At a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) questioned Defense Sec. Pete Hegseth about his calling of the National Guard in California.
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00:00Secretary, thank you for being here. Good to meet you. General, thank you. Ms. McDonald.
00:09I'll start with General Cain. Is the United States being invaded by a foreign nation?
00:18Sir, thanks for your question. I think at this point in time, I don't see any foreign state
00:27sponsored folks invading, but I'll, you know, be mindful of the fact that there has been some
00:34border issues throughout time and defer to DHS who handles the border along the nation's
00:43contiguous outline. Is there a rebellion somewhere in the United States?
00:48Sir, I think there's definitely some frustrated folks out there.
01:00I mean, if frustrated folks were a rebellion, and I guess that goes to my question for the
01:06Secretary. Two things. There should be some sort of paper flow that the committee, the Congress,
01:15the public can look at in invoking Title 10, Section 12406. So can you give us some clarification
01:28on whether the orders that were issued apply to specifically Los Angeles, to California generally,
01:39or is this a nationwide order? The orders that have been issued, which are publicly available and
01:47known, relate to an ongoing situation in Los Angeles, which could expand to other places. But
01:55it's quite easy to point out that there has been an invasion of 21 million illegals in our country
02:00under the previous administration. This administration was elected to get a hold of that.
02:05And when you have ICE officers being attacked with concrete blocks, they should be allowed
02:11to do their job. Secretary, I'd really like to not try to create a viral moment for either of us. I'm
02:16actually trying to understand kind of the scope of this order. The order effectuates the ability to
02:25mobilize the Guard and the Marines. In the order, it does not specify a location. It does not specify
02:34which Marines or which Guard. And I'm trying to figure out, if you decided to do this collectively
02:44in Kansas or any other place, would you need to specify a new sort of fact pattern? Or do you think
02:53this order applies to any Guard, anywhere, any service branch, anywhere? It's just like, I get your
03:00justification. We disagree about the circumstances. I'm just trying to figure out, did you just
03:06potentially mobilize every Guard everywhere and every service member everywhere? I mean, create the
03:12framework for that. I understand you didn't. I'm saying, what does the document do, in your opinion?
03:19Senator, if you notice, the initial order of 2,000 in California was followed by a follow-on order
03:24for the additional 2,000 with a recognition that the situation there required more resources in order
03:30to support law enforcement. So part of it is getting ahead of a problem so that if in other places,
03:37if there are other riots and places where law enforcement officers are threatened, we would
03:41have the capability to surge National Guard there if necessary. And thankfully, in most of those states,
03:47you'd have a governor that recognizes the need for it, supports it, and mobilizes it him or herself.
03:52In California, unfortunately, the governor wants to play politics with it.
03:57I did step on the last part of your sentence, so I'm going to try to take turns here. Just on the 747
04:03question, did the Department of Defense initiate the conversation with the Qataris? Did they initiate
04:14the conversation? How did that go?
04:18Senator, I have to go back and review it, but we've been a part of the ongoing conversation.
04:21Yeah, but I think it kind of matters who's asking, doesn't it?
04:28Ultimately, the Defense Department is, or soon will be, when the memorandum of a wonder standard is
04:32signed in receipt of a gift from the Qatari government that could serve once it's modified
04:37eventually as something that the president could use.
04:40I mean, I think this is illegal and unconstitutional, and I won't rant about that, but I actually think
04:45from the standpoint of our collective responsibilities, it very much matters what the paper flow was,
04:51who started these conversations that had come out of the White House, that had come out of
04:54the Secretary of State, or the President, or the SecDef, or at a lower level, or ambassadors.
05:01We're entitled to know, because we can agree or disagree about the propriety of this,
05:05but my basic request of you is that if we're going to disagree, let's disagree with the same
05:13set of facts. Let's have the documentation on the Qatari aircraft. Let's have the same set of
05:19documentation about what these orders do and don't do with respect to Los Angeles, because if we're
05:26just going to scream past each other and then see who succeeds more on the internet, that's actually
05:30not the way to do this work. We're supposed to be in struggle against each other, but in a way where
05:36we actually have all the information. You have our information, we have yours, and so I'm hoping that
05:42we can get some documentation about both matters in a nonpartisan, bipartisan way. Thank you.