Top Generals Raise Alarm Over Trump and Hegseth

0:00Ben Meiselas:Top military generals and admirals past and present are warning that Hegseth and Trump are destroying and have destroyed our once great military in the past 24 hours. Take a look at some of these headlines leaking out from the inside of the Pentagon and from the inside of our top military layers. Hegseth's culture war fixation disrupting army progress, sources say. Hegseth extends Mideast deployments into 2027, escalating strain on troops. Trump has told aides privately he believes his strategy will eventually work as 50 ,000 troops remain on hand to give him options. Meanwhile, our top admirals and generals all gave a do not concur in the Secretary of Defense order books in response to that plan.

1:00Ben Meiselas:So what did Hegseth and Donald Trump do yesterday? Oh, yeah. The Pentagon has now cut off access to classified information amid Iran war concerns. Documents associated with the Secretary of Defense order books that were once on a classified portal were deleted and removed from the internal Pentagon web portal after the Washington Post report. This is what three people have now leaked to the Washington Post. Meanwhile, a top Republican senator who previously voted to confirm Pete Hegseth has now said, once again, Hegseth needs to go. Hegseth is incompetent. Hegseth can't lead. And Hegseth is destroying our military.

1:49Ben Meiselas:All the while, Pete Hegseth is posting photos of high school students in Canada who are cadets, not actually in the Canadian military, in the summer cadet program. And Hegseth is shaming them and mocking the children, the kids. This is what the U.S. Secretary of Defense is doing, a vile and despicable piece of trash. Meanwhile, Axios reports Pentagon turmoil deepens as Hegseth consolidates control. This, of course, follows Dan Driscoll, the former army secretary, resigning from his position. And we now know a lot of information about that resignation that Driscoll met with Donald Trump and said, it's me or Hegseth.

2:42Ben Meiselas:And Hegseth is destroying the military. We're out of ammunition. He's fired our top military leaders, our top generals and our admirals, and we are screwed. And Trump's like, yeah, I want exit. Okay. That's who I'm going to go with. And according to some sources, some sources, Donald Trump just wanted to speak with Driscoll about the golden ballroom and how much Xi Jinping is going to love the golden ballroom and how much Putin will love the golden ballroom. And isn't that grand? And Driscoll's like, I'm getting the hell out of here. Axios reporting this summary of events. Hegseth has fired or forced out senior officers across nearly every service, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Navy's top admiral, and the Army Chief of Staff.

3:33Ben Meiselas:The Washington Post counts more than two dozen top officers dismissed under Hegseth, who has remade nearly the entire Joint Chiefs. Only the Marine Corps and Space Force chiefs he inherited are still serving. The New York Times reports that Hegseth has also personally removed at least 45 officers from promotion lists this year, an extraordinary intervention in a system traditionally insulated from political leadership. NBC reports Tuesday that Hegseth has blocked more promotions in recent weeks, including more than a dozen black, Hispanic, or female officers across the services because Hegseth has demonstrated that he is a very racist individual and people knew this about him before.

4:21Ben Meiselas:He is refusing to promote people in our military who are qualified simply because they are black, they are Hispanic, and they are women. What a vile scumbag loser Hegseth is. Now, Now, the Republican senator who made posts yesterday about how Hegseth needs to go was the Republican senator who cast the decisive vote confirming Hegseth. Republican senator over here, Tom Tillis, ripping Hegseth and saying, dude, you confirm the guy. It's because of you, Tillis, your legacy will be you contributed to the destruction of the United States military by putting this lowlife, this scumbag loser in charge of the Defense Department.

5:14Ben Meiselas:This was a guy, Hegseth, who couldn't run a nonprofit, a small veterans nonprofit. He ran, he mismanaged that. And you're going to put him in, by the way, all the other accusations against him. You're going to put this guy in charge. This is what Tom Tillis, Republican and Senator had to say yesterday. Here, play this clip. Pete Excess has demonstrated to me he doesn't have the confidence to run a large, complex organization. And we always need a highly confident, highly focused, unselfish leader of the Department of Defense. I'll show you more in a bit about what other members of Congress are saying about how Tillis needs to go.

5:54Ben Meiselas:But this was the story by the Washington Post with high-level leaks from top military officials. Documents associated with the Secretary of Defense order books, the SDOBs, were removed from an internal web portal on the secret Internet protocol router network, the Cybernet. Three people familiar with the matter told Dan and Alex Horton, who they've been doing some great reporting. The Washington Post defense reporters and the other top defense reporters actually do a very stellar job. and they were pushed out of the Pentagon by Hegseth. Hegseth has now referred to all of the surrounding area around him as a SCIF, a sensitive compartmented information facility, so that he can just say everything around me is classified so the press can't get near me.

6:46Ben Meiselas:He hasn't held a brief for months and months and months, hasn't addressed anything about the catastrophic war. And instead, we also learn that the Pentagon has hired all of these MAGA influencers on X who masquerade as MAGA influencers, but they are feds. Yeah, the people who accused others of the deep state turns out they're the deep state. A lot of these MAGA X influencers work for the Pentagon. They're literally feds hired by Hegseth to spew regime propaganda. Heck, 1984 Orwellian stuff isn't that bad. It was bad, but not that bad. Take a look at this Washington Post article. They go on and report about how the SDOB, the Secretary of Defense Order Book, is kept on this cyber net portal, as it's called.

7:43Ben Meiselas:And there is access to this portal by certain people who have the right types of classification credentials. after the Washington Post reported how some of the top commanders did a do not concur with Hegsitt's war plans for 2027. Hegsitt basically removed the Cybernet portal link to this SDOB report and the associated documents. And they are now hiding that from the American people. how utterly sick. That's how thin skinned he is that they're deleting the portal. They delete the portal. Just get rid of the information, Hegseth. Run, Hegseth, you freaking loser, you. Then we have a Republican Congress member, Bacon, Don Bacon, who was in the military, had a fairly high ranking position in the military.

8:37Ben Meiselas:He agrees with Tom Tillis that Hegseth's got to go play this clip. So, Congressman, do you agree with your GOP colleague in the Senate, Tom Tillis, who, as we mentioned tonight, is calling on President Trump to replace Pete Hegseth, saying on social media, quote, I have never witnessed a more inept management of the brave men and women of who serve our country. Of course, you served your country as well. Do you agree with that? I agree with the sentiments of Senator Tillis. I hate to tell the president who he should hire and fire. I don't know if it's really my role, but I would say this. I would not he would not be on my team.

9:12I think he is he has not been a very good leader in many in many ways. So I agree with the sentiments of Senator Tillis and I wouldn't hire him myself. He would not be on my team. You, of course, served. You reached the rank of brigadier general. You did four tours in the Middle East. So when you say see that the secretary of defense disparaging a Canadian cadet, a teenager, we should note, taking part in a summer training camp and her instructor on social media, posting a photo of two women. You see them there at a moment of what's clearly great pride for them. Is that beneath the dignity of the office, as Canada's defense minister said?

9:52It is. It's lowbrow. I think it's unprofessional. And I'd like to think that our leadership representing us in the Pentagon and in the White House, we should be better than that. And I thought it was demeaning and uncalled for. As you know, there were questions about Hegseth during confirmation hearings, quite hard questions. And yet, Republican senators confirmed him. Should they have seen this coming? I think so. I told a few senators that I would vote no. And I was told by some, and I'll keep them nameless, Don, you're not under all the pressure that we're under to vote for. But I said, I've been under a lot of other pressure and other bills.

10:30I still vote no or vote by conscience. I felt like he was trouble from the beginning. And then right after he got confirmed, then we had the signal gate. And what bothered me there, he put classified information on an unclassified phone in an unclassified application, gets caught, and instead of just saying, you know, I was wrong, I shouldn't have done it, he gets mad at the reporter. And I expect leaders to take responsibility when they fail and they make a mistake. None of us are perfect, but when you fail, you own up to it and say, I was wrong and it won't happen again. And I heard somebody that acted more like my teenagers when they're 30 and 40 now.

11:10But when they were teenagers, just deny and accuse somebody else of being at fault. I didn't like it. I thought it was wrong.

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13:12And we all got along. That's that's shifting a lot. And there are a lot of people that are seeing Hegseth as a guy focused on these shallow things that don't matter. Yeah, fine. You know, maybe do a video or two occasionally where you're doing some pull ups or push ups to encourage good health among the troops. But when that becomes the obsession, and I'll tell you, I also know bad commanders, and bad commanders are the ones that always end up reverting back to focusing on things like, did you shave close enough? What does your uniform look like? And they use the old adage of, if we can't trust you to get your uniform right, how can we trust you to fly an$8 million plane?

13:46Always bad commanders that do that. And to put on Twitter, you know, kids, kids that have a desire to some level to serve in the Canadian military and shame them to an entire country is not just punching down. It is the most beta male guy who is scared to death of his own shadow thing I've ever seen. And nobody can defend that. It's disgusting. And he needs to apologize for it.

14:12Ben Meiselas:But Donald Trump says it's all roses, all peachy. Donald Trump says he says. Hegseth has done an amazing job. This is what Donald Trump said yesterday. He invited a lot of Republicans from swing districts for this midterm rally. This was part of the midterm rally. And here's what Donald Trump said yesterday in front of everybody. Play this clip. Trouble, right, Pete? You did a good job last night in Iran, by the way. You knocked the hell out of him. Very good. We're winning. We're winning that one very big, by the way, in case you haven't noticed. Now, here's the message from Republican Senator Tom Tillis.

14:47Ben Meiselas:I thank Army Secretary Dan Driscoll for his leadership to our army and service to our country. Dan was the right man at the right moment to lead our soldiers and army civilians. Our understanding and assumptions of warfare are being challenged in places like Ukraine and Iran. And Dan understands the old way of doing business no longer applies. He and General George began a transformative period of innovation in how we array our forces and equip our soldiers. He challenged our legacy approach to manning and procurement. Most of all, he cared deeply about the men and women in our army formations and quickly earned their respect.

15:26Ben Meiselas:If we had a secretary of defense who maintained the same priorities and forward thinking, he would be fighting to retain talented leaders like Dan Driscoll and the many flag officers he has forced into retirement. Instead, he is creating a leadership void at the top of our military ranks. I served on the Senate Armed Services for eight years and as chair or ranking member of the personnel and readiness subcommittee. I have never witnessed more inept management of the brave men and women who serve our country. He is intimidated by competence and retreats to ginning up culture wars instead of soberly.

16:07Ben Meiselas:These are all words that he picked ginning up culture wars instead of soberly attending to the vital work of our national defense and the health and well-being of our fighting force ginning up soberly. You get what he's saying there. I urge the president to find a new leader at the Pentagon who will retain and empower our military talent rather than diminish it. Dude, you were the deciding vote, bud. You allowed Hegseth to get into power. Now you want a mulligan. Now you want an oopsies. Meanwhile, CNN's reporting that in addition to Hegseth now deleting all of the files on Cybernet because the SDOB got out and said that the top generals and admirals freaking hate the guy and think he's got loser plans.

16:59Ben Meiselas:Hegseth's culture war fixation is disrupting the army progress. Top military sources are indeed telling CNN the following. In the aftermath of the resignation of Dan Driscoll, army secretary, multiple sources told CNN. They believe defense secretary Hegseth is damaging the army's efforts to adapt to the modern battlefield as he focuses on culture wars and prioritizing his own image of the American warfighter and pushes out leaders who don't align with his vision. In submitting his resignation, a source familiar said Driscoll brought up concerns with the administration surrounding the army transformation and readiness and Hegseth blocking those efforts, specifically by firing top generals who were responsible.

17:49Ben Meiselas:The generals like Randy George, Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, his wife, Patty, were beloved in the United States military. George was perhaps the most well-respected, decorated, active duty service member, four-star general there was. Donahue, they got rid of him. CQ Brown Jr. Driscoll announced Tuesday evening would be his last day. Multiple sources told CNN they agree with the concerns, Driscoll raised, that Hegseth is damaging the army's efforts to modernize and adapt to the 21st century battlefield environment where drone warfare is becoming increasingly important by firing or pushing out leaders who are spearheading those efforts.

18:35Ben Meiselas:It's critical that you have key leaders that understand technology and have the temperament to deal with industry and turn that into the formation. A former senior army official said when you fire these guys for arbitrary reasons, it creates confusions and devoid. The army is enduring turbulence right now. Senior U.S. military officials have privately acknowledged that they have come under what could be characterized as political pressure during Hegseth's tenure, particularly when he has prioritized culture war issues and voiced concerns about the secretary's recent efforts to fire or push out uniformed and civilian leaders.

19:18Ben Meiselas:A defense official in Europe told CNN that even though Hegseth has spoken about technology reform and even previously released guidance on unmanned systems, in practice, they see a secretary in Pentagon leadership more focused on culture issues than on modernization. That brings me to the Wall Street Journal article, Hegseth extends Middle East deployments into 2027, escalating the strain on troops. It talks about this open-ended military strategy that Donald Trump and Hegseth want to have options in the war, but the deployment of 19 warships, air defense units, fighter squadrons, and power troopers across the region is straining service members and their families and creating a maintenance backlog that could take years to unwind.

20:12Ben Meiselas:The people said not to mention that our logistics in the Middle East, in Bahrain and other areas have been destroyed by Iran. That leaves the main logistical hub that's not even close to where our aircraft carriers are in the Middle East. In Diego Garcia, that logistical breakdown is one of the reasons why our brave sailors and Marines aboard the aircraft carriers and in the neighboring ships, the protective ships that are part of the group, why they're not getting basic food and nutrition and supplies and mail and other things that their family is sending them as well. And then you saw the USS Abraham Lincoln, the condition it was in, eh, when it headed to Thailand.

20:59Ben Meiselas:It just arrived in Thailand. No doubt you have Putin and Xi having their team and having lots of people in Thailand as our service members are going there. I could assure you that that's probably what's going down there as well. And you see the condition of our ship? Ain't looking too good. This is, I mean, and you can say, well, Ben, that's because it was deployed for 286 days. I know, it shouldn't be deployed for 286 days. It should be going back to, there should be plans and there should be places where it goes to dock and then goes back, but okay. There you have it, everybody. Let me know what you think.

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