Top Admiral Warns US Troops on Trump’s Behavior

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2:52Ben Meiselas:The most decorated Navy Admiral is warning our troops about Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth. Four-star retired Navy Admiral and Navy SEAL William McRaven just penned an incredible op-ed where he calls out Hegseth, he calls out Trump for their firing of top four-star generals, admirals, and military leaders who Admiral McRaven knew to be some of the most honorable and top military tacticians and military leaders that were serving today. Admiral McRaven is warning our troops, is warning our country that Donald Trump and Hegsitt's reckless behavior are putting us all in peril. McRaven would know he's the Navy SEAL four-star admiral who led the mission to capture and kill bin Laden.

3:54Ben Meiselas:I want to read for you what he said, and then I want to remind you of the people who Donald Trump and Hegsitt have been firing over the past few months And over the past year and a half, again, some of our most distinguished members of the military, because Trump and Hegseth do not like qualified people. And a lot of these terminations, let's just call it out what it is, are based on very, very racist criteria because Hegseth and Trump are racists. Here's what Jennifer Griffin says. From the Navy SEAL officer who planned and executed the bin Laden raid, here's what he has to say. In recent months, President Trump, upon the advice from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, has relieved or forced into retirement some of the finest officers that have ever served our nation.

4:48Ben Meiselas:I have personally worked with some of these great people. I have personally worked with most of them in combat. And this week, in an egregious decision, the President forced General Chris Donahue to step down from his position in command of U.S. Army Europe. Donahue is without question one of the most brilliant officers I know. He is strategically focused, tactically aggressive, personally courageous, exceptionally thoughtful in his planning and execution, and compassionate with his troops. He has the respect of every man and woman who ever served with him. And you could put me on top of that list.

5:33Ben Meiselas:Here's the article from retired four-star Admiral William McRaven. Americans deserve answers from Hegseth. The president and his secretary of defense have a right to remove officers, but also an obligation to explain their actions. And McRaven goes into the history about other presidents and defense secretaries who have removed top military leaders. But in all cases, except now, going back to World War II, Cold War, war in Iraq, you name it, when there were major terminations of top military leaders and it was never a mass firing like we have right now or a mass purge like we have right now, the president and the defense secretary would answer these questions to the American people.

6:26Ben Meiselas:They would be transparent about it. Here's what McRaven says. Every president and secretary of defense has the right and moreover the responsibility to remove officers who are failing to meet the high standards expected of senior leaders. But when crucial decisions regarding the professionalism, effectiveness, or morale of the military are made, the people and their duly elected representatives have a right to know why these decisions were made. In recent months, Trump, upon the advice of Hegseth, has relieved or forced into retirement some of the finest officers that I have ever served with or that have ever served in this nation.

7:04Ben Meiselas:I have personally worked with most of them in combat. I can tell you from experience that Generals C.Q. Brown, he's the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Randy George, the former Army Chief of Staff who was just fired, beloved Jim Mingus, J.P. McGee, Dave Hodney, Jim Slife, and Joe Berger and Admirals Lisa Franchetti and Jamie Sands were war fighters through and through. This week, in an egregious decision, the president forced General Donahue to step down from his position in command of U.S. Army Europe. He goes in and talks about Donahue's background, which I just explained. Then McRaven explains, what is particularly concerning about these firings is the effect that dismissals will have on the officer ranks.

7:53Ben Meiselas:Throughout my time as a senior officer, I never hesitated to provide my best military advice to the secretary or president, even when that advice ran contrary to their stated position. Never once did I fear that by providing my advice, I would be fired or asked to retire early. Not only was it my obligation to be forthcoming, but it was also the expectation of those leaders that I would be brutally candid. Hopefully, that level of honest engagement kept the Secretary and the President from making poor military decisions. However, these recent firings raise real risks that senior officers will be overly cautious about providing their best advice and therefore that the chance for military miscalculation will grow dramatically.

8:41Ben Meiselas:Pause there. That's exactly what we've seen in this catastrophic and unlawful war in Iran. That's exactly what we are seeing as the Trump regime engages in all of these war crimes, blowing up these fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela or in the Pacific. That is exactly what we're seeing as America's military and our security umbrellas that we used to provide abroad have utterly collapsed. As McRaven goes on to say, if Secretary Hegseth is trying to revive the, quote, warrior ethos and restore trust in our military, as he has said, then the unplanned departure of the senior leaders will do just the opposite and may leave the president and the secretary without experienced voices they need to make the best military decisions.

9:32Ben Meiselas:Members of Congress should demand answers. The American people should demand answers. The future of our national security depends on it. But I would just say this with McRaven. That future is dead. And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, and perhaps McRaven is more optimistic, but it's done. It is over. The catastrophic, irreparable harm has been done because Donald Trump and Hegseth, as takes of prances around Cuba, cosplaying this warrior ethos crap, they have destroyed the credibility of the United States military for generations and generations. It's irreparable. I don't know. Maybe one day it could, I don't know.

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11:44Ben Meiselas:See terms and conditions for the Sudden prepaid card, Sudden debit flex card, and Bancorp debit FlexCard, Cash App Green Features, Savings, Direct Deposit, Roundups, Overdraft Coverage, and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. Brand. Visit cash.app slash legal slash podcast for full disclosures. And again, I want to remind you of just some of these terminations, just because we've been covering it all here. The latest being General Chris, and they're all framed as, oh, these people were retired or they're taking early retirement. I mean, people believe General Chris Donahue, who's also the last soldier to leave Afghanistan in 2021, you know, that night vision photo, he was the last to leave.

12:22Ben Meiselas:By the way, he wasn't even responsible for the security at the Ahmed Karzai airport. He showed up, stabilized the situation, was the last to leave. I mean, this guy, his entire career was A plus everything. And he's the exact qualified guy that Trump and Hegseth won out because Trump and Hegseth think they know everything when they're the dumbest freaking people out there. And again, you have Donahue being forced out. He should have been the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, not Dan Cain. It should have been CQ Brown, but Donahue was forced out. I mean, Donahue's the most beloved guy. I mean, y 'all know, I know we have a lot of people from the military.

13:00Ben Meiselas:Y 'all, Donahue, I'll tell you, it was a close, who was the most beloved? Donahue or Randy George, right? General Randy George, the former U.S. Army Chief of Staff, who was forced out as well. And as he left, he told his troops, I know you'll stay laser focused on the mission and cut through the bureaucracy to get our warfighters what they need, he wrote in his departure letter. Randy George and his wife were like the staples of the United States military. So who was more popular, Donoghue or Randy George? It was very close, but it was also David Hodney, retired general, former Army Ranger, who leads the Army Transformation and Training Command.

13:41Ben Meiselas:You had Major General William Green, Jr., the chief of the Army's Chaplain Corps. Hegseth and his team were getting rid of all these people. The Secretary of Army, they got rid of Dan Driscoll. I mean, they fired everybody. CQ Brown was one of the first to go, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Let's just be real. They fired him because he was black and they brought in an unqualified white guy in Dan Kane who had to get a waiver because he didn't have the requisite military experience. That's just the reality. They fired all of the top JAG lawyers. They forced out Alvin Holsey. Remember Alvin Holsey, who was the head of Southcom?

14:19Ben Meiselas:And then they replaced him with a less qualified guy, General Francis Donovan, to carry out all of the executions of the fishing boats and blowing up all the fishing boats. I want to go back to McRaven for a moment here and share with you what McRaven had said after Randy George was fired. And here's how McRaven was talking about the purges that were taking place at that period of time. Here, retired Admiral McRaven talks about the Iran War and the Pentagon purges. Play this clip. I am concerned, of course, in the last year, the president has either fired or asked to retire somewhere around the neighborhood of 30 general officers.

14:57This has a cascading effect on the morale of the senior officers, not so much the junior officers and the junior enlisted, but it does have an impact on the senior officers. And I am concerned that it puts them in a position where they may be afraid to speak truth to power. You have an obligation as a military officer to always give your best military advice, Not your best political advice, not what you think the president or the secretary wants to hear, but your best military advice. And we want to make sure that this purge, if you will, doesn't impact that.

15:29Ben Meiselas:Here he is speaking with the Carnegie endowment about from a military perspective, the war with Iran demonstrates how the nature of power has changed. Play this clip. I think what this war has taught us in a very interesting way, and we put the humanitarian tragedy aside from a purely military standpoint, it's a very interesting look at the nature of power today. I mean, here we have the most powerful military in the world, certainly the most powerful navy in the world. And yet asymmetric warfare, the Iranians ability to target soft targets along the Gulf, their ability to, you know, to kind of attack us constantly at night, keeping us a little bit off guard, their ability to close the Straits of Hormuz.

16:15it shows that, hey, all this military power, when you have something like the Straits of Hormuz, when you have a country that is prepared to use asymmetric warfare, that a lot of that military power is just not going to be as effective as you want it to be. So where are we now? Well, we're in a very difficult place right now. I have been saying for months now that the only opportunity that the president had to kind of leave, you know, this conflict with a narrative that might work for him is to, you know, tell the Iranians, look, we'll lift the blockade if you'll open the straits and then we will sit down.

16:52Ben Meiselas:And here was McRaven. He recently was on the You Hewitt show and he talked about the importance of character as well. I'll share this with you right here. I mean, Eisenhower's first inaugural address really just, you know, resonated with me. The quote you pull on that I leaned on is he proclaimed America's, quote, faith in the desolate dignity of man and the values that form this great republic, freedom, equality of the rule law and the power of the people. And you ended the book by saying we need to be able to proudly say I'm an American. You know, the polling's not so good on that right now, Admiral.

17:28Does that alarm you? Yeah, of course it does. But the whole reason I wrote the book, Hugh, was to let other Americans know that, look, we are really good people.

17:39Ben Meiselas:And just to remind you of McRaven, this was that famous 2014 speech that he gave at the University of Texas. 10 lessons from 36 years as a Navy SEAL. I mean, this is the kind of guy and the person of character that the Trump regime hates right here. Let me show this to you so you can see for yourself. Let's play this clip. But if you'll humor this old sailor for just a moment, I have a few suggestions that might help you on your way to a better world. And while these lessons were learned during my time in the military, I can assure you that it matters not whether you ever served a day in uniform.

18:18It matters not your gender, your ethnic or religious background, your orientation or your social status. Our struggles in this world are similar and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward changing ourselves and changing the world around us will apply equally to all. I've been a Navy SEAL for 36 years but it all began when I left UT for basic SEAL training in Coronado, California. Basic SEAL training is six months of long torturous runs in the soft sand, midnight swims in the cold water off San Diego, obstacle courses, unending calisthenics, days without sleep and always being cold, wet, and miserable.

18:57It is six months of being constantly harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL. But the training also seeks to find those students who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure, and hardships. To me basic SEAL training was a lifetime of challenges crammed into six months. So here are the 10 lessons I learned from basic SEAL training that hopefully will be of value to you as you move forward in life.

19:33Ben Meiselas:And I'll just share this with you again. Here's a video of General Donahue in an interview he recently gave. So you can see his kind of worldview and why it's so obvious that he was despised by uh, Hegseth and Trump, like very, again, Trump, Hegseth, just very low character people here play this clip. That they know, Hey, this is the environment we want to create. And this is why you have to change. Um, and then the process to actually do it, which is hugely important, right? You can go out and have the best culture in the world and go out and make temporary changes, but if you don't get it into the process, it doesn't matter.

20:10Ben Meiselas:You know, uh, right now we're developing the Eastern flank deterrence line, which we'll talk about. But if you don't put Put that into a process where people actually buy the things that you have to do for this. You can have the greatest plan, the greatest vision, we're doing all kinds of awesome, unique stuff we've never done before, but you actually have to put things into the ground. People actually have to train and they have to believe and have faith that that's going to work in combat. I want to talk about the process because, again, going back to Bragg, at the two-star level. Everybody's there at the division.

20:47Everybody's there in your footprint. Then you go up to 18th Airborne Corps. Most people are there, but now you've got some core separates that aren't necessarily on BRAG. But now you're here in Europe, you've got folks everywhere. So how do you communicate that why, that vision when you have a dispersed team like the one you're leading right now? Yeah, I think, well, the first thing, even at 18th Airborne Corps, the vast majority was out.

21:14Ben Meiselas:I think the number one thing is you have to trust your subordinates. Right there you have it. Let me know what you think. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. Thanks for watching, everybody. Really appreciate you watching. Help us get to 7 million. New Midas merch. Head to store.midastouch.com today and get yourself the best pro-democracy gear and show your support. That's store.midastouch.com.