And then comes Ukraine, and it's a classic David versus Goliath story. And and I think for a lot of us it was appealing because this was right versus wrong. There's no Gray, there's no Murphy, and and and then then what I think about is the same thing I thought about about Afghans, who we betrayed, and Kourags we betrayed. But the betrayal of the Ukrainians. Imagine if you're one of the one of the members of soft right now
in Europe. I don't think they're in Ukraine, but in Europe, you know, training Ukraine, as are your CIO officer in at key station. How do you look at your partners in the eye this morning?
All right, hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of Eyes on Very Special. On today we have Jack Murphy and Mark poly Moropolis, the No Marines, Thank god, uh Locke cooking. I want to thank Mark of course, Mark, former senior CIA officer, current national security analyst, an expert. Jack Murphy of course or do you leader, host of the Teamhouse and writer of the High Side. Guys, how's it going? What's happening in the world? Mark? How are you you start? Because uh, I know you're red hot.
No, so it's good. So you know, I just got back and I have a little home gym that we built during COVID, so I was just lifted and I was listening to French heavy metal go Gyra. So I'm all fucking jazzed up now. But but I wanted to say something because every time I come on, I love coming on the show. I've done this for years. But I was just out at the University of Colorado at
their RTC program talking to the cadets about leadership. They they're they're the couple of the army guys, and invited me out just because they had they had heard me where on the fucking team house. Literally, I get a foc ball and said, hey, I heard you in the team house. I loved your leadership stuff when you come out and talk to the cadets. So I went out there, and you all have a huge following, even amongst the kind of youngsters coming up and so, and I want
to tell you one thing. If you ever go to Colorado, University of Colorado and Boulder, oh.
My god, what a place that's cool. That's exactly the type of audience you know that I hope we reach out to young people who are interested in, you know, serving their country in some shape or form, and not to not to really persuade them one way or the other, but you know, if you're interested in this, here's a lot of more information. You can listen to someone like Mark talk about, you know, in depth about the agency for in his career there, and that can help them
make their decision. So yeah, those are exactly the type of people you hope you reach to.
And one of those things is that they also with the cadets told me, and also there was a couple of jack a couple of army rangers who run the program there, but they said they loved how you know, you bring on folks and this probably won't apply today, but who are a political so, you know, because you have in kind of the vepro world kind of you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, people who kind of go crazy on the right, but you all don't do that, and you bring on people
who serve their country and tell some unique stories and you try to keep it a political mind. One of my favorite things is whenever I listened to Team House and you see one of your guests go down a certain road and how you and Dave kind of madly scramble to try to get them back on track.
Yeah, yeah, we're not necessarily trying to go down that road. But yeah, I mean I think I had a conversation with Doug Wise a while back where he said something like that. He's like, this is one of the few nonpartisan spaces where people from this profession can talk. He's like, there's not very many of them.
So amen, Amen to you guys. So happy to be on as always.
And just editors know by design, that's by design. We do that on purpose. And I'll me and Jack talk about this offline all the time that it hinders and has hindered our growth. Oh sure, we're going to keep it like that, even if it means less money in our pockets. Clear, you know what I mean, Like, we're never gonna just colt how so.
Yeah, I mean this is like a little aside, a little like anecdote that maybe means nothing to anyone at this point. But you know, many years ago I fell into the circle of Ginny Thomas, the Supreme Court Justice's wife, who is quite a sort of an activist. Not that I ever met her or anything like that, but she was emailing me and trying to get me to testify in front of Congress, trying to get me to talk
to sixty minutes and all these other people. Not that I'm have a problem talking to Congress or journalists, but I realized at that point, I was like, if I do this, I'm allowing myself to become a political tool and the entire rest of my life is going to be different. And I was probably like I was still young. I mean I was like thirty or something like that, and I was just like, this isn't the road I want to go down. You know.
One of the interesting things is I obviously has denoted I you know, I do some media commentary and I have a contract with MSNBC, so you know, take it whatever you want to take it in terms of ideology. But if people actually watched my my hits during the Afghan withdrawal, I was savage against the Biden administration for how they hose this up. And so I think, you know, one of the things that I try to do is is you know, call it like I see it, and
that's what I think you all do as well. And so that's just that's just kind of a smart place to be that if you find yourselves being hated by everybody, it can be loved by everybody too. But if if you if you annoyed both the right and the left, Jack, I think you've probably done your job. That's the place to be.
But I will say, though you know, all of that said, I also have felt in the you know, over the last month or so, that maybe it's more important, not necessarily to get partisan, but like I'm seeing things that I think are pretty messed up, and I think it's important that we say they're messed up, like this isn't cool, this isn't okay. And and I don't think it's necessarily a left or a right issue, like we'll talk about Ukraine in a little that, Like it's not necessarily a
left or right issue. It's just like this is stupid.
Well right, I mean, I have to you know, half of my friends are Republicans, uh, And I spend half of my day on signal chats saying, really, this is really what you signed up for? You know, Trump siding with Putin or you know, uh, you know threatening to fire the probationary officers at the CIA or or the special agents at the FBI. I mean these are actually not conservative principles from what's happening right now. So I'd very comfortable.
The question is what are what are you trying to conserve, because it doesn't seem like they're trying to conserve the United States government or constitution at this moment.
Look, government, you know, government sucks until you know, planes start falling out of the sky and terrorist attacks happened in the United States and your VHX don't get to you, and then there's a fricking measles or burf flu epidemic and you know your kids are sick, and so you know this kind of you know, war on government I find ludicrous. We won't. We want to reform government. Everybody does. If you actually worked, you know, you were in the military,
I was in the CIA. I could spend five hours telling you all the reforms that are needed. You probably could do the same thing. We could have a whole podcast in the Pentagon procurement process, which is, you know, do we need giant aircraft carriers? I mean, look look at Ukraine and you know the explosion in indigenously produced drones that are having effects on the battlefield. So you know, reform is really good. But this is this is kind of the and I called the wet dream of the
Chinese or Russian intelligence services. It looks like a COVID action plan to like destroy the US government.
Yeah, I mean that's the thing. If you had infiltrated your people into the United States government, you know, like j Edgar Hoover suspected, this is exactly what they would be doing. They'd be flipping all the switches off, unplugging things, firing people, just like jamming up the works so that nothing can happen.
Let me say that the you know, I have lots of friends in the FBI who all believe in the need for reform. But the idea that you're going to take it's it's six thousand FBI per some of the work on personnel who worked on January six cases, nine hundred special agents. The list of them went down to this kind of weird omb elon Musk thing which we don't really know is secure or not, and then and
to DJ. But one thing that I don't know if the American people realize, is that the agents involved in the January sixth cases were taken from the Joint Terrorism Task Forces because they considered it domestic terrorism.
Which they were.
They were taken from all over Mark. I mean like that sucked up like a third of the eighth of the bureau.
But if you end up getting rid of these people, you know that that's gutting the jttfs around the country. It's also doing two other things. One is their existing case load, what happens to it? But number two and I don't think this has been talked enough about do you really want and you know, think about things we did overseas when we're trying to advise reformer security services. Here's what you don't do. You don't throw you know, six thousand FBI personnel or two thousand CIA officers out
in the streets overnight were angry. That's a counterintelligence disaster. I'm not talking about civil you know, civil unrest. People without with with mortgages to pay, with top secret clearances, who need healthcare, and who when they get when they get hit up on LinkedIn by a consulting firm located in Dubai that wants their uh you know, their their services, it's the Chinese intelligence organizations who are going to hit
them up. So there's so many second order effects of just a lot of these really ill thought out moves. And but again I don't see a whole lot of pushback from from the Republicans, and I guess the American people think it's okay. There's CBS News poll from last week said Trumpet a fifty three percent approval rating, which means this shit's going to keep going until something bad happens.
Yeah, I mean, maybe maybe I'm the one that's out of touch, right, you know, like you start to wonder this at all. You know, you mentioned earlier, like maybe America isn't the country that we thought it was, it's
actually something different. It seems like we're in this point, this error right now, where people people who are intimidated by complexity, where I think the information environment has become so overwhelming that everyone wants to distill it down and you know, quote unquote common sense, and you know, you can that complexity and that information environment makes people feel uncomfortable.
But when you start trying to eliminate it, I mean, the way the globalized world works today, I mean, we can't go back to the Stone Age, like it's not possible at this point. I mean not without you know, catastrophe and apocalypse happening.
Right right, and so you know, so we're left with a time in which we are kind of battling for the truth. I mean, you know, I mean, you know, I think de follows me on Twitter, probably more than you do. But I threw a fit and kind of said I wouldn't go on Twitter anymore a couple of months ago, and now I'm back on.
Jack's been good, he's out, he's not.
And look, trust me, I get more hate mail and death threats on Twitter. Some of them are funny. I think I might have told you guys, someone called me an is Lomist communist one time, and that I should have. But I don't really know what an is Lomist communist actually is because it kind of doesn't exist.
I mean, people, people are so brainwashed. I mean we we will do an interview with, you know, a woman who served in the army, and you get a bunch of comments like, oh, this is the DEI podcast. I was like, you're just the water buffalo, Like you can't think for yourself at all. You're just regurgitating propaganda like like a communist.
One of the things that I've done is I talked to I do a lot of talks to college students who are interested in national security careers and and I had a line in this and I kept it. I was brave, I was, you know, it's just at the University of Colorado recently, and I say, you know, I actually say, diversity, you know, is our superpower. That, of course is exactly what Pete Hegseth, new Secretary of Defense said, and his hearing, he said we should never say that again.
And I disagree, and I just I tell the students why is because on the streets of places like Moscow and Damascus, the most sensitive assets are off and handled by female case officers. If you serve and you know work and serve in the Middle East, and you're a CIO officer, and you guys know this, but you know, for the audience, if you go out and what's called a surveillance detection route, it's the idea of you know, making sure you don't take surveillance the bad guys to
your agent meeting. If you have a female officer in a full of baya, guess what they're not going to do. They're not going to get caught. We need to have female officers, We need to have people who don't look like the three of us on this program. I remember, you know, so many instances in which we had this ethnically diverse station in which they spoke different languages. And the reason, one of the reasons why we didn't get caught was good trade craft, but also is because we
could look differently on the street. That's the best athlete approach, and that's where diversity is great. But when you hear things like the Pentagon is not going to these there's just a news article that they're not going to this. I guess it was engineering conference or event at a historically black college or something in which used to be a very a kind of recruiting tool for the military. Well they can't go anymore because of the anti woke,
you know, anti DEI stuff that's insane. You know, we're going to end up and your some of your listeners are gonna go crazy when I say this. We're gonna end up with an all white intelligence and military if we kind of go down these paths of you know what,
we can't celebrate you know, Black History Month. You know, you can't have a women's counsel and even you know at the Agency, when I go into these colleges and I talk to folks, and a female officer of a female candidate would come up and say, is is CIA a comfortable place for women? And I said, you know, it's gotten better. We've had sexual harassment scandals. But here's why, because we really cannot you. You know, female officers have
kind of a tremendous advantage in some places. But also, you know what, there's a women's council at the CIA. You will have a group outside of work where you can talk to people that doesn't exist anymore. That's crazy. So, you know, is the DEI stuff annoying? Sometimes? Sure it is. I went through all this stuff. I was told in a three day seminar that I was a racist. It was annoying. Did it stop me from spying?
No?
And so the pendulum is lung so wildly, you know, in which we blame plane crashes on DEI stuff. This is crazy.
I was blaming.
Should it be reformed? Yes? You know? Now it's like that. The it explains all of our ills of society.
You know, blaming, blaming women and black people, like punching down like that is about the most pathetic thing that I can possibly imagine. That's it's kind of sad that there are these dudes that are just so intimidated by, you know, a country that is changing that you know, we're seeing like a backlash.
Stuffs like you.
I mean, are you sire melting right?
You want to be this badass motherfucker in Special Forces or in the CIA, and you can't take a two day class on DEI and that's going to cause you to quit. I mean, this is crazy, it's annoying it.
But I mean a couple I talked to one person who worked for uh, let's just say Protective Detail at the State Department, right, and he's in He thought, dee, I was stupid, but it was also just a block on evaluation, yes, and it said something about like are you inclusive with your team members and bringing them into the fold or something like that. He's like, it's dumb,
but it didn't affect his job in any way. Or up at at Special Operations Command, they had a office with a DEI office with nine employees working in it, run by a PhD. They all got fired. And I mean, I don't really have a problem with that either, because no one I've spoken to knows what the hell these nine people did up there. So I mean, I don't think DEI is something that's going to be missed as
it goes away. There's gonna be some other things, you know, like I should point out the Equal Opportunity REP is still up there at SOCOM, so I mean that's and that was always separate from DEI. So I mean, yeah, absolutely, I think it's important that we recruit, you know, from a diverse population. But yeah, d I mean, it's like you said, I don't think it was like destroying or helping America. It was more like something that was like kind of annoying.
So so fix it, you know. But but you know, you know, Musk's kind of preoccupation with this anti woke stuff and that or that if Pete Hexast thinks that this is actually what you know, has affective military readiness is insane. Let me just you know, my friends who have served that you know in the US Navy who just got back. These are some young folks who were you know, you know, driving a ship in the in the you know, in the Pacific somewhere says, you know what,
our fucking ships are falling apart. I'm sorry, that's not because of de I you know, there's there's something fundamentally, uh, the fundamental reform that that certainly needs to take place in it within within.
It goes back to what I said about people being intimidated by complexity. Like, right, yes, sorting the navy is a big, complicated, expensive endeavor. It's a lot easier to just blame transsexuals and be like, hey, the transsexuals. They destroyed the navy.
You know that one of the I was out west of a while ago and someone was railing to me about, you know, trans athletes and high school sports, and I said, I said, you realize in Utah there's four of them, Like literally this this might have decided the presidential election. Yeah. Remember the Super Bowl ad that everyone like?
That ad was incredible?
Uh, And so the Republicans ran this ad. But I mean, this is like five thousand on the list of important things in America. It's not a voting. Oh come on, let's see, let's let's get us back on track. Let's talk.
Yeah, let's yeah. So yesterday the US delegation included Mark, Rubio and Lavarov met in Saudi Arabia with UH was MBS at the meeting.
I don't think so oh no, no, no, no, they met before with.
Him, Okay. So and they had a four and a half hour meeting and they came out Uh. I mean, if you're a supporter of you, I wouldn't say it was a pro Ukrainian meeting. Uh. I think that's fair to say. You know, they came out saying that Ukraine needs to have made concessions and stuff like that. It looked like a hostage video with Marko Rubio with the Russian delegates. Yeah, so that's where we're at. There. There's some word that Putin and Trump are gonna meet within
the month. Again, I don't know where it came out. Very pro Russia, I mean, and I told Jack this before the meeting, like they're gonna go into that meeting and come out with a different set of a new set of talking points, and it's gonna get disseminated out and these are gonna be the new talking points of what Zelenski's gonna have to do without Ukraine and without European representation at these meetings. So that's where we're at, Mark.
So let me just start off this off again because I think Jack made a good point that we have to criticize things that that we see are wrong. But you almost make this on a non partisan basis. So I'll say that, you know, if you were Donald Reagan or John McCain, you'd be horrified at what was the betrayal of Ukraine and the resuscitation, the rehabilitation of a war criminal. It's Vladimir Putin. Yesterday was kind of the culmination of a shocking week in which the US policy
foreign policy changed dramatically. You know, we were the ally of the Ukrainians. We spent sixty billion dollars to a triit the Ukrainian military fifty percent. Not a single US soldier was killed. Russia is our enemy everything from of course their invasion of Ukraine to you know, sabotage and assassination or operations across Europe too, by the way, and you all, I think I've talked about it, you know,
paying bounties to the Taliban to kill US soldiers. Yet now we are at best a neutral party, and perhaps now we're actually siding with Putin. Because it wasn't only the results of the RIAD meeting, it was then President Trump's comments in a press conference in which he essentially blamed Ukraine for being invaded, and so you know, there was a former British intelligence officer made a comment yesterday that I'd certainly heard and picked up on. He said,
US flushed eighty years of leadership down the toilet. And so I think this is a really a profound moment for the United States. Friends of mine, probably for you all as well who've worked on and in Ukraine are horrified. But ultimately the you know, well, there's two things. Do the American people care? I don't know. But where are
the republics? Where the GUP national security set, who actually many have been in favor of helping Ukrainians Because yesterday and really the week was not a proud one for the United States. You do wonder, And I know the way my friends in Europe are saying, now, you know, are we the good guys anymore? Yeah?
Now that that is the question, isn't it.
What do you think, Jack?
I mean, I don't think that a country changes overnight, but I mean, from like a political policy point of view, I mean, we're, you know, siding with the evil empire here. You know, Russia was up against They're on the ropes. Their economy is shit. They lost like eight hundred thousand soldiers during the conflict. Why in the world are we
appeasing this dictator. It doesn't make any sense to me other than to be you know, it's it really is like these people cooked their minds on Twitter and they want to be like edgy contrarians, like, oh, let's go side with this, you know, dictator, this strong man. It's kind of bizarre to me.
Jak.
Let me give you kind of my thoughts on this, and I think you'll identify with it because both of us were practitioners, so I look at everything differently. I know you guys were very kind to say, I'm a national security analyst blah blah blah, But actually I always look at it from the guy or the gal on
the ground. And so, you know, we went through the twenty years of the GWATT and I spent time in I Rock and Afghanistan and Syria, and so we trained indigenous forces and sometimes we obviously stayed in places too far and you leave with the whole kind of I think, maybe I don't want to speak for you, but you know, you're like, hey, I'm proud of my service. But yeah, it's things are a little murky, like some of my friends really fucked up, Like, I'm not so sure how
great God blessed me. We had to respond after nine to eleven. But a rock WMD like, you know, proud of the service there anyway, so you'll leave with like. And then comes Ukraine and it's a classic David versus Goliath story. And I think for a lot of us it was appealing because this was right versus wrong. There's no gray, there's no mercy, and and and then then what I think about is the same thing I thought about about Afghans, who we betrayed, and courage we betrayed.
But the betrayal of the Ukrainians. Imagine if you're one of the one of the members of SOF right now in Europe. I don't think they're in Ukraine, but in Europe, you know, training Ukraine as your CIO officer in at KEYV station, how do you look at your partners in the eye this morning after what Trump said, not only after what happened in Ria, but after what Trump said. I mean, these are people you broke bread with, you spent a year plus with them, you know their families,
Maybe people in their units have been killed. We were committed to to this then, you know, so I think of the guy or the gal on the ground and what it's like to look at your Ukrainian partner in the eye and see as they're looking at you and hey, hey, jack Man, I love you, but holy shit, you guys are betraying us now, aren't you. What do you say back?
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Yeah, no, exactly, what would you say?
I mean, it's one of those things where like, yeah, as the person on the ground, do you have to be like diplomatic about it, like, yeah, support the policies of the United States government, but you know, we're still committed to this relationship. You know, I've spoken a little bit about it before. When I really you would say that, I mean, what else are you gonna say?
Mag this is fucked up. I know. I'm sorry.
Well, maybe like at a bar over a beer you might like, I'm.
Not talking about like like like a conference room here.
But here's where you got to be careful on this, because if I was sitting across my can't creating partner and I said, hey, man, like this is totally fucked up, this is wrong, and our president is this is crazy what we're doing. What if this guy goes back tells his you know, his his you know, commanders, and say, hey, you know, the agency guys here think this is really screwed up, and that gets back back to the White House and back to Washington. You were an impossible situation.
Uh you know does that mean you you well, if you're in the military, you can't the agency. Do you resign? I mean, if you're in the State Department, do you write a dissent channel? I mean, I don't know what the answer is because I've not. I can't imagine a time in which we have switched policies almost overnight. Now we saw this coming. This all kind of emanates from Helsinki, you know, years ago, and Trump won when he sided with Putin in the in when Putin said, you know,
I didn't interfere in your elections. Jonathan Lemire of MSNBC asked him a question, you know, who do you believe, and he basically said, I believe putin over the intelligence services, So you can you can think of it starting from then. But this right now, this policy flip, I mean, it's it's pretty wild. And so again for practitioners on the ground, I mean, I don't know how you serving US embassy in Kiev. Now what do you say, Mark?
Mark? What do you make of it as from a policy standpoint? I mean, I think none of us ken or should at all assume that there is some sort of grand strategy behind this, because I don't think there is. But still, I mean, why why do you think that we did this abrupt child? Is it just a case of like, well, Biden did this, so it's bad, you know, just like during the first Trump administration, anything that Obama did was bad, so we got to reverse that and
turn it around. I mean, is it just contrarianism or is there something else going on here?
Jack?
That's a that's a great question. So a couple things just to kind of but to to prep for the answer to that. Let me say, there is no function in this government now, so ordinarily policy changes, policy discussions take place in the National Security Council, where you have and this is this I'm gonna get a migraine thinking
about this because I participated that. And then you know, you have low level policy meetings at the NSC amongst the inner agency, and then it eventually goes up to what's called the Deputies Committee the DC, that's the deputies of cabinet agencies, and then it goes to the Principals Committee, chaired by the National Security Advisor. Then the President will come in, so there's a policy process and saying hey,
we're going to do something different. I don't think this shit's going on right now because if you look what happened in Munich, Pete Hegseth stepped on his crank. I'm sorry. You know, this is someone who is wildly unqualified for the job. And he goes out there and he gives this speech which which all of my information is was not coordinated with anybody, and basically says Ukraine will never be in NATO, just giving away one of our you know,
negotiating positions. Wild Everyone goes crazy. Then Jadie Vance comes and gives this lecture about to Europe saying, actually, Russia is not your biggest enemy. Actually the European free speeches and people's minds are blown. And then Trump says something else that we have And by the way, General Kellogg, former Green Beret, where the fuck is he? He's and so he's supposed to be the envoy. So we have
no voice in any of this. And the only thing that matters, And one of the things I've been saying, you know, on my TV hits, is that Trump is the only one who matters in this. And again you look at at you know, you know.
You don't Trump, Elon and Elon right.
Don't you think Mike Walt's a former Green Beret or Mark or Rubio a longtime member of the Senate now Secretary of State. Don't you think they know better?
What do you make of that press conference they gave yesterday where Mike Waltz and Rubio they looked like they just had their launch eaten by the Russians, like because they didn't had.
They have no experience in negotiations, They have no experience in dealing with people like Sergei Lavrov, the Foreign Minister has been there for two decades. You know, God blessed Mike Waltz and what he did for our country. And Mark Rubio has actually been a voice against autocracy and for human rights. And they're sitting there like, you know, you know, Saddam esque parroting the great leader of Trump. But let me go back to why does this all occur?
And you know, one of the things that CI did really well, we fucked a lot of things up, but we would do these leadership profiles of foreign of foreign heads of state. So can you imagine the leadership profile that the British, or the French, or the Germans or anyone else has done of Trump when it comes to Ukraine. Because I think he actually detests Ukraine. He thinks this was one of the reasons why he was originally impeached, and he particularly hates Zelenski and so for him, it's
all personal. So there's what I'm trying to say is there's no way we are ever going to support Ukraine or Zelenski. It's just not gonna happen, because that's just baked into Trump's DNA. And it does doesn't matter if everybody around Trump, not everybody, but people like Waltz and Rubio want to support the Ukrainians. It's not going to happen.
Yeah, So there's a from the New York Times, Uh, Trump's he's putin as a compatriot and a strong player who was a genius for bullying Ukraine. And from the New York Times.
Vilensky said sometime in the last twenty four hours that Trump is living in a Russian manufactured disinformation environment.
I mean it is good that, like, you know, because Alenki was saying all the right things the last couple of months, you know, the election happened as a transition, is going on saying what he needs to say to try and keep Trump on side, and now you do see him kind of bucking a little bit. Yeah.
Well, the lead up to that is that agreement they tried to hand him at Munich right where you know, apparently the Trump administration wanted him to turn over like fifty percent of the natural resources of Ukraine over in exchange for what I'm not even exchange.
For previous support, not even new support.
So so do you know how gross this is? I mean, think of the United States, and you know, don't laugh at me when I say this. Because I believed it and I still you know, and I still want to. But you know, we're supposed to be the good guys. You know, America stands for economic and political freedom, and we don't always live up to this, but there is the notion of the bright, shining city on the hill.
And I'll tell you if you go to any US embassy consulate section overseas anywhere, there's a line around the around the corner because people want to come to America for a reason.
Uh uh.
And we you know, values do matter again, Pete Hegseth in his speech in Europe that actually values don't matter. Only military might matters. And you know, my head blew off again because that's just not who what America is about. It doesn't even make sense, right, it doesn't make any sense. But now we are a transactional government. You know, this is this is the age of kings and queens again. We're going to do We're only going to do anything that is you know, it has direct financial interest for
the United States, Like this idea of trading minerals. I mean, I think it's I understand why the Ukrainians would go along with it, because they're like we'll do anything at this point, but it's gross. Again, the American ideal means something.
Let me, well, I was thinking about the other day, and I've talked about this, you know, we've had great conversations on the team house about you know, how do we recruit agents, and you know, there's that old acronym mice, and so we we we end up gaining someone else's trust, you know, in Iranian government officials, Russian, Chinese, based on
their vulnerabilities. But it's based on this this acronym mice, which is money, ideology, coercion which we really don't do, and ego, and that's you know, that's what you're trying to plug into. Some people are financially vulnerable, some people have you know, have been screwed at work, so you
can go for their ego. But a huge amount of people we recruit is based on ideology, because we're the good guys, I mean, and that's the idea of political and economic freedom, and are we actually going to take that off the table? And so I was that's what I was thinking about the other day, just because to me, it was just this this transactional foreign policy is just gross.
Well, it's interesting you mentioned that you know, we're go you feel like we're going back to the age of kings and queens. And that's exactly what I've been reading about in nick Land's writings, which apparently nick Land was and is influential on the thinking of Elon Musk and the people around him. And nick Land specifically talks about how liberalism has failed, democracy has failed, America is a
failed experiment. He uses this term the cathedral to describe like our institutions, that it is just this sort of self replicating zombie and that what we need instead is a monarch, a monarch ceo. And he goes into like it really is going to be like a government of high status males basically all just corncob and each other, I guess. And you have this monarch ceo at the top that just says like this is how it's going to be.
You know, there's there's so that seems like exactly what's happening. So good on you to to be reading that. I got to pick that.
Book up, Yeah, and I should. I should point out too that like behind like all the like kind of like cool branding, that this looks like it's something new or kind of hip. It's really just boiler plate fascism. There's nothing really new about it. It's just fascism with some clever branding around it.
And I think that that that should go to kind of this existential question on you know, who are we right now? And one of the things that I think that is going to be very telling, you know, will the American people then at some point say hey, this is really not what we signed up for. You know, we elected Donald Trump because there was inflation, the price of eggs were high. Now let alone, you can't find any goddamn eggs anywhere. I want some eggs. There's no
eggs and whole foods. This is driving me crazy in Vienna, Virginia. Uh but but you know, but who, you know, are we okay with this? And and so you know, we're going to see over the next several months and years and maybe the next of the midterm elections, but are the American people okay? Which you know. Ann Applebaum is is a writer who I love, you know, all of her kind of analysis. And there's a piece she wrote for the Atlantic this last week or two where she
actually called what's happening is regime change in America. Yeah, because it's not only foreign policy that's changing, but just fundamentally inside the United States, this theory of the unitary executive, this all powerful presidency, no set, you know, there's no.
Well maybe I've been a little bit worse than that, though, Marcus. I mean when I listen to President Trump, I mean, it just sounds like old man babble to me. It doesn't even make sense what he's saying. It seems like Elon is actually running the show.
And JD Vance as well, and jd Vance has some very extreme views on this, So I actually I agree with you. And so you know, are we okay with you know, dismantling the entire or you know, you know, firing thirty or forty percent of the US government. You know, if if American people are okay with that and there's a bird flu at epidemic or there's a measle epidemic in Texas and people are gonna die, okay, well you know, maybe we deserve what we're going to get. But I'm
not so sure that's that's the case. And you know, I mean I just the stories of the last couple of days, you know, uh, you know, the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of national security, you know, to support the military or back the blue. Is that what firing FBI agents is all about?
Is that?
What? You know there's been you know, when with all these with these cuts or these uh you know, terminations, reductions and force of these probationary employees. That's military spouses we're getting fired. You know, none of this makes sense the VA. I mean, does the VA need reform of my god, of course it does. But it's just the my I guess my question is is the American people?
Are the American people going to be okay with this when the real effects of some of these changes, Yeah, exactly coming back because it is radical and I don't think any I mean, they said they were going to do it sort of. I don't think they realized that Elon Musk would be the co president. But but ultimately it's it's pretty dramatic what's happening. And and for people, you know, I think it's so lazy intellectually when people see, yes, fuck the government. You see a lot of conservatives say
that that's okay, good, the federal government's too big. Okay, So you know, when the FAA doesn't have controllers in the control tower? Is that what government too big means? This is just not being done smartly or with any kind of uh, you know direction. It's it's like how Elon Musks. You know, when he took over Twitter, he fired everybody and then kind of rebuilt it. You don't do that in the government.
One of the interpretations of like you know that people have advanced of like what is Donald Trump? What does that represent?
What?
You know, this sort of like end of an error in the beginning of the next. And I mean one of the probably like easiest to understand takes on it is that Trump is a wrecking ball that the voters, that the constituents sent to Washington to destroy the place because they're so fucking angry, right, so fed up and some of those some of those issues, those anger issues
with like we've talked about DEI, they're hyped up. You know, it's grievance politics, but there are real issues that Americans are sick and tired and they're fed up and they're tired of being fed bullshit all the time. And I think many people, rightly or wrongly, they see Donald Trump is like the guy that's going to cut through that.
So you know, you're one hundred percent right. And I think we also don't have a party in opposition, you know, the Democratic Party not.
Being absolute pussies excuse me from being so brass.
And so you know, there's there's there certainly is a whole kind of you know, aar going on, you know, forensic analysis of how in the world did this happen? Did Donald Trump get elected because of this of this disruption, you know, with the Democrats that dysfunctional, and I think, you know, you make it. You can make a very strong case that the answer is yes, you know, there's you know, so what do we need? I mean, now
we're getting into some weirder territory. One of the things I talk to a friend of mine the other day said, you know, we need a we need an oligarch in the center, like a Mark Cuban to come in, you know and be the cat. I don't know, it kind of makes some sense, I sort of, I guess, but you know, because one of the things that you have, going back to something Jack you said earlier, is you know,
I love your podcast. I'm on your podcast, but some podcasts in the United States have done tremendous harm in spreading uh, you know, misinformation and disinformation. And so when you look at the and I'm sure you know scours the lists of of of podcasts what do well and what don't you know Tucker call us in or Joe Rogan, there's a lot of nonsense that's spewed on there. And that's how Americans are getting their their information right now. So you know, so how do you counter that? How
do you how do you counter it? I mean, you just have to tell the truth because so there's so much crap on on these kind of podcasts that have gazillions of viewers.
I don't know that the truth can necessarily compete though, with people's emotions, and that they they get emotionally triggered by certain outrageous things. And I feel like that the the algorithms that these companies are using, that they're actually encouraging and I know for a fact that they encourage
you to put out outrageous content all the time. D and I had many conversations about this, and it's interesting to see how the algorithm itself is sort of like barfing up this new ideology in the last few years that combines right wing politics, the military, Christianity, but also you like UFOs.
Yeah, conspiracy theories.
Earthquake weapons, you know what, what what? What's going on here? And I think it really is an algorithm that all ideologies are filled with inconsistent, dumb ideas. But I think you're seeing a new one start to coalesce because of this arbitrary algorithm.
And then and then people have this incredible distrust, uh, you know, particularly of government. I mean one of my buddies, he's actually a cop, he was down at these you know, the FBI. Quantico runs these annual conferences for for you know, kind of local police officers. Actually went and I I did a leadership talk a couple of years at it.
But he was wearing an FBI polar shirt around Quantico, just going to Local seven eleven or whatever, getting his gas at sheets or I don't know, whatever the heck it was. And someone came up and said something like derogatory against the bureau, like I don't trust you guys, and like you live in Quantico, like the whole this town is fundamentally based on FBI. D I in the Marine Corps, you know, base being here, and it's just
to me. That was and he was shocked. He's a big city he's a big city East Coast, you know, cop, so he doesn't see this kind of that kind of I mean, he's he he's an anti police bias probably from other people on the streets. But but he was shocked at this. This is regular old kind of person a pickup truck saying something nasty to him because he's wearing an FBI shirt. I mean that that there. So again there's something wrong with that. Yeah, and so and so.
But one thing I kind of I wanted to to kind of throw out there just in terms as you know, of course as a national security podcast, it has to do with kind of the pending reductions both at the State Department, CIA and FBI, and maybe even lead off with kind of us A I D. But you know, my view of working alongside AID front service officers over the years is that's a tremendous you know, kind of value added for US in terms of of soft power.
I mean there's there's multiple military officials, US military folks I've met over the years who actually said AID was indispensable to the United States national security. What's your what's your thought on that and essentially gutting foreign aid entirely.
Yeah, I mean it's again, it's one of those things where some voters think that half of our GDP goes to foreign aid, right, I mean they seriously believe that when it's I don't know what the actual percent is, it's for sure less than one percent. It's probably closer to like point oh one percent, that's correct. And you know that foreign aid it develops our soft power. And you know what people don't really understand about that is it's not like just to be nice. It's like we're
also looking for something in return. There's some leverage we're hoping to develop through foreign aid. You know. Sometimes it's in good will, like hey, you're an ally, you get got pounded by an earthquake. We want to help you guys out, And there's not like strings attached to it or anything, but like foreign military sales and usaid and all that kind of stuff, there there is a sort of like give and take to all of that that I don't think a lot of people acknowledge or want to acknowledge.
And Jack, who do you think when we stop doing that? Who do you think takes our place?
Yeah?
Russia, China or right, China. I mean it's unbelievable. I mean, eating soft power to China for a tiny kind of fraction of investment. You know. On top of the notion that, I think, what there's there's some figure that was thrown around twenty we've saved twenty million people with kind of the HIV prevention help.
Yeah, which is which is objectively a good thing.
It's a conservative program too. I mean, you know, conservatives love this program. So it's just this is to me, is is insanity. And then you go to the notion of the probationary officer issue, and that's where the US government is firing the probationary staff of the U. I mean the sorry, the administration.
Again it started to interrupt, Mark, but just to point out there are a lot of people out there who think probationary officers are people who are on probation because they're in trouble, because they did something wrong. You want to tell them what it really means.
It's officers within one to four years of experience. I think the intelligence community has has a higher number. It's several years, maybe three years in your four years into your career. But for others a year and so what we're doing. You know, so all federal agencies had to give lists to omb about their probationary staff because it's easier to fire them if you're in your probationary period, you don't have the same amount of rights. This is insane, you know Again I said, as I said, I'm going
to talking to colleges all the time. I got a text message from a kid I mentored at the Citadel who is a Republican who then joined the National Security State and was just fired. And he is respondent, Uh, because this is this is gen z. This is the next generation of security practice. It's who you and I and D in this podcast are trying to pass the torch to to get them excited about this. We've just fired these people. That's insane. There's you know, uh. It
also makes no sense. So for example, if if you say, uh, you know, uh, the new directors the c I, John Ratcliffe, wants to beef up our spying capability. He said that, you know, because the agency is two woke, so we got to get better against China. You just fired your staff.
Who's going to go serve in see in Beijing. It's nuts and and I think the the you know, uh, it also seems misguided if you want to as you know, as as you know, I don't know if they have the right legally, but if you want to say, look, I'm gonna replace this the C suites of the FBI and C I a fine, do it. What are you doing going after the junior staff? This is not the
woke ideologues of the Biden administration. These are kids right out of college who wanted to serve their country and the rest of their fucking classmates are making a shitload more money. I just don't get it.
I mean, it's just like a real business. It's a businessman thinking, right, Like what's your first move when you don't have a good quarter?
Yeah, Jack welch, just like trim the fat. Yeah, it just laid people are a bunch of people.
And like I'll make a guess that like when they go to d D they're gonna cut people too, and we'll yeah, like what people were saying, like, oh, they're gonna look at the procurement process, Like no, they're not. They're not gonna look at the primes and the money that the defense contractors are making. Let's be honest to you, the first movie is to scalp. They want scalps.
So the economists had a great article this week talking about the need for reform at d OD and exactly that you know how how everything is jacked up. Uh, But that has nothing to do with the idea of going in and firing your probationary staff. One of the one of the interesting things now is because you know, there's so much pork barrel politics, there's so much congressional interest. Individual congressmen and women have their pet projects, and they
have people at military basis. So these d D cuts, I don't know, if you're a Republican congressman, you're gonna hear it this week when when people start getting fired.
But what they're worried about is if a Republican congressman comes out and says something against Trump that Elon is going to primary. I know, so this is million dollars primary.
Yeah, I mean, the lack of courage amongst the Republican kind of national security set is incredible to me. And again it half by friends.
And all all of these corporations too. Isn't it interesting that they went from unwavering support for DEI to totally bowing down like immediately. And I've railed against this for years. You know that these companies use this crass advertising. You know that we have like b L m ice creaming gay pride oreos, and it's it's just the way corporations to sell a shit that we don't need.
It.
But it's still, you know, disconcerting to see, like, yeah, if we did have like a fascist or a communist government, these same corporations would be selling us products you know, covered with a hammer and sickle or a swastika.
Like they are. Everyone's bowing to the media. I mean, the people can't rush to the White House. These CEOs can't rush fast enough.
Yeah.
One of the things also that I wanted to raise again for folks who are interessed in the intelligence community. You know, when you when you're this literally I'm going to tell you something that one ndred percent happens. So as you get promoted up through the agency or the IC or the State Department, I'm sure FBI, you know,
there's always gonna be the flavor of the day. So at one point it was okay, you need a little more kind of DEI experience, and so you mark case officer Mark, after serving overseas and getting shot at at war zones and all this stuff, we need you to go do a rotation in some kind of you know, you know, recruitment office where there's some little DEI flavor in order to get promoted. Okay, and and you know what you say, you say, all right, I gotta check
the box. I mean, Jack, you're in the military. This shit happens all the time.
You gotta go check the boxes.
You gotta check the box. So I'm gonna go check the box. And all of a sudden, Trump's elected. And what they did is they then fired anybody in a DEI position. These are rotational positions. It's a regular case officer, a senior manager who was told to get promoted, he or she had to go to this position. They're there
and they are now out of a job. And one of the things I saw in an article yesterday I was actually happy with this is that there was eleven such officers at the agency and they a judge has kind of frozen their dismissal because this is like the lawyer Kevin Carroll, former agency officer, was like, these are people who were told to take this job. They're off, they're case officers or analysts, Like what are you doing
firing them? But that was this blanket thing, like anyone who ever touched DEI is going to get fired again. That's just again, I mean, these are common sense stuff that I think the American people should agree was nuts. But we'll see if it kind of sticks or not.
The one other thing I wanted to, you know, ask you about her to put our finger on a little bit here regarding USA I D. But also all the other stuff going on with like the I R S and the Treasury Department and so on. And I think it's important to point out that Elon Musk is lying about what's going on in these organizations, describing congressionally approved expenditures as being quote unquote fraud, that these are lies.
This is a liar who's telling boldfaced lies to the American public about their government.
He admitted it Jack in that bizarre press conference where in the Oval office where his kid was picking his nose, Yeah, which was I actually thought that was incredibly funny. Uh yeah, but that was on purpose marked the nose picking. No, the kid being in the shop, Oh no, I like the nose picking part of it.
I know, it's hilarious and cute, but that's like to distract.
And Trump Trump looked like a hostage there too. He did.
Yeah.
But but Elon must said something really interesting because someone said, hey, by the way, this charge that we spend fifty million dollars for condoms in Hamas actually is not true, and and Elon must said, yes, sometimes we're going to get things wrong. Yet yet Fox News blurts out this fifty million dollars condoms in Gaza bullshit NonStop and gets everybody kind of all hyped up that the idea is this you know, you know, is now a terrrist supporting entity.
I mean, I don't know, it's it's it's it's pro choice, pro birth control, terror sympathizers. I mean, it's it's freaking madness. But Elon Musk lied, and he said, yeah, sometimes we're going to get it wrong and we'll get corrected and then you know, the damage is done already. And so, you know, the I think the thing that's there's a couple of things that to me are really chilling about this. These doge folks access into kind of the kind of the secret world. I don't know who these individuals are
I don't know if they have security clearances. The idea that they have access to the treasury system is or the irs is is terrifying as an American citizen because that's your personal data.
Well, and the question is why the fuck do they need access to Why do they need data for government efficiency?
Like why for an administration that looks like there is going to be a campaign of retribution against Trump's political enemies. I mean, this should scare the crap out of every conservative, Like, this is why my head is going to explode. This is conservative should be outraged. This is massive government overreach into privacy. And then the other part is, you know when you talk about these people poking around in the treasury or the national security institutions, is there's a huge
counterintelligence issue. And you know, there was a story and I don't know if it's true or not, it's been reported quite often. I imagine it's true that that somehow the agency sent down the first name and last initial of the entire probation area Tatry two thousand and five hundred officers down to omb in an unsecured manner. We just then, in essence, compromised the entire COVID status of our next generation.
We spoke about that in an episode.
Yeah again insane and an own goal by the agency. But I think they're probably just obviously trying to comply. There should be an investigation on how.
I mean that's that gets into the other interesting thing about like compliance. Like if you're working at the CIA and they tell you to send email with all these names over an unsecured net, I mean, is it your answer going to be No, I'm not doing that because.
It's illegal, which is what you know. That's why the acting director of the of the of the FBI, you know, a former HRT guy you know, was considered a hero down at the bureau. Because he's actually resisting some of this stuff. He's probably I would imagine, not going to be there. It does.
It baffles me a little bit because like if some nineteen year old, pimple faced kid shows up in my office at va Irs, Treasury, FBI and starts telling me he needs to look at the computers and this is how it's going to be, dude, I get old school on that ass and show him right out the door. I turn that dude right around. But it seems like nobody's willing to do that.
The two AID Security chiefs were fired after they said no.
I mean, how many inspected generals were fired?
They're all gone right, yeah, so again this is but who is the architect of the IG and of whistleblower stuff? These are people like Chuck Grassley, a very conservative Republican and so the Republican Party is dead on these issues. They've been good on this stuff. They believe, you know, whistleblowers are critical. Uh, the Inspectral General staff absolutely critical because what does it do? It uncovers government malfeasance. This
is That's it. That's a conservative principle that so many in Congress seem to have.
That's what I understand. Like why fire inspector generals if you're trying to trim the fat and make these agencies more cization cult.
Because it's a right.
It's the power of the unitary.
That matters is one person, one person.
You're a true conservative. I don't see how your supportive of of this stuff. And you so you know, we'll see if anyone has kind of power of strength. I think you're going to see this week the probable uh you know, nomination going through of cash Ptel crazy, the same thing would happen.
That's like me going to the FBI and being the director.
But I mean, you know, so whether it's Patel or Telsey Gabbard was confirmed or FK Junior was confirmed, I mean these are Hegseth was confirmed. When you talk to Republicans, you know, I live in d C. On the side, none of these people are qualified and so but but they see it in a much different fashion. This is based on political survival. Survival. If they voted against these individuals,
they would get primaried. And again that's to me that goes against you know, your your principles, when you take an oath to the Constitution to do the right thing. They did not. I would much rather, you know, be out of a job than to have on my record that I voted for some of these people. Yeah that's me.
Oh god, I don't feel well good about this conversation at all.
I mean, I don't know what's What's there something good to look forward to. I'm trying to think baseball seasons coming up. Great, I got some great concert tickets. I'm gonna go, Oh Jack, You're gonna love this. Come on next Thursday. I'm gonna go see Dropkick Murphy's in DC, A tiny little place of five thousand uh people in the stands.
That's cool.
That's some old school punk. Come on, you got Yeah.
Another bit of news. Uh, Kellogg arrives arrived in Kiev today. I saw a video of him. He did, he took some questions, he looked. I mean, what does a guy like that do when he shows up in Kiev after the day before? What like what happened yesterday during that meeting and the after math with Trump? Uh, basically just siding with Russia more or less. Like, what does a guy like Kellogg go through? He's going to meet everybody right in Kiev? Like, what does he tell these people?
Matt I Uh, comply, Yeah, I mean I would imagine there's gonna be some damage control. I mean, you know, uh, which is often the case. I mean, Rubio has come out and said, no, the Ukrainian is going to be at the table again. It's a dysfunctional government. Nobody knows what we're talking about. I mean, you know, my friends who were at the Munich Security conference came back and said it was just it was incredible to see the
whiplash and our European partners are are horrified. And again, what you know, for those who think that Europe doesn't matter, and I think there's probably a lot of people on the right who are very dismissive of Europe, they shouldn't be because a thousand NATO members were killed in Afghanistan defending the United States. Even the Ukrainians. Think about the scenes at Hkia at how many Karzai Airport with the chaotic witrowal. You saw some people outside you of course,
the US military was there very bravely. You saw a lot of people in tiger stripes, which is kind of maybe some intelligence community, paramilitary forces Afghans, and you saw the Ukrainian special forces who were there after the US left. We are not going to have any friends or allies if we treat people like shit, if we've turned into this kind of imperialiss bully. Uh. You know, another nine
to eleven, no one's coming to our aid. One hundred and fifty eight Canadians were killed in Afghanistan, and and yet we're we're you know, we're beating the shit out of Canada every day. I mean, you know, for those of us who kind of worked with partner forces worked on liaison relationships. You know, this stuff matters. And uh and and I think we're kind of going going south. I don't know, you know, Kellogg will do some damage control.
I mean they're gonna try to. I mean, right now, the personal relationship between Trump and Zelenski has now gone right into the toilet. So how you repair that? I'm not sure?
So yeah, uh, Zelenskia, like probably an hour ago, I've begun discussions with European leaders and I believe they would step up in from the Ukrainian armed forces that the US does not. EU has agreed on new sanctions on package on Russia Financial Times and I was I read some article that there was talks of like the EU package for Ukraine being like upwards of like eight hundred nine hundred billion euros.
Good, I hope. So, I mean they have it. I mean, Europe's got to get a ship together. They need leadership. Europeans certainly have the capacity to do this. The question is you know in any kind of so there's one is is kind of you know, sustainability. If you talk to people, and I'm gonna box this, of course I'm not a military analyst, but you know, you know, certainly
Europe needs stuff. I mean, sorry, Ukraine needs stuff, but this has actually turned into this kind of drone war and so and you're in Ukraine is producing, there's a lot of indigenous productions. So I think Europe certainly can can step up and lead. There can be some kind of your europe security force there. But again this is going away from US leadership, certainly any kind of US role, and you know, perhaps that's ultimately what what what what you know what Trump wants to kind of walk away
from all this. The other the other point on this too is that you know, under NATO, there's that there's an issue of what's called Article five, which is attack on one NATO member other people will come to eight. That's what, that's how, that's why a thousand NATO members were killed in Afghanistan. I think that that whole notion of Article five is dead.
I mean, the only time it was ever invoked was nine to eleven.
Yep, yep, and a thousand NATO members were killed, right, Which is why I think so much of this kind of europe bashing is so insulting. Just why you know, same thing again, one hundred and fifty nine Canadian troops.
There were you know, there were forty nine Danish troops who died right in Afghanistan, which is a hell of a lot of people for a small country like that.
Yet we want to invade Greenland.
It's like I said, it's not a lot of the right issue. It's just dumb, like it just doesn't look.
Yet what are we doing. We're going to have no friends, you know, and that you know from your former unit, and certainly stuff that I did, you know, a lot of the time was done training with other countries militaries or intelligence services. That's going to go away. We're going to have no friends, and so we're going to have a short term win, you know. So the President of Panama says something about this whole mess with the Panama Canal,
which makes my head hurt. But ultimately, you know, are we going to have anyone come to our come to our assistance in our time of need? And I don't know the answer to that.
Yeah, it seems like, yeah, they want short term wins, so that it's a little feather in the hat of the administration. But like with destroying everything around it, you know.
I mean, you know, again, are we the good guys you look like an asshole, you know, I mean I I you know, my time goes back to so what would it like, what would be like, let's just play a game here at a diplomatic reception in the past, you go, you hang out with the Brits because they're
fun and they're like to drink. You go over to the French because they probably have some good wine going on, and you know, maybe there's they you know, they're talking about a new restaurant they went to, and so you're checking out the around town. I mean, who do we hang out with?
Now?
You know, it's not Europe anymore. It's going to be like, you know, like the Pakistani dat de fantatic. I don't know, like who are our friends? You know, is it going to be the authoritarians and come by and kind of give a little you know, wink, hey, like you're one of us now, Like I don't know what it's like to be an American diplomat with this kind of stuff.
Yeah, I mean, I guess just to like close off from thoughts on it, you know, I have been kind of like dismayed. I mean we've talked a little bit about like the failure of like the media, the Democrats, the Republicans to confront some of these issues. Talk about academia for a moment, Like I was reading the last issue of Foreign Affairs, which was written between the time that Trump was elected an inauguration, so he wasn't yet
in office when that that issue was published. But all of these scholars, political scholars, and damn near every single one of them was like, well, you know, the Trump administration may prove to be surprisingly nuanced in some ways that you didn't quite expect, and you know, it's not going to be as bad as you think it's going to be because the resiliency of the global system is like completely out to lunch, like completely detached from reality.
I call it wishful thinking. And I was. I was, and I quit. I was a member of a signal chat where there was some really very esteemed kind of historians involved, and that's what I heard from them. It was this wishful thinking, Yeah, it's not going to be so bad. And of course I go through my daily catastrophizing, so maybe it's a dang on me. You know, you know, I get criticized on social media and Twitter, doom scrolling the whole.
The whole Peter Teal like thought process about that guy, Nick LeAnn is like they attack Uh, academics too, Like academics are in the crossairs. So I think they're doing the same thing as like the Yeah Republican congress people are the big corporate CEOs. Is like they're trying to hedge their bets and do the right thing so they don't get fucking targeted.
But I rejoined this chat. I was invited back in because I was I was being an asshole and I'm railing against everybody, and Bay and some of the some of the historians, these are like former deans of major universities said to me, you were right. It's actually worse. It's actually worse than what you predicted. So I think that in academia it's changing a little bit too, because again it's now My argument would be, well, he said he was going to do all this read Project twenty
twenty five. Yeah, he's coming through on all of his promises. There there ain't nothing new on this stuff. I mean, there's a playbook. They are following it to the t. Uh. But but Jack, I think you're a thousand percent right. There's so much wishful thinking there's the it's quote it's not this bad or you know, you know, you know, and uh, I think that there's people are gonna regret
some of these articles. It reminds me. I mean just this just came like it's like when you know, Jake Sullivan wrote and was it Foreign Affairs or Foreign policy just before Gaza October seventh, the Middle East is peaceful. It was great.
Yeah, he was like, we fixed its Palestine Israel.
Yeah, that's so much. We didn't and we didn't even talk about the Middle East. About you now advocating you know, ethnic cleansing in Gaza, which as a Middle East hand that is my expertise. My head blew off with that. I mean, again, are we the good guys? Are we actually advocating the ethnic cleansing of Gaza?
Want that one's on Biden and Trump just solidified it and put it on paper kind.
Of, I mean, come on, what are we doing? So anyhow? I could talk you guys all day. It's fun and I can't wait to see some of that. You'll get some positive responses, you'll get some hate mail.
For people are gonna freak the funk out.
Let them.
Let jack one last question how's your book doing good?
Really good? Yeah, we defy it has done really well. And uh, I'm working on a novel right now that I have been hired to write.
Very good. They see see DC, I'm playing producer now, I'm playing like like MC here but plugging his book.
Thank you, so Jack Murphy. Of course, we defy. Great job mark on that. You can check it out. The link will be in the description. All the other guys stuff. The links will be in the description. Mick Mulwright doing incredible work with fog boll and Longbow Mark p MSNBC analyst national security analysts. Where else can people find Twitter?
Every the deep State?
Deep?
Yeah, hardcore? When is the new podcast? Are you gonna come out with a new podcast?
What's Yeah, there's some exciting news but not to be announced yet. Okay, podcasts from a the Pond cool? Uh, a member of and then so.
So something's cooking so stay tuned for that. Yeah. And Patreon dot com Slash the Teamhouse. Please don't leave it if you got upset, join it. Please also our merch store. All the links will be in the description Patreon dot com Slash the Teamhouse. Thanks guys, all right, thank you