This is the longest government shutdown in history, and it s not even close to being the worst one yet. The Democratic Senate held up funding for the Affordable Care Act for more than 40 days, and now it s time to ask the question: Why did they do it?
00:00:27.080And I was talking to Senator Cain a moment ago, and he basically laid out everything that they could have gotten if they never went into a shutdown.
00:00:33.500He was worried about SNAP benefits running out.
00:00:35.480Well, if they never went into a shutdown, SNAP benefits would not have run out.
00:00:39.240He was worried about federal workers getting getting laid off.
00:00:42.060Well, if they didn't go into a shutdown, they weren't going to get laid off.
00:00:45.520And so they spent 40 days saying this is all about health care, all about the ACA and these subsidies.
00:00:50.680This is the only point we're going to have any leverage on this.
00:00:54.100And then now they're like, well, we're going to have a separate vote and the American public will get to see where Republicans stand.
00:01:01.740And by the way, it sounds like the House isn't even going to take it up.
00:01:05.320I hear all that, Katie, but that was the best case scenario from the start.
00:01:08.880I mean, and they had no choice to do nothing.
00:01:12.120If they wanted to get the health care subsidies extended, they need to win the election last November.
00:01:17.000The Republicans control all of Washington.
00:01:20.120Like this expectation that the Republicans are going to wake up one morning and say, you know what, we're going to do the emergency Obamacare extension.
00:01:28.640You know, we're going to make sure that the subsidies for people that are early retirees are going to continue.
00:01:34.180It's crazy to think that the Republicans were never going to do that.
00:01:37.720And the purpose of the shutdown, to my mind, was to demonstrate to the voters as Democrats what their side was on this issue and what the Republican side was.
00:01:47.300There was not going to be a tangible policy.
00:01:51.100The Republicans never even came to the table.
00:01:52.740The House hasn't been in session for a month.
00:01:54.700Donald Trump never tried to negotiate.
00:02:00.600But this is the longest shutdown in history.
00:02:02.200I remember back when I was a Republican, the Democrats and people like me and the establishment of the Republican Party said the Tea Party is crazy.
00:02:09.580These guys at the Tea Party are extremists with the way that they are pushing these shutdowns.
00:02:15.020This Democratic Senate just held a longer shutdown than the Tea Party ever did.
00:02:20.580So, I mean, I just think that's like that is about as much as could have been expected, given the real harm that was happening to people with the loss of loss of benefits, loss of jobs, loss of salaries.
00:02:30.680Did it take, as I guess, Tim, you're suggesting, that much time for the American public to see where the Democrats stood and how they felt about health care and to and to look at it closely and see that ultimately it was the Republicans that were stonewalling this issue?
00:02:56.140Yeah, I mean, look, I think the strategy always had an endgame problem.
00:03:01.020And sort of what Tim is getting at here.
00:03:04.360Republicans were never likely to give Dems their big demands.
00:03:07.880I think if Democrats were going to cut this kind of a deal, it probably would have been a better idea to have done it a week ago before the elections gave everybody a renewed sense of momentum before Trump started lobbying Republicans to get rid of the filibuster.
00:03:21.360And people like me were like, hmm, this is interesting.
00:03:24.120But, you know, I do think that there is an argument for claiming a win here.
00:03:28.940Democrats were able to drive a conversation about health care and make that a central focus, which is something they've been struggling to do for a long time.
00:03:37.060And look, if you want to be really cynical about this from a political perspective, by not extending the ACA subsidies, Republicans have set themselves up for a year next year that is going to be entirely focused on health care.
00:03:50.200And people's premiums are going to go up.
00:03:53.020Republicans are highly unlikely to extend these subsidies, which is part of why Democrats were demanding that they do it.
00:03:57.820But that's going to be all on Republicans.
00:03:59.520It's going to be similar to 2017 when they made it all about repealing the ACA.
00:04:03.480Republicans have put themselves in a position where all of next year going into the midterms is going to be focused on people's premiums going up at the hands of Republicans in control of Congress.
00:04:12.940This is the primal scream of a dying regime.
00:04:20.320Pray for our enemies, because we're going to medieval on these people.
00:05:30.540Let me lay this out before you get into it.
00:05:33.240When I've got stalwarts of the MAGA movement, and I'm talking first team players, I've got Darren Beattie, Jack Posobiec, Julie Kelly, Glenn Beck, Stephen Baker.
00:05:45.100When people like that are telling me over and over again this pipe bomber thing is not simply big, but it's the key that picks the lock on many different things relate to J6, the Fed's direction, and the deep state.
00:05:59.160And that I think even Glenn said the other day could be as big as potentially as Watergate.
00:06:04.920I take that seriously since there's such a depth of premium folks and folks that do this for a living are telling me that.
00:06:13.640And as you know, over the weekend I was in a location, I didn't have great Wi-Fi or phone, but my phone literally blew up when I got back in the area on Sunday afternoon about the situation on the pipe bomb and maybe some new revelation on the pipe bomber.
00:06:29.940Can you get us up to speed on everything that's happening, ma'am?
00:06:32.300Yes, so this is a report on Blaze Media, and this was authored by Steve Baker and Joe Hanneman, two reporters who have covered January 6th.
00:06:44.540And this was teased last week, to your point, by Glenn Beck and Steve Baker, that this was going to be the greatest political scandal of all time, that this would implicate high-level Trump administration officials, including perhaps CIA Director John Ratcliffe, DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard, and others,
00:07:06.220related to who these reporters believe they have identified as the individual seen on that very grainy, low-quality surveillance video of a hoodie suspect walking around Capitol Hill on January 5th that evening,
00:07:24.580which is the time frame that the FBI and law enforcement believe those two dummy explosive pipe bombs were planted outside the headquarters of the RNC and the DNC,
00:07:39.520only to be conveniently and coincidentally discovered 17 hours later to coincide with the start of the joint session of Congress.
00:07:50.840So this article took over social media and the internet all weekend, and it was supposed to not just identify this pipe bomber, but also expose this big scandal.
00:08:03.240Well, the article, in my opinion, fell far short of providing enough solid evidence to almost definitively, they said 98%, based on this GATE analysis,
00:08:19.340which we can kind of talk about, meaning the walking mannerisms and style of a Capitol Police officer.
00:08:27.060You mean gate, you mean gate like a horse would have a gate, or like a human would have a gate, the way you would walk, correct?
00:08:33.220The way you would propel yourself forward?
00:08:42.060So apparently what happened is Steve Baker was looking at video from January 6th, Capitol Police officers who were using what they call non-lethal munitions on the crowd.
00:08:54.320And he apparently saw a Capitol Police officer who he thought had the same gate pattern as this individual on January 5th, who still has not been identified, January 5th, 2021.
00:09:07.500Is there something unique enough about the suspect?
00:09:12.920Because this is like the Magruder film, kind of.
00:09:18.360You and Beattie and Posobiec and Glenn Beck's team and many others for hours and hours and hours have gone over all this grainy footage.
00:09:27.820I mean, Beattie was on the show one time.
00:09:30.640I mean, Beattie was on the show one time for an hour.
00:09:32.840And I think we went over this thing and he had like every movement of this.
00:09:37.060And I didn't have a suspect at the time, but why this is so important, why the official narrative was a lie and how this was going to be something that would explode the whole Fed's erection, ma'am.
00:09:50.080Right. Well, as Darren Beattie has said, and I think Darren Beattie and I have uncovered the most information, evidence, shady circumstances related to the pipe bombers, both at the DNC and RNC.
00:10:06.100But what Darren always said is if you expose the truth about the pipe bombs, the entire January 6th narrative unravels because that was the incident that those two incidents really initiated the panic that day.
00:10:25.840And I think that's what Glenn's talking about.
00:10:27.740That if you if you solve the identity of this pipe bomber or you can get the idea that the that the feds knew a lot more about this pipe bomber, even maybe being part of them or knowing about it, this gets to be Watergate level because then the entire official narrative collapses.
00:10:47.640And this is something we've talked about for years.
00:10:50.460And Darren Beattie and I have suspected for years, and you and I have talked about this as well, that this was an inside job, that law enforcement in some capacity was tied to the planting of one or both of these devices.
00:11:06.240I just had a report out last month that you and I talked about more suspicious surroundings related to the woman who discovered the RNC pipe bomb.
00:11:16.720She worked for FirstNet, which of course is a law enforcement agency, and then the DNC.
00:11:22.900So it's not exactly news that this is an inside job, that law enforcement was somehow involved in one capacity or the other.
00:11:34.980I think this might be new to Glenn because of how he's talked about it, but it certainly is not to us.
00:11:41.960So if this individual, and we won't name her name because you could see people are already backing off this report as they identified this woman, who now is under police protection, by the way, based on, I think, really dubious evidence.
00:11:58.360Oh, because naturally the MAGA people would seek immediate vengeance, correct?
00:12:06.000Well, look, it's really irresponsible to float someone's name without enough substantive evidence that confirms that this is the absolute identity of this suspect.
00:12:24.120I mean, this is a very controversial issue.
00:12:28.880It's one of great public interest and one of great consequence to both the individual and anyone else who would have been involved.
00:12:36.680So is the evidence that they put forward – the evidence they put forward was they actually put pictures that were up there and they compared the grainy footage of the suspect or the unidentified person walking its gait versus her gait so that you could actually compare and contrast?
00:12:55.580We don't know because the article did not embed any video clips that had been used as samples for this gait analysis.
00:13:05.760So we don't know what video this one analyst or the software that was used, but we certainly don't have the video clips.
00:13:15.240What I think is also a little bit questionable here is that in the article they say they did not use the FBI grainy footage that we've all seen for years, that they used different footage that was clearer and had a more accurate timing to it.
00:13:35.140Now, as you know, Dara Beatty, years ago, broke down how a lot of that video, especially the video captured by the DNC security footage, how it was purposefully slow, that it had such a slow frame rate as to suggest that it's somehow been manipulated.
00:13:54.160So what footage did they use? We don't know. They didn't put the video clips in the piece, which I feel like from a journalistic standpoint,
00:14:02.860if you're going to call someone's name out, you better provide the public with the evidence that you're using as a basis of that conclusion.
00:14:12.680Hang on. I want to take a break if you can. I know you're under a tight schedule.
00:14:16.520Our next guest is also under a tight schedule. It's the 250th anniversary of the birth of the Marine Corps at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia.
00:14:25.620As Continental Marines, I think they started recruiting. Naturally, if you're going to recruit Marines, what better place to recruit them than a tavern, right?
00:14:33.140Hard fighting devil dogs. We're going to get to all of this for the next two hours.
00:14:38.000Julie Kelly. Julie, can you just stick around for a minute or two on the other side? I know you get a bounce.
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00:16:40.540Julie Kelly, this is also important as the engine room, the war room engine room informs me that Kamala Harris might have also been jeopardized because now we know, I guess, I don't know if it's fake news or not.
00:17:08.440She mentioned it one time in her book.
00:17:10.300She said she went there to call contributors and donors, which still doesn't make any sense.
00:17:16.300And Barry Laudermilk's committee, new J6 committee, today is asking for testimony from her Secret Service agents who missed this device, by the way, that was planted right outside of the entrance to the DNC.
00:17:29.280At any rate, I've also been covering for, since late 2021, the circumstances of this discovery of the RNC device, which was found by a woman named Karlyn Younger.
00:17:44.220She worked for FirstNet, which is a private-public partnership that oversees broadband for first responders during disasters, emergencies, et cetera.
00:17:55.000She just so happened to go do her laundry in the middle of the day, and it's this sort of outdoor, if you access it, from outside.
00:18:04.680She lived right next to the Capitol Hill Club, a popular hangout for Republicans, as you know, in the headquarters of the RNC.
00:18:10.860As she's going to do her laundry, her second trip there, she looks down and notices a device by a recycling bin and goes to alert security, first at the Capitol Hill Club, then RNC.
00:18:27.200So this was around 1240, Steve, on January 6th, 20 minutes before the joint session convened.
00:18:34.680RNC and DNC headquarters, as you know, just a few blocks away from the U.S. Capitol.
00:18:38.760So the discovery of that device, now both devices were not going to be active.
00:18:51.740So I have two pieces up declassified with Julie Kelly that talk about more suspicious surroundings as to her discovery,
00:19:00.420which I think has more evidence of, hmm, maybe we need to question this person than certainly the evidence that was provided in the Blaze article over the weekend.
00:19:09.760But to Glenn Beck's and Scott Baker and you, they're coming at it with getting information and trying – because they understand you – this is the key that could pick the lock, right?
00:19:24.100There's something been weird about this from the beginning.
00:19:26.080This is why Darren Beattie was obsessed by this.
00:19:29.380You've been going at this, right, in a different direction but have very compelling, at least circumstantial evidence right now.
00:19:35.600So is the Justice Department, the FBI, the Secret Service, anything that we consider an actual government apparatus that should have access to absolutely everything,
00:19:47.200are they working with the Glenn Beck team?
00:19:50.600Is there – can we just get – why do we have to have two of our smartest investigative units spending an incredible amount of time burning a lot of daylight doing this
00:20:02.540when isn't a lot of this information there that could be shared by the FBI, the Secret Service, the D.C. Metro Police, the Capitol Hill Police, or anything, ma'am?
00:20:11.980Well, I mean, I don't know if the Blaze and Steve Baker have shared their gait analysis or their video samples with the FBI.
00:20:20.860If – I mean, the FBI didn't come up with this.
00:20:41.820Is the government, is the FBI, the people that should know all the information or have absolutely everything and have every foot people walk because they had drones up
00:20:51.780or they had every piece of technology – you can't walk a foot in D.C. that you're not monitored by 100 cameras.
00:20:58.160They had the official government apparatus because what frustrates me is Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch, Julie Kelly over the substack, Glenn Beck at the Blaze,
00:21:07.380all these people, the revolver team, you guys are spending time, money, effort, and, hey, there's – you know, this is a Trump administration run by Trump people.
00:21:18.060So this should be something that we should get to the bottom of, like immediately, every piece of information.
00:21:23.360And I'm sure there are hundreds of thousands of pieces of information about this just on all the different details of how technologically you're tracked in the current era.
00:21:33.880So why are we not getting any information that are helping you, helping Beck, helping Revolver, helping – you know, Judicial Watch told me – Fitton the other day, who's my hero,
00:21:43.380told me he's got more FOIA requests, he's fighting harder than – and the Obama administration, forget Biden.
00:21:50.060He said Biden, we're nothing compared to – this is back to Holder.
00:21:52.620So why is that – why are we not getting full cooperation by the official apparatuses we control, ma'am?
00:22:00.500Well, I mean, I haven't heard a lot from my sources on this particular story.
00:22:07.100I think there is work being done looking into whatever is publicly available.
00:22:13.260But I share everyone's frustration that we don't have better answers, that we're coming up on the five-year anniversary of January 6th.
00:22:20.860And you have statute of limitations expiring on certain charges, certainly, for whoever planted the pipe bomb and obscured any sort of investigation.
00:22:33.140But we know from testimony that this investigation was basically shut down in spring of 2021.
00:22:41.300And there really was not much happening.
00:22:42.860So the question is – and we know that this continues to be an ongoing problem at the FBI and DOJ and DNI and everywhere else – is that evidence was hidden, evidence was buried.
00:22:54.540We had testimony that the cell phone data from January 5th was corrupted.
00:22:59.800And then I think that they've been digging into that, trying to see if they can access cell phone data from that night.
00:23:05.940That seems completely impossible to believe.
00:23:09.140So I do trust that there are – I know that there – that investigation is still active and ongoing.
00:23:16.620Not to sound like an FBI spokesman there.
00:23:19.060But I share everyone's frustration that we don't have answers.
00:23:22.400And that's why, unfortunately, that vacuum can be filled with bad information, which is what this report represents.
00:23:30.58060 days – within 60 days, we're going to be on the fifth anniversary of this.
00:24:14.420It will have its national broadcast at 10 o'clock.
00:24:16.480I think it's a great honor to the men in the film, in the mission they were on, that PBS would think that this is emblematic of kind of the heart of what the Marine Corps does, right?
00:24:29.100And we have one of the great warriors from that, Scott Cuomo, is on.
00:24:34.240Tell us about Scott before we bring him on.
00:24:36.600Well, Scott was in the section on the Battle of Najaf.
00:24:40.780As you know, the film does the first Battle of Fallujah in the North against Sunni insurgents, then the Battle of Najaf in the South against Shia militia, and then back to the second Battle of Fallujah in the North again.
00:24:53.840And Scott was, I think, a lieutenant at the time, he can correct me, but he was one of these guys that had to follow these orders.
00:25:01.460He tells the story, I should have him tell it, of when he was called, and he had to kind of just go.
00:25:14.240First off, your feelings, you were there live when we did the premiere a week or so ago, and it was amazing your guys' participation and how great it was with the audience afterwards.
00:25:24.500Talk to me about the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps, of how few institutions have been around for 250 years, and that PBS has decided after 17 years to show this film as its primetime representation of the United States Marine Corps, sir.
00:25:40.860Steve and Mike, thank you so much, especially on this day, Veterans Day tomorrow.
00:25:50.760Just grateful that that would be the Marines who fought Najaf, both, and then the documentary covers, obviously, Fallujah 1 and Fallujah 2 as well.
00:26:02.100And just to tell the story of the young warriors that busted their ever-living butts to execute some incredibly demanding missions.
00:26:10.020So I'm just incredibly grateful that it'll be on PBS this evening, and America will get to learn.
00:26:15.300You know, for 250 years, you send the Marines, you got the hardest missions in the world that need to get executed.
00:26:21.220You need us to do them, and we're going to do them, period.
00:26:29.400Do we have the—we're going to go out in every section of this Michael Pack in honor of the film and in honor of the 250th anniversary with the Marine Corps hymn.
00:27:02.540The premiere of the last 600 meters, the battles of Fallujah, 1st Fallujah, Najaf, and 2nd Fallujah, told through the eyes of Marine riflemen, which is Jan Becker.
00:27:18.640Bender says in there, everybody's a rifleman in the Marine Corps.
00:29:15.900Colonel Scott Cuomo joins us, who was a lieutenant at the time.
00:29:19.400Tell us about Najaf and why on the 250th anniversary of this institution that has lived longer than the Roman Republic, that why did PBS, when they looked at it, who were not fans of this film initially, think it was emblematic enough of the work of the Marine Corps to put it up tonight on the 250th birthday, sir?
00:29:43.680Yeah, no, Mike can, I'm sure, cover the details of what led to the decision there a little bit differently.
00:29:53.540But specific to the battle, I am grateful to have the opportunity to just talk with you guys about it.
00:30:00.460You know, hot, intense, close quarters, intimate, very personal.
00:30:11.240You know, for me and the Marines that I had the privilege to serve in that battle, it started with a helicopter, Huey helicopter, getting shot down.
00:30:19.200We were in another province and got a fragmentary order of FRAGO, as we call it in the Marine Corps, to get our butts to Najaf immediately and go help out our teammates and to go fight.
00:30:32.120And that was very early on the morning of 5 August.
00:30:35.480And for the next 22 days, it was just battled nonstop in weather that is almost, you know, up to that point in my life, it was never experienced anything like that.
00:30:47.840And then the battlegrounds, we had trained in urban environments a lot before going over.
00:30:53.400I had the privilege to be a rifle platoon commander on the march to Baghdad, so I had fought, but never in a cemetery that's 15, 20 square kilometers, depending on the way you measured it.
00:31:04.800So, yeah, I'm just grateful that PBS put that out or will put it out later today so that America gets to see, you know, what do Marines do?
00:31:13.420What have Marines done for 250 years, no matter the challenge, and batter all butts off to do whatever we need to do to help keep America safe?
00:31:22.820What the temperature was, correct me if I'm wrong, 100 to 115 degrees during parts of the day that you guys were fighting through this vast cemetery.
00:31:31.800And folks, you'll see tonight, it's a cemetery like you would see in New Orleans, a cemetery that's above ground, where the, I guess, esophagus or all the tombs are actually above ground.
00:31:44.560One on top of each other, but there's also a huge subterranean area.
00:31:47.820So it's just vast, both up and down and out.
00:32:38.500There, obviously, throughout history, Marines have fought, you know, in some very, very close, up close environments.
00:32:45.040I think this was, you know, just thinking about it now, 21 years later, I don't think.
00:32:49.860We fought in cemeteries, but nothing like this, nothing in this proximity, this density, the catacombs, the roads that moved in and out of the cemetery were just very narrow.
00:33:04.560The reason that you take, that people, I think, take such pride when they see this film, no matter how bloody it is, in the second, excuse me, in Najaf, you're essentially fighting in what is the Vatican of the Shiite religion.
00:33:20.440And to the degree that you guys are told by your senior officers and that you're promulgating to the troops that the mosque, which is like, you know, St. Peter's Cathedral, to the Shiites, it's their Vatican.
00:33:36.920You've got to take extra care with that.
00:33:38.780I mean, particularly extra care of that, even to the degree that, you know, you might put some Marines in danger.
00:33:48.040The enemy, we refer to as rules of engagement or ROEs, the enemy knew what ours were.
00:33:54.460And so many aspects of their command post, their mortar firing positions, their casualty collection points were at times inside the Imam Ali Mosque complex.
00:34:07.680And like you're saying, it is huge, multi-kilometer complex.
00:34:12.000So it was very difficult to be struck by mortar barrages that were launched from inside the complex and then to have to find other ways because the rules of engagement as the battle progressed.
00:34:27.300Initially, they were very restrictive, as the documentary lays out.
00:34:30.700And as the days went on, very similar to, you know, something for those, for the Way City veterans from 1968, you'd find the same thing.
00:34:39.960The opening days of the battle, much more restrictive rules of engagement than it went on.
00:35:06.000Colonel Mayer describes how they would have, they would have IVs in their arm.
00:35:11.460They'd come out of the fighting in the cemetery and they'd have to be hydrated with IVs.
00:35:16.360And they'd leave the IV stints in so that they can come in and out faster.
00:35:20.080And you can see them in the film lying there and nearly passed out getting hydrated.
00:35:24.360I mean, it's, it's an, and that it's a surreal kind of landscape.
00:35:28.540And then the mosque, I mean, in the end, you know, they put, the Marines pushed them out of the cemetery into the mosque where we, they couldn't attack.
00:35:37.300They were going to send in because, of course, U.S. troops can't go into the mosque because, as you say, it's one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam.
00:35:44.800So they were going to send in Iraqi commandos.
00:35:48.060And they were all set to do that when another Shiite leader, Sistani, shows up and boom.
00:35:55.820Sadr and the Mahdi army, you know, survived to escape another day.
00:35:59.000And you can hear the frustration in some of the Marines at that moment that they didn't get a chance to finish the job and, and deal with the Mahdi militia that actually plagued Iraq, you know, for a long, long time, even to today.
00:36:12.900I believe Maqtada Sadr is still active.
00:36:18.240We didn't talk about that too much with you in the film.
00:36:20.480I mean, what was it like to sort of suddenly the thing is over, the thing you're preparing for doesn't happen and the thing ends?
00:36:26.320Yeah, no, I, you joked when we were offline a little bit about the difference in interviewing two years after and then reflecting on it now, you know, in short, incredibly frustrating, you know, the Marines.
00:36:43.620And I, I'm confident I speak with all the guys that were in BLT one, four, you fight your butts off 22 days in that heat and you finally, finally get the enemy.
00:36:54.380Uh, you kind of got the bull by the horns, if you will, or, you know, we've got them, uh, with our hands right around his neck, you know, and get ready to finish the job.
00:37:03.380And then the Ayatollah Sistani, I'm not exactly sure what happened between the night of 25 and 26 August.
00:37:09.460I just knew we were ready to go into the very final assault and we got word to stand down and some agreement had been reached and, uh, or met.
00:37:18.180And it was, it was frustrating at the time, um, uh, ready to launch.
00:37:28.440But, but yeah, you know, you, uh, you, I, you mentioned that I joked about how you guys were different 17 years ago, but you still have the fight.
00:38:03.560No, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, just reflecting on this now, having a privilege to serve for almost 25, so 10% of the Corps' history, um, had, you know, served Marines in three different combat environments and the missions are hard.
00:38:16.960Um, but no matter what happens, if you need Marines to do something, it doesn't matter how hard it is.
00:38:26.360We will depend on non-commissioned officers.
00:38:28.860And this isn't just, this is just what Marines do.
00:38:32.220Uh, Steve, you asked about why 250 is so important because literally for 250 years, non-commissioned officers, junior officers, staff non-commissioned officers in the Marine Corps, just find a way to get it done.
00:38:51.000We learn from those who've gone before us.
00:38:53.900Our instructors train us really well and we depend on each other.
00:38:56.860And yeah, what was it like on a scale of one to 10, a million infuriating when we were finally ready to close?
00:39:04.200Um, yeah, but it's, uh, it's not uncommon throughout history, the Corps' history.
00:39:08.820And so our job, when you all tell us to go, you know, for those who are watching this, you tell us to go, we are going to go and we are going to attack a hundred miles an hour.
00:39:17.840And if you tell us to stop, we're going to stop as, as frustrating as it might be.
00:39:21.400Um, but yeah, if that answers your question, Mike.
00:39:25.120You know, Michael was, Mike was going to, Michael was going to make a film about high technology and how it changed the battlefield.
00:39:30.800And he came back and said, after doing his research, he realized that what was happening in Iraq was, uh, was a war that was being fought by, uh, teenager infantry men with non-commissioned officers that were not much older above them.
00:39:43.940Um, and these junior officers, second, first lieutenants, second lieutenants and captains.
00:39:47.600And that's what comes out in, you, you do have a few generals sprinkling in there, but the first person participants are all in teenagers or in their early, how old were you, Scott, when you were in, uh, Najaf?
00:40:03.100Uh, 20, what was I? 22, 23. I'm trying to think. I was born in seven.
00:40:20.600Yeah, I was saying the majority of the Marines in the battle, 19, 20 years old.
00:40:25.080When you're seeing the scenes that Michael and the team recorded just so powerfully, uh, inside fighting, whether that be from tombstone to tombstone or inside the catacombs or inside the old city at the end, uh, these are 19, 20 year old Americans predominantly.
00:40:41.100They're non-commissioned officers, you know, plus or minus 21 to 24 years old.
00:40:51.120When, when, when you click us off safe as we say in the Marine Corps, they're angry and they're going to do whatever they have to do to protect America, to protect each other.
00:40:59.680So, Colonel, do you have social media?
00:41:02.940Is there any way people can, uh, can get your coordinates?
00:41:06.580I, uh, generally speaking, I'm not on social media, but, um, yeah.
00:41:51.160Remember, we're going to talk about when we come back, why PBS, why this has been 17 years.
00:41:55.960When Michael first turned this in, this film was very powerful.
00:41:58.620Of course, we were still in the Iraq war and it wasn't that they didn't like the political message because some of the things said, well, hold on.
00:42:05.960The political side looked totally screwed up.
00:42:07.760But it's the fact that they could not believe that you just went into this group and that these were typical standard Marines, right?
00:42:52.420You know, I didn't know this until the guys at Field of Greens, the doctors and the experts, told me about it and then gave me information.
00:43:20.180Because Americans eat so many processed and ultra-processed foods and not enough fruits and vegetables, many, perhaps most, are 10 years older on the inside than their actual age.
00:44:16.760Find out how you can slow down your internal biological clock by using this amazing formula, which you just add to your favorite drink or the water, which you do at the War Room every day.
00:44:31.960And, in addition, you will get an energy boost.
00:45:08.280In fact, if President Trump had not won twice, I'll tell Pack's story in the next hour.
00:45:13.860Michael Pack is one of my all-time heroes.
00:45:15.380You talk about tough as boot leather, Pack is tough as boot leather, because they try to literally destroy him.
00:45:21.580But this film, and I hadn't seen it on a big screen in a long time.
00:45:25.460It was so overwhelmingly powerful when I saw it on the big screen with the sound and how beautiful the photography is, or how stunningly it's so realistic.
00:47:26.920At one point they said, even though this is contrary to the essence of the film, that I needed to put in more political, historical background.
00:47:34.340I needed to interview politicians and should we or shouldn't be in the war.
00:47:49.080I mean, a lot of these things were fancy ways of saying, no, the thing they never said and couldn't say is it isn't a good film.
00:47:55.980And I've had 15 films on broadcast nationally on PBS, including another one with you on Admiral Rickover after, you know, after this one was finished.
00:48:06.320And so they couldn't say it was a bad film.
00:48:08.340So they had to think of things to say.