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A
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B
Welcome back everyone, to another unfiltered edition of Truth in the Barrel. The world is on fire. Prices for everything are up. We're still in this sort of dumb war of choice in Iran, but today I'm really excited because we're bringing back Ken Harbaugh. Ken is a Midas Touch host and president of Valor Media who has a new documentary that just came out that we're going to dive into about Ukraine. Ken, welcome to Truth in the Barrel.
- [00:55]
C
Amy, thank you for having me. It's great to see you.
- [00:58]
B
I want to start out with your documentary. It's called the Drone Hunters of Kherson. Talk to us about why you went there and what your, what did you film.
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C
Well, it was a long time in the making. You don't just get to show up with a unit like this. I embedded last, this was last October with one of the teams, a small three man team that goes out on the highway of death that runs through Kherson along the Dnipro river and is literally the last line of defense for the Russian FPV drones. And I'll explain that term in a second. But the Russians launched these drones across the river to attack civilian targets. And this is one of the, I mean they've got to be some of the bravest people in, well, not just in the Ukrainian military but in the history of, of combat because they literally put themselves out there as bait to soak up these suicide drug drones that the Russians are sending before they're able to kill civilians. And that's the Russian tactic. The UN in fact declared that the Russian drone operations in Kherson are tantamount to a depopulation campaign. They are trying to terrorize and depopulate these areas of Kherson. In fact, all of Kherson, they want it back. They occupied it for, for many months at the beginning of the war until they were driven out. And this in a way is their revenge killing. And I've seen the tapes because the Russ Post them themselves, killing old ladies walking back from the market with arms loaded with shopping bags. That's who they're going after. And they brag about it when they get these kills.
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B
So what this is what the Ukrainians are doing is basically having drones that go and hunt the offensive drones so that's, that's what this is all about. Defensive drones going and killing offensive drones.
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C
They're shooting them down with rifles, Amy. It's wild. Not even shotguns. And you'd be amazed at how much advice that I received to pass along to the Ukrainians on how to do their jobs better. But the fact is you can't shoot these things down with shotguns because the kill envelope of a shotgun is within the kill radius of the warhead. It's too late by the time they're within shotgun range. So these guys, and they're all men, the ones I was on patrol with, have to engage the. These drones that are about the size of a pigeon, moving at 100 km an hour with rifles, with AK47s, because they have to hit them that far away and they literally have seconds in that last, the terminal phase of this drone's approach. And because they're fiber optically guided, there's no other way to detect them. They emit no electromagnetic signature. There's no, like, radio signal from the drone back to the operator. You have to either see it or hear it and then engage it. And it also means there's no way to jam it. The only way to stop these drones from killing civilians in Kherson is to put your best fighters between the Russian lines and those civilian neighborhoods. By the way, that is something the Russians would never do. They would never put their best soldiers between the enemy and a civilian population. But it is a testament to the value that the Ukrainians place on human life that they're willing to risk their best people to do this.
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B
That's incredible, incredible bravery.
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C
It really is.
- [04:32]
B
So I just want people to understand a little bit more about the Russian drones. And you talked about the fact that they are not controlled by radio waves, but what we're seeing now is the fiber optic cables. So what is that? I mean, when you look, and this was something that we saw in the documentary, it's these very thin, silky things that, that are, that are kind of everywhere.
- [04:59]
C
Silk is a great way to describe it because if you look at some of these areas right up against the battle line, some of these populated areas, that have seen these waves of fiber optic drone controlled attacks. It looks like a web of spider silk has been laid over the entire neighborhood and the wires themselves are hair thin. But when you have thousands, and in some case many thousands of drones being launched over these neighborhoods after the drone detonates, it just lays this thin, silky wire down in its path. And you're right, they can't be jammed. They can't be detected because there's no signal that is going through the air from the drone back to its operator. So the only way to. To know they're coming is see it or hear it. It is really ominous stuff. I make the comment at some point in the documentary that what we're seeing is a blend of trench warfare and Terminator. I mean, it really is the future of warfare, and it's being invented and tested in Ukraine right now in the documentary.
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B
Ken, you were there on October 7th, which is why. Why was that date significant? Can you talk about that?
- [06:21]
C
Yeah. Well, I mean, it definitely has resonance in the Middle east, but in. In Ukraine and in that part of the world, it is Vladimir Putin's birthday. And as a birthday present to himself, he, every year since the war started, has launched massive waves of drones against civilian cities. And on this particular October 7th, his attacks on Odessa and Kherson and every major city, Kharkiv and Dnipro and Kyiv, represented the largest drone attacks of the war up until that point. They've since grown even bigger. But it is just an indication of the bloodlust that motivates this campaign in Ukraine, and it filters all the way down to the frontline Russian soldier and the commanders. I've heard Russian commanders, or reports of Russian commanders describing their own infantry as human radar because they will send them in waves towards Ukrainian positions and wherever the bodies pile up. That's where the Ukrainian strong point is. From the perspective of the Russian soldier, I already described how the reason we know that they're targeting civilians in Kherson, completely defenseless, unarmed civilians, old ladies coming back from the market. I referenced that specifically because I've seen these videos, is because they post the. The kills themselves on Telegram and other Russian social media channels, referring to their missions over civilian areas of Kherson as human safaris because they're hunting humans. So it is. I mean, it's a way of war that I don't think we really appreciate here. You have to see it to believe it.
- [08:14]
B
Yeah. I'm wondering, Ken, if. Do the Russians, when they post these things, are those posts getting back to Russia? Do the Russian people see their own army targeting grandmothers coming out of the market?
- [08:33]
C
It's a great question. I feel like there is a disassociation in the minds of the Russian civilians. There is a real attempt, and I'm not an expert on this. I haven't studied it as much as I have the battlefield itself, but you get the feeling like there is a real concerted effort to try to make the war in Ukraine seem like it's very far away, like it's very distant. And the Russian government itself is determined to insulate and isolate its people from the horrors of what is happening at the front. It's the reason that their Rubicon is a general draft. They're trying not to reach that point because then it would be undeniable. But I haven't been to Moscow, but the reports I hear from people who go to Moscow say it is kind of a fantasy land. It's Russia's Disney World, and they make every possible attempt to insulate their people from what is actually happening at the war. So I'm sure that information is available, but I think people are just tuning it out.
- [09:44]
B
You know, you could say even here in the United States, we are kind of tuning out some of the things that are happening in the wars that we're in. Well, I want to ask you, what do you think is the most important lesson right now that the United States military can take from what's happening in Ukraine?
- [10:05]
C
It's a great, great question. And if I had to boil it down to a single lesson, it would be humility. Let's accept that we don't know everything. Just because we have the most expensive military in the world doesn't mean we have the most adaptable or the best military in the world. The Ukrainians are a drone superpower today, and they have been begging for the opportunity to teach us what they know. And I think largely because of hubris, we have said no. And you think about the first mass casualty event on the American side in this war of choice with Iran. It was inflicted by an Iranian shahed drone that the Ukrainians have perfected in taking down over the last many years. It was a Shahed, a $20,000 drone that got past every one of our air defenses and hit a base in Kuwait that had no overhead protection and killed six Americans. A $20,000 drone. That the shit that the Ukrainians have been trying to tell us how to take out of the sky. Our approach to shooting down shaheds, which are cheap, a few tens of thousands of dollars. There are $50,000 variants that's still not very expensive when we're shooting them down with multimillion dollar interceptors. And sometimes it takes two or three interceptors to take down one of these $20,000 Shahed drones. So even if we do knock it out of the sky, the Iranians can call it a win. They don't even have to they don't even have to get their shaheds to the target. If they're soaking up million dollar interceptors every time they launch one, it is worth it. On balance, it's worth it. It's a win for them. And the Ukrainians are just scratching their heads saying why won't you guys take our advice, take our tech. We are knocking of the sky by the hundreds every night with thousand dollar interceptors and you're using million dollar interceptors and missing them.
- [12:03]
B
That is such an interesting response because you and I, we both served you in the Navy and myself in the Marine Corps. And we live in an age right now where politicians, lots of people who get on tv, the Secretary of Defense, everybody who just constantly loves to say how great our military is. And we, we are, we are fantastic force, highly trained, incredible weaponry, incredible professionalism. I get all that. But I do worry that sometimes we, we're not humble enough to look at some of the, you know, conflicts around the world, particularly like Ukraine and, and see what we need to learn from them.
- [12:53]
C
Well, we should be looking at our own conflicts as well. I see Hegseth's cabal high fiving each other about destroying the Iranian navy and air force in the first few days. Someone needs to remind them that the Iraqi navy and air force lasted all of five minutes and the war dragged on for years. The Afghan navy didn't last very long either. They didn't even have one. And we were sent packing with our tail between our legs. The idea that we can just fight every war we choose to fight on our terms is, is so deeply ignorant. Not just of like the deep history of conflict over millennia. I mean it's, it's like someone needs to read Sun Tzu in the Pentagon. It's a rejection of our own experience. It's a denial of our own experience. In Iraq and Afghanistan, the enemy gets a vote. They don't seem to appreciate that when it comes to Iran, which is a far form, far more formidable enemy than Afghanistan, than Iraq, certainly than Venezuela, which is the model apparently according to President Trump for the takedown of the Iranian regime, this is going to be nothing like any of those, except for the fact that the Iranians will get their own vote.
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B
Yeah, well, I mean, very well said. I think we, we absolutely don't have leaders that look back at history and are looking at those lessons that we should be looking at right now. Where can people find your documentary?
- [14:30]
C
The documentary Drone Hunters of Kherson is published on the Midas Touch Network and the Valor Media Networks. If you want to be a little sneaky and see the ad free version, go to my substack page and it is available for free without the annoying commercials at the Ken Harbaugh show substack page.
- [14:50]
B
Awesome. So everybody check that out. It's not very long. It won't take a ton of, you know, it's not a Ken Burns 18 hour thing. It's pretty short. It's great. So please check that out, everybody. All right, Ken, Donald Trump, our president, addressed the American people last night about the war in Iran. Probably something he should have done at the very beginning. Here we are one month into this thing and I want to. First of all, did you watch?
- [15:27]
C
Did you listen to.
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B
Okay, you did not.
- [15:29]
C
Okay, no, I did not. And sometimes I let other people take the bullet for me.
- [15:38]
B
Well, I will do that. I will do that for everyone. I did. Both my husband and I watched this and I was very much worried that he would try to pull us out of NATO or something like that. Here's the bottom line on the speech last night. Nothing has changed. The president is still all over the map. He is still saying the war is ending, but then telling everybody that we're going to continue to bomb them back to the, quote, stone Age. And he is on one hand saying, we've got this new regime and they're talking to us. And then he turns around and says, if they don't make a deal, we're going to continue to bomb them. It was a slew of lies. I'll read you a couple of these things that made my head explode. Ken, did you know we're winning bigger than ever before? Okay. And did you also know that we don't need their oil? They are meaning the oil in the Middle East. We are there to help. Okay? And he also said all other presidents who did not invade and start a war in Iran made a mistake and that he alone has corrected them. I mean, it's crazy. I have this slew of lies and craziness. He also said that the Strait of Hormuz will open up, quote, naturally.
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C
Naturally. Yeah.
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B
Which reminded me of his comments back during when Covid happened, where he said, don't worry, by Easter, it'll be gone. You know, I mean, just crazy. We still don't have a strategy here. Congress still has done nothing. They have not declared war. We are in a major war with no end in sight. We have the Secretary of State tweeting out, hey, our objectives have been made. You mentioned a couple of them are we've destroyed the Navy, we destroyed the army, we've decimated their missile making capability, which of course is all, okay, fine, but that doesn't mean that they don't have power over the Strait of Hormuz. We have the Secretary of War tweeting out back to the Stone Age, so he just wants to keep bombing people. And we have a president who just literally is all over the map in everything that he says about this war. That's my take.
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C
Yeah, I read some summaries of the speech. I just couldn't stand listening to his voice last night. We all have those moments of weakness, right? And it was confirmation to me of. Of something I think a lot of us have suspected for a long time, which is that there is nobody in his inner circle, or maybe even in his outer circle, who has the ability, the integrity, the courage whatever, to walk into the Oval Office and say, sir, this is a bad idea on anything. It feels like the purpose of his advisors, of even the Joint Chiefs, of everyone in the cabinet, is to take his worst ideas and convince him they're not bad. And something like Iran, where he reportedly said, let's go do this like we did Venezuela, where the reaction immediately should be, no, it's not like Venezuela. It is not at all like Venezuela. It's different in every way. I mean, I think about our experience in Iraq, right? The lie that got us into Iraq is actually real. In Iran, they have the potential for weapons of mass destruction. They have 460 kilograms of enriched uranium. We have no idea where that is. It is infinitely more complicated. It is a nation of over 90 million people, a Muslim nation, by the way, that we are talking about waging a holy war against. Every time I see Pete Hegseth at another Pentagon prayer service, and let me just, you know, establish for the record, there is nothing wrong with praying at the Pentagon. There is nothing wrong with praying in uniform or being a person of faith in the military. But when you invoke the way Hegseth does the violence of the Old Testament and no mercy for your enemies and dashing their skulls in or I think it was smashing their teeth from a podium with the seal of the United States Department of Defense on it during a war like the kind of war we're in, it, it sends a pretty demotivational signal. It is a kind of bloodlust I don't think we've ever seen out of this Pentagon. Look, we've had a Pentagon that. That lies before. But the systematic lying of Hegseth's Pentagon feels new. The banishment of the professional press corps, even after the courts have said that's unconstitutional. Sending them across the street to. To a different building. That should be a warning flag for every American. The fact that the Pentagon and the Trump regime does not want the American people to know what's happening should alarm us all.
- [21:03]
B
Yeah. And I feel like when the President says something or tweets something, honestly, you, You. You can't believe it. I mean, if he. If he says, well, they. They made a deal, you're sort of like, well, really, I mean, my first
- [21:21]
C
reaction is, is to hear what the Iranians are saying. Right. Which is crazy. Imagine. Imagine if during. And look, I'm no fan of George W. Bush, but imagine if our fact check on George W. Bush was to go hear what Saddam had to say. That would have been crazy. Today, you kind of have to do it.
- [21:39]
B
And then. Can we just quickly talk about the fact that. And people are sort of glossing over this, but we're talking about now wanting to end this thing and come up with a ceasefire and negotiate with this, quote, new regime or whatever, which we all know is not new. But then we keep trying to kill the negotiators. I mean, do these guys think that we just kill these guys and somebody's gonna come out with the white flag somewhere and be able to lead a nation of 90 million people and have that credibility? We keep killing the very people who we're supposed to be talking with. Then it's just like it's diplomatic malpractice. I mean, that on top of all of the other strategic malpractice that we've gotten ourselves into here.
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C
And what makes us think that this supposed new regime is any less fanatical than the previous one? The guy who's in charge now, we killed his parents, we killed his brother, we killed, as I understand it, his wife, one of his children. You think that's going to bring him to the table in a spirit of negotiation Again, back to Sun Tzu and know your enemy. I think we fundamentally misunderstand the zeal of the Iranian leadership. And we have undermined the pro democracy movement in that country. We had a chance to help them months ago, but instead we waited. Instead, we lied about bombing a girls school. I mean, everything we appear to be doing. We threatened to blow up civilian infrastructure like power plants, which is a war crime. It's not a gray area. It's a war crime. And our government has called Putin's targeting of these kinds of facilities in Ukraine a war crime. And here, our commander in Chief is threatening to do the exact same thing. I don't know how that is supposed to provoke the people of, of Iran to rise up, but is it is having the exact opposite effect. We are, if anything, entrenching the hardliners in power in, in Iran when they were at their weakest a few months ago.
- [24:02]
B
Yeah. And we're all sort of now waiting. I guess the next big date is April 6, because, you know, the President has immediately, he said, we're going to strike Iran's energy infrastructure immediately if you don't come up with a deal. And then, of course, the markets go crazy. And he extends that 10 days, and now it's April 6th, and who the heck knows? In the meantime, he's sending out signals that he's just going to leave, that we're just gonna, like, we don't need the Strait of Hormuz. European nations, you come in and have the courage to go get the oil. And, I mean, I just can't believe we're here. I cannot. To me, I know that a second Trump presidency would be bad. I didn't know it would be this bad.
- [24:51]
C
No, it's worse than I thought it would be. And I think it could get worse. I really, I really do. Because every time we've thought, I. We've thought we've arrived at a new low, he's been able to break through and, and dig deeper. And my biggest fear, honestly, when. When you think about Trump as, as a person who sees himself in historic terms and epochal terms, what gets someone like him on Mount Rushmore? You know, he's thinking that kind of thing, right? And I worry that in the back of his head, in those dark moments when he, when those voices creep in, he's thinking nukes, right? How to etch yourself in history better than being only the second president in history to launch a nuke. And I think we all know he's irrational, he's borderline crazy at this point, but the real question is, will the people around him ever draw a line? Will Dan Cain and the others say that is too far?
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B
Far.
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C
So far they haven't. I mean, we had so much, we put so much faith in Dan Kane as supposedly the adult in the room to, to be able to reign his, his worst impulses in. And he hasn't been able to so far. So I, I've stopped giving the guy credit. And it begs the question, if it comes to, if it comes to that, if it comes to the real nightmare scenario, who's the adult in the room? Gonna be.
- [26:23]
B
I don't know. How would you like to be the STRATCOM commander? Right now? The STRATCOM is the strategic command, the general in charge of our nuclear weapons. I mean, that. Oof. I don't know. So. Well, listen, you're in Ohio, and I'm obviously in Kentucky, and we're seeing, like every other American, I think, around the country, the craziness of prices going up for everything. Gas prices are now up. Since Trump started the war on February 28th, gas prices across the country have gone up 35%, and we're now above $4 a gallon, which is just one of the ramifications of this stupid war. But even before that, we were seeing groceries, the prices of that gone up, heating. Are you seeing the same thing in Ohio?
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C
Oh, everywhere. Yeah, I'm seeing it everywhere and with everything. I mean, people need to understand that the price of fuel affects everything. It affects the price of food. It affects the price of your vacations. It affects the price of medicine. When 20% of the world's oil supply and a good chunk of the world's fertilizer is choked off at choke point like the Strait of Hormuz, it's going to have global ramifications. And it doesn't matter that we're a net positive producer of oil in this country. It is a global commodities market. The price is global. And if you're able to choke off 20% of the supply, the prices here are going to go up. I think it is really telling, though, that Donald Trump said, this is good for us because we produce a lot of oil and America is. What was his exact quote? Americans are getting rich. Well, not the Americans. I know. Not the Americans. You know, his friends are getting rich, right?
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B
Yeah.
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C
The oligarchs are doing fine.
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B
There's a disconnect there when he's. Like last night when he said, well, it's good news because we have a lot of oil, so we don't straight up Hormuz. And there's just a. It's almost like he doesn't understand the interconnectedness of the globalized world. It's like when he instituted a year ago his tariff policies, it was almost like, oh, we're going to make money off of this. We're going to be great. But not understanding, no, Americans pay for this. 95% of tariffs are paid by Americans, and it hurts everybody and it hurts our economy. I feel like this is a similar thing where he's trying to justify this war and the economic pain that Americans are feeling. 78% of Americans right now say they are concerned about grocery prices. Four in 10 adults who are over 50 say that groceries now cost more than what they can actually afford. It's crazy. I saw this article in Stateline this week that said that some grocery companies are actually can. Using these algorithms of personal data that they have. You know, when you, you had, when you go to Kroger or whatever your, your grocery store, they have a lot of personal data because they know what you buy, you know, and some, I'm not, I'm not saying which ones, but apparently, according to this article, some grocery companies are using these algorithms and personal data to set prices for different people based on what they're buying, based on where they go.
- [30:26]
C
Some of the examples of this are really dystopian. Like when you, when you look at the dynamic pricing models taking advantage of, of people, I. A great example is something like Uber or Lyft, right? The prices go up the more desperate you are. Apply that to food and it becomes really sick. The more, the more they can get out of you, the higher the prices are going to be. And I'm just not sure I want to live in that world.
- [31:01]
B
Well, and this is some of the things that AI is changing for all of us that we're going to have to get guardrails around in the future here with leaders in my belief. And then of course, we have the president trying to put his name and his face on things that typically a president does not do, at least not while he's living. You know, we put faces of presidents on our coins. We put their names as memorials. For example, the John F. Kennedy Center Memorial, which was the place in Washington D.C. now we have the president wanting to put his face and name on everything. You know, he's already done it.
- [31:47]
C
I think some of it's actually illegal. It's not just a violation of tradition and norms. Putting living presidents or serving sitting president's face on currency is a, is a violation of the law. I think they're working around that by calling it a commemorative coin, but I don't think they even care about the law. If the Republican Congress wants to put Donald Trump's face on the $1 bill, they'll figure out a way to do it, and the law be damned. The one comforting thing I take in all this is imagining the day when we tear it all down, because that is coming. It's, it's just a question of how much pain we have to endure to get there. How much violence will there be between now and then, and I hope every day, that democracy holds and the institutions hold and we have the blue wave in November and free and fair elections in 2028. Because the day will come when Trump's name is torn off the JFK center in D.C. when the currency that has his face emblazoned on it is melted down or burned, when the ballroom has his name ripped off or is itself torn down. And that is going to be a very visible repudiation of everything his tenure represented. And it's going to be a catharsis for this country. But we have a lot to go through before we get to that.
- [33:24]
B
We do. And it's going to be quite a sight to see these massive pictures that are already of Donald Trump that are up in places like Washington, D.C. being torn down and the names coming off of these buildings, because it will happen. It will happen.
- [33:41]
C
It will.
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B
We do things a certain way here in the United States. And this ain't the way. This ain't the way.
- [33:49]
C
Yep.
- [33:50]
B
So last week, I think the Financial Times, actually just a couple days ago, the Financial Times reported that a broker for the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, who you and I both, no, fairly well, tried to make a large investment in a major defense company in the lead up to the war in Iran. So I just want to talk to you about how insanely crazy this is. This is a guy who is the Secretary of Defense, and he is trying to make. He's trying to play the stock market, making a multimillion dollar investment in defense contractors that he knows are going to be having a boom because of a war that he knows is going to happen. And apparently the only reason it was stopped was because his stockbroker tried to do this, but the account wasn't ready yet. So in other words, the, the account that he wanted to buy wasn't ready
- [35:00]
C
for
- [35:02]
B
somebody to actually go buy it yet. That was the only reason it was stopped. It wasn't stopped because of ethics. Wow.
- [35:09]
C
Yeah. Well, this is part of a pattern, and you see it across the government. There was a really alarming moment in the hours, and in a few cases, minutes before the first bombs fell on Iran, when these poly market bets were placed clearly by people with inside information close to the decision, so close to the president, who knew that we were about to attack, attack Iran. And they literally made a killing on the opening phase of the war. You see just how intertwined the Trump family is now in the defense business with the. The sons owning drone companies. And it's just. It's just Gross. It's the kind of thing Eisenhower warned about with the defense industrial complex, but it's now personalized. It is now not just this, this sort of abstract leviathan with its tentacles and every aspect of American industry. It is tied to the Oval Office and the President and the decision making about when and how America goes to war. And that's new. I'm not sure even Eisenhower imagined it would become this corrupt, that the President himself, that the Oval Office itself would have a stake, a financial stake in making sure that America goes to war and stays at war.
- [36:42]
B
Yeah. And I've said many times that Congress needs to pass a law banning members of Congress from stock trading. Okay. But it's beyond this. It's beyond Congress, the Cabinet members that need to be banned from stock. I mean, you're either a Cabinet member, you're either the head of our National Security, head of our Director of National Intelligence. You should not be able to trade stocks. I agree. You either pick one or the other. You either want to be a stockbroker or you want to. For that time frame where you're in office and you hold office, which isn't forever. You want to go play the stock market, fine. Then wait till you get out. You know, I just don't think this is. This is. Should be a. We should have done this decades ago.
- [37:36]
C
But I don't think this is controversial at all. If you ask the average American, the only reason it hasn't happened is that the people making these trades are making a fortune and they don't want us to know about it.
- [37:49]
B
The amount of grift we focus on the President, but the amount of grift with the people that he has surrounded himself with is insane right now.
- [37:59]
C
It really is. Yeah.
- [38:00]
B
Yeah. Well, the last thing I wanted to talk with you about is this. And a lot of times these stories get put in the back burner because there's so much going on. But you know how Donald Trump pardoned all of these folks that ransacked the Capitol and January 6, 2021, many of those folks are now being rearrested for other crimes. And I know Republicans are always going after folks who somehow grant leniency on criminals, and then they turn around and say, well, because you were lenient on them, they turned around and committed crimes, and therefore you should be fired. But they. But the President himself pardoned all these people, and now many of them are getting arrested for things like sex crimes, child sexual abuse, burglary, vandalism, some violent crimes, even. I mean, this is where we're at.
- [39:06]
C
Yeah. I mean, it's absolutely appalling, but not the least bit surprising that the kind of people who would fall under the spell of Trump and the Big Lie and then exercise their anger by storming the Capitol and demanding the hanging of Mike Pence and trying to kill some of our friends in Congress as Republicans cowered in fear. Right. As Josh Hawley ran for his life and as Mark Wayne Mullen hid behind the true heroes of that day and defended empty benches. I will never forget that picture of him now, the head of the Department of Homeland Security. You know, I contrast the behavior of that crowd on January 6, several thousands of people who nearly, who did interrupt the peaceful transition of power and nearly stopped it. I contrast that with the nine million no Kings protesters who took to the streets peacefully and expressed their frustration at what is going on with our government. And there you have the two sides, 9 million on one side protesting peacefully, saying we're not happy with what is going on. A few thousand at the Capitol who wreaked havoc, who led to multiple deaths and who tried to end our democracy. I hope the Americans see that contrast and pick a side.
- [40:41]
B
It's a huge contrast. Ken, I want to get your take on one more thing before we leave, because you and I are both naval aviators. And in the past couple of days, we've found this story where these Apache helicopters were on a training mission. I think in California they call it a training mission. And they stopped in front of the house of Kid Rock. Kid Rock is a person who really, he's an entertainer. He loves Donald Trump. Donald Trump loves him. And these Apache helicopters got in front of his house and he gets a chance to wave to them and it's all nice and good. Well, the United States army, because that, that was all videoed and it was very well videoed. So they kind of knew it was coming.
- [41:27]
C
Oh, yeah.
- [41:27]
B
And, and the United States army rightfully came down and on the pilots and said, we're going to do an investigation on this. This is not normal. And that, of course, got out. And then the secretary of defense comes in and says, we're not doing an investigation. We love Kid Rock. And there shouldn't be any investigation on this at all. I want to get your take on this as an aviator. How professional is this for these Apache pilots here?
- [41:57]
C
Well, the added context is that this two ship of Apaches apparently also did a low flyby over a no Kings protest as a show of force. I don't know how that could be seen as anything other than intimidating. And it was before they did the flyby, I don't know what you call it, when they hovered next to Kid Rock's compound as a show of respect, which was absolutely the opposite of what they were demonstrating to the no Kings protesters. Absolutely. A prosecutable offense, a violation, not just of multiple regulations, but I would argue the ucmj, the politicizing or the use of their positions to intimidate their political enemies and uplift their political allies. The use of their positions as, as, as aviators, as leaders. I mean, imagine if something similar happened during the presidency of Barack Obama where, you know, we had flown, you know, a low fast pass to intimidate a, you know, a right wing protest and then flown by, I don't know, some, you know, some celebrities house to celebrate them. People would be losing their minds, as they should, because you don't get to use military equipment that way. You don't get to use your position of trust within the military that way. And it's made all the more worse by the fact that Pete Hegseth cut the legs out from under the army, which did the right thing, which said, this is not, not, this is not normal, this is not what the army is and this is not what we do. And Pete Hexeth said, nope, yeah, it is. It is basically a, a free license now, a blank check to go. Use your position to intimidate Trump's political enemies and uplift his political allies. Because Pete Heth not only, it's not like he just canceled the investigation, he celebrated. Those pilots were doing terrible terror, terrible
- [44:07]
B
to undermine the United States army like that. And then as you said, the politicization, what this message that this sends to anyone in our military is you could do anything you want as long as you're pro Trump and you do something that touts the Secretary of War or Donald Trump and you invoke his name and you're a Trumper, then we're going to protect you. And no matter what you do, I mean, that's the message. That's the message it sends. Well, Ken, it's really great to have you on the show again. Thank you for being a part of Truth in the Barrel. Great to see you and I hope you come back again soon.
- [44:50]
C
Thanks for having me, Amy. Appreciate it.
- [44:52]
B
All right,
- [44:58]
D
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