Mark Hertling: Performative and Deadly

Every day has a to-do list, but adding enjoy Belveta to yours can help you knock out the rest of it.

Belveda breakfast biscuits are a tasty and convenient breakfast option when paired with low-fat yogurt and fruit that provides steady energy all morning.

While Belveeta Energy Snack Bites give you the perfect mid-morning refuel, best part, they both taste great.

So make the most out of your morning with a bite of Belveeta.

Pick up a pack of Belveeta at your local store today.

Ready to take advantage of an incredible deal at Mazda?

September is the final month of eligibility for federal $7,500 electric vehicle lease cash on the new Mazda CX70 and CX90 plug-in hybrid.

All Mazda current inventory is unaffected by new tariffs.

See your local Mazda dealer for details.

$7,500 electric vehicle lease cash offer expires at the end of September.

Don't miss out.

$7,500 lease customer cash good toward 2025 CX70 PHEV and CX90 PHEV when leasing through Mazda Financial Services.

Lease customer cash can be be combined with other public offers, including lease incentive offers.

Lease customer cash cannot be combined with APR or other customer cash offers.

Lease customer cash is not redeemable as cash or cash back option.

Lease customer cash is only available on approved credit.

Not all customers will qualify for credit approval or offer.

Limit 1 discount per customer per vehicle.

Lease customer cash offer only available in the United States regardless of buyer's residency.

Void were prohibited.

Apply within the lease structure as a capital cost reduction.

Lease customer cash is only available on participating Mazda dealer's current inventory, which is subject to availability.

Off rents 9:30-2025, and you must take delivery prior to the expiration of offer.

See participating Mazda dealer for complete details.

Hello and welcome to the Bullword Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome back retired Lieutenant General.

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

Army in Europe.

He's the pride of CBC High School in St.

Louis, Missouri.

It's of course Mark Hartling.

How you doing?

Hey good, Tim.

I don't know why you're asking me on today.

There's nothing at all to talk about.

Well, you said in the green room you want to try to be optimistic about something.

So I'm excited to see where that comes.

Yeah, because my topic outline here has a lot of bleakness.

I want to start.

I've been obsessed with the story, but just haven't had a chance to get to it.

And that's kind of the nature of our world right now.

And so I want to start with it.

And that is the attack, I guess, on the drug running boat, the alleged drug-running boat outside of Venezuela.

If you will miss this, on Tuesday, the Pentagon made a precision strike against what they say is a drug vessel operated by Trenda Aragua.

Trump said 11 members of that Venezuelan gang had been killed while transporting the drugs.

He shared a video of the attack on a speedboat.

I've got a lot of concerns and questions here, but just I'm curious at the biggest picture, what you think about that news.

There are so many things to talk about with that particular issue.

The context of was it legal?

Why are we doing it this way?

What's the operational design?

What kind of mission set does the Navy have versus a Coast Guard?

How can we not pass intelligence?

And truthfully, there's been a lot of talk in the circles I hang out in and former military guys is, was this even a legal strike?

It seems to be an extra judicial killing, which we saw a lot of when we were fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

You know, a long time ago, Tim, I tell you when I was a young major, I almost almost was assigned to something called JTF-6, which was a counter-narcotics effort coming out of El Paso, Texas.

I was big into the narco-terrorism world, understanding how it went, wrote a couple of articles.

In fact, I just wrote one for the bulwark about narco-terrorism and how, you know, there's two sides of this, both the supply side and the demand side, and how our wars back in the late 1980s, early 1990s to take out narco-terrorists were not going to to be very successful.

But in this case, yesterday, or a few days ago, when they struck this boat, it seems like there would have been a whole lot different approach to it if you had a legal recommendation.

Because just striking a ship, as I think it was Rand Paul said, we don't really know who was on that.

I would suggest the intelligence was probably better and it probably was a drug-running cigarette boat, as they call them.

But it's overkill.

That's the best way to put it.

And it's not necessarily legal.

I have a couple of follow-up questions on that, but I want to kind of back it up even more about whether this is even a drug-running operation of drugs that would come to America.

There was this cool article I read a couple months ago that kind of mapped out where all the cocaine comes and goes from.

It was one of these very cool

pieces of journalism.

And you can sort of watch it as it like how it gets to Europe and how it gets to America.

We don't even get cocaine from Venezuela in America.

I mean, I think this has to kind of matter.

90 plus percent of our cocaine comes from Colombia.

There's some from Peru, some from Bolivia, some from Mexico, but we don't get cocaine from Venezuela.

So, what were they trafficking here?

Rubio said on Tuesday that this boat was going to Trinidad,

and then Trump said later in the day that it was coming to America.

So, yesterday, Rubio changed his story to say

it was coming to America.

Like that seems to be a lie.

Like it seems to be, right?

I mean, even if it was a drug trafficking boat, like it, it doesn't seem to be a boat that was coming here.

Yeah, and what's interesting is the Coast Guard, if you talk to anybody in the Coast Guard, and I've actually seen one of these operations, they will tell you that boats aren't the most efficient way to bring drugs into the country.

It's usually small aircraft at different outside city airports coming in and out to different locations.

A cigarette boat can only hold X amount of narcotics and it's not enough really to bring it into the shores and there's going to be checks on it whenever they dock somewhere.

Those who are running cigarette boats between Venezuela or Colombia or any place like that are normally human traffickers because they can get more money transporting human beings than they can drugs.

I was on a mission one time with the Coast Guard where it was fascinating because they don't don't have a whole lot of ships that can keep up with a cigarette boat.

So they will launch a cruiser or one of their Coast Guard cutters out, launch a helicopter with a sniper in it, shoot out the engine of the cigarette boat, and then board the vessel and take charge of the people who are driving it and whatever they're transporting, usually human beings.

We should just say it explicitly because like that's a reason also not to drone the boat.

I mean, again, if these are human traffickers, if that's what's happening, obviously we'd love to see accountability for human traffickers of things we can effectively do to cut down on that that'd be great but what if there were humans that were being trafficked on the boat right yeah and and i don't know how a cigarette boat would have 11 crew members transporting drugs

that's an awful lot of people uh for that kind of a mission set so there's just some disconnects in the whole thing i but i'll counter that by saying u.s intelligence on these kind of things they're relatively good coming out of southern command so they must have had some kind of indicator They said they had been watching this particular boat for a couple of days and then when it took off, they decided to strike it.

It just doesn't to me make a lot of sense.

But again, Trump was claiming that it's part of the counterterrorism because ADT is a terrorist organization.

But there's no authorization for use of military force against terrorists anymore.

Certainly not in Central America.

No.

And so whenever that happens, you have to go to Congress and say, hey, we're looking to go to war against someone because this was Casa's belly.

This was an act of war against another country if that boat was coming out of Venezuela.

And they said that they're going to keep doing it.

The Times story here from yesterday.

The Trump administration says the boat strike is the start of a campaign against the Venezuelan cartels.

Hagseth said that there's going to be

more.

of these to come.

So again, by law, that would be something that Congress would have to authorize.

Well, you also, at the very beginning of this,

the Defense Department was very proud about saying we have six U.S.

Navy cruisers, Marine Expeditionary Force,

a bunch of helicopters, 2,500 Marines.

I mean, you don't need that many people in a troop-to-task relationship just to knock out a couple of drug boats.

So it appears that there is something further on the horizon of what they might be planning on doing.

And, you know, there are some people that that say this is a pretty smart move, but those people don't understand the use of force and they don't understand the legalities of violating international law by knocking out a boat on open seas without any kind of pure cause for it.

There are a lot of problems with this.

Color me skeptical that the guys that photoshopped the letters onto the guy's hand to try to claim that he was a member of a gang are telling us the truth on this.

I guess one last question, because

if you were going to reignite the war on drugs in a more aggressive way here, because it was so effective the first time, and you wanted to go after the root of drugs that are coming to America, you would do it in Mexico, right?

Like to me, this kind of seems like

they're doing it because they want to say that they're doing something and because Venezuela does not pose a real like military or economic threat, right?

I mean, like, if you're doing it in Mexico, that like creates all of these other issues for like cross-border trade and economic stuff.

And so, and there were some of the MAGA people that were like, we should go to war against the cartels.

And to me, this is kind of like, well, we can't do that.

So, we're going to do this other thing instead, you know, where there isn't as many other ancillary issues.

What do you make of that?

Well, you know, I'd say from a military perspective, and I would hope they'd be getting military advice on this, but it seems like this is more of a show than an actual targeting session.

When you're talking about killing enemy people or taking some kind of action that's tied to strategy, in this particular case, you could hit three different points.

You could hit the production point, the delivery point, or the transfer point.

And what they hit with this boat was the transport point.

So that is the least effective and efficient because they can find new ways to transport it.

So if you really want to destroy a drug cartel's capability, you hit where they either make the drugs or where they deliver it.

And those things have different targeting procedures associated with them.

Both of them could be effective and efficient, but it's got to have a whole lot more process development.

And what we're seeing, Tim, I keep going back to, it's, you know, it's performative.

It's just, here's what we're doing.

We're badasses.

We want to destroy things and make our base happy.

Well, most of the base that's happy about this don't understand military operations and how inefficient and ineffective this kind of a strike is but it makes for a great headline especially because like i said i know they're hitting it on transport point and i don't think they're transporting here but we have a lot of listeners out there we got a lot of viewers on youtube if anybody's getting venezuelan coke you know and want to dm me and correct the record on this you can let me know but i don't i don't believe that's what's happening

Cooler temps are rolling in.

Well, for some of you people, not down here in the bayou, but you know, we got to be prepared.

We got to be prepped for that kind of depressing earlier sunset and chillier weather.

And so we're turning to Quince for fall staples that actually last.

From cashmere to denim to boots, the quality holds up and the price is exactly what you're looking for.

Quince has the kind of fall staples you'll wear non-stop, like super soft 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at just 60 bucks.

What makes Quince different?

They partner directly with ethical factories and skip the middlemen, so you get top-tier fabrics and craftsmanship at half the price of similar brands.

I've been wearing my Quince.

Cam Caskey will tell you what I've been wearing, which is my denim shirts.

Okay, I love a denim shirt.

Excuse me.

Sorry for partying in my denim shirt.

But I've gotten some other stuff too, including some clothes for my daughter.

They have kids' clothes as well.

Some other staples and basics.

I had some Quince stuff from last season, like my Army shacket.

I'm excited to get back into.

You know, I don't know when the weather's appropriate here for that.

Probably not till November.

Keep it classic and cool this fall with long-lasting staples from Quince.

Go to to quince.com/slash the bulwark for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's q-u-i-n-ce-e.com/slash the bulwark.

Free shipping and 365-day returns, quince.com/slash the bulwark.

I want to talk to you about military purges you wrote for us.

A couple articles I want to talk about, which I really appreciate.

One was a couple weeks ago now, but it's still relevant.

It was Donald Trump, General Cruz, and the Perils of Yes Men was the title of the article.

And we've seen pretty widespread purges now from within the military and the security apparatus.

Relevant to what we're talking about with Venezuela, that Tulsi purged a couple of people who put out a report, you know, saying that Venezuela wasn't trying to invade us because that undermined the Trump immigration agenda.

So those are a couple of experts that were lost.

We've lost people, I guess this isn't military really, but FBI who do counter-intel stuff, who have expertise on that, who've gotten pushed out.

We interviewed one of those folks a couple of weeks ago now.

You wrote about this, Lieutenant General Cruz, who is the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who got pushed out because he gave an unapproved assessment on the Iran bombing.

Chief of Staff of the Air Force, you mentioned also in that article.

How big of a problem is this?

And as you mentioned, you're kind of on these sort of in these conversations with other ex-military people.

What are people saying and hearing about all this?

It is causing just a pale across the military force, a senior military force.

You know, the dedication of the professional military officers, the general and flag, you know, admirals, the flag officers that are out there, they will obey the legal orders of any president.

That is the civil-military relationship.

If it's a democratically elected leader, they will obey those people.

But when you start firing a lot of folks, and there have been a lot of folks fired or told to resign, it's troublesome because it tends to keep everybody else quiet because they don't know if they're next.

They have a dual loyalty, Tim.

This is the other factor that's involved.

You know, sometimes a lot of people are saying, How come these generals aren't throwing their stars on the table and quitting?

Well, because they have a loyalty to their boss, the president, but they also have a loyalty to their soldiers.

And they realize that if they quit, the soldiers are going to say, Hey, Hertling can get out.

He's a general.

He can resign his commission and leave the military.

And, you know, somebody else is going to come on.

We can't do that.

We're in for an enlistment period of three to five years.

So there's that dynamic.

But what we're seeing, and it relates directly to what we were talking about earlier with the Venezuelan strike, there is no lawyer in the world, no military lawyer in the world who would have said, that's an accurate capability and go ahead and strike it because it's legal.

That was probably illegal.

Now, the Defense Department said they got a legal review and everything was okay.

I'd like to see that legal review because those are the same kind of legal reviews that the Defense Department gave a thumbs down to when they were asked to have soldiers waterboard people during Afghanistan and Iraq.

And no one in the military did it because it was illegal.

So those are the kinds of things we're talking about.

All of the judge advocate generals of the various services have been fired.

All of the inspector generals that take a look at things that are troublesome in each branch of the service have been fired.

And about from my count, three of the five chiefs of staff of the various services have either been fired or told to resign.

The most recent ones, General General Alvin, who is the chief of staff in the Air Force, made a comment and made an argument in closed circles, as I understand it, that we shouldn't be singularly focused on China, that there are several other threats in the world, and we can't just put all of our resources into monitoring China.

And for that, they said, hey, this doesn't fit in with the administration's narrative.

We want to focus only on China.

Forget about Russia.

Forget about all these other alleged seven other places that President Trump brought peace toward, which none of those are true.

And so he was told to resign because of that.

In a normal period of time, Tim, when a chief of staff of a service retires or resigns early, man, that's national headlines.

In this case, with General Alvin, it was Tuesday because two of the others, the Navy and the Coast Guard and others, have been relieved of their duty responsibilities.

So there is a continual cut of people as well as the affecting of organizations, all on the basis of increasing lethality, like Secretary Hegset said.

So I'm very troubled by it.

In talking with several of my retired and active duty peers, there are problems with it.

Well, one other I'll mention, General Sims, the director of the Joint Staff, who I personally know.

He's a great soldier, great leader, three-star general, was getting ready to become a four-star general.

The director of the joint staff is a very critical role.

And because he was connected to Milley, allegedly, General Milley, in a previous life, they fired him and didn't give him a four-star.

And now he has to resign his commission.

Those are the kinds of things that I think are really putting a pale over all of the senior leaders in the military and are causing some stutter steps within decision making and the advancement of military advice to the civilian leaders.

One of the other implications that you wrote about was just kind of the potential perils of like only having people around who are going to tell the president what he wants to hear or having people around who are afraid to give uncomfortable information.

And some of this is obvious, but I just think it's worth stating explicitly.

Yeah, well, I mean, you can go back through history and see the people that didn't pay attention to their advisors.

And you can go back in history and see the ones that were, both in our history and in other nations' histories.

I mean, Bush didn't pay attention to the analysts at the CIA when they were telling him there doesn't seem to be yellow cake in Iraq and it took us into a 15-year war.

Hitler didn't listen to his generals about the Eastern Front and he completely lost it.

I mean, we can go down the list of a bunch of people who paid no attention to their military advisors.

or any of their advisors, quite frankly, and we've seen the sycophantic approaches to cabinet meetings.

But you also have to take a look at those who do take the advice and how much better off they are.

Inside the military, we have things called red teamings.

Whenever I would make a decision about an operation, there was a team that would go off and say, what could possibly go wrong?

What is Hurtling not thinking about when he's giving this order?

And they would pick the thing apart.

Now, all of that was done behind closed doors, but they would come back to me and say, hey, boss, here's some things you may not have thought about.

And in many cases, it was like, holy crap, yeah, you're right.

I had thought about that.

And that could give the enemy an advantage.

So those are the kind of things that you want.

But what we're seeing in the current administration is anybody that offers contrarian advice are just squashed.

I read a piece this morning in the Wall Street Journal about the National Security Council not having the number of people that they should have to help the president make decisions.

Well, the president can do anything he or she wants with the National Security Council.

It's there to provide advice and consent from a bunch of different organizations that may be experts.

When you draw that council down significantly and you dual task the Secretary of State of being the National Security Advisor, you're going to have a government run through ad hocism.

And it's all on the decision-making of one person because he is not taking the advice of others.

I've kind of ignored the fucking Trump bluster about,

oh, how I've solved seven wars or whatever.

You kind of mentioned how it's not true.

Sometimes it's valuable to just say what, like explicitly say what you mean by the fact that it's not true.

Like, what do you reference?

Like, what has he been saying that you think is inaccurate on that?

Well, what I'm trying to figure out, first of all, is what are the seven wars he solved?

Because

India, Pakistan.

Well, India-Pakistan is one.

I think he's claiming Israel-Iran and that he brokered a ceasefire.

We don't really know.

Hostilities could resurface still from Iran.

India-Pakistan.

Congo and Rwanda.

I think

let me address India-Pakistan first.

He says that he's cooled the violence after the Kashmir debacle.

And that's been going on for decades.

So Indian officials deny this mediation and that they say that U.S.

involvement may have had modest influence.

Okay, so he didn't solve that war.

Thailand, Cambodia.

This is a border clash that ended allegedly with U.S.

trade pressure causing it.

But

it's contributing in part to U.S.

leverages, but part also to the fact that they didn't want to fight anymore.

Congo-Rwanda.

Peace agreement was facilitated, but the rebel groups haven't signed on to it yet.

And hostilities are reduced, but the conflicts still persist.

Armenia-Azerbajan.

Trump hosted the leaders who allegedly signed a peace document, but that final treaty isn't concluded and the conflict still is unresolved.

Egypt-Ithi-Ethiopia.

This is over the Nile Dam claim and no formal peace deal is in place.

And in fact, last night I read a report that Egypt was mobilizing 40,000 troops and putting vehicles on train to head toward that location.

The last one is Serbia, Kosovo.

And there's been very little progress under Trump.

Trump's second term and there's been no major breakthroughs.

So those are the seven he claims he has solved, but none of them are accurately completed.

I loved it.

I followed up on that, and you just had it.

You just pulled them all.

You're just dropping it.

Well, and the two that he said he was going to solve in the day, Israel and Ukraine, he's kind of given up on both of them.

I just wanted to go back because I was a young man when this happened.

Some of my lefty critics like to blame me for the Iraq war.

And I'm always like, I was hit in the bong during the Iraq war.

I'm sorry.

I just, I have plenty of sins, but I don't, that one just wasn't on me.

So you mentioned something just kind of in passing, but I think it's important, which was like what happened with the waterboarding and the enhanced interrogation stuff then.

And what you said was that, and so now I'm going from memory, so you can correct me.

The military assessed that it was illegal.

And so it was CIA that was doing those operations, not military members.

Is that what happened?

I don't remember.

Yeah, the legal advice to Secretary Rumsfeld at the time, and I happened to be serving my only Pentagon tour during that period on the joint staff, so I was privy to all this.

The legal advice was soldiers can't do this.

Military officers, it's an illegal act.

There's no proof that this will generate any kind of confessions.

So Rumsfeld turned to, I think it was Tenet, who was the CIA advisor at that time, and said, we can't do it.

Can you do it?

So the CIA took it on as a mission.

So all the CIA black sites were because the military said, we're not going to do waterboarding.

It's torture.

And torture under the laws of war is illegal.

And obviously, that didn't solve anything that there were

JAG officers that were getting in the way there.

But it just, as you project out potential risks and stuff going forward about the Hagseth approach, like the fact that he's basically eliminated that, I mean, they have foreshow, whatever, legal reviews.

We don't actually know yet, as you mentioned it, but Hagseth has shown such disdain for that projects like potentially some concerning orders coming from the military, right?

I mean, that's like you want to have the legal reviews there.

Well, I mean, we saw that this week with General Sherman in California, who was testifying that the deployment of soldiers and Marines to Los Angeles

without the approval of the governor and making that into a, quote, insurrection activity or an emergency when there wasn't an emergency claim.

The head of the California National Guard stood up and said, we didn't need them.

And I was.

troubled because we were asking military people to do policing duties and that's illegal if you don't declare an insurrection.

And he was claimed to be a non-patriot.

And, you know, this is a guy who served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, a head of the California National Guard, a two-star general.

And when he testified before the judge, he said it was an illegal act.

And, you know, I can't tell my soldiers to do something that's illegal.

And he was proclaimed to be a traitor and, you know, a libtard and woke and all that other stuff that they do to generals that,

you know, talk about facts.

struggling to switch off at night after listening to an ominous bulwark podcast?

Well, Soul's out-of-office gummies and beverages can help you relax, quiet your thoughts, fall asleep naturally.

Just the right balance of CBD and THC to ease you into a restful night.

Soul is a wellness brand that believes feeling good should be fun and easy.

They specialize in delicious hemp-derived THC and CBD products designed to boost your mood and help you unwind.

Their best-selling out-of-office gummies were designed to provide a mild, relaxing buzz, boost your mood, enhance creativity and relaxation.

With five strengths, you can tailor the dose to fit your vibe from a gentle 1.5 micro dose to their newest 15-milligram gummy for a more elevated experience.

Some around the office were calling that 15-milligram gummy the Tim Special.

I'm like, my reputation.

I guess I take it as a compliment that I have a reputation as being somebody that could take a 15-milligram gummy to the dome and then provide you this kind of insightful and engaging podcast experience the next day.

But unfortunately, that is not true.

And at best, I'm a micro-dose man these days.

I've gotten weak in middle age.

Soul also has a variety of products specifically designed to help you get a better night's rest, including their top-selling Sleepy Gummies, a fan favorite for deep restorative sleep.

So bring on the good vibes and treat yourself to Soul today.

Right now, Soul is offering my audience 30% off your entire order.

Go to get soul.com and use the code thebulwark.

That's getsoul.com, promo code the bulwark for 30% off.

That's important testimony because it seems like that campaign is continuing.

Trump yesterday was talking about what they're going to do with guard deployment options.

And there's something that was interesting, I think, both politically.

And

it's very relevant to both of our areas of interest.

Trump said this that he's considering now deploying National Guard troops to New Orleans instead of, or in addition to Chicago.

We're making a determination now.

Do we go to Chicago or do we go to a place like New Orleans where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country?

It's become quite tough, quite bad.

I want to get to the New Orleans part in a second, but first, I thought it was kind of interesting and maybe revealing that maybe they are responsive to the legal pushback on this, right?

Like, whereas going to Chicago would put them into a Los Angeles type situation where they're going over the objection of the governor who's the commander-in-chief of the National Guard.

Is that the right way to describe it?

Yeah.

And whereas you could go to a place like Louisiana where Jeff Landry would invite them to come and that would give them more leeway, though I don't know how much leeway on doing some of these more policing activities.

What do you think about that?

Well, first of all, unless there's an emergency and the president declares insurrection, The military, either National Guard or active, cannot conduct policing operations.

They can support civilian authorities.

And in New Orleans, as an example, the governor can call up the guard to support federal agents that come in, that coordinate with the police force, but those guard soldiers are not going to be arresting, detaining, or processing individuals.

They only do a mission that's called support to civil authorities, SCAs.

And what that means is they can guard a building.

They can do paperwork and help the federal agents that are doing whatever they're doing.

They can put up razor wire to protect something, but they can't actually grab a person, detain a person, put handcuffs on a person, or start booking a person.

For two reasons, Tim.

First of all, most of these guard soldiers are not military policemen.

That's a very small force.

When you mobilize the guard, you're getting truck drivers, supply sergeants, tankers, infantry.

None of those people have had any training on police actions.

They have had training on maybe riot control or crowd control protecting a building, but they can't arrest somebody.

That's up to the either state or local or federal authorities.

If the governor says, we're going to mobilize the guard in New Orleans, okay, that's great.

What are you going to have them do?

What's their mission?

Which is kind of silly in and of itself.

But I think what's happening is the governor is saying, sure, I'll take the ICE agents in town and I'll allow them to come in and help my crime problem, which Governor Pritzker says, I don't need them.

You know, my police are dealing with it.

You want to help me?

Give me some more money so I can hire 400 more cops.

But the National Guard, as we saw in Washington and as we saw in Los Angeles, mostly were standing around doing nothing or picking up

grass clippings and trash and things like that, like they were doing in D.C.

We could do some pothole filling down here in New Orleans, so maybe that's a job for them.

But to your point about how they can't do policing and how there are other options, this is the thing that drives me the most crazy about all this because John Kennedy, our senator, was speaking yesterday about this question.

He said he'd support troops in New Orleans because the local government there doesn't support police like they should.

And our other problem is we don't have enough officers.

Well, like sending in the National Guard doesn't solve that problem because they can't do policing.

And do you know what Congress can't do?

He's a senator.

He's not a commentator on Fox.

Like he's a senator.

So what they could do is pass a bill that gives funding to local jurisdictions to hire more police.

Such a bill was proposed during the Biden years by Democrats.

Like that could be a bipartisan bill.

There are a lot of Democrats that would support that.

If they felt like the problem was that there's not enough police, well, the government could just fund more local police.

Like that's a thing they could do.

But instead, they're going to send in these troops who are not allowed to do policing by law.

Like meanwhile, we also have simultaneously a funding shortage in New Orleans.

I was just reading local news yesterday and it made me kind of ruefully laugh about this.

Right now, we're only replacing streetlights on an emergency basis because of a funding shortage.

It's just like,

what's going to do more for helping crime in New Orleans?

Like sending in National Guard troops who can't do policing or actually making sure the fucking streetlights work so people can't do crime in the dark.

You know, like the whole thing is crazy and it comes amidst like a historic crime drop here.

Like where

in 2022, you know, just for example, in April, let's look at April 2022.

We had 24 murders, seven this year.

In February, 16 murders in that year, two this year.

So there's just no way to call this an emergency.

Like, it doesn't make any sense on any level.

It's just back to the drug.

It's a total show.

It's total bullshit.

Well, and I was going to say that, you know, and I watched Senator Kennedy yesterday and some of his advice to the press in his corn ponish manner.

And it's fascinating to me if a reporter would just ask, Senator, what do you think they're going to do when you say they need leadership in the New Orleans police force?

You know, what are these military guys going to do, this infantryman or this supply officer or this air defense officer, how are they going to affect the New Orleans police force?

If you want leadership, you know, you might want to take a look at your police academies and what they're doing in terms of developing leaders.

The Army isn't going to save you, Senator.

They can only do so many things legally that you have created in legislation.

So, yeah, it just, it makes no sense.

And it's partly due, Tim, because a lot of people don't really understand what the military does.

I was watching Nicole Wallace the other day talking to Randy Manners, who was a former National Guard commander, two-star general, and he was explaining how mobilization of guard, these young troopers and their leaders, they're coming out of civilian jobs.

I mean, some of them are flipping burgers, some of them are office workers, some of them are lawyers, and they're mobilized.

So first of all, they leave their firms in a lurch because they're not there.

And employees sometimes really get pissed when there's repeated mobilizations of the guard because they're losing their base of employees.

Secondly, they're getting paid less while they're there, most of them.

Some of them say, hey, this is a good deal.

I'm getting mobilized for 30 days and I haven't been doing anything but going to college.

So I'm going to, you know, maybe get some money to spend.

That's good.

But it's normally, it's $11 an hour, which is under minimum wage for most privates.

So you look at those kind of things and say, and then what do you want them to do?

Because they're limited.

If you think they're cops, they're not.

You know, policemen take training for months or weeks and know how to conduct police work.

These soldiers do not know how to do that.

I think that for some of them, they just like the authoritarian costuming.

Like that's just what they like.

and then i think for others and i don't know where kennedy lands on this but i i think some of them truly do believe that just having guys walking around in fatigues scares the criminals away from doing crime i don't know maybe that works on the margins but i but it doesn't feel like the most efficient way to use our resources Well, presence is always good.

I mean, if someone was going to commit a crime, if someone's there watching, they're not going to commit the crime.

But eventually, these guys are going to be pulling out.

You know, Trump is now saying that Washington, D.C.

is down to zero crime.

Zero is what he said yesterday.

And what I'm thinking is, okay, great.

As soon as everybody leaves, it's going to pop back up again because you haven't solved the problem you've just intimidated for a while.

And unless you want to keep National Guard and ICE and, you know, federal officers there forever and ever, amen, the crime problem still exists.

You haven't done anything.

Maybe he does want that.

This is not exactly your Bailey look, but I think that there's a parallel that I wanted to ask you about about the kind of recruitment stories and how you're doing recruitment in the military and what kind of folks you want.

Because this is something I'm really worried about on the ICE front.

There's this Washington Post story yesterday about a guy named Aaron Ellie.

He was an MMA fighter who went by the cyborg.

I don't know if you're a big MMA fan, but

his career flamed out.

He ended up getting into IT after his hip gave out.

He got upset, I guess, because his ability, as he says, his ability to advance in IT was limited because the market is crowded with candidates from India.

And so then he said this, I keep seeing these memes where Indians are bragging about taking our tech jobs.

So I said, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to work with ICE and they're going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement, and send you home.

And I just, I felt like that was a very chilling story.

It's just one anecdote.

But as they're trying to...

staff up quickly.

Like this is something that there is a parallel to the military, right?

Like at times of war where you're trying to recruit people and you're trying to get people in.

They're essentially doing that, like going to a domestic war on migrants.

What are your thoughts on all that?

Well, you know, recruitment is the most important thing we do in the military.

We want people to come in because they want to serve something bigger than themselves.

Sometimes they don't know that when they first join in, but they learn it very quickly.

So that it is selfless service to the nation.

When we talk about police, and I won't get into

the ICE or any of those others, but when you talk about police, if you look at most police cars in most cities, they normally have, you know, the mantra written on the side of the police car to protect and serve.

So there's an attitude that's supposed to go with that as well.

If you're recruiting people that want to slam other people's faces into the concrete and take care of them and kick them out of the country, you probably got the wrong person.

And when they do come into your force, you have to train them to have a set of values, a set of cultural behaviors, and a way that they conduct themselves as part of the organization, or it's going to be an embarrassment to the organization.

I mean, you know, every time there's a mass shooting in the United States, the first thing that reporters like to find out is whether or not the person had a military background.

And why that is, is because, okay, they learn how to use weapons.

Well, as a military guy, that troubles me.

when someone who was a former military uses a weapon in a mass shooting.

We failed somehow.

And there's always the follow-up question, well, didn't you do an emotional mental check on this guy before you let him in the service?

Well, a little bit, but not much.

And you can't change a lion's stripes in a short period of time in training.

When you're actively recruiting people that want to do these kind of things, there are going to be the kinds of issues that we'll see on the streets right now of people being body slammed to the ground and cuffs put on without any, you know, adherence to citizens' rights.

That's not who we proclaim to be as a nation.

You know, one of our national values is respect for all human beings.

We're not showing that all that much right now.

Hey, y'all, I warned you.

I warned you, our Toronto show has sold out.

The Canadians love Sam Stein so much that, you know, there are lines around the block to get tickets to it.

But the good news is we still have tickets left for our live shows in Washington, D.C.

and in New York coming up in early October.

So go get those tickets now at thebulwark.com/slash events.

I'm missing LSU versus South Carolina for you guys.

I'm going to be in New York for that.

And so assuming that's an afternoon game, I might have a couple of bourbons in me by the time we get on stage on Saturday night.

So that one could be a rowdy one.

So if you're looking for an excuse to go to the Big Apple, go see a show Friday night, come see us Saturday night.

Could be a fun little weekend.

Go get tickets.

Like I said, thebork.com slash events.

The bulwark.com events.

See y'all soon.

I want to go back to the Russia stuff you referenced earlier and the fact that maybe America is giving up on that.

You wrote presciently, God, how long ago was it now?

Two or three years ago, Times a Flat Circle about the weakness of the Russian military and kind of saw in advance that their invasion of Ukraine wasn't going to go as smoothly as other people thought that it was going to.

Where we're at now, it's kind of this quasi-stalemate on the front, and you have Putin sending missiles into Kyiv and at civilian targets.

What we have today is

this so-called Coalition of the Willing, which is basically the European countries and Australia and Canada, so not us.

They're meeting to talk about what to do going forward.

And they're kind of waiting to hear from Washington about what kind of role we're prepared to play in the security guarantees.

I was reading the Kyiv post this morning, and they said that basically Europe is struggling to kind of demonstrate that they can do it alone.

And some of the members there are concerned about their ability to support Ukraine without U.S.

involvement.

What do you think about that and the state of play?

The Europeans are putting up a good front.

They are trying hard to collaborate and make it a difference.

But truthfully, they don't have some of the things that we do.

primarily the big air defense pieces of equipment, the intelligence capability, even the supply chain operations that we helped Ukraine establish at the beginning of of the war to get not just equipment, but ammunition, supplies, and everything else to the front line.

The Europeans will be able to do some things, and I'm happy to see them all pulling together and doing those.

But there is going to be a delta versus what they provide versus what Ukraine needs that could only be provided by the United States.

So I'm concerned about it.

But at the same time, what I tell you is, Russia is in much worse shape than people believe and i think you know

putin's trip to china this last week was an indicator of that he desperately needs funding his economy is in the toilet still and growing worse he has not gained much ground if any in the territories he's looking to consume in ukraine and ukraine is doing a pretty good job and continuing to hold them off but they're also continuing to suffer civilian casualties from massive strikes by russia but i would say Russia is running out of ammunition.

They are on a war footing.

They are producing arms and weapons more than anything else in their economy.

That can't last forever.

And I think Ukraine has more of a national and military will than Russia does.

I continue to say we're at an inflection point, but we haven't quite crossed over that to the other side where Russia starts being defeated.

And I'm now concerned that China and India are going to help.

Right before that last phrase, I was going to say, there was your hint of optimism 40 minutes in to this podcast, and you had to caveat it.

But I'm curious, just kind of putting your general hat on for a sec, if there were no political constraints, given that weakness that you mentioned with Russia, like what could Ukraine and the West be doing that were not, that you would think might give them an even greater advantage in repelling this right now?

There would be continued shipment of air defense systems.

There would be a sell inside of Ukraine or even inside of Kyiv or even on the front lines of intelligence targeters that are contributing to what Ukraine is doing, although they're doing a pretty good job themselves.

There would be a lot of people there from the United States watching what they're doing in terms of drone warfare because they are learning quite a few lessons that we could certainly take on.

And, you know, they could just give morale support.

Right now, one of the things within Ukraine, and I talked to a buddy of mine in Ukraine the other day, a Ukrainian who I used to work with, and he said the biggest thing is morale, that they can't believe that after three years and them continuing to hold the fight, that the United States is backing off of helping them.

That's the part that they don't get.

The weapons are one thing, you know, continuing the supply, but the main issue is, are you really for democracy and sovereignty or are you not?

Because that's what we thought you were for all this time.

And that's the troublesome piece at the upper echelons of the Ukrainian military right now.

The other conflict you mentioned, obviously Israel, Gaza, just kind of open-ended.

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on the current situation.

Yeah, it's a mess.

It always has been a mess, but it's getting messier.

They continue to fight against Hamas, and there are still a lot of Hamas fighters left inside of the Gaza Strip, but they are doing it in such a way that they're completely ignoring any kind of political end state.

And, you know, I go back to Clausewitz and say war is politics by any other mean.

There's got to be some kind of political end state.

And there doesn't seem to be one right now.

And I see the Israeli government right now that's in power of completely ignoring the potential for saving lives inside of Gaza.

They're not even considering it anymore.

They just want to kill more terrorists.

And there's a lot of non-terrorists in that nation, certainly some people who support the terrorists, but they're human beings.

And you can't go into a war, any war, at any time, if you're not considering what's going to happen when the fighting stops.

And Israel has refused to even take that under consideration.

What does Zin really give you?

Not just hands-free nicotine satisfaction, but also real freedom.

Freedom to do more of what you love, when and where you want to do it.

When is the right time for Zinn?

It's any time you need to be ready for every chance that's coming your way.

Smoke-free, hassle-free, on your terms.

Why bring Zen along for the ride?

Because America's number one nicotine pouch opens up something just as exciting as the road ahead.

It opens up the endless possibilities of now.

From the way you spend your day to the people you choose to spend it with.

From the to-do list right in front of you, to the distant goal only you can see.

With Zin, you don't just find freedom.

You keep finding it.

Again and again.

Find your Zen.

Learn more at Zen.com.

Warning, this product contains nicotine.

Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Elite Basketball returns to the Elite Caribbean destination.

It's the 2025 Battle for Atlantis men's tournament happening November 26th to 28th.

Don't miss hometown team St.

Mary's, along with Colorado State, Vanderbilt, Virginia Tech, Western Kentucky, South Florida, VCU, and Wichita State, playing 12 games over three days.

It's basketball at its best, plus everything Atlantis has to offer.

Aqua Venture Water Park, White Sand Beaches, World Class Dining, and more.

Get your tickets and accommodations at battleforatlantis.com.

Two other topics of interest to you.

One with one you wrote.

I'm warning you.

Neither of them are giving you opportunities for optimism.

So we'll have three topics left.

Two, not, and then you can, dealer's choice at the end.

You can come up with something positive.

All right.

You wrote for us, which got a lot of attention.

Honoring Ashley Babbitt dishonors the military.

I was happy you wrote for it because I actually missed the announcement of the story that the Air Force planned to grant military funeral honors to Ashley Babbitt, who, if people don't know, was the woman that was killed storming the Capitol on January 6th.

Why'd you feel the need to write this?

Because there's an increasing divisiveness between the American population and the military.

And it's because of the things we've already talked about, what's going on in the streets of our city, how they're being used by the President and the Secretary of Defense, how many, most Americans don't understand what the military does, and the fact that

You know, it's interesting, the statistic, only one, less than 1%

of people between the ages of 18 and 24 even think about joining the military.

So you've got a nation that's already totally disconnected from the military.

And then when you see the divisiveness continuing to be wedged on an issue like someone who has gone into Congress and attempted to overthrow our Constitution, and yet that person

X number of years ago was actually in the Air Force.

And

when she was in the Air Force, when she first joined and whenever she got a promotion, she raised her right hand and said, I, Ashley Babbitt, will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemy, foreign and domestic, and the rest of that beautiful oath that we all take multiple times during our career.

And she was doing exactly the opposite.

And what I wanted to remind people of is that there are those who take that oath, who understand their role in government and how we support government.

Yeah, we can protest, we can peacefully protest, but that's not what January 6th was.

And I think our current administration continues to try and whitewash that with their base, saying it was no big deal.

And what I'll tell you, in terms of reaction to that article, Tim,

it was probably the most, the largest reaction I got on social media.

But then, about day two or three, the trolls started coming in.

And the trolls were all saying, oh, this was just a peaceful protest.

And she was shot in the face.

And the guy that ought to be taken care of is the person that shot him.

And he should be in jail and convicted and given the death penalty.

And there was such an opposite reaction that didn't address what is associated with taking the oath to defend the Constitution and make our nation grow and transform better every day that I just thought I had to write something about that.

So that's a long explanation.

No, we appreciated it.

And that's important.

This goes back to why the military should be neutral, like kind of your point at the beginning, why it's sort of, you know, sometimes folks like me are like, why aren't the generals speaking out?

it's like well you know because you don't want to get into these sort of situations where you have the air force making these decisions for someone that that dishonored their oath for political reasons if i can say one more thing about the babbitt thing you know if if she had lived the rest of her life without any kind of criminal activity and this was determined to be a criminal act what she was trying to do she would have gotten the military honors at her death okay but what happens is there was a decision made by the department of defense under Secretary Austin of, hey, she was a criminal.

She was shot trying to overthrow the Constitution.

We are not giving her military honors.

So that decision was overturned by the current administration, specifically Secretary Hegset.

And I don't understand the reason why.

You're living in Florida still?

I am.

You were a VP at a hospital there?

That was another challenge that you had?

I was.

I was a long time ago, yeah.

when I first retired.

Well, then I have to ask you about something a little bit away from what I usually ask about, which is healthcare stuff.

Your state, they decided to end all vaccine mandates.

Yesterday, Ron DeSantis decided to end all vaccine mandates.

We had RFK testifying the Hill as we're talking now.

And obviously, they're making a lot of changes at CDC or they're not listening to experts on vaccines.

I was just curious what your thoughts were about that based on your experience.

Yeah, I came out of the military and was recruited to work at a healthcare organization on something that I did, but the main thing I did was work with physicians because they asked me to put together a physician-nurse leadership program, which we did.

And it proved to be a culture changer at this hospital.

But I was there during COVID.

And what I saw was the doctors and nurses who I had trained take charge of a crisis response cell.

And watching them work in a period of time that they were overwhelmed by sick people coming in and what they did to make life better and take care of health was just miraculous to me.

What you are gonna see in our nation's hospitals because, well, in Florida's hospital primarily, but it's gonna cross state lines, is without a vaccine mandate, you're gonna see a lot of sick people and a lot of contagion.

And it's gonna not only affect the lives and deaths of our citizens, but it's gonna affect what happens in already overcrowded emergency rooms and hospitals.

And it's gonna cause a lot of doctors, and like I hear from military guys, I hear from doctors because I still work with them at a different organization.

They're saying that this is going to be a medical crisis for their profession of how do you treat the number of people that are going to be coming in with disease that say, oh, gee, I wish I had taken the vaccination, but it's too late now.

because they want their freedoms.

And they reminded me that individual freedoms are important, but what is also important is social responsibility, making sure your individual freedoms don't affect other people in your society.

And that's what we're seeing probably going to happen in Florida.

All right, here you go.

The world's your oyster.

Leave us with something uplifting.

You got anything?

Yeah, I do, actually.

The last couple of days as I've watched things that are not in my avenue, like the Epstein issues and some of the court hearings and now Harvard pushing back and the attorney generals that are going after different things in terms of states.

I've shifted from almost purely negative to

maybe a little bit of a rainbow of positivity that things are happening for the better.

And it's been created by individuals being affected.

They're now seeing the craziness of the kinds of things that this administration are doing, whether they're legal or not, it's affecting lives.

And I think that's when the American citizens are going to stand up and make a difference.

I was in the Baltics this summer, Tim, and I was reminded in talking to some of the citizens of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia about their six million-person hand-holding that occurred across those three states.

And I saw pictures of citizens holding hand to protest the Russians and what they were doing to those states.

And it struck me that that was a pretty powerful movement when instead of people protesting in a town square, that everyone was holding hands saying, we're together in this, in countering the oppression that we're seeing.

I'm thinking it's almost time that the citizens of our country start doing something like that because everyone is feeling the negative effect of what has been happening with our administration.

That's my optimistic view of what may happen in the next couple of months.

Estonia.

Estonia is always a place to look for optimism.

They're small but brave in Estonia.

Mark Hertling, I appreciate you coming back as always, and I'm sure we'll be talking to you again soon.

All right.

Hey, thanks, Tim.

Appreciate it.

All right, everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for a weekend edition of the Bulwark Podcast.

See y'all then.

Peace.

Child, rebel, soldier, you ain't often enough.

A a rapper turn trapper can't morph into us but a trapper turn rapper can't morph into puff

dance contests for the smokers i predict snow al roca if you know you know i only ever looked up to slots up you all get a bird this nigga oprah

Bricklayers and ball shorts coaching from the side of the ball courts if you know you know

wanna stop like a Walmart we got the tennis balls for the wrong sport if you know, you know.

If you know about the carport, them trapdoor supposed to be awkward.

If you know, you know.

That's the reason we ball for.

Circle round twice for the encore.

If you know, you know.

You ever been hit with the water weight?

Then had to wait, do you walk away?

If you know, you know.

When we all clicking like golden state, and you and your team are the motorcade.

You know, you know.

Been granting wishes like a genie.

Some bad hoes and two-piece bikinis.

I've been hiding where you can see me.

The sky box is right next to Ri's.

Solely responsible for showing rappers how to stand on the front lines when trappers started throwing bands.

Where were you when Big Meets brought the tigers in?

Cause I was busy earning stripes like a tiger skin.

Brick layers in ball shorts.

Coaching from the side of the ball courts.

If you know, you know.

Want to stop like a Walmart.

We got the tennis balls for the wrong sport.

You know, you know.

If you know about the carport, them trapdoor supposed to be awkward.

If you know, you know.

That's the reason we ball for.

Circle round twice for the encore.

If you know, you know.

The Bullwork Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

The new Dell AI PC with Intel Core Ultra helps you fast forward through busy work like editing images, summarizing meeting notes, responding to Jim's long emails, leaving more time for you time.

Get yours at dell.com slash AI-PC.

It's time to head back to school and forward to your future with Carrington College.

For over 55 years, we've helped train the next generation of healthcare professionals.

Apply now to get hands-on training from teachers with real-world experience.

In as few as nine months, you could start making a difference in healthcare.

Classes start soon in Pleasant Hill, San Leandro, and San Jose.

Visit Carrington.edu to see what's next for you.

Visit Carrington.edu/slash SCI for information on program outcomes.