Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says It’s “Dangerous” That Tulsi Gabbard Is Politicizing Intelligence “to make sure that content is basically driven to reinforce this administration’s views”

See below for video and a few highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s latest press availability, held earlier today (bolding added by me for emphasis of key points):

• “…the jaw-dropping actions of this president to basically accept a $400 million Qatari souped-up jet to be Air Force One. I mean, is there no clearer case of a clear violation of the emoluments clause in the constitution, where a foreign entity cannot give a gift to a president of the United States that has this kind of value? And the idea  the Qataris are doing this…because they’re expecting nothing in return is naive to say the least. And I can tell you, again, from my position leading the intelligence community, the amount of time, effort and stripping down of this jet to make sure there’s not bugs or other listening devices or other security breaches on the plane – and it would be a fool to assume they’re not put there – would turn this free gift into something that would cost the taxpayers a lot of money. And again, it just baffles my mind that Americans are going to sit by and say the president ought to be taking a $400 million souped-up jet from a country that at times has been a place that has supported terrorists and harbored terrorists. So huge concerns there…
• “Meanwhile back at home, the House keeps barreling along on their so-called one great beautiful bill. And I can tell you nothing will be more devastating in Virginia than the kind of cuts that’ll take place, a lot of this on Medicaid cuts, and that’s going to leave about 14 million Americans without health care, and the number we’re trying to refine it in Virginia, it will be in the hundreds of thousands will lose health care. And they’ll lose it not only in terms of direct Medicaid expansion, but those Virginians who also buy their health insurance in the marketplace, they will see price hikes 200%, 300%, 400% if the subsidies are removed. And come November, if we can’t slow this down, it is going to jolt literally hundreds of thousands Virginians – they’ll either lose care or they’ll be priced out of coverage. On top of that, candidly, rural hospitals in southwest and southside, even in parts of the valley, they very well way have to close their doors. The whole funding cycle of how many in rural communities patients are Medicaid patients and the hospitals margins are thin enough, you take this payment system away this quickly, and you will have rural hospitals across Virginia close. And where will people turn for example for OBGYN or other kind of services if you don’t have a local hospital? It will be it will be devastating.”
• “On top of that – and this hasn’t received nearly as much attention – but is going to be cuts to what’s called SNAP, this is basically food assistance – meals on wheels will have huge cuts. You know, we spent a long time trying to make sure that kids could get a healthy breakfast at school or at lunch – you could learn a lot better if you’ve got food in your stomach. Well, those programs will be almost destroyed, and do we really want kids trying to learn hungry? You know, these are pennies on the dollar, but to cut this kind of food assistance, it’s just cruel, there’s no other word about it, there’s no real justification in terms of long-term savings, it also undermines some of our agricultural communities. So we’ll see if some of the Republican friends who are expressing these concerns will have the courage to actually say no. But if it does pass the House, I will do everything possible to make sure that these cuts don’t take place, and that means we’ll have to stop this bill in the Senate.”
• [On Tulsi Gabbard firing “the top two career officials leading the National Intelligence Council, the senior most analytical group in the intelligence community whose job it is to understand and assess the biggest threats facing the United States.”] “I absolutely do. I mean, the most important virtue of a strong intelligence service is willingness to speak truth to power. And these National Intelligence Center leaders, they’ve worked there under Democrats, Republicans, I believe they both actually were were serving in the community under President Trump as well in the first term. And the idea that Tulsi Gabbard, who almost daily insults the intelligence workforce by claiming they’re ‘deep state’ or somehow acting against the interest of the administration, she is almost single-handedly destroying the morale amongst the intelligence community. And we’ve got in Virginia and the whole DMV, that is where the vast majority of intelligence professionals live and work. And there’s not a day that goes by we don’t hear of concerns about the politicization of the intelligence product. If that takes place, if she is able to with her attacks on so-called ‘deep state’ intelligence officers, and turn the intelligence community to nothing but an endorsement of whatever Trump policy he puts forward depending on which side of the bed he gets up to and each morning, it will be devastating, it will make America less safe. And as we’ve already seen because of her and Pete Hegseth’s sloppy handling of classified information, our allies around the world will stop sharing intelligence with us if they view that the American intelligence services are no longer independent but politicized. They’re not going to share their best stuff with us, it’s just the fact of life. And I just again, I know a lot of my Republican friends say they support national security, but their complete silence on this matter, firing of these officials, are trying to actually even take the the briefers who provide the president’s daily brief, which by the way he is at an all-time low of even reading or absorbing that information, and somehow move it away from the CIA and move it to the director of national intelligence – this is a way to make sure that content is basically driven to reinforce this administration’s views. That is dangerous. It undermines the integrity of the intelligence community. And we are seeing a community that is already with extremely low morale. This would be like a gut punch to the professionalism and independence that has been I think the hallmark of this community.”