Yesterday, Politico posted video of Sen. Mark Warner responding to one of their questions, posed to him at the Munich Security Conference. In that response, Sen. Warner riffed on Democrats’ tarnished “brand”; “ideological purity” and “over-the-top ‘wokeism’” being a “recipe for disaster,” splintered media, the importance of culture, etc. Those comments resulted in a LOT of responses, but actually they were only a very small part of the interview, which covered a wide range of important topics. Now, fortunately, Politico has posted video of Sen. Warner’s full interview (which they really should have done in the first place). See below for that, as well as a transcript and highlights (in bold). Enjoy?
- “I think [Ukrainian] President Zelenskyy made a strong case for us to continue to stand with Ukraine, what’s at stake not just for Ukraine but for Europe and for that matter the world. And my hope is that as one of the folks who’ve been one of the strongest supporters of Ukraine, I wish we’ve been able to get the last aid package six months earlier, but I still think the Ukrainians while outnumbered on the front, particularly the drone activity recently, I hope he’s starting to shift a little bit of the battlefront tactics.”
- “I don’t think the vice president spoke for the majority of Americans. I don’t think he spoke obviously for the majority of Democrats. I don’t even think he spoke for the majority of Republicans in terms of how he views the alliance with Europe, how critical it is to America’s long-term security. And if everything becomes simply a transaction tactic, then the kind of 70 plus years of alliance that we’ve had won’t stand the test of time. And I was disappointed by the tone. As somebody, it was our committee – the intelligence committee – that did the deepest dive into the Russian intervention in the 2016 elections, it was completely bipartisan, for him to also kind of underestimate the power of misinformation and disinformation candidly shows that I’m not sure he’s read much history, the ability of particularly Russia in previous engagements to overthrow regimes based upon misinformation, disinformation campaigns. That is real and it can be now done at speed and scale with AI tools that make the threat even greater.”
- “I think if suddenly he or the Secretary of Defense are starting to take negotiating items off the table, how is that anything but positive for Russia? Now, of course, that follows on some of the activities of the DOGE group that again have been celebrated by Russia, by China, by Iran, as you start to see for example 70 years of American soft power through USAID and other institutions frankly try to be almost erased or disappeared in what literally are the first 3 weeks of this Administration. And again, that’s great news for a China or a Russia that can come in and very quickly supplement where America has provided humanitarian or medical aid in countries are terribly important. And there’s not a single person, current or particularly some of our retired military, that don’t strongly stand up for the soft power that foreign aid represents.
- “Well first of all we don’t know yet…the Democrats on the intelligence committee have written to try to say all right who are these DOGE folks, what level of clearance do they have? We’ve already seen release of classified information in terms of the National Reconnaissance Organization, NRO, release of the the number of employees; that may have just been ignorance for that individual not to realize that that’s classified. Or the kind of mistake made on sending names of CIA agents…that’s crazy. I mean it shows a complete lack of understanding of how long it takes to get a clearance and how long it takes to train someone to be that careless. And we don’t know the security level clearances of the the DOGE folks. I do think our committee’s always been bipartisan, Senator Cotton who’s the chair now, I was chair until recently, the vice chair, we’re going to I believe jointly try to get these answers. But I have huge security concerns when you have 22 year olds who may not even appreciate the value of the information they have being so careless. For example, the one individual who was over at Treasury who was 25 and then got fired for a while because of racist comments and then got rehired, this individual in effect having visibility into America’s checkbook, it’s no secret to say that America or any other nation-state sometimes does covert actions through another entity. You send out that kind of information and you could destroy operations that literally have taken years to build.”
- “Let’s put it like this, we are a very bipartisan committee that’s always hung together…I raised concerns about the new DNI, I now hope that she’s going to be successful, but I think there are a number of folks who’ve got concerns. And it’s going to be interesting to see when and where this breaks. It may not break at the Congressional level first. You know Virginia is home for a lot of federal employees; we’ve got about 150,000, we have lots of government contractors. We are seeing for example on the so-called government freeze that supposedly has been unfrozen, yet we have community health centers around rural Virginia that are shutting down because they didn’t get their funds, we have Head Start programs stopping. And my belief is this may start to bubble from the ground up, where local Republican elected officials will be the first to break, as we’ve got projects in Virginia we’ve been working for years, on economic development, that suddenly the money that will make the projects up for grabs. So I think it may start at the local level and move to the state level and then hopefully percolate to the federal level. But of an evidence of how significant this is, and we go back to Russell Vought, who’s the head new head of OMB who made his claim and he’s been quite successful that he wanted to traumatize the federal workforce. But to give you an example of that trauma, you know Senators oftentimes do what’s called tele-town halls where you have a firm call out the random numbers and you say, pick up and Senator Warner will be on the line for an hour. You usually get about 3 to 5,000 people on one of those calls. Tim Kaine and I did one the other day – we had 71,000 people…one out of every 10 voters in Virginia and the thing was 60,000 of them stayed on for the whole hour. So this is causing huge concern. And you know the unfortunate thing is even as a senior senator I didn’t have full answers for a lot of their questions.”
- “Remember, whether it’s Five Eyes or our other alliances on the intel side, there’s no document that says we’re going to share this information, you share that information. I mean I think America’s intelligence community is the best, but we get about 50% of our intelligence from our allies. And that exchange of information is totally based on trust. And if that trust is burned, then that information is not going to be shared…at this point I think everybody and some of our intelligence partners that I’ve met with here in Munich I think they’re in a wait-and-see mode. I think they want to work with the administration. They hope that the norms about protecting classified information will be maintained. They hope that if they share some of the most important information they collect or intelligence they collect it will be protected. But I think there is a understandable wariness. I’m thinking folks are all hoping for the best...intelligence sharing is a two-way street, many of the allies don’t want to lose the intelligence they obviously get from America. But these are the kind of relationships that, once burned, takes a long time to recover. And…God forbid that happens, it will make the United States less secure if we have less of that sharing.”
- “It’s crazy, I mean it’ll be interested to see if you can actually document any savings, but the notional idea that you’re going to offer a buyout to a CIA field operative or a buyout to an NSA code breaker and replace him with a 22-year-old coder the way you might be able to replace somebody at a company in the valley shows a complete lack of understanding of what the intelligence community does, how long it takes for people to get this expertise. And it is NOT interchangeable. So I think there is still…the leadership at some…of the agencies I know have been quickly trying to include more people in their excluded category, but to me from the outside and seeing this it seems like it’s chaotic.”
- “On DOGE, I think there’s, as somebody who was a business guy before I was in politics, the idea of a DOGE made a lot of sense to me. You know, there are lots of ways you could bring more efficiency – I mean, defense contracting, cutting back, making loser pays when you do contract resolution, trying to have more fixed-price contracts. That kind of actually where you could bring efficiency, bring innovation – that was what I thought we were going to get instead of a sledgehammer coming at the workforce with people that have virtually no knowledge of even the functions of the agencies they’re going after. And then the backtracking we saw over at Department of Energy when they said, oops, maybe shouldn’t fire all the people that take control of our nuclear materials. That kind of lack of knowledge and kind of irresponsible approach, I think it’s making people scratch their head, obviously making Americans scratch their head, it’s making I think our European friends scratch their heads. It’s one of the reasons why with some of my Republican colleagues as we were coming over, we thought – and this was before the vice president’s speech – that this was the most important Munich conference we’d have to come to, to try to say you know regardless of what may be coming out of the White House we’re not walking away from NATO, we’re not walking away from the alliance with Europe, we’re not walking away from our trading partnerships…It depends on which Americans you’re talking about…I’m not sure, and I can’t say that I’ve heard every one of my Congressional colleagues, but I don’t think any of them have echoed the vice president’s comments. Now, again, there may be self- selection if you come on this trip you’re more pro-NATO, pro-Europe, but I’ve have yet to hear anyone you know echo that kind of and also I believe a most naive dismissal of the power of misinformation and disinformation, particularly at scale with technology tools.”
- “It’s hard to believe, but we’re not even a month into this new Administration; in dog years it feels like it’s been about 20 years. But I think, as in any new Administration, there’s going to be competition. I think folks like Mike Waltz and others who kind of have a more traditional view of of these relationships, I think time will tell who wins out. But I’m not sure…everybody sometimes describes President Trump as crazy like a fox or something. But with the vice president’s comments, the Secretary of Defense’s comments and how they then get backtracked back and forth, it feels if this is strategy, it’s at a level much higher than my ability to compute, it seems to me a lot more just kind of ad hoc throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what what might stick.”
- “I think the first week or so, Democrats were reeling. I think since that time, both in terms of virtual unanimity, and…listen, I voted for many of President Trump’s nominees first term, I worked closely with particularly Secretary Mnuchin, that first week or so I voted for a lot of Trump’s nominees, the ones that I thought were were kind of in the mainstream. I think that has changed. I think you’re seeing you know a lot of redress to the courts and the courts so far have stood up for rule of law. I think the brave US attorney in New York standing up against the kind of outrageous attempted pardon of the mayor. I think you’re also starting to see Americans rise up; there was not the kind of resistance movement that happened after the first Trump effort, but I think it’s now, you know the level of voices rising, the amount of kind of output that we’re trying to put out has dramatically increased.”
- “Let’s see where [Trump’s approval rating] is in two weeks. Let’s see where that is, as some of these effects of community health centers shutting down or thousands of your neighbors being put out of work that happen to work for the government. And because the government is not just in Washington DC. And one of things that I’m not sure my European friends know is the size of the federal workforce in America in 2025 is about the size it was in 1970; it’s not grown with this massive bureaucracy. And when people will start saying your food inspector is being fired, your park ranger is being fired, that’s where I think people will start to feel these effects. But there is at the Congressional level, there are effects when you lose and when you’ve got a trifecta, the other party having all three both houses of Congress and the presidency. And with some of the rule changes, is one of the reasons why you know 10 years ago when we got rid of the filibuster on nominees and moved it to a 50-vote majority, I thought that was going back and bite us, it obviously has.”
- “I think you’ve got to find, you know Donald Trump is president of the United States, I want him to succeed because I want America to succeed. But that does not mean you give him a pass on irresponsible actions around national security. That doesn’t mean you turn a blind eye when I believe you’re taking illegal actions. I mean the crazy buyout...what is the initial sign of any scammer call right away? Offer expires at midnight! Well that was the approach was taken on the buyouts. There is no money for these buyouts; the federal government in United States runs out on March 14th. I fear these people are going to be left not only without a job but probably without the promise of eight months pay. And where we on those kind of actions, we will fight to every level. But I am not going to go into the sense of you know there are things that we can help make sure America stays strong, particularly in terms of the authoritarian threats. I’m not going to resist on those efforts.”
- “I don’t agree with Bibi on a lot of things, but he’s a very skilled politician. And for him to try to say, well, maybe there’s merits of good ideas [regarding Trump’s Gaza plan], I think everybody was pretty surprised…How’s that for the understatement of the day?...some of his willingness to constantly move his government to the right, I don’t see any path that has displacement of 2 million Palestinians in Gaza. I also continue to be amazed with all of the challenges and some of the internal corruption within the the Palestinian Authority. I’m still amazed that the Palestinian Authority security forces still keep showing up for work each day on the West Bank. And I continue to fear that if someday they all decide we’re not going to work, you could have what would make previous intifadas look like nothing compared to the potential for violence on the West Bank. And that kind of, whether it’s Gaza or the West Bank, precludes the ability to go ahead and finally negotiate a treaty between Saudi Arabia and Israel, it diminishes the ability to have the Sunni nations in the region along with Israel, along with America, along with Europe have a more of a united front against Iran. And I think that’s frankly to Israel’s long-term detriment.”
- “What about my job?…whichever the outrage happens and…how you temper your reaction to things, how you realize this is the kind of classic cliche that it’s a marathon not a sprint, how you reassure people? You can’t have the volume at all the way…on DEFCON 5 on every item. I think that’s what President Trump is doing it by flooding the zone.”
- “First of all…I expected at the beginning of Trump a flood, I didn’t expect a tsunami. And I think after…that first week…we had the initial EOs, they were all kind of in the the range of what was expected. You know, the DOGE crowd of young folks without clearances getting access to information just so goes against the grain of everything I’ve learned in the national security community for the last 12 to 14 years, it’s just stunning to me. The fact that you could see the 70 years of soft power, and… like in any entity there are bad programs, but the idea that you’re going to erase USAID and all the good it does? I mean I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year on Sudan where more people die every day than Gaza and Ukraine combined. We spent most of last year trying to open up humanitarian channels to Sudan and candidly there’s no good guys in Sudan, the RSF and the SAF…The fact that we have American medicine rotting because we can’t pay the AID workers to distribute to the population. And the fact that China can come right behind and for pennies on the dollar play a much more major role, that in my mind is a DEFCON 5 even though it may not be to the most of the American public. So the long-term loss that we have in some of these nations is irreplaceable.”
- “One, do I think there’ll be Democratic votes on the Republican reconciliation plans that are out there? No! We’ve not been invited in. You know, the one thing about this process you can see in American politics, whether it was the Trump tax bill, whether it was Obamacare when you pass something with only one party, that means all you’re going to do is relitigate it at some later time. You know there is a value in bipartisan, not because the ideas are better, but because both parties then own the good and the bad of the program. And when they’re talking about literally trillions of cuts and frankly where all the benefits are going to go to those at the top. And I’m a capitalist, pro-business Democrat, when all the benefits of these tax cuts are going to go to the top, that’s not fair or right. And…I remember 15 years ago I had my first gang, was around the Simpson Bowles plan when I thought, oh my God, America’s going to go hell in a hand basket because we were approaching 17 trillion in debt and how we were going to raise revenues and cut back on spending. We were horribly unsuccessful obviously, we got called debt Cassandras. Now debt’s at 37 trillion, annual debt payments exceed the defense budget, and with this four to five to 7 trillion that you can see coming out of the reconciliation plan this is going to bite us, this is again an attack on our national security.”
- “I have not ever lived through a presidential election that had less to do with issues. I don’t think getting rid of tax on tips was something that drove the whole election, but that may have been the only new idea that came frankly from either candidate. I think the Democrats’ brand is really bad. And I think this was an election based on culture. And the Democrats’ kind of failure to connect on a cultural basis with a wide swath of Americans is hugely problematic…When I first ran for governor 25 years ago in Virginia, I had a bluegrass band, I sponsored a NASCAR truck, I had Sportsman for Warner. I didn’t change who I was, but I said I appreciate the culture and I don’t think until you have a cultural connection there’re ever going to people are going to listen to you on your issues…”
- “I think the majority of the party realizes that the ideological purity of some of the groups is a recipe for disaster, and that candidly the attack on over-the-top ‘wokeism’ was a valid attack. The irony of course is – and this sounds like a a whining Democrat, which maybe I am – is that Democrats do some stupid things in 2019 and occasionally one person says one thing that sticks forever; President Trump can say virtually anything and it’s forgotten within the same 24-hour news period. So that is a whine and a complaint but it’s the reality!…Be crazy all the time?…But I do think acknowledging the over ‘wokeism’. I don’t think the kind of notion that some in my party say of, well, we just got to turn out more people. You know, I think they did turn out more people and folks that we thought were going to go for Democrats aren’t. I think a lot of that goes back to culture; until you can make a cultural connection, I’m not sure people are going to listen to you on issues. And particularly as we now live in a world where the number of people who watch a Politico or read a newspaper or do the normal means of communication or the old traditional means of communication is less than 50%. And… Trump was brilliant at, Trump was so ahead of his time on sorting that out with a huge reinforcing network of supporters, of followers – that’s extraordinary and the Democrats have got a lot to learn from that.”
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