'Elephant in the room': MS NOW analyst says Senate hearings were really about one thing

A singular threat from President Donald Trump loomed over both congressional hearings covering the Department of Homeland Security and the intelligence community, according to an MS NOW analyst.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) faced his colleagues in a Senate confirmation hearing as Trump's nominee to lead DHS, and intel chief Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and FBI Director Kash Patel faced questions from the Senate Intelligence Committee, but journalist Paolo Ramos told host Ana Cabrera that one topic loomed over both hearings.

"I'm trying to connect the dots, and I think Sen. [Mark] Warner (D-VA) and Sen. [Ruben] Gallego (D-AZ) are pointing to the same thing, which is sort of the elephant, the elephant in the room: Will there be free and fair elections?" Ramos said.

Warner pressed the director of national intelligence about her presence at the FBI raid of a Fulton County, Georgia, election facility, while Gallego challenged Mullin to agree that Joe Biden had won the 2020 election in Arizona, which he refused to do, and Ramos said the Democratic senators were pointing to the same concern.

"This split-screen moment between both of these hearings should concern us," Ramos said. "You have Tulsi Gabbard sort of struggling to respond to what she was doing in Fulton County during that election search. Then you have on the other side this election denier, someone that refused to certify the 2020 election, someone that still could not answer to Sen. Gallego whether or not he believed that Joe Biden was the president of the United States. He did not answer that question."

"All of this happening in the background as the Senate is about to debate the SAVE Act," she added. "So what I would have loved for Sen. Gallego to then ask Sen. Mullin is, will you rule out ICE agents going to polling locations, something that Kristi Noem was unable to answer during the last hearing."

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