Steve Cortes, former senior spokesman and strategist for the 2016 and 2020 Trump campaigns and current head of the League of American Workers, said Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Turner’s (R-OH-10) Wednesday statement warning of a “serious national security threat” was “vague,” adding it “smells bad for a lot of reasons.”
On Wednesday, Turner released a statement urging the Biden administration to “declassify all information” related to the “serious national security threat,” so that the appropriate parties can “discuss the actions necessary” in response.
One day later, Turner released another statement saying his original statement on Wednesday was coordinated with the Biden administration, adding it was “cleared by the Administration prior to release.”
“The opacity here is troubling, to say the least. Look, either divulge to the public what it is, if it’s relevant and the public should know, or keep your trap shut, quite frankly,” Cortes said during Thursday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
Cortes went on to note his suspicion of many committee chairmen who have an “establishment” mindset, saying, “I don’t trust most of them.”
“I have to say, listen, I don’t care if they have an “R” after their name, a lot of these committee chairmen are incredibly establishment minded in Washington, D.C. I don’t trust most of them and I’m not saying that I don’t trust Turner specifically, but this really, it really smells bad for a lot of reasons,” Cortes said.
Cortes went on to explain two possible reasons as to why the announcement was made.
“Number one, of course, we know that the establishment on both sides of the aisle is trying desperately to get us to spend mountains, more borrowed money to escalate a war in Ukraine, which America has no vested interest in. So making Russia into an even scarier adversary, of course, serves that interest,” Cortes explained.
“You know, number two, there’s a lot of consternation on the right in this country about the abuse of FISA courts, about the intelligence community abuse of Americans for partisan domestic political reasons. So, it’s a very opportune time for them to try to raise the specter of a sort of unnamed boogeyman or unnamed threat you know, that we all better be concerned about, except, we can’t even tell you what it is. So the whole thing, like I said, reeks,” Cortes added.
Cortes noted that despite Russia not being an ally of the United States, the country does not need to be our “dire enemy.”
“I mean, look, Russia is clearly not our friend. Putin’s not our friend, but nor does Russia need to be our dire enemy. This is not the 1980s. And we, in some cases, have common interests. In some cases, our interests are completely opposed. But this idea that we need to make Putin and Russia into this evil empire, you know, a la the Soviet Union is just not realpolitik,” Cortes said. “We in the America First movement believe in a foreign policy of realism and restraint. And given that these kinds of pseudo vague warnings from Washington DC should be viewed with a lot of suspicion, I think, and are being viewed with suspicion by people like us.”
– – –
Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Mike Turner” by Mike Turner.
