The Bulwark Podcast - Mark Hertling: Performative and Deadly
Episode Date: September 4, 2025The lethal U.S. military strike on a speedboat in the Caribbean was more about putting on a show than countering the drug trade out of South America. And it's not even clear that the people killed on ...the boat were running drugs, or that any contraband was bound for America. Meanwhile, if senators are truly concerned that local police departments are insufficiently staffed, then they should pass a bill to fund more officers instead of pushing the charade that Guard troops can legally do police work. Plus, Russia is running out of ammunition, Ashli Babbitt was no hero, and a dissection of Trump's fatuous 'seven wars' lie Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling joins Tim Miller. joins Tim Miller. show notes Hertling's piece, "Bombs Won't Win the War on Drugs" "Honoring Ashli Babbitt Dishonors the Military" Hertling on the 'perils of yes-men' Rand Paul on the speedboat bombing Bulwark Live in DC and NYC at TheBulwark.com/events. Toronto is SOLD OUT
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Delighted to welcome back,
retired lieutenant general. He's a former commanding general of the U.S. Army in Europe. He's the pride of
of CBC High School in St. Louis, Missouri. It's, of course, Mark Hartling. How you doing?
Hey, good, Tim. I don't know why you're asking me on today. There's nothing at all to talk about.
Well, you said in the green room, you want to try to be optimistic about something.
So I'm excited to see where that comes because my topic outline here has a lot of bleakness.
I want to start, I've been obsessed with the story, but just haven't had a chance to get to it.
And that's kind of the nature of our world right now.
And so I want to start with it.
And that is the attack, I guess, on the drug running boat, the alleged drug running boat outside of Venezuela.
If you will miss this on Tuesday, the Pentagon made a precision strike again.
against what they say is a drug vessel operated by Trendaragua.
Trump said 11 members of that Venezuelan gang had been killed while transporting the drugs.
He shared a video of the attack on a speedboat.
I've got a lot of concerns and questions here, but just I'm curious that the biggest picture
what you think about that news.
There are so many things to talk about with that particular issue.
The context of was it legal?
why are we doing it this way? What's the operational design? What kind of mission set is the Navy have versus a Coast Guard? How can we not pass intelligence? And truthfully, there's been a lot of talk in the circles I hang out in and former military guys was this even a legal strike. It seems to be an extrajudicial killing, which we saw a lot of when we were fighting in both Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, a long time ago, Tim, I'd tell you, when I was a young major, I
almost was assigned to something called JTF6, which was a counter-narcotics effort coming out of El Paso, Texas.
I was big into the narco-terrorism world, understanding how it went, wrote a couple of articles.
In fact, I just wrote one for the bulwark about narco-terrorism and how, you know, there's two sides of this, both the supply side and the demand side, and how our wars back in the late 1980s, early 1990s to take out narco-terrorists, we're not going to be very successful.
But in this case yesterday, or a few, two days ago, when they struck this boat, it seems like there would have been a whole lot different approach to it if you had a legal recommendation.
Because just striking a ship, as I think it was Rand Paul said, we don't really know who was on that.
I would suggest the intelligence was probably better, and it probably was a drug-running cigarette boat, as they call them.
But it's overkill.
That's the best way to put it, and it's not necessarily legal.
I have a couple of follow questions on that, but I want to kind of back it up even more about whether this is even a drug-running operation of drugs that would come.
to America. There was this cool article I read a couple months ago that I kind of mapped out
where all the cocaine comes and goes from. It was one of these very cool, you know, pieces of
journalism. And you can sort of watch it as like how it gets to Europe and how it gets to
America. We don't even get cocaine from Venezuela in America. I mean, I think this has to kind
of matter. 90 plus percent of our cocaine comes from Colombia. There's some from Peru,
some from Bolivia, some from Mexico, but we don't get cocaine from Venezuela.
So what were they trafficking here?
Rubio said on Tuesday that this boat was going to Trinidad, and then Trump said later in the
day that it was coming to America.
So yesterday, Rubio changed his story to say it was coming to America.
Like, that seems to be a lie.
Like, it seems to be, right?
I mean, even if it was a drug trafficking.
boat? Like, it doesn't seem to be a boat that was coming here.
Yeah, and what's interesting is the Coast Guard, if you talk to anybody in the Coast Guard,
and I've actually seen one of these operations. They will tell you that boats aren't the most
efficient way to bring drugs into the country. It's usually small aircraft at different
outside city airports coming in and out to different locations. A cigarette boat can only
hold X amount of narcotics, and it's not enough, really, to bring it into the shores. And there's
going to be checks on it whenever they dock somewhere. So those who are running cigarette boats
between Venezuela or Columbia or any place like that are normally human traffickers because they can get
more money transporting human beings than they can drugs. I was on a mission one time with the Coast Guard
where it was fascinating because they don't have a whole lot of ships that can keep up with a cigarette
boat so they will launch a cruiser or one of their Coast Guard cutters out, launch a helicopter with a sniper
in it, shoot out the engine of the cigarette boat, and then board the vessel and take charge
of the people who are driving in and whatever they're transporting it, usually human beings.
We should just say it explicitly because, like, that's a reason also not to drone the boat.
I mean, again, if these are human traffickers, if that's what's happening, obviously we'd love to
see accountability for human traffickers or things we can effectively do to cut down on that,
that'd be great, but what if there were humans that were being trafficked on the boat, right?
Yeah. And I don't know how a cigarette boat would have 11 crew members transporting drugs. That's an awful lot of people for that kind of a mission set. So there's just some disconnects in the whole thing. But I'll counter that by saying U.S. intelligence on these kind of things, they're relatively good coming out of Southern Command. So they must have had some kind of indicator. They said they had been watching this particular boat for a couple of days. And then when it took off, they decided to
strike it. It just doesn't, to me, make a lot of sense. But again, Trump was claiming that it's
part of the counterterrorism because ADT is a terrorist organization. But there's no authorization
for use of military force against terrorists anymore. Certainly not in Central America.
And so whenever that happens, you have to go to Congress and say, hey, we're looking to go
to war against someone because this was Casas Belli. This was an act of war against another
country if that vote was coming out of
Venezuela. And they said that they're going to keep doing
it at the Times story here
for yesterday. Trump administration says the boat strike
is the start of a campaign against
the Venezuelan cartels.
Hegsath said that there's going to
be, you know,
more of these to come.
So again, by law,
that would be something that Congress
would have to authorize. Well,
you also, at the very beginning of this,
they were very, the defense department
was very proud about saying we have
six U.S. Navy cruisers, marine expeditionary force, a bunch of helicopters, 2,500 Marines.
I mean, you don't need that many people in a troop-to-task relationship just to knock out a
couple of drugboats. So it appears that there is something further on the horizon of what they
might be planning on doing. And, you know, there are some people that say this is a pretty smart
move, but those people don't understand the use of force, and they don't understand.
the legalities of violating international law by knocking out a boat on open seas without any kind of
pure cause for it. There are a lot of problems with this. Color me skeptical that the guys that
photoshopped the letters onto the guy's hand to try to claim that he was a member of a gang
are telling us the truth on this. I guess one last question, because if you were going to
reignite the war on drugs in a more aggressive way here, because it was so effective.
of the first time, and he wanted to go after, like, the root of drugs that are coming into
America, like, you would do it in Mexico, right? To me, this kind of seems like, like, they're
doing it because they want to say that they're doing something, and because Venezuela does
not pose a real, like, military or economic threat, right? I mean, like, if you're doing it in
Mexico, that, like, creates all of these other issues for, like, cross-border trade and
economic stuff. And so there were some of the bag of people that were like, we should go to war
against the cartels. And to me, this is kind of like, well, we can't do that. So we're going to do
this other thing instead, you know, where there isn't as many other ancillary issues. What do you
make of that? Well, you know, I'd say from a military perspective, and I would hope they'd be getting
military advice on this, but it seems like this is more of a show than an actual targeting session.
Yeah. When you're talking about killing enemy people are taking some kind of
action that's tied to strategy. In this particular case, you could hit three different points.
You could hit the production point, the delivery point, or the transfer point. And what they hit
with this boat was the transport point. So that is the least effective and efficient because
they can find new ways to transport it. So if you really want to destroy a drug cartel's capability,
you hit where they either make the drugs or where they deliver it.
And those things have different targeting procedures associated with them.
Both of them could be effective and efficient, but it's got to have a whole lot more process development.
And what we're seeing, Tim, I keep going back to, it's performative.
It's just here's what we're doing.
We're badasses.
We want to destroy things and make our base happy.
Well, most of the base that's happy about this don't understand military operations.
and how inefficient and ineffective this kind of a strike is.
But it makes for a great headline.
Especially because, like I said, they're hitting it on a transfer point,
and I don't think they're transporting here.
But we have a lot of listeners out there.
We've got a lot of viewers on YouTube.
If anybody's getting Venezuelan Coke, you know,
want to DM me and correct the record on this, you can let me know.
But I don't believe that's what's happening.
Cooler attempts are rolling in.
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quince.com slash the bulwark. I want to talk to you about military purges. You wrote for us
a couple articles I want to talk about, which I really appreciate. One was a couple weeks ago now,
but it's still relevant. It was Donald Trump, General Cruz, and the Perils of Yes Men was the title
of the article. And we've seen pretty widespread purges now from within the military and the
security apparatus. Relevant to what we're talking about with Venezuela, that Tulsi purged a couple
of people who put out a report, you know, saying that Venezuela wasn't trying to invade us
because that undermined the Trump immigration agenda. So those were a couple of experts that were
lost. We've lost people, I guess this isn't military, really, but FBI who do counterintel stuff,
who have expertise on that, who've gotten pushed out. We interviewed one of those folks a couple
weeks ago now. You wrote about this, Lieutenant General Cruz, who is the director of the
Defense Intelligence Agency, who got pushed out because he gave an unapproved assessment on
the Iran bombing. Chief of Staff of the Air Force, you mentioned also in that article.
How big of a problem is this? And as you mentioned, you're kind of on these, sort of in these
conversations with ex-military people. What are people saying and hearing about all this?
It is causing just a pail across the military force of senior military force.
You know, the dedication of the professional military officers, the general and flag, you know,
admirals, the flag officers that are out there, they will obey the legal orders of any president.
That is the civil military relationship.
If it's a democratically elected leader, they will obey those people.
But when you start firing a lot of folks, and there have been a lot of folks fired, are told to resign,
it's troublesome because it tends to keep everybody else quiet because they don't know if they're next.
They have a dual loyalty, Tim. This is the other factor that's involved.
You know, sometimes a lot of people are saying, how come these generals aren't throwing their stars on the table and quitting?
Well, because they have a loyalty to their boss, the president, but they also have a loyalty to their soldiers.
And they realize that if they quit, the soldiers are going to say, hey, Hurtling can get out.
He's a general. He can resign his commission and leave the military.
somebody else is going to come on, we can't do that. We're in for an enlistment period of three to five
years. So there's that dynamic. But what we're seeing, and it relates directly to what we're
talking about earlier with the Venezuelan strike, there is no lawyer in the world, no military
lawyer in the world who would have said that's an accurate capability and go ahead and strike it
because it's legal. That was probably illegal. Now, the Defense Department said they got a legal
review and everything was okay. I'd like to see that legal review because those are the same kind of
legal reviews that the Defense Department gave a thumbs down to when they were asked to have
soldiers waterboard people during Afghanistan and Iraq. And no one in the military did it because
it was illegal. So those are the kinds of things we're talking about. All of the judge advocate
generals of the various services have been fired, all of the inspector generals that take a look at
things that are troublesome in each branch of the service have been fired. And about, from my count,
three of the five chiefs of staff of the various services have either been fired or told to resign.
The most recent ones, General Alvin, who is the chief of staff of the Air Force, made a comment
and made an argument in closed circles, as I understand it, that we shouldn't be singularly focused
on China, that there are several other threats in the world.
and we can't just put all of our resources into monitoring China.
And for that, they said, hey, this doesn't fit in with the administration's narrative.
We want to focus only on China.
Forget about Russia.
Forget about all these other alleged seven other places that President Trump brought
peace toward, which none of those are true.
And so he was told to resign because of that.
In a normal period of time, Tim, when a chief of staff of a service retires or resigns
early. Man, that's national headlines. In this case, with General Alvin, it was Tuesday because
two of the others, the Navy and the Coast Guard and others have been relieved of their duty
responsibilities. So there is a continual cut of people as well as the affecting of organizations
all on the basis of increasing lethality like Secretary Hexas said. So I'm very troubled by it in talking
with several of my retired and active duty peers, there are problems with it.
Well, one other I'll mention, General Sims, the director of the joint staff, who I personally
know, he's a great soldier, great leader, three-star general, was getting ready to become a
four-star general.
The director of the joint staff is a very critical role, and because he was connected to
Millie, allegedly, General Millie in that previous life, they fired him and didn't give
him a four-star, and now he has to resign.
his commission. Those are the kinds of things that I think are really putting a pail over all of the
senior leaders in the military and are causing some stutter steps within decision-making and the
advancement of military advice to the civilian leaders. One of the other implications that you wrote
about was just kind of the potential perils of like only having people around who are going to
tell the president what he wants to hear or having people around who are afraid to give
uncomfortable information. And some of this is obvious, but I just think it's worth stating explicitly.
Yeah, well, I mean, you can go back through history and see the people that didn't pay attention
to their advisors. And you can go back in history and see the ones that were, both in our history
and in other nation's histories. I mean, Bush didn't pay attention to the analysts at the CIA
when they were telling them there doesn't seem to be yellowcake in Iraq. And it took us into a
15-year war. Hitler didn't listen to his generals about the Eastern Front, and he completely lost
it. I mean, we can go down the list of a bunch of people who paid no attention to their
military advisors or any of their advisors, quite frankly, and we've seen the sycophantic approaches
to cabinet meetings, but you also have to take a look at those who do take the advice
and how much better off they are. Inside the military, we have things called red teamings.
Whenever I would make a decision about an operation, there was a team that would go off and say,
what could possibly go wrong? What is Hurtling not thinking about when he's giving this order?
And they would pick the thing apart. Now, all of that was done behind closed doors, but they would come
back to me and say, hey, boss, here's some things you may not have thought about. And in many
cases, it was like, holy crap. Yeah, you're right. I had thought about that. And that could give
the enemy an advantage. So those are the kind of things that you want. But what we're seeing in the
current administration is anybody that offers contrarian advice are just squashed. I read a piece this
morning in the Wall Street Journal about the National Security Council not having the number of
people that they should have to help the president make decisions. Well, the president can do
anything he or she wants with the National Security Council. It's there to provide advice and
consent from a bunch of different organizations that may be experts. When you draw that
counsel down significantly, and you dual-task the Secretary of State of being the national
security advisor, you're going to have a government run through ad hocism. And it's all on the
decision-making of one person because he is not taking the advice of others. I've kind of ignored
the fucking Trump bluster about, oh, how I've solved seven wars or whatever, that you kind of
mention how it's not true. Sometimes it's valuable to just say what I could explicitly say what you
mean by the fact that it's not true? Like, what do you refer? Like, what is he been saying that you
think is inaccurate on that? Well, what I'm trying to figure out, first of all, is what are the
seven wars he solved? Because, you know, India, Pakistan. Well, India, Pakistan is one. I think
he's claiming Israel, Iran, and that he brokered a ceasefire. We don't really know
hostilities could resurface still from Iran. India, Pakistan. Congo and Rwanda, I think.
Well, let me address India-Pakistan first.
He says he's cooled the violence after the Kashmir debacle, and that's been going on for decades.
So Indian officials deny this mediation, and that they say that U.S. involvement may have had modest influence.
Okay, so he didn't solve that war.
Thailand, Cambodia.
This is a border clash that ended allegedly with U.S. trade pressure causing it.
but it's contributing in part to U.S. leverages, but part also to the fact that they didn't want
to fight anymore. Congo, Rwanda. Peace agreement was facilitated, but the rebel groups haven't
signed onto it yet. Hostilities are reduced, but the conflicts still persist. Armenia, Azerbaijan.
Trump hosted the leaders who allegedly signed a peace document, but that final treaty isn't concluded
and the conflict still is unresolved.
Egypt is Ethiopia.
This is over the Nile Dam claim,
and no formal peace deal is in place.
And in fact, last night I read a report
that Egypt was mobilizing 40,000 troops
and putting vehicles on train
to head toward that location.
The last one is Serbia, Kosovo.
And there's been very little progress
under Trump's second term,
and there's been no major breakthroughs.
So those are the seven,
he claims he has solved, but none of them are accurately completed.
I loved it.
I followed up on that.
You just had it.
You just pulled them all.
You're just dropping.
And the two that he said he was going to solve in the day, Israel and Ukraine, he's kind of
given up on both of them.
Worst than I just wanted to go back because I was a young man when this happened.
Some of my lefty critics like to blame me for the Iraq war.
And I'm always like, I was hitting the bong during the Iraq war.
I'm sorry.
I just, I've, I've, I've plenty of sins, but I don't, that one just wasn't on me.
So you mentioned something just kind of in passing, but I think it's important, which
was like what happened with the waterboarding and the enhanced interrogation stuff then.
And what you said was that, and so now I'm going from memory, so you can correct me.
The military assessed that it was illegal, and so it was CIA that was doing those operations,
not, not military members.
Is that what happened?
I don't remember.
Yeah, the legal advice to Secretary Rumsfeld at the time, and I had,
happened to be serving my only Pentagon tour during that period on the joint staff, so I was
privy to all this. The legal advice was soldiers can't do this. Military, it's an illegal act.
There's no proof that this will generate any kind of confessions. So Rumsfeld turned to, I think it was
Tenet, who was the CIA advisor at that time, and said, we can't do it, can you do it? So the CIA
took it on as a mission. So all the CIA black sites were because the military said, we're not
going to do waterboarding. It's torture and torture under the laws of war is illegal.
And obviously, that didn't solve anything that there were, you know,
JAG officers that were getting in the way there. But it just, as you project out to potential
risks and stuff going forward about the Heggseth approach, like the fact that he's basically
eliminated that, I mean, they have for show whatever legal reviews. We don't actually know yet,
as you mentioned it, but Heg Seth has shown such disdain for that projects, like potentially
some concerning orders coming from the military, right?
I mean, that's like you want to have the legal reviews there.
Well, I mean, we saw that this week with General Sherman in California,
who is testifying that the deployment of soldiers and Marines to Los Angeles
without the approval of the governor and making that into a, quote,
Insurrection Act activity or an emergency when there wasn't an emergency claim,
the head of the California National Guard stood up and said,
we didn't need them. And I was troubled because we were asking military people to do policing
duties. And that's illegal if you don't declare an insurrection. And he was claimed to be a non-patriot.
And this is a guy who served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, ahead of the California National Guard,
a two-star general. And when he testified before the judge, he said it was an illegal act.
And I can't tell my soldiers to do something that's illegal. And he was,
Proclaimed to be a traitor and, you know, a libtard and woke and all that other stuff that they do to generals that, you know, talk about facts.
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That's important testimony because it seems like that campaign is continuing.
Trump yesterday was talking about what they're going to do with guard deployment options.
and there's some of those interesting, I think, both politically and it's very relevant to both of our areas of interest.
Trump said that he's considering now deploying national guard troops to New Orleans instead of, or in addition to Chicago, we're making a determination now.
Do we go to Chicago or do we go to a place like New Orleans where we have a great governor, Jeff Landry, who wants us to come in and straighten out a very nice section of this country that's become quite tough, quite bad?
I want to get to the New Orleans part in a second, but first, I thought it was.
kind of interesting and maybe revealing that maybe they are responsive to the legal pushback on
this, right? Like, whereas going to Chicago would put them into a Los Angeles type situation
where they're going over the objection of the governor who's the commander-in-chief of the National
Guard. Is that the right way to describe it? Yeah. And whereas you could go to a place like Louisiana
where Jeff Landry would invite them to come and that would give them more leeway.
So I don't know how much leeway on doing some of these, you know, more political
policing activities. What do you think about that? Well, first of all, unless there's an emergency
and the president declares insurrection, the military, either National Guard or active,
cannot conduct policing operations. They can support civilian authorities. And in New Orleans,
as an example, the governor can call up the guard to support federal agents that come in,
that coordinate with the police force. But those guard soldiers are not going to be arresting,
detaining, or processing individuals. They only do a mission that's called support to civil
authorities, SCAs. And what that means is they can guard a building. They can do paperwork and help
the federal agents that are doing whatever they're doing. They can put up razor wire to, you know,
protect something. But they can't actually grab a person, detain a person, put handcuffs on a person,
or start booking a person. For two reasons, Tim. First of all, most of these guys,
Guard soldiers are not military policemen. That's a very small force. When you mobilize the guard,
you're getting truck drivers, supply sergeants, tankers, infantry. None of those people have had any
training on police actions. They have had training on maybe riot control or crowd control protecting
a building, but they can't arrest somebody. That's up to the either state or local or federal
authorities. If the governor says we're going to mobilize the guard in New Orleans, okay, that's great.
going to have them do? What's their mission? Which is kind of silly enough itself. But I think what's
happening is the governor is saying, sure, I'll take the ICE agents in town and I'll allow them to come in
and help my crime problem, which Governor Prisker says, I don't need them. You know, my police are
dealing with you. You want to help me? Give me more money so I can hire 400 more cops. But the National
Guard, as we saw in Washington, and as we saw in Los Angeles, mostly we're standing around doing
nothing or picking up, you know, grass clippings and trash and things like that like they were doing
in D.C. Well, we could do some pothole filling down here in New Orleans, so maybe that's a job for
them. But to your point about how they can't do policing and other other options, this is the thing
that drives me the most crazy about all this, because John Kennedy, our senator, was speaking
yesterday about this question. He said he'd support troops in New Orleans because the local
government there doesn't support police like they should. And our other problem is we don't have enough
officers. Well, sending in the National Guard doesn't solve that problem because they can't do
policing. And do you know what Congress can't do? He's a senator. He's not a commentator on Fox.
Like, he's a senator. So what they could do is pass a bill that gives funding to local jurisdictions
to hire more police that like such a bill was proposed during the Biden years by Democrats.
Like, that could be a bipartisan bill. There are a lot of Democrats that would support that.
if they felt like the problem was that there's not enough police,
well, the government could just fund more local police.
Like, that's a thing they could do.
But instead, they're going to send in these troops who are not allowed to do policing by law.
Like, meanwhile, we also have simultaneously a funding shortage in Orleans.
I was just reading the local news yesterday, and it made me kind of ruefully laugh about this.
Right now, we're only replacing streetlights on an emergency basis because of a funding shortage.
It's just like, what's going to do more?
for helping crime in New Orleans,
like sending in National Guard troops
who can't do policing or actually making sure
the fucking streetlights work.
So people can't do crime in the dark.
You know, like, the whole thing is crazy.
And it comes amidst like a historic crime drop here,
like where in 2022, you know,
just for example, April,
it's like April 2020.
We had 24 murders at 7 this year,
in February 16 murders in that year,
two this year.
So there's just no way to call this in a murder.
It doesn't make any sense on any level.
It's just back to the drug.
It's a total show.
It's total bullshit.
Well, and I was going to say that, you know, and I watched Senator Kennedy yesterday
and some of his advice to the press in his corn-ponish manner.
And it's fascinating to me if a reporter would just ask, Senator, what do you think they're
going to do when you say they need leadership in the New Orleans police force?
you know, what are these military guys going to do this infantry men or this supply officer or this
air defense officer? How are they going to affect the New Orleans police force? If you want
leadership, you know, you might want to take a look at your police academies and what they're doing
in terms of developing leaders. The army isn't going to save you, Senator. They can only do so many
things legally that you have created in legislation. So yeah, it just, it makes no sense.
And it's partly due, Tim, because a lot of people don't really understand what the military does.
I was watching Nicole Wallace the other day talking to Randy Manners, who was a former National Guard commander, two-star general.
And he was explaining how mobilization of guard, these young troopers and their leaders, they're coming out of civilian jobs.
I mean, some of them are flipping burgers.
Some of them are office workers.
Some of them are lawyers.
And they're mobilized.
So, first of all, they leave their firms in a lurch because they're not there.
And employees sometimes really get pissed when there's repeated mobilizations of the guard
because they're losing their base of employees.
Secondly, they're getting paid less while they're there, most of them.
Some of them say, hey, this is a good deal.
I'm getting mobilized for 30 days.
And I haven't been doing anything but going to college.
So I'm going to maybe get some money to spend.
That's good.
But it's normally, it's $11 an hour, which is,
under minimum wage for most privates.
So you look at those kind of things and say,
and then what do you want them to do?
Because they're limited.
If you think they're cops, they're not.
You know, policemen take training for months or weeks
and know how to conduct police work.
These soldiers do not know how to do that.
I think that for some of them,
they just like the authoritarian costuming.
Sure.
Like, that's just what they like.
And then I think for others,
and I don't know where Kennedy lands in this,
But I think some of them truly do believe that just having guys walking around in fatigues, scares the criminals away from doing crime.
I don't know.
Maybe that works on the margins, but it doesn't be like the most efficient way to use our resources.
Well, presence is always good.
I mean, if someone was going to commit a crime, if someone's there watching, they're not going to commit the crime.
But eventually, these guys are going to be pulling out.
You know, Trump is now saying that Washington, D.C. is down to zero crime.
Zero is what he said yesterday.
And what I'm thinking is, okay, great, as soon as everybody leaves, it's going to pop back
up again because you haven't solved the problem, you've just intimidated for a while.
And unless you want to keep National Guard and ICE and, you know, federal officers there forever
and ever amen, the crime problem still exists.
You haven't done anything.
Maybe he does want that.
This is not exactly your baili look, but I think that there's a parallel that I wanted to
ask you about about the kind of recruitment stories and how you're doing recruitment in the military
and what kind of folks you want.
Because this is something I'm really worried about on the ice front.
There's this Washington Post story yesterday about a guy named Aaron Ellie.
He was an M.MA fighter who went by the cyborg.
I don't know if you're a big M.A fan.
But his career flamed out.
He ended up getting into IT after his hip gave out.
He got upset, I guess, because his ability, as he says, his ability to advance in IT was limited
because the market is crowded with candidates from India.
And so then he said this,
I keep seeing these memes where Indians are bragging about taking our tech jobs.
So I said, oh, yeah, well, I'm going to work with ice, and they're going to arrest you, slam your face on the pavement, and send you home.
And I just, I thought like that was a very chilling story.
It's just one anecdote.
But as they're trying to staff up quickly, this is something that there is made parallel to the military, right?
Like at times of war where you're trying to recruit people and you're trying to get people in, they're essentially doing that, like wanting to do a domestic.
war on migrants. What are your thoughts on all that? Well, you know, recruitment is the most important
thing we do in the military. We want people to come in because they want to serve something
bigger than themselves. Sometimes they don't know that when they first join in, but they learn
it very quickly. It is selfless service to the nation. When we talk about police, and I won't get
into the ice or any of those others, but when you talk about police, if you look at most police
cars in most cities. They normally have, you know, the mantra written on the side of the police car
to protect and serve. So there's an attitude that's supposed to go with that as well. If you're
recruiting people that want to slam other people's faces into the concrete and take care of them
and kick them out of the country, you probably got the wrong person. And when they do come into
your force, you have to train them to have a set of values, a set of cultural behaviors,
and a way that they conduct themselves as part of the organization,
or it's going to be an embarrassment to the organization.
I mean, every time there's a mass shooting in the United States,
the first thing that reporters like to find out is whether or not the person
had a military background.
And why that is is because, okay, they learn how to use weapons.
Well, as a military guy, that troubles me when someone who was a former military
uses a weapon in a mass shooting.
We failed somehow.
And there's always the follow-up question.
Well, didn't you do an emotional mental check on this guy before you let him in the service?
Well, a little bit, but not much.
And you can't change a lion's stripes in a short period of time in training.
When you're actively recruiting people that want to do these kind of things, there are going to be the kinds of issues that we'll see on the streets right now of people being body slammed to the ground and cuffs put on without any.
you know, adherence to citizens' rights, that's not who we proclaim to be as a nation.
You know, one of our national values is respect for all human beings.
We're not showing that all that much right now.
Hey, y'all, I warned you. I warned you. Our Toronto show has sold out.
The Canadians love Sam Stein so much that, you know, there are lines around the block to get tickets to it.
But the good news is we still have tickets left for our live shows in Washington, D.C. and in New York.
coming up in early October.
So go get those tickets now at the bulwark.com
slash events.
I'm missing LSU versus South Carolina for you guys.
I'm going to be in New York for that.
And so assuming that's an afternoon game,
I might have a couple of bourbons in me
by the time we get on stage on Saturday night.
So that one could be a rowdy one.
So if you're looking for an excuse to get to the Big Apple,
go see a show Friday night, come see us Saturday night.
Could be a fun little weekend.
Go get tickets.
Like I said, thebork.
Slash events, the Borg.com slash events. See you all soon.
I want to go back to the Russia stuff you referenced earlier and the fact that maybe America's giving up on that.
You wrote presciently, God, how long ago was it now, two or three years ago, times a flat circle, about the weakness of the Russian military and kind of saw an advance that their invasion of Ukraine wasn't going to go as smoothly as other people thought that it was going to.
where we're at now,
it's kind of this quasi stalemate on the front
and you have Putin,
sending missiles into Kiev at civilian targets.
What we have today is
this so-called Coalition of the Willing,
which is basically the European countries
in Australia and Canada,
so not us.
They're meeting to talk about, you know,
what to do going forward,
and they're kind of waiting to hear from Washington
about what kind of role we're prepared to play
in the security guarantees.
I was reading the Kiev Post this morning,
and they said that basically,
Europe is struggling to kind of demonstrate that they can do it alone. And some of the members there
are concerned about their ability to support Ukraine without U.S. involvement. What do you think
about that and the state of play? The Europeans are putting up a good front. They are trying
hard to collaborate and make it a difference. But truthfully, they don't have some of the things
that we do, primarily the big air defense pieces of equipment, the intelligence capability,
even the supply chain operations that we helped Ukraine establish at the beginning of the war
to get not just equipment, but ammunition, supplies, and everything else to the front line.
The Europeans will be able to do some things, and I'm happy to see them all pulling together
and doing those. But there is going to be a delta versus what they provide versus what Ukraine
needs that could only be provided by the United States. So I'm concerned about it. But at the same
time, what I tell you is Russia is in much worse shape than people believe. And I think, you
know, Putin's trip to China this last week was an indicator of that. He desperately needs
funding. His economy is in the toilet still and growing worse. He has not gained much ground,
if any, in the territories he's looking to consume in Ukraine. And Ukraine is doing a pretty good
job and continuing to hold them off, but they're also continuing to suffer civilian casualties
from massive strikes by Russia. But I would say Russia is running out of ammunition. They are
on a war footing. They are producing arms and weapons more than anything else in their economy.
That can't last forever. And I think Ukraine has more of a national and military will than
Russia does. I continue to say we're at an inflection point.
but we haven't quite crossed over that to the other side where Russia starts being defeated.
And I'm now concerned that China and India are going to help.
Right before that last phrase, I was going to say,
there was your hint of optimism, 40 minutes in to this podcast and you had to caveat it.
But I'm curious, just kind of putting your general hat on for a sec,
if there were no political constraints, given that weakness that you mentioned with Russia,
like what could Ukraine in the West be doing that were not that you would think
might give them an even greater advantage in repelling this right now.
There would be continued shipment of air defense systems.
There would be a cell inside of Ukraine or even inside of Kiev or even on the front lines
of intelligence targeters that are contributing to what Ukraine is doing, although they're
doing a pretty good job themselves.
There would be a lot of people there from the United States watching what they're doing
in terms of drone warfare because they are learning quite a few lessons that we could
certainly take on. And, you know, they could just give morale support. Right now, one of the things
within Ukraine, and I talked to a buddy of mine in Ukraine the other day, a Ukrainian who I used to work with,
and he said the biggest thing is morale, that they can't believe that after three years and them
continuing to hold the fight that the United States is backing off of helping them. That's the part
that they don't get. The weapons are one thing, you know, continuing the supply. But the main issue is
are you really for democracy and sovereignty or are you not? Because that's what we thought
you were for all this time. And that's the troublesome piece at the upper echelons of the Ukrainian
military right now. The other conflict you mentioned, obviously, Israel, Gaza, just kind of open
ended. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on the current situation. Yeah, it's a mess.
It always has been a mess, but it's getting messier. They continue to fight against Hamas.
and there are still a lot of Hamas fighters left inside of the Gaza Strip, but they are doing it
and in such a way that they're completely ignoring any kind of political end state. And, you know,
I go back to Clausewitz and say war is politics by any other mean. There's got to be some kind of
political end state. And there doesn't seem to be one right now. And I see the Israeli government right now
that's in power of completely ignoring the potential for saving lives inside of Gaza.
They're not even considering it anymore. They just want to kill more terrorists. And there's a lot
of non-terrorists in that nation, certainly some people who support the terrorist, but they're
human beings. And you can't go into a war, any war, at any time, if you're not considering
what's going to happen when the fighting stops. And Israel has refused to even
take that under consideration.
Two other topics of interest
to you. One was the one you
wrote. You're warning me out, man. I'm warning you. Neither of them
are giving you opportunities for optimism. We'll have three topics left.
Two, not, and then you can, dealer's choice at the end. You can come up with something
positive. All right. You wrote for us, which
got out of attention. Honoring Ashley Babett dishonors the military.
I was happy you wrote for it because I actually missed the announcement of the story that
the Air Force plan to grant military funeral honors to Ashley Babbitt, who, if people don't know,
was the woman that was killed, storming the Capitol on January 6th. Why'd you feel the need to write this?
Because there's an increasing divisiveness between the American population and the military.
And it's because of the things we've already talked about, what's going on in the streets of our city,
how they're being used by the president and the Secretary of Defense, how many, most Americans,
don't understand what the military does.
And the fact that, you know, it's interesting,
the statistic only one, less than one percent of people between the ages of 18 and 24
even think about joining the military.
So you've got a nation that's already totally disconnected from the military.
And then when you see the divisiveness continuing to be wedged on an issue like
someone who has gone into Congress and attempted to overthrow our Constitution,
And yet that person, X number of years ago, was actually in the Air Force.
And when she was in the Air Force, when she first joined and whenever she got a promotion,
she raised her right hand and said, I, Ashley Babbitt, will support and defend the Constitution
in the United States against all enemy foreign and domestic and the rest of that beautiful oath
that we all take multiple times during our career.
And she was doing exactly the opposite.
And what I wanted to remind people of is that there are those who take that oath, who understand
their role in government and how we support government. Yeah, we can protest. We can peacefully
protest. But that's not what January 6 was. And I think our current administration continues to
try and whitewash that with their base, saying it was no big deal. And what I'll tell you in
terms of reaction to that article, Tim, it was probably the most, the largest reaction I got
on social media. But then about day two or three, the trolls started coming in. And the trolls
were all saying, oh, this was just a peaceful protest. And she was shot in the face. And the guy that
ought to be taken care of is the person that shot him. And he should be in jail and convicted and
given the death penalty. And there was such an opposite reaction that didn't address what is
associated with taking the oath to defend the Constitution and make our nation grow and transform
better every day that I just thought I had to write something about that. So that's a long
explanation. No, we appreciated it. And that's important. This goes back to why the military should
be neutral, like kind of your point at the beginning, what sort of, you know, sometimes, you know,
like me are like, why aren't the generals speaking out? It's like, well, you know, because you don't
want to get into these sort of situations where you have the Air Force making these decisions for
someone that dishonored their oath for political reasons. If I can say one more thing about
the Babbitt thing, you know, if she had lived the rest of her life without any kind of criminal
activity, and this was determined to be a criminal act, what she was trying to do, she would have
gotten the military honors at her death. Okay. But what happens is there was a
decision made by the Department of Defense under Secretary Austin of, hey, she was a criminal.
She was shot trying to overthrow the Constitution. We are not giving her military honors.
So that decision was overturned by the current administration, specifically Secretary Hegsa.
And I don't understand the reason why.
You're living in Florida still?
I am.
You were a VP at a hospital there? It was another job that you had?
I was a long time ago, yeah, when I first retired.
Well, then I have to ask you about something a little bit away from what I usually ask about, which is health care stuff.
Your state, they decided to end all vaccine mandates.
Yesterday, Ron DeSantis, decided to end all vaccine mandes.
We had RFK testifying the Hill as we're talking now.
Obviously, they're making a lot of changes at CDC or they're not listening to experts on vaccines.
I was just curious what your thoughts were about that based on your experience.
Yeah, I came out of the military and was recruited to work at a health care organization.
on something that I did, but the main thing I did was work with physicians because they asked me
to put together a physician nurse leadership program, which we did, and it proved to be a culture
changer at this hospital. But I was there during COVID. And what I saw was the doctors and
nurses who I had trained take charge of a crisis response cell. And watching them work in a period
of time that they were overwhelmed by sick people coming in and what they did to make life better
and take care of health was just miraculous to me. What you were going to see in our nation's
hospitals because Florida's hospital primarily, but it's going to cross state lines is without
a vaccine mandate, you're going to see a lot of sick people and a lot of contagion. And it's
going to not only affect the lives and deaths of our citizens, but it's going to affect what
happens in already overcrowded emergency rooms and hospitals. And it's going to cause a lot of
doctors. And like I hear from military guys, I hear from doctors because I still work with
them at a different organization. They're saying that this is going to be a medical crisis for
their profession of how do you treat the number of people that are going to be coming in with
disease. It'd say, oh, gee, I wish I had taken the vaccination, but it's too late now because they
want their freedoms. And they reminded me that individual freedoms are important, but what is also
important is social responsibility, making sure your individual freedoms don't affect other people
in your society. And that's what we're seeing probably going to happen in Florida.
All right, here you go. The world's your oyster. Leave us with something uplifting. You got anything?
Yeah, I do, actually. The last couple of days is I've watched things that are not in my avenue, like the Epstein issues and some of the court hearings and now Harvard pushing back and the attorney generals that are going after different things in terms of states. I've shifted from almost purely negative to maybe a little bit of a rainbow of positivity that things are happening for the better. And it's been created by individuals being affected.
They're now seeing the craziness of the kinds of things that this administration are doing, whether they're legal or not, it's affecting lives.
And I think that's when the American citizens are going to stand up and make a difference.
I was in the Baltics this summer, Tim, and I was reminded in talking to some of the citizens of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia about their six million person handholds.
holding that occurred across those three states. And I saw pictures of citizens holding hand to
protest the Russians and what they were doing to those states. And it struck me that that was a
pretty powerful movement when instead of people protesting in a town square, that everyone was
holding hands saying, we're together in this, encountering the oppression that we're seeing.
I'm thinking it's almost time that the citizens of our country start doing something like
that because everyone is feeling the negative effect of what has been happening with our
administration. That's my optimistic view of what may happen in the next couple of months.
Estonia. The Estonia is always a place to look for optimism. They're small but brave in Estonia.
Mark Hurtling, I appreciate you coming back, as always, and I'm sure we'll be talking to you again
soon, all right?
Hey, thanks, Tim. Appreciate it.
All right. Everybody else, we'll be back here tomorrow for a weekend edition of the Bullwark
podcast. See you all then. Peace.
thing of ours. Her fraternity
of drug dealers ringing off.
I just happen to be alumni.
Too legit, they still looking at me with one eye.
The company I keep is not corporate enough.
Child, rebel, soldier, you ain't orphan enough.
Her rapper termed trapper can't morph into us,
but a trapper turn rapper can morph in the puff.
Dance contest for the smokers.
I predict Snow, I'll Roker.
If you know, you know, I only,
ever looked up to Sosa, you all get a bird, this nigger Oprah.
Brick layers and ball shorts,
coaching from the side of the ball courts.
If you know, you know,
one stop like a Walmart,
we got the tennis balls for the wrong sport.
If you know, you know,
if you know about the carport,
the trap door is supposed to be awkward.
If you know, you know,
that's the reason we ball for.
Circle round twice for the encore.
If you know, you know,
You ever been hit with the waterway, then had to wade, do you wore a wave?
If you know, you know, when we all clicking like Golden State, and you and your team of the motorcade.
If you know, you know, been granting wishes like a genie to bad holes in two-piece bikinis.
I've been hiding where you can see me.
The skybox is right next to Ree-Reese.
Solely responsible for showing rappers how to stand on the front lines when trappers
Started throwing bands.
Where were you and big meats brought the tigers in?
Because I was busy earning stripes like a tiger skin.
Brick layers and ball shorts.
Coaching from the side of the ball courts.
If you know, you know, one stop like a Walmart.
We got the tennis balls for the wrong sport.
If you know, you know, if you know about the carport,
the trap door is supposed to be awkward.
If you know, you know, that's the reason we ball for.
Circle round twice for the encore
If you know, you know
The Bullwark podcast is produced by Katie Cooper
With audio engineering and editing by Jason Brett