Rick Wilson

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, everybody, Welcome back to another edition of the Strategy
Session tonight. Joe and Stewart are both in transit, but
I am joined by the great Tom Nichols, former Naval
War College professor, former or current rather writer at The
Atlantic some of the smartest foreign policy stuff you can
read out there.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Tom, thank you for coming on the show tonight. I
really appreciate it. We are going to.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
Take a night where we're going to take a beat
on all of the domestic screeching in this country and
talk about the important things that are being ignored when
it comes to this national security of this place, and
our president his defense establishment do not seem to be
up to the task right now. And so I wanted
to run through a bunch of the stories we've been

(00:43):
talking kind of a bunch of them. Let's start out
with Donald Trump's trip to the United Kingdom this week, because,
as you said just before this, they're managing him, they're
patting him on the head. Talk to us about like
how they've learned to play him.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Well five years of dealing with him. They figured it out.
If he comes to town and you make him happy
and he feels welcomed, and you know, gets the big parade,
and I mean it's it is like dealing with a
small child. You know, you take and give him a
pony ride, you know, you show him around. It makes

(01:22):
him easier to deal with. That's just I think everyone
who's dealt with Trump in an official capacity, well, I
don't know about unofficial pacity, but it seems to me
that all the world leaders who have dealt with Trump
and an official capacity have figured out that you know,
having angle and merkle yell at him, you know, or
read him the riot Act is not doesn't work with him.

(01:43):
He's you know, he clams up. But that you can
get all you can get a long way again, if
you can take him to a parade again. I'm sorry,
it sounds like I'm talking about a small child.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Donald gets on the pony, gets on the pony.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Take him to a small take him to a parade,
give him a pony ride. Let him meet the big
guy with the you know, the crown and the braids. Right,
you know, he's happy. And I don't blame anybody for
doing this because dictators and democracies alike have figured this
out about Donald Trump, and they both treat him the
same way.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
And I think Starmer is looking for any kind of
way to shortcut this sort of euro maga, or excuse me,
this UK maga that seems to be rising there. I
just came back from a week over there, and it
was it is abundantly apparent that the toolbox of maga,

(02:36):
the populism, the anti immigrant stuff, is now the centerpiece
of the Reform Party's attempt to take power, and it's
probably gonna work.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
I think Starmer.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I think Starmer looked at this trip and cash in
whatever favors he had left with the Palace and said
you got to help me out here, guys.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly right that he
called Buckingham Palace and said it's gonna suck, but we
got to do it. The thing about immigration, I mean,
you know, first thing I thought when I saw this
march and it was led by Tommy Robinson, last I thought, wow,
he's still around, you know, right, I kind of lost track,
I said, Tommy Robinson, I remember that guy either.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
The last time I thought about the guy was like
twenty eighteen or something, when I yeah, making some noise
and it just disappeared.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
But the great thing about immigration and crime as issues
for MAGA and for Trump is that there will always
be immigrants and there will always be crime. So you know,
it's not I mean, it's just a it's always a
go too because you know that that has a resonance
on like deficits, on like you know, budget fights, even

(03:42):
on like abortion. I mean, you know abortion once Roe v.
Wade was overturned and it has now you know, gone
to these this hand to hand political combat. You know,
people have kind of it's sort of passed out of
the consciousness. But immigrants and I'm you know, they're there,
they always exist, They're always going to be here. It's

(04:03):
it's easy to it's an easy button to push.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
I will say this about being over in the UK
for a week and the top story in the news
was that the Deputy Prime Minister had not paid a
sufficient amount.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
Of property taxes.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
The second story was over the technicalities of a tube
strike in London, and it was I never woke up
in the morning and thought, oh my god, did Trump
nuke the moon or or or or or or have
we have we now given Alaska back to Russia or
or anything like that. It it I wonder if they

(04:38):
recognize if they if they elect Farage and Reform, they're
going to end up in the same forever circus of
distractions and loud noises and explosions and exit stage right screaming.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
But they won't be stuck with him, true, you know,
I mean, he wance Farage if they actually elect Farrage,
if the sever I mean, and the actual support of
the Reperform Party is a lot smaller than that parade
for sure.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Oh but you got four seats in parliament.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, they're you know,
they're these are this is a tiny fringe party. But
the other thing you can do is you can call
elections and right and and then you're they're out again.
Uh so I think, you know, I mean, I actually
worry less about the about the right word drift of Europe.

(05:30):
I know that sounds crazy, but if you look at
maybe even seven or eight years ago, look like it
was just unstoppable. And in the end, the Europeans, whenever
they get close enough to that stove, because they are Europeans,
because they have a better sense of this than we do,
every time they get close enough to that stove, they go.
You know, my grandparents told me how this ends. I'm

(05:54):
not gonna probably not going to do this today.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
I have a friend who's an Italian government official who
was he's retired now, but he was active during the
I know, I've known him for forty years. He was
active during the period Bannon was over there, and he said,
he goes, look, there will always be some people who
want to like have a little Mussolini light. There's always

(06:18):
a little streak of that. But if it goes past
a certain level, we will pull the trigger. We will,
we will pull back from it, we will stop it.
And they did. I mean, Maloney is is farther to the
right than a lot of of recent folks in recent memory.
But she's not their dream date in every in every
conceivable respect.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
On Ukraine's She's a far better ally to Ukraine.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Are yeah, it is amazing.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Well, I want to talk about that a little bit
because Ukraine has reshaped American foreign policy from the top down.
And you know you've written a ton about this, that
your your piece of folks. I recommend about the Russia's
reckless provocation. They have now decided to start lobbing drones

(07:07):
into Poland and other and other NATO nations. Are now
going to face the same pressure test. It's the old
you know, the bannet keeps going in until it hits
bone somewhere. So Tom, talk to us about Putin feels entirely,
I think, liberated from any sort of national check by

(07:29):
the American government or the American military right now. Talk
to walk us through how embarrassing this is for America
as a foreign policy disaster that Trump is shrugging this
off the most sacred NATO obligation and the only people
that ever called for it have been US, and they
delivered on, you know, invoking Article five. Talk to us

(07:50):
about where you see this this moment in Europe with
Putin and Trump right now.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
I was actually going to take issue with you about
something you said at the start when you said Ukraine
has reordered you know, foreign policy in America from the
top down. It really hasn't. I mean in the sense
that most Americans believe in NATO, most Americans believe we
should support Ukraine. Most Americans do not trust Putin and
the Kremlin and think of Russia now as an enemy.

(08:16):
Something that kind of breaks my heart because for twenty
years after the Cold War, I said, don't let this happen, don't,
you know, don't let this become another Cold war, which
clearly we're in.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, but you know, the.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
It's I think had Donald Trump not been re elected,
we could have said, look, this is a one off.
America always has an isolation as you know, know nothing
group in it it doesn't understand, has no understanding about
how their own security and material well being is dependent
on our alliances because they're not capable and they don't

(08:49):
care about connecting the dots from you.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Know, luxury.

Speaker 3 (08:54):
Yeah, it's it's you know, what's that that great line
about Americans treat foreign policy like the plumbing. It just
works and they only notice it when the basement's full
of water, you know, right, right, right? But what what's
clearly been going on, especially since the Anchorage summit, and
this is this is my guess. You know, I've said
this a few times to folks now that my guess

(09:16):
about what happened in Anchorage is that you know, they
got off the plane and Trump said, I want to
talk to you. I want to I want to talk
I got to do the according you know, I got
I want to talk to you about some things, and
we got to stop this war and I think what
Putin did close he said, no, I'm going to talk,
You're gonna listen. This is how it's going to go.
This is what I want, This is the way it's
gonna be. And Trump of course walked out afterwards and said, well,

(09:38):
you know, yeah, it's up to Zelenski and he's gonna
give up territory. And and then of course the Europeans
have to come rushing over to say, it's good what
you did. It's always that Twilight Zone episode. It's good
what you did, Anthony. But how about not wishing Zelenski
into a cornfield?

Speaker 2 (09:54):
You know?

Speaker 3 (09:55):
And and so I think what's been happening ever since
Anchorage is that Putin has realized I'm in control here.
I am running this show. The Americans are not going
to let the finger. And I think the Poland incursion,
which I will admit my in the first hour, which
is why I don't like to ever tweet or talk
about anything in the first hour of anything. The rule

(10:15):
we all learn. I said, Okay, if this is a
handful of drones, it could be a mistake. They launched
four hundred and fifteen, four or five of them go
off target. That can jamming you know a lot of sure, yeah, right,
nineteen drones. Yeah, that's not a mistake, and that I
think that's an old Kremlin tactic. It's an all Kremlin

(10:38):
message that says we can reach out and touch you,
and the Americans won't do a damn thing.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Right.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
It is interesting to me that you know, you're seeing
a lot of NATO air now pushing over toward Poland.
You've got but the French and the Brits and the
Italians all pushing air assets over there mm hm, which
I think is as good as they can signal in
terms of of of you know, determination, it would be

(11:09):
it would probably be sending a better signal if there
were you know, more American air assets a little closer up.
But I know, we don't want to escalate. Trump doesn't
want to escalate because he doesn't want to get reprimanded
by by the whole office.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
It's interesting if I can just point out, you know,
you bring up escalation. This was something I worried about
a lot in the first six months because I said,
you know, right, a wounded, humiliated Putin is a dangerous putin.
I mean, he doesn't know what he's doing. This idea
that guy plays. Oh he's a he's a chess master,
and he's right, he's a bull a bullshit artist, but

(11:45):
a dangerous thug. And I said, for that, you know,
don't don't do anything that could lead to not intentional escalation,
but somebody doing something stupid, like I've never worried about.
You know, you and I both worked on this stuff
back in the glory days, right, the old days. I
don't think any of us ever got out of bed
saying someone's going to start World War three Today. I

(12:07):
think the thing we always worried about was someone's going
to do something stupid, whose whose consequences they couldn't foresee,
that will then be misinterpreted by somebody else, who's only
a human being, who's going to screw this up, And
the next thing, you know, it's it's you know, this,
this rude Goldberg disaster machine, you know, goes into goes

(12:28):
into effect. I think at this point it's been three
years Putin claims he he you know, he keeps trying
to play the escalation card. I don't think that there
is anything. I'm a lot less worried about escalation now.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, I agree years ago and I think.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
We're going to be more aggressive about things.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
Well, I mean, I look at Trump's demand on NATO
this week after his his response to NATO was to say,
you have to all stop buying Russian oil and natural guests, which,
by the way, that'd be great if they did it,
would it would it would solve the war very quickly,
I think if they did. But he wasn't doing that
to really get to a solution. Was he was doing

(13:06):
that to buy more time another two weeks for for
for for Pootin.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
Well, also, they're already doing it. The Europeans have already
cut down drastically the amount of gas and oil. Now,
you know, I hate this is where the old conserve,
the old Reaganites can say, we told you so.

Speaker 1 (13:25):
We warned you becan agream, We told you have to
buy this stuff.

Speaker 3 (13:29):
We told you not to put that gas pipeline through Germany.
You know what, that's water under the gas under the pipeline,
water on that bridge. At this point, the Europeans are
already doing it. What he additionally did was was was
the thing about Chinese? Do you have to put like
one hundred tariffs on China?

Speaker 2 (13:47):
China?

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Nobody's gonna and he did this intentionally to say, I'm
willing to do sanctions if you guys, can you know
leap it building, leap it tall building in the cle round.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
And gravity cook a perfect to flay. You know, these are.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Utterly nonsense conditions that he knows no one is going
to meet.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, let's play that clip. We've got to this, guys.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Up.

Speaker 2 (14:14):
It's aggression.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
President Trump is raising new conditions for tough sanctions on Moscow,
but Europe.

Speaker 4 (14:20):
Is buying oil from Russia. I don't want them to
buy oil. And these sanctions that are putting that they're
putting on are not tough enough. And I'm willing to
do sanctions, but They're going to have to tough enough
their sanctions commensurate with what I'm doing.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Trump saying he'll sanction Russia, but only if NATO countries
do the same.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
I I I know he. I know that Trump has
a fundamental understanding that Americans will never do the due
diligence right to look at Europe's current sanction regime on Russia,
which in many cases is much tougher than ours.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
And also we are the large just economy in the world. Yes,
you know, one would think that. I mean, what's he's saying.
You know, well, I'll do it if Slovenia did does
it right?

Speaker 2 (15:08):
And Luxembourg needs to step.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Up right and you exactly Luxembourg, you know, those those
cheese eating Luxembourgians better get their act together, you know,
or else Russia is gonna run. I mean, it's it's
It's not only in Nane. It's embarrassing, right. We used
to be the eyes of the world would turn to
us during a crisis like this and say, you Americans,

(15:32):
You're not perfect, you know, but you always do the
right thing. Where are we going with this? And instead
now we have you know.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
This, you know.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
And there was a sort of shorthand understanding for years
that Trump has this whatever obsession, relationship, whatever you want
to call it, about Russia. But what concerns me now
is I'm seeing increasingly jd. Vance, Mark or Rubio and others,
and not just to keep Trump happy, they're developing a

(16:01):
corollary sort of pro Russian strain that's running through a
lot of their statements.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
I mean jd.

Speaker 1 (16:08):
Vance is a much more articulate defender of Russia than
Trump is. He Trumps always like Putin and I have
a great relationship JD. Vance is making that sort of
Bannonite argument that we have to be on Russia's side
because they're not the decadent West.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
Right, which tells you several things. First of all, you know,
Rubio I think knows better, because Rubio does for years,
has had access to classified information, set of hearings. He
knows better. And I suspect that the book tour, when
all this is over, is all the things I did
to try to not let to.

Speaker 1 (16:41):
Never believe what I did behind the scenes to make
America safe exactly.

Speaker 3 (16:46):
Vance, on the other hand, First of all, it's a
reminder that Vance doesn't know a lot about a lot.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
Correct.

Speaker 3 (16:53):
You know, he is not He's an intelligent man, but
he's not experienced, not particularly well versed in any of
this stuff. But it also tells you how much of
his worldview he got he imbibed through the kind of
Silicon Valley tech pro entrepreneurial class that doesn't really seem
you know. It's it's amazing, Rick that you and I

(17:14):
have had to listen to people screaming about globalists who
don't think about borders and see the world as one
big market and so on. And so forth. But that
is the worldview that shaped Vance and you can see
it here. And I think the only thing that, as
you point out, you know, the other the other thing
I was going to say that this reveals about Pants

(17:35):
is that he doesn't know anything about Russia. I mean,
Russia is an intensely decadent country. I mean America, right,
America America's wood painting compared to Russia.

Speaker 2 (17:48):
Right.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
But because he doesn't know anything about that, has never
been there, has never you know, gotten.

Speaker 5 (17:53):
Outside of the motor caide in mind, right, you know,
so hasn't ever just walked in a in a Russian
somewhere and sort of seeing what, how just how how
decinent Russia really is?

Speaker 3 (18:07):
That he thinks that somehow, you know, he's looking at
white Christian Orthodox you know, Russia and you know San Francisco.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Right. I don't think. I don't think. I think you're right.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
I think it's a really good point, Tom, that that
he's sort of drunk on the kool aid of the
Silicon Valley markets or markets philosophy. I don't think he's
a Duga nite. There is a strain of that in
the American right. But but he's not sophisticated enough to
beat to embrace that he hasn't It would take a
lot more right kind of depth of understanding to be

(18:43):
that scanday. And you know, the only thing that he
has in common with with a lot of Russian operations
is that he's changed his name a lot of times.
So but I want to you know, we see this
sort of clumsy flailing around about Russia.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
But there's another.

Speaker 3 (19:00):
I just love this first.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
I read that a hundred times and it never gets
less like FML.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
Just you and I. You and I are of a
certain age. And the minute I saw that tweet, I
immediately heard it in Cliff Claven's voice, what's with Russia? Remember?
Decides to be a stand up comedy? What's with Russia? Violin? Theres?
What's up with that?

Speaker 2 (19:21):
There we go?

Speaker 3 (19:22):
There we go. I mean, it was just it was
so it's like it's like watching a comedian bomb. Hey, folks,
what Russia violating? What's up with that?

Speaker 2 (19:33):
What's up with that? You know?

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Right age?

Speaker 2 (19:36):
And the room is just like vaguely uncomfortable right there.

Speaker 3 (19:39):
It's just all you hear is the clinking of glasses
and the rustling of.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
But it's interesting because you know, Trump obsesses saying all
the time I've ended all these wars, which you know,
asking to in Pakistan and they're like what. But the
this party of No More Wars is certainly starting to
ramp up. And historically these work out really well for
US wars in humid, semi third world countries where there

(20:10):
where other great powers can step in and cause trouble.
We're getting into a war with Venezuela, whether we like
it or not. And I look, I don't like Venezuela's odds.
I think they'll they'll it won't go well for them.
But we have now sunk a second alleged narco terrorist
boat on a scale of one to Gulf of Tonkin.

(20:32):
Where do you find this whole thing?

Speaker 3 (20:34):
You know, the Gulf of it's an unfair comparison. The
Gulf of Tonkin was an attempt to drag a fig
leaf over something. And also first Gulf of Tonkin incident.

Speaker 2 (20:45):
Problem wasn't yeah right, you know, maybe.

Speaker 3 (20:48):
The second one was a little shakier, but you know
it was at least an attempt to rationalize military action.
This is this is just Trump saying I don't like
drug pushers, right, execute them on the high seas. That's
not a legal order. That's not.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
And this is a question that I I don't think
and you're I think you're absolutely correct. It is extra judicial.
It is way way way outside the bounds of UMCJ.
But I don't think we're in a world where either
we're the three players in this little dance down there,
Marco Rubio, Rich Grennell and Pete Hegseth are gonna hesitate

(21:28):
to do much more.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
And they were chosen specifically to do what they're told.

Speaker 2 (21:33):
Right.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
There is no you know, Mark Milly or Jim Mattis
or anybody else who's going to walk in and say
he's president. This is actually not just a bad idea,
but illegal under international and probably under domestic American law.
And you really shouldn't be ordering guys to just murder
people on boats. And there's no I mean, for people

(21:56):
that are not well versed in this stuff. Let's just
take one secon and to say, there are circumstances under
which you can blow up these boats if they fire
on you first. For example, you are allowed to act
in self defense if they are full of you know,
bombs headed for Miami, you know, and you have actionable
intelligence that says that these people are going to, you know,

(22:20):
blow up Key West the minute these boats make it
to where they're going and you can't stop them, and
you can't interdict them, but to blow them up because
they have drug dealers on them, without interdiction, without arrest,
without telling them to turn back, without doing all the things.
There's a thing in international law, and then I'll get

(22:41):
out of my professor mode. There's also a thing an
international law called the Caroline test, named after, ironically enough,
a boat in the Caroline, that says, in order to
take this kind of action, the threat has to be instant, overwhelming,
leaving no moment for deliberation. You really have to kind
of show the international community. Look, I didn't have a
choice here.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
They opened they opened their they opened they opened the
missile bays, you know, right.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Right, or or they took the tarps off of off
of a machine gun, you know, or they set up
a guy picked up a you know, a rocket launcher.
None of that. They can't. There is nothing that they can.
You know. Trump's attitude is and look, we're the most
powerful country in the world. His attitude is, we don't
care because we don't have to. But this is going

(23:27):
to bite us in the ass down down the line.
This is a bad idea. And I say that as
somebody who you know. I keep bringing up the example
blowing up those guys in Yemen. Remember there was a
car that had six guys in it, and we said
this was right at the beginning of the operations in
the Middle East, where he said, hey, it with six
al Qaeda guys. We're operating under an AUMA and au
m F. We have good intelligence on who they are.

(23:48):
There are members of an organization that has declared war
on us explicitly and where there's no way we can
get into Yemen and stop these guys. And they're headed
for the battlefield to do and they're up to a
good yep.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Different.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
Yeah, this feels like this feels like they're not even
This feels like the intelligence behind this is basically like, oh,
they're boats, we're gonna, we're gonna, We're gonna shoot at them.
They must be trinde Agua smuggling fittanel with America.

Speaker 3 (24:20):
This also feels like it was done on the very
important international principle of not talking about Jeffrey Epstein.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
One hundred, the the the Epstein files being the key
trigger for any military action. But Trump has he sort
of declared it a success.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
Let's play that. Let's play this clip because it's just
classic late stage Trump.

Speaker 6 (24:39):
There are no ships in the ocean anymore. We're seeing
that there's like no ships.

Speaker 3 (24:43):
No.

Speaker 6 (24:43):
You know, when the first one we went, there were
hundreds of boats. Now they're no boats. I wonder why,
meaning no drugs are coming across. Probably stopping some fishermen too.
I mean, to be honest about where a fisherman, I
wouldn't want to go fishing, just a nice let's take
a little trip, because I'd say many Maybe they think

(25:05):
I have drugs down stairs.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
I don't know what.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
I think the.

Speaker 6 (25:08):
Fishing business probably been hurt. But no, they're literally no boats.
This was a boat and we were surprised to see it.
Now what.

Speaker 3 (25:19):
Hey, hey, we stopped a bunch of poor people from fishing.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Right, congratulations, mister president, you had done good.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
That's even true when he says, well, no boats anymore
on the right. Okay, I mean I doubt that's true.

Speaker 1 (25:31):
But having spent some time assigned to a counter narcotics
task force once upon a time, in my life. I
promise everybody in America, if you are in a ficionado
of either cocaine or fentanyl, it will still be here.
They this has the insatiable demand in America will be
met with an insatiable amount of creativity to get drugs

(25:54):
to this country.

Speaker 2 (25:55):
And if they're not on boats, they're on drones or whatever.

Speaker 3 (25:58):
And markets work markets that the drugs will be a
lot more expensive. We try. We go through this every
so often to see, if you know, I mean, all
the way going back to the days of the French connection. Sure,
you know, let's let's uh, you know, let's stop. Oh.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
I sat in I sat in rooms where people talked
about how do we how do we blow up every
bridge and road in and out of the Upper Huloga
Valley without you know, and it was all, you know,
cooler heads always prevailed.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
But there are no cooler heads around this process anymore.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
But I also think that this is just aside from
the let's not talk about Jeffrey Epstein thing, right, he
is trying between this and troops in the stream. He's
trying to establish that as that article what Article two
really means is I can do anything I want with
the US military, and they must obey my orders, and
those orders are always going to be lawful and executed.

(26:53):
And I think, you know, there's so many there's so
many reasons he's doing this, none of which are good,
and none of which are for the actual health and
well being of the United States.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
You know, Tom again, as you said, you know, you
and I have both sort of been around this world
a bit, and and I wonder, I wonder at I
keep wondering. I keep hoping that at some point somebody
is going to say, you know, no, mister President, being
of the Joint Chiefs is an honor, but I cannot
do this for you.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
I will not do this for you. I am deeply concerned.
What do you what do you?

Speaker 1 (27:27):
I mean, the senior officer class right now seems to
be in a state of kind of moral capitulation to
this guy.

Speaker 3 (27:35):
You know, I've been worried about that ever since the
whole that whole shit show at Fort Bragg. Yeah, and
you know, saying where's the Secretary of the I wrote
a piece back then called the Silence of the Generals. Yeah,
you know, where's the Where's the Army chief of Staff?
Where is the Secretary of the Army. Where are these
people who are supposed to say I can't serve you

(27:56):
under these circumstances. Now, look, people need to understand, and
you know this very well, Rick, It's very easy to
tell for civilians. And we used to talk about this
as like case studies when I taught out of War college.
Very easy for civilians that, well, you should just pull
your stars off and throw them on the table. Okay
that first of all. You can do that, and it
won't stop anybody. Right, there's always another guy. The president

(28:20):
can say, fine, you're you're the new three star, you know,
pending Senate approval, which you know is so hard to
get under this Senate.

Speaker 2 (28:28):
It's so difficult.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
But but there are people in government, I mean the
Secretary of the Navy, the Secretary of the Army, to
say I cannot be the second NAV. Well, while you're
telling the cno to murder people on the high seas,
can't be involved with it. Now. Fortunately for Trump, he
chose a second nav has no military experience, no navy experience,

(28:52):
has no you know, I mean he look, give the
Trumper's credit this time around. Rick, They learned from the
first term. Oh, they did. People. Don't pick people who
know what they're doing, don't pick people with a spine,
don't pick people with any moral reservations about anything. You know.
The irony here is that the that the guy who's
the poster boy for this cash pattel might be the

(29:15):
first to lose his job. Now they're turning on him
so fast. But you know he knew exactly like Pete
Hegseth is not there to be a Secretary of Defense.
Pete Heggseth is there to be a heat shield to
just to soak up anything Donald Trump says and transmit
that to the force, and then people can say, well,
this I was ordered to do it by the sect.

Speaker 1 (29:37):
It is a dangerous world, folks, And I hope you
will forgive Tom and I for going off into the
foreign policy ether a little bit tonight. But it is important,
I think, for everybody to keep their eye on the
fact that externalities happen outside of the daily chaos of
social media and foreign policy. Externalities are the most dangerous

(29:57):
and the most consequential in many, many, many ways. So
Tom Nichols, I want to thank you so much for
coming on the show tonight. Tell folks where they can
find your writing and find you on social media.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
Well, first, amen to your point about foreign policy rip.
That's the thing that'll could get us all killed in
a heartbeat. Tomorrow. They can find me at The Atlantic,
where I'm a staff writer and radio free Tom, both
on X and on Blue Sky. I tend to only
post on X and argue on Blue Sky. So if
you me, I tend to be sort of among the

(30:28):
more sane folks. And you know any that's that's pretty
much where I am these days.

Speaker 1 (30:34):
All right, Well, Tom, thank you for joining us tonight
on the strategy session.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
I really appreciate it. Folks.

Speaker 1 (30:39):
We will be back again next Tuesday with the full
cast of characters to get back onto the more noisy
domestic business of a failing economy and the continuing Epstein
cover up.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
Thanks for watching, We appreciate you all. We'll see you
again next time.