'Trump Has Lost His Way': Mark Kelly Minces No Words To Destroy DNI Chief Pick In Fiery PC

Let me try to explain where we are briefly. I don't want to repeat what my colleagues have already said, but a week ago when FISA expired. So what does that mean for the American people? So if you're sitting at home in a place like Arizona or maybe Arkansas or South Dakota, all the other states, like what does this mean to you as an individual? How does it affect you and your family? Well, think about it this way, that through this law, FISA, we are able to gather intelligence from our foreign adversaries, foreign nationals, overseas, through a number of different ways. And with that intelligence, we have on a number of occasions prevented bad things happening to the American people, terrorist attacks, sometimes here, sometimes overseas. It is an incredibly valuable tool that Donald Trump doesn't seem to care about and he's completely messed this up. Then on top of this, he nominated for one of the most critical jobs in our country, the Director of National Intelligence, a person that by any measure is unqualified for the job. I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, when Bill Pulte's name first came up. If you were to make a list of the one million most qualified Americans to be the Director of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte would not be on that list. It is shocking that he put him forward for consideration by the Senate Intelligence Committee. So the president has been using this sort of like a game, but this is our national security and our national security should never be a game and it shouldn't be a bargaining chip. And over the last couple of days, he's now inserted the SAVE Act into this process. What that means for my constituents in Arizona, I've got hundreds of thousands of tribal members that often don't have a birth certificate. They don't have a passport. Even though they vote by mail, they often have to make a 75 mile trip to even get to a mailbox, a polling place to vote in person. It's out of the question. He's trying to disenfranchise millions of Americans from voting and he's inserting that into this process. So you have the combination of Americans are becoming less safe and he's now inserted weakening our democracy into this. So I mean, my point here is the president has lost his way on this issue. He should stop doing things at 4am and tweeting without sharing his plans with maybe some people around him who could advise him, but this has become a complete debacle. And now it's up to the White House to figure out a path forward here. We had a path forward as of yesterday and today we don't. And that's because of this president and his advisors. Well, I'm not going to reveal confidence, but I can tell you that when Pulte was first announced, people in Donald Trump's national security team, I think were shocked. You then saw comments of my Republican partners who almost to a person said he was unqualified. We worked together to try to provide two or three different offerings. Those were not taken. It appeared that the pressure got so great and the choice was so unqualified that the president stepped back and said, well, he's only going to be acting. We made clear that we needed to see a serious replacement. I was going to give tough questions for Jake. He was, I can assure you, even if Jake Clinton had been confirmed, many Democrats were going to vote against him. That's the right. But to take somebody who at least had the national security experience and had a background and has not got a record of disclosing classified information, and then to have him yanked unceremoniously in the middle of the night, debacle was an understatement. Playing with our national security this way. It's outrageous. I mean, could you imagine some of my friends on the Republican side who are viewed as like the security hawks, if this had been a Democratic president doing these antics, they'd be threatening to burn the house down. Yeah, I got to go to a leadership meeting. I got to run. Yes, right. No, right here, right here. Well, any questions for me? And then I got to run a leadership meeting. Yeah, there's a simple way. It's on our Republican colleagues to work with us to find a capable director, not someone who's a menace. And second, then to work with us on renewing Pfizer. It's up to them. It's up to them. This is Republican president, Republican House, Republican Senate, all screwing up with each other. They've got to come to an agreement and they've got to have the courage to buck the president who clearly doesn't want a DNI director and doesn't want Pfizer renewed. All he wants is Pulte. Pulte, it is so obvious to everybody that Pulte to to have Pulte at the hands of the gears with these tools would be dangerous to America. And even our Republican colleagues know it.