Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Ellis joins the show to talk about his new role and the direction of the agency. Plus, we debunk the latest piece of fake news from the failing propaganda regime media and much, much more!
00:06:24.000Welcome to another huge episode of Triggered.
00:06:28.000I'm on the road traveling, but wanted to make sure I hopped on to delve into all of the latest headlines.
00:06:35.000So we'll get into all of the latest news, everything that's going on in the world, and we'll be joined today by Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Ellis.
00:06:46.000Deputy Director Ellis previously served in the White House Counsel's Office.
00:06:50.000And before that, he was actually the General Counsel over here at Rumble.
00:06:56.000So definitely someone who loves free speech, believes in it, has fought for it, and probably under John Ratcliffe, some of the exact kind of leadership that we need to change so much of what's going
00:07:09.000Under the leadership of CIA Director Ratcliffe and Deputy Director Ellis, the CIA is taking major steps to restore credibility to the agency to get the CIA back to its true mission.
00:07:26.000And obviously protecting the American people.
00:07:29.000So this is a special episode where you'll learn a lot and hopefully will inspire a lot of confidence on the direction our country is headed.
00:07:38.000Guys, make sure you're liking, make sure you're sharing, subscribing, downloading the Rumble app on your smart TV so that we can keep getting the message out.
00:07:49.000Also, don't forget that you can go to Apple or Spotify Podcasts if you missed the show here in Rumble.
00:07:55.000If you know your friends get their podcasts that way, make sure they know.
00:08:04.000For all of the headlines that we spotlight here on the show, go over to my news app, MXM News, where you can get the mainstream news without the mainstream bias.
00:08:14.000And don't forget about some of our incredible and brave sponsors who have the guts to support programming like this and very specifically this show.
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00:10:52.000Not surprisingly, leftist propaganda regime Politico, who put out a fake story claiming the Trump administration is considering lifting sanctions again.
00:11:02.000Now, that obviously doesn't stop them from writing because fake news is going to fake.
00:11:27.000How do they get away with continuing to run these fake stories?
00:11:32.000They quote these anonymous sources, people who aren't willing to put their names on it, even if they had direct on-the-record quotes from the people in the room saying that it's a lie.
00:11:45.000And why are so many in the swamp and the press hysterical over the prospect of peace?
00:14:08.000And that's why the D.C. Beltway wants to keep fighting, have people dying.
00:14:14.000As long as it's not their kids, they couldn't care less.
00:14:16.000And that includes, guys, righting so many of Biden's wrongs that weakened our military, like kicking some of our best soldiers out of the service for refusing to take the vaccine.
00:14:29.000But now, Pete Hexeth is welcoming back over 8,700 service members.
00:15:11.000Quickly. Personnel and Readiness Department is working in real time to make that process more and more efficient, more and more direct every single day.
00:15:21.000And remember, guys, Biden and the Democrats made our country less safe and less secure in some of the worst ways imaginable.
00:15:31.000And that includes welcoming into our country foreign narco terrorists like Trinidad and Cartel de los Soles into a nation that takes the lives of innocent Americans each and
00:15:47.000And the FBI is now confirming just how destructive all the people are.
00:15:53.000In a groundbreaking intelligence assessment, the FBI concluded that Maduro, the leader of the Venezuelan government, that Maduro government officials facilitated the migration.
00:16:07.000of Trindle-Aragua gang members from Venezuela to the United States to advance the Maduro regime's objective of undermining public safety in the United States, which, as we've all seen play out, included killing American citizens like Lincoln Riley.
00:16:25.000And Biden and his auto pen enablers allowed this to happen.
00:16:30.000Remember, guys, they were the ones that ended the sanctions on Maduro.
00:16:35.000They cut a secret deal with Chevron, the gas company, and emboldened evil in the worst ways imaginable.
00:16:46.000According to the assessment and multiple reports, the FBM believes the Venezuelan government will likely attempt to leverage these cartels and narco-terrorists in the United States as proxy actors to threaten...
00:17:00.000And kill Americans and Venezuelans alike who are critical of the regime.
00:17:06.000I guess I could be in a lot of trouble here.
00:17:08.000But thankfully, we have my father in office.
00:17:11.000And it's a new era for American strength and an end to the cobbling of evil dictators in our backyard.
00:17:20.000Just yesterday, guys, the FBI announced terrorism charges against an alleged high-ranking member of TDA, Trendlerawa.
00:17:28.000The case sparks the first instance of a Trendel-Naragua member being charged under terrorism-related crimes.
00:17:34.000And as President Bukele of El Salvador recently said, and my father and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have also said, we're not tolerating this narco-terrorism oppression and destruction any longer, guys.
00:17:49.000We're locking up these criminals one by one.
00:17:52.000Under my father's leadership, it's a bad day to be a bad guy.
00:18:11.000Because we're also learning that the Maryland man, you know, the guy who's a Maryland man, he's a super good guy, great father, great guy, great husband, you know, he only beat his wife a few times.
00:18:24.000This 13 gang member who Democrats are in love with was also previously pulled over by Highway Patrol officer back in 2022.
00:18:32.000Huh. How is he driving a car tied to a confessed human smuggler?
00:18:53.000Add to that the revelation that Abrego Garcia was accused of domestic violence, has MS-13 tattoos all over his hand that he paraded around while meeting with Democrat senators.
00:20:00.000I think this idea that somehow that we couldn't deport an MS-13 gang member, and he was an MS-13 gang member, is preposterous.
00:20:08.000And I think there's actually a deeper issue going on, which is that you see some radical judges at the district court level who are trying to layer so much quote-unquote process on top of the immigration.
00:20:20.000system that it makes it impossible to function.
00:20:22.000We have over 20 million illegal aliens in the United States of America.
00:20:28.000Because if we're not allowed to deport them, then what these district courts are saying is fundamentally they reject the will of the Americans.
00:20:39.000I believe the American people elected President Trump to do many jobs, but perhaps the most important job was to bring down the number of illegal immigration in this country.
00:20:50.000And guys, we're also gonna get into all of this with Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Ellis, in just moments.
00:20:59.000But first, another message from one of our brand new sponsors.
00:21:06.000That's why I want to talk to you about AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens.
00:21:13.000It's the conservative alternative to the AARP, fighting for the principles that made this country great.
00:21:21.000AMAC is on the front lines working to protect Social Security, ensure election integrity, and uphold the constitutional values we all hold.
00:23:38.000It is a busy day here, as always, but there are no shortage of issues to dig into as we work to ensure the CIA is serving President Trump's agenda.
00:24:20.000Deputy Director Ellis, thanks first and foremost for joining.
00:24:25.000Deputy Director, what are your core responsibilities inside the CIA right now?
00:24:33.000Well, you know, it's really the honor of a lifetime to be here as part of President Trump's administration.
00:24:42.000And my role is to help Director Ratcliffe ensure that this agency is helping the president achieve his foreign policy goals.
00:24:53.000We want to make sure that when your dad is going face-to-face with any other foreign leader in any negotiation, that he has a decisive intelligence advantage over America's adversaries.
00:25:06.000And our priorities for that, it starts with, I think, the greatest national security threat and one that President Trump deserves a huge amount of credit for, for realizing before the rest of Washington did, is China.
00:25:23.000And realizing that that competition with China is fundamentally a technological competition.
00:25:28.000And we have to be better positioned to take on China in artificial intelligence, in quantum computing, in robotics, in a whole host of areas.
00:25:37.000So China and technology are where we start.
00:25:40.000And another emphasis area, all tracking from the president's policy priorities, is the total elimination of the cartels.
00:25:50.000And that's another area where we are turning CIA, along with the rest of the intel community, as part of a whole government effort to take on and destroy these cartels.
00:26:00.000Yeah, I mean, I'm sort of amazed that that hadn't been a priority really prior to this, because I can't think of much more of sort of a clear and present danger, so to speak, to the United States.
00:26:09.000When you think of 100,000 Americans dying of fentanyl traffic, most of that coming across the southern border, but also through China, working with the cartels, etc.
00:26:18.000It seems like you can kind of, you know, proverbially kill two birds with one stone, taking those on directly.
00:26:27.000Now, you're absolutely right that it's a little shocking this wasn't a bigger priority historically.
00:26:36.000You know, I think for too long the intelligence community viewed the counter-narcotics mission, viewed the fight against drugs.
00:26:46.000As really more of a law enforcement problem, we said, oh, that's what FBI and DEA, that's what DHS, that's what these other parts of governments are doing.
00:26:55.000The intelligence community is worried about China and Russia.
00:26:58.000We weren't worried about these threats closer to home.
00:27:03.000Again, under President Trump's leadership, starting with that goal of total elimination of the cartels, this is a whole of government fight.
00:27:10.000And the intelligence community has an important role to play.
00:27:13.000As you noted, You know, these fentanyl precursors, they start in China.
00:27:18.000And so there is an important intelligence mission of identifying where they're coming from and helping to disrupt and stop those flows of the chemicals.
00:27:26.000And then, you know, you move to south of the border, you know, in Latin America.
00:27:31.000That's where these chemicals are being synthesized into the deadly drugs that are killing Americans.
00:27:37.000So, you know, working with our law enforcement counterparts, but also working with...
00:27:43.000With our partners overseas, working with the Mexicans.
00:27:45.000You know, they don't want the cartels dominating their country either.
00:27:50.000And that's where, you know, for too long, the intelligence community neglected that mission.
00:27:58.000I mean, one of the funny things I noticed when I got here is our counter-narcotics folks, I went for a meeting with them, and their conference room, you have to go through a kitchen to get to their conference room.
00:28:09.000I said, wow, like, is this some sort of, like, high security?
00:28:41.000I guess, without discussing specific operations, under the leader of yourself, Director Ratcliffe, has the CIA restructured those priorities pretty significantly?
00:28:51.000And what kind of organizational shifts are really necessary to effectively balance the need to maintain institutional credibility while also enacting probably some much-needed reform?
00:30:04.000You know, I mentioned the counter-narcotics folks were hidden behind the kitchen.
00:30:09.000We recently merged our counter-narcotics mission center into our western hemisphere.
00:30:15.000We merged them together to make a new America's and counter-narcotics mission center, bringing that regional expertise together with the experience of fighting narcotics traffickers and empowering them to really take the fight to the cartels.
00:30:34.000So, you know, I guess, obviously, over the last, let's call it eight years or so, we've heard so much about, you know, the dangers of weaponized intelligence.
00:30:44.000And how does it relate to how you approach this position inside the CIA?
00:30:52.000Yeah, well, you know, we saw firsthand in President Trump's first administration, the dangers.
00:31:01.000Of a politicized intelligence community, the dangers of the weaponization of intelligence against political opponents.
00:31:08.000It's something that I saw when I was at the NSC.
00:31:12.000And I know my old boss, Chairman Devin Nunes of the House Intelligence Committee, saw when he was investigating what went on with the Russia collusion hoax.
00:31:23.000And it really shows the importance of keeping politics and that kind of political bias out of the intelligence community, because there are very powerful authorities that CIA and other intelligence agencies have.
00:31:38.000We have to ensure that those authorities are turned outwards towards our foreign adversaries and not inwards towards the American people.
00:31:48.000We want to make sure that we lean forward and identify that many of the bad actors have left.
00:32:00.000I think there have been a lot of reports on some of those folks.
00:32:06.000But that if there are still folks that need to be accountable, that we make sure there's accountability for that.
00:32:13.000And we make sure that these things can never happen again.
00:32:16.000That there are forms that have been put into place, forms around the FISA process, that all of this ensures that intelligence community cannot be politicized in the future.
00:32:24.000So the people watching understand, I mean, you work for Devin Nunes.
00:32:30.000Devin was the first guy when he was a congressman to really go after Russia, Russia, Russia.
00:32:35.000Turns out he was right about all of it being a hoax and a setup.
00:32:38.000You then went on to work in the public sector.
00:32:40.000You worked at Rumble, so sort of a free speech absolutist.
00:32:44.000How do you sort of calm some of the natural fears that so many people, at least on my side of the political spectrum, feel?
00:32:52.000Because that political weight, that weaponized intelligence was definitely...
00:32:59.000Really only used against one side of the country and not the other.
00:33:03.000You hear about the high-profile guys either losing their clearance or losing jobs.
00:33:09.000I imagine there's quite a bit of skepticism still about some of the lower levels and just how entrenched all of that is.
00:33:15.000How do you combat that so that people actually have the faith that these institutions do what they say they're going to be able to do?
00:33:25.000No, it's a great question and something that we are thinking about every day of how we can make sure we change the culture here and, again, ensure that the abuses of the past don't happen again.
00:33:40.000You know, part of it, again, starts with strong leadership at the top.
00:33:46.000You talk about, you know, the president's executive orders.
00:33:48.000We are faithfully complying with those and ensuring that, you know, whether it's...
00:33:53.000Turning off security clearances or investigating past bad acts that we hold people accountable for what has happened in the past.
00:34:03.000But, you know, there's also just a broader cultural point of we have to make sure that everyone at CIA knows that, again, we have to keep the work free of politics, free of bias.
00:34:15.000One thing, you know, it's a small little thing, but one thing that I ask for is that every CIA officer, when they come on duty, when a new employee joins CIA, they get a copy of the Constitution.
00:34:27.000Because that is the lodestar for our work here.
00:34:31.000And, you know, violations of Americans' constitutional rights, that is just, you know, absolutely something that we can't have.
00:34:39.000And if we discover that any abuses happen, that there will be accountability for those individuals.
00:34:47.000So, I know you can't speak to anything classified, but how would you describe this job in these first few months?
00:34:54.000What stands out, sort of, you know, given the inherent secrecy of intelligence work and historical controversies that, again, sort of fuel that public skepticism I just sort of talked about, how do you navigate your duties to the agency along with the duties to the American people more broadly?
00:35:13.000Yeah. Well, You know, I mentioned that there were some bad actors here in the past, and that's certainly the case, right?
00:35:23.000But there's also a lot of phenomenal people here.
00:35:26.000There are some true patriots working at the CIA.
00:35:30.000And, you know, of all the parts of the government, I think the CIA actually can be the most responsive.
00:35:42.000I like to say, the CIA is a powerful sword, and one approach to the passive uses could be to beat that sword into a plowshare, but we don't want to neuter that weapon for the president.
00:35:57.000We want to give it to him and let him pick it up and use it to carry out his foreign policy agenda, because there are great people here who can do amazing things.
00:36:06.000They just have to Michael, can you talk a little bit more about the threat of cyber warfare?
00:36:29.000Obviously, that's something that's sort of really in people's minds right now.
00:36:36.000How are our adversaries using AI and what can you tell us about how the CIA itself is integrating AI and machine learning into its analytical processes?
00:36:52.000China has been attacking us on the cyber front for decades.
00:36:56.000And, you know, again, it's amazing to me that really until President Trump entered office in 2017, The U.S. government was largely asleep at the switch on this, right?
00:37:07.000Every national security strategy prior to President Trump's, whether it was Republican or Democratic administration, Bush or Obama, our stated national security strategy was to enable the peaceful rise of China.
00:37:20.000Well, that changed the Trump administration, and cyber is one of those areas where I think we made some significant strides in the first administration, but there's a lot more work to do.
00:37:31.000It starts with having better defenses, in part, right?
00:37:36.000Making sure that our networks are hardened, that we counter the threats in as near real time as possible.
00:37:45.000But it is also an offensive component here.
00:38:51.000They get, you know, a trillion dollars worth of information for free, and then they just work to improve it a little bit, you know, rather than actually create it.
00:38:59.000Is there some sort of public-private partnership that can do that?
00:39:10.000You're absolutely right when you talk about the Chinese have been stealing intellectual property for decades.
00:39:16.000When you see the Chinese fifth-generation fighter jet that looks an awful lot like the F-35, right?
00:39:22.000It's like, yeah, I wonder where they got that idea from.
00:39:26.000You know, the public-private partnership, you know, most of that, it's not within the IC.
00:39:32.000You know, DHS has a big role to play there.
00:39:35.000But the role we can and do play is in collecting the information about Chinese and other foreign adversaries.
00:39:43.000The Iranians are, the Russians, North Koreans, you know, they're bad actors in this space as well.
00:39:50.000And sometimes even just, you know, criminal gangs and ransomware hackers.
00:39:55.000We can collect information, and then even if it's collected in the classified form, the goal is to produce versions of that intelligence that can be shared with the private sector in, again, as near real-time as possible, whether it's through DHS or through other mechanisms,
00:40:13.000to give the private sector that defensive information it needs to protect itself.
00:40:20.000You know, if Chinese bombers or missiles were,
00:40:25.000You know, blowing up American factories.
00:40:28.000No one would say, well, gosh, like, you know, the factory owners should build air defenses, right?
00:40:33.000No, the government has a role to stop this.
00:40:35.000The government has a role to play here in helping the private sector defend itself from nation-state threats.
00:40:44.000You know, I love that you sort of brought up bringing up also sort of the offensive capabilities, not just playing defense and trying to shield them, and then they figure out a way around that, and we're constantly...
00:40:56.000I'd sort of always, in my heart, hope that, hey, maybe I just don't know about what we're doing back, but hopefully there's, you know, the offensive capability as well to, again, as a deterrent from them stopping doing that.
00:41:07.000Meaning if they do something bad, there's going to be something back.
00:41:09.000There's a repercussion, you know, and, you know, people learn.
00:41:13.000Let's call it, you know, education through pain.
00:41:15.000You know, how do you build up those kinds of systems?
00:41:48.000Talk about responses, but never actually carry them out.
00:41:53.000The adversaries, they noticed that, right?
00:41:56.000So, you know, to take an example outside the cybersphere, right, the strike that took out Qasem Soleimani in 2020, right, that President Trump ordered, that established deterrence, right?
00:42:06.000Iran knew that he meant business, and that if they continued, you know, attacking Americans, that they would pay a price.
00:42:16.000You have to establish credible deterrence, and that means imposing costs on your adversaries.
00:42:21.000Again, there's clearly a defensive side.
00:42:24.000The defensive side is important, but it's not sufficient because the adversaries, again, these are highly capable adversaries that will always be looking to stay one step ahead of the defensive protections you can put in place.
00:42:38.000So, Michael, you referenced it a little bit earlier, but can you talk more about what really seems to be a very deliberate and powerful effort?
00:42:46.000into the Western Hemisphere to combat that cartel violence.
00:42:56.000The others are very real threats, probably larger threats, but certainly longer term.
00:43:01.000I understand there's been a merger of the Western Hemisphere Mission Center and the Counter-Narcotic Center.
00:43:07.000I think that was great, rather than having them in a break room past the kitchen into a singular unit.
00:43:12.000What is the significance of all of that?
00:43:17.000Well, you know, I think the significance is that we're finally going to be giving this problem, this, you know, again, one you mentioned is killing tens of thousands of Americans.
00:43:27.000We're finally giving it the attention, the resources, the expertise it deserves.
00:43:33.000Again, CIA has some great patriots who want to take on this fight, who want to stop the deaths we're seeing on our streets.
00:43:42.000And, you know, we are opening up the aperture.
00:43:45.000For them to be able to help dismantle and destroy those drug trafficking networks.
00:43:53.000You know, again, it's part of a broader government effort.
00:44:04.000You know, we're talking about the 10,000 troops along the southern border.
00:44:08.000You know, this is a broad government effort.
00:44:11.000And it's one where, again, you know...
00:44:13.000The people of these countries in Latin America, the people of Mexico, the people of El Salvador and Colombia and Panama, they don't want these drug traffickers in their countries either.
00:44:27.000They don't want the violence and the corruption that comes with this drug trade.
00:44:34.000So it's helping them rid their countries of it, but doing so, and again, in a way that...
00:44:39.000I think the U.S. government just really, really hasn't prioritized the issue in the past.
00:44:44.000And it wasn't until we got that direction from President Trump that the total elimination of the cartels is the priority, that we really, you know, turn this machine, right?
00:44:59.000Again, the well-oiled machine that has dismantled terrorist networks onto the narcotics traffickers.
00:45:04.000So, you know, I think we've always sort of looked at, you know, some of the bad actors, authoritative dictatorships around the world as sort of, you know, one-offs.
00:45:12.000But can you connect the dots for us between those authoritarian dictatorships in Latin America to China and to the Iran threat directly?
00:45:25.000Yeah. Well, you know, we talked a little bit before about the fentanyl networks.
00:45:30.000They start in China with the precursor chemicals.
00:45:50.000But again, I think what we're already seeing is a response to strong leadership from the White House that just wasn't present in the past.
00:46:00.000Our adversaries notice when When there's a change of administration and there's a different tone and a different aggressiveness that wasn't present in the past.
00:46:12.000And I think, again, whether it's on China and not accepting the unfair competition that they've practiced for so long, or on Venezuela on not accepting the migration streams, the criminal gangs that they have been sending to our borders.
00:46:33.000You know, you start to see it in the adversary behavior once they get that very clear message from Washington.
00:46:40.000So, you know, obviously the CIA's job is, you know, functioning, you know, prevention and or perhaps now offense against, you know, our foreign enemies.
00:46:56.000How does that work with some of the, you know, you mentioned DHS, perhaps on the drug side of things.
00:47:01.000How do you work with sort of the US-based counterparts to be able to attack this fully so that, you know, two groups sort of aren't functioning in a vacuum without then sort of negating sort of some of those protections that the CIA isn't supposed to be functioning in the United States,
00:47:22.000Yeah. Well, you know, it starts with the White House giving the same strong direction that the president has given to all departments and agencies that, you know, they need to take on this problem.
00:47:34.000Attorney General Bondi is highly engaged on this issue.
00:47:39.000Director Cash Patel at FBI, you know, he is turning FBI's agents toward border security, towards counter-narcotics.
00:47:46.000And with the assistance of my counterpart there, Deputy Director Dan Bongino, who...
00:47:51.000It's a real delight to have a chance to work with him now with our past working together at Rumble.
00:48:00.000But recently, to your point about the other parts of the government, I recently went out to the southwest border.
00:48:06.000I went down to San Diego to visit with Customs and Border Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations.
00:48:12.000And I also stopped at the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado Springs, which, again, they've got 10,000 troops now along the border, making sure that we secure that border and stop the flow of deadly drugs
00:48:28.000So, you know, it's a whole of government effort and one where we stay very, very closely aligned with our counterparts in law enforcement and the military.
00:48:38.000So what specific role could the CIA have in that border security?
00:48:43.000Is that giving them the information about the cartels?
00:48:51.000Yeah, you know, again, I analogize it a little bit to the counterterrorism mission, which starts, you know, the terrorist threats, historically, they start abroad, right?
00:49:04.000But then you're worried about when the terrorists come into the United States to carry out an attack, right?
00:49:08.000So you have to have, you know, intelligence sharing.
00:49:13.000You have to have strong relationships between the foreign intelligence side and the domestic side.
00:49:17.000And some of these are reforms from after 9 /11 to make sure that there's no gap, there's no wall between the foreign and domestic side here.
00:49:27.000So it's a similar dynamic, I think, for drug trafficking networks, right?
00:49:31.000These are cartels that are located overseas, right?
00:49:34.000So there's information that we can collect.
00:49:37.000There are authorities that the CIA and other parts of the intelligence community can use to take on those cartels overseas.
00:49:47.000We have to have close working relationships with our domestic counterparts so they can make use of that information in their mission.
00:49:56.000All obviously following the appropriate legal protections to make sure that American civil liberties and privacy are protected at all times.
00:50:07.000But it's making sure that we have that fusion of intelligence between the foreign and the domestic side.
00:50:12.000We've got the foreign part of that mission.
00:50:15.000But we need to make sure that we stay very closely aligned with DHS and FBI, the agencies and domestic authorities as well.
00:50:23.000Does the same apply for some of the fairly common sense concerns that so many Americans have about the porous border over the last four years, where allegedly, and not even allegedly, we know they arrested people on terror watch lists.
00:50:53.000Obviously, it's related to the border threat, right?
00:50:56.000Because that's how we know some of these terrorist networks were able to enter the country was through a porous southwest border.
00:51:05.000When you look at some of the threats that were disrupted over the past year, I believe there's...
00:51:14.000Others have talked about how there was a bombing that was disrupted in Oklahoma City on Election Day of 2024, last year, where there was a foreign nexus to that threat and was disrupted thanks to intelligence community working together with domestic law enforcement to save American lives.
00:51:35.000So that threat is still there, and it's one that Director Ratcliffe and I are very closely attuned to.
00:51:44.000We can't take our eye off the ball when it comes to terrorism because while the threat may be different than it was 20 years ago, ISIS, al-Qaeda, they are still out there and they still want to send people into or inspire people inside of this country to kill Americans.
00:52:01.000Yeah, so for those tuning in a little bit late, like I said earlier, you sort of have this incredible background.
00:52:06.000You were at the White House Counsel's Office.
00:52:08.000You were with Devin Nunes then when he was in Congress.
00:52:12.000You went into the public sector at Rumble, obviously, a champion of free speech, sort of absolutism, working directly with Chris Pawlowski.
00:52:20.000You were even a Jeopardy champion, so kind of a big one.
00:52:27.000What have you learned in each step of the way, and how does it apply to that work at the CIA?
00:52:32.000What did you glean from each of those things, whether it was public sector, private sector, government work, or Jeopardy?
00:52:43.000Well, you know, at least on the professional front, you know, working with good teams, good people has really been the most important thing.
00:52:52.000You know, you can have the best job in the world, and if the people around you that we're working with are lousy, then, you know, you'll be miserable.
00:53:01.000But, you know, having a good team, and I think, again, with Director Ratcliffe, we have one here at CIA.
00:53:11.000You know, having the opportunity to work with people like Devin Nunes and Chris Pavlosky, you know, that's really a special thing.
00:53:19.000And small teams that are highly motivated by mission, whether it's at Rumble or in Congress or at the White House or here, can do an amazing amount.
00:53:28.000And that, I think, is something that I've always tried to seek out.
00:53:32.000On the Jeopardy side, you know, that was a great experience.
00:53:39.000I was lucky enough to win one show and then went down in flames on the second one.
00:53:43.000So, you know, I had to go big and give it a shot.
00:54:43.000I want to see, you know, since you understand what the actual threat, you know, of these gang members, whether it's Trendel Aragua, whether it's MS-13, you know, what do you think of some of the lawfare being waged with some of these district judges that seem to have the ultimate authority in America these days?
00:55:00.000They have more power than the president of the United States.
00:55:04.000On a whim, and they're always seemingly cherry-picked with the most radical leftist appointees, but they're seemingly able to overrule not just the President of the United States, but the will of the people who certainly elected my father in part because of what he was going to do in terms of eliminating that domestic threat of criminal illegal aliens.
00:55:29.000Some of these rulings have really been outrageous, and I'm glad that the Department of Justice has been vigorously litigating them and appealing.
00:55:37.000I think, you know, one of the things that I've seen in Congress to deal with this is these nationwide injunctions.
00:56:15.000It deprives the president of his constitutional authority to conduct the foreign relations and serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
00:56:34.000Make sure we turn this machine around and we start going after those adversaries that perhaps we've been a little too asleep at the wheel for a little bit too long.