Four fallen service members were laid to rest today at Dover Air Force Base in a ceremony attended by President Trump, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chief of Staff Gen. Dan Kane. Their names were identified as Lt. Col. Tyler J. Feehan, 1st Lt. Michael J. Swinton, Private First Class Isabella Gonzalez, 2nd Lt. Angel R. Rampersad, and 3rd Lt. Tyler A. Wojtowicz.
00:18:41.700So basically, this is a provision that directs the creation of an official and an office
00:18:48.760and allocates resources for the merger of elements of the U.S. military establishment
00:18:55.780and the Israeli military establishment, right?
00:18:57.720The way that it's been kind of conventionally described in the press is as a merger of the
00:19:02.660U.S. and Israeli defense industrial bases.
00:19:05.180So essentially what the House is doing with this provision is creating a single official who is now tasked with taking all kinds of different kind of cooperative programs and efforts, whether it's technology, whether it's intel sharing, whether it's joint exercises, and basically fusing those with what the Israeli military does, what the IDF does.
00:19:29.540well hold it joint exercises the industrial base is one thing that's actually we have you know many
00:19:36.120different companies working on um air programs missile programs submarines all the equipment
00:19:42.860that goes on navy ships i mean this is the equipment's kind of legion then you have
00:19:46.900then you have information or intelligence sharing then you have like joint operations
00:19:51.800Does this 219 incorporate all of that, or is it just – don't get me wrong.
00:19:58.340The issue of merging the industrial bases is massive in and of itself.
00:20:04.540But are there other things other than the industrial bases?
00:20:08.600Is it intelligence, and is it joint operations?
00:20:12.380So it's not like joint operational control, but it does make provision for intelligence.
00:20:18.440It does make provision for information sharing.
00:20:20.220I mean, the thing to know is that we do a lot of this stuff already, right?
00:20:24.000The Pentagon already does a lot of cooperative work with Israel.
00:20:28.800The difference here is that you now have direction from the Congress saying, you know, don't just do this, do more of it, right?
00:20:36.360And by putting it in statute, you make it extremely difficult to ever unwind, right?
00:20:40.860Because what they're doing right now is basically at the discretion of the president.
00:20:44.840I mean, historically, you know, the Pentagon has been a little too comfortable kind of doing its own thing.
00:20:49.020And there's been sort of some kind of like what you could call deep state influences there.
00:20:52.260But, you know, as a general matter, the president could tomorrow direct them to unwind a lot of this cooperation.
00:20:58.880And if this Section 219 gets enacted into law, it will be extremely difficult to do that.
00:21:05.220OK, I want to go back to the section itself.
00:21:09.120The NDAA, let's pull it back for a second.
00:21:11.420We've talked to the audience a lot about this, but I want to take another shot at it.
00:21:14.240um cabinet departments um department of justice others every five years i think you're supposed
00:21:24.380to come back and get reauthorized right we we've had epa has never been reauthorized i think it's
00:21:30.940been decades maybe a century since doj most of the cabinet departments are never reauthorized
00:21:37.720they never go through this process and number one like even they just figure this will be a
00:21:42.400firefight every time and they don't want to do it and so they just kick the can down the road
00:21:46.240to make sure there's no question whether the um the uh national defense uh industrial complex is
00:21:55.560going to get their money they never miss a must pass piece of legislation when you come to
00:22:00.460washington on capitol hill you don't have to pass a budget you don't even have to pass authorizations
00:22:06.580all the stuff that absolutely should be in statute just kicks gets kicked down the road
00:22:11.580with CRs or omnibuses, they get dumped in. They never do the work. It never really sees the light
00:22:16.860of day. And those fights never see the light of day. But the NDAA always gets, this is a must pass
00:22:23.120because, and they always say, if you don't do this, the troops are not going to get paid. They're not
00:22:27.560going to get their payday. And so everybody heaves too. In the NDAA, so is that a correct description
00:22:34.160of the National Defense Authorization Act? Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And the other thing
00:22:39.120I'll just note is that, you know, the whole process is designed to allow for as little
00:22:43.540debate as possible, which is why the House is doing this at the back end of its last
00:22:47.220week before it goes on recess for five weeks, right?
00:22:51.360So do we have, so we have, we don't have an alliance with Israel.
00:22:58.420Israel is technically not an ally because we've never had an alliance.
00:23:02.200um it but but we do have an alliance a big alliance with nato with the countries of western
00:23:09.480europe kind of post world war ii and that's expanded to other countries we have all kind
00:23:14.660of issues about interoperability and the equipment you know uh what what the british defense britain's
00:23:20.860got some great defense countries uh companies france has got some italy's got some have do we
00:23:26.380have the same type of language? And I understand integration got taken out by Representative
00:23:33.480Anna Polina Luna at the last second. She fought for that to extract integration, the term
00:23:39.100integration. But do we have anything even close to being parallel to what we've just passed
00:23:46.660for Israel with either the United Kingdom or France or Italy or Germany or any other ally
00:23:53.460that we have? Yeah, I mean, so the United Kingdom is a good example. I used to work for the
00:23:58.780Department of the Navy on submarine cooperation, and we have some very strong agreements about
00:24:04.660nuclear technology, you know, the stuff basically that goes in our submarines and on our nuclear
00:24:09.440weapons. Like, we share a lot of that. We use the same suppliers, you know, we have like a lot of
00:24:14.740military industrial integration there. And then there are other like very sort of broad agreements.
00:24:19.940NATO as a whole, I mean, there's not something quite as sort of extensive just because, you know, it's such a large group of countries.
00:26:01.860And that's why I think people are sitting there going, hang on for a second, what are we doing here?
00:26:06.860And at first, the language, what they wanted to pass, the language initially said we were going to integrate the industrial bases of the defense industrial bases of Israel in the United States.
00:26:18.940Walk me through again. Walk the audience through again.
00:26:20.900What will this mean as far as what we actually do by what the statute, how it now reads?
00:26:27.340so taking out the integration language was good but it didn't change a lot of the sort of other
00:26:36.380problematic aspects of the provision so you still have a direction for instance to cooperate in i
00:26:42.640think eight or nine technological areas and they're pretty broad i mean it's like biotech
00:26:46.940you know missile defense ai like big you know cutting edge areas and so what that means is that
00:26:52.220you'll see a lot of sort of sharing of our research and exchanges of our scientists.
00:26:58.000And basically, we're going to give them access to what we have.
00:27:00.980And they're supposed to give us access to what they have.
00:27:02.760But, you know, there's a certain lack of reciprocity just because we're such a bigger country, right?
00:27:07.600We have so much more. We've done so much more in such an expansive scope for this provision.
00:27:12.860So you're going to see some of that. You'll see joint procurement, right, which is like the integration of some like Israeli suppliers into our supply chains,
00:27:20.200the integration presumably of American suppliers into Israeli supply chains, it's still quite large in scope.
00:27:27.420And again, the integration language, that representative Lunar's amendment did cut that.
00:27:33.020And I think from the perspective of sovereignty, that definitely is worth noting.
00:27:38.540But the broader intent of the legislation, or the provision rather, is still intact.
00:27:45.260Well, I mean, this goes to our sovereignty.
00:27:47.080This also goes to about intelligence, national security.
00:27:50.480I mean, you know, it was just a month or so ago, I think some members, I don't think it was Netanyahu himself,
00:27:56.220but they leaked to the press that, hey, if the United States is going to give us a hard time here on armaments,
00:28:04.820you know, India's out there, we got the Chinese Communist Party, they got relationships, they're very close to China.
00:28:10.300This is absolutely an abomination.1.00
00:34:37.800And a lot of this money and this – what they're talking about, the reconciliation is a kind of down payment so the defense industry can actually move quicker and get up the learning curve faster so that we can get, you know, weapons now just from not the big contractors but these small entrepreneurs.
00:34:53.040But to do this is different. This is different. And I don't want to hear the pitch. Oh, there's so far advancing technology. We've got, hey, if it's so great, we'll do it on a project by project basis. And if you want to do a bunch of projects, maybe even go into a vertical, this is different.
00:35:06.800And until Anna Paulina Luna took out the word integration, they wanted an integration of both.
00:35:14.700They understand, Netanyahu and this crowd understands because of the Israel First Imperial Israel Project that has turned off so many people in this country, including many people who are defenders of Israel, that now they were saying, hey, look, it's a wealthy nation.
00:36:06.160Is the CCP going to come in here and just steal our elections?
00:36:09.720Is Israel going to dictate to us through the misinformation that we got and the bad intelligence,
00:36:16.680not the exquisite intelligence, the bad intelligence that has us where we are today in Iran?
00:36:23.460Just see what you see in Iran right now.
00:36:26.480And think about what information, what intelligence got shared at what time to the president of the United States, the commander in chief.
00:36:32.680And I find it ironic on one hand and repulsive on the other that at virtually the very moment you bring those American citizens back, including people who are kids, you bring them back for a dignified transfer to their families here in the United States at virtually the same moment you vote for this.
00:36:54.320you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves for not bringing
00:36:58.980this up for a full and complete debate so that the American people understand exactly what they got
00:37:05.080into. This is no different than the oligarchs trying to slip in all the things they try to do
00:37:11.320on AI to make sure they had no guardrails at all, no controls at all, and bill after bill. Remember,
00:37:16.860it was the NDA last time they tried to get it into. This is what they do when they want to hide
00:37:22.020something. When they want to hide it, they slip it into an NDA and say, well, this is a must pass.
00:37:27.240The troops aren't going to get paid. You have to do this. We can't go on our six-week vacation
00:37:31.640until we get this done. The troops are not going to get paid. Hey, the troops would be fine
00:37:36.720missing a payday or two to have this debated, to have this debated. So, because it leads to exactly
00:37:45.980what in the hell are we doing in the Middle East and who and what are we doing it for and those
00:37:52.820questions have to be answered and they're not going away if people think you can slip this in
00:37:57.040oh that's going to be fine it's not going away because people in the United States are tired of
00:38:01.820it they want to understand what they're paying for to understand why the defense bill is so big
00:38:07.380what is actually the strategy and who's chipping in uh are the Saudis writing a big check is UAE
00:38:15.060writing a big check? Is Qatar writing a big check? Is Kuwait, Bahrain, Pakistan writing a check? Are
00:38:21.760they still opening the six overland routes to the Chinese Communist Party? Our great allies in
00:38:26.960Pakistan. Our great allies in Saudi Arabia. Our great allies in Qatar and UAE. In Bahrain. In
00:38:34.880Kuwait. We've been there for 47 years now. Right? We've been there for 47 years. It's time to ask
00:38:43.200some hard questions uh luke any closing thoughts or comments i really want to thank you and curt
00:38:49.220mills the team of american conservative following in the steps of uh of buchanan right uh who
00:38:56.160started and fought the iraq war and god bless if there are more americans that has back back then
00:39:01.100we were we would have not gotten involved in that debacle your thoughts sir um look i would just
00:39:08.240echo your comments about sovereignty i mean this isn't an anti-israel thing right this is a this
00:39:12.720is an american sovereignty thing right and i think that's why the american people should care
00:39:16.420that's why our representatives should care that's why it was such a disgrace that there wasn't a
00:39:20.560full debate that this was kind of rammed through at the last minute and uh it should not um it's
00:39:27.340not the decent thing to do and it's and i hope you know it it could have potentially like pretty
00:39:33.240negative long-term consequences so as this continues to go to the senate go through conference
00:39:37.940you know we have to really be watching this thing there will be one last vote there will be one vote
00:41:58.780They had every opportunity to do the standing filibuster
00:42:02.080to get back to the old filibuster like you saw in a version of it
00:42:06.160In the Jimmy Stewart movie, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, those kind of are what you saw back if you're old enough or have you even seen the videos, what they did for the Civil Rights Bill and other bills.
00:42:16.840I think the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Bills back in the 1960s is kind of historic where the U.S. Senate became a real debating society.
00:42:26.140They've had every opportunity to do that.
00:42:27.780Mike Lee has tried to lead the charge.
00:42:29.620You've had Senator Schmidt of Missouri and others that have tried to push this.
00:42:34.440You know, Senator Johnson, others have tried to push this, and it just didn't go anywhere because the Senate leadership doesn't want it to go anywhere.
00:42:41.580The Senate leadership treats President Trump as a lame duck.
00:42:46.540Otherwise, why do you not have – take some official recess?
00:42:56.080Maybe President Trump's got to – can think through a couple of recess appointments.
00:43:00.260John Cornyn, up until I think mid-afternoon, was holding up the White House on certain ambassador picks, saying, no, no, no, no, no, I haven't seen the appropriations, you haven't funded AIDS, I guess AIDS relief in Africa.
00:43:14.480Age relief in Africa did not meet John Cornyn's standards
00:48:15.760I don't think governors can mess with federal immigration law,
00:48:21.000but I'll deal with that after the show as I drill down on exactly what was said.
00:48:24.860I want to make sure I have a full understanding of this because I was dealing with other stuff this afternoon related to other topics that are burning.
00:48:36.780In fact, we're going to have tomorrow some folks on about AI legislation, other things that are going on that the Warren Posse needs to know about immediately.
00:48:46.620I think what Jennifer Griffin did was so appropriate today.
00:48:50.100And let's play Jennifer Griffin again, her in memoriam to our honored dead at Dover today.
00:48:58.900Bringing now our Fox News chief national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin.
00:49:02.340She is in our Washington newsroom watching this with us.
00:49:06.240Sandra, every president says that this is the most difficult thing that they have to do during their presidency,
00:49:12.660to go to Dover to meet the families and to greet the caskets of the fallen.
00:49:20.100knowing that they have sent these individuals, these soldiers to war.
00:49:24.840It weighs heavily on them. We've heard President Trump speak about that in the past.
00:49:29.800This is the third time that he has been to Dover since the start of the Iran war.
00:49:34.920There were the six service members who were killed early on in the conflict when a drone hit their base in Kuwait.
00:49:41.920There were the six service members who died in the KC-135 air refueling plane that went down over Iraq.
00:49:50.720And now today we have these four other soldiers.
00:49:55.400First Lieutenant Tyler James Feehan, we're learning more about his life from his family.
00:50:01.140His family in Utah has set up a scholarship fund for ROTC students at his former alma mater,
00:50:08.800the University of Southern Utah, with the death gratuity, the $100,000 that each service member
00:50:15.380will be given by the Department of War. And his family has decided to devote that to future
00:50:22.500service members. He was supposed to return home and get married. His family remembers him as
00:50:28.460an adventurer. He went to Mount Everest base camp. He hiked the Camino Trail. He was planning to come
00:50:36.600home and get married. Then there was private Isabella Gonzalez, just 19 years old. She just
00:50:41.360graduated last year from high school. She told her English teacher just before she was graduating
00:50:49.740that she planned to enlist so that she could eventually go to college. She's from Northern
00:50:54.660Texas, from Carrollton, Texas. Sergeant Michael Swinton, his wife from Fayetteville, North Carolina,
00:51:01.980He was stationed at Fort Bragg. His wife, Mia, posted a heart-rending post on Facebook showing him hugging his four-year-old daughter.
00:51:10.520It was the last picture she would take of him through the car window in his uniform as he hugged his four-year-old daughter.
00:51:17.920He also had a six-year-old son. He was killed in northern Iraq when they were trying to disable a one-way Iranian attack drone last weekend.
00:51:27.200And then there is Sergeant Angel Rampersad. We just learned her name and received a photo of her, 28-year-old Angel Rampersad of Queens, New York. She has been described as believed to be dead because her remains have not yet been identified. They will be identified at Dover. But she had been found under the rubble of that drone strike on the Jordanian base.
00:51:55.680So, these four American heroes have returned to Dover. The president, the Secretary Hegseth,
00:52:02.320as well as the Army Secretary Dan Driscoll were there to greet them, as well as General Dan
00:52:08.320Cain. They spent about three hours with the family members. That's what they do
00:52:13.600before we see this ceremony and the flag-draped caskets come out of the back of that plane.
00:52:19.360They spend time individually with those family members.
00:52:22.860So a heartbreaking moment today at Dover Air Force Base.