It's typical Trump, all bluster, very little substance. He talks a tough game, but then when pressed on it, he's an armchair tough guy. I hate to say it, but this is a guy who said who said that John McCain is not a war hero, yet he sought his own five military deferments. [00:00:16] If you just watched a clip of the man that Donald Trump has nominated as his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who's, of course, also a host over at Fox News, he called him very low substance, said he's all bluster. [00:00:34] Now, the commentary, especially with the inclusion of the late Senator John McCain, indicates that this was during the 2016 election. And so ouch. On one hand, but also, you know, a lot of people in Trump's orbit now [00:00:50] said awful things about him was, I mean, you have his vice president. The president called him a Nazi, called him Hitler or whatever, called him Hitler called him. - Yeah, exactly. - A bunch of Republicans. He's kind of been like in terms of Republicans who in the past were against them. [00:01:06] As long as they kiss the ring, he's kind of let bygones be bygones with a lot of these guys. And I'm I would be shocked if he didn't have to take like a straight up, like a mafia oath type of thing, like you are going to worship me at every single turn and you know, [00:01:24] I'll empower you or whatever. Like if he were to literally, basically excommunicate everybody who along the way to him winning the Republican nomination for presidency up until he won, [00:01:39] because again, even before he won, there were people like, this is a disaster. He's going to like, we should have just nominated a regular Republican. He's going to cost us the race. Basically, people that were down with just the party establishment were against him. [00:01:55] And so he couldn't staff a freaking government if he were to excommunicate all the people who went on Fox to diss him. - Including. - Good point. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Yeah, that's a that's a really good point. And, you know, a lot of these people did turn around and suck up to Trump [00:02:15] because, look, the fact of the matter is Trump is as powerful as he is within the Republican Party because of the Republican voters, like the Republican voters have effectively rejected the traditional conservative Republican figures. [00:02:31] You know, people like John McCain. You know, and look, John McCain definitely a lot of things about him I didn't like. But, you know, he was a prisoner of war. And when he had an opportunity to be released, he didn't he didn't. He didn't snitch. Yeah. [00:02:46] - Snitch. - Yeah. I mean, like, there were things about him that were admirable. Right. And so when you consider that with the fact that Donald Trump, you know, was a draft dodger and lied about bone spurs, like, you know, it's it's kind of rich to hear Trump, you know, say such terrible things [00:03:03] about John McCain, because of the fact that he was a prisoner of war. But anyway, putting that aside, speaking of another, you know, traditional conservative Republican, you have Lindsey Graham, who thinks that this unearthed video is real bad for Hegseth. He says, I think some of these articles are very disturbing. [00:03:21] Hegseth obviously has a chance to defend himself here, but some of this stuff is it's going to be difficult. And so he's not just talking about the unearthed video, he's talking about the allegations, of, you know, a woman alleged that he had sexually assaulted her. [00:03:39] Then there were other allegations coming from people like his staff members when he was the head of the CVA. Then you have this unearthed email that his own mother had sent him talking about how he's, you know, abusive toward women. [00:03:55] So, like, if he had a squeaky clean background, like, I don't think that Trump would sour on him over what he said about Trump in 2016. But it does seem like Hegseth has become more and more of a headache. [00:04:11] And, you know, the way that Trump reacted to Matt Gaetz no longer being considered, you know, as the ag secretary, the attorney general makes me think like he's not really wedded to any of these people. [00:04:26] He might be willing to just drop Hegseth, but I don't know. - What are your thoughts? - I don't know. I think the gates thing is special because he, like, ticked off a bunch of people from his own party, like a bunch of people. This guy has just completely alienated. [00:04:44] And also, like, I guess he's just a crappy guy, a tough hang, a real like jerk, if you will. And so I think it's different when like, you have a guy who they have personal vendettas against versus like a dude who, like, might have some PR issues, but otherwise they don't have [00:05:02] major problems with him. I mean, Lindsey Graham, I hear that. And I'm just like, he's probably just like, he's such a neocon war hawk. Totally. Pick me, pick me, daddy, pick me. Either that or he's just like, let's just get one of our regular generals [00:05:20] who's never seen a war that they didn't love and absolutely want to send people to go fight, right? Like, totally. That's what I hear from Lindsey Graham, more so than a groundswell of, you know, lack of support from the Republicans. Yeah, that's a good point. [00:05:36] And, you know, the traditional military generals despise Donald Trump. And I don't think they despise him for his unsavory rhetoric. I think they do despise him for pulling out of Afghanistan. [00:05:52] He's the one who got the ball rolling on that. I think they despise his antiwar rhetoric, which, to be clear, he was no dove. Okay. When he was in the white House, he expanded Obama's drone war, which was bad enough. Got the white House to stop disclosing, [00:06:10] the amount of drone strikes and the amount of civilians that were getting killed in the Middle East from said drone strikes when there was a bipartisan resolution to pull US support. From the, you know, Saudi backed, you know, rebels or whatever, [00:06:26] or Saudi backed coalition in Yemen. Donald Trump took it, ripped it up. He's like, I don't care. We're going to continue bombing the hell out of helping to bomb the hell out of Yemen, which led to a famine and was absolutely disastrous. Like he did things that were awful foreign policy wise, obviously ripped up [00:06:42] the Iran nuclear deal, paving the way for Iran to develop a nuclear program. So I think he made a lot of mistakes foreign policy wise. But to be fair, he was very clear about the failures of previous administrations that were failures, [00:07:00] like invading Afghanistan, invading Iraq. And he's right about those things. And I think the generals absolutely despised him, for his takes on those issues.