Angry Planet - A Righteous Conversation About Mark Milley

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Paul Rieckhoff is a veteran with a lot to say about the state of the world. He came on Angry Planet to help us understand what happened when former President Donald Trump and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley crossed paths. What does it mean to swear allegiance to the Constitution above all, rather than to any particular commander-in-chief? What do you do if that person at the top wants you to do something unlawful, and who gets to judge what is unlawful?Fun stuff? Tough stuff—but Paul Rieckhoff is both. You can hear more from him at his fabulous Independent Americans podcast, where someone is finally talking a little sense about this country.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. This shit, it's like... It's like an alternate side? Yeah, it's like a Seinfeld episode every fucking day, right? Every day. So basically, if you park your car on a public space in the street, you have to move it twice a week during a 90-minute period.

between 9 and 10.30. And if you don't move your car, you get anywhere from like a $60 to $150 ticket. So people who don't want to pay, in my neighborhood, parking would be something like $700 a month or more. If you don't want to do that, you park on the street, but then twice a week you have to go down, make sure you don't get ticketed.

And then when the street sweepers come by, move your car in this fucked up little dance that everybody does, and then move it back. So rain, shine, all over New York, city, you will see people between 9 and 10.30 sitting in their cars doing calls or sleeping or rushing to make sure they don't get a ticket. That's really funny. Was that a good summary? Oh, that's perfect. And I just want to say, I mean, obviously, this is the Angry Planet podcast. You can tell from, you know, what we're talking about. My name's Jason Fields. Matthew Gold is here.

He's here as always. And we're very, very lucky to be joined by Paul Reichoff, who, by the way, I've just been listening to your podcast again, Independent Americans, fucking love it. Thank you, man. Really, really love it. I appreciate it. We've been grinding at it, and I hope folks are listening. And I got to be honest with you.

I thought we were just doing a call. I didn't know we were recording a podcast, so let's fucking go. That's great. Is that okay? Yeah, yeah. Well, I saw you. I didn't mean to surprise you. I saw you hit record, and I thought it was either you or the Russians.

So I was like, all right, no, problem. No, no, no, it's definitely the Russians. As long as you don't mind, as long as you don't mind, then I might have to actually move the car in the middle of this interview. That is perfect. This is why we, this is why I wanted to capture that explanation at the top.

Yeah, I mean, I can actually see here. Do you guys have video or just? Oh, yeah. Yeah, but we're not recording the video. We're not recording the video. Okay, so here comes the street sweeper. There he goes, right? So he's making it right over there, and he's got this kind of converted garbage truck. And the great to

dilemma is will he turn over here? So all of us right now are waiting to see if he's going to be lazy on a Friday and not do this street or if he's just going to make the turning and come through here and we're all going to have to shuffle. I love that. Is this the content you guys wanted for your podcast? Yes. Now I'm wondering how many podcasts I've listened to that were recorded in cars as people waited to move to the alternate side of the street. More than people admitted. I mean, that's my old thing with, with independent Americans, I think that people need to be more real and authentic and stop bullshitting. And that's part of it, right? So I think a lot more people are doing it from their

cars than they admit. That's, that's probably true. And ironically, we're talking about this. It's always a weird element. The guy in front of me has a beautiful Audi with New Hampshire plates, right? And what does it say in the New Hampshire plate? Live free or die, right? And there's something uniquely ironic about sitting behind a guy with New Hampshire plates who's in New York, deal on the same bullshit that we are. Yeah, except he's having less insurance than you are. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Well, we digress.

Thank you for having me, guys. Yeah. Well, so, look, you and I had corresponded a little bit about Mark Millie. And this is something that you've spoken about. And I really would like to understand what the hell happened. with Trump and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before Trump actually left office. I mean, what do you, what do you know? What really happened?

Well, I have to also admit that when I dialed in, I saw that it said Mark Millie. And I was like, oh, shit, he's going to be on the podcast, too. Great. Oh, yeah, absolutely. He comes on the show every other week. But, you know. All right. So I'm going to answer this question while I move the car.

All right, guys, I'm going to give you a play by play. Oh, I love it. That's an extra degree of difficulty. Oh, yeah. Perfect. In the military, you learn how to multitask. And so me and the New Hampshire guy are going to do this at the same time. And here's what it is, guys, because I think a lot of this has to do with the environment that Trump has created.

If you have a little bit of courtesy and cooperation, you know, America can go pretty well, right? And things can go pretty well to include our national security in particular. And right now we've got very little courtesy and very little cooperation happening between the political side and our military side. And I think that cuts to the core of your question about Millie. Look, Trump tried to politicize the military. Trump crossed every boundary possible in American history with regard to how you politicize and use the military, what you ask the military to do. And I think we now know from, you know, testimony from from whistleblower accounts, from people like John Kelly, General John Kelly speaking out and now a million others, that Trump tried to do a lot of crazy shit. right he tried to do a lot of shit that was that was unprecedented that was potentially illegal that

was definitely strategically not in the best interest of our national defense or our national security and what we we've seen is that milly held the line milly has held the line uh before you know during and after trump leaving office and um now he's talking about it and trump has waged war on Millie in the same way he did against other, I don't know how we would call them, maybe politically designated enemies of his movement like he did with Fauci, right? Like he's done before. He says, okay, this is the bad guy that our movement needs to fight against. And this time, he's chosen the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Like, he was still the chairman when all this went underway. He just retired on October 1st. So I think what you've got is a coordinated political campaign led by extremists in the Republican Party, and I don't think it's the entire Republican Party. I think it's an extreme group of people who are ideologically driven, who share, in my view, radical values that are in conflict with some of the values of our country. And they have a coordinated effort to achieve their political goals. And one of them is to ensure that Trump is reelected, that the election is overturned.

Some of them want violent overthrow of the government. Some of them just want political change in the government. but they coordinate and strategize around targets that are often designated by Trump. And right now, that target is the military. It's the Department of Defense. It's CQ Brown's confirmation for the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It's the Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. It's the entire military that they've decided is too woke, quote unquote, right?

It's diverse. It's changing. And that is coordinated from Trump to the people who want to align with Trump like Ron Santas and Babaksevv and down to people like Tommy Tuberville in the Senate, who's right now blocking, you know, 300 flag-grade confirmations in an unprecedented and radical way. So I think it's a big issue. It's not just about Millie. I think it's really about our national security and the fact that we've got some folks in this country and political power who want to attack our military politically. And also just muck up the works. So I think that's important, too,

even if you don't agree with the squabble or the fight or whatever you want to call it between Trump and Millie, Tuberville's throwing a wrench in the entire Department of Defense. No one in the Department of Defense will tell you this has no impact. Families are impacted. You know, chains of command are impacted. And at the end of the day, guys, a long-winded summary is our enemies are celebrating. You know, I live in New York City a couple blocks away from Ground Zero. If you would have told Bin Laden, hey, we're going to threaten to shut down the government.

we're going to endanger the pay of all American troops. We're going to cut funding to allies. We're going to have the former commander chief openly fighting out in the open with the chairman of joint chiefs. You're going to have candidates calling for attacks on Mexico, just total chaos. I think that Osama bin Laden would have been pretty happy with that. And I know that right now Vladimir Putin is. Putin had a good week. When you see the government almost shut down, when you see our troops morale, I think,

impacted when you see the former commander-in-chief fighting out in the open with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, I think that's good for Putin. And along the way, you know, Ukraine funding gets held up. So I think Putin had a really good week. America had a really bad week. And at the end of the day, it's about leadership. And you got to put the, you know, pin the tail on Trump and say, this is on him. He does not have to do this. And I think he has to be held accountable politically, of course, but even legally, down to, you know, disclosing confidential documents. documents, whatever else around national security will come out. But he has to be held accountable because right now he is undermining our national security, disrupting our domestic stability,

and just kind of screwing everything up. Can he be, can he be held accountable? That's, that's really my question. You really think so. I do. I do. I mean, and I think there's, you know, as my car episode should now be stabilized. I do. I think there's two tracks here, guys. And I don't think this gets talked about enough. There's two pieces. There's the political piece, which will start with first, right? Which is, okay, next year it is going to be an election. Trump is the likely presumptive nominee. He's got 60% support in the Republican Party, you know, barring some change, he will be the nominee against Biden. Now, there is, there is a political way of holding him accountable, which is ensuring doesn't get reelected,

which I think as an independent, I think he is on track to lose. I think he's driving away independents that will be especially important in swing states. I think the Republican Party is doing that more broadly with the shutdown and these other things, including attacking the military, which I think is very unpopular among independents and moderate Republicans and Democrats are going to be key. So I think if Trump keeps this up and he continues to get indicted and he continues to say crazy things and just look unstable, I think he will lose against Biden. Now, whether he accepts that loss is another story, but I think that will be political accountability for him and potentially for his party. On the other side of things, there has to be national security accountability.

And I'm looking to the Justice Department. I'm looking to the FBI. I'm looking to the Department of Defense. Anyone who is responsible for stopping America from being undermined, attacked, and weakened, this is their clarion call. So if he gave, we now learn he may have given out secrets about our nuclear subs, right? He may have handed them out to an Australian businessman for him to hand him out to 40 people. If he did that, it's a violation of national security. it may be criminal. He should be held accountable like anyone else.

If he left all these classified documents in a bathroom at Mara Lago and committed a crime, he should be held accountable there. And then there's, you know, three other indictments to include potentially, you know, leading an insurrection. So I think, yes, there are ways he can be held accountable on both sides, but it's kind of a parallel track. I'm a Yankee fan. If you ever go to Yankee Games, they have the great subway race, well, they have three subways up on the board, right? And it's like, which one's going to get to Yankee Stadium first, I think you've got, you know, the indictments and the criminal proceedings and you've got the election. And they're going on parallel tracks. And the question is,

you know, will he be found guilty on any indictments before the election? And then will he be, well, that knock him out? Will he be in prison? Well, he may not be disqualified, so he conceivably could still be reelected. But I think those are the parallel tracks for watching. And I think you kind of have to keep them separate because I think especially cable news complaints the political race and they only focus on that. Meanwhile, those of us in national defense and security community, the veterans community are always focused on the other side because ultimately it's more important. It's more important because our national security can't wait until next November. And if we've got someone who's radically and significantly endangering our national security,

whether it's a private in the Army or the former commander chief, especially at a time when our enemies are so focused on trying to disrupt America, we got to be focused on that. I want to put some of the, some of the cultural war stuff in context for, for the listeners at home and get your thoughts on it. So, Tuberville is blocking confirmations or, you know,

blocking promotions, uh, ostensibly because the Pentagon in the, in the, in the collapse of Roe v. Wade is trying to guarantee abortion access to, uh, it's,

uh, uh, to the military. Um, at the same time, yeah, it's not, they're not guaranteeing abortion access.

Okay. Well, then the, the, yeah, sorry, man. That's important, right? Vaccine break. No, no, you're absolutely right. It is important. The memo is phrased in a very specific way. Can you walk us through that?

Yeah. I mean, so here's, let's walk it back, right? So last June or July, you know, rose overturned and Dobbs is put into place, right? So, you know, this cataclysmic change in abortion rights in America cascades across every element. of our society, right? So everybody, whether you're, you know, a Fortune 500 company or a city government, and you got to sit down and go, okay, how does this affect us? Right? So DOD and VA both run the traps on all of this because they're federal agencies. And, you know, I use VA as an example because in the past when, for example, cannabis is legalized in the state. Okay, you got a federal VA facility. Does that mean you

you can smoke cannabis at your local VA? That's the question for the VA secretary. right so at the department of defense when rog gets overturned the sec deaf has got to figure out okay what do we do right and he goes through the regulations and you've now got a situation where a service member may be in a place like alabama where abortion rights have now been restricted and they're serving on a base in alabama and they need abortion care they need a merge let's say emergency abortion care what does the department of defense do about that now you cannot go to a local hospital in alabama get treated. You can't go to a military hospital. I would think unless maybe it's a severe

case and the life is in danger. So what the military has decided is they will give you time off. Right. Now, you still have to go to your commander and ask for it. But if you're a female fighter pilot and you need emergency abortion care, you will be given time off to go somewhere else to go get an abortion. Right. That's what the VA is, sorry, what the DOD is doing right now. Tuberville is spinning this and saying that the Department of Defense is funding abortions.

He's called it abortion tourism. He has really mangled and I think misrepresented this entire situation in a way that has really appealed to the culture warriors. And Tuberville said, I'm taking our woke fight over on to the DOD where they want to let everybody have abortions all day long, which is just bullshit. And so the Department of Defense is trying to figure out how to best, protect its service members. I think that's important here, right? If you got a female fighter pilot who needs an emergency abortion, that's an issue of national security, right? Like, we need that

fighter pilot in the plane flying. We need that fighter pilot with her family. We need her to be healthy. We have millions of dollars invested in this woman and she could die, right? So we have to care for her health in the same way we would, in my view, on the battlefield or anywhere else. That's what the Department of Defense is focused on. And there's the recruiting piece, right? And there's the recruiting piece, If you're a woman and you want to join the military and you're from, let's say, New York or California, where 20% of the women join the military, do you think that young woman wants to join and go get stationed in Tommy Tuberville's Alabama? Hell no. So it's impacting recruiting. It's impacting morale.

And I really do think that this is the front line of America's culture wars. I said to somebody yesterday, the VA and DOD used to be like Switzerland. Now they're like Boucher. Like now they are at battlefield. They are an absolute battlefield on everything that's happening, whether it's the fight for diversity and slash woke, whether it's abortion, whether it's immigration, whether it's technology, whether it's taxes, whether it's spending. Every single issue that is at the intersection of political fighting in America is sat right

down on top of the Department of Defense especially and also the VA. So that's a long-winded way of, I think, answering your question, I hope, and providing some context. also will tell you, this is the new normal. If chaos is new normal in Congress, now it's the new normal for our Department of Defense. They can't predict budgets. They don't know if a policy is going to change. Keep in mind, they just went through, okay, we've got a trans ban. Okay, we don't.

Right? These whimsical moves from Trump especially where he would tweet a policy and then the whole Pentagon is going, shit, what do we do? So I think it does come back to a need for stability, for good order. and discipline for process, especially around our national security at a time when they got enough shit to deal with. Like a recruitment crisis in all branches except the Marines and Space Force. You got that too.

Yeah, you got that too. And I think this is a really important one too, guys, if I can touch on it, right? Everybody says, like, we have a recruiting crisis, you know, because the military is too woke or because whatever. One of the reasons why we have a recruiting crisis is because everybody's talking about how screwed up the military is in politics all the time. Right. And when I was in Iraq, I remember when I first came home, people say, you know, don't talk about how bad Iraq is or you're undermining the war effort, right? These guys are literally undermining our war effort by saying our military is weak.

We don't have enough ammunition. If you go there, they're going to make you, you know, get transgendered surgery. Like, it's just this radical, crazy stuff that the average person who doesn't know the military says, wow, that sounds crazy. I'm not sending my kid. I'm not going over there at a time when they're probably not going to get deployed to a war zone like they were post 9-11, where the benefits are pretty good. You know, we've got a disruptive economy. You've got great educational benefits. There's a lot going for the military, but you wouldn't know it if you watch the news because it really sounds like it's a shit show.

And I think that's a part of this that's really important with regard to our recruiting. However, I will tell you one thing. I do think the mandatory vaccines in the military also drove recruiting. That's something Democrats and Republicans view, you know, as a partisan thing. I think it's just a factual thing, right? Like, I know a percentage of people did not want to get the vaccine. And if you told them they had to get it to go in the military, you were going to lose a certain swath. Now, that might be necessary because there are also people who don't want to wear body armor, right?

And they shouldn't be in the military either. You know, there are people who don't want to, you know, get a physical or whatever else. So there are mandatory requirements that we need, but I think that is a factor that may be impacted recruiting much more than especially the Democrats want to admit. You're listening to the Angry Planet podcast. We'll be right back. And we're back with more of Angry Planet. I think it gets to a fundamental question for me. It's when you enter the military, you are taking an oath to the Constitution, right? not to any particular part of the government, not to just the president. Matter of fact, that's actually, I think, one of the most important things people don't necessarily understand, right?

I mean, but how do you, how, if you're a soldier, do you make sense of a constitutional order versus a non-constitutional order? how do you understand the concept of a vaccine, for example, like can you be ordered to get a vaccine? Where does your personal freedom come in versus orders from above? That kind of fun stuff. That's really simple. I think it's really simple. Anybody who's gone through basic training understands and is taught about obeying a direct order.

And we all study mili as an example of an unlawful direct order, right? If you get an order that's a crime, that's a war crime, that's illegal, someone says, go over there and shoot those kids, you have not only a right, but an obligation to, to resist that order, to not execute against that order. And then you will have a trial of your peers. You'll have an opportunity to defend yourself. And, you know, it's, it's the old saying, you know, is it, what is the old saying? It's like, it's better to be, you know, I can't remember that you guys might know the saying. It's like carried by 12 and buried by 6 or whatever it is, right? Or like tried by 12 than buried by 6, right?

You know, you want a chance to have a trial. You want to, you know, if you're dead, you don't get that opportunity. But I think there's a moral question that is actually pretty simple. So here's the deal. If the Army says you have a direct order to take the vaccine, you take the vaccine, or you get out of the Army, period. There's no wiggle room here. If you want to go, you know, have the ACLU or Heritage, take your case to the Supreme Court, that's fine.

But as long as the rule in the military is you take the vaccine, You take the vaccine. And you know, you also have to wear your helmet when you're on a range. You have to not have live rounds in your weapon when you're rolling around. There's a lot of rules that are in place and you follow those rules. If you want to be a cowboy, he doesn't want to follow the rules, don't join the army. Don't join the military. There's plenty of other places where you can go freestyle. But as long as you're in this institution, we all abide by those rules. To include the ones we may not agree with personally, that's part of what you give up is your personal freedom when you have the opportunity to serve. And I think most of the most of the

people in uniform understand that. What they don't understand is why it's so debatable and why it's become so crazy and why our political leaders don't have any unanimity around some things, right? When I went through basic training and when I deployed to Iraq, I got shot with so many vaccines. Nobody asked me, you know, hey, I'm sure I signed something. We all did. But we were worried about the anthrax vaccine. We were worried about the small time.

Right? And we had that discussion. And then we said, shit, we got to take it. and we took because we didn't want to get smallpox and anthrax. And the guys who didn't want to take it, I don't even know if there were any, they faced the UCMJ and consequences. So I really think in some ways it was a good cleansing because if there's a guy in my unit who doesn't want to take his vaccine and he's okay with getting COVID when we're in a helicopter

for 12 hours and giving us all COVID when we're on the battlefield, I want that guy out of my unit. I mean, that's that guy's private shit bag and I want him out of my unit, right? This is a guy in the football team, right? If a guy in the football team wants to take steroids, and he's going to get kicked off the team and he's compromising the team. You don't want that guy in your team, right? So I think this is really basic in my view. And I think the lack of personal experience in the military,

the civil military divide, which is really important in this generation, where most people in the media and in politics have not served, it allows some really stupid conversations and takes to kind of get bigger than they normally would. An example. Sorry? Give me another example of one of these takes getting bigger than they normally would.

Like Marco Rubio publishing a pamphlet about the woke military with a helmet and a pride flag on it? Oh, I mean, yeah. I mean, look, there's also exceptions that happen only in government that boggle my mind. I mean, this is maybe a bit of a tangent. But until recently, the VA had a motto that excluded women and caregivers, right? The VA had a motto that was only for men. It was for he who had born the battle, for his widow and for his orphan. Now, there's no corporate company in America that could have a motto, Walmart,

Citibank, anybody. You cannot go to a private employer where they said, only men are welcome here. Right. But this is a federal government agency that has, you know, $300,000, $300 billion in a budget, hundreds of locations. And that didn't change until like a couple months ago. So I think that's an example of something that is a head scratcher that actually was a big issue for the people that impacted that wasn't inflated enough. Meanwhile, okay, Trump's saying we don't have enough ammunition. Who do you know in the military that says we don't have, maybe if you'd like to shoot some more in the range.

But I don't think there are too many fighter pilots or too many, you know, gun bunnies or tankers who were in training going, damn it, you know, we don't have enough ammunition. It's just that's an example of an inflated issue that Trump drove forward, got echoed by other leaders and has now just become this like, almost not a conspiracy theory, but like a publicly accepted rumor that we don't have enough ammunition. Could we use more ammunition? Sure. We could always use more ammunition. We could always use more cupcakes. we could always use more money, right? But we're not running out of ammunition, you know, at Fort Benning.

I think there is a concern for people who don't want to help Ukraine in particular, you know, that that, I mean, that's part of it, right? I mean, we're giving away our ammunition. Yeah, but you know what? I'm going to flip that. I'm going to say, you know what this is? Pretty good stress test. If we don't have enough ammunition, better we find out now than when the Canadians invade, right? Like, I think it's a good time for us to understand. This is really, I think, one of the most important points about Ukraine.

We spent, what, less than 1% of the overall defense budget as a percentage, and we've eliminated half the Russian military. If you presented that to Ronald Reagan and said, hey, Ron, we're not going to send any American troops. We're going to spend less than 1% of our federal defense budget. And we're going to wipe out half of Russia's tanks. And how's that sound? That's a pretty good investment. I'll take that. And I think that is an important defense component of this. We are testing every weapon system, not in American hands. We're testing every supply chain issue without Americans dying. We're testing our allies.

We're testing our logistics, our saddle. Everything is getting tested in like you guys, the NTC is a national training center, right? Where the military army often does war games. This is a giant real-life war game where we get to test everything we've got on a low budget and also significantly weaken one of our two or three biggest adversaries, right? So I think that cuts through a lot of that bullshit. And if you really understand it from a defense standpoint, this is a no-brainer. We talk about, to kind of go back a little bit, can we talk about the morale piece of this too for the common soldier?

So I think that kind of getting caught up in these culture war fights tends to obscure the very real problems that are going on. the military. There was a government accountability report recently about barracks and how unpleasant they are. Did you happen to see this? Did you see the pictures? I did, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, but I, yeah, I, yeah, I covered it 20 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You, you, you, you, sorry, go ahead. No, I mean, look, I'm sure there's some internal DOD polling about morale, right? And I, I, I, I, I actually, like, try to follow the data because I think morale is often a political bludgeon or shield for

whoever wields it, right? So they're going to say, oh, morale sucks because of, I don't know, they're Ukraine or morale sucks because they're worried the military's too woke. Like morale sucks when your chow is cold, when you've been in the rain for a month, when your wife leaves you, when you can't pay your bills, right? When you lose your leg, right? Like those are things that significantly impact morale. Like the idea that the average private is watching the GOP debates on a Tuesday night when there's like major league baseball playoffs on is just not grounded in reality. So I think, again, the politicization of our military in this generation is unprecedented in part because

you can peddle this shit because most of the country hasn't served. You know, back when, you know, half the men in World War II served, everybody kind of knew what was bullshit and what wasn't because the military wasn't an other, it wasn't a reality TV show. Now you can get on TV and say, everybody in the military is wearing purple socks and it's a real problem. And half the country will be like, oh, I heard it on TV. It's true. And they don't know anybody they can actually check it with. And I think that that civil military divide is one of the single biggest challenges that our generation faces, period. I think it impacts our national unity. It impacts how we fund things. it impacts the fact that you don't have veterans in Congress who can get along like they used to.

I'm a big fan of national service. I know many other people from our community and our generation are as well. And I think that's important because the military and these issues often become this boogeyman or this kind of this hollow thing they can fill up with whatever they want. And the truth is important. And ultimately, data is important. So do I think morale is in the sense? the toilet? No. I mean, is it more in the toilet than when we were at the middle of the surge and we

were like doing 15-month rotations to Afghanistan and everybody was getting stop lost and National Guard units were doing 20-month tours? I mean, that was pretty rough, you know? Is it more rough than now? I think so, yeah. I mean, but again, I would look to some kind of stats within the military where they actually can quantify morale because I know they do that. And I would argue the military should do a better job of sharing that kind of information. How do you? How do we buy? That's the question.

I think we were going to, Matthew and actually asked the same question at the same time, which is rare. How do you bridge the divide? I mean, you mentioned national service. What do you mean by national service and how broadly do you want to apply it? So the number one way to bridge the civil military divide is to implement national service. And there's actually now a local model, which I think is exciting. And it's led by one of our own, a post-9-11 vet who served in the 82nd Airborne, Governor Wes Moore, who's in Maryland, who is a friend of mine, full disclosure.

He's served on the board with me at Iraq and Afghanistan, Veterans America. We've been friends for 20 years. He's a Democrat. I wish he ran as an independent like I am, but he ran as a Democrat. And I think Wes is a tremendous leader. and he's done some bold things already in his, like, 10 months as a governor. And one of them is he has implemented a statewide service program where folks coming out of high school can get a stipend from the government to perform service.

Now, it can be in your community, working in a school, it can be working at a soup kitchen, it can be as a volunteer with young people. I think the step further is providing an option for the military. right everybody when you turn 18 you have some form of national service i would say for two years where you either serve in the marine corps or you serve in the peace corps or you serve in america or you serve in some way and and we will have enough people based off the relatively small size of our military relative to the population where we'll have enough people in the military right we'll get enough for that but we'll also get a generation of people who want to serve

and we'll have some kind of connection to each other and to this country, right? I think that there's too many citizenship freeloaders who have lived here their whole life and never given anything back. And I think that that's a hard conversation to have, especially if you're a politician, but I think it's an overdue conversation. My father immigrated here as a young guy, didn't speak English. He came from Germany. He spent three years in South Pacific.

My father was drafted to serve in Vietnam. Every generation of my family in this country was drafted. And I volunteered in part because I felt like I was a freeloader. Like I had to do my part because I went to college because I got to play football. It doesn't mean that I get a pass. The opposite. Like I have to go serve because it's my duty. It's my obligation.

Now that was me. But I think that we need to provide pathways for young people. And that will, it's not a magic bullet, but it will help people get along. It'll help people understand other sides. It'll help people understand national security and government and infrastructure and how to talk to each other, right? And they'll get technical and tactical skills. And we need the help, right? Whether it's fixing our infrastructure or dealing with a flood, our friends at Team Rubicon, the great vets who do disaster relief, they can't do everything.

They can't be at every flood and every hurricane wildfires. There's plenty of ways for people to serve. So if I were president tomorrow, yeah, one of my top priorities would be instituting. and next generation national service program. Okay, so when are you going to be president? Not any time soon. I'm over here watching out for street sweepers, man. I mean, I think, you know, really an important point is my show is called Independent Americans.

I'm a political independent. I'm like 49% of this country that doesn't have a political home. Have I thought about running for office sometimes, especially I live in New York, and I think the city is going in a bad direction? like to serve and have a voice. Sometimes I think about it, but then I look at it and I say, I'm an independent. I have zero chance in this calcified political environment where you have to pick a side. Now, I am working to change that. I want to push for open primaries and rank choice voting and most of all supporting independent candidates who say that they want none of the above.

But I think like many veterans right now, I'm trying to find a way to serve. And I would like to consider politics as an option. But I don't want to pick one of these two. sides. And I think a lot of my brothers and sisters who've served in uniform feel the same way. If there was a veterans party tomorrow and it was not overly ideological on the issues, I think there'd be a lot of support. You know, if Colin Powell back in the day or John McCain back in the day or maybe Millie and McRaven and 10 others get together and start their own thing that is focused on country first, I think you'd see a lot of folks step up to serve. But I do think we will see a post-9-11 veteran soon.

The reality is we've got, you know, Ron DeSantis is on that stage. He's served in the Navy post-9-11. Westmore, if something happens to Biden, I think West Moore is a top candidate. You've got Pete Buttigieg. You've got other people like that. I think in a very near future,

we will see both parties put forward a post-9-11 bet, probably against each other. So we used to say the matchup was going to be Eric Gritens for the Republicans versus West Moore for the Democrats, and it looked like that for a long time. But now I think you could see Ron DeSantis versus Westmore in four years entirely possible. You don't think DeSantis is going to get washed out this season?

I do. I don't think he's going to be gone. Like I think he'll be around for a while. And I do think he's floundering. And a lot of it is because, you know, whether it's Republicans and people are looking for authenticity, and he doesn't feel authentic. he doesn't feel real, he doesn't feel effective.

And I think that's beyond all the political ideology. I just don't think he's connecting with people. And then on the flip side, if there's a matchup of like, you know, Ron DeSantis against Wes Moore, it's going to be a smoke show. I mean, Wes is like one of the most naturally charismatic human. I call him Captain Positivity. I mean, that guy's like a walking high.

Every time you see him, he's making people happy and smile. And there's a magic to him that I think is really something. people have to focus on because I think that he has that coupled with his national security experience and his veteran status and his youth, which makes him an extremely exciting candidate. You know, along the lines of somebody like JFK. I mean, JFK was a young, charismatic, dynamic war veteran who captured this country's attention with his young family. And, you know, he might say, oh, Rykoff's crazy. Talk to me in 10 years and see if this is crazy, if that guy's in the White House, which I think could happen.

Well, first of all, you have a date. We're more than happy to talk to you then. Hey, our show's been around for eight years now. You know, maybe 18 is possible. We'll have to see. I don't know if my niece can handle it. I will either have gotten rid of my car or we'll have enough money for a parking space. Yeah.

All right. Matthew, you have any other questions? No, I think that'll about do it, sir. All right. Well, Paul Reich, I, we are very grateful to have you on Angry Planet. And we wish you all the luck in the world. And may you sweep through, you know, the political process. I think you're our candidate.

Well, you guys, you know, my show used to be called Angry Americans. And I used to say, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention. Now, the question, what do you do with that anger? Can you turn that anger into politics? positive impact. And I think you guys have a righteous anger. And this is a, at times an angry planet. But I think we can also make it a righteous one. And you can channel that anger into something good instead of burning it all down. We can use that fire to build some stuff up. And I think you guys are doing that. And I appreciate it.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Angry Planet. The show is produced with love by Matthew Galt and Jason Fields with the assistants of Kevin Middle. This is the place where we ask you for money. If you subscribe to us on substack.angriplanet.com, it means the world to us. The show, which we've been doing for more than seven years now, means the world to us, and we hope it means a lot to you. We're incredibly grateful to our subscribers. Please feel free to ask us questions, suggest show ideas, or just say hi. $9 a month may sound like a big ass.

But it helps us to do the show on top of everything else that we do. We'd love to make Angry Planet a full-time gig and bring you a lot more content. If we get enough subscriptions, that's exactly what we'll do. But even if you don't subscribe, we're grateful that you listen. Many of you have been listening since the beginning, and seriously, that makes worth doing the show. Thank you for listening and look for another episode next week. Stay safe. Thank you.