00:00:47.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
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00:01:11.000Joining us to help explain, from the best of his knowledge and experience, what is going on with these unidentified flying objects and balloons and Ukraine is former acting Secretary of Defense and Green Beret Colonel Christopher C. Miller.
00:01:28.000He is also the author of a new book, Soldier Secretary: Warnings from the Battlefield and the Pentagon about America's most dangerous enemies.
00:02:33.000So, Chris, tell us about your book, and then I have a ton of questions to ask you.
00:02:37.000But first, introduce our audience to your biography and also your book.
00:02:42.000Yeah, left government on 1201 on the 20th of January 2021 with no work, no opportunity.
00:02:52.000I enlisted in the Army in 1983 in Iowa City, Iowa.
00:02:56.000I'd served until 2014 as a Green Beret, an Army Special Forces guy.
00:03:01.000Then I worked at the Pentagon a bunch more and met President Trump.
00:03:06.000I really got really focused on defeating Al-Qaeda.
00:03:10.000And President Trump had the same idea.
00:03:13.000And I worked with a guy named Kash Patel who was also with me on that journey.
00:03:18.000And we just got really, really obsessed with killing off the rest of Al-Qaeda and defeating them and ending that war.
00:03:26.000And when I left government, didn't have a lot of opportunities.
00:03:30.000I was fortunately given the chance to write this book.
00:03:33.000And what I wanted to do with the book was make it really accessible.
00:03:36.000I didn't, you get these people like the DC people, and you know them, Charlie, that they write those big phone book-looking things where nobody reads them, you know.
00:03:44.000They just name, you just name-check yourself, right?
00:03:46.000You're like, hey, then I always name-check myself, and it's always some snide remark about, you know, this unqualified guy, which nothing could be further from the truth.
00:03:55.000So I decided I needed to, well, I got the opportunity to put my thoughts down.
00:04:01.000So I tell a lot of war stories from my time in the service in Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq, 2003, and then, you know, basically was part of that war for the remainder of the time.
00:04:13.000And then talk about my time in working for President Trump.
00:04:18.000Key takeaways on this thing is I wanted to make it accessible.
00:04:21.000You know, 7% of our population are veterans, 93% aren't.
00:04:25.000I want to try to close that gap between, you know, those that serve and those they serve because I saw a lot of confusion.
00:04:36.000So that was kind of the idea and try to try to communicate in a way that was accessible and lighthearted in some ways, but serious in others and try to talk to each other and help bridge this gap between our society right now.
00:04:52.000Well, I encourage everyone to check out the book.
00:04:54.000And boy, there are a lot of questions about our military right now.
00:05:24.000So, Charlie, thanks for bringing that up.
00:05:27.000We found out, I guess it was a week ago, a week ago Sunday night, there were these claims that the Trump administration knew all about these Chinese spy balloons.
00:05:37.000Yeah, I mean, I remember the story, but I certainly don't remember anyone telling me that.
00:05:42.000I mean, look, this is the most preposterous thing.
00:05:44.000The number one reason I knew this was a fake story was that if Donald J. Trump knew that there were Chinese spy balloons in the air, he would make sport out of shooting it down.
00:05:53.000And by 7 a.m., he would call into Fox and Friends after tweeting about it, bragging about how quickly he was able to shoot it.
00:06:00.000And then he would double the tariffs on China just for sport by lunch.
00:06:04.000It's nice to be with the home team because that's exactly what would happen.
00:06:08.000And so we had not, I didn't have a clue.
00:06:11.000And I subsequently learned from other people I served with in the administration at high levels.
00:06:16.000None of us had any idea that this was going on, which leads to the question of, well, who knew?
00:06:21.000I think what we're going to find out, you just mark my words, Charlie.
00:06:24.000If Congress finally starts to do their job and does some oversight on these things and asks the right questions, you know, the Department of Defense will do a study.
00:06:47.000It'll have to be tied with a slow news cycle.
00:06:50.000And then it will be revealed that someone in the Department of Defense and in the intelligence community actually knew about these overflights for a long time.
00:06:58.000But I suspect, I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect it'll be in the UFO files.
00:07:04.000They call them something else now, anonymous.
00:07:09.000But I think we'll find out that these things got bucketed in this kind of UFO file and wasn't brought to the attention of senior military officials or civilian officials that oversee the Department of Defense.
00:07:22.000That's my bet that this has been going on for a long time, but it just didn't get reported out.
00:07:26.000And that's, you know, I don't want to talk about Deep State and all that stuff, but that's kind of, you know, this is, I bet you this is going to be emblematic, right?
00:07:43.000Yeah, I think I've heard, I thought I heard a rumor that somebody was flying on a commercial aircraft and looked out the window and said, hey, there's a balloon out there.
00:07:54.000Perhaps that's that does that does show the amazing beauty of flyover country.
00:09:27.000That's really going to be interesting because it's pretty advanced.
00:09:32.000Everybody wants to laugh about it's just a balloon.
00:09:34.000They have very sophisticated abilities to maneuver these things.
00:09:38.000And as you know, satellites just go zipping across at whatever, you know, 200,000, what, 17,000 miles an hour, and these things just hover up there so they can really collect some intelligence.
00:09:48.000I don't quite understand why China would keep on sending these unidentified flying objects one after the other.
00:09:57.000And I mean, I guess China is the only one to blame for it, but these are expensive pieces of equipment that after a couple, they would kind of believe that it's going to get shot down.
00:10:10.000And so, what exactly do they think they're going to gain from this?
00:10:17.000I need to hear somebody convince me of what is the self-interested angle of China to continually send expensive Chinese spy equipment that then gets shot down, which will only provoke more anti-China sentiment in the American homeland.
00:10:58.000What we're doing is we're sending up $100, $150 million jet aircraft, probably more than one, and we're shooting it down with a $400,000 missile.
00:11:06.000And that's part of my book: the cost curves are all off.
00:12:09.000Remember how in the lead up to Ukraine last year, the administration presented all this pretty sensitive intelligence that they were gleaning about the Russians and what they were going to do.
00:12:25.000And in the business, you know, those are sources of methods, and they decided that they would, you know, burn those sources of methods to try to deter this war, which it didn't work, as we all know.
00:12:38.000I think the Chinese saw that and they're realizing, like, let's go ahead and push as much as we can at the U.S. right now to see how much they will reveal about their sensors and their intelligence networks to find.
00:12:52.000I think they got the lesson from the Russians going, that's pretty easy.
00:12:55.000It doesn't cost anything, or it's relatively inexpensive.
00:12:58.000Let's go ahead and probe their defenses as much as we can and see what happens and see what we can what we can deduce about how they're doing their that that's my that's that's kind of my theory right now.
00:13:10.000I think it'll be I agree with all that, but again, I'm just a layman here.
00:13:14.000When you were head of DOD, are you familiar with any objects that could fly 20,000 feet that are in the shape of an octagon?
00:13:51.000I'm not, I don't know military aviation well at all.
00:13:54.000I just, you know, when I fly out of Sky Harbor in Phoenix, I don't see, you know, Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines, and then here's an octagon, like we're going to Vegas.
00:14:02.000And I just doesn't, not something I see very often.
00:14:05.000Okay, there's some breaking news I want to play for you here.
00:14:08.000This is John Kirby talking about it's definitely not aliens.
00:14:18.000My understanding is that the top officials of the Pentagon, when asked explicitly if they were ruling out any kind of extraterrestrial presence, said they weren't ruling anything out.
00:14:28.000And yet at the beginning of today's briefing, albeit with her usual winning smile, Ms. Jean-Pierre seemed to rule out any extraterrestrial activity.
00:14:37.000I don't think the American people need to worry about aliens with respect to these craft.
00:15:08.000But, you know, this comes back to the kind of issue about where do all these UFO reports end up.
00:15:16.000And one of the big mistakes I made when I was acting Secretary of Defense, I didn't, somebody called me like, hey, did you get the UFO briefing?
00:15:23.000And I literally was like, oh, man, I forgot to ask about that.
00:15:29.000So, you know, at the time, but I think that's something, you know, Senator Cruz and others have been really adamant about trying to get to the bottom of a lot of these things.
00:15:37.000And I think at the end of the day, there's still some unexplained stuff.
00:15:40.000I think the vast majority are our secret weapons or other countries' secret weapons.
00:15:46.000But in this case, I'm not thinking it's extraterrestrials.
00:15:54.000I'm asking the question because I don't understand why China would do this.
00:15:58.000I'm not saying that it's extraterrestrials, but it's bizarre how the Biden administration is going around saying it's definitely not aliens.
00:16:07.000Look, Valentine's Day is now over, but the need to say I love you is never over.
00:16:11.000Finding a way to tell someone you care about them on a consistent basis is very hard.
00:16:15.000At least it was until Good Ranchers came along.
00:16:18.000Look, say I love you with meat this year, but not just any meat.
00:18:46.000They talk about the madman theory of international relations where, you know, people, President Trump was accused of this, and it's actually a valid means of international relations where you keep them off balance, right?
00:19:00.000They don't know what you're going to do.
00:19:01.000I'm now calling this kind of the clueless man international affairs strategy, which is not a valid thing because it's confusing.
00:20:45.000For my upbringing, I was the biggest cheerleader and advocate for the American military.
00:20:51.000And so it really burdens me when I start to see now the American military become a college campus with missiles, where we now have the worst ideology imaginable of purging patriots, vaccine mandates, and all of this LGBTQ nonsense.
00:21:08.000So I want to play a piece of tape here.
00:21:10.000I think this is an Army recruiting video or something.
00:22:41.000And I'm white and I want to understand it.
00:22:44.000So what is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?
00:23:30.000I dealt with them all because it's ultimate meritocracy.
00:23:35.000There are issues involved in the military, but they take it very seriously to correct things that go wrong.
00:23:43.000And people, and I went out to the field not too long ago because I thought maybe I was missing something that maybe things had changed because I'm an old guy now, right?
00:23:51.000You know, my used to have orange hair, it's white now.
00:23:55.000You know, and I went out there to listen.
00:24:11.000They want to be combat ready to fight real wars.
00:24:15.000And our leadership, I think, and you brought up the clips and the ad, that's part of the point of my book is there has to be accountability, but our generals are kind of missing the boat.
00:24:28.000And they just need to support those in uniform who don't want to be part of all this.
00:24:54.000There was a piece that came out, I think, in one of the papers, the major papers the other day, where the Army did a survey and they came up with something that there were people that, you know, it's economics or something.
00:25:09.000I really think, though, when we dig into it, there's a problem.
00:25:14.000There's a saying, we're seeing our senior leaders do this thing that is, do as I say, not as I do.
00:25:21.000And, you know, the testimony you saw there and some of these advertising campaigns and these other initiatives, I think you're seeing like young people going, I just want to serve.
00:25:39.000And then when their leaders get involved in it, they start questioning why they're doing it.
00:25:45.000And I also think you brought up vaccinations and other things, or we've talked that certainly come up.
00:25:51.000There's a, I'm afraid that we're going to have a break in faith between our leadership and the young people that we really, really need to come in and serve.
00:26:02.000That's part of my book is like, we, and I'm glad that you're doing what you're doing because there is nobility in public service.
00:26:12.000I mean, there's an just, we need good people to go into it.
00:26:16.000And when they, when they're getting confused about their leaders kind of going, blown, or what do they call it, you know, going with whatever way the wind blows, that's not what they want.
00:26:26.000The, yeah, thank you for those kind words.
00:26:30.000And I will say this, and I've said it before on this show, and it really is disheartening.
00:26:34.000I don't think our military is ready to win a war right now.
00:27:18.000Does that make us more likely to be able to kill the enemy?
00:27:21.000I just, you know, I'll disagree a little bit because those people that are down in the trenches that are doing the day-to-day working are just amazing and they will absolutely get the job done.
00:27:32.000I'm worried, though, that it's a slippery slide.
00:27:36.000And I know that you're looking at it as a much more grand, broad picture.
00:28:11.000When Roe versus Wade fell as the law of the land last year, all it did was increase what pro-abortion states are doing to entice and mislead women to abort their children.
00:28:21.000States are now advertising to travel just to get an abortion.
00:28:26.000So the need to provide the truth as girls and women are contemplating what to do about their pregnancy is greater now than ever before.
00:28:33.000Ultrasounds save babies because ultrasounds give the truth at a time everyone else is saying it's not just a baby, it's just a clump of cells.
00:28:41.000When you introduce a girl to her baby by providing an ultrasound, you are giving her the truth at the most important time of her life.
00:28:48.000And more than 85% of the time, she will choose life.
00:28:52.000You don't have to make a lot of noise to make a big difference for life.
00:28:54.000Just give an ultrasound at preborn.org to be a hero for life.
00:30:01.000That's why I get my, if you want to just know where I come from, that's not a military that's ready to storm a beach or to fight China.
00:30:09.000That's official government-sanctioned propaganda there.
00:30:12.000Yeah, but they're really good sergeants and non-commissioned officers that are responsible for anywhere from three to 12 Americans that are like, we don't use the pronoun we're going to use here is soldier, sailor, airman.
00:30:28.000That's why you're rebuilding my confidence because I want that.
00:30:32.000Because when I see videos like that, I say, look, you guys should find something else on their line of work.
00:30:38.000But, you know, fighting the Chinese or whatever enemy we have to go up against, I really don't care about pronouns.
00:30:44.000Yeah, I was always raised where, you know, we had racial issues when I came into the military and the NCOs and the young leaders were like, we all wear green and we all bleed red.
00:31:04.000You know, I do a thing in my book about I have one of the, you know, you have to do your 10 policy recommendations at the end, which, Charlie, don't tell my publisher.
00:31:12.000I was like, nobody, nobody's going to read that.
00:31:29.000But work in green energy, go overseas, work in a national park.
00:31:34.000But that's kind of one of the things I talk about.
00:31:36.000And I do these informal surveys with younger people.
00:31:38.000And I always get like, I get nine out of 10 say, yeah, I'd be interested in doing universal service, kind of bring, you know, back in the day where you see those World War II movies where the guy from New York City and the southern guy and then somebody from the Midwest, you know, I think that's something that would really help.
00:31:55.000And you're focused so much on developing the youth and developing clear thinking and putting in the foundation for ethical and moral behavior.
00:32:05.000So that's kind of, you know, and I always get one person that's a hardcore libertarian, and I totally get it.
00:32:11.000They say, no, that's counter, that's against the constitution, not part of that.
00:32:15.000I said, well, then let's have a waiver process.
00:32:17.000There used to be conscientious objectors.
00:32:20.000So I kind of, I kind of went off in a tangent there.
00:32:22.000And we were supposed to talk about, we're supposed to talk about Ukraine, man.
00:32:25.000I mean, the current mood I have towards the government is very sour.
00:32:29.000However, the principle and the idea of a national mandated public service work or project, I think, is a great idea if it's done correctly.
00:32:38.000Our government would screw it up because they'd end up having you do environmental work or some sort of LGBT thing.
00:33:07.000If there are people that are willing to fight and die for their freedom against tyranny and autocracy, let's go ahead and give them the tools they need.
00:33:14.000Absolutely needs to be accountable in terms of what we provide.
00:33:19.000In Afghanistan, Iraq, at the height of the war, Charlie, we spent $2 billion a week on training those and equipping those militaries.
00:33:30.000And as soon as things got bad, they collapsed.
00:33:34.000That's not going to happen with Ukraine.
00:33:35.000And, you know, I think it's a model for Taiwan, too.
00:33:39.000If they're willing to fight, if they're willing to die, if they're willing to have their infrastructure destroyed to stand up to tyranny, let's go ahead and give them the tools they need to do that.
00:33:47.000Yeah, the question is: what happens when the regime you're supporting is also pretty evil and wrong, which I would consider Zelensky to be there.
00:33:54.000But that's a different topic for a different time.