Yet another senior military leader was just fired and since we're in the middle of a war, it leads a lot of people to think maybe it was over him not being willing to do something that was either illegal or insane. And maybe it was, we don't know for sure, but here is [00:00:15] what we do know. So this is Navy Secretary John Phelan uh fired just yesterday after months of infighting with senior Pentagon officials, and he's out immediately. So the out immediately is very suspicious. The fact that he had apparently had been clashing with other leaders for a [00:00:31] few months makes it feel a little bit less like this is about a refusal to send ships to Carg Island or something. So let's jump into what some of the explanations being at least given by the mainstream media are as to why he might have been fired at this point and immediately fired. So uh in his role leading the Navy, he had championed the Golden Fleet, a major [00:00:50] investment in new ships, including a Trump class battleship. So grifty kiss ass stuff. But anyway, but his leadership was marred by feuds with senior leaders in the uh Pentagon, including Pete Hegseth and Deputy Defense Secretary Steven Feinberg, Pentagon and congressional officials [00:01:06] said. Okay, so but was it the ships? He's in favor of the ships and Donald Trump wants that. So ah he also apparently had a contentious relationship with his deputy, Under Secretary Hung Kao, I believe it might be, who is more aligned with Mr. Hegseth. especially on some [00:01:24] of the social and cultural battles that have defined the defense secretary's tenure. And yeah, that's a little way of putting it that have defined his tenure. That's what Pete Hegseth cares about. Well, that and makeup and painting his house. That's what he cares about is the social and cultural right wing identity politics BS. And there's actually more in that particular [00:01:43] vein. So he also clashed directly with Mr. Hegseth over personnel issues in the Navy and Marine Corps, which to me reads as, He was being told to weed out anyone who wasn't a straight white attractive man with those hot V ab lines. And that's all that Hegseth wants. [00:02:02] Now we don't know for sure, but that's what seems to be going on. Hegseth had apparently directed the service secretaries to scrub the social media accounts of general and admiral level promotion candidates to ensure they are not deemed too woke. So remember when he came in and he was like, people are being promoted for wokeness? And we're not going to do that, [00:02:21] we're going do merit. Look how that is flipped on its head now. We're like, no, no, no, we're not gonna just consider their actual qualifications. We're gonna go and search to make sure that they're not woke. And if they are, the wokeness is going to be the determining factor, the [00:02:36] exact opposite of a meritocracy. And this was obviously where we were gonna end up with a jackass like Pete Hegseth, who is just right wing identity politics dressed up in a suit. That's all he is. So evidently, it's not about Iran. It's not about landing on Carg Island. [00:02:52] And by the way, the Navy secretary has no formal role overseeing deployed forces. It is likely that the changing up of the guard is going to cause some issues with the Navy, but it's not about day to day operations or anything like that. That said, there has been a lot [00:03:08] of turnover. He's fired, um so the HGCF had butted heads with the Army secretary over promotions and a host of other issues. And he fired the Army Chief of Staff earlier this month. Hex had actually fired the Navy secretary's chief of staff last fall. And the weird thing about [00:03:25] it, and I'll get you in just a sec, Yaz, is that Trump really did seem to like this guy. Not only was he building him his stupid ships or whatever, but he had said at one point, John is one of the most successful businessmen in the country, in our country, he clarified for some reason. He's been a tremendous success. He's taken probably the largest salary cut [00:03:43] in history, but he wanted to do it. He wants to rebuild our Navy, and you needed that kind of brain. to do it properly. And all of that is fascinating, but I'm gonna throw out one additional fact. So ah I had assumed, my God, they're clearing out even more of the institutional [00:04:03] memory and experience and qualifications, which has been the entire story of the Department of Defense under Hegsteth and Trump. But then I found out, no, that's actually not what's happening. Cuz I was a stupid dumb donkey and I assumed that the guy was like a Navy veteran [00:04:24] for 28 years or something like that. No, he wasn't. He had no experience in the Navy or in the military or even in the defense industry as a private enterprise person. He had no experience in any of this. He's an investment banker and a big political donor. That's it. So it's hardly [00:04:43] surprising that Trump liked him. But he was in charge of the Navy. He didn't know anything about the Navy. So I don't know, I kind of almost like it at this point that he was fired. very confused, Yaz, what do you think? ah It's so stupid, right? These people are so stupid. [00:04:59] They can't even define the word woke, but they're so against it. And I know that this has been such a part of our cultural political vernacular for a while. The anti woke crowd and don't be woke and the woke people are blah, blah. It was funny when they first came out against [00:05:15] wokeness as a point of political pandering and branding even. Because at the time it was like, okay, so they're celebrating being ignorant. They're selling ignorance as a virtue to their dumb base. And this dumb base is eating it up as like we're better than you because we're [00:05:32] not woke. Think about for a second what that means. Think about for a second what you are celebrating in yourself. It's that you are Your eyes are shut, you don't know what's going on and you don't even wanna know. You're going through life like this and you're happy about [00:05:47] it and everyone else should do that too. And their base is like, yeah, you're right, we are not woke. We are not awakened to the realities of this world that we live in. And I get it, being woke, uh woke people can be kind of annoying. because they keep pointing out things that [00:06:03] are uncomfortable to deal with, right? They keep pointing out things that don't feel nice to people. And so it's hard to build a coalition with people who love to feel comfortable, but they're celebrating being dumb. And that is where we are in this country. And honestly, [00:06:20] that's how we got to the point that we're at today. You have people like Pete Hegseth, who just says no woke people, no woke people, and he's in charge of our entire- whole military. And that is how he decides to run the military based on whatever his definition of woke is. [00:06:36] And his definition just seems to be anything that makes him feel uncomfortable. And there seems to be a lot of things that make him very uncomfortable because he does not seem like a secure big boy. No, that's the fundamental through line of all of these fake alphas is [00:06:51] that they are riddled with anxieties and insecurities. They have no genuine self assurance, confidence. That's why they are constantly posturing and constantly trying to build up like an ideology that makes it so that they don't have to actually do anything that gives them confidence. I was [00:07:07] born genetically superior, so I can't actually be as pathetic as I worry that I am. It is pathetic though.