The Daily Show: Ears Edition - TDS Time Machine | Secretaries of Defense

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

As the current Secretary of Defense finds himself in the hot seat, take a listen to a few of Pete Hegseth's predecessors' visits to The Daily Show. Jon Stewart sits down with Donald Rumsfeld, Robert Gates and Leon Panetta to dig into their decisions, their legacies and everything else that comes with heading up the most powerful military in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Canada's Wonderland is bringing the holiday magic this season with Winterfest on select nights now through January 3rd. Step into a winter wonderland filled with millions of dazzling lights, festive shows, rides, and holiday treats. Plus, Coca-Cola is back with Canada's kindest community, celebrating acts of kindness nationwide with a chance at 100,000 donation for the winning community and a 2026 holiday caravan stop. Learn more at canadaswunderland.com. This holiday season, comfort is sharing cozy mornings with the people you love. Avocado products transform your home into a peaceful, grounding retreat, made with certified organic and sustainably sourced materials. From breathable bedding to handcrafted mattresses,

avocado is all about true comfort, so you can rest, recharge, and wake up refreshed all season long. Every product is thoughtfully made with the planet in mind, so you can feel good about the comfort and quality you bring into your home. Prioritize rest and recharge with avocado's organic comfort. Head to avocadogreenmatress.com today to create your natural oasis and save big during their holiday sale. Avocado, dream of better.

You're listening to Comedy Central. I got tonight, served as Secretary of Defense in two different presidential administrations, most recently under George W. Bush's new memoir is called Known and Unknown. Please welcome to the program, Donald Rumsfeld. Sir. Nice to see you.

Thank you, please. Go to join us. Thank you. Please, thank you for being here. We appreciate it. The book is known and unknown, and that's you, right there in a vest. In Tos, New Mexico. Is that Tows, New Mexico?

Lovely place, by the way. Obviously, you know, elephant in the room, tension between, I think I know why you're here. And let me just deflate the tension right off the bat. Apology accepted. And now we can move on. Have a nice day, a nice conversation. I know this has been troubling you for some time now. I do thank you for being here.

I don't even know where to start. So let's start with Iraq. Okay. Why am I not surprised? I don't know. I will take your stony silence as acceptance. All right. There's an interesting quote that you had in the book about John Ehrlichman, who was in

the Nixon White House, and you worked with Ehrlichman. And you say to him about him, he seemed to have a high degree of certainty about his views that bordered on arrogance, a trait that did him no favors as he gathered more influence in the White House. Certainty without power can be interesting, even amusing. Certainty with power can be dangerous. And I thought, boy, if there was ever a solid critique of how I felt about the administration you served under President Bush, it would be that. Certainty with power is dangerous.

True or false? If you go to the website that I put up, Rumsfeld-Dy. There are hundreds of documents, thousands of pages, and what you will see is the absence of certainty. You will see probing, questioning, wondering, do we have enough information? Are there more things we ought to know? It's quite exactly the opposite. If you would go to my TiVo, he doesn't think I know what that means. What I think you, you said rumsfeld.com. You're way ahead of me, brother. I'm still licking stamps and putting them on envelopes and hoping it gets to wherever it's going. I think there is, I guess I'm drawing a distinction,

perhaps, between the internal deliberations. And what was presented to the American public. Because presented to the American public was a picture of not just relative certainty, certainty bordering on arrogance. And there was a dismissiveness to anyone who would challenge that certainty. And that's not how you remember it?

It isn't at all, really. I mean, I know what was going through my mind, and I know the kinds of questions the president would ask, and the questions that Colin Powell or Condi Rice or the vice president would ask. And there was a searching. There was lots of questions. A yearning, if you will.

Well, it's not quite the word I would use. Do you, so you disagree that the administration showed it's a face of certainty when it came to the intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq war? Is that now we're, okay. In that respect, you're exactly right. There's no question but that the intelligence community presented that information. Colin Powell made the presentation at the United Nations. He probably had as much experience dealing with intelligence products as anyone in the government,

including the director of CIA. He spent days on it. He worked hard on it. He believed every word he said. Right. And yet he, and he presented it that way. Now, intelligence always is never perfect. I mean, it's always questioned it. You have to question it. Did you guys know intelligence was never perfect?

Oh, my goodness, yes. I feel like we're just sitting on a porch now, sipping lemonade. I said what I shouldn't have said. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Gee, Willikers, let me say that. You made fun of me talk. He makes fun of that, but there are a lot of people in the heartland of America who talk like I do.

No, I know. Maybe not on the coast, but in the heartland they do. Yes, on the coast, we just curse and have gay sex. That's all we do. I just run around cursing and gay sexing each other. No, let me go back to Colin Powell. Right.

Powell was not the only one. only one. To be fair, of course not. Everybody came out. The president made the decision. Colin Powell made the presentation. There was no one in the NSC who disagreed with that. Well, I would take issue with some of that.

Before, for instance, the linkage between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda in terms of the intelligence. There wasn't much of a linkage at all. Thank you. We didn't hear that, though. What we heard was there is a direct link. You cannot talk about the war on terror. You even came out and talked about how this fellow, you didn't mention his name, but Al-Libbi had described training that had been occurring from Iraq to al-Qaeda for...

There had been training camps. And there was an al-Qaeda-connected group called Ansar al-Islam up in Kramal that was actually preparing chemicals. And we found traces of ricin and potassium chlorate thereafter, after major com. combat operations. And Saddam Hussein was giving $25,000 to the families of suicide barbers. And he'd been on the state, he'd been on the State Department terrorist list for years. No question he was on that list. I think my ultimate point is, and I guess I'm somewhat getting to it, is there was no real momentum for a war in Iraq. We had to focus the country on that.

Afghanistan didn't take much convincing. People, I think, were behind that effort. That's fair. So the White House and the Defense Department and the State Department had to coordinate a pretty extraordinary effort to gather information and convince America that this was in our best interests to do so. And would it be fair to consider that in the effort that it took to sell us this, that we lost our... Sell is the word? Let me back up.

In the effort it took the administration to present. I'm just trying to help you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Oh, if only I'd talk to you before. Okay, not sell. I wouldn't say present because they did not present. They gave us again. They were pretty certain when it came out.

All the deliberation had been done. So it wasn't they were... You want to know what I did at one point? Yes. In the book, I talk about it. I sat down and prepared a list of all the things that could go wrong. The parade of horribles. Exactly.

And one of them was there might not be weapons of mass destruction. That's right. And another one was it might last six or eight years. Did you star those? No. No, I didn't. And I didn't believe them, but I just knew that one, a rational person, had to sit down and say, what are the things that could go wrong?

Great. And I presented it to the problem. and to the National Security Council. Right. Could I give you a little background? No. Irrational, but wouldn't a rational person? So you presented, I guess what I'm saying is,

the effort on presenting us the information of certainty that Saddam Hussein was a grave threat that had weapons of mass destruction capability and was in the process of disseminating that to al-Qaeda operatives, the effort to present that. You've overstated. Yeah, promise. goodness gracious do you want to does the does the all right we're going to go to

commercial we'll come back and I will finish I will try and recalibrate me yes we'll be right back with more with Donald Rumsfeld right after you welcome back we're talking with Donald Rumsfeld I guess my what I'm trying to get to is this you had a memo of parade of horribles It was two pages or three pages? I don't know. It was about 30 or 40 horribles. But you had a year...

Possible. Possible horribles. Yeah, I didn't know. No. I just said... You don't know if that parade's going to happen. It could be the Puerto Rican Day parade. Nobody knows.

Nobody didn't do it. But my point is, it seemed that the effort that the administration exuded was more geared towards making the case of why we had to do this than examining your memo. You say yourself in the book, I gave the memo to the NSC, I don't know what happened to it. Not quite.

You gave the memo to the NSC, but they didn't really pay attention. Individuals did, and people did make preparations for some of those things, certainly we did in the department. There were not extensive meetings on them. But that's my point.

Fair enough. The White House Iraq group met weekly. The group that was assigned, the job of coordinating the presentation about going to war in Iraq met weekly. I guess so. I don't know. That would have been at a different level. The NSC met frequently. Did they tell you anything? You poor man.

No, I don't know. Are you not on the email list? Are you not C-C'd? I was in the national security. Of course there was. No, I'm telling you. No, I know. You don't need to tell you.

Did you know, you created a whole office to deal with intelligence within the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans? Did you know that? I did. He told me. You recommended it? I did not. You didn't recommend that office?

No. Did you have any power over there? You did have a lot of power. So if they said you, can we create a special office called the Office of Special Plans to deal with intelligence, you could have said, I don't think that's a good idea. There are three million people in that operation. And everyone did not ask me everything they were going to do. They were delegated large chunks of responsibility.

Your undersecretary Doug Fyth, though, was... And they were very good people. I would agree with that. Well, let's not get crazy. I just want to tell you this. I really do appreciate you at least having the conversation and having at least the ability to sit. Why do you say at least twice?

Nicely done. I really do appreciate it. And I know you have to go, and your time is valuable, and I do thank you for being here. Known and unknown is on the bookshelves now. Donald Rumpfeld. Sir? Thank you. One of the hardest parts of getting older is feeling like something's off in your body,

but not knowing exactly what. It's not just aging. It's often your hormones, too. When they fall out of balance, everything feels off. But here's the good news. This doesn't have to be the story of your next chapter. Hormone Harmony by Happy Mammoth is an herbal formula made with science-backed ingredients, designed to fine-tune your hormones by balancing estrogen, testosterone, progesterone,

and even stress hormones like cortisol. It helps with common issues such as hot flashes, poor sleep, low energy, bloating, and more. With over 40,000 reviews and a bottle sold every 24 seconds, the results speak for themselves. A survey found 86% of women lost weight, 77% saw an improved mood, and 100% felt like themselves again. Start your next chapter feeling balanced and in control. For a limited time, get 15% off your entire first order at happy mammoth.com with code next chapter at checkout. Visit happy mammoth.com today and get your old self back naturally. My guess tonight.

He was the Secretary of Defense in both the George W. Bush and Obama. administrations. His new book is called Duty, Memoirs of a Secretary at War. Please welcome the program, Robert Gates. Sir, thank you for being here. The book is, is, you know, obviously, you've suffered an accident. Apparently, you wrote about Chris Christie and there was retribution. Actually, I finally brought about bipartisan action. Rattribution. Yes, retribution. You are very angry at you inside Washington for having a temerity to write a memoir.

I'm not exactly sure why, because many people write memoirs about their time in Washington. Why do you think you face such scrutiny for this? Well, I think, first of all, I'm pretty blunt and candid about the mess in the place. As I say, it's really not just about the fact that I was brought to Washington to try and salvage two wars, but I had to wage war against the Congress, against my own building, the Department of Defense, and at times against the White House,

often just to get the right things done in terms of support for our men and women serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even such horrible things as cutting the defense budget. Right, and they, you know, have you been surprised that the media has glommed onto maybe the more sensationalist aspects? Well, not surprised. I've been around too long for that. But I think that the, I think, you know, people have kind of proven one of the points in the book, which is Washington is so polarized that absolutely everything is used to prove one political point or another. So people have

cherry-picked individual quotes if it supports their position. So there's stuff in this book. If you're for Bush, there's stuff. If you're against him, there's material. Same thing with President Obama. But I think it's a very honest account. And I basically wrote it for all those kids who serve to show them, among other things, the passion and strong feelings that both presidents had about these wars

and about the tough decisions they had to face. Right. And to see it sensationalized like that in the media for conflict, it was upsetting to me. I mean, I think for me, the big question is, who's better? You know, and I guess you could just answer that. Just Bush, just, I guess, nod once or Obama, just do that or whatever you want to. How about punting? Punt.

It is, it's very interesting how Congress, like you say, if you're one, for one political party or another, you can find things about Obama, you can find things about Bush that are positive or negative. Congress almost universally comes out looking venal and small. And I thought, boy, that sounds accurate. And, and, and, and, and, that sounds accurate. And what a revelation. And what a revelation. I'm sure this comes as new news to the entire American people. What do you, I mean, is there a sense? Where I get into it is in the specifics on how they are that way.

Well, it's oftentimes when you'd be testifying in front of Congress in terms of progress on these various situations, and they would behind the scenes be somewhat thoughtful and circumspect, and then in front of the cameras, be complete braying idiots. Well, I say in the book that the effect of the red light on a television camera going on has the same effect on members of Congress as a full moon does on werewolves. Now, one of the things, you know, the bureaucracy of it, the strategy of it,

all that stuff is very fascinating. But on a more, on a global picture, the idea of, you know, you see what's going on in Iraq right now, it has deteriorated once again into terrible violence. Afghanistan as well. Does it point to an idea maybe that America fell a little bit too in love with a Marshall Plan idea after wars, and that we're applying lessons we learned in World War II to these new fights in the Middle East, and they're not applicable, and that strategy is doomed to failure to some extent?

One of the points that I make in the book is that in recent decades, I believe presidents, when confronted with a foreign challenge or a foreign problem, have been too quick to reach for a gun to solve it. I said in another book I wrote 15 years ago that the dirty little secret in Washington is that the biggest doves wear uniforms. Right. Because they have seen war, and they have seen the consequences, and they have seen the consequences. have also been sent into battle, sent into conflict, and seen political support evaporate

because of political leadership, the lack of political leadership or whatever. So one of the themes in the book is that we need to be a lot more careful when we deploy our forces and when we use military force and be willing to admit that we don't understand unintended consequences and that we know very little usually about our adversaries. assumptions like all wars will be short and will be in and out. That's 12 years after we went into Afghanistan. So I think there's some cautionary tales in the book that I hope will have some relevance as we look at the problem in Syria.

We look at the issues with Iran that you were discussing. Do you think it is that because immediately that's what springs to mind because you bring up an interesting point and it's a point that has been brought up by cyclically. You know, Eisenhower was very clear about military industrial. complex and that you build this machine and someone's going to want to use it on another country. Does it trouble you then to see there's a certain rigidity in the way that we look at the world and the way that we look at American power as being infallible? Well, we have more power than anyone else in the world. I do believe we're an indispensable

nation. There's really not any major international problem that can be solved without the United States being involved or leading the effort. But the reality is, We can't solve every problem, and every time there is an oppression or some terrible thing happens internationally, the answer is not necessarily to send in American troops. We need to pay more attention. Let's go. We're going to take a commercial back. We'll be more with Robert Gates.

The book is called duty. We'll be right back. the former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. I want to talk to you about, you have in these years as the Secretary of Defense for Bush and for Obama, face down, pretty fearsome adversaries. The Iraq War, Reconstruction, the Taliban resurgence. But you talk about a battle you fight

with a really terrifying opponent, the VA bureaucracy. Why is it so difficult? to take care of our men and women when they come home in the manner that they deserve. And why is it, why can we move heaven and earth to, why can we mobilize so quickly and so well for intervention, but not for backlogs of paperwork?

Why is that difficult? I write in the book that the only bureaucracy in Washington Washington that is even more intractable than the Department of Defense is Veterans Affairs. And you can have, I think, a very effective secretary like General Shinseki, who is the secretary now and has been since the beginning of the administration, who is absolutely committed to getting things right. But getting it down through that bureaucracy and getting people willing to change the way they do business is very difficult.

there's another aspect to it, and it brings us back to one of the principal culprits, and that's the Congress. The Congress has micromanaged veterans affairs in such a way that changing anything that has to do with dealing with veterans requires literally an act of Congress. So we would try pilot programs where we would expedite disability evaluations and things like that. But to be able to apply and get them done in a hundred or 150 days rather than a year or two years or three years or more, but we couldn't expand that once we showed it would work without a change in the law. And that proved almost insurmountable.

Even but in the case of, so you were presiding there. And it's not, this is one, this is an interesting case in Washington because in this case, it's not for a lack of money. Not for lack of money, and not for lack of desire. The people who work at the VA, I met a lot of these people. They're good people. They want to help the veterans. They are as trapped in this Byzantine system as anybody other than those waiting.

But you talk about in the revelations when Walter Reed Hospital, when they found out that the conditions that the veterans were living in were substandard. You jumped in there. There was two committees that immediately went to work there. You changed the culture almost on a dime. Things changed almost immediately. Why can't we do a surge like that for the paperwork backlogs to get these guys their benefits? It's hard to figure them.

One of the reasons things changed almost immediately was because I fired the commander of the hospital, the surgeon general of the army, and the secretary of the army. That got people's attention. And part of the problem in Washington is the unwillingness to hold individuals accountable. for performance. And I tried to do that. I noticed in the headlines in the last day or so that there's more trouble

with the Air Force nuclear program. I fired both the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Air Force Secretary for their unwillingness to tackle problems in the nuclear program. So you've got to, whether it's Veterans Affairs or anyplace else, and it's not just at the top, you've got to be willing to hold people accountable

and show that there are consequences for not getting the job done. And you, yeah, I mean, I agree. Can you stick around for a little bit? We'll talk a little bit of the web. It's on the bootshelves now. Robert Gates. We'll be right back on the web a little bit more.

Welcome back with my guest tonight. He was the director of the CIA from 2009 to 2011, then became Secretary of Defense until 2013. The new book is called Worthy Fights. Please welcome the program. Secretary Leon Panetta. Sir! Hello.

Please have to see you. Nice to see you. You've written a book here. It's called Worthy Fights. We'll talk about you. We'll talk about your book. You were with the CIA, so obviously you already know everything about me. Why?

So when you write a book like this, And then you want to promote it. Does the president call you and say, shut up? Or does he, what happens? What is the pushback? Not much. Not much. There has not been, they haven't called to complain and say,

you're speaking ill of our strategies and that sort of thing? No. Really? No. Is that why? So were you worried when you wrote it? After all, I was the CIA director. So they're afraid of you.

Is the CIA, what, is the CIA? operated by anyone in the U.S. government? Is it, like, a separate institute? You don't have to tell me, obviously, on camera, but... Oh, is it, like, a separate part of the government, like a fourth column type thing? It's a very self-contained operation, similar to the Marines.

Really? Yeah. But the Marines have, like, a commander-in-chief. The CIA, really, do they report to anybody, really? The director. That's you. Yes. else.

Anyway, I love your book. Let me ask you a question. What are we doing? Because it seems like we have a relatively incoherent strategy, and we've had it for quite some time now. And typically, when you have strategies like that, you change it to make it coherent. So we have this idea.

We're going to fight ISIL. It's this incredibly evil group. More evil than anything we've ever seen. We're incredibly scared of them. But we're only going to fight them from the air and only in certain places at certain times. Does that sound coherent? Well. Yes.

I guess it'll depend on what happens with Kobani. You know, look, when you're dealing with something like this and a terrorism threat like this that, frankly, you know, moved as quickly as it did, I think what happens in Washington is, you know, how do we move on this, how do we deal with this, how do we confront it? And so, you know, what the president decided is,

look, we are going to confront ISIS, we're going to put troops on the ground in Iraq to try to train. the Iraqi security force to deal with... We're not troops on the ground, though. We're calling them advisors. Yeah, but they wear boots. So we have trips in Iraq now.

Crazy. So we have trips on the ground in Iraq, but apparently Syria, which is generally their save haven, is a totally separate entity. It is. Syria is chaos right now. Right. Nobody quite knows, you know,

who's in the opposite? opposition, how many members of the opposition there are, how many groups there are. I mean, that's how ISIS pretty much developed. And so that strategy is, you know, we have decided, presidents decided, that we're going to go in and train and try to arm those elements that hopefully will represent a more moderate opposition force that can then help us in defining the targets there and going after ISIS in Syria. It's going to be a much tougher challenge, no question about it.

So what are we to make? of the difference between the rhetoric that we hear and the reality because the rhetoric is we are in the fight of our lives. This is an existential threat that we must confront. But we're not going to involve the whole country. It seems like they're trying to get the go-ahead

to do what they want to do without making the commitment and getting the entire country involved in whatever this battle is. Yeah, no, John, I think when we confront this kind of threat, and because it's going to be long and sustained, this is not going to have, you know, we're not going to be able to win this overnight. This is going to take years to be able to do this. I think we, I think the president has to prepare the country for a long and sustained battle against ISIS. And I think the best way to do it, frankly, would be to have Congress, Republicans, and Democrats come together to give him the authorization. Who did, now, what was that name again? Congus, those guys that are up on the hill that can't decide what to do. So here's what you hear from these guys.

We're in this existential fight for our lives. They won't come back from recess to debate this on the floor. How in God's name can that be okay? Well, you know, everybody's going through this dance as to whether or not they should do it, We would like to do it. We think it's the right thing to do. We would welcome it be happening. I think, frankly, the president should say to the Congress, come back, let's make a decision

here with regards to the authorization to take this on. But war powers is Congress's act. They're not babies. They can call themselves back. They don't have to be invited to the Capitol building to do this. Well, unfortunately, this Congress has a hard time trying to find the bathrooms in the Tampa. They all do.

And it brings up to this other idea, you know, it's been floated that if only we had kept 5,000 troops in Iraq and trained some Syrian rebels, none of this would be happening. And to my mind, that seems unbelievably unrealistic. We were in Iraq for 10 years. We spent a trillion dollars. We lost many lives. We trained this whole army. The idea that this one small solution would have completely avoided this crisis seems incredibly reductive.

Yet you have senators out there championing it as though it's dogma. You know, no one really knows what the ultimate result of that would be. I mean, I happen to believe that we probably should have maintained a presence there because, frankly, we didn't know whether the Iraqi security force and the intelligence forces would in fact continue to move in the right direction. to help protect their country, and I think it would have been better to have been there and to put some pressure on. But apparently they wouldn't give our troops immunity. No?

Or they wouldn't give them immunity? Prime Minister Maliki said, we need a SOFA agreement, which is the status of forces agreement, to protect our troops. And Maliki continued to resist it, said, you know, yeah, we should have you do this, but I'm not sure about the SOFA agreement. I'm going to have to send it to the parliament. And it was obvious that he continued to oppose it. At the same time, you know, I think probably we could have.

With the leverage we had on him with military assistance, we probably could have pushed him a little more in the direction of providing that kind of... But did he have the leverage in his own country, in his own parliament? Clearly, his coalition with the soderas was very weak to begin with. The Sunnis didn't care for him in any stretch of the imagination. He was playing the Shia game, which is basically, you know, I'm going to confront the Sunnis.

I would rather do it without the United States present. Right. The Shia game, one of the worst children's games ever made. I don't know what that means. Will you stick around? I know you have a book party to go to, but we have a few more minutes, so we'll stick around, and we'll talk about all this stuff.

Worthy fights, it's on the bookshelves now. Leon Panetta, we'll be right back. So we're back here. We're talking about this idea. You know, we talked about the incoherence of the strategy. It seems to me that our original strategy for fighting these terrorist groups is to knock over existing regimes that we don't trust or like, hold them together through tens of thousands of U.S. troops and billions of dollars

until they become fully functioning democracies that like us. You laugh. You laugh, but I imagine that's kind of how it was pitched in the meeting. why didn't anyone else there go that's hilarious why is is that not what we kind of are doing in Afghanistan in Iraq or what we were doing

I think what we brought us there and you know there are obviously a lot of questions about whether we should have gone in to Iraq whether we should have gone into Afghanistan once we were there the issue became can we accomplish a mission of giving this country the ability to govern and secure themselves. That became the mission.

And so, you know, we work with their security forces. We work with their intelligence forces. We establish some of the structures of government to give them a chance to operate. But you're right. I mean, these are tribal societies. It's not as if they can overnight become Jeffersonian democracies. That just doesn't work that way.

Or why maybe some of them don't even necessarily want that or want what we're bringing them. But the thing, going back to a right, back to Iraq, you know, when the guys are out there and they're saying, if we just left 5,000 troops there, you know, you have a Sunni minority there that doesn't believe they're a minority, that truly believes that they should be more represented in whatever parliament system exists because they're the majority of the country, when they're not. How are we supposed to, in any way, battle, you know, a rift that is, hundreds and hundreds of years old?

with 5,000 or 10,000 troops or any other unrealistic solution to that? Well, one of the ideas was that, you know, maybe we should divide up Iraq into a Sunni area, a Shia area, and a Kurdish area. Right. And I remember when I went there, both as CIA director and Secretary of Defense, I said, you know, what about that idea? And the Sunnis didn't like it, the Shias didn't like it, the Kurds didn't like it. They said we have a country, we want to keep it a country, and we want to be able to try to work our way through. this. And that's the problem. The problem is, I think the structure is there. I think the desire is there to keep a country together. But very frankly, in order for that to happen, like every

country, you need the leadership that will, in fact, take the risks necessary in order to govern. And frankly, if you look at Washington, we have a problem in terms of taking the risk necessary to get things done for this country. Now, I think that's very interesting. You know, why have we lost that, not to use a phrase that I picked up somewhere, I can't remember where it came from, audacity of hope. What has happened to this idea? Because I can tell you, I think people generally feel that the United States either has an unrealistic expectation of how it projects its power or an inability to project it in a way that doesn't play to the individual basis here. At some point,

you cannot rely on these military families to continue. to sacrifice in the manner that they have. You're right. If you're saying to me, this is a 30-year war, well, only 1% of the country's invested in that, and that's military families, and we've put already way too much pressure on them. We have a VA system that can't handle the casualties that have already come back from there. So how can any of us believe this is a realistic battle or that our government is willing to do it? Why is there not talk of a draft?

Why is there not talk of immobilization of resources? You know what the biggest security threat right now to the country is, is the dysfunction in Washington? Because the fact is the parties are not willing to work together in order to solve the problems facing this country. And so they've kind of given up. They've given up on dealing with budgets. They've given up on immigration reform. They've given up on trade legislation. They've given up on infrastructure funding.

They've given up on providing the kind of stable... appropriations bills that would help fund whatever we're doing, whether it's in defense or anything else. And I think what it means is that we're a country that, you know, is operating by crisis. I often tell the students that I deal with at our institute, we govern in a democracy either by leadership or crisis. If leadership is there and willing to take the risk, we can deal with these issues. If not, we govern by crisis. And very frankly, today we largely governed by crisis. Even in crisis,

and people wanted to applaud the fact that there are crises. I don't know where that applause is coming from. We governed by crisis. Chaos! Anarchy! Governing by crisis, though, seems like it would present opportunity. That, you know, when they say there's always

an opportunity in crisis, that through crisis either there would be an enormous executive overreach, which some people say has happened, but does not appear to be the case. The financial crisis, you would have thought, okay, that's a crisis. Within that crisis, we have an opportunity to reform it by FIACA to some extent. We didn't do that. In this instance, the same thing.

We're governing, I would say that we're not governing in crisis. Maybe that's the case. We're just reacting to crisis and papering it over, hopefully, until the new tenants move in, and then they go, there's no floor here. That's what it appears to be. And I have to say, it feels like the Democrats are willing to govern, however incompetently, but the Republicans truly decided from day one, we're not working with this guy. Is that the case?

I think with the Tea Party members there, they made a decision that, as far as they're concerned, you know, they'll blow up the government, they'll shut the government down. and so there's a group there that obviously is very difficult to deal with. There are some Republicans there, both in the House and the Senate, that I think legitimately want to be able to cut some deals and get it done. I mean, you know, most of my history in Washington from a legislative system when I was in Congress, you know, I saw, I've seen Washington at its best and Washington at its worst.

I've seen Washington work. I've seen Republicans and Democrats come together and solve these issues. But it takes the willingness to take risk. How old are you? When was it? Because I'm interested in the best. What was the best? Because that, I think that can give people some sense that it existed,

but it feels like it didn't. In your mind, when did it work to address a problem and then execute that solution in a reasonably competent non-overly bureaucratic manner? After, I mean, after I got out of the Army, I went back to Washington as legislative assistant to a senator from California. I mean, at the time,

mostly your audience won't remember the names. I mean, on the Republican side, there are people like Jacob Javits. Clifford Case from New Jersey, George Aiken from Vermont, Hugh Scott from Pennsylvania, my boss, Tom Keekle, who's Republican for California, Mark Hatfield, and they were willing to work with Democrats like Henry Jackson, Symington, Hubert Humphrey, Dick Russell, Sam Irvin, others. And yes, they had their politics.

Yes, they played politics. They fought each other in elections. But when it came to those big issues, and Lyndon Johnson was the president at the time, when it came to big issues, they said, we really do have to work together. And they created landmark legislation in civil rights, in energy, in the environment, in education, in health care. All of that was produced because they were willing to work together on behalf of the country. And when I was elected to Congress, Tip O'Neill was the Speaker of the House, a guy named Bob Michael was the minority leader in Illinois. They fought each other politically, but when it came to issues that they thought were important

for the country, they were willing to work together. We need to get back to that. This country needs to work together to solve those problems. I don't disagree with any way, shape, or form. How do we, because honestly, I will take misguided good intentions over what we're getting now almost any day. but what is what is the fulcrum of that change is it shame is it uh is electoral politics does not seem to be the answer anymore so where do the american people have a certain amount

of leverage or does it have to get is this a situation like that occurs with with those that abused drugs they have to hit rock bottom and then we have to sit them down and go we all love you but if if this doesn't change we're cutting you you off, you know, or whatever it is that you would say. Yeah. Yeah. What is the method that... You know, you have to be an optimist when you're in this business, otherwise you wind up jumping in the Potomac. And, you know, my view, frankly, is, and, you know, look, as Secretary of Defense, I saw the men and women in uniform that go out there, put their lives on the line,

fight and die for this country, fight to protect it, die to protect it. And I look at that courage, and I look at that willingness to make that sacrifice. And I ask myself, why can't the leadership in this country maybe take a little bit of that risk in order to govern? A little bit of that honor, a little bit of that integrity. Because it does feel like on the home side, we have not lived up in any way to the sacrifice that we've asked. That's right.

Well, I hope that that changes at some point. You wouldn't happen to have a year. Having worked at the CIA, you wouldn't know when that might happen. Would you? You guys really listen to our phone calls? You got to watch what you're saying. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast, Universe by searching The Daily Show,

wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central, and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. This has been a Comedy Central podcast.