All Episodes
Previous Next
May 28, 2020 - Jimmy Dore Show
01:24:30
20200528_TJDS_20200528_Podcast
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Get ready for an outstanding entertainment program.
The Jimmy Dore Show.
Hi, this is Jimmy.
Who's this?
Hi there, Jimmy.
This is Senator Mitt Romney.
Oh, hi, Senator.
It's good to hear from you.
Oh, well, I'm pleased to hear that because sometimes I feel like maybe I called into your computer show too often.
Not at all, Senator.
We're always glad to talk to a sitting United States Senator.
Oh, well, that's good to know.
I'm oh, so terribly lonely.
The reason I'm calling today is to defend my friend Joe Scarborough.
Jimmy, do you know Joe Scarborough?
Not personally, but I am familiar with him, yeah.
He hosts, or I should say co-hosts, a television program called Morning Joe on MSNBC.
Right.
Which is a pun, by the way.
I'm not sure if you're aware.
I used to think it was called Morning Joe because it aired before noon, and it was hosted by Joe.
But it turns out Joe is also slaying for coffee, which I wasn't aware of because I don't drink coffee for religious reasons.
Actually, some elders believe we Mormons can drink decaf, but I've always made it a rigid policy to not taunt the Lord.
Anyway, the pun is very clever.
As is Joe, the man, not the beverage.
I always thought it would be nice if they could work Mika into the pun somehow.
I think she deserves it, or give her her own pun.
But I just can't think of a pun for Mika.
And I've given it hours of serious contemplation.
It's like how nothing grinds with orange.
Mr. Romney.
And that last name of hers, forget about it.
It's like a pollock chugged a can of alphabet soup and then threw it back up onto a bohunk.
Man!
Oh, I'm sorry.
I'm rambling again.
See, this is what I was worried about.
Anyway, Donald Trump accused Joe of murder.
What?
I know.
Can you believe it?
The gall.
Well, did he murder anybody?
No, at least I don't think so.
I mean, I really seriously doubt it.
But that's besides the point.
It is?
The point is that Donald Trump is out of line accusing Joe Scarborough of murder.
It's beyond the pale.
Beyond the pale?
A step too far.
A step too far.
You got that right, Jack.
Hey, are we setting up a musical number?
I'm having fun.
I'm having fun.
I got a top hat just in case.
No, we are not, I assure you.
This seems like yet another example of principled Republican resistance, where you drop your monocles because he said something rude while ignoring the actual structural damage his administration is doing to the federal government.
I'm not sure I follow.
All right.
Well, one example is how Trump's EPA just rolled back Obama-era standards for car fuel efficiency, which many experts predict will make air pollution much, much worse and destroy what little progress we've made on climate change.
Isn't the fate of our planet more important than Donald Trump being borish and rude?
Honestly, it's kind of a toss-up for me.
LAUGHTER It's true.
That's why it's funny.
Mitt, how can you possibly think like that?
Jimmy, tell me.
What is the point of saving?
Jimmy, tell me, what is the point of saving this planet if the most powerful man on the planet could just go around having bad manners?
And Joe Scarborough is publicly smeared without repercussions.
I'd rather be struck by an asteroid.
Look.
Jimmy, I'm a deeply faithful man.
My religion is central to my thinking.
A religion where only bad people drink coffee.
And my number one takeaway from my faith is good manners.
Rudeness and incivility are the greatest threat to civilization.
And as a sitting U.S. senator, I will continue to use Twitter to call out these things, as well as salty language.
My grandmother actually said these things that I've got to say.
As well as salty language.
My number one takeaway from my faith is good manners.
Rudeness and incivility are the greatest threat to civilization.
And as a sitting U.S. Senator, I will continue to use Twitter to call out these things, as well as salty language, children being Weisenheimers, and General Nixies.
This is my pledge to the American people.
I see.
Can I do one for old time's sake?
I guess.
Hey, Jimmy, one more thing.
Yeah?
Why don't you go get fucked, you ball bag riding cockwagon?
Oh, there's the Mitt Romney.
Oh, I miss you, Mitt.
Establishment media sets are fighting.
So good luck.
Bullshit.
We can't afford.
Fomenting this.
Watch and see as it's jacked off the medium speeds and jumps the medium and hits them head on.
It's the Jimmy Tore Show.
Music Hi, everybody.
Welcome to this week's Jimmy Door show.
Let's get to the joke before we get to the joke, shall we?
Hey, did you hear Nara Tandon, president of the Center for American Progress, Nara Tandon, announced that she's infected by the COVID-19 virus?
And I just say, Nara, I'd like to find a cure, but how are you going to pay for it?
You know, remember, even though the debates are over, officially, the Democratic debates are over, Joe Biden is still committed to arguing with himself for the next six months.
Hey, we're going to add, we have a new segment.
We're going to do a recipe.
We have recipes.
Now, here's our recipe this week.
Today's Blue No Matter Who Blue Plate Special.
Blue No Matter Who Played Special.
That's how it goes.
A Blue No Matter Who Played Special.
How do you make that?
Well, you mix 43 million units of human capital stock with 10 weeks of bridge liquidity in a fake melting pot.
Pulverize until soggy and limp.
Add hot water, and you got yourself a big pot of boiled Americans.
Enjoy with a shit sandwich.
Next up, tossing Wall Street salad.
Did you guys see what was happening this Memorial Day?
They were all out there.
Do you see the video of them?
People packed in the pool.
Hundreds, if not thousands of people packed into pools and at beaches.
You see people at the beaches?
People are all over the place.
And only Americans would honor the veterans who died on the shores of Normandy fighting fascism by dying on their own beaches in defense of Wall Street.
Come on.
Hey, as we reach 100,000 dead Americans from COVID-19, the House could vote for a real resolution of impeachment this time.
Instead, they're too busy passing Trump's right-wing agenda for $5 trillion in Wall Street bailouts.
There's nothing funny about that.
So here's a fart noise.
Hey, what's coming up on today's show?
It's Corona Money Talk with Dylan Radigan.
And guess what?
America's economic collapse is now irreversible, says a Harvard Smarty Pants guy.
Plus, we talked with Major Danny Shorson, an anti-war veteran who wants to reboot Memorial Day.
Plus, we got phone calls today from Mitt Robney, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Connery, and Chuck Schumer.
Plus, a lot, lot more.
That's today on the Jimmy Door show.
Joe Biden went on the Breakfast Club and he said something very awkward to the black hole.
Oh, no kidding.
Yeah, so here we go.
We don't get too much.
That's really our time.
I apologize.
So now that's somebody, that's Joe's handler saying, I'm sorry, we're out of time.
And so that's how that starts.
That's really our time.
I apologize.
You can't do that to black media.
I can't do that to white media and black media because my wife has to go on at six o'clock.
Okay.
Oh, uh-oh, I'm in trouble.
Listen, you got to come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden.
I will.
It's a long way until November.
We got more questions.
You got more questions.
Vlad Terry, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for mayor Trump and you ain't black.
It don't have nothing to do with Trump.
It has to do.
Wow.
So that's what he said.
But I love the response.
Let me just, first of all, I'm sure Trump won't even notice that.
Oh, shit.
He already made t-shirts.
So if you don't vote for Joe Biden, you ain't black.
This is the Joe Biden who I recently humiliated a black woman on television as my who thought she was going to be my vice president pick.
And now I'm vetting a woman to be my vice president who threw a black teenager in jail for life for a murder that there's no evidence he committed.
Plus, I wrote the crime bill.
Support me or you ain't black.
I'm sure the demons will spin this in a positive way.
You know, for every reasonable human being vote we'll lose on the coast, we'll pick up five KKK members in Pennsylvania.
And you can repeat that in Ohio, Wisconsin.
You wonder why the Tramp campaign tries to keep him off the air.
Here we go.
So watch what he said.
But watch what the, I love what the host says after this.
So Biden says, you don't, if you don't vote for me, you ain't black.
Did Corn Pop endorse that answer, by the way?
If you don't vote, if you don't vote for me, you ain't black.
You know, one of the most prominent black celebrities in America is a Trumper.
I think this is going to work out great for Joe saying stuff like that.
So watch what he says afterwards.
Black.
It don't have nothing to do with Trump.
It has to do with the fact I want something for my community.
I would love to see.
Take a look at my record, man.
I extended the voting racks 25 years.
I have a record that is second to none.
The NAACPs endorsed me every time I've run.
I mean, come on.
Take a look at the record.
All right.
Thank you so much.
I'm really appreciative.
Anyway, thanks.
I will come back.
All right.
I look forward to seeing you.
So what the host started to say was, this ain't got nothing to do with Trump.
This has got stuff that we need stuff in our community.
We want stuff from Margaret leaders.
And we're going to start making demands.
You want my vote?
I'm going to make a demand.
And what does Joe Biden do immediately?
He yells over him.
Hey, man, I'm the best guy there is.
I'm all you got.
Look at my record.
I looked at your record.
It's horrible.
It's horrible.
You have a horrible record.
By the way, Joe Biden still defends the crime bill.
Just so you know, he did it in this interview.
Hey, man, look at my record.
Anyway, your record's horrible, Joe.
And the fact that Bernie Sanders wouldn't bring it up makes you more vulnerable to Donald Trump.
He didn't do you a favor.
They didn't do you a favor.
If you don't vote for him, you ain't black.
That is amazing.
That'd be the weirdest, the weirdest rap battle ever.
If you don't support me, you ain't black.
Fat.
The Iraq war was dope.
And that's a fact, Mac.
All those people who said he needs to up his Latino outreach are probably telling themselves now to be careful what they wish for.
I agree.
What do you have?
Anything to say about Joe Biden's latest one here?
Did I see the clip again?
Yeah.
That's really our time.
I apologize.
You can't do that to black media.
I can't do that to white media and black media because my wife has to go on at six o'clock.
Okay.
Oh, uh-oh, I'm in trouble.
Listen, you got to come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden.
I will.
It's a long way until November.
We got more questions.
You got more questions.
Vlad Terry, if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for mayor Trump and you ain't black.
It don't have nothing to do with Trump.
It has to do with the fact I want something for my community.
I would love to see you.
Take a look at my record, man.
I extended the voting racks 25 years.
I have a record that is second to none.
The NAACP has endorsed me every time I've run.
I mean, come on.
Take a look at the record.
All right.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate it.
Anyway, thanks.
I will come back.
All right.
I look forward to seeing you in person.
Okay, absolutely.
Okay, pal.
Thanks a lot.
I appreciate it, Charlie.
Okay, there you go.
You know, of course, I mean, that Joe Biden says that it's just cringeworthy.
You know, that he's, who does he connect with?
You know what?
But also, you know, wasn't it just Whoopi Goldberg a couple days ago hosted an event for him?
I mean, so it's just it.
Is that true?
I think so.
Well, I got to tell you, Jimmy, I'm not voting for Biden, and I don't care.
I don't care.
And I know people are saying, oh, you can't, you can't do that.
You can't do that.
You better not do that.
You're dividing the party.
I'm not ever voting for Joe Biden.
I'm not.
Well, you better not.
You better stay off Jack Geager's Twitter feed.
Wow, Sean Connery's on the phone.
Hello.
You son of a bitch.
You probably weren't expecting to hear from me.
Where are you?
Well, you can pack up your old kickbag and cram it up your ass for all I care.
How are you, Sean?
I'm the greatest living shot of all time, you brick-headed bastard.
That's so I am.
A lot of people haven't heard from you in a long time.
That's because I've been social distancing on my island in the Bahamas.
The virus really changed things for everybody, huh?
What virus?
I've been on that island for years.
I wake up, have a cocktail, and beat a woodchuck with a five iron.
That's my day.
We heard you retired.
Well, you heard wrong, Mr. Muckle.
I'll retire when I say I'm goddamn ready to retire.
No sooner, no later.
Well, we're glad to hear that.
Anyway, guess what?
What?
I'm retiring.
I've had it with all the idiots in this business.
You included.
Does that mean you're writing your memoirs?
It could mean that.
Why?
I think people would love to read them.
Can you give us a little excerpt of what you've written so far?
Let's get this straight.
I rarely give interviews unless on my own exacting terms.
I understand.
I'm an intensely private man.
My personal life is none of yours or anybody else's bloody goddamn business.
Okay.
All right.
I'm sorry.
My mistake.
I was born a poor Scots boy in the rundown tenements of Fountain Bridge, Edinburgh.
My mother's name was Euphemia.
And for reasons I'd rather keep private, my father went by the name of Stinky McGurk.
You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to.
A self-reliant young lad.
I never asked for advice and never got it.
But I will give you some.
Virility, aggression, ambition, fatalism, and sex are my middle names.
Stay the hell off my property.
Any thoughts on the final James Bond movie coming out this November?
Yes, Daniel Craig is a small ninny.
It's called No Time to Die.
Apparently, he doesn't have time to die.
Bloody hell.
What a stupid question.
Okay, well, why'd you call me, Sean?
You bastard.
A man can't touch base with a pal every once in a while?
That's nice.
So, Joe Biden, he famously said, if you're having a trouble deciding about voting for me or Trump, you ain't black.
He also said the NAACP has endorsed him and all this stuff.
He's lied about all of it.
He said the crime bill didn't increase incarceration.
He lied about it.
He still defends the crime bill.
All that stuff he did in that.
He's a sociopathic liar, Joe Biden.
Wow.
Sociopathic liar.
Sociopath.
That's not hyperbole.
I'm not exaggerating.
That's why that term was invented.
Sociopathic.
It's for him.
Here he is talking about those people.
You tell me who he means when he's here.
He is talking about putting them in prison, those people.
And who does he mean?
Let's listen.
Take back the streets.
It doesn't matter whether or not the person that is accosting your son or daughter or my son or daughter, my wife, your husband, my mother, your parents.
It doesn't matter whether or not they were deprived as a youth.
It doesn't matter whether or not they had no background that enabled them to become social, become socialize into the fabric of society.
It doesn't matter whether or not they're the victims of society.
Doesn't matter if they're the victims of society.
Let's just lock them up.
Let's not give them education or health care.
Let's lock up their fathers and their uncles and their brothers and say, let's lock them up and then lock them up too.
Doesn't matter if they're a victim of racism, institutional, doesn't matter.
Lock them up.
Here's what he says.
End result is they're about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons.
Now, this is called demonizing the other.
That's what this is.
So there's a class of people out there that are animals and they're violent.
And it doesn't matter that our country has institutional racism and treated them poorly and they are victims themselves.
It doesn't matter.
I don't care about them.
I want them in prisons.
I want them locked up in cages.
I want to ask what made them do this.
They must be taken off the street.
Again, it does not mean because we created them that we somehow forgive them or do not take them out of society to protect my family and yours from them.
They are beyond the pale, many of those people.
Beyond the pale.
Which is ironic because that's what Kyle Kalinsky says about Joe Biden.
Can't vote for a Democrat anymore for president because he's beyond the pale.
Can't vote for Joe Biden.
He's beyond the pale.
And now that's what he's saying about citizens who he even admitted we created.
Doesn't matter if we created them.
Now they're monsters.
And they're beyond the pale.
Did any of those people ever torture someone, Joe?
Because you did.
Did any of those people that are beyond the pale kick desperate people out of their house in the middle of a recession created by Wall Street and your deregulation?
No, none of those people did, but you did.
Did any of those people build cages to put immigrants in?
Because you did.
Now who's the animal?
Who's beyond the pale?
It's Joe Biden.
The pale.
We have an obligation to cordon them off from the rest of society, try to help them, try to change the behavior.
That's why we do in this bill.
We have drug treatment and we have other treatments to try to deal with it, but they are in jail.
Away from my mother, your husband, our families.
America's the world's largest penal colony, and there he is screaming for more incarceration and engineering it.
And who does he mean by them?
They need to be cordoned off.
Who is they?
I think we all know what he means.
Does he mean people in the suburbs?
No.
Does he mean people in Bel Air or South Pasadena?
No.
Does he mean people in Beverly Hills or Brentwood?
Who are they?
And then here, here, Biden's history of Controversial racial comments.
Yes.
Well, this one, I know he's going to.
This one is the one about the 7-Eleven owners.
So let's watch this.
Hey, this is Meneesh.
Meneesh, how are you?
Oh, good to see you.
As you know, I've got a lot of support from you, Sydney.
That's where I have more to come, I think, so.
No, I've had a great relationship.
In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian Americans moving from India.
You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.
I'm not joking.
I You know, that's.
I think that is the least of his troubles.
Put it that way.
And the other thing we should do is you should challenge these students.
We should challenge students in these schools to have advanced placement programs in these schools.
We have this notion that somehow, if you're poor, you cannot do it.
Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.
Oh, way to talk to the people at the Asian and Latino Coalition, PAC, Joe.
Way to know your audience.
Way to know your audience.
So that's what he means when he says they.
That's how you know when he says they and them and cordoned them off.
And we created them, but they got to be in jail away from us.
I don't care.
I think.
Wow.
While discussing the need for criminal justice reform at a luncheon last year, Biden said people must continue to work to recognize black as equals so they so that African-American mothers, like the mother of Trayvon Martin, who was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer.
No, he wasn't.
He was not a neighborhood watch volunteer.
He was just some jag off with a gun.
No longer have to fear their sons will be shot when they go outside.
Wow.
Here he is.
I recognize that kid wearing the hoodie may very well be the next poet laureate and not a gangbanger.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are too many black men, and I might add women in prison.
And how did they get there, Joe?
Did I just see a speech of you going, you gotta be in prison?
That was quite a moment in that, wasn't it?
But they gotta be in prison.
It comforted you, didn't it?
That you knew they were going to be behind those bars.
We got too many.
He says we got too many.
Here he is.
Here's this one.
The first sort of mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean.
Clean.
He's clean, not like those dirty, those other dirty ones.
He's nice and clean.
Again, I understand that this is offensive, but I think these kind of things are the least amount of it.
It's the overt shit that he was saying.
Hey, let's put him in prison.
Let's do it.
And he still doesn't apologize for it.
In fact, he still defends that stuff to this day.
So these are more gaffes.
These are more like revealing an old-style thinking.
Yeah, because, you know, Jimmy, we all know that white-collar crimes aren't that horrible to people.
That's right.
You know, like maybe a crime that maybe Hunter Biden participated in.
Those don't really hurt white people, I guess.
You know, but people who are struggling in poverty and have no, I don't know, you know, road to success or have no options.
What kind of options is Biden providing for anybody right now?
Is he giving us Medicare for all?
Is he even talking about it?
Or does he just want to imprison more people?
I mean, that's bottom line that I feel right now.
Like, you know, people were saying in the live chat, somebody mentioned, oh, it's going to be a low turnout this year.
Who is really going to rally around Joe Biden and go, wow, you know, I've really looked at his record and I got to say, I like it.
So let's, I know one.
So let's watch this video again, shall we?
And break it down.
Just take back the streets.
It doesn't matter whether or not the person that is accosting your son or daughter or my son or daughter or my cousin twice removed or your sister or my granddaughter that I kiss awkwardly in camera or your prom date or my brother, your hairstylist.
I'm just saying words though.
Wife, your husband, my mother, your parents.
This is hilarious.
Just take back the streets.
My second cousin.
It doesn't matter whether or not the person that is accosting your son or daughter or my son or daughter, my wife, your husband, my mother, your parents.
It doesn't matter whether or not they were deprived as a youth.
Doesn't matter.
I have no empathy.
Just ask the millennials.
Just ask the millennials.
Do I have empathy?
None.
No joke.
It doesn't matter whether or not they had no background that enabled them to become enable them to finish a sentence to finish a sentence.
Become socialized into the fabric of society.
It doesn't matter whether or not they're the victims of society.
Yeah.
Doesn't matter whether or not they're the victims of society.
And take it from me, a white privileged guy.
Doesn't matter what your place in society was.
And I ought to know I'm a white privileged guy.
Result is they're about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons.
In the library with the candlestick.
What is it?
Plain clue?
What is it?
But my wife with that lead pipe.
Who has lead pipes?
So I don't want to ask what made them do this.
They must be taken off the street.
Again, it does not mean because we created them that we somehow forgive them or do not take them out of society to protect my family and yours from them.
They are beyond the pale, many of those people.
And, you know, I prefer people who are pale, if you know what I mean.
That's exactly right.
They're beyond the pale.
And I like people who are pale.
Yeah, yeah.
So if you go beyond pale, that's too dark.
Yeah.
Beyond the pale.
We have an obligation to cordon them off from the rest of society, try to help them, try to change their behavior, try to help them.
You know, whatever.
I don't really care.
I have to say this part.
I have to say that.
That's why we do in this bill.
We have drug treatment and we have other treatments to try to deal with it, but they are in jail.
In jail.
You know, my mother got hit with a lead pipe the week after I was liberating Nelson Mandela from prison, armed with nothing but a toothpick and an ice cream cone.
Okay, there's Joe Biden's racist tirade.
To me, that's the this is the problem.
The stuff he says on the Senate floor is the problem, not the stuff, those that other stuff is also off-putting.
But that is disgusting for my mother, your husband, our families, my third cousin, twice removed.
Jesus Christ.
In prison.
So there's your Joey Biden.
Well, you know what?
If you ever have a moment and you check out when Joe Biden and Clinton are talking about how Joe worked so hard for this bill to get past, it just is gross.
It just shows you who, for the last 40 years, have been taking care of the people.
They've been putting us behind bars.
That's right.
And the underlying banks to screw us out of our homes.
And worse than that, take our homes away, put us in forever debt, make it harder for us to get medical care, not be able to discharge our medical debt.
That's all because of Joe Biden.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know, his conversation.
You know, we covered his conversation at the Breakfast Club.
Yes.
Right.
That whole thing.
And, you know, he's, if you've read the highlines, he's, you know, backtracking, but he thought they meant blacktracking.
So he's like, whoa, bam.
All right.
Thank you, Jimmy.
Hey, you know, we no longer have an Amazon link because we're not doing that.
We're not playing that game.
But here's another great way you can help support the show: you become a premium member.
We give you a couple of hours of premium bonus content every week, and it's a great way to help support the show.
You can do it by going to jimmydoorcompany.com, clicking on join premium.
It's the most affordable premium program in the business, and it's a great way to help put your thumb back in the eye of the bastards.
Thanks for everybody who was already a premium member.
And if you haven't, you're missing out.
We give you lots of bonus content.
Thanks for your support.
Hey, look, it's Bill O'Reilly.
I wonder how he's taking a pandemic and if he's drunk.
I heard that.
You can't fool me.
I know you're talking about me, asshole.
I can hear you talking.
You want to know how I'm taking the pandemic?
Like I do all my problems with a big vodka chaser.
Groast.
What have you been up to, Bill?
What have you been up to, Bill?
Are you blind?
Hi, everybody.
Bill O here.
How about this COVID thing, huh?
I haven't seen anything like it in my 46 years of drinking.
I mean, journalism.
I bet you're wondering what I've been up to, eh, Bill?
You've been out of the live light for a while now, buddy.
We worried about you.
Don't worry about me, some love of bitch.
I've been working my ass off on my broadcast call.
Wait for it.
The no-spin zone broadcast production thing, right?
That sounds familiar.
Let me ask you something.
Are you getting information you need to protect yourself and your family and all your shit?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good question.
Are you getting the facts you need to make responsible decisions about things and stuff?
Maybe not.
Are you getting crates of liquor delivered to your door by the news media every Friday morning?
I don't think so.
Me neither either.
And that's why the Bill O'Reilly no-spin broadcast is blah, blah, blah, imperative.
Imperative.
And I don't use that word lightly.
Here's what you'll get when you prescribe to the Bill O'Reilly thing.
Hey, shut your fucking dog up.
Stop the goddamn barking.
I hate my neighbors.
I might cry now.
Hey, please don't do that.
What will people get?
What will people get with your no-spin broadcast, Bill?
My thinger Majiggy?
Yeah.
You'll get the unvarnished truth you may remember from my no-spin zone, including my big, pasty, bloated face without makeup and shitty lighting, framed by a great combovers, untouched by Grecian formula for over 60 days.
I don't think I'm interested.
But wait, you'll also get the crappiest audio quality inside of a Joe Biden town wall.
All skeptical will shock you.
It will make you want to see more.
And some of you might even get wood.
I know I do whenever I see someone wallow in failure and self-pity.
Love me.
Thanks for filling us in on your latest project, Bill.
Is there anything else you'd like to leave us with that's offensive?
Let's face the COVID fact store.
I don't want to sound callous about this, but most of these people who are dying were on their last legs anyway.
I know you're going to hammer me on that door.
Well, I don't care.
Hammer away.
That does sound pretty callous, Bill.
Well play, leftist smeary stuff.
Well, I don't care.
A simple man tells the truth, and a simple truth tells the man.
Man, truth, simple tells of.
Right.
Well.
Oh.
Okay, well, thanks for calling, Bill.
Wait, do you have Dennis Miller's number?
Tell your Nimrod viewers to buy my explosive new book in the killing series, Killing Crazy Horse with Explosives.
Love me.
That's what we're going to be talking about today.
Memorial Day.
That's right.
And specifically, what we're going to be talking about is this article that was in Mother Jones.
See, Mother Jones still does some good work.
See?
See, isn't that nice?
And it's entitled, We Are Combat Vets and We Want America to Reboot Memorial Day.
It says, just as coronavirus has exposed systemic rot, this moment also reveals how obsolete common conceptions of U.S. warfare truly are, raising core questions about the holiday devoted to its sacrifices.
The truth is that today's way of war is so abstract, dissident, and short on at least American casualties as to be nearly invisible to the public.
So that's a big part of this.
We've talked about it.
That's the whole point of an all-voluntary military.
So nobody's protesting.
And then, you know, you just use neoliberal as economic policies to make people desperate and small touts.
With little to show for it, Washington still directs bloody global campaigns, killing thousands of locals.
America has no space on its calendar to memorialize These victims among them.
In recent years, U.S. troops were killed not only in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Syria, Kenya, Somalia, Yemen, and Niger.
Few Americans could locate these countries on a map.
Fewer news soldiers even fought there.
Additionally, Pentagon pilots and proxies killed people in Libya, Pakistan, and elsewhere in West Africa without losing a single soldier.
Most people don't even know that we're in.
That's when I say, you know, Obama took us from two wars of seven.
They're like, what are you talking about?
What are the other five?
And I have to tell them.
The campaign in Somalia and Yemen best exposed the absurd casualty inequality of modern American warfare.
In the former, only a few U.S. service members have been killed in an 18-year intervention.
Conversely, hundreds of thousands of Somalis died or were displaced as a direct or indirect result, an exacerbated famine, for example, of a largely U.S.-catalyzed war.
In Yemen, just one American soldier died in combat, just one, compared to more than 100,000 locals, including 85,000 children that were starved to death in a terror campaign the Saudis couldn't wage without the United States' complicity.
So this year, given the stark reality that even a deadly pandemic and pleas for global ceasefire hasn't slowed Washington's war machine, it's reasonable to question the very concept of Memorial Day.
Wow, it's a big statement.
There are also important parallels with Labor Day, the holiday bookend to today's seasonal kickoff.
Just as memorializing America's obscenely lopsided battle deaths is increasingly indecent, a federal holiday devoted to a labor movement the government has aggressively eviscerated is troubling.
So there's a lot more into that article.
I recommend everyone go read it.
And we have the author with us right here, retired Major Danny Shornson.
He's a veteran of both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
He's a former history instructor at West Point.
Additionally, he's the host of a podcast called Fortress on the Hill and a regular contributor to antiwar.com, LA Times, The Nation, and Truthdig.
He also has a new book that's coming out available on Amazon called Patriotic Dissent.
Please welcome to the show Danny Shortson.
Danny, how are you?
I'm great.
Thanks for having me on.
Glad to be here.
So there's so many things.
So just to start off, what you were talking about, what would you like to see us do on Memorial Day as opposed to what we're doing?
Well, you know, the first thing I'd like to see is for people to pay attention.
You know, pay attention to what's actually happening.
You know, don't nostalize and mythologize the casualties at Normandy.
Look at what American warfare today is really like.
And it's different than it was even when I was in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Question the concept of being there.
What's the point?
And whether there's something obscene, and Matt Ho and I, who jointly wrote this article, we think that there is something obscene about an American way of war that kills into the hundreds of thousands.
I think that I would really like the American people to, you know, take a pause from the memorializing and nostalgizing and actually question the framework of these wars.
Let's bring them to a close.
If not now, then when in the midst of a pandemic.
So they always memorialized the World War II veteran.
Other people have said that that war has made all the other horrible wars possible because we keep pointing to that war and how we stopped the Nazis and stopped fascism and the Holocaust and all that stuff.
And so that kind of gives cover for the rest of our imperialism.
Would you agree with that?
Absolutely.
World War II was probably, you know, the one war of, you know, the last century and a half that had to be fought.
But in some ways, it's been poison to the body politic.
You know, there's a book called The Best War Ever.
And that's, of course, a sarcastic take on World War II.
But the reason it was written is because the legacy of that war is with us.
I mean, you know, Jimmy, all the way up to the Iraq war, folks were saying, well, if we appease, you know, if we appease Saddam Hussein, then it'll be like Munich all over again, where we appeased, you know, Hitler.
And they did the same thing for Bashar al-Assad and the Taliban.
And they're going to do it to the next, you know, the next enemy and the seven or eight enemies we have right now that we're actively bombing and the other 20 enemies we have that we aren't just yet.
This is a, it's really been a poisonous war.
It's been used to prop up the empire.
And that's what I want to say.
This is an empire.
And one thing I don't want to be misunderstood about, this is not a Trump empire.
And my article and Matt's article is not a Trump article.
It is a systemic imperial problem.
If you want a buffoonish emperor, we've got a bush for you.
If you want a polite emperor, we got an Obama.
And if you want a coarse emperor, we got a Trump.
But it's the same empire.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
People always criticize Trump for being a draft dodger.
And I was one of those people.
It seems like that's a bad tack to take because someone made the argument that if John McCain would have beat Barack Obama, he would have had no more moral authority to engage in the war in Libya or Afghanistan than Barack Obama, who never served.
They're both doing, committing horrible atrocities.
So the fact that you served and killed other people in Vietnam doesn't give you moral authority to do it in Yemen or Libya or Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, or anywhere else, right?
So that's so my question is, what do you say to people who criticize Donald Trump because he didn't serve?
Well, I mean, I think it's ridiculous because you can point, you know, that same thing is going to be used against your favorite Democrat someday who didn't serve, whether it's a Clinton or an Obama.
And let's not make any mistake.
Baron Trump is no more likely to join the military or marry a service member than, you know, Sasha and Malia were.
So this, in general, the elites aren't serving any longer.
And I sort of reject the notion that we focus on character, you know, rather than policy, which is, of course, the name of the game in the duopoly, as you often point out, right?
Focus on what we don't like ad hominem or pejorative about this person.
Oh, he was a draft dodger.
Well, so were a lot of folks who were, you know, in Congress today and going to be our president in the future.
I'm more interested in who's willing to challenge empire.
Nobody's done it so far.
Trump said some pretty nice stuff.
You know, he hasn't followed through.
And when I even mentioned that Trump has said some reasonable stuff, like in his last inaugural, when he said great nations don't fight endless wars, I loathe Trump, but that was correct.
Now he hasn't followed through.
But even mentioning that on my behalf gets me vitriol from, you know, the polite left that I otherwise associate with.
So I, yeah, I hear you 100%.
You have to block those people out because they're very pro-war.
That's the problem.
The Democratic Party, someone tweeted out today, and I retweeted it.
The Democratic Party today is indistinguishable from the Republican Party under George Bush.
It's again, it's two war parties.
It's really just one war party.
It's the money party and they really like war.
So is it how important do you think it is for ordinary people?
so just to conclude on Donald Trump, it doesn't matter why someone skipped a war if you skipped out because you were dodging it or because you actually had a medical problem.
It's no, whenever you can skip out on killing other people for capitalists, that's a good call, right?
Absolutely.
I'd actually really like to elect a pacifist or a Quaker or a draft dodger from the Vietnam War who was proud about that.
That would be great with me.
At least that's a principled stand.
So, you know, I don't think it makes you a better president because you drop bombs on folks or and I don't think that I'm anymore to speak out just because I have this veteran platform.
No doubt it probably gets me some publications and attention.
But in some sense, that itself is an obscene thing, isn't it?
Yes.
So do you think it's important for ordinary citizens to speak out against the war, even though they'll be criticized as being armchair quarterbacks and have their credentials questioned because you've never served?
I think it's absolutely vital.
We need to reject the valorization and the canonization of the soldier in the first place.
And fighting against war is actually one of the hardest things to do, speaking out against your war, because, you know, as MLK said, you know, dissent is misunderstood as disloyalty.
It is to me.
I mean, I'm called a traitor, a Russian asset, and I'm not alone.
You know, Tulsi as well, as you know, I think it's vital to speak out on the issues that are hardest to speak out about and reframe patriotism as in most cases, or many cases, dissent, because the platitude of patriotism hasn't gotten us anywhere, has it?
Except, you know, trillions of dollars in debt and 7,000 dead soldiers and probably about 2.2 million foreigners since 9-11.
And so now I want to talk about the conflicts of soldiers who awaken to this problem.
So when you were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, what was your feeling about those wars at the time you were serving?
You know, I kind of went on my own intellectual and ethical journey.
I evolved, right?
Not to sound like Obama on gay marriage, but I did.
I was skeptical of the Iraq war while I was there and I turned against it.
Initially, I thought, well, this war's not winnable, and that's why we shouldn't do it.
Then I started to think maybe we shouldn't really be here in the first place, you know, in general, across the board.
And then only later, especially after Afghanistan and going to grad school and teaching history at West Point, which made me sort of an insurgent, I started to think maybe the entire imperial structure, you know, the system of militarism and the military industrial complex is what we really have to fight.
So, you know, I evolved, but I'll tell you, maybe I'm ahead of a lot of folks and definitely more radical, if that's the word, but I'm seeing a sea change within the military, within the veterans' ranks, and even in the active duty, many of whom I still speak to, including former students of mine who are lieutenants in Afghanistan now and will text me, you know, opposition to the war that they're currently fighting, you know, privately.
Last point on this.
I mean, I'm a member of a number of anti-war veteran organizations and run a podcast from that perspective.
And, you know, right after this show, Fortress on a Hill, we're doing a live stream where we're bringing in a slew of anti-war veterans, enlisted officers, West Point grads.
And it's almost going to be like our little mini winter soldier hearing from the Vietnam War, you know, explaining our culpability and fighting against the war state.
So we're out there, but you won't see us on MSNBC, Jimmy.
You know that.
Yes, that's very interesting.
I'm so glad you brought that up.
I almost let that slip right past me.
So this is a great article.
I'm sure you've been contacted by Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes.
They go out and bring you on TV to talk about this, right?
Well, you know, it's funny because you mentioned how the Democrats were a lot like the Bush administration in 03.
Just watch Rachel Maddow, right?
Who I used to have a lot of respect for 10 years ago, wrongfully.
Her show now, the guest list, it's a Bush alumni party in the Bush administration.
It's amazing.
It's born-again war criminals, you know, and they're laundered like dirty money through Las Vegas onto MSNBC.
So of course they're not calling me, even though Rachel's first book, Drift, identified these very problems.
It was an excellent book, and she's a smart woman, and she obviously has no ethical core.
I've, you know, on other radio shows, I've challenged her to a debate on MSNBC.
She doesn't care about me, but I would wipe the floor with her Oxford education, I promise you.
Yeah, I know you would because you have the truth on your side.
So here's the, so there's lots of problems, right?
So I had Tulsi on the show, and, you know, she was a strong voice calling out the intelligence community and our BS foreign wars, which no one else would do.
No one else.
It was very vital that she did that.
Unfortunately, she ended up endorsing the biggest warmonger running, which was such a crusher for me, right?
When you try to challenge people who are currently serving, see, because when people like, I talk to people who are former military, they all say they apologize to the people of the countries that they invaded and they killed people in or whatever.
But current people like Tulsi couldn't do that, right?
And I said, what do you say to those people?
Because it's weird that you can be against the wars, which she is.
She correctly frames them, which she does.
She correctly calls out the intelligence community, yet she can't tell people not to join anymore.
Like there's some kind of a, you're kind of betraying your service if you tell, because I asked, I go, don't you feel bad that your service might attract other people to go serve in these bogus wars?
And so what do you say to that?
No, I mean, this is an important problem.
One of the mistakes, although I think it wasn't a mistake at all that I made, was, you know, I wrote my first book, Ghost Riders or Baghdad, while I was, you know, still in the army.
And actually, it came out when I was teaching at West Point.
And I was writing these anti-war columns, you know, right on the blurred line of what's legal and what's not within the army.
And it got me, you know, investigated in trouble.
My pension, you know, was threatened, all this stuff.
Really?
It's a difficult thing, but I will tell you this.
You know, it is a difficult thing to ask any like former or serving officer to tell people not to join or to disobey orders.
But during the Vietnam War, one of the kind of blacked out and whitewashed histories of how that war ended is it wasn't Congress who saved us and it wasn't the Kennedy brothers or their Democratic Party.
And it wasn't even the college kids protesting on campus, although they were an important component.
One of the main factors was GI resistance.
Folks refused to go on patrol.
They had these underground newspapers and coffee shops.
Now, part of the reason for that is because they were draftees.
And in the volunteer force, that's much harder.
However, I think as we saw with the Captain Crozier incident on the aircraft carrier, there are those rumblings I mentioned among even active duty soldiers and sailors.
And there's a lot of power in that serving and even veteran community because even though it's kind of gross and problematic, folks trust us.
Maybe they shouldn't.
Maybe we don't have the moral authority they lend us.
But if we have it, then I think it becomes an obligation to speak out.
And so, you know, I think people have to follow their conscience when it's In the service, I wish I would have had the courage to speak out earlier than 2015, you know, and there's a lot of reasons, you know, none of them very good that I didn't.
But for the folks out there listening, I'm not in uniform anymore.
I'm not afraid to say it.
If your conscience says don't do it, then don't.
So, doesn't a military person have an obligation to the Constitution, right?
So, that's what they're and that if someone gives you an illegal order, you're supposed to disobey it.
And isn't the Iraq war one big illegal order?
You know, this is such an important point.
I'm glad you brought it up.
You know, every time I got promoted and when I first got in, I had to take, you know, my oath to follow the orders of the president of the United States, but that's secondary.
The main part of the oath is support and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Well, I don't remember the last time we constitutionally declared war.
It was 1941.
And, you know, according to the Nuremberg principles, which we kind of shepherded, the number one crime, they said, the number one war crime is the crime of aggression, of aggressive war.
Framed that way, pretty much everything that we are doing currently is illegal and immoral.
And so, you know, I question the entire concept that we have some sort of obligation to be company men because that's what a lot of these folks, these retired generals, these serving generals who go on MSNBC or Fox, it doesn't matter what side of the Duobli they're on.
What they are is company men carrying water for the empire.
And I'm complicit.
I did it for a long time, but it is gross.
And it's destroying what's left of the small R Republic, if there is any.
So if there is a war with Iran or China, do you think that the enlisted men should refuse to go?
And at what point should a soldier refuse?
Well, you know, I'll be cautious here, not for my own sake, but because it's a difficult thing to tell somebody what they should do.
I will say that I like to believe, and although there's not a ton of evidence to support it, I'd like to believe that if we started another war with Iran, which would be grotesquely illegal and unstrategic, that I personally would pack it in.
And folks have.
There are Camila Meha, you know, was one of the first people to refuse.
And Lieutenant, there was a lieutenant up in Washington.
I do think that the time is coming for a, you know, we'll call it a wildcat sit-down strike on the aircraft carriers and in the armored brigades.
And people are going to attack me for saying that.
And at this point, I don't really care because the bloodshed that's on all of our hands, because these wars are fought in our name, civilians like me now, it's fought in our name.
Just because there's no draft doesn't mean we're not complicit.
We're all in on the system.
So here's another difficult question.
How do you criticize the senseless and pointlessness of these wars for the family members and friends of people who've died in these wars and they have to believe that their death meant something?
So how do you square that circle?
Well, it's something that I personally deal with on the daily.
I mean, my inbox filled up with more than the usual hate mail today because of this article.
And most of it was, you know, sort of reflexive from veterans and in some cases, family members of like, oh my God, are you guys, you and Matt Hoe, are you saying that you're not in favor of honoring the dead?
Well, that's, of course, ridiculous.
I'm not a monster, at least not mostly.
And frankly, my son, who's, you know, maybe 12 feet from me at this moment, is named after three soldiers who died under my command in Iraq, one of whom was, you know, two of whom were totally close friends.
There's pictures of them on my wall.
We have to be big enough and intellectual enough to hold two opposing concepts in our head at the same time, which is that it is important to honor the folks who died that you loved, you know, that, you know, they were fighting for their brothers, all the platitudes, but they're true.
And also understand that the best way to honor them, I think, and I'd like to believe they'd feel is to create less dead Americans as well as less dead Yemeni children, children whose skins, if they were less brown and religion of their parents, if they were less Muslim, would be just would just horrify Americans, children.
And, you know, so I understand that they're, look, I'm close to the family members of some of the soldiers that died under my command, very close.
And I understand that there is a need for some of them to hold on to the old notion of patriotism.
And they fear that if they turn against the wars, they're somehow turning against their son.
You know, I can't tell them how to feel, but I think that it is an obligation for those of us who read and think and really give a damn about this country to separate the two and hold the two opposing views in our head at the same time.
They ain't all that opposing either.
So do you find a problem?
See, because the tricky part is in consoling them, it means that believing that some past war was worthy, which then means that a future war is worthy.
And as we know now, they aren't.
Yeah, it's a difficult thing.
I think that, you know, we have to be okay with saying that a consensus of historians agrees, by the way, probably there were only two wars fought in American history that were worth fighting.
And that's the one that freed the slaves indirectly and somewhat directly.
And then the one against the Nazis that we eventually got stuck in, but only largely because of the failures of the first war.
Yes, it's a difficult thing.
It really is.
Right, right.
And so when you say you want to reboot Memorial Day, how would you like to see Memorial Day rebooted?
You know, I think just to simplify it, I'd like to see it used as a jumping off point like we are right now to question and challenge the war state and to provide some empathy for the folks we kill and to recognize that the American way of war has become so outsourced, mercenary, and technocratic that mercenaries, militias, and machines are killing people with little cost to us.
So, you know, I'm not saying we ditch the concept of honoring troops.
I'm saying maybe we put that on pause for a while until we figure out how to put this republic back together, ditch the empire, and really honor these kids, right?
Which they largely are by ending the system that's going to send the next generation to die in some hopeless, futile, and frankly immoral endeavor.
If we can even talk about that, that's a small victory.
And in America today, that's about the best we're getting is small victories.
Why do you think the news media, even though you know, you and I both know they know better, pushes every war?
Why does Rachel Maddow, even though she wrote a book about it, still a militarist?
Why does the New York Times, every war, they're for it on their front page?
Is that an accident?
Because there is a, there, Anon Girardis just wrote a book and he's talking, he's going around saying that it isn't a problem, there isn't a systemic problem with the news media.
It's individual journalists who have habits of mind.
What do you say?
You know, you're an intellectual and an academic, plus you have war experience.
What do you think the reason is that the news media ubiquitously gets war wrong and is pro-war every time?
Well, because like Congress, they're bought, Sold and derelict in their duty.
You know, they're all owned by the same people.
You know, it's thrown around like a cliche, but there really are only a few people who own these media institutions.
And war sells as entertainment and clickbait.
That's why they have eagles flying in front of Bradley tanks before we go kill people in Iraq.
And that's where the funding comes from.
That's where your bread is buttered.
Having me on or, Jimmy, you're famous, even having you on, isn't going to help their bottom line.
These are contrived talk shows where the very narrow left and right limits, unlike on your show, are laid out beforehand.
So what you have is the illusion of an oppositional media, when in reality, the military-industrial complex, like Eisenhower originally wanted to do in his speech, really needs to be broadened to say military, industrial, congressional media complex, because everybody is complicit in the same system.
Everybody wins at the top.
Everybody scratches everybody's back and retweets everybody and plugs them.
But you know who loses?
The kids that I know from the housing projects and the rural towns that we threw overboard with the steel industry 40 years ago, those were the kids that I fell in love with that I served with.
They don't win.
And yet we adulate them on the football field as, you know, a D-level participation ribbon.
And the whole thing is gross.
And if I sound a little angry about it, it's because I'm letting myself because we all should be.
And you're definitely right.
Let me ask you quickly about what did people in the military think about the intelligence community, the Democratic Party, and the news media pushing an evidence-free red baiting conspiracy theory against the president, who's the commander-in-chief and was actively ordering people into battle.
Well, you know, the Democratic Party and the media and Russia gate, in my experience, are very unpopular, highly unpopular, maybe more in the military than even most places.
The military is not a monolith politically like it maybe once was, or maybe it never was.
It's never been just conservative.
But, you know, ginning up a new Cold War that means their blood based on what has demonstrably been, you know, probably lies, definitely some lies, and really just obfuscation across the board and unbacked conjecture.
That's not a winner.
That is not a winner with the veteran community.
Let's remember, Lincoln gets elected, you know, play historian, largely on the ballots of the soldiers who are allowed to come back or mail them in in like the first ever mail ballots.
And, you know, this is not a winner for Nancy Pelosi.
I mean, this is, if anyone's more unpopular than Trump with soldiers, I guarantee you it's her.
And I think that's an important point.
Look, RussiaGate was a distraction from the reality, which is we should have been critiquing Trump on his active foreign policy and calling on him to live up to some of his relatively earthy and correct campaign promises.
Instead of holding his feet to the fire on empire and whatever else, even domestically.
No, no, no.
We threw all our chips in for a scam for the Iraq war gate of my generation.
And who picked it up, Jimmy?
You did.
Matt Taibbi did.
But how many people in the mainstream media?
If they found that they don't have jobs anymore.
Yeah, none of the people in the mainstream media.
I mean, I guess Matt Taibbi's mainstream.
He writes for Rolling Stone.
So that would be it.
Glenn Green, is the intercept?
I mean, everybody else at the intercept was Russia gating besides Glenn Greenwald.
So he got it right.
So that was nice.
The editor of the intercept still rushed till this day at the top of Verlung's 100 miles an hour.
Still doing that.
It's amazing.
Well, one Russian asset to another, Jimmy.
I mean, I'm going to call my handler after this show, Vlad, and tell him what we talked about.
It's amazing though.
I mean, that's a cudgel.
You know, I will just say this.
Before Trump was elected, I got a lot of hate then, too.
But it was always that I was a traitor and I hated America.
But after Trump was elected, then it became, oh, you love Trump and you're a Russia apologist and a Russian asset.
I think that's instructive, actually, because my views didn't change.
Yeah, very, that's very, yeah.
Of course, yeah, your views didn't change, but there are smear tactics against people telling the truth about war change.
That's all.
That's the only thing that happened.
You know, so we hear about the human cost of war.
And do you have anything to say about the, you know, what war does to so a lot of people say, I'll worry about animals as soon as I can get people to start worrying about people.
And other people make the argument that if we don't address how we treat animals, which is what the undergrid girds this whole culture, not only through animal agriculture, but even the way war treats the environment and the cruelty to animals from a military testing, I mean, the effects of sanctions, pollutions from our weapons, and generations of collateral damage.
Can you talk about some of that stuff that's the military mindset has inflicted on the earth?
Yeah, in the name of this apparently indispensable nation of ours and our freedom on the tip of a bayonet military that we adulate and canonize.
In the name of that, we're the number one polluter, the Department of Defense.
Our own soldiers are poisoned by Gulf War syndrome and Agent Orange and now batteries being burned in burn pits.
I mean, I don't know how many class action suits I've gotten emails asking me to be a part of.
It's every generation, it's the same way.
And the focus, if at all, is a two-minute clip on the veterans.
We do very little to talk about our influence on the climate and on the environment in a lot of these, in a lot of these places.
I mean, just one perfect example is that most of those deaths that you mentioned in my article and me and Matt Ho's article in Yemen and Somalia are actually famine and disease and cholera.
What folks don't realize is that, as I wrote in a recent article, the number one epidemic exacerbator in history is war.
And that was true with the Native Americans, and it's true in Yemen today.
When you've got desertification in West Africa and East Africa, that is already existing from the climate and our contribution to it with the Pentagon.
And then you throw drones and refugees and raids on top of that.
I mean, it's a petri dish.
It's a petri dish before people started talking about that when Americans started dying from Corona.
It's always been there.
Our sins are manifold and they're interconnected.
And that's the structural part.
And what people don't realize, which is just so crazy that everyone would want to go to war because they thought Assad killed 50 people with a chlorine bomb.
Whereas we are literally committing siege warfare on Yemen, which I don't know if you know, that is a war crime.
You're not allowed To do that.
And that's why 75,000 children died of a famine during a war because we are blocking medicine, food, any kind of help from getting into those people.
And that's called siege warfare.
That's illegal.
We're doing that.
That's the United States.
So then we point our finger at Putin and say he's a strong man, he's a thug, or Assad's a thug, or a Qaddafi's a thug.
The biggest thug in the history of humankind is the United States of America.
Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I do.
And it took me a long time to come to that place longer than it should have.
It's really important what you're saying here.
I mean, let's talk about Yemen.
I like to be flippant, but hey, at least the guys we're supporting who are doing it, at least it's a really nice, freedom-loving regime, the Saudis, right?
Where they still burn women for witchcraft and sorcery.
It's on the books, folks.
Putin is a monster.
All right.
I'm not a fan of Russian foreign policy per se, but it's less aggressive than American foreign policy.
It's killing less folks directly and indirectly.
That doesn't mean I support it.
It means I'm willing to hold those same two opposing ideas in my head at the same time.
Putin is an imperfect, somewhat problematic leader for the Russians to worry about.
But America, using the witch-burning regime that happens to have a lot of oil, is starving children.
And we've been doing it for quite some time.
And they also backed a guy called Osam bin Laden in Afghanistan.
I heard that somewhere.
And it was our money that helped do it.
So blowback 101, Empire 101.
When are we going to stop it?
When are we going to sit down?
When are we?
I mean, everybody I talk to.
So I travel all over the country.
And before the pandemic, I would travel everywhere, every weekend, going somewhere.
And no matter where, to a person everybody was like, no one ever says more war.
Everyone says, let's get out of these wars and put that money into our own country, into infrastructure or education or health care or whatever.
So, and then Trump gets elected on an anti-interventionist platform.
They immediately turn him.
They give him an extra $131 billion to go bomb people as they say he's in bed with our enemies, which those two things don't make sense.
That's how you know they're lying about Russia Gate.
And they give an extra $131 billion and he doesn't complain about it.
So there's no way to stop this machine, right?
I mean, it's short of a real revolution, right, Danny?
Well, yeah, some sort of version of a general strike, which you've advocated, you know, when you had Christian Smallzon from Blue Collar Staten Island, where I grew up.
You know, we have to apply that to the empire and we have to connect because the media won't do it for us.
They ain't going to connect the dots.
The dots give them a job.
What needs to be connected is the opportunity cost of every dollar spent on the aircraft carrier, right?
Every person killed overseas that blows back on us.
I mean, this is domestic and foreign policy are completely connected.
Working in the system has never stopped an American war.
Never.
And that goes since 1607 when a white dude showed up in Virginia.
And if we think it's going to work now, it's like thinking that Nancy Pelosi is going to put universal health care in the bailout.
It's the same delusion.
It's the same delusion.
It's the same sickness with different symptoms.
It's gross.
And we got to quit with delusions because, you know, like the Bible says, and I'm not religious, childish things need to be left behind.
Americans not so keen on that so far.
It's only been like 400 years, Jimmy.
So, you know, I'm holding out my hope.
Would you extend that same philosophy to reformation of our political parties?
Because I know a lot of people still believe that the answer is somehow sucking some more corporate cock, backing the Democratic Party another time, and then trying to get back at them in four years.
That's exactly what you said.
That's childish things, right?
Well, it is.
And, you know, I haven't even, I haven't even like taken a position on, you know, endorsing anybody.
I'm not important enough.
But I wrote an article called Gambling on Biden's Foreign Policy about two weeks ago.
And I literally got more hate mail all from the left, from the polite liberals, in one morning than I did in the month before.
And that's saying something because I dared mention that Biden is an emperor.
You know, he's a little bit less polite than Obama, but he's of the polite emperor mold.
He's going to smile like Uncle Joe from Scranton or wherever or HSBC or whatever.
And the reality is, if you gamble on Biden thinking he's going to end the empire, you're in a delusion.
You may as well be one of these Mike Pompeo, the raptures coming in Israel types, because it's not going to happen.
If you choose to vote for Biden and you know what you're getting, look, you got to do what you got to do.
And for me, I'm done.
I'm done with the duopoly.
I think Trump is a threat in a number of ways in the climate.
But listen, if you think that Biden is going to dismantle the empire, I mean, I've got oceanfront property in Arizona, as George Strait said.
Can you speak before we let you go?
I know you got to get to your own show.
You know, troop suicides mirror the slow suicide of all humanity right now.
And the military is a big part of that.
What are your thoughts on the high numbers of troop suicides?
You know, a lot of folks said that I didn't pay enough attention honoring troops in my article today.
I was like, well, you didn't read the article because I talked about substance abuse and suicide as an epidemic within the military and how maybe if we're going to memorialize anybody, let's focus on them because they're about a thousand times higher than how many soldiers died in Yemen.
On a personal level, both for me and Matt Ho, you know, the Marine and State Department whistleblower who I wrote this with, three soldiers under my command, direct command, took their own lives.
All right.
Two of those were substance abuse related.
The invisible wound is real and it ain't just a platitude, even though it sounds like one.
But what we like to do is say, what a shame that 22 or 17 or whatever the status, veterans are killing themselves today.
What a shame.
If we thank them more in the airport and pick up a few more checks at TJI Fridays, that'll do it.
You know, never saying, what is it about readjustment to civilian life from forever war where they're never going to see a victory?
What is it about that process that is causing a suicide and a substance abuse epidemic?
It's it actually, for me, it's it's hard, you know, because people that I love took their own lives.
And then I'll tell you, you want to talk about substance abuse?
Hang out with me after a funeral in Salina, Kansas for a Mexican-American kid who was the best soldier ever and then takes his own life.
It's really problematic.
And the folks that are going to be on my live show right after this doing our kind of winner soldier, give our thoughts on the wars thing, almost every one of them is either personally affected with those, you know, depression and PTSD and substance abuse or know somebody who critically has either taken their life or come close.
That epidemic, that story, if we don't tie it to the empire and to the forever war state, then we're doing a disservice to every one of those people who took their own lives and the future ones because, you know, it'll be 17 more tomorrow.
So just hold on.
I have no idea how people readjust after being in a war zone.
I saw a dog get hit by a car.
I still have nightmares.
I have no idea how people can.
And I'm not making a joke about that.
Like, that's for real.
So I have no idea.
I'm such a fragile dude in that way.
So I can't even imagine how, you know, the stuff that you see and you have to do.
And I've heard soldiers talk about the stuff they were ordered to do and the things that ripping people out of their houses and making people stand against walls and all kinds of, you know, just the things they had to do.
It's just, it's, I don't know, I don't know how they do it.
So yeah, aren't you surprised that the, I mean, like, there was a town, I think, in Utah that decided to make sure that none of their veterans were homeless.
Aren't you surprised there isn't like a nationwide program like that?
I wish I was surprised.
I mean, I do.
I wish that I was surprised by that.
I wish that I had enough faith in our systems to think that, you know, our big bear hug of freedom would, you know, go all the way down to the kids from Western Pennsylvania who serve and die in our military and come back broken physically and emotionally.
But I'm not surprised because, you know, the system isn't designed for them.
They may be water carriers for that system and we may thank them, but they're the detritus of empire and every empire has produced them and we ain't all that different from them.
It's gross on so many levels, but I think that it's actually an insult to the military, to veterans that we purport to adulate and we play all their movies on TBS every Memorial Day and Veterans.
Frankly, I find these holidays wretched at this point, which is why this year Matt and I wrote an article saying, let's just ditch it or at least reframe the whole thing.
Because frankly, I'm sick of writing anti-war articles on Memorial Day because I don't have a lot of faith that they're doing any good.
But I do hope that like when it comes to, you know, the Occupy style movement and economic inequality, that we, you know, take those direct action grassroots messages from history and realize that those are the tactics that work.
And I listen to you regularly, and I don't think I've seen an episode in a year where you didn't mention the necessity of that.
And I appreciate it.
And I think a lot of veterans out there do because we're not a monolith and a whole lot of us, quietly mostly, but a whole lot of us are just about fed up.
And apathy is the most insulting thing.
I'd rather be called a baby killer, which isn't completely even wrong, but I'd rather be insulted directly than have citizen apathy.
But that's what reigns.
And that's what the media produces.
They're part of the game.
What was the word you used?
They are the detriments of empire.
What was that word?
The detrude of empire.
Yeah.
What does that word mean?
How do you spell that word?
That's a good word.
E-T-R-I-T-U-S.
Yeah.
You know, just like the trash of empire, you know, the leftovers of empire.
And this, this has been the case throughout history.
I mean, the British Empire had the same thing.
You've got these broken imperial soldiers who come home.
They don't recognize the country they just came from.
Who do they, not all of them, but who do a lot of them take it out on?
The immigrants to London who came from the same place they were just trying to pacify.
I mean, this whole thing works in such a way to divide us, whether it's, you know, by class or ethnicity or immigrant status.
But, you know, we're the, we're, my generation is just the newest, you know, post-Vietnam generation of broken empire, of broken soldiers that really are the detriment of empire.
So, you know, forgive me for not being excited about Joe Biden, you know, who was the number one cheerleader for the Iraq war.
That broke me, right?
And maybe I'm not a tough enough guy.
Maybe that's possible.
I got a lot of weaknesses.
I will tell you that watching teenagers get executed on the side of the road in Iraq because they were Shia or Sunni and we started that war, that broke me and it changed my life.
Now I'm glad it did, but forgive me for not getting excited about the guy who defended what he called popular President Bush, you know, six months into that war when it was clear we didn't have a single WMD to be found.
And, you know, the Civil War had already kind of kicked off.
So yeah, I can't get excited for him.
Do you think there is a chance of soldiers refusing to serve at any point?
I think it's if I'm a little hopeful, I'm not optimistic.
You know, something to keep in mind.
I mean, people talk about the all-volunteer force.
In and of itself, the all-volunteer force was designed not by some hippie, you know, SDS activist on a college campus.
It was designed by Richard Nixon.
It was designed by the Republican Party to squelch dissent.
That's why it was created.
So expecting, you know, the all-volunteer force to suddenly, you know, behave like the conscripts of Vietnam is, again, it's sort of another illusion.
However, if you push even a volunteer force, which isn't really volunteer, it's an economic draft.
I mean, just look at the soldiers I serve with.
I mean, come on.
But even if you push volunteers far enough and you keep them at war for decades, because we're going to go into our third decade of war, not too far from now, I think you'll see pushback.
I think you'll see more folks who passively, aggressively kind of revolt like the sailors did on Captain Crozier's pandemic ship.
But as for refusal to serve, less likely.
And so long, final point, so long as the things that you constantly talk about continue, which is economic disparity, unemployment, and the gig economy at the bottom, also part of the same system.
So long as that doesn't change, then folks are going to leave their crappy towns and neighborhoods to serve in a place that's the most socialist institution in America, where even if you're 19 and you've got two kids and a teenage wife, because I hung out at their houses, the Army gives you a house and universal health care and at least a living wage, mostly.
So, you know, I mean, my point is, if you think that on the demand end, you know, less folks are going to join, even that's unlikely so long as we maintain the oligarchy.
And again, it's not conspiratorial to say that it's part of the same system because Nixon designed it.
Nixon, not George McGovern, not John F. Kennedy.
Danny Shortson, thanks so much.
Retired Major Danny Shortson, anti-war activist, host of The Fortress on a Hill, which is doing a live stream starting right now.
Is that on a YouTube live stream?
Yeah, we're on Facebook, Porchana Hill.
Check us out.
And yeah, if you don't mind, if you want to check out my columns, I'm a contributing editor at anniewar.com and my website is skepticalvet.com.
So I'm all over the place.
Even Mother Jones, which is for only the second time.
But thanks so much for having me, Jimmy, and having this honest conversation that I couldn't have had anywhere else.
Number one, because they wouldn't have invited me.
And number two, because very few people are asking these questions.
Well, I really appreciate your work and your advocacy and your truth telling and your courage to do so.
And It really makes a big difference.
So, thanks again, and we look forward to talking to you.
Hey, and let me know when your book is out.
It's called Patriotic Dissent, and we'll have you back on, okay?
Thanks, Jimmy.
Glad to do it anytime.
Okay, buddy.
Hello.
Greetings, Jimmy Door.
It is I, fabled and storied United States Senator from New York, Charles Chip Schumer, at your service, for I'm first and foremost your humble public servant.
If there is anything I can help you and your special lady with during this trying time, please do not hesitate to contact my office.
That is all.
Thank you.
Well, there is something we were wondering about.
Huh?
Wouldn't supporting a free, federally funded healthcare plan for everybody help even more?
That's crazy talk.
We can't afford to lay off our vital workforce insurance middlemen.
These people are essential workers.
In the middle of a pandemic, who else is going to refuse you access to a ventilator?
Your wife?
Of course not.
She doesn't have the courage.
But people are drowning in their own lung fluids, Chuck.
What?
They should drown in somebody else's?
Have you gone mad?
So it might make things a little easier if you supported Medicare for All, right?
Now is not the time to talk about free health care, you asshole.
There's a pandemic going on.
Hey, you know, there's a lot more to that phone call, but we don't have time in today's podcast.
How do you hear the entire phone call?
You got to become a premium member.
Go to JimmyDoorComedy.com, sign up.
It's the most affordable premium program in the business.
Today's show was written by Ron Placone, Mark Van Landowitz, Steph Zamarano, Jim Earle, Mike McRae, and Roger Rittenhouse.
All the voices performed today by the one and the only of the inimitable, Mike McRae, who can be found at MikeMcRae.com.
That's it for this week.
You be the best you can be, and I'll keep being me.
▲
Export Selection