The Dispatch Podcast - Is Trump’s Greenland Deal a Foreign Policy Victory?

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

Mike Warren is joined by Kevin Williamson and Mike Nelson to examine President Trump’s deal with Denmark on U.S. military presence in Greenland and discuss the reporting by the Washington Post that the Pentagon may be underreporting deaths from the conflict with Iran. The Agenda: —Is this the art of the deal? —NATO welcomes Greenland deal —Trump’s biggest foreign policy victory? —The Pentagon’s underreported deaths —Bipartisan criticism over Pentagon briefing —Will Hegseth be fired after the midterms? —NWYT: Evil lairs and the Arc de Trump  The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including audio versions of all our articles and newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Learn more at Bloomberg.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Mike Warren. On today's roundtable, we examine President Trump's deal with Denmark to strengthen America's military presence in Greenland. Is this a walkback? Then we discussed reporting by the Washington Post that suggests more U.S. troops have died during the Iran war than the Pentagon has publicly acknowledged. We talked about some problems with the Department of Defense and Transparency as well. And finally, for not worth your time, evil layers. and the Ark de Trump the plan for Washington, D.C. I'm joined today by Dispatch National Correspondent

Kevin Williamson and dispatch contributor and retired Special Forces officer Mike Nelson. Let's dive in. All right, gentlemen, some late-breaking news late last week. Donald Trump, the president of the United States, posted this on truth, social. Breaking news, I am pleased to announce

that the United States of America has entered into an agreement with the Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland that gives the United States permanent control over security and all other needs in Greenland, completely addressing all of our many U.S. concerns. There will be no cost to the United States. At my direction, we worked with representatives

of Denmark and Greenland to guarantee that the United States will forever have the complete ability to do what is necessary in Greenland in order to secure and defend the security of Greenland, etc., etc., etc., etc. I won't go on and read the entire post, but this seems to not just be a late Friday afternoon rambling from the president. There appears to be an agreement that is going to be signed at some point in the near future on this.

This sort of seems, in the words of the president, to have ended his now nearly, I guess, a year and a half long quest to have something happen with the United States' relationship with Greenland. I don't know if this is a fulfillment of the original plan to annex Greenland and make it a part of the United States, but nevertheless, this agreement has happened. Kevin, I want to start with you because I think it's very interesting that it was a year and a half ago, actually just before the inauguration when the initial rumblings about Trump's interest in Greenland were sort of kicking back up, you know, reigniting after some teasing during the first term.

You wrote this, as Trump was talking about annexing or somehow getting control of Greenland. You wrote, quote, if the Trump administration were serious about Greenland and the strategic issues associated with it, which are real, Trump himself would be doing the opposite of what he has been doing since forever and worked to fortify U.S. leadership in NATO and to build up the credibility and capabilities of the alliance itself. okay, we now have this apparent agreement. NATO is involved. The Danish are involved.

Everybody seems happy. So, Kevin, can you take credit now for this great achievement of diplomacy by the Trump administration? I'm sure the president was reading what you wrote for us at the dispatch on this and took notes and said, we're going to end up here where Kevin Williamson said. So take your victory lap here. Is this the fulfillment of your great diplomatic mind? Well, one thing we know for sure is that all sentences that begin with President Trump was reading are false. So that is not what happened.

Okay. So, you know, like most people from Texas, I grew up bilingual. I speak both English and bullshit. And I understand what, you know, Trump is doing here. Trump has this kind of obvious tell when he starts writing in superlatives and definitives. You know, total control, ultimate this, nothing at all, complete that. forever and ever. That means there's nothing to it. And the Danes and the Greenlanders have all sort of telegraphed that there's nothing to this, essentially, where they said, well, all of our

red lines have been respected and we're happy to sign this. And it, you know, extends the, was it the 1951, the original agreement with Denmark? Right. So what a lot of folks don't seem to understand is that the United States already had, because of the 1951 agreement, the ability to pretty much do militarily what we wanted to in Greenland. We could build bases there. We could send troops there. We can, you know, do this, that, and the other. We have pretty extensive cooperation from both the Danes and the Greenlanders on that issue.

So this doesn't seem to add much of anything to that. And, of course, we're all celebrating an agreement that no one's going to get to read until it's been signed, of course, which is how we do things now, apparently. And the Senate apparently doesn't have any interest in, you know, ratifying treaties or doing any of that senatorial stuff that they used to do. If this comes with a part B that says, here's what we're now going to do in Greenland, that might actually be significant. But until then, it's a plan to have a plan, right? It's everybody says we can do what we want to do in Greenland. So what do we want to do in Greenland? And why couldn't we do that before,

instead of spending these years now of fighting with NATO, causing this, you know, idiotic, fruitless crisis. I mean, the Trump administration, I'll say it was all negotiating position, negotiating tactics, this, that, and the other. But we'll know that's not true because they're not actually probably going to come out with the Part B. Because the Part B part is work.

That's when you have to actually think things through and come up with the program and talk to people who know what they're doing instead of people like Pete Heggseth, who's like just, you know, doing push-ups because that's cool and all. And I'm pro push-up, but I think that the Defense Secretary,

pardon me, the War Secretary, should probably have some other things on his resume other than push-ups. I don't expect this to amount to very much. If there is an issue at all, it's this, that there may have been some questions in some people's minds about what happens if the Greenlanders eventually decide that they want to have complete independence from the kingdom of Denmark. And that's the Greenlandic sovereignty issue.

And if there were questions about whether our agreement would automatically transfer in such situation, then it's probably good to get that sorted out. Again, we don't know if that's what we're going to be. what this agreement has done, or even if that was the primary issue. And if it was the primary issue, why it couldn't have been addressed in a more straightforward way some years ago without all the pageantry and dog and pony show and crisis and all the rest of it. So we have an agreement that probably amounts to nothing, but we don't know because we don't know what it says. Look, I think that's fair, Kevin. I think we should wait to see what is signed, apparently maybe this

week at the UN General Assembly is... You know, what we should do is find out what it says before we sign it, since we allegedly live in a representative country. Yeah. Right, right. We have to pass it to see what's in it. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Yeah. We won't be until it's signed. Yeah, I'd like to know what's in the agreement before our government signs off on it. So I feel a little bit more like a citizen and a little bit less like a subject. Well, there we go. But let's back up a little bit and talk about that intervening period this year and a half. Because again, Kevin, you wrote your advice for Donald Trump on this on January 13th. 2025, that period in between the supposed, you know, if you were to take kind of the Trumpian

sycophantic explanation for how we got here, oh, this was all negotiating, negotiating tactic, and look where we've ended up now. This is sort of brilliant statecraft and all that. Let's look at all of what sort of took place. You had lots of saber rattling. Remember one of the first things that Vice President J.D. Vance did as Vice President of any note was he traveled to Greenland to one of those American bases that we have in that part of the world. There was all this talk that we were going to seize it and that this was, of course, very important strategically and for national security purposes that the United States have this.

We did sort of play up the Greenland sovereignty issue. Hey, let this decision go with the Greenlanders while we put a lot of pressure on them. Although it didn't seem that the Greenlanders were that interested in leaving. kingdom of Denmark. Regardless, we had all of this, you know, a lot of the conversation from NATO and European allies with, why is the United States doing this? Why are they making such a big deal out of this? Why are they being antagonistic? Which is what it ended up being for, again, about a year and a half. And now, Mike, I want to bring you in on this because the, this is what the spokesperson for NATO said about this planned agreement, this negotiated agreement

that apparently everybody's going to sign very soon, the military alliance of NATO, welcome the deal, which would, quote, help advance security, stability, and cooperation in this vital region. The Denmark's prime minister said, quote, she is pleased that there is a prospect of a good agreement, close quote, for all three parties.

This sounds to me, Mike, like, you know, for all of the concern, all the frustration with the United States from NATO, from Denmark, from European allies, they are looking at this as an obvious win and an obvious, you know, come down from the United States. This is Trump in the United States backing away from sort of the most extreme claims to Greenland, what they wanted to get out of annexing Greenland or somehow getting more control over Greenland. And they're happy to say, this is a great deal because, as Kevin says, nothing is really changing in spirit as far as we can tell.

Is this a retreat from Donald Trump on Greenland? First of all, I would like to agree with Kevin that I have no awareness of what Kat Weinberger or Bob Gates' upper body strength was like, but they were infinitely better Secretaries of Defense than what we currently have. But onto the real question. So this deal, there are goods. Well, what brought us to this deal in this resolution? Wineberger is pretty ripped. Yeah. Jacked Weinberger is what most people actually called him behind his back.

Little known fact. So there are goods, there are bads, and there are unknown. about this arrangement and the 18 months that led us to it. And most of that in the 18 months falls into the bad category. So first of all, the goods. There are a lot of people who were impulsively critical of the president, and there is much to be critical

about which to be critical, but that would deny that there was any interest in our strategic position in the North Atlantic and particularly as it relates to Greenland. That's not correct. Number one, it is the approach for ballistic missiles that would come from Russia. we have a ballistic missile defense interest there,

although that is now going to be challenging because we've had depleted amounts of ballistic missiles and our supply chains are arrears in producing those. We also have the northern approaches in general for maritime traffic, particularly as the Arctic becomes more navigable with changes in weather. The Arctic is becoming more of a position for strategic competition and access to both the Russians and the Chinese. So there is an absolute vested interest

and is working closer with the Greenlanders and the Danes to gain access to either, put our ballistic missile defense batteries or to put naval assets that would defend in the North Atlantic, which, by the way, is a whole other issue as we look to rebuild our Navy. The effects on ships operating north of the Arctic Circle is significantly greater than just operating the South Pacific or something. That also requires some of the defense industrial revitalization to equip our Navy to be able to perform there, which is something, again, that the Secretary of Defense should be focusing on rather than work out with the Texas A&M cadets.

So, you know, this is a little bit more expansive than the 1951. The 1951 deal was done under the framework of the Cold War under NATO auspices. It did not specify that Russians or Chinese would never gain access to Greenland because it did not need to be specified. It was implied under the historical context of what was taking place at the time. Now this, at least from what we're hearing characterized on the American side, This will provide guarantees that there will never be Russian or Chinese access to the island of Greenland. So that is inherently good.

Expanded access, Chinese and Russian denial, all inherently good. All those things are things that seem like we could have gotten through any other mechanism other than threatening them. We were largely pushing on an open door probably. What we don't know, as Kevin pointed out about Greenlandic independence, as well as just in general Danish sovereignty, if Greenland stays part of Denmark, I don't know that we can ever put a guarantee on in perpetuity forever, that America has some kind of like pseudo-sovereign rights

to what's going on in Greenland. We've seen that, you know, NAFTA was an enduring agreement until it wasn't. USMCA, which replaced that, was an enduring agreement until it wasn't. You know, countries are led sometimes by impulsive leaders or by changes in their popular demographics that change what relationships are,

and we shouldn't take it as a guarantee that this is forever, that this gives us some kind of super, sovereign rights. This is still something we're going to need to work with the Danish government to guarantee and maintain and foster that relationship. I also don't think it's probably correct that the president said this will cost us nothing. We may not have to pay the Danes anything, but all the military construction that's going to go into it, we are probably going to have to, you know, build our own facilities there. This will cost us something. Those costs are probably worth it, but it will come at some kind of cost. Now the bad, you know, for the people who hail the president as a

master negotiator and a 5D chess player and say this is all just the way he negotiates. He increases, you know, this hyperbolic leverage and then people are so relieved that they give into what he wanted in the first place. Number one, the Danes would have probably given us this without. But that use of the hyperbolic rhetoric and the threats has come at a real cost. Denmark is not a huge country. Their military is, you know, smaller than ours because it's proportionate to their population. but they sent a good chunk of their limited special operations capability to Greenland to prepare for a U.S. invasion.

They took this seriously enough that they were going to prepare to conduct a guerrilla warfare and sabotage campaign against any U.S. invading forces. A NATO ally prepared for a U.S. invasion, even if just, you know, nominally, that's a significant development and something that shouldn't be the case. we've also hindered, you know, our ability to ask for NATO allies to participate with us as we try to defeat threats around the world. Now, we've gone round and round in this podcast about whether the Iran War, number one, should have been initiated when it was and whether it's legal even within a U.S. framework. But we know for fact, number one, that we did not consult any of our allies. And number two, we had been threatening at least two of our NATO allies. and then we wanted to berate them for not participating. It seems unlikely that countries like Denmark or Canada

or the rest of NATO would want to participate in a war when they may need to marshal their forces to defend against us or at least when we've been an unfriendly ally in the first place. So while we got what we could have had all along through just asking or through some kind of negotiation maybe where we, you know, pay a little bit for access, we damaged a critical relationship, or not just one relationship.

we damaged our relationship with all of NATO, by the way we treated one of our allies, and we ended up where we could have been 18 months ago without all the hullabaloo. I would point out again, this has been said by many people, the Danes lost proportionally in Afghanistan, proportionate to their population, roughly the same amount that we lost in Afghanistan. They were, to use the term correctly, unlike Hassan Piker, pound for pound, just as had as much skin in the game and blood in the game in Afghanistan as the United States. did. When we were getting ready to fight, or when we were fighting ISIS, one of my duties was to

integrate the partner forces into the overall special operations campaign. Danish soft was one of the more aggressive and willing partners that came to play and wanted to get into the fight very early on and wanted to do whatever we needed them to do to help defeat the threats emanating out of Iraq and Syria. One last thing that was mentioned as one of the many justifications for why we need to conquer the Great White North that has not been addressed by this is the president did enumerate before, and there seemed to be many moneyed interests around him that were interested in this. This is not addressed mineral rights. And a conquest of Greenland would have, it would have been the northern version of taking the oil.

I imagine there will still be people who want access to Greenlandic mineral rights. But as all of us have said, that can be negotiated the same way we've negotiated access to international oil markets. Yeah. that's taking the rare earth minerals, right? That's the rare earth metals would be the idea there. But I think maybe I've sort of set up this conversation as Trump kind of receding from his line and NATO and Denmark jumping at this opportunity to maintain with all the caveats, Mike, that you just pointed out about what is different about 1951,

what will change if this agreement does go through as we understand it, the broad strokes, but that they've essentially accepted a broad status quo plus a little bit here that is to their advantage. But there is a lot of reporting recently about NATO being concerned about Russia trying to test this alliance here, right? There's a report just this past weekend that a number of intelligence officials in Europe believe that a Russian test of that NATO alliance is imminent. You heard this from the Polish prime minister who said that Russia might attack. NATO territory with drones or missiles sometime soon in an attempt to trigger Article 5 and test this NATO alliance. So things seem precarious at this moment, not that they haven't quite a bit over the last couple of years, but particularly right now, potentially precarious for NATO,

for this alliance. Couldn't we look at this scenario right now and see sort of NATO and Denmark trying to just resolidify the relationship with the United States in light of what Russia may be, or what they certainly think Russia may be planning on doing. How should we read this, Mike, in terms of sort of the geostrategic maneuvering here on the part of NATO? Well, I definitely think the European partners in NATO, well, basically everyone besides the United States will say right now, sees the value in the alliance, sees the threats that are potentially looking to test the alliance and is concerned about that. You have seen alternating responses where some people, including Mark Carney's tease with

this, you know, the kind of the middle power strategy wherein the rest of NATO would form an alternate alliance that would try to defend themselves. Obviously, that got a little bit of a cantankerous response from Bridge Colby, whose policies are largely responsible for people looking at those. we see our Secretary of Defense for Policy's office is doing a review right now that we're getting teasers that we're going to reduce our presence and commitment to Europe. We're sending a little bit of mixed messages there because we just announced with President Naraki that we're going to build a forward permanent base in Poland. But there are very real concerns about, number one,

the commitment of the largest power within NATO to the alliance and number two, external actors who want to test it. Now, I would argue Russia has been on a path of testing NATO through incremental measures, at least since 2007. They did a major cyber attack against Estonia, which they, and we apparently, by tacit admission, seemed to view as lower than the threshold of Article 5. They attempted to assassinate British citizens on British soil, which somehow flew under Article 5. They blew up a Czech munitions depot in 2014, which somehow fell under Article 5.

And we just saw the DOJ indicted last week members of Russian intelligence who had tried to solicit murder in the United States of American personnel. So they have been slowly testing the bounds of what is and is not an attack for some period of time now. What's different is they seem to be growing more, or at least Putin, seems to be growing more frustrated with his difficulties in Ukraine. He is venting or pointing some of his frustration at the European powers who are backing Ukraine, and there is a belief that he may attempt to expand the war in some limited fashion.

but more direct than those kinds of gray zone attacks that I just listed against the allies. And probably for good reason, he may not believe that America will come to the aid of anyone who might be attacked. I think that outside of total war, which is destroying a political entity that is a country, all warfare, conflict competition is done basically playing the man across you in the table. And it is a fair assessment to look at the president's rhetoric and come to the assumption that this, this current chief executive, is not going to exercise the same level of enthusiasm, response, defense of NATO as previous presidents would have. And now is the time, if there is a time, now is the time to test the resolve of the alliance. And we, you know, we know that Putin has said the destruction of NATO, or at least the recession of NATO, the rebuilding of the de facto Soviet. Empire is probably his great life's work. So he may look at the events around the world and say, now is the time to test NATO resolve. It's never going to get better for me. And America's tied

down in Iran anyway. Well, let me, let's table that until we see some more concrete action. But I think it's interesting to consider. You mean like Italy having to scramble just to shoot down a drone over NATO territory? Because that happened last week. That's, I mean, it's a good point. And look, to Mike's point, right, this has been going on for 20 years. And the threats against the drone threats plot against the German airfield. Yeah, Leibiske. I believe it was the Defense Minister of Lithuania who said last week, look, we're at war with Russia. Yes.

And we should just get used to the fact. I don't think you necessarily wrong about that. Yeah, yeah. But all of those concerns, let's put those aside for a second, because I do wonder if maybe I've set up this conversation by taking this. this truth social post, this apparent agreement, maybe a little too seriously, or not considering the domestic political context of this for Donald Trump, right? This announcement comes on Friday afternoon. We're going to talk a little more about the Iran war later on in this podcast, but if you look, Kevin, at the world as it is and as Donald Trump is sort of facing it, the Iran war

not going well. It's not polling well. Okay, the Venezuela action at the very beginning of 2006 seemed to have been a success, but there's been no sort of grand, you know, I mean, there was talk about Venezuela was going to become a 51st state. That hasn't quite happened. You have what we have sort of touched on a little bit here, which is the back and forth with Canada over trade. You know, we have this General Assembly where Chinese President Xi is going to be here as well.

I don't know. I look at a lot of this, and I see Donald Trump looking at not the, the, you know, the, the best sort of suite of outcomes or statuses across the globe. And here's Trump just looking for a win, right? And just being able to try to say, hey, look, I accomplished something. We got something done, something that I have been working on for a really long time. In the grand scheme of things, again, all of those benefits that Mike has mentioned, notwithstanding, it's maybe not the biggest deal, certainly not the biggest win that you could imagine for diplomatic and foreign policy goals.

is this just Trump trying to sort of, as you said at the beginning, Kevin, just try to use a bunch of adjectives to make it sound like a bigger deal? I guess what I'm saying is, is this the best foreign policy kind of victory that Donald Trump can lay claim to at this point in his presidency? And what is he trying to maybe convey to Americans about the strength of his foreign policy at this point in his administration? Well, I don't think it's necessarily the best way for him to rally his base because, I mean, there are surely some more. boatloads of Spanish-speaking brown people somewhere that we can murder. Well, and that would probably do more to buoy his numbers than this sort of thing would. But, yeah, I, Iran is obviously going badly. Yeah, every morning I get up and I check the price of diesel, 6.51, rarely this morning.

And that's a lot. So for my standard F-250 with a big fuel tank test, that's now $325 to fill it up or whatever. That's a lot to fill up for it. And as long as that is the case, he is going to. to look like a foreign policy jackass on the one metric that most Americans will experience most directly. The Iranians here are actually doing something kind of interesting, I think, and two things. They're showing, one, why they want a nuclear weapon, because countries with nuclear weapons don't get summarily smacked around this way. But they're also showing that you

don't need a nuclear weapon to necessarily resist a superpower if you're willing to do things that they aren't willing to do. And Iran's economic campaign and the straight-of-war moves, and by essentially declaring war on the Middle Eastern oil and gas industry, is looking pretty effective. And it's looking particularly effective when you get the Saudis dragged into it and the Saudi saying, hey, Washington, a little help, please. And Trump says, nah, sorry, you're on your own for a while here. Maybe we'll come back to you later. That's not a great look for a country that's dependent on allies in that region to help us get stuff done. So I think that if I were advising to Donald Trump, God help us both, other than, you know, T.S. Eliot's advice at the end of the difficulties of statesmen, which is resign, resign, resign. I would tell him there's stuff you just want to take off the table, at least rhetorically. And terrorists would be one of those things. The U.S. Canada thing would be one of those things. And certainly Greenland, Denmark would be one of those things because it's such a low return, high cost political proposition. So if you can, you can, you go off your checklist and say, okay, we're done with this now, we're done with this now,

we're done with that now. Maybe that takes a little pressure off of you politically, domestically, but I don't see how that's going to be very effective when the economic consequences of the chaos in the Middle East are going to be so much on people's minds and weighing so heavily on their pocketbooks, not only if people, of course, who drive diesel vehicles, but people who buy things that are transported by means of diesel-powered vehicles, which is basically everything you buy that's a physical product, either moves on a diesel power truck or train or both. So I think that what I would expect Trump to do within the next couple of weeks is switch into blame defection mode. So when the stock market correction comes or the other bad economic news comes, he will give this speech where he said,

well, have an economy that was just, it was, no one had ever seen an economy like it before. It was the best economy would ever have, but then it looked like the Democrats were going to win the midterms and everything went to hell because people were expecting bad Democratic policies. after the midterms, and they knew they were going to cheat in the elections and, you know, maybe impeach Trump again a second, third, fourth, fifth, whatever time. And that's where we're going to be. So I think they're in the position of trying to tamp stuff down. And when that inevitably fails, they'll move on to the next thing, which is blame avoidance. All right, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be back soon with more from the dispatch podcast. We're back. You're listening

to the dispatch podcast. Let's jump in. Well, Kevin, you mentioned the economic pain that's being felt by Americans because of the Iran War, let's switch gears a little bit and talk about some of the other losses in the Iran War. I want to, you know, breed from you a Washington Post article that ran late last week. Sort of brought me up short when I first saw the headline, but this is the lead to the story from the Washington Post. More American service members have died in the Middle East during the ongoing Iran war, than the Pentagon has disclosed publicly,

according to six U.S. officials, familiar with the Defense Department's internal casualty accounting data. Five of the officials said there have been at least 22 military fatalities, four more than what appears in the Pentagon's public database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System or Deccas. A six official who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the figures, said 23 service members have died since February 28th when the Trump administration in concert with Israel

is initiated the Iran War. Not all of the undisclosed deaths are directly tied to the conflict, but have involved U.S. personnel who were in the Middle East amid ongoing hostilities. This person said. This is the Washington Post's report. The Secretary of Defense or Warris, they call him Pete Hexeth, that's denied,

and sort of broad strokes, called this report a lie. Mike, let me start with you. what is your understanding first of what the truth is in this Washington Post report as far as we know what maybe kind of nuanced arguments could there be to back up that very broad and kind of non-responsive claim from Hegset, that it is all a lie, explain to us a little bit about what we know. And I think maybe it goes without saying it's obviously important for there to be transparency about American service members dying overseas. and in service, but explain why this is obviously so important for us to get right and to understand

exactly what the casualties from this war look like. Well, part of the problem that we don't exactly know what the situation is or what is being described, what the circumstances are behind the Washington Post's reporting are because the DOD has been so at times disingenuous or engaged in some kind of chicanery and at other times outright dishonest about some of the claims and reports or responses that they've made to previous reporting. The secretary himself and his chief spokesman, Sean Parnell, have in the past, their general response to any negative stories is just a claim that it's completely false. A total lie. And they do not clarify what specifics they take issue with. They claim that the entire

story is false. And then it turns out that the story was 99% true. There was, some slight mischaracterization in one thing that they took an issue with or not the way that they would have termed it and obviously they're disingenuous in their representations. We've also seen the DOD has played some, what I would consider pretty dishonorable accounting games with some of the casualties already. The last three killed in action, two in Jordan and one in northern Iraq, were not accounted on decas as casualties of Operation Epic Fury because in the DOD's explanation, well, it happened after the ceasefire initiated by the MOU, therefore Epic Fury was done.

So they were counted as part of other operations, either what's called Operation Inherent Resolve, which is the response against ISIS, or Operation Spartan Shield, which is the presence of kind of U.S. forces in theater or U.S. Army forces in theater just as a theater-wide presence. They counted them under those two operations so that when you looked under Epic Fury, it would look like there would only been 15 killed when, in fact, there were more. these were direct result of Iranian hostilities. These were not as a result of fighting ISIS or things that happened. I think what I do not believe happened or what I think is unlikely,

if this did happen, then this would be incredibly scandalous, dishonorable, and impeachment worthy of the secretary himself if this did happen. But I do not think this is likely. I do not think there were four American service members who were killed directly by an Iranian attack, in the moment and that the DOD is concealing that. What is possible, but I'm not saying it's like I don't have any insight into the Washington Post reporting, but there are people who die in theater from non-combat related incidents, accidents.

One of the first casualties of the Afghan war was specialist Disney, who was killed in Uzbekistan when loading equipment accidentally dropped something, right? These things happen, workplace accidents. there are illnesses. One of the casualties, as reported from Epic Ferry, suffered a heart attack while in theater. He would not have been deployed if not for the war, but he died of natural causes.

There are illnesses, you know, either those that just happen naturally or those that are unique to the Sincom Theater that maybe someone contracted a disease. There are casualties who may have been wounded in earlier attacks, evacuated out of theater, and later die. There was a, I won't,

list his name because I don't know how his family feels about this, but there was somebody in my old battalion and third battalion, fifth group, was wounded in IED attack, evacuated to Laundstool, completely stabilized from the trauma, had been in Launstrel for a few weeks, and then later developed septic infection and died. Obviously, as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those are all potentially ways that these casualties would have happened where it is true. they would normally be accounted for under casualties of that operation. They would normally be reported. And Hegsa saying there are no combat deaths.

It's the same way he responded to the Atlantic reporting. I didn't tweet war or text war plans. Yes. He did not send a complete concept of the operation, but he did, you know, send details that would have been otherwise classified. So he's probably being a little disingenuous in his reporting. there is probably, you know, a fair amount of validity to the Washington Post's reporting,

but because it might be one of these non-standard or not what the civilian population believes or thinks of when they think of a wartime casualty, the secretary is using that kind of cover to pretend that it didn't happen. I am not inclined to believe the DOD's flat denials because they have been so dishonest for everything from Elon Musk's meeting at the Pentagon. all the way till, you know, through yesterday. They are generally dishonest about some of their responses to these accurate reports, and I think that's probably the case now.

But I, you know, I'm curious to see what exactly, I think there is going to be more to come up from this, and we will see that the secretary is being dishonest. Why is it so important, apparently, to, if your theory is right, and I think it follows the fact pattern that the post story lays out as well, why is it so important for Hexeth for the department to kind of split these hairs in terms of, or not classifying it in the system or not, what is there to gain from this? Is this simply a sort of an attempt to control a narrative and to say, you know, well, no, we have not had these combat deaths. And so it's less concerning or it's not as important. Is there some kind of, you know, propaganda, you know,

advantage to making this argument? Why the lack of transparency on this specific thing, knowing that they had to have known that there would be eventual reporting on this because we're talking about fatalities. We're talking about deaths of service members. This wasn't going to be able to be hidden. What is the advantage to kind of splitting these hairs? I think you were giving far too much credit to the secretary, the DOD infrastructure, and the administration as a whole. if you say there was a calculation that says, you know what, the truth is going to come out, we need to do the right thing. I think in the moment there was probably a belief that they, I mean, we've seen it. They have not reversed the accounting for those three casualties from the summer.

Right. They are sticking by that. And they're just pushing back saying fake news, fake news, whenever they can. Again, they seem to be, they don't seem to be trying to convince the American public of this. They seem to be convincing or want to convince the president that, the secretary is pushing back in a way that he he likes. I don't know that there's anything more to it than they, the administration, various members, agents of the administration, members of the administration have said, alternatively, the war is over, we are in complete control, Iran can't do

anything. And I just think at a minimum, the idea of going into the midterms potentially with a split screen or a cut from the president saying, this is really small potatoes to then showing the faces of or identifying, you know, having family members of these four people who were killed after he said that, it's really not a good look. Now, I mean, that sounds dismissive to say not a good look. I also think it's not a good look that the president is addressing the concept of war and peace in such flippant terms. But I do think that, you know, the problem is from inception, this whole thing was designed conceived to be something easy, something quick. The fact that it's not is an embarrassment at a minimum to the administration, and they don't

want to admit any of that embarrassment. They don't want to admit any of that lack of control. They don't want to admit that this is coming at a greater cost than the president promised us, which going back to the Greenland conversation is always, we will get everything and we will pay nothing. You know, Kevin, this has sort of been a, as Mike has just sort of laid out in many instances, is a running theme for this particular Pentagon in this administration, which is a total lack of transparency, obfuscating, and again, as I said, splitting hairs on specific details and sometimes

just outright lying and going after those reporters who are reporting on things to try to get at the truth. I was thinking about this when I saw this story from the Associated Press last week, late last week, members of the Senate, both Republicans and Democrats, a bipartisan, pretty angry at the Pentagon and particularly angry at somebody we've already mentioned, the Undersecretary for Policy at the Department of Defense, Elbridge Colby, did not give a briefing that they were expecting on the National Defense Strategy. You had basically the Senate Armed Services Committee members, both Republicans and Democrats, saying that essentially he didn't answer any of our questions

and really gave a sort of unsatisfactory briefing on this. Kevin Kramer, were North Dakota Republican, said it was just sort of a dodge and punt, not really a briefing on this strategy. I guess I have a big picture question on this, which is, I mean, this is the Pentagon, right? There's a lot of money that Congress appropriates for the Pentagon. And it does seem to be a place where members of Congress and both parties take it kind of seriously when the Pentagon isn't forthcoming, when the Pentagon is, you know, using that appropriate money and not talking to Congress about how they're using.

it. I'm just curious what you make in general of the way that HECSeth, you know, there's, we talked about the push-ups, we talked about all the sort of ridiculous things on the front end that, that Hegseth has been doing at the Pentagon. But it really does seem like this big, massive department within the executive branch is isolating itself from potential allies on Capitol Hill and frustrating a lot of people in Washington with this lack of transparency. How bad is it? And is that, is that? Is there anything that Congress, in your mind, can do is prepared to do in order to get some kind of change? Or we kind of stuck with this, at least for the next two years, as Hegg Seth and Trump continue to run the department? Yeah, well, we're not at the midterms yet, right?

And Mike Johnson and John Thune are useless, craven, cowards, and sycophants. The Trump administration knows that they're not going to do a goddamn thing. They're not going to lift a pinky to do anything substantive when it comes to this stuff. So they can be lied to, they can be ignored, they can be stupid. stonewell, they can be humiliated, they can be run around, and they aren't going to do anything. And I think that the administration is just, you know, playing out the clock until maybe someone comes into Congress later who is willing to do something. You know, about the casualty figures themselves, we've seen this with police departments, very famously dramatized on the wire.

When they started to be judged by statistical criteria, there are ways to reclassify things. And so aggraffated assaults become simple assaults, and armed robbery becomes larceny and felonies become misdemeanors. And so you would see these police departments reporting great progress across all sorts of crimes except for murder because you can't make bodies go away. And you've got to account for that. And when some 16-year-old gets shot in the back nine times, somebody has to be charged with murder. The Trump administration is now one-upping that where they can take actual dead people and they can reclassify that and try to be able to say, well, we haven't had this kind of death. We haven't had that kind of death. There hasn't been a death in this front

since whenever. But you still got dead Americans whose deaths are going to have to be accounted for in some way. Now, I think Mike is right that there are probably more and less generous interpretations of this stuff. And I too, I too would be surprised if they were just outright. Outright lying is maybe, how to put it, because they do a lot of outright line. You're not willing to go that far to say they might not be outright lying. Maybe. Yes, I'm not right that far. But I would be surprised if they had moved entirely from the realm of distortion into the realm of fiction, let's say. And I suspect they're still in the realm of distortion and misdirection and mischaracterization rather than in the realm of actual manufacturing of events or the actual denial of events. Although I wouldn't be

super, super shocked if that were the case, because these people are habitual liars. They lie even when it's not necessary to lie. They lie just to keep in practice, apparently. They lie when the truth wouldn't hurt them all that much. They just kind of, it's their habit. It's what they're used to, it's what's consistent with their character as people. And, you know, we often talk about character as though this sort of airy-fairy metaphysical thing when it comes to politics. But this is the practical side of it that we don't know whether we can trust the numbers. We don't know that there's going to be proper oversight and that the executive's going to cooperate with Congress when it comes to that. We don't know what's in the Greenland Agreement, whether it actually amounts to anything.

and this uncertainty, this lack of confidence in our institutions, and the people who lead them is something that imposes real costs on us. And it's a real strategic advantage if you're the Chinese or the Russians. Which, by the way, is probably why the Chinese and the Russians spend so much money on influencing American politics in American public opinion because they know that this lack of faith is easier to cultivate in an open and free society. And that given our sort of tribalistic politics and where we are right now when it comes to things like AI and data centers,

or the Russian war against Ukraine or what we're doing hither and yon, that is easier to inject that kind of distrust right now, especially in American politics, because there are so many people occupying high positions of power in Washington who so richly merit distrust. Before we take an ad break, consider becoming a member of the dispatch. You'll unlock access to bonus podcast episodes and all of our exclusive newsletters and articles.

You can sign up at the dispatch.com slash join. And if you use the promo code Roundtable, you'll get one month free. And speaking of ads, if they aren't your thing, you can upgrade to a premium membership. No ads, early access to all episodes, two free gift memberships to give away, exclusive town halls with the founders, and more. Okay, we'll be right back. Your summer travels deserve an upgrade. With select Chevrolete, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac vehicles connected by OnStar, you can stream, game, and more on the go.

Whether you're headed to a music festival or a cottage getaway, you can access hundreds of apps on Google Play right from your center display. Explore OnStar Tech today at OnStar.ca and discover how to take your summer to the next level. OnStar. Better never stops. Welcome back. Let's return to our discussion. Again, Mike Nelson, I want to go back to you on just this general transparency problem with the Pentagon because, you know, it's one thing for members of the general public, readers of the Washington Post and other news outlets to say, well, why aren't we getting a straight answer on this? To me, it's another thing to have members of the Senate Armed Services Committee sort of openly complaining that the briefing they were expecting did not have any of the new information that they were asking for. I'm just wondering if it is, what does the breaking point look like? Is there one? Is this just something that the Pentagon sort of political appointees are going to be able to continue doing? What's your kind of

prognosis on where this could go in terms of Capitol Hill, outrightly expressing their frustration with the way the Pentagon's handling these kinds of questions? One of the reasons that Pete Hegseth is actually legally the Secretary of Defense and not the Secretary of War is he likes to be called, is because the NDAA, which would codify that change. It is part of the draft NDAA right now has not been approved. It's not been approved by the Congress and voted into law by the president. And part of the reason is because the Pentagon is asking for $1.5 trillion, which, by the way, I'm a believer that the Pentagon should get. I do believe we're not spending enough on defense. But our lawmakers in a limited show of legislative spine compared to other places,

are starting to say we are not getting answers as far as how this would be spent, what your plans are. We saw the frustration with Bridge Colby was specifically about the national defense strategy and how we would implement our policy globally. It's slowly but truly, I do believe the chickens are coming home to roost in the fact that Hegset does not know how to run his department. He doesn't know how to answer questions honestly about how he is not competently running that department, and it's going to come to fruition. One of the places we're seeing this is currently we do have a nominated and confirmed Secretary of the Army. Dan Driscoll resign famously over difficulties with Hegset.

And Hegset's coterie, if you watch this play out on Twitter or X, you can see it. There is a concerted campaign to try to push Sean Parnell, his spokesman, into being the nominee for Secretary of the Army. There has been pushed back over allegations that took place during Parnell's divorce that he engaged in domestic abuse. that has been largely where the conversation has focused in some of the reporting around Parnell's confirmability or lack thereof. But I think a bigger issue is Parnell is seen as a key agent in this campaign of dishonesty and obfuscation between the Pentagon and the Senate and House. So I think that's going to be the first place if Parnell is nominated and I don't think the president's even going to do that because he knows he's not confirmable. If that comes up, that will be the first place it bears fruit.

I also think after the midterms, we've already seen some of the Senate GOP push back, at least rhetorically about Heggseth specifically. We saw Tom Massey, who is a jackass and an anti-Semite, and so we shouldn't give him any credit, but he did introduce articles of impeachment, which Mike Johnson left town rather than deal with. But I think in the new Congress, you know, I think the greater threat to the administration is not necessarily that the president will face another impeachment himself. but the Democrats might see vulnerable cabinet secretaries who are susceptible to impeachment and removal

that might get support from enough Republicans, possibly. I think Hegseff is going to face that. I also put it at about a 50-50 chance that Heggseth doesn't survive to the swearing end of the new Congress because I, when the inevitable, you know, Democratic victories happen in November, I believe the president is,

he cannot take the blame himself. He is going to have to find someone to blame. And I believe Hegset is high on the candidates of people who might be thrown under the bus when he realizes how unpopular the war with Iran is. Yeah, I think that's a fair projection of where things go. I mean, we know that this happens. That is a common occurrence when the party in power when the administration's party loses in the midterms. You do see an exit for various reasons, actually, of some cabinet members and sometimes top cabinet members. I'm thinking about the departure of previous Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

with the 2006 midterms in his wake. And I do wonder about that. It also seems to me that you mentioned, you know, the NDAA, not getting past. You mentioned already members of Congress, members of the Senate, including Republicans, saying, Sean Parnell, if he's the Army Secretary nominee, that's a no-go for us. I think that is more signals to that point. But we started this conversation at the beginning of this podcast with a truth social post. And so for a little not worth your time, I would like to end it because I'm just a glutton for punishment with a Trump post on truth social.

And I hate you so much. Kevin, you love me. You know you do. This is from Donald Trump on Sunday morning. You know, it's always good to get that Sunday morning post. You know, some people are waking up, getting ready to go to church or having their brunch. And Trump is posting about this at the strong request of the United States military. and for national security purposes,

I have agreed to convert the magnificent triumphal arch planned since the Civil War era many years ago at the receptive circle adjoining the Arlington Memorial Bridge into a top-grade military complex slash triumphal arch to house, store, and have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones plus snipers on both the roof and plaza areas and additionally have and hold large quantities of sniper ammunition.

In storage, there will be no facility like this anywhere in the world. Out of the 59 top cities and capitals, Washington, D.C. is the only one of the world that does not have a triumphal arch. But it will now and by far the greatest of them all. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So I double-checked. None of my sons, my three sons, ghost-authored this post, which I would have thought, perhaps. because it sounds like the kind of thing that they like to think about, about snipers and thinking about arming various large buildings that they like to build

either with their toys or in their mind. This is a real boast from the President of the United States. We should mention this is this planned arch that we've heard about off and on in this second term from Trump. And he's clearly, he's had a small model in the Oval Office that's been spotted in several times when people have gone to visit. He showed them. This is an arch on the other side of the memorial.

Bridge from Washington, D.C. on the other side of the Potomac, the Virginia side of the Potomac right near Arlington National Cemetery. So my question is really nothing about the actual arch itself or this plan to arm it with drones and snipers, but to ask both of you, if you had a lair, what sort of weaponry would you arm your layer with? Where would your layer be? you know, would it be on a volcanic island somewhere or up in the snowy mountains? And what sort of weaponry would you arm it with to stop your enemies? Since we're all just sort of playing like eight-year-old boy fantasies here, what would you do? Kevin, sorry to spring this on you, but I'll start with you.

What are you arming your lair with? Well, first of all, I resent the implication that I don't have a layer. That's a fair point, Kevin. In fact, I mean, I'm just inviting burglary right now. Now, let me count right now. How many firearms do I have within reach? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, one, twelve, thirteen, thirteen, fourteen. So I have fourteen firearms within reach, uh, my, my desk here.

All right. And mostly, uh, big game rifles in case there's an elephant that's bothering me here in where I live. But, um, I know for a fact, I'm not the only person who heard the words sharks with frickin lasers. when this was being read because in fact I posted that on dispatch post on the dispatch Slack and some of our colleagues mentioned that their middle-aged husbands

had also said sharks with freaking lasers with the obvious implications here. Well, and Kevin, let me interrupt you. I brought this up as well to my wife who was totally unaware of any of the conversation and she brought up sharks with freaking laser beams attached to their head. So this is, everybody's on the same page on that front.

So go ahead. If I had a layer, you know, actually what I threatened to do in the passed. And I threatened this before Donald Trump was ever elected president. So he's kind of taking some of the wind out of the sales. But I said if I were, if I were ever elected president, I would move the White House to the top of the Luxor casino in Las Vegas, the one that looks like a big pyramid. Right, right. And I would wear a Farrow costume the whole time I were president. So I think in that case, my lair would be, I guess you would have like, you know, a,

Egyptian-type warriors with spears and stuff, I think, would be the thing to have. Maybe the occasional, I'm not sure what ancient Egyptian weaponry looked like. I'm assuming it was mostly spears and short swords and things like that. But yeah, I think that's what my entourage would look like. I think you have to have, like, cursed mummy booby traps, right? You know, like, as you enter the pyramid. Oh, yeah, there's got to be some Indiana Jones stuff in there, for sure. Yeah, right.

For sure. I also have a four-year-old who is very interested in these. things and builds all sorts of Lego fortifications and couch cushion fortifications and things like that, I probably should have consulted him on this. He does not know about sharks with freaking lasers because we don't watch movies, but he's definitely the kind of kid to whom sharks with freaking lasers would appeal. I mean, what kind of kid does that not appeal to? All right, Mike Nelson. I mean, girls, man. Well, since I am not on the dispatch slack, you know, it apparently preemptively stole what would have been my answer, which is sharks with lasers. But while we are

on the concept of moats and defensive moats with predators therein, I will remind us that the same great mind, beautiful mind that brought us this truth social, also, according to reporting, once inquired as to the viability of putting crocodiles in the Rio Grande to keep immigrants out. So making the Rio Grande into a large alligator-filled moat. So, you know, he's always thinking defensively. One of the things that I'd like to point out, if, first of all, as an Arlington, myself. I am offended. I know there are many people who take aesthetic issue with this archway. I take issue with the idea of disruptive construction in what is already one of the worst design traffic patterns in the Western Hemisphere for unforeseen period of time. But if you look

at where that is, and we're going to put snipers there with extensive sniper ammunition, if you build roughly a thousand meter ring out from there, you can effectively touch nothing. You know, you can cover the cemetery, you can cover the river, and you can cover the southern boundaries of Roslyn, you know, the neighborhood. But there are really no government buildings you can cover there. But if you are interested in having a reservoir in place to put an extensive amount of military drones controlled by the military, just at the very end of that thousand meter ring, there is this building that not many people know about, the world's largest office building, which is already owned by the DOD, that we could nominally put drones in and not have to build a secret murder arch.

Let me guess. Is it got five sides to that building? It's got five sides. Okay. Well, interesting. As Zach Dula Racha described it, the five-sided fistagon. That's right. Yes, that's a good line.

But, Mike, we don't know where your layer is located. So are you? In Arlington, but that's all I'll disclose. No, no. I use the Potomac as my moat to keep Washingtonians away. All right. All right. Mike, I'll ask you this because you actually have this background. Can you make a thousand-yard shot? With the right optics, yeah.

I have not been to SOTIC, which is our sniper course. I had guys on my team who were trained for that. But, you know, I think the farthest I've ever fired is 800 meters. Yeah. Well, you could get some practice, apparently, when the new triumphant arch is installed. Volunteer. Exactly. As far as my lair is concerned, my dream is to be on an island in the middle of the Pacific, sort of like Dr. Evil, where maybe no volcano necessarily, but somewhere where nobody can get to me.

And I really do think that that is its own defense. I don't know if I need to add any sort of extensive weaponry to that. Nobody's going to come bother me. And the great thing about my layer is I'm not launching any kind of world domination schemes from it. I am just trying to keep the rest of the world out so that I can enjoy just, you know, relaxing on my private little Pacific Island layer. If you're looking for a Pacific Island layer, can I recommend Valley? It's just, it's a great place for a layer, I think. Well, I was going to suggest that the good fusion of the two, Pacific Island layer and Evil Fortress, is the one from You Only Live Twice, right?

That's a secret layer inside a volcano. I think that's the way to go. The question is, is if we can combine all that in Bali, how well defended is Bali? And can we launch some kind of... I don't think they have many natural enemies, you know? That's good. Okay. All right.

I'm taking notes here. All right. Well, thank you very much. Both of you gentlemen, for joining us. And thank you, everybody, for listening as well. We will talk to you next time. If you want to support what we're doing here, you can rate, review, and subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice to help

new listeners find us. As always, if you've got questions, comments, concerns, or corrections, you can email us at Roundtable at the Dispatch.com. That's going to do it for today's show. Thanks so much for tuning in. And thank you to the folks behind the scenes who made this episode possible. Noah Hickey and Peter Bonaventure. Thanks again for listening. Please join us next time.