The Pentagon’s Press Purge

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Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another weekly show podcast.
My name is Jon Stewart. It is Wednesday.
What is there, October 22nd? There we go. The show's going to come out tomorrow.

I am still in the afterglow

of all that happened this past weekend with millions and millions of people coming out into the streets and the president of the United states uh

showing a video of him as a king uh in an airplane uh dropping what can only be described as diarrhea

and really more than you would think uh that plane was capable of carrying it was it was it was a lot of diarrhea that the president dumped on the no-king's protesters in the video that he did.

And I just want to point out just very quickly that that's the president of the United States of America, a long lineage of great men from Lincoln to

Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson, even the shitty ones. You know what I mean? Hoover, Garfield, you know, that kind of shit.

And he alone, I think,

I really don't think even Nixon would have shown a video of himself dropping again, what I can only describe as

diarrhea on the American people, the people that he purportedly is in charge of

and his diarrhea plane.

But I think my favorite part of it was Republicans who are asked about said diarrhea plane and have to say things like, well, you know, the American people know that Donald Trump speaks his mind and they really appreciate his honest

reaction of the diarrhea plane. Mike Johnson was

the best, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson,

little cowlick, Mike Johnson. What do you make of the president showing a video of him dropping diarrhea from a plane onto

American people who are just expressing their dissatisfaction? Well, you know, the president is a, you know, he's a very satirical.

You know, I appreciate the satire.

And I'm offended, not as an American, but as a comedian.

What exactly is that?

What is the satire? I'm just curious.

Is the satire it's get it? Oh, it's diarrhea from a plane. I get it now.

Good one, sir.

But that being beside the point, we got bigger, bigger fish to fry in this here American experiment.

As you know, recently, the Pentagon decided to make sure that it was very important that reporters sign a pledge not to report anything from the Pentagon. Because

why would you need information from the Pentagon? I know they have a diarrhea plane.

I don't even know if that was classified. That could have been classified information that has somehow got out.
Someone's going to pay the price for that. That's way worse than the signal chat.

The existence of the diarrhea. You know, let me tell you something.
The Chinese have been working on a diarrhea plane now for decades to try and get ahead of the United States.

But the fact that the United States has developed it. to the point where they could deploy it on their own people.

Well, that's going to send shockwaves through the industry, I'm sure.

But to getting more to the point about military reporting, we do have a show dedicated to what the fuck that was, that they have to sign pledges. And so we're going to get to that right now.

All right, folks. So we're delighted to have our guests today to talk about the changes that have been done to the Pentagon.

uh press corps and and just generally military reporting in general and the difficulties of getting it done.

And, you know, an organization that prides itself on being somewhat opaque, how do you permeate that? We're joined today by Nancy Youssef, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

She covers National Security and Defense Department. Thomas Brennan, founder and executive director of the War Horse, which does really fantastic military reporting, an independent organization.

And retired Marine Corps Colonel David LaPan, former acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, and served as press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security during the first Trump administration.

So, guys,

first of all, thank you all

for being here. I want you to know that you passed our very stringent security procedures.

You are free to roam about the podcast and ask any questions that you wish to. I want to just get a maybe kind of a quick overview.
Nancy, how long have you been covering Pentagon?

So I was based in Iraq from 2003 to seven, and I came to the Pentagon the first time after that. And then I spent about a year in Afghanistan from 2009 to 10.
Okay.

Then I moved to the Middle East from 12 to 14 and came back to the Pentagon in 2014. So on and off for 18 years.
On and off 18 years. So in that time, Nancy,

has the

Pentagon process been generally consistent or does it vary wildly through different administrations or through wartime and peacetime? You know, what's been your experience in covering the building?

It's been relatively consistent. I mean, every secretary kind of brings their own personality and approach to engaging with the press.
Some are more eager to talk to us. Or lack thereof.
That's right.

Or some are more eager than others.

But the consistent thing had been that if you pass the security background check, which is not as stringent as yours, but if you pass it, you can get an access pass to the building.

You could walk to any part of the building and you could talk to people.

If you wanted to go on embeds with certain provisions, you could do so. And that

there was an understanding that

we wanted a press engage. And I should be clear, they weren't doing this as a favor to us.

They did it because they saw that by engaging with us and opening up the building, it really introduced the public to the U.S. military.

and it created a space where the public was willing to invest nearly a trillion tax dollars

and send two millions of its sons and daughters to this department and put their lives in

the hands of these decision makers. So

it's been relatively consistent up until this administration. Now, Dave, you were on the flip side of that.
You were working

in the military and with the press office. So I'm assuming you're the liaison between a lot of these reporters and not.
Is that your experience as well that

you get this security check, this background check, you have general access to the building, although I'm sure there are secured areas within the Pentagon, classified areas, that you are not allowed to?

That's exactly right, John. So my history, I go back to the mid-90s, late 90s, my first Pentagon assignment with the Marine Corps.

When I went to the Department of Defense staff, it was at the end of Bill Clinton's

second term.

William Cohen was the Secretary of Defense.

Then I was there through the George Bush administration with Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.

I was there during the Obama administration and worked with

both Secretary Gates and Secretary Panetta.

And as Nancy described it, you know, there are minor changes, but by and large, the process, the way that we interacted with the Pentagon press was pretty consistent.

So as people understand, you know, Democratic administrations, Republican administrations, I've been in uniform working with all of them.

And important point that you make too, John, about the Pentagon is not this giant secure building. It's basically an office building, and there are lots of secure spaces where needed.
That's right.

One great example, when I was the public affairs advisor, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, right, senior military officer in the United States, i had an office where the press could come and talk to me but i also in another part of my office had a secure compartmentalized information facility a little skiff for the people at home a skiff exactly so i could go into the skiff behind a locked door and go into a safe which was also locked and pull out information i had you know

access to classified information through computer systems, all behind locked doors. But the other part of my office, the Pentagon Press, would frequently come in and visit, and we chat about things.

They weren't given access to classified information.

And the most important point for people to understand is it was my responsibility as the holder of the security clearance to protect the classified information. It's not the reporter's responsibility.

The reporter's job is to get as much information as they can to fully inform the public about whatever the affairs are that are going on behind the scenes. And like you say,

it is the responsibility of the individuals who have a security clearance not to give away information that might be detrimental. Now, Thomas, you have sort of a dip.

I wanted to make sure you were involved in this conversation too, because, you know, Warhorse is a slightly different operation.

You are much more independent and I would say exist more on the side of military families and veterans themselves and a little bit outside the system.

What's your experience interacting with the Pentagon in that way and

the restrictions that are placed on getting that kind of information? Thank you. And thank you for having me.

So I have never actually been a credentialed member of the Pentagon Press Corps. When I started reporting, I was a local reporter covering Camp Lejeune, which is in eastern North Carolina.

Now, was that the toxic exposure case, the bad water at Lejeune that was sickening people, or just generally, that was your beat?

Correct. There was toxic exposure down there, military family housing issues.

I covered government sequestration and shutdowns that happened in 2013 and 2014.

And it was largely covering

local military affairs issues that had a broader national context.

And I would reach out from North Carolina to people like Dave at the Pentagon to arrange interviews, get quotes from national leaders.

And then I was the last military reporter covering Camp Lejeune in 2014 when I used my GI bill to go study journalism at Columbia University. And after that, I wound up starting Warhorse.
And we,

again, are not credentialed, you know, part of the, we're not credentialed as part of the Pentagon Press Corps.

We've embraced what the military calls decentralized command.

And we have reporters all over the country that freelance or staff reporters for us and contribute from military communities around the country. Right.

So now, so we've got kind of a baseline of what the reporting is. It's inside the building, outside the building.
There's independent organizations that are going on there.

There's a little game of cat and mouse, as there always is in any kind of governmental organization. Nancy, talk us through

why this change or these changes have created such an uproar

in the fact that there were about 100 credentialed reporters, I guess, in the Pentagon that are in the building, that are allowed in the building, that are walking around.

85 of them

walked out en masse

after these new restrictions were put in place.

Nancy,

what exactly went down?

So, even before these rules were put into place, we had seen a slow erosion of our ability to do our jobs in the Pentagon.

Within weeks of Secretary Hagseth becoming the Defense Secretary, he kicked out NBC News, CNN from their booths, and told the Washington Post, New York Times, and others that they they couldn't sit at their desks.

Then he said, couldn't sit at their desk. Would they have to get a standing desk? Well, they would literally sit at the next desk.
So, you know,

you guys have assigned desks?

We did, but then, like, you know, we all kind of got to be flexible because there were, you know, our press corps shrunk. And so there were open desks.
And so it wasn't like a space issue.

There were open desks. And so it was like we work.
You're like,

you're like a we work. It's a, it's a, it's a we work.
Okay. But not as clean.

It's not as clean as a we work.

And then a few weeks later, those journalists who didn't have booths anymore were told that they couldn't use the briefing room to do live shots.

And then in May, we were restricted to a few hallways in the Pentagon. There's 17 and a half miles of hallway in the Pentagon.
We got to maybe, I don't know, mile of it total. Mile of hallway.

And then this conversation started that we're going to now put new restrictions on how you can get a badge to enter the building. And so we started hearing about this in September.

And the two big restrictions are: one,

we cannot solicit information, nor can we publish information unless it is approved by the Pentagon under these rules.

And two, we have to agree that we understand that the publication of information, even unclassified information, not authorized by the Pentagon, is a potential security risk.

Okay, so I want to go back to the first one that you said.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry to laugh.
It's It's just so in. First of all, the biggest security classified leak threat within the Pentagon is Hexeth themselves.

I mean, that dumbass signal chat where they were just all, you know, I think it was the Atlantic, right? Wasn't it?

Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic was just added to a group chat where he was like, here's the coordinates of the attack, and here's what time we're doing it.

Right. Enjoy.

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They made a provision that you couldn't report on anything unless they approved it. That's right.
So you are no longer, you're not a reporter. You work for them.
Dave, you worked for them.

I'm assuming that the idea that the Pentagon would have to approve everything that came out of the reporting would seem insane to you, even as someone who's working to protect the Pentagon's interests.

It is insane.

It's dangerous. It's damaging both to the military and to the public that we serve.

The predicate on which this new policy sits is, trust us. We'll tell you what you need to know.
Trust us. Trust the Pentagon.
Right. We'll tell you what you need to know.
Not what you should know,

but what we decide you need to know. And over the last nine months,

is there any good reason to trust everything that comes out of the Pentagon? The irony is. Forget about nine months.
Let's go.

When did they build it? The 40s? Was it Roseville? 1943. 1943.
Right. But again, over the last nine months, we've seen as Nancy has talked about this erosion.

So the irony here is that even in defending the new policy, the Pentagon has said things that are both inaccurate and that mischaracterize the truth.

Now, what has been inaccurate, Dave, of what they have said? Is it the inaccuracy of the access that reporters have to the building or the fact that they had to go through certain security?

What's inaccurate about even the way that they are framing these changes? So a couple of things. One, this idea that they have to start wearing their badges.
They've always worn badges.

They've had badges that clearly identify them as members of the press. The Pentagon press.
So that's not bad. That's what they do already.
Right. That's what they've done for decades.

They did that when I was there. Contractors wear different badges.
The people, the uniform folks wear different badges, right? That's nothing new.

This idea, again, that the Pentagon itself is this giant secure facility, that we can't let reporters roam around because of all this classified stuff, as I've talked about before.

It's an office building, right? So

it mischaracterizes this idea that we can't allow reporters to walk around wherever they want because

they could, you know, learn our secrets. They could open an unlocked door and inside it is a...

maybe they're training cats to operate lasers and you open the door and you see it and the whole and the whole game is blown right and the other part is the it goes back to my point about whose responsibility is to protect classified information right so if you have a security clearance you shouldn't be in the food court talking about classified stuff you shouldn't be in the bathroom talking about stuff you shouldn't be walking down the hallway talking about classified information where oh my god a reporter could overhear it well so could a contractor so could a family member So could the people that work at the CVS in the, in the building?

Again, it's ludicrous. Okay, breaking news.

The Pentagon has a CVS

and a food court. And a Taco Bell and a McDonald's and a Panera's bread.
And all of those employees can move around more freely than we could starting in May. It's a shopping mall.

Wait, the people who work at Panera? can move around more freely than the people that are reporting. So very clear.
So,

Thomas, I want to talk to to you as you listen to these restrictions and things. You're an independent journalist, never been credentialed to go into the Pentagon.

You guys do fabulous reporting.

You know, I remember when Kelly, Kelly Kennedy began reporting, I think it might have been 2008 on the burn pits in Bilad and some of the health effects that were going on there.

It speaks to this.

You know,

how important is access?

Are we arguing with them about something that is

moot? I mean, very clearly, they're showing their hand. The Pentagon is saying,

we control this space. We don't want reporters anywhere near there.
They're not trustworthy. But should they be trustworthy in the first place? And

is the

access worth

the restriction? And Thomas, you know,

what's your overall thought on that?

The access to me is so important because public affairs and journalists have a shared goal, and that's to get the story right. We both want it to be correct.

We both don't want misinformation and disinformation. You're saying public affairs from the military.

Military public affairs wants the story to be correct, just like the journalist doesn't want to get things wrong.

And, you know, we're talking about an organization that has a trillion-dollar budget,

and less than 5% of all journalism focuses on these issues. And while they're they're putting restrictions on journalists, there's been this decimation of military reporting across the ecosystem.

I mean, New York Times shut down their at-war blog years ago. Washington Post shut down their checkpoint blog years ago.

Military.com just got sold to a Canadian hedge fund during the Trumpet First administration. He major cuts to stars and stripes.

And then you look at local news. We're working on a study with Medill right now that looks at the intersection of news deserts and military communities.

And what they're finding is that military communities are impacted by news deserts three times worse than civilian communities, and that less than 10% of all military communities have a newsroom in them.

So while they're increasing the restrictions, there's also a volume issue when it comes to military reporting across our country where it doesn't reflect the line item in the budget.

And it's sort of, it's corroding in the same way that local news is. Nancy, what have you found in terms of the access?

What has that given you in terms of insight? Because Thomas says something interesting, which is public affairs wants to help us get it right too.

That goes counter a little bit to what I imagine or my experience has been in terms of dealing

with the Pentagon is they want it right, but they want it

along the lines of how they want it framed. Would that be accurate? And my job is to sort of just work through that and kind of give the public the information they need to to know.

So, if you think of reporting as sort of like being in a very dark room with a very small flashlight, the ability to walk around the Pentagon, to talk to leaders, to see their reactions to the decisions they're making, they're all ways to widen the aperture so that I can present a more fulsome picture to the American public about what's happening in the building.

So, it's not a necessary thing in that

I can still do my job. And in fact, since the eviction that happened, you have seen exceptional journalism happen just this week alone.
U.S. Southern Command Commander

unexpectedly retired. New York Times wrote that story.
That there were two survivors on the semi-submersible outside the Caribbean. Reuters wrote that story.

That the secretary was flying on a fighter jet with the chairman during a shutdown. Washington Post broke that story.
We can still do our jobs. Right.

But

we lose the nuance, the detail that really shows the sort of layered

involvement behind all these decisions. You know, like

sometimes it's not even a tangible, but it just, it ends up shaping how you think about coverage. It allows you to bring depth to it.

You know, I was in the Pentagon, for example, in the final days of the U.S.

days in Afghanistan, and I was there when Abby Gate happened, 13 U.S. service members were killed.
It said something to watch the building.

absorb what had happened as the death toll kept going up and up and up. Like it's that kind of color.

It's those little one-on-one meetings that you get to learn about how people got to be in their jobs what sort of a vantage point and experience are they bringing to these decisions it gives you a more three-dimensional picture yeah of the humans that that that are making uh the the decisions that go along there

dave what about that interplay between information that the pentagon does not want framed in certain ways versus the interpersonal relationships.

You know, I know that the CIA, I guess, I think it was James Risen was talking about this. The loss of access was,

he thought,

the best thing that ever happened to those reporters because it reshaped the relationship as what it should be, which is slightly adversarial.

And is that difficult to do in a building, Dave, when you have these relationships? You know,

does it color the reporting in negative ways?

So I'd make two points on that, John. One,

from the military point of view, again, given the experience that I had in the building, having a Pentagon Press Corps there resident in the building was advantageous to the Department of Defense because we could call them at a moment's notice when something was happening around the world.

We could put together a press briefing in 10 minutes because they were all there. Right.
We didn't have to put out a press release and go through all this stuff. They were already there.

So it benefited benefited the Department of Defense to have reporters in the building that we could pull together in a moment's notice.

When I was the acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, I did what were known as gaggles, an on-the-record but off-camera briefing every day, Monday through Friday.

And the resident press corps basically came into my office. And we would just talk about all the things.
I would have the opportunity to present the information we wanted to get out.

They would ask me questions about what they wanted to get out. And

there was always a bit of that tension. There was always going to be a bit of an adversarial relationship.

But I think that the folks that I worked with in the Pentagon press and outside would tell you that

I am a straight shooter, you know, that I told them the truth.

Did we always agree? Did we always get along? Absolutely not. That's not the way that it works.
But we respected one another's positions.

And again, as we've talked about, the need for the military to get information out to the American public, the need of journalists to be able to do their job to get information to sort through those different things.

So while there was some tension in that relationship, it was mutually beneficial because we're all serving the American public. It's not just the eviction.

If it were just the eviction, there have been a number of things that have happened. Military leadership are not allowed to go to events and conferences anymore.

Breaking Defense broke yesterday that they have to now check with the department before they talk to Congress.

There's a climate of fear that's happening in the building. There are some who have been told that they could face Polygraph for engaging in any way.

You know, in some ways, our eviction was sort of the canary in the coal mine in terms of a restriction on information flowing generally. And we're seeing that play out right now.
The U.S.

is conducting strikes on boats in the Caribbean. Till this day, we've done seven or eight of them.

I don't know what kind of ordinance was used, what part of the military did it, where those strikes came from.

I take James's point that sometimes

maybe it was too close. That's a fair criticism.
And if it were just this eviction,

I think there's a discussion to have, but it's not. This is a pattern.

But through the whole administration, not just at the Pentagon, I think it's probably that idea of polygraphs and don't talk and be adversary.

You know, that seems to be permeating the whole operation. And now the Pentagon is putting together a list list of new journalists.

They are recruiting journalists to be a part of the new press corps who are like-minded, who are going to sign these restrictions. Sure.
So they've done that in the White House Press Corps.

But at least there's a pool. There's some independent journalism here.
This is

all of the major news organizations are now out of the Pentagon. You're going to have recruited journalists in there.
What happens at a briefing? Who's going to get questions?

Who's going to get to travel? How is that going to shape how we understand what's happening? I worry that the consequence of all of this in totality is that facts become negotiable, right?

Because it's depending on how you're viewed. And that's the erosion that happens in terms of how we understand the Pentagon.
I'm not here to be an advocate for a cause.

I really believe that my job is to inform the public. And so when we think about

the eviction, I think it has to be thought as part of a bigger shift that's happening within the Pentagon. Right.

In your experience, Thomas, is that shift just making the Pentagon's relationship to truth more explicit?

And I'll give you an example. I remember, so we were at a

War Horse symposium in Chicago, and

I had interviewed, at the time, Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks. And we began the talk.

where I said, you know, War Horse is an independent

journalism operation, you know, mainly concerned with, you know, reporting for veterans, military families, and things like that. It's interesting that you chose to be here,

Secretary Hicks, because the Pentagon obviously has a complicated relationship with journalists.

And the first thing she said to me was, oh no, we love journalists. We're very much about transparency.
And I thought, well, here we go. That's just bullshit.
Just

off the jump bullshit.

Thomas, is that, I guess my point is,

are we kidding ourselves here? Isn't that just making explicit, you know, their idea of maybe

very literally creating,

you know, a kind of palace guard of journalists and all that? Has it been your experience that that's very much the case anyway? Maybe that's too cynical a view.

I think that this just puts it on full display for the American public to see with their own eyes instead of it being off the stage. That's my point.

Yeah, instead of just journalists experiencing it one-on-one. And what's scarier for me is

it appears that the Pentagon is at war with journalists and journalism and the Fourth Estate. But haven't they always been, I guess, is my point.
Or at least that seems to be my experience.

Yes, but it seems much more forceful and deliberate and just wide out in the open.

And

at the end of the day, like journalists like myself and Nancy and so many other people who report on the military, like we're not against the Pentagon.

Like we are for the Pentagon and the millions of service members that it represents and the families that it represents. And that's why we do the reporting that we do.
Same thing with the VA.

Like newsrooms like the War Horse are for the veterans that have served our country. And

pitting the DOD leadership, pitting

the, you know, the people like Dave and public affairs officers against journalists like Nancy Mussolini. Like, that's just, that's wrong.

Like, we both have a shared goal of, you know, defending American ideals.

We're at work. Like, we're not at war with one another, just like Marty Barron of the Washington Post would say.

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dave how did you negotiate that relationship between uh journalists you know and and and what the pentagon wanted to frame because i'm really talking about framing you know it's it's you can talk about you know the history of military conflict also includes a history of

you know misinformation shaped i'll give you an example uh

judith miller in the run-up to the iraq war reports that that Saddam Hussein has these aluminum tubes and they can only be used to enrich uranium. And he's building

a weapons program. And they pop it into the New York Times.
It's a front page story.

And literally the next day, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice go on, meet the press and all kinds of other places and say, even the New York Times, no friend of this administration, the Bush administration,

is reporting that Saddam Hussein has a nuclear program and we've got to get in there.

And what it turned out to be was, and I think the famous phrase was, we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

That was the big warning. Well, it turns out that phrase came from the Iraq Working Group.
It was from a PR person, and that information was fed to Judith Miller from the administration.

So,

you know, when you see things like that happen, it's easy to get discouraged about that relationship. So, Dave,

how do you make us understand

why these reporters shouldn't just be adversarial? So I would say

what we are seeing now is an administration that wants to turn journalists into stenographers. Yes.
Right. And just.

Tell, you know, report what we tell you to report. But how is that? I guess I'm saying is how is that different than what they owe? you?

So what's different is that, yeah, that journalists, as Nancy described, part of the job is to go seek different sources of information, right?

You just don't take the Pentagon's view at face value, right? You take that and you say, here's what official people are telling us, but here's what we're also hearing from other people, right?

And so for me as a public affairs officer, it was about relationships, building trust and credibility so that they knew that I was telling the truth to the extent that I could, right?

That I couldn't divulge classified information or I couldn't do certain things. But they didn't just take what I said at face value.
As journalists, they got other

views and perspectives to provide that context that Nancy was talking about earlier. So

for me, and I've said this before, the North Star is always tell the truth. And if you can't tell the truth, explain why you can't tell the truth, right? Is there always some level of spin involved?

Much more when you get into the political realm, certainly. You know, for a uniformed military officer, it was easier, you know, to stay truthful.

Because you were generally dealing with operational aspects, not

exactly. So

sorry, John, I've told this story a few times that the first day when I was the acting

deputy assistant secretary and conducted my first gaggle, one of the members of the Pentagon press asked me point blank, in front of the entire group, Colonel LePan,

as a uniformed military officer, is it appropriate for you to defend administration policy?

And my answer was, no, it's not. If you have those questions, you go talk to Jeff Morrell, who is my civilian counterpart, political appointee.

If you want to talk about military operations and those things, that's me. Right.
And so again, it's much more straightforward for me to stay in those lanes.

when it gets political is when it gets very complicated. Right.

And Nancy, is that your frustration that what you won't be able to get as easily is those operational details and kind of, as you said, the color in the building? Or is it that

the sources that you are relying on?

are now reacting to the changes that are being made to policy and you can't get anything.

I mean, it is much harder to get information, but that's not why we sort of walked out together.

We did it because to sign it would be to sort of say we're not journalists anymore and we couldn't do that. I think we were really trying to protect precedence and what defines our job.

You know, it's funny you mentioned Judy Miller and the run-up to the Iraq war because at the time I worked for Knight Writer Newspapers, which was known for really pushing back.

And it's not, yes, you can be swayed by the fact that you're you're in close proximity of decision makers who are trying to spin you.

But if you're doing your job well, you understand that and contextualize it. What made Night Ritter so singular is that it didn't just put those things out at face value.

And, you know, what happened to Judy Miller? She was discredited. The New York Times took a credibility hit.
That is, the access doesn't shape the coverage.

It's the understanding of how to approach the job by the journalists doing it. And I'll tell you, having been on this beat a pretty long time now,

the journalists who are coming up after,

you know, if you're 30, you were born in 1995, when you were 10, this was the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There's a more adversarial relationship there right now. They're seeing National Guardsmen deployed on American streets.
They're seeing a different military than

I was

brought up under in terms of like the sort of

unquestioned sort of reverence to them.

So there is, there's an adversary relationship across generations, but the kicking out of the press court on top of the sort of experience that everyday Americans have had over the past 30 years, you can see it really already reshaping it.

But it's not the access by itself. I think, frankly, lazy journalists might do it that way.
But the challenge of the job is to figure out what to put in front of the public.

And it's so funny to hear Dave describe during his press conference, he says he and I had back and forth all the time. And it was great.

Now, would you see that in a sort of angrily story, angrily sort of framed story? No, but you would see it in the order that I would put things or you would see it in how things were framed. So

there are extremes where we have done

not the best work and question officials. But I think you'll see an equal number of instances where we have really challenged and brought things to the fore.

The use of MRAPs

were brought to the military because of it. So again, I take your point.

Well, she talks about just for the audience, I don't know, the MRAPs were the vehicles that could withstand mines or mine-resistant, I think, assault. What is it, assault?

Mine-resistant, ambush, protected. Ambush protected, yeah.
That's right.

And so, and the troops that were in Iraq and Afghanistan did not have the proper MRAPs. They had been delayed.
And the reporting on that, and it did cost American lives. And Thomas,

you were in the middle of that because you were deployed at that time, I think, in obviously the Battle of Fallujah and other places. You probably experienced that on the ground.

Nancy, I wanted to say, I think that's a really good point and one that I think

we should stand. I was focused on access.
What you're saying is this isn't so much a question of access and what it hinders and doesn't hinder. It's a question of principle.
It's a question of if

even if the access was not explicitly helping and there wasn't spin and there wasn't people trying to prevent it, the idea that they would say to you,

you have to sign this and only approve it as a principle cannot stand.

Would that be accurate? I think that's part of it. Yes, because we're saying, how can I sign a document that says I will not publish anything other than the Pentagon approves it?

How can I do that? What am I telling my readers that I'm not a journalist at that point?

You know, this job requires sometimes a very adversary relationship with your sources. And what am I doing for my colleagues who come after me?

I just, I don't know how we could do it without sort of signing off

on the whole profession. Right, right.
And Thomas, you know, when you were serving, you know, I remember, you know, I've seen footage of different things. There were a lot of embeds

that were with you guys. You know, that's a different kind of access and a different kind of military reporting.
And I imagine one that's much harder, A, to control through

public affairs or through Pentagon policy. And B,

one that gets really interesting in terms of the personal relationships. because in essence, you're preventing them or trying to prevent them from being killed or harmed while they're going out there.

What's that relationship like in the field? And Nancy, you've done that embedding as well. So, Thomas, you've been on the other side of it as a soldier with embeds.
What's that like?

So, as far as the embed goes, what I experienced in Iraq and Fallujah and then in Helman province, Afghanistan were drastically different.

In Fallujah, we were more concerned with getting to the next house and staying alive.

And I mean, we cared about the journalists getting there too, but them getting their footage was not at the top of our priority list.

You don't have them go, all right, everybody, we got to be quiet for room tone. Hold on.
30 seconds. Yeah, we got to white balance the shot real quick.

So, yeah, there was very little concern outside of their safety for what type of shots they were getting.

And then fast forward to Afghanistan, eight years later in my career, I had a photo journalist who was in beta with us, and that was a slower pace.

We still saw contact almost daily for a good period of time there, but while the journalist was there with us, it allowed for much more

intimate conversations to happen. They actually got to know

the members of our squad. We're still in touch to this day.
I mean, he wound up to be my co-author of my book.

So

the embed in Afghanistan was,

I think, exactly what Dave would have wanted from an embed that he would have placed, where it was a journalist who understood their role. They knew that they couldn't just wander off on patrol and

potentially get one of us hurt. So they had to operate within the confines of the mission that we had there.
But they also, he spent over a month with us.

He really got to know us. And that allowed for him to do some really strong reporting about what

the bond among Marines looks like on the front lines in a place like Afghanistan. And that is of real benefit to the American public.
I mean, they're paying for the war.

They're paying for the service members to be there. When any of us die, they're going to pay the funeral.
They're going to pay the death benefit, all that. So all of that is taxpayer money.

And the types of stories that Finbar was telling about our squad helped to illuminate the military experience and what the war in Afghanistan was like

for all the readers that he had. And that was something as a service member, you know, I was more nervous about my guys.

being out of uniform and me getting in trouble or there being something,

some military customer courtesy, or something that represents discipline

that

the chain of command would have had a problem with, and that it would have become my headache.

Or even a situation like what occurred, which is Abu Ghraib, you know, where you talk about

those photos from the prison that showed abuses, various things. I mean, Dave, that's, you know, there's so many different elements.

You know, it's so interesting to me because my vision of the, you know, here's this now trillion dollar a year.

you know we're talking about defense contractors we're talking about uh a department that has never passed a financial audit uh we're talking about uh a department that puts

americans in harm's way we're talking about uh an organization that once they are done with our soldiers ignore their future problems they've done a better job of it but you know make them fight for the the benefits that they had earned.

Like this is an

incredibly, in my mind, dysfunctional and opaque and complicated

operation.

And as I'm hearing you guys about like, what's the negotiation between the elements that are trying to get at the heart of those things,

it's kind of fascinating. because you rely on each other to some extent.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad you brought up the Media Embed program.
One, I was involved in one of my roles in helping to create that program for

the war in Iraq, right? So I'm very well acquainted with that.

And it gets back to the ludicrousness of this new policy is that we put journalists on the front lines with U.S. troops.
Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Space Force didn't exist then.

You put them on the moon, Dave. Yeah, but we put them out there and allowed them to do that reporting.
One, because

we wanted firsthand, independent views to counter the propaganda and the disinformation we knew were going to come out of the Saddam Hussein regime, right?

And the idea that we would trust military journalists inside, not just military journalists, correct that, journalists to be there on the front lines in combat with us, and now we don't trust them to walk around the inside of an office building.

Really?

They put their lives on the line. That's the other thing.
Thomas will tell you.

He and his Marines, well trained, well armed, ready to do battle. Reporters,

you might put on a helmet and you might wear a flag chest that says press, but you're carrying a camera or a notebook. You are much more vulnerable.
And dangerous.

We saw what happened to Bob Woodruff. We saw what has happened to there was a Fox journalist

who was hit by mortar. Journalists that are killed in Gaza.
I mean, it's the most dangerous place in the world

for journalists. So, again, we collectively, the Department of Defense in this case,

trusted journalists, put them in these situations. And it's now a slap in the face that we're treating them the way

they're being treated by Heg Seth and the administration. Nancy, what's your thought on what this is? Is this just

this administration's, you know, we are the alphas and you are not. And we are, is this just a, we must teach you your place? You're the fake news.

You know, is fake news any news that doesn't flatter their perspective? You've done the tours overseas. What are they trying to do here?

Well, I mean, every time we've written stories that they don't like, we've sort of seen new rules. So the restrictions on movement happened after there was a lot of pushback on reporting that the U.S.

strikes in Iran had not been as successful as the president claimed. So any kind of criticism has sort of, we've seen sort of a tangible effect.

My fear when it comes to the military is that this Pentagon no longer believes it needs to reach the entire American public.

Remember, the military throughout its history, modern history, has really celebrated the fact that it looks like the American people, that it comes from every part of the country, that it's here to defend the nation.

We have heard a Secretary of Defense who has not subscribed to that, that he thinks there's too much DEI at the building, that

we should have a military more focused on

threats in this hemisphere. We've seen an administration put troops on the border, National Guardsmen in American cities.

So my fear is that one reason that they don't want us there is because they don't need us there, that they no longer feel that they need to communicate to the entire American public, but rather to their base, because they want a military that serves their base rather than serve the American people.

And if that's true, then you don't need to reach New York Times readers.

You like the idea of sort of having...

Talking Points USA or

other conservative outlets representing the facts as you want to present them.

I don't know that, but we're starting to see a pattern where, in terms of what they say and some of their actions, that they want a military that is more in line with sort of their values rather than a military that represents the collective interest.

Well, you know, look, he's the defense secretary and he's allowed to create certain policies. But I think, and maybe I'm wrong about this, but Thomas, you know,

if their idea is if we restrict access in the building, we will no longer have adversarial coverage seems insane.

I mean, it seems wildly naive.

If that's the idea that, okay, we're going to bring in some sycophants and they're going to sit in the building, the best reporting on the military doesn't necessarily ever come

from the building.

the MRAP stories,

the Burn Pit stories, the Walter Reed scandal, the sexual assault stories, like those aren't necessarily coming from inside the House. So not only is this

anti-American to some extent in terms of the way that it restricts freedom, it strikes me as foolish and naive

that they think they'll be able to control that. Foolish and naive.

And I think that Secretary Hegseth is displaying a complete disregard for the leadership traits and principles that the enlisted and commissioned officers within the military are taught and live by every single day.

Like what he says demonstrates no tact. He demonstrates no apparent integrity.

You know, the poor judgment flip-flopping back and forth on messaging.

Like the military teaches selflessness. I think he demonstrates selfishness.

And speaking as a Marine veteran, like if he had been my lieutenant, I would not have followed him into combat for those reasons.

He is displaying a complete disregard for norms in the military and a disregard for the life and safety of service members. I can point to that,

the gathering of 800 generals that were brought into Quantico. Like the military lives by an acronym called MDCOA, Enemy's Most Dangerous Course of Action.

I can think of nothing more deadly than having your top, everything from the Secretary of Defense, President of the United States, and 800 generals all being crammed into one room.

That is a massive national security threat that completely disregards their safety.

You know, our national security is a country.

And at the same time, he stood in front of there and demonstrated a lack of understanding of the leadership traits and principles that he is speaking about

his own service members upholding. Right.
It's surprising because his work on the weekend Fox and Friends, I thought, was exemplary.

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Just want to jump on to Thomas because he talked about leadership traits and principles. Here's the other thing.

Using the word principle, DOD policy. which has existed for decades and still exists today.
There's something called the principles of Information.

Amongst those, it says information will be made fully and readily available.

A free flow of general and military information will be made available without censorship or propaganda to the men and women of the armed forces and their dependents.

Then it says information will not be classified or otherwise withheld to protect the government from criticism or embarrassment. That's what's in the DOD principles of information.

That policy exists today. All of these things run completely counter to that.
But if we are being fair, and this gets back to my original point,

it is, it is bullshit.

And they don't, it may be in there, but for sure, they don't. I've watched too many of those where they come out and say,

we told the Israelis, be careful with what the bombs we gave you you know that there's i'll give you an example

so uh

and this goes back to pact stuff so uh there's some veterans that were at karsh kanaban i'm sure i'm pronouncing that poorly they call it k2 right they were the first kind of tip of the spear when uh 9-11 had just happened they were deployed to this base in uzbekistan that was

They were there for a day or two and people started getting incredibly sick.

It was very clear that this was an old base that had been used for some chemical weapon things and all. So,

you know, as they were bulldozing berms and setting stuff up,

a lot of soldiers got sick. So they sent in an environmental team that they got in with hazmat suits and the whole thing.

This environmental team found traces of nerve agents. They found obviously the normal, you know, PFAS and they found the normal toxic, but, you know, the general levels of,

you know, benzenes and dioxins and all kinds of other shit. And what they also found was yellow cake, uranium.
They had Geiger-Counter readings.

There was a gentleman named Nick Nichols who was part of that team and who filed a report

about the conditions at this base. This is in

2002, I believe.

Since then,

many of these soldiers have gotten incredibly sick with all kinds of from osteoporosis to cancers to all kinds of other things. And they have not been able to get the government to recognize,

for the most part, up until a little bit last year, the toxins that were there, even though

that report was there.

They to this day deny

that that report

found what it found or existed.

And I've been on the calls with, there was a general that we were on a call with about that report.

And

when Nick went over what the yellow cake and uranium readings were, because they'll say it's depleted uranium and not, you know,

yellow cake uranium.

When they went over the report, the general said on the call, this is the first time I'm hearing about it. This call was in 2023,

20 years, 21 years afterwards.

What Nick said was, that's surprising because

you were

the officer that I presented this report to originally

20 years ago.

So that gets to the kind of, I understand what it says in the Pentagon rules of information, but that's not how they operate.

That has to be worth something in terms of don't we need a complete redo of how

the Pentagon operates in terms of information?

I think yes. Speaking as an enlisted Marine,

there is a two-tiered justice system that exists within the military. And I think that

it is one of the biggest issues that our service members face. There's no transparency.
Try to go to

a court martial on base and see how you can get through the front gate.

And I just think that it is emblematic of

the secrecy and lack of transparency that the military embodies because these are people that are having their lives ruined,

lives completely changed. Sometimes warranted for crimes that they did, but other times

not.

And

the lack of transparency in the court system, I think, is emblematic of the lack of transparency across the rest of the DOD. And the American public would never

be satisfied with court records and a civilian court of law not being readily available to normal reporters or to the American public.

Yet, for some reason, that type of secrecy and withholding information is normal at the DOD and accepted by the American public.

And I think it's time for the American public to speak up and demand the transparency that we deserve from a $1 trillion military machine. One, I agree.
Reform is needed.

Two, part of the reason I was reading that part is that this administration is going completely the opposite direction. It's making things more opaque and less transparent, even if they weren't

transparent before and reform is needed. Instead of moving in that direction, they're moving in the complete opposite direction to make it even harder to get information

and to build any kind of trust with the American public. And Nancy,

what's your frustration with the system as it holds? You know, this is the line that has been drawn. And I guess my overarching question is,

shouldn't we draw a line

much

clearer beyond like, I'm not signing this pledge? Isn't there a deeper issue here that maybe this gives us an opportunity to address?

Well, a couple things.

I think the challenge that I have is: I don't think anybody would disagree that reforms need to be made and that journalists would want more information more than anyone else.

I just don't see how these changes, and I'm not talking just about evicting the press.

In his September 30th speech on Quantico, Hegseth said we're going to change rules around the DOD Inspector General. We're not going to punish people for minor infractions.

He has laid the groundwork not for more information or reforms or transparency. If he were saying, I want to get more information to the American public, I think you should know more.

That's a different conversation. But he's not saying that, and he's not acting that way.
And in fact, we've already seen that they provide less information. about key things.

It's extraordinary that we don't know who the U.S. is killing

in international waters. We don't know.
Right. And we can't get the answer.
And now they can't talk to Congress. And we're hearing from the Hill.
We're not getting answers either.

So I think there do need to be changes. I think one of the things you've seen this press corps fight for way before this was for more information.
And it's one of the reasons we did the embeds.

We were willing to do anything to get some fidelity on what was being asked of troops, what was happening. So I think you are seeing a

press corps trying to address this. And part of that is by reporting the stories just in the last week that they don't want out there.

I'm not sure that we would know that those two people survived were it not reported by Reuters. I'm not sure that we would know about some of the

things that are happening in the Pentagon without that reporting. So I think you make a valid point.

The information hasn't,

there are changes that need to be made, but I don't know. I feel like it's a doctor saying you have migraines and the prescription is a sledgehammer to the head and you don't have a headache anymore.

I think it's true, you know, but my point is they're going to want to take the hammer to the head, and maybe what it's going to do, you know, they always say, like, you know, certain people, if you lose your sight, other senses kind of grow there.

That maybe

it can be a net positive for, you know, I've seen the reporting that Thomas's group does, and that's with very little access and like really scrappy. And maybe the recognition that, oh, these guys are

like really want it to function like it does in more authoritarian countries is going to spark this sort of much more decentralized

kinds of information gathering and reporting that may ultimately do exactly what you're saying, Nancy.

It may. It may.

I just think there's, I don't know, it gives me pause that somebody who's in charge of the department doesn't want to answer questions from anyone other than those who agree with him.

I worry about information where the American public is potentially getting two different versions of the same event because there is what sort of these approved media say and what the unapproved media say.

And I think because the organization is so big, when you give an organization nearly a trillion dollars, they have their fingerprints in everything. The military touches things beyond comprehension.

The hesitancy that you're hearing to me is because we've already seen less information coming out and we're seeing more and more deployment of U.S.

troops in ways we haven't seen them in a more law enforcement capacity.

I think that could lead to it, but I'm also seeing service members being threatened. I've had spokesmen say to me they're afraid to talk to me because of the restrictions that are being put in place.

You're seeing generals and admirals afraid to talk to their predecessors because they don't know if they're going to get questioned.

reported in some authoritarian regime and I spent two years in Egypt in the sort of post-Arab Spring era. And yes, there was incredible independent journalism that happened.

But there was also

less fidelity in terms of what was happening.

And there will come a moment when the United States finds itself in some sort of conflict and the ability to have that information, that back and forth, the lack of that will be harmful.

I mean, I'll give you a very small example. Yeah, please.

So During the Iran strikes,

some of my colleagues had learned about it and the military came to us and said, for the safety of

the crew, can you not report it until they're in safe space? And we did that.

Now, we don't do everything that they ask for, but there was an acknowledgement that we have to treat that information responsibly.

I just, I can't wrap my mind around the idea that having less engagement leads to better understanding.

And that's, that's, maybe it's my own personal hiccup, but that's the roadblock that i keep hitting i think you already are seeing a better press court i think you could continue to see it but i just can't reconcile the idea right that that do you think access is is really a crucial

not access the engagement that happens that the that we as a country expect those who are accountable for the lives of two million troops those who are making those decisions answer questions answer questions that they don't like i think that i think that to me is the simplest and most direct

case to be made for that to come. And Thomas, you were vigorously nodding when you said, I've had sources say that they were afraid, because I think what Nancy is pointing out is

really

the heart of it, which is somebody standing up in front of somebody else and answering

to the issues that are occurring. And that seems like that's going to be going away.
But you seem to be agreeing that people are afraid now, even within the organization.

Yes, I think Nancy's probably had this too. I mean, you obviously talk about source protection with the people that you speak with, and

that was always part of the conversation. But now it's absolutely one of the first things that are discussed, or hey, can we move this to Signal or Proton or some type of secure area?

And the fear in talking to the press,

the generals and senior officers were always a bit more hesitant to talk to me. And I had much more of a foothold in the enlisted side of things.

And like the fear among the lower enlisted troops right now of speaking up and being outed

is very intense. And I would say it extends outside of the building to our allies.

We've tried to follow up to some of the Afghans that were brought to the United States, and even they don't want to talk out of fear of deportation. So these policies are impacting

myriad areas of the Defense Department and service members and veterans in multiple ways.

Dave, are you getting a sense that that now there is a culture that is not about protecting the security of the United States, but just about exerting control?

Yeah, absolutely get that from, you know, people in the government and people recently out of the government that I speak with. This really, and Nancy talked about it, authoritarian regimes.

I mean, this

reminds me of the old Soviet days of minders, right? Remember where the Soviets would have people that would rat one another out? Um, that's this culture of fear. And Nancy talked about it earlier.

That's what the Pentagon has done is create this culture of fear that people are afraid

of getting polygraphed, of getting demoted, of getting fired, of being threatened for telling the truth. Right.
And that, to me, is the most dangerous part of all of this.

A culture of retribution seems to be taking place. Absolutely.
So here I want want to flip it on its head because I remain optimistic. And I'll tell you why.

This feels like they are grafting an alien culture onto American culture. Americans are not accustomed to this level of sycophancy and control.

And I truly do believe they'll reject it.

And that this type of suppression, you know, Nancy, you mentioned Egypt, but these are societies that were, you know, Mubarak was there for God knows how long as an autocrat.

They had a year of Morsi and then back to Cece. And, you know, again,

our culture is not, this is not indigenous to how we view ourselves and how we view the press's role and how we view the government's role.

I think this is going to be a harder blanket for them to smother us with, if that makes sense. Does that resonate with any of you at all, Nancy? I mean, my concern is

there is an erosion of trust in the media. That's part of what we've been discussing.

And there is,

we haven't talked about it, but there's a social media element. What I've discovered in the course of my career is that readers increasingly expect us to validate their point of view.
And so

I worry that

once we create these sort of

separate systems, ecosystems of journalism and information, that this will further put people on their own islands rather than sort of encourage the kind of engagement that this country is founded on.

Because you're right, the whole premise of this country was we are going to have the people govern, and we're going to do it through engagement and discourse, not violence.

And it started with a free press. That's part of that

process.

So, I'm optimistic in that I think people value a free press. I think that 60 organizers or however many it was,

I don't even know how many organizations, dozens of organizations independently came to this conclusion and weren't willing to give up that principle for something

that could have been allowed them to stay in the building makes me hopeful.

But I just can't help but worry because I'm watching how our readers are engaging. And there's so much

people on their own sort of ecosystems of information that before it gets better, I worry that this can become more entrenched in the short term.

Yeah, it's an interesting, it's an interesting question, which is, will there be a demand?

As much as people, I think, you know, the silos that people are in in terms of social media is not necessarily the country at large. And I still think this country has the ability to be shocked.

And I know that ultimately those kinds of,

you know, larger moments were like the Pentagon Papers or or the fact that there were no wmds those things still have an ability to stun the public at large and i think the more that they try and suffocate that flow of information

the more opportunity they give for that kind of moment to happen again even if it's a snowden type moment look it's a fair point you know as we were packing up i was getting unsolicited messages from sources saying I'm going to continue to talk to you.

And they weren't doing it to be defiant of their civilian leadership. They were doing it because they understood they took an oath to the Constitution.

It does create opportunities for the right journalists to stand up and do it. It's going to be harder.
It's going to be more challenging.

But there is a cost as well, is all I'm saying, which is we are still not going to get answers to basic information. And we're already seeing that play out.
With everything, there's an opportunity.

I agree with you. And I am so proud of this press corps that they're already treating this as such in some ways.
You don't see them sort of resigned or begging to get back in. They are persevering.

It's just there will be a cost as well. It's just to me not binary.
Where we fall in that spectrum in terms of information, new information coming out and basic information not coming out

hasn't been settled yet. Right.

Dave, is that the kind of thing that you can see starting to maybe grow from a more kind of bottom-up way? Yes and no.

Again, I agree with Nancy about the echo chamber effect uh and so many people in their information silos that aren't going to

see anything wrong um because they're consuming information that doesn't provide the full perspective you know it's we're often using the uh boiling frog analogy because right it it's it's accurate um

so i guess i share some of your optimism, John, and some of

them.

So do I, by the way.

I don't want to give you the impression that I do that. Thomas, I'll give you the last word on

maybe

how you see this resolving, cracking, negotiating,

and turning out.

I'm actually nervous that this is going to broaden the military and civilian divide. And

if you think about it, most Americans don't have a connection to the military.

And their first and maybe only experience that they're having right now is the National Guard coming into their neighborhood in Chicago or the Marines going into their community in LA.

And like, if that is the only interaction that you are having with service members of the military, then I feel like that's going to significantly damage the relationship between Americans and its military.

So like getting back to like the human implications of all of this, like there are Americans' sons and daughters on

the border right now in Texas and in Chicago right now. And

I am very nervous about where military-civilian relations are going to go because of domestic deployments and the rhetoric that exists right now, not toward journalists, but also within the military.

People saw what Hegset and the commander-in-chief

did with those 800 generals in there. They saw their leadership on full display.

And like I said, I wouldn't follow them into combat after that display of leadership. And I think that I wasn't the only person who was watching.
So

I'm nervous about where this is going to send us on the military display divide journey. Absence of leadership is what we saw.
Yes. Yeah, I think that's such a great point.

But I think actually, Thomas,

you, I think, really brought it around to a really fantastic human point, which is,

you know, the military is already a relatively opaque organization. There's only, you know, less than 1% 1% of Americans that are in it in a large respect.

It's kept that way purposefully so that you don't have to expend a lot of political capital to do whatever you want with the military, because as you said, its tentacles don't reach.

It's really the burden of it falls on military members and their families. And if that divide,

if there is less understanding between those communities than even there is now,

that could be a really tough situation. And Nancy, I think that's probably what you you were getting at a little earlier as well.
Yes. Yeah, Thomas said it better.

No, that, but I'm telling you, like, as soon as you said that, I was like, oh, shit, that's so,

boy, that's, that's the roughest thing.

And unfortunately for you, Thomas, that makes War Horse and the work that you guys do independently that much more important because that's kind of the focus anyway.

And I think, Nancy, for you as well, like that makes, that makes what you guys do even more crucial in this moment. So I wish, I wish you guys the best.
And Dave, you know, know,

you're on the other side of it, but understanding it really, really well as well.

Guys, I want to thank you all for coming and having the conversation.

And it just points again to the importance of getting the information out about what this trillion-dollar behemoth that all of our lives, unfortunately,

it impacts, as well as for military members and their families. Nancy Youssef, staff writer at the Atlantic, covering national security and defense.

Thomas Bren, the founder and executive director of the War Horse, and retired Marine Corps Colonel, David LaPan, former acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations.

Guys, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you.
Thank you for having us. Thank you.
Thanks for the conversation.

You know, I was interested, and I wonder how you guys feel about this in

their honest

feeling about the veracity of the information that they get and the lack of spin around it,

it seemed

as though, like, I understand the factual stuff and all that, but you know, I guess my view of the Pentagon is that it's so opaque and so spin-oriented that I guess I was surprised by that.

I guess when your baseline is you're expecting that, there's a story in what they do decide to tell you. Right.

Like, there is a value to it, even if you're familiar with the spin that it sometimes comes with. Not having access to even the spin, I guess, for them.

It's like what I think what Nancy said about just like making the aperture smaller and smaller of just like what you can even

learn and what you have access to. Like, I don't know if they take everything at face value, but I think that they appreciate the opportunity to talk to people.

Right, right.

I think they'll still have that, I hope well for now i think the point they were making about the sources uh being scared is is tough because that's what you really need to report from the inside is the people who are experiencing it who don't necessarily have the power to change it no and earlier this year the justice department reinstated that rule making it um

easier for them to like find journalists records and leak investigations. And I mean, none of this is happening in a vacuum.
And it's no great mystery why this administration is against the media.

The scale of corruption and incompetence is staggering. So Jillian Spear going in hard.
Listen, why do you got to stagger? Why do you got to fly a diarrhea plane right into the?

I mean,

yeah, no, it's, I, I can, I completely

agree with that. And the hope is that as the aperture gets smaller,

life finds a way that it goes around it. And hopefully, that it doesn't rely on a Snowden,

an Ellsberg. Like, hopefully, it won't rely on the heroism of a whistleblower, but rather

that cracks in that dam will occur. We become more of the culture.
Yes.

But also to lose access to a Taco Bell in your basement, that's also devastating. Criminal.

Brittany, I got to tell you, I didn't want to say anything about that because I know how devastating that can be. But, you know, for me, for vegetarians, like Taco Bell is it, man.

Crunch wrap supreme, no beef. Okay, that's a hot tip.
That's another vegetarian.

Oh, Taco Bell is wherever you are on the road, talk about like, there's always the like McDonald's Big Mac, no meat, but then you got to spend at least five minutes at the drive-in.

the drive-through going like, no, no, no, no, no meat. He goes, well, that's not a Big Mac.
No, I understand. I'm saying

they've never heard the words before.

Here's what I want. No beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese, pickled onions on a sesame seed bun, but not the beef patties.
I want the other parts of the song,

but not the beef patties. So a Big Mac? No, I

it takes a while. Brittany, what do we got from this week? What's anybody, what do we

just a caveat? As a friendly reminder, if you don't want to answer any questions, you can always pass or phone a friend. Ooh, pass.
All right, here we go.

All right.

First up. Pass.

Oh, I'm sorry. I jumped the gun.
I jumped the gun.

That was my fault.

What are your thoughts on Ellison now wanting to buy Warner Brothers? When

he has enough, enough. He should have it all.

My guy should have it all.

He should be the leader of all. Why? Can I ask you a question? Why are there other media companies? Shouldn't they all just be one?

Shouldn't we get to a point where we're all just fired and hired by the same guy? Just one guy controls all of

the media. What could go wrong? That's what I say.
We definitely all know who we're talking about or talking shit about our bosses. It's all the same guy.
It would really bring the country together.

Lauren, it's about time we all shared the same media source. I have always said my complaint with the media is that there's just too many different aspects of it.
Oh my God.

And if we all just shared the same IP, we all become one. Isn't that what diversity, equity, and inclusion is all about? We solved it.
We all become the same thing. Why should we be fiefdoms?

Yeah, I, for one, am excited to work at one company and shop at one store and watch one channel and one movie. I think it's going to be

the stress I feel when I go to the library and I look up and there's all these different books. And I think, wouldn't it be easier if there was just one book? And enough copies for everyone.

The King James Bible. Right.
Gutenberg Bible and done.

Your wish may come true.

It does look that way, doesn't it? It is wild to think of, though. Like, it's, you know, because now there's going to be like, you know, a bloodletting at Paramount, I think.

It might even be this week or next week. And then if they merge with the other thing, like another one, like, it's, this is how it all runs now in the media industry.

It's, it's a wild it's a wild time uh what what what was the other what there was another one

yes okay instead of demolishing the white house wouldn't it be more cost-effective for trump to just make mar-a-lago the new white house and palm beach the new capital that's so smart That's a smart, I don't know who wrote that in, but that's, that's somebody that is fiscally responsible.

That is somebody that is looking out for the debt and

that America is cow. That is a way to cover.
By the way, I don't know if any of you have ever had to even try to redo a bathroom, but it is a shit show when it comes to permits and everything else.

And these guys just were like, I'm going to build a ballroom. All right, Tuesday, I'll have a, I mean, he's got a literal wrecking ball.
Bulldozer. By

the Eastern. And my favorite thing was there was an article that just came out that was

because of outcry, White House is considering releasing

their plan to rebuild the ball. And they're like, wait a minute.

There was no, there's no plan. There's no plan? Because he had said, he had literally said, we are not affecting the structure of the White House.
The White House will remain sacrosanct.

It will not be touched. And then the first picture is like a giant, like Miley Cyrus on a rectangle

going right through a window on the east wing.

And they're like, oh, oh, you wanted to see it. Like, is the White House not a historic building? Like, have you ever tried to fuck with a historic building? It is nearly impossible.

And the New York Times article was like, It was always hard to believe given the scale of the project. I'm like, Was it, was it hard to believe?

Like,

the marble buildup was no tell to what was coming. Well, they said

somehow the ballroom, which was going to hold 600 people, is now going to hold a thousand people. And you're like, how many, when?

How? What?

Sounds really good.

How often? They're going to have a building larger than the White House that's like, they're going to have to rent this fucking thing out for bar mitzvahs to make any money now.

Like mar-a-lago.

Full circle. Going back to the original idea, which one of our astute listeners came up with, which was just switch it.
He's got to be president forever anyway. What's the difference?

And if not, he'll just hand it over to one of the, I mean, that's, he's got a whole brood now. so he can hand it over to one of them and just keep it down there.

I'm very excited about this, and then they'll put up the arc to Trump. Yeah, everything's going great,

son of a bitch. Brittany, how do they keep in touch with us? Twitter, we a weekly show pod, Instagram, threads, tick tock, blue sky, we weekly show podcasts.

And you can like, subscribe, and comment on our YouTube channel, The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart. Is that those are the only options, right? Like, subscribe, and comment.
There's no other.

I wonder if that's all of the options.

Share.

I don't think that is share.

Sure.

Well done, Lauren. Thank you guys very much.
As always, lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Brittany Mamedovic, producer Jillian Spear, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola,

audio editor and engineer Nicole Boyce, executive producers Chris McShane, Katie Gray.

Thank you guys once again for helping me through another episode of the Weekly Show podcast. We'll see you next week.

Boy boy.

The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart is a comedy central podcast. It's produced by Paramount Audio and Bus Boy Productions.

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