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Nov. 24, 2024 - Stew Peters Show
01:02:47
The Hegseth Agenda: Unpacking the Case for a New Defense Leader
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It's been 12 weeks since President Trump has been re-elected and he has made waves all over the world.
People all over the world are asking for peace deals, ceasefires, and unless you've been living under a rock, you have seen that he has flooded his cabinet With recommendations and nominations and what have you already.
Some of them controversial.
We saw what happened with Matt Gaetz and who knows what's to come of that whole deal.
But we also have seen the controversial appointment of Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense.
Well, today, I think that we should have a conversation centered around that.
It is our opinion here at the Richard Leonard Show that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Hegseth is not getting a fair shake.
So Jason and I are going to have a discussion about our new Secretary of Defense.
So please, stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
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Okay.
So, Secretary of Defense, Mr. Pete Hegseth.
It's going to be our new guy in the Pentagon telling us what's what with the military.
But before we go down that road, let's go out into the interwebs and find our friend Jason.
I just happen to know right where he's at.
Hello, sir.
How are you?
How are you, buddy?
I'm very good.
Thank you for being here.
Thanks for having me.
Well, you're always welcome.
You never invite me anymore.
You never talk to me.
Ridiculous.
That's bullshit, first of all.
This is your second home.
And don't ever forget that.
Okay.
Pete Hegseth.
What say you, Jason?
How do you feel about it?
Do you think he's being unfairly treated?
What do you think?
Oh, because he's not some shiny turd that they wanted?
Yes.
So sick and tired of this shit.
Like, there is no reason to raise a red flag over a man who has his career, period, in my mind.
Well, yes, I agree.
If you had to guess, and I have my opinion about this, but if you had to guess, why do you think that that was...
I mean, there's a lot of guys out there, and maybe even some ladies out there, that might have been a decent pick, that would have been okay.
Why do you think Donald Trump went with Mr. Hegseth, if you had to guess?
I think he's, well, he's one of us.
He's kind of a Minnesota guy, right?
Kind of, yeah.
I think that had something to do with it.
I don't know.
Does he have dual citizenship?
I don't think so.
I don't think so.
So, I mean, no, we've got...
Two great swings here.
He's had a 20-year career in the military.
Maybe he didn't hit that galaxy quest and become one of the anointed turds.
You know, stepping in line, touching wangs to get ahead.
So, I guess...
I mean, you kind of see guys like that.
I mean, we saw it all the time when we served, right?
You know, you kind of see that lieutenant colonel.
They always wondered, like, why didn't they go a little bit further up the chain?
And it was typically because they were actual leaders, not politicians.
Right.
So, you know, throw his rank out.
As far as I'm concerned, I don't care.
That doesn't bother me.
What did he achieve?
Major?
I think it was Lieutenant Colonel, but maybe Major.
I think it was Lieutenant Colonel.
So he did get the Stilber cluster.
I mean, shit, I was pretty happy to hold on to that Gooney Bird.
So I'd say for him to go 05, that's a pretty big ring.
But isn't it weird how so many of the good people die out at that pay grade?
Yeah.
Yeah, it seems like that is the sweet spot for either...
That's like the fork in the road, right?
Your career fork in the road where either you commit to the good old boy club institution, if you will, or you just go down the path of career ending.
You know, like there's those spots, those units or those slots or those jobs that you just go to to end your career, and that's where you'll be until you decide to hang it up.
Yeah, that kind of seems to be all the officers that I've known, that I've, you know, truly, truly appreciated them in service and in my personal life.
They've all kind of ended about there.
And they kind of seem to be, for those of you out there that don't know, they're the soldiers' officers.
They're the ones that still actually pay attention to what's happening.
They're not excited about being driven around, seeing the newest, greatest thing, and all the dog and pony shows they can put on.
You know, they're the first ones to be in the mess hall with you.
Guaranteed they're not going to eat.
Maybe they suck down a couple of ketchup packets that are left over at the end of it.
But...
They're the ones that you want around.
And, I mean, considering the culture that we've been in for the past few years, to see somebody that they don't want in the room, he gets my vote.
Not that I have one.
But that's the kind of guy I want.
I'm sick and tired of the same old, same old.
You know, what are we going to get?
Who do we have now?
Yeah, well, we'll get to that.
Well, okay.
Yeah, I mean, you know what?
The shiny turd game is over.
Yeah.
I honestly believe with this election study, what we're going to see with these appointments, and certainly Pete being one of them, is that the old caste system appears to be fractured.
And I think that's intriguing to me.
Yeah.
You know, we're not picking, he's not picking the ones that he was told to pick before.
No president has really gone down this path, to my recollection, pulling so many outsiders in.
It's always been the power suck up.
And we did see that in the 45th presidency.
But we're certainly not seeing it now.
What does that mean for Pete?
What are they worried about?
We kind of went through that article.
Let's just dive into that turd knocker no-show story.
Well, yes, let's do that.
But I agree with you.
I think that there are those people that the lower enlisted soldiers will like to have around.
They know that these particular leaders are going to They're not going to fight for them, but they're going to advocate for them.
And they're going to make sure that their soldiers are taken care of.
They're going to have the ammunition.
They're going to have the vehicles.
They're going to have, you know, a warm, dry place to sleep.
And they're not going to just take care of their own, make sure that the soldiers have the very bare minimum, right?
Because happy soldiers are strong soldiers out on the battlefield.
And so I agree with you a thousand percent.
And I think...
That Donald Trump is taking people into his cabinet that he knows or at least strongly believes are going to be loyal to him.
Because as you said, last time he had advisors tell him, well, you know, you should pick this person.
Maybe you should talk to this person.
And those were the people that ended up stabbing him in the back like General Milley, that piece of shit that should be in jail for the rest of his life for treason.
And we'll get there.
But...
So I found this article, Jason and I were talking about offline, that just listed a few things about Pete Hegseth that you should know, because he's going to be your next Secretary of Defense.
And Jason, as you said, as if we had any choice.
So I guess it's good information, but at the end of the day, I think that either they try to rile you up to get you pissed off, knowing that you don't have any recourse or anything to do with it.
But anyway, one of the things they listed here is that he really questioned recently.
Recently, he was on the Sean Ryan Show, and the discussion about women in combat came up.
And here's what this article says as to Pete Hegseth's opinion about women in combat.
It says here, Hegseth has pushed for making the military more lethal and said that allowing women to serve in combat roles hurts that effort.
Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat means casualties are worse.
More people are going to get hurt.
He said this during an interview last week on the Sean Ryan Show.
And he was there to promote his new book.
And he continued on by saying, I'm straight up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles.
It hasn't made us more effective.
It hasn't made us more lethal.
It has made fighting more complicated.
And then later on down in the paragraph, it says, by opening combat slots to women, we've changed the standards and putting them there, which means you've changed the capability, the fighting force, the fighting capability of the unit.
And so it sounds like, to me, his stance on it is...
Not that women aren't capable of this, that, or the other thing, but that having women in the combat roles hasn't proven to be more effective.
It hasn't proven to give us better outcomes in combat.
It's only hurting us as a military force.
Now, I think that a lot of ladies are going to take that and they're going to be offended.
But The truth doesn't really care about your feelings, right?
No.
No, and it shouldn't.
Agreed.
You didn't say one thing that wasn't accurate.
I agree.
There's nothing...
Like, if that is supposed to be the thing that you're going to throw out that's going to shake somebody off the perch, you have thrown the wrong size rock.
All you've done is validated what millions of people believe.
And certainly thousands of military veterans and service members who deal with things like that on a regular basis.
Well, and I'll tell you this.
I was an infantry soldier.
And I can remember, Jason, when the battalion CSM, the battalion command sergeant major, called all of us into the chow hall some years ago.
And he had said, okay, all right, men.
They are going to open up the infantry and combat roles in general to women.
Does anybody have a problem fighting or having women in combat roles, specifically in our unit, in the infantry unit?
And of course there were some that said, yeah, of course we do.
Some people didn't really give a shit.
My stance on it was this.
If any lady can meet the same standard that the men are held to, okay.
I mean, if you can perform at the same level that's expected to do the job, then of course, by all means, welcome to the unit.
And we'll take care of you like a sister, like we take care of each other as brothers.
But my thing is this.
At 6'4", 322 pounds at that time.
A lot heavier now, by the way.
But at that time, 6'4", 322 pounds.
If I get shot in the leg, let's say, and I'm laying on the side of the road exposed...
And the team is laying suppressive fire, and the only person left to drag me to cover, to render me aid so I can get back in the fight, is a woman of any stature or whatever.
Can she do that?
Can she perform that function?
If the answer is yes, okay, then I'm cool with it.
The other aspect to it is, is that we all know that Men are inherently protective of ladies.
I think that's just bred into us.
And so in that dichotomy of soldiers in a unit, we are going to be more protective of the women in the unit, maybe.
Maybe.
Therefore, pulling attention from the job, possibly.
Because who knows?
Some guys may be more protective.
Some guys probably maybe don't give a shit.
Or less.
Or less.
And then there's the guys who really don't give a shit, and there's going to be shenanigans.
And we don't need that either.
Right.
That pulls from the mission also.
And so anything that is a distraction that pulls from the mission is going to get us killed.
And so if it is true that there's data out there that shows the force is less effective, less lethal, and less able to do the job, then I agree with him a thousand percent.
I don't even care if there's data.
Okay.
It's just, it's common sense.
Anybody who wants to go argue this, it's foolish.
There's a reason that women don't compete in men's sports and men don't compete in women's sports, even though we've watched some clown world bullshit for the past four years.
You don't do the one thing that the military is designed to do well when you make it more complicated and difficult.
We can get away from all the other bullshit of being able to carry your big ass off the side of a road.
Let's talk about how many different bathrooms do we have.
We have to deal with the personal care differently.
We have to deal with the worrier concern that Maybe a woman might be in a situation where there's going to be a bad outcome for her sexually just based upon the fact that you're around that many dudes.
And I'm not saying it's the guys doing it.
It might be the girls selling it, doing it.
I don't know if I should really be saying this, but that shit happens.
Well, I mean, the truth is it is what it is.
Hey, it happened my last go-round.
I don't know if I can talk about that, but yeah, 100%.
This shit happens.
And so when people have an opinion about this situation and they've never been in it or seen it or lived it or spent more than the moment that they were reading it or hearing it, thinking about it or having to deal with it, shut up.
It's nonsense.
He is speaking truth, and truth is light, and light will light up a dark room.
And a lot of people like to live in dark rooms.
So, sorry to burst your bubble if you're out there and you're on the other side, and I know hate me for saying it, but he's right.
There are plenty of roles for women in the military, there's no question about it, but it's certainly not going to be your tip of the spear force.
You know, can it be, you know, sit back, do work, infantry stuff?
Okay, fine.
Route, patrols, etc.
Smaller stuff.
But when I deployed first on the invasion, I can't, I could probably count how many females I saw on my two hands.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, it's just, what are you going to do?
I don't know.
Why fucking make something complicated that doesn't need to be?
Well, I agree.
First of all, I should probably do the research before I ask the question.
But I'd like to know who came up with this in the first place.
How many years did the United States military exist without women in combat roles?
If I'm not mistaken, we are undefeated World War champions and we didn't have...
Women fighting in combat roles in World War II or I. The ladies that did contribute to World War II, World War I, Vietnam, or just the military as a whole should be recognized.
They did a lot of stuff and they've contributed immensely.
But not fighting.
And I think that there's a lot of different layers.
And you're right, Jason.
Like, how many bathrooms do we need?
How many different buildings for barracks do we need?
Are the women going to now sleep in the same bay or in the same barracks with the men?
Probably not.
That's going to lead to absolute chaos.
Right?
And that's just, you know, being a commander in a situation where you've got a company crossbred.
You've already got enough concerns or worries based upon the mission and the troops that you brought.
Now you're going to make a small subset of your troops.
It's the old 10% of the group is 90% of the problems.
And I'm not saying that women are a problem.
I'm just saying there's requirements that you have to think about and go through.
Whereas you've got a bunch of swinging dongs out there.
You go cut one hole, and that's the piss hole.
And you've got another one, and that's the shit hole.
You're good to go.
That's what I'm talking about.
We don't even need to really hit the first one.
We can hang it out and just go.
It's not an issue.
And again, I think for anybody that has been in that place in time, we all know where the roles can be and where they work out just fine.
But you don't, you know, you hammered on it.
And what he said was, you know, if the standards are the same, well, I'm sorry, the standards aren't the same.
Every time they get dropped, a female is not built like a male, period.
Well, and I think that what happens then, Jason, is also the standards for men drop.
And now your fighting force is greatly diminished because now you're having substandard men also put in these roles to fight these battles.
Right.
Well, are you going to start carrying M60s that are, well, maybe it's an M60-L. It's about 11 pounds lighter.
It's made of titanium.
You know, it's bullshit.
It's nonsense.
And the fact that somebody would jump on Hegseth for this...
I mean, we've absolutely exhausted the conversation on why or why not.
Yeah, right.
But it's more so a validation of his point.
You know, this is in no way, shape, or form.
I don't care.
It doesn't matter to me who wants to serve and in what capacity.
Fine, have at it.
But I do think that when the rubber meets the road and America, you know, hopefully, not anytime soon, finds itself in conflict, That we haven't made a series of terrible decisions that leaves not our flank wide open, but leaves the tip of our spear dull for no reason other than, you know, make people feel better.
Yeah, it's a complete DEI deal, it seems to me.
But you're right, we've completely exhausted it, and we're here to talk about PDXF, not Women in Combat.
Well, we didn't.
Yeah.
So, moving on, here was another one, and I know that you're going to roll your eyes at this one.
Here's another critique of Mr. Hegseth and his goings-ons in his recent career.
Mr. Hegseth went viral and was later sued after he struck a U.S. Army Master Sergeant in the arm with an errant axe thrown during a 2015 Fox& Friends segment.
The video of this indictment shows the axe flying over a target and hitting this master sergeant who was a drummer in West Point's Hellcats Field Band who had been invited to the show for the 240th anniversary of the Army's foundings.
Records show that the lawsuit was discontinued in 2019, and Brandon Cotter, who is the attorney of this master sergeant, said in an email that the parties have resolved the matter and will make no further comment.
Fox News, which was also named in a lawsuit, called the indictment unfortunate and completely unintentional.
The incident was unfortunate and completely unintentional.
My question is this.
First of all, what was that dummy doing standing behind a target to get hit with an axe that may or may have not been overthrown?
And second, this is what you got to gig the guy on?
This makes him unqualified?
Yeah, what Waterhead would believe the fact that...
If somebody's out there saying this is a detrimental notch in his credibility, do you think he tried to kill this guy with this axe?
No.
No, I don't.
Or is it because he poorly threw an axe?
Is it because he got named in a lawsuit in one of the most litigious societies on planet Earth?
Like, which one of these three things matters?
Well, none of this matters.
And by the way, can I tell you something?
What's that?
I haven't heard the phrase waterhead since the first day of basic training.
Yeah, that's literally what I was thinking about.
So you brought me all the way back, and I appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
Well, that's what I was thinking about.
Remember the combatives training?
You know, when people first got that pugil stick in their hands?
Yeah.
I remember the girls are just like, look at these waterheads.
Yeah.
The day, I'm going to tell you real quick.
The first day of basic training when they kicked us off the cattle car, you know how they tell you?
If you can get through basic training and no one ever knows your name, you've succeeded.
Right?
But no one tells you that that's effing impossible.
Well, I wasn't there for five minutes, bro.
And I had already stepped on the drill sergeant's hat, for Christ's sake.
Yeah, I kind of see that coming.
And I was a waterhead.
Seven minutes into basic training.
We've got your new moniker on the interweb.
Oh my goodness.
Yeah, that's going to be my next personalized license plate.
I can work on a t-shirt for you.
Yes, okay, so I apologize, folks.
I apologize, but that caught me off guard.
So yes, this is absolutely ridiculous.
And furthermore, let me say this, because we've got only about a minute left in the segment.
Number one, who are these people that are...
Dragging this dude through the mud.
Like, what is their qualifications?
And how are they qualified to say that Pete Hegseth is not qualified?
Where do they come from?
Or are these just some, like, left-wing dippity-doos who are scared to have somebody loyal to Donald Trump because they're fucked up?
I mean...
Why would anybody, how could anybody look at his resume and say that he's not qualified?
Especially somebody who's never served in the military, first of all.
And I don't know that anybody dragging him through the mud hasn't served in the military, but I would imagine that it's all these politicians who don't want somebody that they don't have a choice in, right?
Right.
You got all the Mitch McConnells of the world out there.
The turtle lord.
And the turtle comes out and gets some of his underlings to go bash Pete on the interweb and everywhere else across social media.
And it's like, these people are spineless at best.
They're cowards when they're pinned to rights.
The worst thing about America is our political class.
And they're the ones driving the show.
These people wouldn't be writing these stories if they weren't being told to do so.
Yeah, and I don't know about you, Jason, but...
In the last few weeks, for me, I feel like we're watching this complete and utter downfall of our political system, and it's just crumbling.
And all these people that got something to lose...
A lot of them remind me of, like, when Stu Peters and I were out bounty hunting together, and you would come across people that know your fugitive, like, for example, the meth heads, right?
They all run together, they all know each other, and they all know where each other are at, and they all know each other's secrets and skeletons in their closets.
Right.
And when you're getting close to the person you're looking to arrest and you're talking to their network of people, You can just like sense and see like this downfall of this little network of meth heads and they're scratching their necks and they got this like pussy open sores and their fingernails and shit.
And then all of a sudden, poof, there they are, right?
And you got this guy in handcuffs, bring him to jail, paycheck, right?
It's kind of like that.
Like all these people who clearly now, if you were hiding it well before, I'm here to tell you folks, it's written all over your face that you're a shithead.
And the truth is going to come out.
And we're just watching this happen.
Anyway, we've got to take a break.
When we come back, we're going to discuss what the Secretary of Defense actually does and how it might relate to how qualified or not Mr. Heggs set this.
Don't go away.
way.
We'll be right back.
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Hey, folks, welcome back here.
Jason and I are going to discuss with you what the Secretary of Defense actually does.
And Jason, I know that you have it pulled up on your screen there.
The Secretary of Defense, if I'm not mistaken, is nothing more than an advisor to the President of the United States, yeah?
In essence, it's primarily an advisory role to the president, but they are the second in the chain of command.
Chain of command for?
Department of Defense.
So, being the second, I'm going to read this, and so this poses a unique challenge for me because I ask my kids to read to me all the time.
And I gig them every time they screw up.
So bear with me as I chop my way through this.
In the military chain of command, the Secretary of Defense is second only to the President.
Even the highest ranking military officer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, must defer to the President via the Secretary of Defense when conducting military operations.
Okay.
So.
So that tells me that something happens.
Something happens in the world and the United States military is involved or is going to be involved and action needs to be taken.
So the Joint Chiefs of Staff convene, talk about a plan, some kind of battle plan or some kind of recovery operation, whatever it is.
And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs will then go to the Secretary of Defense, which right now is Lloyd Austin, and tell him, okay, Mr. Austin, and Lloyd Austin, for the most part, is probably in some kind of...
flowery pajamas or something like that.
Maybe he's got that super cool mask and face shield on again.
Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We don't want to make things worse for him.
A little COVID.
And then his job is to then be the advisor who then goes to sit down in the Oval Office or wherever the president is and explain to him, all right, here is the problem.
This is what the Joint Chiefs came up with, with a solution.
Here is what my recommendation or what my thoughts are.
Here's the information.
What do you want to do?
Right.
And so I think historically, what they've always wanted, like, you know, we talked about months ago, bro.
Do you remember when we talked about how many general officers were in the military now comparative to World War II? Yes.
Remember?
It's like a six-fold multiplier, right?
Yep.
And so it's clear, not only academia, but general staff have been taken over by...
Politicians.
And so they want somebody as SecDef to rubber stamp what they say.
They don't want a barometer.
They don't want somebody who's going to test what's being relayed up.
They want a rubber stamp.
I don't think Pete is a rubber stamp for them.
And so I think that might be one of the things that they're, you know, that's the apparatus's concern, is that Pete would be somebody who would step in the middle and voice his concerns.
And I think Trump, being the person that he is, is going to listen to Pete, which is going to throw a whole host of rocks in the cog of the plans and the things that we've seen happening across the country with United States involvement.
Yeah, I agree with that.
But I also think that Pete Hegseth would be the guy that if he's presented by the Joint Chiefs a solid plan, I think that he's the guy, from what I know of him, from what I've read and what I've observed, that he would tell the President, hey, you know, this is a pretty solid plan.
But I also, on the flip side, as you're saying, I don't think he's going to be the guy that goes, hey, this is what we should do.
This is what they came up with.
I think it's a really good plan.
And also, I think Donald Trump is smarter than that.
I mean, I don't think that President Trump is a military strategist, right?
He didn't go to war college or anything like that.
But he's a pretty smart dude, it seems.
So...
You can still only know so much, like military capabilities and talking about if you're sending small operational units into a place to do a thing under the cloak of darkness.
These are the types of operations that our government conducts on a regular basis.
And I'm not saying this because I know it.
I have to assume.
Because there just happens to be a lot of shit that seems to happen.
And you know that there's pressure being applied somewhere.
And I think that's this type of thing that I'm talking about.
I'm not talking about like a rolling conflict into Iraq or Afghanistan.
I mean, those war fighters are pretty straightforward.
They run all the same way.
But it's all of these small pieces that need to be greenlit by the Chief of Staff.
Or by the Joint Chief, who then bring it up through SACDAF to get to the President for ultimate authority.
Things that are done that are the things that make us great for taking out the turds of the world.
I think that's typically where they're seeing, or why they're so resistant to a guy like Pete.
Yeah, and I think that for this purpose, for this duty, I think he's good for that.
What's next?
What's the next one?
Crafting the national defense policy, the Secretary of Defense works in concert with the White House and Congress to develop military initiatives as part of a broader foreign policy.
Hmm.
policy.
Okay.
Pretty simple, like smart people are going to put together, well, Trump is going to have his smart people put together the policy.
The military is going to put together the policy how to deal with certain contingencies, and then he's going to say which of these things coalesce or align with the things that Donald Trump will want to see happen.
Commander's intent.
Bingo.
So everybody involved will put together their piece of the pie.
The commander will lay out his intent.
The secretary of defense makes sure that all pieces of the pie meet the commander's intent.
And if they don't, he's going to tell you, go back to work.
Make sure you meet the commander's intent and come back to me when you do and make it quick because this is time sensitive.
Correct.
It's like, okay, now, so a guy that has been in positions, granted, not at that level, but who has until you have?
Well, right.
All this stuff is bullshit because, oh, this general officer has done this.
So if they've never actually done it, they've never done it.
If they've done warfighters, they still have never done it.
So it doesn't matter who's going to do it.
You've never done it until you have the job.
So that's out.
Number three, and I think this one is probably a bigger one than I gave it credit for even when I read it.
And are you ready?
Yes.
Managing the Pentagon.
Oh boy.
All military departments coalesce into a single unit at the Pentagon, the national, excuse me, the nation's military headquarters.
As chief executive of the Department of Defense, the SECDEF oversees all operations at the Pentagon.
So for all the power that people are really worried about, you know, the things that they vocalize concerned about, which were like the top two of the previous discussions, I think this one has to be one of their Achilles heels.
Because now he's going to oversee everything happening at the Pentagon.
Right.
And that may be what folks are most scared of.
100%.
Well, they're not going to verbalize it.
I mean, if they ever said it out loud.
I mean, they tend to say the wrong thing at the wrong time now, but they've never said it before.
But when it comes to all these pieces, because if you look at the Department of Defense hierarchy, so you've got Trump at the top, you have POTUS, and then you have SECDEF, and then in between, there's a direct that goes straight in.
That's the National Security Apparatus.
So national security doesn't actually go through there, but a vast majority of the security that we have in our country comes out of the Pentagon.
Yes.
That DOD budget, there's a reason they can't ever settle the budget.
They can't actually explain expenditures.
Because so much of this shit is being spent on things that produce the information that we all have, or that they have, and we find out about, you know, 50 to 100 years later.
And that's all going through the Pentagon.
Well, here's another spin.
Okay.
Overall operations at the Pentagon.
Another thing that I believe that some of these folks might be a little apprehensive or nervous about not having a yes man in the SecDef position are the folks who are committed to the military-industrial complex, right?
If you had to guess, would you say that the amount of money that is taken in and spent as this revolving door of money...
The amount that goes through in military operations and contracts and this and that and the other thing, it's by far got to be the biggest money maker for some of these assholes in our government and governments abroad.
It's gotta be.
You know, when missiles cost $550,000 a pop and we're launching 19 of them a day for training.
You know, shit like that.
And so I would go out on a limb and say that many people in the Pentagon who probably have like under-the-table handshake deals...
Are probably getting pretty nervous because some of these real unnecessary transfers of money and weapons and people and supplies and equipment and what have you may all be coming to an end.
Not only because Pete Hegseth is going to be the Secretary of Defense and overseeing operations at the Pentagon, but, you know...
Let's look at Doge as well.
If these guys are digging into government efficiency, I would think that the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice are probably one of the two organizations that are going to be first, along with other three-letter law enforcement agencies in the federal government.
Treasury.
Treasury.
Treasury and DOD. Can we just take a little walk down the GOAT trail?
Absolutely.
Walk on, son.
If I were Elon, which I'm clearly not.
Well, you're excited.
I like this.
I would spend the first six months just digging into DOD expenditures And then how to get out of the Fed, period.
I mean, those two things, you want to talk about lucrative contracts with the United States of America?
If you have a contract or you're working as either or in either of those systems, there is, it's not, it probably isn't even fraudulent, but just the sheer volume of money that rolls through is so difficult to track or ascertain where it's going that A small fraction of a miscue here or there is millions of dollars in someone's fame.
And a lot of it's done by design.
There's no question about it.
There's the $500,000 weapons that are being utilized for training.
Absolutely.
There's way more in other things.
Those are the things that you and I think about because we know about them.
We know when we went and sat on the range, we burned through 30,000 rounds on a weekend because we don't want to send it back.
Total fucking stupidity.
But it pales in comparison to what goes on.
It's chump change.
It's not even a ripple.
That's like throwing a pebble in the ocean.
Nothing.
And so the fact that you're going to have not just somebody who's going to look at it with Mr. Hedgetteth.
Somebody who's going to report it to the president is going to bring that up.
I don't think there'd be any question about that.
And then a government efficiency unit that's going to go find it?
This guy can 90% of his staff at Twitter And turned it into X, and it seems to run just fine.
Perfectly.
I'd be shaking in my space booties if I knew I had some bullshit job at any organization inside of the Pentagon, right?
Yeah, like, what were the guys from Office Space?
The Bobs?
Oh my god, yeah.
We've got the new Bobs.
Yeah, what would you say you do here?
Those guys.
I think that's a new t-shirt.
We got to get Elon.
Elon and Vivek.
What would you say you do here?
What do you say does you do here?
But I mean, like, you're right, bro.
I mean, and I've worked for the federal government outside of the military.
And when you hear people say, for those of you who don't know, who are watching or listening...
The United States government operates on a fiscal year system that ends and starts September 31st and October 1st.
So the new year starts October 1st.
So we're already in the 2025 fiscal year, for example, in the US government.
And when you hear people say, you know, Early to mid-August, people will usually say in the federal government, managers and supervisors and such, directors, they usually start saying, okay, well, go to your people and figure out what we need.
If there's overtime, let them work as much overtime as they want.
Do we need new desks?
Do we need new computers?
Do we need a new office space?
Should we build out another bathroom?
Do we need any vehicles?
Can we go to GSA and get a couple new trucks or vans or whatever it is?
Because at the end of the fiscal year, whatever money you have in your budget that you don't use, you don't get back the next year.
And so then federal offices start scrambling to spend money.
And that's when we start seeing, especially in political offices, you start seeing staff junkets, right?
You'll see staff retreats where congressional staffs or the staffs of senators, everybody that works for this individual will end up in some chalet in northern Colorado in the mountains for some kind of efficiency training or everybody that works for this individual will end up in some chalet in northern And it'll be five-star accommodations, great food.
Everyone has a great time.
It's beautiful, and it's awesome.
But it's all on the pocketbook of the taxpayer.
And these offices do it because if we don't spend that money, we won't get it back next year.
And sometimes it's thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of dollars that they need to spend.
Now, some offices are good about it and they'll do the math and say, we need to spend X amount each month so we're at or close to zero by the end of the year.
And so it doesn't look as bad.
But there is a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse going on in the federal government.
So much that they used to have, like, I don't know if it was a whole office, but there was fraud, waste, and abuse people that were tasked with identifying this stuff, calling it out, and then, like, sending you a letter about your egregious acts.
And then you're supposed to fix it.
I'm so fucking pissed just thinking about the fact that we just, like, we said it, right?
Like, in the military, we don't have a choice.
The rest of the government, guess what?
All those people that pissed away that money, they did have that choice.
So think about it as a taxpayer.
The fact that your government would look at your money and spend it like that.
Yeah.
We should all be pissed.
We should be pissed.
I think about that old Hank Hill episode on King of the Hill, where he, you know, whatever they charged him for a haircut on Fort Hood, where his neighbor was cutting hair.
It was like a $10,000 haircut.
Oh, the guy with no knees?
Yeah, yeah.
No, no, no, no.
That was his dad, Cotton.
But anyway.
And he gets, like, this award for finding how expensive this was and that basically military barbers should have never been a thing because it's way too expensive for the five haircuts I give a day and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
The fact that we all know that it happens...
And it's at every level of governance.
At any place where there is a control point, where there's money that's actually controlled by that agency, and they do this, they should all be shit-canned.
I don't care.
If you worked for a real company, a private sector business, and we found out, oh, that's what we anticipated we were going to spend this quarter, but all of a sudden there's a $10,000 windfall, which would be to a shareholder, a profit or a dividend, or to the actual owner of the company, a greater profit How do we not pay attention to that as a government?
I don't care.
Yeah, okay, you won't get that back next year.
Bullshit.
If you have something that comes up, you absolutely would.
But they've created a culture of nonsense, of pissing away money at a rate that I don't think normal people will ever wrap their minds around.
I mean, I remember one time, and again, I shouldn't be saying this, but I'm going to, I negotiated a price on paint through my old company, right?
And say it was, you know, at the time, I want to say it was $70 for a five gallon bucket of said paint.
But if I was doing a government project, I had to buy the exact same paint from the exact same company.
And do you know what my price was for five gallon bucket?
$120.
$250.
Holy shit.
And I needed to bid based upon that number because anybody else that was bidding on that project needed to have to pay the exact same price to this exact same company.
So somebody who had absolutely, I didn't have the swinging dick power to get a discount on my fart, let alone on paint.
But I got this little discount.
And somehow, and my discount maybe, the store shelf price is maybe $85.
I got it for $70 because I was buying so much of it.
But the government had negotiated such a good deal that I had to pay three and a half times what I would pay for it.
To be able to work on the project.
Well, there you go.
That's a whole nother aspect.
That's a whole nother view on it.
You've got the biggest fucking check.
On the planet to negotiate contracts and those are the contracts you get?
Shit, they should start another government agency just called the...
They should literally be like barterers or those barter king guys.
You know, the guys that trade it up from like a Q-tip to a Ferrari.
Yeah, yeah.
And they should be the ones negotiating the contracts.
Stupid.
Yeah, man.
I mean...
And you mentioned something a little bit ago where...
If I'm a business owner, and I knew that my employees...
Let's say that I own four locations of a business.
Let's just say I own four laundromats.
And I knew that my staff...
Was like buying up a bunch of shit so that they can get more and all this other stuff.
And then just like wasting the money to get new equipment and get more supplies and get more of this and more of that.
Because somehow, some way there's an incentive.
The more that they use means that the better the business is.
And so they're going to try to mask it and they're just going to buy, buy, buy, buy on my dime.
That's not efficient.
And I'm going to be pissed off about that.
They're going to be pissed off about it when their paychecks end up less because I've got to close a location.
All this other stuff.
But the federal government doesn't do that.
They'll just print more money and open another location.
Well shit, that goes...
Raise our taxes.
Those are your taxes.
Henry Ford wanted to move his company to like a 410 operation, wanted to give his employees raises, wanted to do a lot of wonderful things.
He was sued By his own shareholders to increase profitability rather than give, you know, better situations for his employees.
And the government in action forced him to do the exact same thing.
It's the exact same way that the government works.
They're forcing these people to do it.
And I say, you know, all these people, they lack the moral courage to do what's right.
100%.
I don't care.
I won't back off of that.
If you had to go piss away $20,000 in your particular place, if you're listening to me right now, I feel really sorry for you.
I'm not trying to be a dick, but you're kind of a turd.
Not kind of.
I wanted to say very, very mean things, but I understand the situation that you're in, but it's bullshit.
In no other situation on planet Earth would you ever get the green light to shit money down a hole, and here we sit.
At the same time, we're, what, 37, 34?
Somewhere between 34 and 37 trillion in debt.
And counting.
It's basically space bucks.
Yep.
Yep.
And a freshly laid turd at that.
Hot and steamy.
Okay, Jason.
Yes, sir.
You have about 42 seconds to give us your final thoughts.
We're running up at the end of the show.
So this is your opportunity.
What do you got?
Well, outside of the fact that Pete Hegseth has played softball with our favorite host, Richard Leonard...
I think that if you are on the fence, that you should sit back, relax, and watch a show.
And I think if you're actively rooting against anybody that the president wants to bring on, if you've thought that things have been going so well, I encourage you to grab another six-pack of Zima or whatever it is your lily ass is drinking and drink another dozen or so and figure it out.
Because it's going to happen anyway.
Very well said.
I'm going to tell you guys something.
Jason's getting so good at his final thoughts.
Thank you, sir.
I really appreciate it.
Okay, so I think, listen, the idea that this gentleman, Mr. Hegseth, is not...
Qualified or shouldn't be the Secretary of Defense based on a few piddly things is absolutely asinine.
His military record shows that he has experience leading troops, solving problems, solving issues in short order when needed to.
He's very well educated.
He's well spoken.
We've all seen him on TV. He has pretty good thoughts if he's giving any of his own genuine thoughts while on TV, which I'm sure he does.
There's no reason not to at least see how it goes.
The road that we've been traveling on It hasn't really been all that great.
So why not try something new?
Furthermore, I believe that Donald Trump, President Trump-elect, is filling his cabinet with people that he thinks will be loyal to him.
People that he thinks are not going to stab him in the back, commit treason, and then say that he's crazy.
Because he has a job to do.
So if he can put people in these roles to provide him information to make decisions that he can trust, then who are we to second-guess it?
I'm not qualified to tell anybody whether or not they're qualified to be Secretary of Defense, although I have an opinion, which is why Jason and I have been riding on a soapbox here for the last hour with you.
But at no time should we be second guessing whether or not the guy can pull off the job.
I believe that he's more than capable of being an advisor and a leader in the role in which he's been selected to do.
If you disagree or you agree or you got comments, leave them down below here in the comments.
Let's have a discussion.
Let's talk about it.
Anyway, thank you for being here, being with us.
And also, I'd like to tell you, tell everybody, have a Happy Thanksgiving.
It's coming up in just a few days.
Don't forget to say hello and to wish somebody Happy Thanksgiving that maybe doesn't have somebody to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving.
So, take care of yourselves.
We'll see you guys next week.
Bye-bye.
As Christians in a Christian country, we have a right to be at minimum agnostic about the leadership being all Jewishly occupied.
We literally should be at war with fucking Israel a hundred times over, and instead we're just sending them money, and it's fucking craziness.
Look at the state of Israel, look at the state of Tel Aviv, and look at the state of Philadelphia.
You tell me where this money's going, you tell me who's benefiting from this.
I am prepared to die in the battle.
Fighting this monstrosity that would wish to enslave me and my family and steal away any rights to my property and to take away my God, go fuck yourself.
Will I submit to that?
And if you've got a foreign state, you've got dual citizens in your government, who do you think they're supporting?
God, right now, would you protect the nation of Israel and protect those of us, not just our church, but every church in the world and in this nation that's willing to put their neck on the line and say, we stand with them!
We stand with you!
You can look at Trump's cabinet.
You can look at Biden's cabinet.
It's for Jews.
I have a black friend in school.
I have nothing against blacks.
She has nothing against me.
She understands where I'm coming from.
Excuse me, I'm a Jew, and I'd just like to say that, you know, in our Bible it says that you're like animals.
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