Tulsi Gabbard: One of the unseen threats to that very thing, which is the threat of those in our government who believe that they are above the Constitution, that they are above the will of the American People, more commonly known as the "Deep State".
These are people who operate quietly below the surface. They are the career officials, the senior administrators, the unelected managers of National Security or intelligence, who see elections and the American voters as a nuisance, because they think that they are more important than any election, than any president, and that they are more qualified to run our country than those who we elect to serve our country as leaders.
These are people who outlast every administration. They know where the files are. They control the flow of information.
I can tell you from firsthand experience, they try to slow walk an order or a directive that they disagree with. They will selectively leak to the press in order to discredit any official who is seeking to hold those accountable for abusing their power. And I’ve also seen how they try to shape an intelligence product to tell the president what they want him to hear rather than ensuring that he hears the truth.
I saw this firsthand and fought it every day in my role as Director of National Intelligence, carrying out President Trump’s mandate, which is transparency, accountability, declassification, and telling the American people the truth. And that was the message I delivered to those I worked with every day from day one to the very last day when I walked out of the door. It is always the right time to tell the truth to the American people.
So I did my best while there to shine a light into corners that had been kept dark for too long. I’ll tell you, the resistance was strong and real, sophisticated, and immediate. I could share a long list of anecdotes and experiences, the means of retaliation and resistance.
Some would be so petty they would make you laugh. I’ll give you one quick example. I needed a placemat, a big piece of paper printed out for something I needed to share with the president.
Had a meeting with him that was supposed to be at 10 a.m. in the Oval Office, and there was someone there in my agency that was detailed from a different agency who was responsible for printing these things. And so I was waiting. Time was 9.15, 9.30, I got to go.
I didn’t have what I needed. And long story short, the President needed to push the meeting back an hour, which saved me, because this guy who was responsible for printing refused to print it because he disagreed with what was on the paper. And turns out he actually did print it, but then he locked it in his desk and refused to open his desk.
My chief of staff went down and said, the Director needs to present this to the President. We need this. And he said, "No, I refuse."
And so my chief brought down my head of General Counsel, who said, "The Director needs this for the President."
"I refuse." And he would not do this until his boss back at his home agency said it was OK to do it.
Ridiculous. There are other examples that are far more serious and grave that would make you concerned for the integrity and future of our republic, as I am. We must remain vigilant.
This isn’t a Democrat or Republican issue. These people have been doing this across administrations for decades and longer. They thrive in the gaps between elections.
They are deeply entrenched in the bureaucratic infrastructure. But fundamentally, the quality that these people share is that they put themselves, their own interests, their own objectives ahead of our Constitution and the best interests of the American people. The work of exposing and dismantling these entrenched power structures is not finished.
We, the people, must continue to hold our leaders accountable, to fight against these Deep State actors, because they are the nameless, faceless force within our government that doesn’t care about you. They don’t care about our freedom. They don’t care about our security.
They care about themselves and their own power. The future is in our hands. We must remain vigilant.
I want to close by sharing another story with you about another of the signers of our declaration, someone named Abraham Clark. He was also a delegate from New Jersey, a lawyer. Got New Jersey in the house here, I see.
He was a lawyer and a man of modest means compared to many of his colleagues. He signed the Declaration of Independence and then went and sent his two sons off to fight in the Revolutionary Army. The British captured both of his sons and sent them to a prison ship that was anchored in a New York harbor on a vessel called the Jersey.
It was very well known as the "Hell Ship", because it imprisoned 11,000 American captives who would die on that vessel. The conditions were deliberately brutal. Men starved and died of disease and froze to death.
Abraham Clark’s sons were treated with a special level of cruelty because the British knew who their father was. One of his boys was put in solitary confinement, no food, no light, left to die in the darkness as a message to his father. And then the British came to Abraham Clark with an offer.
They said, recant, come out publicly in support of the king and parliament, denounce the Declaration of Independence, and we will send you back your boys. Just stop for a moment and think about how that would feel if you were Abraham Clark being presented with that proposition. He knew his sons were dying on that ship, and all he had to do was say, "I was wrong".
All he had to do was say that signing the Declaration of Independence was a mistake and that the Crown was right and the idea of America as an independent nation was wrong. And if Abraham did that, said those words, even if he didn’t mean them, they would set his sons free. Abraham said "No".
He said no because he understood that there are moments in life and in history when you must choose between what is easy and what is right. And the choice that you make in that moment defines not just your own life, but potentially the lives of countless generations who will follow. His sons survived the Hell Ship and Abraham Clark lived to see the nation that he helped create take its early steps.
But the courage that he showed in that moment of being presented with a truly impossible decision is the legacy and the responsibility that every one of us carries today. So at this moment, it’s an opportune time for us to ask ourselves what does it mean to be a patriot? It’s not just a feeling. It’s not just a wearing of a flag on our lapel.
It’s not just putting our hand over our heart when we sing the National Anthem. Patriotism is love expressed through action, love of our country, and a deep gratitude for our freedoms that define who we are. And now as we celebrate this 250th birthday of our great nation, action is needed.
While we are not in a position where we have to hide in caves or sleep in the woods, the struggle we face today is for the heart of our nation, for the integrity of our elections and the preservation of our freedoms enshrined in our constitution. We will not win that struggle by sitting back and saying someone else got it. Someone else will fight this fight.
Someone else is better, more equipped, more capable of fighting this fight. Every one of us as proud Americans has a role to play and a responsibility to step in the arena and fight this fight.