Chapo Trap House - AHOY!: The Joe Sestak interview

Episode Date: August 27, 2019

Attention, skippers. There is an Admiral on deck. Former U.S. Congressman, retired three-star vice admiral, and current candidate for Democratic presidential nomination Joe Sestak sat down with us in Iowa. In this special bonus episode, we discuss China, the world bank, Iran, medicare and the VA, and which boats are the best boats.

Hello, everybody. It's your chopper for the week. It's Matt, Will and Virgil here, broadcasting from Des Moines, Iowa. And wouldn't you know it? We went to the State Fair yesterday and we won a candidate. That is the ever-tricky fourth milk bottle, nailed it with the softball. And we now have with us in the living room Joe Sestak, former Congressman, former admiral, and current presidential candidate for the Democratic nomination, Admiral. Great. Thanks for having me aboard. I'm looking forward to the questions and the great discussion. Well, okay. I'm going to start off with maybe kind of a silly one, but I was hoping you could help adjudicate a debate that we've been having amongst ourselves over the last couple of days.

For months. Yeah, months now. All of us have agreed that, you know, were we required to join a branch of the Armed Service, it would have to be the Navy, right? Absolutely. And I said, if I joined the Navy, I would want to be on an aircraft carrier or a destroyer. Matt agrees with me. Virgil says he would prefer to be on a submarine. Nuclear submarine. Well, they're all nuclear now, right?

Well, whatever. But as specific, one of the, what do you call it, the tripod? Trident missile. Trident missile. Okay. One of the ones that's just, you know, the responsibility is in case everything goes haywire up here, you know, you get that message and say, you know, blow up this. Okay. I claim. It's a tide submarine.

Yeah. I claim that it is insane to want to actively want to be on a submarine as opposed to like, you know, any other, like a nice ship or a cruiser or destroyer. Virgil says it's like, you think it's safer? Yes. Yeah. We've never lost a nuclear submarine. Right. But it's just, it's just the confinement that would drive me insane. Well, you're with other people. You're not like a loner.

Okay. And there's activities. Admiral, you were, you were an aircraft carrier guy. So what do you think is the, the best, the best vessel to be on in the Navy? Actually, I honestly believe that the best one to be on is a small surface combat. 150 guys and gals, you walk around the ship every day and you see them all. You talk to them all. And it's one of the earliest commands you can get.

I actually went surface, the submariners, if you're smart, they scoop them all up. Man, that's where the brains go. The aviators, they're those where those, you know, the ones in Top Gun go. And they're just like they are in Top Gun. Man, I went up in the F-14 one time with them and we're over going towards Persian Gulf, flew over northern Africa's deserts, upside down about a hundred feet above the desert. When I came back, I said, now I understand why you guys don't like paperwork. But boy, you go on a surface combatant and you have to deal with everything.

Undersea warfare, surface warfare, air warfare, just not dropping a bomb, which is pretty tough. It's not just pushing a button to have that one torpedo go out. It's multifaceted. In fact, I'd argue it probably pairs you best for politics. But that's why I love it. No, but I mean, the crux of the debate is the three of us are very lazy people. We don't have the highest level of competence. We don't really enjoy doing things very often.

So my idea is you're part of the nuclear triad. One job is to just go around the oceans and wait. You're not in an active combat situation. You're there in case the apocalypse happens, which means probably a lot of free time. Reading. You said there's a lot of smart people. There's PhDs there, probably a lot of chess masters. You could up your ELO.

I just find the thought of being on a submarine even in peacetime so essentially terrifying that no way, no way could you get me on one of those. But you get on airplanes. How is that not equally terrible for like six hours? That's six months. Well, actually, the kind of he's talking on only goes underneath for three months. You're out there on a patrol because they never surface. They're underwater three straight months.

And if you want to get a hold of them, they have a special ways that they trail something. You can obviously get that signal to them and push the button. And they're in certain ways. If you go on the other nuclear submarines, the ones that just do the Tomahawk launch engines and submarines, you're out for six months. So they're the ones literally that sneak in. It's pretty exciting actually because in those, they sneak into harbors in the middle of it. And then so that's how we often would go into Murmansk in the Soviet Union days and slip on out.

That red hunt from red October has a lot of truth to it today. But here's the issue and why you might want to double think about it. If you saw the New York, when I was in the Navy, I proposed we didn't need 54 submarines. We only need about 35. Actually, so we have too many four structure too much. We need at less cost have only 260 instead of 360 because New York Times had an article the other day that said, water is becoming translucent, if not transparent is quantum is quantum sensors and there's other technology that you can actually measure

feel the waves in the middle of the ocean go up a little bit because there's a large metal object moving under it and with all the computer power. So you'd be a little bit more exposed out there. And that's why you can see on my website, I say we should have a less more capable military. That's at less cost today. If we harness cyberspace and newer technologies, it's why a man who worked for me commands the Western Pacific, all Pacific now said we have lost command of the seas in the Western Pacific to the Chinese.

Well, yeah, let's get into that. I mean, this is, you know, when I first saw that you had jumped in the race, you were sort of making this is kind of your issue, like you said, about that we have sort of lost control of the South China Sea for the first time. What's that? It's an issue of mine. An issue of mine, but that was the one that stood out from the other candidates, at least as far as I can see.

So, I mean, I asked you yesterday at the fair during the press scrum, like, how would you describe, like, you know, the issue of China and America as like, you know, the two kind of global superpowers and sort of semi adversaries? How would you describe our relationship with China? We have a real challenge right now of how I describe it is it's a new superpower who's emerging, and it did not set up the rules in the liberal world order. And so, therefore, it feels it shouldn't have to abide by those was, look, I backpacked through China.

The very first year that they led independent travel by Americans flew into Beijing, came out in Hong Kong a couple of weeks later. I had hundreds of people follow me. Never seen a Caucasian before in Wuhan and Chongqing. I went down the Yangtze River on a sheep boat to see the three gorges. I wanted to know this country that was about under the new four, what did they call it, the four great pillars of the future he did. So, when I went down there, I wanted to go to the bridge.

They had it roped off, even a sheep boat. I asked somebody in English that I tried to do in English, and he said, and then I asked again. And he kind of, the third time I asked, I'm a Western, yes or no. He had already told me, no, I didn't realize it when he shook his head. My point is, we're talking past each other, because we set up the rules, and they want them to be different. Do I think it's a challenge?

You bet I do. Why? For three reasons. And I could stop right now and quickly run through them. Let's see the reasons. So, the three reasons are, first, it is establishing a new world order of Sinocentric institutions. But it's doing it in the way that the Prime Minister of Malaysia has said,

as a new colonial power, by giving predatory debt to nations like Djibouti, and when they can't pay it, it has to give them a naval base. Or Greece, because of the investment in its port there, blocked the unanimous consent needed by the European Union to condemn the human rights atrocities they're doing against the Muslim rigor citizens of China. Second, what it's doing is, this is our corporations that have done this. That's why we have to restructure their corporate commons.

It's not just that they're lobbying us and getting great tax benefits that are unfair and outsourcing our jobs. They're outsourcing our national security. So, if you have an Android phone? iPhone. iPhone? Well, if you have an Android program with Chinese software, what you're saying on it goes right back to them.

You read the reports that Bloomberg has said, and others deny it, but that they are actually putting microchips into motherboards. There's contention about it, but when you're as a whole supply chain, 90% of it, of all the technical projects are there in China. Then you have to be concerned about national security. And finally, the most defining threat of all is the 5G network. Whoever builds it owns it, because it means eyes on. And since we sold Lucent, we don't even make the part in the wireless infrastructure.

Why is that important? Economically. Anything that comes on a virtual business meeting will be seen. They don't have to hack. They'll see it. And if you want to go the other way and during a period of tension, you can take down some more readily critical infrastructure. Now, can this be handled?

Absolutely. But not by America. Kick and bruised allies. And leave them behind and coming home behind a wall. Think tell them it's a wrap. You have to convene the world to make sure that a rules-based world order ensues from all this. You talked about China as an emerging global superpower that doesn't want to play by the rules,

which are largely set up by the Anglo-American world order. But from China's perspective, as far as what the British did to them, the British Empire and the Opium War, for instance, and the fact that their country was basically destroyed by Western colonialism, and then the experience of the invasion of Japan, and existing in a world where the rules, like you said, of global superpowers are not them and not to their benefit. And if largely, like I said, victimized and destroyed their country,

why would they want to play along with rules that they regard as, probably incorrectly, as hostile to them? As I said, remember, I said they didn't make the rules, and I understand why they're doing what they're doing. But that doesn't mean that we have to abide by it because of past history. Think about it. Is it right to stay on the ceiling stealing $300 billion a year of intellectual property? Is it correct that they're actually giving predatory loans to Sri Lanka, predatory loans,

way above what it should be, and then now it owns a port there for the next 99 years? So those are the questions that come up. Why is it that the World Trade Organization, which is broken, and this is why Mr. Trump says he doesn't go to it, yeah, it is broken. But those, it has to join the World Trade Organization and to have the rights of the World Trade Organization, but it's breaking the rules because the rules are not being enforced by the World Trade Organization. So I don't, I agree with you that there have been injustices, real injustices in the past,

but that doesn't make it mean that today we should let them do injustice. And so that's why I bring these up. Can we handle these in a very non-military? Absolutely. I have said when I was in the Navy in 2005, I gave a brief to all the flag officers, and I said, terrorism is a tactical issue. The rise of China, having backpacked through it and seen it, is the geostrategic issue for America for the next century.

That doesn't mean we can't do this in the right way, but rules should be established, and they are out there that we think are fair for the liberal world order. Individual and human rights, open and fair markets, fair and just governments, where we work for the world's collective good. Yes, imperfect, like that tragic misadventure in Iraq, that Democrats and Republicans voted for, but there's a lot of goodness we did by having a fair set of rules on the whole. When it's described this way, when you consider a world that rapidly shrinking

globe with resource challenges that are only getting worse, and it does seem like conflict between China and the West broadly construed is inevitable. And I guess the question I have is, is there any reason to believe that that conflict can be resolved absent the simple fact that you have a billion plus person, largest economy in the world trying to assert its ability to have access to resources in this shrinking globe against an order led by the United States? So is that conflict inevitable? And if it's not, what do you think a rapprochement with China would look like,

like a world order where we are not in conflict? Yes, I think it's been proven in the past you can do it without a conflict. The history of that is we had two world wars. After the first world war, we did not build a liberal world order. We didn't have an IMF or World Bank to handle the great depression of the world, and that gave the rise to fascism. So we fought another world war, and then thank goodness the world's greatest generation, and I know it isn't a perfect effort by them, built a different world order

of an IMF, a World Bank, a World Trade Organization, the United Nations, where we didn't do the League of Nations. It built an entire thousands, even a postal union that this president is walking away from that establishes fair rates around the world. And we actually began to understand, because of that second world war, that it's all with everyone that you set up rules, and we won the third world war, the Cold War without a shot. And that was hard, but eventually they came, and as Mrs. Gorbachev said when she came over

and was taken to a shopping mall out in McLean, Virginia, and she turned to the president's wife and said, we have wasted decades. My point is that this should be a positive relationship with them, diplomatically, economically, but with enforcing of the rules. So they want to take the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They'd love to be in it, and they're already setting up their own that have trying to with 17 other countries. I know the issue in the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Angstic Calls,

but those nations are scared of China. And for us to take 40% of the world's gross domestic product and not be part of that, which is truly not just a trade issue, a geostrategic issue, and say, do you want to become part of it? Then play by the rules fairly. To where we gave the rules, China does not want to be isolated. It's why it joined WTO. But if you want to join, go by the rules economically.

Here's why it's important. China's in a race for time. She's like Japan. They don't do immigration. That's what's wrong with this administration, not understanding the value of immigration. And because of that, they're starting to experiment because of the one baby policy. There are populations going down. They've got about 30 years before they just can't keep that China dream from being solidified.

Second, they have real problems. That's why they have a digital incarceration of the Muslim rigor citizens. It's very restive out there. And so they have their own challenges that if they don't have stability internally, and this is where prices are going up on them now, and wages, and trying to meet them, they cannot achieve what they want. So this is one where you do it like you do with the Soviet Union. You had some economics with them, but you didn't deal with them in other areas.

Diplomatically, you join other nations together. That's why I tell everyone, the sculptor that's close to the Oval Office is not of an American. It's of a foreigner, purposely put there. Because that was the man who stood beside George Washington, commanding American troops to win the Battle of Yorktown together. And he's there not in honor of him. But to remind the president, we want our American dream. We cannot protect our American dream without allies and friends.

This is not US versus China. This is a world rules-based world order that we have to restore US leadership to. And I know there's been problems in the past. But gosh darn it, how are we ever going to deal with climate change when China is going to build 1,600 coal plants, not in its own country. It's taking its old ones and it's selling them to the underdeveloped countries. So this is an enormous issue that has to do with our entire contraction of way of life if we do not restore US leadership to the world.

How is what you characterize as predatory lending from China to developing countries, how is that substantively different from, say, the operations of the World Bank and the IMF, which are nominally international organizations but in practice dictated by the United States and by European centers of capital. How is that substantively different from, say, what's happening in Greece right now where there are loans that cannot be repaid and then the enforcement of a strict austerity regime? Yes, the difference is pretty, I express it pretty in my mind, probably too simply, is where the World Bank and the IMF has always either forgiven debt or restructured debt.

China doesn't. I want Djibouti as a naval base. Two days, you probably saw five days ago, they said the same to Cambodia. It's got its second overseas naval base. It is constructing 42 or rebuilding 42 port from Vanuatu to Myanmar. A string of pearls people are concerned about, all with loans from it at predatory rates, many of them, not all. At 7.5%, you can get 4.2% by going to IMF and others who will forgive loans or restructure it. And that's how, by the way, the great recession we got Europe through

was by the IMF and World Bank that we did. They didn't say, okay, we'll do it for you, but I want. I want to make sure I own that territory of yours. And that's the difference. And the Prime Minister of Malaysia said that in an exact quote. He said they will not forgive, they then own you on these loans. What is the role of the United States' global network of military bases in this conflict? Does that not encourage China to seek its own overseas power projection capability?

And does that mean that the United States has a responsibility to try to step down overseas military commitment? Or does it need to fill the box basically to avoid China from filling that space? Right, it's an excellent question. Because some of these bases, like Vanuatu and others, those were former U.S. naval bases. And we have receded from, you look at the numbers, the vast majority of our bases from overseas because there was no need to. But part of the bases is not just for the projection of power.

Part of the reasons to be there and why I advocated that the United States should have put another base for an aircraft carrier in Guam. It has one in Japan is it serves two purposes. As China was, and this is 2005, it's actually serves three purposes. One was it says to China, who knows, we've watched them war game it with Taiwan. I mean, this isn't just based on think. We have plans and we watch what they do. That when they practice invading Taiwan, they know our aircraft carrier alone

can only do 12 hours ops before it shuts down. You need two at all times. One, it serves as a deterrent. More, it serves as a reassurance to allies and friends. So for example, when we have the North Korean dictator, who's now been given credibility on the international stage by Mr. Trump. And Mr. Trump said the other day, I think they want us to cancel all our exercises. Japan is not happy with that.

They've already gotten amphibious force, which they never had after World War II, and are talking about changing their constitution. It's a reassurance to them that we are here. We're not going to walk away from you. And third, it takes one aircraft carrier to keep one forward deployed in the Western Pacific for rotational purposes. It takes five, excuse me, because it takes a month and a half to get there, a month and a half to go.

You got to go into maintenance. I recommended we don't need 12 aircraft carriers. We only need nine because an aircraft carrier today can strike in 24 hours, 10 times the targets they could do 15 years ago. So why do you need so many aircraft carriers? So it saves us money because it's positioned. It's a posture, not a structure. It reassures, and it's there in case something untoward happens.

And we watch them practice against Taiwan. Remember, they shot some things the other day. And that's what it does. But if China's doing it, they can do it. But they're doing it by forcing other nations to bend to its will. We ask permission. But to your point about African nations who have given loans, and then when it comes time to pay them back,

they're like, we want a naval base in your country. If you were a country in the developing world, like you said, Djibouti or Cambodia is a totally developing world, but on the cusp or whatever, and you look at that experience versus what the IMF or World Bank, and the conditions that they would impose on loan repayments, isn't giving China a military base or a naval base a better deal than... I mean, at least you get some infrastructure out of it. IMF led restructuring destroys infrastructure in countries.

And not only that, but like with the TPP, like the conditions that would be imposed vis-a-vis labor unions or even things that your government would democratically want to do are essentially subject to veto by an elected corporate judgeship or council or something like that. Let's say that last portion again. Well, the portions of the TPP that allow the country, if you're a signatory to it that certain things regarding labor,

laws or regulations can be essentially vetoed even if your government passes it. Both points are valid points except World Bank, I know you're saying it's bad and it does. It wastes money on some of those loans. But they're under the stricture not to give a government a loan if it can't, at least as they sign up, be able to pay it back. The real issue is not the World Bank or the IMF, it's the United States, trying to understand to your issue of Africa,

we have more military attachés across the embassy of Africa than we do diplomats or economic development people. So I don't want to be pigeonholed into, this is all about military might or anything, that's like the third most important issue. The issue is we have neglected to be in Africa doing our development there. They'll come out from behind that valetiers they've been in for decades and they'll remember who was there.

I've traveled through Africa, my wife works in Africa. It's why I did, you remember the Afghanistan All-Girls team that got denied a visa for robotics a couple of years ago? I did that. I brought 150 nations together to convene the world, went into Africa to get poor countries who never did stem before. I mean, that's not talking here. I found 62 countries from them, got them all in.

I got, I ran in. Everybody in President Trump is traveling to convene the world. But in Africa, we need to be in there helping them develop because in 2050, that nation will have, I think it's one fourth of the world's population or it's a little bit later. They have five of the most developing countries in the world. We should be in there helping them come out from this tragedy they're in. So the World Bank and World and Things,

they do a lot of infrastructure that is not good infrastructure, but they don't then do what China's doing. You've seen China's projects there? I have. They're terrible. They're shoddy. They're done by labor of China, not indigenous populations there. And they leave it bad.

They don't like them. Look at the last Zimbabwe election. Look at Gambia's last election. Everyone who ran, ran sort of like running about people run against Mr. Trump, what he's doing. They ran against China. Yes. So don't don't go telling me that's what the real issue here is not the military.

That's a side issue. What the real issue here is, are we out there doing what we did do? Like after the Marshall Plan, when we military stop problems, they don't fix them. We stopped Germany with our military. We fixed fascism with the Marshall Plan. Think about Iran.

How did we fix it? We convened the world, including strange bedfellows of Russia and China for economic sanctions and diplomacy and remove that economic stability, nuclear weapons made capability. But now we broke our word when they kept theirs. And you're going to use our military. They can't even survive in the Persian Gulf

because our sonar doesn't work there. We can't find the 19 mini submarines. So they're going to come out on the streets of Ramuz. They're going to close that streets of Ramuz with fishing vessels. We've watched them practice the mines, thousands of them, 20% of the words oil, good for climate change, but bad for economy right now. And then they have thousands,

hundreds of missiles that can rain on China. And we're going to fix Iran. And think about Iraq. We created ISIS because we have people who don't understand military stop problems. We don't fix them. Oh, no, no. I'm not arguing about military here.

I'm arguing, engaging the world with what's needed in order to bind that world of the world, like those Afrinations, not to China's might makes right order, but to our order, imperfect as it is. Nevertheless, on the whole has brought extreme poverty of the world from 85% at the end of World War II to 8% today. And has doubled, doubled the life expectancy, doubled, more than doubled the literacy rate of people in the world.

That could not have been done under a different world order. I'm glad you brought up Iran. Sorry. No, no, yeah, no. I'm glad you brought up Iran because we've talked about this before on the show. And I personally think whoever is in our government right now, that A, exiting the deal in the first place.

And two, the people in our government who have been fantasizing about a war with Iran for decades now, and are maybe kind of trying to do it now, is suicidal to me. You brought up the vulnerabilities of our fleet in the Persian Gulf. Are you familiar with the Millennium Challenge war game that they did about that? We did? Yeah, yeah.

We ran a war game in 2002 called the Millennium Challenge against the U.S. Navy and... I'm very familiar with war games, and I was participating about it. Yes, it was called, not 5027, it was another number. I know the war plan with Iran at the back of my hand. And how did that go? Yeah, let's get that out.

Extraordinary challenging. I also did a study with, and we'll send you the study, with about 30 retired animals and generals after I was out of the military. And here's how it'll go. Now, if we had... And this is what I said. I mean, this isn't here.

I said this, you know, when I was in Congress, when they were trying to do it. I went on Fox to say this, look, here's the issue. We'll have to pull our carriers out. It will take us weeks or months to try to destroy that nuclear infrastructure. One of them at ACT, I think, is under 300 feet of rock. When I left the military, we didn't even have anything

that could do that, and I doubt we do today. It will take us weeks or months, because this is not Iraq. They have sophisticated from Russia air defense system. So when we go in, if this is to really destroy it, we'll have to beat down all those air defense systems. As hundreds of missiles are raining down on our bases in Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel.

And as that's done, we've got to then knock them down, and finally we'll get in there, and then we'll try to destroy it. In four years, they could rebuild it. Militaries don't fix problems. We can stop them for a while. That's the whole issue, and we'll have to do it outside the streets of Ramos, because we can't survive. There's only two places that aircraft carriers can operate in the streets of Ramos.

I've been there, I've commanded it. Back and forth in two large football-sized fields, because that's the only place where the depth of water is, that when you go fast and launch into the wind, you can grab it. So when I tell everybody this, and I went all over Pennsylvania talking about this, people go, oh. So I said, look, we don't want to have a nuclear weapon, but they were going to have a nuclear device in 30 days

if we had not signed that accord, and we got rid of it. Tampa-proof seals, eyes-on television, 3,000-man days so far of inspections in there. And this is the challenge. See, the peep thing is, we also don't have people who know how war will end before deciding if it's wise to begin. And that's Iraq, Libya. You know, it's happened, and that's the real challenge. But that's not how we keep from going to war.

We keep from going to war exactly with your point. We need to be in Africa. This administration has actually opened up a little bit more development aid there, believe it or not. But we need to be all over that place and bring the World Bank and IMF to do it right, and not waste money on non-good infrastructure projects, which they've done. Isn't it a zero-sum game?

We're talking about Africa, and you're talking about the emergence of China as an imperial power that can use military means and economic means and diplomatic means to project power, take control resources, gain military bases, and so on and so forth. It's not as if, in the absence of China, there would be something else. I contend that it is, the new Chinese order is only a threat to the extent that it is a threat to the American-led liberal open markets order, which, you mentioned earlier, is a valid use of American power projection to institute liberal orders and open markets. My contention is that these open markets do not redound to the benefit of people in these places,

because open markets' market liberalization necessarily benefits people with wealth, people with capital. We've spent centuries ripping the capital out of there, taking the natural resources, and now we come back and we can just buy it up. There is not a question that, your example at the end, we have done in place, as capitalism has done that, but communism didn't prove even close to doing the good that the vast majority of capitalism has done. Where did those facts come from that I gave you about extreme poverty being diminished?

Life expectancy going up. So you have a president of the United States as a Republican and does the best AIDS program for Africa that's ever been there. Now, I disagree not with your examples, but with the premise that this system is so bad that it cannot be better for the world than a China that would digitally incarcerate, as well as physically incarcerate, those it disagrees with, the Muslim rigor citizens. And so my take is they're also mandating that if you sign up for the Belt and Road initiatives, these 70 countries and the international organizations that you must

take their digital road, which means you must do the 5G network, which means they own you because they have eyes on everything. So I don't disagree with you on corporations. Look, 450 congressmen and senators have taken a lobbying job since 1998. You know what their income has done in that period of time? 400% as the medium level of income has gone across you. I know I got offered a seven-figure job and my wife put her hand on my shoulder when I turned it down.

I don't mean this in a self-serving way. And I went to do First Global and all that and said, are you sure? You look at corporations that are outsourcing our jobs. Corporations should pay over 40% of corporate revenues for America. Today, it's like 8%. No, your premise is right, but that's not just the system. That's political types. Take the previous administration even.

Opioids. They had the number two justice department official have the pharmaceutical lobbying industry roll in on him. He goes down to the DEA and says, stop all your investigations and bring prosecutions to us in the justice department of the illegal pill mills in West Virginia and everywhere else. We have a town of 500 people and a million pills are being sent to them a week. And you know what?

The administration stopped it. That's why I'm running for accountability to people above self special interest or party. Look, what you're saying is people. It's not just the system. This system is so unaccountable. That's why people voted for Trump. Trump, I tell everybody is not the problem. He's a symptom of the problem of how you can have all these country corporations

outsourcing their supply chains, jobs and everything and who's holding them accountable when they then lobby America to do the business of China liberally. You know that every one of them has a communist cell. That's fine. It's just like a labor organization. But the last law just passed said, now they get a voting right because China is smart. They do things methodically. They now want them to have a voting right on the boards.

And that's kind of minor to some degree. But you know, if you can have China force Marriott to fire an employee in Kansas because they happen to tweet a friendly post about Tibet, is that the system or is that politicians that just a bet that we are letting our corporations run amok on accountability? To me, what you guys want to do about all this stuff about corporate power, absolutely you're right. It's wrong.

That doesn't mean the system's wrong. It means the enforcement of fair standards and accountability is wrong from tax laws to outsourcing our national security. And that's why we have Trump in my opinion. And you know what? I don't want to be president unless somebody, and that's why I'm running, can unite this country because they don't trust anybody to do and go up against the system.

Look what happened when I did. My party put more money in against my race for Senate from the DSCC and television ads than they put in against Mitch McConnell because I had the audacity to say to the party from the president on down, I don't agree. Mr. Spector, the senator, switching parties. Now today, politically, you wouldn't, with the Me Too generation, you just say, whoa, we don't want somebody to try to humiliate Anita Hill.

You know, but back then it was just the system. No, it was politicians who just weren't public servants first. That's my belief. They let the, they set the rules for those corporations to do what they want. So you mentioned that corporations have an outsized power and essentially you're describing the process by which they dictate the terms and the legal regime. So then how do you counterbalance that power if you are not opposed to the system of capitalism and presumably not opposed to say, not in support of say redistribution,

a wealth tax similar to the one Thomas Piketty and Elizabeth Warren are proposed. How do you create a regime of accountability? Because from what I can see, these institutions are only accountable to capital. Only accountable to capital. They're accountable because the government was established in this nation in such a way that people have always said, we don't want the government, you know, to be it. That's how we set up a government to be interfering in our individual rights. We are to be protected against the power of government.

What people failed to realize is government was also established to protect us against the abuse and the power of private industry and power. So much as they did it with the trust busters or all that back in the day late 1800s, we have to do that again. And it's going to take a new generation of people, not necessarily young or anything, but actually believes you're going to go down there and actually say no to where carried interest you're too familiar with that has been protected by New York senators. I voted against it in the House, but up, it has a lot of money coming in the DSCC,

those who have carried interest. You need courage from people willing to lose their job over that. We don't have that today. And again, I come back. That's why we have the situation of what we have in the White House today. You just need someone. Why can't we do it? Now you got to bring the nation together to do it.

I got that. But that's what I did in my Republican district. Nearly two to one Republican district. Man, I have an F from NRA. I got 100% voting right, but 100% NARAL pro-choice, 95% human rights. I don't know where I lost the 5%. But that's it. And I got reelected by 20 points.

And I didn't spend a dime on a campaign ad. But you know what? We disagreed well. They actually were there. If Tea Party, remember the Tea Party, the health care? Man, they'd come in, I'd get there half an hour before shake everybody's hand, let them yell and scream at me. At the end, we shook a picture.

I went over the heads of the 87% of all elect officials in my district who were Republicans and went right to the people. And that's what you need today. I'm sorry. I don't see how else you do it. It's the only reason I'm in this race. So yeah, you mentioned these are the reasons that you are in this race. This is why you're running for president.

You got in late. I'm just saying, so from you and your campaign, what's the next step for you? Is there a way, like you see a path that where you can get into the next debates? Of course. I wouldn't be in here if you don't. You won't live in a conilodge. Yeah, you mentioned that you'd been in Iowa for a month living out of an conilodge. So yeah, I mean, that's a grind.

It is. But is it worth it? Yeah, done right. It's worth it. Yeah, I was going to ask why. I mean, Jimmy Carter got to live in houses when he did his grassroots approach. Remember? Maybe you don't.

But I live in a conilodge, you know? But look, yeah, is there a path? Is it tough? You bet it is. I got in late because, as you well know, my daughter's brain cancer came back. All right? That initially drove me into it. All right?

8% of kids survive. Glioblastoma, same as John McCain, Ted Kennedy. No adult survives. Only 8%. She's beaten it. I wouldn't be here if she wasn't a safe harbor. She was a little low today when I called her just driving up the street here. That's why I was a couple of minutes late.

You know, tired. But all that said, I am running, as you said, for really one purpose. We don't unite this country. We can't meet any of the defining challenges of time back and forth. OK? But can I get it? Sure, I can. First of all, I'll be driving about four hours right after this to go to two events.

All right? And if you saw the tweets recently, when I went to just yesterday about two types of tweets that are coming, and I understand there's only a couple, I got that, to where I was thanked for coming to an event that others didn't come to and how I got there early, as they said it. We just go everywhere. Number two, also tweeted two Democrats who came to see me. Well, one was there already, a waitress.

The other was a gentle elder man who said, we voted for Trump last time. We were looking for somebody else in a letter. I have to get eventually on the debate stage. I got it. But first, I have to secure this beachhead. And I got to be everywhere. And then... Is it tough for you, though, being in a landlocked state like Iowa,

cut off from the power of the sea and your Admiralty? It wasn't the sea. What I most loved, it wasn't. First of all, as soon as I got into politics, I was over any like I was an admiral. You sit there making those phone calls like this, you know what I mean? But I'm now doing what we call the air campaign after this ground here. I'm still going everywhere. But this is why I said to you before I started, thanks for having me on.

I need to get my message out there. Number two, and so that's what we're doing. Went to the Wall Street editorial board the other day and came back. I'll go anywhere. It wasn't Breitbart because nobody would have me on. You know what I mean? Talked about immigration, why the undocumented should be, you know, we need them because women aren't have a birth rate since 1970 that hasn't been replenishing our population.

And so we need immigration of all types. And so finally, then I have to get it eventually on the debate stage. But there's going to be seven or eight. Amateurs do tactics, experts do logistics, and we have laid this thing out. And we think we have a credible opportunity to make it happen. Yeah, no, thank you for appearing on what others have called the left wing Breitbart. So I'll give you credit for that. You mentioned your experience with your daughter or cancer and, you know,

dealing with that as being a big influence on, you know, your politics. And I'm wondering where you stand on Medicare for all. Yeah, it's this little change from when I first got in. I ran in 2005. I got out as independent, became a Democrat, two to one public district. And my one refrain, all I said for four months was, I'm a retired Navy Admiral, runner in national security that begins at home in health security. And I took what's now called Romney care back to 2005.

It hadn't been passed yet, put it on my website. So that's why I'm running. And it was the only reason I ran, pay back my country for saving my daughter. That was it. It period. But what I believe now is that public option that I voted for and the Senate didn't have the guts to stand up to the health insurance industry, took it out. And when I talked about it, I said, this is the transition of choice,

the same words I use today that will get us down one of two paths. I believe I used to think that going towards the VA model was better. Why? Because if you read the New England Journal of Medicine, Rand Corporation, they have been rated despite all the bad press as equal to or better than any private health insurance or Medicare or Medicaid in providing quality care in the top 11 major indices. Believe it or not, it's true.

Yeah, it's like it's the NHS model, yeah. Yep, the VA. The real problem is the VBA portion of the VHA, the benefits trying to get in. You know, there's problems. So number two, I also think that it's very critical to Medicare for all. We keep the John Hopkins of the world, the university that can do innovation, but you get to the single payer portion. Why?

Well, think about this. Here I am, my daughter's brain cancer came back. They couldn't give her the same chemotherapy. It killed several other children that had tried it. It was so hard. So they have a new drug that hadn't been used in brain cancer before. I think this might be the one thing that can do it, perhaps, insurance. $300,000 insurance company, because I am also on a partially private health care plan.

People think military is all in this public. It isn't. They denied it. $300,000. Now, we finally won an appeal, but here's the issue. I think how you take care of people as you care for them is important. 255 million Americans are in some sort of private health care plan. Medicare Advantage, Medicaid Managed.

255 million. If anyone had said to me this past year, two years, you're out of here into this plan, the same medical team of doctors, one came out of retirement to do her surgery. I would have said, whoa, that's why I call it transition of choice. Because in the military, we say, as I told you, piss poor playing gives piss poor execution. You need milestones to make sure it works. And here's why. If our US military could beat, our government could beat China, excuse me,

Japan and Germany in four years, but cannot roll out a health care website in four years, why do you think all of a sudden, just because somebody says it can be done from the state that had tried single health care plan and didn't, you know, single pay didn't work, why can you say two or four years is the right way? And so I want that transition of choice to get to do it. But I'm very frank. I do believe we can get there. So Medicare for all, it's an end goal, but you think it should be achieved through a series

of intervening steps that kind of like a intervening legislation or steps. No, what you do is you have two, three different types of public options. Much as we were planning, all right, they're given a loan to start it up that's just paid back from the government. And you have one that's set up like a VA, all right, with hospitals are owned by government. This is how I would do it. Okay. And it's sort of like the England.

And the other one is you just pay direct from the government right to private hospitals and all, which is Medicare for all. And then you just see as they go along, as they prove it's a choice in the basket of choices, affordable care act, and people, if it is so good, less cost, we've heard that right, better access, we've heard that right. Well, of course, it's they got a choice and better quality care. Okay. Why not do that?

That's not what we do in Afghanistan. We say 40,000 more troops yet. Well, where's the milestones to say that's what you actually, you're going to accomplish it. That's what we don't have any longer. We just have words, not deeds that are measured along the way and all. But I'm very blunt out there about single payers, what we have to get to. But I think either of those might work.

I want to see which ones of those work best as we go towards it. And then you can get to a certain point, you say, it's proven itself. In the next amount of years, everybody can move over to that. The objective is to get that healthcare companies out of there. That say to me $300,000. What? Two quick questions on this vein. One, should private health insurance companies exist?

I don't have a problem after we get to single payer, that if there is a healthcare insurance companies out there, I'm okay with that. Why not? England does it. Supplementary insurance. Supplementary insurance. If someone wants to pick it also, that's fine with me. It's a choice.

But there should not be, you're saying, there should not be profit involved in base medical care. No, do you mean this plan, what I'm talking about here? No, it should not be. See, that was what the public option was about. You know, I didn't, when I first heard the term, I didn't know what it was. I'll be quite blunt with you because we were pretty halfway down the Affordable Care Act. I purposely went to a subcommittee on the, to share how Congress works. You get two committees.

I want to be in armed services because I knew that's where the money is. So that's why I was able to move the first money into autism in 12 years. Because $150 million every year is put into women's breast cancer research there. And I met so many people who had autism. I said, how do we fix this thing? So I moved money to research there. I went over, but it gave me credit. Admiral, who cares about autism?

I mean, that helps a lot of my Republican districts and everywhere else. I mean, number two, I went to education because it's a long pole in the tent. It's our homeland defense, but they had a subcommittee on healthcare. Then I asked for, because I couldn't go to the healthcare committee. You know why? Packed money. All the money goes there. And to prove that, I asked for a waiver for a third committee, small business committee. The majority of Americans work in small business.

We're only creating half as many small businesses today as we did for every 10,000 citizens 30 years ago. So I went there. They said, do you want to be vice chairman? I said, that usually takes 10 to 12 years. I thought they had a sense of humor. Uh-uh. Nobody goes to small business. You know why? Zero pack money. So first off, that's what kind of happens down there.

So I went to the subcommittee and man, they brought in this issue halfway through a public option and I looked at it. And that's when I said, this is the horse we ride to see if we can get to single payer. Because I knew the VA was darn good, has its problems, don't get me wrong. And I've helped, you know, they don't show things where they have problems, transparency stinks. But other than that, they're darn good. So that's always been, you pay back the loan. There's no profit to your great point.

Because why should there be a profit? During the ACA debate, the House passed a version with a public option. And you mentioned that the Senate, even with 60 Democratic votes, did not. 20, 21 at best, there might be 53, 54 Democratic senators. How do you, how would one pass an even more radical approach than a public option? The question of the day. So when everybody up there goes, are you for Medicare for all? Yes. You know, I would have said wrong question.

The question is how you're going to make it happen. And that's why I'm running. Accountability to people, someone who stood up to their own party, president on down and bore the consequences of it, not beat Specter, but still bore the consequences. They didn't support me in that race that in general. I mean, people who are familiar. Yeah, you beat you beat Specter and then he ran as an independent.

No, no, no, no, that was Joe Lieberman. Oh, Lieberman. That's right. Specter had switched parties, which actually gave. Oh, right, right, right in the Senate and you beat him in a primary. But then lost in the fall to pass. And I put out a video why Anita Hill, I have six sisters. And if you ever watch that hearing and how the senators,

why it's standing there with Anita Hill made her repeat all those words like long dong and all that stuff on it was humiliated. They tried to humiliate her. And so I said, no, that's not right. And so what my point is, I'm going to do, and I know it's not a perfect answer, but I don't know any other way. First off, that's why I feel in the best candidate to beat Mr. Trump. Former three-star Admiral served this country.

No, more than that, stood up to his own party when it was wrong. And we serve people in a nearly two to one Republican distance, getting reelected by 20 points. I'll spend a dime on a campaign ad because we learned to disagree well. You disagree with me on choice. I have 100% voting record. Come on in. How to care Saturday morning, 8am, 60 people showed up.

Next quarter did the same. Listen to them and explain to them why I sat where I did. Same with the Hyde Amendment, anything. But sometimes people just want to talk, not be put down. But I'm going to go over the heads if necessary to the people. My first day, I'm going to have a town hall in the middle of America. Anybody can come in. And we're going to do it all the time.

Did it work in my district? Yes. Well, it worked nationally? Don't know. But I am going to say, people, politicians move to where those who support them move. You brought up Earl Inspector and his role in the Clarence Thomas hearings. How about, how would you describe the current Democratic front-runner, Joe Biden's role in the Clarence Thomas hearings? I think that, I think he needs to be accountable. Four years, four terms, 51 years old.

Lyndon Bain Johnson would have given her a fair hearings without much experience down there. I just think what happened to her was inexcusable. But that's how I feel overall. Think about this. As I said earlier, Democrats and Republicans of life who voted for that tragic war in Iraq left two decades of unaccountable consequences with ISIS, even copycat bombings in LA. Think about those same senators and Republicans, including who you mentioned, who over time across the spectrum dismantled the safeguards on Wall Street and took down the one place we actually need a wall in America for sure

to keep greed out and accountability in. Because they tore that down, my constituents, we had to keep our office open to 9 o'clock every night, seven days a week, to save over 800 homes from foreclosures, literally. ABC did a great story on it. And four times in cases of the average congressional office and not one politician, not one, has ever accounted for themselves to be accounted for the carnage from that war or tearing down that wall of the carnage to the livelihoods of my constituents. Do I think how somebody did something should be accountable for it in answer for themselves?

I do. Because that's why we have Trump today. Now, he's a false prophet. I get that. But those people down on those streets saw a system that wasn't working for them in that recession. When I walked across Pennsylvania, 422 miles, step by step, and I had two calls, because I wanted to show people it was not them knowing me, it was me knowing them. I got two calls. One was from a Republican who came out of a car dealership and was walking by my flightjack and said, Admiral, I'm a Republican and I love what you're doing. The second was from the center who controls the money for the DSCC and said, stop walking.

Go back and fundraise. I said no. Yeah, you brought up the Iraq war, deregulation of Wall Street. We could go on and talk about the crime bill or whatever. Opioids have talked about opioid crisis. You brought up corporations. But specifically Joe Biden's role in all of those things. Given what you said about accountability or lack thereof, isn't it depressing that he's still the leader of every poll in the Democratic primary? It is that he's leading the polls in Democratic primary. But if you want someone to win this race, it's got to be someone who's demonstrated they're accountable to people.

Foundability of people doesn't mean even 20 years later, welcoming that same senator into one's party who humiliated her. Look, I had ads put in against me on my last race from the president on down. I think it's not about being a Democrat. I tell all the Democrats, our Hobson's choice is not just to elect the president. It's to heal this country's soul with someone's accountability to them. And we don't have, that's why I got in this race. Look, I'm only, I believe, have demonstrated, I think, the ability in the military to stand up when we had too much force structure and should be spending less, all the way to that race that we just brought up to say, when it gets my party to say, I'll be accountable to you.

And I've shown that by deed because I don't know how else we unite America. How are we ever going to pass Medicare for all, as you said, or get there, or do climate change unless somehow you unite this country? No, I don't think that there is that candidate. They're all fine people. But I don't think that, as you mentioned, Joe Biden or others can do that for this nation. It's the only reason I'm in. All right, we've gone about a little over an hour now. And I think I'd like to wrap it up by asking you one more question about China.

And, you know, you say you've traveled there, you're familiar with it as both the country and as a geostrategic adversary or, you know, a challenge. What do you think, like, if you observe like China as a nation and their emergence as a global superpower, you know, again, coming out of being destroyed by the opium war, then going through the communist revolution, cultural revolution, then the various reforms. But like, you know, they have, there's a lot that they, there's a lot that's, you know, frightening about the, you know, authoritarian nature of the Chinese state. However, is there anything impressive about it? Or is there anything America can learn from the story of China in the 20th century and 21st? Without a question. Look, if you go on my website, read my script of my announcement video on the being of China, I call it a wonderful country.

It is not. It's it's the people are tremendous. It's sort of like they have a leadership, though. All right. When I say China, you know, when you say Democratic Party, I think the people here in Iowa, I, but most people think of those in Washington, DC. So when I say China, it's this isn't against the people. This is against the president who over the last few years, President Xi has changed how China approaches it. Yeah, they were doing some mischief before.

But this China, this Belt and Road Initiative is totally different and wasn't in existence four or five years ago till he became president. And so in my mind is this is not about the China people. Do we have a lot to learn? You bet we do. We have a lot to learn from Iran. Remember, we were the ones in 1953 that overthrew that democracy. Remember? Sure.

So we have a lot to learn. But, you know, that's something that people don't do. I'm worried right now that's what the Democratic Party is not doing, learning its lessons. Military, you have lessons learned after every exercise you sit down, go through them. What did we learn? Somebody better do that because how are you going to get these people who voted for Trump back into the party, including Democrats? And so that's how I feel about China. Let's, we are in the United States.

We're restoring its leadership liberal world or let's make sure we do it right this time in all areas. Your points are well taken. But not so much the Chinese people themselves. I meant the China's use of state power to assert their prerogatives and goals collectively. Is there anything that the US government can learn about the use of state power from China based on how they have done it? Yes. I mean, you can think about down in Central America of how our fruit companies down there, they were basically the US government abetted, you know, or with the oil companies around the world at times. But I think that it's like, I believe it was Winston Churchill said, I have great faith in America because after trying everything else, they will eventually do the right thing.

And that is who we are. We're not perfect. No human being is as Abraham Lincoln said, if men were angels, we wouldn't need laws, but that's the problem. We have forgotten we are a nation of laws, not of men. And when you have a president in the United States, and we've had them in the past that kind of bend the law a little bit for the good of corporations, or make the laws for the good of corporations, then we're missed. But I go right back that. That's why, you know, people look a military guy in the ways of, wait a minute, I learned the lessons of the militaries. When I arrived in the Arabian Sea, I tell everybody here, I got there with my 10,000 sailor seals and Marines.

You know what the average age is, the 5,000 sailors on aircraft carrier, 19 and a half, I tell them. And then I stop and I say, it was an armada, twice as large as ours, we'd become part of our carrier battle group. And they did become part of it, because they were there for America. But then when I went into the Persian Gulf, I was ordered to take my carrier battle group there to begin the precursor strikes against Iraq. Only two countries went with me, because they understood that American leaders, Democrat and Republican, couldn't explain how it would end before it began. I took lessons from my thing, and that's what we need in the White House today. It's not just someone who's going to use the military. What are the lessons?

We're building the wrong military. We could have a better one for cheaper price. Understand the military isn't how we should be engaged in the world first and foremost. The basis of their more to reassure people. But what we want to do is make sure it's our diplomacy, our economy, the power of our ideals that engages them. That's my lessons. I have one more question, and maybe we can interpose this earlier in the conversation. But to take the discussion out of the realm of the theoretical into something happening today, do you support the Trump administration's efforts to overthrow Nicholas Maduro?

No. If you're talking militarily, that's insane. Number two, do I think that we should be approaching it differently? Yes. I think we should be working with the Organization of American States, which John F. Kennedy made sure was invigorated and was sort of like how we together would ensure that mischief was not being done that hurt everyone. And so when you have a country where the drug cartels are with political officials, firmly money out of the country, where you have people being hurt in that economy atrociously, it's not ours to unilaterally intervene. Remember, I'm always saying in convening the world, because we're strong with allies and friends. We can't do it alone, like we're trying to do with China.

And so I would be down there to have the proper targeted sanctions against those who are stealing that country blind. And by that type of pressure, perhaps we can bring an eventual evolution towards a democratic state that isn't really in name, but is really someone who's pickpocketing its people. Well, I'm not just talking about military efforts to support the administration's embargo on Venezuela. I don't think they did it right at all. I think it should have been in conjunction with everyone, not unilaterally. That's what I believe, because it shouldn't be the United States saying, this is it. It should be as a leader of the world. It should, if it's an imminent, imminent threat to us.

All right? This is not a vital interest. It's an important interest that can change the character of a region. And so in those cases, it's not an imminent one to us will do anything to defend ourselves. The missiles you talked about on a submarine, for example, being launched or not. It is one where if the change in the character, we should do what we did in the first Gulf War. We embarked, we convene the world, and therefore we all owned it. And it wasn't just the United States unilaterally going in.

That's why I differ from how this administration does its foreign policy. It thinks it should be all by itself, the big cowboy. And then it's more costly. So no, what I've supported it, if we had done it as the organization of the United States, yes. And by the way, if I could, that's what we should do with the World Trade Organization. Countries, we should convene that, change the rules, and then have it done through a rules-based world order. Not with the United States says, this is a national security interest. Yes.

You know what I mean? And we lose credibility that way. We lose credibility when do things unilaterally. I guess I have one more. You talk about bringing back accountability and taming the excesses of the corporate corruption and the military overspending and all this through accountability, through re-establishment of these norms of behavior that have allowed corruption, that have been reduced and allowed corruption and, you know, to warp the government.

During the speech you were at yesterday, you gave yesterday, you used the metaphor of like a ship, you know, of a ship of the line. And the responsibilities people have on that to each other to the way that the society basically should run. Is there a way to inject that sort of accountability structure and overarching culture in the government without it basically being a military government? First off, the military is not like people think it is. It is not black and white. Those enlisted men and women, if they wanted to and you aren't treating them with respect and due course,

they can make life hell. I mean, they are great. And there's more, as Adam O'Reilly Burke said, even though the thing they like about the Navy was every two officers had a difference of opinion, but then they came together. It's a lot different than people think out there. You don't listen to that Chief Petty Officer who supposedly works for you, but you're really working for him as a young officer and he puts his arm around you and says, keep quiet. I'll teach you the ropes.

You aren't going to make it. All that said, you've asked the defining, another defining question. How do you inculcate a system of accountability? Because you just can't mandate it. You must incentivize it. Now, you can't mandate certain things. No more revolving doors. My party didn't learn that.

They supported someone who was a pharmaceutical lobbyist from a revolving door. They got to where they put the money into a post and then she lost the major election because Pat Doomey obviously used that in the year of draining the swamp. But you don't have the revolving door. There are certain things you can mandate. But then you have to incentivize. And I give this example. We go into Granada.

If you remember that short incursion again, you know. The Marines could not talk to Navy ships. There was no interoperability. There was no jointness that you hear about. They had to use a quarter and a pay phone to go to Norfolk headquarters to have them call the Navy ship to tell them where to put the shell. So Congress in one of the few times really had great wisdom in the way it is incentivized said, look, we got to have jointness. Now we can mandate it.

That's a problem sometimes with just a mandate. There's always a way around it. Tax reforms or stuff like that. And then they don't expect what you inspect. That's why inspections are good to oversee. That's what government should be doing. But that said, because it doesn't. You incentivize it by saying, guess what?

You don't have to be joint. But if you want to make general or admiral, and everybody does, you have to go and do two joint tours over there with another service. And you got to go to a joint war college. And all of a sudden Desert Storm one happens and we're the most joint force world in the world. They incentivized it. You don't have to be incentivized. That's the freedom of choice.

It's not a dictated kind of and improves. That is what we have to do with accountability. It's you're not going to be in our government. If you're one of the revolving doors. It's an incentive that people grow up not wanting to do that. And I don't have the perfect answer to this. But I do know that if a captain of a ship comes aboard. And I took over a ship once that was known for some wild ways.

And he holds accountability. It starts to come down. And it's how he acts, how he enforces it. But then incentivizing them to be that way. So when I busted the first guy, everybody knew. Six months later, I gave him back his stripes and his back pay he lost. It was an incentive to show you can make a mistake. It's okay, but you better be doing it right most of the time.

You know what I'm trying to say? Yeah. Sorry, sir. When you were in Admiral, was there perhaps an enemy Admiral who was in some ways your counterpart? And perhaps, you know, you were enemies, but you had a kind of mutual respect for each other because of the similarities of your position? Yes. There were, I mean, you have to understand that you can even see it among the services

because money is precious, even though you think there's a lot there. There is. But I remember one Air Force officer said, you know, after the Soviet Union, excuse me, after the Navy, the Soviet Union's our next worst enemy. So there's competition in there. But yes, you could take, I'll take Jim Mattis, the former Secretary of Defense, who I have great respect for. And I think we were fortunate to have him as Secretary of Defense.

We had big differences of opinion. I ran the Navy's 350 billion warfare program where I was trying to change and I frankly didn't think that future warfare would be landing Marines like Normandy. And I felt that we didn't need that. If I was doing the same thing as the Submariners, but over here, he understandably had this opinion. Do I have great respect for him? Yes. Do we fight like dogs?

Yes. But that's what we need to democracy. Why not? And that's what we need in America. We need to disagree well is what your point is. But I also will tell you, I got into trouble. When I proposed that reduction, and it's on my website, it went over to Congress. I worked for wonderful chief naval operations.

And I said we only need, and he approved it, 300, 260 ships out of the 375, cut the aircraft carriers, cut this, because we're going to move stuff into cyberspace and other areas. Just, you know, like that's the new commons. If you own the commons of cyberspace, then you can command the commons of the seas and the commons of the air. Without this, you can't. So we don't need as much force structure. But also that proved controversial. And I did run up against the congressional, and I had a brief two senators who made submarines,

and they made that clear, congressional and military industrial complex. And I paid a price for that. I did. Admiral, I want to thank you for joining us and being our candidate from Iowa. Thanks for coming home from the fair with us. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for your time. And good luck with the campaign.

Thank you.