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00:00President Trump's pick to be the acting director of national intelligence is getting mixed reviews from lawmakers on both sides
00:05of the aisle.
00:06The president asked Bill Pulte to do the job on an interim basis.
00:09He is currently the director of the federal housing finance industry, and for the foreseeable future, he's going to do
00:14both of those jobs at the same time.
00:16There's quite a bit of that going around right now.
00:18In the face of questions about both his qualification to be the country's spy chief, Pulte doesn't have a security
00:23clearance, for one instance.
00:25Trump said he doesn't intend to nominate him permanently for the job.
00:28Republican Congressman Greg Stubbe sits on the House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence, and we asked him what he thinks
00:34of the guy currently in the role.
00:36Yeah, I think what you've seen from the president is he's appointing people that he trusts in these different positions.
00:42Former Senator Marco Rubio, whose secretary of state, wears like four hats right now.
00:47I think a lot of these positions, the president's probably going to wait to the midterms and kind of see
00:51how the races flush out, see how the House flushes out.
00:54I don't know Bill Pulte. I've never met him.
00:56Obviously, the president trusts him.
00:59I do have concerns with his lack of a security background, but if he's going to do what the president
01:03is asking him to do, I don't see a problem with that for a short-term basis.
01:08He's just, you know, kind of filling in.
01:10It'd be like having the deputy take over, but obviously it's somebody that the president trusts.
01:14I do hope that he comes into the Intelligence Committee.
01:16I sit on intel. If he's going to be there for a period of time, he should come into the
01:21committee, introduce himself, give us an opportunity to get to know him and ask him questions about how he's going
01:26to take over and transition from Tulsi and what that's going to look like from the DNI perspective.
01:31I go back to something that you just mentioned.
01:33That is, you know, Marco Rubio served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had a background in national security and
01:38foreign policy.
01:39Bill Pulte doesn't have that background, unclear if he even has a security clearance.
01:43How much pause does that give you when you say you're comfortable with him being there on an interim basis?
01:47How long is the right amount of time as you see it?
01:51When do you think this needs to be filled permanently?
01:53Well, like I said, he needs to come in and talk to the committee.
01:57I don't know him.
01:58I imagine a number of the members of the committees don't know him.
02:01I certainly would hope that the people that take these different positions have an intel background.
02:06Most of the people that sit on the committee have an intel background.
02:10It's kind of a unique skill set.
02:12It takes people that have worked in that world before because obviously everything that we deal with is classified.
02:19So that's obviously something that would be good for that person to have that type of background.
02:25I'm not saying he can't do the job.
02:27I just don't know his capabilities, which is why I think it's really important for him to come in, introduce
02:32himself to the intel committee and give open it up for an opportunity for members to get to know him
02:36a little bit.
02:37And talk about how he's going to transition from Tulsi's leadership for the past year and a half into however
02:46long he's going to be there and what that looks like.
02:48I want to go back to something else you just said, which is you're referencing Marco Rubio wearing multiple hats.
02:53And it does feel like there are fewer and fewer people in that national security apparatus advising the president.
02:59Because, as you said, he is appointing people he knows previously and trusts and asking them to expand their portfolios.
03:04Are you at all concerned that the president is appointing people who will say yes to him and he's not
03:08getting enough honest opinions from these loyal soldiers that are close to him on some very important national security issues?
03:15No, I mean, Marco, obviously, and the president have a history from when Marco ran against him previously in a
03:21presidential race.
03:22I've known Marco Rubio since he was running for the U.S. Senate and I was running for the state
03:27house almost 16 years ago.
03:29So I have a lot of faith in Marco.
03:31Obviously, the president does, too, which is why he's appointed him to different positions.
03:35There's a lot of staff in the National Security Advisor, kind of in the National Security Council.
03:40So you have a lot of people that are probably there that are operating as a national security advisor and
03:46then advising Marco, who's advising the president.
03:49So those different positions have a far a fair amount of staff that work underneath them that can support those
03:55roles.
03:56So, like, we haven't had a national security advisor since Walt's left and went over to the U.N.
04:01So, again, it hasn't obviously affected the performance of the administration.
04:06Hegseth's been able to operate just fine on the Department of War.
04:10And same with Marco.
04:11I just want to ask you, I mean, President Trump told The Wall Street Journal that he told Bill Pulte
04:16to start firing, kind of culling intelligence community employees.
04:20There is some bipartisan support for making that DNI office a little bit smaller, a little more streamlined.
04:26Do you support that effort?
04:27Do you think that's a good idea or do you think this is not the time to be cutting intelligence
04:30officers, given that America is at war with a couple of friends, but mainly Iran?
04:35Well, when Tulsi came in, she started that.
04:38Obviously, when you have a transition of administrations, you're going to have an exodus of individuals that don't believe in
04:47what the administration is doing.
04:48And there is a lot of non-confidence in our intelligence community because of the spying on Trump's campaign, on
04:58all of the things that they did with Russia, Russia, Russia, the collusion hoax, and all of the things that
05:03happened.
05:03So anybody that was affiliated with any of that, obviously the president and this administration is not going to want
05:09that.
05:10I don't want that. I don't think there should be people in our intelligence apparatus that are using policy or
05:16politics to go after certain candidates.
05:19That's not the purpose of the IC. And if those people need to be cleaned out, I fully support doing
05:25that.
05:26I know we want to talk a little bit here about legislation that's passed and legislation that's coming to the
05:31House in the coming days.
05:32So let me start there. We had the Senate pass this funding for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border
05:38Patrol as well.
05:39Big package, $70 billion. That's now going to the House.
05:42What's your sense of the timing there? And is that a bill that you're intending to support?
05:46Well, yes, I 100 percent support it. The House has passed four bills to fund all of DHS.
05:51It's crazy that we've had to go through reconciliation just to fund CBP and ICE.
05:55I was hopeful that we could we could vote on that on Friday after it came over, but I guess
06:01there wasn't enough time to do that.
06:02And there were members that were traveling. That's the biggest challenge in the House right now is attendance.
06:07You've got several members that are running for the U.S. Senate or governors and in primary South Carolina is
06:12on Tuesday.
06:13You got two members in the House that are running in that race. So attendance becomes a challenge.
06:17I hope we can pass that as soon as we get back next week, either Monday or Tuesday.
06:21But obviously the whip operation is going to have to ensure that we have enough people there to get it
06:25out.
06:26I 100 percent know it'll pass. We just need to make sure that we have more Republicans present than Democrats.
06:32I think that'll pass on a straight party line vote.
06:35You worried about Tom Keene Jr., where he is?
06:37I mean, you're talking about the importance here of having a full caucus for these votes.
06:42Have you gotten any indication of when he's coming back and where he is and what's going on?
06:45I don't I don't know him that well. I think I've met him once or twice.
06:51Yes, that is an absolute concern of having, you know, we have like a two or three vote majority.
06:56And when you have people like Massey who vote against most of the rules, obviously you have a one or
07:01two vote majority.
07:02So if you have people absent and if you look at the vote totals, the Dems have people absent, too,
07:06but not as much as we do.
07:08It greatly affects our ability to pass bills.
07:12So just having people there is very important.
07:15So hopefully we'll have at least somewhat full attendance.
07:19I would imagine every Republican is going to vote for the ICE and CBP reconciliation bill.
07:24And as long as we have the votes there, they'll bring that up as soon as they can.
07:28I hope we can get it out by Tuesday to get that to the president's desk.
07:32One of the things that didn't make it into that bill was some language kind of precluding this one point
07:37seven billion dollar anti weaponization front from the DOJ.
07:41The acting attorney general has said that that they're not going to pursue that anymore.
07:45But the president said he's not sure it's dead yet.
07:47He's going to talk to the lawyers.
07:48What is your take on that?
07:49Would you support language precluding that fund from happening or would you support that fund from going forward?
07:55So there's been a fund at the DOJ for years that has done this.
07:59Like I read an article where like Carter Page and Peter Stroke, who used and weaponized the intelligence community to
08:06go after President Trump, got awarded because they went after their text messages or something.
08:11So this is a fund that's been around for a while.
08:13Right.
08:13But it hasn't been used in quite this capacity.
08:15And this, you know, the original plan was to set up, you know, these panels that would decide how to
08:19distribute this.
08:20It seems like that has has gone away.
08:22But did you would you support it if it came back in principle in this form?
08:26Well, like I said, it's been in place for a long time.
08:29The administration has been it's just gotten rebranded.
08:33So unfortunately, we're not even going to get the opportunity to look at that because it wasn't it wasn't able
08:37to get through the Senate.
08:38But I think that having some type of fund to be able to help people who have been a victim
08:46of weaponization by the federal government is absolutely something that that we should look at and support.
08:51But there's not the votes in the Senate.
08:53I doubt there's the votes for the House.
08:55It became a very political issue after Trump kind of rebranded it.
08:59And it became this January 6th thing, which wasn't, in my understanding, the intent.
09:03It was anybody that was a victim of weaponization, whether it was through the IRS, whether it was through the
09:08DOJ, whether it was through any of these different agencies.
09:11So it sounds like it's dead because it's not in the Senate bill.
09:14And I don't see it getting resurrected because of the political fallout that's come.
09:18Last question just about Iran.
09:19We keep hearing from the president that we're close to a deal.
09:23Then we kind of are in this position.
09:25We're waiting to see what happens.
09:26Iran's pushing back on that.
09:27Help us understand how you're looking at the prospects of a deal coming together because you're on the intel committee,
09:32as we've discussed.
09:32You have insight into sort of what Iran is thinking and doing, what we know of what they're thinking and
09:36doing.
09:37You hear what the president's saying, how do you square both things and where do you see this going from
09:40here?
09:41Well, I served in the Middle East.
09:43I served in Iraq in 06 and 07 in the Army.
09:45And I will tell you that you cannot believe anything the Iranians tell you.
09:48You have to look at what they're doing.
09:51Even if they sign an agreement, even when they signed the horrible deal that gave them billions of dollars that
09:56they weren't going to go after a nuclear warhead, they still did it.
10:01And they wouldn't allow inspectors in.
10:02They violated the agreement.
10:03So you have to look at what actions they're actually taking, not what they're saying, because what they're saying is
10:09not ever the case.
10:11So that's the challenge that the administration is dealing with, is if they say that they're going to do something,
10:16then they don't do it.
10:17How do they react to that?
10:19I mean, obviously, the world wants this to get resolved and wants peace.
10:23But at the same time, even Barack Obama and Biden didn't want them to get a nuclear weapon.
10:28So even Democrats agree that that can't happen.
10:31So we have a president that finally has the courage to take that on.
10:34But again, you can't believe what they're telling you to do until they're actually going to do the actions that
10:40require on the agreement.
10:42Congressman, I know you're short on time, but before you let me go, you said the JCPOA was a horrible
10:46agreement.
10:47We have some colleagues here at Bloomberg who've done an analysis of what was in that agreement and what has
10:51been proposed, what we know of what has been proposed from the White House.
10:54They're pretty similar.
10:55Can you tell me one thing that you think President Trump is going to get out of the Iranians that
11:01wasn't in that first deal?
11:03Well, the first is giving them billions of dollars.
11:06The president has multiple times said that that was a horrible idea.
11:10I think that's a horrible idea.
11:12Why would you give billions, open up billions of dollars to the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world?
11:18So I think the president has been very clear, no nuclear weapons.
11:21We get the nuclear dust.
11:23You open the Strait of Hormuz and you're not the largest state sponsor of terror in the world and you're
11:28not going to sponsor terrorism throughout the world.
11:30I think if they do those three things, which to me is pretty easy, I think you'd have a pretty
11:35simple agreement that doesn't green light billions of dollars of cash to the regime.
11:40Carson Suby, thank you very much for the time.
11:42We appreciate it.
11:43Yeah, good to see you guys.
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