Speaker 1: Welcome to another edition of The Warning, and I'm thrilled
Speaker 1: today to be joined by Paul Raikoff, who is President
Speaker 1: of the Independent Veterans of America. Paul is a well
Speaker 1: known and outspoken leader of this generation of veterans who
Speaker 1: fought in the Iraq and Afghanistan. Wore somebody that I
Speaker 1: deeply admire, and I'm thrilled to have him here today.
Speaker 1: And I guess to start out, there's a good chance
Speaker 1: we could be in the same cell block in political
Speaker 1: prison together, right if they keep the rs and the
Speaker 1: esses together alphabetically, so we may be seeing more of
Speaker 1: each other soon.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wild times, man, wild times. I mean, I hope not,
Speaker 2: but it's definitely a time where critics are going to
Speaker 2: be under fire and facing all kinds of headwinds we've
Speaker 2: never seen before. Just one correction, I hadn't served in Afghanistan,
Speaker 2: just a rock. But a lot of the last couple
Speaker 2: of months has felt like all those things and then
Speaker 2: some Right, I mean, we're in a new normal. And
Speaker 2: your show is called The Warning. I think that's the
Speaker 2: appropriate title for the times we're living in and what's
Speaker 2: happening right now. And a lot of folks are ready to,
Speaker 2: you know, focus on the holidays and take a break
Speaker 2: or lick their wounds or just go to ground. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a time where we need to be especially
Speaker 2: vigilant and stick together wherever we can. So yeah, I
Speaker 2: hope we're not in getm together. But who knows what
Speaker 2: the next couple of months is going to look like.
Speaker 2: For anybody who's a critic of the president elect.
Speaker 1: It's jerking around with a friend of mine, I said.
Speaker 1: The difference between political prison and regular prison is generally speaking,
Speaker 1: in so far as I can tell, right, it's not experiential.
Speaker 1: But if you get a regular prison, right, your worst
Speaker 1: day is your first day, right, and then it starts
Speaker 1: to get better.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So the Menendez brothers, for example, right, they are involved
Speaker 1: in prison government, and one of them is a meditation tee.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Political prison, on the other hand, tends to be a
Speaker 1: situation where your best day is your first day and
Speaker 1: then it deteriorates from there. So we'll have to we'll
Speaker 1: have to wait and see, apparently, And I want to
Speaker 1: talk to you about this in a in a serious manner.
Speaker 2: When you.
Speaker 1: Think about the great quotations and the phrases, right that
Speaker 1: are part of our daily ritual, like I pledge allegiance
Speaker 1: to the flag, right, or is I pledge allegius in
Speaker 1: a flag?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: It's like it's one, it's one blur.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: These these words don't don't really have an impact. Right.
Speaker 1: And so when you think about people who have had
Speaker 1: enormous impacts in adjacent moments in time, Franklin Roosevelt time
Speaker 1: of real panic. You think about Franklin Roosevelt taking command
Speaker 1: as commander in chief, twenty five percent of the country
Speaker 1: is unemployed, and he sat down, he wrote the speech himself.
Speaker 1: There wasn't the phalanx of speech writers. He had a
Speaker 1: couple of people. But like any time you go out
Speaker 1: you say anything, right, you have military experience, you've commanded men,
Speaker 1: you've commanded men in combat. You have to think about
Speaker 1: what the first thing you're going to say is right?
Speaker 1: But what am I going to lead off with here?
Speaker 1: And for FDR was the only thing we have to
Speaker 1: fear is fear itself. You look in nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: new pope comes to be in nineteen seventy nine, and
Speaker 1: you know, for all the younger folks out there kind
Speaker 1: of forget what the pope John Paul was like when
Speaker 1: he first became pope. Right, this guy was movie star
Speaker 1: good looking, he was really young, and he goes to
Speaker 1: Warsaw at the height of Soviet dominance in the era
Speaker 1: of solidarity, and he goes to a square in front
Speaker 1: of a million people, and he says, do not be afraid.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: You look in this moment, justin Trudeau, Trump lays out
Speaker 1: the tariff. He jackasses down Tomorrow Lago to do the capitulation.
Speaker 1: A couple of weeks later, his government is going to
Speaker 1: fall as it should. Joe Scarborough Mika Brazinski, I think
Speaker 1: the most brutally obvious of the examples out of corporate
Speaker 1: media going down there and then justifying the capitulation. ABC
Speaker 1: News Disney imposing a settlement on George Stephanopolis and on
Speaker 1: the news division on a suit that they surely would
Speaker 1: have won. Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, Patrick Schong
Speaker 1: at the La Times. So we're thirty four days out
Speaker 1: from him taking power and whatever the first line of
Speaker 1: resistance is going to be, it's that way we're retreating, right.
Speaker 1: The opposition is disorganized, it is flat on its back.
Speaker 1: It is completely delusional. I'm reading stories about is Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris going to run for president again next or is
Speaker 1: she going to be governor of California or maybe both
Speaker 1: at once? Who knows? And I just how do you
Speaker 1: process this moment thirty four days out as Trump appears
Speaker 1: before the national media and basically says, well, I got
Speaker 1: you tamed. They all nod back at him, and you
Speaker 1: got to keep being nice. Gotta be nice, nice to Trump?
Speaker 1: How do you assess the strategic landscape politically?
Speaker 2: So we went from the Menendez brothers to the Pope
Speaker 2: to Joe Scarborough and everything right and.
Speaker 1: Maybe not afraid being the key themat.
Speaker 2: Maybe I think the question is the right one because
Speaker 2: one of my great mentors was a guy named lescal
Speaker 2: who ran the Council on Foreign Relations, and he used
Speaker 2: to say, strategy is hard. Most people can't do strategy.
Speaker 2: And I think what you see right now is a
Speaker 2: landscape that looks like an evolving battlefield, right, And you've
Speaker 2: got a force that's on the offensive and it is
Speaker 2: taking ground and got momentum and got energy, and you've
Speaker 2: got a fragmented, disorganized, demoralized opposition and series of oppositions.
Speaker 2: And I think for me, I go back to being
Speaker 2: a dad, right, And when I send my boys off
Speaker 2: to school, we have little sayings every day. I got
Speaker 2: two little boys, they're nine and five, and we say
Speaker 2: strong of body, strong of heart, strong of mind. Right,
Speaker 2: And that's how I kind of steal them to think
Speaker 2: about how they can be empowered to take on whatever
Speaker 2: is going to come at their day. And I make
Speaker 2: the brothers look at each other, tell them they love them,
Speaker 2: and they go in together, right. And every day they're
Speaker 2: going into the unknown in New York City public school.
Speaker 2: But when my nine year old was a kindergartener, he
Speaker 2: was going into COVID with a mask and a temperature
Speaker 2: check and I couldn't even go in the room, right.
Speaker 2: So I kind of bring it all back to that, Steve,
Speaker 2: because I think the most important thing for people, especially Democrats,
Speaker 2: to understand is it's on. It's been on for years
Speaker 2: and now it's fully unfolding. And for these folks that
Speaker 2: are licking their wounds or they're you know, doing with
Speaker 2: what Democrats love to do, which is like a lot
Speaker 2: of listening sessions and roundtables. Trump is pushing his advantage
Speaker 2: very aggressively right now. He's not taking Christmas off to
Speaker 2: handout presents to his grandkids, and he's going to try
Speaker 2: to run up the score. So what's lacking is a
Speaker 2: strategy to oppose him, right, And I think what's also
Speaker 2: lacking is a strategic leader. There is no Churchill, there
Speaker 2: is no FDR, and no one has yet emerged to
Speaker 2: be that person for the Democrats or for America. And
Speaker 2: I've been talking to folks as I'm sure you have,
Speaker 2: who are trying to figure out what to do next
Speaker 2: to get my read and I say, look, part of
Speaker 2: it is about betting on leaders, whether you're betting on
Speaker 2: Steve Schmidt, or you're betting on AOC, or you're betting
Speaker 2: on Dan Osborne who ran as an independent for Senate
Speaker 2: in Nebraska and almost one. It's not a time where
Speaker 2: the existing organizations are nimble, dynamic, or even capable enough
Speaker 2: to respond to this threat. And I view it as
Speaker 2: a threat. I still view it as a national security
Speaker 2: threat more than anything else. And the Trump movement now
Speaker 2: is very close to having the keys to the entire castle.
Speaker 2: But none of it is normal, none of it is acceptable,
Speaker 2: and none of it is inevitable. And what we're lacking
Speaker 2: because we don't have strategic leaders, and we don't have
Speaker 2: a national strategy or even enclaves of strategies to oppose him.
Speaker 2: Is we're lacking priorities, so people don't know where to focus,
Speaker 2: and that's to Trump's advantage. He wants to overwhelm the zone.
Speaker 2: He throws hegseth at you right after Gates and here
Speaker 2: comes Tulca Gabbard and RFK Jr. And nobody's even paying
Speaker 2: attention to the fact that he nominated a guy for
Speaker 2: Secretary of the Navy who's never served in the Navy,
Speaker 2: or that he's got a very radical pick at the
Speaker 2: Department of Veterans Affairs that's way below the radar and
Speaker 2: getting no coverage or even oversight. So that the strategy
Speaker 2: is to overwhelm the country, overwhelm the press, overwhelm the government,
Speaker 2: and get as much ground as he can so that
Speaker 2: the midterms become irrelevant. Right people are stacking their chips
Speaker 2: for the midterms for four years from now. I'm saying
Speaker 2: it's about the next thirty five days, and right now
Speaker 2: I think the most urgent priority is hegset because he
Speaker 2: is the biggest move at the biggest agency in the
Speaker 2: federal government, and he's not inevitable We saw that with Gates,
Speaker 2: and I think Hegseth is the same situation. But if
Speaker 2: you're Trump and you're going for your breaking into the house, okay,
Speaker 2: whether it was your house or someone else's house, the
Speaker 2: first thing you go for is the gun closet. You
Speaker 2: go for the gun closet because it's the most dangerous,
Speaker 2: it's the most valuable, it's got all the symbolic reasons, right,
Speaker 2: And he knows that the Pentagon stopped him last time,
Speaker 2: so he's taken a long shot. He's picking the most political,
Speaker 2: the most extreme, the most not just unqualified but disqualified
Speaker 2: person to take over the largest federal agency in the government,
Speaker 2: not just because it has and the most significant, not
Speaker 2: just because it has two point seven million employees and
Speaker 2: a seven hundred billion dollar budget, but because it's the
Speaker 2: most powerful thing that stopped him last time. Right. So
Speaker 2: if you want to talk about things like federalizing the
Speaker 2: National Guard to rip migrant kids out of schools, if
Speaker 2: you want to talk about owning the military leadership so
Speaker 2: they don't oppose you when you want to do any
Speaker 2: number of crazy things, the first thing you do is
Speaker 2: hit the Pentagon. And that's what he's doing. Pete Hegseth
Speaker 2: is like a political nuke strike. And if he goes through,
Speaker 2: which I don't think has got to happen, everything else
Speaker 2: is easy, right va is cake education, no problem. You
Speaker 2: can even you know, even if he does go down,
Speaker 2: you can put up somebody like DeSantis and he sails through.
Speaker 2: So I really think it's important that people understand that
Speaker 2: Pete Hegseth was built for this moment. He was built
Speaker 2: as a culture warrior, funded by the Koch brothers, empowered
Speaker 2: with a spot on Fox News, and we never thought
Speaker 2: that he would actually get nominated because we knew his
Speaker 2: personal life was messy. I figured he was going to
Speaker 2: be chief of staff or maybe press secretary. But Trump
Speaker 2: is literally saying, and he's saying you, he's I'm gonna
Speaker 2: roll you. I'm gonna put this guy up. And he
Speaker 2: is a culture warrior, and he's got you know, tattoos
Speaker 2: that might be associated white nationalism, and he's got three divorces,
Speaker 2: and he's openly talked about, you know, having sex with
Speaker 2: other people's wives. I mean, this is all out in
Speaker 2: the open. And if he can get hag set through,
Speaker 2: then the Democrats are gonna just get rolled and I
Speaker 2: really think that's why, you know, I continue to bring
Speaker 2: focus towards strategic leaders that aren't political, someone like Admiral Straviti's,
Speaker 2: or maybe it's a retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
Speaker 2: like Mike Mullen. Maybe someone else will emerge. And I
Speaker 2: don't have an answer for you, but I do think
Speaker 2: that independent Americans, especially people who do put country first,
Speaker 2: people who took off the uniform, especially veterans who want
Speaker 2: to continue to serve but don't necessarily want to get
Speaker 2: in politics. This is a time for true patriots to
Speaker 2: step up and and our values. Whether you're a school
Speaker 2: teacher that has to represent yourself at the school board,
Speaker 2: or you're somebody who's been thinking about running for Senate,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe this is your time. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, he wants to roll everybody. And
Speaker 2: I think that's the most important point about December twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four going into January, is he wants to come
Speaker 2: out with a head of steam. This is like a blitzkree.
Speaker 2: He's putting it all up front. He wants to push
Speaker 2: it through because once he gets the keys to not
Speaker 2: just the gun closet, but the kitchen and the security
Speaker 2: system and everything else. Then everything else becomes easier. So
Speaker 2: I think it's really important that you lay out that
Speaker 2: landscape where we can't count on the Democrats. I've never
Speaker 2: been been counting on the Democrats. I don't think you
Speaker 2: have either. But I think it's kind of a wake
Speaker 2: up moment for America to go, hey, they're not going
Speaker 2: to fucking save you here, and we have to look
Speaker 2: to other leaders and other structures and other tactics and
Speaker 2: to have a strategy on a very basic level to
Speaker 2: defend our values, defend our constitution. And let's start with
Speaker 2: defending our military from a guy who says he doesn't
Speaker 2: want women in combat when we've got two hundred thousand
Speaker 2: women in combat, and as all this other shit, let's
Speaker 2: start with focusing on Pete Hag Seth and not all
Speaker 2: the other shiny stuff, because this is a very important fight,
Speaker 2: and it's the fight that is right in front of us,
Speaker 2: and we'll dictate. I think the pays for everything else
Speaker 2: for years to come.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about Pete hag Sath.
Speaker 2: That was a lot to throw at you when we.
Speaker 1: Say no, no, indeed, I and and I agree, I agree,
Speaker 1: I agree with you obviously he is unfit at such
Speaker 1: a profound and deep level. It's tough to find the words.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do my best as we get, as we get,
Speaker 1: as we get into it. But but I want to
Speaker 1: I want to play Devil's advocate to you about something
Speaker 1: that I think is fundamental that we we got to
Speaker 1: put on the table and talk about more in the country,
Speaker 1: which is an honest reckoning about how we have arrived
Speaker 1: at this situation. In the military, as you you know,
Speaker 1: after every action, there's gonna be an after action review. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's important to have an appreciation right of how it
Speaker 1: is they arrived at whatever situation one finds oneself in
Speaker 1: in order to get out of it right and and
Speaker 1: and so in that sense, let me ask you a
Speaker 1: couple kind of couple things. Is it possible that Pete
Speaker 1: Hegseth could be worse in that position than Donald Drumsfeld
Speaker 1: and Robert McNamara were.
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, absolutely, totally and completely. How because on a
Speaker 2: very basic level, you may have disagreed with McNamara or
Speaker 2: Rumsfeld on policy right like whether to bomb Cambodia, whether
Speaker 2: to stay in I Rock. This is compromising the entire
Speaker 2: integrity of the establishment. It's it's making it a political
Speaker 2: wing of Trump's agenda. And I think that's why this
Speaker 2: is very important, right, because everything that Trump wants to
Speaker 2: get done on everything from migrants to banning trans people, right,
Speaker 2: the entire spectrum of his agenda will start with Pete
Speaker 2: Hegseth at the Pentagon. Right, So let's use an example that,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe not a great one, but maybe like
Speaker 2: trans people's rights. Right day one, at the Pentagon, they
Speaker 2: flip the switch. There's a trans band. Anybody who's trans
Speaker 2: gets pulled out of a unit, you get kicked out
Speaker 2: of the military, you get processed out, and we start there. Right.
Speaker 2: It is going to be easier at the Pentagon than
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice or the Department of Labor, or
Speaker 2: at education or at home. The Depentagon is going to
Speaker 2: be the full crumb for everything because it will be
Speaker 2: presented as a position on national security. If we don't
Speaker 2: do this, the Chinese will have an advance. If we
Speaker 2: don't do this, our enemies will be at an advantage. Right.
Speaker 2: That's going to be true for trans bands, that's going
Speaker 2: to be true for activating the national card.
Speaker 1: I want to say that as a political argument. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you lead with, we have to protect national security
Speaker 1: by opposing Trump's trans band on day one, right, this
Speaker 1: is this is the first thing we're running at.
Speaker 2: I'm using that as an example because it's because it's
Speaker 2: the easiest one for him, right, And it's what he
Speaker 2: ran on, right, it's what he ran on, it's what
Speaker 2: he weaponized, it's what he used as as kind of
Speaker 2: a boogeyman, right to me.
Speaker 1: Right, you Trump is going to impose a ban on
Speaker 1: all transgender service members. They're going to be honorably discharged.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing not honorably not that anybody can do
Speaker 1: to stop that. Well, they'll be generally generally discharged.
Speaker 2: They'll probably dishonorably discharge or at least general discharge. They
Speaker 2: probably won't get benefits. And this is why it's important, right,
Speaker 2: because in some ways you could argue the trans people
Speaker 2: are the most vulnerable, or the weakest or the most politicized. Right,
Speaker 2: So you start with them, right. And so when you
Speaker 2: want to do something like take women out of combat,
Speaker 2: which is bigger than it seems, because what it is
Speaker 2: is it's saying women are not equal, Right, women are
Speaker 2: not equally That's the bottom line, you can't do the
Speaker 2: same things that we do, and therefore you will not
Speaker 2: have the same opportunities rights, etc. So if you succeed
Speaker 2: in achieving a lack of equality for women depending on
Speaker 2: abortion rights, everything else is a downhill slide from there.
Speaker 2: So when you ask me, is he more dangerous than
Speaker 2: McNamara or Rumsfeld, you know yes, because the agenda is
Speaker 2: much more extreme. I would argue that you could at
Speaker 2: least count on Rumsfeld on some levels to put country
Speaker 2: over a party. Right. He may have agreed with his
Speaker 2: allegiances or his politics, but I think on a basic
Speaker 2: level there was some kind of integrity there around the
Speaker 2: institution and the world wasn't as dangerous Steve. I mean,
Speaker 2: we've got, you know, a land war in Eastern Europe,
Speaker 2: We've got the Chinese threat of Taiwan. We've got all
Speaker 2: these other threats that are real but also in a
Speaker 2: position to be exaggerated, not just by Trump but by Hegseth,
Speaker 2: who I think too many Democrats dismissed these people. Hegseth
Speaker 2: is a masterful communicator. He is brilliant at doing this,
Speaker 2: at selling, at communicating, at motivating people, and he's a
Speaker 2: multi sport athlete who can go on Joe Rogan, but
Speaker 2: can host a show on Fox and also entangle with
Speaker 2: the reporters on Capitol Hill and spin a weakness into
Speaker 2: his strength. And that's why this is the playbook for
Speaker 2: the rest of the administration. Right, it's the same kind
Speaker 2: of skill set Tulsey Gabbert has. You could argue it's
Speaker 2: the same kind of skill set other people in the
Speaker 2: cabinet now, even like someone like a Christy Nome. But
Speaker 2: they're good on TV. They're able to communicate to people,
Speaker 2: you know, foreign and domestic, and they're good at this.
Speaker 2: They're good at this thing. You may not like the thing,
Speaker 2: but they are very very good at it. And if
Speaker 2: you have a Pete Hegg have controlling everything from our
Speaker 2: nukes to who gets to join, right, that drives the
Speaker 2: culture for the entire country. So if you don't understand
Speaker 2: why Joe Rogan is important, you probably don't understand why
Speaker 2: the Pentagon's so important. And that's the parallel that I
Speaker 2: think Democrats and many liberals in this country are really
Speaker 2: failing to understand. It's much bigger than about politics. It's
Speaker 2: about culture and manipulating American patriotism into something much more nefarious.
Speaker 2: When banning women in combat seems like a patriotic thing
Speaker 2: to do, deploying American troops in the streets seems like
Speaker 2: a patriotic thing to do, and they don't have to
Speaker 2: get everybody.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's gonna happen? Do you think we're
Speaker 1: gonna see troops in the streets.
Speaker 2: I think you will see Trump attempt to federalize the
Speaker 2: National Guard, which is the first like critical cross road,
Speaker 2: you know, might be January twentieth, he declares the state
Speaker 2: of emergency, says, the migrant crisis is out of control.
Speaker 2: I'm federalizing all National Guard units. Now, what could happen
Speaker 2: is every report publican National Guard governor, every Republican governor
Speaker 2: that is, the commander in chief of the National Guard says,
Speaker 2: no problem. Here's Alabama, no problem, Here's Florida. Now what
Speaker 2: happens in Illinois with Pritzker, What happens in Maryland with
Speaker 2: Wes Moore? Do those governors say no, they say you
Speaker 2: can't have my National Guard? Do they fight it out
Speaker 2: in the courts and then take it all the way down?
Speaker 2: What happens to the National Guard soldiers.
Speaker 1: If he federalizes it? Statutorily. Right, there's he's the commander
Speaker 1: in chief, he's got them, he's federalized.
Speaker 2: Take it the next step down. Now you say, okay,
Speaker 2: Maryland National Guard troops, you're going to be deployed to
Speaker 2: round up let's say extreme example, like round up kids,
Speaker 2: migrant kids. Some number of them are going to say no,
Speaker 2: some numbers them are gonna say this is I think
Speaker 2: this is an unlawful order. I am not going I'll
Speaker 2: go to jail. So now you've got the military not
Speaker 2: only rounding up kids, but jailing a certain number of
Speaker 2: their own people who are now in conflict with what
Speaker 2: Trump will argue is is a lawful order. They will
Speaker 2: argue it's not. And I bring it all back to
Speaker 2: this d because Ross Perrot once famously said something like
Speaker 2: he wanted a monument in front of the White House
Speaker 2: that said, first commit the country, then commit the troops.
Speaker 2: If you thought Iraq divided people, imagine what it's like
Speaker 2: when you federalize National Guard troops on the migrant crisis.
Speaker 2: This is Kent State on steroids. And that's why when
Speaker 2: people say is there going to be a civil war?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think more importantly, there's going to
Speaker 2: be a constitutional crisis around how and when to use
Speaker 2: the military. And if you've got Pete hegsett there and
Speaker 2: a bunch of undersecretaries who are willing to do it,
Speaker 2: and you've got all the senior leadership gone because he's
Speaker 2: fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and everybody else
Speaker 2: who hasn't taken a loyalty test, you've got a steam
Speaker 2: roll that can start to move forward.
Speaker 1: This is this is really the heart of what I
Speaker 1: what I want to what I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about right today. So what will happen is Trump
Speaker 1: will get in there day one. He's going to pardon
Speaker 1: everybody who was convicted of an offense on January sixth,
Speaker 1: with the exception I suspect of the hardcore violent seditious
Speaker 1: extremists like Stuart Rhodes, the guy with the.
Speaker 2: iPad YEA and the guys who they have on tape.
Speaker 1: Right but possible. But but but these people will come
Speaker 1: out and they'll they'll be celebrated. He will execute that
Speaker 1: trans band that you talked about in the in the military,
Speaker 1: and uh he will use it politically as a as
Speaker 1: a wedge issue. He will also set about firing the
Speaker 1: senior leadership of the military, go to fire the chairman
Speaker 1: of the Joint chiefs of Staff at the Air Force,
Speaker 1: four star. He's going to fire the chief of Naval
Speaker 1: Operations UH, the first woman uh to UH to rise
Speaker 1: to that level in the United States Navy. All of
Speaker 1: these people will be gone and.
Speaker 2: Make an example out of them too, Which is key
Speaker 2: because right now I have lots of friends in the
Speaker 2: Pentagon who've worked on a number of controversial issues, and
Speaker 2: this is really really important for people to understand. Not
Speaker 2: only will he fire them, he'll probably put him on blast.
Speaker 2: So Colonel Snuffy, who I don't know, for example, was
Speaker 2: a part of the crew that changed the names of
Speaker 2: military bases from Confederate leaders to non Confederate leaders. Right,
Speaker 2: they're all on Tucker Carlson's list. Now their names are
Speaker 2: out there, they've been publicly outed. Right, they're out of
Speaker 2: the military. They have no more salary, they don't have publics,
Speaker 2: they don't have security for their families. Right, they all
Speaker 2: become General Millie, they all become faucy, and that is
Speaker 2: a very dangerous thing. But it's also got a chilling
Speaker 2: effect across not just the military, but every other organization.
Speaker 1: Of course, yeah right, So how deep do you have
Speaker 1: to go or you not have to go so deep
Speaker 1: at all for ambition to take root?
Speaker 2: How you know?
Speaker 1: I mean what MacArthur posited right to the class of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six when they were freshman at West Point
Speaker 1: was the long gray line has never failed us duty
Speaker 1: on our country. So you make a mockery right of
Speaker 1: all of these virtues, all of these standards, all of
Speaker 1: these ethics with the heg Seth nomination. You also have
Speaker 1: the reality that you have somebody who says, atop a
Speaker 1: chain of command involving nuclear weapons that levels below him
Speaker 1: regarding their release, that say, the six I'm the captain
Speaker 1: of a nuclear ballistic missile submarine. Nobody who had the
Speaker 1: problematic drinking that heg Seth has would be allowed to
Speaker 1: be the captain of a submarine. And the Navy, for example,
Speaker 1: is different than the Army culturally, and that the Navy
Speaker 1: relieve senior commanders captains of ships all the time, very
Speaker 1: difficult right to get relieved as the brigade commander of
Speaker 1: an active duty Army unit judge by the numbers. Not
Speaker 1: so much in the Navy, not so much in the
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. But in the services, two of which that
Speaker 1: have the standards for you can't do those things or
Speaker 1: you're out.
Speaker 2: You have an Army.
Speaker 1: Captain it was promoted to major at the end of
Speaker 1: his service in the National Guard, who has gone to
Speaker 1: none of the upper military level graduate schools, has no
Speaker 1: core competency in the diplomacy, the strategy, the nuclear deterrents, doctrines,
Speaker 1: none of it. He's a Fox News morning host who
Speaker 1: is going to be put forward by Trump, who in
Speaker 1: the Trumpian way, Trump is not all in on this guy.
Speaker 1: He's letting them swim a little bit and watching it,
Speaker 1: watching it go out. I have a seventeen I have
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old son who is very seriously thinking
Speaker 1: about I'm thinking about going in the Navy right right
Speaker 1: out of high school. He's like, I'll go I'll go
Speaker 1: to college later. And my position is on this over
Speaker 1: my dead fucking body, if if, if the US senators
Speaker 1: are so disrespectful, so fucking careless, so profoundly indifferent that
Speaker 1: you can't get four of somewhere in the middle to
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, no, the fuck out of here, not
Speaker 1: this guy, no way, no how, not her, and not
Speaker 1: the whack job at the FBI, because if they do
Speaker 1: get through, as you say, right, the orders will be
Speaker 1: conveyed and they'll be expressed to the command structure of
Speaker 1: the military through the Secretary as a legal order. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's the job of the secretary to be the first
Speaker 1: line of defense to say no, that's in a legal order.
Speaker 1: What you talked about is I think the very chilling scenario,
Speaker 1: which is he calls to active duty National Guard troops
Speaker 1: and no one can stop that taking and you have
Speaker 1: a deployment of red state National Guard into blue states.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they'll do that. That's the question, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's these are the kind of questions, right, and
Speaker 2: that's where we don't know. I think, you know, if
Speaker 2: I can pause there for a second, number one, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm getting a lot of those phone calls
Speaker 2: right now. Hey, my son or daughter is thinking about
Speaker 2: joy and what would you tell them, I'd say, first
Speaker 2: of all, if he or she is seventeen, it's not
Speaker 2: up to you. They can do it on their own.
Speaker 2: And so you're right, right, you got to hope that
Speaker 2: they laid the foundation and they're gonna make the right choices.
Speaker 2: But I think it's the right question because when you
Speaker 2: talk about all these nominees, I would give them what
Speaker 2: I've called the school principal test. You know, would you
Speaker 2: be okay with Pete hag Seth or Cash Betel or
Speaker 2: any number of them being the school principle for your
Speaker 2: seventeen year old daughter? And I'm using daughter specifically, right,
Speaker 2: would you be okay with that person being the principal
Speaker 2: of your seventeen year old daughter's school. If not, why
Speaker 2: are you okay with that person being the command or
Speaker 2: the leader of your seventeen year old daughter in the
Speaker 2: Marine Corps? Because that's what we're offering them up to do.
Speaker 2: It's not like they're just gonna run a Walmart here.
Speaker 2: I mean they are the moral, functional, bureaucratic leader that
Speaker 2: your kids, those especially that have kids in the service,
Speaker 2: you know, are gonna have to look to. But I
Speaker 2: think there's a bigger thing here, Steve. When we talk
Speaker 2: about all these elements, I don't think the Democrats realize
Speaker 2: how bad they've lost, Like this is so much gone, right,
Speaker 2: because it's not just the institutions like MSNBC that you
Speaker 2: and I are on all the time, right, it's so
Speaker 2: tiny and CNN is so irrelevant and though and they
Speaker 2: could be gone gobbled up by Elon in three months
Speaker 2: or a year. Right. They they're losing in the media,
Speaker 2: they've lost all three chambers. They're losing in fundraising, they're
Speaker 2: losing on sports, they're losing on culture, they're losing on gender.
Speaker 2: They've lost so many things that you have to understand
Speaker 2: that because they're all interconnected. Because when I say he's
Speaker 2: gonna fire Generals, he's not just gonna fire him. They're
Speaker 2: gonna be on Elon's Twitter feed, right, And the level
Speaker 2: of intimidation and the way this whole flywheel is gonna
Speaker 2: kick in is really faster and more more dangerous, I
Speaker 2: think than most people realize. So when people say, oh,
Speaker 2: Fox News host, that's kind of who you want for
Speaker 2: this moment because he knows how to pull all those levers.
Speaker 2: Pete x at again ran political organizations that were funded
Speaker 2: by dedicated donors that invested in petex at twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: They built him for this moment, and then he had
Speaker 2: a corresponding seat at Fox. So when the Republicans wanted
Speaker 2: to bang on Obama about the VA and they wanted
Speaker 2: to punish the Democrats and make them look weak on
Speaker 2: National Security. Hex has been doing it for years on Fox.
Speaker 2: So this is an example of how it can all
Speaker 2: come together. And I think this activation of the National
Speaker 2: Guard is really important because they're the narrator, right, They're
Speaker 2: going to narrate this to America, and you're gonna have
Speaker 2: these subordinate narrators like Tulsea Gabbard or like Pete Hex said,
Speaker 2: they're gonna echo that. So I keep coming back to, like,
Speaker 2: who are the narrators that are going to rise to
Speaker 2: this moment? It might be a new Colonel Vin been right,
Speaker 2: maybe a state level commander of a National Guard who
Speaker 2: says I'm going to stand up and say no, and
Speaker 2: he gets dragged out in handcuffs, right, Like, They're going
Speaker 2: to have to be people that emerge right now that
Speaker 2: are beyond politics, that are trusted, that can counter that narrative.
Speaker 2: Because maybe that's the most important part of all this
Speaker 2: is Trump has already started writing this.
Speaker 1: I want to get I want to get into I
Speaker 1: want to get into like the details of this, like
Speaker 1: for the for the audience, and so we'll be so
Speaker 1: your service, you were, you served in the army, you
Speaker 1: you were you were a captain, right were you?
Speaker 2: I was I was a lowly platoon leader in a
Speaker 2: grunt unit in I Rock for a little less than
Speaker 2: a year. Yeah, So I mean I was.
Speaker 1: So you're a lieutenant, right, you're a yep. Okay, so
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Reichoff in the New York National Guard. You're hanging
Speaker 1: out right, It's it's January thirtieth, and you get the call. Right,
Speaker 1: unit has been activated. Right, it's been it's been federalized.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And just to everybody who's watching, the way that this
Speaker 1: works is that the military is structure, has an active
Speaker 1: duty component, it has a reserve component. Reservists can serve
Speaker 1: on active duty and they do all the time, and
Speaker 1: has a national guard component, and the national Guard the
Speaker 1: commander in chief of the National Guard on a state
Speaker 1: basis is the governor of the state, and then lassen
Speaker 1: until they're federalized.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And so there's examples, right of instances where the president
Speaker 1: has enforced federal law using the military.
Speaker 2: New York's a really good example because New York's probably
Speaker 2: been activated more since nine to eleven than any other state. Right,
Speaker 2: I was on federal orders, state orders. The people who
Speaker 2: are on the tunnels, the people who were at ground zero.
Speaker 2: I was at ground zero after nine eleven, I think
Speaker 2: we weren't even formally activated. Then some units run state orders,
Speaker 2: then some units run federal orders. But really like Post
Speaker 2: nine to eleven is a really good example because even
Speaker 2: Pete Hegseth was his now guard you, it was federalized
Speaker 2: for January sixth, and he was flagged for being a
Speaker 2: threat as an insider threat because he had a tattoo
Speaker 2: that was associated with extremism. His unit took him off
Speaker 2: the line. So yes, so Christmas time, there are going
Speaker 2: to be these warning orders. Hey guys, we're going to
Speaker 2: get activated, and it's probably going to be like something
Speaker 2: around migrant migrant camp, migrant security, migrant escort expectation.
Speaker 1: Let me walking into this, right, So I was saying, right,
Speaker 1: there's just so everyone watching, right. The precedent of this right,
Speaker 1: and you know, one of the great examples is Dwight
Speaker 1: Eisenhower right nineteen fifty four, the segregationists will not abide
Speaker 1: the little Rock h in Little Rock, Arkansas, I will
Speaker 1: not desegregate the schools in Dwight Eisenhower, now the president,
Speaker 1: but former Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces sent
Speaker 1: in the one hundred and first Airborne right to desegregate
Speaker 1: the schools in Arkansas. So there's a difference though, between
Speaker 1: Trump saying, Hey, I'm going to deploy the eighty second
Speaker 1: Airborne into the interior of the country, and you know,
Speaker 1: Trump saying I'm going to deploy these units of the
Speaker 1: New York National Guard here there or whatever. Now, Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Rychoff gets called up right from the from the and
Speaker 1: they say, hey, you, Lieutenant Rykoff and your men are
Speaker 1: going to go stand here right in Brownsville, Texas. Right
Speaker 1: and there there you go, and and and and there
Speaker 1: you are. Now you have no legal basis whatsoever right
Speaker 1: to refuse the order, right now.
Speaker 2: That's the question. Well, here's the question, right, like if
Speaker 2: I if I am that guy, and I've been that guy, Okay,
Speaker 2: Like I got deployed to go to a rock. I
Speaker 2: volunteered to go to a rock. Right, But there are
Speaker 2: plenty of us who said, you know, I don't agree
Speaker 2: with the Iraq war. I'm getting deployed, right, And I'm
Speaker 2: sure there are cases of somebody people who said no
Speaker 2: isolated you know, conscientious objectors, which are different. But this
Speaker 2: is the real constitutional crisis, right, You're gonna have whether
Speaker 2: or not governors are going to oppose the actual activation,
Speaker 2: But then it's gonna cascade all the way down to
Speaker 2: look like a place like New York. Safe to say
Speaker 2: thirty forty percent of the people in the National Guard
Speaker 2: are Democrats, right. They probably didn't vote for Trump. They
Speaker 2: probably don't want to be deployed in the migrant crisis.
Speaker 2: I got thrust into the national consciousness because I was
Speaker 2: a National Guard person who came home and criticized George
Speaker 2: Bush in two thousand and four. I was still in
Speaker 2: the National Guard when I did that. People told me
Speaker 2: I was going to be tried under the Hatch Act.
Speaker 2: There was no precedent at that time for this like
Speaker 2: melding of the National Guarden reserve that happens now where
Speaker 2: Tulsea Gabbard, you know, apologizes for Putin, but she's still
Speaker 2: in the in the National Guard in Hawaii. Like, these
Speaker 2: lines have been so blurred since nine to eleven that
Speaker 2: I think it's really like a reckoning on some levels, Steve.
Speaker 2: But it does come down to those individuals, and I
Speaker 2: don't think you can kind of cast aside then any
Speaker 2: number of them knows if I say fucket I'm not going. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I might go to Levenworth or I might go to
Speaker 2: a jail for a little while, but the ACLU is
Speaker 2: probably gonna defend me. I'm gonna have a million people
Speaker 2: listening to me on TikTok. I'm gonna have an immediate platform,
Speaker 2: and this is going to birth, I think a new
Speaker 2: generation of a different kind of anti war activists. That's
Speaker 2: what I was, That's what Lindy Shean was, what other
Speaker 2: people were. Right.
Speaker 1: What I hear you saying, right, and and I want
Speaker 1: to and I want to talk about it, right, is
Speaker 1: that people are going to disobeying lawful orders and they're.
Speaker 2: Going to argue that they're not lawful.
Speaker 1: Well, that is different, right, But arguing for example, I'm
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Reikoff in the National Guard and I don't agree
Speaker 1: with the Iraq war, and then I'm not going no doubt,
Speaker 1: you're going to have a lawyer that will take your
Speaker 1: case and argue your position. But from my person, right,
Speaker 1: you have no legal basis. What's so fucking ever to
Speaker 1: refuse that order. In the same way is if you're
Speaker 1: the commander of a platoon in the motor pool in
Speaker 1: the New York National Guard and they tell you to
Speaker 1: deploy to fucking Texas because you've been federalized. Your platoon
Speaker 1: goes to Texas, because you're in the United States Army.
Speaker 1: And if you don't want to go to Texas, right,
Speaker 1: you'll have no sympathy whatsoever from from me, No more
Speaker 1: so than the Taylor Lorenz position, right of Hey, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm joyful, right because this guy got shot in the back,
Speaker 1: gone down by by Luigi Mangione, because of the pain
Speaker 1: I'm in for the healthcare companies. And it's the worst
Speaker 1: conceivable way right to resist Trump because it's unlawful, right,
Speaker 1: and and because because nobody, because Paul, because nobody has
Speaker 1: told you to do anything elle goal other than to
Speaker 1: saddle up as part of the all volunteer force to
Speaker 1: go to the place they told you.
Speaker 2: To go, whether or not we think it's illegal, right, Like,
Speaker 2: and I think this is a really important scenario to
Speaker 2: just kind of think about, right, whether or not we
Speaker 2: think it's illegal. Right. This is a country that celebrated Snowden.
Speaker 2: This is a kind of many people who celebrate Snowden,
Speaker 2: who celebrated Wiki leagues, who thought Julian Lassane was a
Speaker 2: fucking hero, right, all of which I disagree with. Okay,
Speaker 2: But if this person or a number of people take
Speaker 2: this stand, you may not agree with them, other people
Speaker 2: may not agree with them, but they're gonna be on Chris
Speaker 2: Hayes like that, and they're gonna be out in the public.
Speaker 2: And this is where the dynamic is really different now,
Speaker 2: and especially because the civil military divide is so skewed
Speaker 2: and Trump is in part done that, done that by
Speaker 2: politicizing the military in so many different ways. But we
Speaker 2: all wanted to know what was vinmin gonna say when
Speaker 2: he got out, right, Well, Vinman got out and then
Speaker 2: we heard what he said. Right now, if you kick
Speaker 2: that person out, or even if you don't, that person
Speaker 2: can pick up their cell phone. And the country is
Speaker 2: so starved for opposition. And there may even be illegal
Speaker 2: grounds for the kind of deployment what they're asking this
Speaker 2: person to do, whether or not it's legal across state lines.
Speaker 2: That's gonna end up in the courts. And the most
Speaker 2: important thing is Steve, it's going to be I think
Speaker 2: a kind of constitutional crisis, definitely a civil military divide crisis,
Speaker 2: and it's going to rip the country in half, and
Speaker 2: it's going to rip our military in half. And that's
Speaker 2: why this is also dangerous, because when you politicize our military,
Speaker 2: it is the most dangerous thing to do. Again, think
Speaker 2: about Iraq as an example, Afghanistan as an example. Now
Speaker 2: we're talking about whether they're whether they're federal or their state,
Speaker 2: because he also could send federal troops down to the
Speaker 2: border and do other things. You are politicizing the military
Speaker 2: on a level we've never seen. And I've started to
Speaker 2: call these people out. They're chickenhawks. The people are saying, hey,
Speaker 2: send the National Guard down to Texas or send them
Speaker 2: into migrant shelters. Do you think I want to be
Speaker 2: Lieutenant Rykoff carrying a rifle and a migrant shelter in Brooklyn,
Speaker 2: surrounded by protesters and everybody else.
Speaker 1: This is the question that I'm that I'm that I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get to, and I think it's this is
Speaker 1: why I kind of the this is this where the
Speaker 1: line is is is important. So no democratic governor has
Speaker 1: any legal basis whatsoever to say you can't have my
Speaker 1: National Guard.
Speaker 2: I don't know that. I don't know that, but stipulate this.
Speaker 1: Because they don't, right I Under the National Defense Authorization Acts, Paul,
Speaker 1: they they just don't.
Speaker 2: Right, I think there will be at least one democratic
Speaker 2: governor who will challenge it. I don't think. I don't
Speaker 2: think Kathy Hokeel And well, and here's my National Guard, Paul.
Speaker 1: There has to be in the country a place where
Speaker 1: there could be non crazy conversations, right and and so
Speaker 1: I hope this is one of those places. But but
Speaker 1: I but I, but I want to just let's let's
Speaker 1: just go with this, Okay. A democratic governor cannot tell
Speaker 1: the president you can't activate my New Jersey National Guard.
Speaker 1: They can't.
Speaker 2: They can, they can. There's nothing stopping them from making
Speaker 2: even if it's even if it's a political charade.
Speaker 1: They then they stand. There's no military where. I feel
Speaker 1: like we can't get to the important point because we're
Speaker 1: arguing on a detail that I'm right about that you
Speaker 1: won't let go of.
Speaker 2: But we'll come back, come back at too much, See,
Speaker 2: I'll come back. I don't. I don't.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that one won't try, and I'm not
Speaker 1: saying right that they may not be lionized. I'm saying
Speaker 1: that they will not be able to stop, not for
Speaker 1: two point two nanoseconds. They have no legal authority whatsoever,
Speaker 1: no basis. If Trump wants their national Guard troops, a squad,
Speaker 1: a platoon, a company, or all of them, and he
Speaker 1: federalizes them as national Guard, they go and they go
Speaker 1: to wherever, wherever it is he sends them, and so
Speaker 1: there they are.
Speaker 2: And like what if he sends them to Mexico City.
Speaker 1: General Grant said when he went to Mexico City as
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Grant that his evaluation of it was that it
Speaker 1: was the most unjust war that had ever been. But
Speaker 1: but he went to Mexico City as you went to Baghdad,
Speaker 1: as the commander in chief has the power right to
Speaker 1: deploy the military, as you would know better than I.
Speaker 1: Right now, we're in how many countries?
Speaker 2: How many? Twenty one two? How many went to? Like
Speaker 2: how many?
Speaker 1: How many countries is there an American soldier in right now?
Speaker 2: I mean one hundred? I don't know how many. I mean,
Speaker 2: you look it up.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Like it's like it's one hundred, one hundred,
Speaker 1: one hundred at least, right So there's no authorization for that.
Speaker 1: So so my question is when you're when you're there
Speaker 1: in Texas on that corner and the order comes and
Speaker 1: the order is we start rounding up the migrants at
Speaker 1: the at the schools today. Right, this is the spot
Speaker 1: where I think, legally, now you're in an interesting territory
Speaker 1: where all of the ethics, all of the ingrained teachings.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: The American soldier says, uh, yes, this is an illegal order.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's so apparently we have bases in
Speaker 2: fifty five countries roughly, right, but there's a lot of
Speaker 2: places we don't have bases. It gets blurry, But but
Speaker 2: I think this is this is kind of the real
Speaker 2: twenty t twenty four, twenty twenty five world we're gonna
Speaker 2: live in. And let's just I want people to envision
Speaker 2: like let's say he says, it's gonna be like a
Speaker 2: like the Lieutenant Calli is taught in the schoolhouse at
Speaker 2: the infangery school, in the office of school about what
Speaker 2: not to do. You use him as an example from
Speaker 2: Vietnam on a case where you should refuse an unlawful order.
Speaker 2: If the commander comes over and says, hey, hey, hey, Schmidt,
Speaker 2: shoot all those kids, you have an obligation to say
Speaker 2: no to that unlawful order. Now, the problem is, it's
Speaker 2: never that simple. It's always much blurrier and a very
Speaker 2: real scenario could be, Okay, there's a bunch of kids
Speaker 2: in that school, there's a line of protesters who are
Speaker 2: saying they're not gonna let you in. Bust through that
Speaker 2: line and go get those kids. Now you're asking that
Speaker 2: your eighteen year old kid, your nineteen year old kid
Speaker 2: is now that private in the National Guard who's got
Speaker 2: to bust through a line of protesters with every camera
Speaker 2: in the world watching and go. Let's say there's only
Speaker 2: five kids in it, but there's a criminal inside, right,
Speaker 2: there's one criminal inside. Right. This is literally what we
Speaker 2: went through in Iraq on steroids, right, hunting all over
Speaker 2: the place for people and pissing off the population along
Speaker 2: the way. And that's why maybe the most important point
Speaker 2: of all of this that I would the warning for
Speaker 2: your show, right, ittion of our military and of patriotism
Speaker 2: and of all of it. And Hegseth is the manifestation
Speaker 2: of that. But it's not just him. Trump is very
Speaker 2: smartly casting the entire season of this episode, with people
Speaker 2: like Tulca Gabbard and people like the EPA nominee Lee's
Speaker 2: Eldon Right. I ran for governor of New York and
Speaker 2: Trump said his qualifications to be an EPA administrator is
Speaker 2: that he was in the Army reserves and he knows
Speaker 2: about bureaucracy, like he's going to use this shield of
Speaker 2: military veteran and patriotism on everything. And that's the warning,
Speaker 2: that's the thing to watch out for, because I know
Speaker 2: people care about all their different issues, but national security
Speaker 2: and global security is always got to be paramount. And
Speaker 2: that's my warning to everybody as we end December and
Speaker 2: going too January, whether it's Justice Department, whether it's headset.
Speaker 2: If it feels like it's always all overwhelming, remember that
Speaker 2: our enemies are celebrating. Putin loves to see this, and
Speaker 2: Osama bin Laden's dream would have been to see us
Speaker 2: in a situation where you and I are debating whether
Speaker 2: or not National Guard troops are going to have to
Speaker 2: kick in schools and drag out migrant kids.
Speaker 1: When you think about the military in the streets, and
Speaker 1: so you think it's going to happen, right.
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's going to happen in the
Speaker 2: streets right, Like, if you have it's more likely that
Speaker 2: you do things like have them drive trucks or they
Speaker 2: provide medical support. Or that's what I would do if
Speaker 2: I were going to soft sell it. Right, you have
Speaker 2: to drive trucks and do medical support and feed the migrants. Right.
Speaker 2: But Trump doesn't know the difference between the different units,
Speaker 2: and he's probably going to be asking for the Navy
Speaker 2: seals to go get a Mexican criminal in bedside.
Speaker 1: Let me ask it this way. I just drove across
Speaker 1: the country last week from New Hampshire to California, see
Speaker 1: a lot of cops and saw no military vehicles on
Speaker 1: the highways. When I drive back in five months, is
Speaker 1: it gonna look different?
Speaker 2: I think so. I think so because he can also look.
Speaker 2: This is why it's dangerous, because you activate them for
Speaker 2: the migrant crisis. What if you feel like Portland's crime
Speaker 2: situation is out of control. What if you feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, Lower Manhattan has got too many homeless, Like
Speaker 2: it becomes your instrument for executing everything, and it starts
Speaker 2: with those incremental steps. This is how you get Japanese
Speaker 2: internment camps, right, I mean, this is how it starts
Speaker 2: with those increments. But what he's doing is setting the
Speaker 2: pieces in place to have all the crazy shit go
Speaker 2: through the system without resistance from him. To Hegseth, to
Speaker 2: the purge of the Pentagon, of all the officers. Then
Speaker 2: all these crazy things that he wants to do cut
Speaker 2: through like like a knife through butter Right, there's no
Speaker 2: more mill, there's no more Chairman of the Joint chief
Speaker 2: saying hey, sir, it is a bad idea. Those guys
Speaker 2: are all fucking gone. And you got an army of
Speaker 2: hegsets and an army of hash cash betels, including the
Speaker 2: civilian authorities, all the way down in those political positions.
Speaker 2: And you hope that the government, the government people who've
Speaker 2: been there for twenty years, the people who run the pentingon,
Speaker 2: you hope that they stay and try to be a buffer.
Speaker 2: But a lot of them are just gonna fucking check out.
Speaker 2: They're gonna say I don't want this. I'm gonna go
Speaker 2: sit on a beach in Florida where my taxes are
Speaker 2: lower and enjoy the desanthus land. There's plenty of people
Speaker 2: who are gonna do that. And the other piece that's
Speaker 2: critical here, Steve, is the recruiting will change. Yeah, your
Speaker 2: kid might not want to join, But like a Maga
Speaker 2: loyalist who loves Pete Hegseth and listens to Joe Rogan,
Speaker 2: He's fucking joining. He loves this. There's no trans people
Speaker 2: in the military. I don't have to take a COVID shot.
Speaker 2: Sign me up, man, I'm ready to go. And it
Speaker 2: begins to turn into the Maga army, right, it begins
Speaker 2: to turn into the Maga army rather than this beautiful, diverse,
Speaker 2: lethal fighting for or that we've got right now sounds great. Great,
Speaker 2: Merry Christmas, Dave, Merry Christmas. Everybody.
Speaker 1: All right, I want to like talk to you about
Speaker 1: politics for a second, just straight up.
Speaker 2: So I've been talking about politics, right.
Speaker 1: You're talking about talking about something deeper, I think, but
Speaker 1: just raw campaign politics. Do you see anybody potentially running
Speaker 1: as an independent candidate under a I'm gonna fix the country,
Speaker 1: put the country first. Who's a person of stature and
Speaker 1: that person will will come from the military. It'll be
Speaker 1: a senior military officer who is deeply experienced in the
Speaker 1: in the security of the country and in my estimation, right,
Speaker 1: if there is to be such a person, right, who
Speaker 1: comes forward?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: If you think about an independent candidacy, and I've been
Speaker 1: involved in an effort where somebody did some diligence around
Speaker 1: one and I think it's an interesting intellectual proposition that
Speaker 1: you have this duopoly that has produced Donald Trump. And
Speaker 1: I've read a couple of these stories about what Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris is going to do next, whether she's gonna run
Speaker 1: for governor of California run for president again, be both
Speaker 1: at once, and they and they bring me to the
Speaker 1: edge of Anneurism right Nowhere in any of them is
Speaker 1: any talk whatsoever about the person wants the office for,
Speaker 1: what reason, to do, what to serve, what purpose? None
Speaker 1: of it right, It's just it's all about the ambition. Now.
Speaker 1: What the Democratic Party establishment it was very good at
Speaker 1: right over the last couple of years, is when you
Speaker 1: saw some of these bubbles come up, as you know,
Speaker 1: spoiler screaming spoiler right. I think the whole concept of
Speaker 1: the maybe the Democrats shouldn't feel the candidate right in
Speaker 1: four years, maybe they're the sport right electing Trump. Right,
Speaker 1: Maybe they should just run candidates at the gubernatorial US Senate,
Speaker 1: a US House level, and there can be some sort
Speaker 1: of process outside of the Democratic primary process where somebody
Speaker 1: comes forward and run for president without having to go
Speaker 1: through all the bullshit, right and play all the games. Right,
Speaker 1: That produce a result that's corrupt enough right for Donald
Speaker 1: Trump to win.
Speaker 2: Right, But do you think about.
Speaker 1: Like when you independent veteran.
Speaker 2: This is my focus now. I mean, I believe that
Speaker 2: the future of American politics is independent because our past
Speaker 2: was also independent, right, Like George Washington was the last
Speaker 2: independent president we had, and he was also a veteran, right.
Speaker 2: And what I think is the future is people who
Speaker 2: are leaders first, who are independent of the duopoly and
Speaker 2: are judged on their own merit on a more play
Speaker 2: level playing field where they can have not just you know,
Speaker 2: ranked choice voting and public financing, but also you know,
Speaker 2: open primaries and ballot access, all the things that they're
Speaker 2: prohibited from or they're blocked from having or made difficult
Speaker 2: for them. And I think that the truth is the
Speaker 2: biggest group of voters in America and the fastest growing
Speaker 2: is independence. Fifty one percent of Americans call themselves independents.
Speaker 2: More people who voted this time call themselves independence than
Speaker 2: call themselves Democrats and Republicans. Sixty percent of young people
Speaker 2: are calling themselves independence. And they don't want to be
Speaker 2: a part of No Labels or Andrew Yang's Forward Party.
Speaker 2: They just want none of the above. They think it's
Speaker 2: all fucking broken. They want to put their country first.
Speaker 2: They think they can have one hundred options on Amazon
Speaker 2: for a couch and they shouldn't have only two options
Speaker 2: for president. So the next generation is demanding this, and
Speaker 2: I think what you will see as an emergence of
Speaker 2: candidates who can respond to that or who come from that,
Speaker 2: and they maybe we believe that many of them will
Speaker 2: be foreign military people. That's why we started Independent Veterans
Speaker 2: of America. We think they will be the forward edge.
Speaker 2: They will be the easiest to understand because this is
Speaker 2: a group of people who put country first and have
Speaker 2: done that their whole lives. So making that transition is
Speaker 2: going to be more understandable for people. We had eleven
Speaker 2: candidates who ran. Four of them won. Three of them
Speaker 2: that lost lost by less than five percent. Dan Osborne,
Speaker 2: maybe most notably in Nebraska, ran as a Navy steam fitter.
Speaker 2: He ran as an independent against deb Fisher, who was
Speaker 2: an entrenched MAGA Republican, and he lost by you know,
Speaker 2: less than five percent. But that's the best showing by
Speaker 2: an independent candidate for Senate in modern history. So if
Speaker 2: somebody runs for president, and I think it's important to
Speaker 2: pick examples, right, not just talk Let's just not talk
Speaker 2: about Ross Puaux or talk about like if the Rock
Speaker 2: ran right, everybody's oh the Rock, Well, Donald Trump's pretty
Speaker 2: fucking ridiculous too, and plenty of people thought Ronald Reagan
Speaker 2: was ridiculous. But let's just run the model. Right. Let's
Speaker 2: say it's Kamala Harris again against Donald Trump and the
Speaker 2: Rock runs. Run it through the model. He will at
Speaker 2: least be competitive, right, And you could run that same
Speaker 2: model with Adamiral mccraven. You can run it with Oprah,
Speaker 2: and then you could take it down to the state
Speaker 2: level and do it with Matthew McConaughey and Texas, right,
Speaker 2: or do it with Mark Cuban for Senate. And I
Speaker 2: think what you're seeing is the country is finally fed up,
Speaker 2: and what we have to create is the infrastructure and
Speaker 2: the pathway for these people to be viable. And we
Speaker 2: are doing it by starting with veterans. We ran eleven
Speaker 2: this time in twenty five, We're gonna run twenty five,
Speaker 2: twenty five and twenty five. For things like mayors like
Speaker 2: mayor of Omaha, mayor of Buffalo. We are recruiting right now,
Speaker 2: for veterans, but we would put the call out to everyone,
Speaker 2: whether it's local school board or its Senate. We think
Speaker 2: that there is a movement about to tip and what
Speaker 2: you've seen so far is the imperfect offerings like no
Speaker 2: labels and forward and RFK Junior. But they're all tapping
Speaker 2: into something bigger, which is it The country generally considers itself,
Speaker 2: the majority of it independent, and they want leaders first.
Speaker 2: And it's not even compartmentalized by a platform. People say, well,
Speaker 2: are independent people against medicare or for medicare? It depends
Speaker 2: on the person, Like you're gonna have to do the
Speaker 2: work and evaluate each one of them. But you look
Speaker 2: at you look at Dan Osborne, right, he was pretty
Speaker 2: quiet about Ukraine. He said he was going to support
Speaker 2: union rights, he was going to come after corporations. He
Speaker 2: talked tough, he had tattoos, and he used to make
Speaker 2: forty thousand dollars a year. A lot of it's just
Speaker 2: about leadership, Like people know a leader when they see it.
Speaker 2: And if real, authentic, patriotic leaders step forward, and if
Speaker 2: waves of them come, and I think the waves are
Speaker 2: going to come most acutely in veterans, former sports people
Speaker 2: and celebrities. They're going to be the first waves, right,
Speaker 2: and then you can get on down to more normal people.
Speaker 2: But I think the opportunity is there, not just four
Speaker 2: years from now for president. We think the opportunity is
Speaker 2: there in twelve months for local offices, for school boards,
Speaker 2: and for plenty of other races in twenty six, twenty seven,
Speaker 2: leading up to twenty twenty eight, when who knows where
Speaker 2: will be. But I do think the future is independent
Speaker 2: and the country wants it.
Speaker 1: One thing that you said that I just like I
Speaker 1: can't align myself in agreement more with is nobody understands
Speaker 1: how badly they were beaten, and everyone processes this the
Speaker 1: wrong way, which is they count votes as opposed to
Speaker 1: the totality of the leveling and the vote total gives
Speaker 1: you reason for optimism, right, is that it wasn't that
Speaker 1: big a victory and it's a plurality win. But the
Speaker 1: totality of the destruction wrought on the side that managed
Speaker 1: to lose to MAGA is a stop. And so the
Speaker 1: one thing that that Mark Halprin said that I thought
Speaker 1: it was going to happen, it may still manifest itself.
Speaker 1: He predicted that if the if there was a Trump victory,
Speaker 1: the would there would be the biggest mental health crisis
Speaker 1: in in American history, right, and it hasn't really come
Speaker 1: to pass.
Speaker 2: Oh give it some time or give it some time, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: exactly right.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not ruling it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But but the thing that that that for sure, right,
Speaker 1: you know, for sure has happened is this I don't
Speaker 1: I don't know what you call it, but it's this.
Speaker 1: It's just astonishing, uh kind of reconnect like like like
Speaker 1: like that you had the senior leadership of the campaign
Speaker 1: earnestly and honestly believing they ran a flawless effort.
Speaker 2: They still think that, they still think. But I think
Speaker 2: you know, everybody keeps saying, you know, is this a mandate.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing. It's not a mandate. But it was
Speaker 2: a sweep, right. And and when you win the World Series,
Speaker 2: if you won in seven games, you won in six games,
Speaker 2: you won in five games, doesn't fucking matter. You won it, right,
Speaker 2: and you get the parade.
Speaker 1: He's an ass kicking.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, even if it wasn't an ass kicking, it
Speaker 2: was a total victory, right, and that's the most important.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter if you win by one run or
Speaker 2: you win by ten, you won, right, And they won
Speaker 2: in all the key areas, and that's what's most important.
Speaker 2: But it was also simultaneously a rejection of the Democrats
Speaker 2: on a level we maybe have seen before but haven't
Speaker 2: really been looking. Pat Ryan is a friend of mine
Speaker 2: who who Now the Democrats are running to Pat Ryan.
Speaker 2: They're running to all like, let's find the Democrat who
Speaker 2: can help us understand why they won. And Pat sent
Speaker 2: an email that said Pat is a different time Democrat
Speaker 2: and I wrote back in said, but he's still a
Speaker 2: fucking Democrat. They don't understand. Pat is a great candidate.
Speaker 2: I think he's a great public servant. He also ran
Speaker 2: against a woman who was openly gay, and most people
Speaker 2: thought that she was a Democrat and he was the Republican. Right, So, like,
Speaker 2: there's these other pieces of this that people aren't fully understanding,
Speaker 2: which is that the Democratic brand and the Democratic establishment
Speaker 2: is completely shattered, and maybe even more so than the Republicans,
Speaker 2: because at least the Republican party functions. You may not
Speaker 2: like the way it functions or what it's focused on,
Speaker 2: but it actually functions quite effectively to achieve what it
Speaker 2: wants to, which is to win elections and take power. Right. So,
Speaker 2: I think what you're seeing is a reckoning on some levels.
Speaker 2: And the Democrats are holding on to power. The grifters
Speaker 2: and the establishment and the system is all holding on
Speaker 2: to keep it going and give it another run. We
Speaker 2: promise you will get it next time. But I think
Speaker 2: most Americans a year from now especially, will realize they're
Speaker 2: fucked with both of them, and they're not happy with
Speaker 2: both of them, and they want alternatives. And the question, now, Steve,
Speaker 2: for you and for every candidates, can I be an alternative?
Speaker 2: I am putting forward alternatives that I think are viable,
Speaker 2: and they're independent veterans. Right. They're winning at state races
Speaker 2: because people say, oh, I like this guy. Nick Batter
Speaker 2: lost by one hundred votes in Nebraska against a Democrat
Speaker 2: who's spent over a million bucks. I think he spent
Speaker 2: less than one hundred thousand dollars. The fact that he
Speaker 2: even came close, right shows you that the thirst and
Speaker 2: the interest is there. The fact that Kennedy could get
Speaker 2: the kind of support he did. People want an alternative.
Speaker 2: They just don't want Robert Kennedy. If that alternative was
Speaker 2: somebody more viable, we would have had a very different landscape.
Speaker 2: So I think we are in a moment where leaders
Speaker 2: are going to rise and the opposition to Trump will
Speaker 2: most effective. Opposition encounter to Trump won't come from the left,
Speaker 2: It'll come from the middle. The angry, unheard group of
Speaker 2: people in this country that is really starving to get
Speaker 2: power and to take the country back is not Maga Republicans.
Speaker 2: It's moderates, it's independence, It's the majority of this country.
Speaker 1: If I remember, I remember in high school, we had
Speaker 1: a football practice where the coach yelled at us to
Speaker 1: like put down the footballs.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He was like, He's like, no one's in a touch
Speaker 1: of football today, right, He's like, we used to a
Speaker 1: practice lining up and running there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
Speaker 1: And I feel like the Democrats need some practices like that.
Speaker 2: But if I feel like we have to stop putting
Speaker 2: them on the field, don't even let them on the
Speaker 2: fucking field anymore. That's that's the dynamic that needs to change,
Speaker 2: is why do they And this is really the important part.
Speaker 2: What my friend John Optiker runs open primaries is really
Speaker 2: really effective and been I think an important leader in
Speaker 2: democracy reform for many many years. He said, you know,
Speaker 2: when you have closed primaries, as an example, you're letting
Speaker 2: them field a candidate and they're the referee. Right. So
Speaker 2: the Democratic Party, as an example, runs closed private elections
Speaker 2: in my state, uses my kids' public school, uses public
Speaker 2: resources to run a closed primary that I can't even
Speaker 2: vote in because I'm not a Democrat Like that is
Speaker 2: what we have to tackle is the fact that the
Speaker 2: Democrats have closed out competition. So I don't even want
Speaker 2: them on the field, much less running the scoreboard and
Speaker 2: the referees. I want them to have to fight for
Speaker 2: that field, on an even playing field with Dan Osbourne
Speaker 2: or the Rock or whoever else, just like everybody else.
Speaker 2: I think that's where the real action is, right, and
Speaker 2: the Republicans knew it. That's why they tried to keep
Speaker 2: primaries closed in I think twenty states over the last
Speaker 2: couple of years, because if you let the independence in,
Speaker 2: that upsets the entire apple cart.
Speaker 1: The puts to make is that if we were a
Speaker 1: retreating force the opposition, which definitely includes the Democrats, what
Speaker 1: we would be saying to everybody in camp is pick
Speaker 1: up your shit, pack it up. We got a lot
Speaker 1: of walking to do.
Speaker 2: But I'm not saying that, I'm saying take it differently.
Speaker 2: This is what democrats need to hear. They're not in retreat.
Speaker 2: Hold the ground you've got, dig a hole and make
Speaker 2: them run you over because let me, they're gonna keep coming.
Speaker 1: And let me and I and I use that analogy
Speaker 1: because I think you have to have ground that you
Speaker 1: can fight from. And the current position is indefensible. It's scattered,
Speaker 1: is disorganized. There there is no line. So everyone's got
Speaker 1: to pick up their shit and start walking that way
Speaker 1: until we find the first place to defend ground from.
Speaker 1: And what is that? Do you think is going to
Speaker 1: be that first MAGA overreach?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: As we as we get forward, you're going to see
Speaker 1: You're to see a cascade of executive actions, of pardons,
Speaker 1: of fire hose, of nonsense. It's all going to be normalized, sanitized,
Speaker 1: most of it's going to be packaged. As Trump is winning,
Speaker 1: he's succeeding. Look at his application of power and authority
Speaker 1: and wisdom, the whole organizing principle. The media is gonna
Speaker 1: be be nice to Trump. He's gonna start doing all
Speaker 1: of this stuff. I'm a rejectionist of the idea that
Speaker 1: it will be popular, right if we are, in fact
Speaker 1: right entering into the golden age of America led by
Speaker 1: the right, led by the Maga Republicans, and you and
Speaker 1: I are two people is wrong about anything that two
Speaker 1: people have ever been wrong about anything about and and
Speaker 1: we're gonna be totally discredited, don't. I don't think that's
Speaker 1: gonna happen. But where where is the line right that
Speaker 1: that is it? Is it twenty days in? Is it
Speaker 1: thirty days in? Is it on immigration? Is it on
Speaker 1: is it on the deployment of the military, Is it
Speaker 1: on the is it on the confirmation hearings where people
Speaker 1: look at a couple of these people and early, holy shit?
Speaker 2: I think this is a really good question because here
Speaker 2: here's if you ask Zelensky, where's the line, he'd say,
Speaker 2: my whole country? Right. He wouldn't say, oh, you know what,
Speaker 2: I'm okay with giving up the don bos im go
Speaker 2: okay with giving up this. I'm gonna care. That's for
Speaker 2: other people to say, right, Like what would we be okay?
Speaker 2: We'd be okay with giving all my Texas, giving away California,
Speaker 2: giving away Alaska. I think that the mindset of Democrats
Speaker 2: is not even relevant to me, right, Like what I'm
Speaker 2: talking about right now are patriots. What is important to you?
Speaker 2: And everybody's gonna have to draw their own lines, just
Speaker 2: like in combat. Right. Yeah, we're trying to move together
Speaker 2: as a unit, but there is no more unit. The
Speaker 2: unit has been shattered. Your commander's dead. Like everybody is
Speaker 2: kind of fighting on their own. And what you start
Speaker 2: to do now is you're not these little clicks, right.
Speaker 2: It's like band of brothers when they when they when
Speaker 2: the one hundred first gen, you hook up with other
Speaker 2: guys at the clickers and say, hey, you got a clicker,
Speaker 2: I got a clicker. Let's see what we can do, right.
Speaker 2: And that's where we are right now, is people fighting
Speaker 2: for the things that they hold sacred before Trump rolls
Speaker 2: over them. So for me, and I think for a
Speaker 2: lot of veterans, it's the Pentagon, right, And it's this
Speaker 2: nomination because Gates for many people was the line and
Speaker 2: they stop Gates. You can argue Gates is gone crazy
Speaker 2: thing he tried, it's he's off the board, right. I
Speaker 2: think that heg Seth is the line. And it's not
Speaker 2: just about the confirmation hearings. This is a test of
Speaker 2: the Republicans. This is a test obviously. Are any Democrats
Speaker 2: other than Tammy Duckworth gonna stand up and say anything?
Speaker 2: Are they all gonna start folding like it sounds like
Speaker 2: Fetterman is doing and many others? Right? Where are the
Speaker 2: officers within the military. Are they gonna find ways to
Speaker 2: speak out? Are they gonna find ways to try to
Speaker 2: push back? Where the fuck is the press? Right? It's
Speaker 2: gonna be a test of everybody. And heg Seth, in
Speaker 2: my view, is the most immediate and the first real test,
Speaker 2: because Gates wasn't really a test. Gates was, you know
Speaker 2: whatever it was. But but but but Hegseth is the
Speaker 2: big hail Mary he's starting with. It's the big shot
Speaker 2: he's taking. And for me, that's where I am right now.
Speaker 2: I'm hunkered down here. I think you have to try
Speaker 2: to stop heg Seth. And of course somebody else crazy
Speaker 2: is gonna come.
Speaker 1: Do you think that Seth great?
Speaker 2: Coins also, Steve, It's also it's also winnable, right, you
Speaker 2: have to pick winnable fights, right, you ow, it's winnable.
Speaker 1: It's winnable. It's winnable if you can hold all the
Speaker 1: Democratic votes.
Speaker 2: Right. But regardless, like in the beginning, when he got nominated,
Speaker 2: everybody's like, oh, this is gonna happen too, Right, people
Speaker 2: think Tulsi is is inevitable, or that RFK is inevitable.
Speaker 2: None of this is normal, none of it is acceptable,
Speaker 2: and none of it is inevitable. So the real problem, Steve,
Speaker 2: honestly is getting people to not quit. Like, you can't
Speaker 2: get worn out, you can't check out over the holidays.
Speaker 2: You got to keep fighting. I know you're tired from fighting,
Speaker 2: but you got to keep fighting. And right now is
Speaker 2: arguably the most important point because you want to stun
Speaker 2: his momentum. You know he's gonna get the House. You
Speaker 2: know he's gonna get the Senate, he's gonna get Supreme
Speaker 2: Court nominee. So look across the board, there are plenty
Speaker 2: of people said, we can't stop Gates. Those people. I
Speaker 2: want them out of the room. I don't want them
Speaker 2: in my foxhol anymore. Right, But other people know, you
Speaker 2: can stop hag Seth, you can stop RFK Junior, you
Speaker 2: can stop Tulsi, you can stop cash Fattel. And you
Speaker 2: do it by reminding people what's most important and talk
Speaker 2: about the basics, give them the principal and explain why
Speaker 2: you shouldn't have a radical guy who wants to blow
Speaker 2: up the FBI running the FBI.
Speaker 1: Are we to see Military officers Arena Cee senior retired
Speaker 1: and listed sergeant majors, Master chiefs of the Navy retired,
Speaker 1: four stores, three stores, two stores, brigade combat leaders who say,
Speaker 1: you know, at a colonel level, who just say this
Speaker 1: guy's unfit or is that I wouldn't hold your.
Speaker 2: Breath for it, frankly, right, because like if you look
Speaker 2: at the last twenty years, like very few of them
Speaker 2: spoke up against anything ranging from I don't know everything
Speaker 2: from like from Afghanistan going on for twenty years to
Speaker 2: the Iraq surge to even things like torture. Like maybe
Speaker 2: that's like when you know, when John McCain was saying, hey,
Speaker 2: we shouldn't torture people, a lot of people in the
Speaker 2: military just shut the fuck up and do their job.
Speaker 2: And that's on part what they're doing because they trust
Speaker 2: that the military will be ice from politics. So we're
Speaker 2: at this new normal now right where they can't trust
Speaker 2: that the systems will keep things in check and that
Speaker 2: Congress will function normally. So I don't think honestly, Steve,
Speaker 2: like you might get him a Craven, or you might
Speaker 2: get a Kelly, or you might get Millie. But don't
Speaker 2: hold your breath. I think you're more likely to see
Speaker 2: kind of like a next generation AOC. You use her
Speaker 2: as an example because she came out of nowhere, she
Speaker 2: was so talented. You might see a sergeant. You might
Speaker 2: see a John Kerry, right, like someone who captivates the
Speaker 2: country and is able to communicate in a masterful way.
Speaker 2: Like you look at the school shootings, right, some of
Speaker 2: the kids that came out of the school shootings. I
Speaker 2: think people are always looking to the senior leaders. I
Speaker 2: think there are some young people that know how to
Speaker 2: play this game, that know how to do the multimedia landscape,
Speaker 2: and those are the folks that are going to emerge
Speaker 2: very quickly and become like instant superstars.
Speaker 1: Do you think, obviously I would if I was president,
Speaker 1: not nominate Ron DeSantis to be the Secretary of Defense.
Speaker 1: But do you process to Santis and hag Seth as
Speaker 1: materially different.
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah, because Heggseth has built his entire life for this.
Speaker 2: He's been built for You would vote.
Speaker 1: If you were a senator, you would vote to confirm
Speaker 1: the Santas.
Speaker 2: Probably not, but you know, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I'd have to see how the hearings go. And let's see.
Speaker 2: I mean, bron De Santas has never said he wanted
Speaker 2: to be Defense secretary. So I think everybody should at
Speaker 2: a minimum say they want to be in and explain
Speaker 2: why and argue why they're qualified. Right. I think here's.
Speaker 1: The point I'm trying to I'm trying to get.
Speaker 2: He's much less. Right if you had somebody like Joni Ertz,
Speaker 2: obviously Jony Ertz, you know, you can also run the
Speaker 2: clock out. You can say no to all of them
Speaker 2: and just jam up the works. Right, that's another strategy.
Speaker 1: I'm asking you the question. I'm trying to get a
Speaker 1: gauge on where you are, like dispositionally on the issue,
Speaker 1: like for.
Speaker 2: Me, I mean infinitely better than hegseth.
Speaker 1: Like for me, right, Like my disposition on this is
Speaker 1: that presidential elections have consequences, that there is an advice
Speaker 1: and consent, and right that means you get to say, well,
Speaker 1: you know I wouldn't pick them, but you know I
Speaker 1: didn't run, and if you're the Democrats, we didn't win. Right,
Speaker 1: So so for example, I'll give you a preposterous pick
Speaker 1: that I would vote for, right is Kimberly Guilfoil. I
Speaker 1: would vote for Kimberly first Teocretary, Yeah, I would.
Speaker 2: I would vote secretary.
Speaker 1: I would vote for Kimberly. I would vote for Kimberly
Speaker 1: to be Ambassador to Greece if I was a senator
Speaker 1: in my like, under my theory, under my theory of
Speaker 1: this right, I would use my nose sparing that I'd
Speaker 1: be like, the American people have voted for this. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's not like any of this shit's a surprise, right,
Speaker 1: any of these freak shows that he's going to play.
Speaker 1: So I would be like, I'd be like, yeah, I just.
Speaker 2: Think at the end of the day, what Trump is
Speaker 2: trying to do is wear everybody out. And yeah, some
Speaker 2: people might be going along to get along, some people
Speaker 2: might pick their spots. But if you have a functioning
Speaker 2: opposition party, you've got all those different spokes working together. Right,
Speaker 2: You've got somebody who's going to be the radical who's
Speaker 2: going to put the hold on it. You got somebody
Speaker 2: who's going to be a tough sell, somebody who's going
Speaker 2: to be right away, right, But all that's supposed to
Speaker 2: work in concert together, and you don't have that now.
Speaker 2: So for me, if I'm a US senator, I'm betting
Speaker 2: the shit out of every of them, all of them.
Speaker 2: None of them are acceptable until I'm proven otherwise. So
Speaker 2: many of them are not just not qualified, like openly disqualified, right,
Speaker 2: conflict of interest as an example, Like if you lower
Speaker 2: the standards on any level, it becomes easier across the board.
Speaker 2: And I think that's why, yes, advice and consent, but
Speaker 2: also every candidate is supposed to get a certain level
Speaker 2: of rigor and and we can't let him overwhelm.
Speaker 1: The system, right, So like my right, So for example,
Speaker 1: like pamp Bondy, right, pamp Bondi is a registered Katari agent,
Speaker 1: so like to.
Speaker 2: Me, the qualifying right, he just can't.
Speaker 1: Be the Attorney general, right, that's totally disqualifying.
Speaker 2: Right, Okay, so she boom, there you go. All you
Speaker 2: have to do in these people right now, honestly is
Speaker 2: like find out what disqualifies it, right, and what everybody's
Speaker 2: doing on hegseet that's really important. And I keep going
Speaker 2: back to this, like the example was set, Jony Urt's
Speaker 2: got smashed, right, she stuck her head up. She was reasonable, Well,
Speaker 2: you cannot be reasonable right now, You're gonna get smashed.
Speaker 2: They'll threaten the primary you. And she said, okay. Now,
Speaker 2: what she's basically saying is I'll wait till the confirmation hearings,
Speaker 2: which is also the way of saying, I'll wait four
Speaker 2: more weeks to see if any other crazy shit comes out, right,
Speaker 2: And that is probably a more strategic way to approach
Speaker 2: this because people haven't been nominated this far ahead with
Speaker 2: this much crap, right, So there's a lesson learned there, right,
Speaker 2: which is weight. But at the same time, will you
Speaker 2: be able to adequately evaluate Heckset while you've got six
Speaker 2: other nominees happening because he is trying to overwhelm the system,
Speaker 2: and people have to stay vigilant. They have to uphold
Speaker 2: that their honor, and they have to hold the line
Speaker 2: for the American people who elected them to do this.
Speaker 1: I think that we are in store for some extraordinary times,
Speaker 1: out of which will come reform and renewal, and the
Speaker 1: American people will awaken. But sometimes suffering must be experiential
Speaker 1: in order to be believed. And I think there's a
Speaker 1: real lack of imagination in the United States about the
Speaker 1: nature of terribleness and on COVID doesn't measure up on
Speaker 1: the scale with what's coming potentially, And I think it's
Speaker 1: really frightening. And indifference is really what you're talking about
Speaker 1: at the corporal and I think that the fighting spirit
Speaker 1: that you bring to the table is something that's you know,
Speaker 1: really really important, and you know, encourage people to get involved,
Speaker 1: to support independent veterans for America and to be engaged
Speaker 1: in politics.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It doesn't belong to the Democratic Party, doesn't belong to Trump,
Speaker 1: doesn't belong to the Republican Party, and the American citizen
Speaker 1: has a lot of recourse, has a lot of power,
Speaker 1: has a lot of rights to stand up and organize
Speaker 1: and to make a difference. And what we're about to
Speaker 1: enter into, I think is a great age and a
Speaker 1: great era of taking where we see people take as
Speaker 1: much as they can take until somebody puts a stop
Speaker 1: to it. And that will always ultimately happen because one
Speaker 1: of the things that's almost providentially been true about the
Speaker 1: country is the right people have stepped up at the
Speaker 1: right times or have found their way in the right
Speaker 1: moments at the right time into positions where they were
Speaker 1: able to stop the things that needed to be to
Speaker 1: be stopped. None of those people have been perfect people,
Speaker 1: and the ones that are coming aren't going to be
Speaker 1: perfect either, but they are out there. Uh. When you
Speaker 1: when you look at what's what's coming down the pike,
Speaker 1: there's gonna need to be a lot of really committed,
Speaker 1: conviction based opposition to it. We found ourselves in a
Speaker 1: terrible place right now in this in this country, and
Speaker 1: in the first rule of holes is when you find
Speaker 1: yourself in one, stop fucking digging. And if you look
Speaker 1: at the last couple of weeks, every person who's capitulated
Speaker 1: to Trump and claim they did it for us while
Speaker 1: practicing the gospel of self interest has nuped themselves, whether
Speaker 1: it be justin Trudeau in Canada, whether it be Morning Joe,
Speaker 1: whether it be the ABC News division.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be interesting to see, I think, in the
Speaker 1: months ahead where that line gets established and where people
Speaker 1: fight it out. But I'm with Paul one hundred percent
Speaker 1: and couldn't agree more. I'll give you the last word here, Paul,
Speaker 1: But you know it's the Secretary of Defense. I was
Speaker 1: having a discussion. I don't think he'll he'll mind me
Speaker 1: sharing it. It was about the hypothetical of, well, if
Speaker 1: you could only stop one of Trump's like most unfit nominees,
Speaker 1: who would it be? And as I've had this conversation
Speaker 1: with people, and the guy was having it with with
Speaker 1: John Nichols at the at the Nation magazine, who's as
Speaker 1: as smart and as decent a guy as there is,
Speaker 1: And a lot of people are talking about go go
Speaker 1: to Tulsi Gabbard and you're like, well, obviously it's stop
Speaker 1: Tulsi Gabbard and John and I agreed with each other,
Speaker 1: which is that we followed the bread crumbs to the
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons, right that the person who's in the chain
Speaker 1: of command with our five four hundred and thirteen nuclear warheads,
Speaker 1: that's the person that we would focus our attention on.
Speaker 1: So I think you're completely right. You have the most
Speaker 1: unfit person that has ever been nominated for a position
Speaker 1: of responsibility within the National Command already a legitimately accused rapist,
Speaker 1: a person who clearly has a drinking problem, a person
Speaker 1: who's been condemned by his mother, of all people, as
Speaker 1: being abusive to women, who is disqualified from inaugural service
Speaker 1: because of the white nationalists tattoos on his chest a
Speaker 1: Fox mourning television host and polemicist who is a divider,
Speaker 1: and who is an inciter, and who is unfit morally, mentally,
Speaker 1: spiritually to preside over In the end, what is a
Speaker 1: position that requires some degree of moral authority at least?
Speaker 1: And so it is an urgent mission to stop denomination.
Speaker 1: It must be stopped, it must be opposed. The dignity
Speaker 1: of the armed forces of the United States is at stake.
Speaker 1: And this last point MacArthur talked about this in that
Speaker 1: sixty two speech, is that the military and the American soldier,
Speaker 1: and the legacy of the American soldiers MacArthur talked about
Speaker 1: does not belong to the military, nor even to the
Speaker 1: veteran belongs to the nation. And in the nation, the
Speaker 1: nation should be revolted, revolted by the idea of Pete
Speaker 1: Hags athleteing the Pentagon. So I have been as outspoken
Speaker 1: as a person could be about Donald Trump, and two
Speaker 1: out of three times he ran, more voters agreed with
Speaker 1: me than with him. One of those times he sliced
Speaker 1: it through the electoral college. But on one of those times,
Speaker 1: I'm in the minormal position and you're in the minority position.
Speaker 1: A plurality of our people in a country have bestowed
Speaker 1: lawful authority to Donald Trump, and he's going to be
Speaker 1: the commander in chief. And we have we have an
Speaker 1: active force of over a million young men and women primarily.
Speaker 1: We have people all over the world in harm's way,
Speaker 1: doing dangerous things. We got another million people roughly in
Speaker 1: the reserves, in the national in the National Guard. He
Speaker 1: could be called on uh to do difficult and dangerous things.
Speaker 1: And these people deserve respect, and they deserve competent able
Speaker 1: moral leadership. And and Donald Trump was not elected to
Speaker 1: vandalize these places. He was he was, according to him,
Speaker 1: to make them great again. And there's and there's no
Speaker 1: formulation where placing a drunk and accused rapist into a
Speaker 1: position that Pete Hagsath is being placed into makes anything
Speaker 1: great again. It's one purpose, which is the fucking record.
Speaker 1: And and with that, let me let me give you
Speaker 1: the last word here and tell people by all means
Speaker 1: where they can find it.
Speaker 2: Well, Happy holidays, everybody still listening. Uh. You know, Steve
Speaker 2: has called this show the warning. I hope that we've
Speaker 2: moved beyond the warning and are now into the action
Speaker 2: phase because you know your your after action review military
Speaker 2: comparison is a good one. But you also don't always
Speaker 2: have time to do an AR because you're still deep
Speaker 2: in it, and we are still deep in it. And
Speaker 2: I think that's what I would ask everyone to remember,
Speaker 2: is that you know, vigilance is the price of democracy,
Speaker 2: and we've got to be vigilant right now or the
Speaker 2: holidays and always, and it requires just basic citizenship and
Speaker 2: being aware of what's happening. So I think vigilance is
Speaker 2: what's required now. It has to transcend party. It's about
Speaker 2: you know what I said, the principal test? Are you
Speaker 2: okay with these people being your principal? And if you
Speaker 2: need another test, okay? The nuke test also a good one,
Speaker 2: right is this a person who'd be fit to have
Speaker 2: control over our nukes? In contrast, Eve after we finish,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go record my annual Festivus episode of Independent
Speaker 2: Americans with Jason Alexander, who is actually a very very
Speaker 2: deep and thoughtful guy, a great he's a grandfather, and
Speaker 2: I'm gonna ask him about America because I think we
Speaker 2: need all voices right now to help us, to soothe us,
Speaker 2: to guide us. But it's a time to go back
Speaker 2: to wisdom. It's a time to go back to values.
Speaker 2: It's a time to go back to family and just
Speaker 2: look at all these issues through the lens of your
Speaker 2: family around the holidays. I don't know how many people
Speaker 2: would be excited about Pete Hegseth sitting at the kids
Speaker 2: table for your holiday. I would not be. I would
Speaker 2: have them under guard. Watch if you next to my kids,
Speaker 2: or next to my wallet, or next to my wife. Right.
Speaker 2: But I do think that there are amazing people in
Speaker 2: this country who will rise to the moment. I don't
Speaker 2: know who they are, but I know that independence especially
Speaker 2: are well positioned to be those people. If anybody's listening
Speaker 2: and they're an independent veteran, go to Independent Veterans of
Speaker 2: America dot org. We want you, And if you're not
Speaker 2: interested in running, you can help support those who are.
Speaker 2: Check out Independent Americans dot us. You can get it
Speaker 2: on YouTube and Spotify and everywhere else. You get Steve's show,
Speaker 2: and we're going to keep this conversation going. But you
Speaker 2: can't give up, right And I don't think you can
Speaker 2: give up an inch of your integrity. And that's ultimately
Speaker 2: what this is all about is about the integrity of
Speaker 2: our country and looking our kids in the eye and
Speaker 2: telling them what you did during this time. I think
Speaker 2: we're going through something, Steve, that I would call a political, cultural,
Speaker 2: intellectual depression. It's going to be a great depression, and
Speaker 2: we've got to figure out how are you going to
Speaker 2: get through the great depression that you heard your grandparents
Speaker 2: it's talk about. That's what we're facing, and we're gonna
Speaker 2: have to strap in and get ready for it. But
Speaker 2: we will endure and we can get through it if
Speaker 2: we stick together and look out for each other, and
Speaker 2: most of all, just remember that that we're in it together.
Speaker 2: And it does transcend party lines, especially around the holidays.
Speaker 2: It's a good reminder don't let the bastards get you down,
Speaker 2: and don't let this guy divide us like be nice
Speaker 2: to each other and be kind and focus on the
Speaker 2: future and we can pull this one out in the
Speaker 2: late innings and live to fight another day. So thank you,
Speaker 2: Steve for the forum, Thank you for and happy holidays.
Speaker 2: Shut the news off once in a while, okay, and
Speaker 2: try to take care of yourself as you would in combat.
Speaker 2: Make sure you're eating, make sure you're sleeping, spend time
Speaker 2: with family, because you got to brace yourself for a
Speaker 2: long fight. That's what we're in for. And we just
Speaker 2: got to outlast Trump.
Speaker 1: All right off, everybody, great American patriot, great veteran, great
Speaker 1: future leader in the American political fight that is far far, far,
Speaker 1: far far far from over.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Steve, Merry Christmas.
Speaker 1: I'm Steve Schmidt. This is the warning and I invite
Speaker 1: you to join. Subscribe on our substack, on our YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: follow us. Welcome to the community.