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The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
David Rutherford Show: Green Beret On Joe Kent Fallout, Iran War, and The MAGA Reaction
00:42:43
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- [00:00]
Clay Martin
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [00:02]
Cindy Crawford
Guaranteed Human.
- [00:04]
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the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available at public.com disclosures this
- [01:41]
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is Bethany Frankel from Just Be with Bethany Frankel. Let me be blunt. Most dog food is junk. It just is. And I'm not feeding junk to Biggie and Smalls. That is why they eat just food for dogs. It's real 100% human grade food with ingredients I actually recognize. Not mystery pellets pretending to be healthy. And once I switched the difference was obvious. Better digestion, better skin, more energy. Dogs who actually feel good instead of just surviving dinner. Here's the thing, you care about quality. You make an intentional choice to be healthy. So why are you gambling with your dog's health? So let's think about our furry babies. Go to justfood for dogs.com right now and get 50% off your first box. No code Just try it. Because once you see the difference, you're not going back.
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- [03:28]
Clay Martin
I think if you go after Joe, Ken, especially Joe Kent, who has arguably the most gold plated reputation of any man since MacArthur in 1945. Thank you. If you come after him, all right, he is going to bury you. All right? This guy has lived his entire life fighting our nation's battles and had his wife killed in action fighting these same enemies. Like, of all the people in the world that you don't want to screw with is this guy.
- [03:57]
David Rutherford
Joe Kent resigns as director from the National Counterterrorism center and the fallout ensues. That's why I'm bringing on former Special Forces Sergeant Clay Martin to the show today on the David Rutherford Show. All right, Clay, you heard this news. What was your immediate reaction?
- [04:30]
Clay Martin
Honestly, shock. I was, I was absolutely blown away. By the way, thanks for having me on today. Yeah, it was early this morning. I was, I was actually kind of stunned. Not that I didn't think Joe had it in him because he's one of the most audible men that's ever, you know, worn the colors of this country. I just didn't, I didn't see this coming today. So it was absolute shock.
- [04:52]
David Rutherford
I felt the same way. I, you know, I had always imagined that it would come from maybe Tulsi Gabbard or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Right, somebody that had a long tradition of, of being a Democrat or, you know, a different type of belief. But to have in my mind kind of the, the epitome of what, of what a true American patriot and a hero represents in Joe Kent. Like he's, he's the, he's the, the, the totality, I think, like if, if I could go back and do it again. I. I'd want to try and be like Joe Kent. Right.
- [05:36]
Clay Martin
I still want to be in when I grow up, actually. I totally get it.
- [05:39]
David Rutherford
I totally get it. Awesome. Awesome. You know, and as you watched, I don't know about you, obviously, I was paying attention a lot, what you were posting today and what other people were posting. I was. I got sucked into the Twitter wars a little bit as well, too. But the thing that I really wanted to represent and what I was saying is that a guy like this, who he is, what he represents, but more importantly, where he comes from and what he's seen. And that's what I hope we could kind of talk about today from your firsthand experience. Just starting. Let's just start from the beginning. Let's start from the moment you become a Green Beret. Right. Because I. What I think a lot of people, you know, people that aren't familiar with our world, is the very unique differences between all the branches and every force.
- [06:34]
Clay Martin
Yeah.
- [06:34]
David Rutherford
You know, this Special Forces is its own unique animal. And really, in my mind, with the guys that I've worked with in the past, both at the agency and then, you know, doing joint ops, they. They have a profound sense of intelligence. How to utilize it, how to cultivate it, collect it, and then how to employ it in a way that OPSEC is preeminent and then also its function to be able to really great conduct great missions.
- [07:06]
Clay Martin
No, this is absolutely true. And this is. This is directly relevant to especially some of the things that we said about being said about Joe Kent today as far as, like, the negative stuff of it goes. So the big difference, honestly, between, like, the Special, the Green Berets and everybody else is we were actually built to specialize in the intelligence stuff. All right? Like, the. The Johnny Commando stuff is all cool. We got to a bunch of that during the g WAT like everybody else. But really comes down to brass tacks. We were always intended to be like an older force. Used to be you had to have four years of service in the army before you could even go be a Green Beret. All right? And the focus was not as physical or as like classic Johnny Commando as, you know, Seals or Raiders or Rangers, everybody else. It was more to be this, like, intelligence gathering force, all right? And part of this, this goes into, you know, having our little going and trade, host nation guys, all that kind of stuff. But this really does center itself around intelligence because even, like before the war started, we were doing what we call J sets, which is where we go to to friendly countries and train their armies and stuff. There's a huge intelligence mission that goes with that. All right? They're not sending us to teach the Zimbab. And, you know, army privates had a shoot. They don't care about that. They care about having dinner at the colonel's house or whatever other thing that we're doing. So this is, like, deeply steeped in our tradition. The other thing that's especially relevant about Joe and what's being said about him and in this Iran conflict is we also kind of unique. I think it's unique. At least we have a regional focus in SF because of the same things we just talked about. We have to have a language, all right? It's going to be narrowly aligned to the regional world that we work in, especially before the GWAS started. We are never going to think about anything outside of that region. People sometimes ask me about stuff like South America. Like, I have no idea. Why would they tell me, like, you know, I was never going to step foot in Brazil. It's not going to happen. We. That regional alignment is also built for that. The very purpose of. You're going to spend your entire career focused on this one narrow region you're going to know everything about.
- [09:18]
David Rutherford
And that's fascinating to me because what, you know, that specialty does is it really gives you. You know, and let me just back up. I, you know, I. I was an intel rep in. In my first platoon and in my second Platoon and. And I remember, like, the first Platoon, my education seemed almost, I don't know, sophomoric, if you will. My second platoon, we, you know, I did this real brief work up in Kuwait, and then all of a sudden I long. I land in Bagram, and we seem to be like, in this. This intel vacuum, right? And then all of a sudden, I run into the 19th group guys, and there was actually a guy from. 19th group who was there. I think it's fifth group, right? Is. Is the Middle East.
- [10:08]
Clay Martin
Yes. Who was a. Fifth joke.
- [10:11]
David Rutherford
Which. Joking. And I want you to talk about fifth Group in a second. And this guy actually used to train Muhajideen fighters in Pakistan and on the border, right.
- [10:22]
Lenovo Advertiser
To.
- [10:22]
David Rutherford
To.
- [10:23]
Lenovo Advertiser
To.
- [10:24]
David Rutherford
To wage war against the Russians and that. And he's like, man, no, no, no, no, I'm gonna give. And he gave me this book called the Bear Trap, and it was about the. Our involvement in the Russian. In Russian Afghan war and how we helped them with intelligence when we set up all these intel networks and all this. And I read that thing in a week. And I, I remember saying to my, my, my chief, saying, my senior chief going, I, I, I have no idea what I'm doing, man. I'm not trained for this. Like, I, I don't, I, I feel like, you know, sucking my thumb over here because collecting intelligence in and of itself is this profound skill set that takes years and years of development. And as I think about Joe Kent and what his experience was for 20 plus years, not only at fifth group, but also at ground branch at the, as paramilitary case officer, his whole identity involved Middle Eastern intelligence collection and understanding it. Maybe you can riff on that a little bit.
- [11:34]
Clay Martin
Yeah. When that goes back to the, the, the difference between forces too and you know, one of the disparities things people call SF is slow. In fact, they're kind of right, because that was also, that was supposed to be the part of the idea. It was supposed to be an older man's force. It was supposed to be guys like 10 to 15 years. And especially early in the war, that's how those teams were. You know, if you showed up at like 26, 27, you were sometimes a junior by like 5, 6 years to everyone else on your detachment because it was always intended to. And as you know now from, you know, doing intel throughout your career, it does take a long time. That's not one that you can like teach a new guy in like two or three years. I, I also know this because I landed on, we have teams that also kind of specialize in intelligence stuff. And I landed on one of those actually as my first oda, just by accident. It's kind of, it's not like I was so good at this. It's just we were so shorthanded by the time I got to my first ODA that I landed there and it was jarring. There was nothing like I was, I was basically the muscle for the guys that knew what they were doing for a year while we, you know, I mean, like, hey retard, get a machine gun and sit in the car. But it is, it's a, it's an extremely, it's an extremely different skill set from again, a lot of the stuff that we see in movies or the stuff that's actually fun, like shooting and blowing shit up. But our culture especially is extremely steeped in this. And as I recall also, and I didn't check his bio today, but I know Joe pretty well. Joe was in the q course when 911 happened. So when he showed up to a team right after that, you know, six months Or a year after that, he would have been also with an old school fifth group team. We're not talking, you know, 2008, 2009, when half the guys are fresh out of the Q course because we've taken casualties. We're talking still steeped in that old culture where they, everybody knew everything. The team starters going to be grilling you as the new guy about, you know, what kind of bread do they eat. And you know, laor that day, you know, and you have to know the answer because these guys all do because they've been doing it for 15 years. Of course they know. Right. It's just an entirely different kind of mindset. And then also for Joe to go to fifth group, especially pre pre war guys. All right. Fifth and third were kind of the odd ducks out because we were the only guys that went nowhere. That was fun. That would be. Fifth group has the Middle east, third group has Africa. But because of that, fifth group has had the Middle east as an AO since like 1982. Yeah. So for decades prior to, they've been going over anything that, anything weird that's happening in the Middle east, they're doing it, you know, traded Jordanian commandos. There were fifth group guys in Afghanistan a long time ago, like before this war, like when the other war was happening, there were fifth group guys. There was. Yeah. I, to, to say that somebody from fifth group, especially that era, doesn't understand the Middle east is the most foolish thing that you could say. They understand it better than anybody else.
- [14:27]
David Rutherford
I, that, that for me is kind of the, the bizarre reaction to all of this. Right. Obviously, you know, I'm not even going to discuss calling this guy a trader and a leaker and all that. I. Oh, my God.
- [14:42]
Clay Martin
Yeah.
- [14:42]
David Rutherford
And anybody that's carried a top secret security clearance, a TSSCI clearance, just in, in, in the regular and not regular in, in, in Special Operations, much less all the way up to a Chief Warrant. Right. That's handling the most sensitive level. And then obviously the level of clearance he gets while working with Ground branch.
- [15:06]
Clay Martin
Oh my God.
- [15:07]
David Rutherford
Is even a whole nother. So can you, can you describe one, the progression of moving up the ranks in an ODA team and then, and then obviously what it takes to move into a Chief Warrant Officer position.
- [15:26]
Clay Martin
Right. So this is, this is actually hugely important too. So he goes over and does a couple of tours as I don't even know where his end was. He might have been a Bravo or something. All right. But again, our warrant officers and Special Forces, they actually have their own warrant Officer academy. And the whole reason that we have warrant officers was to be the continuity on the team. All right? So it's to basically match a team sergeant, which is like a platoon chief as far as experience goes. But the other thing the Warrant specializes in is the intelligence stuff. Oh my God, that's amazing. Wow. That's most of their training at the Chief Warrant Officer course, they learn a little bit of, you know, bullshit about being an officer and put their uniform on and stuff. But mostly they are the guy that runs all the intelligence collection, all right? They are basically the boss of the 18 fox, who's the intelligence sergeant. All right? And if you're on a specialized human team, all right, that warrant officer is like the master of all the little, you know, Schumach guys. So that's their bread and butter. That's, you know, another year long course where they specialize in those things. To get selected as a warrant officer, you have to do some crazy stuff, all right? You have to have like a letter of recommendation, like your entire chain of command. All right? Not just the enlisted guys, but the officers as well as the warrant officers. It's a process and it's, it's not undertaken lightly. And yeah, you had to be a stellar performer for the most part to even get into that program.
- [16:51]
David Rutherford
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- [18:14]
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- [19:15]
Bethenny Frankel
is Bethenny Frankel from Just Be with Bethany Frankel Let me be blunt. Most dog food is junk. It just is. And I'm not feeding junk to Biggie and Smalls. That is why they eat just food for dogs. It's real 100% human grade food with ingredients I actually recognize. Not mystery pellets pretending to be healthy. And once I switched, the difference was obvious. Better digestion, better skin, more energy. Dogs who actually feel good instead of just surviving dinner. Here's the thing. You care about quality. You make an intentional choice to be healthy. So why are you gambling with your dog's health? So let's think about our furry babies. Go to justfood for dogs.com right now and get 50% off your first box. No code. Just try it. Because once you see the difference, you're not going back.
- [20:02]
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- [22:34]
David Rutherford
All right. So now let's talk about Iraq. In the time that Joe was serving in Iraq as, as a Green Beret, how did you guys. Because I, I know from what I've heard is that not only from, from your side but our side as well too. That around 05 like after Fallujah 05 battle Ramadi moving through there, there was some animosity that had developed between, between the agency and, and SOF and, and so I think the DIA and then those programs where we, they really started to train our guys to run their own intelligence networks and to start going out and take their areas that they were running and build their own intel networks. So can you describe what that. That battle space was like and the challenges and, and, and how complex those relationships would be with local warlords or local, you know, clerics or whatever it was.
- [23:43]
Clay Martin
Right. Right is as much as I can. And, you know, I was a pretty young guy around that period, too. But I did my. My first tour with SF in 2006. So it was. It was both some animosity, and a lot of that was actually driven by. By Donald Rumfield, because he basically owned the DOD and he was tired of the. The Agency doing their thing. So there was some conflict, but there was also some. Like, this is too much for everybody to handle because the CIA itself hasn't had to handle, you know, real, like, war zone war, plus all the other bullshit they have to do in, I don't know, 50 years. You know, there was some presence in Vietnam, too, but they haven't, like, really had to do both things in a really long time. So there was a. There was actually a lot of cross breeding, too. There was a lot of our guys on the intelligence side going up to Langley and going to the Farm, like, full up, like the whole case officer program, and a lot of overlap with that. Now, there was also some conflict, as there's always want to be. There was the growth of CIA muscle around that same time, which somehow they got funded for and sanctioned for, and maybe they pulled the we need a card, which is mostly our guys retired. At the same time we were growing our own intelligence network. It's almost like we built parallel things where the Agency is still a little bit better at intelligence, but a little bit weaker on muscle. And we're a lot better on muscle, but we're still a little bit weaker on intelligence. But we did build a huge amount of overlapping things. The only time it's really coming to conflict is if there was not good. What's the word I'm looking for here? Not good. Cross pollination. All right, you go actually hit something that somebody else was using for a source or vice versa. Usually that stuff got deconvolted, though. But for us, in our little areas especially, so, especially in the Iraq place, they again, try to just break down the country into like, okay, this is your little section, so you get to know everything about that, and hopefully you'll rotate back there multiple times as you. As you come back into that country. And actually, no, one of the places that Joe was at, we weren't there at the same time because we were in different groups. I was in 19th the time and he was in fifth, but he was right down the road from me. So we both spent a lot of time in Shia country down by Diwania and Karbala in those years.
- [25:59]
David Rutherford
Okay. One of the things that I'm hearing a ton of obviously, is there is a tremendous amount of people saying that Iran has been, you know, hunting Americans and going after Americans for, you know, for 47 years. Right. And in particular, I've seen a couple people posting today, you know, that the Iranians were really targeting Americans essentially on, you know, whether it was in eastern Iraq or, or around Baghdad. Can you, can you talk about that threat level and, and, and how that affected operations?
- [26:46]
Clay Martin
No, that's absolutely true. One thing I won't discount from the people that are saying, like, you know, Iran's been at war with us for, you know, 47 years or whatever. Same thing in second recon, I walked past 17 paddles on our quarter deck from our dudes that got killed in the Beirut bombing, but especially as it applies to Iraq war. Yeah, there was a huge amount of Iranian weapons that came across. They did send over most of the, as well as the expertise to do it later on in direct action company. You know, I've, we've, we've hit caches and found your brand new made, you know, PKM still have the factory grease on them and the safeties and Farsi. But my, my answer to this has always been especially, well, let me rephrase that. My answer to this has been since I've been older, what would I do if China invaded Canada and I had a machine gun factory? I would do the same thing. Beirut, that's a little bit before my time, but I mean, I can kind of, you go around in somebody else's neighborhood like this is what's going to happen. So, yes, I've lost friends in Iranian peace too. Do I, do I have a lot of love for Iran? No, I don't. But I can also understand why they did it.
- [27:59]
David Rutherford
Well, I appreciate that answer because that's, that's, that's, these are not, you know, it's not, I think everybody in these circumstances, when somebody like a Joe Kent has a public reaction to, to policy there, it's, it's, what can you find to discredit.
- [28:21]
Clay Martin
Right.
- [28:21]
David Rutherford
His rationale or reasoning, even without knowing his legitimate reasoning. Because we haven't heard from Joe Kent yet.
- [28:28]
Clay Martin
Right, right.
- [28:30]
David Rutherford
You know, all right, so let's move on from his time In. In. In Special Forces to what it takes to make the transition, to go and move over to be a paramilitary case officer for Ground Branch.
- [28:47]
Clay Martin
Well, let's not forget. Let's not forget one other thing there, though, too. And I'll only say this because he publicly disclosed it on the Sean Ryan show two years ago.
- [28:55]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [28:56]
Clay Martin
He didn't just go straight over. He went up to our other SMU first, which is arguably my opinion, the best intelligence guys that there are, maybe even better than, I agree, a lot of ways. And those guys are gangsters. And that's actually, to me, more important than him going to Ground Bridge is I actually went to that selection and I failed it. But that's. That shit happens. That is the weirdest place you will ever go, even just on the selection side of things. I was there for like 30 days. It's so fucking weird and brutally on par with anything else with Delta Selection or Dev Group or anything else. So just to get through that, you're going to have to be a tough and capable son of a bitch. All right? And then to go do that job, I mean. Wow, hats off. I mean, absolutely. Hats off. So he did that for a number of years before he retired and then immediately walked across the street to Ground Branch. I mean, that's incredible. That's basically. If you look at a military career and you say, what's the most gangster shit that you could possibly do? It's. You know, one path of the most gangster you can do is, well, I was in Ranger battalion that was in fifth group for the war. And then I was a chief warrant officer in fifth group. And I was in. The other thing that we don't talk about that I was in drought range. Come on, man. Leave some of the rest of us. Come on, dog. Dude.
- [30:09]
David Rutherford
Dude. I look at my career, I'm like, oh, my God, I suck, man.
- [30:17]
Clay Martin
I'm pretty fucking gangster. Until I see a picture of Joe Ken. I'm like, fuck, man. All right, you know what? JV's pretty good. JV's pretty good, too. It.
- [30:25]
David Rutherford
That's right. That's. That's it. And I'm like, I'm. I'm in like freshman. I'm freshman football right now. So. So, yeah, so I. And I'm. I'm glad you. You brought that up. I. I didn't know whether I should.
- [30:37]
Clay Martin
He disclosed it.
- [30:40]
David Rutherford
Yeah, Yeah, I. I recognize and. And I. I know several guys that were there and.
- [30:45]
Clay Martin
Right.
- [30:46]
David Rutherford
They. Yeah, it's. It's a different level. I really believe it's A different level.
- [30:50]
Clay Martin
Incredible respect. Yeah.
- [30:52]
David Rutherford
And so even with that in the intel access and collection they have there, and then you even morph it into overall ground branch, it's like he has been, he was up until his resignation this morning or yet whenever it really took place, he has been given the ultimate responsibility with operational intelligence for his entire adult life.
- [31:23]
Clay Martin
Exactly. Yes. 100. Look, look, this is a, this is not one of those things like, you know, I had a TSSCI for, you know, whatever last six, seven years. That is nothing compared to the kind of that they're getting into over at the thing. All right. And then we go to the Agency to ground branch specifically. We're talking like, I don't even know what the, your clearances are called because that's how classified they are. You know, I mean, like.
- [31:44]
David Rutherford
Right.
- [31:44]
Clay Martin
He's playing at a completely different level with, with access and with trust. I did. In these things. Yeah. I mean, shit that normal people can't even understand.
- [31:54]
David Rutherford
That's right. That's right. And, and you know, I, you know, then there's this other component that I think even adds another insane layer to the Joe Kent story of his Amer, his commitment to America and more, more importantly, his commitment to America in the Middle East. That, that's the other thing too. Like, right, he's, he's obviously, he's worked, you know, all around Iraq. He's worked probably in Afghanistan, he's certainly worked maybe in Syria, he's worked in Pakistan. Who, I mean, every single conceivable layer of, of the, the complicated nature of what, what foreign policy and, and, and, and, and our enemies, what their objectives have been in the region. There's not many people that have, have, have experienced more of that. Now the layer right beneath that is that his wife, his last, his, his late wife, Shannon Kent, who was with one of my good friends, Scotty Wirtz, when they were blown up in Syria. His wife even had high level access.
- [33:08]
Clay Martin
Right.
- [33:09]
David Rutherford
And, and, and, and so it was in, it was a component of his entire existence. It's not like Joe went home and didn't discuss what he was doing with his wife because his wife was deployed in different areas and they'd come home and see each other for they were
- [33:27]
Clay Martin
in the same unit. So again, this is one of those things that almost can't happen, but it rarely can. They're at the same special mission Unit, which has also been disclosed. I'm not spilling the beans on that. With the same types of clearances doing the same shit in the same AO Yeah. No, I mean, it's insane. It's crazy. There's probably not arguably a human being alive knows more about what we've been doing in the Middle east for the last 25 years than Joe Kennedy. I mean, it's very reasonable.
- [33:59]
David Rutherford
Yeah. And for me, that really becomes the precipice of why the President wanted in that role in particular as to be able to support Tulsi Gabbard, who didn't have a tremendous amount of background or history or understanding of how these different terrorist organizations or governments, you know, whether it's, you know, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, Hezbollah, whatever it is. Joe Kent can articulate a definitive historical reference and idea of what their operations have looked like, like you said, for 25 years. That's why he was, I believe that's why he was brought in to support Tulsi in the position she was in. Do you, do you think that's a great evaluation?
- [34:52]
Clay Martin
I absolutely agree. In fact, I think he probably actually wanted her for Tulsi's position, but knew he would not survive the confirmation process for that, but could be put in as a supporting role, which is oftentimes better anyway. You have the face and then you have like some more, some brains behind as a staff that can really prop that up. And not that Tulsi's, not that Tulsi doesn't know what she's doing. Just she's not playing at the same level as Joe in terms of like the Middle east specifically.
- [35:16]
David Rutherford
That's right.
- [35:16]
Clay Martin
That's right.
- [35:20]
David Rutherford
The, the, the, the great mystery right now obviously is, you know, in the question that immediately I hit based on reading, his response was, okay, Iraq is not, does. Is not an imminent threat. Now obviously he's seen some intelligence and he's, he's. And there's people saying he's been kept out of briefs recently and they're putting him on the sidelines. But it, I, it's, it doesn any sense. And so, you know, as I hear that statement, my immediate response I go to. Well, last summer when we did the, the, the strikes after the 12 day war and we hit their nuclear facilities apparently in quotations, decimating it.
- [36:08]
Clay Martin
Right.
- [36:08]
David Rutherford
Yeah, right, right. That was the thing. And then, and then, you know, the fast forward, what, what transpired over the next, what, eight, nine months until we attacked recently, you know, obviously the, the only question I might have is perhaps he wasn't privy to the, the political negotiations that were taking place with the, with the Iranian political infrastructure, but still he would have access to what Their threats are because he's also tracking, as in working with Homeland Security, based on his testimony we heard a month ago and suggesting there are 2 to 16,000 terrorists, sympathizers or actual terrorists in the country themselves. So he's tracking the threat here as well too.
- [37:06]
Clay Martin
Right? Well, and he's the director too. It's not like he's got to go home and get on Google or he's the director, he can go talk. You know what I mean? Like, it's an easy conversation, you know, like, it's like us working in the same town at the same time. Like, hey, David, I need to know what the is going on. Like, okay, man, here's the. Let's not run through the redneck, which is slower than Christmas. Like, here's the man. Here's the deal. Like, thanks, buddy.
- [37:27]
David Rutherford
Cool.
- [37:27]
Clay Martin
Awesome. Here's what I got. Let's go. Yeah, no, it's insane to, to think that he's. Yeah, even he's been cut out of the. Even if that's true. If he's, you know, I don't know. They suspended the clearance of the director of the national category as preposterous, but let's say that they did. He's still going to know a lot of stuff, it turns out. All right. He's still going to have a lot of people that he's. He's talking to. This. That whole thing is just absolutely insane.
- [37:51]
David Rutherford
Okay. So obviously we, we have very personal reactions to it and I think if you've paid attention, you know, online today from the backlash in particular, I think the majority coming from G. What guys that, you know, obviously, you know, hold Joe and Joe's career at the highest possible level. I mean, like you and I. Oh, both, you know, I'm a fanboy.
- [38:17]
Clay Martin
All right. I'm fanboy. I'm not ashamed of it at all.
- [38:20]
David Rutherford
Yeah, like I must have direct message him like eight times in the last two years, just being like, dude, so proud of you, so honored, you know, keep going. And, and, and what?
- [38:34]
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- [42:27]
David Rutherford
what takes place now. What in your mind.
- [42:31]
Lenovo Advertiser
What.
- [42:31]
David Rutherford
What advice would you give Joe, being. Now that, you know, the. The machine, the political machine is coming at him heavily?
- [42:42]
Clay Martin
What.
- [42:42]
David Rutherford
What would you. What advice would you give Joe?
- [42:45]
Clay Martin
Man 1 I think he knew this was coming. I mean, he. I mean, obviously he knew this was coming. He knew they were going to come hard, hard for him. My advice would be, you know, just stand your ground and know that your boys got your back because we. We clearly do. You. We've seen divisions happen today just in the, you know, the online spaces and stuff that, like you said, this has been the most polarizing thing that I think has possibly ever happened as far as, like, you know, veterans versus everybody else. And it's been also hysterical to watch people call Joe and you and me pacifists and cowards, all this other bullshit, like communists.
- [43:25]
David Rutherford
I got called the communists. Yeah, that was the one. I got. I got fu. Commie.
- [43:30]
Clay Martin
That was my great.
- [43:31]
David Rutherford
That's fantastic.
- [43:33]
Clay Martin
Joe Kent, pacifist. Like, that makes total. That's completely him.
- [43:38]
David Rutherford
But, yeah, more about dealing death than anybody that's in the entire administration. Everybody.
- [43:47]
Clay Martin
He could have done one tour with his group in 2005. And no more about killing that all these other clowns put together. It was how it was back then.
- [43:56]
David Rutherford
Yes.
- [43:56]
Clay Martin
It's. It's completely absurd. But it's been telling, though, too. It's. It's pretty wild and it's. It's funny. It. The grunts, I feel like, are split about 50, 50 on support or, you know, he's a pacifist commie now or whatever. What's been wild, though, is most of the soft Bros. Most of the guys that were like career dudes have been like firmly in his camp, which I, I'm also very happy to see. I, you know, I didn't, I didn't know how the support was going to go, but it's been wildly in Joe's court and I think this is something that's important. It's, you would think it might be weird for us guys, soft veterans to be kind of opposing this Iran war. Like, this is stupid. It's not that we don't want the young guys to get their CIBs or you know, combat Action Driven or whatever bullshit. Just we, we saw this completely play out before. 25 years ago, 23 years ago. It's the same playbook as the buildup to Iraq. And we know how that went. And I personally don't see a good reason for this war with Iran. Obviously Joe Kent doesn't see a good war for this reason with Iran. And here's the funny thing. I'm making my decisions having not had a clearance in 10 years and sitting in my garage reading Drudge Report like everybody else or Zero Hedge. I'm dating myself with the drug report. I don't even know that shit exists anymore. Joe is the goddamn director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He's still got like, you know, the gamma level clearances and shit. I guarantee you he's seen things we haven't even thought about. And that's right, he seems to think this Iran war is a bad idea too.
- [45:31]
David Rutherford
So I, I agree with you, man. I'm my, you know, obviously I, I, I go back to the feeling I felt, you know, the month after 9, 11, the feeling I felt when I hit the ground in, in May of 2002, you know, and, and how over the next nine years from, you know, the, my last deployment to Islamabad in the fall of 2011, like just in that short period of time, I began to realize, oh wait, maybe, maybe what, what they're telling everybody isn't exactly accurate.
- [46:13]
Clay Martin
Right?
- [46:14]
David Rutherford
And so I, I, what I'm trying, what I would like is one that consolidated support of, of Joe if, if, if, if not for his courage and his stance to go against the, the grain, right? He had the ultimate position. You know, he could have parlayed this into be doing whatever he wanted, maybe becoming the director of the CIA, the director of national, whatever it is, he, he chose his, his integrity and his beliefs over all that. And so I, I think at a minimum, that's commendable for all veterans, for everybody around what what, what happens next though in, in this playbook is young men have a high potentiality to be killed. We've already seen what we've already seen. There was the four people that died on the base and then there was the refueler. The, the six people there have died. I'm sure there's more injuries we haven't
- [47:22]
Clay Martin
been told me too about.
- [47:25]
David Rutherford
You know, and there's a lot of, there's probably a lot of backlash taking place in service as well too.
- [47:32]
Clay Martin
Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.
- [47:35]
David Rutherford
But it, like what I, what I really hope is that Joe can find a platform, whatever that is, articulate his reasons without breaking his top secret clearance, without, you know, fueling the fire of this stupid. He's a leaker, he's a traitor.
- [47:53]
Clay Martin
All that getting rolled up in a non disclosure. Yeah, something like that.
- [47:57]
David Rutherford
Yeah, that's right. That's right. And imprisoned. Right, right. And, and he can make the case for not only American young men but also the American people to start to think rationally about another potentially, you know, 20 year war in Iran. Because I, I don't know about you, but I don't think Iran is a quick deal in any regard. No.
- [48:24]
Clay Martin
God no. Well, man, I think you have to look at it from this angle too. You very much. Yeah. And also, yeah, I do not want to see a land invasion of Iran. That seems like a terrible idea. But my, my. I guess I'm going to go back to two points. One, you know, people bring up all the historical stuff and the EFPs in Iraq and blah, blah, blah. Yes, that's true. But then ISIS came along and they were our problem for about six, seven years and Iran really wasn't. What is Iran? What has been their escalation against us? The United States of America in the last 10 years. Did they shoot a couple of drones? I don't even remember. I can't. Yeah, I don't, I don't see them as the threat. Especially in the last decade. You can't pull this like it happened one time. So we have to, you know, are we still mad at Germany for you know, 1944? We're still mad at Japan for, you know, 1940, 41. No, we're not.
- [49:16]
David Rutherford
Some people are.
- [49:17]
Clay Martin
Yeah, well, okay, yeah, some people won't drive a Toyota. I get it. For the most part as nation states, you have to move on. Alliances shift and change, your enemies shift and change. Change. I. With that. Also, I'm not anti war in the slightest. I'm just anti stupid wars like you tell Me that we want to go to war with the cartels in Mexico who are actually poisoning America. I'm down, all right? And I know young men are going to die in that too. And you know what? I accept those terms, all right? If they needed me to do that one, I'd probably go do it again. You know, I'm a little old for that, but you know, whatever.
- [49:48]
David Rutherford
That's the thing. That's the thing that like, that's the, that's the argument. Fentanyl. The cartels in China have killed more Americans on our own soil than Iran has ever killed anybody on our own soil.
- [50:01]
Clay Martin
Even close.
- [50:02]
David Rutherford
Why aren't we bombing the shit out of Mexico and bombing the shit out of. I mean, the logic of these arguments is what is missing for me.
- [50:12]
Clay Martin
100%, brother. Even if we wanted to go protect Christians from Boko Haram, man, I'd be down. I would be 100% down. I just personally don't see Iran as the threat. For the last 10 years, seems like they've been kind of good boys over in their corner and they haven't really, really antagonized us. So if we have a limited amount of resources, a limited amount of things we can do. To me, attacking Iran, is this one of the stupidest things we could do? You know?
- [50:37]
David Rutherford
Awesome. All right, last question for you. What, what would your recommendation to. For the administration on how to this, you know, do they go out and pick another G Watt pipe hitter? Put them in the position? Do they, do they put a, a lid on any negative talk about Joe? I mean, if you were in charge and you had someone break ranks, what, what would your response? What do you think your risk? What, what do you think the. I'm trying to figure out the right way. There's the question.
- [51:18]
Clay Martin
There's a reason they should never let me be in charge of things like this. Well, okay. I think this. All right. I think if you go after Joe Kent, especially Joe Kent, who has arguably the most gold plated reputation of any man Since. Since MacArthur in 1945.
- [51:37]
David Rutherford
Thank you.
- [51:38]
Clay Martin
If you come after him, all right, he's going to fucking bury you, all right? This guy has lived his entire life fighting our nation's battles and had his wife killed in action fighting these same enemies. Like, of all the people in the world that you don't want to screw with is this guy. I. You should just leave him the fuck alone. Let him go, whatever he's going to do, all right, and just deal with it as a damage control. If they try to Go after him. I don't think that's going to go the way that this is the. The most Obi Wan person has ever walked the earth. You strike him down and the boys will come out of the fucking woodwork. So I think that's all a terrible plan. If I was the administration, I would just let him go do his shit. I would bring in somebody else. I would maybe have a, you know, PTS guest shit talk him at a press conference a couple times and just kind of try to laugh it off as the Trump administration does and go about my terrible fucking war in Iran. It's not going the way I think it is and. And hope everybody's distracted enough to forget about it.
- [52:37]
David Rutherford
That's good advice. That's good advice.
- [52:39]
Clay Martin
Well.
- [52:39]
David Rutherford
Well, Clay, thank you so much for hopping on. I know it's. It's later than normal and you got a family to att, but I just really wanted to get your expert opinion on. On Joe's background, his integrity, and what he represents to us, the g. What veterans and. And what he should represent. Represent to the American people.
- [53:00]
Clay Martin
Can we say one more thing, actually, before we go? I feel like this is hyper important. I. A fair number of people have come after Joe today for saying that once you're in position and the bullets start flying, you'll get to quit anymore. All right? I think that's horseshit in this particular equation. It's not like we are enlisted guys in Ranger battalion getting ready to jump into Tehran, and that's the decision the President's made, and we're going to go execute it. This is an appointee, all right, In a position of extreme leadership. All right? The same way that officers actually can resign their commission. All right? Same thing. They don't agree with something, they can resign it right there. It's over and done. We're technically not even in a war, I'm told continually. All right? So to me, this is not the same thing as. As quitting at the line of departure. I. This is a principled stand. It's the most honorable thing that he could do, and he actually has a duty to himself and the rest of us. If he believes that this is a mistake to fall on his sword, as he has done, and resign. All right? So that's. That's where I stand on that issue.
- [54:06]
David Rutherford
Awesome, Clay. Thank you, brother, for everything, and I appreciate your sentiments tonight.
- [54:12]
Clay Martin
Thank you for having me, brother. Talk to you soon.
- [54:24]
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Clay Martin
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