Mike Rose: Fighting for Justice and Integrity in the Military and Service Academies

Episode Transcript
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Al Palmer (00:09):
Welcome America.
This is Al Palmer, your hostfor Stars and Stripes, a
production of Stars, which is anonprofit organization which
seeks to talk about preservingour nation's military and making
sure that they're able to dotheir job every day to save you,
the American public.
Well, I'm happy to have aspecial edition today and we're

(00:33):
gonna talk a little bit aboutone of the most important things
in our society In fact, the onething that makes us most
important in the world thesedays and that is the law.
Our justice system and the waywe pursue it is the one thing
that separates American idealsand values from everything else

(00:54):
probably in the world.
If we don't have the justicesystem to stand up for the
people, then we really don'thave a free country.
So that's going to be thesubject today, and here to help
me with that is a verydistinguished guest and a part
of our STARS family, michael T.
Rose, who's an attorney, a veryprominent attorney, who serves

(01:19):
as the Executive Vice Presidentand Corporate Counsel for STARRS
.
Mike has a gerastate degree fromNew York University School of
Law, where he was an editor ofthe Law Review, and he holds a
master's degree in businessadministration from Harvard
Business School.
He was awarded the highestprofessional rating of AV, which

(01:42):
is on the bar register ofpreeminent lawyers from
Martindale Hubbell.
Mike was an associate attorneyat a major law firm and has
founded and led multiplebusinesses.
In his career Mike was thewinner and plaintiff in a
landmark US Supreme Courtdecision about the Freedom of

(02:02):
Information Act, FOIA and we'lltalk about that some more.
He served four terms as aRepublican state senator in
South Carolina and has lecturedat various universities, college
, professional organizations,and he's been on television a
lot, particularly lately, andthat includes a stint that he

(02:23):
did on CBS 60 Minutes.
So it's a real pleasure towelcome Mike to our show tonight
.
Mike, it's off to you.
Sir, how are you doing today?

Mike Rose (02:36):
I'm doing great, a=l.
Thanks for having me today.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Let me start by it's a pleasureto be here.
Let me start by identifyingmyself the way I would.
As Al said, I am an attorney.
I live in Somerville, southCarolina, about 20 miles from
Charleston.
I live with my wife Vivian in ahouse built in the 1890s.

(03:01):
My daughter lives next door.
Our three grandchildren grew upnext door and her husband, so
we have a safe, comfortable,wonderful life here, within
walking distance of our town.
But I practice law out of myhome office.
As you can see here, I am agraduate of the Air Force

(03:23):
Academy, ew York UniversitySchool of Law and Harvard
Business School.
I spent 10 years going tofull-time college in my early
years, all living in dormitories.
I did serve 13 years as a SouthCarolina state senator.
I've started four privatebusinesses and I now am doing
what I consider my mostimportant endeavor in my life,

(03:50):
which is to serve as ExecutiveVice President and General
Counsel of STARS.
Stars stands for Stand TogetherAgainst Racism and Radicalism
in the Services Inc websitestarsus S-T-A-R-R-Sus two Rs.
And this is important and sortof a culmination of all my

(04:14):
experience in the past, whichreally was four-faceted military
, political, legal and businessbecause I view the future of our
country as in jeopardy andthat's in no small part due to
the deterioration of themilitary, impeding its readiness

(04:39):
and ability to defend ourcountry.
So I now devote virtually afull-time effort, as I have in
the last four years.
To start, the key tounderstanding what I've done in
my life and in my law practicein particular which I think is

(05:02):
substantial is to understand myearly childhood.
My father was the youngest of 12children on a Kentucky
hillbilly subsistence farm.
He joined the Navy the day heturned 17 during World War II.
He met my mother one Saturdaynight at the Englewood
California USO at a dance.
At the end of the war they gotmarried, hitchhiked across the

(05:25):
United States he took her to thehills of Kentucky.
So he went from, she went fromLos Angeles movies and so forth
to no indoor plumbing inKentucky.
Having three children of fouryears, I'm the oldest, so my

(05:45):
earliest memories are Navyhousing projects, quonset huts
on the east or west coast wheremy father is a Navy enlisted man
was stationed.
But due to my familycircumstance I wound up.
My brother, sister and I livein with my grandparents in the
hills of Kentucky.
So we left both parents when Iwas seven.

(06:07):
Now that environment going fromNorfolk, virginia, to Kentucky
might as well have been anotherplanet no indoor plumbing.
I ate entire meals of cornbreadcrumbled up in milk, standing
barefooted at a table whileflies, wasps and dirt garbage
flew around.
I went to a one roomschoolhouse with one teacher

(06:28):
taught eight grades.
Big pot, billy stove in themiddle.
The teacher had one leg andliterally uh, wrote a mule to
school, so he put a mule in thebarn and then get his way over
to the school.
I skipped two grades in thatschool in five years.
I took five.
Two grades in that school infive years.

(06:48):
I took five grades in threeyears.
My dad died, my mother remarriedan Air Force enlistment man at
Charleston, so we moved toCharleston and I was allowed to
keep my grade that I had turnedin Kentucky.
So I graduated from high schoolat 16.
I wanted to go to the Air ForceAcademy.
I did three term papers in highschool about the Air Force
Academy, so but I was too young.

(07:09):
You have to be 17 or 16.
So I went where the Air ForceAcademy recommended that I
prepare for a year.
I went for a year, my firstyear of college at Marion
Military Institute, Marion,Alabama, 30 miles from Selma,
Alabama, during the year of theSelma crisis.

(07:30):
I did get an appointment to theAir Force Academy.
After that I graduated in 1969.
After a year of active duty atLowry Air Force Base, Denver, I
went to New York UniversitySchool of Law on a leave of
absence, meaning the Air Forceallowed me to go but didn't pay
my way.
But then I was to be a lawyerin the Air Force afterwards and

(07:55):
so in law school I understandI'm arriving in New York City
and I don't know a soul there.
All the four colleges I went toI didn't know anybody in the
state and was totallyself-sufficient.
Even when I went to the AirForce Academy, to me it was like

(08:16):
I distinctly recall heaven onearth, even though it was hell
on earth.
But it really was heaven to mebecause I saw all this food I
can't eat it yet, but uh, asmuch as I want, but the, the
beautiful room.
So actually I was lucky.
From the day I entered the airforce academy I never really had
to worry about money like I diduh before.

(08:41):
Anyway, uh I, when I went toNew York City city, didn't know
what LaGuardia Airport was, Ididn't even know what a subway
was.
And the reason I'm telling youthis is that my going to these
schools was a socioeconomicdevelopment of me, not just
academic.
But I had the insight to pursuethe academics and my perception

(09:05):
is that I've gone from one endof the socioeconomic spectrum to
the other, basically going fromthe hills of Kentucky to
Harvard Business School, and itwas a growth experience for me
every step of the way, which I'mvery grateful for.
But in return I feel anobligation to give back and
that's what I've done, primarilyin my law practice.

(09:26):
Now I would just say this isthat a evidence of, I guess I
would say, my impact in law isthat when I attended Harvard
Business School my second year,I took a course called Power and
Influence.

(09:46):
So the 90 students in the classstudied how, historically,
certain people had acquired andused power and influence.
And one day we studied patent.
This is by the case method, soyou read a case about patent and
then we discuss it for 90minutes, 90 students.

(10:06):
And then another day wediscussed Mary Kate, and one day
, while I'm in the class, it wasthe Mike Rose case.
So now the 90 students arediscussing what I had done in my
life as of age 32.
So what are some of the thingsthat I did in my law practice?

(10:32):
Let's start with as a lawstudent, on the law review, I
had to write about something.
I didn't know what law reviewwas, but then I got on it.
And now I got to write aboutsomething and I decided to write
about the Air Force Academy'shonor code because there was no
civilian literature had beenwritten about it, so the public
really didn't know how itoperated and it was to me just

(10:54):
going to be a description of howit worked.
But I expanded it into a twoand a half year $18,000 by by
then those days dollars projectcomparing the conduct, honor and
ethics systems of all fiveservice academies.
And there's a picture of itright there, this book.

(11:27):
It's 190 plus pages long, over1100 footnotes.
It took two and a half years todo and when it was published
within a week, I mean itimmediately got national
publicity and within a week Iwas on 60 Minutes regarding this
, and a link to that 60 Minutessegment also is at the bottom of

(11:50):
my bio on the starsus website.
But I just want to talk aboutthis for a minute.
Understand my perspective is Igrew up in Kentucky, just at the
right age of seven to nine,where I could absorb what was
going on.

(12:10):
And these farmers, many of them, were in one war or another
World War I, World War II,Korean War and they had enlisted
and they quickly became NCOsbecause they were leaders, they

(12:32):
were rugged individualists, theyknew how to fight and when the
battle of bulbs started theydidn't need officers to tell
them how to fight back, theyjust did it.
But they were never officersbecause they didn't have the
education required.
But I heard these farmers I'minternalizing this bragging
about reverently, about westpoint naval academy graduates,

(12:54):
and I remember one uncleactually telling me that the
naval academy was so hard thatas a freshman you had to stay
into attention while the upperclass took tweezers and pulled
your whiskers out one by one andfor some reason I said that's
for me.
So to me it was the epitome ofachievement to aspire to and I

(13:16):
was already being lauded forskipping grades and being smart.
So anyway, when I moved toSouth Carolina Charleston, ,
like I said, let me keep mybrain I graduated at 16.
But my point is, these farmershad an attitude my grandfather
certainly did, of disdain forwhat they call the pretty people
.
The pretty people were peoplethat were wealthy and powerful,

(13:40):
and this may have come from,like the 1700s, where the
wealthy people on the thebi-coastal elites, or it was one
coast elite at that time wouldwear their costumes and wigs and
so forth.
The people in Kentucky judgepeople by merit.
What they could do not pedigree, and so they had a contemptuous

(14:05):
disdain for people that theythought they called pretty
people that were wealthy andpowerful.
They thought because basicinstead of them, because they
didn't like cheating andstealing like the people that
were wealthy and powerful.
So I had a frame of referencewhen I got in the military of
how people who were enlistedwere affected by their leaders

(14:29):
and what happened.
So when I got into, when Iresearched this Law Review
article, I showed that WestPoint and the Air Force Academy
had an honor system conducted ina certain way that was
radically different than theNaval Coast Guard Merchant
Marine Academy and, as of thattime, all the cheating scams

(14:50):
were happening at West Point AirForce Academy.
So I basically advocated thatWest Point Air Force Academy
changed what the three safeservice academies were doing,
which is what wound up happening, which is what wound up
happening.
But also I identified things atthe academies that I concluded

(15:18):
were illegal, and I'll just givean example of this At West
Point.
West Point had a practice calledthe silence the silence Now the
origin of the silence.
The silence, now the origin ofthe silence had to do with
racial discrimination.
I interviewed, by writing thispaper, Benjamin O Davis Jr, west
Point graduate, class 36, whowas the commander of the
Tuskegee Airmen, and heconfirmed to me what was

(15:42):
referenced in his yearbook, westPoint yearbook, that he was
silenced his entire four yearsat West Point solely for being
black.
That means no one spoke to himfor four years.
That means that he sat at atable for three meals a day, at
a table by himself with no onesitting with him and nobody
roomed with him.

(16:02):
He told me this was 99%effective.
It started the second day.
I asked him why was?
He didn't appear to be bitterabout this, why?
Why?
Because I'm and he was thensome kind of undersecretary of
Department of Transportation,retired three star general, and
he said, no, he wasn't bitterbecause you got to understand

(16:23):
that's how things were back thenthat the riots that were
occurring at the time that I wasinterviewing him was because of
with TV, within people, thehave-nots were able to see the
economic disparities, and itmade them angry and so forth.
These are my words, not his,but that's what I understood him
to say.

(16:43):
Angry and so forth these are mywords, not his, but that's what
I understood him to say.
So I went to West Pointauthorities with the proof that
this was an illegal.
This silence was illegal.
The regulations at West Pointsaid that if a cadet was found

(17:04):
guilty of violating the honorcode, then he was entitled
because it was only he's then toappeal to a board of officers.
And if he won his appeal, thenhe used to be returned to the
Corps quote in good standing.
Quote return to the Corps ingood standing.
That's what a regulation said.
Well, you're not being returnedto the Corps in good standing

(17:26):
if you're going to be silenced.
And cadets didn't come up withthe silence on their own.
They were taught that by WestPoint authorities as they
entered West Point.
And furthermore, there wasregulation prohibiting
conspiracies among cadetsagainst other cadets, which is
exactly what they were doing.
And I found two cadets beingsilenced cadets which is exactly

(17:46):
what they were doing.
And I found two cadets beingsilenced and one of them wound
up in that 60 Minutes film thatI was interviewed in 1974 at
Morrie Safer, which again thelink's at the bottom of my bio.
And so I was stunned that wait aminute.
We were taught to obey the lawin the Constitution at the
Academy.
I've gone to five years ofmilitary college and now I'm

(18:08):
showing West Point authoritieswhat they're doing is illegal
and they don't care, they're notgoing to change it and what I
showed is four out of fiveacademies a cadet accused of
violating the Honor Code couldnot be present.
That includes West Point Couldnot be present while the
evidence was presented to thehonor committee.
Well, if you want to get thetruth of the matter, the most

(18:30):
fundamental procedure that'srequired that's one of the
cadets being silent is to allowthe accused to be present while
the evidence is presented sothey can respond to it.
So I thought that was illegaland at the Air Force Academy
there was a cheating scandal inthe early 70s where cadets were
pulled out of bed in the middleof the night, stood in the brace

(18:51):
, screamed at threat and thecourt martial didn't confess and
they had honor hearings.
Around the clock 2 am was yourhonor hearing.
You went to it at 4 o'clock.
You would have thought this wasthe plague they had to get rid
of, but there was no due process.
And I might add that one of thekey leaders of stars was a
subject of this interrogationprocess and he didn't have an

(19:13):
honor hearing.
But I mean, this is not byimagination.
This was in an article in ouralumni magazine that I received
by mail while I'm researchingthis Law Review article, and I
can give multiple other examples.
But think about it.
The highest general cannotinterrogate the lowest enlisted
man in a coercive manner, likepulling them out of bed in the

(19:36):
middle of the night andscreaming at a threatening court
monitor if they don't confess,when what they're being
questioned about they could beprosecuted for under the UCMJ.
So why were we at the Air ForceAcademy teaching future
military commanders that whenthey thought honor was involved,
that's the way to do aninterrogation?

(20:00):
So it was not just illegal, itwas bad policy in my opinion.
So when military officialswould not change these things,
I'm in my dorm room, I'm doingthis pretty much alone and my
thought process is that two ofmy roommates at the Air Force

(20:20):
Academy have been killed inVietnam during the last two or
three years.
I don't know why God put me inthis position, that I have these
insights, but if I don'tpublicize it it's never gonna
change.
So I did and when the book cameout I was invited to be on 60
Minutes.
I swear I never heard of 60Minutes.

(20:42):
I'm in a dorm room laboring onthis paper, so much that even
when the NYU students went homefor Christmas, I didn't go home
for Christmas.
I stayed all over Christmas tofinish this paper before I had
to go back on active duty.
So, as you can see, I didappear on 60 Minutes on a Monday
morning at McGuire Air ForceBase in my uniform.

(21:02):
I had not seen 60 Minutes untilthe night before I left the
Gettysburg Battlefield on a tourto go to a motel to see what 60
Minutes was like, and I knewthe format.
So what you see on that 60Minutes film is unrehearsed and
authentic in the sense thatthat's what I thought and

(21:23):
believed at the time.
But I was actually angry becauseI saw hypocrisy in professing
to adhere to the Constitution,obey the law and even be
honorable.
I mean like pulling people outof the bed in the middle of the
night, the superintendent of theAir Force Academy held a press
conference and wrote an articlein our alumni magazine saying I

(21:47):
was not correct.
What do you mean?
It's not correct.
So I wound up concluding well,not only are they not obeying
the law, they're lying, and theyknow better than this because
they taught us not to do it.
And as a young man, this isvery.
You talk about cognitivedissonance, it's like so.

(22:11):
Anyway, there are other wellthings that I've done with the
law.
For example, I'm the namedplaintiff on the landmark US
Supreme Court decision in theFreedom of Information Act in

(22:34):
1975.
And when the Air Force Academywould not give me a copy of the
one or two page summaries ofhonor cases with the names
redacted, I didn't want names,but I wanted to be able to show
in this law review article whatpeople have been thrown out for,
because I didn't think thepublic would believe some of the
things that people have beenthrown out for that at the Navy
Coast Guard Merchant Academythey would not have probably
been thrown out for.
So I had to make a decision andI sued under the Freedom of

(23:03):
Information Act.
It went to get a copy of thedocuments the Air Force Academy
did not provide and the decisionfavorable to us at the Supreme
Court required Air Force Academyto provide the documents and it
didn't hurt a thing.
But what it established was asa precedent with the new Freedom
of Information Act is redaction, which means the government

(23:24):
cannot withhold a document justbecause somebody's name is in
the document.
Instead they've got to redactit or blacken it or razor plate
it out, and that's called theRoe's process in the federal
government, or at least it was.
I don't know if it is now ornot.
So I have sued or filedcomplaints successfully against

(23:51):
state and local governments manytimes.
And I filed another lawsuitagainst the Air Force which it
settled on terms I consideredfavorable but which I can't
reveal for violations of thePrivacy Act.
So, as our complaint showed,there was an officer at the Air

(24:13):
Force Academy who was keeping 15years or so of records of my
activities my First Amendmentactivities in violation of the
Privacy Act and this would spillover to hurt me in various ways
.
In other words, I was beingcanceled.
And when we did discovery andgot the evidence, like I said,

(24:35):
the case was settled.
I didn't really want to sueanybody.
But I came down to if we don'tpress, then our government's not
going to be accountable and itwould be almost immoral for me
to overlook all this when I hadthe means of doing something

(24:56):
about it.
Now, with regard to STARS, todaywe discovered that the DOD
suspended the boards of visitorsof West Point, the Naval
Academy and the Air ForceAcademy.
So I reasoned well, yeah, well,congress created the boards of
visitors as oversight boards, sohow can the executive branch

(25:18):
cancel or suspend or stop theoperation of a congressionally
created oversight board?
So we filed a lawsuitchallenging that About 11 days
later, the boards of visitorswere unsuspended.
So that just tells me theJustice Department lawyers must
have read the lawsuit and agreedthat that was illegal.

(25:41):
But then in order.
But then President Biden firedall the Trump appointees.
First time in history, anypresidents fired the already
existing members of the Board ofVisitors and we are challenging
that and replace them the Trumpappointees.
So we have in our lawsuit stillpending now before the US

(26:12):
Supreme Court on a petition forwrit of certiorari, we have in
our lawsuit challenging thefiring of the Trump appointees
because Congress createdstaggered terms and these boards
of visitors are supposed to bebalanced politically, not just

(26:33):
skewed politically based on thelatest election.
And there's a third thing ofpacking on subcommittees,
non-members of the board ofvisitors, as another technique
to what?
Neutralize the Boards ofVisitors so they can't provide
oversight.
So what?
So that DEI can be put into theacademies without it being

(26:55):
scrutinized?
So that's something wechallenge.
Now we filed a lawsuitchallenging the legality of the
COVID vaccine mandate in themilitary.
Don't assume just because themilitary mandates taking a
vaccine that it's legal.
In fact a federal judge courtstopped and joined the anthrax

(27:22):
vaccine mandate as being illegalyears ago.
So now we've got a COVIDvaccine mandate and the military
has thrown out thousands, atleast 8500 people, military
members, for not taking a COVIDvaccine, who had religious
objections that even themilitary agreed were sincere.

(27:43):
So objections that even themilitary agreed were sincere.
So eight federal courts haveruled that the military's denial
of those religious exemptionrequests and punishing people
for not taking the COVID vaccinedespite the religious exemption
request violated the FederalReligious Freedom Restoration
Act, a federal statute.
Now I'm just mystified as tohow military officers who take

(28:08):
the oath to support and defendthe Constitution can and do, in
my view, violate the law.
Eight federal courts said theywere violating the law and
they're punishing people forupholding their rights.

Al Palmer (28:27):
Well, Mike, let me just go back real quickly.
The Board of Visitors for ourviewers are individuals who are
appointed to advise thepresident on activities of the
military academies.
But the president doesn'tappoint all those people, does
he?
He has a couple of people, as Irecall, about six, that I think

(28:48):
he picks.
Then there are others that arepicked by Congress and people at
large, but the president of theUnited States doesn't have the
authority, does he, to fire allof them or any of them that he
just doesn't like?

Mike Rose (29:03):
Well, let me say this about that First of all, the
statute doesn't just requirethat the Board of Visitors
report to the President, itrequires that it report to the
Congress, specifically to theSenate Armed Services Committee
and the House Armed ServicesCommittee.
So this oversight board couldhave been created just as a 100

(29:24):
percent congressional reportonly to Congress.
But they chose OK, we're goingto let the executive branch in
on it too.
But this is not.
This is not created by theexecutive branch, it was created
by Congress, and so the therehad never been a firing by a

(29:45):
president of the alreadyexisting members of a board of
visitors, and we believe it'sillegal.
But the Biden administrationclaims that it is legal.
I mean, the Bidenadministration claims that
forgiving student loans is legaltoo, but courts overrule it.
Hardly a week goes by withoutthe court overruling something.

(30:08):
That's what my administrationis doing.
So I actually rewrote thelegislation for the boards of
visitors and Congress of Walzintroduced it in the NDAA it and
the NDAA law which passed theHouse that would eliminate the

(30:28):
executive branch from making anappointment.
So the way the law is right now, congress makes some of the
appointments and the Presidentmakes some of the appointments,
and it's supposed to be balancedand balanced through staggered
terms and balanced politically.
But the legislation I wrotethat passed the House would
delete the executive branch, thepresident, from any

(30:50):
appointments.
So the president wants tocreate oversight committees for
the academies.
Go ahead and create all youwant, but since you're
interfering in three fundamentalways neutering the
congressionally created boardsof visitors, we'll just delete
the presidential appointeesaltogether and we won't have the
problem anymore and Congresscan do its inspector general

(31:12):
type oversight.
But there's just many examplesof this on an ongoing basis.
I've represented maybe over athousand, certainly hundreds of
military people in my careerprobably a hundred just
regarding the COVID vaccineitself including at all five

(31:35):
academies and at all levels ofthe chain of command.
There are injustices.
It's not just injustice.
I look at the law violation.
I can honestly, please say I'venever represented anybody,
especially in the military, thatI didn't think was morally
right in addition to beinglegally right.

(31:56):
But my theory is if you're on asale one to 10, with 10 being
the most elitist and, let's say,wealthy and influential and
zero one being the mostimpoverished if you start out as
an eight, then you won't havean internal appreciation of the

(32:18):
effect of political decisions onthe people that are two, three
or four or lower that you wouldhave if you grew up a one, two,
three or four yourself.
And that's why I question eventhe all-volunteer.

Al Palmer (32:35):
Well, it sounds like that adequately describes your
case, I think, mike, growing upthe way you did, Well, that's
right, and that's why I questionthe all-volunteer military,
which was done out of politicalexpediency.

Mike Rose (32:51):
But I question it because I would like the
decision-makers at the top tohave their children and
grandchildren invested oraffected by the decisions they
make.
So if President Biden, forexample, can send the military
to war, but Hunter doesn't haveto go to war, and and this was

(33:14):
happening even in Vietnam, whenit wasn't all well, even with
the draft.
I mean, I'm at NYU Law School,surrounded by people that had
one maneuver after another toget out of the draft.
And even in the Civil War,there were literally riots that
the American army had to putdown in New York City because

(33:34):
for $300 you could get out ofthe draft.
The poor people did nottolerate.
They rioted because theyweren't wanting to be drafted to
die in a war that the peoplethat were wealthier and more
powerful weren't invested in.
So, in any event, um, mymotivation uh, which I didn't

(34:00):
start out, I was going to be anair force jack.
That's what I thought.
I was going to be an air forceofficer and from being an eagle
scout and boy scouts and me, uh,in char Charleston, living near
a Naval base, being surroundedby military people, my family
being military.
I had a reverence, respect forthe military.

(34:20):
My minister at my churchadvocated I become a minister.
In fact, at 14 years old he hadme give a sermon to the
congregation.
I don't know any 14 year oldsin retrospect gives a sermon to
the congregation.
I don't know any 14 year oldsin retrospect that gives a
sermon to the congregation.
But my calling was to be amilitary officer in my mind.

(34:42):
And it wasn't until my thirdyear at the Air Force Academy,
when I took three law coursesand got around lawyers for the
first time, that I changed myperspective, that I no longer
wanted to be a pilot, I wantedto be a lawyer and I figured
well, I could do more to help.
I'm fascinated by the law.
If I just learn these rules andI have the personality to apply

(35:05):
them, then I can help controlmy own life but influence and
help other people with theirproblems and their lives.
So it's sort of like being aminister, except it's not in
church, it's applying the law,and that turned out to be very
true.
Also, if I were a pilot, Iwould have to at that time,

(35:28):
retire at 60 and maybe earlierif my health went out.
But if I'm a lawyer, I could be77 years old, like him right
now, and still practicing lawdoing what I love.
So that was my reasoning whereI went to law school instead of
pilot training.

Al Palmer (35:45):
And you wouldn't have had to deal with the FAA either
.

Mike Rose (35:49):
I wouldn't have had to deal with that.

Al Palmer (35:58):
either.
The FAA is a pilot.

Mike Rose (35:59):
Yeah, that's always a governmental restriction on
what you do, you don't havenearly as much problem as an
attorney.
I guess, so it sounds like.

Al Palmer (36:06):
Also that religion sounds like religion was a very
big part of your life too.
How did your faith shape yourdecision-making during your
career?

Mike Rose (36:22):
Well, I grew up I went to a rural Baptist church
my grandfather in Kentucky, butin South Carolina.
When I moved there, I was goingto church three times a week.
I'm around conservative peopleIn our high school.
In our school we would say thePledge of Allegiance and have a

(36:42):
devotion every morning.
That was my psychic frame ofreference.
So I believed in God, Ibelieved in.
So I believed in God.
I believed in our Constitution,our country, our freedom.
And it wasn't until more recentyears that I started hearing
claims of being a Christiannationalist, and the things that

(37:05):
we thought were good are reallysupposedly the opposite.
But I will say look, I havegrandchildren who went to
college and say they're 100miles away and if they forgot
their notebook, they call theirmom and their mom meets them
halfway and delivers it to them.

(37:25):
Well, when I went to four years, four different colleges in
four different states I didn'tknow a soul and whatever I
arrived with I was uh, that wasit.
So, yeah, I was alone andwriting this law review article,
I was alone.
Well, I wasn't alone.
I had people around me thatsupported it.

(37:46):
I had people in the militarysupported.
But what I'm saying is thisisn't like being a member of
STARS, where we got alike-minded group.
So what would keep me going tothat?
I had to have faith that Iidentified a noble, positive
motivation for what I was doingand that I should hang in there

(38:13):
and have faith that it will allturn out okay.
You know, when I filed thatlawsuit in the Freedom of
Information Act, I had no way ofknowing whether we would win.
Look at it from the Air Force'sstandpoint.
I'm on a leave of absence as acaptain in the Air Force, going
to law school, and now I'minvestigating them, I'm writing
about them and now I'm suingthem.
So I can understand how therewere people very upset about it.

(38:42):
Certainly the Air Force Academywas, but I just had the
attitude that I've thought aboutit, I've searched, I've
researched, I've discussed it.
This is for their own good, andwhen smoke clears away it'll be
better.
And it was so.
There were certain changes made.
Redaction the Freedom ofInformation Act is positive.
The precedent for our country.

(39:05):
Probably all 50 states haveadopted Freedom of Information
Act.
They have redaction as theirpolicy.
Every time you hear redaction,redaction, redaction on the TV
news it comes from that case,and so on and so on.
And so General Bishop, rodBishop, the Chairman of the

(39:26):
Board of STARS, and I helped getreinstated to the Coast Guard
Academy.
Five cadets had been thrown outfor not taking the COVID
vaccine.
To my surprise, the only one ofthe five academies that threw
any cadets out for not taking aCOVID vaccine was the Coast
Guard Academy and they were verymean-spirited, in my opinion,
in the way they did it.
They didn't have to do it theway they did it at all.

(39:47):
But five returned and GeneralBishop and I went to the
graduation of two of them.
We helped get a cadet now atthe Air Force Academy reinstated
who had been she's thrown outfor failing a drug, a urine

(40:09):
analysis test.
Out for failing a drug, a urineanalysis test, and then five
months later all branches of theservice have a written
announcement they're no longerusing the test because it's
defective, because poppy seedswill cause a false positive.
Well, this cadet had shown shehad taken poppy seeds in a
muffin the day before, so shelost.

(40:31):
So this is just another exampleof don't assume that things are
right just because they'relegal, just because it's being
done.
Get is enough education andenough exposure to, let's say,

(40:54):
the I don't know if I'd say theelite, but to people who enough
exposure to the rest of theworld that I could independently
evaluate the facts myself andnot be dependent upon the
propaganda or spin orgaslighting of somebody else or
something else.
And I think I achieved thatexact objective.

(41:18):
But when I graduated HarvardBusiness School, basically there
was nothing else to go to.
It's like that to me was thepinnacle of education.
And I'd started four businesses, I'd done four businesses, I'd
done this, I'd done that.
So now I just had to live mylife and came to South Carolina

(41:41):
to visit and wound up staying.
Now I have.
I became a South Carolina statesenator.
I had no idea whatsoever ofrunning for office until 1986.
So I'm going to tell you howthat happened because I think
it's an interesting story.

(42:04):
As of 1986, I had done fourthings in my life independently
in different parts of thecountry that had generated
national publicity.
So I had a knack for promotion,or some would say
self-promotion.
And I can't sing and I can'trun.
There's a lot of things I can'tdo.

(42:24):
But I can communicate, I canwrite, I can speak.
And so in 1986 in the summer Isaw on ABC News an Iowa farmer.
There was a big drought inSouth Carolina so farmers were
having to sell their cows.
The cows were dying.
So I saw on ABC News an Iowafarmer offer free hay to a South

(42:47):
Carolina farmer if he could getit here in South Carolina.
So the next day I startedworking as a volunteer on my
initiative with the Commissionerof Agriculture of South
Carolina and I created a programcalled FARM, f-a-r-m Farmers
Assistance Relief Commission.
So we raised money for farmersto bring hay to South Carolina

(43:10):
and I created a program calledthe Adopt-A-Cow program.
The Adopt-A-Cow program.
So we told people at a pressconference that if you'll give
us $140, which is roughly theduration, the cost of hay during
the duration of the droughteffects they're over eight
months If you'll give us $140,we'll give you a certificate
signed by the governor of SouthCarolina, showing you've

(43:31):
officially adopted a genuineSouth Carolina cow.
Well, we got checks from 38states.
In 60 days, an army battalionin Germany adopted a cow,
elementary schools adopted a cow.
The mayor of Anchorage, alaska,adopted a cow.
I have an office next to thecommission agriculture.
The phone rings and I hear MrRose, we think your Adopt-a-Cow

(43:52):
program is very moving, or wethink what you're doing is
utterly fantastic and I'd say,well, we're going to milk it for
all it's worth.
Well, this got in USA Today,wall Street Journal, every
newspaper in the side of SouthCarolina, and state politicians
started coming over to me that Ididn't know, to see what this

(44:13):
is all about.
But here's what I'm leading upto.
So I'm standing in a room sortof like this, with the
Lieutenant Governor of SouthCarolina next to me and the
Commissioner of Agriculture tomy right and understand, I've
created this program out of thinair, just total thin air.
And the Lieutenant Governorsays to me Mike, do you have any

(44:34):
idea how we can find out whatfederal programs are available
for our farmers?
And I said, yeah, there's twoways to do it.
You call Thurman and Hollingsoffice, the senators, and ask
them to research it.
But the other way is why don'tyou call President of America
Rick Ross?
Mike Rose was an hurricane ofmail bl.
Much like Mississippi 1969.
I worked for the red cross inthe afternoon and evening and I
could tell you that red crosshas got this disaster stuff down

(44:57):
pat.
Why don't you call thepresident?
American red cross Lieutenantgovernor then said to me Mike,
do you mind if I speak to thepresident American red cross?
No, you're the lieutenantgovernor.
I want you to just stand there.
So I walk over the phone, dialthe 202 information operator in
Washington.
Get the number for the RedCross.
I dial the number for the RedCross.
I asked switchboard operator.

(45:18):
I said the Lieutenant Governorof South Carolina would like to
speak to the President of theAmerican Red Cross.
President of the American RedCross gets on the phone.
I hand the phone to theLieutenant Governor and they
talk for 45 minutes.
That whole time I stood therestunned and I told myself wait a
minute, I can do that.
For 15 years I've been going tothe local officials trying to
get things done and now they'reasking me how to do it.

(45:40):
And now I'm doing it for them.
What do I need them for?
I didn't get married until Iwas 38 years old and I had just
been married.
So I walked out and I called mynew wife and I said Vivian, I
don't know what political partyI'm in, but I'm joining a party
Because I just had the mystiqueof being an elected official

(46:00):
disappeared.
In that meeting I realized, waita minute, I got the skills, I
can do this.
So what happened is I wound upinterviewing the people who were
head in my county of theRepublican and Democrat Party
and I'd say, well, what do youstand for?
And I basically gotgobbledygook.

(46:21):
So then I looked it up and theyboth sounded both parties
sounded good, but what Irealized is I really couldn't
join the Democrat Party.
What they stood for was keepingtheir jobs in the courthouse
and they were the majority andthey didn't need my help and
they didn't want my help.
Now the Republicans were on theoutside looking in and they

(46:44):
would take whatever they couldget and they started having
monthly meetings.
So I started going there, I ranfor state senator and I won.
And so and even, how do I dothat?
I went to the College ofCharleston or maybe it was
Citadel and checked out sevenbooks on how to run campaign and

(47:05):
read them, and so it was likestarting a business, except this
was a campaign.
So now I remember I don't reallyvisibly cry much, but when I
left our Senate my first twosessions and drove 100 miles

(47:28):
back to my home, I had tearscoming down thinking about the
impact I realized I could haveas a state senator, far more
than just a lawyer whosemaneuvering ability was limited

(47:49):
when you think about it.
I didn't get rid of the silencebecause of the law.
I mean, I had the law as abasis.
I got a front page article inthe New York Times in June of
1974 about the silence and thenit wound up on 60 Minutes with
me and two months later, inAugust, out of embarrassment, at
West Point I held a pressconference.

(48:11):
So what I concluded is the onlyway to get these changes made
is embarrassment or fear ofembarrassment.
But as a state senator, you know, I wrote to every agency in the
state before I had my firstsession saying I'm new, could
you have somebody in yourdepartment meet with me because

(48:33):
I've got a vote on your budget.
I'd like to know more about howthe Department of
Transportation operates, orwhatever it is.
Well, every one of them had adepartment head meet with me,
they weren't going to have someunderling.
I just didn't realize howsignificant South Carolina being
a state senator was.
And significant South Carolinabeing a state senator was, and

(48:57):
what I discovered is that Icould solve two types of
problems macro and micro.
So micro was cutting throughthe bureaucracy to help people
get the government to serve them, and there was just a myriad,
myriad of ways in myriad of ways, but the value I was able to

(49:19):
add that most other senatorscouldn't or didn't is structural
.
Macro, and I'm going to give acouple examples of that.
But what I did is I studied whatother states did.
If I read an article about somestate was doing something and
it sounded like a good idea inSouth Carolina, I made it my
business to import this stuff toSouth Carolina.
I introduced more legislationeach of my 13 years than any

(49:41):
legislator, any senator, exceptone, and he was a committee
chairman.
And even if I thought somethingwould not pass like I thought
we should have the initiativeand the referendum and I
researched.
There were three types and weweren't going to have the
California type but we couldhave the more conservative type.
And even if I knew it wouldn'tpass.
I created for a permanentpublic record how to do it and

(50:06):
what I discovered is SouthCarolina has, for example, the
strongest legislative branch ofany of the 50 states and the
weakest executive branch theweakest governor.
Montana has the oppositestrongest governor weakest
legislative branch.
I would go to the state Senateclerk in Texas and do a two-hour

(50:27):
tape recording interview askinghow is it that the Texas Senate
, which meets only every otheryear and you're a bigger and
more complex state than SouthCarolina how is it that your
state in Texas gets more donemeeting every other year than my
state of South Carolina getsdone meeting once a year and

(50:48):
each once a year?
We're meeting longer than youmeet every other year and I
found it was because of cultureand rules Rules, and what I mean
by that.
Well, in South Carolina anysenator could introduce 100
amendments and filibuster everyone of them so effectively they
could block almost anything andunless you got a real super

(51:11):
majority to override it, you'dnever get away with that in
Texas.
In Texas and in Texas, the mostpowerful politician I'd learned
was the Lieutenant Governor.
He was head of the Senate andhad a written agenda at the
beginning of each term everyother year, but he could appoint

(51:33):
a committee chairman.
If you can appoint a committeechairman, you can get a lot of
legislation passed.
Now I got a lot of legislationpassed.
At the end of my second year asa senator, I went on stage in
Boston and got an award as oneof the three best legislators in
the US by the AmericanLegislative Exchange Council

(51:58):
before a group of legislators,bipartisan, both parties, in all
50 states.
And that's because in my firsttwo years I'd introduced eight
bills that got passed in the law, which they said was more than
most legislators did in theirlifetime.
But I want to illustrate justhow backward some of the stuff

(52:22):
in our state was and how Ipersonally was able to improve
it.
Now I represented three townsHanahan, goose Creek and
Somerville and the Senatordetermined who the governor was
going to appoint as magistrates.
Magistrates were judges andthey had a lot of power, but

(52:43):
none of the magistrates in thosethree cities were lawyers not
one.
So I figured if you're going toapply the law, that you need to
have a lawyer in there anyway.
So I got a lawyer appointed toall three towns.
Well, you would have thought Iwas a member of the Taliban.
There were people that didn't.

(53:03):
So what I discovered is, with ageneral population, this isn't
like the military.
By definition, the averageperson is average, which means
half of them are below averagein terms of intellect, drive,
ambition, a character, whateverit is.
So they don't necessarilyunderstand or connect the dots.
So why are you putting a lawyerin there?
So now I'll tell you why I'mputting a lawyer in there.

(53:26):
I am absolutely notexaggerating this.
One of the managers, goose creek, put a rotating blue light and
siren in his car and would stopand arrest people for speeding
stuff like that.
Well, that's not what a judgeis supposed to do.
So when I heard it, Iconfronted him.
He produced an 1832 law inSouth Carolina that said

(53:50):
magistrates are required toarrest anybody committing a
crime in their presence.
So I got that law repealed andI got rid of that magistrate.
And I mean the magistrate stopsat night a couple with two
children for littering and hasthe wife and two children
standing there while thehusband's going down the road to

(54:12):
pick the trash up.
That's how screwed up this guyis.
Now let me tell you this secondpractice.
You're going to really laughwhen you hear this.
The sheriff in my county hadthe diet program.
The diet program, literally,the county council gave the
sheriff money to pay forprisoner food and whatever he
didn't spend he got to keep hispersonal income.

(54:35):
Let me repeat that the sheriffhad the financial incentive to
shortchange the prisoners foodand he called it the diet
program.
So I introduced the bill to themandate.
I can see why.
No, no, no, the Sheriff'sAssociation comes out of the
woodwork opposing it, becauseyou're going to decrease the

(54:56):
income of this sheriff.
And it turns out another countyin the state was doing the same
thing.
Now, when I asked our localsheriff how much money he was
making due to the diet program,he said oh no, I'm not really
making anything.
Okay, well then you don't mindme banishing it.
Oh no, no, no, I'm going tolose a lot of income if you
banish it.
So I, to get this to pass, Ihad to put in the bill that the

(55:25):
county would determine how muchmoney the sheriff made from the
diet program over the previousthree years.
Take the average and increasepermanently the salary of the
sheriff by that amount.
See, what I did is I hadprobably thousands of instances
where I'd read the legislation,stand before a Senate and say I
know what you're trying to do,but this language doesn't do it.

(55:46):
So, and not only that, itcreates this other problem.
So I reworded it this way and Igained a reputation where
people trusted me and I was ableto have.
I gained a reputation wherepeople trusted me and I was able
to have, I think, an inordinateamount of influence, especially
as a junior senator, because inour legislature, in our Senate,

(56:08):
it was all the seniority system, so the people who have been
around 30, 40 years are the onesthat were the committee
chairman.
My wife and I were driving fromReno to Las Vegas, nevada.
Every dinky little town I cameto there was an arrow that said
Senior Citizen Center, pointingsomewhere to it.
So I wondered well, why doesGoose Creek have a Senior

(56:36):
Citizen Center, but my town ofSomerville doesn't?
And what I found out is thatsenior citizens in Nevada were
financed by casino money, whichwe don't have in South Carolina.
But I got legislation passedallowing the local town or
county to have a referendum onwhether people wanted to tax
themselves to get a seniorcitizen center and as a result,
somerville now has a very goodsenior citizen center.

(56:59):
And I want to give you one lastexample, because I can give many
, many, many more examples.
But this is the mostsignificant structural change,
not only that I made, but themost significant structural
change, I think, in SouthCarolina's government since
Reconstruction.
Reconstruction I discoveredwhen I became a senator that

(57:23):
South Carolina has a peculiarform of government called the
delegation system, the countylegislative delegation system
and it turns out Alabama andGeorgia have the same thing.
Now here's how this works.
In 47 states there are fourlayers of government federal
state, county city, federalstate, county city.
Well, in Alabama, georgia,south Carolina, there are five

(57:46):
levels of government federalstate, county city and county
legislative delegation.
Now here's how this works Ifany state senator or state house
member represents any othergeographic area of a county,
like my county, that they'redeemed to be on, this committee
called the county legislativedelegation and they have

(58:06):
enormous powers to allocatemoney, replace members of the
school board who resign and thissort of thing.
Not in our constitution, butall by statute.
There's not a word in ourconstitution about county
legislative delegation.
Now the problem with this isthat every member of the
delegation, that is, everySenator and every House member,

(58:28):
represented a different amountof population within the county
but had the same one vote.
So I said now let me get thisstraight.
I'm new here.
There's seven people on myDorchester County delegation.
I'm one of them and you're twoof them and I live in the county
and I represent 100,000 people,but you don't live in the

(58:48):
county.
You live in an adjoining county, and a little territory in
Dorchester County represents anuninhabited swamp land.
So you two have one vote each,or two, and you don't live here,
you don't represent anybody andI've got one only vote.
And I live here and I represent100,000 people.

(59:09):
Well, yeah, that's the system.
And then they gerrymandered it.
The Democrats did to make surethat the Democrats dominated the
county delegation and the moneyand the appointment.
So I advocated that almost allthe powers of the delegation

(59:30):
need to be transferred to thecity and the county councils.
Why?
Well, all those members live inthe counties, they live in
their towns and they representequal population because they've
got single member districts.
So why have somebody?
You understand that threecounties converge where I live.
So now I'm on three countydelegation Instead of working on

(59:51):
just statewide problems.
I got to go 20 miles fromCharleston, south Carolina, to
sit in a meeting on who's goingto be appointed to the
Charleston County Veterans BoardCommission, where we have
attendees from Beaufort,georgetown, moncks, corner and
Somerville, which are many milesaway, and it's sometimes not

(01:00:13):
even in the county, and it was aridiculous waste of time.
So when I couldn't get thepolitically this changed, I
filed a lawsuit in the FourthCircuit Court of Appeals I mean
in federal court and on behalfof plaintiffs from three
counties.
Anyway, the Fourth CircuitCourt of Appeals ruled that the

(01:00:36):
Constitution required weightedvoting, that every delegation
member's vote was going to countonly in proportion to the
amount of total population inthe county they represented.
So if they represented nobody,they got 0%.
If they represented one-tenthof 1%, they got one-tenth of 1%
vote.
Well, suddenly it wasn't fun tobe on a delegation anymore if

(01:00:58):
you didn't have much power.
Now, this is the importantthing.
The Fourth Circuit Court ofAppeals ruled that the origin of
this delegation system wasracial discrimination during the
Reconstruction, that the whitefolks were so afraid of a black
governor that they creatednumber one.
They created over 100commissions to diffuse the power

(01:01:19):
.
They created a weak governorand a strong legislature, but in
the and they created thisdelegation system to further
diffuse the power.
Now, one of the first laws I gotpassed was to repeal a law,
still in our books, prohibitingblacks and whites from riding
the school bus together.
That was still on the SouthCarolina's books in 1990.

(01:01:40):
Another law I got passed wasrepealing the law, still on
books, prohibiting blacks andwhites from going to public
school together.
A footnote saying Brown versusthe Board over Roda.
Well then, why do we have itstill in our law?
I will say also my first twoyears as a senator, there was an
FBI sting called Operation LostTrust.

(01:02:02):
You can Google Operation LostTrust and see within two years
about 20% of our legislature wasin jail in jail for
participating in bribery.
And so I'm now going from thehigh standards of the Air Force

(01:02:22):
Academy to being amongcolleagues who were indicted and
going to jail and you may laughwhen you hear this because I'm
just all over the place, but Ihope this is interesting at
least.
I stood before a state senatethree times and I said I have a

(01:02:44):
problem here, and I know youhave a problem, but I'm going to
tell you what it is.
During my form of developmentstage as a teenager, I went to
the Air Force Academy and, asscribes in our class ring and I
hold it up is our class mottoSAere, sa, non videre, sa, non
videre means to be, not to seem,to be, not to seem.

(01:03:06):
My problem is, ever since I gotinto legislature, it's that the
motto were the opposite to seem, not to be.
It's a 180 degree culturequestion In the Air Force.
It's very concrete.
You either had enough fuel togo home or you didn't.
You either dropped the bomb atthe right place or at the right
time.
You didn't.
But here in the legislature wesay you see that black wall over
there?
It's really not a wall, it justlooks like one.

(01:03:26):
And even if it were a wall,it's not black.
So every day I'm hearingobfuscations, distortions,
exaggerations and downright lies, and I know you know what
you're saying is lying.
That's like taking a fork andscraping it across the
blackboard.
To me, that is my problem.
There's operationalized trust,don't you think?

Al Palmer (01:03:45):
now that.
But now that we've got, andparticularly now in an election
cycle, there's kind of a paucityof substance and a lot of talk
and hot air about what peoplewant to do or don't want to do.
But you're exactly right oftalk and hot air about what
people want to do or don't wantto do.
But but you're exactly rightit's the doers that have the
ability to identify problems andfind solutions and, as you say

(01:04:08):
and you're so good at it, beinginnovative in doing it anybody
can go along to get along.
Anybody can sit at their deskall day long and let the rules
and regulations and instructionsplay out.
It's very few people who can begood and creative enough, I
think, to solve problems, and Ithink that's what you're

(01:04:29):
pointing out, mike, and you'vedone a great job with that, and
we try to do that here at STARS,I think, and we're making some
progress on it, because ours isan educational mission, as you
know.
We try to get the ideas andsubstance to people about what's
happening, particularly withthe military right now.
But I would also suggest thatit's a larger problem with our

(01:04:54):
society, as you've pointed out,where people get into little
fiefdoms and they forget aboutlaw, they forget about honor and
duty and country, and that'swhat Star Wars is about.
So we're kind of getting closeto the end, I think, here, mike.
But I'd offer can you kind ofwrap this up a little bit from

(01:05:16):
the standpoint of law and orderand what we do, even with
politics, which is not to saythat we all can't talk about it,
but it is something that's realto all of us.
We live in it and those arereal problems with solutions
today.
Any thoughts on military, forinstance?

Mike Rose (01:05:38):
I do.
Now our culture of traditionalvalues, our constitution, is
under attack, and deliberateattack.
This all started in Russia,Germany, migrated to the US

(01:06:01):
through Columbia University andacademia but, as the law, march
to the institutions and nowthese leftist ideologies have
been infused into the military.
And when I entered the airforce, uh was it didn't matter

(01:06:25):
what your background was, we'reall on the same team and we're
going to be judged by ourcharacter and merit and our
competence and we have theability to compete for
advancement.
The ability to compete foradvancement and for people of
humble beginnings, that wasabout as good an opportunity
that existed anywhere.

(01:06:45):
But that's been transformed nowto judge people not by their
character, as Martin Luther Kingwould say, but by their skin
color or their gender, and tosubordinate merit to external
characteristics like skin colorand gender, and that has caused

(01:07:14):
dramatically lower recruitmentretention, lower morale, lower
effectiveness.
The standards had to be loweredto accommodate the people that
couldn't meet the standards thatwere brought into the military
uh factors other than merit.

(01:07:36):
So, uh, I understand from a um,my original background was sort
of like just like a jd vance,except I would say, in terms of
uh, poverty, with the nearesttown 10 miles away, the nearest
paved road two miles away.

(01:07:57):
That I'm sort of more JD Vancestory than he is.
The point is, though, is that,if you see the opportunity for
advancement, even these peopleenlisted in the military.
This was a great opportunityfor them to see the world and
get a gainful employment andopportunity to advance in a

(01:08:17):
retirement and serve theircountry.
But what happens is, if peopledon't believe in the system
anymore, if they don't believein their leaders, they don't
have confidence, they don't havethe reverence for academy
graduates that my Kentuckyrelatives did.
They don't trust theircompetence and look, this whole
thing is like Bud Light.
There's going to be a ruralrebellion in this election.

(01:08:42):
A rural rebellion.
I read that term this week andI think it's very appropriate.
Those people in western NorthCarolina who are not getting
government assistance have beenwiped out by Hurricane Colleen.
Those people in those mountainhollows are just like Kentucky
and Tennessee and West Virginia,and they're rugged individuals.

(01:09:23):
They have a mentality.
It's like when Cornwallis sentan army during the Revolutionary
War to go conquer the ruralpeople in those areas.
Unless they paid homage to KingGeorge and Cornwallis, these
Kentucky, these mountain people,mobilized themselves and
surrounded the British Army atBattle Kings Mountain and wiped
them out and then he went home.
They weren't fighting forindependence, they were fighting
because they were insulted andthey were attacked verbally.

(01:09:44):
So these proud people aren'tinto transgenderism, they aren't
into having some of theseparties that they consider
decadent and the military isfacing now what Bud Light did,

(01:10:07):
that the Bud Light NewMarketeers catered to a minority
leftist population, therebyalienating their big base.
And that's precisely what'shappening in the military is
that people like me joined themilitary because our relatives

(01:10:28):
recommended it or spoke highlyof it and we thought there was a
noble purpose to support anddefend our Constitution, have
the rule of law, have freedom,have all these things that we
enjoy, the Bill of Rights.
And if the ideology, thechanges to the left so that

(01:10:54):
people are taught to believethat the military is bad and our
country is bad and our countryis bad, our constitution is bad,
needs to be transformed andreplaced.
I'll give you an example.
Lieutenant Colonel MatthewLohmeyer wrote his book
Irresistible Revolution and hedescribes how, as a squad
commander, now he's one of thetop, if not the top, lieutenant

(01:11:16):
colonel in the Air Force orSpace Force.
At that time he had been theaide-de-camp, if there's only
one of them to a four-stargeneral who became head of the
Space Force.
So he was destined undoubtedlyto be a general.
But he has expertise on Chinaand he recognized as a squadron

(01:11:39):
commander in Colorado that whenhe interviewed people getting
out of the Air Force the whitepeople said he'd say why are you
leaving?
I'm leaving because I'm tiredof being called racist and as he
describes in his book.
And then the black people wouldsay basically, well, I wanted
to serve my country but I didn'trealize how racist and bad it

(01:12:00):
was until I got in the Air Forceand they taught me that.
So I'm saying if you change thebrand, look, people didn't
smoke Marlboro cigarettesbecause they liked the
cigarettes as much as they likedthe image of the Marlboro man.
So if you change the image andyou change to drag shows and

(01:12:24):
these kinds of things, I assureyou that these rural people in
the Southeast who havetraditionally enlisted aren't
gonna have military servicerecommended to them and they're
not gonna join and they're gonnaget out of their earliest
opportunity and it's weakened.
Heritage Foundation says themilitary is weak, the Air Force

(01:12:45):
is the weakest.
There's just lots of data, eventhe Wall Street Journal.
I saw this morning an articledated yesterday about the severe
shortages in recruitment andretention in the military and
performance.
We have 17 Navy ships, I read,that can't be used because we

(01:13:07):
don't have enough Navy man,sailor manpower to man them.
We have Air Force wings thataren't functioning at standards.
Look, our country will not haveour freedoms and its
opportunities and its way oflife unless our military is
strong.
If that is defeated, then we'lltransform to socialism,

(01:13:32):
communism and these standards,just like in the last four years
the standards of the masses, ofthe middle class, have declined
.
Well, they'll declineprecipitously anymore, and this
is why I understand this enoughuntil I consider what I'm doing
with STARS to be the most, notjust skilled people of great

(01:14:04):
character, but noble andtalented.
And what's the word I'm lookingfor?

Al Palmer (01:14:14):
Productive maybe.

Mike Rose (01:14:16):
Well productive is part of it.
But what I'm saying is I workedfor four years as a volunteer
in this organization because Iunderstand.
Look, if I could just be asheep and just grazing and let a

(01:14:37):
shepherd take care of me within, that'd be one thing.
But that's not the case.
I see a clear and presentimminent danger in this election
.
Now I'm speaking.
All everything I've said hereis not stars, uh, officially for
stars, even though I'm anofficer in stars.
It's my personal opinion.
But we have a fork in the roadhere.
Are we going to right the shipwith President Trump or are we

(01:15:03):
going to go further left?
And if we do go further leftfor the next four years, if
Kamala is elected, then I doubtthat we can resuscitate what we
had, which is what they want.
But what President Trump willdo I think should do is to

(01:15:24):
reinstate if he becomes electedon day one.
Reinstate his executive orderthat he had previously, that
Biden rescinded, but nowreinstate it, banning DEI
throughout the federalgovernment.
And secondly, matthew Lohmeyerappeared a couple weeks or so

(01:15:44):
ago in a press conference withPresident Trump and got to ask
him a question, along with sixother veterans, and when it's
Matthew's turn, he askedPresident Trump, if he became
president again, would he firethe generals who are imposing

(01:16:06):
DEI, this onerous thing on themilitary?
President Trump interrupted himand said they're gone.
They're gone.
And then he said and would youcreate in the Pentagon an entity
of some kind that will monitorthe getting rid of the onerous
DEI throughout the military onan ongoing basis?

(01:16:28):
And President Trump's responseis that he was going to appoint
you, matthew Lohmeyer, the firstperson to that committee.
Yes, I'll create that committeeand you're going to be
appointed to it, and Iunderstand his staff have
followed up to prepare MatthewBollmeyer to be able to do that.
So this is what is needed and tohow to and look, they're going

(01:16:55):
to have to reassign what Obamadid when he transformed, tried
to transform our country,including our military, is he
basically purged the topgenerals that weren't leftists

(01:17:16):
this is my perception andretained and installed people
that would get with their DEIprogram.
So President Trump's going tohave to do the opposite.
And now, whether he firesanybody or not, I don't know,
but you can always transfer themand put them wherever you want.

(01:17:36):
You got to get people inpositions of authority and power
that get rid of this DEI.

Al Palmer (01:17:42):
Yeah, Diego Garcia might be a good place to start
with some reassignments.

Mike Rose (01:17:51):
Or maybe ADAC.

Al Palmer (01:17:51):
Alaska.
Well, mike, listen, we'veprobably solved some of the
problems of the world here today, but I want to tell you how
grateful we here at STARS arefor having you as our general
counsel Not only that, asanother one of our leaders
who've gone through the crucibleof the academies, learned about

(01:18:13):
integrity and honor and dutyand I know you're still
practicing it, as I tried to,but we've got a lot of work that
can be done to straighten thecountry out, and now it's time
for people to do that.
So to our audience, we're onlya few days away from the
election.
If you have not gone out tovote yet, please do it.

(01:18:34):
And if you want a little bitmore information about Mike and
his career and what we're doinghere at STARS, go to starsus,
our website, and you can seewhat we're doing.
You can also see our archive ofpodcasts that we've done in the
past here.
I'm going to say thank you, mike, for being with us tonight, and

(01:18:57):
thank you to the audience forbeing with us again on a very
special edition of Stars andStripes, and we'll see you next
week.

Mike Rose (01:19:05):
Al.

Al Palmer (01:19:06):
Good night.

Mike Rose (01:19:07):
Al.
I'd like to say something elseif I could.
Sure, I just don't want toleave this out.
I checked my notes.
Here's a couple of the thingsthat should happen if President
Trump is reelected.
My notes here's a couple of thethings that should happen if
President Trump is reelected, ifCongress becomes the Republican
majority.
In particular, congress shouldpass a law banning DEI, which is

(01:19:29):
even stronger than an executiveorder, and the Constitution,
article I, section A, clause 14,states that Congress has the
power to make rules for theregulation of the military.
Also, there could be some veryquick, tangible fixes to show
there's a new sheriff in town,like getting rid of the purple

(01:19:51):
cords by cadets at the academies.
And these people that have beenthrown out, these people that
have been thrown out for nottaking a COVID vaccine illegally
, according to eight federalcourts.
There could be reinstatement,back pay.
President Ford, at the end ofVietnam, created by executive

(01:20:12):
order a commission to evaluaterequests for a pardon for the
crime of avoiding the draft, andhe gave many pardons, President
Trump.
A President Trump could createsuch a board process, all these
requests for back pay,reinstatement and so forth, and
get this done.
So I just checked my notes amoment ago.

(01:20:35):
I just at the end here.
I wanted to plant the seed inthis podcast for some of those
ideas.

Al Palmer (01:20:40):
Thank you, Well, Mike , listen, I think this is
exactly what we need to doFinding solutions and finding
good, sensible procedures forwhat we do, rather than people
sitting on their hands waitingfor something to happen and then
.
Thanks again, Mike, for beingwith us to our audience.
We'll see you again later.
Good night.

Mike Rose (01:21:01):
Thank you.

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