A Conversation with Senator Mark Warner

"I don't want to be your damn conscience! You’re a damn senator! Vote!"

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I sat down yesterday with Senator Mark Warner of Virginia in his hideaway office on Capitol Hill to discuss, well, all the horrors we’re witnessing unfold.

He’s currently near the end of his third term serving the people of the Old Dominion, a nickname for the state that originates from its loyalty to King Charles II during the English Civil War, which is pretty ironic given the current national conversation on tyrants and division.

Prior to his first election to the Senate in 2008, Mr. Warner served a term as the state’s governor (2002-2006) and garnered widespread praise for his performance. A 2005 study done by Governing magazine and the Pew Charitable Trust assessed Virginia as one of the best performing state governments in the country.

It’s quite fair to say the Senator can be largely credited with Virginia’s pivot from perennial swing state to favorable for Democrats. No Republican has won a Senate seat in Virginia since 2008 and no GOP presidential candidate has won the state since 2004. He soundly won reelection in 2020 by double digits.

He serves on several committees, notably as Vice Chair—and formerly Chair—of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

We discussed the ongoing fallout from Elon Musk and DOGE, Pete Hegseth’s catastrophic tenure as Secretary of Defense, Republican cowardice in confronting the corruption and incompetence of the Trump administration, and what needs to happen in response to the compounding constitutional crises plaguing our nation.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity. My questions and remarks are bolded.

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Senator Warner, thank you for joining me today.

I’m very curious. There are 150,000 federal workers in Virginia—that we know of, as of December—300,000 in the DMV area. Obviously, a lot of them have been laid off. There’s a lot of fear right now among folks who have spent their lives dedicated to public service in the federal government. What are we doing right now? How do we feel about this?

Well, they’ve been screwed.

I mean, promises that were made — people went into the federal service usually because they believed in the mission. They also thought: well, I may be giving up current income, but I’m going to get a decent retirement. All that is up for grabs.

So, what we’ve been doing is litigating. We’ve been protesting, and I’ve attended a number of protests. I still believe—some activists think: don’t work with the Republicans at all—I still believe, you know, at least until the next period, until ‘26, if we could peel away four or five votes in the Senate, we could reserve some of this activity.

Because it’s not just the DMV. Alaska has a huge number of federal employees on a per capita basis. Other states do, as well.

And I think the damage that’s being done is mind-blowing. I was Chairman of the Intelligence Committee—still Vice Chair—it costs the government about $340,000 to get a security clearance and put a CIA agent through training. And new people were getting fired, they fired a lot of the probationary in the first two years. Who’s gonna join any government service moving forward?

And I've seen Roanoke in southwest Virginia, a pretty red part of the state, right? Two or three dads saying their daughters were working in the government and the level of stress they're going through right now, they're thinking about quitting the federal government, going to the private sector. This will do so much more damage than the immediate consternation.

Let me give you one last story that's really heartbreaking. Walking through the halls a couple of weeks ago and some women came up and I think nobody had been willing to talk to them. They were both kind of middle-aged. They had both worked at the FDA in cessation of childhood smoking.

The federal government doesn't give the FDA a dime for this program. It's all funded from fees. They had saved—documented—38 billion dollars from having kids [addicted]. They both got fired with no notice. They were saying, you know, what do we do? They both had young kids. How do we, you know, we can't afford child care and being able to go look for a job.

And it's just heartbreaking and that story is retold literally thousands and thousands of times. So, we got to fight. We got to switch over some votes. I think, you know, we in the DMV are like the point of the spear. This is going to start reverberating out across the whole country. I think we'll win on a lot of the litigation.

But for God's sake, some of these Republicans have, you know, the number of them that come up privately and say things, especially around the intelligence services, I had a couple of them say: oh Mark, you know, you're our conscience.

I don't want to be your damn conscience! You’re a damn senator! Vote!

By the way, it's been eight years of private conversations with unnamed Republican sources who are raising the alarm about Donald Trump and folks like Elon Musk. And yet, where's the courage to speak out?

You know, I hope, I pray. We hit the 100-day mark. You know, his numbers are going down. Courage will pick up. His numbers go down, but how much damage is gonna be done before the worm finally turns?

And some of this, even when the policies are reversed, you know, the attitude about public service or the fact of our alliances. How the heck do you make Canada an enemy in 100 days? Canada.

Of all places.

Of all places.

Crazy.

It’s wild.

A couple of weeks ago, Senator [Lisa] Murkowski gave what I thought is probably one of the more chilling statements by any sitting senator regarding the fear that the rest of the Republican caucus has right now.

It felt like she was signaling to Senator Schumer that she would be willing to cross the aisle for some kind of negotiation, some kind of process. There's an opening there clearly. What needs to happen in order to get them over?

There's a lot of conversations going on, and I'm very disappointed by the Republicans.

I know a couple of Republican senators who've had to go out and hire personal security for their families because Elon Musk and his 200 million plus followers, you get called out, your families get threatened. That's something that comes out of a third world nation, not out of our country.

I think it will not, I think the break will come not with one or two, it will have to be a big break. And whether that ultimately results in people literally switching, that may be a bridge too far for some, although Lisa ran as an independent the last time. So, she's got more flexibility.

But we have to get it, my feeling is we've got to try to get six or eight because if we go back to the same three or four who have had shown some courage sometimes, it just places so much burden.

And there have been literally dozens that have talked to me. I got critiqued by some of the activists because—especially during Biden—most of the big legislation, the CHIPS bill, the infrastructure bill, the IRA bill, were all kind of put together by a bipartisan coalition.

The Respect for Marriage Act.

Yeah, Respect for Marriage Act was bipartisan. And I think we've got to form some of those coalitions again. And it's hard because the anger and frustration I feel, but you still have to say until we can make change at the ballot box, I still feel like we've got to try to work to get some of these folks to vote their conscience, not be afraid of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

What do you say to folks in the base who are thinking: okay, we need six-to-eight Republicans, just give them whatever the hell they want. You know, let's give them, you know, if they wanna come over and temporarily caucus or permanently caucus, give them any committee assignments they want, give them the farm.

I am open to all of the above. I mean, I think that, you know, I think we're gonna have a constitutional crisis. I hate to say that, I don't want to say it lightly. It'll either be in the form of—

It feels like we're here!

And it feels like we're here! Either when Trump absolutely goes against the Supreme Court, you know, obviously on the due process issue for the gentleman who's in El Salvador, they kind of left a little wiggle room that, we need a straight off decision that is irrefutable.

Or—and I've been pounding on the folks who are appropriators—why be in Congress if you work through and say, well, I think this program ought to be funded and you get it funded, signed into law, and then a president can arbitrarily, with an executive order, take the money back?

That's right.

I mean, this, the evisceration of Congress's power, if they don't step up, I mean, I'm not an appropriator. The one thing appropriators are, they're usually very jealous about their power, but they got to step up. And I think the test—one of the early tests will be and this could happen over the next two weeks—they were talking about sending what's called a rescission bill, which would mean trying to get congressional approval about some of the cuts they've made on things like USAID, the soft power that America's used for 70 years.

If they go along with the rescission, then you have basically chopped the legs off of the Appropriations Committee. I hope, I believe that that will be shut down and that may be the beginning of brighter days to come. But I don't take anything to the bank until the votes are cast, especially now.

Especially now.

Especially now.

Mr. Hegseth is in this ongoing quagmire with Signal and then all the related branches. First, it was just the one chat. Now it's not only the second chat with close family members but then confirmation of dozens of other chats.

Right, and, you know, it even begs the question around nepotism. What in the hell is his wife, his brother, his personal lawyer, all on DOD payroll? Is there nothing that is going to make the gag reflex start to happen?

Hegseth is so, he's so beyond his capabilities. This is screaming out for action.

You combine that with the disclosure of CIA identities, which dismisses the ability of those men and women to do their job. You saw the firing of the NSA leader—NSA and [U.S. Cyber Command]—and watch if they try to split that and put in a political person. You don't want a political person that has the right to have spying on Americans. That could be down the line.

And just the fact—I was also very much against the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. The comments that she has made about the intelligence workforce since she's been in, they have been worse than I could even imagine.

One of the things I have been, I think I'll get some progress on is, if you guys don't have the courage to call out the Signal excess, at least give some support for the literally thousands of people who work in the intelligence community, who never get the recognition that folks who work in the military get, that you know, we trust them, we support your service. We'll see if that happens.

But it's probably been, this first hundred days, I love being on the Intelligence Committee. It's always been bipartisan. It's always been national security first. It has been bitterly disappointing that these guys and gals that I've worked with for 14 years — and we called out Biden when they screwed up Afghanistan. We called out Trump in the Russian intervention.

We were willing to do these things. Regardless, they have not found their voice yet.

I was a 20 year-old enlisted Army soldier who once worked in a Secret clearance environment and every service member I've talked to right now, every veteran, we're all just furious because if we did even a fraction of what Mr. Hegseth has done, we'd be in Leavenworth for the rest of our lives.

Amen. What I told Hegseth was: oh, this is not important information? I said: you come down to Norfolk, Virginia—which is the home port of the USS Truman the Truman's the aircraft carrier that's been deployed to the Eastern Med, where the jets took off to bomb the Houtis—and you tell the family and friends of those sailors that this was not important information.

They know that if that information had gotten out—because what the Houtis just shot down, it wasn't a manned plane but one of our drones again yesterday—we would have lost pilots only because of the sloppiness and carelessness, and, as you said, if you were a military officer, a CIA officer, your butt would be fired, no question.

Yeah, no hesitation. I mean, this guy's just been a walking intelligence disaster. I can't believe I'm witnessing this happen with our military and our Defense Department.

And what it's doing to the morale, again, that's the stuff that it's just like, the fear I have, even when— I don’t think Hegseth will last long. I think he's just, I think he's incapable of not screwing up again.

But how do you kind of restore the trust that the hard work of the military and the intelligence community is gonna be respected?

It just, it kind of goes to the fact that there's so many of these areas and the fact that we spent 70 years trying to bring friends and allies together, against authoritarian nations, we actually have alliances. The fact that we pissed all of them off.

In record time.

In record time! I went crazy the other day against the Trade Representative, kind of going like, guys, with Australia, we have a free trade agreement, we have no tariffs. I mean, either way, we have a trade surplus with Australia and we are jointly building submarines together. And they still got stuck with a 10% tariff, why?

He had no answer and when we take Canada, Australia, the UK, NATO, Poland—who's doing so much to try to help the Ukrainians—are just angry beyond belief and as they should be.

And it's, I think Americans are recognizing this. It's why we all need to stand up and speak up. And part of that means, if you are feeling the kind of anger that I think many of us are feeling, what I'd ask people to do is do the hard thing.

Don't just talk to your friends, talk to your relatives or folks you work with that may have supported Trump and say: is this really what you were looking for? Is there not a way to have those kind of personal conversations in a way that's not necessarily confrontational?

A lot of this is gonna have to be changed person-by-person. We as elected officials have to do our job. We have to resist, but this is at the core of our country. It's the core of our values. And we need every American who feels the way we do to stand up and speak out.

Yes, Sir. Absolutely. I got one more question for you on foreign policy. I think millions of Americans are concerned about what Trump is doing with basically our allies and hostile nations, of course. On a scale of 1-to-10, ten being the worst, how bad are we doing right now with foreign policy?

I think we're at an eight-and-a-half moving towards ten. Yeah. I mean, you served our country in the military. I think about people who served in the military, people who served in the intelligence community, our NATO alliance.

You know, we've all always thought: Russia, autocratic, Putin's a thug, they're our adversary. You suddenly have the President of the United States saying: no, we don't like our allies, but we think Putin's a good guy.

Putin is playing Trump like a fiddle. This whole notion of, oh, “we're going to have some negotiation.” Bullshit. There are no negotiations. This is stringing out time to frankly advance Russia's interests in Ukraine.

You combine that with the fastest growing continent in the world: Africa, by far. And we think about all the rare minerals. We think about the opportunities for economic growth. When we take away literally less than one percent of our money that goes into foreign aid, when we take those few dollars away, when we have food rotting on docks rather than getting to people in Sudan who are dying of starvation, we are not only discounting the fastest growing continent in the world, but we're also giving China the chance for pennies on the dollars to come in. And, you know, it is it's disgraceful.

You know, we've always counted on people to follow us, not only because we're the world’s biggest military but because we represented values. We represented a notion that other countries aspire to. And so much of that is being destroyed in real time. And that again is one of those areas that I would have given him a full ten, except for the fact that I don't know in the next two weeks what other crazy stuff he might do that might move us.

You don’t want to tempt fate.

Yeah, I don't want to tempt us to get to a ten.

Yeah, it's been horrifying. You know, I remember growing up and occasionally seeing interviews on C-SPAN with historians who talk about the fall of empires and how America is, you know, no special exception. I never wanted that question answered in our lifetime, and yet, it feels like it's been answered pretty strongly in the last four months.

And with all the flaws we have in this country, our history of racism, with the challenges we have for communities that have not been fully respected. All of the bad, we're still the country in the world where people literally give up their life to try to have a piece of what we take for granted every day.

So, I never thought it would be in my life, I mean this kind of awful situation. But it doesn't mean that the country — I believe still in the underlying goodness of Americans. I don't think we're mean-spirited. I don't think we're a spiteful. There may be that 35% of hardcore MAGA that will applaud people being taken away without any due process.

I think the vast majority of us, and I think we're starting to see this even in the polling numbers. This is not what they thought they were gonna get. They thought they were gonna deal with the border and get lower prices. Well, the border has changed. Lower prices, not so much.

The economy today is actually decreased one of the first times for the first quarter in years. So, it's a fight, and we all have a role to play.

And I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate how we're trying to get the message out because as an old dog trying to learn new tricks, I mean, it's only about 35% of Americans that watch any TV news or read any newspaper. So, social media is the way we communicate now.

Unfortunately. [laughs]

Fortunately and unfortunately! Because there are different ways that we can, having the set piece where you give talking points — people are sophisticated, that they just tune that out. Having a real conversation! I still think we're gonna, we can win this fight. But boy it’s gonna take us all.

Well, Senator, can I just say, millions of Americans really need that stability, and I would say: the strength of the old guard. And you're giving a lot of confidence to Americans whose confidence has been shattered recently by this administration.

So, thank you for standing in the breach and standing tall with the American people.

Thank you so much.

Yes, Sir. I appreciate it.

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