GOP Sen Pushes Conspiracy Theory That Someone In White House Can Press Button To Mute Biden

thank you thank you very much mr chairman um uh mr secretary i can tell you i've listened to you and a handful of other people try to put the best face on this possible and i can tell you that the temperature of the american people is not there with you and that i'm not talking from a partisan basis this this goes both ways you know there is not enough lipstick in the world to uh put on this pig to make it look any different than what it actually is so i somebody need we need the american people want to know who's responsible for this so let's start with this who is responsible who made the decisions on this was it the president of the united states uh ultimately uh the president makes the decisions that's correct did he in this case as as in every case ultimately decisions that can only be decided by the president are decided by the president well in now of course to be to be specific uh uh senator there are hundreds thousands of decisions uh every single day uh that go into a situation as complex as this one the big strategic decisions those are decided by the by the president the tactical operational decisions are made by uh by different agencies agency heads uh agency officials well i'm more interested in in the top decision making look we've all seen this we saw it as as recently as yesterday somebody in the white house has authority to press the button and stop the president cut off the president's speaking ability and sound who is that person i think anyone who knows the president including members of this committee knows that uh he speaks very clearly and very deliberately for himself no one else does well are you saying that there is no one in the white house that can cut him off because yesterday that happened and it's happened a number of times before that it's been widely reported that somebody has the ability to push the button and cut off his sound and stop him from speaking who is that person there is there is no such person again uh the president uh speaks for himself uh makes all of the strategic decisions uh informed by the best advice that he can get from the uh the people around him so are you unaware that this is actually happening because it happened yesterday at the interagency fire center uh it was widely reported the media's reported on it and it's not the first time it's happened it's happened several times are you telling this are you telling this committee that this does not happen that there's no one in the white house who pushes the button and cuts him off in mid-sentence that's correct so this didn't happen yesterday nor on the other occasions where the media showed the american people that his sentence was cut off in mid-sentence are you saying that didn't happen senator i i really don't know what you're what you're referring to all i can tell you is uh having uh worked with the president uh for now uh 20 years both here on this committee and in over the last nine months at the white house the president very much speaks for himself well let's take a different attack he does speak for himself but what happens when somebody doesn't want him speaking you're you're telling us you don't know anything about this that that somebody cuts him off in mid-sentence is that what you're trying to tell this committee because everybody here has seen it senator i'm telling you based on my own experience uh with the president over the last 20 years anyone who tried to stop him from saying what he wanted to say speaking his mind would probably not be long for their for their job let's turn to the descent cable that you received in july are you willing to give a copy of this descent cable that you got from two dozen diplomats regarding the imminent catastrophic collapse in afghanistan are you willing to give a copy of that to this committee this this dissent channel is something that i place tremendous value and importance on uh it's it's a it's a way um for people in the state department to speak the truth as they see it to power and these uh cables i've read every single one of them of the descent channel cables that we've gotten during this administration i've responded to every single one i factored what i read and heard into um into my thinking and and into my actions but the legitimacy of the of the channel the ability for people to be able to uh with confidence uh share their thoughts uh share their views even when they run counter uh to what uh their uh their seniors uh have said or the policies being prescribed uh it's vitally important that we protect that channel protect its integrity uh and it is designed by its very regulations uh only to be shared with senior officials in the department and what i don't want to see is some kind of chilling effect going forward that says to those who would think of writing a cable in the future that uh this uh this will uh you know get out widely be uh be distributed uh in ways that um uh that would have that uh that would have that chilling effect do you admit that you received a descent cable in july signed by two dozen diplomats that warned about the imminent uh catastrophic collapse that was coming in afghanistan uh senator i certainly uh received this uh the cable in uh in mid-july i read it i responded to it i factored uh its contents into my my thinking and what the the cable said broadly uh is was two things it did not uh suggest that the government and security forces were going to collapse prior to our departure it did express real concerns about the durability of that government enforce after our departure and it focused on the efforts that we were making particularly on the on the sie front uh to try to expedite moving them out and in fact a number of the recommendations the very good recommendations it made were already entrained others were not but one of the ones that was entrained was the establishment of operation allies refuge we received the cable on july 13th that operation was actually put in into force on july 14th it would already be planned for some time and this was an effort to expedite the um identification and relocation of sivs actually putting them on planes which as you know is not part of uh of the program actually relocating them and working to establish transit sites so that we could put them there while we finished processing them well you see that's the problem with us not having access to that cable you're telling us that but we have uh been told by others that it was it was significantly different than what you're saying also we really would like to see the response to that because i think history is going to be interested in that particular cable and your response to it i'll save my next question for the next round thank you miss jim thank you thank you senator corey and i've asked senator cardin to in addition to his questions uh preside for a few minutes since i have a hearing that i have to just go to thank you thank you mr chairman secretary blanken thank you so much for being with us today

Channel: Forbes Breaking News

Views: 717,840

Keywords: biden, conspiracy, mute button, senate

Id: xuGP9Td3_bg

Length: 7min 31sec (451 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021