Episode 5530: Somali Immigration Overrun Maine; Coming Up Short On Deportations

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Bannon`s War Room 54 min 6 speakers 4 chapters transcribed 1 month ago
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Why are White House intelligence documents being declassified so quickly?

Sarah Rathner 0:00
Katie, I think the biggest tell that this is an effort to sell a narrative as opposed to a truly legitimate law enforcement investigation or other national security kind of effort to move or improve our national security is the fact that this effort from what we know was so rushed. These millions of documents that a team of advisors working out of the White House collected was reviewed and declassified within three weeks. And it appeared to be a very rushed effort to kind of grab things without them fully being, uh, without seeing the full picture. In fact, a White House official told me that they were still reviewing many of the things, that they didn't have answers to some of the questions that we posed.
Sarah Rathner 0:49
And so I think what we are seeing here is an effort to create confusion, but also to let the person who believes that these elections were stolen so dearly, the president, continue to say that. And we're seeing how he's able to use federal resources, use investigative resources to try and fit that narrative. And I think one of the most important things is that the very people that would be helpful in kind of assessing some of this information, the very national security analysts who cover China, who cover Russia, those people were fired weeks before. So we have lost so much of the kind of intelligence infrastructure that allows us to evaluate whether or not this is accurate information and what should be done.
Unknown 1:37
So I wonder if it really was just an attempt to find people who would go with whatever the president wanted them to say, regardless of whether the evidence was there in any form at all. And I ask that because there's an interesting article about Bill Pulte, Donald Trump's current acting DNI, and the lengths he was willing to go, but then getting cold feet about it. Here's what Pulte said. He got really scared, according to Politico piece, by the whole thing and pulled back, said one of the two senior officials. He got POTUS all spun up and then was incredibly scared when he realized people could die with his reckless behavior. This is regarding revealing the names of intelligence officials who they were going to accuse of concealing election interference with Trump.
Unknown 2:29
What do you make of that, Sarah?
Sarah Rathner 2:32
i think it reflects you have the difference between kind of having these conspiracy theories when you're out of government and being in the position of having to make these tough choices and i think the fact that that cold feet that happened very very late in the game here because our understanding uh from white house officials is that there were plans for others to make statements there were plans for additional kind of high-level cabinet officials to create state to say more about the fact that they allegedly were misled and then we didn't see any of that most notably director Radcliffe's statement so I think that this reflects a you know a difference between understanding the ramifications of what this material means and being outside of government and being able to you know speak
Sarah Rathner 3:20
been a narrative or believe, you know, not have that raw intelligence to understand. And I think that's a really important point. Much of this was really raw intelligence that was later in the same documents demonstrated to not fit the conclusions that the White House was telling us that it fit. And so I think that that is the danger here. That's why we have such a kind of exhaustive and multi-tiered process, why we have multiple agencies who review information and make recommendations. It's so that we can, with certainty, make sure that raw intelligence is translated into something that is usable and actionable in a way that doesn't harm our national security.
Unknown 4:03
Listen to some folks that Alex Tabet talked to in Iowa. First one is a three-time Donald Trump voter, and the second is a 22-year-old man who did vote for Donald Trump in 24. Let's listen.
Stephen K. Bannon 4:17
Do you think that the president should be focusing on something else other than elections of years past?
Unknown 4:23
Yeah, I mean, you know, we got enough going on right now with Iran and everybody.

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