Joe BLASTS DNI pick Jay Clayton's 'Orwellian' Senate Hearing

[0:00] It's a simple question, Mr. Clayton. [0:03] And I've answered it. [0:03] Who won the 2020 presidential election? [0:06] I've answered it. [0:08] You're here asking for the support of senators to lead America's intelligence community. [0:14] We've established that you have an obligation to be honest and forthright with this committee [0:19] and with the American public, but you refuse to answer a simple matter of fact about the 2020 election. [0:25] Is that right? [0:26] No, that's not right. [0:27] Then answer the question. [0:29] Who won the 2020 election? [0:30] I have answered the question. [0:31] Answer it. [0:32] What is your answer? [0:33] I've given you my answer. [0:35] What is your answer? [0:40] You refuse to answer a basic question about who won a presidential election, but you asked [0:47] to lead America's intelligence community. [0:50] Isn't it humiliating to be unable to answer this question, to have to indulge the president's [0:58] delusions? [1:00] We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. [1:07] Why can you not give it? [1:09] I think I gave you the answer. [1:10] To entertain the president's delusions. [1:16] I mean, over an issue, Willie, that if you wanted to take judicial notice of who won that [1:23] election, you could take judicial notice in any courtroom across America, there are 63 federal judges who said [1:32] that Biden won it. [1:34] You had the Supreme Court of the United States rejecting one Trump appeal after another, and even in [1:40] one Pennsylvania case, saying that there were not enough votes to even swing Pennsylvania. [1:47] You could just go on and on. [1:49] But again, you have this man, this learned man, who, again, more interested in the president's delusions about [1:59] 2020 than telling the truth. [2:02] And how can it not remind you, how can that sequence not remind people of George Orwell, [2:07] who said the party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and your ears? [2:16] And when I saw it, not to be melodramatic, but I thought of Hannah Arendt's The Origins of [2:22] Totalitarianism, where she said the first goal of tyrants is to tear down the institutions that protect [2:31] the society. [2:32] And the way they do that, authoritarians, they do that by replacing competence with blind loyalty. [2:43] And of course, she was talking about Hitler. [2:45] She was talking about Stalin. [2:48] We could be talking about Orban or any number of authoritarians through the years. [2:53] But, yeah, this is demeaning for him, but also frightening for us that he can't state what everybody in that room knew. [3:08] Yeah, and it's humiliating for him personally that's less important. [3:12] Senator Ossoff was right to point that out, that it is humiliating, that you can't be man enough to just say the truth. [3:17] What if you just said, I didn't like the outcome. [3:20] I voted for Donald Trump. [3:21] I supported Donald Trump in the 2020 election. [3:23] But Joe Biden won. [3:25] Donald Trump is president now, and that's why I'm here. [3:28] It's not that hard. [3:29] You wouldn't lose. [3:30] You wouldn't have your nomination pulled by Donald Trump if you just said that, which Donald Trump obviously was watching and was pleased with what he saw from Jay Clayton yesterday. [3:40] So there's the personal humiliation. [3:42] But also, this is an issue that's front and center again. [3:45] Donald Trump, the president of the United States, is going to make a primetime address tonight, repeating warmed-over conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. [3:53] And are we going to have a director of national intelligence who's going to go along with those, who's going to try in some way to affect these elections, these midterm elections in 2026 at the direction of President Trump, to try in some way to affect the 2028 presidential election under the direction of Donald Trump. [4:12] So it's not just that it's embarrassing, and boy, is it for him, but it's also a serious matter in front of us right now as a country. [4:21] David Rode was in the room yesterday. [4:23] He's the MSNOW senior national security reporter. [4:25] He joins us now along with MSNOW justice and intelligence reporter Ken Delaney. [4:30] Guys, good morning to you both. [4:31] What stood out to you, David, as you sat in through that hearing all day yesterday? [4:36] It was honestly energizing and a sign that our democracy can be healthy and is healthy in that a congressional hearing actually mattered. [4:47] Those questions were very sharp. [4:49] He, Clayton, chose to answer it that way. [4:51] And it was, the question is, you're going to be the director of national intelligence. [4:55] Essentially, they're asking, will you defend our constitution? [4:58] Will you defend our democracy? [5:00] And the fact that he wouldn't answer the question, and again, that framing just, viewers probably know this, [5:05] all these nominees who come up are so fearful of the president that they will only say Joe Biden was certified as the winner of the election. [5:13] They will not say the words, Joe Biden got the most votes. [5:16] And he did, and that is fact. [5:18] And I agree with what Joe said. [5:19] This is like this epic, critical moment for the country. [5:23] Jay Clayton failed. [5:25] John Ossoff just ate him alive. [5:28] And Mark Kelly, in particular, because he is the director of national intelligence, [5:32] and he asked him, will you have the courage to present facts to the president? [5:36] And he said in the Oval Office and most of all, in the Situation Room. [5:40] That's a reference to the war with Iran. [5:42] That's a reference was this is about American lives and when will we go to war? [5:46] Apparently, no one had the courage to say to Donald Trump, the Iranian people aren't able to rise up in the streets, [5:53] you know, unarmed and take over the Iranian government. [5:55] And we go into this war without the president getting, I think, enough facts and people with courage. [6:01] And Americans have died as a result. [6:03] So this could not be more important for American lives or for American democracy. [6:07] And there's a way, as I said, to answer that question and still keep your nomination in place. [6:11] There was another exchange, David, you saw in the room where the nominee, Jay Clayton, [6:16] was asked about the raid in Fulton County in January, [6:20] where the previous director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, in a very, very bizarre, [6:25] unprecedented move, was there to oversee the seizure of these ballots from Fulton County [6:30] to see if there was any nefarious action down there. [6:34] There's a picture of her. [6:35] And he claimed ignorance about that. [6:37] He said, well, I just heard about it yesterday when you told me in our private meeting. [6:40] Could that possibly be true that he's not aware that the director of national intelligence [6:44] was running around chasing election conspiracies? [6:47] No, and the answer was just astonishing. [6:50] At the end of the hearing, Mark Warner, who knows Jay Clayton, who's worked with him for years, said, [6:54] sir, in your preparations for this hearing, didn't this, this? [6:58] And it's a key question. [6:59] This is about, again, will you respect the Constitution? [7:03] Under the Constitution, state and local governments control elections. [7:07] The founders put it in that way so the president can't decide the count in the vote [7:11] and decide if he or she gets to be president for four more years. [7:15] So this was illegal to have the director of national intelligence and the FBI go down [7:20] and seize voting records in Fulton County. [7:22] So Clayton was asked, would you do this? [7:24] And his answer was, well, I haven't really thought about that. [7:27] And when Senator Warner asked, you know, how could you not have thought about this? [7:31] He just said, you know, it didn't come to mind to me. [7:35] And that's an astonishing statement. [7:37] It's embarrassing. [7:38] And I've heard that Clayton is a weak leader. [7:40] And I think he showed that yesterday. [7:42] So it was an amazing moment. [7:44] And then Warner just said, I am, like, bitterly disappointed by your answers today. [7:49] And Warner was just in shock. [7:50] This person he knew so well had been brought to this level by Donald Trump. [7:56] Ken, we've been talking about the questions that have been coming, of course, from the Democratic side. [8:00] And I guess this is once again a situation where it was shocking but not all that surprising [8:06] that Jay Clayton answered the way he did. [8:08] We've all now become familiar with the brief that these people have been given about what [8:13] they're allowed to say and what they aren't allowed to say in these hearings. [8:16] But what about the reaction from Republicans to Jay Clayton? [8:20] Do you think that there were any Republicans on that committee who, even if they were assuming [8:24] he was not going to say, yes, Joe Biden won the 2020 election, may have been disappointed [8:30] by how cack-handed he was, how badly he handled those questions? [8:37] Well, Katty, good morning. [8:38] I'm sure they were privately disappointed, but it's not clear that any of them are prepared [8:42] to vote against him. [8:44] I would just say, though, that while we do all expect this kind of answer from Trump nominees, [8:48] it's important for our viewers to understand Jay Clayton is a little bit different. [8:53] Jay Clayton led the SEC in the first Trump administration, and he emerged relatively unscathed. [8:59] And he was seen by some Democrats, including Mark Warner, who, as David said, has known him [9:05] for a long time. [9:06] He was seen as a much better alternative than, obviously, than Bill Pulte, who is the acting [9:11] director of national intelligence now. [9:13] He was seen as more favorable than even than Todd Blanche, who was the other nominee on the [9:17] Hill for a confirmation hearing yesterday. [9:20] And by the end of the hearing, as David said, Mark Warner, who is prepared possibly to vote in [9:25] favor of Jay Clayton, was disgusted and was and has abandoned his support, from what I understand [9:32] of Clayton. [9:34] And by the way, Clayton knew that that question was coming. [9:38] He had had meetings with senators including Democrats, and he knew he would be asked that. [9:43] And yet he could not bring himself to use the W word that Joe Biden won the election. [9:48] And again, this is a man, University of Pennsylvania Law School, considered an accomplished [9:53] face. [9:54] It's one thing for Kash Patel to behave this way. [9:57] Kash Patel is largely viewed in Washington as not a very serious person. [10:01] Jay Clayton did not have that reputation. [10:03] And so I think this hearing was a real disaster for his reputation personally. [10:07] And as David said, it's a very it's a stark warning sign for the country as we await to [10:13] see what Donald Trump says in this speech about the alleged foreign interference that would [10:19] have happened under the watch of his intelligence community during his administration. [10:23] Yeah.