Where are you getting your information from, your sources? Who are the experts you're using? There's this whole case in Syria with chemical weapons attacks that Assad did on his civilian population. It's very clear, and I think even to her, that he was gassing and poisoning with chemical weapons his population. That wasn't really in dispute. But she used her political capital to defend him
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
on two separate specific cases and then didn't do it well and was using, you know, what I think most people would view as like bad sources of information to try to make a case that in that specific instance that he did not use sarin gas from that weapon on this population. And it just seemed like a really odd thing to do. And the challenge that she will, you know, face if confirmed is the DNI
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
is you sometimes get conflicting information from the intelligence community. Like you're looking at these reports and then they'll present to you like, here's the dissenting view on this. And you got to be able to sort it out and figure out, okay, what do I think is right here? And now I got to go to the president and say, hey, these are the five most important things today.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
And I think this is what you need to focus on. But if you have this like tendency to kind of go down the rabbit hole every time with the disinformation and misinformation, that puts all of us at risk.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
You know, I spent 25 years in the Navy. I was a junior officer on an aircraft carrier in a squadron. Not my issue, but for the Secretary of Defense, when you have, and it's self-reported, by the way, you know, in his books that he has this significant problem. And it's not like it was way in the past. I mean, some of these reports are just two months ago.
The Bulwark Podcast
Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret
There is a local brewery called Modo Sonoran in Tucson, Arizona. And they've got a whole selection, and they make some pretty good beer.