The Tucker Carlson Show - The Pentagon Didn’t Fire Dan Caldwell Over Leaks. They Fired Him for Opposing War With Iran.

00:00:00.560 Dan Caldwell is a Marine Corps veteran who wound up until three days ago

00:00:05.360 advising the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on military policy. He was one of the strongest

00:00:11.760 voices in the U.S. government in the Trump administration against the war with Iran.

00:00:17.120 And his rationale was simple. It's not in America's interest and many Americans will die

00:00:22.320 and billions will be spent on a war we don't need to fight. And as someone who fought in Iraq, he

00:00:27.840 was able to take that case to the principles with some force. Then, three days ago, he was fired from

00:00:34.320 the Pentagon. But not for his views on Iran, no. Dan Caldwell was fired because, reporters are told

00:00:41.200 off the record, he had leaked classified documents to the media. But what were these classified

00:00:47.200 documents exactly? Well, no one at the Pentagon could know the answer to that because Dan Caldwell's

00:00:52.960 phone was never examined. Nor was he given a polygraph. So actually, beneath the headlines

00:00:59.440 was nothing other than a false accusation. Was Dan Caldwell fired because he opposed the push to war

00:01:06.160 with Iran? You decide. Here's Dan Caldwell. So there is an enormous amount of pressure on this

00:01:14.000 administration to participate in military action against Iran. And the President's position has

00:01:20.560 been, I think, really clear for a long time, which is we don't want to run to get nuclear weapons.

00:01:24.640 That's bad for everybody. Yes. He sincerely believes that. He's against proliferation.

00:01:30.160 He's very concerned about nuclear weapons in general, I think. But we would strongly prefer a

00:01:37.680 diplomatic solution. And he's being attacked up and down, including by a lot of people in the

00:01:43.520 administration in private, who were trying to steer him toward military action. So leaving aside all

00:01:53.760 the, you know, internecine fights going on, just as a real life matter, what would happen if the U.S.

00:02:00.480 participated in a military strike on Iran's nuclear sites? So I strongly believe that for

00:02:09.040 diplomacy to work, there needs to be a credible military option. Yes. And the President needs

00:02:16.000 that. The Pentagon, where I used to work, needs to provide that. That is their role in American

00:02:22.080 foreign policy, is to provide that leverage for diplomatic solutions to work. Now, that's how it's

00:02:28.960 supposed to work. Does it often work that way? Unfortunately, the last 30 years have shown us

00:02:32.480 us that it really doesn't. But the Trump administration is trying to make it work

00:02:37.520 that way, like it's supposed to. So that's-

00:02:40.160 So we're pursuing diplomacy with the leverage of potential military action.

00:02:45.120 Correct. That is how it's supposed to work. Now, there's risks in that. You could create

00:02:48.800 a security dilemma, a spiral. So you have to be careful. But that is essentially why the DOD exists.

00:02:56.000 Now, with that said, there are obviously specifics I can't get into. But I think it is fair to say

00:03:04.480 that a war with Iran risks being incredibly costly in terms of lives and dollars and instability in

00:03:12.880 the Middle East. Lives and dollars, American lives, American dollars. The lives of Americans,

00:03:17.920 the lives of Iraqis, of Saudis, of Bahrainians, of-

00:03:22.640 Israelis.

00:03:23.040 Israelis.

00:03:23.360 Israelis, yes, of Israelis. And of course, Iranians. It could be an incredibly costly war. And I think

00:03:32.880 that that is very obvious to anybody who's been watching the region for a while. And I think that's

00:03:39.680 why over the last few years, you have seen certain countries in the region change some of their positions

00:03:46.880 on how they want to engage Iran. There are a lot of Gulf Arab countries, for example, who

00:03:55.360 they by no means view Iran as a benevolent force in the region. They're very aware of the threats

00:04:04.000 that they could pose. But they also recognize that a war for them would be extremely costly. And so

00:04:10.720 they're trying to adopt a different posture. And that's a recognition on their end of the costs

00:04:16.640 that a potential full-out war with Iran could have. And I think the president, vice president,

00:04:23.920 they know this. And that is why they are making sure they're prioritizing diplomacy. And let me just

00:04:30.560 say, thank God we have Steve Witkoff in the administration. He is truly doing the Lord's work

00:04:35.280 and trying to stop this war through diplomacy and also end another ongoing war in Russia, Ukraine.

00:04:41.040 And they're making sure that his effort is the main effort, not a military effort at the moment.

00:04:48.720 So just for people who haven't been following this, what you're alluding to with the Gulf states,

00:04:53.520 there are six of them, but two of the biggest ones and the closest US allies would be UAE and Saudi.

00:04:59.680 And those are primarily Sunni states run by Sunnis. And they are hostile to Iran for a bunch of

00:05:06.400 different reasons going back a long way. Iran's proxy forces in neighboring countries, there's a lot

00:05:11.200 here, but they've been basically enemies of Iran or perceived that way. And so the thought was,

00:05:15.760 well, they would back military action against Iran, but you're saying all of a sudden they wake up

00:05:20.400 and realize, no, they don't back it. They don't want a major war in the Middle East right now because

00:05:27.680 of what they're trying to do with their countries in terms of economic development, because they're

00:05:32.320 trying to give their people a better life. It's worth noting that Khalid bin Salman, the Saudi

00:05:38.240 defense minister, was in Tehran, I believe, a few days ago. And he's the brother of Mohammed bin

00:05:42.960 Solomon, the crown prince. Yes. And they recognize fully the threat that Iran poses,

00:05:49.520 and they take it seriously. But just like the Trump administration, they are prioritizing

00:05:55.840 diplomatic outreach and trying to achieve somewhat of a detente. And that doesn't mean you disarm and

00:06:02.720 you join hands and the Middle East becomes this, you know, happy, hippie, you know, circle jam band.

00:06:08.400 It means that people recognize it's in no one's interest to have a major war in the Middle East.

00:06:14.080 So the idea that it could become a major war is kind of absent from American news accounts. So the

00:06:20.560 idea is that the United States, probably in partnership with Israel or vice versa, Israel

00:06:26.560 in partnership with the United States, would take out the, I think, six Iranian nuclear sites,

00:06:34.720 and that would kind of be the end of it. That it wouldn't become a major war. I mean,

00:06:39.360 I don't think I've ever read any account that suggests it could become a major war, but you're

00:06:43.840 saying it could. Look, when the minute that the bombs or bullets start flying, you can never say

00:06:50.000 with certainty what exactly is going to happen. But I think that because of

00:06:58.800 the fact that Iran has been put on its back foot, and Iran is weakened, they've had a lot of

00:07:04.880 failures in the region. Um, I think that actually creates an opportunity for more and better

00:07:10.560 diplomacy, but there's some who argue that creates an opportunity for more military action. And again,

00:07:17.360 maybe, maybe that's true, but all indications are, is that any type of strike would likely incite a,

00:07:26.560 a major war in the, in the Middle East. And again, I won't get into specifics. Right.

00:07:29.840 That could entail, but that is a, a re that is a likely outcome of any, uh, sustained set of strikes

00:07:40.480 on certain, uh, certain parts of Iran. I saw a graphic the other day, um, that showed the number

00:07:47.360 of us military installations in that region around the Persian Arabian Gulf. And, um, I don't know if

00:07:54.320 it was a complete, uh, list, but there are a lot, there are a lot, and there's publicly available

00:07:59.600 information. There are a lot of American service personnel stationed in that region and different

00:08:05.120 places. And some of the places there aren't that many, they're not massive, well-defended bases.

00:08:09.200 They seem like small bases, including in Iraq, uh, and Syria, but others. I mean, why wouldn't those

00:08:16.000 people be at risk?

00:08:16.960 It's not even just the service members. It's diplomats in these large embassies in places like

00:08:25.040 Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Kuwait. Uh, there are some places where there's actually

00:08:32.400 family members, uh, in the Middle East. Um, so it's not just service members that are at risk.

00:08:39.440 It is American government employees, primarily diplomatic staff. Uh, it's also a lot of American

00:08:45.760 workers in the region, working in the oil industry, working in the finance industry.

00:08:50.240 There are a lot of Americans that would be at risk, not just service members.

00:08:55.840 And that, that is, again, that is something that, as you point out very well,

00:09:00.800 is often overlooked in any discussion around military action.

00:09:03.520 Well, it's not even mentioned. It's not even mentioned. The threat to American lives

00:09:07.520 is not even mentioned. And that's of course not even considering,

00:09:11.440 you know, the potential for terrorism. I mean, 9-11 happened because

00:09:16.320 extremists disagreed with American foreign policy. I mean, they said so again, and again,

00:09:20.800 and again, and again, you're supposed to ignore that and think they did it because they hated our

00:09:23.760 freedoms. Um, what they did was evil. I'm of course not in any way excusing it, but they, they,

00:09:30.160 they said why they did it. We disagree with what you're doing. And, and they attacked the US

00:09:34.160 homeland and killed 3000 Americans. So is, I mean, there's got to be a concern given how many

00:09:40.880 Iranians came into the country under the Biden administration illegally, like that there are

00:09:44.880 probably agents of the Iranian government here. And like, there could be acts of terror here if we

00:09:50.320 did this.

00:09:51.600 I mean, that is, that is a risk with any overseas military op, uh, operation. I, I do think this is,

00:09:57.760 you know, another reason why we need to take, uh, homeland defense and homeland security more

00:10:03.360 seriously. Uh, but yes, that, that is, that is a real risk. Um, I will say, you know, the backing

00:10:10.800 up to nine 11 comparison is there was a series of mistakes, uh, in both American foreign policy

00:10:17.120 and American security policy that paved the road to nine 11. I mean, the, the inability of the FBI

00:10:22.720 and CIA to work together, the decision to, through friendly nations, to fund certain groups, to, uh,

00:10:29.840 allow, you know, the growth of certain forces to fight communism, which at the time was probably the

00:10:35.200 right decision because of the threat, the Soviet union post, but the road to hell is paved with good

00:10:40.400 intentions. And one of the reasons why we're in the situation we are in the middle East with Iran

00:10:45.440 is we have to be honest because of the war in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was a check against Iran is

00:10:53.280 that he forced Iran to devote resources to deterring Iraq that now Iran doesn't need to put against

00:11:02.240 deterring Iraq conventionally or through their own proxies. Now they're able to put that money into

00:11:08.320 places like Hezbollah, the Houthis, and also devote more resources to its missile program and

00:11:14.320 potentially its nuclear program as well too. That, that is, I think, one of the things that

00:11:19.680 you can't overlook when discussing foreign policy and that not enough people have the conversation

00:11:24.960 about how did we get here? It's like, people don't want to have a conversation about how we got to

00:11:29.120 where we are in Ukraine. You know, NATO expansion played a big role in that. Um, you know, 30 years

00:11:36.880 of failed American foreign policy towards Eastern Europe, uh, the support of, of certain revolutions,

00:11:43.360 the support of certain, uh, political figures. Uh, there were smart people from George Kennan to,

00:11:50.240 you know, even the former CIA director, whatever you think of him, Bill Burns,

00:11:54.240 who warned that this stuff would happen. And again, these decisions that we make in a certain moment,

00:12:00.880 very focused on one thing, have second and third order consequences that sometimes are very easy to

00:12:06.000 see that they're quite obvious. Like if anybody had any understanding of the region and the power

00:12:11.520 dynamics in the region, 2003, they would have known, geez, removing Saddam Hussein, however awful he was,

00:12:18.560 would inevitably benefit Iran. There was hardly any discussion of that in the lead up.

00:12:23.360 Well, no, I was, I was, I was present in the country when all of that happened. And I,

00:12:27.440 and I didn't know anything, but it just seemed obvious if you have a majority Shiite country

00:12:33.200 and you force democracy, whatever that is on that country, and all of a sudden you get a Shiite

00:12:37.840 government, it's probably going to be aligned with Iran, right? It went from a bulwark against Iran to

00:12:43.600 an ally of Iran, which it remains, I think. It is effectively, the Iraqi government is effectively

00:12:48.960 Iranian proxy. Okay. So why would you do that? I don't, I mean, was it, and this weren't getting far

00:12:55.200 afield, but it's, it's, it's directly relevant to what's happening right now. Yeah. Even I,

00:13:01.200 as like a 35 year old journalist could see that this was going to have this effect.

00:13:07.680 Why were the geniuses in charge of our policy not thinking that, or maybe they were, maybe there was

00:13:11.840 some larger. Boy, that, that could be a three hour conversation in and of itself. So I think

00:13:18.320 there's a lot of reasons why we invaded Iraq, none of them good. But the one thing that should be

00:13:28.480 acknowledged is, is that even before 9-11, there was an effort to create the conditions for the United

00:13:35.360 States to go and invade Iraq. They thought that by overthrowing Saddam, that this would lead to an

00:13:43.600 outbreak of peace and democracy across the Middle East that predated 9-11. And you had things like

00:13:50.720 the project for new American century. You had Paul Wolfowitz at the tail end of the Bush administration,

00:13:56.400 very angry that George HW Bush didn't go all the way in terms of the Baghdad. And then you had this post

00:14:06.240 cold war moment where the United States was not simply a superpower. It was a hyper power. And we had

00:14:13.040 nobody who could effectively challenge us. Russia was a mess. China was still on the upswing. Some

00:14:19.520 people could, some smart people saw what was coming. But the assumption was we bring them into the WTO,

00:14:24.560 we do free trade, China's going to become a democracy. And so when, when you have nobody in the world

00:14:32.800 that can effectively challenge or check you, that can create political conditions domestically

00:14:40.800 that lead people to think that there will be no consequences for American foreign policy. And I

00:14:45.360 also think too, that our experience in the Balkans and how those wars went also convinced a large part

00:14:52.080 of the American security establishment that, oh, we can deal with Iraq rather cheaply and quickly,

00:14:58.240 and it'd be no big deal. And you saw a lot of that in the early days of the Iraq war,

00:15:02.320 people gloating, people assuming that, you know, once the statue of Saddam in Fido Square

00:15:08.640 fell down, which, by the way, was, you know, pulled down by Marines from 1st Marine Division,

00:15:14.400 that, you know, we'd be out there pretty quickly. And history showed that that was not the case.

00:15:19.920 No, it certainly wasn't. Well, whatever the motive, the actions of the US government under George W.

00:15:26.400 Bush greatly strengthened Iran. Great. I mean, removed the main

00:15:33.120 sort of bulwark against their expansion and freed up a lot of cash, as you just said.

00:15:38.880 So, so here we are, we're facing, you know, enormous pressure to go to war with a country

00:15:44.240 that's not Iraq, that's actually more powerful than Iraq. A lot of this is public information,

00:15:48.560 but to the extent, I know you're gonna, you're doing your best not to

00:15:52.240 reveal anything that's classified. But to the extent you can kind of characterize it using

00:15:57.680 publicly available information, what is the current strength of Iran, do you think, as a military power?

00:16:03.120 Well, again, they're quite clearly on their back foot. Anybody who's been watching

00:16:10.240 what has happened to them in the region in the last seven, eight months can see that. Yes.

00:16:14.960 Yes. Hezbollah has suffered significant defeats. Iran lost arguably its closest ally in the region in

00:16:24.240 Bashar al-Assad, lost a key pipeline of weapons and supplies into Lebanon, which restricts their ability

00:16:33.280 to help Hezbollah rebuild itself. They suffered some setbacks from some initial Israeli airstrikes

00:16:46.160 at the end of last year. And I just want to be clear about those airstrikes is that they were very

00:16:49.920 limited and they were very targeted. And the Iranian response was effectively, you can say,

00:16:57.760 looking at it. And again, I, I don't have any information if this is the case, but it was

00:17:02.720 telegraphed. And so the Israelis knew it was coming. They were prepared. They had American support to help

00:17:07.360 repel it. It was symbolic. It looked like to me. Yes. I mean, that's what it appears. Right. It appears.

00:17:12.640 So again, though, they, we can't deny that they have suffered some significant setbacks. However,

00:17:18.960 they still retain significant conventional military capabilities, um, a effective missile force.

00:17:27.360 They have effective proxies in Iraq. They have, um, uh, very effective, uh, drone program.

00:17:36.800 And those things, I think the Iranian missile force more than even a potential nuclear program,

00:17:43.600 and this is based on their experience. And they ran Iraq war. They, they very much view their missile

00:17:49.280 force as their ultimate guarantor of regime and national survival. And again, that goes back to

00:17:56.240 their experience. And they ran Iraq war when Saddam Hussein, sometimes with indirect or direct American

00:18:02.160 support, um, would use his Scud missiles and Tupolev bombers to effectively bomb and attack

00:18:10.080 Iranian cities. And the Iranians didn't have really an effective, uh, defense against them,

00:18:16.320 or even a effective way to counterstrike, uh, Iraq. They, they were able to get some Scud missiles from

00:18:24.160 Libya and other sources. It's interesting story. Gaddafi and Saddam had this kind of rivalry. So

00:18:29.520 Libya, even though being an Arab secular Arab socialist state, kind of like Iraq, they wound up backing,

00:18:35.200 uh, Iran, but they were never able to match, uh, Iraq's long range strike capabilities.

00:18:43.200 And so that is a big reason why they have invested so heavily in developing missiles, drones, cruise

00:18:50.320 missiles, and things like that, that can strike all across the region. And that is really the, the,

00:18:57.440 the real threat. And that is Iranian conventional weapons, missiles. Correct. As of right now. Yes.

00:19:04.640 Right. So when we hear that they're weakened, um, we're talking about their air defenses mostly. Uh,

00:19:11.680 I won't necessarily get into that, but there, I mean, part of their conventional, uh, capabilities have

00:19:19.040 been weakened, um, but not defeated and they still retain significant capabilities.

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00:21:51.460 It sounds to me like people who thought a lot about this have reached the conclusion that if we were

00:21:56.900 to participate in a strike on their nuclear facilities, lots of Americans would die.

00:22:00.640 There is a real potential to that. Again, there's a saying in the military that no plan survives the

00:22:07.940 first contact. It's larger too that no assumptions survive the first contact, but it's still a

00:22:15.060 significant risk that that could happen. I think it's fair to say that that is weighing in the

00:22:23.060 calculus of a lot of people in the administration. The choke point for a lot of the global oil trade

00:22:28.520 is, you know, the very end, you know, the, the terminus of the entrance to the Arabian Gulf,

00:22:34.860 Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz famously. And, um, do you think Iran is capable of shutting that

00:22:40.160 off? I think that is a real risk if not, you know, significantly curtailing, um, the ability to ship

00:22:48.480 energy through that, uh, vital sea lane. And what happens to global oil prices? They catastrophically

00:22:55.160 spike. Now over time, the oil market may, will sort itself out for sure. You know, you'll have

00:23:01.920 more production here domestically and elsewhere, um, oils fungible. Uh, but initially it would have

00:23:08.220 a pretty catastrophic impact on global oil markets at a time where, you know, the United States is

00:23:14.040 facing some economic headwinds. So you could see catastrophe both in the form of like a global

00:23:21.520 depression potentially, and the deaths of a lot of Americans in that region and here, uh, in the wake

00:23:27.940 of a war with Iran. The third point that I don't think is ever mentioned in any account I've ever

00:23:34.300 read about these plans to just bomb Iran and rid them of their nuclear program is the fact that Iran

00:23:39.660 is now part of a global coalition of big countries that oppose us. Now, see, this is, this is very

00:23:45.100 interesting. Tucker is what, why, why are they part of that coalition? And it's because of our own

00:23:52.020 stupidity. We force these countries together that don't naturally have aligned interests.

00:23:58.300 Okay. Iran is a Shiite theocracy. Russia is an authoritarian country run by Vladimir Putin and a

00:24:07.940 group of, of oligarchs, essentially. China is a quasi-communist, quasi-state capitalist state.

00:24:16.040 North Korea is one of the last true communist authoritarian countries on the face of the earth.

00:24:21.760 A lot of these countries should have natural tension. And there's been points in the post-Cold

00:24:26.280 War era where a country like Russia was willing to do things like not sell weapons to Iran because

00:24:35.100 they didn't want to inflict instability on the Middle East. Russia also traditionally,

00:24:41.840 despite the fact they've supported some of Israel's adversaries, did have a good relationship

00:24:45.900 with Israel. So Israelis along the United States were able to convince the Russians at key points

00:24:50.220 like, hey, don't sell these weapons to Iran or don't do this. And so while they were growing closer,

00:24:56.240 there were still gaps between them. And let's also be honest too, is Russia has had significant

00:25:01.100 problems with Islamic radicalism in their country. And they don't want to support a regime that in the

00:25:08.860 past has supported Islamic radicals, both Sunni and Shia across the Middle East and across other parts

00:25:14.120 of the world. They don't want them doing that in certain parts of the world. And so why are they pushed

00:25:21.200 together? Well, it's because we adopted this mindset, and even before the Biden administration

00:25:28.960 adopted this, is that this autocracy versus democracy. And again, it wasn't well-defined

00:25:35.880 before that, but we started just bucketing these countries together. Here's a great example,

00:25:42.260 axis of evil. When they said, we have this axis of evil of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

00:25:48.140 We just talked about it. Iran and Iraq hated each other. They were natural enemies. And by the way,

00:25:54.600 North Korea- And what does North Korea have to do with it?

00:25:56.540 Here's an interesting thing. Iraq and North Korea broke off relationships in the Iran-Iraq war

00:26:01.160 because they were so close to the Iranians. And the North Koreans, it appears, may have ripped off

00:26:08.040 the Iraqis in the 90s. They got them. This is, again, it hasn't been confirmed, but they may have

00:26:13.620 ripped them off when the North Koreans offered to sell them weapons. And the North Koreans are

00:26:18.840 actually kind of famous for this. They got the money and said, yeah, we can't give that to you.

00:26:24.120 They actually tried at one point in the early 90s. Again, I can't say if this story is for sure,

00:26:28.820 but I read this on a military blog. They try to pay for some Russian military equipment with used car

00:26:34.080 parts. So I bring this up in that, and again, Russia and China, these are two countries with

00:26:40.840 historical antagonisms. They've have a shared border that they've, you know, during the Soviet

00:26:47.100 times, they fought wars over. They have the Chinese look at Siberia and its resources, and it's growing

00:26:53.200 its own, its population I don't think is growing right now because they killed 100 million baby girls.

00:26:58.220 But this is an area with resources that they need and that there's been in the past conflicts over.

00:27:05.320 There should be tension between those two countries, but our foreign policy of bucketing

00:27:09.420 them all together, sanctioning them, treating them as one united front has kind of willed it into

00:27:15.220 existence. Has made them one united front. Yes, and it shouldn't be that way. We should be able to

00:27:19.980 pull them apart because they have interests that don't align. We should be able to be working more

00:27:25.740 with the Russians, and I hope that, you know, if, again, Steve Witkoff is successful and others in

00:27:31.840 the administration, there's a lot of great people in the administration working on Russia, Ukraine

00:27:35.820 right now. If they're successful, we can hopefully maybe get to a better place with Russia, and they

00:27:40.480 can help us with Iran. Let me just ask you to pause it. Everything you're saying is, by the way,

00:27:44.680 in the public sphere, you're not guessing about any of this. It's obvious. No honest person would

00:27:51.400 deny it. And it's so crazy, these policies, that it's almost like they were formulated by people

00:27:58.200 who are trying to tank the United States. I mean, these are policies that are hostile to American

00:28:02.480 interests, not indifferent. You know, I think maybe that's a possibility, but the more I've

00:28:11.040 interacted with some of these people and seen them up close, it's almost giving them too much credit.

00:28:14.080 I mean, I just... Never attribute to conspiracy what stupidity can explain? Is that what you're

00:28:20.140 saying? That's... There's definitely evil forces at play, but a lot of this is stupidity and laziness.

00:28:27.080 You know, in my, albeit short time in the Pentagon, like with Ukraine, a lot of people in the Pentagon

00:28:35.780 wanted to keep doing what we were doing in Ukraine. Some of them really had an ideological commitment

00:28:41.160 to the Ukrainian project. I think a lot of the officers that... A more transgender Eastern Europe.

00:28:50.560 You know, Zelensky has a savior of global liberalism. The... The war against Christianity,

00:28:57.100 they're all in. Yeah. The... So I think that because of their experience, in some ways you can somewhat

00:29:04.520 sympathize with it, is that they did sympathize with Ukraine. But, you know, I saw a lot of it,

00:29:09.900 and a lot of it was, it's easier to say we should keep doing what we're doing than admit that we had

00:29:18.080 been screwing things up and think of a different way to do things. I think that, more than ideology,

00:29:24.920 and ideology plays an important role, the belief that America needs to be the global hegemon to,

00:29:30.100 you know, enforce liberal hegemony. But really, for a lot of the people, and I think the same applies

00:29:36.420 as a State Department, it's just easier to say we should just keep doing what we're doing.

00:29:38.680 No, I believe that. I've spent a lot of time around the bureaucracy. I think that's right.

00:29:42.420 It's just like, there's a physics principle. Objects in motion tend to stay that way.

00:29:46.220 Yeah. So, no, I completely believe that. But big picture, just like swooping out a little bit,

00:29:52.940 another Middle Eastern war. Like, I think the overwhelming majority of Americans, and certainly

00:29:59.900 the overwhelming majority of Trump voters, like, wait a second, no. So, and in fact, the president

00:30:06.800 was elected to some large extent on the promise to not get us involved in another forever war.

00:30:15.060 So, I just have really been struck, but you're the expert by how much pressure is applied to the

00:30:21.520 administration to do this, to get us involved in another war in the Middle East. Did you feel that?

00:30:27.040 Yeah. I think there clearly is a very strong coalition within the United States that wants

00:30:35.600 us to see another war in the Middle East, and it crosses both parties. Just to point something out,

00:30:43.160 and I wrote about this in Foreign Affairs with a friend of mine, Reed Smith. You know, during the

00:30:49.440 campaign, the Democrats attacked Trump for being too dovish on Iran. And they attacked him for not

00:30:58.860 doing more after killing Soleimani, not doing more after some of the Iranian drone strikes on Saudi

00:31:05.780 Arabia in 2019. They accused him of being too weak on Iran. And the Democrat Party trotted out Liz Cheney,

00:31:13.900 of all people, and the endorsement of her father, had her going to battleground states talking about

00:31:20.100 the importance of staying, quote, strong in the Middle East and continuing to fund an unwinnable

00:31:26.440 war in Ukraine. And that was the position they adopted. So, it's kind of transcended the traditional

00:31:33.660 right-left way we think about American foreign policy that came into being at the end of the Cold

00:31:39.600 War. And, or even before that, it really predates the end of the Cold War. It goes back to the Cold

00:31:44.200 War where the, you know, in the post-Vietnam era, especially the Democrats were the doves,

00:31:49.100 Republicans were the hawks. It really kind of transcends that. And you have this trans-partisan

00:31:53.300 movement to keep America engaged in the world. And I think it's good for America to be engaged in

00:32:00.780 the world, but engaged in the world so that their primary purpose is not to protect American interests

00:32:05.900 or safety or the conditions of American prosperity, but to ensure that America is enforcing liberal

00:32:13.680 hegemony. So, getting back to Iran, there's a lot of reasons why people want war with Iran. I think

00:32:19.740 when it comes down to it is a lot of people still think you can do regime change wars successfully in

00:32:28.200 the Middle East. Regime change wars? I thought this was all about getting rid of the whatever half dozen

00:32:34.340 Iranian nuclear sites because we don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

00:32:38.860 Well, I think Donald Trump has exposed them because they're essentially, I mean, some of the

00:32:44.580 biggest advocates of war with Iran, whether it's groups like Foundation for Defense of Democracy,

00:32:52.360 writers at certain publications, essentially they are saying the problem with diplomacy is it doesn't

00:33:01.180 lead to regime change, is that the policy should be regime change. It's almost like the nuclear issue

00:33:09.740 is really about creating a pathway to regime change. And it really still goes back to this idea

00:33:16.640 is a lot of them deep down inside believe, and some of them say it out loud, that we could have made

00:33:24.340 Iraq successful. And Iraq is just a mess. It is an absolute just cluster. Well, it's a proxy of Iran

00:33:34.660 to the country they hate. Yes. Let me just make a note on this. The most deadly forces in the middle,

00:33:41.240 the forces that pose the most risk to the United States, United States forces, are the popular

00:33:49.180 mobilization forces in Iraq. They are an official arm of the Iraqi government that we created after

00:33:57.080 the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which we fund through aid and whose troops that we train

00:34:03.560 still with a couple thousand troops in Iraq. So American troops in Iraq right now are getting

00:34:12.440 attacked by people who are part of the same government that American troops are helping to

00:34:19.320 support and whose security forces they're helping to train. It is the most counterproductive and insane

00:34:24.100 foreign policy mission in the globe right now. And I hope the administration will make changes to that.

00:34:30.980 But that's, yeah, that's how I'm saying it is. I don't understand. So, I mean, in the last,

00:34:36.480 I don't know, 22 years, 24 years, I guess, since 9-11. Amazing. Our record with regime change in the

00:34:44.700 Middle East has been like 100% failure. Yeah. And if you go to Libya, you go to Syria. Yeah.

00:34:55.120 But failure on every level. It hasn't. Even Yemen, you can include Yemen because we back the old

00:34:59.880 government before it collapsed and Yemen devolved into a civil war. It hasn't made the United States

00:35:04.180 safer or richer. It hasn't, by the way, I would argue, made our allies safer either, however much

00:35:09.760 they may have wanted it. It hasn't been good for them either that I can see. And it's been a disaster

00:35:14.260 for millions of people, human beings, in those countries. But mostly it hasn't helped the United

00:35:19.080 States. So how could you, with a straight face, advocate for yet another regime change war against

00:35:24.420 a real country that's not Libya, not Iraq? It's Iran. It's the Persian Empire. Like, how could you say

00:35:29.720 that out loud? Are they actually saying that out loud? Yeah. I mean, some of them do say it out

00:35:36.000 loud, yes. Is that they think, oh, the Shah, you know, the Shah's son has reemerged. I mean, this guy

00:35:41.960 is the, he's the ultimate fail son, in my view. And then you have groups like the MEK,

00:35:50.360 People's Mujahideen of Iran, who pay a lot of American politicians to advocate for them and

00:35:54.580 advocate for regime change. They are essentially saying, hey, we have governments in waiting

00:36:02.080 that can just swoop in there and everything will be fine if you just get rid of the mullahs.

00:36:07.720 Where have we heard that before? You know?

00:36:10.600 It's hard to believe this is actually real.

00:36:12.860 I know it is. It is hard to believe that-

00:36:14.860 I mean, it's ignoring the most obvious facts of the last 30 years.

00:36:18.900 Yeah. It goes back to what I was saying about what I observed in the Pentagon, I think, is that

00:36:23.540 it's easier to advocate for the same things over and over again than to say we should do

00:36:27.980 something different. But what do you make of the senator? I mean, maybe you have a different

00:36:30.540 experience, but I just hear constantly about Republican senators. I'm sure there are Democrats

00:36:36.000 too, but I hear about the Republicans, Lindsey Graham being the most obvious, but many others

00:36:39.260 constantly applying pressure to the administration to have a regime change war against Iran. I'm not

00:36:46.540 going to confirm your nominees. We're going to hassle- I mean, like threatening the Trump

00:36:51.580 administration in order to force them to lead a regime change war against Iran. What could

00:36:56.900 possibly be their motive? What is that?

00:37:02.020 Look, there- I think- and I've talked about this before in my past jobs. I think there's

00:37:08.740 a disconnect in Washington, D.C. among elected Republicans, with the exception of those in the

00:37:14.220 White House currently, between the base, with the base actually believes on foreign policy.

00:37:20.940 And so the base very much doesn't want new wars.

00:37:27.060 Like the voters you're talking about, people who put them there.

00:37:29.540 And time and time again, you saw the majority of Republican voters in a lot of these primaries

00:37:34.140 saying that they wanted fewer wars. The Republicans in a lot of cases were now less hawkish overall.

00:37:41.180 And, you know, polling, it doesn't tell the whole story all the time, but you saw voters-

00:37:48.740 generally, the Democrats are getting more hawkish primarily because of Ukraine, but you saw Republican

00:37:53.620 voters and independent voters becoming more and more wary of foreign wars. However, because foreign

00:37:59.240 policy for a lot of voters is often not a highly salient issue, it's not in their top three,

00:38:06.900 a lot of Republicans and Democrats are able to get elected despite having horrible records on foreign

00:38:14.580 policy. Now, there are elections where it makes a difference. 2016, for example, there's real

00:38:21.860 evidence that the fact that Donald Trump was viewed as less hawkish than Hillary Clinton

00:38:26.180 played a decisive role in him winning Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.

00:38:31.340 The counties that flipped from Obama to Trump, they had higher levels of what you call military

00:38:37.960 sacrifice. So troops deployed, wounded, or killed than some of their adjacent counties. So that likely

00:38:44.620 contributed both to his 2016 and possibly his 2024 victory. Now, I have good dear friends of mine that

00:38:51.700 from a, you know, they're much smarter than me on polling and social science. They may disagree with

00:38:56.780 that. But there have been times where actually the political incentives are to be less hawkish,

00:39:03.320 but those don't show up in most elections. So you have a lot of Republican leaders in particular

00:39:11.820 that are just disconnected from the base. Now, I think the good news is, though,

00:39:16.080 is you're starting to see that change. And you saw that play out with Ukraine aid,

00:39:19.680 where I think the last major Ukraine aid vote, and it may actually be the last major Ukraine aid

00:39:26.120 vote yet ever. So I think you had over half of Senate Republicans vote against it, and more than

00:39:33.380 half of Senate or excuse me, House members vote against it. And that went from like you only had

00:39:39.980 six Republicans voting against the first big Ukraine aid package in 2022, and only 40 House

00:39:48.020 Republicans to now believe about 26, 27 senators, and then nearly 110, 113, somewhere in that range,

00:39:59.020 House Republicans voting against it. So you've seen changes. And definitely the Republicans elected

00:40:05.120 since 2018 in both the House and Senate, they're far less hawkish than people elected before then.

00:40:11.300 That's indisputable. Well, it hasn't worked. It hasn't worked. And I don't think anyone who puts the

00:40:17.400 interest of the United States first really does in his heart, could come around to another regime

00:40:24.340 change war in Iran. Like it's that's almost prima facie evidence that you are not putting your

00:40:30.000 country's interest first. That's the way it feels to me. Maybe I'm being uncharitable.

00:40:33.780 No, I think this goes back to a simple belief of what is the purpose of American foreign policy?

00:40:39.200 I believe, and I think President Trump, Vice President Vance, I believe even Secretary Rubio,

00:40:46.580 Secretary Hegseff, and others in the administration fundamentally believe the purpose of American

00:40:50.800 foreign policy is to ensure American safety and the conditions of our prosperity. That doesn't mean

00:40:56.200 we're going to ensure 3% GDP growth. It's the things that enable us to be prosperous. So like,

00:41:01.640 for example, prioritizing the defense of the Panama Canal over the negligible issue of which Eastern

00:41:08.960 European oligarch gets to loot the Donbass. Like they believe they believe that that, you know,

00:41:15.680 that is more important because the Panama Canal indisputably is more important to us than who

00:41:21.040 controls the Donbass or who controls some desolate patch of desert in the Middle East.

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00:42:36.700 Tucker. You get three months for free. You'll be grateful you did. Honestly, you will be.

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00:43:16.700 website, sambrosa.com. How did you get involved in all of this? What's your story? Um, and can I say,

00:43:24.860 I should have asked at the outset, what was your, you just left the Pentagon under circumstances I hope

00:43:29.500 we can talk about. What were you doing when you left? So I was a senior advisor to the secretary of

00:43:36.380 defense. I was focused on policy. I was the senior advisor in the front office for policy. And so my job

00:43:43.620 day to day was advising the secretary on policy, making sure that he was prepared for meetings, making

00:43:50.140 sure that he was prepared for giving certain speeches and talks, and then providing him policy advice as

00:43:57.440 needed. Uh, we had a very smart, um, policy team, uh, the undersecretary of defense for policy who just

00:44:05.120 was, uh, uh, confirmed, thank God, uh, Bridge Colby. He's doing a great job. But the way the Pentagon

00:44:10.060 works is you need somebody in the front office that can connect the secretary effectively to policy

00:44:14.980 and policy has so many jobs and so many things they have to focus on that you need somebody in

00:44:20.360 the front office that can help be that immediate policy advisor that is able to walk in and talk to the

00:44:26.120 secretary right away. Right. Okay. Is that the job that you dreamed about as a child? Like, how did

00:44:30.480 you wind up here? You know, it's funny. I, there was a part of me that didn't even want to go into the

00:44:36.700 Pentagon. It wasn't necessarily something that I, uh, I dreamed of. I mean, I think my first job I was

00:44:41.580 really obsessed with, like a lot of young boys is being a firefighter. And then, um, where'd you grow

00:44:46.440 up? I grew up, I was born in California, lived in Massachusetts for a while, but home is Scottsdale,

00:44:51.440 Arizona. That's where I consider home. My kids were born there. My parents still live there.

00:44:55.800 Um, my grandma still lives there. I still have a lot of family there and that's, that will always

00:44:59.500 be home for me. So how did you, you were in the military? Yes. The Marine Corps. You're in the

00:45:03.620 Marine Corps. How did that, how'd you wind up in the Marine Corps? So I went to, uh, a Jesuit all

00:45:10.600 boys school and the last two years are very intense. And the expectation was everybody's going to go to

00:45:16.020 college. And, um, by the end of, of my time in high school, I was, didn't want to do more academics.

00:45:24.200 I didn't want to go to college, but it was the thing you had to do. So I dragged myself down to

00:45:30.460 Tucson, uh, to go to the university of Arizona. And candidly, I was miserable. Um, I didn't have

00:45:38.740 any motivation to go to class or do stuff. And I just was hating life. Um, and then one day, my best

00:45:46.900 friend, uh, just a dear friend, I love him to death, James O'Connor, he was from high school,

00:45:53.780 from high school. He had dropped out of Arizona state university and enlisted in the army as a

00:45:59.060 paratrooper, like his dad and was attached to 101st as part of a pathfinder unit. And he was in Iraq

00:46:06.020 at the, uh, in the summer, he went to Iraq near the fall, 2005. And I remember him on AOL instant

00:46:13.420 messenger sending me a message saying, my, my team almost got hit by an IED. And I was kind of like,

00:46:22.040 what am I doing here? I need to get in the fight. Because growing up, you asked me what I wanted to

00:46:26.700 do is I was very interested in military history. And my grandfather, who is very important to me,

00:46:34.120 um, he, he was a paratrooper, but I became obsessed with the Marine Corps and he had me

00:46:40.580 read two books, the Nightingale song about amazing book. It's amazing book. I read, I still go and read

00:46:47.540 it every couple of years. Honestly. And the, and the, he released, I think he's passed away now.

00:46:52.260 He has Baltimore sun report, but, um, he released a longer version, kind of unexpurgated version,

00:46:58.000 which is amazing. And then he had me read fields of fire by Jim Webb. Oh my gosh.

00:47:02.240 And Jim Webb is one of my personal, those are both Vietnam books. Yes. Yeah. And so they had

00:47:08.960 an unvarnished view of the Marine Corps, but I still wanted to be part of that. And so, you know,

00:47:14.680 I, I, so James, I get the message from James and I say, I got to get out of here. Dropped out,

00:47:19.900 told my parents who are apoplectic. They weren't impressed. Yeah. I, I, they were scared.

00:47:26.140 And, um, uh, I still feel bad about that fear I put in them because I went and I enlisted in the

00:47:34.120 infantry. I didn't go in the Marine Corps. You enlisted. Yes. As an O three, uh, O three 11 in

00:47:40.300 the Marine Corps. Um, now my first two years in the Marine Corps. That's not, that's like the least

00:47:45.380 glamorous thing you can do. I, you know what? For some people, yes. And I know that you have some

00:47:52.220 Marines that work for you, but enlisted Marines. Yeah. And I'll do respect to them, but there was

00:47:57.400 a saying in the infantry is like, if you ain't infantry, you ain't shit. Yeah. And everything

00:48:02.960 the Marine Corps did from its fighter squadrons to its artillery, to its tanks was in support of

00:48:11.420 the enlisted riflemen locating with and destroying the enemy and repelling enemy assault by fire maneuver.

00:48:17.480 And so everything was in support of the O three 11 doing his job. And so I love being in the

00:48:24.720 infantry. And there was kind of this thing, like if, if you were infantry, like you were,

00:48:30.000 you felt whether it was true or not, you're cut above the rest, your life sucked more,

00:48:33.720 but that was a point of pride. And I love that. Um, and so, but my first two years,

00:48:40.600 so you just bottom line, you drop out of college and enlist in the Marine Corps during a war.

00:48:44.820 Yes. This was 2005, you know, things were going just swimmingly in Iraq.

00:48:50.900 Afghanistan was kind of on a, on a simmer, but it was, you know, still bad, um, before getting much,

00:48:56.620 much worse. Um, so my first two years, I, in bootcamp, I was selected for a program called

00:49:02.680 Yankee white. And I, this is the presidential support program. So if you ever seen the Marines

00:49:08.240 saluting in front of the white house, they're part of the presidential support program.

00:49:12.420 Um, and as part of that, I went to be part of the Marine security force of camp David. So I spent,

00:49:16.740 I think almost two years up there about that, uh, while president Bush was president. Um, and that

00:49:23.160 was a great duty station. I loved it. Some of my closest friends still to this day, I serve with up

00:49:30.280 there and it was a great command. I had a great first sergeant, great commanding officer, great

00:49:34.480 platoon sergeant. So I spent two years there. And then once, uh, I, my time was up there, I went to

00:49:40.360 second battalion, first Marines, which is very lucky. I got put in another great company,

00:49:44.640 Fox company two, one, and we did a workup and we need a deployment to Iraq. And this was end of

00:49:50.340 eight, 2009. I'll be honest. It was, it was not as bad as it was in Ramadi and Fallujah a few years

00:49:58.300 before. And it was mostly an uneventful deployment with some exceptions. There was, you know, some,

00:50:04.800 some incidents and things like that, but you kind of left Iraq at that time thinking, okay,

00:50:11.900 this isn't going to be like the new, uh, you know, this isn't going to be Scottsdale, Arizona anytime

00:50:19.400 soon, but this could kind of work. You know, this could kind of be like Tijuana, Mexico. Um,

00:50:24.880 but, um, strip clubs. Yeah. But five years later, with the exception of Al-Assad, every,

00:50:31.540 every place that I was at in Iraq was under the control of ISIS.

00:50:35.940 The places you were personally? Yes. That you had been? From, from the city of Hitt to South Sinjar,

00:50:41.100 the mountain where, um, those, the Yazidis were trapped, uh, where there was those massacres and

00:50:47.920 they enslaved, um, all the women. Yeah. I was, we were all around Mount Sinjar. We spent a lot of time

00:50:54.500 with Yazidis. Just very interesting people. Their religion is very interesting. Uh, they worship

00:51:00.640 what the West, a lot of Westerners would call the devil. I don't think that's very accurate,

00:51:05.060 but they were very pro-American. They were, they were always dressed in colorful outfits and they

00:51:09.940 come and wave at us. And, um, whereas when you were in the SUNY parts, they just kind of ignore you.

00:51:14.640 And they're like, when are you guys going to leave? You know? Uh, and so five years after that,

00:51:20.400 all had fallen apart. And that was, and a lot of those people who waved at you were dead

00:51:23.960 or sex slaves. Yeah. I have a picture of myself on my Twitter with, uh, two young Yazidi boys and,

00:51:34.420 uh, they're either dead or they're in a refugee camp. I, I, maybe they were able to go back, but,

00:51:41.840 um, that's probably the reality of that, of that, unfortunately. Where were you by five years

00:51:48.020 later by the time you saw this? I was working at Concerned Veterans for America. Uh, that's where

00:51:52.280 I met Pete Hegshef. And one thing, you know, one thing that happened over those five years and,

00:51:59.680 and continue to happen as I saw. So I did two things. I learned a lot about why the war started,

00:52:08.000 learned about the decisions that brought us there. And I didn't have an overnight transition.

00:52:13.720 It took a while for it to happen, but I saw the impact on my community of veterans. Um,

00:52:21.120 and it's only gotten worse since then. What was the, I'm sure you could talk for hours on it,

00:52:26.200 but if you could sum up the effect of the Iraq war on guys, you knew, what would it be? Um,

00:52:32.160 so three Marines that I served with, uh, either in two, one or camp David were killed in action.

00:52:39.340 Um, a half dozen were seriously wounded, including some of their double amputees.

00:52:44.460 So all in Afghanistan, well, a few in Iraq. Um, as we sit here, believe about 20 have committed

00:52:54.040 suicide or died as a result of service related injuries. 20? That's for people who serve in the

00:53:00.860 infantry. That's very common. Uh, there were infantry units who fought in the battle of Fallujah

00:53:05.980 and Ramadi and other very intense conflicts that have suffered more Marines who've killed

00:53:13.840 themselves than were actually killed in action. And it, you know, you really try to navigate this

00:53:22.400 topic without being filled with hate. You don't want to become a hater, but it's hard when you hear

00:53:27.220 stuff like that. And you think of someone like David from not even an American screaming at people,

00:53:32.700 calling them bigots for not wanting to engage in another regime change war. I mean, it's like,

00:53:37.360 it's hard. It's a disgrace that, that he is allowed in good and proper company. Um, I think

00:53:43.080 the Iraq war was a monstrous crime. That's the only way I can describe it as a crime first and foremost

00:53:47.680 against the Iraqi people. And then the Syrian people, because those two wars are clearly connected.

00:53:52.840 You know, ISIS essentially was formed in American prisons in, well, ISIS sprung out of Zarqawi's

00:54:01.340 group, but the leadership like Baghdadi and even the new president of Syria, Jelani, they were

00:54:07.700 in American prisons and they met people that would eventually help form their core leadership teams

00:54:15.060 in Al-Nusra, which is the Al-Qaeda, uh, branch and then ISIS. You know, Baghdadi met in prison,

00:54:23.860 an American prison, you know, Iraqi military leaders and, and started to learn more about

00:54:29.320 military tactics. And a lot of those people he was in prison with would be the people that would

00:54:32.860 help him take over most of Iraq and Syria. What did it, you're not the first person I've asked this

00:54:38.920 of, but what did it feel like as someone who actually served there, um, who wanted to serve there,

00:54:43.760 dropped out of college to enlist, not go into ROTC, but to enlist in the Marine Corps. What did it,

00:54:50.560 you gave your whole life to it. And then to see the carnage, the Americans whose lives were destroyed,

00:54:56.280 like, and then realize this was all kind of fake, like what effect did that have on you?

00:55:02.860 It started really pushing me to where I'm at now in foreign policy. Like we need to do something

00:55:09.800 differently. And it kind of radicalized me in a certain way on this. And really

00:55:16.600 there's an argument that you need to be, when you're talking about foreign policy,

00:55:21.840 you kind of need to be cold and detached. Like some people say that realists need to be cold

00:55:25.740 and detached. I don't necessarily buy that. Um, but you know, when I hear about launching a new

00:55:36.260 military operation and somebody talk about something, my first thought is what's it going

00:55:41.280 to be like for the guys, what's going to be like for the, the, the boys that are going to be in the

00:55:44.780 front. Um, and you know, men, men, women too. Uh, it just, that's kind of the, the, you can't help,

00:55:55.620 but look through it for that prism. And it's sometimes you do have to attach yourself from it,

00:55:59.860 but yeah, that's, you know, that's, that's what I, I really think of. But the big thing is like,

00:56:05.120 we have to stop this from happening again. This cannot happen again.

00:56:10.240 I couldn't agree with you more. And, um, I wish more people would articulate this perspective.

00:56:15.160 I think it's, it's pretty, so among the guys you serve with in the Marine Corps in Iraq,

00:56:19.260 like, would you say many agree with you? Yes. Yes. Um, right, left, most of them are

00:56:27.140 rabidly anti-interventionist. Some of them make me look like Paul Wolfowitz.

00:56:34.340 And you're talking about the guys who served, who carried rifles in Iraq. Yes. Yeah. And we did

00:56:39.080 at Concerned Veterans for America, we did a lot of polling when I was there and we consistently found

00:56:43.560 that the veterans and military family population was more opposed to new wars by pretty noticeable

00:56:50.160 margins than the general population as a whole. It's, it's interesting. So you mentioned, um,

00:56:55.280 death, killed in action. You mentioned injuries, um, profound injuries. You mentioned suicide,

00:57:01.820 psychological injuries. And I, I'm sorry, I didn't even mention broken families.

00:57:05.340 Well, that's it. That's what I was about to ask. Keep going.

00:57:07.520 I mean, high, high rates of divorce.

00:57:10.020 High rates of divorce. We were talking before we were on the air. I know a lot of

00:57:13.120 enlisted Marines. My dad was one. I don't know. I don't think I know any guys who enlisted the Marine

00:57:20.320 Corps during the war on terror who aren't divorced. I'm sure there are, but am I imagining this?

00:57:24.780 There are some combat arms and special forces, uh, uh, communities that have 90% divorce rates.

00:57:33.020 90%? Yes.

00:57:36.840 We undervalue that. Like that is a disaster for the people involved and for their children. Like

00:57:44.940 that's a true tragedy. Um, true tragedy. Divorce is a death. And so if you've got 90% divorce rates,

00:57:52.960 like that, I, I, I don't know why no one pauses to say, how can we, how can we not do this to

00:58:00.040 people? Yeah. Do you agree? Yes. Now look, I mean, divorce has always been a problem in the

00:58:06.500 military. You have a lot of guys, you know, getting married too young to get out of the

00:58:10.520 barracks. We were talking about that beforehand, but it's the strain of deployments on these

00:58:16.160 specific units that just spikes divorce rates in certain units. And when you have guys that are

00:58:23.540 spending 70, 80% of their time away from home, either training to be deployed or deployed,

00:58:28.820 it's hard. And military services is always going to be hard, but the increased deployment tempo we've

00:58:35.740 had, particularly post nine 11 is exacerbated that. Well, that's the first thing I noticed when I

00:58:41.480 started covering all this stuff or going over there. It's like the, these guys were doing like

00:58:45.520 a crazy number of deployments. And I just think you're going to destroy a man over time if you

00:58:50.700 keep sending him to war. No. Yeah. How could you not? Yes. I think everybody has a breaking point and

00:58:57.500 there are, there are guys who are able to do, I mean, there, there are people in ranger units that

00:59:04.180 are on their 15th, 16th deployment, you know, guys who've been in for over 20 years.

00:59:08.400 What does that do to you? I mean, it, there's so many things that can do to you. I mean,

00:59:14.260 there's some people that are able to just turn it on and off and put it in a box, but I would say

00:59:21.020 that for everybody, just physically, it's, it breaks you down. You know, you got 38 guys that have

00:59:27.380 bought a 38 year old guys that have bodies of 60 year olds and just mentally, it just can,

00:59:32.220 can wear you down as well too. I've argued with Dan Crenshaw in public a lot. I made fun of him a lot.

00:59:38.380 And I mean this with true sincerity. I look at that guy and I'm like, you were damaged by war.

00:59:44.460 I'm sorry. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't know, Dan Crenshaw, but I do know a lot of people

00:59:48.740 who have been damaged by their experience, like really damaged by their experience.

00:59:52.520 You know, I'd say that he's kind of an outlier too in the community where he's still,

00:59:56.840 for whatever reason, is supporting American primacy and the status quo. And, you know, most of his,

01:00:04.600 increasingly, most of his fellow veterans in the Republican side are actually rejecting that.

01:00:09.060 Well, they hate him. And I understand, certainly understand why, but he's unbalanced. Like that

01:00:14.160 guy's, it's not that we have like a disagreement over policies. Like that guy, there's something

01:00:18.140 really wrong with him. And maybe I'm being too generous, but I just have to suspect knowing

01:00:22.660 a lot of guys like that.

01:00:23.800 Well, I can understand why you said that. I mean, he did, right. He threatened to kill you.

01:00:27.740 He threatened to kill me. You know, I'm not worried about that. I just like,

01:00:30.600 yeah, I'm trying to be Christian and generous about this. Like he's a very damaged person

01:00:35.500 and perhaps he always was, but I know a bunch of damaged people who went through those experiences.

01:00:42.420 Do you, I mean, you must also, it's been devastating on, on our community. It really has.

01:00:48.400 Oh, and there's some people that say, oh, the word damp, like they try to soften it. Oh,

01:00:52.020 you shouldn't use the word damaged. That's the proper word to describe it.

01:00:55.920 I'm saying that with love and compassion and gratitude for everything they've done for us

01:01:00.800 and for their patriotism and decency. And I, I'm not saying that as a criticism. I'm saying that as,

01:01:06.680 as you would about someone you care about and you hate to see them hurt. I mean.

01:01:10.940 Yeah. I, yeah, I agree.

01:01:13.340 Um, so you get out of the Marine Corps. What do you do? You, you, so I finished up college. Um,

01:01:19.740 I didn't really want to go to college, but I blew through in like two, two, two and a half years

01:01:25.620 to work for member of Congress for a couple of years. How, how, how were you feeling when you

01:01:30.520 got out of there? Did it have lasting effects on you? You know, my first few months out of the

01:01:35.200 Marine Corps were, were tough. There was some stuff in my personal life that was happening. My,

01:01:38.660 my father, this is when the economy is really bad. My father passed away from a drug overdose and

01:01:45.900 then leaving the Marine Corps, leaving a group of guys you had thought were your brothers and

01:01:51.600 living in an apartment by yourself that had a negative, like that was not a fun time. I thought

01:01:57.240 it was going to be blast. You know, I have a bunch of money saved up from deployment. I'm going to go

01:02:01.300 on the GI bill. I'm going to, you know, a party school. And I just eventually just said, Hey,

01:02:08.500 I'm just going to get through college. I want to get a job. I got married. And so I just blew through

01:02:14.740 college. And then I got a job working for member of Congress out in Arizona. And I was primarily

01:02:19.860 focused on veterans, constituent work at first. And that was actually fulfilling, helping veterans

01:02:24.780 get benefits. And I learned a lot about how dysfunctional the VA was and how dysfunctional

01:02:30.140 Department of Defense was too, because, you know, helping guys with problems with the DOD. And after

01:02:36.060 two and a half years there, you know, just to be candid, I needed to make more money. I had,

01:02:40.840 by that time I had a child. And so a friend of mine introduced me to Concerned Veterans for America,

01:02:46.920 which at the time was run by Pete Hegseff. And I was recruited there first as somebody doing some

01:02:54.780 field work, and then eventually as a legislative and one of the policy directors. How long were you

01:03:00.980 there? I was with, I was affiliated with Concerned Veterans for America in one capacity or another for,

01:03:06.840 gosh, almost nine years. Wow. I was eventually the executive director. And then even when I moved

01:03:14.400 to a new job, I retained a senior advisor role. Huh. And were you close to Pete the whole time?

01:03:22.900 When he was with Concerned Veterans for America, yes, we worked very closely together along with

01:03:29.020 Darren Selnick, who's another individual that left the Pentagon last week. And I was primarily

01:03:35.300 working with him on policy and comms, mainly focused on our efforts to fix Department of Veterans

01:03:40.080 Affairs. So fast forward to the 2024 campaign, Trump wins in November, and there's a mad scramble

01:03:49.520 to staff the administration. What role did you play in that? So early on, even before the election,

01:03:57.680 it was very informal because, you know, President Trump didn't initially do a formal transition that

01:04:03.200 you'd seen before, which actually, I think, in some ways was a good idea. At the time, I maybe

01:04:08.680 didn't understand why, but but because of all the leaks and stuff that had hurt him in the first

01:04:14.980 campaign, it ultimately became a much better run transition. And I think a lot of the credit goes

01:04:20.420 to, of course, the president himself, but Susie Wiles, and I think Sergio Gore as well, too, was heading

01:04:25.520 personnel. So I was working with a group of people early on to identify people that could serve in the

01:04:31.620 Department of Defense. And one day, I get a call from someone and was told, hey, what do you know

01:04:39.860 about Pete Hegseth? I give, you know, a few bullets about what I know about him. And then, you know, I

01:04:46.800 call Pete. And we had not, I mean, we had still stayed in touch, but we weren't, you know, working as

01:04:55.040 closely together as we watched before. It was like, hey, just so you know, the transition was asking

01:05:00.780 questions about you. And he says, yeah, I know I'm being considered for the role of Secretary of

01:05:04.260 Defense. So, wow, okay, that's, that's, that's cool. And so a few days later, through Veterans Day

01:05:12.820 weekend, he gets the job. And I started working with him during his confirmation. I helped him

01:05:21.140 during the confirmation, helped him defend against a lot of the attacks that were made against him,

01:05:26.160 help with strategy. But what I eventually took over was being his main link to the personnel

01:05:32.380 operation. So helping to vet and place personnel within the Department of Defense. And so I'd fly

01:05:40.140 down to Florida a lot and work with some really great people on the PPO. They're now on the PPO team

01:05:45.520 and doing that. And so I did. So you're not working for the government at this point? No, I'm doing this

01:05:50.900 on a volunteer basis. And, you know, I was paying out of these flights out of my own pocket. Really?

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01:07:48.180 So you're paying your way down to help Pete Hegseth. You're obviously strongly in favor of

01:07:53.500 Pete Hegseth. Are you doing that? Correct. Yeah. I was very strongly supportive of

01:07:57.520 him becoming Secretary of Defense. Yeah. Yes. I know him. I know him obviously very well. I work with

01:08:03.020 him. He's such a good guy. And I would just say, you know, there's a lot of stories eventually

01:08:08.800 written about me and the personnel that I was, you know, the puppet master and that I had ultimate

01:08:13.880 decision rights and that I was trying to block people that supported this or that or oppose this

01:08:18.380 and that. It was all nonsense. I mean, let me tell you, again, I've already used this already,

01:08:25.360 but there were people on the PPO team that were much more hardcore foreign policy than I was.

01:08:31.380 And so in a lot of cases, I didn't even need to block unaligned people. They were already getting

01:08:37.380 blocked by people, you know, earlier in the process. Well, I must say, I don't think a fair

01:08:43.020 listener could accuse you of being radical in any sense. You seem totally mainstream to me.

01:08:49.580 Nothing you've said seems ideological or crazy or fringe or anything like that. You served in the

01:08:54.420 Marine Corps during a war. You didn't think that our policy was serving the country or the people

01:08:59.820 who defend it. And you're just trying to keep that foremost in mind as you help create policy

01:09:05.620 for the next generation. Yes. Is that a fair? I think that's, yeah, I mean, I obviously bias. I

01:09:11.020 think it's totally fair. And I just sort of point out is that one thing that was amazing about working

01:09:16.340 on the transition, it was tough sometimes, it's frustrating sometimes. And then in the administration

01:09:20.980 was there are so many good people in this administration. I remember I worked a lot,

01:09:27.280 I never went in, but I worked a lot with the first Trump administration. And you can see me

01:09:31.360 on the internet. I was standing behind the president when he was signing veterans bills all the time.

01:09:35.500 President tweeted about one of my media appearances once. I remember where I would have people from the

01:09:42.200 White House and from the VA trying to talk me and Concerned Veterans for America out of supporting

01:09:48.540 something the president wanted, particularly VA choice is giving choice to veterans or making

01:09:54.840 it easier to fire bad VA employees. These are political appointees saying, why do you want to

01:09:59.660 do that? That's too radical. You know, just we need to fix this or that on the margin. And in this,

01:10:05.160 in this time around, you have, I think, you know, just like any administration, there are people

01:10:09.020 that aren't on board with the president. But one of the coolest things I would just say working

01:10:14.100 in the administration was having friends and people that share your mindset across the interagency

01:10:20.240 and being able to call them up and bounce ideas off each other. And, and that, that was, that was a really

01:10:28.500 good experience, I will say. And you saw that transition too.

01:10:32.260 Well, you, and you feel it, you feel it. And it, it, I'm not involved at all. I'm just watching, but it

01:10:37.980 seems like the fastest way to derail the whole project, the Trump administration and the United

01:10:45.740 States of America is a war with Iran. And that's why I've just been watching it as carefully as I

01:10:53.140 can, because I feel like, again, if you hated Donald Trump and you hated what the administration is

01:10:57.740 doing on immigration, trade, anti-wokness, whatever, and you wanted to stop it, the first thing you would

01:11:05.760 do is apply pressure to have the U S military engage in a war with Iran. I mean, that that's

01:11:13.120 my perspective on it anyway. I would think that, and also continuing to do what we've been doing

01:11:18.240 previously in, in Russia. Oh, for sure. For sure. Though it, I don't know why, well, I'm going to

01:11:23.380 ask you all about this, but it feels like Wyckoff is, is helping a lot there. God bless. He's, I mean,

01:11:29.540 I've already said he's a godsend. God bless Steve Wyckoff. I couldn't agree more, uh, as a man and as a,

01:11:34.460 an instrument of peace and a figure now out of history. Um, okay. So you did make just from an

01:11:42.200 outsider's perspective, one maybe career mistake by, um, giving on the record interviews before you

01:11:48.760 went in describing your foreign policy views, which I think are fully within the mainstream of the

01:11:53.420 world in the U S but out of the mainstream among, you know, warmongers in Washington. So like there

01:12:01.340 were people knew that you weren't fully on board with the regime change program. Is that fair to

01:12:05.440 say? Yeah, I was very open about it. I was very on the record about it. And most of the time when I

01:12:12.380 was saying that we shouldn't do this, it was actually in support of, you know, the president's

01:12:18.580 stated preferences, like the president clearly doesn't want this. In the first term, there were

01:12:23.240 people in his administration that wanted it. He didn't clearly, he clearly didn't want it.

01:12:27.040 And so it was supporting people who didn't want the war. And so I was essentially,

01:12:33.400 Donald Trump had said, has said, and now his actions make perfectly clear,

01:12:37.300 he would strongly prefer a diplomatic solution. Correct. I don't want to speak for the president,

01:12:41.960 but it's fairly obvious that that's what he wants. Well, he said it. I mean, he said it again,

01:12:46.840 and he ran on it. So it's not a crazy position. And now things are getting so bonkers in this country

01:12:53.460 that saying that makes you a bigot or something, a Nazi. It's like, it's, I'm just going to ignore

01:12:58.460 all that. And I just want to get back to your experience. So I'm just watching this from the

01:13:01.780 outside. And I'm thinking, having spent my life in DC, I was like, Dan Caldwell's got a target on

01:13:08.340 his back. I don't know if he knows that. Yeah. And then I read all of a sudden that you're a trader.

01:13:16.400 You're like marched out of the Pentagon for leaking, for leaking. Right. And then the whispering

01:13:25.740 campaign, the character assassination campaign begins, and it hears its outline. I don't want

01:13:30.780 to upset you. You may not even be aware of this. Dan Caldwell leaked classified information to liberal

01:13:38.800 media outlets, to the media, to NBC News, for example. So I just want to be totally direct with

01:13:45.520 you. Did you leak classified information against the wishes of your superiors to media outlets?

01:13:51.280 Absolutely not. Did you photograph classified material and then text pictures of that material

01:13:57.020 to an NBC News reporter? Absolutely not. And I have not spoken to an NBC reporter while at the Pentagon.

01:14:05.040 Are you, do you know what you've been accused of? No, I don't. Sitting here right now, myself

01:14:12.500 and Darren Selenick and Colin Carroll, the other two individuals that were escorted out of the

01:14:17.980 Pentagon, initially placed on leave and then fired on Friday. We have not been told as of this

01:14:24.160 recording. One, is there what we were being investigated for? Two, is there still an investigation?

01:14:32.640 And three, was there even a real investigation? Because there's a lot of evidence that there is

01:14:38.300 not a real investigation. But again, sitting here right now, there are a lot of unknowns about this.

01:14:44.960 As a former Secretary of Defense would say, there's a lot of unknown unknowns. There are some things

01:14:49.840 that are pretty clear, but we have no idea what specifically reinvestigated for.

01:14:55.180 So we can know some things just by the details. So here are a couple. Have you been polygraphed?

01:15:00.080 No. I've never been hooked up to a polygraph machine since I've been in the Department of Defense.

01:15:04.500 Okay. Have you given up your private communications devices, your private phone,

01:15:09.260 your phone? No. To anybody? No. Okay. So that raises the obvious question. I'm trying not to

01:15:15.780 use the F word here because the lying is just driving me insane. You're being accused of leaking

01:15:20.340 classified information, but the people accusing you would have no way of knowing whether you did

01:15:24.520 that or not because they haven't polygraphed you or taken your devices, your private devices,

01:15:28.380 correct? I mean, there are- You can't even make the allegation because there's no conceivable

01:15:33.220 way you could prove that. And let me just say, there are so many different things that would

01:15:38.620 prevent me from doing the things that you've laid out. And again, I don't even know if that's what

01:15:43.840 I'm really being investigated for. Again, if there's a real investigation, but all these- The point

01:15:48.180 is, is so what I have told some people who have asked me about what's going on is I would repeat

01:15:54.300 something that I heard in the Marine Corps in our work up to Iraq. I believe it was in something

01:15:58.740 called a combat hunter course, which isn't what it sounds like. It's actually about observing things

01:16:03.760 better. And I remember an instructor very clearly saying, when you're in this environment, believe

01:16:11.880 nothing of what you hear and only half of what you say. And I think this needs to apply to this

01:16:15.820 situation. Yeah. The problem with it is, it's just a very serious allegation that you betrayed your

01:16:21.440 boss and friend, Pete Hegseth, who you've worked with for like over a decade, who you supported

01:16:26.880 from the very beginning. I think that's all in my, I don't want to speak for you, but you're being

01:16:31.180 accused of betraying Hegseth, who's under attack from people who want a war with Iran. Let's just

01:16:39.440 be totally blunt about it. And so you're being accused of betraying him, betraying the president

01:16:45.980 and, and committing a crime. That's a crime. So this is not just like, Hey, Dan Caldwell's got,

01:16:53.900 you know, bad taste in neckties. This is like Dan Caldwell's a criminal. Yeah. It's just,

01:16:59.420 you know, there's sometimes I think it just hasn't fully set in with me and what's going on. And,

01:17:10.720 and, you know, I just, I want to talk about two, the two other gentlemen that were,

01:17:17.760 that are going through this with me and what's going on with them in some ways is more infuriating

01:17:27.580 because as you said, I have a public profile. I took some, what shouldn't be controversial

01:17:33.300 positions, but are, and, you know, I, I was out there, you know, advancing things that a lot of

01:17:43.760 people in the foreign positive establishment didn't want. It doesn't justify what's happening

01:17:48.580 to me, but that like, let's just be honest. That is the nature of the games played in DC.

01:17:53.120 You know, Darren Selnick and Colin Carroll are patriots. Let me talk about Darren a little bit.

01:17:59.360 Darren's another person that worked with Secretary Hegseth for over a decade. He is somebody who's

01:18:04.900 spent decades working around veterans and military health issues. He served in the first Bush

01:18:11.020 administration at the VA. He served a critical role in the second, or excuse me, the first Trump

01:18:16.920 administration. He was a key player in advancing the VA Mission Act, one of the greatest accomplishments

01:18:22.340 of the first Trump administration, which fundamentally reformed how the VA delivers healthcare. Darren,

01:18:27.600 I think, can go to bed every night saying he saved thousands of veterans' lives because of the

01:18:31.820 reforms he helped advance. He's an Air Force veteran. In between his, his stints in government,

01:18:37.100 he worked at Concerned Veterans for America with me and Pete, helping develop revolutionary reform to

01:18:42.480 the VA that in large part were implemented by the first Trump administration. To come back, he picked up,

01:18:49.580 left his, his nice life in Oceanside, California. His wife, you know, stayed behind and he got,

01:18:55.920 you know, a crummy apartment in Arlington, Virginia and worked sometimes 16, 17 hour days to advance

01:19:03.780 his secretary's agenda. He played a key role in ripping out woke and DEI nonsense from the

01:19:10.980 administration. Darren was a key driver of that. Um, and you know, it's so by your description of

01:19:17.800 Darren Selnick, he doesn't sound like he is engaged in like the policy fights or he's like some crazed

01:19:23.080 audio log. So before I talk about Karen or excuse me, Colin, you know, Colin has not transitioned

01:19:28.780 as far as I know. Um, but I don't actually know what Darren Selnick and Carl, Colin Carroll think

01:19:35.920 about Iran. Darren could, Darren Selnick could be a secret 12 or Shia for all I know. Colin Carroll

01:19:43.060 could want to, you know, nuke Iran until the sand glows. Darren was a, he was deputy chief of staff

01:19:49.900 focused on backend office operations and personnel and military health policy. Colin Carroll. Let me

01:19:55.000 talk about Colin because he's, I think, an incredible individual too. Colin's a Naval Academy

01:19:59.100 graduate. He served as a recon Marine in combat. Then he literally became a rocket scientist working

01:20:05.080 in tech, working in companies like Andrel. And he was Steve Feinberg's chief of staff. Colin's focus

01:20:11.100 was on science, R&E and budget. He was down and in. And we, these, these, these gentlemen were patriots

01:20:23.260 and they did not deserve, none of us deserve to get traded this way, but in some ways angers me more

01:20:29.140 than what's going on with them. So we did an amazing interview with Alex Jones the other day. It got huge

01:20:34.200 numbers all over the internet, but then we heard from YouTube. They're partially demonetizing the video

01:20:39.680 because it had a forbidden word. It had, and we're quoting now, extreme profanity. What did we say in

01:20:47.320 that interview that was extreme profanity? We use the word tranny. Tranny, tranny, tranny, tranny, tranny.

01:20:53.200 It's mildly hilarious. We didn't even think about it when we said it. It made the most powerful people

01:20:58.120 in our society mad. And that's why they demonetized us. But we're not intimidated at all for a really

01:21:04.700 simple reason. We're not controlled. We are funded by the people who watch us. And that's why we have

01:21:11.000 the freedom to say exactly what we want and the freedom also to make jokes that include the word

01:21:15.560 tranny. It's a huge blessing. You can become a member and help support free speech by going to

01:21:22.560 tuckercarlson.com. And we will continue to be as honest as we possibly can and also tell mild jokes

01:21:29.320 once in a while. Not extreme profanity, but it's possible we will use the word tranny because it's

01:21:33.860 hilarious. Thank you for supporting us. And it's not even clear. I mean, I should say at the outset

01:21:41.020 that depending on DOD is the largest human organization in the world, has more people than

01:21:45.760 any, I think, in the history of the world. And there's a lot at stake. The future of the world's

01:21:53.100 state gets DOD. They have nuclear weapons. And so the pressure exerted on that agency from outside,

01:22:00.760 but also the fighting within it, make it like one of the most complicated and treacherous work

01:22:05.600 environments ever created. Is that fair? That is fair. And I will say the one thing we had in common,

01:22:14.720 there was a couple of things we have in common, was we were threatening a lot of established interests

01:22:21.640 in our own separate ways. And we had people who had personal vendettas against us. Yes. And I think

01:22:27.560 they weaponized the investigation against us. I think that's part of what's going on here. But

01:22:31.820 look, Colin, and let me just say Steve Feinberg, I didn't know him before this. I have a lot of

01:22:37.380 respect for him. I do too. I think he's going to be a fantastic deputy secretary. Steve Feinberg and

01:22:42.260 Colin were going to shake up how acquisitions are done, how the budgeting is done, how we do science

01:22:49.400 and research. And Colin, Colin's got one speed and that's go. And he, you know, he wasn't afraid

01:22:56.560 to challenge people when they're acting stupid and wanted to keep doing the same thing. Darren's the

01:23:00.280 same way. Darren upset a lot of the people that want to keep doing using the military to be a giant

01:23:07.020 social science experiment. Right. So we, and of course, I have some views about the role of America

01:23:13.880 and the world, you know, as we've discussed, are a little controversial. All of us in our own ways

01:23:18.320 threatened really established interests. Those, your views are only controversial in Washington,

01:23:23.800 D.C. Let me tell you that as a matter of fact. Correct. They are not controversial anywhere else

01:23:28.220 in this country or the world. We, we threatened a lot of established interests inside the building

01:23:33.000 and outside the building. So I just want to restate because this is the, this is why you're here

01:23:37.800 because you got bounced out and you're being accused of betraying your boss, your president,

01:23:42.780 your nation. You have, I don't want to speak for you, not leak classified information to the news

01:23:50.680 media. You've never undergone a polygraph exam and you've never handed over your personal phone.

01:23:55.760 Are all those statements true? That is all 100% correct. And let me just say, actually,

01:24:02.080 my first instinct when they came and escorted me out of my office was I actually thought that they

01:24:09.600 were going to try and get me to testify against the secretary because the secretary over the whole

01:24:15.460 signal gate stuff is under an inspector general investigation. That was my first instinct was this

01:24:21.460 was part of it. So, um, there was an investigation into leaking. Um, I think the president, like all

01:24:29.020 presidents doesn't want leaking. I mean, no, nobody wants leaking, right? If you're in charge, you don't

01:24:33.100 want your employees to be leaking against you. So there was this leak investigation, um, that was

01:24:37.980 ongoing for weeks, right? Uh, what, what were you, was your access to classified information limited

01:24:45.340 during that time? Not at all. Uh, in fact, the day I was escorted out of the, escorted out of the

01:24:49.580 building, I went into, I won't get specific, the highest of high level intelligence briefings. And up until

01:24:56.980 the minute I was pulled up my office, I was on highly classified systems doing my work.

01:25:02.320 So you were looking at highly classified information up until the moment they brought you outside

01:25:08.400 and separated on the basis of the claim that you were leaking classified information.

01:25:12.460 I was doing my job. Part of my job entailed looking at, at intelligence, helping make recommendations

01:25:19.680 as the secretary, giving my thoughts, working with a policy team. And most of our work was done

01:25:27.380 on classified systems. The reason I'm pressing on this is that doesn't make any sense.

01:25:32.940 It doesn't make any sense to me. Right. So if you're, I mean, cause just to be clear,

01:25:36.700 you don't want people leaking classified information from the Pentagon.

01:25:40.080 Let me be clear. That is a problem at the department of defense. There has been things

01:25:45.980 that have been shared with the media, particularly, I would say this, the Panama stuff that,

01:25:52.720 that, that is unacceptable. And I've been the recipient of classified information for decades,

01:25:58.360 including from the Pentagon in the form of leaks. And every journalist who's doing his job has been.

01:26:03.300 So like, there's a lot of leaking of classified information. I can tell you,

01:26:07.000 but let's be honest, everyone knows where that's coming from. It's from the career staff who don't

01:26:13.100 look like what the president and the secretary and vice president want to do. There's people on

01:26:18.760 the joint staff that I've come to respect, but a lot of them are incredibly hostile to the secretary,

01:26:24.640 to the president and the vice president's worldview. It's pretty obvious that that's where most of the

01:26:30.200 leaks are coming from. There's a less obvious place. I just want to point something out.

01:26:33.240 As we sit here today, Tucker, and this could change by the time this is aired. But as we sit

01:26:40.200 here today, Susan Rice, Michelle Flournoy, Eric Edelman are still in good standing with the Department of

01:26:46.880 Defense. What? That is correct. They are still...

01:26:50.240 Susan Rice? Like the Obama Susan Rice?

01:26:52.460 Yes. Susan Rice is still on the defense policy board.

01:26:57.020 Right now?

01:26:57.440 As we speak, sit here today, by the time this is released, that might change. But as we sit here

01:27:02.320 today, she is still on the defense policy board. Now, that doesn't mean she can go in the building

01:27:06.380 and get access to whatever she wants. But it means that she works with DOD employees, she can interact

01:27:11.260 with them, and has the credential and the affiliation with the Department of Defense.

01:27:17.480 But Susan Rice has no relevant experience for a job like that at all. She's a political hack.

01:27:23.420 Correct. Yet, as we sit here in April of 2025, about 100 days into the president's first term,

01:27:31.720 she and a bunch of other people who are incredibly hostile to the president and his worldview remain

01:27:37.720 on the defense policy board.

01:27:39.020 You're sure?

01:27:39.520 You can go on the website and check it right now. And I checked with Colin and Darren, and

01:27:45.460 they confirmed that as well, too.

01:27:49.300 Well, that's shocking.

01:27:51.220 And again, I would just say, if you want to look where leaks are maybe coming from, that would be a

01:27:56.620 place to start.

01:27:59.840 So, but just back to your story, and I won't linger on it. Every time I mention this, your jaw tightens,

01:28:03.880 I can feel your frustration.

01:28:05.460 And I should just say, point blank.

01:28:07.620 I'm frustrated at you.

01:28:08.640 Well, I'm completely convinced that this is nonsense and sinister nonsense. But if you were

01:28:19.380 the subject of an investigation, a leak investigation, if the investigators had determined that you

01:28:23.640 were leaking classified information to the news media, you probably wouldn't have continued

01:28:29.280 to receive access to classified information, correct?

01:28:31.940 Correct. And I probably wouldn't be sitting here today.

01:28:33.700 You'd be in jail, dude. You'd be, you would have been handcuffed, correct?

01:28:37.240 If, if I, if, if I had leaked, well, again, I just want to be clear here. I still don't know if,

01:28:44.260 if the term they used is, and that you see the DOD using, is unauthorized release of information.

01:28:52.500 If, if, I think there's a lot of rumors and people are exploiting this that we can talk about.

01:28:57.600 If, if I actually did some of the things that, that anonymous people on the internet and in the

01:29:03.000 Pentagon are saying I did, I'd, I'd be in handcuffs.

01:29:07.460 And you're not?

01:29:08.560 I'm not.

01:29:09.560 Yeah.

01:29:10.080 I'd be like reality winner or, uh, Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden or one of those people.

01:29:15.540 It's very obvious to me, um, having far fewer details than you have, uh, that you're one of

01:29:23.080 the people who is perceived to be standing in the way of a regime change war in Iran. And that,

01:29:28.940 that was kind of your crime. That, that's, seems obvious to me.

01:29:31.880 I think it's, it's complicated. There's other layers to this, but based on what has been

01:29:37.740 happening since then, I, I, I think that is a factor is that I think, and it is being weaponized

01:29:43.780 against me is I think that they want to also go after. And I think that had, I can't say this with

01:29:53.100 certainty, but just speculating that had somebody in the white house not said, okay, we need to put a

01:29:59.340 stop to this. There've probably been more people treated the same way that, that Colin, uh, Darren

01:30:06.140 Selnick and, and myself were treated.

01:30:09.000 So the fastest way to, uh, knock someone out of commission and eliminate his influence and in

01:30:14.860 your case, his job is to tell the person that he works for that, that person's betraying you,

01:30:19.920 that person's betraying you. Um, and so, I mean, it sounds to me, again, I'm keep putting words

01:30:26.520 your mouth, but it sounds to me like you have felt, it sounds like you still feel that your,

01:30:31.260 your views are aligned with those of the president.

01:30:34.180 100%. I wouldn't have joined this administration if I didn't feel that way. Again, I don't speak

01:30:38.540 for the president, but here's the other thing too. I had this attitude in the, in the pen and

01:30:44.420 Pentagon, and maybe this was, you know, I saw this attitude that I was still, you know,

01:30:50.620 in the Marine Corps. It's like, Hey, when it, when a decision is made, when we've decided on a course

01:30:55.700 of action that we're going to do this, we're going to make sure it's executed properly. Yes.

01:31:01.360 And you still raise concerns. You still, if you see something happening, then you can do that.

01:31:06.920 But if you are so repulsed by what's happening, then you should resign.

01:31:11.220 So I think what you're saying is that you, uh, you were serving your boss bosses, um, even when

01:31:20.900 you personally disagreed. Correct. As you did in the U.S. Marine Corps. Correct. Okay. Um, how does,

01:31:27.880 I don't even want to ask you, but I'm going to, how does this make you feel? I mean, you must feel

01:31:31.060 like you're living in a dream, a nightmare. I said earlier, sometimes I feel like it hasn't fully set in

01:31:40.840 because it does feel like a dream. It's like, what am I going to wake up at zero four 30 and

01:31:45.960 just get, get ready for work and, you know, walk my dog, drop her off at doggy daycare and then roll

01:31:52.380 into the river entrance back in the Pentagon. I feel like on some level that's happening and, and it,

01:31:59.820 you know, it, I feel like it hasn't fully hit me, but it's been awful. I mean,

01:32:05.620 the impact on my family, you know, I'll just say I wanted to try and hide this from my mom as long

01:32:15.300 as possible because I was worried. She's a worrier. I love her to death. She's, she's a saint. I, I,

01:32:20.920 I didn't want to tell her. Then an hour later, some, somebody leaked to Reuters describing exactly

01:32:28.100 what had happened to me. And then six hours later, they pulled the same stunt with Darren. And then 12

01:32:33.240 hours later, they pulled the same stunt with Colin. And so, you know, it's been devastating

01:32:39.460 and it's caused a lot of stress to, to my family. Just one thing I want to say is

01:32:45.000 I've, I've been a friend and supporter of Pete Hegseth for a long time. And I'm, I'm just

01:32:54.420 personally devastated by this. It's, it's, it's just awful and, and whatnot. And, and

01:33:01.480 but at the end of the day, putting all this aside,

01:33:10.700 Pete Hegseth needs to be a successful secretary of defense and the entire department of defense

01:33:19.120 cannot be, continue to be consumed by chaos. They have a great team there. They have a great deputy

01:33:27.800 secretary. We just talked about Steve Feinberg. They have a, I think one of the leading lights of

01:33:34.120 the America first foreign policy movement in bridge Colby, a dear friend of mine running the policy

01:33:39.740 shop. Now effectively the Pentagon's number three, he has a lot of great mid-level and junior staffers

01:33:45.080 under him. You're going to have some great undersecretaries coming in. These are just world

01:33:49.240 class people. These are not political hacks. You know, people like Mike Duffy at ANS, people like

01:33:54.560 Emile Michaels and ANS's acquisition and sustainment at research and engineering service secretaries.

01:34:00.380 I think are going to be great. Dan Driscoll, even though he has a secondary job running an agency

01:34:05.280 that shouldn't exist, ATF. I think he's proven to be a great army secretary. And look, one of my

01:34:11.000 favorite things, Tucker, is admitting you're wrong about people. One person I was wrong about was John

01:34:15.820 Phelan. I was skeptical of him being Navy secretary. And so far, I have to say him and his team are off

01:34:21.160 to a great start. I think Troy Mink is going to be a fantastic Air Force secretary. And so there's

01:34:27.680 this fantastic team underneath the secretary that can enable him to be incredibly successful.

01:34:36.380 He has to move past this. He has to get a solid team around him in the front office. And this isn't a

01:34:43.360 plea to hire me back. I, I can't really just want to move on and go back to the doing what I was doing

01:34:50.580 before and being an advocate on the outside. But, but, you know, without Darren and I and others, he, he, he

01:34:58.040 needs to get a strong team in there. And there's some great people that I think could could do that.

01:35:01.420 And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs?

01:35:03.220 Oh, I have to say, this is interesting you bring him up. Chairman Dan Raisin Cain,

01:35:10.440 incredibly impressive. And I actually think, if I'm being honest, one thing that has incited the

01:35:16.320 building against President Trump and the secretary was a selection of him. They want a lot of people

01:35:22.280 wanted the secretary and the president to go the normal route, including some people in the

01:35:26.740 administration, and pick a combatant commander, you know, a General Carrillo, or an Admiral Paparo.

01:35:33.800 I actually like Admiral Paparo, but they wanted him to go that route. No, instead, they did something

01:35:38.880 that needed to happen, is they pulled a very accomplished guy out of retirement, somebody who

01:35:46.740 didn't do all the right things and check all the right boxes in his career, but who's incredibly

01:35:53.180 smart, who's incredibly thoughtful about how he approached his problems to be the chairman.

01:35:59.020 And that upset so many career paths. Like, if you look at these books, where they kind of lay out,

01:36:05.340 like, how you promote generals, is they have, like, little maps about where people are going to go.

01:36:09.060 And there's a lot of people that are going to go to this role in the, you know, the chairman of the

01:36:14.060 Joint Chiefs of Staff, the vice chairman, they're going to be the chief of staff of the army.

01:36:18.180 And by elevating Kang, they upset so many career paths. And it's hard to overstate how much of a

01:36:26.120 middle finger that was to a lot of the uniform leadership of the United States military. And I

01:36:31.980 think that was one of the reasons why we started to see more leaks really starting around the middle

01:36:36.920 of March. And they weren't coming from you? No, absolutely not. And again, it's obvious to

01:36:42.520 anybody who's worked in the Pentagon, where these were coming from.

01:36:48.000 I really appreciate your spending all this time.

01:36:50.540 Tucker, it's been an honor to be here. And I just want to say,

01:36:55.020 I think you should feel proud, because you have played a key role in helping stop some really bad

01:37:04.520 stuff in foreign policy. Your platform has really helped turn the tide, I think, in a lot of different

01:37:10.420 ways. And I think you deserve a lot of credit for that. I just want to be useful. But I appreciate

01:37:14.320 it. Dan Caldwell, thank you very much. And Godspeed.

01:37:16.300 Thank you.

01:37:21.160 We want to thank you for watching us on Spotify, a company that we use every day. We know the

01:37:25.340 people who run it, good people. While you're here, do us a favor, hit follow and tap the bell so you

01:37:31.520 never miss an episode. We have real conversations, news, things that actually matter. Telling the truth

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01:37:41.780 Thanks for watching.

The Tucker Carlson Show - April 21, 2025

The Pentagon Didn’t Fire Dan Caldwell Over Leaks. They Fired Him for Opposing War With Iran.

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