Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly: Dirty Little Secret

Summary

The Bulwark Podcast: Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly – “Dirty Little Secret”
Release Date: January 15, 2025

Introduction and Context

In this episode of The Bulwark Podcast, host Tim Miller engages in a deep and critical conversation with former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger and Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. The discussion centers around the recent Pam Bondi confirmation hearings, the nomination of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, and broader concerns within the Republican Party and U.S. political landscape.

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Adam Kinzinger’s Commentary

Timestamp: 00:08 – 42:48

Critique of Nancy Mace and Republican Oversight

Adam Kinzinger opens the conversation by expressing disappointment over the Republican senators' handling of Nancy Mace during the Pam Bondi hearings. He criticizes Mace for her inconsistent stance and perceived shift from moderation to a more aggressive political stance.

Adam Kinzinger [03:19]: “Either somebody has a complete actual change in what they believe, or they were just a con artist from the beginning.”

Kinzinger also reflects on the broader failure of Republican senators to maintain serious oversight, suggesting that instead of holding nominees accountable, they focus on ingratiating themselves with them for future favors.

Adam Kinzinger [09:11]: “They all knew that Hegseth was going to get confirmed. So now they have to be, and I like, I know this is a former member, you instead go from asking serious questions then to, how do I kiss his ass?”

Concerns Over Pete Hegseth’s Nomination

Kinzinger is highly critical of Pete Hegseth’s qualifications and suitability for the role of Secretary of Defense. He highlights Hegseth’s lack of substantial military or defense experience and his tendency to side with partisan interests over national security.

Adam Kinzinger [17:55]: “Donald Trump doesn't want people to think he's unpredictable because he doesn't know if he likes our enemies or our friends. It's all about what makes him feel good at the moment.”

Joe Kent’s Nomination and Elon Musk’s Influence

The conversation shifts to the nomination of Joe Kent as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kinzinger condemns Kent’s far-right affiliations and conspiracy theories, questioning his mental fitness for a critical national security position.

Adam Kinzinger [28:30]: “This guy is like, I'm not going to say neo Nazi, but as close as you can get to that without being labeled, that is about what he is.”

Kinzinger also expresses concern over Elon Musk’s potential influence within the government, fearing Musk’s unpredictable actions could have global repercussions.

Adam Kinzinger [32:31]: “Elon Musk is the most powerful man in the world right now. That is a massive concern to me because it's not like he's even thinking rationally.”

Personal Heroism and Recognition

Kinzinger shares a personal story about intervening in a deadly knife attack in Milwaukee in 2006, for which he received the Airman’s Medal. He reflects on the emotional impact of being recognized by the victim years later.

Adam Kinzinger [40:17]: “I ended up beating him and disarming him to save her life. She got 70 stitches in her neck, and I got the Airman's Medal.”

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Mark Kelly’s Commentary

Timestamp: 43:29 – 61:24

Evaluation of Pete Hegseth’s Qualifications

Senator Mark Kelly provides a detailed critique of Pete Hegseth’s suitability for the role of Secretary of Defense. He emphasizes the gravity of the position and the necessity for unwavering competence and integrity.

Mark Kelly [48:08]: “If he messes it up, he puts people's lives in danger or he could wind up screwing up some acquisition program.”

Kelly is particularly concerned about Hegseth’s inability to provide clear answers during the hearings, viewing it as indicative of a reluctance to challenge unlawful or harmful orders.

Mark Kelly [54:39]: “If he gets to the job, we're going to all understand that he is going to be very reluctant to push back.”

Criticism of Republican Handling and Future Implications

Kelly criticizes his Republican colleagues for their abbreviated and superficial approach to the confirmation hearings, arguing that such behavior undermines the serious nature of the Department of Defense role.

Mark Kelly [51:12]: “The seriousness of this hearing and the consequences of this hearing were such that we did ahead of time talk about it, sort of come up with a plan.”

Concerns Over Tulsi Gabbard’s Confirmation

Looking ahead, Kelly discusses the upcoming confirmation of Tulsi Gabbard for the DNI position, raising concerns about her stance on intelligence practices and misinformation.

Mark Kelly [55:36]: “Her predilection to go down the rabbit hole of misinformation puts all of us at risk.”

Kelly highlights Gabbard’s contradictory positions, especially regarding FISA and her views on Edward Snowden, questioning her ability to manage conflicting intelligence information effectively.

Closing Remarks and Future Outlook

Both Kinzinger and Kelly express a somber outlook on the current state of the Republican Party, fearing that its current trajectory under Trump could lead to significant instability and deviation from traditional conservative principles.

Adam Kinzinger [36:22]: “There's no principles in the Republican Party. It's literally a party of one man... it’s a party that eventually does completely change its stripes.”

Mark Kelly [57:11]: “The biggest issue I think I have with Congressman Gabbard is just this predilection to go down the rabbit hole of misinformation.”

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Conclusion

The episode provides a critical examination of current political dynamics, particularly focusing on the Republican Party’s handling of key defense nominations and the broader implications for U.S. national security. Adam Kinzinger and Mark Kelly offer insights into the challenges posed by partisan behavior, inadequate vetting processes, and the potential risks of appointing unqualified individuals to pivotal government positions. Their discussion underscores the urgent need for accountability and a return to principled governance to safeguard the nation’s interests.

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Notable Quotes

• Adam Kinzinger [03:19]: “Either somebody has a complete actual change in what they believe, or they were just a con artist from the beginning.”
• Adam Kinzinger [09:11]: “They all knew that Hegseth was going to get confirmed. So now they have to be... how do I kiss his ass?”
• Adam Kinzinger [17:55]: “Donald Trump doesn't want people to think he's unpredictable... it's all about what makes him feel good at the moment.”
• Mark Kelly [48:08]: “If he messes it up, he puts people's lives in danger...”
• Mark Kelly [54:39]: “If he gets to the job, ... he is going to be very reluctant to push back.”

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Final Thoughts

This episode offers a critical lens on the intersection of politics and national security, emphasizing the importance of integrity and competency in high-stakes government roles. For listeners interested in the inner workings of political oversight and the ramifications of partisan appointments, this episode provides valuable perspectives and thought-provoking critiques.

Transcript

[Unknown Speaker]

Foreign.

[Tim Miller]

Hello and welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. As we're recording right now, the Pam Bondi confirmation hearings are happening. There'll be much more on that tomorrow. Today we got a Hegseth doubleheader. In segment two, it's Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. But first, he was a Republican congressman from Illinois. He served in the Air Force during Iraq and Afghanistan. He's a senior political commentator for cnn, founder of country first and it's got a substack newsletter like everybody else. He's Adam Kinzinger. What's going on, bro?

[Adam Kinzinger]

I'll tell you what, man, I am, I'm happy to be here. I'm so sad I'm missing the grilling that Pam Bondi is going to get from the Republican senators. I'm sure they're just going to be going through her statements and, and just tearing them apart doing their oversight job for America.

[Tim Miller]

Do you think Tim Sheehy will ask her how many push ups she can do? Or is that just, is that only a question for dudes?

[Adam Kinzinger]

I think it's just for dudes, but.

[Tim Miller]

They'Ll ask up do. Actually now we're right here. How many push ups can you do these days?

[Adam Kinzinger]

I don't know, man. Like, I think without stopping. So we used to do, we do the PT test in the Air Force, which I'm out now, but I could probably get up to I think like 60 something before I was like toast.

[Tim Miller]

Right, okay, 69. What, what do you think about X is 47? Five. Five rounds of 47. You think that's. That's happening? That was his claim.

[Adam Kinzinger]

He's one of those dudes that like, you see when you're scrolling through Instagram and he's like, here' amino acids. I'm 50, but you know, I look like I'm 12 and my wife was just born six minutes ago and I do amino acids. That's him. You know those people like, and they're, and you're like, listen, it's good to be in shape. I try to be in shape as a 46 year old man. When you're obsessed with how you look at 50, something, something is missing in your life.

[Tim Miller]

Something, something else missing. Okay. My husband usually looks at those kind of guys. I'm not into the muscle men, but I do know who you're talking about. All right, we're going to do a lot of headsets. We're gonna go deep on stuff. We kind of already did a palate cleanser with the amino Acids. But I just think, given how horrific the world is right now, we need two palate cleansers. So let's take a listen to a little exchange on the House floor that I don't know if you caught yesterday. Somebody's campaign coffers really are struggling right now, so she gonna keep saying trans, trans, trans so that people will feel threatened and child, listen, I want y'all. I am no child.

[Nancy Mace]

Call me a child.

[Tim Miller]

I am no child. I want to find out. I'm a grown woman. Which of those. You will not do the order.

[Adam Kinzinger]

I am reclaiming my time.

[Tim Miller]

If you want to take it outside, Mr. Chairman, the committee is not in order. Cash is outside. Says Nancy Mays. She is not a child. She's glass. She's breaking glass ceilings everywhere she goes. What do you think? That was Jasmine Crockett and Nancy Mace, if you missed it.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Listen, man, I got something to say about Nancy Mace especially. Okay? First off, she shouldn't have called her child. Okay? Let's say that. Like, she shouldn't have.

[Tim Miller]

Just think that's kind of like a manner. It's kind of like how I say, man. You know, Kind of like I was like, hey, man, what's up? And then some people. Some people, like, I'm not a man. Don't call me man. You know, I think. I think it was just cultural, but. Okay, go ahead.

[Adam Kinzinger]

But then watching Mace, it's like. And this. I'm not even joking here. I saw that this morning, okay? And then I pulled up on YouTube because it reminded me, and I didn't do it on purpose. It just like. You know how you get this chain of events in your mind? I pull. I'm not even joking. This is God's honest truth. I pulled up the Will Ferrell, I drive a Dodge Stratus, like, you know, thing from snl where they're sitting there eating in the awkward dinner, and they all start yelling each other's like, I'm an important guy. I'm a district manager. And literally. And it was not because of her, but it led to that chain because I was like, the Dutch Stratus, SNL thing. Look, it's crazy. I mean. And the thing about Nancy Mace is she was. When she started out, so when I was in, she was very much the moderate and mature and honestly, you remember. I think I've talked to you about how the day before the impeachment vote, I thought we had 25, okay? And we ended up with 10 of those 25. You know, people like Mike Gallagher, who was committed to vote for impeachment until he didn't. And then Nancy Mace was one of those. She was one of the drivers of it. And then she voted against impeachment, which was disappointing. But okay, fine, she. And then she just went all in. And all I can say is this is. Either somebody has a complete actual change in what they believe, or they were just a con artist from the beginning. And I think that's her. Yeah, she's having real mental issues. And I mean that like I say that gently, understanding that if it's true, she really should get help. But that's the kind of thing we've all. When we've done. Anybody that's done any significant amount of time in Congress can tell you you go through dark periods at some point. I can think of years that were pretty dark for me. And I think she's in one of those. And I say that truly, like compassionate.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Therapy. Nothing wrong with therapy. I have to do a little therapy. I'm going to have. I'm going to have Jason put. I drive a Dodge Stratus in and post just so people can. I think people need that. People need that these days. I wish you weren't a liar.

[Nancy Mace]

I didn't lie, Ted.

[Tim Miller]

I just wish you weren't a liar.

[Mark Kelly]

I wish you wouldn't call me a liar.

[Tim Miller]

Don't raise your voice at me.

[Nancy Mace]

I am not raising my voice.

[Tim Miller]

You do not talk to me like that. I said you don't talk to me like that. I work too hard to deal with this stuff. I work too hard. I am a division manager in charge of 29 people.

[Unknown Speaker]

Shut up, bitch.

[Tim Miller]

I drive. I drive a Dodge Stratus. Okay, Hank, Seth, we could go a million ways with this. So I guess I just. Let me put a quarter in. And what's your biggest picture thought on the hearing yesterday?

[Adam Kinzinger]

Okay, so first off, let me. Let me go after the Dems first.

[Tim Miller]

Okay.

[Adam Kinzinger]

I thought the Democrats did a pretty bad job. Look, I get it. Hegseth was against women in combat and in the military. That's worth one of the senators asking questions on. But Hegseth, I think regardless of whether you believe he's genuine or not, he's changed his mind. And when he's Secretary of Defense. Defense. It's not like he's going to then turn around and ban women. Okay, but the fact that there were so many senators that use their 10 minutes or whatever hammering that same thing I thought was a waste. I also thought the Democrats let him get away with not answering too much. One of the things I learned as a congressman, a witness tries to filibuster you, so you ask a basic question, and they'll try to go for a minute to burn your time, and you have to kind of rudely cut them off and say, no, I'm reclaiming my time. None of the Democratic senators did that when he was, you know, burning the clock.

[Tim Miller]

Even on the women in the military thing.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Like, as an example, and I know we got Democratic staffers that are the tune in sometimes. So just like, friendly tip, like, he said he was against women in the military in November of 24, two months ago. Right. And so I just. Despite the fact that five of them asked him about this, there was never a. So what changed since November? Like, what changed since November? And just a very direct, specific question here was the quote, in November, what changed? And then he's like, blah, blah, blah. Why? I was like, so you just change your mind? Did somebody tell you a new thing? Might you change your mind back in two more months? Yeah, no, you know what I mean? Like, there just was no. A lot of times it was a rant, you know, and this is why we have Mark Kelly on. In segment two. I thought he did a nice job and a couple others did a nice job. So it wasn't everybody. So I just think that was, to me, like, the biggest. I just process failing of just being able to go at people directly.

[Adam Kinzinger]

And I think, like, here, here's one, for instance. Again, if he. If he doesn't answer questions but she didn't answer any of them. I mean, let's be honest, you know, hey, would you refuse an illegal order that probably should have been asked in the first couple questions, not at the very end. Because then every senator could have been like, wait, you didn't answer. Would you. The answer should always be yes, by the way.

[Tim Miller]

Always.

[Adam Kinzinger]

If you would. If you would refuse. But, like, you sit there and it's like, okay, so. So I, I don't know. I. They, they were unable to kind of follow up the fact that you use Jesus every other sentence as a prop? I would have been like, okay, hey, tell me, exactly when was the conversion moment? When was your road to Damascus moment? What were you doing when you realized that your life was a mess and you needed to turn it around and tell me how your life has been different since then? Because that may be something that's personal to you, but you're sitting there using it. Right?

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. What'd you do that you asked forgiveness for?

[Adam Kinzinger]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

You never told us you Said you said you got. You were saved by Jesus. What did he save you from? What did you do? You never told us.

[Adam Kinzinger]

So that's on the Democratic side. Look, on the Republican side. It was a joke. It was a joke. I talked to somebody today, and I have to unfortunately leave everybody anonymous here that talked to a senator that was on that, a Republican who's like, yeah, unfortunately, he's going to get in. So we all have to, you know, play along and. But it's all about oversight now.

[Tim Miller]

It's all about oversight.

[Adam Kinzinger]

No, it's not.

[Tim Miller]

No.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah. No, it's not. It's not.

[Tim Miller]

Somebody really said that.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Oversight. Yes, yes. A recognized Republican US Senator said to this person, but now it's about oversight. So what you saw yesterday, Tim, was they all knew that Hexeth was going to get, you know, confirmed. They all know that, okay? They, you know, they obviously pre count this stuff. So now have to be.

[Tim Miller]

I mean, I mean, it only takes three of them.

[Adam Kinzinger]

I know.

[Tim Miller]

Are they sure? I mean, you know, Collins, Murkowski, Curtis, one more.

[Adam Kinzinger]

I know, I know, but they, they basically know that, okay, there's not the resistance on this guy. So what do you do? So you instead. And I like, I know this is a former member, you instead go from asking serious questions then to, how do I kiss his ass? So that when he's Secretary of Defense, I can get an audience with him about the fighter jet, you know, in my National Guard unit or whatever. And that's what they were all doing, you know, Mark Wayne, Mullen, you know, in essence, why are you so amazing? You know, all these people were sitting here trying. They want to make him happy so that when they call and say, hey, my, you know, my National Guard unit needs a new whatever, you know, Swiffer, Sweeper, you know, he can do it. He'll take their calls.

[Tim Miller]

And so, Adam, that is like, this is. That's like Russia shit, like China shit. We're sucking up to this guy. Like, it's crazy. Like, we kind of immediately got into the process, like, at the biggest possible picture. You know, somebody that served and was in Congress, was on these committees. Like, this is an insane person to make the Secretary of Defense. Like, it is total madness. Like, there's not one person that's like, guys, this is a little crazy. I mean, we should at least. We should at least pressure test this guy. He's been half drunk. Allegedly. On a weekend. Is a weekend talk show co host for the last decade.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yep. My wife had made a point today because she used to Work in the, she worked for Pence kind of under the Scaramucci regime for, you know, Trump for a little bit. She actually dislikes the administration even more than I do, which is funny.

[Tim Miller]

But she want to do a YouTube segment with me anytime. Well, she'd be good.

[Adam Kinzinger]

She can do it in Spanish too. So there you go. Broaden the audience. But like she, she made the point. She goes, a lot of people think that, you know, Congress is this separate and equal branch. I guess technically it is. But the reality is Congress gets starstruck by the administration. Like Congress gets when you see somebody that you see on TV that's in the administration or that's close to who the president is or that runs this branch or this, you know, whatever this agency, all of a sudden, instead of being oversight, you're trying to get in good with these people. And that's the dirty secret is it's not actual oversight, it's more like access. And that's what this modern, you know, American country is. And so terrible questions by the Republicans and Pete Exeth. Now, can I mention I haven't seen many people writing anything about this, but the fact that he didn't meet with any or most, at least of the Democratic senators is not only unprecedented, it is absolutely a shame because he's making it very clear that he is going to be a Republican in charge of the Department of Defense. Now, we all know that there are Republicans or Democrats that get appointed to head the Department of Defense, but once you take that position or once you're nominated for that position, you at least put on the pretend to be nonpartisan thing. By him going and only speaking to Republicans, he made it very clear he will be a Republican military. And that bothers me a lot, Tim.

[Tim Miller]

In a way, it's kind of, it's worse than that. I'm glad you brought this up, but I hate to kind of obsess on the process. Like the kinds of questioning and the kinds of meetings. It's like it feels like this is a Punchbowl DC podcast or something. But the process stuff matters. On things like this. This man has been nominated to run the largest bureaucracy in the world, in addition to it being the military. So there's life or death decisions on the line. The idea that he couldn't even meet in private with Democrats before the hearing, I guess he's going to do some meetings after. The idea that they, that they truncated the hearing so that it was like only a couple hours and they didn't get to ask him follow up questions. It just shows a total lack of seriousness from the people on the Republican side that they've decided that, like, they. They are just completely going to throw away any ability to vet this person, any even pretense that this job is serious and that the vetting should be taken seriously. And that is why it's fucking laughable to hear that they are going to do oversight if this is the way they behave, you know, during the advice and consent process.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah, absolutely. And look, even on. Again, another hit to the Democrats, how come somebody didn't spend 10 minutes talking about Ukraine? For the life of me, I don't understand that. But, okay, fine, whatever.

[Tim Miller]

No, no, let's actually stick on that for a second. Don't say, okay, fine. This is a good point because this is a hit on the Democrats and on the Republicans because for the Democrats is a strategic thing. Right. You know, that these Republicans don't give a fuck about somebody cheating on their wife. All right? They're in a Donald Trump cult. Okay? So doing that, talking about that to embarrass them or whatever, it's fine if somebody wants to spend seven minutes on that, but conceivably you could maybe peel off a Republican on policy issues. Maybe not. Maybe not. Okay, maybe not. But you have Roger fucking Wicker, who is the chairman of the committee, who's the senator from Mississippi wearing a Ukraine pin. Okay. And Hagseth is testifying, who's clearly just going to do whatever Donald Trump and ultimately Vladimir Putin wants, you know, in order to totally sell out our friends in Ukraine. How can you in good conscience, like, wear a Ukraine pin and say you care about Ukraine and then not even pressure test this guy on whether he intends to do what he can to help our allies in Ukraine.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah. And so one of the. I don't remember who it was. One of the Democratic senators asked him in passing about Ukraine. I think it was the only time he was asked. Instead of Hegseth saying, okay, whatever answer, you know, negotiations, blah, blah, you know, you would expect any nominee to say, of course we think Russia is wrong and Ukraine is the good guy here. Right. Instead, what he said is, we all know who the aggressor is and we all know who the good guy is. Okay? So we just now fill things. Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Does Trump know?

[Adam Kinzinger]

Right.

[Tim Miller]

Does the director of the DNI know?

[Adam Kinzinger]

You take somebody who's extreme MAGA that has been tweeting over and over how amazing Vladimir Putin is, and they put into that in their mind, oh, well, yeah, obviously the aggressor is Ukraine because they wanted to join NATO and the good guy is Russia who's just simply defending their right to exist. Then that's like, so why can't he even say that? And by the way, that was, every answer Pete Hegseth gave was a non committal BS or it was, thank God for Jesus. It was one of those kinds of things. And he was, he got away with it.

[Tim Miller]

The Republican senators in the Ukraine thing, I mean, do you think that Roger Wicker has convinced himself that Donald Trump is going to come around on this?

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yes.

[Tim Miller]

What is he doing wearing a fucking Ukraine pin? It is just so shameful. Like they're. The election of Donald Trump is essentially giving Ukraine away. And so then he wears a Ukraine pin on there and doesn't even challenge Trump's nominees on this. Like, what do you do is he's stupid. He's just been fooled.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Look, I think, look, the human mind can convince themselves of anything, especially if you have to bring into alignment who you are with your values. And currently you know where you are is outside of your values. You can convince yourself of anything. And they've convinced themselves that Donald Trump is just, look, he's not saying he wants Ukraine to win because he wants to be able to go to the negotiating table, but trust me, he wants Ukraine. He knows if Ukraine falls, he's going to be judged harshly. And actually he wants Vladimir Putin to think he's unpredictable. By the way, if anybody else ever says the oh, Donald Trump just wants people to think he's unpredictable BS line, it's garbage. Donald Trump doesn't want people to think he's. He just is unpredictable because he doesn't know if he likes our enemies or our friends. And he actually honestly doesn't even care who he likes. It's all about what makes him feel good at the moment. It's a three year old like way of doing foreign policy.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And in some ways he is predictable. Like if you just suck up to him, then he'll do what you want. So in some ways he's the most. He's unpredictable in certain ways, in other ways, the most predictable person possible in a foreign exchange. Planning any exciting foreign trips this year? I know I'm going to try to take a little vacation this summer if you guys are going to let me. But I bet something you might be thinking about is whether you should learn a little bit of the local language. Well, with our sponsor today, Babbel, you only need a few weeks to be conversant this year. You can speak like a whole new you with Babbel, the language learning app that gets you talking. Learning new language is the pathway to discovering new cultures. So why not embark on learning something new? Babbel's quick 10 minute lessons, handcrafted by over 200 language experts, get you to begin speaking your new language in three weeks or whatever pace you choose. And because conversing is the key to really understanding each other in new languages, Babbel is designed using practical real world conversations. Spending months with private teachers is the old way of learning languages and nothing screams tourists like holding a phone translation app up to your face all day. Babbel's tips and tools are inspired by the real life stuff you actually need when communicating. With a focus on conversation, you'll be ready to talk wherever you go. I don't know where I'm going to go this summer, I got to tell you. I do. I think I got to get out of here though. I got to get out of here and I think I got to go someplace where people aren't speaking English. There's just something a little bit more freeing when they're not speaking English around you. You know, it feels a little bit more like a vacation. Looking at Babel, trying to figure out a way to be able to order at the restaurants, at minimum, you know, be able to chat with some gays at the bar. That's something I'm going to be looking into. But first I got to decide where I'm going. So we'll see how it goes. If you need proof that Babel gets you talking, studies from Yale, Michigan State and other leading universities continue to prove Babel works. One study found that using Babel for 15 hours is equivalent to a full semester of college. So let's get more of you talking in a new language. Babel is gifting our listeners 60% off subscriptions at babbel.com bulwark get up to 60% [e-mail] bulwark spelled B A B-B-E-L.com bulwark babbel.com bulwark rules and restrictions may apply. I want to just get in on that Slotkin question that you mentioned, which was an example of the Democrats trying to pin him down in a way that was effective. Unfortunately is the last round of questioning of the hearing, but there was an important issue that was undergirding this Q and A. So I want to listen to all of it. It's a little bit longer clip than we usually play, but let's listen to Alyssa Slotkin news Senator from Michigan challenging PTEXF.

[Nancy Mace]

Yesterday, Donald Trump asked for the active duty 82nd Airborne to be deployed during that same time. Secretary Esper has written that he convinced him against that decision. If Donald Trump asked you to use the 82nd Airborne in law enforcement roles in Washington, D.C. would you also convince him otherwise?

[Alyssa Slotkin]

I'm not going to get ahead of conversations I would have with the President. However, there are laws and processes inside our Constitution that would be foul.

[Tim Miller]

Follow.

[Nancy Mace]

President Trump said in November that he is willing to consider using the active duty military against the, quote, enemy within. Have you been personally involved in discussions of using the US Military active duty inside the United States, Senator?

[Alyssa Slotkin]

I'm fine. I'm glad we finally got to the topic of border security equaling national security. Because it's been abdicated and ignored for the last four years.

[Nancy Mace]

That wasn't my question. I'm just asking, have you been involved. You're about to be the Secretary of Defense, potentially. Have you been involved in discussions about using the active duty military inside the United States, Senator?

[Alyssa Slotkin]

I am not yet the Secretary of Defense. If confirmed, I would be party to any number of.

[Nancy Mace]

But you haven't been in any of.

[Alyssa Slotkin]

These, which I would not reveal what I have discussed with the President.

[Nancy Mace]

No, no, just. Do you support the use of active duty military in supporting detention camps?

[Alyssa Slotkin]

Senator? Everything we will do would be lawful and under the Constitution.

[Tim Miller]

But I recognize, I'm gonna take that as. Yes, that was the most alarming card. Yeah, go ahead.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah. This is why I'm a believer in, you know, a lot of times when you compare the House versus the Senate, the Senate is always seen as this smarter, better body. In reality, I think the House is. And I mean this because, and I'm serious, we're better at asking questions because we have a much stricter clock, you know, and you have five minutes to ask a question of an important person. So what you see in Ms. Slotin there is she basically was able to see when he was starting to filibuster, to cut him off. This is what every Democrat should have done to cut him off, to not let him do it. To go back to her question. No, I asked you a specific question. Now, is he ever going to answer that? Probably not. Is that going to affect his nomination? Probably not. But at least you're getting it on the records. The on the record. The other thing is, you know, Pete, and again, he did a good job for if your job is not to have oversight and simply to get confirmed by a cult like he did, fine to do that, but he would always answer everything with, I'm not going to answer hypotheticals. And it's like, look, okay, if Russia attacked, would you defend the United States of America with the US Military? Well, I'm not going to answer hypotheticals. It's like, well, no, that's. You're going to be Secretary of Defense, we need to know would you be willing to do that? So when you ask, would you put the 82nd Airborne on the street, would you use the military to round up people? Just answer the question like, no, it's not hypothetical because Donald Trump said he's going to do it. And that's again a frustration for is they let him get away with all that with answering that's a hypothetical. Like, trust me, I'm going to tell you as a politician, that is the fallback answer to punt and not answer a question. If I'm on tv, particularly when I was in, and they're like, hey, you know, if Donald Trump, blah, blah. If I felt comfortable answering it, I'd answer it. If I didn't, I'd be like, I'm not going to deal in hypotheticals. That's just, it's, it's politician trick.

[Tim Miller]

Is there anything that worries you most about Pete?

[Adam Kinzinger]

The thing, I guess that would worry me the most is Donald Trump makes a decision like, let's use the military to suppress a riot. Right. You know, the National Guard can be used, but let's use a Title 10 military. There's not going to be anything to stop him and there's not going to be a general. You. We always have this belief that, you know, officers will refuse an illegal order. Well, maybe, but they also have to know the order is illegal. And a Secretary of Defense determines in many cases what is. And so does the president what is illegal and what is illegal. Because it's really just an interpretation by a lawyer. So I don't think this like honorable swear of duty to the Constitution thing is really going to defend us against overreach by this president. The other thing is just sheer incompetence. I mean, there is no way Pete Eggseth goes to Washington D.C. and ever gets a grip on the bureaucracy and what actually DoD does, because by the time he learns that he's either going to be fired or his time in office is going to be up. I guess that's a concern. But yeah, more than anything is this, this politicizing the military and just violating the Constitution.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Just at the risk of this, like, I don't know about him getting fired just because he's not going to go against Trump. Trump doesn't actually care about incompetence, right. Like he cares about disloyalty. And so I think that he might be around and that worries me, man. The thing that worries me the most is him getting fired would probably be good because 82 year old Donald Trump in 2028 trying to get into some shit. I would much rather have Mark Esper in there at that point than Pete Hegseth. But here we are. Anything on the substance of Ukraine state of play that you want to weigh in?

[Adam Kinzinger]

Here's the thing. I want to keep hammering this to people because people will say like, well, what's state of the war? You know, you'll see these things. Ukraine is losing, okay? Ukraine, if they lose the amount of territory they've lost in two years, okay, if they keep losing that rate of territory, it will take 100 years for Russia to take over Ukraine. I want you to think about that. So, yes, you'll read, Ukraine lost 20 square kilometers or 30 square kilometers. When you do the math at that rate, it takes 100 years for Russia to overtake Ukraine. You also extrapolate the math and say at the cost of 70 million Russian soldiers. So obviously it's unrealistic for a defending country to win a war. All they have to do is defend. They don't have to collapse the Russian government. They don't have to defeat the Russians in three months. They have to continue to defend. Ukraine is doing that bravely and heroically. If Donald Trump makes a decision, and I pray he does, to stand with Ukraine or at least give Ukraine what they need while we negotiate like there is no way Ukraine falls. And so the substantially I've say this Ukraine is way out punching its weight class. It still occupies territory of the Russians, the first time that's happened since World War II. And their fighting spirit remains strong. The one thing I'll say quickly is the Ukrainians have got to get a grip on their drafting age. They don't draft until I think 25 years old, which means 18 to 25 is, is not drafted. And it's, the whole thing is, well, we want to save our youth, I get it. But if your country collapses, you're not going to save your youth. We basically stop drafting people about the time that Ukraine starts. That is a huge problem in Ukraine that they have to fix. And I expect that would happen, you know, with any deal with Trump probably.

[Tim Miller]

Well, who knows how good the deal is.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Sure.

[Tim Miller]

There's a little nomination news yesterday. I want to ask you about Joe Kent is the leading contender to be the next head of the National Counterterrorism Center. People don't know Joe Kent. I'll put this article in the show notes. I wrote an article about him, God, about three years ago now. He's run for Congress a couple times and lost to friend of the pod, Marie Gluzenkamp Perez, one of our favorite Democrats. And I watched this video of him. The shortest way to describe it is there's a group of kind of Hitler youth, like white nationalist young people groipers. And Kent wanted to win and get into their good graces. So he goes and submits to an interview from like a child in his bedroom asking him about protecting white people. And Kent is like sucking up to him and being like, yeah, I care about white people. He is a very far right MAGA person who is off the deep end on conspiracy stuff. Thoughts about having Joe Kent as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center.

[Adam Kinzinger]

I mean, look, this is, although it doesn't have quite the implications as like Michael Flynn would have had. This is like having Michael Flynn at that level. Joe Kent, he lost to Jamie Herrera Butler, my friend, she was a fellow impeacher. I mean, this guy is like, I'm not going to say neo Nazi, but as close as you can get to that without being labeled, that is about what he is. Every conspiracy theory, he's curious about it at least he's my curious. Yeah, every conspiracy theory he buys into. And honestly, there's some, there's some real mental health questions that again, I don't say judgmentally, but you know, those are things you have to take into account. I mean, you can't even fly an airplane for United if you've had mental health issues. So, you know, in terms of, you know, being in charge of our, you know, very important parts of the military, we probably should have that discussion. So this has nothing to do about competence or anything. This is all about who is a MAGA influencer. And if you're a MAGA influencer, you're going to get a job in this, in this administration. And you know, if you're Elon Musk by the. That's a whole nother thing. Elon Musk is the most frightening person in the world right now. But yeah, the joking thing is scary.

[Tim Miller]

Let's talk about in the Counterterrorism center. And this is like going to be part of under Tulsi's remit, I guess. Yeah, right.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Miller]

That's the crowd you have There.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yep. So you have Tulsi, who basically passionate about Bashar al Assad until he fell, also believed we couldn't spy on spies. Basically, we couldn't spy on spies until she all of a sudden switched because either she didn't understand what it was, or more than likely because she needed to. To. To win. And then she's putting this other conspiracy in that position. So, look, it's. The good thing is there'll be safeguards around them in terms of, like, the CIA safeguards and everything. But this is a. This is a mess. And, you know, I guess.

[Tim Miller]

But I get into this a little bit with Kelly in the next segment, just very briefly, but just for people to, like, understand what this job is like. The National Counterterrorism center was created after 9 11, and there was. In the 911 Commission, you know, one of the takeaways was that there wasn't communication. Right. Between FBI and CIA. And so this is a coordinating type role. Right. And so in order to be in a coordinate type role, you've got to be able to take in info from these different agencies and then process them and prioritize. Right. And help prioritize and share. Well, if you're a conspiracy theorist and you can't tell the difference between truth and something that was posted on, you know, in the comment section of Breitbart, that's not a great skill set for that role, to say the least.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, let's say, you know, these same people are the ones that are cruising X to find out what the latest conspiracy is that people like Elon Musk are retweeting.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Adam Kinzinger]

So I would.

[Tim Miller]

I needed to update my references. You're right. Like, they're getting conspiracies from, like, and Wokeness on X. Not. Not from comments on Breitbart anymore. Yeah, that's right.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Or from Hustle, like. Or Cat Turd.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. Okay.

[Adam Kinzinger]

By the way, give me one second to say this. Like, the people that say. And I really don't read the comments on X, but occasionally I'll look at them and they'll be like, you know, they'll call you a coward or something like that for something. And then their name is Cat Turd or Hustle or. Or some name that is not their real name. Dude. By the way, if I. If I tweeted under an alias, I could say really brave stuff, too. Like, come on. That's. The whole thing is, like, the definition of, like, manliness or bravery or whatever, or courage has totally changed to can you can you tweet in all caps on the Internet. And if you're brave and courageous, it means you're going to do whatever Donald Trump and other men tell you to do. Not, you know, what you actually believe to be right. It's, it's such bizarro world anyway. It's all. That's a whole rant.

[Tim Miller]

It wasn't on my list, but you just, you piqued my interest with your Elon aside. So I just want to hear you kind of rant, rant about it for a minute.

[Adam Kinzinger]

This, to me, Tim, is. I haven't put a grip on it yet fully, but it is the most frightening kind of thing to me that exists out there is the fact that somebody like Elon Musk. You know, there's rumors, by the way, pretty good ones, that there was a foia. We don't know who it came from to request every time anybody at NASA typed out SpaceX. And, you know, for all those emails and so, you know, who has a negative view of SpaceX? The problem is, is Elon is, is violating all these rules can basically demand his company gets whatever, you know, could actually start working with the Russians, could do whatever he wants. And there are no safety valves right now. Now, at least in the next five days, you and I know that if Elon Musk basically broke the law that there would be some thing to come in and stop that from happening. Either there would be a breakup of, you know, monopolies or whatever. Under Trump, that doesn't exist. There is nothing. So he can endorse the Neo Nazi party in Germany, he can go against the UK government, and he is basically Iron Man. He's the most powerful man in the world right now. That is a massive concern to me because it's not like he's even thinking rationally. This is another dude on the edge, edge of a mental breakdown or something. I actually really do am concerned more about Elon Musk than I am probably even about Donald Trump at this point.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, there was a report yesterday. He's going to have an office, I guess, maybe in the White House. We'll see.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Good. Good.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. I mean, look, having free reign to target people inside the government to go after him. He's obviously a very sensitive person, Huge government contractor. All of it is alarming. The Jack Smith report came out. Liz Cheney wrote this about it. The Special Counsel's 16 report confirms the unavoidable facts of January 6th. Once again, DOJ's exhaustive investigation reached the same conclusions as the Select Committee, which You were on all this doj. Evidence must be preserved. But more important now, as the Senate considers confirming Trump's Justice Department nominees, if those nominees cooperated with his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, they cannot now be entrusted with responsibility to preserve the rule of law and protect our republic. As our framers knew, our institutions only holding those in office are not compromised by personal loyalty to a tyrant. So the question is now paramount for Republic. Will you faithfully perform the duties the framers assigned to you? I think we know the answer to that rhetorical question, but you can take it if you want.

[Adam Kinzinger]

No, it's a great question. We need to keep kind of the fire as dim as it is kind of lit on the. On these principles and these ideas. But, yeah, I mean, honestly, no Republican senator cares anymore. The good thing is, I honestly believe this in four years is the end of maga. I think it's done in four years. I don't think it survives past the Trump administration for any number of reasons, but I don't think it does. And so then history is going to kind of look back as it defines what is January 6, to things like what happened on the January 6 committee and the January 6 report. So this is important from a historical perspective for our kids to learn what to never do again. But in the short term, look, they don't care. And, you know, we've got to keep this fire lit. But something, Tim, that I was thinking of, you know, in the last couple days is, you know, we keep thinking about this old Republican Party that you, you know, we hold up so dear, the Reagan Party or whatever, but for the last 10 years, there has been no vestige of that. So over a period of 10 years, a party eventually does completely change its stripes. It no longer holds old vestiges of what it was. And I, sadly, we're at that point now. It's, it's. There is no principles in the Republican Party. It's literally a party of one man, which means when he eventually has one too many Big Macs, I, I don't know what will happen to. But they're going to have a little. It's like when a dictator falls in a country, you can expect some real instability.

[Tim Miller]

Did you. Do you have any other thoughts for the Jack Smith Report? I mean, it was just kind of confirmed, but you guys all covered already.

[Adam Kinzinger]

It confirms it. And it makes me angry that I am angry at Merrick Garland. You know, I've tried to kind of COVID that anger up because I wanted to defer to the Justice Department on a lot, because I'm not a. I'm not a lawyer. I've never worked for the Justice Department. But, you know, the reality is, it was after our first hearing in the summer when it was kind of that holy shit stuff that came out. That's when DOJ started their investigation against Trump. They lost a year in that process, and a year and a half, actually. This would have been fully adjudicated had Merrick Garland actually appointed a special Prosecutor Right after January6, as Mitch McConnell basically had said, should have been done, this would be fully adjudicated. I really believe had the American people seen the full totality of this, had a jury convicted Trump, it would be a very different America. But I tell you, Trump is the luckiest man that's ever lived in Earth. Like, everything goes his way. Like, if karma is real, it's going to get bad at some point for him.

[Tim Miller]

But, like, I don't think karma's real. I've got bad news.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah, I know.

[Tim Miller]

I think we can close the book on that one. Karma, not real. You've got to do the right thing for your own purposes internally, and to feel good about yourself, because you're not getting rewarded unless maybe an afterlife, I guess. We can't close the book on that. Who knows?

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah, true, true.

[Tim Miller]

Maybe, maybe. Maybe heaven.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Maybe heaven.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, but I'm not. I'm not counting. I'm not counting my chickens on that, but we'll see. All right. You mentioned the vestiges of the Republican Party and how those, Those embers have died. Wondering if any of the vestiges still exist within you when it comes to the conversation of Greenland? I asked Bill Kristol about this, was like, does national greatness, conservatism still live inside of you? And are you at least a little tempted by these conversations about the US Acquiring Greenland? And I asked you this question, and there's a fact this morning, because I knew this at one point, but I'd forgotten, so I googled it. The president that acquired Alaska was Andrew Johnson, America's worst president before Donald Trump. So you can be the worst president and also expand our territory. Are you intrigued by the new worst president, also looking to expand to the Great White north at all?

[Adam Kinzinger]

Look, I never thought as a neocon, I'd ever be against an invasion, particularly a land grab. But no, we don't want. I don't want Greenland. I mean, honestly, like, all of a sudden, you want 40,000 people that are going to expect us to take care of them because there's Not a huge economy there. Look, we already have access to Greenland in terms of some of the military stuff. It is a very important land mass. And this is, this is something I think people need to understand. When Donald Trump claims that it is important for national defense, he's actually claiming it is important to, to posture against Russia. Okay. Because Russia's the threat on this, which is interesting because we could actually posture against Russia by ensuring that Ukraine wins the war. That's actually the best way to push back, not an invasion of Greenland. So, look, as long as I think we can, you know, continue to use our military there to an extent and be able to monitor and whatever we need, the Danes are not going ban us from Greenland and they're not going to side with the Russians. In fact, Denmark is one of the most staunchly anti Russian countries out there. So I don't think we need to invade. Invade Greenland. Sorry.

[Tim Miller]

Sensible.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

Adam Kinzinger, realist. I want to do the last thing. There was a Daily Mail story about you on Sunday, and it was a nice Daily Mail story, which is a big change of pace for you for the last couple of years.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Yeah.

[Tim Miller]

A mom of four, Amina Hamden, has thanked Adam Kinzinger for rescuing her from a deadly knife attack in the street in Milwaukee in 2006. I saw you shared this, that there are things you didn't know there that you learned about this instance. Talk about that a little bit.

[Adam Kinzinger]

So the, the film that's coming out, last Republican actually documents in 2006, I had a situation where a guy was murdering his girlfriend and I ended up intervening and he was using a knife. And look, honestly, I'd fight, I would fight a guy with a pistol before I would fight a guy knife. And so it was like, by the grace of God, I intervened and I ended up beating him and got him down, disarmed him, saved her life. She, she got 70 stitches in her neck. You know, and I, I got, I got the airman's medal, which is actually higher than the Bronze Star. And unlike other people that sit there and publish, I mean, you can tell I have an airman's medal, but I don't talk much about it. And, and, and it's, you know, it's rank and order and all that stuff. But anyway, that story is in this documentary and Daily Mail to their credit. I was in politics for 14 years and not a single us, you know, journalistic entity ever researched this story. But the Daily Mail does. Okay. And it was, and to me, like, it was amazing because I find out that she was a mom when I intervened. I didn't know that she has since had three more kids. Kids. And, you know, it's like you sit there and you realize, like, there is going to be generations that exist now because of that act that I took that I really, if somebody would have whispered to me to run, I would have run away. So I don't know. It was. It was amazing. And, you know, the other thing that I thought was kind of funny is I think she knew who I was as a public official, but at no point realized that I was the atom that saved her. And so she basically ended up up after daily mail calls and puts two and two together. So I'm going to talk to her at some point in the next few days. And it's been emotional for me to read that, by the way. It really punched me in the gut, kind of, because I didn't expect it to come. I didn't expect anybody to research the story as well as they did. So I give them credit and I'm looking forward to talking to her about it. You can actually, if you Google, I think, Adam Kinzinger, you know, Milwaukee knife attack or whatever on you, if you YouTube it, you can actually see a story where we meet for the first time. And that was a year after the incident. But I hadn't heard anything about her, you know, since that day. So anyway, it's a interesting story.

[Tim Miller]

I look forward to hearing about that, man. No, that's cool, man. I appreciate you. You're a great American. You're a good pal. And it's tough out there, so we got to take the good stories where we can get them. We'll be talking maybe, you know, keep updated on this story and all the other that's happening in Washington.

[Adam Kinzinger]

That sounds good.

[Tim Miller]

I very much look forward to it. All right, man.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Absolutely. Take care, brother.

[Tim Miller]

All right. Sounds good. Up next. Next, Senator Mark Kelly. All right, we are back with Mark Kelly, Democratic senator from Arizona. He was a Navy combat pilot, flew 39 missions in operation Desert Storm. He was also a NASA astronaut and flew into orbit on four space shuttle missions. He's a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and had some questions for Pete Hegseth on Tuesday. How you doing, Senator?

[Mark Kelly]

I'm good. How are you this morning?

[Tim Miller]

You know, I'm doing good, all things considered. You know, setting aside maybe the future of the Pentagon, I'm doing pretty good. All right. I wanted to start with your exchange with Pete Hegseth from the hearing yesterday.

[Mark Kelly]

Let's take a Listen, December of 2014, at the CVA 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?

[Alyssa Slotkin]

Anonymous smears.

[Mark Kelly]

Another time, a CVA staffer stated that you passed out in the back of a party bus. Is that true or false?

[Tim Miller]

Anonymous smears in that back and forth there. I thought it was interesting that for some of the stories that you laid out, his answer was just anonymous smears. But then when we got to young ladies at the strip club, it was, that's not true. And also anonymous smears. That was maybe a little bit of a reveal to me about. About whether the first stories were true or not. What do you think about your exchange?

[Mark Kelly]

Well, Tim, when I went in there yesterday morning, that was not the line of questioning I had planned on. You know, I had this plan to talk to him more about his management experience, you know, at Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans of America, and, you know, how he managed these organizations and his financial management and the state that he left them in when he moved on, which is still unclear exactly how that happened. Was he asked to leave or was he removed? So that was what I had planned. And then after some of my colleagues asked some of these other questions about personal issues, it became 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, he would just say, smear, that he's being smeared. That's when I went in there and I said to my team, and we just went and pulled all these specific cases. So the thing that concerned me more than what you just said about the last question was that he couldn't say if these things were true or false. And it's a very simple question. And if you feel you've been smeared, it would be obvious. You would say, well, these are false.

[Tim Miller]

And he did say that in one case, which makes you think that maybe the other cases, they weren't false.

[Mark Kelly]

Yeah, yeah, at the end, that is true. But just stepping through all these things, and I gave him more than one chance. I said, hey, I'm asking you, just. 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. 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 9 to 5 job. This is 24, 7, 365 days out of the year. You need to be available and ready. 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.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. The enormity of the job question, this is what hangs over everything to me is that the lack of seriousness with which the Republicans took their job to advise and consent on him yesterday was pretty astonishing to me. There's a million examples of this, but there was just one clip I wanted to play for you, if you don't mind, because there's a lot about qualifications. And I think it's so hypocritical of senators, especially on the other side of the aisle, be talking about his qualifications. Not the least the secretary or be the Secretary of defense. And yet your qualifications aren't any better. You guys aren't any more qualified to be the senator than I'm qualified to be the senator. Except we're lucky enough to be here. That was Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma. I was watching that. I'm thinking you're pointing at a damn astronaut. You know, Pete is a weekend TV co host who can allegedly do his job while half in the bag. Just the lack of caring about the fact that they're pulling this guy off the Fox and Friends couch and putting him in the most important job in the world was pretty astonishing to me. I don't know. What did you think about the defense of his resume from the Republicans?

[Mark Kelly]

Well, that, but also the whole thing about we're talking about two different jobs. I mean, being a US 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 US Senate. And what Mark Wayne was saying, you 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.

[Tim Miller]

You haven't seen any hammered senators being like pulled off the floor by their staff.

[Mark Kelly]

Not once pulled off the floor. Not pulled off the floor. I've never seen that. Not in a single occasion. Maybe he's talking about his experience in the House. He was a House member and I.

[Tim Miller]

Don'T Matt Gates was his colleague in the House. You know, people like to party in the House. Yeah.

[Mark Kelly]

I don't know what 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, 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. I just don't see how that nine years or 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 weeks and run this enormous agency where the consequences of your job performance are so significant. Again, we've got, you know, well over a million service members and then there's government employees. 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. The cost, the taxpayers, there's multiple billions of dollars more because he was unprepared for the job. 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.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. And again, there are other jobs out there. Doug Burgum, if you kind of want to go around and do a quick one round of questions, seven minutes, half day, move on, that's fine. I don't have any objection to that. That. But given what you just laid out about all of the different contingencies that you have, if you are running the Pentagon. I interviewed Mark Hertling about this last week and he laid all this out. So clearly you have to just be pretty flabbergasted. Have you had any conversations with your fellow Republicans? They're just going to do three hours of questions to Pete Hegseth and rubber stamp him. I guess there's going to be some private meetings now, but do you have any sense whether there's any more vetting happening here, given the serious.

[Mark Kelly]

Well, I haven't spoken to them since yesterday. I did, you know, at the committee hearing, I spoke to the chairman about having another round of questions. I think it's sort of unprecedented, you know, how abbreviated this hearing was. This is the first one I've done for secretary of Defense, we should have had an opportunity to ask more. And I had a bunch of policy questions I wanted to ask him on specific programs, on CJAD C2, on Sentinel, on Slick'em N, 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 know, you're talking about, you know, how significant this job is. And I just cannot stress more how important it is to have somebody there that's incredibly competent to do this and it's 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.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah, it's hard to think about any do one that if he had the experience but his personal life was a mess, that'd be one thing. Or if he was a great leader in his community but didn't quite have the experience, maybe it's another thing. But no, he's not checking anything. You mentioned that you hadn't planned to ask the questions that you did. Are you coordinating with the other senators about this? I mean, there was some talk that maybe given the fact that, look, Roger Wicker had a Ukraine pin on, maybe it would have been better to try to win Republicans over to try to pin him down on policies where he is separate from the senators. I can't imagine Roger Wicker and Pete Hegseth have the same policy on Ukraine. How do you guys kind of decide what the strategic approach is in these sorts of hearings?

[Mark Kelly]

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, sort of come up with a plan. 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 know, the chairman or the ranking member, you know, Jack Reed, I said, hey, we have to kind of coordinate because we don't all want to be asking the same exact thing. And in Hegseth 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 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. And 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.

[Tim Miller]

Her material was great. I just talked to former Congressman Kinzinger about that. That exact exchange. Was that the most alarming to like, obviously just his background and his existence as the Secretary of Defense is the most alarming thing. But of the actual substantive things, you got into his unwillingness to say, you know, that he wouldn't oppose unlawful orders or that he wouldn't use the military to target citizens. Was that the most alarming part to you or was there something else that jumped out?

[Mark Kelly]

No, I think that was it. You know, for me, you know, obviously, you know, him not being able to answer my question 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 for the President of the United States, he might be very hesitant to push back against those. And that's concerning.

[Tim Miller]

You've got another hearing. You're on the committee for Tulsi Gabbard. His hard confirmation is coming up soon. Soon. In a way that's a little bit of a different challenge than Hegseth, because I think it's possible we'll see, that some of your Republican colleagues might be against her on policy grounds. So have you thought about that confirmation hearing and what you want to challenge her on and whether any of the Republicans you think might share the concerns of the folks on the Democratic side when it comes to Gabbard?

[Mark Kelly]

Well, I know they do. I mean, just from a. 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 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, and how all that stuff is handled. So she's done a 180 on this. That's a concern. 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. My view is he, 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. 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.

[Tim Miller]

Whether she knows who our ally is in the Russia, Ukraine war might be something interesting to explore. I'm not sure she knows which side she's supposed to be on in that.

[Mark Kelly]

Yeah, we talked about that a little bit. I mean, she was in my office last week, so we got to touch on a number of these topics.

[Tim Miller]

Were you at all assuaged by?

[Mark Kelly]

I still have concerns about, you know, her taking on this role. I mean, her background 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, a 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 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, you know, right now with, with Congresswoman Gabbard is just this predilection to go down the rabbit hole of misinformation. 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, him 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 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, what do I think is right here? And now I got to go to the president and say, hey, this is. These are the five most important things today. 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.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah. If you can't tell the difference between Gateway pundit and the Wall Street Journal, that's not. When it comes to reporting, that's not a great sign. Okay, I gotta let you go. I have one last thing, though. I have one last thing I have to ask you. Just, you know, we just have to get on the record on this. There's a lot of concerns. Democrats, Democrats are struggling with young men, you know, and so I was watching it. I thought you gave Pete Hexa some really good, tough questions. But I just, I want to be clear, you know, you don't have any issues with, you know, pounding some beers on a party bus? Okay. If some bros want to pound some beers on a party bus on the way to the football game, that's okay with you? That wasn't. That's not your issue.

[Mark Kelly]

You know, I spent 25 years in the Navy. I was a junior officer on an aircraft carrier in a squad squadron. Not my issue. But for the secretary of defense, when you have. 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.

[Tim Miller]

Have you ever passed out on a party bus? Me? Never. Keg stand. What about a keg stand, though? None of that stands. Okay. All right. What is your favorite beer? What are you drinking? Right.

[Mark Kelly]

Right now, there is a local brewery called Moto Soren in Tucson, Arizona.

[Tim Miller]

Yeah.

[Mark Kelly]

And they, you know, they, they've got a whole selection and they make some pretty good beer.

[Tim Miller]

I love. Tucson's sneaky cool. So I'll have to go check it out the next time through.

[Mark Kelly]

Tucson's a cool place.

[Tim Miller]

All right. Thank you so much. Sandra Kelly, come on back. We're gonna have to talk a little politics next time. A lot happen in Arizona, so we'll see you soon.

[Mark Kelly]

All right, let's do that. All right.

[Tim Miller]

I appreciate, Appreciate it. All right. Thank you to favorite of the pod, Adam Kinzinger, and to Senator Mark Kelly. We'll have much more tomorrow. On the Pam Bondi hearing and the rest of the parade of horribles. Look forward to see y'all then. Peace.

[Unknown Speaker]

Were not your friends I I was right and the look on your face says you know about it I know what you're going to say all the party got away from you baby the lights in your eyes put your hands on a skirt you're making it worse with your meaningless words forget about it you ruin every night you always start the fight oh I, I do I say that I love you Sweet dreams can't sleep it off wait till I wake you up Cuz I can only wait to tell you all the things that you've done when you're up that I was but I'm not your type I've seen the messages on your phone it kept me up a whole godamn night and all of our friends seem to know about it oh but what about me? Maybe I should have a secret I keep it locked in my chest you be chasing the key is that what you need? A girl that can cheat the girl Forget about it forget about it forget about it you win every night you always start the fight oh why do I say that I I love you sweet Ch can sleep it all wait till I wake you up cuz I can only wait to tell you all the things that you've done.

[Tim Miller]

When you're.

[Adam Kinzinger]

Up.

[Unknown Speaker]

When you're up.

[Tim Miller]

The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.