FURIOUS Retired General DESTROYS Trump’s Military STUNT

FURIOUS Retired General DESTROYS Trump’s Military STUNT

I don’t know about you, but that show, that performative show that happened yesterday by the quote secretary of war Pete Hagsath and convicted felon Donald Trump when they hauled in from across the world in a mandatory appearance requirement. All the one, two, three, fourstar generals and their enlisted adviserss hauled them into a room so they could get a public dressing down. That was uh a bridge too far for me. But who am I to a certain opinion on this? Who we really want to hear from is retired Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling. Almost 40 years of service in the US Army. Uh he is for me he knows how to level set what expectations should be when it comes to the American military. He also has such a clearheaded vision for where our country is heading under the leadership and I say that in quotes of Pete Hagsth, former Fox News host. So I wanted to have this important conversation. Parts of it are incredibly sobering, parts of it are enlightening as always and part of it is actually encouraging. So take a listen to Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling. As always, it is truly a privilege and I want to underscore the word privilege to be able to spend time with retired retired United States Army Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling, former commanding general of the US Army Europe and the Seventh Army with almost 40 years of service um in the United States Army. General, thank you so much uh for joining me today. Katie, the privilege and the honor is all mine. Uh it is great to be with you once again. and I always have fun whenever we talk. Yeah, sir. Listen, I anticipated having this conversation with you and I wanted to bring you in specifically to get your take on what transpired yesterday. Um, I’m still troubled by the moniker the Department of War. I think that it obviously sets the tone in a way that is not only unwelcome to most Americans, but frankly to the world. And I’m actually going to have us play a quick clip. This is uh the Secretary of War, as is his new title, Pete Hexth, talking about pacifism um and his take on it. So, Adam, if we could play that. And as history teaches us, the only people who actually deserve peace are those who are willing to wage war to defend it. That’s why pacifism is so naive and dangerous. It ignores human nature and it ignores human history. Either you protect your people and your sovereignty or you will be subservient to something or someone. It’s a truth as old as time. General, he he could try to say it as dramatically as he wants, but my fear is, as I just stated, you’re setting a tone by saying that message. And can you let our viewers know who was in that audience? Because I think it’s really important. It wasn’t just Fox News viewers, right? Even though it was broadcast on Fox News. Talk about the people in that audience and why when you start with that message when you’re referring to this audience specifically, why it’s really setting, like I said, a message from the top down. I think anybody in that audience could have debated him uh with success on that statement that he committed from the stage. Uh it it in the audience what you have are the one, two, three and four star generals who are in command of organizations around the world. Different levels of command. Unbelievable responsibilities uh on board ships on the ground in the air. But just as important, Katie, there were the command sergeants majors and the chief petty officers, the master chief petty officers, and the senior enlisted adviserss from all of the forces. Uh, and the reason I bring that uh up in part of the conversation, and please excuse my language, but those are the automatic detectors. Uh these are guys who grow guys and gals who grow up in the ranks and they’ve been privates before. They’ve been sergeants and now they’re the senior enlisted adviserss to those generals who have about the same amount of service as they do. And all of the people in that audience, I would I would suggest probably have between 25 and 40 years of service in uniform. Now consider that you’ve got a thousand people there. How many millennial does that combine into that that have experiences in all different kinds of peace and war? And they know uh how good their forces are. They know how good their military personnel are when they come together in teams because that’s what they do. And the last thing I’ll say just to to sum it all up is this is not a business. They are members of a profession. And when you’re part of the profession of arms, just like when you’re a professional lawyer or a doctor or a minister, which are our four big professions, uh you abide by the tenants of a profession. Uh and some of those tenants are number one, you instill an a values and ethos of the profession. Number two, you do something in the society that no one else does. Number three, you you discipline and possibly even dismiss fellow professionals who don’t live up to your professional standards. So, having a guy come in uh who who appeared, and I’m going to put it bluntly, uh when I watched Secretary Hex give his presentation, it was very polished. Like you said, he’s a TV guy. He knows how to do that. But it was also with the ambiance of a lieutenant talking to a platoon of soldiers, which is what he was. Uh he he got to the point of being a major in the National Guard, but he basically was in combat as a young company grade officer and not with a whole lot of experience. Uh so in those kind of cases most leadership manuals will tell you uh to use the ratio of your eyes and ears versus your mouth. You know listen and watch uh four times as much as you speak. That that has not been the instance with Secretary Hegs. Uh, and I think it got him into trouble with with those in the room yesterday because there was some internal rolling of eyeballs that were not obvious in the audience, but they were there. I guarantee it. So, I don’t want you to obviously disclose any uh confidential or private com conversations or communications you may have had, General, but I presume that there was some shared sentiment with you about this whole experience yesterday. To your well-taken point, Hagith was speaking in such a demeaning way to the people that were present. Not only did he criticize kind of I think the the mission so far that has been, you know, over centuries for the armed forces, um, but he said that the troops were fat, that the women pretty much couldn’t carry their own weight when it came to being in active combat. and he pretty much suggested that, you know, what had been done so far was insufficient and was inadequate and that they, as in the generals, needed to ship up or ship out and it just seemed incredibly degrading in the messaging that he had. Yeah. Another leadership trait uh Katie that we talk a lot about in the courses I teach is you should always you should always praise in public and discipline in private. And yet in this case yesterday he had the entire leadership of the armed forces where their soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines could be watching as well as all of the American public specifically because he had a camera crew there to film this. Uh and and so it was more than just an ass chewing if you will. This was a public uh uh insult and and it contributes in my view to uh the further damaging of an institution which has a very high rating by the American people. The la the last recording I saw in terms of polls said that 62% of the American people believe in the capability and the effectiveness of the of the American military. That compares to like 30% of the presidency and 12% of Congress. Uh so not only is that a factor, but I’m going to go even one step further. Our allies were watching and and and our foes were watching as well. So, not only was he beating up uh these these senior leaders, men and women uh officer and enlisted in a in a public forum that was being broadcast across the country and everybody watched it. I mean, I don’t know how many didn’t watch it, but everybody’s talking about it. But it was being highlighted to people around the world on cable television and YouTube videos and all those kind of things where I not only got some messages from people that were in that crowd who I served with. You know, I’m not that old. I retired 12 years ago and there are still some people in the force that I know uh who talked about their their constrnation at what happened. But I also got several messages from former colleagues, counterparts in other militaries that I used to partner with in Europe. Uh and and I won’t even give you that number, but it was more than five. Uh and guys messaged me and said, “Really, what’s going on?” Because you guys are damn good and we’ve been partnering for a long time and we know how effective the US military. What the heck is going on here? So even and I didn’t get any text messages from any Russian generals or any Bellarian generals but I’m sure they were uh excited because their strategy of further dividing uh our nation and further dividing our institutions and our presidency is continues to be ongoing. That’s the real problem I have uh with uh everything that went on yesterday. So, I want to play for you now another clip of Pete Hagsth where I found this to be one of the most alarming things that was said yesterday. I mean, admittedly, there was a lot, but this one deals with not having rules of engagement and it kind of not only says let the shackles be off, but it suggests that there’s not going to be any type of consequences for war crimes, frankly, General. And I couldn’t believe it. So, Adam, if you could play that clip for the general, please. We are preparing every day. We have to be prepared for war, not for defense. We’re training warriors, not defenders. We fight wars to win, not to defend. Defense is something you do all the time. It’s inherently reactionary and can lead to overuse, overreach, and mission creep. War is something you do sparingly, on our own terms, and with clear aims. We fight to win. We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy. We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our war fighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement. Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for war fighters. That’s all I ever wanted as a platoon leader, sir. There there we go back to the platoon leader days, Katie. And I I’ll tell you, I’ve had these kind of discussions as both an assistant division commander and a division commander and as a major in combat during Desert Storm where you have that lieutenant says, “Just just turn me loose and I’ll do everything you need to do.” Well, I mean, it just shows a lack of a strategic vision and a strategic understanding of what the laws of land warfare and the Geneva Convention do do. It it is I mean, you’re a lawyer. You know these things. You know, if if you commit crimes in combat, it it first of all diminishes your moral authority as a nation, but secondly, it will eventually cause unbelievable moral injury to each individual who does those kind of things. And again, I I’ll hearken back to Russia again. uh Russia after their fights in Cheschna and they’re beginning to see it now uh from as a result of their fights in Ukraine. Those soldiers who were totally unleashed and become barbarians on the battlefield and don’t live by any rules instilled by their commanders, they go back to civilian society with a great deal of moral injury. That’s proven. That’s factual data behind that. Now, as a commander, you have to worry about that. I had to worry about that. Uh, I watched troops very closely when they were getting into tough firefights and even sometimes pulled units out of the fight because they were getting a little bit too froggy and how they were approaching the enemy. That’s what commanders do. and for the Secretary of Defense to stand up in front of one through four star generals and their enlisted adviserss who know this inherently because they’ve seen it in a much greater realm of operations than he ever has. uh it it is insulting and and that’s why I say not only are rules of engagement important, sure you can adjust them based on the situation, but he he decrieded every single rule of engagement yesterday. This the tape you just showed showed a complete disregard for any kind of control and command of forces under your charge. And that’s troubling to me because it’s morally and ethically uh against what I believe is the the role of soldiers on a battlefield. So, put yourself back in that role of of active duty service or you’re in that room. You hear this from the quote secretary of war who is saying pretty much um there are no shackles on you, you know, unleash the hounds I guess is the phrase, right? What do you as a general then do after you leave that room and you hear this? Are you under any type of orders now to have to do something with what you’ve heard? Well, the commanders on the ground are the ones that actually issue the rules of engagement. Those don’t come from the Department of Defense. Okay? You know, it’s it’s what what I heard General Marty Dempsey call the thousand mile screwdriver from DoD, you know, coming from the Pentagon into the force trying to adjust what they do. Uh and and that’s not the way it’s done. I mean, commanders on the ground understand what I just said to you about the moral injury and the moral responsibility. So, they will dictate their own rules of engagement. What’s troubling to me truthfully Katie is what happens if there’s interference in that. Now if it if the interference comes from the president, here’s a dynamic. You can wrestle with this one being the lawyer that you are. If it comes if the order comes from the president uh and he is immune from criminal activity, that’s one thing. But soldiers and commanders in the on the ground are not immune and they are responsible to the to the the rules of the HEG the requirements of the Geneva Convention and they can be tried as we’ve seen in the past after wars are over. So what I’m going to do as a commander is I’m going to in place rules of engagement and I’m going to hold my soldiers to that responsibility uh to uphold those rules. But the problem is going to be when you get that young immature private or that young immature lieutenant like Lieutenant Hexth just claimed he was who says, “Why are we have why do we have to obey this? What’s going on?” Well, then I got to hold him responsible. And by the way, there’s precedent for this because as a Fox News anchor, Mr. Hexathth, not Secretary Hexth, defended war criminals and got the president of the United States to free them, one of them before his trial even began. And that caused a tumultuous effect inside of the SEAL community and the military community where that happened. And it caused commanders on the scene to really do cheetah flips to try and uh fix that inside an organization that they legally have to control. Well, along that vein, General uh HGth yesterday also said that if you have marks on your record, we’re going to get rid of them. We’re going to, you know, clean that slate, wipe it clean. And it really wasn’t too much to have to dig beyond the surface to understand what he was talking about. Uh well, no it it didn’t. And one of those uh getting rid of marks that make you unclean is an investigation that’s ongoing on him today. When he said he wanted to get rid of the IG’s, the IG’s right now are inspecting are actually conducting an investigation into his use of the Signal app, which runs contrary to all law. The other thing connected to that, Katie, I don’t want to to leave this topic until I talk about this. Yeah, sure. Is his comments about uh putting hands back on recruits and trashing their rooms, what drill sergeants call smoking a soldiers. We went away from that 30 years ago because it’s ineffective in training young people of these new generations to perform as members of a team. You know where it didn’t go away? because I saw it was inside the Russian army. In my three visits to the to the Russian Federation, I got to see Russian basic training. That’s what they do. And they they put they instill such fear and uh corporal punishment and hazing and trashing of rooms and beating soldiers with rods and pipes that those soldiers are reacting on the battlefield by not having the trust in their leaders or in their government which we see today in Ukraine. That’s just such a horrific takeaway. Um, and I appreciate you kind of peeling the curtain back and letting us see, you know, what’s happening in other countries. Um, I want say one more thing if I can about that. Of course, you probably don’t know this, but before I commanded US forces in in Europe, my job before that was commanding initial military training. So, I was in charge of all basic and advanced individual training for soldiers, officers, and warrant officers. We brought in 160,000 soldiers every year. Had literally thousands of drill sergeants. And you can probably remember a time in the news when drill sergeants weren’t behaving very well and they were not not only hazing soldiers but causing death and in some cases having massive rings of sexual assault against female soldiers. That’s right. That’s the kind of control that you have to have to ensure that the professionalism of the force not only is good in their training sites but produces the soldier uh or the sailor, marine, coast guardsman, whoever uh that can go out and act independently in the kind of doctrine we produce in the US military. I mean, you got to start from day one and move forward. I mean, it’s not like you just do it and then you abandon it. like it’s it’s the development and the evolution of the soldier I think over time through their enlistment. I I want to play uh a clip of Trump Adam. This is the training ground clip. Um it’s really short general, but I want to ask you something about your thoughts on the other side of it, Adam. But I want to salute every service member who has helped us carry out this critical mission. It’s really a very important mission. And I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military. National Guard, but military. He’s talking about American cities. I mean, he said you can take them out, as in fellow citizens, fellow Americans. He talked about Portland and Chicago, LA, DC. He was talking in ways that dehumanizes people that are political opponents, political, you know, party affiliations that may not be Republican. How does this impact the psyche of the American soldier hearing from the president of the United States who’s the commander and chief of the armed forces stating not only can you take them out as in Democrats or quote liberals but that they want to use American cities as training grounds for the American military service members to be able to learn what brutality? um to not have rules of engagement. Yeah. And and I’ll hearken again back to the capabilities of the US soldier today, Katie. What we’re talking about is throwing them into police roles which they have not been trained for. Now, I I’ve taken an independent survey of myself uh looked at some research in terms of different cities in the United States to produce a policeman. The amount of time varies city to city. There are some cities that have, you know, four months of police academy work. There are some that have six months. There are some that have a year in our different cities. And in that period of time, you learn policing. What you would get if you put most of the the vast majority of US military on the ground as cities is no one who has been trained in police work. There’s a very small percentage of military policemen and military police women in our National Guard and our active duty force. Not big at all. And it takes a whole lot to go into a city the size of Chicago or Portland. I was in Chicago couple weeks ago when he said he was he was he was going to put military forces in there. And I thought, “Holy cow, you’re going to need a whole bunch of people because this is a really big city with a lot of streets.” And to control a city like he’s suggesting would take tens of thousands of soldiers because we learn that in combat. But you also have to have tens of thousands of soldiers who aren’t posing a threat to their fellow citizens. In each one of these states, I mean, think about this. You know, when we talk about National Guard deploying to Portland, as an example, in each one of these states, the National Guard he is deploying are fellow citizens of the people in that state. So the ones that deploy to Portland are from Oregon. They are their own citizens and they’re facing off against college students and most of these National Guardsman’s have job. Uh you know some of them may be police officers but not many. Uh but they’re being asked to do things that they are not prepared to do and it can only cause problems in my view. So that’s why there’s policing and then there’s defending the nation. And I’ll go back to that defense of nation as opposed to department of war thing uh in terms of what we do. General Hurtling, I want to thank you for your time as always. You are so generous with not only me but with the viewers. Um, there is a value in hearing from you and from others that have honorably served our country and sacrificed in ways that we will never be able to adequately say thank you. But it it troubles me and it pains me to see what we just saw yesterday because I know that’s not how you were trained. It wasn’t how you were even just raised, right? Just as a person. It’s not what we believe in. And it just completely, I think, makes us look like um not all of us, but makes our country look like we’re just wararm mongers. And it takes this nationalistic very um ju it just makes nationalism a thing of shame, right? That you can’t be proud of a country that’s advocating for this type of stuff. Um and so I’m always grateful for your time. Sincerely. Well, thanks Katie. If I can just say two more things and give you a a measure of hope please of that. Uh the first thing is having served for four decades with the great women and men of our military I will tell you that there is no finer trained or diligent force in the world. They are capable. They are effective. They know what is expected of them and they do it extremely well no matter what Secretary Hath or the president said yesterday. The other thing about yesterday was it it was a collective reminder of the professional culture inside the military that transcends politics. Yeah. Uh the professionalism and discipline of those senior officers and NCOs were on was on full display in the audience. It was not often on full display on stage. And we’ve got a lot to be thankful because that our organization of the professional military, no matter what people think, is not breaking and it’s not bending much. Uh it it is struggling with some of the challenges they’re facing right now and some of the words they’ve heard, but they’re going to get through this. Okay. I’m I’m confident of that. Well, I’m grateful and thank you for letting us part ways on such an uplifting note. As always, retired Lieutenant General Mark Hurtling, thank you for your time. Thanks, Katie. Katie Fang here. We launched the Katy Fang News Channel in partnership with the Midas Touch Network so we could bring you the latest in legal and political news. Straight, no chaser. So, if you’re a fellow trutht teller, hit that subscribe button and share the word about this channel so we can build a highinformation America

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