The following is the transcript of an interview with Sen. Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on March 30, 2025.
MAJOR GARRETT: Welcome back. We are joined now by the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Virginia Democrat Mark Warner. Senator, always a pleasure. Thanks for coming in. Two things here. We’re going to talk about the chat room and we’re going to talk about the raid. Let’s talk about the raid first. Are you glad this administration is taking a more aggressive military posture against the Houthis and do you believe if it is successful, it will reopen commercial shipping through the Red Sea?
SEN. MARK WARNER: I think we should take more affirmative action. I think the administration is doing the right thing. I would rather than do it with more of our allies involved. But the fact that Donald Trump’s America First is turning quickly into America alone, but the basis of going after Houthis in a stronger, tougher way, I agree with.
MAJOR GARRETT: The administration argues the Biden administration didn’t do enough. Do you agree with that?
SEN. WARNER: I think the Biden administration took repeated action against the Houthis. I think they could have done more.
MAJOR GARRETT: All right, now let’s get to the chat room. What is your experience? Do you use Signal, for example?
SEN. WARNER: Yes. Signal is safer than your normal cell phone, because the Chinese, through Salt Typhoon, have penetrated our traditional cellular networks. Signal is better, but the Chinese, the Russians, are trying to go after Signal. They’ve- they’ve made- had some successful efforts. Everyone is warned in the intelligence community, do not use Signal for classified information. It is bright, it is bold, it is a- it is cyber hygiene 101, in terms of how to stay safe.
MAJOR GARRETT: One of the things discussed in this chat, which the administration has said is accurate, was a reference to a high value Houthi target at his girlfriend’s house somewhere in Yemen, probably Sanaa, near the capital. David Martin, my exceptional colleague here at CBS, has reported that the Israelis are furious about this because they believe those who would read that could sort of backward engineer that and find something out that they shouldn’t find out. Do you agree with that? What do you think the implications of that are?
SEN. WARNER : I have not seen any of the classified information about this, so I’m basing my knowledge on open source. If the Israelis are this mad, and I think they got a right to be this mad about classified information being treated sloppily, and this is a pattern. We’ve seen them expose CIA agents in the first two weeks. We’ve seen the DOGE boys print the full budget and head counts of a classified agency. So this is not a one off. And what happens if the Israelis are this mad and the Five Eye partners, our key allies, are upset, will they continue to share information with us if it’s treated this sloppily. And if we don’t see action taken by this administration, if someone is not held accountable, I believe Secretary Hegseth should resign or be fired. I think Mike Waltz should resign or be fired. If no action is taken, what message does that send to the workforce? Because Maj- Major, I can tell you this, if you were a military officer or a CIA agent and you treated classified information this way, you would be fired. End of story.
MAJOR GARRETT: When Republicans say it was a mistake and they’ll never make it again, does that satisfy you?
SEN. WARNER: Baloney. I’d use stronger language- Sunday morning, but it’s like this is a pattern of sloppiness. I mean, think about the DOGE boys when they print all the savings and half of the information just factually wrong. This administration does not treat classified information the appropriate way, Major. We don’t- we’ve not even seen if the phones that were used, have they been collected? Had they been checked to make sure the bad guys didn’t put malware in them? That, again, would be the first action of a serious administration. I’ve asked the FBI Director whether he’s launching an investigation. I’ve heard nothing back from him.
MAJOR GARRETT: Does it give you any comfort that the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker, a Republican and the Democrat Jack Reed, have called for an inspector general investigation? And is that enough?
SEN. WARNER: I’m glad there’s that bipartisan effort. I hope there will be additional ones. I hope, frankly, I think the Department of Justice needs to look at whether laws have been broken. Because, again, put this in context, the Director of National Intelligence, I think, 12-13, days ago, boldly tweeted out, you know, anybody that leaks information should be pursued to the full extent of the law? Well, if Tulsi Gabbard believes that, is that just for others, or does that standard apply to her as well? Well, she frankly, in our hearing, one, refused to acknowledge she was even on the call to start with, wouldn’t tell us if her phone was hers or the government, and then, at least initially, said there was no classified information at all. When clearly, if you’ve got this kind of information about time of an attack that’s classified, and one of the things I’d love her or Hegseth to do is go down to the Norfolk, Virginia Beach area. I was there yesterday for a couple town halls. The aircraft carrier Truman is home ported in Norfolk. I was talking yesterday with friends and family of members who are on the Truman. Their anger level was so high because if that information had gotten out and the Houthis had been able to redirect their defensive tools, very likely, we would have had American life loss. That could’ve been prevented if you just have treat classified information appropriately.
MAJOR GARRETT: Talk about something else that is of deep concern to you because you wrote the law. Oracle appears to be in deep talks with the administration about some method of acquiring Tiktok before the April 5 deadline. It’s not clear whether or not China would retain ownership of the ever important algorithm within Tiktok. What do you know? What are your concerns? What’s going to happen?
SEN. WARNER: What I know is I believe there are four bidders. I don’t know all of the bidders, but I can tell you this. If there is a result, no matter how much kind of Trump publicity around this, that suddenly we’ve got a new owner, if we’ve got a result and the algorithm resides in Beijing, it is all a sham, because the ability to manipulate that algorithm to what we see on that TikTok channel- and again, remember, China doesn’t offer Tiktok to their own young people that are getting, you know, we get the crack version. And where you can manipulate information, you can put Chinese propaganda out, and if that algorithm does not move whatever transfer, then the whole thing’s a sham.
MAJOR GARRETT: And it violates the law.
SEN. WARNER: And it violates the law. And the irony of this, Major, it was Donald Trump in his first administration that first pointed out the problems with TikTok. Candidly, I didn’t fully agree until I did my own research and I go, holy heck, collecting data and this power of a propaganda tool, it should not be available to Americans. Eighty percent of the Congress, both parties agree.
MAJOR GARRETT: Senator Warner, stay right there. We’ll have more questions for you, and for you at home, please stay with us, we’ll be right back.
[COMMERCIAL BREAK]
MAJOR GARRETT: Welcome back to Face the Nation. We return to our conversation with Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, Vice Chair of the Intelligence Committee. So the intelligence community released its National Threat Assessment Tuesday. Among the things it said was China is going after Greenland’s natural resources, saying they, China, will use the same access as a key strategic foothold for advancing China’s broader and economic aims in the Arctic. The Vice President was there with his wife a couple of days ago. President Trump recently said 100% America will get Greenland, and did not rule out, if necessary, the possible use of military force in America to do that. Is Greenland a legitimate strategic issue? Point 1. Point 2, how is this administration pursuing that legitimate interest, if there is one?
SEN. WARNER: Greenland has got a lot of rare earth minerals and has enormous value, just as many other places around the world do, so legitimate interests and stronger ties with Greenland, absolutely. The idea that we are going to threaten a military invasion against a population that at least everything I’ve read, overwhelmingly people in Greenland don’t want to become part of America. The going against Denmark, who is a NATO member, who rules Greenland currently, this whole approach that Trump has of treating our allies, I mean, he turned Canada into an enemy, our allies as not allies. And suddenly wanting to buddy up with Putin in Russia or with Xi in China. Think about it. America, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, voted with Russia, North Korea, I think it was Belarus, against everyone else who was a democracy, because we wouldn’t acknowledge that Putin started the war in Ukraine. This is a crazy foreign policy, and America is stronger when we have allies. America alone is weaker if we don’t have that intelligence sharing, if we don’t have these mutual defense pacts.
MAJOR GARRETT: That National Threat Assessment also had a notable shift, saying that the biggest threat to America was drug cartels, gangs, fentanyl, Islamic terrorists, not Russia and China. Do you agree?
SEN. WARNER: I think the threat of drugs is awful, and we need to do more against fentanyl. I think the long term strategic technology competition with China is the issue, not just of today, but of the next 30 years, it’s AI, it’s quantum, it’s a whole series of biotech as well. On the question of Russia, here’s the remarkable thing, the intelligence assessment said Russia is still an enemy, and said Russia is still going to do malign election interference. In that document, they say that at the very same time, the Trump administration is getting rid of the election threat group inside our intelligence community, that is a complete contradiction.
MAJOR GARRETT: Very quickly, this threat assessment does not mention climate change. It was there in the previous Trump administration and the Biden administration. Your reaction?
SEN. WARNER: Denial of science doesn’t mean that it’s not happening. One of the reasons why Greenland in the Arctic, because we’ve had so much ice melt, there are a whole suddenly set of new shipping lanes. You can’t deny what is happening. Call it sea level rise. Call it whatever you want. We spend hundreds of millions of dollars raising the piers each year in Norfolk because of sea level rise. You can’t ignore what’s happening.
MAJOR GARRETT: Democratic Senator Mark Warner, Virginia, Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence community. Thanks very much.
SEN. WARNER: Thank you, Major.
MAJOR GARRETT: And we’ll be right back.
