STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We've called a Democratic lawmaker with experience in the intelligence community. Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan is also a former CIA analyst. Senator, good morning.
ELISSA SLOTKIN: Morning, Steve.
INSKEEP: What did you think when you heard that President Trump is determined to have Bill Pulte in that DNI job for just a little while to do some specific things?
SLOTKIN: I mean, the reason why Trump wants Pulte in is exactly why Pulte should never go in the job as DNI. He wants him to go in very explicitly, as your report said, to weaponize the intelligence community for this, you know, obsession he has with the false claim that he won the 2020 election. He wants him to use the perch of, you know, in charge of 17 different intelligence agencies with all kinds of data and tools at his fingertips, to use that perch to figure out and do things that make no sense for the director of National Intelligence and are just doing the bidding of Donald Trump. So it just, to me, reinforces why this man should not be in the seat.
INSKEEP: It's very interesting to think about this because presumably, we're talking about things that the president has wanted from the beginning that Tulsi Gabbard, his previous choice for DNI, was not willing to do, maybe, and apparently he doesn't think Jay Clayton, his own nominee, would be willing to do. That's the kind of thing that Pulte would do?
SLOTKIN: It sounds like it. And we know that Bill Pulte has, like, as you said, already weaponized his current job. He's a housing official. He has access to every piece of mortgage information from every American and he's used it. He's gone into those records and come up with these fake attacks against the - Trump's perceived enemies. The idea that he won't do the exact same thing in the DNI's office but with more tools is just folly. So it's important he not be in.
INSKEEP: The president has also threatened to block, as we heard, reauthorizing a part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes a lot of spying. Eric McDaniel observed that this is a tool for the president. It fills the president's daily brief. Is he threatening to hurt himself if he doesn't get what he wants?
SLOTKIN: Yeah. I mean, I think, honestly, it's like cutting off your nose to spite your face. It's hurting yourself. You know, the president's primary responsibility is to protect against foreign threats. As someone who was a CIA analyst and wrote the presidential daily brief for the president on the topics I was covering, this is important information to get right, regardless of your party, regardless of your political views, or whatever fight you're having with the Hill.
INSKEEP: Nevertheless, he is causing those of you in the Senate who care about national security some trouble. We had Mark Warner, your fellow Democrat from Virginia, on the program a few days ago and he sounded genuinely upset by the possibility that this spying authorization might expire.
SLOTKIN: Yeah. And we've worked really hard to put reforms into the legislation to make it something that makes sense for 2026. But, again, if the primary responsibility of any administration is protect against foreign threats, it's a tool in that toolkit that he's leaving on the table.
INSKEEP: And he's saying, listen, if you want your FISA, all you got to do is pass my election security bill, my SAVE Act. Are you likely to just do that?
SLOTKIN: No. I mean, I think there's no clearer way that he wants to try and change the outcome of the election than trying to change who can vote. And it's a massive way of making it harder to vote, especially for women in this country who have their married name. So it's a bad bill and even my Republican colleagues know that.
INSKEEP: I want to underline what you're talking about here, Senator. We've had some discussion of this on the program. The SAVE America Act requires stronger proof of citizenship, and it's possible that something like a birth certificate would not match up for a married woman who changed her name as is very common. That's the concern you're raising, right?
SLOTKIN: Yeah. And by the way, you can't vote as a non-citizen in a place like Michigan. That's just not a possibility. Of course, we don't want non-citizens voting, but this idea that you have to show an original birth certificate to vote, potentially at the polls, well, if you're a married woman, then your birth certificate has a different name. So it's just - it creates amazing headaches for a huge number of people and just doing their constitutional right to vote.
INSKEEP: I want to invite you to put yourself in the president's head. Now, this is always risky to do. We should state that. We don't really know what the president is thinking. But as a critic of the president, as someone in the other party, I think you have to try to understand what you believe he is doing. Why do you think the president keeps repeating lies about 2020 or falsehoods about 2020, claiming that he won when he obviously lost? Why do you think he keeps going after that?
SLOTKIN: Who knows? It's like a record that keeps skipping. He's obsessed with it. Someone pointed out to me that when he lost the Iowa caucuses in 2016, that was the first time he said an election had been rigged, that he's obsessed with the fact that he can't possibly actually lose and so there must be some sort of falsehoods. He said that at the State of the Union that if his party loses in November, it's because the election was rigged, and he said it over 100 times just this year.
So he's telling us what he thinks. He's telling us what he's obsessed with, despite the fact that it's not true and 60 courts have said so. I can't understand it other than his ego and his desire to show himself as, you know, the leader, the central leader of this sort of last 15 years, hinges on the fact that he can't be a loser in anything, even though he was.
INSKEEP: Is it strategic, perhaps? It discredits any election in the future that his party doesn't win.
SLOTKIN: Well, he's certainly absolutely trying to inject misinformation and disinformation and make people less sure of their own democracy.
INSKEEP: Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, thanks so much.
SLOTKIN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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