Will Democracy Survive A 2nd Trump Presidency? | A Conversation with Paul Rieckhoff

And I guess to start out, there's a good chance we could be in the same cell block in political prison together, right if they keep the rs and the esses together alphabetically, so we may be seeing more of each other soon.

happening right now. And a lot of folks are ready to, you know, focus on the holidays and take a break or lick their wounds or just go to ground. I mean, this is a time where we need to be especially vigilant and stick together wherever we can. So yeah, I hope we're not in getm together. But who knows what the next couple of months is going to look like. For anybody who's a critic of the president elect.

couple of people. But like any time you go out you say anything, right, you have military experience, you've commanded men, you've commanded men in combat. You have to think about what the first thing you're going to say is right? But what am I going to lead off with here? And for FDR was the only thing we have to

fear is fear itself. You look in nineteen eighty one, new pope comes to be in nineteen seventy nine, and you know, for all the younger folks out there kind of forget what the pope John Paul was like when he first became pope. Right, this guy was movie star good looking, he was really young, and he goes to Warsaw at the height of Soviet dominance in the era of solidarity, and he goes to a square in front of a million people, and he says, do not be afraid.

have won. Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, Patrick Schong at the La Times. So we're thirty four days out from him taking power and whatever the first line of resistance is going to be, it's that way we're retreating, right. The opposition is disorganized, it is flat on its back. It is completely delusional. I'm reading stories about is Kamala Harris going to run for president again next or is she going to be governor of California or maybe both

at once? Who knows? And I just how do you process this moment thirty four days out as Trump appears before the national media and basically says, well, I got you tamed. They all nod back at him, and you got to keep being nice. Gotta be nice, nice to Trump? How do you assess the strategic landscape politically?

And I think what you see right now is a landscape that looks like an evolving battlefield, right, And you've got a force that's on the offensive and it is taking ground and got momentum and got energy, and you've got a fragmented, disorganized, demoralized opposition and series of oppositions. And I think for me, I go back to being a dad, right, And when I send my boys off to school, we have little sayings every day. I got two little boys, they're nine and five, and we say

strong of body, strong of heart, strong of mind. Right, And that's how I kind of steal them to think about how they can be empowered to take on whatever is going to come at their day. And I make the brothers look at each other, tell them they love them, and they go in together, right. And every day they're going into the unknown in New York City public school.

But when my nine year old was a kindergartener, he was going into COVID with a mask and a temperature check and I couldn't even go in the room, right. So I kind of bring it all back to that, Steve, because I think the most important thing for people, especially Democrats, to understand is it's on. It's been on for years and now it's fully unfolding. And for these folks that are licking their wounds or they're you know, doing with what Democrats love to do, which is like a lot

of listening sessions and roundtables. Trump is pushing his advantage very aggressively right now. He's not taking Christmas off to handout presents to his grandkids, and he's going to try to run up the score. So what's lacking is a strategy to oppose him, right, And I think what's also lacking is a strategic leader. There is no Churchill, there is no FDR, and no one has yet emerged to

be that person for the Democrats or for America. And I've been talking to folks as I'm sure you have, who are trying to figure out what to do next to get my read and I say, look, part of it is about betting on leaders, whether you're betting on Steve Schmidt, or you're betting on AOC, or you're betting on Dan Osborne who ran as an independent for Senate in Nebraska and almost one. It's not a time where the existing organizations are nimble, dynamic, or even capable enough

to respond to this threat. And I view it as a threat. I still view it as a national security threat more than anything else. And the Trump movement now is very close to having the keys to the entire castle. But none of it is normal, none of it is acceptable, and none of it is inevitable. And what we're lacking because we don't have strategic leaders, and we don't have a national strategy or even enclaves of strategies to oppose him.

Is we're lacking priorities, so people don't know where to focus, and that's to Trump's advantage. He wants to overwhelm the zone. He throws hegseth at you right after Gates and here comes Tulca Gabbard and RFK Jr. And nobody's even paying attention to the fact that he nominated a guy for Secretary of the Navy who's never served in the Navy, or that he's got a very radical pick at the Department of Veterans Affairs that's way below the radar and

getting no coverage or even oversight. So that the strategy is to overwhelm the country, overwhelm the press, overwhelm the government, and get as much ground as he can so that the midterms become irrelevant. Right people are stacking their chips

for the midterms for four years from now. I'm saying it's about the next thirty five days, and right now I think the most urgent priority is hegset because he is the biggest move at the biggest agency in the federal government, and he's not inevitable We saw that with Gates, and I think Hegseth is the same situation. But if you're Trump and you're going for your breaking into the house, okay, whether it was your house or someone else's house, the

first thing you go for is the gun closet. You go for the gun closet because it's the most dangerous, it's the most valuable, it's got all the symbolic reasons, right, And he knows that the Pentagon stopped him last time,

so he's taken a long shot. He's picking the most political, the most extreme, the most not just unqualified but disqualified person to take over the largest federal agency in the government, not just because it has and the most significant, not just because it has two point seven million employees and a seven hundred billion dollar budget, but because it's the

most powerful thing that stopped him last time. Right. So if you want to talk about things like federalizing the National Guard to rip migrant kids out of schools, if you want to talk about owning the military leadership so they don't oppose you when you want to do any number of crazy things, the first thing you do is hit the Pentagon. And that's what he's doing. Pete Hegseth is like a political nuke strike. And if he goes through, which I don't think has got to happen, everything else

is easy, right va is cake education, no problem. You can even you know, even if he does go down, you can put up somebody like DeSantis and he sails through. So I really think it's important that people understand that Pete Hegseth was built for this moment. He was built as a culture warrior, funded by the Koch brothers, empowered with a spot on Fox News, and we never thought that he would actually get nominated because we knew his personal life was messy. I figured he was going to

be chief of staff or maybe press secretary. But Trump is literally saying, and he's saying you, he's I'm gonna roll you. I'm gonna put this guy up. And he is a culture warrior, and he's got you know, tattoos that might be associated white nationalism, and he's got three divorces, and he's openly talked about, you know, having sex with other people's wives. I mean, this is all out in

the open. And if he can get hag set through, then the Democrats are gonna just get rolled and I really think that's why, you know, I continue to bring focus towards strategic leaders that aren't political, someone like Admiral Straviti's, or maybe it's a retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs

like Mike Mullen. Maybe someone else will emerge. And I don't have an answer for you, but I do think that independent Americans, especially people who do put country first, people who took off the uniform, especially veterans who want to continue to serve but don't necessarily want to get in politics. This is a time for true patriots to

step up and and our values. Whether you're a school teacher that has to represent yourself at the school board, or you're somebody who's been thinking about running for Senate, you know, maybe this is your time. But at the end of the day, he wants to roll everybody. And I think that's the most important point about December twenty twenty four going into January, is he wants to come out with a head of steam. This is like a blitzkree.

He's putting it all up front. He wants to push it through because once he gets the keys to not just the gun closet, but the kitchen and the security system and everything else. Then everything else becomes easier. So I think it's really important that you lay out that landscape where we can't count on the Democrats. I've never been been counting on the Democrats. I don't think you

have either. But I think it's kind of a wake up moment for America to go, hey, they're not going to fucking save you here, and we have to look to other leaders and other structures and other tactics and to have a strategy on a very basic level to

defend our values, defend our constitution. And let's start with defending our military from a guy who says he doesn't want women in combat when we've got two hundred thousand women in combat, and as all this other shit, let's start with focusing on Pete Hag Seth and not all the other shiny stuff, because this is a very important fight, and it's the fight that is right in front of us, and we'll dictate. I think the pays for everything else for years to come.

after every action, there's gonna be an after action review. Uh, it's important to have an appreciation right of how it is they arrived at whatever situation one finds oneself in in order to get out of it right and and and so in that sense, let me ask you a couple kind of couple things. Is it possible that Pete Hegseth could be worse in that position than Donald Drumsfeld and Robert McNamara were.

wing of Trump's agenda. And I think that's why this is very important, right, because everything that Trump wants to get done on everything from migrants to banning trans people, right, the entire spectrum of his agenda will start with Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon. Right, So let's use an example that, you know, maybe not a great one, but maybe like trans people's rights. Right day one, at the Pentagon, they

flip the switch. There's a trans band. Anybody who's trans gets pulled out of a unit, you get kicked out of the military, you get processed out, and we start there. Right. It is going to be easier at the Pentagon than the Department of Justice or the Department of Labor, or at education or at home. The Depentagon is going to be the full crumb for everything because it will be presented as a position on national security. If we don't do this, the Chinese will have an advance. If we

don't do this, our enemies will be at an advantage. Right. That's going to be true for trans bands, that's going to be true for activating the national card.

So you start with them, right. And so when you want to do something like take women out of combat, which is bigger than it seems, because what it is is it's saying women are not equal, Right, women are not equally That's the bottom line, you can't do the same things that we do, and therefore you will not have the same opportunities rights, etc. So if you succeed in achieving a lack of equality for women depending on abortion rights, everything else is a downhill slide from there.

So when you ask me, is he more dangerous than McNamara or Rumsfeld, you know yes, because the agenda is much more extreme. I would argue that you could at least count on Rumsfeld on some levels to put country over a party. Right. He may have agreed with his allegiances or his politics, but I think on a basic level there was some kind of integrity there around the institution and the world wasn't as dangerous Steve. I mean, we've got, you know, a land war in Eastern Europe,

We've got the Chinese threat of Taiwan. We've got all these other threats that are real but also in a position to be exaggerated, not just by Trump but by Hegseth, who I think too many Democrats dismissed these people. Hegseth is a masterful communicator. He is brilliant at doing this, at selling, at communicating, at motivating people, and he's a multi sport athlete who can go on Joe Rogan, but can host a show on Fox and also entangle with the reporters on Capitol Hill and spin a weakness into

his strength. And that's why this is the playbook for the rest of the administration. Right, it's the same kind of skill set Tulsey Gabbert has. You could argue it's the same kind of skill set other people in the cabinet now, even like someone like a Christy Nome. But they're good on TV. They're able to communicate to people, you know, foreign and domestic, and they're good at this. They're good at this thing. You may not like the thing,

but they are very very good at it. And if you have a Pete Hegg have controlling everything from our nukes to who gets to join, right, that drives the culture for the entire country. So if you don't understand why Joe Rogan is important, you probably don't understand why the Pentagon's so important. And that's the parallel that I think Democrats and many liberals in this country are really

failing to understand. It's much bigger than about politics. It's about culture and manipulating American patriotism into something much more nefarious. When banning women in combat seems like a patriotic thing to do, deploying American troops in the streets seems like a patriotic thing to do, and they don't have to get everybody.

no problem. Here's Alabama, no problem, Here's Florida. Now what happens in Illinois with Pritzker, What happens in Maryland with Wes Moore? Do those governors say no, they say you can't have my National Guard? Do they fight it out in the courts and then take it all the way down? What happens to the National Guard soldiers.

Trump will argue is is a lawful order. They will argue it's not. And I bring it all back to this d because Ross Perrot once famously said something like he wanted a monument in front of the White House that said, first commit the country, then commit the troops. If you thought Iraq divided people, imagine what it's like when you federalize National Guard troops on the migrant crisis. This is Kent State on steroids. And that's why when people say is there going to be a civil war?

I don't know. I think more importantly, there's going to be a constitutional crisis around how and when to use the military. And if you've got Pete hegsett there and a bunch of undersecretaries who are willing to do it, and you've got all the senior leadership gone because he's fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and everybody else who hasn't taken a loyalty test, you've got a steam roll that can start to move forward.

to that level in the United States Navy. All of these people will be gone and.

they're all on Tucker Carlson's list. Now their names are out there, they've been publicly outed. Right, they're out of the military. They have no more salary, they don't have publics, they don't have security for their families. Right, they all become General Millie, they all become faucy, and that is a very dangerous thing. But it's also got a chilling effect across not just the military, but every other organization.

of a nuclear ballistic missile submarine. Nobody who had the problematic drinking that heg Seth has would be allowed to be the captain of a submarine. And the Navy, for example, is different than the Army culturally, and that the Navy relieve senior commanders captains of ships all the time, very difficult right to get relieved as the brigade commander of an active duty Army unit judge by the numbers. Not so much in the Navy, not so much in the

Marine Corps. But in the services, two of which that have the standards for you can't do those things or you're out.

watching it go out. I have a seventeen I have an eighteen year old son who is very seriously thinking about I'm thinking about going in the Navy right right out of high school. He's like, I'll go I'll go

to college later. And my position is on this over my dead fucking body, if if, if the US senators are so disrespectful, so fucking careless, so profoundly indifferent that you can't get four of somewhere in the middle to be like, yeah, no, the fuck out of here, not this guy, no way, no how, not her, and not the whack job at the FBI, because if they do get through, as you say, right, the orders will be conveyed and they'll be expressed to the command structure of

the military through the Secretary as a legal order. Yeah, he's the job of the secretary to be the first line of defense to say no, that's in a legal order. What you talked about is I think the very chilling scenario, which is he calls to active duty National Guard troops and no one can stop that taking and you have a deployment of red state National Guard into blue states.

And so you're right, right, you got to hope that they laid the foundation and they're gonna make the right choices. But I think it's the right question because when you talk about all these nominees, I would give them what I've called the school principal test. You know, would you be okay with Pete hag Seth or Cash Betel or any number of them being the school principle for your

seventeen year old daughter? And I'm using daughter specifically, right, would you be okay with that person being the principal of your seventeen year old daughter's school. If not, why are you okay with that person being the command or the leader of your seventeen year old daughter in the Marine Corps? Because that's what we're offering them up to do. It's not like they're just gonna run a Walmart here.

I mean they are the moral, functional, bureaucratic leader that your kids, those especially that have kids in the service, you know, are gonna have to look to. But I

think there's a bigger thing here, Steve. When we talk about all these elements, I don't think the Democrats realize how bad they've lost, Like this is so much gone, right, because it's not just the institutions like MSNBC that you and I are on all the time, right, it's so tiny and CNN is so irrelevant and though and they could be gone gobbled up by Elon in three months or a year. Right. They they're losing in the media,

they've lost all three chambers. They're losing in fundraising, they're losing on sports, they're losing on culture, they're losing on gender. They've lost so many things that you have to understand that because they're all interconnected. Because when I say he's gonna fire Generals, he's not just gonna fire him. They're gonna be on Elon's Twitter feed, right, And the level of intimidation and the way this whole flywheel is gonna kick in is really faster and more more dangerous, I

think than most people realize. So when people say, oh, Fox News host, that's kind of who you want for this moment because he knows how to pull all those levers. Pete x at again ran political organizations that were funded by dedicated donors that invested in petex at twenty years ago. They built him for this moment, and then he had a corresponding seat at Fox. So when the Republicans wanted to bang on Obama about the VA and they wanted to punish the Democrats and make them look weak on

National Security. Hex has been doing it for years on Fox. So this is an example of how it can all come together. And I think this activation of the National Guard is really important because they're the narrator, right, They're going to narrate this to America, and you're gonna have these subordinate narrators like Tulsea Gabbard or like Pete Hex said, they're gonna echo that. So I keep coming back to, like, who are the narrators that are going to rise to

this moment? It might be a new Colonel Vin been right, maybe a state level commander of a National Guard who says I'm going to stand up and say no, and he gets dragged out in handcuffs, right, Like, They're going to have to be people that emerge right now that are beyond politics, that are trusted, that can counter that narrative. Because maybe that's the most important part of all this is Trump has already started writing this.

then some units run federal orders. But really like Post nine to eleven is a really good example because even Pete Hegseth was his now guard you, it was federalized for January sixth, and he was flagged for being a threat as an insider threat because he had a tattoo that was associated with extremism. His unit took him off the line. So yes, so Christmas time, there are going

to be these warning orders. Hey guys, we're going to get activated, and it's probably going to be like something around migrant migrant camp, migrant security, migrant escort expectation.

the schools in Arkansas. So there's a difference though, between Trump saying, Hey, I'm going to deploy the eighty second Airborne into the interior of the country, and you know, Trump saying I'm going to deploy these units of the New York National Guard here there or whatever. Now, Lieutenant Rychoff gets called up right from the from the and they say, hey, you, Lieutenant Rykoff and your men are

going to go stand here right in Brownsville, Texas. Right and there there you go, and and and and there you are. Now you have no legal basis whatsoever right to refuse the order, right now.

isolated you know, conscientious objectors, which are different. But this is the real constitutional crisis, right, You're gonna have whether or not governors are going to oppose the actual activation, But then it's gonna cascade all the way down to look like a place like New York. Safe to say thirty forty percent of the people in the National Guard are Democrats, right. They probably didn't vote for Trump. They probably don't want to be deployed in the migrant crisis.

I got thrust into the national consciousness because I was a National Guard person who came home and criticized George Bush in two thousand and four. I was still in the National Guard when I did that. People told me I was going to be tried under the Hatch Act. There was no precedent at that time for this like melding of the National Guarden reserve that happens now where Tulsea Gabbard, you know, apologizes for Putin, but she's still

in the in the National Guard in Hawaii. Like, these lines have been so blurred since nine to eleven that I think it's really like a reckoning on some levels, Steve. But it does come down to those individuals, and I don't think you can kind of cast aside then any number of them knows if I say fucket I'm not going. Yeah, I might go to Levenworth or I might go to a jail for a little while, but the ACLU is probably gonna defend me. I'm gonna have a million people

listening to me on TikTok. I'm gonna have an immediate platform, and this is going to birth, I think a new generation of a different kind of anti war activists. That's what I was, That's what Lindy Shean was, what other people were. Right.

deploy to fucking Texas because you've been federalized. Your platoon goes to Texas, because you're in the United States Army. And if you don't want to go to Texas, right, you'll have no sympathy whatsoever from from me, No more so than the Taylor Lorenz position, right of Hey, you know, I'm joyful, right because this guy got shot in the back, gone down by by Luigi Mangione, because of the pain

I'm in for the healthcare companies. And it's the worst conceivable way right to resist Trump because it's unlawful, right, and and because because nobody, because Paul, because nobody has told you to do anything elle goal other than to saddle up as part of the all volunteer force to go to the place they told you.

fucking hero, right, all of which I disagree with. Okay, But if this person or a number of people take this stand, you may not agree with them, other people may not agree with them, but they're gonna be on Chris Hayes like that, and they're gonna be out in the public. And this is where the dynamic is really different now, and especially because the civil military divide is so skewed and Trump is in part done that, done that by

politicizing the military in so many different ways. But we all wanted to know what was vinmin gonna say when he got out, right, Well, Vinman got out and then we heard what he said. Right now, if you kick that person out, or even if you don't, that person can pick up their cell phone. And the country is so starved for opposition. And there may even be illegal grounds for the kind of deployment what they're asking this person to do, whether or not it's legal across state lines.

That's gonna end up in the courts. And the most important thing is Steve, it's going to be I think a kind of constitutional crisis, definitely a civil military divide crisis, and it's going to rip the country in half, and it's going to rip our military in half. And that's why this is also dangerous, because when you politicize our military, it is the most dangerous thing to do. Again, think

about Iraq as an example, Afghanistan as an example. Now we're talking about whether they're whether they're federal or their state, because he also could send federal troops down to the border and do other things. You are politicizing the military on a level we've never seen. And I've started to call these people out. They're chickenhawks. The people are saying, hey, send the National Guard down to Texas or send them

into migrant shelters. Do you think I want to be Lieutenant Rykoff carrying a rifle and a migrant shelter in Brooklyn, surrounded by protesters and everybody else.

not to do. You use him as an example from Vietnam on a case where you should refuse an unlawful order. If the commander comes over and says, hey, hey, hey, Schmidt, shoot all those kids, you have an obligation to say no to that unlawful order. Now, the problem is, it's never that simple. It's always much blurrier and a very real scenario could be, Okay, there's a bunch of kids in that school, there's a line of protesters who are saying they're not gonna let you in. Bust through that

line and go get those kids. Now you're asking that your eighteen year old kid, your nineteen year old kid is now that private in the National Guard who's got to bust through a line of protesters with every camera in the world watching and go. Let's say there's only five kids in it, but there's a criminal inside, right, there's one criminal inside. Right. This is literally what we went through in Iraq on steroids, right, hunting all over the place for people and pissing off the population along

the way. And that's why maybe the most important point of all of this that I would the warning for your show, right, ittion of our military and of patriotism and of all of it. And Hegseth is the manifestation of that. But it's not just him. Trump is very smartly casting the entire season of this episode, with people like Tulca Gabbard and people like the EPA nominee Lee's

Eldon Right. I ran for governor of New York and Trump said his qualifications to be an EPA administrator is that he was in the Army reserves and he knows about bureaucracy, like he's going to use this shield of military veteran and patriotism on everything. And that's the warning, that's the thing to watch out for, because I know people care about all their different issues, but national security

and global security is always got to be paramount. And that's my warning to everybody as we end December and going too January, whether it's Justice Department, whether it's headset. If it feels like it's always all overwhelming, remember that our enemies are celebrating. Putin loves to see this, and Osama bin Laden's dream would have been to see us in a situation where you and I are debating whether or not National Guard troops are going to have to kick in schools and drag out migrant kids.

with those increments. But what he's doing is setting the pieces in place to have all the crazy shit go through the system without resistance from him. To Hegseth, to the purge of the Pentagon, of all the officers. Then all these crazy things that he wants to do cut through like like a knife through butter Right, there's no more mill, there's no more Chairman of the Joint chief saying hey, sir, it is a bad idea. Those guys

are all fucking gone. And you got an army of hegsets and an army of hash cash betels, including the civilian authorities, all the way down in those political positions. And you hope that the government, the government people who've been there for twenty years, the people who run the pentingon, you hope that they stay and try to be a buffer. But a lot of them are just gonna fucking check out. They're gonna say I don't want this. I'm gonna go sit on a beach in Florida where my taxes are

lower and enjoy the desanthus land. There's plenty of people who are gonna do that. And the other piece that's critical here, Steve, is the recruiting will change. Yeah, your kid might not want to join, But like a Maga loyalist who loves Pete Hegseth and listens to Joe Rogan, He's fucking joining. He loves this. There's no trans people in the military. I don't have to take a COVID shot.

Sign me up, man, I'm ready to go. And it begins to turn into the Maga army, right, it begins to turn into the Maga army rather than this beautiful, diverse, lethal fighting for or that we've got right now sounds great. Great, Merry Christmas, Dave, Merry Christmas. Everybody.

you have this duopoly that has produced Donald Trump. And I've read a couple of these stories about what Kamala Harris is going to do next, whether she's gonna run for governor of California run for president again, be both at once, and they and they bring me to the edge of Anneurism right Nowhere in any of them is any talk whatsoever about the person wants the office for, what reason, to do, what to serve, what purpose? None of it right, It's just it's all about the ambition. Now.

What the Democratic Party establishment it was very good at right over the last couple of years, is when you saw some of these bubbles come up, as you know, spoiler screaming spoiler right. I think the whole concept of the maybe the Democrats shouldn't feel the candidate right in

four years, maybe they're the sport right electing Trump. Right, Maybe they should just run candidates at the gubernatorial US Senate, a US House level, and there can be some sort of process outside of the Democratic primary process where somebody comes forward and run for president without having to go through all the bullshit, right and play all the games. Right, That produce a result that's corrupt enough right for Donald Trump to win.

And what I think is the future is people who are leaders first, who are independent of the duopoly and are judged on their own merit on a more play level playing field where they can have not just you know, ranked choice voting and public financing, but also you know, open primaries and ballot access, all the things that they're prohibited from or they're blocked from having or made difficult for them. And I think that the truth is the biggest group of voters in America and the fastest growing

is independence. Fifty one percent of Americans call themselves independents. More people who voted this time call themselves independence than call themselves Democrats and Republicans. Sixty percent of young people are calling themselves independence. And they don't want to be a part of No Labels or Andrew Yang's Forward Party. They just want none of the above. They think it's all fucking broken. They want to put their country first.

They think they can have one hundred options on Amazon for a couch and they shouldn't have only two options for president. So the next generation is demanding this, and I think what you will see as an emergence of candidates who can respond to that or who come from that, and they maybe we believe that many of them will be foreign military people. That's why we started Independent Veterans of America. We think they will be the forward edge.

They will be the easiest to understand because this is a group of people who put country first and have done that their whole lives. So making that transition is going to be more understandable for people. We had eleven candidates who ran. Four of them won. Three of them that lost lost by less than five percent. Dan Osborne, maybe most notably in Nebraska, ran as a Navy steam fitter. He ran as an independent against deb Fisher, who was an entrenched MAGA Republican, and he lost by you know,

less than five percent. But that's the best showing by an independent candidate for Senate in modern history. So if somebody runs for president, and I think it's important to pick examples, right, not just talk Let's just not talk about Ross Puaux or talk about like if the Rock ran right, everybody's oh the Rock, Well, Donald Trump's pretty fucking ridiculous too, and plenty of people thought Ronald Reagan

was ridiculous. But let's just run the model. Right. Let's say it's Kamala Harris again against Donald Trump and the Rock runs. Run it through the model. He will at least be competitive, right, And you could run that same model with Adamiral mccraven. You can run it with Oprah, and then you could take it down to the state level and do it with Matthew McConaughey and Texas, right,

or do it with Mark Cuban for Senate. And I think what you're seeing is the country is finally fed up, and what we have to create is the infrastructure and the pathway for these people to be viable. And we are doing it by starting with veterans. We ran eleven this time in twenty five, We're gonna run twenty five, twenty five and twenty five. For things like mayors like mayor of Omaha, mayor of Buffalo. We are recruiting right now, for veterans, but we would put the call out to everyone,

whether it's local school board or its Senate. We think that there is a movement about to tip and what you've seen so far is the imperfect offerings like no labels and forward and RFK Junior. But they're all tapping into something bigger, which is it The country generally considers itself, the majority of it independent, and they want leaders first. And it's not even compartmentalized by a platform. People say, well,

are independent people against medicare or for medicare? It depends on the person, Like you're gonna have to do the work and evaluate each one of them. But you look at you look at Dan Osborne, right, he was pretty quiet about Ukraine. He said he was going to support union rights, he was going to come after corporations. He talked tough, he had tattoos, and he used to make forty thousand dollars a year. A lot of it's just about leadership, Like people know a leader when they see it.

And if real, authentic, patriotic leaders step forward, and if waves of them come, and I think the waves are going to come most acutely in veterans, former sports people and celebrities. They're going to be the first waves, right, and then you can get on down to more normal people. But I think the opportunity is there, not just four

years from now for president. We think the opportunity is there in twelve months for local offices, for school boards, and for plenty of other races in twenty six, twenty seven, leading up to twenty twenty eight, when who knows where will be. But I do think the future is independent and the country wants it.

to lose to MAGA is a stop. And so the one thing that that Mark Halprin said that I thought it was going to happen, it may still manifest itself. He predicted that if the if there was a Trump victory, the would there would be the biggest mental health crisis in in American history, right, and it hasn't really come to pass.

They're running to all like, let's find the Democrat who can help us understand why they won. And Pat sent an email that said Pat is a different time Democrat and I wrote back in said, but he's still a fucking Democrat. They don't understand. Pat is a great candidate. I think he's a great public servant. He also ran against a woman who was openly gay, and most people

thought that she was a Democrat and he was the Republican. Right, So, like, there's these other pieces of this that people aren't fully understanding, which is that the Democratic brand and the Democratic establishment is completely shattered, and maybe even more so than the Republicans, because at least the Republican party functions. You may not like the way it functions or what it's focused on, but it actually functions quite effectively to achieve what it

wants to, which is to win elections and take power. Right. So, I think what you're seeing is a reckoning on some levels. And the Democrats are holding on to power. The grifters and the establishment and the system is all holding on to keep it going and give it another run. We promise you will get it next time. But I think most Americans a year from now especially, will realize they're fucked with both of them, and they're not happy with

both of them, and they want alternatives. And the question, now, Steve, for you and for every candidates, can I be an alternative? I am putting forward alternatives that I think are viable, and they're independent veterans. Right. They're winning at state races because people say, oh, I like this guy. Nick Batter lost by one hundred votes in Nebraska against a Democrat who's spent over a million bucks. I think he spent

less than one hundred thousand dollars. The fact that he even came close, right shows you that the thirst and the interest is there. The fact that Kennedy could get the kind of support he did. People want an alternative. They just don't want Robert Kennedy. If that alternative was somebody more viable, we would have had a very different landscape. So I think we are in a moment where leaders are going to rise and the opposition to Trump will

most effective. Opposition encounter to Trump won't come from the left, It'll come from the middle. The angry, unheard group of people in this country that is really starving to get power and to take the country back is not Maga Republicans. It's moderates, it's independence, It's the majority of this country.

them field a candidate and they're the referee. Right. So the Democratic Party, as an example, runs closed private elections in my state, uses my kids' public school, uses public resources to run a closed primary that I can't even vote in because I'm not a Democrat Like that is what we have to tackle is the fact that the Democrats have closed out competition. So I don't even want them on the field, much less running the scoreboard and

the referees. I want them to have to fight for that field, on an even playing field with Dan Osbourne or the Rock or whoever else, just like everybody else. I think that's where the real action is, right, and the Republicans knew it. That's why they tried to keep primaries closed in I think twenty states over the last couple of years, because if you let the independence in, that upsets the entire apple cart.

of this stuff. I'm a rejectionist of the idea that it will be popular, right if we are, in fact right entering into the golden age of America led by the right, led by the Maga Republicans, and you and I are two people is wrong about anything that two people have ever been wrong about anything about and and we're gonna be totally discredited, don't. I don't think that's gonna happen. But where where is the line right that that is it? Is it twenty days in? Is it

thirty days in? Is it on immigration? Is it on is it on the deployment of the military, Is it on the is it on the confirmation hearings where people look at a couple of these people and early, holy shit?

talking about right now are patriots. What is important to you? And everybody's gonna have to draw their own lines, just like in combat. Right. Yeah, we're trying to move together as a unit, but there is no more unit. The unit has been shattered. Your commander's dead. Like everybody is kind of fighting on their own. And what you start to do now is you're not these little clicks, right.

It's like band of brothers when they when they when the one hundred first gen, you hook up with other guys at the clickers and say, hey, you got a clicker, I got a clicker. Let's see what we can do, right. And that's where we are right now, is people fighting for the things that they hold sacred before Trump rolls over them. So for me, and I think for a lot of veterans, it's the Pentagon, right, And it's this nomination because Gates for many people was the line and

they stop Gates. You can argue Gates is gone crazy thing he tried, it's he's off the board, right. I think that heg Seth is the line. And it's not just about the confirmation hearings. This is a test of the Republicans. This is a test obviously. Are any Democrats other than Tammy Duckworth gonna stand up and say anything? Are they all gonna start folding like it sounds like Fetterman is doing and many others? Right? Where are the officers within the military. Are they gonna find ways to

speak out? Are they gonna find ways to try to push back? Where the fuck is the press? Right? It's gonna be a test of everybody. And heg Seth, in my view, is the most immediate and the first real test, because Gates wasn't really a test. Gates was, you know whatever it was. But but but but Hegseth is the big hail Mary he's starting with. It's the big shot he's taking. And for me, that's where I am right now. I'm hunkered down here. I think you have to try

to stop heg Seth. And of course somebody else crazy is gonna come.

but you got to keep fighting. And right now is arguably the most important point because you want to stun his momentum. You know he's gonna get the House. You know he's gonna get the Senate, he's gonna get Supreme Court nominee. So look across the board, there are plenty of people said, we can't stop Gates. Those people. I want them out of the room. I don't want them in my foxhol anymore. Right, But other people know, you can stop hag Seth, you can stop RFK Junior, you

can stop Tulsi, you can stop cash Fattel. And you do it by reminding people what's most important and talk about the basics, give them the principal and explain why you shouldn't have a radical guy who wants to blow up the FBI running the FBI.

that the military will be ice from politics. So we're at this new normal now right where they can't trust that the systems will keep things in check and that Congress will function normally. So I don't think honestly, Steve, like you might get him a Craven, or you might get a Kelly, or you might get Millie. But don't hold your breath. I think you're more likely to see kind of like a next generation AOC. You use her as an example because she came out of nowhere, she

was so talented. You might see a sergeant. You might see a John Kerry, right, like someone who captivates the country and is able to communicate in a masterful way. Like you look at the school shootings, right, some of the kids that came out of the school shootings. I

think people are always looking to the senior leaders. I think there are some young people that know how to play this game, that know how to do the multimedia landscape, and those are the folks that are going to emerge very quickly and become like instant superstars.

going to put the hold on it. You got somebody who's going to be a tough sell, somebody who's going to be right away, right, But all that's supposed to work in concert together, and you don't have that now. So for me, if I'm a US senator, I'm betting the shit out of every of them, all of them.

None of them are acceptable until I'm proven otherwise. So many of them are not just not qualified, like openly disqualified, right, conflict of interest as an example, Like if you lower the standards on any level, it becomes easier across the board. And I think that's why, yes, advice and consent, but also every candidate is supposed to get a certain level of rigor and and we can't let him overwhelm.

They'll threaten the primary you. And she said, okay. Now, what she's basically saying is I'll wait till the confirmation hearings, which is also the way of saying, I'll wait four more weeks to see if any other crazy shit comes out, right, And that is probably a more strategic way to approach this because people haven't been nominated this far ahead with this much crap, right, So there's a lesson learned there, right,

which is weight. But at the same time, will you be able to adequately evaluate Heckset while you've got six other nominees happening because he is trying to overwhelm the system, and people have to stay vigilant. They have to uphold that their honor, and they have to hold the line for the American people who elected them to do this.

really frightening. And indifference is really what you're talking about at the corporal and I think that the fighting spirit that you bring to the table is something that's you know, really really important, and you know, encourage people to get involved, to support independent veterans for America and to be engaged in politics.

to it. And that will always ultimately happen because one of the things that's almost providentially been true about the country is the right people have stepped up at the right times or have found their way in the right moments at the right time into positions where they were able to stop the things that needed to be to be stopped. None of those people have been perfect people, and the ones that are coming aren't going to be

perfect either, but they are out there. Uh. When you when you look at what's what's coming down the pike, there's gonna need to be a lot of really committed, conviction based opposition to it. We found ourselves in a terrible place right now in this in this country, and in the first rule of holes is when you find

yourself in one, stop fucking digging. And if you look at the last couple of weeks, every person who's capitulated to Trump and claim they did it for us while practicing the gospel of self interest has nuped themselves, whether it be justin Trudeau in Canada, whether it be Morning Joe, whether it be the ABC News division.

who would it be? And as I've had this conversation with people, and the guy was having it with with John Nichols at the at the Nation magazine, who's as as smart and as decent a guy as there is, And a lot of people are talking about go go to Tulsi Gabbard and you're like, well, obviously it's stop Tulsi Gabbard and John and I agreed with each other, which is that we followed the bread crumbs to the nuclear weapons, right that the person who's in the chain

of command with our five four hundred and thirteen nuclear warheads, that's the person that we would focus our attention on.

So I think you're completely right. You have the most unfit person that has ever been nominated for a position of responsibility within the National Command already a legitimately accused rapist, a person who clearly has a drinking problem, a person who's been condemned by his mother, of all people, as being abusive to women, who is disqualified from inaugural service because of the white nationalists tattoos on his chest a Fox mourning television host and polemicist who is a divider,

and who is an inciter, and who is unfit morally, mentally, spiritually to preside over In the end, what is a position that requires some degree of moral authority at least? And so it is an urgent mission to stop denomination. It must be stopped, it must be opposed. The dignity of the armed forces of the United States is at stake.

And this last point MacArthur talked about this in that sixty two speech, is that the military and the American soldier, and the legacy of the American soldiers MacArthur talked about does not belong to the military, nor even to the veteran belongs to the nation. And in the nation, the nation should be revolted, revolted by the idea of Pete Hags athleteing the Pentagon. So I have been as outspoken as a person could be about Donald Trump, and two out of three times he ran, more voters agreed with

me than with him. One of those times he sliced it through the electoral college. But on one of those times, I'm in the minormal position and you're in the minority position. A plurality of our people in a country have bestowed lawful authority to Donald Trump, and he's going to be the commander in chief. And we have we have an active force of over a million young men and women primarily. We have people all over the world in harm's way,

doing dangerous things. We got another million people roughly in the reserves, in the national in the National Guard. He could be called on uh to do difficult and dangerous things. And these people deserve respect, and they deserve competent able moral leadership. And and Donald Trump was not elected to vandalize these places. He was he was, according to him,

to make them great again. And there's and there's no formulation where placing a drunk and accused rapist into a position that Pete Hagsath is being placed into makes anything great again. It's one purpose, which is the fucking record. And and with that, let me let me give you the last word here and tell people by all means where they can find it.

in it, and we are still deep in it. And I think that's what I would ask everyone to remember, is that you know, vigilance is the price of democracy, and we've got to be vigilant right now or the holidays and always, and it requires just basic citizenship and being aware of what's happening. So I think vigilance is what's required now. It has to transcend party. It's about you know what I said, the principal test? Are you okay with these people being your principal? And if you

need another test, okay? The nuke test also a good one, right is this a person who'd be fit to have control over our nukes? In contrast, Eve after we finish, I'm gonna go record my annual Festivus episode of Independent Americans with Jason Alexander, who is actually a very very deep and thoughtful guy, a great he's a grandfather, and I'm gonna ask him about America because I think we need all voices right now to help us, to soothe us, to guide us. But it's a time to go back

to wisdom. It's a time to go back to values. It's a time to go back to family and just look at all these issues through the lens of your family around the holidays. I don't know how many people would be excited about Pete Hegseth sitting at the kids table for your holiday. I would not be. I would have them under guard. Watch if you next to my kids, or next to my wallet, or next to my wife. Right. But I do think that there are amazing people in

this country who will rise to the moment. I don't know who they are, but I know that independence especially are well positioned to be those people. If anybody's listening and they're an independent veteran, go to Independent Veterans of America dot org. We want you, And if you're not interested in running, you can help support those who are. Check out Independent Americans dot us. You can get it on YouTube and Spotify and everywhere else. You get Steve's show,

and we're going to keep this conversation going. But you can't give up, right And I don't think you can give up an inch of your integrity. And that's ultimately what this is all about is about the integrity of our country and looking our kids in the eye and telling them what you did during this time. I think we're going through something, Steve, that I would call a political, cultural,

intellectual depression. It's going to be a great depression, and we've got to figure out how are you going to get through the great depression that you heard your grandparents it's talk about. That's what we're facing, and we're gonna have to strap in and get ready for it. But we will endure and we can get through it if we stick together and look out for each other, and most of all, just remember that that we're in it together. And it does transcend party lines, especially around the holidays.

It's a good reminder don't let the bastards get you down, and don't let this guy divide us like be nice to each other and be kind and focus on the future and we can pull this one out in the late innings and live to fight another day. So thank you, Steve for the forum, Thank you for and happy holidays. Shut the news off once in a while, okay, and try to take care of yourself as you would in combat.

Make sure you're eating, make sure you're sleeping, spend time with family, because you got to brace yourself for a long fight. That's what we're in for. And we just got to outlast Trump.