Trump's practice of hiring based on loyalty instead of qualificiations comes back to bite him

[0:00] Tonight, the Trump administration announced that the secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, would be leaving his role immediately. [0:05] Now, he didn't exactly come into the job with an impressive resume or a wealth of applicable experience. [0:11] But the thing here is that it's a part of a pattern in Pete Hegseth's combative managerial style at the Pentagon. [0:18] Earlier this month, Hegseth gave Army Chief of Staff Randy George the boot, reportedly because Hegseth suspected he leaked a story to The New York Times. [0:26] That's what really got him going. [0:28] So far, Hegseth has fired dozens of military officers and counting. [0:32] And just an FYI, we're obviously still at war with Iran, and the U.S. is still engaged in a massive naval blockade in the Middle East. [0:40] And remember, just last week, there were reports about troops who were stationed there not having enough food to eat. [0:46] Now, on that front a short time ago, 46 senators, most of them Democrats, tried again to pass a bill to rein in the president's war powers. [0:53] And 51 senators, most of them Republicans, said no. [0:56] And here's what Senator Cory Booker had to say about that before Pete Hegseth went and fired another top Pentagon official during a war. [1:05] What is this body doing? [1:08] Nothing. [1:10] Republican leadership has called no open hearings, no sufficient accountability, no substantive oversight. [1:19] They're kowtowing to a president and allowing him into a reckless war with grave consequences and a shredding of our constitutional intent by our founders. [1:30] Joining me now is Senator Cory Booker, who you just saw given that fiery speech, of course, a Democrat from New Jersey, and also a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. [1:40] So much to ask you about always. [1:41] Let me just first start by asking you about the ouster of the Army secretary today. [1:46] Yeah, the frustrating thing with me is you're seeing somebody who was not qualified for that position, literally Elon Musk threatening Republican senators that he would run primaries against him if they didn't give a pass to something that even they, someone even they knew was unqualified. [2:00] You say managerial style. [2:01] I say he has no managerial capabilities, no managerial experience to do a job this big. [2:06] And his sort of reckless, punishing, removal of some of our highest-ranking military people who have extraordinary experience throwing them out in the midst of a war. [2:18] Today, it's just yet another testimony to his incompetence, in my opinion, and not only that, to how dangerous his recklessness is. [2:27] This is all happening, and everybody knows this who's watching. [2:31] We're in the middle of a war. [2:32] We don't know what's happening. [2:34] We still don't know the purpose. [2:35] We don't know any details of the negotiations. [2:37] We know very little, except for two real estate guys are negotiating an end to this. [2:40] So there we are. [2:41] But The Washington Post reported today that the Pentagon told Congress it could take as long as six months to remove the mines from the Strait of Hormuz. [2:50] That is a long time, I think longer than many people anticipated. [2:54] That could mean much longer in terms of the economic impact. [2:59] What can be done to address kind of the economic long-term pain there? [3:03] I mean, look, this is what we were saying from the beginning. [3:06] This president was thrusting us into war with no pretext, no reason for going in. [3:11] It shifted multiple times, and then no way of coming out. [3:15] And think about this now. [3:16] The regime is stronger than it was, more extreme, I should say, than it was when they came in. [3:21] The highly enriched fissile material is still within that country. [3:26] They now have seen how their low-cost drones can actually, in an asymmetric way, really hurt American allies. [3:35] They've discovered this new strength of leverage that they would never have dared to do before. [3:39] But we cornered them in without anticipating that they would do it, which is shutting down the Strait of Hormuz with a global economic shock. [3:47] They now realize they have this almost like superpower and an ability to do that we can't stop them from doing right now. [3:53] So Donald Trump has made this situation worse, more extreme regime, and more pain. [3:59] On top of that, that pain is being bared by the American people who are seeing their costs explode amidst this global oil shock. [4:06] This is a colossal and costly blunder on this president. [4:11] It will go down with one of the worst presidential decisions to go to war that we've ever seen in American history. [4:18] I just played a clip of you speaking on the Senate floor. [4:21] You seem incredibly frustrated for good reason. [4:23] And I think for a lot of people watching, as you're watching this war unfold and not knowing anything, [4:29] you see vote after vote and Senate Republicans consistently voting it down. [4:33] They seem unwilling to change their view. [4:35] And I say this as you're somebody who joined 39 other Democrats in voting to support a bloc on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of aid to Israel, [4:42] something you did for the first time. [4:44] There's a willingness on your part to look at things from a fresh eye. [4:48] What do you think needs to be done to get Republicans? [4:51] Can it be done? [4:52] Will they move over to vote for a War Powers Act? [4:54] Well, I'm going to continue to stand up in the context of this disastrous war that is getting worse [4:59] as Americans are paying higher and higher costs for us to get us to focus in on this folly. [5:05] And the reality is, and I read on the Senate floor today about a soldier that had the strength and courage [5:12] when he lost his comrades in a drone attack to say that what the secretary of war is saying is not true. [5:18] He's standing up. [5:19] He's on the front line. [5:21] He's doing his job. [5:22] He's stowing a fidelity and loyalty to the Constitution and fulfilling his duties. [5:26] And what are we doing back here? [5:29] The senators have one obligation. [5:30] They swore an oath to a Constitution. [5:33] War powers lie with us. [5:34] And what is Republicans doing? [5:36] Oh, you guys are out there defending our Constitution, defending our country. [5:39] We can't even stand up and do our job, which is to provide oversight, to ask the tough questions to this administration, [5:46] to have accountability, checks and balances, open hearings. [5:49] They're doing none of it. [5:51] They're surrendering their job. [5:53] And this president is taking that surrender as permission to continue to persecute a failed war effort that all of us are paying the costs, [6:01] but none of them as much as the cost paid by the hundreds who have been injured in our military armed services and those 13 that have died. [6:09] It is unconscionable and shameful for this Senate to not step up and do something. [6:14] And that's why we're trying to force a debate onto the Senate floor. [6:17] Trump is betting they're not going to grow spines. [6:19] They have not grown spines.