00:00:00.000Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Great America podcast with Lou Dobbs, always in the fight for truth, justice, and yes, our American way of life.
00:00:09.340And now here he is, the Peabody award-winning voice of truth, the great Lou Dobbs.
00:00:14.860Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Great America Show.
00:00:18.340The 2021 November elections produced, as you probably noticed, a seismic shock to the Democratic Party in the sway of the Marxist left, the Biden White House, and radical Dems on Capitol Hill, who unleashed a campaign to seize control of public education and, in effect, prepare the way forward for the federal government, those wonderful teachers unions, and yes, the Marxist left, to control the education of all students.
00:00:47.660And push aside parents, their rights, push aside local school boards and local communities to determine who will be teaching our children and what they will be taught.
00:01:00.520Virginia's gubernatorial Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, actually told Virginia voters before the election that their schools had too many white teachers, that he didn't believe parents should actually be telling schools what they should teach and how.
00:01:17.080And in choosing governor-elect Glenn Youngkin, they announced what will likely be a nationwide rollback of critical race theory and the effort to replace parents with the state.
00:01:30.740Joining us now to take up the role of CRT and the role of the Marxist left and their efforts to indoctrinate our students.
00:01:40.040We're joined by an outstanding journalist who's been amongst the leaders in reporting the impact of CRT, whether in schools or business or in government.
00:02:07.000It's something that, while it originated in law schools, has now filtered down to K-12 schools.
00:02:12.980And as I've reported throughout this year, dozens of different stories where these really horrible principles of race essentialism, a collective guilt, dividing students into categories of oppressor and oppressed based on their skin color,
00:02:30.700is now becoming more and more common, not only in big blue city districts like in San Francisco and New York and Seattle, but in places you wouldn't expect, in the American heartland, in red states, because it's become the default ideology of so many of our public institutions.
00:02:50.580And while I would like to think that the tide has turned in the last year, we're facing some serious uphill battle because it's become extremely entrenched and they have billions of dollars in public funding to play with the ideology and the curriculum in so many of our schools.
00:03:11.200When you say the money to play, what do you mean play?
00:03:16.200Because the parents listening to us, grandparents, and I hope a lot of students as well, are understandably confused about all of the terminology, about who is behind this wave of energy, behind what is a Marxist philosophy, clearly being pushed by, once we thought they were neoliberals,
00:03:41.200but it looks like they're old-time Marxists, working very hard to take down our traditional institutions and values.
00:03:49.700Well, you have to really start at the beginning is what are the origins of critical race theory and how does it move through our institutions?
00:03:57.120And it's a really kind of ironic twist. You have a revolutionary ideology that is actually publicly subsidized and publicly financed.
00:04:07.480It began in the universities, the big state schools, which are publicly funded, as well as the elite private schools, which are publicly subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars a year.
00:04:17.720And then this philosophy emerges in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and then it finds places and new institutions to colonize.
00:04:27.160And it's most successfully moved from law schools to the university system to graduate schools of education, and now to K-12 schools and departments of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion that have become cemented in the bureaucracies in most school districts and many state agencies.
00:04:46.100And so what you have is an ideology that is a creature of taxpayer money, it lives through taxpayer subsidies, and then extends itself through the organs of state bureaucracies, where it's unaccountable to the market, and it's increasingly unaccountable to voters, who in many cases don't approve these things directly.
00:05:06.440Secondly, there's just part of this endless creep of bureaucracies that always cements its own power, first and foremost.
00:05:14.740And so what you have is an ideology emerging from universities that now provides two things to the public school systems.
00:05:22.380One, it provides a sense of purpose that is much easier than the traditional goals of education, to get people through basic literacy and then basic preparation for citizenship, which for decades our schools, especially in the big inner cities, have failed to do.
00:05:40.840And so this provides them an alternate framework that isn't based on merit or academic excellence or accomplishment or even basic literacy.
00:05:48.120It's based on politics, and then it also serves to shift the blame elsewhere.
00:05:54.360You have these bloated public school bureaucracies that in some cases fail to educate in basic reading, writing, and math more than 80% of their students in a place like Philadelphia or Buffalo.
00:06:06.420They adopt this ideology to excuse their own failures to educate and shift the blame to abstract forces like systemic racism.
00:06:14.480And so that's the territory that we have now.
00:06:26.520But we need to take the next step and show how parents can push back against it in local school districts and at the state level.
00:06:33.780You know, it's interesting to me, Chris, that what we have not heard, we've heard a great deal from the Biden administration, from the government, from our federal government in particular.
00:06:45.100But it's also, as you say straight out, it's also now a creature of our public education system at the local level.
00:06:52.280The administrative state, in all its levels of bureaucracy, has really taken hold of this and is a force that is financed by the very people who are right now passive victims to this onslaught of Marxist ideology, critical race theory,
00:07:14.200and the absolute despicable attack on cherished American values and all of the premises by which this great country, whether it be through immigration and assimilation, a melting pot,
00:07:32.440whether it be through a middle class that was born of hard work and, and without question, great opportunity, that's being now denied the very people who are taking on the chore of delivering an entirely different political and economic system.
00:07:51.780That's right. You have, at the basis of this ideology, a complete and explicit rejection of the founding principles of the country.
00:08:03.720They say that the Declaration was a document of hypocrisy that preached equality, but, but was designed to distract from exploitation.
00:08:14.720And you even have then a critique, a very strong critique from the critical race theorists about the 14th Amendment, which, after the Civil War, guaranteed equality under the law to each individual citizen,
00:08:29.780which they reject as a kind of race-neutral oppression in itself that, that sought to not provide equality, but to enshrine inequality.
00:08:40.160And even the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which traditionally liberals have held to be a mark of progress towards a system of codified law that, that stops racial discrimination.
00:08:55.160The critical race theorists reject as a false or fake or camouflage that enables white supremacy and oppression, which they argue is just as bad now in 2021 as it was in 1921 or 1821.
00:09:14.160They believe that racism is the essence of this country, that it's unchanging, that it's dominant across every institution, and therefore their program, which they don't always admit in such stark terms,
00:09:28.840but it's there in the literature that they've created over the last three decades, is to eliminate or abolish all of the systems from the Constitution to our economic system of capitalism to the legal system that guarantees individual rights in favor of a collectivist and a race-based form of neo-Marxism.
00:09:52.080This is the goal, this is the goal, and they believe that the strategy to achieving it is to soften the consciousness of the public through the education system,
00:10:02.020softening the minds of young people to this revolutionary ideology so that when they become of age, they're thoroughly jaded and, and, and desperate and willing to topple the system at the root, at the level of its deepest foundations.
00:10:19.560And the parents themselves are, are being criminalized for their concerns and fears about how their children are being taught and what they're being taught about what is an assault on their minds.
00:10:33.880You talk about the effort by these Marxists, these CRT advocates to soften the minds of our children.
00:10:44.780It's really, as well, desensitizing their minds and turning them from, from objective education and to something of indoctrination, radicalization, and social activism at some level.
00:11:03.880Yeah, even on a sixth grade class, it's, it's, it's really stunning stuff and they're getting away with it.
00:11:10.280Uh, take note that the justice department, the attorney general saying that there will be investigations of parents who threaten school boards, quote unquote, threatened there.
00:11:21.840I haven't seen a single, uh, substantial, uh, evidence of a actual threat against a school board, a physical threat, uh, being carried out, let alone, uh, being, uh, articulated, uh, in a credible way.
00:11:37.840Well, I've looked through the documents from the national school boards association and the department of justice, and there was one incident in Illinois of a, uh, someone attending a school board meeting, getting into a scuffle, uh, and then committing a simple battery, uh, in this process of being, uh, taken out of the, of the room.
00:12:00.440And we should condemn this. There should be no violence of any kind at school board meetings within our institutions. Um, but this is one example from 14,000 school districts that have had tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of school board meetings.
00:12:16.680Uh, this year, uh, it doesn't in any way represent a threat of domestic terrorism or a widespread threat of violence, uh, at the school boards. Uh, it's being used rather as a pretext to suppress parents, to silence dissent, uh, and to really push forward this idea that was even published recently in the Washington post.
00:12:39.000Parents do not have a right to guide their kids' education in the public school system. They're out and out saying it now, uh, that they believe that parents are an impediment to the total control by bureaucrats.
00:12:52.360And this, unfortunately, isn't anything new. They may be saying it out loud right now, uh, but this has been a theme in, uh, Marxist literature dating back 150 years.
00:13:02.600They see the nuclear family. Uh, they see, uh, uh, uh, uh, fatherhood. Um, they see the, the structure of, of, of, of the family itself as an impediment to their ideology, as an impediment to their revolution.
00:13:18.240And so it's by no surprise that they believe that the state through the public schools should be the primary shaping factor, uh, in a child's development.
00:13:28.520And that's where the fight is because thankfully American parents are standing up and they're saying, uh, we reject this. Uh, we are the ultimate authority over our children's, uh, development.
00:13:39.340Uh, and we do not accept this extraordinary overreach, uh, uh, and indoctrination by a state entity that we no longer trust and we no longer believe is serving the best interests of our kids.
00:13:53.160To me, it's, it's, it's interesting, Chris, that local school boards are elected. Uh, they represent the, the community and they are being shunned by the school bureaucracy. Uh, that is the superintendents, the, uh, principals, the administrative staff, as well as the two powerful teachers unions, uh, the Federation of Teachers and the NEA.
00:14:20.640And they're getting away with it again, uh, with public public taxpayer dollars driving the entire operation.
00:14:29.940Uh, how does a community reclaim the power that is theirs under the constitution, under law in this country to say, parents will by God be given their due.
00:14:46.560And we'll be deciding what their children are taught and will be deciding who is doing the teaching.
00:14:58.000And thankfully we've had some shining examples in recent months that show us exactly the path forward for parents, uh, to reclaim, uh, authority over the public schools.
00:15:10.760And then, uh, reestablish accountability within these organizations and parents from California to New York state, uh, to the state of Texas have organized at the grassroots level.
00:15:23.000Have come together with a, even a small group, five, 10, 20, a hundred people, uh, showed up at school board meetings, let their positions be known, uh, demanding change and accountability.
00:15:34.020And if, when that's not been delivered, uh, they've successfully, for example, in Westchester County, uh, toppled the stupid superintendent, uh, actually advocated for, uh, removal of superintendents and achieved it.
00:15:48.400Uh, or in Texas, uh, or in Texas, parents who have never been politically active had said, uh, you know what, enough is enough.
00:15:55.360They overthrew the, the existing school board leadership.
00:15:58.580They're now reforming those institutions.
00:16:00.960So it's not just that, uh, that we have as citizens, uh, a right to guide, shape, and, and control our public institutions.
00:16:10.960We actually have a duty to participate and the public institutions will seek their own way and their own sovereignty and their own domination over the public, unless the public spends a significant amount of energy engaging in the democratic process, organizing at the school board level, running for office when it's necessary, and then making a very clear line in the sand.
00:16:35.640If you transgress our, if you transgress our values, if you abuse our kids, uh, we will hold you accountable.
00:16:42.160We'll remove you from office and we will replace you with people who, uh, reflect the virtues that we want to transmit through our institutions.
00:16:50.620And what I'm seeing now is a awakening across the country of parents who are sick of the bureaucracy, deciding what happens to their kids.
00:16:58.960And they're taking control of these systems, uh, reforming them for the good, uh, and letting, uh, letting these, uh, bureaucrats know, uh, there is, uh, a line that you shall not cross or we will replace you.
00:17:14.260And compounding the complexity of this, uh, this conflict is corporate America and the place of business, which has traditionally been conservative,
00:17:25.080which has traditionally been behind the parents of the community and the traditional values in our school systems and all of the other institutions.
00:17:34.400But now suddenly business is moving left.
00:17:38.440Uh, it's confronted with corporate community responsibilities, whether it be, uh, equity and, uh, inclusion and diversity, whatever it may be.
00:17:49.200They're having a lot of material that is Marxist, uh, shoved down their throats, the national chamber of commerce, the business round table are in league through their HR departments, through their lobbying efforts with the left on all of this political correctness mandates, you name it.
00:18:11.520They do not look anything like a conservative group of, uh, uh, businesses anymore and companies.
00:18:18.240They look more like left-wing organizations that just happen to be a, uh, an enterprise your thoughts.
00:18:25.880Well, I think this is again, a question of organization.
00:18:29.840If you think about, uh, a CEO of a fortune 100 company, they get a lot of pressure from the media and from activists on the left, uh, to do their bidding,
00:18:39.900to follow the orthodoxies of, of political correctness or identity politics, and they don't have a similar pressure from the right.
00:18:47.700But we know, and even through some of my own reporting on these companies, we know that when we exert a countervailing pressure, we can have influence.
00:18:56.680I reported on a egregious, uh, so-called anti-racism program at Disney, uh, that taught employees that America was fundamentally racist and that they should atone for their internalized racial guilt, uh,
00:19:09.680within 72 hours, the company, uh, nuked the program from their internal servers completely.
00:19:15.620Um, I reported on American Express, uh, and forced the CEO of the company to be personally responding to emails for a few days, uh, defending the policy from angry customers.
00:19:27.880So we know, even through this small example, I can only do so much within my own individual bar, but we know that if we can replicate this on a bigger scale, conservatives can, uh, can leverage, uh, their voice, can leverage their, uh, their power, uh, to provide a counterbalancing force.
00:19:47.340And, and, and I think people, frankly, conservatives have rested on their laurels, believing that business was always on their side.
00:20:00.200Complicating the matter, as I said, uh, corporate America, uh, which has always been, if you will, uh, the critics would say in league, uh, with the country club Republicans, or as I would call them rhinos, uh, Republicans in name only.
00:20:16.460Are trying to create a, uh, uh, are trying to create a new image of themselves going into the 22 elections, that they're the party of working men and women, uh, as Donald Trump, President Trump, uh, led them forward to victory in 2016.
00:20:33.460But the truth of the matter is that Republicans in name only the establishment Republican party is in league with the same corporations, the same mindsets, and the same administrative state or deep state.
00:20:50.320In most cases, uh, uh, that are creating these, uh, these issues, these conflicts, uh, and not only financing, but in some cases, uh, enabling the assault on fundamental values and the fundamental way of life in this country.
00:21:07.380It is, I mean, it is an absolutely, uh, uphill battle.
00:21:13.100We're up against the most powerful institutions, uh, in the country that seem to be working together and playing from the same playbook.
00:21:20.860Uh, but ultimately we have to be optimistic because the vast mass of the American people, uh, still believes in the country.
00:21:30.440Uh, they still believe in our, uh, possibility, uh, and they still believe in those principles of, uh, strong families of, uh, uh, uh, citizen control of public institutions.
00:21:42.840Uh, and a, uh, a continuing unfolding of our national story towards those great principles of freedom and equality.
00:21:50.640And so we have to appeal to and mobilize this great base of the American people.
00:21:57.100And ultimately I'm confident because, uh, we've seen even in the last year, some major changes because even though we're up against institutions of great power, uh, the truth that we have, the truth that we've exposed, uh,
00:22:12.840can topple, uh, these paper tigers that rule the bureaucracies, uh, throughout our country.
00:22:18.860Uh, and I know that if enough of us, even a small band of us, uh, can come together, we can speak the truth, uh, we can remain, uh, fearless in the face of power.
00:22:28.640Um, we can topple them, uh, we can restore power back to the American citizen, uh, and we can tame, uh, these, these, these tyrannical bureaucratic authorities, uh,
00:22:41.020that threaten the American way of life.
00:22:47.060And when I say we, I'm talking about the American people, working men and women and their families, small business people can take control of their communities and, and, and eliminate, uh, this assault.
00:23:02.340Uh, I think, uh, I, I think absolutely, uh, rid it, not just simply push it back, but destroy it.
00:23:08.940And that's really, that is really the, the mission before us.
00:23:14.220Encouragingly, uh, a recent poll, uh, showed that three quarters, almost three quarters of parents surveyed are very concerned and disturbed by what is being taught in their children's, uh, schools.
00:23:28.780And I, I haven't seen a more encouraging poll on this issue, uh, in the last decade.
00:23:36.360And that I think should give everyone great, uh, great hope and, and considerable excitement to join the fight and to be certain, uh, for your children, your grandchildren, uh, that we win this fight.
00:23:57.660And I think, you know, it's one thing for the public to see, uh, some identity politics nonsense at the university or the federal government.
00:24:10.600But once people have woken up to the fact that the state bureaucracies and the critical race ideologues are actually going after your kids are going after the most vulnerable and impressionable members of our society.
00:24:27.580Uh, they crossed a line that is, uh, sacred to, uh, almost everyone in this country.
00:24:34.460You're trying to separate or create a wedge between parent and child.
00:24:39.160That's why we're seeing these numbers.
00:24:44.240Uh, that's why we're seeing people who have previously been apathetic or disengaged starting to participate in the political process.
00:24:51.580And, and I'm confident that this is just the beginning, uh, we've opened up a new domain for, uh, politics.
00:24:59.080We've opened up, uh, uh, the eyes of millions of people, uh, and as they get engaged this year and next year, I think we're going to see tremendous changes.
00:25:09.080I'm optimistic, I'm confident, uh, and I'm hoping that this is only, uh, the beginning of a long process of, uh, restoring, uh, the, the autonomy and sovereignty and authority of American families of all racial backgrounds of all political stripes against this cruel and, and dehumanizing, uh, state machine.
00:25:30.680I've always believed, Chris, that our public education system, I'm a product of public education, uh, is, is my wife, uh, and our children went to public schools.
00:25:43.040It is the great equalizer in our society.
00:25:47.180I don't think there's a stronger force for equality in this country than public education.
00:25:54.160It's given poor people an opportunity to demonstrate their talent and their ability, uh, to be rewarded with opportunity for over 200 years and to watch what we are letting happen, uh, to this great public education system is disgusting.
00:26:11.440Uh, and, and in some cases it's because of overly powerful teachers union, the NAA or the Federation of Teachers, uh, also the national school board association.
00:26:24.160It really works as a proxy for both, uh, of those left-wing, uh, teachers unions too often against the school board, uh, in lobbying and in representing, uh, the issues, uh, on Capitol Hill.
00:26:39.800We have to be very, very sophisticated and understand, uh, who the, who the enemies are in this fight and make certain that we bring them to heel.
00:26:51.100Uh, you get the last word here, Chris.
00:26:54.880What we're seeing in our country is, uh, many institutions that have been corrupted.
00:27:00.140I think teachers unions, uh, at the highest position among them and conservatives need to be exactly that sophisticated in how we fight, uh, sophisticated in our language that we use to fight, uh, and sophisticated in our strategies to, uh, undermine and, and disrupt the power of these institutions that aren't serving the public good.
00:27:21.620Uh, and I think we go straight for the teachers unions, uh, which create a cycle of corruption, uh, which don't put students and families first, uh, and we start there and we've already seen encouraging signs.
00:27:33.240We've actually shattered the national school boards association in recent months.
00:27:37.340Uh, we now have divided their state from their national organizations.
00:27:41.240We have state organizations that have denounced the national headquarters, entire states that have separated from the national organization.
00:27:48.360Uh, it's splintering because we put the spotlight on them.
00:27:51.620We've exposed their corruption and we've hammered at them every day.
00:27:55.060Uh, and so this is a model going forward, uh, in this great, uh, fight, this great quest, uh, to bring the teachers unions to heel and eventually abolish them from American life.
00:28:06.720And to win this fight, we're very fortunate to have Chris, uh, Chris Ruffo in the fight.
00:28:12.600He's been leading the fight, uh, for years and, uh, we owe you a great, uh, a great debt of gratitude.
00:28:19.620And as always, Chris, great talking with you.
00:28:34.320The world isn't any less dangerous than when we last got together.
00:28:39.800And there are signs that danger levels are rising at potential flashpoints around the globe, whether inspired by Iran, Russia, or China.
00:28:49.660And we do have to give some considerable credit to the enfeebled Biden White House and the effectless Euro pacifists who want to buy much of their oil and natural gas from Russia.
00:29:00.760And who obviously believe that they'll only have to pay for that energy in euros, Russian rubles, and dollars.
00:29:08.840That price will certainly go much higher in what has been for years a Cold War standoff between Russia and Europe could well in a flash break into a very hot confrontation.
00:29:20.680Only now is it occurring seemingly to the NATO nations, whose militaries are underfunded, undermanned, and under-equipped, that they could easily be overwhelmed by Russian forces now massed on the western border of Russia.
00:29:35.380Satellite imagery convincingly supports Ukraine claims of 100,000 Russian troops concentrated on the eastern border of Ukraine.
00:29:45.820NATO Secretary Stoltenberg sounds vaguely delusional as he warns Russia that they must be, are you ready for this word?
00:29:53.040They must be transparent about their military activities, whatever that means.
00:29:58.140It doesn't sound like a red line, does it? Or an ultimatum.
00:30:02.240It sounds more like Stoltenberg can't stand the suspense as we await Putin's next move.
00:30:08.940All the innovated Europeans can muster is a cry for transparency as Russian tanks warm up their diesel engines ready to rumble toward eastern Europe.
00:30:19.020And NATO naval ships, including those of the U.S., have so far avoided confrontation with the Russian Navy on the Black Sea.
00:30:28.440But it's clear all sides are engaged in a high-risk exercise that could result in an explosive conflict, whether on the Black Sea or in the skies above it.
00:30:38.840We'll take up the rising number of national security threats to the United States with Robert O'Neill, former Navy SEAL.
00:30:45.400Yes, that Robert O'Neill, who shot and killed Osama bin Laden just over 10 years ago.
00:31:46.720I'd like to have your thoughts, first of all, on what you know about right now, the readiness of our military.
00:31:52.140It's going through immense changes, as I think most Americans know.
00:31:57.940But the readiness of our military across all branches, in particular, the quality of this country's leadership, whether military or civilian.
00:32:05.960The readiness, I like to think, is always there because of the not so much junior leadership, but definitely not the senior leadership.
00:32:16.380I wouldn't say they're junior, just the middle-level officers and then the semi-senior enlisted.
00:32:21.740Because a lot of them have had their boots on the ground in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they get it.
00:32:27.400The problem is the senior leadership who's in charge, they're either going to get out and get into a political life or get appointed to their next star by someone in politics right now.
00:32:36.100So they need to toe the line as far as being woke right now is where they're at.
00:32:40.480The Marine Corps just recently came out.
00:32:42.380The Commandant of the Marine Corps just came out and said they're really going to overhaul the entire Marine Corps.
00:32:46.920In the same sentence, it was so we can concentrate on diversity and then find out about retention.
00:32:54.520And I was thinking, well, the question and answer are right there in the headline.
00:33:00.380Because the diversity thing, the woke thing, only matters to the senior leadership because of the political division.
00:33:05.700The men and women in the military, they're not thinking about diversity.
00:33:10.380They're thinking about why am I taking this online course about stuff when I should be on the range shooting, when I should be in the gym lifting, when we should be shooting, moving, and communicating.
00:34:23.600You know, we're getting our butt kicks in war games right now.
00:34:27.320Everything from friendly exercises with, like, the Royal Marines in the UK to combat-ready exercises where we get destroyed by Iran, of all people.
00:34:37.800And you can't even talk to some of these senior-level people because they're claiming to have defenses.
00:34:42.580It's like, yeah, well, we can shoot down an anti-aircraft carrier missile.
00:34:47.160Can you shoot down 1,000 of them at once?
00:34:49.500And they're taking their eye completely off the ball.
00:34:52.840You know, we got bogged down in Afghanistan to the point where everyone's just trying to make the next rank.
00:34:57.620And that's where some officers don't tell senior leaders the truth because they don't want to not get that job.
00:35:04.120So our eyes off the ball, we're concentrating on the wrong stuff.
00:35:07.300And if and when it comes to a war with China, it's going to be bad for us.
00:35:11.820And let's be clear, because the national left-wing media, and I don't know whether you can speak to this or not, but I have witnessed it over the years, has become far more dependent on the branches, whatever branch it is, for greater security so they can maintain openness and actually get some news out of the Marines or out of the Navy, the Air Force, whichever branch it is.
00:35:41.820So they choose not to press on one point or the other, whether it be, is there really enough ammunition for training exercises in the United States Army?
00:35:53.400We know the answer is no, there isn't.
00:36:05.480And the answer is, we're not making the ammunition.
00:36:08.460We have another supply chain disruption in this country that's affecting the readiness, in my judgment, at least, and I want to know yours, of our military.
00:36:32.440But someone somewhere will come up with how – there are places in Coronado, California, where Navy SEAL training, based on the water devilish SEAL training is.
00:36:41.260They knocked out – I don't know how much is a whole bunch of land we could have been using because of some domestic bumblebee.
00:36:49.880I'm probably wrong with what it was, but it's something that's silly that you can't get trained here because of, you know, some environmental protection agency restriction.
00:36:57.400And because of politicians, they're just – they're cutting us off at the knees.
00:37:01.000And I was back in 1996, you know, that I got out in 2012.
00:37:08.500And, I mean, a great example I have right now is watching the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley.
00:37:12.360And when we left Afghanistan and just the arrogance of, well, you know, you can't touch us, whatever – the way that I put it is the naval football team in Annapolis, Naval Academy, they went 0-2.
00:37:24.980They immediately fired their offensive coordinator.
00:37:27.120We get 13 people killed in a very predictable and preventable attack in the blink of an eye.
00:37:31.060Not a person gets reprimanded except the one officer who asked for accountability.
00:38:03.500He has lied outright to the United States Congress.
00:38:07.020He continues to brag that he not only called the counterparts in the PLA of Communist China to warn them that there is some instability in the upper levels of government and that we might attack.
00:38:23.920He said he would do it all over again.
00:38:34.940And that's – I mean that's all because they're fragile egos.
00:38:36.940Once you get to a certain level of being a senior officer, I would say show me a four-star general and I will show you a minimum of 11 people who are really good at kissing butt.
00:38:45.460And they're so fragile because when – when – when – when – you know, if I'm in the military and I'm at the point where I'm not carrying my own bags,
00:38:52.640maybe I should be taking advice from some junior enlisted people, you're going to get better advice from an E-5 in the Marine Corps on the ground than you are, you know, a lieutenant general because the general below him is telling him just what he wants to hear.
00:39:32.340And watching a year or two when Mark Milley's out and he's working for one of these major contractors, isn't it convenient that we left so much stuff behind in Afghanistan that now we just need to make it again?
00:39:41.320There's a couple hundred million dollar contract that I'm going to broker.
00:39:45.640You know, we haven't won a war since World War II.
00:39:50.220And if you want to lose, which we have, involve these high-ranking officers, people in suits on the beltway, and get a bunch of lawyers involved, you're going to lose the war.
00:40:04.360And Milley, as he sits atop the military in this country, sits atop it still, despite those 13 Marines who died in Kabul, that disastrous extrication from Kabul.
00:40:21.220It turned out to be a disaster, a catastrophe that we could never have imagined.
00:40:25.980And Milley stayed at the top, as where he is today.
00:40:29.840The Commandant, as you pointed out, of the Marine Corps, is now talking about diversity and equity and reflecting the population in the makeup of the United States Marine Corps.
00:40:43.280I've got news for the Commandant and the rest of the people who lead this military.
00:40:48.900This country has never had a military that reflect the population.
00:40:54.320We've had patriots who stand up and join the Marine Corps and every other branch of the service to defend the nation and to serve the nation.
00:41:04.740And that has generally been, by the way, folks from the West and from the southeastern part of the United States predominantly.
00:41:13.120And you can break it down ethically or demographically.
00:41:16.180And by the way, you'll see a lot of Scots-Irish in there as well as you go through the mix.
00:41:23.980And there is no intellectual integrity and there is no sense of fact or commitment to fact when our military officers, and I'm talking about the general staff, speak to the American people almost without exception.
00:41:45.580I think because the military relies so much on the funding that comes from the suits and the beltway that they know it's free reign for them to do social experiments on the military because you have to do what you're told.
00:42:02.860I mean, even with the vaccines, you know, they're punishing people.
00:42:05.680They were talking about dishonorable discharge for not getting a vaccine.
00:42:08.500Now, I mean, I was different when I was there when we were invading Iraq in 2003.
00:42:13.600They were making us all get smallpox and anthrax.
00:42:16.100And I got them just because I wanted to fight.
00:42:18.120Like, you know, I'm young and tough and invincible.
00:42:21.540But, you know, I look back now and I'm like, there are people high up in that administration that had a lot of stock in those companies that are forcing us to take their anthrax.
00:42:31.880And it was never – anthrax was never a problem because it turns out there were no weapons of mass destruction.
00:42:36.160And it's one of those things with Iraq.
00:42:37.940It's like, okay, you know, we never should have invaded, but we also shouldn't have left as quickly as we did.
00:42:42.940And it's something that they have a problem with that I was a big believer in a lot of the missions I was in in real combat where it doesn't matter how and why we got here.
00:43:09.380I mean, it's one – it's, again, too, and this has been said time and time again, and I've got to bring politicians to do it because they're involved with combat.
00:43:15.180It's like I don't really have a problem with the very successful businessman who's already a millionaire going into Congress.
00:43:20.920The problem I have is with someone that doesn't have any money, and all of a sudden they become a millionaire in Congress.
00:43:29.680It seems – and I can't speak to this with great certainty, but I have the sense that the people you're describing, that is, those who walked in with a certain amount of money would walk out with millions.
00:43:40.060I think that's the larger sample size in the U.S. Congress, and as you say, it's abominable.
00:43:48.920And you have to tell the party line, if you want to get advanced – and everyone should want to get advanced, but once you start speaking out, you're going to get canceled.
00:43:56.280That's the same thing in the military.
00:43:57.140I mean, it's getting worse, but now just experimenting on these people that – I mean, you know, we have people in the military who can't tell time without looking at their iPhone, let alone use a map and compass.
00:44:10.760And I try to tell – I mean, I've talked to senior guys before, even, you know, with Afghanistan, when we should have gotten out.
00:44:16.280But I said, well, what if – what happens when the electricity turns off in electronic warfare?
00:44:37.420And I started bringing up how – well, remember when we kind of screwed them over when we went into Kuwait and left Saddam to kill them, who was a Sunni?
00:44:44.540And they said, oh, the Shia are going to rise up.
00:44:46.280And me and the tactical leaders are like, OK, what if they don't?
00:45:11.780And by the way, West Point has a terrific warrior's curricula that is magnificent and great warriors lead much of that teaching.
00:45:24.020But they don't teach what happens in failure, what has caused failure, what happened in Afghanistan, what happened in the early days of the Korean War, and how could we get into so much trouble so quickly without understanding what we're doing?
00:46:07.200But, you know, in order to get to that fine tip of the spear as far as brass on your shoulder, you need to say the right things.
00:46:11.760And what we were talking about, one of the guys I was speaking with was a colonel, Green Beret, and when he said the problem, even at the war college, they claim that all they're teaching is leadership, and that's fine, leadership in the hierarchy, but you're not teaching winning, and you're not teaching losing.
00:46:29.600And it's so obvious because, you know, you do win from success sometimes, but you should always learn from failure.
00:46:36.140Failure is the description, and I think we have to apply to the withdrawal of the United States forces from Afghanistan, the way we left.
00:46:46.840I can't imagine people in that region ever forgetting what the United States did.
00:46:55.000Your thoughts about that and the absence of any accountability, and how many people do you understand?
00:47:03.460How many Americans and how many of our allies have we left to the mercy of the Taliban and ISIS?
00:47:10.160Well, just because of what we've done with the Taliban and ISIS, we've also left Taiwan out with China.
00:47:16.380They know we're not going to defend them.
00:47:20.280I was talking to some of my guys that were on the bin Laden raid, and over the conversation, we said, you know, because the guys that planned it, our group of tactical guys came up with the best plan,
00:47:30.280which, by the way, the plan didn't work because a helicopter crashed, but we decided if we took that same team and tried to come up with what's the worst possible way to leave Afghanistan, that's exactly what we would have done, the worst way.
00:47:42.080And it's so bad to the point that even with the Taliban, when they had those poor soldiers, Marines, and airmen out there, and we're watching it like they're going to send a suicide bomber in,
00:47:52.840and because they're pretty much lying to us about the difference between the Haqqani Network Taliban and ISIS, they're going to have the Taliban just say, oh, that was ISIS.
00:48:00.120It's like, are you kidding me right now?
00:48:02.340And then you get bad intel on an airstrike later where you kill an entire family.
00:48:06.880All they were doing was getting water for the family, but we got single-source intelligence, yeah, because it was someone with a blood feud against them,
00:48:12.600or the Taliban saying, watch what we can make these idiot Americans do.
00:48:15.680We can make them kill an innocent family.
00:48:17.160But, and he just, I mean, I wouldn't, if I was over there, I mean, you know, as opposed to just running for one of the stands up to the north,
00:48:24.300I'm never working with the Americans, not in the short, not now, maybe, who knows?
00:48:29.620But it's, I mean, it was a complete intelligence failure, and again, not on the intel part,
00:48:33.640because the three-letter agency people, they said what's going to happen, and, you know, they had to get out of there, too.
00:48:39.780And it's just, someone's up above, just like, well, President Biden sure wants to get out of here by the 20th anniversary of 9-11, and we better do it.
00:48:46.720And they also realized, because we're not even really talking about those 13 people who were killed anymore.
00:48:51.220We're not talking about how many Americans we left behind.
00:48:53.500And they knew that if, you know, we'll forget about it by the 20th anniversary of 9-11, we'll certainly forget about it by the midterms next year.
00:48:59.700Well, I'll guarantee you this, the Great America Show will not be forgetting, Rob.
00:49:05.200And I think there are a lot of people who are going to surprise many of our friends in Washington by not forgetting and insisting on people being held to account for what was an utter catastrophe.
00:49:20.940It's, let's turn to, if we may, to Taiwan.
00:49:28.760We just have heard the PLA and the CCP together threaten Australia that if they were to in any way defend Taiwan,
00:49:40.160when the Chinese ultimately decide to invade Taiwan and end their independence, their sovereignty, that they will be attacked hard, as the Chinese communists put it.
00:49:52.880Your thoughts about the level of our commitment and our level of capability to meet that commitment?
00:50:01.680And if given, we're designed to beat, obviously, naval forces, but our Marine Corps and our Army and Air Force are designed to beat large, we're designed to beat large armies.
00:50:11.880If we had the commitment, which we've proven that we don't, we'd be fine, because all you need right now is to have a couple of amphib ships in Taiwan doing exercises,
00:50:21.480just to have American boots on the ground to prove that we're willing to back them, which we don't have.
00:50:24.660We just had that debacle with the submarine deal between France and Australia's trying to get subs, because it could be coming to them, because they're the closest.
00:50:33.380And we simply have a president who says, oh, I didn't know.
00:50:51.580And there's a pretty rocky history between Japan and China.
00:50:56.940And so you're talking about some pretty serious stuff.
00:50:58.600And the way that we defeat this kind of stuff is strength through force.
00:51:03.620It's deterrence, forward defense and alliance solidarity.
00:51:06.960And we're just, we're giving all of that up for political gains of a few individuals and then because of political correctness.
00:51:14.860They don't want to, we used to have to fill out a shooter statement for killing Al-Qaeda and make some Afghans write a statement for us and then sign it.
00:51:25.180They couldn't even sign their own name.
00:51:53.620What was done by special forces and the CIA and the other intelligence agencies in Afghanistan in 2000, from 2001 to 2002 is a textbook for how to avoid the, what became the doctrine of the U.S. military, the so-called long war.
00:52:12.920I have to ask you, David Petraeus, obviously the author of that, I have said so many years that I have never heard of anything so stupid in my life as the doctrine of long war.
00:52:27.020Every general, everyone I've ever known has always said that the purpose is to kill the enemy and to do so as quickly as possible to achieve the objective.
00:52:37.500And here we are with a doctrine that is really just rationalization of incompetence and pathetic leadership on the part of the U.S. military, in my opinion.
00:53:28.840Now, those same guys, the longer we have them, they go to Guantanamo Bay.
00:53:33.300Now, all of a sudden, they got U.S. attorneys and JAG officers defending them.
00:53:37.360They get 23 hours a day outside in the sun playing soccer, realizing that we're going to win this fight because they're going to get us back to the jihad eventually.
00:53:46.420But for now, I'll enjoy this Cuban sunshine because the longer you're involved, the more they see.
00:53:51.360And the more they see, it's not just, I mean, Al-Qaeda and Taliban aren't the only ones who see how stupid we are.
00:53:58.460Russia and China are watching, and they're doing everything they can behind the scenes to make sure that they just drag it.
00:54:03.540We did it to them when they were fighting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and we're sending stuff to Pakistan, who, another play, that's an entirely different episode.
00:54:10.800But the longer you're in there, the more they read you, and you're going to do worse, especially than you get a public, like we've proven in Vietnam.
00:54:17.880All of a sudden, these college kids who don't know anything except what they've been taught by some dude in the classroom that's never done anything.
00:54:23.800You know, the uprising of the streets and all this stuff, and we have no choice but to back.
00:54:26.820It's just that you can tell, even by the way I'm talking right now, I can hear myself bogging my arguments down.