Morning Wire - Tulsi Gabbard on China, Cartels, and Cleaning House

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

Tulsi Gabbard breaks down how the Trump administration is building alliances abroad while rooting out corruption and weaponization inside the intelligence community. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since being sworn in as the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard has played a prominent role on both the domestic and international fronts, working to expose the weaponization of federal agencies and working with America's allies abroad to combat terrorism and trafficking. This week, she helped lead a diplomatic team to a major defense summit in Asia called the Shang Rala Dialogue. In this episode, we sit down with Gabbard to discuss how the Trump administration is working with its partners in Asia to address the threat of China, terrorism, and international. criminal organizations and how her office is working to weed out weaponization. I'm Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley with Georgia Howl. It's Saturday, June 7th, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire. Do you have an ancient mattress with a crater in the middle that sucks you in like quicksand, leaving you with throbbing back pain that no amount of stretching can fix? Maybe you've tried flipping it, adding foam toppers and even sleeping sideways, but nothing helps. If a solid night's sleep keeps alluding you, then you need to check out Helix.

Helix improves your nights and keeps you sleeping well all night long so you can wake up each morning ready to be your best self. Whether you're a side sleeper, back sleeper, or somewhere in between, they have you covered. All you have to do is take their sleep quiz and find your ideal match. And trust me, when you find the right match, you'll wonder how you ever slept on anything else. I just received my California King, Dust, Glux, Helix mattress,

and have already felt the difference. I'm 6'4, so that extra space is an absolute game changer. They have so many great options perfectly tailored for me and my unique sleeping needs. Right now is the perfect time to upgrade your sleep because Helix is offering a fantastic summer sale. Head over to helixleep.com slash wire to get 20% off sitewide. That's helixleep.com slash wire for 20% off site wide. Helixleaf.com slash wire.

Joining us from Singapore where she's helping lead the U.S. delegation at the Defense Summit. There is Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence. Director Gabbert, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you. Great to join you here today from the other side of the planet. Yeah, literally the other side of the world. So first, there were immediately some major headlines coming out of the Shangri-La dialogue. Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth gave a speech Saturday, delivered some rather ominous warnings about the threat of China.

He said, China is, quote, preparing to use military force to alter the situation there in Asia. Here's a clip from that speech. To be clear, any attempt by communist China to conquer Taiwan by force would result in devastating, consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world. There's no reason to sugarcoat it. The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent. Is China preparing to take military action in the region? I think it's important to take a step back and look at the full context of Pete Hegseth comments there. You know, the indications show us that the answer to your question is no.

And really the overwhelming message that Pete delivered is the message that we hear from President Trump, which is that he is the president of peace. And the goal here, here within this region, as well as others around the world, is to be able to achieve that. And that's really why these kinds of conferences, this one in particular is so important, because it provides the opportunity for leaders from these countries from across the Indo-Pacific to come together and engage in dialogue, engage in diplomacy, build those relationships, increase. understanding and awareness of each other's interests, areas where there may be differences, areas where we can seek opportunities that serve the mutual interests of the people of our

respective countries. And that's really what has been happening here over the last few days. I know Secretary Hegsteth has had meetings throughout these days, as have I, with countries from across the Indo-Pacific. Obviously, Singapore is hosting, but we have, you know, India, Japan, Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Thailand, and many other countries, both from around this region and other parts of the world, once again, with that goal of how do we find areas where we can best pursue our goal of peace and stability that best our respective peoples in our countries and around the world? This is a significant summit, hundreds of delegates representing dozens of nations, as you've said.

much has China been the focus of this summit so far? Obviously, it's a topic of conversation, but I won't say it has not been the sole focus. We've heard from, I've heard directly from leaders within these different countries who are focusing on many of the same areas we are focusing on. How do we make sure that our, you know, borders are secure? Counterterrorism has been a really common topic that has come up from countries from across the region. The issue of transnational criminal organizations has been a predominant concern as well. And there's been a lot of questions coming from other countries about some of the actions that we are taking under President Trump's leadership, not only to secure our

own borders, but to deal with the cartels who are trafficking in Sentinel and other narcotics that are dealing in human trafficking and sex trafficking. These are very common issues that we're seeing both across this region, but as well as from some of the other countries who are here from part of the Middle East and in Europe as well. So a lot of sharing of notes, lessons learned, questions and areas where we see opportunity for us to work together to tackle some of these challenges that are not only common to us by theme, but oftentimes we're seeing some of these very same groups and organizations that we are tackling, affecting us in different countries and parts of the world. Now, you mentioned fentanyl trafficking there. It's a massive focus here in the U.S.

of course. How much of a focus has there been on fittnal in the summit? Fentanyl has been a topic, but it's not just fentanyl. We've heard from some other countries that the drug of choice that's being trafficked is meth, for example. So it's interesting, again, and a great opportunity for us to understand how these different drugs or these different, you know, illegal trafficking of weapons, of course, sex trafficking and human trafficking, how ultimately the driver of these illegal activities that are harming the American people in our country and the people in these other countries, you know, these are profit-driven organizations of organized crime of cartels. obviously President Trump designated many of these major cartels as terrorist organizations,

which has opened up resources and lessons learned within our own country about how we can best tackle these networks, these financial networks that are driving and enabling these criminal activities that ultimately are harming the American people in our country. And especially when we look at the Biden administration's last four years of essentially open borders, how that really rolled out the red carpet for these cartels to be able to not only come in and out of our country and conduct their illegal activities, but unfortunately what we are seeing more and more is how deeply the entrenched they already are in our communities and not just those that sit along our southern border, but throughout states across our country. So this is

obviously an area where in my organization as the Director of National Intelligence, we're working closely with the Attorney General, with the FBI, with the Department of Homeland Security across the board towards getting after these threats that already exist within our country, and of course making sure that we are securing our border and which it is more secure now than it has been in a very, very long time. Indeed, record lows for crossing on the border at this point. Is there a sense of real opportunity to better crack down on these illegal enterprises in the dialogues you're having? There is. You know, these are, complicated problems and not ones that are easily solved largely because, and I can point to

our specific areas of focus where you have some of these larger cartels or transnational criminal organizations who are operating in different parts of the world. But also in the case of fentanyl, for example, in Mexico, we have small independent actors who are more easily able to access these precursors and who are setting up these small manufacturing and production elements that are a little bit harder to track and a little bit harder to be able to identify and crack down on. So again, we have to take a look at this. And I had a meeting with some of our UK partners and friends who are focusing on this in their country as well and looking at how this is also impacting Europe. And yes, fentanyl is impacting Europe, not yet to the

extent that it has the United States, but looking at how do we get after. after the sources of the financial networks and their ability to be able to traffic in these drugs, rather than just looking at kind of picking off and playing whack-a-mole at specific operations and specific attempts to get these drugs across our borders. It's really taking a very holistic approach to be able to look at this again, financial networks, traffickers,

who they're using, how they're getting it across, our borders, we are taking a very comprehensive approach to this problem that has taken many, many Americans' lives. Yeah, we actually just talked to the Treasury Department, and they brought up the same concept, this holistic approach that the Trump administration is taking to crack down from the financial side on cartels. It's actually very fascinating. Now, we hear a lot of discussion about the perception of the U.S. on the global stage.

What's your sense so far in terms of your interactions with other countries about how they're receiving the Trump administration and his more aggressive approach to. of foreign policy and trafficking compared to the Biden administration? Well, first of all, it is very clear that of all these different countries, both at this conference out here in Singapore, that really focuses on the Indo-Pacific, but other similar security-related conferences that I have attended in other in Munich, for example, and another in India, there's a desire to continue to maintain and grow strong partnerships amongst the United States and these other countries.

There's no question about people looking to the United States, looking to President Trump for his leadership to see how his foreign policy is shaping up and how it may impact these countries either very directly or indirectly. Again, there's an eagerness to be able to find areas where we can and should cooperate areas of mutual and shared interests, many of which we talked about, that are affecting these other countries in their own ways, meant much of how these same problems are affecting us. Again, counterterrorism has been a major focus as well,

in addition to the topics that we've discussed. And so there's an understanding that when we work together to be able to tackle these areas that are affecting our own respective security of our people, we have a much better odds of success and bringing about the kind of peace and stability that we're seeking that really is necessary for us to achieve prosperity. Final question. Back here on the domestic front, you've been pretty busy working to uncover potential weaponization of agencies by the Biden administration. Obviously, the intelligence

community, a major focus for you. And we've seen some results from that too. You've declassified documents concerning domestic violent extremists, for example. Can you tell us about what you've been doing on that front? Yeah, there's a few documents that I've declassified and released recently, really in the effort to achieve what President Trump has set out for, which is maximum transparency, and pointing to some of the things that we experienced over the last four years, the Biden administration, where we saw very clear effects of weaponization, politicization of, the national security state and the intelligence community and federal law enforcement against Americans. We saw the effects of it, but really what these documents are showing very clearly is

how intentional it was and how it was carried out. So one of the documents that I released a few weeks ago was the strategic implementation plan of the Biden administration's efforts against violent domestic extremists. The other documents that I declassified justice last week, point to kind of the next step. How were they starting to identify those who they deem as these domestic violent extremists? And this is where we start to see the playbook, the pieces of the playbook coming together where ultimately the common thread being those who spoke up against the Biden administration's policies. In some cases, it was around the COVID vaccine mandates. In other cases, it was around those who were voicing very loudly their concerns,

about the Biden administration's open border policies and other areas as well where ultimately these documents show that those who parents, for example, who were concerned about their children being forced to get the COVID vaccine at schools without the parents' approval would be likely to potentially resort to quote unquote violent extremism. We saw the same thing around those who were speaking out against and warning against the consequences on our own safety and security of the Biden administration's open border policies. Those two in these documents were listed as the most likely to potentially resort to become domestic and violent extremists. So again, this is something that I've had personal and

direct experience with where we see how the groundwork was laid out under the Biden administration to paint the picture of those who spoke out against the Biden administration's policies, exercising our First Amendment rights, then were deemed as being suspicious and those who were most likely to be domestic violent extremists. And then you put this together with the social media company censorship that we know that the Biden administration through the FBI and others were coercing or mandating these social media companies to do to silence voices of those. who were critical of the Biden administration's COVID policies, for example. Right. We're personally very familiar with that effort here at the Daily Wire, unfortunately. Exactly. So this is an effort, again, towards maximum transparency and for the American people to see how exactly this happened.

The reason for this transparency, of course, is to make it so that these types of things, the weaponization of the government against the American people does not continue. Yeah, so crucial to. keeping the trust of the American people. Well, I know you're a very busy woman. Thank you for taking the time to talk with us today. Thank you. Great to talk to you. That was director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.