Bulwark Takes - Command Post: Top General Reportedly Retired Over Investigation Into Kid Rock Flyby

Episode Date: August 26, 2026

Go to https://zbiotics.com/bulwarktakes and use BULWARKTAKES at checkout for 15% off any first time orders of ZBiotics probiotics.Ben Parker and Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling (Ret.) give their takes on Trump’s latest claims that the U.S. has “really dominated” Iran, the Pentagon’s purge of senior military leaders, and reports that a top Army official was pushed out after opening an investigation into the bizarre Kid Rock helicopter flyby. Plus, they discuss reports that the Navy could rename an aircraft carrier planned to honor Doris Miller, the Black sailor and Medal of Honor recipient who became a hero at Pearl Harbor—and name it after Trump instead.Read more from Mark: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-pentagons-purge-at-stars-and-stripes-hegseth-firing-military-newspaper-aircraft-carrier-iran-war

Hi, I'm Ben Parker from the Bullwork. Welcome to Command Post on the Bullwork takes feed. I'm joined, as always, by our very own Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling, General. How are you this morning? I'm overwhelmed, Ben. Should I be overwhelmed with the amount of news that we're going to report on today? It is overwhelming. We got a lot of stuff to get to. We are going to be disciplined and prioritized. And so we're going to start with what President Trump said about Iran just this morning. right from the beginning, from the B-2 bombers a little more than a year ago where we knocked out the nuclear to the present, we have really dominated, really truly dominated. We have knocked out the nuclear and we have dominated. That's why we're still there. That's why we're still there, and I'm confused about what our continued desired end state is. It appears now that it's opening the straight of our moves, and, uh,

stopping the economic disaster that seems to be percolating not in the Middle East, not only in the Middle East, but all over the world. It is interesting that in President Trump's mind, Operation Midnight Hammer from 2025, the summer 2025, just bleeds seamlessly into, what do they call this, Operation Freedom, something? Epic Fury, right, thank you. Operation Epic Fury from February of this year, those were very Which by the way Can I just point out the fact that Epic Fury

starts with the two same letters as Epstein files? Oh, that's interesting. Okay. That was probably a mistake on their point. I'm sure it is. Yeah. I remember saying

last year in 2025 actually, you know, seems like Operation Midnight Hammer went pretty well, not total obliteration as the president promised. But, you know, we didn't get a ton of retaliation from the Iranians, and it did a lot of damage. You can go to independent organizations like the Institute for Science and International Security, as they call good ISIS, did a lot of open source reporting about this.

And I remember thinking like, okay, not bad, right? That was kind of the best case scenario. Of course, the administration couldn't admit that it was only a partial success. They couldn't take half a loaf. Now, as you said, our goal isn't even to destroy the rest of the nuclear program because either we can't or won't. It's just to get back to where we were right after Midnight Hammer when the Strait of Formos was open, right?

We're just trying to correct the thing that went wrong that we caused. Yeah. It's interesting, Ben, because I spent during my time in the military, I spent a lot of time in Israel because they were part of the U.S. Army Europe's footprint. And there was a term I picked up from Israeli military leaders when they talked about trying to knock back Hamas or Hezbollah or even the Iranian threat. And it was that every year or three, they would have to cut the grass. And I think that's what we contributed to in terms of the Iran nuclear capability. And as you just said, it seemed to be a pretty successful mission back in 2020.

that was only received more contributions in early 26. So the question would be if the nuclear facilities had been destroyed, as President Trump just said, and he continues to use that mantra, what the heck were we doing? And we've followed his different end states. It's helping people of Iran and helping them conduct a revolt against their Ayatollah, and then it was destroying the IRGC and destroying the missiles and drone capabilities. And then it was opening the straits.

So the constantly changing end state is what causes confusion. And it hasn't been well publicized either with our Congress, with our fellow citizens, or even I would say with the military. And we're starting to see some effects of that within the morale and discipline within our military ranks. And I think we're going to talk a little bit about that today. Yeah, certainly.

And as we keep saying, you know, the word we here, we have really dominated is an interesting one. Because the uniformed military forces have performed very well, right? The operations to suppress Iranian air defenses to bomb Iranian targets to, you know, accomplish the original objectives of the air campaign, that was a well-orchestrated, well-performed mission for the most part, right? Like, it was very impressive. But we, in terms of the chief executive of the United States and his senior advisors versus the chief executive of Iran and his senior advisors, that we is not dominating so much. So it's what we keep on talking about, right? It's the military force versus the strategic direction of the war. And it's the strategic direction of the war in this case that really matters more.

And usually, I think, really matters more. What do you think? Yeah, it is a, I mean, you are an expert in national security affairs, as are so many other people. And they will tell you, and I'm sure you've learned this throughout your career and also in schooling, that there are really four elements of national power. They are the economic, the diplomatic, the military, and the informational space. We use the military only. Now we seem to be using the economic only. There has been very little effective diplomacy because of the people we sent over that the Iranians did not want to deal with.

And the information space has been absolutely horrible because no one has known from the beginning exactly what we are trying to do. And it hasn't been publicized to either our own government, our people, or our allies. So when you have the disconnect and a lack of synchronization, as the military calls it, of the four elements of national power, and you just use each one in a very piecemeal approach, this is the kind of results you should get. And it could have been predicted by anyone that understands the use of national power to achieve political objectives. And yet, here we are.

Yeah, amen. Okay, so we have to move on because we have so much to talk about. One of them is we got to check and move with what's going on at the Pentagon and all of the senior leadership changes that are going on. I'm actually going to do the second one first, Matt, this New York Times story. Heg Seth Purge of top generals leaves the army rudderless.

The leadership vacuum comes as the army is trying to adapt to a new kind of war dominated by deadly drones. You and I have talked about this offline. There was a story that the new chief of staff of the army shut down an experimental drone unit that was pioneered by the former

chief of staff of the army whom Hegseth fired. You've been in these kinds of, I don't know if you've been in experimental units, but you've at least been in the Harvard before, which I have not. What do you make of all this? Well, the word rudderless is a little bit harsh in my view by the New York Times because it certainly has caused some confusion. When you eliminate multiple four stars, a whole bunch of three star generals who are waiting in the wings to assume four star positions, key four star positions, you now have the rumor mill suggesting that

Secretary Dan Durskull, who has been very effective, I would say one of the most effective service secretaries in Hexas Lot, and he's well-liked within the Army because he's a common-sense guy, very pragmatic, and he works very well with the military. Now he is rumored to have potentially providing his resignation from the cabinet in the first of the year or at the end of this year, which, you know, that's a normal situation for a lot of people who spend two years in administration and then go on to do something else. But because of the other confusions within the higher ranks of the Army, with the forced retirements of several key figures, and I could provide names, the forced retirements of the staff judge advocates, the IG, the Inspector General, and the chief

of staff of the Army, you see where, yeah, it is a purge of top generals in the Army, but not just the Army. It's the other services as well. And you've also cut off the knees of those who were going to assume or presumed to assume some of those key positions like the Chief of Staff of the Army when General George would have retired normally. But in the meantime, we've got an acting chief of staff of the Army who also is serving. bringing in the role as the vice chief of staff. Now, for most people, okay, no big deal. You've got a four-star replacing another four-star as an acne chief, but the roles of those two individuals are decidedly different. You know, the chief of staff of the Army does his title requirement of

manning, equipping, training, and providing direction for the U.S. ground forces, the military arm of the army. The vice chief kind of runs the Pentagon and does all the things like policy and assignments and, you know, selection of new generals. So you really have two very difficult roles that are the chief of a service being cluged into one, and none of them are congressionally approved. So that's problematic in and of itself, especially during a time when we're seeing a massive evolution in warfare, where units need to be given directions in terms of how to address the future with some of the things we're learning from the current conflict in both Iran and Ukraine. And we should talk about that a little bit and what happened between the Brits and the Ukrainians on

Monday, because that's an important step that I think is going under the radar right now. But you also just have the establishment of a military vision. Normally, the role of a chief of staff consists of either a two-year or a four-year assignment, and they project a vision for those four years for the direction the Army takes. Right now, we don't have that. Yeah, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. It would be remarkable in a normal administration if there weren't. First of all, it's very rare that I think there's an acting chief of staff for any of the services.

And then to have an acting chief of staff, so the highest uniformed officer in that service is not, confirmed. And it's been pretty clear the Senate is not going to confirm the guy who's acting chief staff of the Army. And then at the same time, you have the service secretary saying, I'm also going to get out of here. So you have the people in charge of making sure this service is ready to fight now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, and whatever those conflicts may look like, both of them are kind of placeholders. That's not good. The title requirement, I'm sorry, go Go ahead. No, no, no, no, no, please. No, the title requirement of the Army chief is to man, equip, and train the Army force. Those three things are requirements. He doesn't fight them. I mean, the Chief of Staff, the Army is not leading on the battlefield saying, follow me, but he sets the directions for all those other units who are parsed out to the combatant commanders for the kind of operations that we're conducting right now. So we should talk about this story from the Washington Post about how this change may have occurred between General George and General Lenev, who's the acting chief of staff.

It may have had to do with Kid Rock, of all people. People remember this story that there was a military helicopter flight by Kid Rock's house that Secretary Hankseth thought was really cool. It was in violation of all sorts of regulations. It wasn't exactly a model of aviation safety. but it was a cool stunt. And so Hegset said, you know, no investigation, no reprimand for the pilots who did this. And so now Washington Post was reporting that General Lenev, who was, before he was in the army leadership, he was a military aide to Secretary Hegsef.

He then became the vice chief of staff of the army. Then he told General George, his boss, hey, don't do an investigation. just leave this whole kid rock situation alone, believe me. And days later, General George's was, what's the term we're using, prematurely resigned? Invited to resign. Primaturely retired. Thank you. And then General Lenev, this apparent Higseth protege of sorts, even though I guess he's older and more experience, becomes acting chief of staff of the army.

It is a weird story. And my biggest takeaway is like, this is such a small deal to be making these very important personnel decisions, right? Yeah, I would say I think most people would see it as a small deal, Ben, but from a senior leadership perspective, it is a big deal. And I think that's why General George, as reported in this Washington Post Army article, was so upset because it has to do with military standards. And one of the things in terms of the man equip and train piece, the training piece is setting the standards and the metrics by which your force is judged.

And when you see an abrogation of standards like we saw in the Kid Rock House fly by by a couple of Apache helicopters, I mean, anyone that was in a senior leadership position is like, are you kidding me? who the hell ordered that and what was the pilot doing and let's investigate what the hell's going on in that unit that caused that to happen. Well, suddenly it just, you know, HECS not only dismisses it, but he says, I can't remember what his tweet said. It said, carry on patriots or the sound of freedom or something stupid like that. It's immature and it's unprofessional. So when you're the chief, if I'm the senior leader of, an organization, no matter what the organization is, but if you're the chief of the army and your vice chief who is supposed to be your wingman in this role says, I know hex-athlethic, let it go, it's no big deal. It's a big friggin deal. And if I was once taught early in my

career, if you walk past a violation of standards and allow it to exist, you have just created a brand new standard, and that standard is lower. So what happens if tomorrow there's a flyby of, oh, I don't know, Mel Gibson's house by A-64s, and one of those gets too close to the house and crashes and kills the pilot and the co-pilot. What happens then? Because it is a safety violation. Now, I know I'm getting into the weeds on this, Ben, but this is the kind of thing we should get into the weeds are because Secretary Hagseth is diluting the standards of the military and basically claiming this old boys club of just, you know, it's almost like a drunken frat house approach of, hey, everything's okay as long as it's cool. It ain't cool because one of these days it's going

to cause somebody to die. And that's not cool at all. That's what commanders have to, that's why we have to maintain standards. Yeah, no, I think that's very, very, very well put. The other angle I'd just like to to point out on this is that this is also a corruption story. Kid Rock is clearly a friend of the administration. He's done his weird photo shoot video thing with RFK Jr.

I can't remember if he was actually at any campaign events with Donald Trump. He may have been, I can't remember. Yeah, he was. He was. Okay. He's clearly a friend of the administration. And so Pete Hexseth says, it is okay for us to spend taxpayer money to get those helicopters into flying shape with all the maintenance and parts and all that, you know, the lubricants to spend tax money to buy the aviation fuel, to pay those pilots and ground crew to go do a flyby for a friend of the administration.

That's our tax dollars, right? Yeah. And it's by no means the biggest corruption story of this administration. But like, I don't want to pay for if those helicopters need to fly in training missions to practice for combat, I am more than happy to pay for that. but I don't want to pay for Kid Rock to get a cool spectacle of personal air show. That's not what my tax dollars are for. Well, there's even more, Ben.

Soon after the flyby of Kid Rock's house, the Secretary of Defense took himself and Kid Rock and put them in the back seat of two Apache helicopters and actually did an orientation flight. Now, having once commanded an armored division and having a helicopter brigade under my command and knowing that they had age 64s, we never put anybody in the backseat of an A64 to do an orientation flight. It never happened. Every once in while, there might be a senior commander that might want to see how the Apache systems work so you fly.

I mean, hell, I've never flown in an A864. I've flown in OH58's, the observation helicopters, and I spent a lot of time in the backseat of a Black Hawk, But I've never been in the co-pilot seat of an age 64. It's just not what we do. Yeah. So great. Everything's going really great.

And we have so many more. We're dominating. We're dominating. We're dominating. We're going to get to more domination right after a short break. This message is sponsored by Zbiotics. So I have to tell you all about this game-changing product to add to your routine before a night out with drinks. It's called pre-alcohol by Zbiotics. Zbiotics, pre-alcohol, probiotic drink is the world's

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Okay, before we get back into the substance, a quick note, if you just watched almost 20 minutes of command post and made it through the ad break, thank you so much. You're probably a fan of command post. We appreciate that. And there's a lot more the bulwark has to offer, more take. like this and subjects like the economy with our economics editor, Catherine Rampel, like what's going on on the right with Will Summer, who's an absolute star.

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Absolutely. And a lot of it is free. I will admit that. A lot of it is free, but there's some stuff, well, even if you don't want the stuff that's behind a paywall, most of it's free, but even still, you'll be supporting us, which you appreciate. Speaking of support,

we were early on this. You called it. When everyone was talking about the USS Abraham Lincoln, you said, don't forget the support ships and the other ships in that strike group, because it's not just a carrier floating out by itself in the middle of the ocean. There's also destroyers and cruisers

and submarines and probably tenders for those ships to make sure they're fueled and supplied. And what do we see now? The USS Abraham Lincoln is heading home, excuse me, not the rest of the strike group. The rest of the strike group is staying in place. It's just the Lincoln that gets to be swapped out. Well, yeah, and the Lincoln will probably take a couple of support ships along with them on the cruise home. They, by the way, they, as I understand it, they're doing a port call right now. And God help the port that they're in because these sailors have been on board that ship for almost nine, over nine months. So they're going to be drinking a little bit of beer, I would suspect, in whatever port they're going to and letting

off some steam. But the fact that the destroyers are staying home, and in this case, it's the Murphy and the Spruents, the USS Spruents and Murphy. It's because we don't know what's going to happen next within the Strait of Hormuz. Are those destroyers going to have to provide escorts for some of the merchant ships if things get back to normal? Are they going to be a part of the Washington's carrier strike group that are coming on board? Did the Washington leave some of their destroyers back in the Indo-Pacific region? And just like any military organization, Ben, strike groups or task forces, if you will, exchange forces within their group depending on the mission set. But I got to tell you, if I'm part of the ships that were left behind, if my family members

weren't told they were going to stay longer, if I'm a sailor on one of those ships, and that's part of what's in this article, the thousands sailors that are on those two ships, allegedly have not been told they were staying behind for a little bit longer. There continues to be morale problems. That's just all part of the deal in terms of long-term deployments in any kind of theater of operation. I'm just getting word, by the way, that we have a clip. Trump just commented on the situation of the street of Hormuz this morning. So I think we're going to play a clip of that. And I have no idea what he's going to say.

So we'll react live. Okay. The war prior to what we're doing with Iran, which I think we'll be ending fairly soon, You could really say, you know, because the straight is open. We take a lot of ships through the straight now. We're taking them in. The mines are gone. You probably saw that we put it out yesterday.

All the mines. We got rid of the mines. But the straight, it's functioning. It's a functioning straight. Yes, every once in a well, there'll be a drone or a rocket or something shot. But it is a very functioning straight. A lot of oil is pouring out. 10 million gallons, 10 million barrels yesterday.

So I just want to point out that I would not want to be anywhere where every now and again you get a rocket or a drone. And more importantly, I don't think the real decision makers here in terms of the trade through the strait, who are the insurance companies who back up these tankers, I don't think they're going to be okay with the insurance on a on a street where every now and again you get a rocket or a drone. That does not sound like an optimistic prognosis to me. There was a ship hit, I think it was on Sunday by an Iranian, a merchant ship hit by an Iranian drone on Monday that created a significant amount of damage on the Omani side of the strait. And to hear the president say the strait is open and they have demined the waters, Ben, I got to tell you, I'm talking to Navy guys, that is just politely, I'll say, say it's mistruth. It is a lie. That is not the case. There were over the last couple of days in less than a dozen ships that have gone through the Strait of Hormuz. And those were admitted by Iran and Oman. And usually there's an average of between 120 and 150 ships going

through that straight on a daily basis. Before the war, yeah. Before the war. So, You know, and the demining operation has just not occurred. I don't know how the president can say that. And he's acting and messaging that things are back to normal, and they are not just emphatically. They are not. Oman and Iran are still negotiating the means to get ships through the strait. One on the northern side, on the Iranian side, one on the southern side, a route on the southern side, the Omani side.

And it's not open. Well, maybe if we just say it a bunch more times, miraculously, it will become open. You never know. You never know. It could work. One of these days. This is a question we didn't prepare for, but I just wanted to get your thoughts on it. We've been talking about morale.

And there's a story that President Trump, or I should say the Pentagon, someone, is considering changing the name of the next Ford-class aircraft carrier that's going to be launched. It was going to be named Doris Miller after a Medal of Honor recipient. This was a black sailor who was in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. He was only rated, I think, as like a messmate or something. He was a cook. He was a cook. Back in the segregated Navy, that was one of the few jobs that he could do.

And so he wasn't even trained to operate a weapon. But he saw an anti-aircraft gun that was uncrewed because it was a Sunday morning or because the crew had already been killed or whatever. And he jumped on, immediately taught himself how to use it, and just started firing at the Japanese. He just said, I'm a sailor. There's a weapon. I'm going to defend the ship.

I'm going to defend the base. And he was awarded the Medal of Honor. And so the Navy was going to name a ship after him. The Navy names tons of ships out of Medal of Honor winners. Wow, good job, Matt. I didn't even warn you about that. You just found it. The Navy names tons of ships after Medal of Honor winners in the Navy and the Marine Corps

to celebrate their acts of service and heroes. What do you make of the reports that perhaps the administration is considering taking away the name of this aircraft carrier that was already planned and approved and changing it to something else? I can't imagine that happening, Matt. There would be such an upheaval in the United States Navy about this if that occurred. Dory Miller, Doris Miller is his formal name, but he's known as Dory Miller, is, you know, is, the hero of the highest regard of a guy that went above and beyond the call of duty. He was like you said, a duty is a messmate, a cook. And on that morning of December 7th, the crew of that anti-aircraft gun were killed.

He jumped up on a hot gun and continued to fire at Japanese airplanes. You can see the pictures. This is a proud young man. he's wearing that medal on his chest is not the Medal of Honor, it's the Navy Cross, which I believe it's the Navy Cross, which he was awarded initially, and then it was upgraded to the Medal of Honor. But every single sailor is taught the story of Dory Miller. It's sort of like every single Army soldier is taught the story of Audie Murphy in World War.

And it's just, it's just, it's legendary. If that sailor's name is replaced on that ship by any other name, it doesn't matter whose name it is, there will be an upheaval and a revolt within the U.S. Navy, in my view. And there should be. Yeah. The only good thing about this is that it's bringing more attention to this remarkable American hero. And that's a good thing. Yeah.

Okay. Our last topic for today, you have a great article up at the Bullwark. right now, the Pentagon's purge at Stars and Stripes is a gift to our enemies. Regular command post fans will remember when we talked to Jacqueline Smith, who for a long time was the ombudsman for Stars and Stripes,

she was the sort of public relations officer, and she resigned because she thought that the independent newspaper operated by the Department of Defense was coming under pressure to become a mouthpiece for the Pentagon. And so she was basically

fired for that. And she was right because now they have removed the publisher and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper because they said they were insubordinate and there is talk about replacing them not with civilians

who work for the Department of Defense's journalists but with a uniformed officer who would be lawfully obligated to follow orders. You wrote about what Stars and Stripes means to the military would have meant to you during your times of service and why it's so important and actually the senior leaders will

miss it if they replace it with something that is just a PR mouthpiece. Yeah. And there was also, by the way, Ben, a reporter who was also fired, a very brave reporter who stood up for Freedom of the Press in one of her articles. Yeah, the reason stars and strides, and most Americans never see this newspaper, rightfully so, it's usually overseas. There is an online edition now that has only occurred recently as the web has become ubiquitous. But if you're stationed overseas or on a ship somewhere and you get a paper

copy of this, it gives you snippets of information about national security on the front page. But it also provides stories about fellow soldiers, fellow sailors, depending on what base is in, airmen. It really massages its news to the audience it's speaking to. They want to know about what's going on in their military, in their community, in their local high schools. So, I mean, in Germany, the Stars and Stripes when I was there for 12 years would not only have the key news stories on the front page and maybe a couple of human interest stories about soldiers primarily or airmen that were in the European landmass. But they would also list the football games between Heidelberg High School and Ramstein High School,

you know, the Army versus the Navy bases. They would give you your box scores for your Cardinals game, like you were talking about me being such a fan. They would give you information about your commanders and what was going on. And it gave, and oh, by the way, it also gave you a great comic section on a daily basis and a great crossword. So, you know, this was one of those kind of things you could leaf through within, I don't know, 15 or 20 minutes or so, but it was geared specifically to the military community wherever you were in the world.

And it gives, and they're reporting done by both military members and civilian reporters were based on freedom of the press. They would report, sometimes I'd open up the Stars and Stripes and there'd be a picture of me. You sent me a picture that got me in trouble that was on the front page of the Stars and Stripes when I was a young Brigidary General and I was drinking a beer. with a German mayor. And my boss chewed my ass because, hey, we're in the middle of a war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why are you on the cover in Germany of Stars and Stripes with a beer in your hand?

Can I have you for just one second? Sure. After we told the story, I want to see if I could find the picture. So I reached out to Stars and Stripes. You immediately got an email back. They said, you know, okay, sure. Why do you want that photo? Yeah.

And you shared it with me. So thanks a lot for that because I hadn't seen it in 20 years. But, you know, it also shows sometimes the troops things that are embarrassing to their commanders. And, you know, sometimes it talks about best squad competition or the best tank gunnery or the logisticians who are supported. So it's really a newspaper for the troops and it's often by the troops. And it provides trust in the institution because it tells the great. stories, but it also every once in a while tells the bad stories, like the morale issues on the USS Abraham Lincoln. Stars and Stripes was one of the first group of reporters that broke

that story because they were hearing from sailors about what was going on. And that was when the active media sort of picked it up as well. So if you put it as a Pentagon mouthpiece as opposed to freedom of the press, you're going to lose the trust and confidence of the military members wearing the uniform within the force and their family members as well. Yeah, it doesn't make the bad news disappear. It just makes it go elsewhere. It doesn't mean there's not morale problems in the Navy, you know, in the Middle East or on the Lincoln. It doesn't mean that there are families back home in San Diego who are wondering about their loved ones. It just means they're going to have to go elsewhere.

have those conversations. And that's not, that's not necessarily a healthy thing for the military, for the country, for anyone. Right. You know, when you go to TikTok or Twitter or blue sky or whatever you go to, there's no editorial devices that make corrections or say, yeah, that's not true. That's misinformation. Within Stars and Stripes, they have an editorial board.

So they're telling the truth with facts and logic and reason and passion. And that's what makes the difference in good journalism, versus blog sites. So, yeah, it's an important thing, and it's just troubling that the Pentagon thinks they can control the editorial board of Stars and Stripes as well as firing some of their better reporters. It's part of a larger pattern of not just this Pentagon, but this administration of just this instinct, which I think is actually sort of self-destructive towards secrecy.

You can see it in a bunch of ways in the Pentagon. When is the last time they had a press briefing? We had all the scandals from mostly last year about how basically they said to all the national news outlets, you can't report from the Pentagon or unless we clear it first. We have to approve your reports, which is ridiculous. So they replaced all the Pentagon reporters with, you know, Todies and Licksbittles. They restricted the areas of the Pentagon where journalists could go. And then we're not talking about like, this is a classified room. We need a clearance to get in.

We're talking about like, you have to stay in the press room. you can't go to the cafeteria, that kind of thing. They shut down some of the Defense Department databases that just had, you know, like research papers and things, that outside researchers can't get information about the Defense Department currently or going back generations. It's going to be harder for asking people to do research. Or casualty reporting as well.

Yes, exactly. Our enlistment rates. We've been told by Secretary Hagsat that enlistments are through the window, and we can't talk, we don't have enough time. today to talk about it, but I think next week we'll probably talk a little bit about a great story that's coming out of MS now right now regarding people who are taking, asking for conscientious objector status because they see things that they shouldn't be seeing. And during my time in the military, I had a total of two over a 40-year period soldiers who submitted conscientious

objector packets. And it's a difficult thing to use that to get out of the the military, but there's a process in place. There seems to be a much larger number today there was in the past. We have to do some more research on that before we report on it. But it's a troubling trend that we're seeing. We will talk about that because that is super interesting and I'd love to get into that. And that'll be a subject for the next command post, General. Thank you so much for joining me. Always a pleasure, Ben. Thanks for doing this once again.