Mark Hertling: Contrary to American Values

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Hello, and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome back retired Lieutenant General.

He's the former commanding general of the U.S.

Army of Europe.

It's Mark Hurtling.

How are you doing, sir?

Hey, good, Tim.

How are you?

I'm doing well.

Appreciate you coming on today, kind of on short notice.

I got to tell you,

I was pretty shook by President Trump's speech yesterday at Fort Bragg.

Obviously, there have been actual policies that I've found more appalling since he's been in, but just as a scene, it might have been the most dispiriting scene, I think, for me since the inauguration.

He's speaking in front of a bunch of soldiers commemorating the 250th anniversary.

I try not to do clips of him for people because, you know, everybody needs a break.

They can watch him on the news if they want.

But I'm more interested in the reaction than in Trump's words.

So if you don't mind, I've got a little highlight, low light reel, if you will, from the speech I want to play and get your reaction to.

The fake news, ladies and gentlemen, look at them.

Look at them all.

Oh,

what I have to put up with.

Fake news.

What I have to put up with.

You think this crowd would have showed up for Biden?

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

I don't think so.

And maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe I'm wrong.

In Los Angeles, the governor of California, the mayor

of Los Angeles,

they're incompetent.

Yes, active duty military, they're booing the fake news.

Former commander-in-chief, Gavin Newsome.

What did you make of that?

You said you were shook by it.

I was too.

I was also embarrassed.

But I'll lead in by saying, you know, the military, especially the army, draws from all elements of the population.

So it is not a surprise that there are some soldiers who support different parties.

A lot of soldiers maybe in this audience appeared to have supported Trump.

The backstory, though, that I'm receiving from some folks in the military, and I'm not sure any of this is true, but there was a couple of chain of command, I don't want to say orders, but they were, hey, if you support this guy and you want to stand behind him, you can do that.

Just make sure that you look good, that you're in shape, you've got your beret on, and don't embarrass yourself.

And if you're not a supporter, then you don't even have to go to the speech.

So this was not something that was ordered to the entire either 18th Airborne Corps or 82nd Airborne Division.

But you can understand that, you know, a lot of people jumped at the chance because a lot of young soldiers are enamored by their president, no matter what party they're in.

But what really stunned me, and I think this is what stunned you, was the reaction to some of the things that were actually

contrary to our Constitution, you know, insulting the press, insulting other politicians.

It became a political speech.

It became a rally, it was a rally speech.

It didn't become one.

It probably started off as a rally.

And there's a significant number of rules and regulations and policies that tell soldiers when you're wearing the uniform, you must remain apolitical.

You can't support another party in either an election or a campaign or in current political issues.

So these were a bunch of young soldiers, and I scanned the audience when I was watching it, and it seemed like a bunch of very young soldiers without probably a whole lot of leadership.

either sergeants or officers in the crowd with them.

And they got caught up in the rally environment and almost kind of a mob-like reaction.

So yeah, it was very disappointing.

And what I'll tell you, Tim, is I sure would hope there's a bunch of commanders and senior leaders right now telling their soldiers.

uh about the policies reminding them again what they should and should not do at political rallies in terms of supporting candidates but especially candidates that seem to run contrary to some of the things that our constitution requires.

Yeah.

I mean, look,

I've been 20 before and got caught up in a mob-like environment jeering at people that maybe I look back on and shouldn't have done, right?

So I understand that.

Even still, you know, it's in the military, everybody's in uniform.

And like you said, hopefully...

there are some commanders or military leadership that maybe would provide some feedback afterwards.

But is that happening?

Like, is there evidence of that happening?

I know Tom Nichols is in the Atlantic this morning, you know, saying folks should speak out as far as military leadership is concerned.

Maybe that's too much to wish for.

I don't know.

What do you think in the conversations you have with ex-military and all that?

What do you think the conversations are like?

Yeah, I think there's going to be a reaction by the military today.

And I always look at it from what would I do if?

You know, when I do military analysis for different people, I try and look at the enemy's point of view, the friendly point of view, and what I would do as a commander.

If I had been still in command of either U.S.

Army Europe, 1st Armored Division, a brigade or a squadron or even a company with 100 people in it, you know, if I had seen that, I think the very first thing I would do at morning PT formation is go in and talk to the soldiers that I was leading and say, hey, this isn't what we are.

This is not who we are proposing to be.

This is not the culture of the military.

We don't jeer the press.

You know, we work with the press

even though sometimes we don't like them and they get under our cross sometimes.

We work with them because, by the way, the military, the Army specifically and the press are the two institutions that are named by name in the Constitution of the United States.

So those are two things you don't counter and you don't cheer for one political

party or person over another.

When people make fun of other people, I mean, one of our Army values is respect.

We should have respect for all people.

And so when you're jeering the press or you're jeering Governor New Scum, as Mr.

Trump called him or anything else, that's just not appropriate in the military culture.

And I think soldiers have to be reminded of that.

I do think it just will be interesting to see how that shakes out.

I hope that's happening.

Obviously, the worries are, you know, at some level, the scene was...

like what what word did he use embarrassing and you know it felt like not particularly american and so that is what what gives you kind of a natural negative physical reaction to it.

But

the worry, obviously, is the kind of worst case scenario elements of all this that folks in the military just start to get used to this and what we're about to get into LA next, but like across a series of different,

you know, in a series of different ways.

you know, they start to undermine what the kind of traditional

role had been.

And you start to see the military doing more partisan stuff on behalf of an increasingly emboldened want to be autocrat.

I mean, like, that's the thing that I think worried me watching that.

It's like, man, I see a lot of people that I think would go along with a lot of stuff right now that isn't great.

Yeah, I think we see the president openly trying to create chaos in different institutions, and especially the institutions that held during his first administration, the legal system, the rule of law, the courts, the military, those are the ones I think present the biggest potential for a crisis.

And I see last night truly as kind of that opening of a door to a potential crisis, especially given the other things that are going on.

The context of last night at Fort Bragg was really pretty interesting, talking about, you know,

you know, the parade this weekend,

you know, what's going on in Los Angeles, what's potentially going on in other places, the reduction of arms to Ukraine, you know, the announcement made by Secretary Hegseth.

Those are the things all coming together that really show sort of an upheaval of not only our policies, but also our foreign policy.

I want to get into all those things.

One more thing from the speech.

In the words of Rick Sanchez from Rick and Morty, your booze mean nothing because I've seen what makes you cheer.

It wasn't just what they booed that was concerning.

There was some cheers following the announcement that we're going to rename some of these military installations after, you know, or go back to the Confederate names.

I just want to play that clip really quick.

I think it took them a little by surprise, but for a little breaking news, we are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Brucker, Fort Polk, Fort A.P.

Hill,

and Fort Robert E.

Lee.

It's interesting because every one of those that he named were a Confederate general, the posts were named after.

The Department of Defense, Secretary Hegseth, is trying to get around that by saying, well, it's not the real Lee that we're naming it after.

We're not really naming it after Robert E.

Lee.

We're naming it after Fitzlee, who I think was actually a relative of Robert E.

Lee, who died in another war and received an award.

Yeah, a lot of the relatives of Robert E.

Lee, who fought for the Union, by the way, I was seeing some stuff, some chatter on social media about how, well, how can you blame Robert E.

Lee?

We got to go back to him.

He was defending his family.

It's like, no, actually, that's not true.

People should listen to the behind the bastards about Robert E.

Lee.

It's a really excellent podcast.

And his family was split, actually.

So that's not quite right.

So he did.

So there are some Lee's that were on the Union side we could name things after for sure.

You know, the other post, A.P.

Hill Bragg, I mean, these were generals that did not cover themselves with glory.

And in fact, they were some of the most incompetent Confederate generals.

Not only did they, they, you know, act as a traitor to the country by disavowing their oath, but they also were not all that good on the battlefield.

But they happened to be good in the eyes of their citizens enough to posture them as the namesakes of some of these posts.

Do you have a theory for why that might be?

No, I have no theory what to say.

Okay,

I've got one.

Racism.

They like the Confederacy.

It's Confederacy nostalgia.

I'm very upset about the Mexican flag, right?

Because at these protests is the claim, because, you know, know, you've got to represent America.

But at the same time, we want to take the people that were traitors to America and

put their names back on our military installations.

Well, if you don't like the Mexican flag, you probably like the Confederate flag even more, you know.

But yeah, it just, it's nonsensical.

It's just appealing to emotion.

It's the proverbial red meat, and I hate to use that phrase.

It seems to override any logic or pragmatism that when you look at the evidence, you say, oh, okay, that's why these posts shouldn't be named that way, or that's why the Marines shouldn't deploy, or that's why, yeah, I mean, you could go down the entire list.

If you actually analyze it and apply facts and rationale, you'll get a whole different solution.

But it doesn't seem to be that's in the equation.

It's all about emotions and opinions and rabidness, I guess.

And it's all about sticking your finger in the eye of the other guys, right?

I mean, Teg Seth does this, you know, we're not going to be woke, we're not going to be politically correct.

And it's about that, right?

It's like, we know this will make our political enemies unhappy, you know, that it will be a troll on them to rename this, these, you know, whatever, and rename a fort after some loser, trade or general.

And that's why they're doing it.

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Okay, I want to talk about Los Angeles.

So some stuff has happened since yesterday.

We do now have hundreds of Marines.

They're hitting the streets of LA today.

We learned a little bit more about what the National Guard troops were doing.

Maybe you can explain this.

Adam Kinzinger texted me and said that

they are National Guard troops, but technically they're kind of federal troops because of the nature of how they've been brought into service, so to speak, here in Los Angeles.

But anyway, we saw the type of protection they were providing.

And it seems like, it doesn't seem like we have reporting that they're providing perimeter protection for ICE raids.

So it's not even anti-riot.

It's not even like they were involved in any of the pushback on the

number of rioters, but they were providing protection for ICE agents doing raids, some of these National Guard troops.

So anyway, what do you make of what we know so far about what the use of military in Southern California?

Well, I'll talk about the control of them first.

I mean,

any state's National Guard belongs to the governor of that state, and he or she can use the Guard in ways that that contribute to law and order or security within the state or for humanitarian crisis.

That's something called Title 32.

And when the president says, hey, I need the National Guard for something else, like, I mean, all during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, multiple National Guard units were mobilized under Title X and reinforced the active duty military.

But that's with the coordination and the collaboration of the government of the state, particularly the governor.

So the president would go to the governor and say, hey, look, I need, you know,

the division out of California to reinforce one of the active divisions in Iraq.

Can you mobilize them under Title 10 and we can federalize them and have them go just like active troops?

And they do that.

And they're great.

I mean, they are terrific.

They normally do logistics functions, but there are some combat arms forces.

Okay, so when you disregard the role of the governor in controlling his National Guard, then that's a major party fall.

You should always be coordinating with the Guard for their state's militia, if you will.

So that's the first thing that stuck in the craw of Governor Newsom, that he was not asked if these could be federalized.

It just came as an order from the Department of Defense.

So very little coordination.

And what you have to consider is these guard soldiers are not sitting around in a barrack somewhere or in the motor pool of some tank park.

They're working jobs as real estate agents and dental assistants and anything you can name, and they are pulled away from those jobs.

So it's a huge disruption, not just for the individual soldier who has to then report to his unit for deployment, but it's a disruption of the workplace that they have to leave.

Add to that the fact that the California Guard specifically does some wonderful things not only in firefighting and wildfires and all the things that they do, but they're also part of something called a state partnership program, which no one really knows about.

So every single state has a partnership with some other country coincidentally over the last 10 years california's national guard has had a partnership with ukraine so they have been inside of ukraine multiple times with small forces training the ukrainian army prior to the war breaking out I used to work with the California Guard.

They're a great, when I was in U.S.

Army Europe, they're a great organization.

They've got some great leaders and the Ukrainians stand by them 100%.

So you can see just by that description, the churn you're going to get of disrupting normal missions and taking people away from their jobs and how employers feel about this.

You know, if you've got a person working for you who's a guardsman and every couple of weeks they're saying, hey, I just got notified, I got to go somewhere.

Well, if you're an employer, you're going to lose that person for a month or two months.

And in this case, from what I understand, the deployment order is two months long, 60 days, even though they haven't been really given a mission other than support for civilian authorities.

And that's a very amorphous kind of mission set where you're asked to do anything you can.

So that's the background.

Well, I think that's an interesting context, in particular, for the other element of what I brought up, right, that we're learning yesterday.

It's like you're disrupting the lives of these guardsmen.

You're disrupting the businesses they work at.

You're disrupting their, you know, you're doing all that to what end?

Basically, you're taking them away from their family as well.

To be the muscle for a deportation force.

And that's really what this is.

Like,

it'd be one thing, you know, to say, okay, these riots are out of control and we need more manpower.

Now, obviously, you would want to coordinate with the governor on that.

And this has happened many times throughout history where the governor and president have coordinated on such a thing.

But that's not what this, and that's what they kind of said it was.

But what it turns out it actually is, is that they're taking these guys to

go to raid, you know, businesses where they're unarmed immigrants.

You know, there are videos yesterday of ICE agents, you know, kind of detaining unarmed immigrants with these guardsmen kind of standing around with their weapons, just,

you know, whatever, protecting the space.

That feels to me to be insane.

With no coordination beforehand for things like lodging and food, and hey, that's up to the guard.

Or in this case, once it transfers from the guard to the federal authority, then they fall under an entirely different command structure.

So every National Guard has the Adjutant General, which is a two-star general.

And as soon as they're mobilized, that two-star general is no no longer the authority.

They are put under the control of U.S.

Northern Command, a federal active component organization.

So there's that, you know, whole kabuki dance.

The one other thing I would say about the guardsmen that I didn't mention, Tim, and it's important.

A lot of soldiers, a lot of guardsmen are single parents.

So when they're deployed for 30 days or 60 days at a time, where are their kids go?

When you're a guardsman, you have to have a family support plan where you say, if I am deployed, if I am activated for service, here's where my child is going to go.

It's either going to go with a grandparent or your ex-wife or whatever.

So even that creates a whole bunch of churn within the personal aspects of the guard.

And then, especially when they're mobilized by the feds to work against their fellow citizens, you've got the face-off of guardsmen who may or may not believe in what's going on facing facing off against civilians who are, in most cases, peacefully protesting.

So, there's more dynamics to this than I think most Americans understand.

Like, listening to you explain all that, like, my reaction is, like, it really raises the bar for doing this, right?

Like, this is not a thing to do willy-nilly because you want a Fox News segment, right?

Like, there's a lot of considerations at play, there's a lot of personal considerations, there's safety considerations, right?

And there's no evidence at this point that this was necessary for anything other than

escalating the public feud between Trump and

Newsom and blue states and immigrants, right?

I mean,

is there any rationale for doing it the way they've done it?

What you just described is sort of how I see it.

But you and I are not on the ground in California.

So we're taking the word of Newsom versus Trump, Bass versus Trump.

But I tend to believe the person on the ground who's seeing what's happening, especially a person that has a very large police force at their disposal.

You know, it was interesting.

I heard somebody say the other day that there are with the 2,000 plus 2,000 plus 700 Marines, there are more National Guard and Marines on the ground in California than we had at the very end of the stages in Afghanistan.

So, you know, it's kind of an interesting comparison.

But to your point, it really gets to how do civilian leaders make decisions on using the military?

It better be a considered, analyzed, pragmatic way.

And the ones who finally pull that trigger of saying, let's launch this force, really have to understand the implications of launching this force to what you, to your point, of it shouldn't just be something to put on Fox News because there's perceived craziness.

I think that's right.

And look, you're right.

We're not on the ground in L.A.

And there certainly are like some sophisticated rioters.

And like I was watching some of the news last night and like some of these guys are obviously have thought through the troublemaking that they're trying to do.

Let's just say that.

So it's not as if, I mean, there also are a bunch of peaceful fraud.

Like all this stuff is happening simultaneously, right?

So it's not as if there was no public safety threat.

But I just think to what you're getting at, like the thing that worries me, and I think the thing that worries a lot of people is just like, okay, well, like the Trump administration isn't even really making the case that they needed to do this to support the public safety element of this only, right?

And that like they were going to do what was needed to work with, you know, anybody in California that needs them, the LAPD or whatever.

Like that's not the case that they're making.

Like they're making their case is that LA is out of control and that they need to go in there and they need to be part of the mass deportation efforts.

That's just a very different animal.

And again, I'm going to go back to the mission set because this is important too.

When the guard is deployed, when active duty soldiers or Marines are deployed, unless the Insurrection Act has been called, there's a limit on what they can do.

There's a mission set called support for civil authorities.

So what the Guard does in those kind of missions is they take on the administrative functions, the logistical functions of supporting the frontline people who are doing the acts.

So as Mike Barnacle said yesterday, our shared friend, he said, the one thing that the guard or the Marines can't do is say, you're under arrest.

They are not authorized to do that.

They can't touch people unless they're threatened.

So when you're talking about what the guard can do, they can put up barricades.

They can put up fences.

They can stand around buildings to protect them.

And in fact, the new mission set that you're talking about is standing around or forming a cordon around ice.

they can actually do that too but it puts them in a position that they could be attacked by these protesters and then they have to use force to extricate themselves but they can't arrest the people that are using force or that are protesting i think there was a letter dhs was trying to ask hexas for permission to let them do that or whatever which again takes you to a very concerning place Well, that's where the whole posse comatitis, which few people understand, comes into play.

Why don't you explain it for folks?

Well, it's a Latin term saying for the county.

It basically says that military forces, unless it's an emergency or an insurrection, do not have the power to police, to do the acts of police people.

And there's a very good reason for that.

There's many good reasons for it.

The one is you're approaching fellow citizens and arresting them when you're supposed to be defending them as the military.

The second thing is, most of these guardsmen on the street have not been trained in police action.

Unless you've got a military police battalion out on the street, they're not going to know how to handcuff people.

They're not going to know how to treat people.

They're not going to know how to read rights or any of those other kind of things that policemen do.

They're infantry guys or in some cases, cooks and bottle washers.

You know, that's the scary part of it.

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One more thing, just on this, on the folks on the ground there in LA, because there is some dialogue about this going on.

I saw a video of

she was dressed like an active duty troop.

I guess I didn't check.

She was in fatigues talking about how her fellow soldiers should not obey unconstitutional orders and that, you know, do any sort of the things that you're talking about, things that violate Pasi Comitadas, things that violate the constitutional rights of Americans, you know, when it comes to these immigration raids, they should not be a part of.

Michael Wood, who we've had on here a few times, who's a veteran and who ran for Congress, posted, Marine soldiers, sailors, airmen, you're not some sort of Republican guard.

Your loyalty is to the Constitution above all else.

But on the other hand, I noticed you posted a guy named Joseph Collins saying that he's concerned about the well-meaning people telling these corporals and privates not to obey an unlawful order.

It's more complex than it seems.

So why don't you kind of just talk about that?

choice that I don't I don't think we're kind of I don't know if we've crossed the Rubicon to that yet but man we're a lot closer than we've been in a while we we are close and and I saw that that clip too or that tweet or whatever it was.

And it was a very good point because

there's an expression in the military called a barracks lawyer.

That's someone that lives in the barracks and makes decisions on what's right and wrong and what's legal and not.

And normally, most soldiers don't have law degrees.

So they can't really tell.

But within units, there are lawyers that advise commanders that say, here's what's legal and here's what's not.

Okay, here's the order I just got.

What do you think?

Well, that's an illegal order.

You should protest it with your superior.

Individual soldiers should not do that because they really don't know what is a legal or illegal order is but if they have questions about it they should ask their commander in their chain of command and even that gets a little tenuous as well what is like the chatter for you among you know fellow retireds like how worried is everybody about this like what is the state of alarm about kind of the use of military domestically at this point well the the chatter among the the proverbial generals and admirals is

it's a continuous debate on civil-military relations.

What do we do?

What do we have the authority to do other than what we're doing right now, talking about the facts associated with the issues?

What we can't say is, we need to go arrest Trump.

That's ridiculous.

I mean, that is...

I can do that.

You can do that.

As a guy who represents the defense of America, I can't.

What I can point out are things that are happening within our republic that says these don't seem to fit into our constitution and boy you should remember that the next time you vote but as long as you voted the american public have given this guy the plurality of the vote the military is beholden to obey his legal orders number one but then there's beyond the military debate going on tim and this is the interesting thing i can't tell you the number of texts or tweets or blue skies that i get on a daily basis saying why aren't you guys doing something about this and the question is what exactly do you want us to do?

You're the one that elected them.

I'm sorry.

And I think somebody said this after the last election.

The generals aren't going to save you.

That's not what we do.

We defend the country.

So if you want a different leader, it's up to you to determine how to get that leader.

And usually it's associated with voting.

And yeah, some of that is just the gasp of frustration of people, like where, who is going to be out there?

And I get that.

And part of it is, you know.

I don't know.

Again, we're closer to this than we've been.

I don't know.

i certainly made back to the civil rights era maybe more you know where they're like these questions become real like what is my duty right is my duty to just follow orders blindly is my duty to the constitution if i'm going to be ordered to do something that is illegal or that targets my fellow citizens how do i process that i don't know if somebody called you and was just like what what advice do you have for me on this i'm in i'm i'm in a pickle like what is the answer right now it seems tough what i would tell you is I'm in that same kind of squishy ground because I was thinking about it the other day.

During my 38-year military career, I worked under, I think it was either five or four Democratic presidents and six Republican presidents.

And I never had these kind of thoughts before.

That's the problem.

And even in Tom Nichols' column you mentioned the other day, he said, Randy George, the chief of staff of the army, should go in and whisper in the president's ear and say, you got to quit using troops as your political props.

That's easier written in the Atlantic than it is done by the chief of the army, especially with this president.

That's the hard part.

How do you get this guy to back off?

And how do you get Hegseth to back off from the kinds of things that they're doing?

And I don't know the answer to that.

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I think the last time we were all, we kind of talked about the military parade, which is coming up this weekend.

So I don't know how much more you have to say about that.

One thing that happened yesterday was Trump said that anybody who protests the military parade, quote, hate our country and will be met with very heavy force.

And that's alarming as well.

You know, I don't know.

It could just be Trump bluster.

But again, this is the type of thing that's like, we are really on a precipice here.

And so I don't know.

I'm wondering if you've kind of updated your thoughts on what we're going to see Saturday since we last spoke.

I said to some folks yesterday that I'm all for celebrating the soldiers who have served in the Army or are currently serving in the Army for 250 years.

It's a great milestone.

The Army was founded, was created, and its birthday is a year older than our country.

So that's a pretty big deal.

You know, other than required parades like for changes of command or Memorial Day parades where you go down the street, you honor different people.

I've never been truthfully a big parade guy.

Even at West Point, I tried to avoid as many parades as I could as an athlete.

But if you do have a parade, it should be honoring the soldiers that served on their birthday or that are currently serving.

Part of the parade is doing that.

But what we're seeing is it's turning into somewhat of a vanity play for one individual.

And they're making no bones about that.

That's the sad thing about it.

And when I say they, it's primarily the people in the White House and the Defense Department.

So I think what was initially planned as a celebration of soldiers and the anniversary of the Army has turned into something else.

And with the remarks from yesterday about very big actions against protesters, I mean, that's part of the Constitution too.

That's part of the First Amendment right, the right to protest and to speak freely.

So there's a contrary action.

being associated with a celebration.

If somebody wants to get out and stand along the side of the road road that they're marching down and say we protest with signs, I'm okay with that.

The same thing as Mary Clemens said last night in front of the troops that they cheered about people kneeling at football games when the Star-Spangled Banner is played.

I'm okay with that too, to be honest with you.

I don't like it, but I'm okay with it because that's what we protect.

We protect freedom of speech and expression.

So there's that conversation that I think is being overwhelmed by some of the bluster.

And that's what concerns me.

Just a finer point on, it really is kind of wrapping in the American flag a lot of really anti-American sentiments, you know, and a lot of quasi-authoritarian sentiments when it comes to breaking down protesters, very partisan speeches in front of the military, going out, right?

Anti-immigrant, like all this stuff is this kind of jingoism without the underlying elements of what makes America special.

And that, that is,

I don't know, That's something that really, you know, I find dangerous.

I think we've talked about this once before, but it gets back to American values.

And you have a lot of people say they,

you know, I'm all for American values.

Okay, really, what are those values?

What are they?

Well, it's freedom of expression, freedom of speech, respect for other individuals, liberty, life.

And, you know, you go down all the speeches.

Yeah, you go down the speeches of people like King and Kennedy and Roosevelt, and you see what American values are, and

there's oftentimes we're running contrary to what those American values are, especially respect for one another, and freedom of speech, and freedom of religion, freedom from want.

Those are the kind of things that have been outlined for us as part of our history, and yet they're being ignored by just the simple statement of, well, I'm all for American values.

Okay, well, what are they?

And are you really living by them?

So there's a little bit of hypocrisy there.

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I had some friends sending me videos from Ukraine over the last few days.

There have been massive aerial attacks from Russia on Kharkiv, on Kyiv.

It's a little bit out of the news because of all the other stuff that is happening.

But, you know, that offensive

coming off of, you know, this period of Trump talking to Putin for an hour and a half and saying that these are just like two guys fighting on the playground.

You got to let them fight it out.

I mean, it seems like to me, again, as an outsider, that we're in an escalating period from Russia in response to the president's cowering.

But I don't know what you make of what you're seeing out of Ukraine and what you're hearing from folks.

It's interesting.

I think the Russians continue to do what they've been doing for three years, but at a much greater rate.

They launched over 450 missiles and drones over the last couple of nights, each night, against civilian targets, specifically civilian targets.

So they're hitting infrastructure, apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, churches.

And this is in direct reaction to Ukraine's action and the spider web operation that specifically targeted military aircraft and military facilities.

So you've got one side going after the military and the other side continuing to try and affect the will of the Ukrainian people by killing people, by killing civilians, contrary to the law, international law, and the law of land warfare.

And it is Putin, I think, trying to gain an advantage of imparting his will against the people more massively than he has over the last couple of years.

And it's because we are ignoring it.

I think that's one of the reasons why Putin invaded in the first place, because he saw a divided America and a divided NATO.

Well, NATO has come together.

America sort of came together for a while, and now it's separating apart.

So he's using that obfuscation as a way to continue with his desires to occupy part or all of Ukraine, which is troubling.

Keith probably does this weekend, so I'd request that folks stay safe in that.

That feels like

it's a lot of dangerous targets these days if you're in Ukraine.

Do you have any, I think I asked you this last time, but

three months, things are changing so quickly.

We've seen what happened with the offensive from Ukraine.

Do you sense that without America, this is a doable fight for Ukraine with the Europeans behind them?

How do you assess their capabilities without us?

Yeah, I do.

In fact, I was in Sweden two weeks ago talking to their defense university, and my take is there's an uptick on what the Europeans are trying to do to compensate for the loss of at least some of American support.

But at the same time, I also see Ukraine masterfully building drone factories and ammunition factories and trying to keep up.

But the biggest problem is they don't have the air defense capability that they need.

And there's only a few people, us included, that can provide some of that.

And that's what Secretary Higseth evidently eliminated as of today.

Eliminated the air defense help.

Yeah, the contributions of weapon systems to Ukraine.

Not sure that may be just, you know, internet rumor, but allegedly that's what he said he was going to do.

And he said it in the speech last night at Fort Bragg.

Yeah.

Speaking of internet rumor, I've also have on decent authority that it's not going to be surprising that they're going to revoke, I don't have the official name in front of me, but whatever,

whatever the version of TPS was for Ukraine, temporary protected status for Ukrainians who came to America.

It isn't TPS.

It was a different program.

A lot of discussion in immigration circles that they're planning on revoking that.

That goes in line with the revoking of the Afghan special visa holders as well.

Is there outrage about that in your circles, the Afghan special visa revocation?

There is, because I think a lot of the military folks who served in Afghanistan understand it, what it's going to do.

It's going to send people back to Afghanistan who were contributing to our fight as interpreters or assisters in units.

So, yeah, there's outrage in the military community, but it's underneath the wave tops of all the other crap that's going on.

Okay, last thing I just, I couldn't not ask you about Tulsi, our director of national intelligence, while I had you.

Two news items in the last 48 hours.

Apparently, she fed the JFK files into an AI to see what she thought should be declassified.

She said that in a speech at some corporate function.

She also put out this creepy video about how we're the closest we've ever been to nuclear annihilation, which to me read as either

kind of some sort of Russian propaganda type message that like, hey, we should back out of Ukraine.

We don't want to escalate towards nuclear war, or maybe kind of a golden dome type.

I was trying to understand what was behind this like very weird video.

Me and Sam Stein did a big breakdown of it where she was warning that we're close to nuclear annihilation.

Open-ended on what you've seen from our director of national intelligence.

The latter one on the nuclear weapons is that that seems to be a messaging of a Russian talking point, multiple talking points that they've made about using nuclear weapons.

And it continues to be a debate within the Russian government.

The first one about the AI, I heard that this morning, and it's just mind-boggling to me that unless it's a secure AI capability, she's given up secrets.

I mean, I can...

you know, insert things in chat GPT and say, consolidate all my writings into this thing and give me a summary of all this, which is if what she did was on an open source AI platform, she's just provided it to the entire world.

So the director of national intelligence, like also

that job,

she's so upfront.

Like that, it should be a secret.

It should be a behind the scenes job, right?

I mean, talk to me about battle.

If you're in the military, do you want the director of national intelligence out there doing all this stuff?

And I was in the Pentagon as the J7 when the DNI was first created under Rumsfeld.

And it's interesting because that was supposed to be the coordinator.

The Negro Ponte was the first DNI, is that right?

No, I think it was, wasn't it Cambone?

I'm not sure.

I don't remember.

But the thing was created and it was supposed to be the coordinator of all the intelligence agencies.

Well, you would think that person would be in a trench somewhere and no one would ever know.

The very fact that we don't even know who it was and I don't even know who the last couple of ones were tells you that they're never seen.

But I'm seeing Gabbard all over the news recently, you know, with performative politics and what she thinks should be happening.

And it's not collaboration of intelligence, it's just her own personal beliefs.

All right.

Anything I didn't ask you for?

Any wisdom you want to leave us with?

It was a pretty, it was a pretty bleak podcast today, General.

You got any?

You know, the one thing that I've kind of been hot on that I don't think has garnered attention because it's so buried, and that's the deletion of CISA,

the cyber network folks that are doing a great job in keeping us safe.

I think that, you know, it's not a military operation, but it certainly is connected to the military.

And I think, you know, we've said that cyber warfare is a potential national threat for the last 20 years.

And now we've completely disbanded the agency that is supposed to be protecting us.

So I think that's troublesome and should garner more attention.

I'm glad you mentioned that.

And I think that like.

Again, it's hard to do.

You're doing Kremlinology now with the administration sometimes, but it could be just directly related to the 2020 stuff.

Chris Krebs was the person that was the point man on that, that spoke, you know, that they were protecting our elections from cyber attacks.

They do other, you know, protection of us from cyber attacks, but that was one thing they were doing that he was the point person on.

And Trump got obviously mad at him for a lot for telling the truth about the election and just targeting him.

And who in the hell knows with Trump?

It might just be that like now that word SISA, he doesn't like anymore because they were the people that were saying the election was not stolen in 2020.

Right.

The cleanest election we've ever had.

So let's disband the people that helped make it that way.

Yeah, so that's one area.

But there are,

Tim, there's so many others.

We could go on and on, but it's kind of an interesting national security environment, isn't it?

Not an uplifting close, but okay, that's okay.

You know, that's just the world we're in.

Mark Hurtling, please come back.

We obviously have a lot of developments, unfortunately, domestically and abroad related to the military.

And so we appreciate your expertise and wisdom on all this.

Okay, hey, thanks, Tim.

Appreciate it.

All right, everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow with another edition of the Bulwark Podcast.

See you all then.

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