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unidentified
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Republican government funding bill. | |
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| Welcome back to Washington Journal. | ||
| We're joined now by Ben Wolfgang. | ||
| He's national security correspondent for the Washington Times. | ||
| Ben, welcome to the program. | ||
|
unidentified
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It's a pleasure. | |
| Thanks so much for having me. | ||
| You wrote an article in the Washington Times with this headline, He lost us. | ||
| General's senior officers say trust in Hegseth has evaporated. | ||
| Now, this is after that September 30th speech where he brought in all the country's top generals and admirals into Quantico, Virginia to give that speech. | ||
| You quote somebody saying, quote, if he ever had us, he lost us. | ||
| Explain what that means. | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I think what you had, Mimi, and thanks again for having me on here. | |
| You know, since Secretary Hegseth took the job earlier this year in late January, you've had questions bubbling beneath the surface about his professionalism, quite frankly, his qualifications for the job, his ability to do the job. | ||
| I mean, you go all the way back to one of his first major appearances in office. | ||
| He got way out in front of the administration talking about whether Ukraine could ever get its territory back from Russia. | ||
| Then, of course, we had the Signal Group chat where he very clearly talked about classified military information in that chat that Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic was added to. | ||
| And any number of other instances along the way where you had folks questioning his qualifications, whether he was, to be blunt, a serious enough person to be the United States Defense Secretary. | ||
| And then, you know, the September 30th, Quantico speech for at least a lot of the folks that I talked to, including one current Army general and a number of senior officers, that was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back for them, that they felt that this was an over-the-top, you know, politically tinged or politically driven, if you will, theatrical performance by Secretary Hegseth. | ||
| And again, now there were more than 800 people in the room. | ||
| I certainly didn't talk to all of them. | ||
| I didn't talk to 10% of them for this story, but the folks that I did talk to, including some who were there and some senior officers who, of course, deal with the Secretary quite frequently, they were just kind of appalled by, frankly, what they saw from his performance and his delivery. | ||
| And it came, a lot of them that I talked to came to the conclusion that, you know, their trust in this individual to lead the largest federal department, the single largest employer in the United States of any kind with a budget of nearly a trillion dollars responsible for the lives of men and women around the world, their faith in this individual to do that job has been shaken and eroded probably irreparably, I think, at this point. | ||
| So, Ben, you spoke to a lot of people, a lot of anonymous sources in your article. | ||
| Can you tell us who you spoke to as far as what ranks they were? | ||
| Are they current? | ||
| Are they former? | ||
| And why they needed to remain anonymous? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so in terms of the folks, there was one current Army general, of course, that's quoted in the story, a number of other current senior officers who I quote in the story as well. | |
| You know, the reasons that I wasn't more specific about, you know, the services they were in or their specific rank in the story, and it probably can't be this morning either, is, just to be frank about it, they'll be fired. | ||
| And I'm sure that over the past 48 to 72 hours since this story was published on Monday evening, you know, I haven't heard this firsthand, but I have a pretty good idea that I'm sure there's been a hunt from the Secretary of Defense's office to find out who these individuals are. | ||
| We've seen a number of people fired over leaks investigations, including some in the Secretary's inner circle over the past six, seven months. | ||
| So these individuals would very clearly be disciplined and likely fired if they were to be found out as sources for this story. | ||
| I, of course, can't put them in that position. | ||
| I take it very seriously as a journalist when I'm quoting people anonymously, unnamed sources. | ||
| I just personally think that that's something journalists should do only when it's absolutely necessary to do it. | ||
| And I think this was one of those instances. | ||
| Well, let's take a look at a portion of Secretary Hagseth from September 30th in Quantico, Virginia, talking about the new direction of the U.S. military. | ||
| The new compass heading is clear. | ||
| Out with the Shirellis, the McKenzies, and the Milleys, and in with the Stockdales, the Schwarzkopfs, and the Pattons. | ||
| More leadership changes will be made of that, I'm certain. | ||
| Not because we want to, but because we must. | ||
| Once again, this is life and death. | ||
| The sooner we have the right people, the sooner we can advance the right policies. | ||
| Personnel is policy. | ||
| But I look out at this group and I see great Americans. | ||
| Leaders who have given decades to our great republic at great sacrifice to yourselves and to your families. | ||
| But if the words I'm speaking today are making your heart sink, then you should do the honorable thing and resign. | ||
|
unidentified
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We would thank you for your service. | |
| But I suspect, I know, the overwhelming majority of you feel the opposite. | ||
| These words make your hearts full. | ||
| You love the War Department because you love what you do, the profession of arms. | ||
| You are hereby liberated to be an apolitical, hard-charging, no-nonsense, constitutional leader that you joined the military to be. | ||
| What did the people that you spoke to make of that sentiment of if you don't like it, you can leave and do the honorable thing and resign? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, I mean, look, in some ways it's not surprising, right? | |
| Because we've seen those words put into action from the very first weeks of Secretary Hegseth being in the job. | ||
| And, you know, President Trump fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C.Q. Brown, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti. | ||
| These folks were fired shortly after the administration came into power. | ||
| And you've had any number of firings, resignations, early retirements since then. | ||
| So I think folks were not surprised to hear Secretary Hegseth sort of give voice to that idea. | ||
| I think where the real problem lies or the disconnect between those words and those actions is when the Secretary talks about it being apolitical, that these folks are now liberated to be the apolitical, hard-charging, no-nonsense officers that they signed up to the United States military to be. | ||
| What I'm hearing and what my reporting has uncovered here is that the apolitical part of that is just not accurate in terms of what's happening behind the scenes, that you very clearly have folks who need to be aligned with a certain brand of politics and a certain set of policies in order to be at this point, at least according to my sources, promoted and given more responsibility in the armed forces. | ||
| And if you're not aligned with these politics and this particular set of policies, then you're probably not going to be promoted and potentially could be pushed out or even fired, as the Secretary made very clear in that statement that there's going to be more leadership changes coming down the pike in this administration. | ||
| So I think that's where the problem lies is that you have lip service, if you will, to this idea of wanting apolitical military folks in place. | ||
| But behind the scenes, folks are telling me it's actually the opposite. | ||
| It's not a meritocracy. | ||
| It's making sure everybody in the ranks that's climbing up the ranks, that's in positions of leadership right now is in fact politically aligned with where this administration is. | ||
| Ben Wolfgang is our guest. | ||
| He's a national security correspondent for the Washington Times. | ||
| If you've got a question about Secretary Hegseth and his relationship with senior military officers, you can join the conversation. | ||
| Here are the lines. | ||
| Republicans are on 202-748-8001. | ||
| Democrats 202748-8000. | ||
| And Independents 202748-8002. | ||
| We also have a line for former or current military members. | ||
| That is 202-748-8003. | ||
| Ben, some of the sources that you cited describe Secretary Hegseth as operating with a, quote, junior officers mentality. | ||
| What did they mean by that? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah, this is one of the more fascinating aspects to this story in doing the reporting that I uncovered is the number of people who independently made this case to me. | |
| And some of, you know, some analysts have put their names to this narrative or this argument as well. | ||
| There's a contrast between folks we've had recently as Defense Secretary, for example, Lloyd Austin, General James Mattis, a general during the first Trump administration, any number of other folks, even if they're not generals, have experience in sort of leadership, either in the defense industry in some capacity or in the military itself. | ||
| Secretary Hegseth was, and no disrespect for this, but he was a Fox News host for a decade before coming to this job. | ||
| He did, of course, serve in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| He was awarded two bronze stars, and that should never be questioned or taken away from him. | ||
| But he doesn't have the high-ranking officer level of expertise and experience that some recent past defense secretaries have had. | ||
| And now, maybe you think that's a good thing if you're of the opinion that the officer corps is, in fact, too bloated and is too woke, if you will, or too obsessed with DEI. | ||
| And you need somebody who's sort of outside of that circle to come in and shake things up. | ||
| But what I think the tangible sort of ramifications of that have been are that you have a secretary who, by all accounts and the sources I've talked to, is really down in the weeds on some policies that a defense secretary traditionally would not have been involved in. | ||
| For example, grooming standards, talking about, you know, he referred to them as beardos, the facial hair standards. | ||
| Even more recently than that is, of course, an example that's very much in the news right now, the Pentagon press access policy that led almost all major news outlets, including the Washington Times, to give up their access to the Pentagon rather than sign a policy that acknowledged we could be considered a security threat for trying to get information from sources, or in other words, do our job as journalists. | ||
| I've heard from multiple sources with knowledge of that that this Defense Secretary Hegseth was a personal driving force behind that policy, that he had a personal interest in setting up those new rules in terms of press access to the Pentagon. | ||
| You know, I've covered a number of different defense secretaries, three different administrations in the Pentagon. | ||
| I don't think I've ever seen a defense secretary get involved in terms of hard passes and press credentials for the building and briefings and who's allowed in and who has a desk and those sorts of matters. | ||
| So I think when folks say that he has either a mid-grade officer or junior officer's mentality, I think that's what they're referring to, is that he's not necessarily spending as much time as critics would like thinking about the threat from China or thinking about military modernization or what 21st century warfighting is going to be like or how the U.S. military footprint needs to be divided today in 2025 between the Middle East and Europe and the Pacific. | ||
| For example, he's talking about haircuts and beards and the press access policy to the Pentagon. | ||
| All right, let's bring in callers and start with Jorge in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Independent Line. | ||
|
unidentified
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Hello, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I'm not so much worried about personnel as like economic subterfuge. | ||
| I believe that we're basically in World War III. | ||
| I think the economic subterfuge comes through the AI. | ||
| And AI is in charge of investment now in banking. | ||
| And why not bank and invest in itself? | ||
| And that's what it's doing through circular business contracts. | ||
| Jorge, how is this related to our topic of Secretary Hegseth's relationship to top military? | ||
|
unidentified
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Because I think our personnel are good. | |
| It's not the people. | ||
| There's different ways. | ||
| The ways we destroyed the Soviet Republic or the Soviet Union was through economic subterfuge, and I think they're doing that to us now. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's go to Melinda in Arizona, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning, Melinda. | ||
|
unidentified
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Good morning. | |
| I wanted to talk about the gentleman that saw him TV, and then I have a short comment on the shutdown. | ||
| In my family, we have two purple hearts, three bronze stars, and a silver star. | ||
| Pete Hetsip is the most insulting person to the Army I have ever seen. | ||
| He is more like, he sells it like a car salesman. | ||
| He doesn't know what he's talking about. | ||
| And to have those people sit in that auditorium and be insulted as he was insulted, as the service was insulted, I am ashamed of our government's military leader. | ||
| Now, to the shutdown. | ||
| I'm a Democrat. | ||
| I'm sticking with them Democrats. | ||
| And I want to say something about that lunch President Trump held for the Republicans, which basically said thank you for holding the line and not working with the Democrats on the that, to me, is a slap in the face to the American people. | ||
| Trump hosting a lunch to celebrate the Democrat. | ||
| All right, Melinda. | ||
| We got that point. | ||
| Let's get back to the topic at hand. | ||
| Go ahead, Ben. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, no, I think she raises a point that I heard from a number of sources in reporting this story, which is, you know, I think when you summon 800-plus generals and admirals from literally all over the world to come back to Quantico for this address, which, by the way, is not cheap to do. | |
| I mean, you're talking about bringing folks back from South Korea and from Guam and all over Europe and the Middle East. | ||
| They were expecting something more substantive from the Secretary. | ||
| You know, we'd heard that there were plans for a downsizing of the number of three and four-star generals and admirals. | ||
| We thought maybe we'd get some details on that, or there would be some new doctrinal shift or some major announcement. | ||
| A lot of them did feel, as the caller just referenced, that they were being lectured and that this was something that really didn't justify the cost and the expense and the time and just the logistical headache of even arranging this meeting in the first place, let alone what the content of it actually ended up being. | ||
| So that is a sentiment I've heard from a number of folks in the aftermath of that. | ||
| Phil is former military in Columbia, Maryland. | ||
| Good morning, Phil. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thank you for having me. | ||
| I was calling because I am irate that Mr. Hagseth is the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| I refuse to call him Secretary of War because that is an act that Congress has to enact to change the name so he is still the Secretary of Defense. | ||
| Mr. Hegset is the ultimate DEI hire. | ||
| He has zero experience and the same level that General Austin and General Armatis did. | ||
| I did some research. | ||
| There have been a number of Secretaries of Defense who had ranks of lieutenant when they were in the service or who had rank of captain, but they brought different attributes to the job. | ||
| Mr. Hagseth has zero leadership ability. | ||
| And this is what upsets me as a former Marine, as a Marine, right, who is about to celebrate his 250th Marine Corps anniversary. | ||
| Mr. Hagseth's lack of leadership and his politicization of the Department of Defense is sad. | ||
| It alienates all Americans, regardless of what color you are, what your gender is. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Phil, let's go ahead and get a response. | ||
| Go ahead, Ben. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I would just say, you know, obviously that's a criticism I've heard from a number of people, both in reporting the story and the sort of the months leading up to it. | |
| I think it's worth keeping in mind, and I don't think that the Secretary would deny this, and I don't think President Donald Trump would disagree with this, that they see, and I made this point in the story, they see the showmanship, if you want to call it that, of Secretary Hagseth as a strength, not as a weakness. | ||
| I call it a feature, not a bug, as they see it, of what he brings to the table. | ||
| There are obviously a lot of folks who don't like that style, including the folks that I talked to for this story, the sources, the high-ranking officers that I talked to, and the gentleman who was just on the phone. | ||
| And I understand that, and I think that's probably a prevailing view among a lot of folks. | ||
| But it is worth pointing out, and I think stressing, there is a subsection, including, I think, probably the commander-in-chief, who look at the way Pete Hegseth conducts himself and how comfortable he is speaking in front of large groups of people and the way he can deliver a message authoritatively and how comfortable he is on camera, that they see that as a positive. | ||
| And I guess it depends on which side of the glass you want to look through and view Secretary Hagseth if you see that as a good thing or as a bad thing. | ||
| There are some folks who think that's exactly what we need as the Defense Secretary right now. | ||
| Clearly, a lot of folks disagree with that. | ||
| Ben, who is advising Secretary Hegseth? | ||
| What does his inner circle look like? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm glad you asked, and that's one of the, I think, the most underreported and interesting parts of this. | |
| His inner circle has been getting smaller and smaller over the past eight, nine months. | ||
| You've had a number of advisors, you know, he had Colin Carroll and a number of other close advisors with him who were fired earlier this year because of concerns about leaks coming out of his office. | ||
| You've had John Elliott, who is one of the key folks in the press office, resigned earlier this year, a number of other key resignations. | ||
| At this point, what I'm hearing is that he's left with a handful of folks around him. | ||
| Patrick Weaver is still there. | ||
| Sean Parnell, of course, the chief Pentagon spokesperson is one of his key advisors. | ||
| I hear that he relies increasingly on his brother Phil for advice in sort of his inner circle. | ||
| So there are a handful of people that he relies on for advice and that he talks to, obviously, on a daily, if not kind of constant basis when making decisions. | ||
| But his circle of trust doesn't extend, near as I can tell, doesn't extend far beyond that. | ||
| And that is different and a key distinction from past secretaries. | ||
| Certainly everyone, every public official, everybody in any walk of life, a CEO or whoever we're talking about, has a core group of people that they trust. | ||
| That's not surprising and I don't think should be criticized in this case. | ||
| But it does seem like he is, according to the sources I talk to, not as willing to go outside of that to even vet, for example, personnel decisions. | ||
| In other words, he's not relying on folks outside of that small core group throughout the Pentagon who have decades in some cases of experience in a particular job. | ||
| He's not going to them to try to vet an individual for a job or to run some kind of policy change, like maybe, for example, the Pentagon press policy by those folks. | ||
| It's made by that core group of people around him in the secretary's office. | ||
| And that group has been getting progressively smaller almost by the month. | ||
| All right, let's talk to Tom in Woodbridge, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Good morning, Tom. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, guys. | |
| There's so many things that have been said over the last like five or six minutes that I'd love to address, but I'm going to break it down, Barney style. | ||
| I've been in the military since 1987, prior to the coming down of the Berlin Wall. | ||
| So I've seen pretty much the degradation of our military for over 30 years. | ||
| And that's really what the leftist politicians in our country have done. | ||
| They've denigrated and weakened and, you know, dismantled the warfighting spirit in the United States for the last 34 years. | ||
| And that's why what we need is to get rid of the with all due respect and to just add some granularity to this. | ||
| I've been involved in the military for over 34 years, and I have more sources than your person sitting there does at the same rank or higher who absolutely abjectly disagree with this person's fantasy, you know, these fantasy sources that they don't have the courage to come forward and say who they are that they disagree with, getting back to the basics. | ||
| And that's really what this entire administration is about: we've got to get all the politicization out of the military, and we've got to get back to shooting, moving, and communicating because we're on the brink of a major crisis in East Asia, a major crisis. | ||
| And we don't have time to be talking about whether we're he, she, they, them, she, her. | ||
| All right, Tom, we got your point. | ||
| Go ahead, Ben. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, a few things on that. | |
| I mean, number one, I think the last point he made, you know, bringing up pronouns, for example, I think that's absolutely right. | ||
| And a lot of folks do agree with that. | ||
| I think folks would also add, you know, critics would also add things like the Pentagon press policy and facial hair standards as things that the secretary doesn't need to necessarily be focused on and could be focused on the threat from China, for example. | ||
| So that's number one. | ||
| In terms of the, you know, the unnamed sources, I take that point. | ||
| You know, there are many, many hundreds of thousands of people that we could potentially talk to for this story. | ||
| Obviously, I can't talk to all of them, and I'm sure that there are folks who would voice very different feelings about Secretary Hegseph to me as well. | ||
| I do think, again, the reason that I think saying that these folks don't have the courage to put their names to their comments in this case is not really a fair criticism. | ||
| There's no way to get this kind of information from current generals or high-ranking officers with their names on it. | ||
| They would be out of a job, and I suspect that there are a lot of folks on either side of the political aisle who would be okay with unnamed sources in the military and otherwise, depending on where their politics lie and what those individuals had to say. | ||
| But I do think the caller makes one really good point that I want to drill into more going forward with additional reporting. | ||
| And that is a disconnect between some plenty of enlisted folks and some lower-ranking officers and some of the higher-ranking three and four-star generals and admirals. | ||
| It does seem like there is a little bit more vitriol and criticism directed toward the secretary coming from the higher ranks of the military and then also in the upper echelons of civilian leadership inside the Defense Department versus what I'm hearing anecdotally from enlisted folks and even some junior officers and certainly among the recruiting class that we've seen, which recruiting is significantly up across the services under Secretary Hegseph. | ||
| So wherever your politics lie and however you feel about the Secretary, there is some pretty, I think, divergent views and a disconnect between different segments, if you will, of the armed forces. | ||
| And that is a really interesting dynamic. | ||
| And it's at a level that I haven't really seen before, personally, since I've been covering the Pentagon for almost a decade now. | ||
| And it's something that I'm going to try to explore further with some more reporting going forward. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Ben Wolfgang, National Security Correspondent for the Washington Times. | ||
| You can find the article that we have been talking about at WashingtonTimes.com. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks so much. | |
| Live Friday on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| At 10 a.m. Eastern, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans will hold a news conference on day 24 of a federal government shutdown. | ||
| Then at 10.30 a.m. Eastern, Interior Secretary Doug Bergham will discuss Trump administration energy policies with Foundation for Defense of Democracy's Energy and National Security Program Director Richard Goldberg. | ||
| From Washington, D.C., watch it live starting at 10.30 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| On C-SPAN 2, live at 8.30 a.m. Eastern, former National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Monica Bertagnoli delivers remarks at a meeting hosted by the National Foundation for Cancer Research. | ||
| And then live at 10 a.m. Eastern, academics and policy advocates sit down for panel discussions on how local communities govern and promote trust in civic processes. | ||
| And at 12 noon Eastern, a look at how Gen Z is affected by today's economy and suggestions on how to navigate it with a discussion hosted by the Claire Booth Loose Center for Conservative Women. | ||
| These events all stream live on the free C-SPAN Now video app and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series, Sunday with our guest, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, only the fifth woman to serve on the high court and author of the book, Listening to the Law. | ||
| She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubenstein. | ||
| And what do you hope most people will take away from your book? | ||
| I think what I want them to take away from the book is that they should be proud of the court. | ||
| And I want them to be able, I want them to understand the way the court grapples with the legal questions that matter to the country. | ||
|
unidentified
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Watch America's Book Club with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Sunday at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | |
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