Left Face
Join Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson while they talk politics and community engagement in Pikes Peak region.
Left Face
Generals, Beards, and the Battle for Military Culture
A community protest with porta-potty “sponsorships” shouldn’t have anything to do with a room full of stone-faced generals at Quantico—but it does. We open on real-world organizing in Colorado Springs, then trace a straight line to a stage where aesthetics and loyalty checks tried to pass for military leadership. When beards become the battleground and “look the part” outweighs mission, you can feel the culture war trying to rewrite standards from the outside.
We break down what actually happened at the GOFO summit: a massive lift to move the brass, a political speech delivered to an audience trained not to clap, and a message heavy on optics but light on readiness. From shaving waivers and their racial reality to religious accommodations in the Space Force, we separate myth from operational need. We also clear the air on PT standards and combat roles: elite units already enforce tough, job-specific requirements that didn’t soften when women got a fair shot. The data is small, the standards are high, and the dog whistles are loud.
Then we widen the lens. “Train in our cities,” “enemy within,” and a push to militarize police risk crossing legal lines that protect civilians from domestic force. Add a government shutdown framed by misinformation about immigrant benefits while lavish projects skate through, and the priorities come into focus. Finally, we challenge the nostalgia for “hands-on” boot camp. Draft-era fear worked when you could replace deserters with letters; in an all-volunteer force, abuse undermines trust, retention, and real readiness. Along the way, we call out the AI meme factory and the normalization of ridicule from the highest office—a propaganda loop that distracts from what actually keeps the country safe.
If you care about readiness over rhetoric and mission over memes, pull up a chair. Subscribe, share this episode with a friend who served (or wanted to), and leave a review to help more folks find an honest take on what really matters.
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Hello everyone and welcome to Left Face. My name is Adam Gillard. I'm your co-host long here with Dick Wilkinson. How are you doing this morning, Dick? I'm doing great, Adam. Good morning. Good morning. And is uh it's crazy how we don't even really have to prepare for these things anymore. There's just such a constant onslaught of BS.
SPEAKER_02:Um It's like just grab onto the stream and float, float through the river, you know? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It's nuts that uh we have a pretty constant stream of stuff to talk about here. Um but before we dive into our topics today, uh I wanted to mention that uh our local protest on the 18th of October here in Colorado Springs is gonna be at America the Beautiful Park uh from 12 to 3. We're gonna have a lot of uh different uh workshops and community organizations there just kind of you know trying to build community and especially you know now that you know government shut down things things are gonna get start you know drying up here locally. Yeah. How how do we keep move on as a community and help each other out? So we're gonna have some workshops down there. Um uh you can donate at uh give butter uh 5051 COS so 50501 COS at Give Butter. Uh you know, if you want to you know rent a porta potty and name it after somebody, you can do that. Uh yeah, you know, if you need to rent a dumpster, you know, you can do that. But but yeah, it should be a good day.
SPEAKER_02:12 to 3 is I'm gonna rent the porta potties and dumpsters and put them in your honor. How about that?
SPEAKER_00:I like that those are the things available to to rent.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, but we're thinking like the Trump dump, yeah, you know, things like that. You know, so okay. That's different. Yeah, I see a bit of a pejorative or a tongue-in-cheek sponsorship. Okay, yeah, yeah. I was like, who wants the bathroom named after them? So I got you. Exactly. There you go. Okay, the other way or out because I'm sitting here like, what are you talking about? Good job, Barbie. Uh joke sponsorships. That's a great way to, yeah, I like that. I'm very much, I mean, I was gonna joke sponsor it for you, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00:King King Turret over here, yeah. Uh but yeah, so that'd be the 18th of you know, 12 to 3 at America the Beautiful Park. Uh some other organizations are gonna try to get some uh marches going and and you know do some other things, you know, after our our portion. But uh it should be a great time. It's getting a lot of traction. A lot of people are talking about it, you know, and just being able to go somewhere and be around people that you know understand what you're going through and find ways that you can give back to the community. Uh it's been huge for folks, and and it's been you know a lot of fun going down there. That's great. I'm glad it's coming up soon. Yeah. Um, so the first thing we wanted to talk about is kind of a follow-up to what we uh hit a lot last week was this uh big GoFo meeting that uh hadn't happened at Quantico, you know, just a couple days ago. It feels like forever already. Like it gets covered so much and you read so much about it, feels like it was all right. Yeah, it's almost out of the news cycle now. Um but you so you know, Secretary of Defense still, uh Pete Heggseth, uh called 800 some generals and admirals and their senior enlisted advisors uh to Quantico. And now when that team kind type of team travels, they travel with calm people, they travel with a whole like it's not just like a couple people going because like these folks have responsibilities that they can't walk away from the city. Especially you can't transfer command from the four-star down to somebody else. Yeah, yeah. So what's that called? You know, authorized commands. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So the uh the three stars and the four stars, they always have their own calm teams that they travel with. So so like it's a big logistical movement to get there. Yeah, it's at least five people, right? I mean, to get the four-star somewhere, it's a five-person team. Right. And uh so it's a huge lift. Everything that I've read, and again, I'm in my own echo chambers, I recognize that, is that it was bet it was a complete waste of time for the generals. Like no general has come out and you know said anything positive about it or or like enjoyed the trip or you know, enjoyed Virginia this time of year. Um, they went you know, leaf sighted.
SPEAKER_02:That that would have been great if one of them just basically ignored the fact that they were at this meeting and just been like, you know, back get great to get back to Quantico. This is where I started my career, you know, and just like talk about little buddies in Virginia. Yeah, just to have them down a barbecue and be like, I haven't seen this guy in 30 years.
SPEAKER_00:You know, you know, it we get trained to be so uh non-political, and you heard some like clapping and things like that during Heg Seth or uh Donald Trump speech, but I think it really shocks people. Barely, yeah, barely. And it was probably their own entourage, right? Sure. It was probably their own other people, yeah. It's their own yes uniform people chuckling. Um but people don't r realize how awkward it is because like you can go to a military thing and somebody could just crush the national anthem, like leave you in goosebumps and you just stand there and stare at them and you don't clap for them. You know, it's so weird how like yeah, the just the lack of emotion. So when people saw that, you know, a room full of stone faced generals, like they were like, Oh shit, they're kind of serious. Like, yeah, they they they take their job seriously. Yeah, like they're they're not extremely happy about getting called away from they're not up for company picnics, yeah. Right. And really, you know, the message that came out was you know, one from unqualified people to deliver the message, but you know, get fitter, look better. It was about aesthetics, right? It it it wasn't aboutficial, yeah. It was, you know, look better. Yeah. And look, you know, meet the male standards, things like that. Um and overall, you know, when you look at you know, recruiting numbers and who they're going after and who they've been pulling in over the last few months, it's clear that they're going after a certain shade of people. Okay. Um there's there's a demographic. Yeah. You know, hex, I thought they you know they've already they're they're removing the shaving waiver. So anybody that needs to be hearing about that. Yeah, anybody's gonna be able to do that. Yeah, so if you're on a shaving waiver for more than a year, you're gone. Yeah. And that's a lot of African American uh soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, guardians, whatever, are on shaving waivers. Uh they're they're getting rid of folks that disagree with them in every avenue possible.
SPEAKER_02:Um I'll be curious to see how the shaving waiver part plays out. I know I made a joke about it last week, but um, you know, that the the racial implication of that is you know, anybody that served in the military understands that yes, it was extremely rare to see a Caucasian male with a shaving waiver and it was always very temporary, like five days, right? You know, like you get you got a burned on your face and now you have a five-day shaving waiver, and then you better start shaving before the burn's even healed, right? Like that's what the expectation was. Yeah, and so you're right. The only people that had pseudophiliculitis barbae and had the long-term waivers were people of African-American descent, right? Like that's it. Um now, I have noticed in the Space Force specifically, um, it seems like they're man, everybody got a beard around there, you know. Like there's a lot of people with beards in the Space Force, regardless of the shade of skin or complexion or you know, you know, hair problems. You're just doing it, right? And that that may be he's like, What's going on here? Like you're just a regular dude and you have a tight beard and uniform. That's not right. You know, that's what just visually, that's what Pete's seeing.
SPEAKER_00:Right, but but a lot of these folks have you know religious reasons for having their beard. And again, it it's not the the Christian nationalist.
SPEAKER_02:I have no idea why. I mean, I'm saying I've seen people in person here in the local community, and I look at them and go, I have no clue how why you have a beard. Yeah, right. Like it doesn't make sense to me.
SPEAKER_00:Umes that affect the war fight.
SPEAKER_02:It doesn't, right? Uh foreign militaries um allow their senior NCOs and officers to have beards, and it's a mark of uh, you know, maturity and respect that you're gonna follow the rules and you're not gonna act a fool and try and look, you know, look crazy and out of rags. You're gonna look professional. Yeah, if we let, you know, young men under 25, they're gonna try and have handlebars and stuff like that. But by the time you've been in the military for about five to ten years, you're gonna follow the rules. You know, and so that's how they all do it is their NCOs and officers are allowed to have that, right? And then, yes, if you go into theater and they think you're gonna be under attack, you need to shave to have a tight seal on your gas mask. That's an operational requirement that's dictated by the theater of operations, right? It's not gonna happen in your you know home unit in what we call garrison in the army, right? But that's where garrison is the place where grooming standards matter the most, right? Yeah, that the sergeant major, you know, at that unit is like all that matters is tight uniforms and clean shaven and like you know, discipline is carried out by the razor, right? It just is, you know.
SPEAKER_00:And it's uh meh, well, I mean yeah, it's totally backwards. Yeah, because even the operators in the field that are actually under threat often have beards.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, often have beards because they're not putting on a gas mask, they're gonna shoot their way out of the gas cloud or die, right? Like it's not gonna be a prolonged exposure to some nerve gas.
SPEAKER_00:Like just the overall tone of having somebody that never served at a high enough level to even make these decisions to make such superficial claims, you know, that that they're gonna have been in clean shape. They're gonna be any kind of like anything other than aesthetically pleasing, you know, it's gonna have no effectiveness on our military. It's gonna hurt probably if I because now we're gonna get rid of qualified people um trying to try to re-rebuild things. For sure. Uh you know, so you're okay with you know the you know, going back to male standards and making those standards tougher. Um what do you think what do you think that the long-term impacts of this type of rally cry from the secretary is gonna have?
SPEAKER_02:Um on the PT part, I mean I'll speak about that in the standards, you know, and what his statement was of combat roles, and he's coming at that from a very army mindset, right? Like the army has full of units that are male only. I don't remember, yes, something along those lines. Combat arms. He was a combat arms guy, you know. So not a staff officer, like you know, no, he wasn't an Intel guy or uh, you know, comms guy or anything like that. No, he was uh he was a you know troop leader, puller, trigger puller kind of guy, yeah. So um he's taking a very army concept and applying it to all branches, but saying that combat roles that have in the army, we have unique physical requirements to be airborne or to be a ranger or to be, you know, whatever special forces, right? Like if you're gonna go do those things, they tend to be more strict and kind of may not matter what your age is. The standard may be more strict even as you get older as a male. They're like, hey, it doesn't matter if you want to keep you know doing ranger stuff, you have to be able to do ranger stuff no matter how old you are, right? And so those special units have special standards, and that's what he was kind of trying to say is if you're in a job that that puts you into those units, you need to everybody has to qualify to those standards to include females. The army specific thing that's happened over, I think, the last 10 years was that shift where it was like no female would have ever been allowed to go to ranger school because there's no females in ranger units, right? Like the MOS is there excluded females. Well, that changed probably, I think, right before Trump's first term. Some females were starting to be allowed to train into those units. Um, but it was single-digit, you know, very small throughput of people who volunteered to go and take that uh program, take that training, and they hadn't they knew they had to meet some exceedingly hard standard compared to their regular PT test. They understood that going into it, right? So he's making a much ado about nothing, right? Of like that kind of program's kind of already been in place. And I don't think that there are any females or even males, no, you know, regardless, females or males, that are making it into those units off of wokism, off of DEI, off of lowered standards. I don't think there's anybody that's standing there giving them a PT test and going, well, you just barely have to pass female and then we'll let you be a ranger. Right. No, they don't even let males barely pass. You know, the standard army unit, like you have to get more than 60% in each category. You have to get like 80 or 90 percent as the baseline to stay qualified in that unit. So they already increased the standard to keep that unit more fit than the regular army. That's been there for a long time, right? Regardless of gender and regardless of qualifications. So there's not much to restore in that. And then we're also talking if there's a thousand, that I mean, that's extremely generous. If there's a thousand women that have made it through any of those programs that required higher uh physical standards, that's all that's ever has been in the past 10 years. Right. And we're talking hundreds of thousands of people that go through these programs, and there's been a thousand of them that are females. So again, uh, it's it's a much ado about the very, very small slice of readiness, yeah, warrior mentality, any of that stuff. So I say I'm okay with it because I don't think it impacts very many people.
SPEAKER_00:I guess is really what it boils down to. But but the the rallying cry and the dog whistles that that they say and and you know, the impact on the culture overall when when you take uh, you know, because it it's again hysterically ironic or just sad that you know they sit there and cry about culture wars, but that's all they stand on. And that's all they preach about. That's all Tuesday was. So now again, you take a very small percentage of the population of the military and and try to alienate them. Amplify it and turn it into a big topic. Yeah, it and then I mean so so there's that you know divisiveness there uh so that you can kind of you know strengthen your your voices as the women playing in men's sports to them. Exactly the opposite of what's happening in collegiate and high school situations, right?
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. Women are playing in these men's sports, and we got to do something about that. Just like men are playing in women's sports in college, and that's unfair to them. Yeah, we don't need females hanging around doing this over here. Yeah, right? You know, it's not that overt, but the it comes from the same root. Yeah, it grows from the same, you know, moral root.
SPEAKER_00:Just uh well, yeah, like a chauvinistic lifestyle. Like uh like viewpoint of the city.
SPEAKER_02:That's a good that's an absolute, you know, definition-wise, that's an apt word.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, you don't think women belong in the military. Um, and again, Hegcess's spiritual leader is a big proponent of that. Um, but an another thing that he said that was just flabbergasted to me was uh calling out fat generals and admirals. So he did do that. And then and then not even to point out the having Trump come up speak next, and like you talk about you know a commander-in-chief like not being fit. Uh physically fit, yeah. We'll leave that to the side. Yeah, but you're talking about folks that have spent easily over 30 years in the military. Oh, sure. Easily, yeah, high stress, high, just crazy amount of hours. Like they don't always get time to go to the gym. Um, they're still incredibly in good shape. You look like like General Miley.
SPEAKER_02:Compared to the regular population, to their peers that are all 55, 60 years old. Yeah, yeah, they'll still benchmark. They're blowing them out of the water, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Right. I mean, like General Miley. He he probably wasn't in the greatest shape of his life, yeah, but like that was a dude who who know knew you know what was going on, right? Um you're gonna get rid of people who are look a little bit more you know bigger in their uniforms, but they can still button up their jackets uh just for aesthetics, just to so that you can get uh a yes man in there.
SPEAKER_02:Now, see there you got you wrapped two things together there. Hold on now. You wrapped the yes man into it. Um because yeah, yeah. You get to hand pick the the skinny muscle guy and go, hey, we gave you a two-level, three-level promotion, right? We took you from colonel to two-star, right? Like we you just you skipped a star because your waistline's under 40 inches, right? Right. You know, I think that's our new promotion standard. How many stars is how far under the, you know. So I mean, so I was raised in the army mentality of uh if you look like a soldier, you'll act like a soldier, and you'll just be better off in general. So be thin and be fit. And I heard Heg Seth, you know, screaming that from the rafters in that statement of leaders have to set the example, leaders have to look fit, you know, look like a soldier to act like a soldier. And that's why drill sergeants get picked. You know, there's literally some aesthetic aspect of like, you know, if you don't look right, yeah, we're not gonna get let you go train the troops, right? The honor guard for the guard the tomb and things like that. Yeah, they have height requirements and weight requirements and all that stuff, right? So, anyways, um, I get where the what what Pete's talking about there, right? Um I also agree though that the value that somebody with 30 years of experience and is you know well past retirement possibility that they're continuing to volunteer to add value to the mission that they've dedicated their entire lives to, if they're within standards, there's nothing to talk about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, the standard is there.
SPEAKER_02:Change the standard and then you know, harass people in the hallways of the Pentagon. But if they're qualifying in the standard right now, there's nothing to talk about.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and you know, like you said, like I do like to wrap up the two points because this is a bigger push for them because you know the one, you know, they wrote all this stuff down in Project 2012 that he never knew about, but now he's saying that he's gonna meet with the guy that wrote today. Like they're in the room together, yeah, yeah, yeah, to cut you know democratic programs and stuff like that. So it's always been the plan to do these types of things and push people out and and really install their folks, and not only in the military, but local police departments too. I uh I don't know if you saw recently uh uh that little psycho um Miller. Okay, he was talking with Heggseth behind him, and I think the uh Levitt, the the press secretary, where he told police officers, like the handcuffs are off you, you can go sure put them on criminal. They're out there like militarizing the police force, really getting them hyped up to go out and hurt people, really. Yeah, uh and this is directly what you know the militarization of the local police forces is again another a blurring of the line, right?
SPEAKER_02:Of on purpose, right? Of like figuring out a way around Posse Comatatis, right?
SPEAKER_00:Like and historically, this is what the Nazis did too. You know, when when you start you know really militarizing the police force against your own citizens, and when the president stands up in front of all these generals and says that the enemy is from within, that's horrifying.
SPEAKER_02:The um we'll switch gears a little bit here on I mean, still in the same lane, but the whole concept of um use our cities as training grounds for war. Yeah. What does that mean? What I mean, what does that mean? And even when uh the does he not understand what war is? That's what that's got to mean to me. He's been dodging. You don't understand what war is, homie. Like you can't do you can't march around inside the United States and scare people, even if you were walking around with blanks. You're not gonna roll down streets and formation in in like uh you know convoys. No, you know, like the point of that is to go out and shoot, to get into position and shoot. That's what you know, train and and that's what the point of it is, is to figure out where you need to go to kill people. Right. Do you cannot do that in the United States? Like, it's just not that doesn't even make sense. I I don't it's an alternative reality statement that just kids can't even make sense.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and at this point, you know, there there's so many similarities to what you know the the the Nazis did and things like that to what's going on. Like I I think the MAGA movement has moved past being associated with Nazis. I think they're their own thing. I think you know, like they're using their playbook, sure, but but people need to stop saying, like, oh, they're Nazis. No, they're MAGA, they need to own this. I hear what you're saying. America was here for 250 years almost, and these these folks are tearing it down purposefully. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. Purposefully and intentionally doing it, using the Third Reich's playbook. It's like they need to be called out for what they're doing, though.
SPEAKER_02:Speaking of that, you sent me a text where Pete Pete Hexeth had uh there was a general that made reference to the the some conference where they brought everybody, all the German generals back together and basically said this is the new order, right? And you either are on board or you're not. Yeah. And then Pete Hexeth said, Cool story, bro. Cool story, bro. And then he went out there and said, You're either on board or you're not, right? He said, if what I'm saying today doesn't make your heart or it makes your heart sink, meaning like you don't agree with the moral tone of what I'm delivering, you're welcome to leave the room and don't come back, right? Get up and resign, do the right thing. Exactly. That was the uh my comments last week was like, you know, I I was a little bit um uh being a little bit hyperbolic over the idea that it's a loyalty check, right? Um that that there's probably some other genuine uh valid reasons to talk to all these folks. But he didn't sugarcoat that very much at all. You know what I'm saying? He said, You're either gonna get on board or you're gonna leave, right? And then Trump backed him up. Right. Trump said once he got on stage, we haven't even talked about what what President Trump has said on stage, right? We haven't even got there yet. But he got up there and said, Oh, you know, if you don't agree with me, you could get up and walk out, but that'd be the end of your career, that'd be the end of everything you have, you know. Like and straight up said, like, I know you're not gonna clap for me, but you better damn sure better not get up and walk out. Yeah, he said that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and I I mean on his way there, he he threatened a report, not threatened to the reporter, but he said to a reporter that, you know, if anybody disagrees with me, I'll fire him on the spot. Yeah, yeah. Like, uh how author authoritarian do you need to be? Um, because when when uh the press pressed Mike Johnson, and Mike Johnson was like, Well, I'm not gonna you know entertain your interpretation of the president's words. Yeah, like no, he said we're the enemy within, and these he's gonna use us for training grounds. Like, like how do you feel about that? I'm not gonna I'm not gonna interpret that.
SPEAKER_02:Then the very next day deployed troops into Portland, Oregon, right, after the governor said, We don't need troops, right?
SPEAKER_00:And I think somebody got killed in the last 24 hours there, too. Yeah, um uh insane. Oh yeah, yeah. So uh yeah, you know, when we wrapped up last week's show, you you threw out the question there, like how would you do the code? I was like I'm not gonna answer that.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But I tell you what I wouldn't do if I was the Trump or Heggseth administration. Stop following the Nazi playbook step by step. Is that I wouldn't put 800 generals in the same room and then walk out and like I hope those some of those generals like kind of looked around the room and was like, We doing this, guys? Yeah, but like I wouldn't put all those guys in the same room right now because like those are the folks that are gonna stop you.
SPEAKER_02:So that's exactly thank you for taking the words out of my mouth. So I will I'll say uh we talk, we're part of the rhetoric, part of the rhetoric machine, because we do talk about the um similarities or parallels between previous fascist regimes or totalitarian regimes or dictators or whatever, you know, and that and the the granddaddy of all of those are Nazis. I try to be real careful about the Nazi language, right? And I, you know, you can't help it when the when the playbook is being executed the way it is. I used to be a good idea. It's hard to avoid the language sometimes, you know, but I'm still committed to avoiding that language. So I appreciate that you said MAGA can be something different. Um, and that that calling MAGA MAGA and whether it's evil or not, or whatever it is, like let's give it its own credence and stop form factoring it over to whatever Nazis and that type of fascism. Like, I kind of like the mental separation that history will probably draw in the future, you know, whether it's rhetorical or factual about something that happens with the MAGA movement. I don't know. Um, but yeah, the uh the thing for me that I saw on stage, and I I guess unfortunately I watch Donald Trump on stage more often than I care to, right? Because he's on all the time, right? And so I've seen him get up there and do his riffs, I've seen him get up there and do his uh political speeches. I've heard him talk about how terrible Biden was and blah, blah, blah, and woke and everything. I've heard, you know, he didn't say anything he hasn't said a thousand times up there. It was a full-on political speech. It had nothing to do with military discipline or might or almost anything, right? Like he said, we're the hottest country in the world to these generals, right? I went to the UN and everybody told me we're super cool. All right. Right on. But here's what I saw, and maybe it was the lack of applause. It was an audience that Trump is not familiar with, right? Like, there is no room that he walks into where literally everybody is just staring at him and is not moving or saying anything. Yeah, right. And there was a 2,000 people in there just staring straight at him.
SPEAKER_00:Because they weren't there to be entertained, they were there to listen. To listen.
SPEAKER_02:And yeah, and so here like you said, Trump, as much as we want to think that he's sometimes he's bumbling his way through this tragedy. Um, he knows who where the if anyone's gonna hold the line ever in something that exceeds the boundaries of the Constitution, whatever that is, those are the guys and gals that are gonna do it, right? They have the mandate, they have the responsibility to do said protection, right? They have it. Like it's clear, it's written down and it's legally directed to them to say if somebody, not just Donald Trump, but if anybody that's a politician that's in power tries to break the rules, you all have some reasonable authority to stop that. There's almost nobody else that President Trump interacts with that has that, right? Like the Supreme Court's already said they don't have it and don't want it, right? Like they set it down and said we had it, but not for now, right? Um, and so this is the only group of people that has really got any say in how he wants to execute 2028, right? And I think he knew he knows that, right? Like he's not stupid, he's really not stupid. He he uh he sometimes he puts on an act, but he's not stupid, and he knows that those are the people that that like we said, loyalty has always been extremely important to him, even outside of this setting, right? In every setting, loyalty is is currency with Donald Trump. Yeah, because he's usually breaking the law, and he's standing in a room full of people who are sworn to not be loyal to him, right? To be loyal to something other than him. Yeah, and you could see that in him, you could hear it in his voice, you could see it in his body language that he was not that freewheeling. Everybody in here is my best friend, and they're all just gonna pour money into my pockets. He wasn't doing that. He understood that he was talking to a room full of people that, like you said, were there to listen, they were paying attention, they were taking notes, and they actually have some decision to be made where Donald Trump's not telling them, here's what I'm about to deliver into your life, right? Like everybody else that he talks to. It's it's here's what pop of sugar is gonna come and just pour on everybody, right? Those people had no reason to care about that, and so he's just never in a room of people where 90% of them have no interest in loyalty to him as a person, a brand, a movement, a political figure. None of them cared, right? Right, and he could he felt that awkwardness, you know?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, it's good to see him squirm a little. Yeah. Um, it it's kind of ironic. Again, the the irony of all these administration gaffes are just his they're gonna be there's gonna be a lot of books written. But uh the government shuts down a couple days after we spend millions of dollars to move all these generals around the world. Government shuts down. Now, with uh the government being shut down, all of these government websites are putting things up that say things like, oh, the woke left is you know radicalizing this and that and that like on government websites.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, and emails from government systems out to employees.
SPEAKER_00:Partisan language, direct violations of the Hatch Act, you know, using government systems to endorse activity in politics. Um big time, but it's uh so blatant propaganda being swallowed and drank up drinking up by the right pushed through government channels, like but nobody seems to be fussing about that on the right at all. And you know, government in general is nonpartisan, right? Uh and people can't be I don't know, it just again, it's another one of those mind-blowing moments that when you look back at like you know how regimes took over, they did things like this. They started pushing propaganda on all media sites, on all government public sites.
SPEAKER_02:No channel is sacred.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, right, right, right, right. You know, that there's you know only authorized news releases, like guys, like we're we are in it now. Like, I I know you're afraid of the Nazi language, I was afraid of it for a long time, and that's why I just call them MAGA. Like, like we are in our own shit storm right now. Like we don't need to call it anything else.
SPEAKER_02:See, I'm more comfortable with that. I'm like way more comfortable with that. I can own that, I can take ownership of that and go, yeah, something really, really bad is afoot here. And so historical relationships to that don't don't matter, right? And I'm like way better with that, I guess. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so yeah, I mean, who's to blame with the shutdown now? What what are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_02:The thing that I have the most bone to pick with is the the lie of the talking point that um illegal immigrants getting medical health care is is the only nail in this coffin that matters, it's the only conflict of of interest that matters, and that the Democratic side of the house is is trying to promote the idea that if you just wandered across the border, we're gonna give you a bunch of benefits. It's just not true, right?
SPEAKER_00:But it but it but it worked last year, it worked in 2020 uh you know, 24 before the election. Sure. Even it wasn't true then, so why change the story? Yeah, you know, right? Oh, like just keeping it. From a political branding perspective, yes, yeah. But but it's it's easily proven false that you know immigrants pay into these systems you know through their EINs and stuff like that. Yeah, but when it comes down to it, they do not get benefits back, yeah, right, right. There's a very few activ or like uh avenues for them to get things, you know, you know, if they're in the immigration court systems.
SPEAKER_02:So and that was it was um the difference and then. This is what it really boils down to where it's the gamesmanship of the one big beautiful bill took away medical coverage for people who were here on legal status but were not fully immigrated and naturalized, right? So they're here on legal status, asylum seekers that we brought in, or like people from Haiti when there's that emergency, you know, we bring in 5,000 people and we just give them this like five-year green card type thing, right? Those people were eligible for coverage because we invited them to America. Yeah, they're just and that got taken away in the Big Beautiful bill. So now the usually Mike Johnson is saying um that change basically is irrelevant, that the continuing resolution is exactly what they were already operating on operating on as the previous year's things, but that's not true. That's disingenuous because the big beautiful bill takes away something that was in the last CR. And that's the only talking point and the only focal point that anybody's talking about, right? Um I don't know, man. Like, uh, is this is it worth shutting the government down over? No, sure, surely it's not. Um, is there some great moral unjustice happening if that gets taken away or reinstated? Like, man, that doesn't move the needle for almost any voter. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_00:Even yeah, that one right there, again, very narrow targeted, but it's a good talking point. It's a good thing that for them to say.
SPEAKER_02:Because it's related to health care and immigration. And so it's like you did, like you twisted the wires on me earlier, the Republicans going, ha, two things in the Democratic bucket that aren't related, but we'll make them stuck together in a way that like people can't even make it make sense, right?
SPEAKER_00:But but when we look at you know what our government's doing, and even the Department of Homeland Security months ago triggered the anti-deficiency act by overgoing overshooting their budget. So that they're just spending all this money. The what the White House has, you know,$200 million ballroom being planned, it's being you know, gold plated and stuff like that. They have money for all these things, they just don't want to give it to the people. And that's what's disgusting. And that that like that's why I am 100% for shutting it down. Like, we need a big change now. Uh we can't allow them to just keep funding the ice agents that are stealing people off the streets. That they're rolling in vans now, just kidnapping people and snatching them quickly in these protests. Um plain clothes, plain card. Yeah, that's dangerous. If you if you want to do that shit, well, you're not getting a paycheck. Yeah, sorry, buddy. But like I didn't get a paycheck for a couple months during the one of the you know the sequestrations before. Like, I've been there.
SPEAKER_02:ICE agents would never get furloughed. What are you talking about? They'll they'll take people from other jobs and be like, hey, you don't have to take next week off if you want to go down and kick doors for ice. No kidding. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm not joking. That that'll be an option. They'll be like, hey, you can take the next month off, or you can report to the ice detention facility and watch inmates, you know.
SPEAKER_00:I mean that's for real, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Like somebody's getting that letter, that email today. Needs of the service, right? Yeah, service before service. Basically, yeah, that's it. They're just telling that to the civilians instead. So yeah. Uh well, let's wrap up on a veteran topic that we, you know, will I know we're running long on this episode, but there's a lot to talk about. Uh yeah, we're good right now. So the put hands-on recruits topic. Oh, yeah. We're back to Pete Hexeth and talking to the generals, which none of these dudes have almost anything to do with that. Um, guys or gals. But uh the idea that basic training once upon a time was much more physical, much more frightening, and from a mental perspective of like never knowing what was going on, you know. And if somebody told you to go somewhere and you were by yourself, you were worried that maybe something bad was gonna happen, right? Like, oh no, they're tricking me into getting my my ass beat, right?
SPEAKER_00:You know. So uh uh I got a good story on that. My uh I had a friend in the Marines uh back in Vietnam, so he was drafted. And uh his daytime drill sergeant told him that they could bit burn the midnight oil and write letters underneath their blankets, like write letters home, but didn't pass that on to the nighttime drill sergeant. Yeah, probably did. They probably you know, but my friend was yeah, it's a good setup, yeah. Yeah, yeah. My friend was the only one that did this, took advantage of it. Took advantage of it. So nighttime drill sergeant comes in, rips the blanket off, and he snaps up to attention. Dude knocks him out. Yeah, knocks him over cleaned him out, yeah. He woke up to Revele playing, yeah. And you know, a few hours later, yeah, a few hours later, and everybody rushed into the bathroom, and so he wiped the blood off his face, and he's like, I was out there by the end of it. Yeah, and he's like that that was the the norm. That that was you know what they were expecting.
SPEAKER_02:And so that's what Pete Heggseth won't was saying we can go back to that, right? And man, you know, I like the sentiment of hard and scary, um, but the point that you just made or the story that you shared makes the point is um that era that Hollywood romanticizes that older gentlemen talk about was from the draft era from World War II through Vietnam, where there were a lot of people in the military that did not uh you know volunteer. They they were told by to duty of country you have to go. The discipline um of a person who does not volunteer and doesn't want to be there, right, and is basically go to war or go to jail kind of you know deal. Of course, those people are going to be much, much harder to train and coerce, if you will, into getting the right outcomes, right? That stopped in 1976 or something. When did the draft like so since 1976, it's been an all volunteer force. Everybody, now there's some draftees that stayed in forever, and they were the odd duck that somehow managed to get drafted in and then spent 25 years in the military. Yeah, and those folks retired in the 90s, right? Like they've been gone, right? And so there's nobody culturally that remembers that time or that has any relationship to getting beat up in basic training, right? It's it's it's this weird romantic concept that old people have, right? I say old veterans have about, well, this it was tougher, and that's always a thing in the military. Well, what I went through was tougher than what you went through. Oh, yeah. So I'm tough and you're you're a beard, you know, like just downgrade you, you know, inside our own veteran circles. That's what happens, right? And so he's you know, Heg Seth is saying, let's go back to that era where people can get beat up and be scared about basic training. That doesn't work when the formula includes an all-volunteer force, right? Because for you know, for every five people that ran away from boot camp because they were getting beat up, and that's what happened is they just deserted, right? They could recruit 50 more with a draft letter. Yeah, it wasn't a problem to backfill those people that said, I don't have to be here, right? Like, I'd rather run away and be a criminal than get beat up again, right? That's not who's in the military now at all. They volunteered to be there. So physical uh contact abuse, correction, whatever you want to call it, wall-to-wall counseling, right? Like it doesn't matter. That is not congr congruent, if you will, with uh an all-volunteer force that is passionately seeking training and the the possibility to serve.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Uh another thing I think that is lost on people that didn't go through the draft error era uh is the the fear that you had on draft nights. You know, when when people would sit down with and watch the news and see what numbers got called. Yeah. You know, I I had one uncle uh get drafted into the Marines and uh died in 6 either no, I think it was late 68, 69, something like that. But but he died after the peace accords broke down, after like our own folks shut down the peace accords, yeah, um and you know the the South Vietnamese pulled out, uh you know, he he he got killed in in action. Um my other next closest oldest uncle, his number was like 10 from getting called away. And you remember sitting down watching the news and like seeing sweating bullets right because like you start seeing like your numbers coming up and then like it's 10 away. Yeah, um, and your brother just died a couple years ago. Yeah, you know, people don't remember that, right? And people don't understand that the fear that it comes with and you know, if we start going back towards that, and you know, again, the enemies from within, and again, 50% of our, you know, we're we're 50-50 right now. So they're talking about going after a lot of us. Uh, and you're gonna people aren't gonna be joining the military, so you're gonna start having to draft folks. Um, if we start going down this path, and we're already are down this path again. This isn't something that we can say, oh, it might happen. Like, this is what we're doing now as a country. Um, we are you know marching back towards the monarchy um because Trump is still hawking 2028 merchandise in the White House, uh, you know, sending them to political opponents and trying to taunt people with it.
SPEAKER_02:And like this isn't let's wrap up on the friggin' Hakeem Jeffries meme. Oh my god, let's wrap up on that, yeah. And the double down. So I'll tell the story, I'll tell the story so people know why I'm excited. Um, I saw the first meme, uh, but I didn't know about the double down until, of course, much later on. But uh Trump is really off the rails with Truth Social and just retweeting things. Like it's sort of I think it's a game, it's kind of like a sweepstakes. If I can put something goofy on Truth Social with my own personal account, maybe I'll go get one. So see if I can win this prize, right? Like I want to win this prize. Uh, if I say something goofy enough that just is the right flavor of ice cream today that Trump wants to eat, he'll retweet me, right? He'll retweet me. And then like I'm on every news outlet and every you know, webpage is talking about it and everything, right? Like my goofy little AI video that I just made went from two hours ago, I just made it to this evening, it's on CNN, right? Like, I want to win that prize, right? And so who knows if the people that are creating this crap are even genuine in what they're creating or if they're like going fishing and just like, can I land a big one, you know? Yeah, and so the video was Schumer saying something about how it's terrible. There, it's a fake AI video. They're standing out on like a podium outside of the Capitol, and Schumer saying, Oh, it's terrible to be a Democrat. And then beside Schumer is Hakeem Jeffries, these are the leader of the Senate and the House on the Democrat side, and he's wearing a sombrero with a cartoon mustache. And I understood that what they were trying to say was Democrats, he's trying to basically say, Hey, all you Latinos, we we failed you, which doesn't make any sense. But he didn't say any of this. This the dumb AI video made this up, right? All right, that's offensive. That's maybe it's funny, maybe it's not. It's goofy, and why did the president do that? Like, I can laugh at it from that perspective of like, oh my gosh, that this dude's the president. Yeah, and he's spending his time retweeting goofy cartoons. I can't even laugh at that. So, you know, like, but here's what the part that's funny, because that part was maybe not so funny. The double down is that Hakeem Jeffrey said they said something about like this is just silly, and you know, I can't believe, you know, this is so far below the office of the president, I can't believe we're talking about this, right? So then somebody took that video and put Donald Trump as the as a mariachi band where every person in the mariachi band was Donald Trump, right? And then Hakeem Jeffrey's hat and mustache was even more goofy, and it made no sense. Yeah, it was so.
SPEAKER_00:But it goes around, and like you said, it's gonna be seen by millions of people. Uh, a few months ago, a friend of mine, uh a Mexican friend of mine, sent me a video of President Trump, like an AI video of cartoonish him as like a robot mech warrior kicking down the border and smashing and just slaughtering you know brown people, and sh and he's like, Oh, lol. No, man, I can't even laugh at this shit because that's what they want to do. Well, when when they when they're degrading people like this, like it's all intentional and it's all a part of this propaganda machine that is just disgusting to see how many people are just oh, you know, boys will be boys, presidents will be presidents, that's like our bar is that low now that that this is how we behave all because of Kamala's laugh. Great job, guys. Yeah, great fucking choice. We made it 249 years, yeah, and we're a laugh turned us off. Cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. See, I was trying to land on the happy part of this. That the cartoon tweets are funny, right? The cartoon tweets are funny, right? Never mind that they're from the free leader of the free world, right? Like he's got time to retweet cartoons.
SPEAKER_01:Oh god, but yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So I like Donald Trump as a mariachi band. Let's just there we go. That's what I want to end on. Is I loved it. And I just loved it. And he must like it too.
SPEAKER_00:If you get running off into the Sun's opposite mariachi guy, I'm all for it. Just stop sitting in the world. I love it. I want him, I want that's what I want to see more of. So well, that's what we got for this week on Left Face. Uh, tune in next week. We'll have more of me bitching and complaining. Yeah. Thanks, everybody.
