All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 11, 2021 - Sean Hannity Show
30:22
Military Free Speech - October 11th, Hour 2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This is an iHeart Podcast.
All right, hour two, Sean Hannity's show.
Toll free, it's 800-941-SEAN.
You want to be a part of the program.
48 days, Americans abandoned by Joe Biden behind enemy lines, their families, thousands of green card holders, people eligible to live in this country, our Afghan allies that we made a solemn vow to that if this day ever came, we'd get them the hell out of there.
They're there.
They're being killed systematically by the Taliban.
And yet, there's no effort at all.
Joe Biden's turned the page, and they're all patting themselves on the back.
It's unconscionable to me.
Now, it's all got started.
We have this situation involving Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, 17-year veteran, six tours of duty, one for an entire year, putting his life on the line for the country.
He sees the abandonment of our fellow Americans.
He knows, he's fully aware of the risk.
17 years, he's three years away from a pension.
And he goes on social media and he tells the truth.
This can't happen.
This is not an America that I recognize.
And here's what he said.
People are so upset on social media right now is not because the Marine on the battlefield let someone down.
That service member has always rose to the occasion and done extraordinary things.
People are upset because their senior leaders let them down and none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability or saying we messed this up.
If an O5 battalion commander has the simplest Li-Fire incident EO complaint, boom, fire.
But we have a Secretary of Defense that testified to Congress in May that the Afghan National Security Force could withstand the Taliban advance.
We have chairmans of Joint Chief who, the Kama, is a member of that.
We're supposed to advise on military policy.
We have a Marine combatant commander.
All of these people are supposed to advise.
And I'm not saying we've got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, hey, it's a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, the strategic air base, before we evacuate everyone?
Did anyone do that?
And when you didn't think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, we completely messed this up?
I've got battalion commander friends right now that are posting similar things and they're saying, you know, wondering if all the lives were lost and if it was in vain, all those people that we've lost over the last 20 years.
And he goes on to say that we're all part of a chain.
While every link may not be tested, the strength of the chain is only as strong as each link, and you got to be a good link, something like that.
And what I'll say is, from my position, potentially all those people did die in vain if we don't have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and say, we did not do this well in the end.
Without that, we just keep repeating the same mistakes.
This amalgamation of the economic slash corporate slash political slash higher military ranks are not holding up their end of the bargain.
I want to say this very strongly.
I have been fighting for 17 years.
I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability.
Well, now they have thrown him in the brig and his parents have been unable to contact him.
Congressman Louis Gomert, our friend from Texas, was able to go yesterday and see him.
Stu and Kathy Scheller, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller's parents are with us along with Congressman Louis Gomert.
Welcome both of you back to the program.
Let me start with you, Stu, and you, Kathy.
And you still have not had an opportunity to talk to your son.
Tell us where the case stands now.
There is great outrage now that has built among the American people since you were last on the radio with me and on TV last night with us.
Well, I will tell you, thanks to the efforts of Louis Gohmert, thanks to at least three dozen congressmen writing the Commandant, writing the Secretary of Navy, it is working, America.
Clearly, many Americans have found their voice and they're standing up and they're contacting their congressmen.
But I will tell you, we are not out of the woods.
We do not have an agreement.
We have been told by his legal counsel that it be prepared.
He could stay in prison for a long time before this is resolved.
So we are leaving Ohio and traveling to North Carolina this weekend.
His counsel has asked for an open hearing on Tuesday.
We hope to see our son.
We hope that they can negotiate, navigate a positive settlement between both the Marine Corps and Stuart this weekend.
But, you know, I got to tell you, I don't trust go figure.
And so we can't let up.
And I'm still, Kathy and I are still asking Americans to keep doing what they're doing because it is working.
This audience is fully engaged in this with you.
I can tell you that.
And I know there's a lot of calls going into Washington.
I'll even give out the phone number here in a second so people can call their representatives.
Why don't you give them the name and number of the Secretary of the Navy?
That might help because that individual will have to sign off on this agreement.
202-224-3121.
Okay, that's the number you call.
And talk.
I ask people when they do call, be respectful.
202-224-3121 and be respectful and say, please work to free Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller.
Now, your son, Kathy, let me bring you in on this.
He offered to resign his commission under honorable conditions, according to Marine Corps documents.
The offer was rejected by Major General Julian Alford, the commander of the Marine Corps Training Command, and he posted this video in August demanding accountability.
Now, there is no excuse.
I've been showing this map on television, and we saw the Taliban on the march from South Afghanistan all the way up to Kabul.
We saw it in March, April, May, June, July.
They were taking over 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 percent of the country.
Now we understand from testimony that the Taliban even offered to stay out of Kabul until everyone was evacuated.
You can't have a bigger screw-up than what they've done here.
One of the worst foreign policy debacles in the history of this country.
Your son, speaking out as a patriotic American and a Marine and a serviceman, is repulsed by abandoning Americans behind enemy lines like this.
I think it's warranted and justified.
He was willing to, again, resign his commission, and now they throw him in the brig and are threatening, you know, threatening perhaps to keep him there for a period of time.
Well, the days were looking dark, but things looked, I have a little bit of hope after yesterday's hearing that charges weren't slapped on him right away.
And I guess we can thank the great state of Texas for that.
And by the way, we do have four grandchildren in Texas, so thank you so much.
No, it's awful.
All he did was ask for accountability.
No, he broke command, but what our senators did was Broken command as well.
And if you're going to punish one for breaking command, the other should probably be broken or punished for breaking command.
So, whatever I feel they have done, it's hypocrisy there.
It's just hypocrisy.
And he did, he knew.
And he had said in a subsequent video, I know that I broke command.
All you had to do was, you know, take accountability.
It mattered.
And I would have gotten back in rank and I would have submitted.
Let's not forget I would have submitted.
He asked them, and they said no.
Louie Gomert, you got a chance to spend time yesterday with Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller.
How's he doing?
Well, yesterday he was doing much better.
And like Ms. Scheller said, there was hope yesterday.
It looked like there was an agreement they were going to allow him to resign instead of having a court-martial, and that it would be under honorable conditions.
And today, things have changed.
As I understand it, Major General Alford now is saying no deal.
He wants to nail Stu to the wall.
I can't help but wonder: do you only have courage to crush people under you?
Or have you stood up to Millie and said, Millie, what you did was wrong, sir?
Have those conversations been had?
I doubt it.
I don't think so.
I don't think Millie would have called the Chinese military and said, Hey, don't worry about Trump.
You know, I'm going around him.
I'm taking charge, and I'll let you know if he's going to do something stupid.
Some of us think that's quite a crime that he committed.
But so, where was Major General Alford in standing up to the people above him as they were what many of us think was betraying our country?
Do you only crush people that are underneath your command, or do you have the courage, apparently not, but the courage that Stu has to say, look, this is wrong.
And Sean, I've been saying for a long time, before this horrible thing happened, where they just pulled out and surrendered, never lost a battle in Afghanistan, and yet surrendered to the Taliban.
And my concern especially was I didn't think we'd leave people behind like these military people did and the president did, but for those like Stu who fought over there, and if you read his Bronze Star Award, what he did, he didn't, as a captain, he didn't just send people out, you know, go do this.
He was leading them, being fired at, you know, and that's why he got this medal for his courage.
This is a guy that will take an order and follow the order.
But then when he sees that commanders are just violating everything he was trained to understand, it's not good.
And I'm quite concerned that we have people that served in Afghanistan, Marines, Army, Navy, that in the Air Force, and they saw their friends die, and they suffered from PTSD.
And I'm quite concerned that the way this has been done, they're being triggered.
And so with people that have struggled, they fought there honorably, courageously, that people like Alfred really, this is what you want to do.
You want to crush them?
Why don't you pick up your glove and slap them around like Patton did?
Why don't you just go ahead and do that?
But somebody like Stu, he stood strong and courageous in the face of fire, and he's continuing to do that, but he is behind bars.
Yesterday afternoon, it was looking good.
Today, you've got people that won't stand up to the people above them, so they're coming after Stu.
All right, got to take a break here.
We're going to continue more on the other side.
We've got Stu and Kathy Scheller and Congressman Louie Gomert.
We'll give them an opportunity to ask Louie, who was with their son yesterday.
They've not been able to see their son a few questions when we come back on the other side as we continue.
Joe Biden doesn't know where he is.
What are we talking about?
But we know where Sean is.
You can't intimidate us.
You cannot control us.
Control us.
6,650 stations nationwide.
Sean Hannity.
In Kabul,
the United States ended 20 years of war in Afghanistan.
The longest war in American history.
We completed one of the biggest airlifts in history with more than 120,000 people evacuated to safety.
That number is more than double what most experts thought were possible.
No nation, no nation has ever done anything like it in all of history.
Only the United States had the capacity and the will and ability to do it, and we did it today.
The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravery, and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals.
Three possibilities here: either the president lied to the American people, or he legitimately cannot remember the counsel of his top military advisors in winding down the longest war in American history, or you have not been fully accurate under oath.
General McKenzie, I'll ask you, which is it?
I'm going to be very direct.
I cannot share advice I give the president, and I will not do that.
I will also tell you, though, that it's been my consistent position throughout this hearing and the hearing yesterday that I believe the appropriate level of our forces in Afghanistan should have been 2,500.
Is the war on terror over?
General Milley?
Absolutely not.
General McKenzie?
The war on terror is not over, and the war in Afghanistan is not over either.
Has the exit from Afghanistan made the war more challenging for us or less challenging with respect to continuing to try and protect the homeland and U.S. interest abroad?
Senator's made it more challenging.
General Mille, you agree?
Yeah, absolutely.
All right.
On the other side, remember, we're going to talk to 25 till the top of the hour, continuing our conversation with Stu and Kathy Scheller and Congressman Louie Gohmert.
As you know, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller has been put in the brig for daring to tell the truth about the disaster that is Afghanistan.
Now we have a lot of congressmen speaking up.
Many of you are contacting your members of Congress, 202-224-3121.
Please be polite.
That's the only thing we ask.
Or Senator, and demanding that he be released from prison.
We got this hearing on Tuesday.
His lawyers are asking that this hearing be made public.
Let's see if they allow that.
Doesn't seem like they want that.
Stu and Kathy, I know that you had an opportunity to kind of be debriefed by Louie Gomer, but if you have any questions you want to ask him, please do.
This is your son you're worried about.
Louis, you did emphasize that he's being treated well in the brig.
Yes.
And he's in good spirits.
Well, they like him because everybody that I know that serves in the military, they know he told the truth.
And everybody that I know that served in Afghanistan and Iraq, they're disgusted.
They find this repulsive.
They find this, you know, a debacle of monumental proportions.
And many that have the most severe injuries are asking themselves, what the hell did I do this for?
And many that lost loved ones, they are apoplectic that we had full control of this country.
And this was not Donald Trump's plan.
Donald Trump's plan was predicated that he would obliterate them like he did the caliphate and Soleimani in Baghdadi, that he would keep Bagram air base forever in perpetuity.
And that if the Taliban moved, if they violated one period, one comma, one dotted I or crossed T, they would pay the price immediately.
And Joe Biden let them march all the way up from the south, all the way up through Kabul, and didn't withdraw our fellow Americans and their families and green card holders and allies and equipment while they had full control.
There's no excuse for this.
Stu, you wanted to say?
Louis, I'm going to ask you, I have been, Kathy and I have been calling for Americans to pray.
We've been calling them to call their congresspeople to vote in 2022.
But if this were your son, and I would ask you, Louie, what action would you be asking Americans to take today on Friday, October 1st?
And where should they take that action and to whom?
If I'm a wounded veteran in Omaha, Nebraska, or a veteran in Tampa, Florida, what should I do today?
Well, yeah, I would say let's see what's going to happen Tuesday, but let's just have people burn up the phone lines to General Alford and to the staff judge advocate.
His name is not Scheller, but Schuler there at Camp Lejeune and to members of Congress and senators so that they will place a call to these commanders and say, hey, you look really bad.
Look like you'll crush a guy underneath you, but you won't stand up to the people who've lied and helped the enemy above you.
Why don't you just stop looking so bad, do the right thing, and let him go?
I think we would get some action pretty quick if enough people burn up the lines and burn up the email line, send him messages.
I think that's what needs to be done.
But let me also make this point real quick.
One of the things I've been fighting for, having been in the Army for four years, I've seen injustice, I've seen justice.
But man, Sean, since I've been in, things that were created so that military could have trials in combat theaters and cut through a lot of red tape, cut through a lot of due process.
We're at a place now where it's so badly abused.
And most people don't know the convening authority who signs the charges, sending a guy to be tried at a court martial, that's also the same guy that picks every one of the jurors that will sit on that panel and sit in judgment.
And the military doesn't require a unanimous verdict in order to find somebody guilty and send them to prison for the rest of their life.
It doesn't have to be unanimous.
And they can control whether the defense even gets to call a single witness.
And there are a number of cases.
They bring them back from Afghanistan, try them here in the U.S., and they don't allow any of their witnesses to come back.
They go, oh, well, no, they can't come back.
They're in a combat theater.
It has been being abused, and it's time.
And I've been pushing for a few years now, and I've got Derek Miller on the staff helping.
But we clean up some of these things that prevent our military members from having fair trials, from having due process.
And it allows somebody like a gutless commander to crush people under them because they are basically the judge, jury, prosecution.
And the judges, they are evaluated by the commander that sends these things to court.
And if you're a judge and you want to stay in the military, you've got to please the commanding general.
If you rule some way that ticks him off, you're not going to get another promotion and you're not going to get another job.
You're going to end up out of the military.
So there are a lot of ways that a military commander like General Alfred can crush military members that are just concerned and they're devoted to their country and to the United States Marine Corps.
And those things have to be reformed.
They've got to be.
But for now, we're dealing with the power.
Let me give the last word.
Yeah, please.
To Stu and Kathy, I'll let you have the last word here today.
And I know you guys have to run, but I want to give you an opportunity to.
I know people can help.
I know voices help.
Giving out this number helps.
20224-3121.
And so anything else that we could do in the interim to help you?
I'm just heartbroken.
I don't know.
I'm just heartbroken.
You know, Sean, we're both heartbroken.
And we're sad.
It's been a roller coaster.
I'm asking every veteran, every veteran's family, every citizen.
Stuart said it best in one of his posts or one of his videos.
We are not that divided and as divided as they want us to think we are.
We have had an outpouring from veterans, civilians, Republicans, Democrats from all over the world.
Keep it going, please.
Turn it up.
You deserve that.
He deserves that.
He risked his life for all of us.
And now we ought to protect his right to freedom of expression.
And if the military doesn't appreciate it, they don't have to keep him.
He offered to resign.
But to put him in the brig is beyond repulsive.
And he spoke the truth.
That's the saddest part of this.
This commander-in-chief let down this entire country by abandoning our fellow Americans.
And I know the rest of the media is not talking a whole hell of a lot about it, but I'm not going to stop.
I know his counsel asked for an open hearing on Tuesday.
What are the chances of that happening?
Well, it should happen.
You're going to take a guy's liberty away with a star chamber where you don't even let you, the parents, or the public know if they're going to have this massive injustice, then somebody there ought to have the courage to say, we're going to open this up and let the public see.
Just how many people?
They want to hide it, Louis.
Louie, this is not our first rodeo, Louis.
They want to hide it.
Why would they have a hearing and not allow the parents of Lieutenant Colonel Scheller?
You know, we do have something called due process and the presumption of innocence, or at least the last time I checked, we did, sir.
Well, there's a lot less in the military than there used to be when I was there, and it's got to be corrected.
But the only way that's going to happen is if people make enough noise.
All right.
You can count on it.
Prayers are with you.
And everybody listening to this program, I ask you to be polite.
Call your congressman.
Call your senators, 202-224-3121, and ask them to speak out on behalf of Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller.
Ask that he be released from the brig that he's now currently confined in.
Allow that his parents get to see their child.
This guy served all of us, risked his life, six separate tours, one for over a year.
And all he did was point out the truth.
That's his crime here.
Remember the scene with Jack Nicholas?
You can't handle the truth.
A few good men, they can't handle the truth.
Millie admitting this week that, in fact, he told his Chinese counterpart he would tip him off, you know, getting loyalty oaths from other top military officials, inserting himself in the chain of command, usurping the constitutional authority of a president.
God only knows what he conspired with Nancy Pelosi on, speaking, spending his time, you know, gossiping about his boss as commander-in-chief with every Trump-hating author in America.
These are unbelievable times.
And while we're talking about this, yeah, 48 days Americans left behind enemy lines.
Each day, it gets harder to get them out.
And on top of that, it's 31 days since Joe Biden's ever mentioned them.
He's turned the page.
Mr. Scheller, Stu, Kathy, thank you.
Louie Gomert, thank you.
We appreciate both of you very much.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you and God bless America.
Thank you.
God bless America.
Quick break right back.
The final hour of the Sean Hannity Show is up next.
Hang on for Sean's conservative solutions.
But your top military advisors weren't against withdrawing on this
timeline.
They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.
No, they didn't.
It was split.
That wasn't true.
That wasn't true.
My assessment was back in the fall of 20, and it remained consistent throughout, that we should keep a steady state of 2,500, and it could bounce up to 3,500, maybe something like that.
So no one told your military advisor to not tell you, no, we should just keep 2,500 troops.
It's been a stable situation for the last several years.
We can do that.
We can continue to do that.
No, no one said that to me that I can recall.
General McKenzie.
Did you receive advice from General Miller in the end of 20 and early 21 related to troop levels in Afghanistan?
Ranking Member, I did.
What was that advice?
The advice, his view and my view were essentially the same view.
And my view was that we needed to maintain about 2,500.
The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill, bravery, and selfless courage of the United States military and our diplomats and intelligence professionals.
People are so upset on social media right now is not because the Marine on the battlefield let someone down.
That service member has always rose to the occasion and done extraordinary things.
People are upset because their senior leaders let them down, and none of them are raising their hands and accepting accountability or saying, we messed this up.
If an O5 battalion commander has the simplest LIFER incident EO complaint, boom, fired.
But we have a Secretary of Defense that testified to Congress in May that the Afghan National Security Force could withstand the Taliban advance.
We have chairmans of Joint Chief who, the Commandant, is a member of that, who's supposed to advise on military policy.
We have a Marine combatant commander.
All of these people are supposed to advise.
And I'm not saying we've got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, hey, it's a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, the strategic air barriers, before we evacuate everyone?
Did anyone do that?
And when you didn't think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, we completely messed this up?
I've got battalion commander friends right now that are posting similar things.
And they're saying, you know, wondering if all the lives were lost and if it was in vain, all those people that we've lost over the last 20 years.
And he goes on to say that we're all part of a chain.
While every link may not be tested, the strength of the chain is only as strong as each link, and you've got to be a good link, something like that.
And what I'll say is, from my position, potentially all those people did die in vain if we don't have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and say, we did not do this well in the end.
Without that, we just keep repeating the same mistakes.
This amalgamation of the economic slash corporate slash political slash higher military ranks are not holding up their end of the bargain.
I want to say this very strongly.
I have been fighting for 17 years.
I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, I demand accountability.
Pretty sad what this poor family is going through, and I'm hopeful that they release Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller.
Your voices are very important in all of this.
▲
Export Selection