Senator Inhofe: Mattis is the Right Choice for Secretary of Defense

FRANK GAFFNEY: Welcome to Secure Freedom Radio, this is Frank Gaffney, your host and guide for what I think of as an intelligence briefing on the war for the free world. It has been my extraordinary privilege and great honor to have known for some time now, a man of uncommon intelligence, as well as huge common sense when it comes to matters involving the national security of the United States and so much more. He is Senator Jim Inhofe. He represents with great distinction in the United States Senate the people of Oklahoma, and he, among other things, serves on the Senate’s Armed Services Committee. He is a member of the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee. He is a war veteran of the United States Army and an extraordinary legislator and public servant and we very much welcome him back. Happy New Year, Sir, glad to have you with us.

SENATOR JIM INHOFE: Well and to you too, I think we need to tell these people out there how long you and I have been working together. Do you know it’s been thirty-one years now, Frank?

FRANK GAFFNEY: Has it really? It just feels that long.

SENATOR JIM INHOFE: When I first came, I was in the House before. I had a career in building and all that to start with for twenty years and then I ended up in the House for eight years and in the Senate for the past twenty-one years. And my concentration has always been in those two committees. One, I’ve been a ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and then, of course, the Environment Public Works Committee and there’s a reason for this, Frank, and I’ll just get this out ahead. There’s so many stupid things that government does but if you get out and read that old beat up rag out there that nobody cares about anymore called the Constitution, it will tell you what we’re supposed to be doing. Article 1, Section 8 says clearly, we’re supposed to be defending America, and then they actually get into infrastructure, called post-roads at that time. So I’ve always felt that is our responsibility and that is why I have stayed on those two committees for all that long period of time.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Yeah and served with great distinction, I have to say Sir, you have really made a mark in both Let me talk quickly about sort of the two portfolios of great interest to you. One is, in the Armed Services Committee just yesterday, you took testimony from the man that the president-elect has designated to be our next Secretary of Defense, General Jim Mattis. It seemed to have gone pretty well overall. Your thoughts on this selection and his prospects for getting the necessary waiver and, ultimately, confirmation by your colleagues.

SENATOR JIM INHOFE: Yeah, sure. Well, you know, I could say this about all of the nominees that this President has. There is no one I can think of in America today that is better qualified for this time in our history to be the Secretary of Defense because we have just gone through a destruction of our defense system for the past 8 years. And this is the guy that can do it. I don’t think anyone got to him yesterday. I sat through the whole meeting and there is several who tried and started talking about transvestites and all this stuff, but he stayed right on message and he is the guy who is qualified, not just a tough Marine. You know, the big issue there is should you have a military person in that role, and I think we all agree in a civilian military, but his situation is a little different, because he has always been a 100 percenter in everything that he has done. You know he doesn’t even have, you might even say, a family life. Everything is the military for him.

FRANK GAFFNEY: It is his family.

SENATOR JIM INHOFE: So he is the best, the toughest guy, and we should not, I do agree with that he had to get a waiver because we can’t have someone who is within 7 years of discharge from the military in this role—it takes a legal waiver. Well, we got that last night.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Senator, let me just ask you quickly. One of the issues on which people have been trying to see if they have got daylight between him and the President-elect is on Russia. In light of what has been happening, not just with respect to this influence operation and hacking and so on, but something I know you have been very closely monitoring and concerned about is, for example, Russia’s nuclear build-up and the threats that it is engaged in. Should we be taking a hardline towards Russia in your judgment at this point?

SENATOR JIM INHOFE: Well you know what we have to do, Frank. We have to acknowledge that Putin is our enemy, that he is someone who is not good for other people, not just in the matter of the United States of America. I happened to be over in Ukraine when they had their Parliamentary elections. I was with Poroshenko at that time. And they were so proud that, for the first time in 96 years, there is not one communist in the Parliament of the Ukraine. Now, immediately Putin went in there and started killing everybody. And our administration, the Obama administration, took the position of “well, he’s still someone we have to coddle” and you know, when you are dealing with people like that, you have to recognize that they are the bad guys, we are the good guys, and we stand up tall in our military, so my feeling on that is exactly what the feeling of Mattis was. And you are going to have a lot of times when people will say, “well, we now have the new president who has made statements in the past.” Yeah, he made a lot of statements in the past, but just keep in mind that he had to win an election, and he’s made a lot of statements and he also—and I say this firsthand Frank, because I was called on the 9^th of October and asked by him if I would come to the Trump Tower and talk around his roundtable and so he wanted me there I guess from the military perspective and overregulation perspective. And so I looked around that table, and these were people that he was listening to. These were people that he understands know more about it than he does. So he will be changing some of his positions because he has surrounded himself with really good, authoritative people and I think that you are going to see strong positions coming out that are the result of people who are very well informed on these subjects.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Yeah, well, then among them, Jim Mattis, to be sure. Um, Jim, we are almost out of time, let me just quickly ask you about the other portfolio. You have been a champion in the United States Congress and in the Senate, a reconstruction of the aging—in fact, decrepit—infrastructure that so much of our society and certainly our economy and our people rely upon. One question that I just wondered if you might speak to: Donald Trump has made it clear that he intends to make a major investment in those areas. Is it important, in your judgment, as a nationally security minded guy especially, that a focus of that effort be to ensure that we are not just building anew, but we are building resilient infrastructure, particularly I am thinking of the electric grid, but more generally, that’s got baked into it the idea that there may be people who are going to try to harm that infrastructure.

SENATOR JIM INHOFE: Just keep in mind that the one who started the national system was President Eisenhower. And he did so—if you go back and research it, nobody remembers this—but he did so for national security purposes. You have to have an infrastructure throughout the country so he has done that, then there are always people coming along and wanting to get us off track, the whole thing on global warming and all of that, to try to captivate the American people into thinking that it is not important. No. The two things that are important in this country that government has a responsibility for are defending America, that’s a strong national defense, and then our infrastructure, and it is not just roads, highways, bridges but, as you say, the energy infrastructure as well as all infrastructure. That is what we are supposed to be doing if you get the constitution out and read it—everyone should do that now and then.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Indeed. Sir, you have mentioned climate change, you have been a very prominent skeptic shall we say. Has your view changed on this or do you think that the election of Donald Trump who has expressed similar skepticism suggests that in fact the American people are pretty solidly behind you.

SENATOR JIM INHOFE: Oh I think they are, and you know, liberal democrats are in denial. We do know that a very wealthy came along and started pumping money into campaigns, into Senate campaigns and none of them won. And I remember in ’02 when I first started this thing, and by the way, if anyone wants to read my book, if they really want to know the truth about this, read my book called the Greatest Hopes. But that started in ’02, and if you remember the first bill was the McCain-Lieberman bill and we had to go down and defeat that. At that time, the polling showed it was the number one or two problem, do you know what it is today, Frank? Global warming is now back to dead last at number 15. So people have caught on, they do know that the science is mixed on this, but they do know that the economics are not mixed. It would constitute the largest tax increase in the history of this country and not accomplish anything.

FRANK GAFFNEY: We will be following this issue with you, Sir, I hope often in 2017. Thank you so much for your service to our country, Senator Jim Inhofe.