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Unknown A
Trump making some significant moves over at the Pentagon, in particular removing the previous chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Let's go and put his announcement up on the screen. This was on Truth Social. He says, I want to thank General Charles C. Q. Brown for his over 40 years of service to our country, including as our current chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He is a fine gentleman and an outstanding leader, and I wish a great future for him and his family. Today I'm honored to announce that I am nominating Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan Raisin Cain to be the next chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Kaine is an accomplished pilot, national security expert, successful entrepreneur, and a war fighter. In quotes, for some reason with significant interagency and special operations experience. So we'll tell you a little bit more about the individual who is General Brown's replacement.
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Unknown A
But this was one of a number of moves that were made at the Pentagon in what some are describing as a purge. So in addition to the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff being removed, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, also removed. The Air Force Vice Chief of Staff, General James Slife, also removed. And then in addition to this, in what was, I think, maybe the most eyebrow raising part of this whole maneuver, the three top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force. So the top JAG lawyers for those three service branches were all fired as well. Obviously, you know, this raises questions. Why do you want to get rid of the top lawyers in these various, for these various branches of the military? And Pete Hegseth, who of course is now the Secretary of, of Defense, was pressed on exactly that point on one of the Sunday shows.
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Unknown A
Let's take a listen to that.
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Unknown B
For people who may not know, I mean, they, they give advice to the military about what is lawful and what isn't. Not surprisingly, there's been some backlash to those who are worried about their removal. One Georgetown law professor says this Trump also firing the Army, Navy and Air Force jags. In some ways, that's even more chilling than firing the four stars. It's what you do when you're planning to break the law. You get rid of any lawyers who might try to slow you down. Your response to her, I don't know.
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Unknown C
Who Rosa is and her, what her hyperbole is all about. Ultimately, we want lawyers who give sound constitutional advice and don't exist to attempt to be roadblocks to anything, anything that happens in their spots. What we know about these T jags are called T Jags inside the military. Traditionally They've been elected by each other or chosen by each other, which is exactly how it works, often with the chairman as well. Small group of insulated officers who perpetuate the status quo. Well, guess what? Status quo hasn't worked very well at the Pentagon. It's time for fresh blood.
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Unknown A
So, you know, one of the things we know about Hegseth, because he's written about it and also because of his public advocacy, is he has pushed for there to be fewer limits on what he calls war fighters in terms of, you know, following the rules of war. He went to the mat for a number of people who had been either indicted or convicted of war crimes, one of whom was turned in by his own soldiers underneath him for what he had, you know, what he had done while he was in battle. And so for him to push these individuals out, I think it's pretty consistent with his desire to, I guess the polite way would say it would be like, loosen the rules of engagement. It's very much what you heard kind of, you know, way back in the Vietnam era, there was this sense of, oh, if we let our guys do what they do, then we would have been more successful there.
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Unknown A
You also heard it from Pete Hegseth in the context of the Iraq war, which he supported up until shockingly recently, that you needed to let them be more, have fewer rules of engagement and effectively green light more war crimes. So it's consistent with that. Also, the moves, I think, overall are consistent with. Trump wants to make sure that the people who are at the top of these chains of command, that they're going to do whatever he wants them to do, whether those. Whether that pertains to executing on his foreign policy, which I think he feels justifiably that he was stymied at times by the top brass or whether it comes to executing orders that would be unlawful or unconstitutional, as when he wanted to, you know, shoot protesters in the legs during the Black Lives Matter protests and riots. And the current chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as Mark Esper at that point was like, we're not doing that.
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Unknown A
So I think it's maybe Mark Milley, but.
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Unknown D
Yeah, well, it was.
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Unknown A
Millie was. Yeah, they were both involved.
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Unknown D
Look, I mean, my main thing is this traces back to. I have sympathy. There are a lot of GWOT veterans who watch this show, and in a sense, they're not wrong in that they were constrained because they were basically put into a situation where they became State Department diplomats in a job that they never signed up for, nation building, and others that was not sold to the American public. So you have these guys, National Guardsmen who were previously cops in Kansas, who are trying to negotiate between two rival sheikhs who are literally at war over which boy they get to sexually molest, and they're like, what the hell am I doing here? Right? So in a way, they're right in terms of a lot of the way that the JAG officer corps and all of that. This was under McChrystal. It's kind of the HR purification of the military is they put an intense amount of restrictions on people whose job was not to do this in the first place.
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Unknown D
This is where I sympathize with the Vietnam vets and with the. The gwat vets in terms of. They're like, look, we didn't know what our job was. Was it was to kill the enemy, or was it to negotiate, you know, with all this bullshit between these tribal leaders and then train a bunch of guys who are the most corrupt police force literally on planet earth in Afghanistan. So I sympathize with Pete on this, simply because that is the overwhelming feeling of how betrayed many of the people there are. In terms of the four stars, cq, Brown, everything I did in terms of research, this guy is mediocre at best and basically just a complete representation of the bureaucracy inside of the Pentagon. Terrible F35 review over the program. Literally like a DEI person in that nobody could say anything about his track record as a general except for, oh, he's black.
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Unknown D
It's like, okay, well, what did he do? I read a 2023 dissent against his nomination, which went through his background at the Air Force. Not a single major remarkable thing. He was basically promoted because of his race under Lloyd Austin. It's like, okay, well, so I have no problem with him getting fired. I think really what it comes down to is the Mark Milley stuff that you talked about previously, which is that Trump correctly saw how James Mattis and Mark Milley and the previous Joint Chiefs all basically worked to stymize direct and lawful orders. For example, like saying, pulling out of Syria, negotiating with the Taliban. These are the people who worked inside the bureaucracy to keep it from happening. One of the main reasons he picked Hegsat. Hegsat's entire formation as a member of the United States military was joining because he believed in Iraq.
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Unknown D
Obviously, that was bad. But while being inside of the bureaucracy, watching both the constraining at the political and at the legal level, trying to turn the Pentagon into something that it's not supposed to be, both in terms of a social experiment through dei, which CQ Brown, by the way, literally on record talking about how he would put his thumb on the scales to promote more black officers. I just think that's totally counter to what Trump ran on. So I don't care whatsoever that he got fired with the JAG stuff. Also very much fits with Hegsett's view of the military and his overall war on Pentagon bureaucracy. So, I mean, currently I don't have an issue with this. I was looking to. Pete has told the department to prepare for major budget cuts. Great, let's do it. Let's cut even more four star generals. The commonly held thing that Pete often talks about is the number of four stars that we have today as opposed to the actual winning fighters of World War II.
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Unknown D
And I think he's completely correct in terms of the explosion of all of the bureaucracy inside of the Pentagon, where, in the words of Steve Bannon, the real budget's a trillion. We could lop 100 billion off the top and not all that much would happen over there.
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Unknown A
Here's what I would say. I think it's insane to imagine that the problem in Iraq was that we were too protective of civilians. Or in Afghanistan, for that matter.
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Unknown D
But do you understand how they get there? Like, in terms of they're sent over there, what they think is to kill terrorists. They show up and they're like, well, we're supposed to. The brass tells you kill the terrorists, but you need to have eyes on him. He needs to be shooting at you. And at the very same time, you need to not disrupt civilians.
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Unknown A
The job of a soldier.
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Unknown D
No, but see, that's really not just.
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Unknown A
To give you a specific. So I mean, which is part of why you want good JAG officers to advise you on the rules of war and to make sure you're not just blanket massacring civilians, which did happen at times. I mean, one of the guys that he went to bat for, which is the one that I said his own men turned him in, he instructed them to fire on a group of civilians that they knew were civilians and after the fact tried to cover it up by saying, well, we weren't able after the fact to check them for weapons, so we really don't know. So again, it was his own, like the soldiers who were serving under him who did not want to execute that order because they knew it was just a slaughter of civilians who turned him in. And then he's found guilty and Hegseth advocates for him, goes to the mat, gets Trump to pardon him, even Though, you know, it was quite clear, and Ganni was found guilty by a jury of his peers, turned in by his own men, that he had just gone out and slaughtered civilians.
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Unknown A
So, you know, I just. I don't think that that's acceptable. I don't think that's the way that we should be conducting ourselves. I don't think that that helped. That type of, you know, just brutality towards civilians helped us either in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, we never should have been there in the first place. And the fact that Pete Hegseth was in favor of the Iraq war long after even, you know, some of Hillary Clinton and some of the most dynamical neocons had said, you know, this wasn't a great idea, does not really particularly recommend him. So, you know, the other thing I would say about the chair of the Joint Chiefs here, who I don't have a lot of specific knowledge about him. I know Hagseth in his book didn't really offer a lot of analysis about why he suspected that he wasn't sort of deserving or meritorious of this particular position.
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Unknown A
There seemed to be just an assumption like, well, he's black, so he must not deserve it. But putting that as that's not true, but I think it probably is true.
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Unknown D
I think it's pretty okay. For example, anyone name single things T.Q. brown did before he was.
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Unknown A
But Sagra, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I think it's very difficult to argue that the guy that they're putting in now is there out of quote, unquote, merit. I mean, it's really clear. Trump is putting him in place because he thinks he's a Trump MAGA diehard, will do whatever he wants. And I'm not just talking about, you know, executing his lawful orders with regard to Syria or whatever. I'm talking about even if he wants to use the military in ways that would be unconstitutional, unlawful, and, yes, fascist, that this would be the guy who would greenlight those sorts of things. And, you know, to bolster that point, Point. Trump has long been telling stories about this guy claiming he put on a MAGA hat and said, I love you, sir. I think you're great, sir. I'll kill for you, sir. He actually has to get a waiver in order to be elevated to this position because he doesn't meet the technical qualifications you are supposed to have for this job.
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Unknown A
So the idea this is, like, just about merit, I think, is kind of preposterous. I think it's preposterous. So many of the Positions.
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Unknown D
Now we worship at the altar a four star generalship and say, oh well, he's not a four star general.
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Unknown A
I'm just saying. I'm just saying that if you're trying to argue that he's being put in place because of merit, I think that is relatively preposterous on its.
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Unknown D
What I am arguing is that I don't care about the. I don't think most people care either whether somebody is, quote, like, check all the boxes of having satisfied military bureaucracy up to the four star level so that they can get their nice little stamp of approval for joint Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. By the way, CQ Brown will be just fine if you have Raytheon or Lockheed literally tomorrow. Okay, so we all know how that works. Now I'm not gonna dispute. I don't actually know a ton about this new guy. I've been trying to read about Cain, but why don't we play the clip of Trump talking about Kane before we weigh in? Let's take a listen.
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Unknown E
A general, another general, a colonel, a staff sergeant could be in any movie. These guys, it's like perfect. They're like perfect individuals. If I were casting a movie on the military, I would pick these guys. There's nobody you could hire in Hollywood that looks like this. So I walked down and this is where I met General Raisin Cain. And what's your name? General? What's your name? And he gave me his name. What's your name? Sergeant? Yes, sir. And I love you, sir. I think you're great, sir. I'll kill for you, sir. Then he puts on a Make America great again. You're not allowed to do that, but they did it. I remember I went into the hangar and there were a lot of. There were hundreds, hundreds of troops. And they're not supposed to do this, but they all put on the Make America great again hat.
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Unknown D
So that's what Trump has said.
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Unknown A
There's his qualification for the job. I mean, you can't deny like this is what. This is why Trump picked.
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Unknown D
Do I think Trump is Mr. Merritt and wants all of this stuff? No. Do I think that Pete Hegseth and them do? Yes. Actually. They have a much longer track record of being against military bureaucracy, of restoring the Pentagon to its singular purpose. And you know, to counter what you were talking about earlier. Cause I think this is very important is you were saying that's the job of a soldier. The problem is that we made that the job of the soldier when it's not actually the job. The job of the Soldier is to win and to fight a war. It's the job of the State Department and of the presidents and others to not put people in a situation which is actually counter to their job description. Should 19 year olds from Topeka really be negotiating, you know, tribal warfare between. Absolutely not.
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Unknown A
Well, again, that's the problem with the entire mission to, you know, you're right, obviously we should never have been there at all, period. But when you look at a track record of judgment, Pete Hegseth has had a very bad one. You know, he was. He was wrong about Iraq, he was wrong about Afghanistan, he was wrong about Ukraine up until very recently. You know, if you're looking for someone who. But you know, what matters most is that you took the correct position when it was hard to do, when it was unpopular, when it didn't serve your political and career interests. He does not have a track record of that. He has a track record of being. I want to go in even more. I want to send even more people in. I want to go to even go get us involved in even more wars.
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Unknown A
So I certainly don't trust him on that front. But yes, once you're there, part of the job of the soldier is to try to protect the civilian populations that are in the area.
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Unknown D
They certainly did. I'm not arguing that they shouldn't have. What I'm saying is the reason why they felt. This is the thing again, that people need to remember. The rules of engagement would change on an almost yearly basis in Afghanistan as to whatever the political mission was. First it was light up the Taliban. Then it was McChrystal came in. Then Obama fires McChrystal and it changes again literally on a year by year basis. The type of shots that you could take were completely up in the air. They have to call up to the chain of command. They had no idea what they were doing. There's a book Jake Tapper wrote. There's a movie as well. I think I'm blanking on the name. The Outpost. That's what it is. People should watch it. In terms of what it actually was like for people when they're getting ambushed within those rules of engagement.
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Unknown D
Now, obviously none of them would dispute their want to protect the civilian population. That's not it at all. As far as the Gallagher case, I recommend there's a book called Alpha about Eddie Gallagher. It's very anti Eddie Gallagher. If you want the case for why he should have been convicted, there's a lot of stuff online that you can go and read against it. It's a lot more complicated than people think. I will say that in terms of whether he should have been convicted or not, I'm still up in the air in terms of what I've read about the case. But the point that I come back to is that if you're gonna get into a war, and this was what the Vietnam people would often say, too, is if we're gonna get into a war, then we have to be able to fight. Now, I don't think we should have gotten in those wars in the first place.
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Unknown D
And we should, if. Before we light it up. If it's not capable. If you're not capable to win purely through military means, then you should not be fighting in the first place. You shouldn't turn these people into these quasi diplomats, but then at the same time, tell them that they're war fighters. And I think that gets to the actual crux of Hegset. That's ideology. Just in terms of everything. I've listened to the guy, and I can't say I disagree with him at all, which is don't get involved if you're not going to do it the way that you're supposed to do it.
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Unknown A
Yeah, but I just fundamentally dispute the idea that if we had had more gloves off and killed more than had more collateral damage, than it would have gone better for us in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think the polar opposite of the case, but that is Pete Hexass position, is that we should have been wore gloves off. I mean, the case I'm talking about, this guy knew these were civilians, and he was like, kill them. And tried to cover it up after the fact, hide the weapons. Like, we weren't able to go and check and see if they had weapons so that they could have plausible deniability that they just mass murdered civilians. And it was not, you know, it was actually the people who were lower on the totem pole, who were probably less experienced, who were like, this was wrong. And by the way, just.
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Unknown A
Just one last thing on this, and we can get into this last piece with regard to the dude who's now the chair of the Joint Chiefs. Those rules are not just put in place for protecting other civilians. It's also put in place so that our warfighters can live with themselves afterwards, so that they can come home and be able to go back to a normal life and not be completely traumatized by the things that they did. And inevitably, when you have humans killing other humans, it's going to be a horrific and traumatizing experience. No doubt about that. But if you feel like you conducted yourself honorably and that the expectation was you were just killing the bad guys, you weren't just going out and murdering whatever civilians happened into your path because some psycho who was above you was ordering you to do that, that's also protection for our own soldiers.
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Unknown A
And I don't think. I think the firing of these JAG officers, the top lawyers in these three services indicate, you know, he has no respect for that whatsoever. Obviously, that's what he's written in the past. And I also think, you know, again, the overall program here, yes, it may be something about the bureaucracy and making sure that even the lawful orders are properly executed, fine. But I think at core, as judging by the way Trump himself describes who he's put in here, it really is about making sure this is someone who will do whatever I say, no matter what it is, whether it is legal or illegal or somewhere in between, they're going to execute on my orders. And the last piece of this is. This is pulled. So this is kind of weird. I just put this out there. Make of it what you will.
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Unknown A
The new guy who got put in, Dan Cain, he had just retired from the military, so they're pulling him back out of. And I'm talking about, like, just retired in January, immediately after he retires. Oh, look at that. He gets snatched up by three different crypto firms. One of them in particular, Thrive Capital, was founded by Jared Kushner's brother Joshua, had an investment by Peter Thiel, and also led a funding round for OpenAI in 2024. And so, you know, the other thing that Trump gets out of putting selecting this individual for this position is, number one, I mean, how much money did he make while he was there? Like, is he now responsible for sort of like his financial security? But certainly he would never have ascended to anything like this level in terms of his career. He had just retired without Trump. So he owes Trump everything is what I'm trying to say.
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Unknown A
And so that, again, speaks to this part of, I want you to be loyal no matter what I ask you to do. And I think he feels like with Dan Cain, that's what he's getting.
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Unknown D
So, Cain, first of all, I will just say this. This is not a procaine argument. They all go out and join crypto cybersecurity firms and or prime contractors after that. So he's not particularly.
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Unknown A
Are they all started by Jared Kushner's brother, however, Thrive Capital?
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Unknown D
Yes. Does Joshua Kushner own a stake in Thrive? But this is what I'M saying in terms of, if you look at the board seats for all of these people, what's the first thing that they all go out and do? And by the way, Jim Mattis literally was on the board of Theranos, if we all recall. So to show, just to show folks how this all works, of course Atreus is at KKR Capital.
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Unknown A
I could go on forever. It's an accident that he gets, gets snatched up and hired. And who knows how much money he makes in this short period of time from a firm that is connected both to Peter Thiel and to Jared.
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Unknown D
I actually don't think it's the Thiel connection. Everything I've been able to read is that Trump met this guy six years ago in Iraq and was like, man, I just love.
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Unknown A
No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying that this means that. So he retires, he has a short window of time to go on the private sector and make bank. And guess who shows up at his door to be like, we will pay you. We don't know how much. However much happens to be Jared Kushner's brother's firm, that's not an accident.
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Unknown D
I honestly don't think it's nearly as intentional as you think. I think literally all of these guys, especially cuz he's a former Air Force person and work flew F16s, is going to go join some space like firm. They all have them on the payroll. This is not a defense of him per se. This is the entire general office class. This is the problem.
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Unknown A
It's just an accident that it's Kushner's brother's firm that happens to give him this.
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Unknown D
I mean, I don't think it's a, a quote unquote accident or whatever. I don't know if they necessarily picked him because they thought he was gonna be the next chairman. Again, everything I have read is that Trump is obsessed with this dude because of his quote can do attitude from a visit to Iraq six years ago. Maybe because they knew that Trump liked him, they hired him. So I can't rule that out per se, but everything I've been able to see from his background is he joined that main firm apparently that was paying him was this cybersecurity firm in Washington that seems to be like the major source of his funds. I'm not defending any of this. I think it's gross. And this is the problem I have with all of this is the bureaucratization, the corporate basically fusing of the entire general officership. So whoever this guy is I would really hope that you at least don't keep that ethos whenever you're at the top.
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Unknown D
But I'm not naive in terms of who and why he got picked. But I don't think that the connection is as solid as people are trying to make.
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Unknown A
I just think it's very convenient that this man now owes both his career and his wealth to Trump and the Trump family.
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Unknown D
Okay, but this is where I'm just don't. Well, first of all, I mean, not really. Right. Like, Joshua Kushner basically denounced his own brother whenever he was in the White House. And who was he married to? The supercarlie Kloss or something like that, who was putting out anti Trump stuff. I don't think the connection is as close as you're making it out to be. But again, this is the problem with the systemic corruption around here. Like, did people really care when Lloyd. Did Democrats really care when Lloyd Austin literally coming from prime contractors back into the Defense Secretary? Not really. CQ Brown, he'll be employed tomorrow by probably the same type of people here because of his past experience. So I just don't think that people have a huge leg to stand on in terms of pointing out corruption.
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Unknown A
It's not just about the corruption, it's about the direct family. So if we're. If my case is he's put in there because of loyalty, and if you have been responsible not only for the career elevation, which is very, you know, again, he has to get a waiver to even get put in this position. He had retired. Very unusual. Come back out of retirement, like Trump. He owes Trump his career and you have this connection, family connection to his wealth. I'm just saying that if you owe that much to this one person, then that is another attempt to help guarantee that whatever it is that you wanna do in the future, this person is going to be loyal no matter what.
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Unknown D
I see what you're saying. Yeah, I think that's probably fair. Although, I mean, he probably was picked for this exact reason. Was specifically the person.
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Unknown A
But this isn't a guarantee to that.
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Unknown D
I mean, I just would say it's not like any person who serves as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is ever hard up for money. Literally ever. If you go look at all these spaces, you don't need Peter Thiel or Joshua Kushner to cut you a check. There's oceans of money here in Northern Virginia to be made for all of them. So I don't think it's nearly as clear cut. And people are going to say that I'm defending this guy. I'm just pointing out how disgusting this entire system is. Every single, basically one star onward becomes a multimillionaire within a year after a year after they resign through these boards, through whatever Fox News or CFR contracts and all of this. And unfortunately it is Paris for the course that we have here. And again, I just don't think that these people have much leg to stand on when their literal heroes are doing the exact same thing.
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Unknown D
So it's like, okay, you're arguing within a broken system. The next Democratic president is almost certainly going to pick somebody who is also on the board of Lockheed or whatever. It's a systemic problem that we have. And it just makes it probably more cynical in terms of the war over like who's really corrupt because easily people can point out out that it's everyone. Hey, if you like that video, hit the like button or leave a comment below. It really helps get the show to more people.
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Unknown A
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Unknown D
That's right, get the full show. Help support the future of independent media at breakingpoints. Com.