← Bulwark Takes
Loading summary
Transcript42 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my colleague at the Bulwark, Bill Kristol. We have just wrapped up first ever briefing of the full flag officer corps of the United States military by the Secretary of Defense, not Secretary of War, requires an act of Congress to change that, no matter what he calls himself. But I'm happy he has his pronouns and titles in ways that align with his identity and. And the President, United States Bill. So I want to start out here. We're going to play a bunch of clips for people who may not have seen it. I think you and I have sort of fundamentally different views. I think this was as serious as a heart attack. You, I think, think it was clownish, I think. But these views are not intention. Right. They're reconcilable.
- [00:51]
B
Yeah.
- [00:51]
C
The heart of Trumpism is that it's both out of Trump is that he's both clownish and very dangerous. And so I think we probably agree. I would, I mean, I wrote about this in, I guess, the last three morning shots. And so I've been very alarmed about the upshot of this and I'm slightly reassured in this respect. The senior officers, the general and flag officers behaved in an exemplary way. I mean, they were stone faced. They did not rise to the bait. Hegseth and Trump both wanted applause, offered applause, lines invited applause, really. Hegseth paused very conspicuously. Trump almost literally asked for it a couple of times and they did not do that. They stood as they always do when the President comes into the room and leaves. They gave him perfunctory and respectful applause at the end, but that was pretty much it. There wasn't even much chuckling to his two or three sort of witty lines. So I thought in this respect, what most worried me was that he would be able to convey to the American people that the senior military leadership of the United States is totally on board and every aspect of his authoritarian and illiberal agenda. And he. I'll let you go on this now since you, I think it sort of alarmed you so much is he was not very abashed in laying out that agenda. But I don't think he, I don't think the public watching or the troops who are watching, which I think is a very important part of the audience, would think that the military is, you know, rah rah behind this.
- [02:16]
A
Yeah. I want to say this is not you reacting just from the video feed that we were able to see. This is from in the room reporting from pools and other reporters. So for instance, from the pool report we have much more still and quiet than he's accustomed to. Pool can see several officers sitting in a row looking expressionless and inscrutable, with few smiles. POTUS's attacks on Joe Biden have been met with silence. And this is again, same thing again, another, another not from the pool, but another in the room reporter they stood in. Some, not all lightly applauded when he concluded, so as you say, the, the officers reacted as we might hope. And here's the, so here's, here's the tension. I think if you were expecting a scene from Triumph of the Will, that's not what you got. You got fat Elvis. So this is, I mean Trump was rambling and slurring. He was, I mean, I have to admit at the very, very beginning he was actually fairly charming in, in the way that he can be for like 90 seconds. And after that it really sort of went off the rails. And it was, you know, there were, you could tell when he snapped onto the teleprompter version of the actual prepared speech because there were like seven sections like that and they were like, they were the only sections in which he spoke complete sentences that formed coherent thoughts. But it was, I mean, I mean, I have to ask, you know, more, you know, more high level military officers than I do. If you are a professional military officer and you've devoted your life and career to studying the art of war, understanding logistics, understanding military transformations and those sorts of things, and the commander in chief comes in and is just pinging around and talking about how we're consider reconsidering the concept of battleships because those big guns are so, I mean the classic military thing is always, you don't want to be led by civilian leaders who are idiots. Do you think the people there sat and thought, yeah, I feel good about the decision making acumen, the mental, just cognitive abilities of the commander in chief. Do you think they were able to, I guess this is what I'm saying. Do you think that they were able to be like, oh, this is just Trump doing the Trump thing. It's all actually okay in the way that like the Wall Street Journal editorial board was, or do you think that they were looking at this performance in some alarm, not even on a content basis, you know, but just on a, geez, he's out to lunch.
- [05:00]
C
I mean there were several hundred people there, so I, obviously they have somewhat different points of view, I'm sure, and I don't know that many that well, but I know, I think alarmed. I think if you're a serious General officer, and you hear that speech from the President of the United States that when you've all been assembled there in an unprecedented way suddenly kind of almost not or emergency canceling all other meetings, travel, so forth, and this is what the president thinks it's appropriate to do, which is to give prepared parts were mediocre and not that many of them, most of it was rambling, repetitious rambling and goofy and foolish in many cases and just lie insane exaggerations and lies, as he always does. And no, I think you were worried. No, I, and I put hegseth in this thing too. I think if you come away from it, from my point of view, from the public effect of it, I'm not as alarmed by that outcome as I thought I might be. If you are a serious military officer, I had the exact thought what you just implied most of the way through the speech that he's three and a third more years of this and are we going to make it through? And is anyone there telling him, hopefully General Kaine, the chairman, is telling him, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that. There's been some reporting, actually divisions on the military strategy document that's due soon between all the general staff and on the one hand and Hexeth and Trump on the other. But no, I mean, maybe you think he's goofy enough, maybe he reassures off by saying that he's goofy enough and distracted enough that he doesn't really cause any, you know, I don't know that we're not in a nightmare situation. But no, you'd be very worried, very worried. I think. Don't you think? Don't you think?
- [06:44]
A
I mean, I think so, but I don't know if these guys have Fox News brain or not. I, you know, I don't know what the consumption habits are. Right. I mean, if, if you're in the military, do you have the, the luxury of taking him seriously? But not literally.
- [07:00]
C
I mean, so I was worried that some of them would have Fox News, Brandon. I think some of them do, I'm sure. But the general officers, I mean, these are all people basically who've been in, well, at least 20, mostly 30 years, but maybe 20 or 25 years. So they're, they predate a little bit the those who've totally and only been marinated in the stew of Fox News. And there's some obviously winnowing process too. So it's a little different from going to a mess hall on a base and awful lot of young kids and junior Officers who are kind of rah rah for Fox. That's kind of all they've known. And unfortunately, they have been sort of student that. So Mark Hertling was right. He and I discussed this. He's written two excellent pieces, I think, twice, two for the Bulwark in the last three or four days. He was pretty confident the senior military would, would, would be, behave appropriately but not be at all influenced or moved by this. I was a little more nervous. So I think in that respect, he's right. Does that mean that. But on the other hand, so having said all this, that they, they understand how, how ridiculous it is that he's Commander in Chief and President of the United States. What do you do about it? I mean, I mean, they do stuff like a practical problem. They, they, they have to obey legal orders. They, they, there's a limit to, you know, how much they could educate up, so to speak. Hegseth is. And again, I do think, just this for me is the core thing. Trump is worse than he was in the first term. Obviously the authoritarian movement behind him is much more dangerous than it was in the first term. But there were Mattis and Esper to cushion all this in the first term. And I think that's one thing a lot of these officers must have thought to themselves, geez, if they were there already in the office of Corps, the senior officer Corps, five, six, seven years ago, they remember all these moments when people in the Pentagon were able to cushion the effect of Trump's idiocy, and they can't have confidence that that's happening today.
- [08:51]
A
So here I want to get to now to the important policy part, because in the, the broadest possible sense, this was a policy speech, and the policy was about the deployment of the military domestically. And we're going to listen to three clips from it to start. Jared, could we get clip two, then seven and then eight.
- [09:14]
B
In our inner cities, which we're going to be talking about, because it's, it's a big part of war now. It's a big part of war. But the firemen go up on ladders and you have people shooting at them while they're up in ladders. I don't even know if anybody heard that, but. And I said don't talk about it much, but I think you have to. Our firemen are incredible. They're up in one of these ladders that goes way up to the sky rescuing people, and you have animals shooting at them.
- [09:39]
A
American citizens are animals. All right, go to seven and then eight.
- [09:44]
B
America is under invasion from within. We're under invasion from within. No different than a foreign enemy, but more difficult in many ways because they don't wear uniforms. At least when they're wearing a uniform, you can take them out. These people don't have uniforms. But we are under invasion from within. We're stopping it very quickly. And people other than politicians that look bad, they think, you know, the Democrats run most of the cities that are in bad shape. We have many cities in great shape, too, by the way. I want you to know that. But it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left Democrats, what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, they're very unsafe places and we're going to straighten them out. It'll be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war, too. It's a war from within. Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can't let these people in. You know, we had no people enter in the last four months, zero even. I can't believe that, you know, we had millions coming in, pouring in, 25 million all told. And of those 25 million, many of them should never be in our country. They would take their worst people and their people from prisons and jail and they put them in a caravan and they'd walk up. CNN was interviewing one person.
- [11:07]
A
Yeah, so I I don't know. That's enough, Jared. And later on he says, I told Pete Hegseth we should use some of these cities as training grounds for our military National Guard. But military we're going into Chicago very soon. And he then, and this is just final one, a very short one, clip number nine, where he attempts to to lay the predicate to his audience that this what he is saying is not exceptional but stands in a line of things that American Presidents have done.
- [11:45]
B
Clip 9 But these service members are following in a great and storied military tradition, from protecting frontier communities to chasing outlaws and bandits in the Wild West. And our history is filled with military heroes who took on all enemies, foreign and domestic. You know that phrase very well. That's what the oath says, foreign and domestic. Well, we also have domestic George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Grover Cleveland, George Bush and others all use the armed forces to keep domestic order and peace.
- [12:23]
A
Many of okay, so that's enough. So I think that's the the heart of the speech. And this was again, it is a theme he returned to over and over. He attacked various types of Americans. He attacked Democrats specifically. He called, he referred to people as animals, enemies. He wouldn't speak about Putin this way. He didn't mention Xi at all. Again, he, he really doesn't have a lot to say about America's foreign adversaries. It's his domestic enemies that he's really, really focused on. And I don't know. I mean, I guess my question, Bill, is it seems to me that this is a warning to everybody in that room that at some point in the future, they're going to be forced to choose between their oath and Trump. And the question is that room filled with people like Mike Pence or is it filled with people like Pete Hegseth?
- [13:28]
C
I mean, I hope Mike Pence, and I rather think Mike Pence in this case. Here's what I guess I totally agree with. I mean, how it really is just so beyond deplorable that a President United States would give this kind of speech to military officers. We shouldn't. I mean, I'm trying to reassure myself that the officers aren't buying it and that there are maybe a few other obstacles in the way down for the next three years. But I want to totally endorse your. Both I say, I'd say outrage and, and alarm that the President United States is giving this speech in this setting. I mean, even to say it not to military office is bad enough. Right, Right. So it's really, that is horrifying and we should. And then also just the lies of Portland's, you know, it's unbelievable. It's a war zone. And then it turns out he's watching clips from five years ago. And I think there's enough of that in there to make it a little bit incredible, if I can put it that way, to the, to the, to the general officers. There was not a lot of, you know, data that made it seem like it was the situation Washington faced early on or Lincoln or even Incidentally, President George H.W. bush in 1992 went for a week. He mobilized the guard with the approval and encouragement of the governor of California to take care of the, to deal with the LA riots. And then they were demobilized. And that was, that didn't go into five different cities because there were crime problems and so forth. So I think in that respect, respect, it wasn't the most. I mean, his base, I suppose Trump's base is fine with it. But I think if you're a slightly Fox News viewing, maybe voted for Trump privately. You know, General, this didn't convince you that. Yeah, I guess I really have to focus. We really need to Be use our guys for this local, you know, for local law enforcement, I guess, to protect, to protect the firemen on the ladders, you know, not to minimize any attacks on them that shouldn't happen either. So I guess I'm slightly reassured. And I, I thought here the contrast with. And they don't want this. I think even if you're a non bulwark type military officer, you know, you didn't join to do policing at home. You have been taught from the very beginning that is not your role. You don't train for it. You don't want your troops to be exposed to it. I don't think there's much enthusiasm for that. I think in this respect, Hegseth's speech, which was cartoonish and like, you know, dope, you know, like a cartoon version of Patton or something like that, probably spoke to them a little bit more. Some of them don't like the rules of engagement. Some of them don't like women in combat. Some of them don't like, you know, various other things that have happened in the last five, 10, 15, 30 years. I guess Hexath wants to go back to 1990, 35 years of, you know, reforming of the military. There's probably some market for that. But Hegseth put it in the context of war fighting, actually, which was, I think, intelligent of him in a way. I mean that was the more conventional. We need to be tougher, more warrior. Like a lot of it is total in my opinion, and some of it is dangerous in its own way. Incidentally, let's just forgive war crimes abroad and so forth. But I think that has a little more resonance. I really wonder, I just don't know. How much resonance does the Trump attempt to turn the military into a domestic giant, domestic police force? How much residence does it have in the military? How much residence does it have with the country? And I guess we just, I don't know. What do you think?
- [16:39]
A
I think we're going to find out. I mean, I mean that's. At some point we're going to find out the answer to this question. And I'm not looking forward to that. You mentioned the lies. There was one lie that really jumped out at me as Joe Biden's last quasi defender in America. Can you play clip 10 for me, Jared?
- [16:59]
B
Now bragging about I said we have the strongest military anywhere in the world. I say it. You never heard Biden say that. Never heard him say anything. But you never heard him say. Did he ever hear him say we have the strongest military? He doesn't say that. I say it. We have the biggest economy in the world, the strongest military in the history of the world. We have the strongest military in the history of the world.
- [17:25]
A
This is, you know, like Biden said that all the time. This is the guy who, you know, who's the biggest, most famous applause line was like, General Motors is alive and Osama bin Laden is dead. That was anyway, just a small thing. So I, I want to talk a little bit about the Hegseth aspect of it because there is, there is a real tension between Hegseth's macho cosplay and the heart of maga. And the mantra cosplay is warrior, warrior, warrior, warfighter. We need all of our drill sergeants to be like our Lee Ermey in that movie I saw once, because otherwise, you know, we were turned into a bunch of pussies. And. But at the same time, we're not going to get into any more wars, right? Which is this weird. Like the whole idea of America first is we're not going to get into wars, we are not going to send troops anywhere, but we've got to be all butch. And I think that really only the only way to resolve that tension is to, to focus on using the military as domestic enforcers. Right? I mean, if so, what is the. Why do we need to expand the size of the military? Why do we need all this? Why do we need everybody doing butch pull ups and stuff like that? Because this is, I mean, there's another he. There was a line in there where hegseth and we don't need the clips on it, but talked about how he says it all starts with physical fitness and appearance. If the Secretary of War can do regular hard pt, so can every member of our joint forces, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And again, like, I'm, I'm sorry, but right now we are undergoing a transformation of military affairs on the battleground of, of Ukraine. And it is all related to drones and the use of drone. This is like the largest transformation of military affairs at least since guided munitions and maybe since air power. And it has all to do with doing pull ups like in the. But you know, do you know what does have a lot to do with bullying? Doing pull ups is busting heads on the street.
- [19:42]
C
No, I, I take that point. I mean, I'd say Hexef actually gave an example of what he likes in fighting wars post 1945, I guess, and that was the Gulf War. I was struck that he sort of put that in. It's as if Someone read an early draft which was entirely nostalgic for the pre1947 world of the Department of War, and said to him what I think we've all commented, which is, you know what, when we were at the Department of War, we got dragged into two massive world wars in which tens of millions of people were killed. Was that the right attitude? Maybe being the Department of Defense, where you have international alliances, where you understand that it's not just about super mobilization, but it's about having troops deployed in many places to preserve the peace, to deter war, maybe that's a better the world has been a better place since we became the Department of Defense compared to when we were in the Department of War, with all due respect, and to have the deepest respect, obviously, for what we did actually once we were in World War I and World War II. So I think he probably heard that criticism. Someone there did, and they thought, you know, we have to have a moderate instance of the kind of thing we're in favor of. We're against Iraq and Afghanistan and nation building and obviously all endless wars and all that. So we're for the first Gulf War. Now, his little account of that is that's something someone should look at. Maybe I'll write about this for tomorrow morning. So it's sort of mildly interesting in a way that it's. He correctly credits Reagan's buildup, the Cold War buildup, which provided us the huge military we were able to use, large military were able to use in the first Gulf War. And then it's we had a clarity about. About ends. He slides over the fact that the people who ran that war that he liked so much are precisely the Republicans he hates so much and to the degree that they're still alive, hate his boss, Donald, or despise Donald Trump, and probably don't think much of Pete Hegseth, who was Secretary of Defense during, during that war that was so well run. Dick Cheney, who is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell. Does anyone embody more? And incidentally, well, that is just what could go on, obviously George H.W. bush himself, Jim Baker, Secretary of State, etc. Etc. So he mentioned Schwarzkopf. Schwarzkopf, you know, sort of had that image as more of a, I don't know, did he? Patent type. I don't even know if that was really true. So, yeah, I think that would be his wave, I guess why you need to be so tough. But as you say, the truth is, Schwarzkopf, I don't know how much PT he did and he was stipulated. Very good, General, I think. And as you say, anyway, it's all childish, I mean, but so that, I think, would be the way they, in their own mind, that's how you can reconcile the toughness and the, I guess, you know, and then the sort of war fighting, we're warriors, warfight. There's a tension between the warrior stuff and the policing at home. I guess that's maybe a different way of putting what you just really. Well, I mean, it isn't there, right?
- [22:22]
A
This is the thing, right? I don't think there is. I think you're right. Well, that is a very real enemy are the enemies within.
- [22:31]
C
I think it's going to be tough to get the US Military to buy into that. But I don't quarrel with your assessment that that's a very dicey, you know, it's going to put a lot of people, if it gets serious, in very tough positions. And about their, you know, in terms of their oath to the Constitution, I just think that I don't know the military. I know. And this goes down to the junior ones, too. They, they do not. I mean, fine, if they get deployed for two weeks somewhere to help out at a flood or if they're in the Guard or even if they are active duty maybe for a week in some real emergency somewhere, they don't think that's their job. And I don't know. I don't know. So I'd say the way they want.
- [23:08]
A
To, but the go force, the commanders.
- [23:13]
C
Greenland, Panama, Venezuela, are sort of the in between middle ground. That's Hegset's version of the current first Gulf War. Right? Right. You overpower inferior enemies. It's Western Hemisphere, so it's vaguely America first. I mean, sort of. And a lot of it could be done by just blowing up tiny little fishing boats and killing them all. And so you feel good and, you know, to degree they feel good about that, and there's no risk of actual, you know, difficult combat, honestly. So that's their vision. And I suppose we could go through three more years of things that you and I do not approve of, obviously, in terms of fishing boats and in terms of blustering against Denmark, as, you know, in terms of their control of Greenland and stuff, and hopefully avoiding either stumbling into a real crisis abroad, which is entirely possible in Asia or Europe, or we're already facing real challenges, obviously, or the deployments at home. But I take your point that when you really think it through, will Trump be content to have to occasionally use force and Very, very. In limited ways, Pinprick bombing. The Iranians. Super successful. Obliterated. Wow. There's patriots. The whole thing is so incoherent, though, doesn't it maybe fall of its own way? The military has been woke and horrible for the last 30 years. Also, these weapons we have. Fantastic. Well, how does that. And also the people who carried out all these strikes that he likes so much, they are people who were in the military for the last 30 years. I mean, you know, what are we talking about here? How do we get these excellent pilots? I mean, it wasn't because Trump suddenly promoted them all in January of 2025. So, I don't know. The incoherence, I think, is sufficiently deep that it maybe it makes it a little hard to sustain as a authoritarian or quasi fascist project, but maybe it doesn't. I mean, that really is the question, isn't it?
- [25:03]
A
Maybe it doesn't. So this is the last thing, and then we'll get out of here. The fixation on the renaming of the Department of Defense and the Gulf of America, these things seem ridiculous until you start realizing that every time you have an authoritarian movement, one of the first things they do is start renaming shit. You know, whether it's the Khmer Rouge or the Nazis or the. The Soviets, like, it is a. They get in and the revolutionary spirit is that we are sweeping away the old and creating a new reality, and so they just start renaming things. That is one of the aspects about the Trump administration. Administration that I like. You know, when he goes to actually rename the Kennedy center, which I'm sure is like, in the offing, it's going to be named the Trump Center. I expect that the new ballroom complex, which is larger than the White House itself, will probably be named for him. They'll probably stick his name on it. Those things are important, right? I mean, the nomenclature does matter, because that's part of the. The war for society itself, isn't it?
- [26:17]
C
Yes. Stalingrad, Leningrad. Right. I mean, no, I totally. I think you're absolutely right. And it's a sign of where. Of their authoritarianism and their disdain for the actual history, which has given us a bunch of historical names and their wish to impose their own cartoon version of things on society. I mean, I guess if I wanted to be. I don't know why I'm in my reassuring mode today, since I'm usually.
- [26:41]
A
Yeah, it's counterbalanced me.
- [26:43]
C
That's alarms, I guess.
- [26:44]
A
Yeah.
- [26:44]
C
I give you credit for making, you know, getting a slightly. To my alarmist side and making Me, I mean, I guess they're also third world dictators who rename things. Some of them do horrible damage, obviously. So I don't mean. But they don't. Some of them are very successful authoritarians. Was. They're just too. I don't know what goofy and non. But this is where Steve Miller comes in, right? I mean, Miller scares me much in this respect. If Miller remains in that apex of power that he's in, Trump's goofiness does not save us from the authoritarianism and the quasi fascism. Hegseth's isn't as, you know, focused and serious as Miller, but he probably. I don't know. I don't know. Interesting hex. That's a little bit in between. But he's so incompetent, inept. What are the. I. I feel bad for these senior officers. If I could just say that though. You know, I've known a few of them over the years. I mean, these are serious people. They've had some SEC deaths. They didn't think the great were the greatest. They've had some chairman of the Joint Chiefs and some commanding officers, like everyone in the military will tell you stories about this who were perfect. Sometimes even they thought they did some real damage. But I mean, they've never had a situation like this. And maybe we muddle through it for three plus years, but three plus years is a long time. I always come back to you and I discussed this so many times. I mean, people who think, well, we've seen the worst of it, you know, I think we'll make it through maybe. But we're only. What are we, eight plus months in nine months?
- [28:07]
A
We are nine months in nine months.
- [28:09]
C
I'm sorry. Yeah. So it's a long. It's a long time to continue juggling and balancing and hoping that our adversaries abroad don't really, really test us and hoping that there are various distractions and constraints on Trump. And I don't. Hoping Hegseth can spend a lot of time worrying about PT and one last point about the Hexath thing. I don't want to. It seems like maybe I minimize. He's gonna do a lot of damage. I mean, the injustice of what he's doing and saying about women in the military and many other, you know, the people they fired, whom he sort of gave kind of lame excuses for, what's nothing personal, they just benefited from and grew up in a different kind of military. We had to clean house. Really disgraceful behavior by him. And then he's like, grow up in that military.
- [28:57]
A
Like I'm, I'm, maybe I'm wrong, but he didn't serve for four years just while Trump was president.
- [29:01]
C
Right.
- [29:03]
A
If he's proud of his service and he was a great officer and warrior, then like I don't do you see.
- [29:09]
C
He didn't like what excuse. I think people like him. I'm excused. One thing that people like him didn't like would maybe 1% of justice, 99% of not justice was the rules of engagement. His senior officers were wimpy. The women. I mean there weren't even women in combat, of course, when he was there in Iraq in oh, six. So it's all ridiculous. There wasn't dei, there wasn't anything. There were gays in the middle, you know, who were out of the closet in the military and so forth. But, but he was a famously one. It was very striking when he mentioned three bad generals. One was Millie. I can't remember who the second one was. And then one was Chiarelli. Chiarelli. I can't remember how you say his name. I've met him, actually. I met him in Iraq. Who was a very good general. Tried to remove a. Unfortunately, someone who was bad apple. Maybe it was a one star beneath him. They, they didn't. They overruled him very foolishly. I think Hexath thought that was an instance of political correctness. The guy was. War crimes were being committed on this guy's watch and they weren't being disciplined. At least that's what Giarelli, I think thought and I think others thought. So anyway, Hegseth has grievances from way back then as many people who served in the 2000, the tough wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have. And I say there's some germ of truth in some of them, but that's sort of maybe what, what, what's driving him. But it does lead him to have a contempt for everything that's happened over the last 35 years in the military, which is a little nuts. Very. I mean, more than a little nuts. I mean, are we, you know. And I, I, I do. That's where I kind of wondered. You're a senior military officer. You looked up to General Dunford or whoever you did, or General Pace or Millie or whatever. And others much less well known. One and two stars. And you think those people were all just, you know, dei, promote, promoted because of DEI or woke people who didn't care about actually having an effective fighting force. I mean these, a lot of these people were in actual combat, obviously in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think they cared about having an effective fighting force and I think they were pretty good at it, whatever our problems in those wars were. And I don't know, I feel like they've put themselves in a position where Hexaf is maybe a little more than Trump, where he's. But both of them really, where they have contempt for everything that's been done for the last 35 years. Is that really a tenable position? I don't know. Is it?
- [31:20]
A
Well, I think it is because that contempt is a statement of. That the only legitimate authority is us. Right.
- [31:26]
C
And this is.
- [31:27]
A
Okay, real last thing.
- [31:29]
C
That's a very good point. You should elaborate on that point. That's a very important point.
- [31:33]
A
Have you ever seen a commander in chief denigrate to the military in public by name, his two predecessors in office and say that they were bad and incompetent? Because you. He, he by. He mentioned by name, Biden and Obama talked about how terrible they were, how incompetent, how they were never fair to the military. And he did, most alarmingly. He said that Biden was only president because the election had been rigged. So he said that Biden had been an illegitimate commander in Chief and the 800 or so general officers had to sit there and just accept that. I mean, they didn't have a choice. But, but this is what I'm saying. This is, he is, he is making cases for the person of Donald Trump being the only legitimate authority to hold the power of commander in chief.
- [32:34]
C
No, I think that's really. And I thought you were going to say, yes, I very much agree about attacking Biden, Obama, but also attacking previous generals who've served by name, who, who have never been accused or convicted obviously of any crimes or anything like that, or misbehavior. They were served honorably, they were discharged honorably. Some of them rose to the very top. So that's never been done. Whatever. Privately, people might have thought about some general from four years ago or 15 years ago. No, it's really appalling. So Trump, Trump was as bad as we would have expected, I thought. But though, I don't know. Did you think he was showing his age a little bit repetitious and maybe therefore not quite as command in terms of the public, I don't think it was a commanding performance. Hegseth is bad and dangerous. Hopefully most of the stuff is just stupid physical training stuff and all that. And the military officers, I'm somewhat reassured by. But look, they'll be under huge pressure and again Final, final, final point. If I could just. He could fire a lot. They could be a lot of turnover. This is what I the. I believe this. Those people in that auditorium would do the right thing if confronted with the choice that you mentioned earlier, Constitution or Trump. Two years from now, three years from now. Kind of an important moment, fall of 2028, with the people who have been promoted to replace many of the people in that room, do the right thing. We don't know. And Hexaf and those guys are spending a lot of time looking apparently at promotions and to go as I think one of them did next, I was say this. We've gone through the files. We've done a deep dive on all you, everyone in the military. We're carefully selecting people. They also said in passing that all their loyalty is to the President of the United States. You serve at the pleasure of the President, United States. I do not believe that may literally be true in terms of the, I guess the general officers, but not true of the whole military, incidentally. But even so, I don't think previous secretaries of defense would have put it that way or they would have quickly said, but of course the key is your professionalism, yourself, your discipline, your loyalty to the Constitution. None of that, of course. So anyway, three years of politicization, of politicized promotions and firings, of rewarding people who go along with, with, with the MAGA agenda. Even if the military is holding for now, will it hold in three years? That, that I think is extremely worrisome. Did I get alarmed enough to you here at the end? That's good.
- [35:01]
A
I think so. We're going to find out. Guys, thanks for sitting with us. It's, it's pretty, pretty bad moment, pretty dangerous moment for America. Unprecedented. Of course, if things are unprecedented every day, are they ever really unprecedented anymore? It's hard to say hit like and subscribe. Follow the channel and stay with us as we all hope we can make it through this with our democracy intact. Good luck, America.