＂Second Strike＂ Narrative Falls Apart, Kash Patel Responds, and How To Be a Man, with Rich Lowry, Charles Cooke, Elliot Ackerman, and Bryan Cox ｜ Ep. 1204
The Washington Post's reporting on the aftermath of a drone strike on an alleged drug smuggler's boat on the Potomac River, Washington Post reporter Brian L. Cox says there's reason to doubt the credibility of the report.
00:14:42.240So we should not attack them in that case.
00:14:44.220But if the vessel that they're on still qualifies as a military objective, then they're not, but they're by definition
00:14:49.720they're not shipwrecked and, you know, the commander could order subsequent strikes to finish the, you know, the
00:14:57.500mission, to complete the mission to ensure that the boat is no longer serviceable, that no longer is a military objective.
00:15:03.420So if the boat is not destroyed, and the mission is to destroy it, and you have two survivors who are floating on the boat or holding onto the boat in the water, it's fair game.
00:15:13.720They're going to go if the mission is take out that boat.
00:15:17.420So this is a difference between whether the boat was disabled or destroyed.
00:15:21.660And so if, I mean, if it's destroyed, we can think of, you know, pieces of boat floating around in the water, you know, and, you know, maybe survivors with a life vest on or clinging to it or whatever.
00:15:33.440And if that's the case, then there would be no reason to re-attack it.
00:15:36.680But if the boat is disabled, and again, by the initial report from the Washington Post, it's what it sounds to me like the commander involved assessed, that the boat was disabled rather than destroyed, then there's no, it still qualifies then by legal definition, by law of armed conflict, as a military objective such that it can be, you know, it can be attacked.
00:16:01.020So you need a second strike to destroy it.
00:16:02.880That's what this Admiral Bradley saw and did.
00:16:05.200And those two guys who survived the initial blast were taken down in the second strike.
00:16:10.360And now, not only do we have the suggestion that it's possible the two survivors might have been able to coordinate with other narco-terrorists, we actually, in the New York Times report, have, this is on the record now, one of the officials that spoke to the Times is quoted as saying,
00:16:29.580the U.S. military intercepted radio communications from one of the survivors to what the official said were narco-traffickers.
00:16:39.860I mean, now that's as clear-cut as it comes.
00:16:43.280Any military commander would order those guys taken out.
00:16:46.360Absolutely, because at that point, if that's the intelligence that they have, at that point, it absolutely still does qualify.
00:16:53.020Because, again, by definition, an object by its use makes an effective contribution to military action.
00:16:58.380And so it was kind of implied by the way that the Washington Post reported it that the commander believed that they could radio for assistance and have someone come and get the cargo and continue with the mission.
00:17:15.360But with the, you know, with going on record now, establishing on the record that, yes, there was, in fact, a radio transmission that was intercepted, then, you know, that basically supports the conclusion that that's exactly what the commander believed at the time.
00:17:30.160And, you know, the commander ordered subsequent strikes to destroy the boat because it wasn't destroyed to begin with.
00:17:39.480It's a left-wing Trump-hating narrative that we have these military commanders who are just these rogue agents who have thrown caution to the wind, who, you know, are just out there for bloodlust, trying to take down anybody that they see in the seas, as opposed to rational, thoughtful, considered leaders who understand the rules of military combat a lot better than the Washington Post or some armchair pundits who want to jump all the way all over them.
00:18:09.480And it also seemed clear in the way the military was very careful in its wording about this.
00:18:14.960You know, you had Trump saying, Hegseth told me he did not give that second order, that he did not give a verbal command to kill all the people.
00:18:59.320And so, this is the danger with running with completely speculative reporting.
00:19:05.520As, you know, initial reports are almost always, and this is something we know in the military, you know, for operationally, we just take it as a given.
00:19:12.280And initial reports are almost always, if not wrong, they're at least incomplete enough that you don't have enough information to make, you know, kind of really meaningful conclusions.
00:19:28.140We still need to figure out exactly what happened.
00:19:29.860And so, the responsible thing, if the Washington Post wanted to report, you know, based on the sources that they have, I mean, you know, that's a journalistic decision in-house.
00:19:40.440And, you know, I know that there are checks in place to decide, you know, whether we're going to run a story based on completely anonymous sources.
00:19:48.020So, that's one thing, to run this story.
00:19:50.280There is news value and public interest in it.
00:19:52.300I get it, but we need to exercise caution when all we're dealing with is speculative reports from anonymous sources that we're not really sure, like, they're filling in, they're providing some evidence of what happened, but they're not really filling in the gaps.
00:20:08.240And before we can make conclusions and denounce everybody involved as a war criminal, I mean, this is, if they're wrong about this, if they're wrong about the allegations, this is defamation, right?
00:20:20.740So, before we jump to conclusions like this, it's, I mean, it's just, it makes logical sense to gather the information and figure out, you know, if it came to light that the commander involved or the secretary of war, for this case, you know, saw that the boat was completely destroyed and there was no military utility in attacking the boat anyways, and there's just two survivors clinging around to, you know, wreckage floating around in the Caribbean ocean, and they said kill them anyways.
00:20:49.120I mean, I mean, if that's the evidence that we're getting, then, I mean, that sounds to me like a war crime, right?
00:20:55.700But we're not getting that evidence from the initial Washington Post report, and so it's irresponsible to take, to make conclusions, you know, really assertive conclusions that this was a war crime and that Pete Hegseth needs to resign or be fired or prosecuted or whatever, based on incomplete information.
00:21:13.120You had Congressman Seth Moulton of Massachusetts out there saying, you mark my words, someone's going to jail for murder.
00:21:20.400I mean, that's like so irresponsible, ginning up hatred and acrimony toward our serving military members who are under enough stress as it is.
00:21:30.680You made a point in your tweet storm that was so powerful, responding to those who say, oh, you know, in defense of this so-called seditious six, the six lawmakers who went out there and started this whole thing by saying, hey, soldiers, don't obey illegal orders.
00:21:47.700It's just a reminder, just a reminder to these soldiers in these tumultuous times, like, you don't have the obligation to follow an illegal order, and they just needed that.
00:21:58.460Yeah, we don't need to be, we, so, you know, having spent 22 years in the military, I'm just still kind of part of my identity, and so I still identify in that even though I'm no longer in, but, you know, service members, me included when I was in, we don't need reminders that we, you know, have to, we have an obligation not to obey manifestly unlawful orders, right?
00:22:20.620So, not just unlawful orders, but manifestly.
00:22:23.840We don't need anyone from Congress, we don't need anyone from the outside to remind us of this, because, I mean, it's part of the ethos that we live every day.
00:22:32.360It's drilled into us, you know, starting in basic training, and it's part of our, following orders is, it's part of the military life.
00:22:41.340I mean, it's part of good order and discipline, but we're also, we already understand that we have no obligation to follow patent, you know, manifestly unlawful orders.
00:22:51.860And so, the people who are reminding us, or reminding the, you know, members of the DOD of this, they know that, they know that service members don't need to be reminded that we have no obligation to follow manifestly unlawful orders.
00:23:07.920They're doing this to create doubt, to second guess the, you know, the current political leadership of the military, civilian and senior military leadership, to create the appearance that the orders that are being given are manifestly unlawful.
00:23:27.140And so, there is an obligation not to follow them.
00:23:30.020And that is also irresponsible, because, again, it's not something we need to be reminded of, and the obligation is not just to, you know, not follow or not obey unlawful orders, but it's manifestly unlawful.
00:23:44.560And if we don't, and so, the context of the, you know, the members of Congress who are being referred to as the Seditious Six, they're making their case that this is not an armed conflict, that it should actually be, you know, human rights law that's applying, and we should not be engaged in, you know, military strikes against these boats.
00:24:02.260And that's, you know, that's, you know, an opinion, and that's, you know, it's interesting academically, but the troops who are involved in this conflict are not specialists in, you know, international law involving the resort to force.
00:24:14.880And so, you know, that's at the political leadership level.
00:24:18.660And so, you know, we are given orders, you are in, we have determined, the political leadership has determined that you are in armed conflict, so apply law of armed conflict to this rather than, you know, human rights law.
00:24:29.140And, you know, that is a, we're not, we're not in a position to understand whether that is unlawful or not.
00:24:35.880You know, we're, we are going to comply with law of armed conflict.
00:24:38.180This is pretty sophisticated stuff that had to be run up and down the chain of command and lawyers, DOJ and elsewhere, like to expect Admiral Bradley to have full, complete knowledge of this.
00:24:48.980Whereas, you know, people have gone to law school who have practiced law at the elite levels who understand military law, maritime law, all the things, they, they, they had to study this.
00:24:58.080They had teams who studied it to expect one Admiral to have it all down, as opposed to understanding that I have a boss who has to deal with that.
00:25:06.560He talks to lawyers who had to deal with that.
00:25:08.940And when my boss tells me what to do, I do it.
00:25:11.580Like, that's how the chain of command works.
00:25:13.440But the notion that Senator Mark Kelly can somehow empower, you know, the guy who actually has to press the button on the kinetic strike to say, no, Admiral, I'm not doing that, sir.
00:25:27.880Mark Kelly told me I have the authority to say no to you is really dangerous.
00:25:33.740So, it's dangerous at the individual level, because if that troop, whoever it is, that service member refuses to obey the order, and it doesn't turn out that it's reasonably manifestly unlawful, then that, whoever it is, that service member is going to be court-martialed.
00:25:49.300And that service member, you know, it's not going to be a defense that, well, I read on, you know, social media that Senator Mark Kelly said that I have an obligation not to do this, and so I didn't do it.
00:26:02.540And so, that service member is now at legal risk for, you know, for having the impression that he or she does not need to follow this order when it actually is a lawful order.
00:26:14.760And so, you know, these external commentators are essentially trying to substitute their own understanding of what is or is not lawful for the actual current chain of command from the secretary of war all the way down to the tactical level.
00:26:29.020So, that's one issue for the individual, you know, concerned is that's not going to be a defense when they get court-martialed for this.
00:26:36.340But then there's a more kind of systemic concern with this, and that is, it's sowing the seeds of doubt among those who are actually involved with carrying out orders.
00:26:48.700And if there is hesitation in carrying out lawful orders, that's the whole reason why we train on this, how we train on the disciplined use of overwhelming force.
00:27:00.780If we're not doing that because we're second-guessing orders that are actually lawful, we're going to end up having hesitation on the battlefield, and that's going to end up creating missed opportunities that could end up costing us our lives.
00:27:15.920When, you know, the missed opportunity of the adversary that we didn't attack ends up attacking us, and that could end up creating a risk of mission, mission failure.
00:28:56.440Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review and Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer for National Review and host of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast.
00:29:04.300Find all their work by becoming an NR Plus subscriber.
00:29:21.520So I understand you heard at least part of Brian Cox, who's a very thoughtful guy, and what his initial reaction to that Washington Post report is already being borne out by the subsequent reporting by the New York Times.
00:29:33.620He saw the Washington Post talking about a disabled boat as opposed to a destroyed boat and understood as a guy who served for 22 years, wait, wait, wait.
00:29:44.540If the mission is to destroy a boat and after strike one it's only been disabled, you can pretty much bet your dollars to donuts, there's going to be a strike two.
00:29:55.560And so the second strike would have been perfectly within the laws of war with or without two survivors clinging to some portion of the boat.
00:30:06.360But on top of all that, we get the New York Times now reporting that at least one of the officials they spoke to reports that one of these alleged survivors, or whatever you want to call them, had radioed back.
00:30:20.100It was actually radioing back to another narco-terrorist saying, like, help, the boat has been disabled, and giving, you know, the people in command, like Admiral Bradley, even more reason to take the second strike.
00:30:34.520And we also now learn, contrary to the Washington Post report, that Pete Hexeth did not issue a second order.
00:30:41.020There was no verbal command to kill everybody, as WAPO reported.
00:30:45.300So, Rich, I mean, there was a litany of things wrong, as it looks today, from that Washington Post report, which is diametrically opposed to the New York Times and to what the White House and the Pentagon are saying.
00:30:56.600Yeah, so just as someone who's spent a lot of time consuming news, lest my adult life, just the Washington Post story has the classic aspect of something that's too perfect, that's too cinematic.
00:31:10.880It feels like the movie where you have the handsome, slightly nefarious defense secretary with all the screens on the wall, and there's the moment where you can see whether you can take out the wounded guys, and he orders it.
00:31:22.920So, I just inherently, we need to learn more, but the New York Times story seems more credible to me, where I depart from our guest, I guess, is that what he says makes total sense to me.
00:31:35.100If this is a destroyer or some sort of military vessel, of course you take it out, even if there are wounded people on the vessel, but I just don't think these drug runners are combatants.
00:31:44.720I don't think they represent a threat to our military, I don't see any reason why you wouldn't take the guys off the boat, and then sink the boat, or whatever you want to do.
00:31:54.900So, I have a problem over and beyond the double tap.
00:31:59.000I don't think we should be tapping these boats to begin with, because they're not combatants.
00:32:02.560Okay, but they've gotten a legal blessing for doing that, and so now the question is tactics and whether they're within the rules of war, and it looks like the Washington Post got way ahead of its skis on this one, Charles, and I'll tell you something else that's interesting here.
00:32:17.140Remember, this morning you had NPR, and I believe, I don't know what NPR tapes, excuse me, it's Up First podcast, but I think it's either very, very late at night or first thing in the morning, because I'm always comparing my own AM update to theirs, just to see if they have what we have, because we always go very, very late on our taping.
00:32:36.740Anyway, they completely ignore the New York Times reporting, which is not like NPR, so I think they either missed it, or worse, they just didn't account for it, in doubling down on the, what appears to be faulty, Washington Post reporting from Friday.
00:32:55.260Take a listen to what I heard on NPR this morning.
00:32:57.880So on Friday, the Washington Post reported that on September 2nd, U.S. forces struck one of those boats, leaving survivors afterwards, and so Hegseth gave an order to kill those survivors.
00:33:10.700Now, NPR later confirmed that Hegseth had ordered both strikes.
00:33:14.600All of that matters because, as Congress members from both parties have said, that second strike may have constituted a war crime.
00:33:21.660Meanwhile, the Department of Defense in that Washington Post story said that, quote, this entire narrative is completely false.
00:33:29.580Now, what did we learn from the White House yesterday?
00:33:32.240Well, the administration then confirmed some parts of this story.
00:33:35.880At yesterday's press briefing, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt acknowledged a second strike, but as for Hegseth ordering it, she didn't deny it, but said Hegseth authorized U.S. Navy Admiral Frank M. Bradley to take these actions.
00:33:49.520But our NPR colleague, Tom Bowman, has new reporting on this.
00:33:53.180Yesterday, a U.S. official who was not authorized to speak publicly pushed back on the White House, saying Hegseth gave the command for two strikes to kill in addition to two strikes to sink the boat.
00:34:05.880Okay, so it's like the New York Times report doesn't exist.
00:34:09.120She doesn't acknowledge Caroline Levitt did say yesterday that Hegseth did not say kill everyone.
00:34:14.960She did not acknowledge, or she just went with that he gave the order to kill, and that NPR confirmed that he gave this order to kill, like a second order.
00:34:27.220And she did not acknowledge the Hegseth tweet yesterday saying Admiral Bradley is the one who did it, and we stand behind him.
00:34:36.280He basically said Admiral Bradley commanded the operation.
00:34:50.080I was skeptical of the Washington Post story.
00:34:52.480That doesn't mean it's untrue, but I have been and remain skeptical of it, having lived through now 10 years of stories relating to Donald Trump.
00:35:02.420The way in which the anonymous sources were used as scaffolding to build what, as Rich said, looks a bit like a movie scene made me skeptical.
00:35:13.800And then when the New York Times story came out, which is against the interests of the New York Times' editorial bent, I became even more skeptical.
00:35:22.520So I'm absolutely open to the idea that Washington Post got this wrong or went too far with what information it had.
00:35:30.360And I think your guest made a compelling case to that effect.
00:35:33.800But I am with Rich on the underlying problem, which is that there's no authorization here for war in the first place.
00:36:37.600He has this awe-shocks, like, gee, I'm just being neighborly here, letting the soldiers know that they shouldn't obey these terrible orders, which inevitably, you know, the evil Donald Trump or Pete Hegseth are giving.
00:36:49.360So, like, I'm just Joe-friendly, trying to remind you of this.
00:36:51.560But, like, that's what set this whole thing off.
00:37:20.300And they can figure out, you know, a reasonable person can tell something that is legal and something that is illegal.
00:37:26.760So would you refuse these specific orders to strike drug boats if you were still in uniform?
00:37:32.540Well, the difference between the initial strike and what is being reported, you know, as a second strike, and those things are different.
00:37:39.800I think this administration has tied themselves in knots, the explanations that we have received on how this is all legal.
00:37:48.820And I was saying weeks ago, my concern is with the service members, that we're going to put these individuals in a really, really tough decision, in a tough place.
00:37:59.020And, you know, they may find out, you know, down the road that they did something that is illegal.
00:38:05.940Wait, I thought he just said that, you know, he said in the middle of that soundbite, you know what's a legal order and what's an illegal order.
00:38:13.600Then he ends it with, I'm really concerned about the service members who might not know.
00:38:17.240And then down the line are going to get prosecuted.
00:38:44.120Look, on this video, it was clearly base maintenance.
00:38:47.040The audience for that is the left-wing base of the Democratic Party.
00:38:51.460Everyone who's in the military, all this stuff is drilled into them constantly.
00:38:55.180They don't need Mark Kelly's permission to defy illegal orders.
00:38:59.240And I just, I'm highly skeptical on the other side of the ledger that any Marine, a 19-year-old Marine, is going to defy a lawful order because of something Mark Kelly said.
00:39:09.880So I find this aspect of it to be just entirely theater.
00:39:13.400Here's the other thing, Rich, to your point about the Washington Post theatrical reporting.
00:39:19.680It was co-authored by Ellen Nakashima.
00:39:24.080She's been square in the crosshairs of our friend Glenn Greenwald for many years, who has kept the receipts on the Russiagate fake reporting.
00:39:35.140And she was almost as bad as Natasha Burstrand, who's also all over this story.
00:39:40.600Two of the chief antagonists of Trump 1.0 are back in Trump 2.0.
00:39:45.280And here's Ellen Nakashima, who won a Pulitzer in 2018 for her fake Russiagate reporting that said that Russia was trying to help Trump win the White House.
00:39:58.020Again, now we're looking at all these CIA documents and understanding that they were manipulated by John Brennan and so on.
00:40:04.040She had no skepticism at all because it made Trump look bad the first time around.
00:40:08.940And I would argue exactly the same thing is haunting her reporting.
00:40:12.780She's now been humiliated, not by Fox News, not by me, not by NR, but by the New York Times.
00:40:20.360And they need to update that reporting stat.
00:40:25.520Now, today, I want to tell you that we have our own exclusive reporting in response to the hit that came out yesterday, this report, attacking Kash Patel and, to a lesser extent, Dan Bongino.
00:40:40.800We broke some of this news in our AM update, but I have more to tell you today.
00:40:45.660That is direct from Kash Patel himself with his authorization that it be on the record.
00:40:51.580Just by way of background, what happened was a group called the National Alliance of Retired and Active Duty, FBI special agents and analysts, issued a report.
00:41:01.080This report, we're told, is going to be presented to Congress later this week.
00:41:06.180It's called a pulse check of the first six months of the Patel leadership, February through August.
00:41:14.320And it calls the FBI a chronically underperforming agency, in part because of Kash's political partisanship.
00:41:21.660It reveals a troubling picture, they say.
00:41:24.000This is after their interviews with rank and file current and former agents of a chronically underperforming agency debilitated by low confidence in FBI leadership, based on a lack of prior experience.
00:41:33.960A historically toxic culture of fear and operational paralysis and deep-seated internal partisanship.
00:41:40.960They go on, and I'll go through some of the allegations, but the biggest thing that they point to that's been used to embarrass or try to Kash Patel is a story that when Kash went out to the Charlie Kirk assassination guys,
00:42:01.000that he showed up there via his airplane, and he didn't have an FBI jacket, and that he, like a high school girl wanting to be in the right outfit at the big football game, refused to leave the vehicle, the plane, until he got the proper threads on him.
00:42:22.800He wouldn't leave until he got an FBI jacket, and that, on top of that, he demanded a patch to make him look like badass.
00:42:31.340Like, so that one of the local guys had to take off a patch and give him the patch so that he looked tougher.
00:43:06.680He was out to dinner when he learned about Charlie, so he did borrow an FBI jacket.
00:43:11.740He said the patches piece of the story is also not true.
00:43:15.880He said a guy who worked one of the special divisions out in Utah actually gave him a patch as like a solidarity, the way a lot of law enforcement will give you like a coin or whatever.
00:43:27.580He gave it to him because he wanted the FBI director to feel like part of the crew.
00:43:31.320And patch, to respect this guy and say thanks for, you know, giving this to me, put it on his arm and got off the plane.
00:43:38.200He said there was no waiting on the plane to get a jacket.
00:43:40.700There was no waiting on the plane to get a patch.
00:43:57.300But then later, the actual 110 or so on page report dropped.
00:44:02.540And as I actually went through it, the complaints in here, boys.
00:44:07.000I mean, okay, I'll give you an example.
00:44:09.500The deep-seated internal partisanship is there because of, they say, because of the FBI director, who previously campaigned for the president as a vocal critic of the FBI.
00:44:29.040There is increasing dislike for Trump in the FBI, they say.
00:44:32.060The number of FBI employees exhibiting TDS is much more widespread than it was within the FBI.
00:44:38.740Then they go on to say, agents are upset about the January 6th pardons.
00:44:43.820A subsource, who is an FBI employee, reported he or she is demoralized that the president pardoned those rightfully convicted for their role in January 6th.
00:45:39.500You have to reprogram the mindset from hyper-defensive to full receive mode and commit to embracing feedback.
00:45:47.320And then you must execute on the recommendations.
00:45:49.740This sounds like a BLM session, like the Wall Street Journal kids who tried to pull this shit onto the WSJ during the George Floyd-a-palooza.
00:46:14.480Yeah, so the jacket story, classic kind of BS story.
00:46:19.840It goes back to the Hexf Washington Post story.
00:46:22.520I learned long ago in the Trump era, you don't believe anything that allegedly happened in private or said that was said in private.
00:46:29.980I mean, they lied about things Trump said on camera in the Lester Holt interview about why he fired James Comey, what he said about the Charlottesville protests.
00:46:37.500So I don't believe anything that's reported about something that happened in private unless there's some written record of it.
00:46:44.100And this is a classic story that feels like the jacket thing.
00:47:04.580I'm sure things have been shaky because he's inexperienced.
00:47:07.160We saw some of that in public and how he handled the Charlie Kirk assassination, you know, saying whether we had a suspect in custody or not and having to change a couple of times on that.
00:47:16.060But on the other hand, there's an entrenched bureaucracy that's going to be hostile to his priorities and hostile to his politics.
00:47:23.400So this this is not I don't I don't take any of this very, very seriously, but it comes with the job for cash.
00:49:50.020But the deal is that as a government employee, you work for the president until you can't.
00:49:56.440So if you've been in the FBI or any other agency in the last 15 years, you've worked under Barack Obama and Donald Trump and Joe Biden and now Donald Trump.
00:50:06.060Again, those are very different people.
00:50:14.060So I think unless there is a lot more to the report, I think the answer to that is nobody cares.
00:50:22.300The notion that the military in particular, but police forces, ought to be subordinate to the civil power is one of the core elements in America.
00:50:30.500So, you know, I don't know if you need to go see Oprah, but if you're upset with your leadership, then suck it up because that is how our democracy works and you wouldn't want it any other way.
00:50:41.000It's very strange, Rich, to read this from FBI agents.
00:50:45.220Like, you have to receive the information.
00:50:53.120I mean, like, if I heard this from my staff, I'd be like, you need to go work for somebody else.
00:50:56.460I'm not the make you feel seen and heard kind of person.
00:50:59.720Yeah, you want the FBI guys to be guys with crew cuts that take orders and go take down bad guys and don't spend their time backbiting and whining, which is what this report sounds like.
00:51:12.640So, in any event, I think what I'm seeing with Cash and with Dan is a trend to try to diminish and embarrass them.
00:51:20.020And I know their critics will say that's because they've done diminishing and embarrassing things.
00:51:23.500And I would just urge people to understand, I've been in this business a long time, I'm seeing a pattern on them, same pattern as we've seen on Hegseth, where the people who didn't like them to begin with continue not to like them, and then more and more and more hit pieces wind up in the news.
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00:54:14.220Rich Lowry and Charlie Cook of National Review are back with me now.
00:54:22.240And guys, this just in, as Trump is holding a cabinet meeting, some good news.
00:54:28.120It's not, we don't know how good, but it's definitely good news about the remaining survivor, National Guard member, who was shot by that Afghani asylee.
00:56:08.100Sarah Beckstrom is the National Guard member who died on Thanksgiving, age 20.
00:56:13.440And what's been so disgusting in the wake of this murder, an attempted murder in the case of Andrew Charles, is the left wing running around trying to pretend that the issue is really that they were there in the first place.
00:56:29.140Like Jane Mayer of The New Yorker out there saying this was all so unnecessary.
00:56:34.500They didn't need to be there as if that's really the problem.
00:56:38.480Like, not that there's some lunatic who drove from Washington state to Washington, D.C. to shoot down two innocents in the prime of their lives.
00:56:47.180But that Trump gave the order to fortify the crime preventions in Washington, D.C.
00:57:25.820The federal government is allowed to deploy federal agents in the federal district.
00:57:31.480So once you get past that, then what Jane Mayer and others effectively are saying is the equivalent of saying, well, if you don't like the police, you can just shoot them, which is crazy.
00:58:25.760It is not just stupid to say, well, of course, if they hadn't been there, they wouldn't have been shot because someone else would have been.
00:58:35.980That is not how it works in the United States.
00:58:39.040But I think, unfortunately, it is representative of a particular sort of progressive thinking, which holds that if, for whatever reason, you, being the progressive elite, don't like someone, whether that be the deployment of the National Guard in D.C.
00:58:54.600or ICE performing and enforcing immigration law or, say, Charlie Kirk saying things they didn't like, then it's sort of understandable.
00:59:02.980They wouldn't go so far as to say it's justified, but it's sort of understandable.
00:59:06.680And you have to take that into consideration when looking at the story.
00:59:10.220And Ken Delanian on MS Now, which is formerly MSNBC, he said, well, you want to play it?
00:59:18.640But, of course, you know, there's so much controversy happening in the United States right now with ICE, who are also wearing uniforms and wearing masks.
00:59:30.560And so there's you don't know people walking around with uniforms in an American city.
00:59:39.740There are some Americans that might object to that.
00:59:42.360And so apparently this shooting has happened.
00:59:45.420There are some Americans who might object to that.
00:59:48.560And so apparently this shooting has happened because people walk around with uniforms there.
01:00:09.700I don't like some of our gun control laws.
01:00:11.940There's no way Ken Delaney would go on TV and say, well, of course, the president just signed an increase in the tax rate so that an IRS agent was killed.
01:02:47.220They're, by and large, young people, upstanding, patriotic, want to do their duty.
01:02:52.280And what they're doing largely in Washington, D.C. is providing a symbol of public order that no way justifies any act of violence against them, any harassment against them.
01:03:04.160And, of course, in no way justifies murdering them.
01:03:20.340But it does not appear that this guy was necessarily one of them because he went through a lot of vetting.
01:03:26.180And my next guest coming on after you guys is going to walk us through some of that.
01:03:28.900But even the administration is suggesting they think the guy was radicalized here, here, which is like, oh, jeez, like, great, great, rich.
01:04:04.120But it is interesting if he got radicalized here because he was a few years earlier helping us and then was yelling Allahu Akbar as he shot two of our service personnel.
01:04:54.160Somalia doesn't have anything to do with us.
01:04:55.860There's no reason we should be giving asylum to those people or that if they're refugees, they shouldn't be going someplace nearby Somalia where they might speak the language or the culture is familiar.
01:05:04.760And it would be easier for them to go back.
01:05:06.620That's supposed to be part of the process.
01:05:08.020You hope refugees eventually return to their native country and it would be much easier for a Minneapolis to assimilate the Somali immigrants if, say, there are 10,000 rather than 80,000.
01:05:21.840So I don't think there's an easy answer to this guy's case.
01:05:24.320At least it doesn't look like there was.
01:05:26.500You'd hope when we're granting asylum, by the way, that it's not just do you have a fear of persecution back home, which he certainly did.
01:05:34.920But whether you're sane or not and an upstanding member of the community or not, and with the Trump administration kicking the tires now in the asylum process, you hope that's something they're looking at.
01:05:44.220Well, there was this group that was monitoring him, Charlie, this like immigration, I don't know what it's called.
01:05:50.140It's got some long official sounding name, but it wasn't really a governmental organization.
01:05:54.400It was a left-leaning organization that realized he was suicidal and, as far as I can tell, told no one.
01:06:01.400It did not, you know, it's problematic because to the points that Rich was just making, you bring these people who have a totally different background, totally different upbringing,
01:06:10.840who, let's face it, grow up in a place where the jihad is very frequent, common, familiar, and not nearly as frowned upon as it is here.
01:06:19.680And then you unleash them into the United States, even when they were so-called good guys, with only a left-leaning, bleeding heart, like checking in on them every once in a while.
01:06:29.040And are we totally shocked that this is what happened?
01:06:32.580Well, also, although, of course, it is not the case that most people who come here from Islamic countries are radicalized,
01:06:40.120they are more likely to be radicalized than, say, me, because they come from a background in which the messages they're receiving are normal.
01:06:49.300If somebody came up to me and started talking about radical Islam, I think I would look at them funny.
01:06:54.380Also, you're radicalized on some things, Joe, I just need to do it.
01:07:22.860But the information that the federal government was able to look at when I applied to become a permanent resident and then a citizen was comprehensive.
01:07:32.300Because I came from a stable country in which the bureaucracy and the government have long been fairly competent.
01:07:41.560And that is true of people from France or from Germany or from Australia or Japan or what you will.
01:07:47.140It's just not the case for people from the third world.
01:07:50.240There aren't many records in failed Islamic states such as Afghanistan.
01:07:54.320And that is, you know, when we hear the word vetted, that's something we ought to bear in mind.
01:07:59.500Now, that doesn't mean, of course, you don't let anyone in from anywhere that isn't a Western country.
01:08:04.220But it does mean you have to have a different approach because you just can't know that the paper trail in an Afghanistan, as opposed to, say, a Germany, is worthwhile.
01:08:16.340By the way, the name of the group that was supposed to be keeping an eye on him is the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, which sounds so nice and official.
01:08:25.040But really, it's just some left-leaning group that's supposed to, I guess, ease their way into the country and keep one eye on them.
01:08:30.520And the person did accurately deduce that he was feeling suicidal, did not accurately deduce that he was feeling homicidal.
01:08:38.340And if they did, did nothing about it.
01:09:29.260And she said, no, it was the New York Post reporting, said she wants a, quote, full travel ban on unnamed countries who are flooding the U.S. with dangerous migrants.
01:09:41.560She wrote on X, I am recommending a full travel ban on every damn country that's been flooding our nation with killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.
01:09:49.260This was after she, quote, just met with the president.
01:09:53.960So a DHS spokesperson told the Post a list of nations would be announced soon.
01:09:59.460So a full travel ban, unlike the loser countries.
01:10:08.720It would probably be the 19 countries they've already listed as countries of concern, a country that go to Charlie's point.
01:10:14.760If you don't have a functional country or a liable country government on the other end, you can't vet someone, and you're going to have huge visa overstay problems.
01:10:24.220So I think this kind of pause is appropriate, but, of course, it's going to be depicted as racist.
01:10:29.020Mark Kelly, our friend Mark Kelly, in that same Meet the Press interview that you played a clip from earlier, said that Trump wants to shut down third-world immigration because he hates brown people.
01:10:38.920And this is an argument we're going to hear, when actually you could stop all immigration from those 19 countries forevermore, and still the immigration flow into the United States would be overwhelmingly, to use his term, brown.
01:10:51.740Because most people are coming from Latin America and from Asia, but they always play the race card.
01:11:08.680Okay, but this is veteran action founder Mark Lucas, and he's talking about how Afghanis, for example, treat their children and their women.
01:11:19.100Just to give you one example of how different their culture is from ours, take a listen here, Sot 5.
01:11:25.380In Afghanistan, there was a saying that we as Americans have the watches, but the Afghans own the time.
01:11:35.720And over the weekend, I was sharing stories of what I witnessed as a platoon leader in Afghanistan 2010.
01:11:41.480You know, the Afghan elders that I had to conduct key leader engagements with, they had small little boys that were called chai boys, maybe eight or nine years old, who were at every single one of our meetings, giving us tea.
01:11:56.240And my Afghan interpreter told me that those young boys were sold into sexual slavery, and their parents were willing to sell their children in hopes that they would be able to be sent to Kabul to get a higher education from these elders.
01:12:09.320But my interpreter proudly told me that many of these young boys would grow up to become men, and they'd come back, and they would kill those elders.
01:12:17.640But also, the Afghans would beat their women.
01:12:19.800They have no respect for women, and I had three strong, brave women attached to my unit.
01:12:26.320They were members of my female engagement team, and they all just so happened to be blonde-haired.
01:12:30.900And we had to constantly protect them from our Afghan allies in the Afghan Border Patrol.
01:12:36.000But when we'd go out on a foot patrol, you'd have these sick Afghan men just hover around them.
01:12:42.500So I'm trying to warn people that these aren't folks that you want in your neighborhood.