Bulwark Takes - Exclusive: Mark Kelly Smacks Down Elon After He Calls Astronaut Senator A Traitor

Episode Date: March 11, 2025

Senator Mark Kelly joins Andrew Egger to discuss his recent trip to Ukraine, the importance of defending freedom, his response to Elon Musk calling him a "traitor," and why Musk should stick to rockets.

Hi, this is Andrew Egger with The Bulwark. Donald Trump's heel turn on Ukraine continues, in addition to savaging Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and adopting Vladimir Putin's demands on our one-time ally as official U.S. foreign policy. Trump has frozen battlefield aid to Ukraine. He's yanked U.S. intelligence support. That's left many in Congress in a bizarre spot. Many of our lawmakers remain staunch allies of Ukraine, but their wings have been clipped by what's going on in the Oval Office. So I'm joined today. I'm happy to be joined today by Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona. He just got back from a trip to Ukraine himself, here to talk to us a little bit about it today. Thank you for being on, Senator. Well, thank you, Andrew.

So just tell me a little bit about your trip. Why did you choose now to go to Ukraine? What was your message to the people over there? What'd you do while you were there? What's your message to us back here? Well, this change in policy from the Trump administration was rather concerning to me. I mean, cutting the Ukrainians off from the weapons that we've been providing to them and the weapon systems and the security assistance. And then on top of it, stopping the sharing of certain kinds of intelligence is damaging to the Ukrainian effort. This is my third trip. These folks have been fighting valiantly, fighting for their lives, the existence. Literally, they're fighting. This is an existential fight. They will cease to exist as a country if they're not successful and they're not going to get our if they get cut off from support. This gets really, really harder in my role as a U.S. senator here to visit the Ukrainians, also to visit our embassy personnel.

And here firsthand, what does this change mean to them? How is it affecting them on the battlefield? And I visited a veterans hospital. I visited with some senior leadership. I met with some F-16 pilots, one of which I'd previously met with in Tucson, Arizona, where they were training to learn how to fly the F-16. It was a valuable trip. As I said, it's my third trip to the country. I've seen some changes in how this war is being prosecuted.

And the Ukrainians are doing well in some areas. They need more help. I will say what they don't need is to be abandoned by the United States of America. Andrew, this is not who we are as a country to turn our back on a friend, turn our back on an ally. And it's really short sighted. Our national security interest and our safety is, you know, lies with, you know, this turning out in a way where Ukraine is stronger. Make no mistake. Putin has a plan. He didn't do this on a whim.

He has said he wants to restore the territory of the Soviet Union. That means taking Ukraine and Poland and the Baltic nations. Those other countries, by the way, with the exception of Ukraine, are NATO countries. And if a NATO country is attacked, we are supposed to come to their defense. Now, I'm not so sure if Donald Trump is going to do that. He's, you know, said some things in the past that indicates that maybe that's optional. Shouldn't be optional. We are a stronger nation when we have allies, when we have friends around the world,

countries that will support us in our time of need. NATO countries have done that before. I can guarantee you if we continue to support Ukraine wait we need them a decade or two decades from now they'll be there for us i you know spent some time at this veterans hospital a couple days ago and you know it's it it's some of the stories are shocking i I met with a couple nurses, Tatiana and Irina, I think her name was. And in 2022, they witnessed some children that they knew from their neighborhood who the Russians, Russian soldiers, raped the children in front of their parents and then murdered the children in front of their parents and then murdered the kids in front of their parents. They were obviously, as you would expect, they were crying when they told this story. And every single day they get up and they go into work to help veterans who are seriously injured.

Many of them have lost limbs. Help them regain their strength and recover from their injuries. And several of the veterans that I spoke to over the weekend, who some were amputees, their plans are to go back to the front lines. They're not going to give up. If we give up on them, they said, one quote was, we will fight with rocks and sticks if we have to. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and of course, nobody really knows, you know, from one day to another how Donald Trump will wake up and respond. It's possible we'll see, you know, another kind of

flip from this administration. But just in terms of kind of the immediate term, what's your understanding from having been over there? How heavy of a short term blow it has the withdrawal of of the types of support that you mentioned, Ben, in terms of Ukrainian readiness and morale? Andrew, I don't want to get into detail with specific weapons and when they will run out. But I went over this with them. You know, certain things they will run out, but I went over this with them. Certain things they will run out of sooner, things that they really need. By the way, those weapons are just sitting, I don't think I should say exactly where, but pretty close to Ukraine, but over the border, on the other side of the border, and they're not allowed to be transferred. And some of these are defensive weapons that they need to defend Kiev and other cities.

Many of these cities have Americans living there. There's 12 to 15,000 Americans who are in Ukraine at any given time. Puts them at risk. But Putin is using cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, one wayway attack drones to target schools and hospitals, intentionally trying to kill children, women, children, old people. The weapons that are just over the border, Ukraine needs those to defend themselves, but also to continue fighting against the Russians on the front lines. That has a serious impact. It'll have a much worse impact if it doesn't get turned back on in the coming days and weeks and months. On top of that, the way we share intelligence

with the Ukrainians and what we share as some of it's been halted. I talked to the F-16 pilots about this. One of these F-16 pilots I met with in Tucson when he was training to learn how to fly the F-16, and they talked specifically about what this means to them. I used to buy, you know, airplanes off of an aircraft carrier. I've flown in combat. We talk specific details about what they have lost in the previous week and how that puts them at additional risk. And we run the risk that they get shot down. They lose their lives, we lose the airplanes, which are valuable assets. Western airplanes, the F-16 Viper, they need these. They're making a difference. They've learned a lot. I was actually pretty shocked at how far they've come from where they were when I met them in Tucson to where they are today, the weapons that they are employing, the success

that they have is, is, is pretty remarkable, pretty good. They need more pilots. They need more airplanes. Um, but they've lost some valuable information that they get every single day. They don't get it anymore from us. Yeah. Um, obviously this is all extremely serious stuff and I hate to, to even really bring, bring up sort of social media nonsense. But I did want to ask you about, I'm sure you already know what I'm about to ask you about. You made a post on Twitter on X yesterday. You wrote this, just left Ukraine. What I saw proved to me we can't give up on the Ukrainian people. Everyone wants this war to end, but any agreement has to protect Ukraine's security and can't be a giveaway to Putin. Let me tell you

about my trip and why it's important we stand with Ukraine. You went on from there. But what was particularly remarkable was one of the replies you got was from Elon Musk, who just wrote, you are a traitor. Kind of a remarkable thing from the supposed head of the Department of Government Efficiency. What was your reaction seeing that? What's your response to a quote like that from Elon Musk? Well, he apparently doesn't understand how how national security works and what makes us safe and what doesn't. He doesn't get it. He should leave it to the adults in the room.

He should stay out of stay out of this. The things he says are ridiculous, right? And he's an unserious person. He's an unelected billionaire who has been focused over the last couple of months on making the world better for billionaires, slashing and burning the federal government. So there's some more room in the budget to provide a big tax cut for billionaires like himself and his friends and the president. So I don't take him very seriously. Obviously, I did respond to his tweet at me. I usually don't respond to things he just randomly says. Most of it is ridiculous.

He should go back to building rockets. By the way, he does a reasonable job at, I have to say. He's pretty good at the rocket thing. He should stick to that. Right, right. One thing we've been following along pretty closely with has been the ways that Elon Musk has been butting heads specifically with Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, obviously a former colleague of yours for a time. He is in Saudi Arabia today doing some preliminary negotiations touching on Ukraine. Are you hopeful to be able to see some progress out of that? What's kind of your temperature check on where the administration is right now? Yeah, I was just on the phone with one of his senior advisors, with the Secretary of State's

senior, one of his senior advisors, and we talked specifically about the negotiation. Yeah, I'm hopeful. I mean, I hope they can get it back on track. It's hard to negotiate with the Russians. I'll tell you what's harder, though, is negotiating with them when they have the upper hand. Donald Trump talks about Ukraine not having the cards. I think we've seen him say this. Andrew, you've probably seen him say this. You don't have the cards. Well, that's because Donald Trump threw a couple aces on the floor. That was NATO membership and territory.

So two of the biggest points in the negotiation, Donald Trump ceded those points before the negotiations start. That's not the way you get a good deal. So I wish the Secretary of State well. I know him. We served together in the Senate. I voted for him. I've got confidence in him. He's got a tough job because when you cut off combat assistance,

so you cut off weapons to Ukraine, you cut off intelligence, you give up two of the bargaining ships, really hard to negotiate. I hope he has success here. I think one of the things would help is if we allow them to continue to get the weapons they need until we get to a ceasefire. You know, have the intelligence turned back on until we get to a ceasefire. I want this thing to end. But it's got to end in a way that respects the sovereignty of Ukraine. And it should end in a deal where we provide some security guarantees

for Ukraine. We want Ukraine to be on our side. If we want them on our side, we have to be on their side. And I could tell you this, what I learned from being over there and meeting with Ukrainians over the last weekend and my other trips, is they will be with us in the future. They will stand by the United States of America if we continue to stand with them. It's incredibly short-sighted to think that if this ends and the Russians have an upper hand in Europe, that they're not going to figure out what the next target is.

And that puts every American at risk. I'm not talking about every veteran, every soldier, sailor, airman, marine, guardian. I mean, U.S. citizens are at risk if Russia is stronger. You know, Russia has the Soviet Union before them. You know, they want to see the downfall of the United States and Western democracy. We are stronger when we stick with our allies, our European allies, our allies around the world, Asia. And I'll tell you this, Andrew, you know who's watching this very closely? The Chinese.

You know, they're watching every single decision we make. And if they see and get the impression that we don't have the friends around the world that we have built over the last 80 years, I think it makes it more likely that they make the decision to go after Taiwan. And if that happens, this president or the next president, they've got a really tough decision to make. And, you know, so my goal here is, you know, to make sure the people that I represent in Arizona

and Americans understand what's at stake here. We want this conflict to end, but it needs to end when we negotiate from a position of strength, not weakness. And that's what this trip was about. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, I know you need to get going. I wanted to ask you one quick question on a different topic, if you'd indulge me, just because, you know, we're barreling toward the possibility of a government shutdown. And at the end of this week, the House is looking likely to pass a stopgap measure that would, you know, keep most of the lights on for seven months or something like that. You can tell I'm not on the ground in Congress reporting on this today. But I just wanted to get your temperature take on where things are at in those negotiations,

how you think Democrats are likely to go. So I just got off. I got back late last night. I'm back here in my office in Washington. We'll get the details of what they're offering. I will say that Elon Musk, you bring him up, he's been shutting down big parts of the government already. Probably doesn't want him to open back up. We need to continue to talk to our Republican colleagues about this.

Government shutdowns aren't good. All right, we can leave it at that. Senator Kelly, thanks so much for taking the time to come on and talk to us. Thank you all for watching, for listening, for joining us at the Bulwark.