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- [00:00]
A
Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bulwark, joined as always by our very own Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. This is Command Post on the Bulwark takes feed. Thanks for watching. We are. We're addressing some breaking news. That's why we delayed starting a little bit because President Trump just finished up a interesting press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Ankara for the NATO summit. We have to talk about Iran. We have to talk about the fact that we're at war. Again, question mark. But it's all related because there doesn't seem to be anyone at home upstairs, if you know what I mean. So. Yesterday, the United States Central Command announced the resumption of strikes on Iran. The memorandum of understanding. The ceasefire seems to be falling apart. General, I want to. I want to get your take on how we should understand what's going on, because I really don't. But first, I think we owe it to the President to hear his explanation. So if we can play their scum. Mr. Producer, thank you.
- [01:06]
B
It's a very interesting question. To me. I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people and they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. I'll speak to our negotiators. They want to negotiate. They're good people. Steve Woodkoff, Jared Kushner, but they have to come back to me. As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars.
- [01:42]
A
General. Is that clear strategic direction?
- [01:45]
C
It is not, because I don't know what it's over means. Does that mean it's over in negotiations? Is the war over? Are we not going to deal with them anymore? Are we just going to destroy them because they're, quote, unquote, scum? It isn't an objective or an end state that I can parse together. It was just a very interesting press conference and I watched most of it.
- [02:12]
A
I. That was. Yeah, that. It was. That wasn't even his press conference. As Zelensky, we should say. I think he said that yesterday. So he's just been on a. Been on a real tear so far in Ankara. I mentioned this when I was on the live stream with Bill Crystal yesterday. Our colleague that I've been rereading Churchill's history of World War II. And one of the things he points out in the first volume, which is all sort of the lead up to the war, the decade or so leading up, is that. Oh, sorry, I'm getting a correction. This is all from today. I'm sorry, this is all from today. He's really been on a tear today in Ankara. One of the things Churchill points out is that one of the things he wanted the British government to do before he was Prime Minister was be clear with the British public about what the danger was from Nazi Germany and say. And this is what Churchill ended up saying, like, there's a big task in front of us and it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be fun, but we have to do it because it's important. Which is really, like most of a president's power, Right. It was the famous political scientist, I forget who, Hofstadter maybe, who said, the president's power is just the power to persuade at the end of the day. And we can play. Well, not play this whole thing because it's kind of long, but we can play negotiations. Done. And hear what our president is saying to the American people, to the Iranian people, to the Iranian leaders, and to the world, let's play negotiations and that
- [03:26]
B
talks with Iran will not resume. I don't care. They can talk, but I think they're wasting their time. They're a bunch of lying guys. I do my whole life, that's all I do is deals. My whole life is. That's how I became president. I guess that's a deal, too, right?
- [03:38]
A
Interesting theory.
- [03:39]
B
I made a lot of money. I had a lot of great success. Tremendous success. Everything I did, I was successful. And I deal with these guys and I say, this is from a different school. They're liars, they're cheats, they're sick people. They've hurt their people. They killed 54,000 people as of now that were protesting. You know when people say, how come they haven't taken over? They can't take over because they're dead. They killed them. Nobody's going to take over. They have no guns and the other side has machine guns and they're killing them. The press doesn't report it, but they're bad people. They're bad people. And frankly, I don't want to waste my time with them. Now, I'll let our wonderful negotiators keep talking if they want, but I don't see it. I don't like these people. You know that.
- [04:31]
A
General, if you were the commander of centcom. And you heard that. What are you supposed to do about that? Or even if you're the national security advisor or an American ambassador or an American ally, what do you make of that?
- [04:44]
C
You know, the key whenever you go to war is understanding your enemy. President Trump has put all Iranians in the scum category, or he's at least put their government in the scum category. If you don't understand the culture, the dynamics, the history of the country, what they're trying to do. Going back to your commentary about influence, that's the key element of leadership, is it's not just your attributes and your competencies and the context you're placed into, but how do you influence other people to do what you'd like them to do? It's called leading up, leading sideways, leading down. To just wipe your hands and say, they've been our enemies for 47 years, which is. Which the President has repeatedly done. Guess what? We have been their enemies for 47 years and more because we were the ones that led to a coup that occurred in Iran during the revolution. We have been attacking them for 47 years. So both sides have kind of. Yeah. As a military leader, you look at this, what are our powers? What are the powers of the nation that we're fighting? And I think Iran is using them quite accurately, because I'm going to go back to something else, Ben. We've had an MOU on the table that was supposed to be negotiated within two weeks. It is long past that two weeks now. There have been almost no negotiations that I can see have happened in terms of what the further talks would be. And as I said once before on command post, an MOU is sort of like the agenda items for a business meeting. That's your start point of what you're going to talk about and how you're going to address the issues. We haven't even gotten to that point yet, and we haven't seen any updates either in the media or from the White House or from the State Department or the Pentagon in terms of what has happened. We know Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are over there. Don't know if Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, is involved, don't know if the Defense Department is involved other than providing kinetic operations in the Gulf. We seem to think that the strait was going to be open soon. There were no indicators that there's been any negotiations of how to open those straits. Whether we're using the northern side, which is the Iranian side, or the southern side, which is the Omani side or the center, which is allegedly mine. Still, I'm looking not only at national media, but at international media and Middle east media, and there is complete confusion about what has happened in the last couple weeks since the announcement of the mou. That certainly doesn't lead to any kind of process. So one might say, and I'll end it here, Ben, that's a long diatribe by me. One might say when ships started to try and bridge the Strait of Hormuz yesterday and they were fired upon by the Iranians, that's because one of the issues is transit of the Strait, and that has not been resolved yet. So it looks like these strips were. These ships were trying to make a break for it. And Iran said, no, we haven't. We haven't decided on that yet. So we're still at war. And. Oh, one more thing.
- [08:11]
A
Yeah.
- [08:12]
C
The President, on multiple occasions during this NATO conference has said, we are not at war. He has used the term military operations.
- [08:23]
A
This morning he used special military operations.
- [08:26]
C
Well, that's what I thought. No, he didn't say special. He just said, it's not a war, it's a military operations. Then he said, what it's really all about is denuclearization. And that's the first time I've heard him say that, although allegedly he has said that before. So why are we getting upset when ships are moving through the Strait? Well, that's because they haven't been addressed yet to get to the point when you're talking about denuclearization. So, Ben, this thing, as you and I have talked multiple times before, has been just chaotic and dysfunctional from the beginning, and it's not getting any better.
- [09:04]
A
Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. I can't. If I may, I may. Before we do our last clip on Iran, I want to take a little bit of a victory lap, because on the first day of this war, February 28th, I think it was, when we started bombing, I wrote an article for the Bulborg in which I asked three major questions about the war. And one of them concerned how the nuclear issue fit into the larger issues in the war. What are our goals were, what the reasons for the war were, basically our war aims. And I pointed out that in the case of Iraq, the nuclear issue sort of overwhelmed everything else, and people had trouble, partially because of the way the administration sold the war, partially because nuclear weapons sort of have such a, you know, powerful psychic imprint on people. Rightly so.
- [09:59]
C
If I. If I may, Ben, you said Iraq, you Meant Iran, I think.
- [10:02]
A
No, no, I meant Iraq. I meant Iraq 2003. Like. Yeah, yeah, sorry.
- [10:05]
C
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Sorry.
- [10:07]
A
The nuclear issue in Iraq became so dominant that when there weren't nuclear weapons, all the other reasons that the administration internally had listed for the war were just gone. Like, you know, the fact that Saddam Hussein was a, you know, habitual menace and was invading his neighbors and was a huge problem. All this stuff, people got focused on the nuclear issue that is happening now in reverse. Right. We started out with this whole list of war aims for Iran. We wanted them to. We wanted a regime change, or we wanted a regime transition, or we wanted them to, you know, respect the rights of their people, or we wanted their army and they're sorry their navy and air force destroyed.
- [10:44]
C
Control their proxies. Control their proxies.
- [10:47]
A
Exactly the proxies. And now Trump has gone back to. Well, you know, of course, it's always really about nuclear weapons, which, if it were really about nuclear weapons, why didn't we just do Midnight Hammer Version 2? Why did. Why are we not striking the nuclear sites? Why? You know, we've gotten ourselves into such a huge mess because we didn't have clear war aims. And Trump is leaning on this nuclear weapons thing because it has such a strong psyche impression on people and causes you to ignore everything else. That's my theory.
- [11:13]
C
Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right. And what's interesting about that is he. He brought up in today's press conference the pallets of cash again.
- [11:25]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [11:26]
C
That were delivered as a result of the jcpoa. There are no indicators. Or was any pallets of cash and banks being raped of all their money in Maryland? And, you know, I. It's just a ludicrous commentary, but it gets back to the point of. There was the first element of a nuclear deal under JCOOPOA, which Trump purposely tore up. Don't. Don't want to go back to that. But that is the case.
- [11:57]
A
Yeah, no, I think that's right. So I said we'd only have one more clip, but then our trumpet producer, Matt, found something that Trump just said in his meeting with the President of Syria. So let's play that one. You just added, Matt, about nuclear material.
- [12:14]
B
Yes, yes, ma'. Am.
- [12:16]
A
You said that dealing with the Iranians
- [12:18]
B
is a waste of time. How do you plan to get the
- [12:20]
A
nuclear material and the nuclear assurances that you want?
- [12:23]
B
Well, we've already got the nuclear material because it's so far underground, nobody's going to be able to get it, except us, because we have the equipment that can get it. But I call it the nuclear test. The nuclear material is so far down underneath the mountain. And now that's been determined that it would take massive machinery that we have that no other country has.
- [12:47]
A
So you have no plans to go
- [12:48]
B
in boots on the ground? Why would I go in now? I go in when they're completely. Either.
- [12:56]
A
So it's just looking at our faces there on the camera. So, so it's. We, we have to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon, but they can't get a nuclear weapon because only we could access their nuclear material. So it's very important that we keep bombing things that aren't their nuclear sites to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon that they can't get. Do I have that right?
- [13:16]
C
You do. And it, and now that you've kind of summarized it, Ben, it all makes sense to me completely. I, I'm, I now understand the war aims. This is the kind of thing we continue to hear. And because the President, God bless him, can't stop talking and can't stop giving the kind of off the cuff answers that make no sense, it's only confounding the issues. And I wish, God help us, I wish they would show the faces of, of Secretary Rubio, Beset, Witkoff, Kush, everybody else that's with them, because I think their faces would mirror what your face and my face just look like if they did.
- [14:00]
A
Yeah, I think that's right. Okay, we got one more short clip here. And this is the one I really, I really want to get your reaction to because. Is this an order? Let's play the big attack clip and see is this is, if this is an operational order from the President, be
- [14:16]
B
a big attack and it'll knock out a lot of stuff. We don't knock out nothing. We knock out a lot.
- [14:28]
C
Okay, I'm glad they showed Zelinsky's face on that because this is a wartime president who understands another country coming into his country and knocking out a lot of stuff. So, yeah, from a military perspective, Ben, there would have to be a whole lot of war gaming and plans development to determine what knocking out a lot of stuff means. And then you have to go back to the commander with his commander's intent of knocking out a lot of stuff and saying, is this what you wanted us to do? Or do you want us to do something different or, and truthfully, you know, the President said also in the conference this morning that he was a military history expert and he knows more about the history of warfare than anyone else. So if that's the case, then I'm sure he could give, after those course of actions are developed, a whole lot more precise guidance to his military commanders.
- [15:31]
A
Yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath on that. I just wanted to. Before we move on to other things the President has said recently, I just wanted to mention that there was one quote from an anonymous administration official that I saw circulating that really sort of set my hair on fire. And it was. And I know this is going to bother you, too. He said, the Iranians clearly aren't listening. So we're turning up the volume. They're not getting the message. So we're turning up the volume. And, you know, do you want to play a game? Let's play a game. The game is called you can't win, and you have to guess what the right answer is. Okay. The case is I am the American President and I am ordering the Air Force to bomb more things so that the enemy gets the message. Now, am I Truman or Eisenhower during the Korean War? Am I LBJ and Nixon during Vietnam? Am I Trump in Iran, or am I Putin in Ukraine?
- [16:33]
C
I think we have all of the above, potentially.
- [16:36]
A
Ah, you did win. You won. You can't win. And the answer is, none of those were victories, bombs and messages, but all
- [16:43]
C
of them were the approach.
- [16:45]
A
Yeah, that's right. It is so maddening that these people are like, we're sending them a message with these. You can't send a message with a bomb. You can destroy things with a bomb, but a bomb doesn't have words.
- [16:57]
C
The point of all this is that warfare always ends in some type of diplomatic action. What makes this case even more dysfunctional is the fact that there has been the admittance by many that these actions have depleted to a degree. And I don't know what the degree is, I have no access to the information. Complete depleted the ammunition stockpiles of the United States military to the point where one combatant commander, the one in Pacific Command, basically said, we no longer. We are very concerned about our capability to execute contingencies against other regions. That in and of itself is a blinding flash of the obvious that something's going wrong. So if you continue these massive attacks like they've never seen before, or if you bomb them into the Stone Age, or to put it in the President's word, or the administrative official, administration officials words of turning up the volume, you're just going to waste more stuff. And it hasn't worked so far. And in fact, it's only compounding the issues inside of Iran.
- [18:12]
A
I can. I totally agree. We're trying more of the same because we're out of ideas, as I keep saying. As you keep saying. And it's not working. Okay. General, we wanted to be serious about what's going on in the war with Iran, but I don't think we've done quite a good enough job of explaining just how unserious the President sounded. So we have to start before we move on to how we talked about Ukraine and NATO and Russia. We have to start with this clip of President Trump mentioning a country that doesn't exist.
- [18:42]
B
Yesterday we had 111 missile shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan. They were shot at the aircraft carrier.
- [18:52]
A
I'm sorry, the what? The what? The Islamic Republic of Japan.
- [19:01]
C
I think everyone who is ever on film or in this age of social media has at least one flub like, like that, but that's a pretty big one. I once said something that has come back in 2016, which every time I make a comment and the, the, a lot on the right don't like it, they bring a film club up that I was in that I apologized for. I went on CNN and said I made a mistake in a comment. But yeah, the Islamic Republic of Japan, that's a, that's, that's a pretty interesting one.
- [19:37]
A
That's a pretty interesting one. No, I agree people can mess up their words. But really, if you don't watch the full video, we're trying to play fuller clips here so you can understand if you didn't watch the full press conference, what the president sounds like. And he does not. Well, how about this? Let's just play drones in Moscow and we can hear the President talking about the Ukrainian deep strike campaign in their war with Russia. So let's just play that and listen
- [20:04]
B
and said, I would love to meet in Moscow. And I said, I don't think, you know, I have to put myself in this position. I don't know that he'd go to Moscow. Maybe he would. Would you go to Moscow? It's difficult. There are a lot of Ukrainian drones there. That's right.
- [20:26]
C
That. Matt, that is world class trolling right there. That's world class. And it kind of shows that Zelensky now has a bunch of cards. At one time he may not have had cards or according to some, he may not have had cards. He's got a bunch of cards. And I got to tell you, that was a great comment on his part.
- [20:47]
A
Yeah. The difference between how sharp and like on it. And, you know, thinking fast. Zelensky is versus. Well, how about this? Let's play. Let's play the Abraham clip and listen to our president.
- [21:07]
B
We'd have great protection. I love the protection.
- [21:11]
A
He's talking about air defense.
- [21:12]
B
You wouldn't. You'd never be hit in. As an example, in Kiev, where they get hit with missiles. Those missiles, like what I said about the Abraham Lincoln, the missiles would be shot down. Yeah. And I think you start making it pretty quickly. Right. You like the idea? No, no, it's a great idea. I think everybody likes it.
- [21:34]
A
So he's talking here about Patriot missile batteries, which one Ukraine does have some of. But they are desperate for more interceptors because the Patriot is the only system, basically, they can shoot down some of the most advanced Russian ballistic missiles. And they've been desperate for these interceptors and have not been receiving them from the American government. So now Trump is saying, oh, well, if you had Patriot interceptors, you could shoot on anything. Right. And he's saying this to Zelensky, like, if only you had Patriots. Ukrainians are livid that we used more Patriot interceptors in the first four weeks of the war in Iran than they've used in four years of war with Russia.
- [22:09]
C
Yeah, here's. Here's the other thing, and this is where I'll get into my military geekiness. The President, in that clip, or right after that clip as I was watching it, talked about the USS Abraham Lincoln and how they were attacked by over 100 drones and missiles in one night, and they shot them all down. Well, the Abraham Lincoln is about a 1 square mile circumference target in the middle of an ocean, and it has multiple air defense systems on board. It's protecting the carrier. That's what it does. The nation of, of Ukraine is the size of the state of Texas, which means they're not a point target. The President mentioned Kiev, not Kiev and how it was being attacked. Well, 100 drones against the USS Abraham Lincoln compared to, oh, I don't know, the launching of anywhere from 4 to 800 drones per day at different targets inside the area of Ukraine is a whole lot more. It's a whole lot more difficult to defend. So again, the President, who's the expert at warfare, doesn't understand the difference between an aircraft carrier versus a nation protecting civilian infrastructure, where you can't put air defense everywhere. And your point about what Ukraine has received, the other point the President made today, which was a complete surprise, right after that pitch, he said a little. His term, not mine, had told him that they were going to issue Ukraine the ability to build Patriot factories inside of Ukraine to help them with their Patriot missiles. Now I would say if the first brick of that factory is laid today, it's probably going to be at least a year before the first Patriot comes out of that factory, at least. And that would also be an interesting intelligence dynamic for the Russian republic hearing that we're now going to let Raytheon start building Patriot missiles inside of Ukraine. I think Raytheon is the manufacturer of Patriots, I think so. All of these things that come out in these kind of press conferences are just things that you don't want to say in public. But again, I go back to the point that the president can't help himself.
- [24:41]
A
You know, I'm just going to go ahead and quote Churchill again real quick because things may have changed. I'm not an expert on the defense industry, but he's talking about the late 1930s when Britain was finally preparing for war, finally thinking, oh no, we might have to fight again. And it's years behind the German rearmament. And he says munitions production is a four year process. In the first year you get nothing. In the second year you get a very little. In the third year you get a lot. And in the fourth year you get a flood. And Ukraine has already been four years since the full scale invasion. So they've already been fighting the full scale high intensity war for four years. And before that, the original Russian invasion was in 2014. So it's been a long time and we're finally getting around to like, hey, maybe we should help you build the weapons you need. It's, it's infuriating. I'd also like to point out before we, before we play our last clip and.