10-1-25 - 8am - Hegseth Speech

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, good morning Michael and Redbeard. I really enjoyed Peace
makes Sis. That was amazing. Do you be in general?

Speaker 2 (00:08):
It's got a assi of BMI and a huge yes.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Now I gotta start working out.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
I'll be funny. Well, this is all we're going to
talk about a little bit, the reaction to There were
two distinct speeches given yesterday, obviously in two different individuals.
When I I was able to watch the Secretary of

(00:39):
War speech on an official Pentagon YouTube site, so there
was no commentary. It was just the speech, and I
leaned back in my chair, put my feet on top
of the desk, and I watched every single bit of it.

(01:03):
I was amazed because he which is a good thing
speak If you ever are a keynote speaker large gathering
like that, One of the things that I do is
I always tell the organizers I want a lavlier wireless

(01:25):
microphone because I want to walk the stage. And the
reason I want to walk the stage is when you
have a group where you have and this is a
there was a mezzanine, a mezzanine and an upper level,
so you had in the in the lower in the
orchestra seats, so to speak, you had all the generals

(01:47):
and admirals, and then you probably had some n c
O s and some others that were up in the
in the mezzanine level, and then you had what was
I assume the media, or maybe it was reversed. You
get media there. And one reason that I like to
step out from behind the lectern and the podium is

(02:09):
to walk the stage because you know where the lights
are and you can't see the audience. But occasionally if
you walk side by side, now you have to avoid pacing.
You can't just pace back and forth. Pete seemed to
do a little bit of that yesterday. But you go
to one corner and you address and speak, even though

(02:30):
you can't see them. You speak to that portion of
the audience, and then you maybe walk to the other
side and you speak to that group for a little bit,
and then you walk in the middle and you tee
and you mix it up, primarily to keep their attention.
When you're sitting in an auditorium like that and you're
speaking to a group that size, people are one. They're

(02:52):
crammed in. It's like going to see a you know,
you're going to a Broadway play, so you're crammed into
a seat, and you're stuck there for a while and
intermission except here, your your boss is speaking, so you're
stuck there, and you're a general or an admiral, so
you're already sitting at attention. I noticed many on the
front row taking notes, which I found interesting. I'm sure

(03:17):
they were taking down some of the things he said, uh,
because they probably wanted to go back to their people
and repeat and emphasize some of the things that the
Secretary of War said. I was also amazed because there
were teleprompters set up at the lectern now down below,

(03:39):
on the on the edge of the on the on
the edge of the auditorium, on the edge of the
platform were black boxes. Those black boxes were probably teleprompters,
because I don't think that he could have memorized and

(04:00):
delivered this speech as well as he did from memory.
So I think there were teleprompters along the edge of
the platform, so as he walked the stage, he could
glance at the teleprompter and deliver his speech. And I
also think that he knew exactly what he wanted to say.
Between whatever his input was and the input of his

(04:22):
speech writers, they came up with something that was quintessential
Pete Hegsen and delivered with finesse, and delivered with the
right emphasis and sometimes the right emphasis on the right
syllables and sometimes the right syllables. It was very good.

(04:42):
It was very very good. Watched every bit of it,
and I kept thinking to myself, I wonder what they're thinking.
I wonder if the generals and the admirals were thinking.
And then I got to thinking about the press sitting
up there, because every time that Heggsas said something that,
if you take it out of context, is an awful

(05:06):
thing to say, he added the context. And now we know,
of course that, because I then I the other thing
I did last night, See I know how to consume news.
The other thing. I watched the speech, and then I
did something that always irritates Tamra, but last night didn't care.

(05:26):
Gotta be careful when I say that, otherwise to get
a fr frying pan on my head. I wanted to
see what the networks had to say about it, so
I thought, well, who'll be the worst? Well, I can't
stand the whole new format of CBS with those two
y'all who's sitting there? And I didn't really know why.
I don't even know who's has Lesterholt left NBC. Now,

(05:47):
who's still doing the NBC Nightly News? Is it Lester?
I know he's retiring, but I don't know when. So
I thought, let's go to David Muhror ABC World News tonight.
And it was exactly what I expect. Infected focused on
exactly the things I expected him to focus on. Oh,
he's sexist and you know he doesn't want women in

(06:10):
combat and blah blah blah. No, no, nothing, that's not
at all what this speech was about. The speech was
about warriors, and the speech was about standards, and the
language that he used was Now, I've never he's written

(06:31):
a book called The War on Warriors, and he tweeted
out hagsas did he tweeted out yesterday today we end
the War on Warriors, obviously referencing his book and his
old attitude about a warrior mentality. That's what was delivered yesterday.

(06:53):
Now I've heard two forms of commentary. One is General
Jack Keen, who is a news contributor who is the
head of the Institute for the Study of War. Don't
always agree with General King, but I respect his opinions,
and when he speaks about anything going on around the world,
I listen closely to what he has to say. He

(07:16):
loved the speech, and his interpretation was that those generals
in the room jump probably to a tee. He thinks
almost all of them loved the speech too, except for maybe,
you know, I don't want fat generals because some of
them probably are a little overweight and getting a little

(07:36):
chunky and a little out of shape. But they probably
love the idea that they are empowered now to do
what they enlisted to do, and that was to be
the best war fighting machine on the face of the earth. Now,

(07:56):
I will say, is a footnote right here. Has talked
about we're going to give you the weapons you need.
That's going to be a heavy lift because and he
mentioned specifically shipbuilding, we have no shipbuilding capability. That's going
to take years to develop, and it's going to take

(08:19):
billions and billions and billions of dollars to do. I
don't think that we are keeping up. I don't know
what darp is doing because I don't get brief by
DARPA anymore. But I don't know what the Defense Research
Agency is doing in terms of coming up with new weaponry.
What are we doing in terms of cyber what's the
Space Command doing in terms of missile defense? You know,

(08:43):
I'm not briefed on this stuff anymore. It only comes
from publicly available domain information and what I'm able to
occasionally get out of somebody that has been briefed, Can
you give me a little hint about what's going on?
So I think that's one area where the General's probably thought, yeah,
we'll believe it when we see it, and rightfully so.

(09:04):
Now having said that, Trump is indeed trying to re
weaponize the military, and he's trying to increase the number
of submarines and ships and fighter jets and drones and
everything else that we need. But he's behind. He's doing
what he needs to do, but he's behind. And that's

(09:26):
not all Trump's fault. That's Congress's fault too. And that's
also another example of where we have our priorities wrong.
For example, somebody on the text line ask because I
made the comment about we spend too much money on
these entitlement programs, and somebody said, well, you know what, person,
you know it's probably not as much as you think. Really,

(09:51):
my question to one of the AI platforms, was this,
what percentage of the federal budget are entitlements and income transfers?
Because I wanted to include Medicare, Medicaid, social Security, and
I wanted to include anything like food stamps, healthcare benefits,
anything that is an income transfer. In other words, it's

(10:12):
money that I paid in that you paid in as taxes,
but it gets transferred to another person who did not
pay taxes or paid less taxes than you and I did,
and so they get some of our money in the
form of some sort of a benefit. The major entitlement programs,
including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, food stamps, and all

(10:35):
the other healthcare programs, consume fifty percent of all federal
spending in twenty twenty three and continue to represent roughly
half of the federal budget into twenty twenty five. Social
Security twenty one percent of the federal budget around one
point four trillion dollars. Health insurance programs Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ACA,

(10:56):
marketplace subsidies, those together make up about twenty five four
percent of the budget approximately one point five trillion. One
point five trillion, So social Security and those health insurance
programs together account for what two point nine trillion worth
three trillion dollars, And we haven't done anything in terms

(11:18):
of militarizing our military. We haven't done anything in terms
of building a new bridge or a federal highway somewhere.
We haven't done anything in terms of whatever it takes
to guarantee our rights. The first under the Bill of
Rights that food stamps is about one point five percent

(11:38):
of federal spending. All of the transfer type entitlements collectively
form half a federal spending half. Now I haven't broken
down to see what the other half is in terms
of military versus non military, but military is going to

(11:59):
probably get not to be it's not going to be
fifty percent of that fifty. So we're behind because we're
spending money on the wrong things and we are facing
serious I believe existential threats. I do believe that the
Chinese Communist Party is an existential threat to this country.

(12:22):
I do not believe that climate change is an existential threat.
I don't want to spend any money on climate change.
If some university wants to go spend some money of
its own to study the climate and how it changes
and everything have at it, I don't think that's a
federal function. I don't think we all be spending money.

(12:43):
Oh but Michael, well, how are we going to know
what's happening? What about Noah? Well, what's Noah doing? So far?
The information that we get from Noah is all diluted
it and it's been poisoned, and it's not correct and
it's inaccurate. So Noah, what budget? I know, I know

(13:04):
they're right up there. I'm pointing to them right now.
I know they're up there. Tell me what they do.
Back to the speeches. So then I try to find
Trump's speech. I couldn't find it on the Pentagon website.
Maybe there now it was, at least it wasn't yesterday.
But I did find NBC News covering. So I go

(13:27):
through the Trump speech, and of course starts out with
a joke something to the effect, I've never walked into
the crowd this quiet. Well, of course it's the commander
in chief. And they are, as I say, sitting at attention.
They're not there. They are trained not to. I've always
been fascinated by you know, I was trained as a

(13:51):
child that when at particularly Christmas time, when the hallelu hallelujah,
courus uh starts, you stand up, and when it's done,
you don't applaud, handles hallelujah. Course you stand out of respect,
and then you sipped. Generals are trained the same way.

(14:14):
The commander in chief comes in, you stand and you
stay standing until the commander in chief tells you to
sit down. You don't applaud. You show discipline, discipline, and
that's what they showed. But the civilians at NBC News thought, well,
he tried to make a joke and it wasn't very funny.
Then he joked about, oh, feel free. You can do

(14:37):
whatever you want to do if you want to. You know,
if you want to stand up and leave, you can leave.
Of course, if you leave, you know you're gonna lose
your rank and your pension and everything else. Trump's just
not very good at delivering jokes. But it was obvious
to me it was a joke. But nobody laughed. They
didn't laugh because they didn't think it was funny. They
didn't laugh because they thought it was funny. But they're
disciplined not to laugh. They didn't laugh because that's not

(14:59):
what they do. That's just not what they do. At
some point in Haigesa's speech, He pointed out that we're
not they are not civilians. We are separate apart from
the civilians. We are supposed to be a cohesive, disciplined unit.

(15:24):
And he's right about that. So that got into some
things that he said that really caused civilians, particularly in
the cabal, to lose it, to utterly lose it. One

(15:47):
simple example, which I don't do, I have everything plugnant.
Double click there, Michael, it's a double click, and I
don't know what Maybe this one's I think this is
a gradium. This is what our service problem. Yeah, we

(16:09):
got time. We'll do this. See if this one plays.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
Upholding and demanding high standards is not toxic. Enforcing high
standards not toxic.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Leadership.

Speaker 2 (16:22):
Leading warfighters toward the goals of high, gender neutral, and
uncompromising standards in order to forge a cohesive, formidable, and
lethal department of War is not toxic. It is our
duty consistent with our constitutional oath.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Real toxic leadership is endangering subordinates with low standards.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
Real toxic leadership is promoting people based on immutable characteristics
or quotas instead of based on merit. Real toxic leadership
is promoting destructive ideologies that are in an anathema for the
Constitution and the laws of nature, and nature's goe.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Bingo, spot on, absolutely spot on. By the way, the
other thing I noticed about NBC News, which are you
reminded about? That? As I was listening to it, they
introduced him as the former Fox and Friends' host and
now Secretary of War Pete Hegsy. Okay, completely ignore his

(17:23):
military experience. Yeah, just ignore that, bastards.

Speaker 4 (17:30):
Tom from South Dakota. You have me all worried with
this hysteria about the government shutdown. I'm so concerned tonight
that the National Forest Service won't have enough money to
light up the shrine to Democracy Mount Rushmore, and I
won't be able to see Mount Rushmore from my deck

(17:50):
tonight because the government doesn't have enough money to pay
its electric bills to turn on Mount.

Speaker 3 (18:00):
Then you need to go to Cabela's and buy a
bunch of gigant you know, big ass flashlights, and then
drive up to the monument, get out, you know, park
there in the lot, and then go around to where
the railing is and then you stand there and shine
your flashlights up on the heads. Okay, do your duty,
do your civic duty. We do have. So, yes, we've

(18:24):
got a couple of ship building yards, but they're not adequate.
Now you think about Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor is a
naval shipyard, but it's for maintenance and repairs, it's not
for ship building. I don't think we know accurately how
many ship building ports we actually have. Yeah, we have

(18:46):
bath Maine, and we've got a few others. But whatever
we have is insufficient because China is building naval warships
at a rate faster than we are. There are some
reports out there that China builds about six ships for
every one that we build. That's humongous. And remember, if

(19:14):
we go to war, inevidably some ships are going to
be lost. So we need to We need to get
in a much stronger posture of strength than we are now.
Otherwise we can be the most fierce war fighting unit
in the entire universe. But if they can outgun us

(19:37):
an out manus, then just they'll just run over us.
And I do worry about that. Back to Heggs's speech,
the best way to care for the troops is through
this is addressing the generals in the room. Now, I

(19:57):
confess that I had slight concern. I think I said
it on air about bringing all of those commanders from
all those joint forces and all you know, northcomb, southt com,
all of bringing them all in to one place because

(20:18):
you never know when something's going to happen. I know
they have people behind them, and they have people that stayed,
and we're ready to become operational on them, you know,
on a second's notice. But once I heard the speech,
I thought to myself in terms of leadership, in terms

(20:39):
of having that face to face moment when they can
see you and not over a stupid zoom call where
you know you're getting interrupted or you're tuba or whatever
you might be doing. Not that the generals will be
doing that, but you know they get distracted. I think
it was well worth it.

Speaker 1 (21:00):
Today is about people and it's about culture.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
The topic today is about the nature of ourselves, because
no plan, no program, no reform, no formation will ultimately
succeed unless we have the right people and the right
culture at the War Department.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
If I've learned one core.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Lesson in my eight months in this job, it's that
personnel is policy.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
Personnel is policy.

Speaker 2 (21:31):
The best way to take care of troops is to
give them good leaders committed to the war fighting culture
of the department.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Not perfect leaders.

Speaker 2 (21:40):
Good leaders competent, qualified, professional, agile, aggressive, innovative, risk taking
a political faithful to their oath.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
And to the Constitution.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
Eugene Sledge, in his World War II memoir wrote quote,
war is brutish in glory and a terrible waste.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Combat leaves an indelible mark on those who are forced
to endure it.

Speaker 2 (22:06):
The only redeeming factors are my comrade's incredible bravery and
their devotion to each other.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
In combat, there are thousands of variables.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
As I learned in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as so
many of you did in so many more places. Leaders
can only control about three of them. You control how
well you're trained, mostly how well you're equipped, and the
last variable is how well you lead.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
After that, you're on your own.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Our warfighters are entitled to be led by the best
and most capable leaders.

Speaker 1 (22:41):
That is who we need you all to be.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Even then, in combat, even if you do everything right,
you may still lose people because the enemy always gets
a vote. We have a sacred duty to ensure that
our warriors are led by the most capable and qualified
combat leaders.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
This is one thing you and I can control and
we owe it to the force to deliver it.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Amen. It is indeed about leadership, and that is what
they are called to do to lead them. I just
he was absolutely right. He goes on to say, I.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Don't want my son serving alongside troops who are out
of shape, or in combat unit with females who can't
meet the same combat arms physical standards as men, or
troops who are not fully proficient on their assigned weapons,
platform or task, or under a leader who was the
first but not the best. Standards must be uniform, gender neutral,

(23:45):
and high. If not, they're not standards, they're just suggestions,
suggestions that get our sons and daughters killed.

Speaker 1 (23:59):
When it comes to combat at arms units. And there
are many.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Different stripes across our joint force.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
The era of politically.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
Correct, overly sensitive don't hurt anyone's feelings.

Speaker 1 (24:11):
Leadership ends right now at every level.

Speaker 2 (24:17):
Either you can meet the standard, either you can do
the job. Either you are disciplined, fit and trained, or
you are out. And that's why today at my direction,
and this is the first of ten Department of War
directives that are arriving at your commands, as we speak
and in your inbox today. At my direction, each service

(24:40):
will ensure that every requirement for every combat mos, for
every designated combat arms position returns to the highest male
standard only because this job is life or death. Standards
must be met and not just met.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
At every level.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
We should seek to exceed the standard, to push the envelope,
to compete its common sense and core.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
To who we are and what we do.

Speaker 2 (25:06):
It should be in our DNA today at my direction,
we are also adding a combat field test for combat
arms units that must be executable in any environment, at
any time, and with combat equipment. These tests they'll look familiar.
They'll resemble the Army Expert Physical Fitness Assessment or the

(25:26):
Marine Corps Combat Fitness Test. I'm also directing the warfighters
in combat jobs execute their Service Fitness Test at a
gender neutral, age normed male standard score above seventy percent.
It all starts with physical fitness and appearance. If the
Secretary of War can do regular hard PT, so can

(25:50):
every member of our joint force.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Frankly, it's tiring to.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
Look out at combat formations or really any formation and
see fat troops. Likewise, it's completely unacceptable to see fat
generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon and
leading commands around the country in the world.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
It's a bad look. It is bad and it's not
who we are.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
So whether you're an airborne ranger or a chair borne ranger,
a brand new private or a four star general, you
need to meet the height and weight standards and pass
the PT tests.

Speaker 1 (26:22):
And as the Chairman said, yes there is no PT test, but.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Today, at my direction, every member of the Joint Force
at every rank is required to take a PT test
twice a year, as well as meet height and weight
requirements twice a year every year of service. Also today,
at my direction, every warrior across our Joint Force is

(26:46):
required to do PT every duty day.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Should be common SATs.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
I mean most units do that already, but we're codifying
and we're not talking like hot yoga instretching.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Real hard PT.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
There's either as a unit or as an individual at
every level, from the Joint chiefs to everyone.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
In this room to the youngest.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Private leaders, set the standard, and so many of you
do this already, Active Guard and Reserve.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Set the standard. Build a cohesive unit, which means, as
you're going to hear in a minute that DEI and
all of that stuff goes away. Merit based cohesive units
that are designed, as he said at one point in

(27:35):
the speech, to kill people and break things, which is
what we went the military to do. And again gender neutral,
not trying to kick women out. Just have to meet
the standard. So anyone regardless of any immutable characteristic, regardless

(27:56):
of any other characteristic, as long as you meet the standard, ay,
you're part of us. You're part of this unit, the
United States Military. I think about the fact that recruitment
goals have been met or exceeded since Biden left office.

(28:20):
This shows the power of leadership and focused on a mission,
whether it's the military or this private sector, a military
unit or a private company. When you define the mission
and then you give people the tools, the ability, and

(28:40):
the flexibility to go meet that mission. People, excel I found,
as he told the generals too, you'll make mistakes and
that's okay. And in fact, we're going to change the
record keeping requirements so if you make an honest mistake,
it's not going to stay on your record forever. I

(29:01):
always told my staff that I want you to go
out and if you need to break the rules, break
the rules, just make sure I know about it before
it appears in the Washington Post. And I had people
that would follow me to the end of the earth
and still to this day would do that leadership. What
I saw Hesath's display yesterday in a single forty five

(29:24):
minute speech was saying to all of I mean everybody,
because everybody in the entire all the services are going
to hear that speech at one point or another, and
they're going to see between that and the Chairman of
the Joint chiefs, Oh, there's new leadership in town, and

(29:45):
we get to do our mission, which I think is
why most of them joined the military in the first place.
Right government shut down my ass State patrolmans just pulled
me for speeding. I hope you had the program turned
up really loud and you said, well, I was busy

(30:07):
listening to the situation with Michael Brown, because he would
have then said, oh, in that case, just move along.
Not because he thinks that this program is great, because
that proves that you're crazy and he wants to get
away from you because you're dangerous. One of the things

(30:33):
that has worried me is our ability to conduct a
long term, a lengthy battle war against someone like Russia
or China that could easily devolve into a world war.

(31:00):
I think this is a recognition, this speech, these ten
new defense policies, is a recognition that we probably can't.
I mean, I'm not trying to be negative about the speech.
I'm just trying to say, why, after six seven, eight
months in office does Hagsith come out and make this

(31:22):
speech today yesterday? And I think it's because they recognize
that much like American society, the military has in many ways. Now, Look,
I've known lots of enlisted people, I've known a couple
of generals. I've well, actually i've known a lot of generals,

(31:43):
so the whole gamut of the military status system. And
they always complain, as we all do about all of
our companies and our businesses. But they're life and death
and they are our defense system that protects this soil

(32:10):
and protects our way of life. And to stand before
the generals and say standards, gender neutral, immutable characteristics don't matter,
merit matters, and that we're all going to be held
to that same standards. And is that his comment, which

(32:35):
in the speech was kind of glossed over the three
things that you're trained well, that you have your weapons,
and he added to the best that we can, and
then leadership, those three things that you want when you're
in combat. I think that second thing. I think we're

(32:57):
addressing the first and third things. And I know Trump's
trying to address the second thing, which is weaponry, but
until we start reprioritizing national defense and that doesn't mean
just building more bombs necessarily, but understanding that there's now

(33:18):
asymmetric war going on and how do we combat that.