← The Kinzinger Report
The Kinzinger Report
Central Casting | Trump's Pentagon Picks Generals for Their Looks — August 5, 2026
00:13:10
Loading summary
Transcript11 lines
- [00:06]
A
I'm Adam Kinzinger, and you're listening to the Kinzinger Report, where I bring you top stories and analysis on current events and the growing threats to our democracy. After serving over a decade in Congress, I help you know what's true and what really matters so that we can all work to save this country that we love so much. Well, everybody, welcome back. Happy Wednesday. It's good to have you here. This is the last day on the road, so we'll be back to the normal operations after today. Our top story, the Pentagon is quietly drafting a new nuclear strategy for a possible war with China or Russia. And it's all happening under a defense secretary so unserious that his own party won't even let him pick the general that he wants to run the army in such a dangerous moment, Pete Hegseth is failing this country. We're gonna get more into that in a second. We're also gonna get into Max Miller going on CNN and somehow making everything worse. Voters in Trump country rejecting two GOP power grabs, a judge fuming as he's forced to drop the last oath Keeper case, and a 60 Minutes investigation into Epstein that mysteriously vanished. Do me a favor, like the video, share it with someone who needs to see it and subscribe because you never want to miss an episode. So let's get to it. We're going to start with two concerning stories out of the Pentagon. First, NBC News is reporting that the Department of Defense is drafting a brand new nuclear strategy. And this one breaks with decades of settled policy. It leans into the idea of using smaller, shorter range tactical nuclear weapons in a regional war with China or Russia. The whole theory of a tactical nuke assumes that the other side responds proportionately. But nobody knows that for sure. Once the first one goes off, every assumption about escalation goes out the window. And here's the thing. It feels like every week there's a new report of this administration drawing up plans for another war. Maybe we could actually just finish the ones we started first, like, I don't know, Iran. At the same time, Defense Secretary Pete Egseth can't even get his choice to lead the U.S. army through the Senate because his own Republicans are blocking it. His pick has been a four star general for six months. Most Army Chiefs of Staff spend at least a year and a half at that rank before they're trusted to run the entire Army. Senator Joni Ernst, a combat veteran herself and who was a Republican, looked at that thin resume and said, like, quote, it wasn't enough. There are Some other options in reporting is suggesting that Hegseth's pick was on his radar, partly because he once nicely greeted Trump on a video call. You don't make this stuff up. This is real. And Trump thought he looked the part of, quote, central casting right out of central casting. The job is open in the first place because Hegseth fired the last army chief. He was a respected general back in April, and after that, general reportedly refused to strip two black officers and two female officers off of a promotion list. So put these two stories together. We're already in one war. The Pentagon keeps sketching out new ones, and the person running it all treats four star generals like contestants on a casting show. This is no longer the same military I served in. My experiences, friendships, hardships, and moments where I learned what it truly means to serve in the United States military are unfortunately a thing of the past. Now let's hope it comes back. We have to accept that even the military isn't untouchable when it comes to the rot that this president has inflicted on this country. We're going to have a lot of cleaning up to do. That rot has affected the standards of who we allow to serve in Congress. Max Miller admitted it yesterday in a wild interview. By the way, we talked a good bit about this story, but we need to talk about it again because Miller seems to be going on a media tour to try to make things better, but it's just making things a whole lot worse. Yesterday, he sat down with Jake Tapper on cnn. It was an extremely interesting interview. Things started out with Miller explaining why he's resisting calls for his resignation and even gave a shout out to his personal role model.
- [04:32]
B
And people have asked me, you know, what are you going to do? Are you going to drop out of this race? Are you going to resign? You know, are you going to get out before the deadline? And my answer to you, Jake, is no. And I can tell you why. In 2016, when President Donald J. Trump faced the most extreme allegations in the world that hit him day after day after day, and people in the media very much like yourself and others, said that he would have no shot at winning, that he should not be the President of the United States. But guess what? He stayed in and he was resilient.
- [05:01]
A
That right there is a Freudian slip of epic proportions. He's telling you that Donald Trump is the reason he thinks he can get away with this. Trump, who was found civilly liable for sexually abusing Eugene Carroll, by the way, Trump, who's been caught on tape, Bragging about touching women without consent. Trump, who. Who's been implicated in the Epstein files. Trump, who has been accused by dozens of women for sexual misconduct going all the way back to the 70s. But the interview just keeps getting worse from there. Tapper asked him when the last time he took illegal drugs was. Should be a pretty simple question, right? Not for this guy. Look at what he said.
- [05:38]
B
The last time I had illegal drugs would have been, I don't know, several years ago. I mean, I don't have a time frame on it, but use illegal drugs? No, Jake, this is what they're doing, okay? This whole, you know, needles thing, this is testosterone replacement therapy. People are painting this as something that it's not. Secretary Hegseth, who is the Secretary of War, just three weeks ago allowed our entire military, who are males, to take testosterone replacement therapy. That's what I was doing.
- [06:11]
A
He couldn't give a straight answer on if he's done illegal drugs recently. Then he pivoted to blaming testosterone treatments. Then he went on Newsmax today and topped it all off.
- [06:21]
B
The answer is clear, that if any of these things were true, that I would be in prison.
- [06:25]
A
It's not how this works, by the way, but nice try. This guy has the worst excuses of all time. So Miller went on tv, called his accusers liars, and told you his hero for doing so is the President of the United States. That's not resilience like he said it is. That's another one of the side effects of allowing Trump to become president. A two and a half year old girl is stuck in the middle of it this time. And for some reason, Republicans are allowing this man to remain in government and calling it a family matter. We all know why, but it's sickening. Now for some good news. Two of the reddest states in America just crushed Republican power grabs. For years, Republicans in Kansas had been furious at the state Supreme Court for protecting some abortion rights. So they came up with a plan. Stop letting a nonpartisan commission help pick judges on merit and switch to partisan elections instead. That way, they could pack the court with justices who'd rule their way. It's not just about abortion. It's about a whole number of issues. So they put it on the ballot. The state GOP chair called it, quote, the most important election of our lifetime. And on Tuesday, Kansas voters rejected it by more than 20 points. Kansas is a state that Trump won easily, and voters looked at the Republican proposal and flat out rejected it. Another result from last night comes out of Missouri, another deep red state Right now, a citizen amendment passes with a simple majority of the whole state. The Republican state legislature wanted to require citizen amendments to win a majority in every single congressional district whose boundaries they control. By the way, Missouri voters shot that down by a 60 point margin in 80% said no. Trump's Republican Party has been trying to do these referendums behind the scenes, but the moment you put it directly in front of the people, even conservative people, they fail because most Americans, left and right, don't want rigged politics. They don't want to put more power in the hands of politicians. They want a fair fight. Kansas and Missouri are great examples here because they just proved that even in some of the darkest red states in the country, democracy can defend itself. But while voters can still hold Republicans accountable, no one is left to punish the men who attack democracy itself. Yesterday, a federal judge granted the Justice Department's request to drop the seditious conspiracy case against Stewart Rhodes and seven other leaders of the Oath Keepers for their role on January 6th in the insurrection. It was the same judge who originally sentenced Rhodes to 18 years, and he made clear he strongly disagreed with the dismissal. But with the DOJ polling the case, he acknowledged that the court cannot write a different ending. This follows a similar pattern from three weeks ago, when another judge was forced to dismiss charges against five Proud Boy leaders. Those two rulings officially closed the book on the January 6th investigation, the largest criminal inquiry in the Justice Department's history. Every last case wiped out, I said on the January 6th committee. I went through the evidence myself. On that day, Rhodes and the Oath Keepers stashed an arsenal of rifles at a hotel just outside of D.C. ready to use to keep President Trump in power. That is seditious conspiracy, plain and simple. So why was it all erased? Not because of new evidence, not because of flawed convictions. In an interview with Midas Touch back in January, Rhodes revealed the real reason himself. Mr. Rhodes, did Trump keep his promise
- [10:05]
C
to you and other January 6th prisoners?
- [10:07]
A
Are you satisfied with sort of what's happened so far?
- [10:10]
C
He set us free, but there are still 12 of us. Myself, eight Oath Keepers and four Proud Boys who still need pardons, who are commuted but not pardoned. And here's the thing is we were the ones who were loyal to him and went to trial. Those of us who insisted on taking telling the truth and going to trial and not backing down are being punished.
- [10:33]
A
Loyalty, not innocence. Loyalty. Rhodes thinks he's earned this because he stayed loyal to Donald Trump and paid the price. This week, the Justice Department agreed. And all we can do is make sure the next DOJ answers to the Constitution and the law, not one man's roster of loyalists. And finally, the Epstein cover up is growing. Yesterday, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden released a major investigation into how Wall street banks enabled Jeffrey Epstein for decades. The findings are really damning. According to the report, Deutsche bank failed to prompt or report more than $250 million in suspicious transactions tied to Epstein. Some of it was cash used to pay women in Russia and Eastern Europe. JPMorgan Chase processed more than a billion dollars for him. Despite the internal alarm, bank of America flagged 170 million in related transactions that it later admitted had no apparent economic, business, or lawful purpose. In other words, the money that powered Epstein's crimes ran right through the biggest banks in America and they looked the other way. That sounds like a big scoop, right? Well, apparently, Bari Weiss didn't think so. 60 Minutes had this exact story months ago. One correspondent had interviewed Senator Wyden and was building the investigation until she was fired after criticizing Weiss's takeover. So a Trump ally takes over a major news network, and suddenly the Epstein baking expose quietly disappears, huh? Coincidence. And while this all came out yesterday, can you guess what the President was doing? He was on Truth Social, enthusiastically promoting a new book from Alan Dershowitz. You know, the lawyer who defended Epstein, helped negotiate his infamous plea deal, flew on his plane and showed up throughout the Epstein files. And the same one who defended the President during his first impeachment. Trump called him a great American patriot. Look, connect the dots, because they're not subtle. Every single lever of power is being pulled in the same direction, away from the truth about Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump. When this many people work this hard to bury a story, the story is almost always worth digging up. And so we're going to keep digging. That's it. That's the show for August 5th. Do me a favor like this. Share it with someone who needs to see it and subscribe so that you never miss an episode. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Take care.