Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Expanding Presidential Power Boundaries and MAGA Identity
Our latest episode delves into the connection between young men and their political identities, sparked by an encounter with a MAGA supporter in an airport. We explore themes of masculinity, emotional appeal, and the current political landscape while emphasizing the ongoing conversation around representation and identity in today’s society.
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Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Left Face. This is the podcast covering military and veterans issues in the Colorado and Pikes Peak region, and we are excited to bring you what is more than an episode's worth of information in a short amount of time. I'm joined today. My name is Dick Wilkinson, I am your co-host and I'm joined today with Adam Gillard. Good morning, adam, morning Dick. How are you doing? I'm doing well. I am happy to be here. I've been traveling this week and I've got a little story for you. I saw a young guy in the airport last night. He was probably about 25 years old. He had a very sharp suit, some fancy shoes and a big old red MAGA hat right and he was so proud to be just like out loud about. You know, I'm MAGA and I love it and I'm in public and like it was like, but it was cool. I mean, I wasn't upset about it.
Speaker 2:He wasn't being obnoxious or anything.
Speaker 1:The hat itself is kind of obnoxious because it's just so bright. You know, in the sea of people it stands out like a sore thumb, but it was. It gave me some insight on where we're at in America, that this young guy like I don't know. He was really proud of it and I just I reflected on that for a minute.
Speaker 2:Did uh, uh. Did anybody interact with him over it? Or like, did he draw a crowd? Did he ask the people?
Speaker 1:Yes, so that he was being quite gregarious, um, in talk. He was hanging outside of the men's room. It's a good start. He was standing there with a suitcase waiting on whoever, or something like that. But we just want to put this in reference. Here there's a lot of foot traffic, is what that means? And so, because he had his hat on and he was quite proud of himself, he was being very gregarious towards other people walking by and he was like hey, sir, how's it going? And being very polite and I don't know, just approachable on purpose, and he did strike up a conversation with a couple of, like I say, he was about 25 and these guys were probably 60, 70 years old, and he said sir to them and they stopped and talked to him. So you know, and I'm sure they were like, I left my hat at home. My wife won't let me wear it at the airport, it's in the carry-on luggage. But it was just. You got my brain thinking about the episode today.
Speaker 2:You know, you've been seeing a lot more how people I don't know, it's just they're definitely coming out of the woodworks and wanting I don't want to say confrontation, but like a conversation at least More. I think About it and like, Well, you feel a conversation at least More.
Speaker 1:I think About it and like, well, you feel a little bit safe. Now I don't want to say the word emboldened is wrong, because this guy wasn't doing anything wrong.
Speaker 1:He was just wearing a hat, right, but they feel a lot more, I think, most of the folks that. I don't want to say there was very many closet Trump fans out there, but there was definitely people that shifted gears and voted for Trump this time, right, and those, I think those people because he won, they can wear it on their sleeve a little bit more, and not if there was any kind of like. I'm not sure how this person is going to react. They've got that like. It doesn't really matter because he won.
Speaker 2:But so, like at this point, though this is, you said last night, like we've already seen his cabinet throwing up Nazi salutes, we've already seen him making some decisions.
Speaker 1:Well, that's not, that's not kind of what I wanted here the what the reflection of that is and what it. What it showed me was statistics in real time that young men voted for trump big time, yeah, and that's what I saw was that guy was the poster child of whoever that was. That was like man. Trump is going to be my guy. He's setting the tone for the America that I want to inherit. I think that's where these young men because I'm trying to put myself back in that 18 to 25 year mentality, that age set and think what would I have cared about that age set, and think what would I have cared about Whether I was voting or not, and especially if I wasn't in the military at that time, where would I have been on presidential politics and that red meat to the base kind of thing.
Speaker 1:He spoke the right language to young men and I don't know, and I don't know. I think the appeal was just like the grunting masculine you know, uh, uh, uh, you know, yeah, and honestly, if there's the experience of young men where they're like, hey, masculine energy is not okay If you hit on a girl and she doesn't like you, like you could get in trouble and even if you're being polite about it, like you could be just if nothing harassed for just being sexually forward with somebody, because that's not welcome. And so I think young men who feel that way and maybe had some of those experiences where maybe something they did wasn't really offensive but they were told it was like Trump was the perfect you know mentality. He brought that mentality of I'm going to protect you so you can live your life and you don't have to worry about people giving you a hard time for just being yourself. That's what these guys heard. I'm not saying that's what Trump said, but that's what they heard.
Speaker 2:Right, but yeah, even in that scenario, those actions, parents still need a parent. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean, Sure we're letting society drive that train more than our families.
Speaker 2:I know, yeah, with social media, but parents still need to parent. They still need to be interactive with their kids and when things go wrong, not just protect your kids all the time but like, yeah, the decision.
Speaker 1:Sometimes there's consequences.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the decisions you've made were shitty decisions. These are the shitty consequences, sure.
Speaker 1:And I don't think it's like it's more of the under the microaggression header. Not things that were truly upsetting or offensive, but just those, like you just know, when you thought you were in the right and then somehow you get kind of like outcast or thrown under the bus and it's just for a day and it's not like your friends hate you.
Speaker 1:But if that happens throughout high school and in college and you're like I feel out of place and and I don't think I'm doing anything weird, that's where those, that's where those young men are so I just watched the wall with my daughter, my 12 year old daughter, and kind of explained the wall as we were going along.
Speaker 2:you know every brick in the wall. You know from like mommy being overprotective, to teachers making fun of his poetry, yeah to his wife cheating on him and him being distant and getting into drugs, and all these things and all these bricks in the wall and then he turns to right, right wing fascism, like the movies it was like watching today play out.
Speaker 1:Sure Well, and that reminds me, too, of I think it was American no, not American history.
Speaker 1:It's the one about the guys everybody was in college. It was back in the nineties and I'm not going to remember the name of it, but, um gosh, michael Rappaport was Remy and he was the young white guy from like Iowa that went to college in Boston or something like that, and he fell in with a group of skinheads Right, and he was in college and he started to start to walk and talk and look like a skinhead, but he was in class with a bunch of people that he'd never been around before, and so the story is about the. There's like five different stories in there, and each one of them is that exposure of like what are these young people going through in this situation? And then how does Remy get pushed over the line? By just being enticed by these tough guys that he thinks are that's what I want to be.
Speaker 1:That's why I came here is to get in with the group, and I don't care, he didn't, but he was clearly not comfortable with what they were telling him to do. Yeah, you know. And so that story happens, man, it does.
Speaker 2:It's real All the time. All the time. I'm listening to a book called On Killing right now and it talks about the peer pressure of like in the war and things like that. A lot of guns that were recovered during the Civil War were either loaded like 50% were loaded yeah, out of that 50%. Like 50% of those had two rounds in them. Some of them had up to like 10, 12 rounds yeah, because they would just stuff it, put the gun up, yeah.
Speaker 1:Wait for somebody else to fire and not pull the trigger.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Because there's something about that, that just people, the moral rejection of like.
Speaker 1:I can't, I just can't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so some people don't do it and some people shoot over heads. Yeah, shooting the ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there was one firing I'm sure that's still a situation in the spray and pray kind of situation. Like I'm not going to pop my head up, but I'll shoot some bullets in that direction.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was a firing squad that fired at somebody and everybody shot. Everybody missed, yeah, and the person walked free because they're like well the people there so.
Speaker 1:I think we have young men in those types of, again, micro situations, but they feel that sort of that flavor of pressure and Trump talked to that right, trump was the I am your retribution, I am your protector, I am your savior. You know all these things and whatever word he used, it hit the note with young men, like the guys on the airport last night.
Speaker 2:So you know, you know it's wild, Like as we started talking here, I looked over at the calendar to see that it's the 24th. It's only been like four days since he and like I thought this was last week already and like I looked I was like man, it's only four days ago.
Speaker 1:Barely, not even four whole days. Right yeah, the hits just keep on coming. Three and a half.
Speaker 2:So, when we look at some of his immediate things that he's done pulling us out of the Paris Climate Accord, getting rid of the electrical vehicle mandate, that was supposed to happen in 2035. Sure, all these things are going to have bad impacts on the planet. I don't think we should trust like free enterprise to like manage themselves, and that's kind of what they're. They're they're. They're just they're pulling up all of the stops, they're pulling up all of the EPA regulations, things like that, and just letting people come in when people talk about you know thinking you talk about you know them voting for their future. How do we get that message across that Like your future is more than like the next five minutes of you just not liking the person next to you?
Speaker 1:Sure, so we got. I think that falls back into the political category of people vote on emotion more than they vote on measurable outcomes, necessarily Like temperature, yeah, yeah, I mean just the. They vote for the guy they want to have a beer with, right, that kind of idea, not so much about how he's going to do his job.
Speaker 2:He's going to make you pay for that beer and you're going to pay twice as much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because it came from Canada.
Speaker 1:If you don't drink Labatt you're screwed $10 a pour, but uh, you know. So anyways, um, that's that's honestly, that's it right. There is if you're like, hey, guess what? You know, beer is going to double in price and they'll go, but he told me that I'm going to have what I think I should have, and I believe him, and it's just down to that belief, right. And so it's hard to make people believe that a bad thing is coming if they can't see it right now. It's very hard to get that emotional belief going. But it's very easy to appeal to something that they already feel and say I'm going to make that better. And Trump's coming at it from that angle, and you're coming at it from a bit of a logical angle, but also, it's not future looking, trump's coming from a past looking situation.
Speaker 2:He's going.
Speaker 1:how much are you upset about what happened yesterday and you're talking about how much are you concerned about what's going to happen in the future? Right, and for somebody under the age of maybe 30, that's a hard conversation to have.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah. Well, I mean this silly renaming of things, you know, going after things like that. I don't even nobody wanted that. That just came out of left field, no one cared. It came out of the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not one person ever. I've been to the Gulf of Mexico in both Texas, louisiana, mississippi and Florida, so I've been around and I never looked out at the ocean and thought you know, that's a really crappy place. We renamed it. It'd just be so much better, right? Yeah, not once did I feel that way. Yeah, you, not once did I feel that way. You know, and like you were talking about the oil or energy production, a comedian had said you know, we'll rename it to the Gulf of America so that we can just pour our own oil all over it and we won't have anybody to be, you know like nobody will get mad at us if we just oil slick our own ocean.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's going to be one of our southern defenses. We're just going to light it on fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just set it on fire and keep everybody from coming from Panama.
Speaker 2:Right when we get hot with Panama, we'll just set the Gulf of America on fire? Yeah, just straight up threatening them. Yeah, like that is crazy, like he said in his speech there that you know we're back in expansionism or something like that. Like he wants to expand America. Like it's going to be a new wave of colonialism and everybody's just hurrah, and then the guy throws up a Nazi salute.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the deal, man. Thank you for saying that, because what I just said was Trump looks backwards. Trump looks at the past and, just like, as we're going to talk about Pete Hegseth, says we should change the Department of Defense back to the Department of War. Trump's like, yeah, let's look at what, everything else that was going on around that time, and guess what we were doing? Adding states Right Back when we had a Department of War, and right around the 40s and 50s we were adding states to the United States and we got Alaska and Hawaii, which were military advantage positions.
Speaker 1:And Trump says we've done it before and it wasn't that long ago, it was less than 100 years ago. So I have justification of why I might want to do this again. And I don't know how the people of Alaska or Hawaii feel about being a state, but they've been doing it for a while now. And who knows, doing it for a while now and who knows, you know, I mean I'm not saying I agree with him, but I understand completely. If you're willing to go get in a time machine, you probably want to pop out and do the things that were happening back in the date that you want to arrive at, you know but he's talking about sovereign nations that we don't have control over.
Speaker 2:You know like when you know we got Hawaii through the Spanish-American War right.
Speaker 1:I can't remember how we got there, I mean as a territory versus a state.
Speaker 2:you're saying yeah, so like there was a process to them becoming a state. It wasn't like we looked over and saw them and were like I love coconuts.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, there was a progression to become a state.
Speaker 2:He's talking about just going and taking over Canada.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean he's inviting them.
Speaker 1:He wants the progression to happen on their terms, as long as they say yes right and he's like hey, if this takes two months or ten years, like we'll figure it out, but you know he's trying to invite them before whatever other thing happens. Right, same with Greenland. We're going to go there and entice them, we're going to invite them first.
Speaker 2:Is that what people voted for, though? Is that what people?
Speaker 1:want. No one knew he had that trick up his sleeve at all. Right, Like that was post-election, pre inauguration. He was like guess what, here we go right and what that. So the topic for today, of course, is Trump is now in office and, as you can tell, the conversation is all over the place so far. I don't think we're going to pull it back together. We're just going to let this be spaghetti on the wall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right so.
Speaker 1:That is man. The last three days have shown us that Trump, President Trump does believe and he is correct that he is going to impose his will in every sector of government and expand the powers of the president as much as he possibly can, and he started doing it before he even swore into the office, right? And so this is him on unleashed Right. We're going to see and not just the last three days, I'm saying the next four years is whatever Trump, someone told him in the first term, you are constrained because of X, y and Z. You need to get reelected or you can't tip the chessboard this hard. It's going to freak people out. Yeah, none of that restraint is there now and will not be Right, and we know it won't because the Supreme Court said restraint is not required.
Speaker 2:So you heard about the Silk Road guy that got pardoned, Albrecht.
Speaker 1:I did not. I mean, I know who he is, but I did not know. He got pardoned, so he got pardoned, he walked out of jail.
Speaker 2:Okay, so my theory is that he has billions of dollars stashed somewhere. Somebody just got a new donor.
Speaker 1:He was probably getting paid bitcoins back in the day.
Speaker 2:Exactly Right, and that was the only crypto around, and it was all illegal transactions.
Speaker 1:So that yeah, he has old school, old money in the digital world. He's got white haired money from Bitcoin.
Speaker 2:So now you know president Trump has a new donor. Yeah, um, who knows how to work the dark web?
Speaker 1:and has his ear that, that I mean the president's, the crypto president of of the world, is what he said right not just of america. You got the trump meme coin. Anybody in the world can buy that right.
Speaker 2:Oh my god. What about the maloney coin? Anybody can buy that. Baron had a coin like a scam coin for like three minutes and people lost like millions on it.
Speaker 1:I do believe it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:The whole crypto thing is and man conflict of interest abound like so far beyond what legal boundaries can even wrap its head around, to say. The president wants America to invest in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, while he is selling manufactured hype of cryptocurrency in his own to his own pocket.
Speaker 2:That's the evolution of the Fox News gold selling that they do the commercials in. Fox News. They're always selling that gold. This is like the evolution of that. They probably can't sell no more gold, so they're let's just sell them air, sell them nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Well, he did the NFTs back in his first term while he was president Forgot about that.
Speaker 2:He sold NFTs. Unethical disaster there.
Speaker 1:Whatever, but I mean again, that's just proof that the unleashing is complete, that the devil may care. I'm going to do whatever I think I need to do. He said he's going to tell the Fed to reduce interest rates, which, honestly, here's one where I'm like you know what I understand political influence and sway and like that might be bad for the economy, blah, blah, blah. But I kind of do feel like the president and the Fed, like he, not necessarily Trump, but whoever is in that position, man or woman, should have some influence on the Fed. Right, Like it's a big deal.
Speaker 2:It's an influence, but they have a plan in place already for this year with some With, like I think, three or four drops planned, like strategically throughout the year. I'm sure they do.
Speaker 1:And Trump said I don't care about that, right? So he said are you going to? This was in. They were asking him when he was in the Oval Office yesterday are you going to tell Jerome Powell what to do? And he said yes. And they said do you think that he will listen to you or that he should listen to you? And he just kind of looks and he goes, yeah, made him like if he doesn't, there's going to be hell to pay. I mean, it was. So that's not a the unleashing I that's not a the unleashing.
Speaker 2:I can't remember how that position gets filled because it's not a part of the government, it's separate. It is a separate entity, yeah, but yeah, the board feels it. Another overreach, you know when you talk about, like trying to keep him on the rails, his reinstating of TikTok before the band. So like the Biden administration said that they would not enforce it, like TikTok did not need to fucking take it down. They took it down anyways. And then put Trump's name up to 127 million voters or people.
Speaker 1:Thank you, president Trump. Yeah, and it was before he was back in office. But he's always President Trump after being the president, right? You know? So like, eh, yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's still one of those things where it was legislated. The Supreme Court ruled that it was good, so two branches said no, yes, and he said yes, and it's happening. How do you keep that on the rails when he's blatantly overstepping two other branches of government?
Speaker 1:He's pouring gravel all over the rails you know, I mean this the. The train tracks are always on a big bed of gravel and rock, right and a mound of earth. He's doubling that mound right over the top of the tracks right, and he's got a rock crawler that he's going to drive through and not. It doesn't matter. You know what I'm saying? So there are no rails, adam, that's what I'm trying to say. The rails are gone, uh, for the next four years, and they will be reestablished as such in a totally different fashion.
Speaker 2:No, somewhere along the way A congressman last night or yesterday introduced something to let Trump run for a third term.
Speaker 1:And that will get put out there in various forms and fashions. I don't think it'll fly, maybe it might.
Speaker 2:But I mean, I don't know who's saying no to them right now, right? No, nobody you know and like, uh, I think even the conversations around town and people are, people are so pissed off over the last four years they're gonna be like oh, it's illegitimate four years anyways yeah, now here's the catch, and this is the one that I do believe.
Speaker 1:I strongly believe that this could be, if it were to work. The idea that anyone could run for a third term means that President Obama could be the president again.
Speaker 2:Oh Right, so the way that this guy wrote it it was Is that only Donald Trump could be the president.
Speaker 1:Pretty much, yeah, well then, that can't be passed.
Speaker 2:It can't be consecutive terms. They said, like, if you don't have consecutive terms, you get to have a third. Ah, okay, you get to double that. Yeah, so like they're specifically writing it, for that's ridiculous, you know.
Speaker 1:That doesn't make any sense. But here we go. I know let's see what are we talking about. Since it doesn, yeah Well, I'm just surprised that happened that fast. I knew it was going to happen.
Speaker 2:When you look at Hitler taking over and Nazis taking over Germany, it took like under 60 days. It was like 53 days that they dismantled the entire German government and put their Nazis in place. Right 53 days. Yeah, we're on day four.
Speaker 1:Time machine. Man, I won't make that comparison for our listeners. I understand where, adam, why you say that, but I'm like man, I'm gonna keep hitler and nazis out of my mouth right, I just am, and I don't care that everybody else wants to talk about it.
Speaker 1:I I'm gonna watch this unfold in its own term and I'm gonna watch how you know, anthropologists and historians watch whatever. This is right where trump calls it the golden age of America. But he also said that January 6th riots was a day of love right, so that's a good point for us to transition and spend the rest of the episode talking about January 6th pardons, right? So that's the view of the world that Trump has is, when you hit police with metal objects and spray them with chemicals, you are in love with them. You know?
Speaker 2:that's how much the rails are gone you know and it's not just being he didn't just pardon them Like they're getting invites to the white house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the white house and the Capitol. You know what I mean. Like, hang out down here, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah. These guys are traitors. By they were prosecuted. Every definition of the word.
Speaker 1:They were convicted and prosecuted. Pardon be damned. The paperwork is still there and the historical record is still there. Court juries of their peers, often, in most cases not just judges, duly selected, processed juries, not just political judges.
Speaker 2:But nobody gives a shit At all.
Speaker 1:At all.
Speaker 2:Nobody cares we got going to have all these new felons and they're probably going to get their gun rights back. They have it back. No, they do, that's the shaman guy.
Speaker 1:They said how do you feel?
Speaker 2:You just won the Super Bowl.
Speaker 1:January 6th, shaman, and he said I'm going to go buy some guns.
Speaker 2:Can he though yeah, well, can he though yes?
Speaker 1:All rights restored Voting, gun ownership, everything. For if you were pardoned, if your sentence was commuted, then that may not restore all of your rights, yeah, but if you were pardoned, it's as though it did not happen, from a rights restoration perspective.
Speaker 2:So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Now if anyone ever asked did you have a conviction for a felony? Like if one of these people wanted to be in government and decided they wanted to get a clearance granted, they would get their clearance granted anyway just because of who they are, but the paperwork would have to say yes, I have been convicted of a felony. Like that's the condition of a pardon, right, and then when they investigate it they'd say, oh, you have a pardon.
Speaker 2:Well then you're fine. Oh yeah, but like those assholes are going to hang that pardon on their wall. Yes, the conviction and the pardon. Exactly Side by side, right they're?
Speaker 1:going to have it all, yeah, of them hitting people with sticks and blood on their hands, literally some guy squatting on the desk, and they're going to have that in a mural on the wall. Absolutely they're going to have it down in the shrine for them, down at the whatever community hall that they have in their town or whatever Like. Yeah, they're heroes, man. They're heroes to some of these people. They are.
Speaker 2:What blows my mind, though, is that they think they're the patriots when they're the redcoats. They're like reinstalling a king, and they think that they're patriots. Yes, Like you guys have literally said. You know, we want a monarchy here.
Speaker 1:Yes, they are. I have seen more than one person you know say that out loud that they would be fine if President Trump was the president for the rest of his life. Yeah, so that's a king. Yeah, that's not a president. Yeah, yeah. But again, we're assuming that they have ever read a history book or heard about the Civil War or the previous, you know, Revolutionary War or any of that stuff that constitutes how America exists today. We're making some assumptions there. There's some of them that are ultra constitution, crazy people and you know they do know it word for word.
Speaker 2:You know call them constitution shake, yeah, but uh, like I don't know there's.
Speaker 1:There's just as many that'll be like it's in the constitution and they're thinking like that's why chevy's got a positrack rear end you know it's like it's an article 15 man says chevy pickup truck you know like they don't they. That's how much they've read it you know, but it doesn't matter, because the hero status is the same, you know, depending on where you're at.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so you know we haven't seen much resistance to any of his picks. Pete Hegseth, we'll go through.
Speaker 1:You passed the last thing, there was two senators, you said Two senators that were both GOP senators that voted that I don't know will today because it's happening later this afternoon have declared that they'll vote no against him, understanding that that doesn't break the bubble and he'll get nominated yeah. If they were at risk of breaking the bubble, I don't think they would actually do that. I think they get to have this symbolic no vote, yeah, and this is I'm always fascinated by how timelines impact politics and, depending on when these senators were elected, they are not at risk of a primary. If they've got a six-year term ahead of them and Trump's got a four-year term ahead of him, Then they get to have some of these symbolic gesture votes, or they may even get to push back.
Speaker 1:At times. They may get to become oh boy from West Virginia, where they're like I'm in charge of this because I'm going to be the symbolic holdout all the time and I'm going to you know, tip the scale when I decide to. Senators are looking for those opportunities. It helps them stay in power. It also would help even a GOP Senator determine that a third term for president Trump might not be good for them, because that means no more terms for them.
Speaker 1:You know if they're going to burn bridges over these next few years. They can't tolerate whatever happens after that, unless they just quit Right and for whatever reason. Senators don't do that.
Speaker 1:I guess, Manchin, he did, but it's, you know, he's quite. Oh, after 30 years, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm like it's different, you know. So, yeah, two senators that basically said no, that's not going to work, and their language was vocal about they believe all the things that Pete Hegseth claims to be smears, as he says. They don't think they're smears, they think it's his true behavior and that he would struggle to maintain some type of behavior that's not that under the stress of this job. Right. That he sets a poor example for a body of people who are criminally held liable if they cheat on their spouse. That his example of multiple transgressions of infidelity is not an example that they want to set for the military, because there's a law against that.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I never even thought of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah, yeah, and there was a guy, mr Wonderful, on a panel on on CNN. He was like who cares, if you know? Like no, the military doesn't care if you cheat on your spouse, cause he had no clue about military culture or UCMJ or anything like that. And one of the guys, uh, juan Williams. He's like I'm a veteran and I'm telling you it's serious. You can't know. No, you get in trouble and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:And he was like you're telling me the boss forced to retire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's like you're telling me that these, you know all the divorces in the military, it's not because it's this X, y and Z. And then we were like you know, the people on the panel were like, listen, it's against the law.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, and, and you know, that's a if for nothing else if he can out loud say I broke this rule and I was technically in the military when this stuff was going on.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, I see these, some of these rules as optional, but I think under the war cabinet it probably there was no fraternization policy, right. It was like, hey, you just hire whoever you want and if they become your, you know, predatory victim doesn't matter, right? So that I don't see why he wouldn't be willing to roll some things back like that. Oh, yeah. Just have that culture.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, he's always just one like slight away from throwing a temper tantrum anyways. Uh, like his whole persona, even on fox, was you know, just speak louder. And like that's not gonna fly with.
Speaker 1:Like you're gonna go to a negotiation table with the iranians and talk like an asshole like that, like it's not gonna work right I, I, you know, and I'll get um personal on the topic of Hegsath and his behavior around alcohol or just addiction and substance use, regardless of whether he how he sees his own use or misuse of any substance. But alcohol is what he's been accused of having problems with, right. There's a possibility here. You remember the movie I think it was Flight with Denzel Washington where he's an alcoholic but he was a pilot, yeah, and he flipped a plane upside down to save everybody. But then, you know, in the end he was basically held, you know, held accountable for being drunk, yeah, even though he saved everybody's life. They were like, but it doesn't matter, the rules rule, you were 100% on the wrong side of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pete Hegseth's going to do that in real life man, yeah, and he's going to flip the plane upside down because he probably genuinely has an issue with this substance. And it could turn into a very public display of I don't know man, either persecution or compassion towards somebody who's addicted to a substance yeah, addicted to a substance. And I'm very curious to see how that sets the tone for other people in the military, for how commands approach substance abuse, for how policy is handled, and not just under his leadership. I'm saying, but if there was a bad day and it was clear that, hey, the SecDef said he wasn't going to drink and he went to the Army ball and did headstands in the cake cake, you know, uh, he got drug out of the army ball drunk, uh, that's gonna be a problem, you know, it's gonna catch headlines. And I'm concerned for this gentleman that this, that four-year dry stint, may not be something he's able to do.
Speaker 2:It'd be amazing if trump keeps the sect f for four years.
Speaker 1:Sure I mean that may be the easy out is that they just pick some random campaign or something that happened.
Speaker 2:They're like oh, this is it, that's it.
Speaker 1:Iran just rolled over Pete Hickseth right, yeah. Like if somebody dies in Israel, it's not even an American. And they're like see, you can't handle the military. Like sure they could scapegoat them right out of. Maybe perhaps a more, uh, seasoned and appropriately trained person would get the opportunity. I mean because some to some degree, uh, there's like, there's this, uh, the shock and awe campaign. As much as I believe there's an unlimited amount of energy behind it, uh, at some point it just won't pay the bills anymore.
Speaker 2:You know, know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:You will actually have to hire somebody that knows how to run the freaking military.
Speaker 2:Yeah, somebody competent, yeah.
Speaker 1:You can't experiment with it before.
Speaker 2:And especially when they're so eager to send our troops to other places.
Speaker 1:Sure, if we've got to invade Greenland and you pull the rug out from under Pete, you might want to get a more qualified person in the room to go invade Greenland, petraeus. We got to get Petraeus back, man.
Speaker 2:No, who's his other one that he can run?
Speaker 1:the Greenland op.
Speaker 2:I'm surprised he hasn't tried to get Flynn back into the networks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, make Flynn a five-star. Just skip him a couple stars right. Yeah, the commandant of all of the war machine or whatever you know whatever they start calling it. Yeah, it's crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. Actually, you're right, man. I'm curious, flynn, I hadn't heard about him in a while and then, of course, late in the election cycle last year, he popped up and, like a little news, you know, came around because he's been a QAnon. He's a QAnon shaman himself right yeah.
Speaker 2:During he's a QAnon shaman himself. Right yeah, during that assassination attempt, there his name popped up, that's what it? Was. It was popping up a lot, yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 1:Or you know we could see him, as maybe if Tulsi Gabbard gets hung out to dry, you could see somebody like Flynn roll in and be the national security advisor. You know, whatever you know, like those kind of things. Yeah, who knows? Right, I know him and Trump and Flynn left on bad blood last time but he's done nothing but clap for Trump ever since Right you know like he's been a very vocal cheerleader all along and that seems to be a big deal to Trump Right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:And there's been plenty of other people that have been crossways with Trump, like one Rubio Right. Rubio is the secretary of state and they would cuss at each other in the news for years.
Speaker 2:Rubio is the secretary of state and they would cuss at each other in the news for years.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying. And yet he was immediately handed an extremely important job and, honestly, regardless of his politics, I don't pay attention to what Rubio really does, but he's the most qualified dude Trump's hired to do anything.
Speaker 2:Yet that's why I was okay with that one. I was like it could be so much worse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, there's another topic I want to cover, but not today. We're going to mention it the deputy secretary of the Air Force. His gentleman's name is Lohmeyer and he was a captain in the Air Force that got relieved of command a few years ago because he spoke out against the woke policy of general officers in the Air Force, or you know something to do with that, and he was at Buckley Air Force Base Space Force Base, I guess at the time, probably when he was relieved of command. So he was the intelligence squadron commander. That's an interesting topic. I would recommend our listeners to maybe look into it a little bit. I'm going to try and scope my own statements and opinion about it between now and maybe the next episode.
Speaker 1:But it's something that I would encourage you to read about Adam and hopefully anybody else, oh, and if you have any opinions about it between now and then, we might talk about those. So look into that nomination? Deputy Secretary of the Air Force has an interesting past with his military career. That, some would say, might you know, is either exactly why Trump has nominated him or is a pretty big issue that people would be concerned about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so yeah, I've got it. The current chair of the Air Force is pretty DEI-centric, sure, so like he's probably facing the chopper there's. Yeah, yeah, so we'll dig into it next, maybe next week. So all right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So we'll dig into it, maybe next week, All right? Well, thanks everybody for listening to Left Face and for putting up with our spaghetti episode today. Just rambling, yeah, rambling, but you know what? The last four days America has been rambling. So here we are. So thanks for listening to Left Face. Please check us out on our socials, Blue Sky. Feel free to send us an email or drop us some comments on social and we.
