Motion to Discharge

Floor Speech

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Mr. TUBERVILLE. Mr. President, you know, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy serves as the national security advisor to the Secretary of Defense. This position requires even temperament, sound judgment, and a willingness to work with both sides of the aisle to protect and advance our national security.

As many of my colleagues have noted, President Biden's nominee for this important position severely lacks these qualities.

Colin Kahl has promoted conspiracy theories on social media. He makes outrageous claims against those who disagree with him, like when he called Republicans ``the party of ethnic cleansing.'' And he views the threats of our Nation solely through the lens of partisan politics.

Dr. Kahl blatantly downplayed the threat of Russia when our colleague Mitt Romney highlighted it during the 2012 Presidential campaign but then promoted numerous lies about President Trump and Russia after the 2016 election. This is not--and I repeat--not the kind of person who should serve in the Pentagon's No. 3 position.

But today I want to address another issue. Dr. Kahl presents himself as an academic, but he often makes claims that are not grounded in data. That is especially true when it comes to the situation along our southern border.

As everybody knows, the illegal migration crisis is not new. As of 2017, according to the Pew Research Center, there were an estimated 10.5 million unauthorized immigrants in this country. And according to Pew, over 77 percent of those unauthorized immigrants came from within the Western Hemisphere. President Trump came into office in 2017 promising to do something about this challenge: enforce our immigration laws and reinforce southern security along our border. Dr. Kahl disagreed with his policy, and that is certainly his right, but rather than explain why he disagreed, he promoted baseless lies.

In October 2018, a migrant caravan surged toward our southwestern border. President Trump deployed approximately 5,000 U.S. members of our service to support the Department of Homeland Security at the border. This was not, as some in the media claimed, a ``show of force.'' This was the defense support to civil authority's mission, the type of mission that the DOD also does to support FEMA during hurricanes.

Dr. Kahl has served previously at the Pentagon. He has served as National Security Advisor to the Vice President. He knows what defense support to civil authority is and what these missions entail. But rather than explain any of this to his many thousands of Twitter followers, Dr. Kahl told them that the deployment was a ``stunt.'' This was a terrible insult to the men and women in uniform who were supporting DHS at the time. But more to the point, it was also a blatant lie.

A few months later, Dr. Kahl called the situation at the border a ``fake crisis'' and also tweeted that ``Trump's claims of a border crisis are bogus.''

To justify his claims, Kahl cited data showing a decrease in arrests at the southern border. But there was one problem with his data: arrests along the border always decline when border enforcement is lax.

Well, as we know, President Trump stepped up enforcement at the border, and it worked. As a result, arrests at the border surged through the first half of 2019. More border security means more arrests, but it also deters future illegal migrants, and that is why illegal border crossings fell dramatically in the second half of 2019.

Far from being a ``fake crisis,'' as Dr. Kahl would have it, this was a crisis that was not being properly addressed until President Trump took action. Today, we have another crisis at the border. We have seen a record number of illegal crossings and arrests in recent months as illegal migrants anticipate a more welcoming environment under President Biden's administration.

The Biden administration has made detrimental changes to our border policy, including ending the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. But it is worth noting what has not changed: U.S. troops are still deployed in support of DHS along the border. They are still there. Anyone who has taken the time to visit our southern border, as I was there just a few weeks ago, understands that if our troops were not in this region, the crisis at the border would only grow worse.

Colin Kahl saw the deployment as a ``stunt'' under President Trump. I suspect he sees it a little differently under President Biden. And that is exactly the problem: Colin Kahl's judgment is often based on partisan politics, not data.

We cannot accept the risk of having someone so partisan in the Defense Department's No. 3 position. This position requires someone who bases his recommendations on data and not on the top trending hashtag. I urge my colleagues to vote against the motion to discharge.

Let Colin Kahl keep tweeting and let the administration send us another nominee.

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