WASHINGTON—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Appropriations, Banking, and Foreign Relations Committees and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, yesterday joined The Lead With Jake Tapper to discuss the appropriate U.S. role in the aftermath of the collapse of Syria’s Assad regime, along with his support for President Donald Trump’s cabinet nominations.
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Partial Transcript
Hagerty on U.S. role following collapse of the Assad regime: “I think the U.S., right now, certainly is, and should be, continuing to communicate with various leaders on the ground to help get to a point where we do know who to work with. And certainly, the goal overall is to ensure that stability ensues there. Israel, our allies in the region, should take the lead. The U.S. should be supportive—I certainly don’t think we need to be entering and getting involved directly—but I do think that this is something that we should be watching extremely closely, because the last thing we want, Jake, is to see Assad’s chemical weapons, to see any of the terrorist groups that are there in any way get into a position where they could actually hurt America here in the homeland.”
Hagerty on his support for Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination to be National Intelligence Director: “Congresswoman Gabbard is a decorated veteran. She has been a wonderful member of the military. President Trump has hired her for a very specific job—he’s in the process of doing that—and she’s actually raised questions with respect to the intelligence community, I think, that need to be asked, that need to be delivered upon. Also, Tulsi represents a broadening of the tent, if you will, bringing in people from a variety of backgrounds. President Trump won the election by broadening the tent. I’m pleased to see her do this, and I think she’s going to move through the process. I think she’ll make good progress. And at the end of the day, President Trump’s policies are what’s going to drive this Administration, and Tulsi Gabbard should be a loyal member of his cabinet and follow those policies.”
Hagerty on his support for Kash Patel’s nomination to be FBI Director: “I’ll say this: I think Kash is, in every sense, right to be calling out the team there at the FBI that back in 2016, used a Clinton-fabricated dossier as an excuse to come and spy on the Trump campaign. The whole context and pretext for this Russia thing that hampered the Trump campaign, the first several years of its Administration, all of this emanated from the FBI. All of it needs to be cleaned up. And even if you look forward to 2020, the FBI collaborated with [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken and the so-called 51 intelligence experts to hide Hunter Biden’s laptop. They went out and front ran that story to major social media organizations to basically say it’s going to be Russian Disinformation. The FBI was complicit in this. There really is a lot that needs to be cleaned up, Jake, and Kash is very much focused on this.”
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