From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Pete Hegseth On the Travel Sports Debate & Why Our Military Isn’t Ready For War With China

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

The Duffys welcome one of their closest Fox News friends to the Kitchen Table! Fox & Friends Weekend Co-host Pete Hegseth joins Sean and Rachel to discuss his new book, 'The War On Warriors,” a captivating analysis of the disheartening differences he sees between the military he joined twenty years ago and the one today.   Plus, Pete offers his perspective on travel sports and how to be an intentional parent. Follow Sean & Rachel on X: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy along with my co-host for the podcast, my partner in life and my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's so great to be back and we're going to just have a conversation with a friend, a good friend, Pete Hegseth. Pete, welcome. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. Good to see you.

It's good. So we want to talk about your book. But before that, we just want to talk about life. You OK with that? Sure. Let's go. Let's go. Always.

So there's a horse at the Hegseth house. Tell us about it. There is. Tell us about it. There is. Tell us about the rationale that went behind it. It's one thing to get a dog. It's another thing to go, we're going to buy a horse. It's one thing to get motorcycles, Pete, for your kids. You can put them in the garage and leave them there.

But a horse, I mean, this is like constant care. How did you get from motorcycles to chickens now to horses? It's a great question, Sean. I don't know. I don't know. Things just happen to you. You look at it as a horse in the field. I mean, you're right. I was reminded by some folks that, you know, we're cat people, which we are, because cats will take care of themselves for a week if you need to be gone. And they said, then you should have beef cattle because cattle will take care of themselves and you can be gone. He said, a horse is just a giant dog in that

context. And that is true. So we did buy a horse. He's five years old. He's very, very friendly. It's a very nice horse. He's been very good to our kids. I don't have any concerns about that, which is big. We haven't ridden him yet. Although one of our kids did when we were looking at them, and it's fine. I don't think we're ready for it. And Jen's got a big wake-up call coming. She does. It's like when you have a baby and you leave the hospital and you're like, who let us out of here?

Jen said the same thing. When the horse trailer came out and then the horse trailer drove away, she like this we're not we're not qualified for this what what do we do do you know how to put on a saddle or those at the bridal what do you put over their mouth and their we know how to do the bridal and can walk them around jen is so she goes out there a lot and like walks it around and he walks with her and he'll turn with her even without a bridal even without a harness nothing just kind of walking we're gonna get to riding she's always wanted one you know kids young girls want a horse she's always wanted one she has and we have the land for it um i think she's gonna love it and she's been out there it just it's tbd check in on in three months guys and we'll see how

horse horse land is going there's also no utility to a horse until you're riding it. So I am committed, Sean, this is your year of doing things, and I know you've actually been successful at it. Well, I'm trying to. We'll tell you in the fall as well. What? In the fall, I'll tell you how successful I've been with my operation. I get some honey and some vegetables.

Yeah, Pete, so just my vantage point on this is I'm really allergic to cats. Like, I break out like a wild man. And horses, too. I love riding horses. But if I go on without everything covered, a pair of jeans on, I get on, I mean, like, I

break out like a cat. Yeah, so I would love it if I could do it what's that but bees are okay maybe there's a horse suit i could i haven't told you about that sexy outfit yet oh i've seen it i've seen it it's good hey by the way what did the kids make promises that like they can't keep about the horse because that's like what they do with dogs they've kept him so far but it's only so far and one we can only do jackson the one that gets up would get up at three in the morning if he could every morning you know he's like you wake up he's already fed him and i've already cleaned the stall all the poop oh that's so great i love that

that's awesome so speaking of kids because we had a because we had a guest on our podcast the other day, Tim Carney. And I think you interviewed him on Fox and Friends as well. He wrote a book called Family and Friendly. And we really focused almost exclusively based around the idea of his book and how, you know, essentially he thinks that, you know, America is just not what we know we're not producing enough babies but also we're not um we're just not creating a culture that is conducive for family life for family culture and we really dove into the sports the travel sports program he's in virginia it's really big there and he just talked about how it's just taking away from family time by taking away from dinner time.

We did it with trepidation, too, just because travel sports is such a big part of our culture that to talk about what impact travel sports has on on the family life. People don't want to have that conversation. Right. We said we said it was like talking about abortion. Yeah. People are very committed on either side. And we want to talk to you about it too, Pete, because we know you love sports. You played sports growing up. You know, I don't know. I think you were closer to our generation where it was still kind of normal sports where you play seasons of different sports. You didn't play one sport year round. It wasn't travel sports. We were gone every weekend. That's what's happened in today's culture. It's consuming families' lives, the sports of their kids. And so we want to get your take. What do you think about travel sports

impact on kids' culture, family? It's a wonderful, I'm glad you guys are having the conversation. It's kind of feels like when I would wrote the book, Battle for the American Mind, it was sort of talking about getting your kids out of government schools. And every time you talk about that, you're offending the people who have their kids in those schools because they look at you and say, of course, I'm trying to do the best by my kids. So I get that good on you for having that conversation. First of all, I was right on the bleeding edge, I think. Like I did travel basketball and then I did offseason basketball, even though I played baseball and football, because I was really dedicated to be the best basketball player I ever could. And I went to camps all summer long. I think some summers I went to five or six camps, but that was because I was sort of neurotic about it. Like

I had this belief that I was going to be in the NBA and I wanted to play it. My dad was a basketball coach. And so our house was a sports house. That's what we did. That's what our off time was. So I fit into the category of the type of people that would probably not like what you said. We live in middle Tennessee. Our town won the Little League World Series 10 years ago. So baseball is huge in this town, right? And none of our kids play baseball, but that culture is here. As I've told you, Rachel and Sean, I'm transitioning out of the sort of belief that center should be at the, that sports should be at the center of my kids' life. It's not that it's a sport. It's that it becomes everything. And I was around this. I was, I've seen it. I've seen other, your entire schedule, your entire life is dictated off of a 13 year old all star

so-called all star team. But there are seven of them. So not everyone's an all star, but everyone's told they're an all star. And everything of your weekends, everything of your evenings, everything of your Sundays, everything of your holidays is games at 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. with a bunch of people you kind of know, but you get to know over the course of the season, all centered around the sports excellence of your child. But there's nothing any more excellent about it than anything else. I also don't like the fact that it forces kids into managed play

all the time as opposed to anything that they would do by themselves. So we're transitioning away from that. We've said, if you want to be a great athlete, that's great. Then you need, here's the following things you need to do. And I'll support you in that. I'll go shoot hoops with you. I'll do whatever with you, but we're going to play school ball through the school. And you know, that's Tuesday, Thursday after school. And then it may be a game on Friday night or whatever you get. I think 85% of the goodness of sports. You get the teamwork, the camaraderie, the brotherhood, the hard work. All of that stuff is good from sports without the obsession of it. And I think I said, Rachel, to you, for many people, I know it was for me, sports becomes an idol. There are a lot of idols in the world that we have to be aware of.

Sports for kids becomes one of them. Parents live their sports dreams through their kids, vicariously put all this unfair pressure on them. Kids half the time end up resenting the sport they're playing. So I think we just said, you play, we'll play in it. We're not going to be all-stars. You're probably not going to be D1 athletes unless you really, really, really decide you want to be.

But you're going to learn how to compete, and that's good. We want to focus on working out. I mean, how, as you, so first of all, for some parents, it's not just that they have like grand illusions that like their son or daughter is going to end up in, in the NBA or in the, in, you know, some elite, you know, category of sports, but also there's a social side for the parent, right? So if that community is into travel sports, the parents have this, there's a social scene around it. I'm talking to somebody who doesn't like to be invited, doesn't even like to be invited to parties. So that's not an issue for you, But just how is that transition work for your family? Is it like our family life is better or our kids are mad about it?

Or what is it? No, we've gone the other direction completely. And when we moved here, we moved because we wanted an intentional community of like-minded Christians. And so we moved to a school, which is a classical Christian school. But we actually what we actually found was a church, which is a Presbyterian Reformed Christian church with a bunch of families trying to live intentionally the same way. And so when you're not surrounded by the pressure of what team are you on? Did you make the A team or the B team? Do your jerseys have the name on the back? It dilutes the amount of pressure that comes with keeping up with that crew. I also don't

like my values or my friend group being dictated by whether or not their son can also hit a fast ball when they were 12 years old. I don't want that. I want my kids to be shaped by other kids whose parents have shaped them so that excellence and wisdom, because all kids are not excellent and not wise, none of them, not a single one. But if they're at least in a household where those things are trying to be reinforced, you have a fighting chance. So we've replaced that community with a school and a church community quite intentionally. I know not everyone can. And so in some cases, I'll defend the sports ethos.

In some cases, if you're in a rougher area, then the sports team is sort of an up and out. And a lot of those parents are the ones who are invested in their kids because they spend time with them. There's a father in the home and they teach them sports. And so the sports teams become the group of good kids. I mean, so it can go the other way too, depending on where you are. So Pete, I do, Rachel and I both said this. I think in my own life, I know in your life, sports are really important. Kids learn, especially boys, how to work on a team, how to be competitive, how to win, how to lose, how to work hard, how to use their physical bodies.

Boys have a lot of energy. Girls do, too, a little less than boys. So sports are important. So we're not saying our kids shouldn't play sports because they should. they should. But when the sports are the focal point of a family's life, it doesn't leave room for family dinner or for church or for other friend groups. And I think when these kids get out of high school, they wake up and they don't have sports anymore because to your point, Pete, most of them aren't going to play D1. Most of them aren't going to play D3 sports. They're done. And what do they have? What other skills have you helped them develop through the course of the time you had them in your home?

And there's not much else there. And so I do think you're a unique cat to play off. You like cats. A lot of people who would think of sports like you have, who've come from a place of who's been dedicated to sports. Your dad is a coach. You idolize athletes. He played in college. Yeah. That's been dedicated to sports. Your dad was a coach. You idolize athletes. He played in college. Yeah. That's what college. Princeton. Princeton. You know, does that count? I think it does. But how do you get how did you and Jen get to the point? You're

like, you know what? We've got to rethink this because I think a lot of parents don't even think about am I doing this right? Because you just you just do it and you've actually taken the time to go i'm going to think about this and you've transitioned how did you do that how did you do that how it's unique i'll be i'll be real with you which i know is what podcasts are for uh it's i think for me it's a product of brokenness i think it was a product of um our family and we have a blended family we're not together all the time for a long time i took for granted some aspects of parenting and now my kids are my kids are we're young then so there's not a whole like necessarily formation you're doing with a four-year-old but because i don't have all my kids all the time because i can't have the perfect setup and do this and do that and do

that i i think the lord i think the circumstances of that brokenness sort of mugged me. And he said, what are you trying to do here? Are you trying to raise basketball players or are you trying to raise Christian young men? You can't do both. That is so important. That is. And so I, I struggle a lot with the best Rachel. We've talked, we talked about this. I say Rachel because we spent so much time talking during the show,

but it is, yeah, that, that's the biggest challenge of my heart is how do I manage that? Because I can't manage it. I can't control every aspect of it. And so we've, we've just decided, no, I mean, we've gotten into things like family worship, which is on a daily basis when we have all the kids together, like opening the word, reading it, reading it with them,

um, praying and then trying to live it so that the, the only thing I can control and I can't even control it. It's all in God's hands is whether or not I've put the word in front of them and their faith in front of them till they're 18. And then they'll make their own decisions. But I know the more they encounter it in an earnest way in the home, home uh the more they're likely to want to live it out in the future and that's one thing with the time that i have that i want to try to live out and help for them

so but if i if they let's say we were in a normal you know a completely nuclear scenario um and other things hadn't transpired, I might be the same go, go, go, sports, sports, sports gunner, what are you doing? You got this sport. There's a lot of sleepwalking that comes with what you did before that I think would have happened. We'll have more of this conversation after this.

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i literally couldn't do it but also because i was gone and he was gone and so and and on some ways we we when we're really when we've analyzed situation, the circumstances, because I couldn't do it and he wasn't there. We probably underdid the sports and have and have now we have the opportunity. We always say the best part about having nine kids is you get do overs. And so we're able to like kind of course correct a little bit and err on the other side. But that said, the one thing that I am really proud of, and it's something that has slipped away

in the American family culture, is family dinner. And even with Sean's new job, my kids come home, I make dinner before they come, and we sit down and we have dinner every single day. And I think I've just decided instead of prioritizing sports, I prioritize dinner. I think it's so important. Not just even the connection part, of course there is and catching up and people learning to talk and interact over meals and pick up after meals and help set the table. Um, it's all of that, but it's also healthier eating

too as well. So it's, it's, it's, it's all of it is good. And I was, when we were talking to Tim Krimer, there's a lot of people who are like big on sports, which seems like a super healthy thing. And they're doing takeout every night because there literally is no time to have dinner. And to me, that's so counterproductive, um, in,productive in every facet of that. But anyway, I'm glad we talked about this because, again, it is probably one of the most controversial topics in parenting right now. But I am starting to see people turn that way. There's a lot more like TikTok videos and Instagram videos of parents saying, throwing their hands up and saying, I'm done. This is not working for our family.

throwing their hands up and saying, I'm done. This is not working for our family. And I think the more we talk about it, the more we give people permission to not associate good parenting with travel sports. There's lots of great parents who are travel sports people, and there's lots of great parents who have given that up. And so I think there was this weird connection going on. I'll leave this up in a second. But Pete, so we've come to New Jersey, not from Wisconsin.

And still in Wisconsin, we have little league, right? Where, you know, the community gets together and the kids get together and you get coaches and it depends on the size of your community. You have all these different teams that play each other. And it's a really simple process that you, your boys can play in the spring. It is bizarre. Like now it's, there's no like little league sports anymore. It's like these travel teams try out. I'm like, when do the kids learn how to play baseball in like a little league setting? And if they're going to go to Babe Ruth, okay, maybe do the travel sports there.

But it becomes challenging as a parent. How do you even plug them in? Because the sports have changed so much. It's not as localized and community-based as it used to be. It's so true. You guys are – it's so hardcore. And I look at it and I go – and then it becomes one of these things. If you don't start them and they're nine years old or eight years old,

then they're done. Your life is over. Yes. You don't start playing hockey at five? Dude, wrap it up. You're done. Seven years old? It's crazy. You're like an old man playing hockey. It's like you don't start playing hockey at five dude wrap it up you're done like seven years old you're like an old man playing hockey it's like you can't and then we also talked about the elitism of it you know there's a lot of parents who are struggling right now

and they're cutting corners but like cutting corners in areas they shouldn't in order to make sure that their kids can fit into this whole i mean i didn't have a jersey. I don't think I, I'm pretty sure I've never had a jersey with my name on the back, even in college, because Princeton prided itself on the team ethos. So we didn't have a name in our back, like Notre Dame doesn't have that. Never had, my kids had their name on the back of their jersey in like fourth grade. You know what I mean? I mean, the whole thing is like, you're not a pro. great. You know what I mean? I mean, the whole thing is like, you're not a pro. What are we doing here? Yeah. All right. Well, of course, you, you wrote this book, War on Warriors is such an interesting topic right now, because our country has never been more dangerous. You know, I keep talking about it on the show. I think we're on the verge of World War III every weekend. And it's a scary time.

And yet our military has never been in a worse position. Recruitment is plummeted. We have weird-ass commercials coming out of our military, like anime, LGBTQ-themed recruitment commercials. You're not allowed to say a few good men. Remember those ads that were so awesome? Great ads. Even girls like those ads you know what the heck i'm looking for a good man and but like what's happening and you diagnose the problem for us and and tell us if it's fixable in this crazy age we're in right now well you, you're right. You're spot on. It's been interesting. Even just in the promo, guys, the reaction has been bifurcated much heavily in one

direction. So all of the feedback I get from guys still serving, junior enlisted, junior officers, middle of their career, so younger in the units, in the ranks is like spot on. Keep going. This is what I'm seeing. You got to do it. The only pushback I've gotten is from a couple of two and three star generals who are like, exactly. You know, I recently was at Camp Liberty and I was overseeing the training of our troopers. And these are the finest troopers I've ever seen. I'd put them up against when I was a trooper. You know, it's first of all, your sentence started with I was at Camp Liberty and you didn't say it ironically because it used to be Fort Liberty used to be Fort Bragg. But you changed the name. Yeah, you changed the name. So overwhelmingly, I know we're over the target

here. And it doesn't mean that all of our troops suddenly now stink and they're no good at their job. Like, of course, we have great units that are prepared to fight, who would do us well and could deploy in a moment's notice. I know that. It's that underneath it, are they really as good as they were? Are they really as cohesive as they could be? Have they really been training in every aspect the way they should be? And the answer overwhelmingly, unfortunately, is no. And are they served well by the equipment that we're getting them? And is the plan we would put in their hands something that would actually defeat our adversaries? Because Rachel, if we are on the verge of World War III, by the way, you say that and you're right. And World War III could start in like four different places. It's not just one place we could be on the verge of World War III.

There are a lot of different places. And world wars start when a power parity starts in imbalance, starts to move in a direction where a challenger thinks an incumbent or the existing hegemon is vulnerable. And that's exactly where we are right now. America's standing on the world stage has not been lower since before World War II because of our commander in chief, because of disasters like Afghanistan, because of the confusion of the last 20 years of combats overseas. And then because of a military that's eroded in its readiness, add all that together. And there are multiple entities that would love to challenge our supremacy if and when they did. The question is what happens in the first two or three days. And that's the scary scenario is that a lot of these foreign militaries, especially China, are preparing for a battle against the United States. And they've built a military that is meant to defeat the United States, whereas our military is still fighting the previous war with equipment from the previous war with thinking that's static. So you've got a lot of things going wrong in the ranks. It's not just the personnel. But if we were to lose that world war, if that should unfortunately happen, the whole world changes. Because we were talking about this last night

over the dinner table. The kids were having some nonsense conversations. I'm like, stop, this conversation's over. Let's reorient. And I just threw it out there. I said, who here knows where the U.N. is located? I don't know how we got to it or something. And the kids, for some reason, didn't know where the U.N. was located. I was ashamed of my own.

I mean, I talk so poorly of the U.N. Actually, I was going to say, I thought that was great. The irrelevance of the U.N. That's true. say, I thought that was great. The irrelevance of the UN is absorbed by the Hengsteth kids. That's another way to look at it. I love it. And so we finally got, and I said, why is the UN in New York? And they're like, I said, because we won the war. We won the war. When you win the war, you get to pick where the headquarters are. And we've made the biggest investment and we were the most successful. And we said, we wantN. in New York City.

That's basic. It's more complex than that. That's basically how power politics works. Whoever wins the next war is going to set the terms of the 22nd century or the rest of the 21st. And if we don't win it, I mean, a world run by really any other country that's in conflict right now is not a very friendly world to freedom. So, Pete, you make a good point. The men and women that serve are remarkable, and they give their all, and they're willing to put many of their lives on the line for a country. But to your point, something else has happened,

whether it's in the training or the philosophy in the military. And so if you go back 20 years, you might say the American military was ready. We could address any and all threats that anyone could pose to our country. I think the point here is we're not so sure anymore. So what's happened inside the military? What philosophy has come in? What new viewpoints have come in that have made us change from what we were in maybe the 70s, 80s, 90s? What's happened from that time frame when we were great to what's happening right now? What's happened? The wrong social pressures over the last 20 years have been pushed onto the military,

and the military has allowed itself to be infected by them. And I say the wrong social pressures because the military has always been a top-down organization where social change has been part of its ethos. I look at the ability of black soldiers to serve i was just at we were at a memorial day ceremony yesterday there was a group of black soldiers in an area of the cemetery and we walked over with all the kids and i just said hello and these guys were setting up shop with a table anybody that would talk talk to them, it was all black soldiers that were buried in that area, obviously. And so they were trying to carry on the memory of that group. Segregation was real. But the military took that head on before really any other institution

in our government integrated. Eisenhower, right? Absolutely. And part of men, black men and black and white men fighting together is part of the reason why racism actually it proved that physical differences are not real. And as a result, like the old racism of the past sort of eventually could be eradicated because plenty of people had seen that that's not true. So I'm not saying social pressure can't be used in a positive way inside the military. It has been. sure can't be used in a positive way inside the military. It has been. But what happened, starting in Clinton, really, it started with a lot of the tinkering of don't ask, don't tell, although that's a whole other issue. But it became ideologues pushing views about what the military should do that are antithetical to one thing, meritocracy. You see, meritocracy could stand up to black and white soldiers, but meritocracy can could stand up to black and white soldiers, but meritocracy

can't stand up to male and female soldiers trying to hold them to the same standard or different standards, because pretty soon you're pushing females into the ranks, into positions that you want them in, that they can't compete with men. But the commanders, the politicians are saying, we need just as many women as men, instead of the military saying that that's not how it works here. We're in the business of killing people and keeping people alive. So standards matter more than anything else. They said, OK, we'll fudge the studies. OK, we'll fudge the standards to make sure we get X percentage of women in our ranks.

Same thing happened with then you add on top of that ideologies. And you kind of referred to this, Sean, critical race theory is run amiss inside our military. CRT is a real thing. You know, Mark Milley and others can yell about, I want to understand white rage, because they know exactly what's happening inside their ranks. And so it's doing the exact opposite of what desegregation had done inside our military. It's turning white against black and black against white in an academic sense of who's aggrieved and who isn't. All the things that we talk about all the time, which is fine in a Harvard faculty lounge, but it's not okay inside a unit

where you're going to be willing to die for that guy next to you. Or you have to believe that your commander or that staff sergeant above you achieved that rank because they're the best at their job in that. And if you don't believe that or you're skeptical of that, that breeds a cynicism. It breeds a mistrust that you can't have when we're an organization that says, I'm giving you an order to take that hill and you can't disobey that order, even if you think it's a stupid order, because it's a lawful order and you might die in the in trying to save that hill but you have to trust that i have your best interest in mind and i've done my homework about why we're trying to take that hill so it's a combination of all of those things have created

the word i heard all the time in interviewing people for this book is eggshells that commanders walk on eggshells that you're walking on eggshells about race, diversity, racial quotas, transgender pronouns. It's almost like the power has inverted to the point where young soldiers know what the buzzwords are. Right. And I say soldiers as a catch all. They know what the standards are supposed to be, but what they really, you know, commanders don't want to enforce because it would make them look bad. And so they run the joint in a lot of places. Right. It's like what you see on the college campuses when the professors or came a point where everything turned right, where the professors were now afraid of the students to the point where, like, we remember we had that that woman on from a medical school who who got basically thrown out because she talked about

biological sex in medical school and the students got mad and she was she was the one in trouble um it's the same thing yesterday sean and i were we were going through um we were gonna watch a movie um it was raining and we saw a promo for uh i think it's like a documentary on the blue angels um which was interesting because you know i i had had just done that with Rachel's a blue angel herself. I know she is. But, you know, the Thunderbirds, Thunderbirds. But but I was we watched the trailer and in the trailer they were talking. Everybody was like it was like a Benetton commercial. Right. There were enough women. There was, you know, people of color of every different color. There was the, you know,

the, the, the token white guy now, um, you know, everybody was like, you know, like that. Right. And then they were talking about how, how dangerous this is that they, they, they fly in formation within inches of each other. And I just looked over at Sean. I'm like, this is a job where you don't want DEI. Like you really want to be able to trust everybody on there. But yet I found it implausible. I mean, maybe all of them were super excellent, but it was like so perfectly DEI'd casted for this documentary that it caused me to question. I think that's the whole point is, you know, and I grew up in the military. For those who don't know, I'm a military brat. My dad went into the military. Part of the reason was for what you said before,

a Hispanic guy, when there was still racism in America, you know, was still on the military, was a place you could go and perform well and not worry about racism, you know, holding you back. It was meritocracy. It was meritocracy. And you've met my dad, Pete, which, by the way, he wants you to sign that book. He's really excited about reading the book. And he was like, I've never seen, my dad would iron his fatigues. Like, my dad, you know, he makes a bed. It's perfect.

I just went upstairs. He's staying with us right now. Um, I walked through to get something out of the room and you know, the room is, I don't think a bed has ever been made in my house that well, you know, it's, he just, he's vacationing and it's still made perfect. Um, this is a man who knew that if he, if he was allowed to perform well and do his thing, he would succeed. And he rose to, you know, 32 years in the service, master sergeant, so good at his job, so dedicated, so disciplined. But now it's like, I would think if you're a young soldier of color, you got, you kind of have something over your boss. I mean, that's kind of a weird flip of a situation in some ways.

I think, by the way, I think you're, both things are true in your example of the Blue Angels. I think for highly curated units like that, and there are many of that, if you think of the massiveness of the Defense Department, someone said, we want this unit to be representative. No doubt. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind based on everything that I know. So generals are saying, we need the Blue Angels to be representative because representation leads to recruitment. You know, we need to you need to see that. So they very carefully identified people throughout the system who were highly capable and pulled them along and said, we want you to be fast tracked into the Blue Angels.

Put them through all the same training that anyone else would have had training for and then made sure that. And I don't know if standards are lowered in that scenario or not. This is all kind of a hypothetical, but this is how it happens. Yeah, and I'm not denigrating them. No, but hold on. When that happens, somebody loses out.

Somebody loses out. That's right. And somebody who otherwise wanted to be a member of the Blue Angels was highly qualified, willing to work really hard, is now, does not have a slot because it was a highly curated process meant to look like a Benetton ad. That's not okay. And who is that usually? And we say in the book

openly, it's straight male, it's male white people, men who traditionally filled the ranks. So that's those, that group of people are sort of, you know, you can't have too many of them in too many of the high profile units pertaining to the DOD because that's not what the bosses want. And so that call it what you want. It's reverse discrimination against. up on a military base was just how organically and naturally diverse it was and how racially integrated, you know, every, you know, everybody was, was marrying people of different races and, and, and people from the country they were living in at that time. And I lived all over the world and it was, I never, the idea of racism was so foreign to me. And it's just I think that is one of the saddest sort of reversals I've ever seen in American culture. Racism is already illegal.

By the way, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, there are a lot of things that are legal that are not illegal in regular life. Racism or any overt or covert forms of racism or discrimination have been illegal in the military for a really long time. Yeah. So, Pete, you say this started with, you know, the Clinton presidency. So we're going back 30 years of this, you know, cancer infecting and rotting our military. So we go back 30 years. I'd say more like 20. I'd say it tinkered in the 30s, but it's much more Obama to Clinton.

Obama took it into overdrive. So even if it's 20 years, 20 years is a really long time to bring in an ideology, to promote people who support and believe in that ideology, because those are the ones who rise to the ranks who are going to buy in to this new military philosophy. So let's now go to the end of January of 2025. And let's say Pete Hexeth is the Secretary of Defense. And you have 20 years of this rot in the military. And you're like, we have to get rid of it. We are going to make sure we have a fighting force that can defeat any enemy on the face of the planet. What do you do? How long does it take? I think that is the operative question of the book is can a next commander in chief, meaning could Donald Trump steer the ship in a different direction decisively? Because notice there was a four year period between Obama and Biden, and that was the Trump administration.

between Obama and Biden. And that was the Trump administration. And obviously he had the best of intentions about not wanting any of this inside the military and focused on defeating things like ISIS. But I think all the CRT, all this stuff underneath. What? It didn't slow down, really. It didn't because I think it was still under the surface

in a way that was, and I think you had a lot of generals that were promoted under the Obama system. Yes. Who had kind of gone along with it, who were happy to just, Millie and others like that, to keep their jobs. A lot of the story of this problem is careerism. It is career protection. It's career advancement.

Generals become politicians. They want to get promoted. So they go along. They ignore their oath to the Constitution. And then they want the defense contractor job once they retire. Right. If any point along the line, if you're disruptive or don't play the game, you lose your rank or you lose that future job and that future board. So that's a big you talk to general officers and others, as I as I did, and they recognize that's the core of the. So if you said if you had a law that said generals for eight years can't be on a defense

board? I think that's in the book. And I totally agree. Ten years, you shouldn't be able to serve on the board of a defense contractor because it distorts completely the feedback loop, not just of who ends up getting promoted, but also the types of weapon systems that get advanced that don't actually reflect the reality of the combat that we're up against, the gravy train. Is that a realistic reform that could actually be implemented? I think it could. Yeah. I mean, you know why? Because most members of Congress have never served. And that's not that everyone has to, but it's a small, small percentage. So imposing that is a possibility. You know what might not happen, though, is that defense

contractors spend more money than anybody else. And Sean, you know this. I mean, they shower money to protect the defense budget. And so there's lots of people, military or not, who are beholden to the defense contractor dollars to make sure that doesn't change. Would it pass? Sean would know better than I whether or not Congress would have the appetite for that. We'll have more of this conversation after this. So I mean, I didn't I the committees I was on, I didn't see defense contractors anywhere, anytime. Okay. And what's interesting, Pete, is, and again, just for our listeners, yeah, you have defense

contractors coming into the appropriate committees and trying to build relationships with those members. But I'd argue that members aren't doing what defense contractors say. I'd argue that members aren't doing what defense contractors say. Usually defense contractors are giving, you know, campaign money to people who they think support their view of the world. It's not one for the other. It's not a quid pro quo for members of Congress. That really doesn't happen. But what you have is a majority of the Congress has zero relationship with any defense contractor, right?

Because they just are committee focused. But this is a big Congress. There's 435 members. And so whoever is, there's the powers concentrated in them. Right. And so but if you want to actually do this, if you want to make a change, you would have a majority of the Congress fighting the minority who if it was true what Pete said, which I don't think it is, but that you've sold out to the defense contractor, the it was true what Pete said, which I don't think it is,

but that you've sold out to the defense contractor, the majority will still win, right? So it could happen. Defense contractors as a whole are not that powerful, I would argue, in the Congress, but you're going to get the military. Oh my, they come in, they're not supposed to lobby, right? But they do. You think the military and the veterans groups, they're going to come in and go, oh do. Oh, they're using the military and the veterans groups and all those are way more powerful. They're going to come in and go, oh, no, Congressman, this is going to be horrible. This is why it's so bad. You can't do this.

So the defense contractors would push other groups to come in and move and work with the Congress. But let's go back to the original question, Pete. Yeah. Can we – I think your point was well, can you elevate, are there still good young leaders that could be elevated on a somewhat of a fast track to take those top level positions, those one-star, two-star positions, three-star? And you retire out the woke ones? That's what Obama did. That's what Obama brought up. His whole cadre of, you know, woke generals that bought into his ideology.

Do we have the good ones still in there that we could elevate? The answer is yes. Sean, I think we agree on the other one, too. I think the power of, like, the House Armed Services Committee chairman is immense, right? And he's been carefully curated. And as a result, a lot of members defer to the

insight the chairman might have on a particular bill or a particular measure and so they they may not control they may not have access to all the members but they they've hyper focused on the right members in many ways to try to get what they want that's fair i will uh so the answer is yes so you have an interesting um level you have a almost a donut hole right now a good donut hole in the military so you've got the top brass who are who are appointees or excuse me uh alumni of the way of thinking of biden and obama because they were willing to do get along to go along and they're in control now and they're advancing all of the nonsense uh and they some of them in that place know what they're doing is bad and they're saying we're here to protect the institution from it

which is still warped thinking but they they're there, right? And then you've got, but what, here's the dangerous part about the moment we're in now is they've pushed the education down. So you've got young officers at West Point, Annapolis and Colorado Springs. You've got young ROTC officers coming out who are now baptized in this DEI stuff. So now your young leaders are becoming true believers in it, right? But you still have what I would call the donut hole of your E7s to E9s, your, you know, O4s to O6s, O7s, guys who were in combat or joined during the war, got in for all the right reasons, still believe in the institutions. They're the ones that whisper under their breath, this is a bunch of crap that we're doing. If I was in charge, we wouldn't do any of this. And I, and that's the

core of our military. A lot of those guys have gotten out right now, by the way, though, a lot of those guys were, didn't want to take the experimental vaccine, got out. So there's a lot of ways in which they've filtered out that group, but you could promote higher performers of that loop group more quickly. Get you. So the answer is you need to fire all the anyone who was going along with all the der dei nonsense who's pushing electric tanks who's pushing i mean the head of south com is obsessed with gender um ideology in south com while china is moving into south america in ways ways that Rachel's way more than I do. Our global engagement strategy is empowering female leaders, which is wonderful.

Fine. But you're not living in the real world of what we're up against down there. But she got promoted because first was the way to. So there's a thicket of things you need to untangle. And your best way to untangle a thicket is to take a chainsaw to it and just go across the middle of it and you have to be willing to do that with anyone involved in in what these you the outroar will be beyond what it'll be just like what would happen anywhere else and then you need to just remove dei's outlawed crt we're not doing it outlawed um standards we're going to return to what they were when when we understood that male and women were biologically different. And so whatever standard it is, if we're going to have male and female have a shot, they all have to achieve the same standard and we're not going to erode it.

So it's new leadership. It's getting rid of the cynical theories and then ultimately real standards inside the military. theories and then ultimately real standards inside the military. And you could, unlike education, which I argued we need to retreat from, I think we can take this institution back because the takeover from the left is very broad, but it's shallow. And so you have a lot of troops inside the institution that don't buy it, don't want any part of it, have seen war and realize how terrible these ideologies are. So it's possible, but you have to be prepared, Sean, to your point, to spend a lot of political capital on this institution as a new commander in chief, when usually the military is not a political capital institution. You know, you salute the troops, you fund the troops, you do this. You're going to get a

culture war backlash from undoing this in the DOD that most commanders in chief are not looking for or expecting. But you have to do it. And that's why I think this book is so important. And we're going to end it here. But this is why I think this book is so important. It's on my reading list. I plan to take it with me to the lake and read it. I don't normally read military books.

read military books. But I think what you've done is in this book is similar to the what I think you've done in an amazing way with the education book, which is you're pulling the curtain back and you're educating the citizens because this is such a big job that, you know, Donald Trump and a few good guys like you advising him are not going to be enough. The entire citizenry has to be on board pushing their members of Congress to get behind these kinds of reforms because we're in trouble. Their safety, their security, their freedom depend on it. I know. It's not even like a big deal. This isn't like some niche thing that Pete's talking about that he's interested in. This isn't like his thesis at Princeton that he's happy to talk about.

This is existential to who we are as a country, to our future. Our enemies are on the rise. They're laughing at this DEI shit that we've put into our military and how weak we've become. I really recommend, this is a great book for Father's Day. This is a great book for a summer read for anybody who's interested on how we preserve freedom. And it starts with our military. And again, I want to thank you, Pete. I like a lot of stuff you do, have done in the past, but what you've done on education and what you're doing in exposing the

rot in our military is truly a service to our country. So Pete, quick, the War on Warriors comes out June 4th. Is that right? June 4th. Yep. And you can pre-order now. You can pre-order now. And if you want for Father's Day, actually a signed copy or a personalized copy, you can go to waronwarriors.com. It's waronwarriors.com. I don't have to do that because I can just turn to you on Saturday. Would you sign my dad's book? We're so excited for you. You have a full page, we're so excited for you. You have a full page, two pages in the New York Post.

The book is already causing, well, it's already getting up on the charts, but also it's causing a lot of- Consternation. Yeah, consternation. A lot of conversations that we need to have at very high levels. But again, I think the citizenry needs to understand the crux of the problem, I think the citizenry needs to understand

the crux of the problem. I think you lay it out really well. I just went for it. You know, it was like, listen, I've lived this. I've seen it. I'm just going to I'm going to say exactly what I think. And some people and I've already gotten it from military type saying you're you're the reason you're part of the reason why we have a recruiting crisis. You're you're taking these small, insignificant examples. Yeah. You're taking these small, insignificant examples and blowing it up and making us look bad. I said, no, and Mike Walsh did an episode with me and he made the same point. He's like, no, you guys did all this. People are coming to us and telling us this. You're just an institution not used to criticism on this front. And you have to be critical of things that you don't

want to fundamentally transform. You want to preserve. And the military is one of them. Well, I felt the same thing with when I criticized the Catholic Church or the pope. I have a lot of, you know, very faithful Catholics that will say you shouldn't do that in public. And I'm like, you know what? You have to be transparent. You have to tell the truth if you want to save an institution that you love. And I think that's what you're doing here as well. And by the way, I mean, the Catholic Church used to have the most badass army in the whole world.

Yeah. What happened to that? They also had walls. We kept the walls up at least. They were good walls though, you're right. Not in the country. Pete Hexeth with six flags in his shot. What, five behind him and one on his hat? He's probably wearing flag socks too.

Flag underwear as well, I bet. I wouldn't doubt it at all. Flag galore. Wouldn't doubt it at all. Pete Hexeth, great book. Thanks for joining us. You guys are the best. Thank you.

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