Former Marine Stuart Scheller speaks out on the anniversary of the loss of 13 service members in the 2011 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Fallujah, Afghanistan, and the lack of accountability for the way the incident was handled.
00:01:36.520But she does have a lot of power and we're going to get an update to you on how the vaccine mandates are looking.
00:01:44.380Do we think they're going to fare well or do we think they're going to be struck down?
00:01:48.040I've got some thoughts and we're going to be joined by Robert Barnes with some legal analysis just a bit.
00:01:53.300First, however, I'm excited to be joined today by a special guest.
00:01:57.740First, now former Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller is here with us today and he's going to talk to us for the first time about his experience and speaking out about the debacle in Afghanistan
00:02:10.360and about the fact that he is now officially the only, the only person to be held responsible for that nightmare.
00:02:18.620Not a senior officer has been disciplined, has been fired, has been held to account for the way that was handled.
00:02:25.800Just now, again, former Marine Lieutenant Colonel Scheller, who had the nerve to speak out about it and say, this is wrong.
00:02:58.080We saw speeches by politicians, the vice president, the president, members of Congress.
00:03:03.320We have a congressional investigation underway into how it happened.
00:03:07.240We saw lawmakers invited to speak about their, how they were personally affected by this riot.
00:03:14.320What are the chances we're going to see anything close to that on the anniversary of the deaths of those 13 service members in August of 2022?
00:03:26.100When we see, do you think a year from that debacle, we're going to see anything like that sort of reverence for a solemn event from these same players?
00:03:35.540No, Megan, the point you're making is obviously we won't.
00:03:39.560We've lost thousands of service members over the last 20 years.
00:03:44.060But I think, you know, the reason you're having me on right now and the reason this conversation is so important is not only to remember those 13 service members that lost their lives, but hopefully we can have conversations that prevent putting service members in situations like that and hopefully prevent the next loss of life that is preventable.
00:04:02.660Right. It seems to me that the members of Congress and the administration are very quick to spend the day marking, marking an occasion that makes Republicans look bad.
00:04:15.000But when it would be something that would hold them to account, that would remind people of their own malfeasance, I don't think we can expect anything like that.
00:04:22.760And I think it goes to the very point you've been making, which is who has been held accountable, who where is the administration's desire to hold someone accountable, not just for the death of those 13 service members, but of for the entire debacle and the way it went down.
00:04:40.240So let's start at the beginning for you and just help us get to know you since we've we covered you a lot while you were in the brig for having the nerve to speak out.
00:04:48.720But this is my first chance getting to talk to you. How old were you when you joined the Marine Corps?
00:04:55.080Twenty three. I joined after college. I graduated from the University of Cincinnati with an accounting degree.
00:05:00.120At the time, I thought I was going to go be an FBI agent and I was working as an accountant and that was in 2004.
00:05:06.980So the war was going on. I saw the Marines on TV and I just had a call to serve to go have an opportunity to be a leader in combat.
00:05:14.520So in 2004 is when I called up my Marine recruiting office.
00:05:18.980Wow. I always I always have even a greater respect for somebody who signs up to serve in the middle of a war and in particular one that wasn't going very well back then.
00:05:28.700So, I mean, it takes a lot of guts, takes a lot of patriotism. Do you come from a military family?
00:05:34.720No, I don't. My grandfather did land in Normandy when he was 18.
00:05:39.700He was only like third generation American. He's a German-American.
00:05:45.400And so they actually didn't trust him. And he was in like the third wave and he ended up getting out.
00:05:49.340But he went into the federal service. He was a U.S. Marshal. I had an uncle that was in the FBI.
00:05:53.920And so they kind of pushed me towards being, you know, serving my country.
00:05:57.960And that's why I got the accounting degree. I was following in his footsteps.
00:06:01.000So my father was an insurance salesman. I've got two brothers and a sister and none of them are in the military.
00:06:05.140So I was really only the first one in a couple of generations that joined the military.
00:06:09.820Nobody that I knew was in the Marine Corps, but I pursued it because it seemed to me like a good challenge.
00:06:14.920And I was always an athlete and I liked being a part of teams. And I loved America.
00:06:18.820I loved Americans. And it was something that I wanted to do to challenge myself.
00:07:48.980I was in Egypt when the president got put in prison and Al-Sisi took over and I had to evacuate out of there and did a bunch of bilateral training operations.
00:07:57.840And then I did a UDP. They put Marines in the Pacific and Okinawa to be part of the war plans if we were ever to go to war with North Korea.
00:08:07.280And so we were part of that planning. And then we went to Korea and a couple other places.
00:08:11.080So five total deployments is my deployment background.
00:08:15.300Meanwhile, you get married. You have a few children, right? How many kids?
00:08:21.740I have three boys, 11, 9, and 7. I got married.
00:08:25.360I was actually, I was dating her as a senior in college.
00:08:28.320We got married within six months of me being in the Marine Corps.
00:09:20.040Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. It's in Jacksonville. It's just above Wilmington, North Carolina.
00:09:24.040Yeah, yeah, sure. I've been down there. OK, so you decide to to issue a post.
00:09:32.320And where did you on social media? I think it was Facebook. Was that where you primarily were posting?
00:09:38.040I had I had two social media platforms. It was Facebook and LinkedIn.
00:09:42.520And most military officers don't have social media. In fact, I didn't have social media until 2018.
00:09:47.820But I had launched a business as a major. And because I had launched that business, I needed social media.
00:09:53.320So I had a couple thousand followers on each platform. I think I had just enough to kind of light the fire when I ended up posting what I did.
00:10:00.740So, yeah, it was Facebook and LinkedIn were the two platforms.
00:10:04.840And the first post was in August. And was it before or after the death of the 13 service personnel?
00:10:12.520It was the same day. So I was in my office. You got to understand it. I didn't just make that decision that day.
00:10:18.580I mean, this is something that had been building up. So I have a master's in military science.
00:10:24.060I specialize my thesis on foreign diplomacy. I've been thinking about how we could do this more effectively for a long time.
00:10:30.600Obviously, I have the experiences in the countries where I saw some things that we did that were highly ineffective.
00:10:35.200And then, you know, in current day, I was watching the Afghanistan fallout real time on social media, on the news.
00:10:43.280And I was getting frustrated. And then my senior leaders were making messages that basically said, go to the therapist if you're struggling.
00:10:50.000But they weren't accepting accountability as far as I saw it.
00:10:54.080And so when the deaths happened, you got to also understand it was the unit one eight was my first unit.
00:11:00.720That was the unit I went to Ramadi with. My best friend got hit with the suicide vest.
00:11:04.600It was very personal for me. Also, when I was the operations officer, they were in my regiment.
00:11:09.880I'm the one that trained, manned, equipped them and sent them out on deployment from what a higher headquarters does.
00:11:15.380Obviously, they do all the training themselves. But from a higher headquarters, like I knew everybody in that unit.
00:11:19.740And so when it happened, I just got to a place where I knew without a doubt that no senior leaders were held accountable.
00:11:27.060And I knew based on all my experiences that this was very preventable.
00:11:31.440And so I just felt like no one else is going to address this.
00:11:35.260And I think a lot of American people don't understand the true fundamental problems that are plaguing the military.
00:11:41.000And I know you started the interview with January 6th and political.
00:11:45.160And I know there is some politicalization in the military.
00:11:48.300But the truth is the systemic problems go, you know, through both parties.
00:11:53.520Yeah. The problem facing the military in the White House.
00:11:58.440Yes. And so I just want to make sure that we understand that people have been lionizing and saying thank you for so long because they want to be supportive.
00:12:07.060And we appreciate that. But because of the lack of criticism, it's just created these problems that nobody was addressing.
00:12:14.400So that led me to the day of the attack.
00:12:17.160I posted a video and the takeaway from the video was, you know, you abandoned Bagram Air Base.
00:12:36.760Let's let's take a look at some of that.
00:12:38.600Here's soundbite one, which is an excerpt from Stuart's video, August 26, 2021.
00:12:45.200I'm not saying we've got to be in the in Afghanistan forever.
00:12:48.480But I am saying, did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, hey, it's a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, the strategic air barriers, before we evacuate everyone?
00:13:41.820There's a soundbite in the middle that says, you know, I know I'm jeopardizing my family, my retirement, my job.
00:13:48.660And so, I mean, I articulated even in the video that I had thought through it.
00:13:52.160But even after I made that video, I drove back to my house, hadn't posted it, and was pacing around my house, deciding whether or not I really wanted to go down that route because I knew how life-changing it would be.
00:14:04.280But like I said, this is just very personal.
00:14:07.260I've spent my whole adult life thinking, living this.
00:14:10.700And there just wasn't anything that was more important.
00:14:13.080And so, you know, with a click of that button, you post it, and then it kind of took off from there.
00:14:18.360I know you felt like nobody was really calling them out, demanding accountability within the military.
00:14:25.920Outside of the military, there were many people doing it, right?
00:14:29.160It was half the country who was outraged, and even Democrats, and even some of the mainstream press that would normally be more protective of President Biden were not as protective in the wake of all of this.
00:14:48.360Well, first of all, even though, let's just use Congress, for example, all got opportunities to use their soundbites of anger towards the generals, they didn't do anything.
00:15:01.820Each one of those apolitical Congress people that demanded accountability, six days previous to that congressional testimony to the three generals,
00:15:11.180they approved one of the largest DOD budgets, and nobody stood against the DOD budget and demanded metrics of effectiveness or accountability, because that would have taken courage.
00:15:20.860So it was easy to tap into the people's anger, but it was much harder to actually use the leverage of control that they have against the DOD budget.
00:15:30.980And so, you know, I get it, people in the aftermath are going to talk about it, but then the news cycle is going to move on and nothing happens, i.e. Vietnam.
00:15:39.360So these problems have plagued us post-World War II, and quite honestly, nobody is doing anything.
00:15:46.560And I thought a guy in uniform with the experiences that I have, with the education that I have, it was very important to start this conversation.
00:15:55.120And I'm one of these guys that's not going to let it go.
00:15:56.640You know, once I'm in the fight, I'm going to fight to the end, and I'm going to make sure that we bring the changes that are needed,
00:16:02.480because quite honestly, all those people that talked about it right after the fact, they're on the talking about other things.
00:16:08.520And here I am still doing the rounds, because this is still very important, and these are problems that need to be fixed.
00:17:11.540But the bottom line is all these professional publications are mostly controlled by retired generals.
00:17:16.720And even the ones that aren't, my question would be to all the people in these professional publications, how many of those articles have prevented failure over the last 60 years?
00:17:25.820So if we keep doing the same thing and we keep having the same failures, at what point do we do something differently?
00:17:31.660What about, you know, I'm not in the military, but I know that obviously the whole thing requires people to follow orders, people to respect command.
00:17:42.960And so that's sort of what they seem to rely on.
00:17:45.620Like, you didn't follow orders to stop doing this.
00:17:48.180You were disrespectful of senior officers and so on.
00:17:51.060And that there's a reason, you know, it's like the movie, A Few Good Men, you know, maybe you only get to follow the orders that, you know, really mean something.
00:17:59.800And the smaller orders you can ignore.
00:18:01.960And of course, it's like, wait, follow orders or people die.
00:18:30.460And I should have been held accountable.
00:18:32.100But to say that we can't have this open conversation, to me, it just doesn't make sense.
00:18:38.600If everyone agrees with what I say, but then remains quiet, the system might actually implode faster.
00:18:45.420If you actually care about the system and you agree with the content of my statements, you have a moral obligation to speak up, in my opinion.
00:18:53.360Yeah, listen, it's fascinating to hear you say all this.
00:19:00.540You know, we've had people coming on saying, no, we shouldn't have done it.
00:19:03.640And more than that, people who are saying good for him, someone needed to.
00:19:08.420And this was such an extraordinary circumstance where you had all the top generals, all the secretary of defense and, you know, all the players, chairman of the Joint Chiefs coming out there and sort of uniformly telling us this was going well and that it was the right call and that they were handling it well.
00:19:27.240And it was like, you know, gaslighting, to use an overused term.
00:20:53.860I made a post that thanked the Marine Corps and I understood what was happening.
00:20:57.800But then I got on my social media when I made that post thanking everybody and I saw some old bosses had got on my public platform and made the statement, if Stuart Scheller was honorable, he would resign.
00:21:10.360And that's kind of where I diverged ways, because if they were willing to relieve me within 12 hours, no investigation.
00:21:17.180And then I had previous mentors publicly attacking me, not identifying that they were my previous boss or that they knew me, but just calling me out.
00:21:26.300I got to a place where I was like, I don't know if this organization cares about me as much as I care about them.
00:23:43.120You need patriots that are going to go out there and commit violence when evil is not listening to reason.
00:23:47.740So they would later suggest, you know, you were suggesting revolution.
00:23:53.740There was another quote about that and that you wanted sort of an uprising, a revolution within the United States, violence against command and so on.
00:24:01.660And you tell me whether that's what you meant.
00:24:04.980I mean, I never stated that I wanted a violent overthrow of the government.
00:24:09.860I don't feel like I ever even came close to that.
00:24:11.900In fact, some of my posts, I went on to clarify because people were saying that, Kelly, and I said in one loud voice in a constitutional manner.
00:24:19.100I went on to quote the Declaration of Independence that says the power of the government comes from the people.
00:24:24.220And if the government no longer serves the interests of the people, it's the people's obligation to throw off that form of government.
00:24:30.100And people were calling me a violent extremist.
00:24:33.180And I was like, look how far we've come, guys.
00:24:35.540I'm quoting our foundational document, like quoting it.
00:24:39.400And you're calling me a violent extremist.
00:25:00.540And, you know, I wish some of those teachers were in Afghanistan teaching to see the depths of their misguided worldview.
00:25:07.640And you don't want to use violence, but you need to have strength so that you can prevent evil out there.
00:25:15.200Because evil doesn't always just listen to your views that violence isn't the answer.
00:25:19.460So no one is seeking violence, but you need to have the capability to use it if evil isn't listening.
00:25:25.160Was the point that we needed to have some sort of residual force in Afghanistan?
00:25:30.280No, I don't think – I think where we got wrong over the last 20 years was fighting the counterinsurgency.
00:25:39.180I mean, we've celebrated the generals of the last two decades was counterinsurgency.
00:25:45.220And the secret to counterinsurgency is to not get involved in an insurgency in the first place.
00:25:52.120So what happened is all our service members have won every single battle on the tactical level,
00:25:56.980but our senior leaders can't figure out how to achieve success on the operational through the strategic level.
00:26:03.080And part of that is their willingness to engage in these insurgencies or to think they can export democracy or an American view on another population that just doesn't see the world through the same lens.
00:26:18.420So I don't think we should have been in Afghanistan forever, but to your earlier point about the senior leaders gaslighting about how well it was going,
00:26:26.000it very quickly went from a withdrawal to an evacuation.
00:26:29.880And it went to an evacuation because they poorly planned the withdrawal.
00:26:33.920I don't think we should have had people in Afghanistan forever,
00:26:36.460but I think I deserve senior leaders that are competent and capable enough to plan a withdrawal absent of a PR headline to have everyone out by September 11th,
00:26:45.420if it means protecting our service members to get them out of there safely because you had them over there fighting an insurgency for 20 years that obviously wasn't effective.
00:26:54.240You know, Rob O'Neill came on the program and said something very similar.
00:26:59.000It was saying, obviously, for the listeners who don't know, the guy who shot bin Laden, former Navy SEAL.
00:27:04.820And he he was making the same point that we have these leaders of the military would never denigrate the service personnel themselves.
00:27:11.820But the leaders, he said something similar to you to the effect of they're very good at staying in power and they're very bad at winning wars.
00:27:18.560And I know you one of your points was we need to fire more of these generals.
00:27:22.600We need to start firing leaders and understanding that those who managed to make it to the top now may be these great sort of diplomats or butt kissers.
00:27:32.140That's not necessarily who we want commanding troops.
00:27:34.240And it's one of the reasons why we're not winning wars anymore.
00:28:05.620So you're one of your biggest beefs was the fact that we gave up Bagram Air Base and you want accountability for the person who made that decision, which obviously even the lay person.
00:28:16.340Here in America could see, boy, it's a problem that we don't control an air base like that one anymore.
00:28:23.500As we see the Taliban take over what's left and we were not in control and we were begging them for permission to get in and out and to evacuate people.
00:28:32.280And we actually wound up leaving people behind.
00:28:34.940We would later claim our administration would tell us everybody who wanted to get out, did get out.
00:28:50.100It is it's hard to even fathom if you've never been there, how big and important and critical this was.
00:28:55.720You could have done that whole evacuation and maintain security and never had a problem.
00:29:00.480The arguments right now, I know the operational planners that were over there when they submitted plans to the National Security Council and Biden's administration, they submitted plans to maintain Bagram.
00:29:12.480The decision was made by President Biden, the National Security Council to close down Bagram because of they wanted to shrink the force in Afghanistan very quickly.
00:29:21.780And even in the general's testimony, they all stated we wanted to keep twenty five hundred and that was shot down.
00:29:27.520And the reason that twenty five hundred was so significant, significant is because they were saying had they had that force number, they would have been able to maintain Bagram Air Base.
00:29:36.520But because that was shot down, they felt the best course of action was to shrink into Kabul airfield.
00:29:41.340But even with that plan, they still didn't fully appreciate the speed with which the Taliban could advance into Kabul.
00:29:48.200So my position is once the generals, General McKenzie specifically, submitted the plan, it's his responsibility to make.
00:29:58.560He was CENTCOM commander. He oversaw Afghanistan.
00:30:01.700That's right. He's the CENTCOM combatant commander, General Frank McKenzie.
00:30:05.880He's the one, in my opinion, that's ultimately responsible.
00:30:08.760So when he recommended to the president that we should have twenty five hundred troops,
00:30:12.680there is a responsibility for the military advisor to get the boss to take his plan.
00:30:17.300But he can't control that. Right. So he failed in that soft diplomacy on figuring out how to get him to take his plan.
00:30:24.140So at that point, General McKenzie had a choice. He could have resigned because if he thought, all right, here's the restraints on my plan.
00:30:31.100And I can't execute this out without a speedy advance by the Taliban and getting people killed.
00:30:36.080Then he had a moral responsibility to resign if that's what he thought.
00:30:39.600But he didn't do that. So he obviously thought based on the restraints that he had, he could still pull off the plan.
00:30:45.320And in my opinion, at that point, he is responsible.
00:30:49.040He is the military guy that's in charge of that plan, doing the withdrawal.
00:30:53.700He doesn't get to go back after the fact, which is what he did, and say, no, I told the president twenty five hundred and he didn't listen to me.
00:31:00.500Well, you didn't resign, did you, Frank? And you didn't get him to agree to your plan, did you, Frank?
00:31:04.580So guess what? You're responsible at this point.
00:31:08.600And so it just kind of breaks my heart that this is where we're at, where we're looking at these general officers.
00:31:12.920Their plans are obviously failing and we don't have anyone saying, hey, we messed this up.
00:31:18.140Mm hmm. What we had instead was the commander in chief looking at us over and over, you know, leading up to this saying, don't worry, it's good.
00:31:25.000But don't worry that the Taliban is not going to take over.
00:31:27.640The Afghan National Army has got this.
00:31:29.480There's nothing to fear. And then when it all started to fall apart, as we mentioned, Biden looking into the camera and saying that this mission was an extraordinary success, extraordinary success.
00:31:40.860While you've got Afghan service members of ours, of our military who have served in Afghanistan in tears and and calling suicide hotlines and wondering what the hell was this for?
00:31:52.860Why did I go over there? Why did I lose my buddies?
00:31:55.760Why? Like the what you one of the things you complained about was you were effectively told by leadership within the military.
00:32:03.940It was worth it. Go lean on your buddies and your families if you're feeling bad, but just trust us.
00:32:11.940It was worth it. And you you were like not good enough.
00:32:46.780And so after Vietnam, the story told in the military today is that the generals had to fix the service.
00:32:54.420The generals had to clean up draft class, the drug use, and they never went back and addressed the operational strategic failures in Vietnam.
00:33:02.240There was many mistakes that were made by general officers and none of them were held accountable back then.
00:33:09.040They're focusing on tactical fixes to the problem.
00:33:11.520When we've won every tactical battle, no one is addressing the breakdown at the operational and strategic level, which is the four star general level.
00:33:18.800And those people need to be held accountable.
00:33:20.560And to go back to the combatant commander, the CENTCOM commander, General McKenzie, I just I've been on a gag order for four months.
00:33:27.220So I haven't been able to fully articulate some of these points.
00:33:30.600Just two days ago, after I started doing the interviews, the White House came out and said that General McKenzie was going to be replaced this spring by another army general.
00:33:40.740And the timing of it, it seems very coincidental to me that this guy is now racing to the exits that I'm going out and pointing out to everyone that he should be held accountable.
00:33:48.260Hmm. Do you think I mean, do you think he's being pushed out because it just doesn't seem possible that Joe Biden would be blaming anyone other than himself for the outcome?
00:36:12.760And I think even if General McKenzie goes off into retirement and takes a board director job somewhere and gets his honorable, at the end of the day, he and I will see each other again and look eye to eye.
00:36:23.500And I feel like I'll be standing taller at that point.
00:36:26.440Yeah, I honestly, I mean, you you may have broken some rules, but you did not break any code of honor.
00:36:33.760I mean, that just seems so clear to me.
00:36:36.560And and yet the Marine Corps appears to have in coming after you.
00:36:43.020They betrayed you, as I understand it.
00:36:45.780And I want you to help me fill in the blanks here.
00:36:48.660But Colonel General Hines, the Marine judge who oversaw your trial, was very critical of how the Marine Corps handled your case.
00:36:56.960First of all, he rejected the prosecution's request for further punishment.
00:37:14.860And then he said the combination of your pretrial confinement, with which he was not happy, along with alleged leaks to the press by the Marine Corps about you, raised the specter of unlawful command influence over you.
00:37:32.480And so to me, it sounds like the judge was very much on your side when it came to the fact that though you may have broken these rules, you were treated unfairly by your own command.
00:37:42.480So what did they leak to the press about you?
00:37:48.500I'll go back to the leak press thing that the judge, Colonel Hines, in my opinion, didn't believe that I was guilty or he thought legally I could have beat the charges based on the undue command influence.
00:37:59.080But you've got to understand it wasn't a, you know, somewhere in the middle is a binary choice.
00:38:04.220When I was in jail, they offered me a special court martial with five charges.
00:38:09.040I plead guilty to all five charges or I go to general court martial and I tried to beat all of them.
00:38:14.140And I do believe that I could have beat all five of those charges.
00:38:17.140But again, the whole point of this was my message.
00:38:21.800And I do feel like deep down I broke some rules.
00:38:24.740So if I were to go to general court martial and beat some of these or all of them on legal technicalities, even though I did break the rules, but they had a disproportionate response.
00:38:34.740Therefore, I can get off of the charges.
00:38:37.180It seemed like it would take away from my message.
00:38:39.700And so I agreed to plead guilty at special on all five charges.
00:38:43.720But to your point, the judge was like painstakingly going through and making sure that I understood everything that had happened to me and that why I was pleading guilty, because it was clear he didn't want me to plead guilty.
00:38:59.540The Marine Corps did, the week before my trial, leak my full command investigation to a publication.
00:39:08.800And in the in the investigation, they put my medical record.
00:39:13.020So I don't know if they selectively leaked pieces, but the the publication stated they had my full investigation, which includes my medical records, which is obviously a huge deal.
00:39:28.560And so the judge scolded them for that.
00:39:31.080And so then they did another investigation on my leaked investigation.
00:39:35.740And so then I asked for that investigation and they told me, no, they're like, you can go through Freedom of Information Act to get that investigation.
00:39:43.320I was like, let me just get this straight.
00:39:45.360You created another investigation for how you improperly leaked last investigation.
00:39:50.720It is completely about me, but I can't get it unless I go through Freedom of Information Act.
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00:41:47.280And if you want to, while you're there, scroll down.
00:41:49.820You'll see our full archives, more than 230 shows, including some very powerful shows last August with Robert O'Neill and Marcus Luttrell and his brother Morgan on the botched Afghanistan withdrawal as it was happening.
00:42:03.860You mentioned earlier this isn't political for you.
00:42:12.300And I have looked and you have been critical of Democrat and Republican presidents in command.
00:42:18.420You you issued an interesting post about President Trump.
00:42:22.280And as I understood it, you may have gotten wind that he was about to say something about you or maybe respond because you've been critical not just of Biden, but of Trump as well.
00:42:32.380And then something kind of extraordinary happened.
00:42:39.760So explain what you what you felt when you understood that he was going to stand down on coming coming for you and how you think this has been politicized by others.
00:42:53.900You got to understand the world is crashing down on me.
00:42:56.580It was apolitical, just like you said.
00:42:58.840And I attacked the last four presidents apolitically.
00:43:01.680But the media only ran with the comments I had about President Trump, which bothered me.
00:43:08.540And it also bothered him rightfully so.
00:43:11.380And so President Trump actually called a member on my team and said that he was planning on attacking me in the media and or defending himself.
00:43:20.040And the member of my team said, hey, Stu's going through a lot.
00:43:23.980You would mean a lot for us if you could exercise restraint.
00:43:46.980And I, you know, I think he and I come from different worlds and we may not agree on everything, but I think we need to have more humility and figure out how to develop common ground.
00:43:54.900And I really appreciated what he did for me.
00:43:59.180In the meantime, you I know still have questions about whether people are listening on your phone calls, whether there's a campaign to discredit you that goes on.
00:44:09.840Because because there are people sending me messages that are pretty crazy and I've had them validated by the best of the best and, you know, their VPN burner numbers.
00:44:21.820I don't believe it's the government, even though that's everyone's assumptions.
00:44:25.040I believe there's, you know, nefarious players out there.
00:44:45.740It's crazy how everything gets politicized.
00:44:47.540It's like who in their right mind would be attacking you?
00:44:52.260You've paid more than the price of your job and, you know, your your 20 years and the benefits you would have gotten had you stayed with the Marine Corps.
00:44:59.640I understand you've been pretty open about the fact that your marriage has fallen apart.
00:45:04.320Your wife is taking your sons, I guess, away for a bit just to try to spare them some of the bullying that they then received as a result of you speaking out.
00:45:13.460The family toll seems significant, Stuart.
00:45:17.420Yeah, so I'll just say I still love my wife.
00:45:55.460And I think the reason we're going through a divorce is just because in a lot of ways, the situation illustrated that we are going down different paths.
00:46:04.220You know, my wife has sacrificed so much over the last 17 years and she was looking forward to some stability and, you know, some retirements and things that she is entitled to.
00:46:16.140And once she kind of saw the trajectory of my life changing, we had an adult conversation.
00:46:22.340And, you know, ultimately, we want to do what's within the best interest of our children.
00:46:25.780And that means co-parenting and always having nice things to say about each other.
00:46:32.360The news wasn't all bad, however, because as your parents pointed out, while you lost some support in your immediate circles, boy, oh, boy, did you gain some coast to coast.
00:47:21.160Your thoughts on, you know, the support you did receive from your parents to the citizens of this country who were rooting for you.
00:47:29.740Yeah, for the parents, I have spent more time with my parents these last six months than I have the last 17 years.
00:47:39.000Their love just it just showed the unconditional love that they have for me.
00:47:43.020And they stepped up when I really needed it.
00:47:44.680I just I couldn't have done this without them.
00:47:46.760And quite honestly, I never asked them to do anything.
00:47:48.600This was them seeking me out and just stepping up and being a critical part of my team when I needed it the most.
00:47:56.320And for Americans, that's this whole endeavor for me was about love of America and to see 40,000 people donate to the Pipe Hitter Foundation.
00:49:23.300The U.S. Supreme Court right now is hearing oral arguments regarding President Biden's vaccine mandates for private businesses nationwide.
00:49:38.560But apparently some of the justices are getting their facts, I mean, grossly wrong, stating false statistics when it comes to the pandemic.
00:49:49.380I have to tell you, as somebody who practiced law for 10 years and covered the high court for Fox News for three years and then, you know, since then has been following it closely, I'm shocked to hear how wrong they are.
00:50:01.180I mean, it's one thing to get the decision wrong and to have a, you know, boneheaded judicial philosophy or take on a case.
00:50:07.220It's quite another to just be grossly misstating the facts.
00:50:11.340Joining me now to do the opposite of that is Robert Barnes.
00:52:00.320So you saw a lot of the effect of a lot of the censorship that's taken place in the social media space and the news media space is translated to judges thinking they know things they don't know, because that's not in the record, as was detailed by the Fifth Circuit.
00:52:12.540When they initially granted the stay, there was actually very little evidence in the record to support the idea that vaccination would provide this complete protective umbrella against the spread of covid.
00:52:26.100They didn't know if it how it would work.
00:52:27.880So the it's not in the record what these statements that they were making.
00:52:31.100They were sort of was just making up claims to some degree.
00:52:34.500Justice Breyer, frankly, did the same.
00:52:37.080Justice Kagan was treating this as if any emergency justifies any departure from the Constitution.
00:52:43.120So it was a little frightening where they were going, but it was re encouraging where the key three centrists appear to be going.
00:52:50.400Roberts, Barrett and Kavanaugh appear to be leaning towards striking down the mandate.
00:52:54.840It's clear that Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch are already there by the nature of their questions.
00:52:58.740So you get the three conservatives, we think, ready to strike down the mandates, the three liberals ready to uphold the mandates.
00:53:04.540And it comes down to the three center righties and how they're going to see this issue.
00:53:09.140But I will say they've been the Supreme Court's been very supportive of the state mandates.
00:53:15.840I mean, those challenges like raising, you know, can the state mandate me to do this, that or the other thing with respect to the vaccine?
00:53:23.300They have not been going the way of those who are anti-mandate, including at the U.S. Supreme Court.
00:53:30.180Yeah, no doubt. And I think it's been disappointing.
00:53:34.200I mean, the history of when the Supreme Court fails is when a so-called emergency is present or they defer to the executive branch too much.
00:53:40.440So you go back to the forced sterilizations in the Connie Buck case.
00:53:44.760The Supreme Court celebrated that decision as if it was a great decision that went down as one of the most ignoble decisions in judicial history.
00:53:51.620Then with the same thing of Korematsu, where they locked, they allowed forced detention camps based on where somebody's grandfather was born.
00:53:58.660These are the, there's an unfortunate history of the Supreme Court being scared to get involved in emergencies.
00:54:04.560And that was the entire argument today by the feds.
00:54:07.180Their entire argument was scary, scary virus.
00:54:09.600If you don't do what we tell you, a whole bunch of people are going to die.
00:54:12.400So you better just stay back, stay out of it.
00:54:14.540And in fact, Justice Breyer kind of made that argument explicitly as to why a stay shouldn't be granted.
00:54:20.200So I think the sad thing is that 90 percent of the questions today had nothing to do with the law.
00:54:25.680It was about a policy debate taking place.
00:56:02.960Can you ask us or is that what you're doing now to say it's in the public interest in this situation to stop this vaccination rule with nearly a million people?
00:56:18.320I mean, to me, I would find that unbelievable.
00:56:20.540Justice Breyer, we are asking for a stay before enforcement takes up, in fact, Monday.
00:56:27.260OK, so, Robert, the again, going back to Phil Kirpin, who's been right his reign on this, he he points out he says hospitals are full almost to the point of the maximum.
00:56:38.380Phil's response is these people know absolutely nothing.
00:57:21.760And in fact, there was I mean, to Justice Alito's credit, to Justice Thomas's credit.
00:57:25.980They both raised the question about how effective these vaccines actually are.
00:57:30.280Do they actually prevent transmission to the degree that OSHA presumed they would, given the new information that's come out and it's been present?
00:57:36.580Because, as you note, Omicron is like most coronaviruses and like most pandemics.
00:57:42.260What happens is it becomes in order to evolve and survive, it becomes more transmissible but less lethal.
00:58:12.520It's scary how much they're willing to allow emergency fear to justify circumventing the Constitution, because the questions today should have been all about the law.
00:58:20.480Do they have even Sotomayor even said Omicron is as deadly as Delta?
00:59:14.220And it's a rare circumstances, just as Thomas pointed out, that where you're basically mandating something, usually OSHA rules are to protect employees and force employers to do things to protect employees.
00:59:27.180They're forcing things on employees that employees don't want.
00:59:29.880And as Justice Alito pointed out, that you're forcing the employee to take on a risk because even if the risk is small, there's at least some risk of an adverse event from this vaccine.
00:59:39.600And as you pointed out, that's historically unprecedented and unparalleled.
00:59:42.860And the government, the Solicitor General, could not identify any prior example where that had ever occurred before.
00:59:48.300Yeah, yeah, because Alito, sorry, Alito seemed to be saying, well, give me a circumstance in which OSHA has passed some regulation that makes you, as opposed to just putting on a hard hat when you're on the assembly line, take the risk home with you.
01:00:02.340You've got to put something in your body that may indeed cause an injury.
01:00:07.300Exactly. It's like a permanent, he compared it to a wand, sort of a permanent effect that a permanent hard hat that you have to wear all the way home, wear the shower, wherever you go.
01:00:18.660And he's like, this has never been done before.
01:00:20.480So it's highly unusual to mandate something for an employee's benefit that the employee doesn't want.
01:00:26.020That it's for the, in particular, OSHA said that they did this solely for the unvaccinated because they're operating under the assumption that being vaccinated works.
01:00:33.540The problem for them was that means you couldn't argue that the vaccinated needed the unvaccinated to get vaccinated, which is kind of where they're really going.
01:00:42.660But they can't admit that because that would be to admit the vaccine doesn't work like they say it does.
01:00:47.120And that's where they got caught in factual traps today.
01:00:49.700Well, Robert, if we have 750 million people a day getting COVID, clearly the vaccines aren't working as intended.
01:00:55.540I wish somebody had said that to Justice Breyer.
01:00:57.720OK, so let's back up because we kind of started right kind of at the end, not this, not the end, but maybe the penultimate chapter of this legal battle, which is the arguments.
01:01:06.740Let's back up to what they're really arguing about there.
01:01:10.840I'm going to mandate every business in America that has 100 employees or more has to either require vaccines, issue a vaccine mandate or require mandatory masking and testing, I think, once a week.
01:01:26.320And this would affect affect, I think it's two out of three American businesses.
01:01:31.080And then separately, there's a vaccine mandate saying any.
01:01:35.240And is it any hospital that receives federal dollars?
01:01:37.960But all health care workers have to have to get the vaccine.
01:01:41.760Exactly. If you're within six degrees of separation of Medicare and Medicaid funding, you have to get the vaccine.
01:02:18.240You know, for all of the fanfare over Biden's announcement, he didn't actually do it.
01:02:22.260Then all these employers who I think kind of wanted to do it anyway, were like, oh, we have to because of Joe Biden.
01:02:26.980But there are a lot of employers out there.
01:02:28.760I'm thinking about my pal Ben Shapiro over the Daily Wire, who was like, we're not doing this.
01:02:32.620And they immediately filed lawsuits saying this is unlawful.
01:02:35.380You don't you, President Biden, don't have the authority to mandate this of us.
01:02:39.020And the argument was, you know, normally if somebody if you're going to make a business do something like this, it has to be Congress that has the power via they call it the commerce power.
01:02:49.360If an item touches interstate commerce, Congress can generally do it.
01:02:53.560But they're saying Congress didn't really issue this kind of authority to OSHA, which is an organization that regulates workplace safety.
01:03:02.240And if Congress did say, OSHA, you can regulate things like this, they needed to be a lot more specific than what they've done here.
01:03:10.580Does that basically encapsulate the argument?
01:03:15.180It's what Congress have the power to do it under the commerce clause in the first place.
01:03:18.660And even if they did, they needed to say so specifically and clearly in ways that is not by the very sort of generic provisions they're using, kind of ambiguous or cryptic language, because under their interpretation, they could issue almost any edict just by executive order.
01:03:34.780They could short circuit the entire Administrative Procedures Act, not do notice and comment, not recognize citizen petition process, not go through Congress, the legislative branch, not even allow it to be adjudicated because they'll claim there's no standing to contest it.
01:03:47.040And that would be a sort of a terrifying prospect if the executive branch in the name of an emergency could just declare anything they wanted, including to the degree of imposing something on a person's body and requiring they take medical treatment.
01:03:58.860So that's the core constitutional and legal issue at play.
01:04:02.620And it's bigger than the vaccine because it will impact executive power writ large and agency power in general.
01:04:08.820My gosh, I mean, I hesitate to think what OSHA could mandate us to do if they're allowed to do this.
01:04:14.200So if it's like, well, anything, anything in the name of workplace safety, as long as I can say it's an emergency and it's in our best interest, there was a good back and forth on this.
01:04:25.100It's Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioning those who are challenging the mandate.
01:04:31.140So I think she and they are aligned, but she's trying to say this OSHA rule, it's too broad and it should be more targeted for us to be able to uphold it.
01:04:38.980Take a listen to our most recently confirmed Supreme Court justice.
01:04:44.360I think what you're saying is that even if there are some industries or some people who would face a great risk and this might be necessary to address that risk.
01:04:53.480So in other words, if OSHA had adopted a more targeted rule, you might not be contesting that or you would not be contesting that.
01:04:59.900That the problem here is its scope and that there's no differentiation between the risk faced by unvaccinated 22 year olds and unvaccinated 60 year olds or industries.
01:05:10.360You are just talking about landscapers and people who work primarily outdoors.
01:05:14.700Those and workers who work in an inside environment all day long.
01:05:19.800So is that the distinction that you're making?
01:05:21.940They're not disputing what Justice Kagan said that, you know, this is a grave danger and that in some circumstances this rule might be necessary, but just the scope of it makes it different.
01:05:33.240But I just want to be very clear about this.
01:05:36.280Wherever that line is, this ETS is so far beyond that line.
01:05:40.820So what's the point there, Robert, that they haven't this this order, you know, that Biden got OSHA to issue is so sweeping, it makes no distinction between the fact that, you know, an unvaccinated 18 year old has a lower risk than a fully vaccinated 50 year old.
01:05:58.980I think based on their prior their questions today and their prior rulings, both Roberts and Barrett would like to save and salvage vaccine mandates, but they're not comfortable with this method of doing so.
01:06:09.380So they're not comfortable with the Biden administration, just writ large, circumventing Congress, circumventing citizen petition process, circumventing all the rules and just saying we can declare whatever we want.
01:06:19.180And sort of as Roberts made clear, you're just picking, you know, one agency, then the next agency, then the next agency all has this buried hidden power.
01:06:27.180As Justice Alito pointed out, basically, there's all these elephants in these mouse holes everywhere that federal agencies are claiming.
01:06:33.540And I think they're uncomfortable, both Roberts and Barrett are uncomfortable with that assertion of power, even though they feel that some degree, they want to protect some degree of vaccine mandates or emergency power.
01:06:43.740I think that's the where they're sort of at the cusp of what to decide.
01:06:49.040Do we think Amy Coney Barrett is less conservative than we expected her to be?
01:06:52.220I was more of a skeptic of her when she was coming in because she had favorably cited the Jacobson decision in a lockdown-related case while she was on the Seventh Circuit.
01:07:02.920And so I was one of the few critics who said that she's not going to end up, she's going to be more like a Roberts than she's going to end up like an Alito or Thomas or a Gorsuch or Scalia.
01:07:15.160Even though she came in as the female Scalia, her background on the Seventh Circuit said she's more of what some people in the law would call a centrist.
01:07:22.440Center right, I think, is appropriate, but tends to be an institutionalist.
01:07:26.400So not the biggest advocate for civil liberties, at least in the Seventh Circuit.
01:07:30.920And I think we're seeing signs of that now in the Supreme Court.
01:07:33.140I have to say, so I covered the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for both Roberts and Alito and many others, frankly.
01:07:39.160But Roberts and Alito, I was on the air every day for every single minute of the of the hearings and had studied everything.
01:07:45.640And on Roberts, I thought he was like born in a crib with a justice's role on.
01:07:50.980I mean, if you look back at his history, it was just perfection in terms of getting a Supreme Court seat.
01:07:56.740Never mind chief justice. Yes, yes, yes.
01:07:58.560And he was extremely conservative in his prior rulings and he was a Bush appointee.
01:08:01.880And I thought you could ask for no better.
01:08:05.120Maybe the problem was he became chief justice, but he's been really wishy washy and hasn't been at all.
01:08:11.760I think the justice President Bush was hoping for.
01:08:18.240I mean, I said to the audience before, I'm much more of sort of with the Federalist Society when it comes to my own judicial approach.
01:08:24.220Alito, he doesn't get enough credit for how smart and strong he's been on this bench.
01:08:28.140No doubt. I mean, he's earned his reputation of Scalido that they used to call him on the third circuit, because he's in fact, he's been a better advocate than even some conservatives thought he would be.
01:08:39.140He's ended up much more same with Gorsuch, for the most part, with the with one or two decisions, except they have been particularly in this context.
01:08:47.120They've been very good. They have been warning about Jacobson.
01:08:49.660They've been warning about the misapplication of emergency power, that just because you have a pandemic doesn't mean you throw the Constitution out with it.
01:08:57.220And in the ask, very good question today. Justice Thomas has more questions than he normally does.
01:09:02.180Yeah. So all of that was a good indicator, as long as they can get Barrett, Roberts, Kavanaugh or two of the three to go with.
01:09:08.500So if they if they uphold the mandates, then they go forward, then they kick in on January 10th and all these employers have to start complying with them immediately.
01:09:22.260Yes. And I think you'll see a lot of EEOC complaints because a lot of employers are today.
01:09:27.040The government said, you know, you have to recognize religious accommodations as one of the groups that may stay unvaccinated.
01:09:34.420But there's a lot of employers that are not enforcing that law, despite what Title VII and the Civil Rights Act said.
01:09:39.800So I think it will just invite a new wave of litigation in a broader context and substantially disrupt the economy, as both the National Federation of Independent Businesses and the state said today pointed out it's going to be billions of dollars lost.
01:09:52.840And the supply chain that already has problems is going to be major disruptions because of the labor market issues.
01:09:57.980They anticipate anywhere from two to 10 percent of employees would rather quit than for something in their body that they don't feel is appropriate for them.
01:10:06.140Didn't you think it was odd how I thought there'd be more of a focus on Omicron and how incredibly contagious it is and how that's really been a that's a game changer for this whole thing?
01:10:16.280You know, the vaccines don't stop you from getting Omicron, from getting COVID.
01:10:23.920But I mean, there's no question that this variant breaks right through the vaccine and the booster and all of that.
01:10:30.880And the vaccine mandate has really kind of been just rendered obsolete.
01:10:35.520I I would have hit that harder had I been representing one of the teams that was in there challenging the mandate.
01:10:41.540I think there's been this sort of fear factor with litigants not to challenge judges misapprehensions about the about COVID in the pandemic because they think they'll undermine their legal argument.
01:10:52.680But I agree they would have been better off and better situated had they pointed out just how ineffective this vaccine is and how much more effective other means are.
01:11:02.400As Sotomayor mentioned, if you're if you're symptomatic, she acted like this was weird that that nobody knows that if you're symptomatic, you should stay home.
01:11:09.420And that's been a policy for two years everywhere.
01:11:13.060That's a more practical policy than a than forcing a vaccine that may not be effective, that has an unusual risk profile for the history of vaccines with a lot of people who don't want to take it for a wide range of reasons, some religious, some medical.
01:11:26.420That seems to make a lot more sense than what the Biden administration is doing.
01:11:29.900And they're using every pretext to do it.
01:11:31.600But I think they're also trying to establish the precedent that they can use these little loopholes, these little mouse holes to put in every elephant they want, including probably environmental legislation, climate change, emergency.
01:11:42.860That's probably if this gets affirmed, that's what's coming next.
01:11:45.760If they if they strike down the mandates, then it doesn't mean you cannot have an individual employer or individual hospital issue a mandate.
01:11:59.740What they're saying, if they strike it down, we expect would be Biden didn't have this power.
01:12:05.880Congress didn't delegate this much authority to OSHA.
01:12:09.300Everyone's on their own with respect to setting policy.
01:12:12.840Yes, exactly. And the same with they'll probably whatever they rule in the OSHA mandate will probably be the same in the Medicare mandate and federal contractor mandate as well.
01:12:22.140Maybe not the federal employee mandate. That's slower to go up the food chain currently.
01:12:26.240But I think but that's basically what it means.
01:12:28.040Now, I think a lot of employers were surprised at how many people didn't want to take the vaccine.
01:12:32.540So there were like people like Boeing, people like Disney were reconsidering their options.
01:12:36.760And if OSHA that made it is withdrawn, a lot of big employers that were planning on doing it probably won't.
01:12:43.280But there will still be some employers that legally can there.
01:12:46.440You're still have rights to medical accommodations and religious accommodations under both state and federal law.
01:12:51.780But they still can. But I think probably half or more would decide not to go forward with it if the OSHA mandate falls.
01:12:57.700Well, I hope you're right, because it's you know, I I just feel like at this point when the vaccine doesn't prevent transmission of the virus and we've got great therapeutics now, thank goodness, available to those who choose not to get the vaccine because the vaccine definitely does prevent severe disease.
01:13:16.220Not in all cases, but preventive in most severe disease or death, which is what we're trying to fight.
01:13:21.080But if you choose not to, you know, afford yourself of that benefit by not getting the vaccine, you do still have therapeutics as an option.
01:13:30.080So I guess an employer saying you're going to be an expensive employee for me.
01:13:33.380Therefore, I want to mandate that you get the vaccine, because if you do get severe disease or wind up on a ventilator, that's going to cost our health insurance a lot of money.
01:13:41.320Now you get the therapeutics, you know.
01:13:42.820So it's like the reasons behind these mandates are dwindling in strength and persuasiveness by the day.
01:13:50.360Let's hope the Supreme Court and in particular Roberts and Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh are cognizant of that in the same way the liberal justices seem to be cognizant of things outside the record, but maybe slightly more factual.
01:14:08.400Next up, we're going to be joined by one mom who's fighting back over masks and wait till you hear what her school district did to her when her mask fell slightly below her nose.
01:14:22.080We've lost our minds and she's fighting back.
01:14:33.900Shannon's a mother of three who lives in upstate New York, and she's planning to file a lawsuit next week against her school system after she says she was pulled out of a school board meeting and arrested for improperly wearing her face mask.
01:14:51.740Shannon, thank you so much for being here.
01:15:46.300Were you, like, a school board activist all your whole life?
01:15:50.720So, I call myself an accidental activist, which I think a lot of people have become in the past two years since March of 2020.
01:15:59.420And I began attending school board meetings shortly after they opened them up to the public.
01:16:05.240And it was because I was very concerned about what was happening within our schools, a whole host of reasons, critical race theory, the masking, the distancing, the sex ed curriculum coming down the pike.
01:16:17.100And so, in Monroe County, not just in my school district, there were many parents organizing.
01:16:22.180They were attending school board meetings.
01:16:24.180They were speaking out in public comment.
01:16:26.960And the testimony of these parents was absolutely heartbreaking.
01:16:31.880The relationship between the board and the parents of these students, concerned about what is happening in their school, was deteriorating, I think, over the past five or six months.
01:16:43.420And so, that led to this particular school board meeting.
01:16:46.200Not only was I a taxpayer, I was also a parent in the Fairport School District.
01:16:50.740And also, I had a large media platform.
01:16:53.300So, I think in some ways, I was a triple threat.
01:16:56.040They did not like that we were speaking out.
01:16:58.180They did not like that we were dissenting.
01:17:00.540They did not like that we were organizing.
01:17:02.840And we believe, you know, the lawsuit that we're filing on Wednesday, we're very confident about this lawsuit.
01:17:11.840If we need to take this to the Supreme Court, we will do so.
01:17:14.700But we are very confident that we can prove that the school board, the superintendent, and other actors within our school system conspired potentially with the private security company and outside political organizations linked to BLM to set up the conditions at that meeting that led to my arrest.
01:17:36.520And we are very confident when we move into discovery, we can depose these individuals and have them testify under oath.
01:17:45.560We're going to shine a light on this entire system.
01:17:47.980And we're going to stand up for parents across the country who have been bullied, school boards who have used the police to suppress their voices and to intimidate them into silence, which is what we believe they tried to do on that day.
01:18:02.060In any other world, the audience might be sitting here saying, nah, no, the school board wouldn't use police to silence parents.
01:18:10.940But now we know at the very highest levels of our government, we've had a White House coordinate with an attorney general to accept that these parents speaking out of these meetings may be domestic terrorists and may be the subject of FBI investigations.
01:18:23.900And who pushed them to do that? School boards.
01:18:26.760So, there's no question these school boards don't like dissent.
01:18:29.760They don't like objections to critical race theory, to masking, to vaccines, to, like you point out, this weird, I hate to call it sex ed.