Devin Nunes Gets Publicly Shamed During House Intel Hearing

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Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) got rhetorically smacked down during a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Wednesday after he self-confidently complained about a supposed “infatuation with left-wing dogma” on the part of the intelligence community. Specifically, Nunes whined about what he called the “proliferation of seminars given to military service members focusing on the dangers of white supremacy and systemic racism,” the release by the intelligence community of a report on “global warming,” efforts by the State Department to uplift LGBTQ individuals, and more.

The problem is, though, that these issues and efforts are connected to the basic reality in which the United States has found itself. Does Nunes seriously want to pretend as though climate change doesn’t have national security ramifications? Does he want to convince observers that “seminars” against white supremacy are… a bad thing? Besides the ideology itself, white supremacy is connected to decades upon decades of real-world instances of violence throughout the modern world. It’s clearly a national security issue.

Nunes self-confidently asserted that the “international threat matrix does not take time out as our national security agencies become enthralled by critical race theory and pronoun etiquette.” He added that he would “argue that woke obsessions are the proper jurisdiction of faculty lounge Marxists, not our national security agencies,” insisting that the “effectiveness of these organizations will unavoidably suffer when merit is devalued in favor of any other consideration.” His idea would be that proactively trying to bring marginalized communities into the metaphorical — or literal — room is distracting from the true mission.

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) took on Nunes’s remarks in a follow-up. As he put it:

‘I’m going to bring the conversation back to the reason that we’re here. Why are we here? Is this some scratching of a faculty lounge itch, as the ranking member suggests? Is this some effusion of white, liberal guilt? It is not. It is not. We are here because our responsibility — our duty — is to field the most competent, capable, and lethal national security team we can. A generation ago, the CIA was mocked for being, ‘pale, male, Yale.’ Now, maybe you believe that an [intelligence community] comprised of white males is the result of a perfectly meritocratic system. Maybe you believe that white males have some racial or ethnic or genetic advantage over others. If you do, there’s a word for that. I don’t believe that we believe that.’

Check out Himes’s remarks below: