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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Red Letter meets the Warning. Got Steve

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Speaker 1: Schmidt on the line and meet Hara Paul Mary. Thanks

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Speaker 1: so much for joining us as we break down the

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Speaker 1: news of the day and some of my latest reporting.

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Speaker 2: About Pete Heigseth and the Pentagon.

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Speaker 1: Everything seems to be revolving around him anyway, since we

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Speaker 1: are in our third week in a war by now.

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Speaker 2: But you know, I.

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Speaker 1: Wanted to have Steve on the show because last time

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Speaker 1: we had a really great chat and he offered a

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Speaker 1: lot of perspective on this war compared to you know,

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Speaker 1: a rock Afghanistan. And of course please leave your questions.

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Speaker 1: We're going to try to get to them throughout the show.

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Speaker 1: And Steve, thanks for coming on.

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Speaker 3: Of course, good to see it's how are you.

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Speaker 1: I'm good, I'm good. I'm happy to be back with

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Speaker 1: you a week later. I feel like we have to

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Speaker 1: do these regularly, these check.

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Speaker 4: Ins absolutely anytime. It's good to be with you.

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Speaker 2: Thanks.

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Speaker 1: So Yeah. I had some reporting, exclusive reporting. I was

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Speaker 1: calling around to my sources on Capitol Hill and the

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Speaker 1: administration and K Street and just sort of trying to

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Speaker 1: find out what Republicans are really saying about this war,

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Speaker 1: especially since President Trump is asking for a two hundred

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Speaker 1: billion dollars supplemental bill to pay for the war. So

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Speaker 1: you know, it's a bit of a put your money

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Speaker 1: where your mouth is moment, right, And what I kept

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Speaker 1: hearing over and over again is that there's zero confidence

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Speaker 1: in Pete haig Seth. They don't like his defensive, pugnacious style.

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Speaker 1: One sentence source said to me, everyone regrets voting for him.

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Speaker 1: There's more regret than their vote for RFK, and that.

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Speaker 2: Is saying something.

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Speaker 1: So there is there are a lot of feelings on

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Speaker 1: the hill that he is not leading a country in

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Speaker 1: the right direction as Secretary of War, and you know,

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Speaker 1: I find it a bit rich. Like we obviously remember

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Speaker 1: when he was being confirmed about this time, well, no,

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Speaker 1: a few months earlier than that, but you know last

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Speaker 1: year and Joni Earnst had a lot of reservations about

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Speaker 1: confirming him. He was saying he wanted women out of

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Speaker 1: the military. She was the first combat that on the ground,

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Speaker 1: a sexual assault survivor. Obviously, he's got his long list

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Speaker 1: of women who have accused him of sexual assault. And

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Speaker 1: you know, they spent millions of dollars in her backyard

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Speaker 1: threatening primary challengers trying to take her down so that

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Speaker 1: she would vote to confirm him. But so many other

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Speaker 1: centers just went along with it and voted for him,

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Speaker 1: and now they're having regrets. When we are in the

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Speaker 1: middle of a war. We've got a frat boy running

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Speaker 1: the whole show. So I don't know, I don't know, Steve,

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Speaker 1: what do you think?

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Speaker 3: He's the singularly most unfake cabinet secretary of my entire

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Speaker 3: lifetime in the chain of command for the release of

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Speaker 3: thermonuclear weapons and is preposterous. Every time he opens his mouth,

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Speaker 3: he demonstrates that car tunes can come to life. And

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Speaker 3: so you have this cartoon figure, belligerent, disrespectful, pugnacious, to

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Speaker 3: say nothing of the religious Nuttery, who is a principal

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Speaker 3: architect of erasing standards in the Pentagon. And you have

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Speaker 3: now a debacle unfolding in the Middle East, where the

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Speaker 3: straight Offoor moves is closed. Gas prices are soaring, and

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Speaker 3: the two chief beneficiaries of all the instability caused by

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Speaker 3: this are China and Russia, which gets rich off of

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Speaker 3: the oil which is now spiked to ludicrously high prices.

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Speaker 3: And of course there's reporting that we're in essence doing

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Speaker 3: the bidding of the Saudis, who are asking Trump from

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Speaker 3: behind the scenes to finish around and off while Jared

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Speaker 3: Kushner is getting billions of dollars from the Saudiast. The

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Speaker 3: entirety of the corruption, the lack of planning, all of

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Speaker 3: it is appalling. But nobody gets to say that the

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Speaker 3: Pete hegset they voted for is somehow a different Pete

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Speaker 3: Hegseth at the Pentagon. Every one of these people who

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Speaker 3: voted for Pete Hegseth knew what they were voting for,

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Speaker 3: knew the danger to the country by voting for him.

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Speaker 3: It did so anyway because they are obedient to Donald Trump,

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Speaker 3: and that is one of the reasons we're in this crisis.

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Speaker 4: That we're in.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it is interesting to hear that they

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Speaker 1: have regrets when they had a chance, right, And I

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Speaker 1: thought it was interesting you said that he is the

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Speaker 1: worst cabinet secretary, and yet Christinome has already lost her position.

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Speaker 1: So that's so that is saying something. And really the

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Speaker 1: way that he is pushing the narrative with the press,

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Speaker 1: I mean, first of all, he tried to keep the

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Speaker 1: press out of the kind of gone he just lost

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Speaker 1: that a judge ruled against it, and now he's keeping

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Speaker 1: them cordoned off. And then just his combative tone. It's

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Speaker 1: not reassuring. In a time of war. You're supposed to

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Speaker 1: have composure, strength, you're a leader, and he is so defensive,

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Speaker 1: he is so on his back heel that it makes

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Speaker 1: people feel unsettled. It's just not strong communication. Also, in

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Speaker 1: time of war, you can't just force feed people one narrative.

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Speaker 1: And like you mentioned, actually I think this was last

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Speaker 1: week you mentioned too, and something that I really hadn't

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Speaker 1: thought about that we haven't allowed any troops. We haven't

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Speaker 1: allowed any journalists to follow our troops to cover this

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Speaker 1: war properly. It's almost like It'srael and how they blocked

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Speaker 1: everyone from going into Gaza.

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Speaker 3: We have no journalists embedded with US forces, and that

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Speaker 3: is completely unacceptable in a republic, in a democracy with

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Speaker 3: an all volunteer force. The military is not Donald Trump's toy.

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Speaker 3: The military belongs to the nation. It's made up of

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Speaker 3: the nation sons and daughters. And the journalists who cover

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Speaker 3: the Pentagon can cover what's going on in the military

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Speaker 3: without being in a room in the Pentagon. But certainly

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Speaker 3: the idea that there are no reporters embedded with forces

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Speaker 3: at war, contrary to how this has been done in

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Speaker 3: the modern aras, is completely unacceptable. And it's also the

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Speaker 3: case that there are very ambiguous circumstances, to say the

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Speaker 3: least about the reason the aircraft carrier gerald Ford has

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Speaker 3: retreated from the theater of operation to a Greek port.

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Speaker 3: And there are some articles suggesting that there was a

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Speaker 3: fire deliberately set by the crew aboard an aircraft carrier

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Speaker 3: with two nuclear reactors aboard it while engaged in combat operations.

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Speaker 3: And if that was the case, that would be a

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Speaker 3: monumental story. But there ought to be journalists waiting for

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Speaker 3: that ship wherever it gets to in Greece, and the

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Speaker 3: American people have every right to know about what's happening

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Speaker 3: in our name. And the truth is that Donald Trump

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Speaker 3: has cornered himself with a lot of bad advice, and

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Speaker 3: he has two options. He can either escalate or he

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Speaker 3: can withdraw. He can go forward and escalate, or he

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Speaker 3: can go backwards and leave. Those are the options. And

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Speaker 3: so when you see these marine deployment the talk of

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Speaker 3: the eighty second Airport Division Ready Brigade being spun up

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Speaker 3: what it suggests is that Donald Trump is going to

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Speaker 3: try to see some of these islands in the Gulf

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Speaker 3: where there's a lot of Iranian oil production and refining capacity.

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Speaker 3: And what it requires to protect the American troops that

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Speaker 3: would land at those places is to seize the high

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Speaker 3: ground and the coastal mountains along the length of the

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Speaker 3: Strait of Hormuz where they would be vulnerable to artillery

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Speaker 3: and to missile attacks. So it's a major escalation. These

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Speaker 3: US forces would be insignificant harm's way. And Donald Trump

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Speaker 3: right now has stumbled into this without any notion around

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Speaker 3: how it ends, and so right now he's improvising, and

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Speaker 3: in his improvisation he's come to the inflection point forward

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Speaker 3: or backward. And we're at that place three weeks into this,

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Speaker 3: and it is not looking good for a lot of

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Speaker 3: different reasons.

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Speaker 1: So Texas Chris just chimed in reports that part of

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Speaker 1: eighty second Airborne has received orders to deploy it to

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Speaker 1: the Middle East. What could be accomplished with these paratroopers

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Speaker 1: combined with the two marine meus.

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Speaker 2: What do you thinks to you?

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Speaker 3: Well, the Division Ready Brigade of the eighty second Airborne

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Speaker 3: is one of the elite military forces in the country,

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Speaker 3: and it's designed to be deployable within twenty four hours

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Speaker 3: to anywhere in the world, and so it's ready to go.

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Speaker 3: It's on a constant war footing and the eighty second

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Speaker 3: Airborne if it parachutes in. It's a light infantry division,

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Speaker 3: and it is designed to hold territory, to take it

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Speaker 3: to take territory, to hold territory for a brief time

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Speaker 3: until it's.

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Speaker 4: Relieved by a more potent unit.

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Speaker 3: These marine expeditionary units, about twenty five hundred men, are

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Speaker 3: about the same sized or smaller than a division, but

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Speaker 3: they're self contained. They have their own air support, they

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Speaker 3: have their own artillery. They are infantry units. They have

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Speaker 3: amphibious capability, they have airlift capability. And again though those

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Speaker 3: marine expeditionary units are not designed to advance onward without relief,

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Speaker 3: and they need to have supply and so all of

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Speaker 3: those things factor into this, and what it requires.

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Speaker 4: Is more and more and more and more.

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Speaker 3: Troops as this goes on, and that's one consideration that

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Speaker 3: for sure they are having to look at.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that that was the follow up question

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Speaker 1: from Texas Chris, which is are there enough troops to

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Speaker 1: accomplish anything of significance.

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Speaker 4: No, there's not.

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Speaker 3: And so the first instance of ground troops going in,

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Speaker 3: you'll have an immediate cry of that there's not enough

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Speaker 3: ground troops.

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Speaker 4: We need more troops.

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Speaker 2: Mm, yeah, you know.

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Speaker 1: Sarah Burr asked, how do members the military feel about

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Speaker 1: what's going on? Do they understand what this excursion is about? Jeez,

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Speaker 1: the word excursion in quotes. She's on substacks. We couldn't

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Speaker 1: put it up on the screen. But what do you think, Steve,

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Speaker 1: do you get the feeling that they are on board?

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Speaker 3: Well, military is going to follow their orders and they're

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Speaker 3: going to complete their mission. And there's a there's a

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Speaker 3: say in the Marine Corps the seven p's prior proper

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Speaker 3: planning prevents pisspoor performance. So in the military, they're going

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Speaker 3: to recognize the lack of a plan. Uh, the improvisational

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Speaker 3: political nature of this.

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Speaker 4: Uh.

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Speaker 3: They are living in real time the reality of the mission.

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Speaker 3: They're not watching it unfold on the Fox News Happy Hour.

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Speaker 3: And so if you're forward and you're watching this and

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Speaker 3: you think it's a force, you're going to react to

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Speaker 3: it the way you react to watching watching a farce.

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Speaker 3: So the military is going to do two things at once.

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Speaker 3: They're going to see clearly what's being asked of them,

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Speaker 3: and two they're they're going to do it. They're going

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Speaker 3: to obey their their lawful orders. And at the end

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Speaker 3: of the day, Donald Trump needs to be restrained here,

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Speaker 3: not by the military saying no, but by by the

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Speaker 3: US Congress, uh, saying no. That's how that's how our

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Speaker 3: system of government works.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, that's the other thing too. I mean,

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Speaker 1: is the military sold on it? I guess they don't really.

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Speaker 1: They don't really have much of a saying yeah. But

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Speaker 1: we all get a vote, right.

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Speaker 4: We certainly do. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And that was another thing that a source brought up

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Speaker 1: to me, that there's a feeling that President Trump could

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Speaker 1: be doing more to sell the American people on this. Obviously,

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Speaker 1: we all woke up one morning and found out that

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Speaker 1: we were in bombing around we were in the middle

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Speaker 1: of another war. And you know a lot of people say,

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Speaker 1: it's been three weeks and we still haven't even gotten

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Speaker 1: an Oval Office address. You've been, you know, in the

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Speaker 1: Bush administration. You know how much they worked to sell

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Speaker 1: the war to Congress, They went to the UN. They

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Speaker 1: really tried to sell the war do you think that

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Speaker 1: this has been just coming from the perspective as someone

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Speaker 1: who worked in the Comms department for Bush, Like, do

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Speaker 1: you think that President Trump should be doing that?

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Speaker 2: Do you think he should be trying.

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Speaker 3: Listen any any John McCain talked about this all all

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Speaker 3: the all the time, and there's a there's a great

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Speaker 3: excerpt in a speech by Admiral Stockdale speaking to Marine

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Speaker 3: officers about the fact when wars are started, uh for

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Speaker 3: fraudulent reasons, that the men who start them are often

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Speaker 3: the first to run, turn tail and quit. And it's

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Speaker 3: not so easy if you're the person who is assigned

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Speaker 3: to fight the war. He's a very famous prisoner, prisoner

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Speaker 3: of war on uh, you know, for instance, on this

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Speaker 3: but I but but what McCain talked about is that

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Speaker 3: MAGA doesn't lose a war, The United States loses a war.

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Speaker 3: The Republican Party doesn't go to war. The United States

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Speaker 3: goes to war. And this has been as sloppily planned

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Speaker 3: to war as any adult has ever seen in our lifetime.

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Speaker 3: There's shifting reasons, there's shifting rationales, and there's an utter

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Speaker 3: lack of communication. It's just Donald Trump or some minion

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Speaker 3: yelling at the country and demand for obedience around what

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Speaker 3: we can see to not be true, and in the

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Speaker 3: case of in the case of this war, public opinion,

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Speaker 3: as Lincoln pointed out, it's everything. He said that with it,

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Speaker 3: you can do anything in America. Without it, nothing, And overwhelmingly,

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Speaker 3: like ninety two percent of the country has qualms about

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Speaker 3: what's going on here, and a vast majority is outright

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Speaker 3: opposed to it. And so Donald Trump cannot sustain a

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Speaker 3: war opposed by the American people. And it's one more

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Speaker 3: in a long laundry list of things that he's done

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Speaker 3: he's going to pay a big price for and the's

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Speaker 3: actions coming up.

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Speaker 1: I have to say, I am shocked, though, when I

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Speaker 1: see these polls that show that a lot of Republicans

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Speaker 1: are behind him, the maga more libertarian end of the party.

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Speaker 1: They're not the Megan Kelly's, the Tucker Carlson's there, But

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Speaker 1: you know.

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Speaker 2: A lot of Republicans are with him on this war.

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Speaker 1: And when I wrote this piece, you know, I spoke

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Speaker 1: to the White House Press Secretary who pointed to a

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Speaker 1: political poll that showed that forty three percent overall of

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Speaker 1: all the respondents were in favor of the war. And

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Speaker 1: the strikes in Ron. Now that was against thirty three

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Speaker 1: percent who disagreed with it. So they see that, as

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Speaker 1: you know, indication that they're on the right track. I

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Speaker 1: think forty three percent is below is underwater. And but

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Speaker 1: regardless it is, it is surprising. Do you think that

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Speaker 1: that this that there's going to be war fatigue soon,

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Speaker 1: gas prices?

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Speaker 2: What are you thinking?

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Speaker 3: I mean, so one of them said that there was

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Speaker 3: one hundred percent support inside the Republican Party for this,

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Speaker 3: and so if that's true against what the numbers are,

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Speaker 3: it means that he has seventeen percent approval amongst everybody else.

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Speaker 3: And so the independence all the Democrats, the majority making

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Speaker 3: middle of the country is just simply not with him

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Speaker 3: on any of this.

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Speaker 4: And when you look at numbers, and.

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Speaker 3: Even if I say, okay, I think that number is high,

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Speaker 3: what's true about all of those numbers is that this

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Speaker 3: early on in a war, for them to be so

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Speaker 3: low is in and of itself historic.

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Speaker 4: Is that when wars.

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Speaker 3: Begin, they usually begin with a lot of consensus around

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Speaker 3: the wisdom of the war, and that was certainly the

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Speaker 3: case around the Iraq War. The country sours on it,

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Speaker 3: political union around it falls apart over time, but not

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Speaker 3: three weeks into it.

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Speaker 4: And that's where we are with this.

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Speaker 3: He's taken the country to war without there being a

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Speaker 3: consensus for it, without there being a plan, and without

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Speaker 3: there being any any plan to end the war that

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Speaker 3: makes any sense, any achievable, knowable definition of victory, of

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Speaker 3: how this ends beyond Trump's whim him simply saying, I'll

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Speaker 3: let you know when it ends. It's my instinct that

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Speaker 3: will that will tell us. That's that's where we are

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Speaker 3: with this.

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Speaker 1: Right And already he's saying that he's having conversations with

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Speaker 1: the Ayatola, which they deny.

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Speaker 2: What did you make of that?

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Speaker 3: Well, again, it's an incredible thing that as you adjudicate

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Speaker 3: those two sources for information, it's not it's not a uh,

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Speaker 3: it's not a calculus.

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Speaker 4: It's not a calculus equation.

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Speaker 3: Right, It's it's a it's a very simple puzzle to unravel.

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Speaker 3: You got you got the Iranian government saying something, you

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Speaker 3: got the American government and Trump saying something, and you

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Speaker 3: have to decide who's telling you the truth there and

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Speaker 3: and in that instance, like a lot of Americans, for

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Speaker 3: the first time in my life, well, I'm going with

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Speaker 3: the Iranian government. I believe they're telling the truth. I

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Speaker 3: don't believe there's been any contact between Donald Trump and

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Speaker 3: the Iranian government, and I think the Iranian government is

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Speaker 3: telling the truth about that is that Trump is not

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Speaker 3: talking to the Ayatola. He is completely making it up,

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Speaker 3: which again raises this question of his fitness. At the

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Speaker 3: most elementary level, is that there are Americans in arms

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Speaker 3: way in combat and Trump is making up conversations in

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Speaker 3: his head, either on purpose or he is delusional enough

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Speaker 3: that he doesn't know that he's not talking to the Ayatola.

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Speaker 3: But either way, he has these made up conversations that

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Speaker 3: he's relating to the country and it's not it's not real.

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Speaker 3: So it's a it's a big problem when the country's

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Speaker 3: at war. And again, you can either go forward and

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Speaker 3: escalate or get out, and Trump is not getting out.

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Speaker 3: It seems like he's escalating when we look at the

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Speaker 3: troop movements.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting.

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Speaker 1: You know, obviously some intermediaries like Egypt, Turkey, they're trying

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Speaker 1: to create a line between the US and.

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Speaker 2: And Iran right now.

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Speaker 1: I saw that there was some reporting sources saying that

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Speaker 1: US would like to see the head of the.

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Speaker 2: Parliament run the country of Baron. What do you think

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Speaker 2: of that?

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Speaker 3: Well, I don't think we're in a position to demand

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Speaker 3: that the Iranian parliament speaker become the new Iotola. I

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Speaker 3: think the Iotolas have named their new Iatola. And what

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Speaker 3: we've achieved is we replaced the Iotola Kamane.

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Speaker 4: We have the new Iotola Kamanee.

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Speaker 3: And the new Iotola Kamanee, according to some reports, was

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Speaker 3: viewed as unfit for the business of being a good

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Speaker 3: Ayatola by his very own father, the dead Iatola. So

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Speaker 3: maybe we have a version of Eric Trump as the

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Speaker 3: new Iranian as the new Iranian Ayatola. But but the

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Speaker 3: government seems likely to be more extreme, and if it

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Speaker 3: remains in power, wouldn't one of the immediate priorities be

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Speaker 3: to develop as quickly as possible to demonstrate the ability

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Speaker 3: to use.

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Speaker 4: A nuclear weapon.

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Speaker 3: And so there are four hundred and sixty kilograms of

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Speaker 3: enriched uranium that nobody knows where it is. Trump said

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Speaker 3: the program was obliterated, then he said it needed to

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Speaker 3: be re obliterated and reobliterated again. So nobody really knows.

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Speaker 3: And Donald Trump, and this can't be erase. Three weeks

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Speaker 3: ago set out on this adventure saying we're going to

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Speaker 3: remove this regime from power. And the regime has not

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Speaker 3: been removed from power. The regime has absorbed the blows

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Speaker 3: and it has stayed in power, and it controls a

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Speaker 3: vital waterway, and all of America's power can't seem to

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Speaker 3: reopen that waterway by threat alone. And that's why we're

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Speaker 3: at this point of either escalation or withdrawal.

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Speaker 4: And withdrawal will give a clear victory to Iran.

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Speaker 3: And so what Donald Trump, who promised not to start wars,

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Speaker 3: will have done is start a war and quickly lose

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Speaker 3: a war to the Islamic Republic, which will be quite

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Speaker 3: a feat and he'll pay a very high price for

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Speaker 3: that politically.

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Speaker 1: So Rick g says, it seems that Trump's actions are

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Speaker 1: being dictated by Israel. What do you think about that?

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Speaker 3: Well, I think that it's I don't like it when

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Speaker 3: it's talked about in terms that Israel is somehow dictating,

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Speaker 3: as in the Jews.

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Speaker 4: Are manipulating at all.

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Speaker 3: But Marco Rubio said, the reason we're at war is

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Speaker 3: because Israel had decided to attack Iran, and therefore Iran

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Speaker 3: would turn around and attack American targets and air go

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Speaker 3: if that were to be the case, and we need

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Speaker 3: to attack first. And what that means is that Benjamin

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Speaker 3: Nett and Yahoo is the person who determines what an

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Speaker 3: imminent threat is regarding American forces, not the President of

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Speaker 3: the United States, and that should never be the case.

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Speaker 3: And two, it is a clear statement about what our

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Speaker 3: interests were, and our interests have nothing to do with

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Speaker 3: our security.

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Speaker 4: And that's for the record books.

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Speaker 3: But it's not just the Israelis that have manipulated Team Trump.

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Speaker 3: It's the Saudis who have done it. It's the Amadis

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Speaker 3: have done it. It's all the Gulf Arab states. And

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Speaker 3: they play a double game as well as any people

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Speaker 3: on Earth, and it's constantly played against the United States.

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Speaker 3: And it is being played right now where the Saudis,

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Speaker 3: out of one side of their mouth are saying we

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Speaker 3: want this to stop, but on the out of the

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Speaker 3: other side or saying to Trump, you got to finish

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Speaker 3: them off.

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Speaker 1: And they haven't actually done it. They haven't launched any

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Speaker 1: attackers again.

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Speaker 3: Haven't and they haven't launched anything. You have you have

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Speaker 3: dead Americans, and you have American forces functioning as their

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Speaker 3: Hessians as their mercenaries is completely unacceptable. So I don't

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Speaker 3: I don't ever want to see American forces used as

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Speaker 3: mercenaries for the Israelis and for the net and Yahu government,

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Speaker 3: for NBS in the Saudi government, for whatever shake in

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Speaker 3: the Emirates at all. And so these are all going

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Speaker 3: to be very I think vibrant campaign pain issues in

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Speaker 3: the in the twenty seven to twenty eight presidential season,

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Speaker 3: to say the least.

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Speaker 1: Steve, thank you so much for joining the Shadow. Everyone

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Speaker 1: who sent in questions, this was a great episode. You

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Speaker 1: can support both of us in independent journalism by hitting

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Speaker 1: that subscribe button and you know, by becoming paid subscribers

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Speaker 1: to The Warning and the Red Letter.

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Speaker 2: You keep us going.

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Speaker 1: And we really appreciate all of you because we couldn't

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Speaker 1: do this without you, and really appreciate all your questions.

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Speaker 2: They were very smart and there were some that I

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Speaker 2: didn't get to.

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Speaker 1: So hopefully we will reconvene next week and I hope

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Speaker 1: with better news