Bulwark Takes - BREAKING: Trump Says USS Lincoln Deployment Hasn’t Gone on “Nearly Long Enough” | Command Post

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Ben Parker and Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) give their takes on the growing crisis aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, where sailors have endured months at sea with poor food and living conditions, disrupted communications, and little clarity about when they will finally come home. Now, there's been several reports that sailors have considered or attempted jumping overboard. And yet, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the situation “completely misrepresented.”Go to https://thebulwark.com/events for more info on the upcoming Fall tour.

Hi, everybody, Ben Parker here from the Bullwork. A little heads up that we recorded command post before President Trump made his comments about the USS Abraham Lincoln's. We had a whole episode talking about what's going on on board that ship and other ships and the terrible state of leadership in the military. And we didn't even have the full information because President Trump waited until after we'd recorded to make his comments. So we won't talk about that, but you can listen right now to what he said. Well, no, that ship is cool. We know they're not. That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it's being replaced with another very similar ship. No, no, no, not nearly long enough. Thank you, everybody.

Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bullwork. Welcome back to Command Post. I'm joined as ever by our very own Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling, recent winner of the Nonfiction Writers Association Award. Congratulations. Yeah, I just heard about that this morning, Ben. Thank you so much for commenting on that. Appreciate it. Congratulations. Unfortunately, that is the last piece of good news we have to discuss. I am frankly kind of furious today. I read boarding shots. Bill Crystal wrote about the situation that's going on with the USS Abraham Lincoln and the sailors on board that ship and what the Navy is not doing about it. So we got to talk about this crisis that's developing today because it is just an abuse of the people in uniform. It is terrible leadership. And it is a catastrophe that we warned about earlier on command post months ago, and nothing's been done.

So just to catch everyone up, I think it was back in maybe March or April, we talked on command post about these reports we were getting from sailors on an extended deployment aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln and other ships involved in the Iran War, that they were getting what looked like really measly food rations, that they had no idea where their deployment was going to end, that they were having troubles with resupply and morale. and being relieved. And now it turns out that the problem is so bad that several sailors have thrown themselves overboard,

one specifically threw himself off the USS Abraham Lincoln. They didn't immediately tell his family. They, in fact, it appears sort of tried to prevent the family from finding out. And when the sailor's wife asked what happened to my husband, they said, oh, he's fine. I cannot believe that the people who constantly defend from any criticism by saying, well, you don't support the troops, are treating the troops like this? General, what did you think when you were reading these stories about the terrible conditions aboard the Lincoln?

Well, we talked about this, as you said, Ben, way back in April. And it was fascinating then because from a commander's perspective, and this is, after all command post, you say, okay, we've got some challenges in the force right now because we don't have the capability to resupply as best we can. The supply chains to our ships have been disrupted. we haven't been able to go into ports because the ports are actually being struck by Iranian missiles. So from a commander's perspective, you know that they're under constrained conditions. But you would also think, okay, at that point, those in the Navy or those in Central Command would start thinking, what do we need to do about this?

We are getting reports on lack of food, some bad conditions on board the ship. And I should bring something up right now, Ben. And, you know, everyone is talking about the Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier, but this is part of a carrier strike group. So there are destroyers and cruisers and frigates and submarines that are all part of this group who haven't come up on the net, as it were, but I'm suspecting that they might be experiencing some of the same supply challenges as the Lincoln is. but they're also likely experiencing more maintenance problems than the Lincoln's because the Lincoln is a nuclear-powered carrier.

The rest of them have a lot of diesel engines, and those diesel engines wear out, they've got to resupply fuel, all those kind of things. This has been building, and it's finally hit the point where people are starting to notice. And it took literally a sailor jumping off a ship for people to start taking notice. And now it's all over the news. And having been in an extended deployment twice in my career, you understand that what's happening to these sailors are creating dog days. And it's even worse, and here I am an army guy saying this, it's even worse in the Navy than it is in the Army.

I mean, if you're in the Army, you can tell a guy, hey, take a break, you know, go to R&R, do something like that. If you're in the Navy, you're continuing to do 24-7 shifts. You have shift work. You're in a constrained space on a cruise ship. You can't get repair parts. I mean, in the Army, you had porta-potties on our forward operating bases. In the Navy, you have toilets that break down and showers that don't work.

And, you know, I'm painting the picture of life on an aircraft carrier because it is loud. It's constrained. it's constant duty. There's no breaks. And when you're talking about almost a year in a deployment, that's a pretty heady thing to be discussing and knowing that morale is going to be low because every day is a dog day for those sailors on board these ships. Yeah, this is something we've been talking about you and I in the Bullwark Slack Channel. You know, you were on a deployment that got extended. You've told the stories of when you had to go tell the families, actually, we're not coming home after all. We're going to be in Iraq a little longer.

and how much anger that caused. And it's not an unusual thing in the military to be told you're going to have to sacrifice, you're going to have to suffer, you're going to have to risk things for the mission. But where is the mission? Right. It's one thing to ask people to sacrifice and risk and endure for a period of time with an ending because at the end of it, there's something worthwhile we're going to accomplish. For these sailors, I can't imagine what they're thinking, like, are we even, is there an end date?

or are we just going to do this forever? Are we ever going to get relieved? Or are we just going to do this until like the end of time? And even if we do, like what are we accomplishing here? We're not doing any good. It's not like we're defeating the enemy. You know, it's not like we're winning the war. Like, why are we doing this?

Yeah, and that's the thing. I'll bring up one vignette. I don't think I told you this story. When we were extended in our deployment, I was the assistant division commander for support. So I was pushing troops out. we had literally pushed about a third of our 20,000 man and woman organization back to Europe, back to their post in Europe.

So we had about 7, 8,000 soldiers already returning home. And in fact, in one welcome home ceremony, a local German newspaper took a picture of a soldier hugging his wife. And before that picture appeared on the front page of the local newspaper, he was back in Iraq already. So we brought people back, but at least they had a taste. And to your point, they knew what the mission was. There was an uprising in Iraq. We had fought for a year to camp things down and Mukta de Sauter pulled it back up. In some of the reports from the Navy, one that I read that really struck my heart is a sailor wrote to his wife and said, I'm not even sure what the mission is. And I don't even know if I'm not committing war crimes, which we have talked to. about as well. You know, are the things that the sailor basically said, I'm not sure the things I'm doing are legal. So you see not only the confusion about the mission, which has always been confused, and we've talked about that dozens of times on here on command post. But even the fact that

they are questioning what they're doing in some cases and on board a ship, unlike on a Navy base, or excuse me, an army base where, you know, early deployments you were doing mail call, recent deployments you were setting up internet cafes so soldiers could talk to their wife. When Wi-Fi goes out on a ship, there ain't nobody talking. And in this case, with the soldier who jumped overboard, his wife is 19 years old. And I've experienced that too, where you have a young service member and a young spouse. and boy, they signed up thinking they were getting into something to serve their country and this is what they're experiencing. It just reinforces how bad this is.

We've mentioned some of these texts and communications back and forth that they were able to get between this one sailor and his wife. From Stars and Stripes, one mother said, my son is currently on that ship and listening to him say that he and his shipmates constantly think about jumping off the ship for relief is just so hard to listen to. A spouse of a sailor told the Navy official that she got a text from her husband saying he hopes he doesn't wake up tomorrow. The Navy Times said Annabelle Loma has spoken with her husband only a few times since he attempted to jump overboard from the Abraham Lincoln during his current deployment. She said he's scared. He thinks he'll get a dishonorable discharge and just because he was burnt out, his 13 year career is ruined just like that. That's not fair. That's not right.

That's not what he should be worrying about right now. So those are some of the communications that people have been getting. And that, as you said, they confronted the Navy with. And the Navy said, well, hyperbolic made up. Every commander in the U.S. military, Ben, will tell you those are all indicative of something called suicide ideations. And you better get help, whether it's a mental health professional, which they have on board the ships, or just turning to their battle buddy and saying, you know, they turn to me

and they say, hey, what's going on with Parker? He's been saying things like jumping off a ship. What's going on? I don't know. I don't know, Chief. I'll take care of them. We'll get it squared away. And you get battle buddies involved or you get doctors involved or the chain of command involved.

And I'm sure that's happening on board the ship. But boy, it seems like there's a trend line based on these messages that are overpowering in terms of suicide ideations on board a ship. Yeah, it's terrible. We got to talk about how poor the leadership is here from the very top, right? I haven't heard the president talking about this. I haven't heard him doing anything about it. Secretary Hegseth, we're going to play a clip in just a sec. He basically said it's fake news. The chief of naval operations, who Hengseth handpicked after he fired the old chief of naval operations,

said the reports grossly mischaracterized the situation. The acting secretary of the Navy hasn't been doing anything. All the senior leadership is trying to ignore this problem and brush it under the rug. And these are the people who claim we support the troops. And I make one comment. The acting secretary of the Navy did. go to San Diego. And he was faced with spouses and family members and they destroyed him. And I experienced that too. And rightfully so, you've got to hear from the distaff side in terms of how

they're feeling about their sailor being deployed. But the second thing, the clip you're about to show, I think we ought to reinforce the fact. This was said yesterday. Yeah. After a week long media campaign and media blitz saying what the hell is going on in the Lincoln, And here's what our Secretary of Defense said yesterday. Completely misrepresented. Listen, we make sure that every ship, every crew, every captain has everything we can provide them at every single moment. Some deployments are longer than others. And I have more respect and gratitude for those sailors than anybody.

What they do in those high seas and those austere conditions with less court calls, it's incredible. Americans don't understand what it's like to do that. So as someone who's not been on a ship like that, but been on long deployments, I feel it. I want them home as soon as everybody else. Do I want folks rotate it as quickly as possible? I want the best for them. My commanders know that. Our service secretaries know that.

The president expects that. And so to that crew and to all those crews, we're going to do everything we can for you. And we are so grateful for their dedication of that crew and others. They've held the line for the country and they've done a fantastic job. First of all, Ben, can I point out, the Secretary of Defense just said he's been on a deployment that is correct. He was in Iraq for a specific number of times. It was not an extended deployment. He was a lieutenant at the time. He wasn't making the kind of command decisions or really concerned about large level operational supply chains and logistics and those kind of things. So him using that

hyperbole to claim, oh, yeah, I'm like one of them because I was there. and by the way, he was a reserve officer when he did it, and he was a reinforcing officer, which meant in case somebody got shot, he'd step in. So he's never commanded anything. And I'm not saying that's necessarily a deterrent for him understanding of what's going on. But to put yourself in that position and be the real tough guy. And yeah, I was there just like they are, not like the sailors, but like the army on an extended deployment. Yeah, don't bring that into it because you have no idea.

what the feelings are like in this kind of situation. You know, when you are in a position, like the presidency, like if you're Secretary of Defense, like if you are a service chief, you're the higher striking officer in your service, if you're one of the service secretaries, you have a moral responsibility to be good at your job. And the most generous explanation I can give to all of this is that they just didn't plan. and Trump said, we're starting a war, and they didn't come up with plans for it, and they had no idea how it was going to go. And so still, months and months and months later, the Navy is kind of flailing to figure out, like, okay, what ships need to be in Drydok and what ships need to be in refit? And what crews can we get?

What airwings can we get? And they're still figuring out all the logistics, because these things are very complicated. And so it's not like they intended for the Lincoln to be out this long. They just screwed it up because they were put in a bad position. That's why it's important to have people in these positions who know something and have some experience and are responsible and are going to think it through. It's not enough to say, oh, well, I care the most. Caring the most doesn't make you a good Secretary of Defense. This is a trite expression, but it's known for most in the military that plans don't survive first contact with the enemy.

There's always a changing plan. There was a boxer. I think it was Frazier that said, I can't remember who it was. it said you can plan for a fight until you get the first punch in your nose. Oh, Mike Tyson, I think so. Mike Tyson, yeah. Anyway, what I'd say is the administration likely expected and stated that this would be a four to six week action. They've now been there six months.

And that's not the first time an administration has done that. You know, Secretary Rumsfeld back in 2004 said they would greet us with open arms in Iraq and we were there for 10 years. So that in and of itself requires an understanding. I also think it was reinforced by a relatively short special operation-centric mission in Venezuela, where you were in and out in a very quick period of time. And it shows a lack of understanding, as we've said so many times on here, the culture of, of the Middle East and what happens when you attack a large country with 92 million people like Iran? And your comment, first of all, is the what-if drills that have to occur within the military planning cycle.

You know, the Navy has a thing called in-chop and out-chop. When a ship goes into an area of operation, it's an in-shop, and that usually means ships are going out in an out-chop. And it's back and forth continuously. when you don't plan for something like that and when you're constrained in the first place because you've used your carriers in other places and there are in fact other missions and part of the carrier fleet is always in dry dock to do maintenance after a nine-month-long deployment you should understand you're going to have problems and I'm not saying you know

there was someone that compared this the other day to the non-combatant evacuation operation in Afghanistan, that it turned to crap very quickly because we didn't have plans. I'm not sure that's true. I'm not sure, in fact, I would contend that the operation in Afghanistan that the last administration took so much heat for was something that they delayed when the first Trump administration set the date for withdrawal. They delayed it three months. And any time you do a neo, a non-combatant evacuation operation,

It's a mess. Well, yeah, that was messy, but I got to tell you, this is a whole lot messier. This is horrific. I have never seen a plan or a contingency fall apart as badly as this one has. And there are some things they could have done about this issue with the troops. You know, I don't want to get too deeply into the operation and the strategy of attacking Iran. But in terms of when this started bubbling up in eight, April, I can point to about six things that should have happened that didn't.

And we can talk about that if you want. Yeah, I want to talk about that. And I also, I have a story that I want to share. But you have actually been on aircraft carriers, not for full deployment, but I've never spent time on a carrier at all. You have. So you have a bit of a perspective into what it's like on board and what they should have done when they saw that, you know, there was going to be morale problems and supply problems.

Yeah, well, my time on the aircraft carrier was. more the first time it was more a visit, a two-day visit. I was a young major at the School of Advanced Military Studies and they took our class on board, the Kennedy, which was really cool to watch flight operations and all that and you landed on a cob. The second time was a little bit longer on the USS George Washington. And during that period of time, it was not conflict, but it was a training exercise and it was for a longer period. And when you're sleeping, even sleeping on below deck, the constant rumbles of aircraft hitting the deck being launched. You know, you don't get very good REM sleep on an aircraft period.

The food is usually pretty good because they know of everything else, that's the thing that improves morale. So if, and the Wi-Fi at the time, neither one of them were applicable at the time I was there. but the mail call, you know, when the helicopters brought in the mailbags, that was a big deal. Well, now food is disruption and your communication with your family members is not mail, but it's basically Wi-Fi. And the sailor that jumped overboard basically said he had no contact with his young wife over Wi-Fi. So when you start losing computer access and connection with your family members back home, it not only affects the sailors on board the ship, it affects the

family members in San Diego. You know, what the hell's going on? And, you know, when you do get a spotted Wi-Fi message, an email message or a text message, it's the kind of messages we're reading about that this young sailor sent to his wife, which were not very uplifting. No, not at all. And by the way, it's worth making this point that you have made so many times and so well, and we see this happening. Hegseth likes to talk about, you know, we're going to focus on lethality, not legality. And we're going to get the lawyers out of the way and quit, you know, caring about the rules and just focus on killing the enemy and all that kind of stuff. And this is what happens.

You get young sailors who are saying, I don't know if what I'm doing is right and I don't know if I can keep doing it. And is that making for a better ship? Is the Navy stronger because that young sailor doesn't believe in his mission because he thinks it might be illegal and immoral? Is that the kind of, you know,

we're rebuilding the military thing? Like, it's exactly the, it is not only exactly the opposite of what the administration claims to be doing. It is exactly what you have been saying. the entire time was going to happen. Yeah, well, what I'd say, Ben, is having spent four decades, we're in the uniform, and seeing what soldiers can and don't do, soldiers will do anything when they're assigned a mission. They will make miracles happen.

They are magical in terms of making the impossible occur. But that's dependent on whether they are not they believe in the mission, they've been told the mission, and they understand the mission. It is the military equivalent of Simon Cynix, know your why. If you know why you're doing something, and that's in the realm of leadership, you have to explain that why and inspire and influence your service members, they'll do anything for you. Well, we're seeing a deterioration of that, and the soldiers are losing trust not only in their government for sending them to this mission, but now they're starting to lose trust in their military leaders because they're not fixed. the problems they see on board these ships. And sometimes they can't, truthfully. I mean, I'll stand up for the captain of the USS Abe Lincoln and all the other ships.

They're kicking ass. They're trying to do the best they can, but their hands are tied in many situations. When the supply chains don't work, they can't get into a port and give their sailors a little bit of time to get off the ship and drink a beer and, you know, wander around a town. But I've got to tell you, too, by the way, when they eventually do, do get a port call, I would not be living in the port that they're going into because it's going to get wild. Anyway, that's a different subject.

Okay, so I wanted to mention just a couple more things. One is, you mentioned the sound of the catapults that are constantly launching the ships. I'm going to get a little bit technical here, but I promise it'll be stupid at the end. So the catapults for a long time were powered by compressed steam. By the way, that's what we always aim for on the command post, being stupid at the end. Yeah, it starts on technical and get stupid. So the catapults for a long time, these machines that launched the airplanes off the end of the carrier, were powered by compressed steam. And so it would be really loud.

It's a giant steam piston that's accelerating a big jet or airplane of some kind up to flight speed in the space of like, you know, 100 feet or whatever it is. And so when the things goes off, it's super loud, right? There's just something everyone who's ever been near a carrier says is like, oh, my God, it's so loud. They did find a slightly quieter way and a more efficient way of launching jets. and that is they replace the steam-based catapults on the newest class of aircraft carriers with electromagnetic catapults. So it works more like a super-fast monorail,

uses magnets. It's still allowed, but it's quieter. So it just helps, you know, it improves the quality of life for everyone. And also, I think, is easier to maintain, I've heard, and uses less that power, whatever. It's better. Except the president of the United States

has said he's going to sign a memorandum ordering the Navy to put back in the old technology. Great. So at a moment when these people, People on the aircraft carrier, these sailors are burnt out and exhausted and miserable. And as you said, suffering from suicidal ideation, what's the president's solution? Let's give them worse sleep. Well, you know, I'm not an engineer.

I do know the electronic catapults are being installed in the newest classes of aircraft carrier, one that's already built, so they would have to retrofit it, which would cost a whole lot of money and seem to counter. The other one is, I think it's called the Dory Millie. the newer aircraft carrier that's still being built. They want to change the design pattern, which would cause delays in getting that ship to launch. I don't know the efficiencies. I've read some pieces about how there's fewer failure

between launches with the steam catapults than there are with the electrical catapults. I don't know if that's true or not. But if it is true, I'm sure it's all part of the new acquisition process. Everything that comes in new in the military has some bugs, which you can fix over time, and this may be one of them. I don't know, Ben.

I don't know the engineering, but to have the president of the United States, and hear me out on this, insert himself in the design of an aircraft carrier and change it back from an old method to, or change it from a new method back to an old method, tells me there's likely more involved. with this. There's got to be some type of defense contractor that's gotten in his ear, and I'm not trying to pose a conspiracy theory here, but I don't understand why the president would be so involved in something like the launch mechanism of an aircraft carrier unless there was something to be gained by it, because that's the trend line we've seen over the last administration of President Trump. Yeah, can't argue with that. So I did want to tell one story about

about an aircraft carrier, just to highlight the differences. The USS Enterprise was returning home from the Persian Gulf in the fifth month of a sixth month deployment on the morning of 9-11. And as soon as the captain of that ship heard, the captain of the strike group, heard the news, he immediately, without receiving orders, said, we're steering back, we're going back, we're going back to the Arabian Sea. and that ship spent an additional three or four months off the coast of Pakistan and the Arabian Sea

to conduct some of the first strike missions over Afghanistan and that crew spent a long time. There was a huge effort to keep that ship supplied and from what I've heard, the entire crew was locked in the entire time because they knew the mission. It was obviously just after 9-11, the country had under attack.

They were proud to be there as part of the first line of defense. I read the ship made steam for, for its station off the off the coast so fast that it outran all of its escorts. So they had to catch up behind it, which is very unusual. Not the way you're supposed to command a strike group normally. When that ship came home,

there was, they had ABC News on board to do a special broadcast. They put on a concert with a country, I think Garth Brooks or someone, a country music concert on the ship. And when the ship was in, when the ship was in Pearl Harbor, I think, President Bush went

out to the ship. He did. He did. talk to the sailors from on the flight deck. Now, that deployment ended up going, I think, nine or ten months. And that's when they finally made it back home. That is how long the Lincoln has already been at sea now. And I wonder, when the Lincoln comes home, is President Trump going to go out to the Lincoln? Is he going to address the sailors from the flight deck? Is Pete Heckstaff? I wonder. I want to see that. Yeah. Well, that brings up another point. And yes, President Bush did go to Hawaii to meet that crew of that ship. But it brings up some devil in the detail comments because when they did that move, they had port capabilities.

They had an effective supply chain. They weren't in a war yet, but they would be soon. So they had allies helping them out. And that's kind of a difference of what we've done now, where we've basically dissed our allies, not have a port to land it. President Bush, by the way, Ben also came to visit V-Spot in Germany when the first Army Division finally got home from that 15-month deployment in Iraq in 2004. So you're talking about leadership here, and that's what I want to point out right now. When these stories started appearing about the Abe Lincoln in April and May and then got worse in June, I don't know, but I've always learned that if you're the commander, you dispatch somebody to tell you. you what's going on or you go yourself. So, you know, I would think that if, if these kind of

reports were bubbling up, instead of calling them fake news, as Secretary Hexeth did, I'd say, hey, let's send the Navy IG onto the ship and see what's going on. Oh, wait, he fired the Navy IG. Okay, maybe we can send the chief of naval operations. Oh, wait, he fired her too. Or maybe maybe the Secretary of the Navy. Oh, wait, he was fired as well during this interim period. The point I'm trying to make is you get eyes on the target. You get someone there to come back and say, hey, boss, hey, Mr. Secretary, I was just there. And boy, is it suck. So this is not fake news. And this is a crisis. And we better do something about it. I don't know if any of that has happened. I would suspect it's happened at the minor level. But if he's getting it.

the information he and the press secretary of the Pentagon are not reporting it, which brings up another point that you just made about the enterprise turning around. They had reporters on board. They had reporters talking about the story and letting people know what was happening. There are no reporters on board the Abe Lincoln. There are no reporters on that carrier group, and I don't think there's a whole lot of reporters in the Pentagon right now that are willing to report that this is not fake news. Except now it's generating a little bit of momentum, and people are starting to see the kind of conditions these great sailors are living under.

Well, I hope it helps. I hope that all this attention on the story does force the Pentagon to do something to relieve these sailors to make their conditions a little better. I mean, we said this before, but the A. Blinket isn't the only ship that's faced these conditions. I think the Ford was one of the ships that was deployed first to Venezuela and then to the Middle East and had a very long deployment and is now home. but of course there are so many other ships in these strike groups. So, you know, I hope it makes it better. Yeah, same.

Hopefully we'll have a little bit happier news to discuss on the next command post. If you want to make sure to see that, follow the channel here, like the video, and if you really want to support what we're doing and make sure we can keep doing it, go to the bulwark.com and become a bulwark plus member. We'd love to have you. General, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, Ben. It's always a pleasure. Hey, guys, me, Sam. I just wanted to let you know we got some really fun news ahead for you this fall.

The Bullock is heading to the southeast for what we're calling the, good fight to our. So Sarah, JVL, Tim, myself, a couple others. We're going to be heading to the Carolinas and to Atlanta in October. Bullwork Plus members will get access to our subscriber presale on Tuesday. So make sure you're a member at theblerc.com slash join so you can grab your seats while they still lost and they are going to go fast. Tickets for everyone else will go on sale next Friday. Again, you get to do it this Tuesday, presale. Tickets for everyone go on sale on Friday. Come hang out with us before the midterms and keep an eye on the Bullwark. for the latest information on the toy.