Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says He’s a NO on Defense Appropriations BIll, NO on Jay Clayton, Not Sure Yet on Government Funding…

Speaking to Bloomberg Television yesterday afternoon, Sen. Mark Warner had a lot of interesting things to say – see below for highlights and video:

• ” I’m a no [on the military appropriations bill] because the Defense Department still has roughly $85 billion of unspent money. I agree that we have, you know, taken down our stocks of munitions. They need to be replenished. You take it out of already appropriated money. This was a war of choice. And the irony is to start a war of choice without a plan or a plan that we were going to bomb Iran into submission. The four goals that the administration laid out. Regime change – how’s that going? The current crowd is worse. Enriched uranium – we haven’t gotten it out; it would take 15,000 troops on the ground. Getting rid of the missiles and drones? Obviously not the case. And Strait of Hormuz? Seems to me, gas now back to $4 and diesel about $5, that’s not working out as well. This was a war of choice. The president never made the case to the American people. It’s dreadfully unpopular. We want to replenish those troops. And I do. Take it from the funds that have already been appropriated that are sitting and sitting in the basically the budget at DoD.”
• [On voting to fund the government],  “it feels like throwing in the towel now. when we’ve got weeks left before September 30th…Is it a clean CR or is it not a clean CR? I got enough on my plate right now, I’m not focused on this yet. If it comes over, I’ll take a good solid look…the thing that I worry, because I do think there are some changes at the Department of Defense that are really important. They’re trying to move to multi-year contracts. They’re trying to see if we can squeeze more resources out. I mean, the deputy secretary, Steve Feinberg, who was a business guy, I have a lot of respect for him. But you can’t ask the Democrats to write a blank check when they haven’t said, okay, usually there’s a ratio between defense spending and domestic spending. They don’t even want to talk about that yet…In my state, you get through the election, and if the Big Ugly Bill law is actually implemented, we’ll throw 300,000 Virginians off of health care coverage for Medicaid. I’m supposed to then almost double the defense budget when we’re taking health care away so dramatically? This is not the way things are to operate. And frankly, the administration on some of these one- time items I don’t think is really only made the case.”
• “ I know, Jay Clayton, I like Jay Clayton. I worked with him well when he was head of the SEC. But I was bitterly disappointed when he came before the committee and couldn’t even say who was elected president in 2020 or when he had…I also was almost as much kind of strained my credibility that he wasn’t fully familiar with what Tulsi Gabbard had done in intervening in the obsession Trump has about losing the 2020 election and grabbing those voter files. And I just felt like I can’t in good conscience say, you’ve earned my vote. I voted against him today. But I will also quickly say, if he’s going to get confirmed, I’d like him to get confirmed quickly. Because you know what? We do know, at least in my view, who is a disaster is Bill Pulte, the acting director who has no national security background at all and is only in my mind, you know, qualification for the job was in his job is overseeing Fannie and Freddie in the housing markets, and he was willing to take private mortgage information and politically weaponize it. What could go wrong if he’s in charge of all 18 of our intelligence agencies?”
• “I was embarrassed by the president the other night. Not as a senator, not as a Democrat. I was embarrassed that the present United States would ask for this much time and go forward with a bunch of lies. Most responsible networks didn’t even treat it as news. And you’ve always seen, I mean, the hypocrisy of this guy is jaw dropping. You know, he’s saying China does all this. And yet today he was asked about China – ‘oh, no, they’re better now.’ He can’t even maintain the same story for five days. I think that speech was a disaster. I think we did a good job at it. I can assure you, the intelligence community, all 18 agencies. And the irony is, of course, who was in charge of the 2020 election? Donald Trump. It was his intelligence community. He was the president. They came back with a consensus view that all countries tried to influence China, Russia, Iran, Russia I wish to on behalf of Trump. But you never know whether the influence social media campaigns work or not. But no one interfered and changed a single vote. And then again, I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole, but the idea that, oh my gosh, China’s got a hold of our voter files – they’re  public information. Every country, friend and foe, I’m sure, buys up the data  of our voter files. And would act like that is a great reveal. And, you know, it was insane. So, you know, I do appreciate that that and one of the things I’ve been trying to do is get former members of the Intel community, military to speak to truth. So it’s not just coming from a partisan lines.”
• “I’m obsessed about AI. I think it can bring great positives, but there’s also a lot of downside. And so this is not a single bill. And by no means do I think all my answers are perfect ones. But if we don’t move quickly, all of the innovation could be squashed because of, frankly, fear from the American people from both the left and the right. So on data centers, I think there ought to be minimum federal standards around power usage, water usage, setbacks, and backup power, making sure communities know. And I don’t think the companies should get full accelerated depreciation until they meet those. I think most of us would agree that, you know, social media, we should have put some guardrails on. Social media is nothing compared to the ability of what AI can have to influence kids  – chat bots and encourage suicide, nonconsensual nudes. We’ve got to have and there’s some bipartisan efforts here as well. We ought to have some rules about at least not having the government buy some of the systems and allow them. I also lay out, I think I’m one of the first people to lay out at least a framework What duty of care ought to be around agentic AI agents. They are going to be more and more the way we interview and interact with the markets with a finance system. Let’s have some standard of care. Clock’s ticking. I think we also, in terms of with Mythos coming out, the Anthropic model, and there have been four more models since then. This raises huge national security concerns. And I think even the administration is realizing we’ve got to have some level of pre-testing, I believe it needs to be mandatory before we put these out in the wild. And then finally, I even believe there will be AI jobs created, but we could have a five-year gap. And unlike last transformations it won’t hit the low-skilled jobs, I think it’s going to hit our college graduates…I think we could hit 30% recent college graduate unemployment in the next two years, and we don’t even really know, you know, the best idea I may have heard is, yeah, take a third of the business majors and turn them into health care workers. But we’re going to need big ideas here…”

UPDATE 7/29: See below for a few video clips from Sen. Warner’s interview with Mehdi Hasan. And yes, I’m stunned that Warner agreed to do this interview, but…bravery points?

Sen. Mark Warner: “I would say that I have been a strong supporter of Israel. Of course, the Israel that I grew up with of Mosha Dayan and Abba Eban and others is very different than the Israel that my kids grew up with of Bibi Netanyahu, who basically have known no other Israeli leader. And the horror of what has happened in Gaza is inexcusable. Any Palestinian life, any Israeli life that’s lost is is is awful. I would also say we should not forget what happened on October 7th as well, which was horrific. So, it has taken me probably longer than many of my my friends have liked and  to make the distinction that you can be supportive of Israel and its right to exist but not agree with the Netanyahu government. And I recently have taken action on this. And my base…not just my base, I got to answer to every Virginian. Where I stood up and have for a long time stood up against for example the sale of bulldozers to do what’s happening on the West Bank. What’s happening on the West Bank is horrific as well…I would also say that the bombs, if used appropriately, could be in defense of a country. But again, you have every right – and I hear this from Virginians regularly –  and part of my job I feel like is I get hired, I’m going to use my best judgment on these things. I look at every one of these individually. There may be future votes and I’m not going to make any commitment, but you will see when I vote. I would add one thing and I know we’ve got we we’ve got more questions on Israel. I’d be happy to. I would hope that as more people die in Sudan every day than Gaza and Ukraine combined. I am right to be criticized for having been slow on the travesty of what’s happened in Gaza. But I would also beg…”

Sen. Mark Warner: “[Sen. Warner says he won’t call what’s happening in Gaza a “genocide” because] I am concerned that that would somehow give credence to the very same people that think that there should be no Israel, and ‘from the river to the sea’, and the existence of a a Jewish state. I don’t support. Now that linkage I understand… [Q: “Are the acts being committed in Gaza, are they genocidal?”]…I’m going to stick with the words that I choose…[Q: “Why are you willing to call it out elsewhere, but not in Gaza?”] Fair point. But I also think there are the I do believe there are forces that have been trying to that have taken the Israel conflict which has gone on way too long and use this as a a tool of for anti-semitism. I think we need to stand up against bias against all faiths. I would also point out, I hope you’ve seen as well, I think I’m the only senator since this conflict has started that’s gone to the floor of the Senate and spoke at length against the rise of anti-Muslim feelings across our country and pushed back on that. I’m not even sure all of my colleagues who have been much more forward-leaning have gone publicly to the floor of Senate…[Q: “You’ve taken a lot of money from AIPAC..Tell our viewers why you take that money and why they shouldn’t assume, as many do, that that money affects your votes and your position on Israel?”]…The one thing that I have felt through my whole career, governor, senator, is people hire me and then I’m going to do what I think is right. And I frankly resent accusations that somehow people who give money – no one’s going to buy my vote. They can fire me. That’s that is their right…I also take money from many Muslim-American groups.”

Sen. Mark Warner: “I am not going to put as a some kind of litmus test on who wants to support me, who doesn’t want me unless they are so outrageous. And some will say AIPAC falls into that category…I think that AIPAC has done Israel a disservice by making it support for Israel synonymous with support for the Israeli government.  And I think that’s a mistake…You know the wonderful thing.. I failed a couple times in business, my third time did very well. I’m self-aware enough that I’ve not been a white guy with the right education. I wouldn’t have got three chances. But the freedom of and I, you know, the prerequisites saying that somehow you need to do well to be able to be. But I’ve had many times where I’ve said to people who have tried to even insinuate you support this, I’ll support that. Keep your money…But I also would just say yeah, then that leads to the presumption that oh my gosh, everyone in politics must be bought off. I mean, I know many people believe that…Listen, if we can get rid of Citizens United, sign me up tomorrow…Because big money shouldn’t influence as much…I’ve had Republican donors since the beginning… I think there is lots of mischief going on in both parties primary seasons where groups trying to encourage or discourage or frankly often times try to support the candidate that may be the weakest in the general election. I think that’s a challenge and how we fix it short of campaign finance reform.”