NEWS: Kennedy Presses Hegseth On Xi And Mauritius Hours Before Trump's China Trip

[0:00] followed by Senator Murphy, and I know that Secretary has a time departure. [0:06] Thank you for your indulgence, Madam Chair. [0:08] Thank you. [0:08] Mr. Secretary, welcome. [0:13] Can we agree that if you took President Xi Jinping and turned him upside down and shook him, [0:22] that the African country of Mauritius would fall out of his pocket? [0:29] I don't know if we can, but I'd like to indulge you on that. [0:33] Well, let me try it another way. [0:35] So, Mauritius is good friends with China, is it not? [0:44] I understand there's some level of a relationship there. [0:46] Yeah, like they're BFFs or whatever the young people call. [0:53] Prime Minister Starmer wants to give Diego Garcia and the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, [1:06] which has virtually no connection with Chagos Islands, [1:10] who will promptly give a spare key to Diego Garcia to China. [1:17] Is that accurate? [1:20] What I would underscore is that Diego Garcia is a very strategic location, [1:23] and having the ability to operate there for the United States military is going to be critically important in the future. [1:28] But Starmer wants to give it away, does he not? [1:29] As President Trump has stated, there's been some pretty bad deals made by the Brits as it pertains to Diego Garcia. [1:35] Well, I'd like to hear you. [1:36] I mean, the President's been back and forth on this, and I've talked to him a lot. [1:43] He is not going to agree to that, is he? [1:48] No, as the President has stated, it was a bad deal that was cut by the UK and Prime Minister Starmer [1:54] as it pertains to Diego Garcia as evidenced by limitations that our troops could face in how we use that island. [2:00] Yes. [2:00] All right. [2:01] I appreciate that. [2:03] My understanding is that the classified information and unclassified, it's public, [2:13] showed that our intelligence discovered that not that long ago, Iran had developed a new Supreme Leader. [2:21] Now, dead is fried chicken, but they have a new Supreme Leader, [2:24] had developed a new game plan for their nuclear weapons program. [2:29] And their game plan was to jack up missile, both ballistic and cruise missile production [2:38] and drone production, and put together this huge stockpile of missiles and drones, [2:46] at which point they would turn to the United States and Israel and the rest of the world and say, [2:50] we're going to restart our nuclear weapons program. [2:53] If you bomb us again, like you did in June, we will destroy the Middle East. [3:01] And by the way, our missiles can now reach Berlin and London and Paris. [3:06] Is that my understanding of one of the reasons, the main reason we went into Iran? [3:11] I think that's pretty well articulated, Senator, that they were trying to use the umbrella of their conventional, [3:17] established conventional stockpiles to blackmail the rest of the world in pursuit of their own nuclear weapons. [3:22] Now, let's talk about Iran today. [3:24] Can we agree that Iran, both the public and the private sector, is being held together right now with spit and duct tape? [3:34] Spit and duct tape is not a doctrinal term, Senator, but I would agree with something along those lines. [3:38] It's a Louisiana term. [3:40] I mean, seven out of ten Iranians are out of work. [3:46] We bomb their infrastructure. [3:49] They've got 70 percent inflation. [3:52] Their Internet's shut off. [3:55] You know better than I do what we've done on the military side. [4:00] Their launchers, gone. [4:02] Their missiles, for the most part, gone. [4:05] Their drones, gone. [4:06] Do they have some left? [4:07] Yeah. [4:08] Their Navy, gone. [4:09] Their Air Force, gone. [4:10] You can get in an airplane, you personally, and fly anywhere you want to across Iran right now and feel safe, [4:19] because they don't have any air defenses. [4:21] It will be, in my opinion, 20 years and cost a trillion dollars before they're even back somewhat to normal. [4:31] And I don't have the slightest idea where they're going to get the money. [4:36] If they think China's going to give it to them or Russia, they've got to learn a hard lesson. [4:41] To that extent, have we achieved our objective in Iran? [4:44] Your objective, as this president has stated from the beginning, is to ensure they don't get a nuclear weapon. [4:51] And President Trump remains dedicated to ensuring that happens. [4:54] And everything you described with the military degradation of their country was in service of ensuring they never get a nuclear weapon. [4:59] This is what—I never understood the president to say, I want a regime change in Iran, and I want to obtain all of their fissile material. [5:16] I've never heard him say that. [5:19] What I heard him say was, I don't want to go back through it. [5:23] But our goal is to cripple them so they can't blackmail the rest of the world. [5:27] Now, many of my Democratic friends are now trying to say, we have lost. [5:34] Here's a footnote. [5:36] You're not going to get Democratic support. [5:39] They're not. [5:39] They're not going to support you, Mr. Secretary, because they don't support President Trump. [5:46] I know that's not a newsflash. [5:47] But they say, we've lost. [5:55] I don't get it. [5:56] I don't understand how we've lost. [5:57] Is the strait closed? [5:58] Yes. [6:00] But if we continue that blockade, where nothing's going in and nothing's going out, eventually they're going to have to shut down their oil fields. [6:07] Half of their oil fields are low pressure. [6:10] Once they put them down, they're not going to get them back up. [6:13] Am I missing something here? [6:15] No, that's why the president is right when he says, we hold all the cards. [6:18] And we do. [6:19] And we've got the best dealmaker in the world able to make the best deal for the United States of America. [6:24] And if we have to go back at it as the Department of War, we're ready to do that as well. [6:28] Well, keep two things in mind. [6:31] You're not going to win over my Democratic friends. [6:34] It's not worth getting your blood pressure up. [6:38] Focus on other things. [6:40] And number two, just keep this in mind. [6:43] America first does not have to mean America alone. [6:49] America first does not have to mean America alone. [6:57] We need all the friends we can get. [6:59] They need to carry their own weight. [7:01] They need to pay their bills. [7:03] But the more the better. [7:04] I'm sorry I went way over, but I sure do appreciate it. [7:06] Thank you, Senator Kennedy. [7:07] Senator Murphy. [7:07] Thank you, Madam Chair.