What the USS Lincoln Crisis Reveals About the U.S. Military

- You're listening to American Power. I'm your host, Nat Towson,

“Standup comedian, writer, speech writer,”

many other kinds of writer, and most likely to lead to a stable life and a future podcast host.

I'm joined as always by my panel of experts

our expert on foreign policy on the military. Chad Scott, Chad, how is it going? - It's going well. What an exhausting week. It's already been with this administration.

It's my Tuesday. - It's going well. I'm exhausted. And joining us to discuss oil, renewable energy, all things energy.

- You know him is Mr. Global, Matt Randolph, Matt, how are you? - How are you? - Well, I'm here to remind Chad that it's Monday. So, oh crap, it is Monday.

- It's been an exhausting day. You mean, can't, damn.

“- I did catch that, but it's my job to get through the intro.”

- It is Monday. - It has been an exhausting day. - It comes out on Wednesday, but we are recording it on Monday. So if anything happens on Tuesday

that it sounds like we should know about it at the time of this recording, that's not on us. It's on Chad. - Chad. - I know some of it.

- Chad is clearly on some of it. - But Matt and I are in the present. - It's Tuesday here. - It's two, oh, is that one of those things how some states don't do daily saving?

- Yeah, right. - I don't just as literally on. - Well, we have as Chad said, had an exhausting week so far on Monday evening as we are recording this with Trump threatening

to bomb Oman and many other top of line stories, but we are going to talk a little bit upfront about the crisis aboard the USS Lincoln for those who don't know the conditions for Naval,

for the, sorry, finally, I'm stumbling over that.

For those who don't know, the conditions aboard the USS Lincoln have been rapidly deteriorating and to the point where their families have reached out to the government and Trump has of course responded and pathically and solved the problem quickly

and with understanding and regret, Chad, could you expound on that a little bit? - Except, it's none of that. - On the bad part of the beginning, I said it's mostly true, right?

- That's true, no, yeah, it's none of the, it's none of the care that Trump or Higgs have had, they've been atrocious, but you're right, it's been a pretty dire, I wouldn't say dire, that sounds like they're sinking or something,

but it's been a pretty terrible situation as these sailors.

Basically, they've been at sea underway

for about 260 days, which for carriers quite long. Within that timeframe, they had 200 days where they didn't see a port. That is unheard of, that is exceptionally crazy in my mind, and I understand, I'm army,

but I do know several sailors that have talked about how this is unprecedented in the history of the Navy to have an aircraft carrier like this be underway, because it's just a morale problem. There's other things like supplies,

which those ships can be supplied at sea, but it's not as efficient, there's problems that come with it,

“and so that's why we've heard things like,”

they've had, quote unquote, "gray meat." And one sailor took a photo of his train, it was like a tortilla and some beef, and that's all they had for dinner. And it's brought up a problem from the families.

They're like, what's going on? Why are our sailors calling us and reaching back out to us and saying, this is terrible conditions? And aside from the problems themselves, this is a bigger leadership story in my book.

Now, granted, Hexeth and Trump have reacted. The Abraham Lincoln is coming back to the US as we speak. They've relieved it, they brought the George B. Bush out of, or the George A. B. Bush. I've been one of the Bushes, out of the South-China Sea,

leaving that completely open, the South-China Sea doesn't have a carry or a US carrier there. So that's reduced our deterrence capability in that theater, but they're now coming to moving to the Middle East around India to relieve the Lincoln.

The reason I say this is the bigger story here is the leadership story is, has to do with all of the things that a leader is supposed to do in the military. Now, I was a platoon leader in the 25th Infantry Division. I deployed with my platoon to Iraq.

We had roughly 48 soldiers that worked for me. And then I was a company commander in the first Infantry Division. At the time, my wife at the time was the family readiness group leader.

between the military and the families. This is something all militaries have. Whether it's the Navy, the Army, the Marine Corps. There's this person that is the go between to help the command understand the concerns of these families.

And I can tell you, commanders in all branches of sort of this take this very, very seriously, complaints from families. And I cannot, I can't fathom the amount of heat that I would have taken. Had one of my soldiers, had a family member, one of their wives, one of their husbands went to the media to say we didn't treat them well.

And so the fact that we're seeing multiple sailors, wives, and family members come forward, mothers come forward and say, tell the news, tell CNN that this is happening is a massive leadership failure at the top.

“But here's the thing, can we go further?”

Can I ask you a couple of top-aligned questions about how this is. Yeah, sure. How did this, well, okay, here's my main question. Why is this happening? I mean, I, you're saying it's a failure of leadership, but literally what is the event? Is this pure negligence, are they leaving them there?

Because resources are strapped, what's happening? It has to do with a mix of managing the morale, the logistics,

and the, basically, the communication back to home,

and all three of failed, essentially. So they're in a theater four. That's the first thing that has to be understood. When you're in a theater, it's much different than being in garrison, or being in port, or being even in a peacetime underway.

It's much easier to resupply, it's much easier to communicate. That being said, even in a combat zone, you have a duty to ensure your soldiers are being taken care of. And you have a duty to ensure that you've planned well enough to have the necessities, such as basics like food,

and replacement plumbing equipment, so that your, your toilets and showers work,

“and things like that, so that you can continue to conduct the mission,”

because without the sailors or the soldiers or the Marines or whoever, that mission just hasn't happened. And so what's happening is they failed to plan. They did not plan for this to happen where they had sailors underway

for 200 straight days, conducting high opt-empo, basically,

they're dealing with the Iranian threat, whether it's drones, whether it's conducting sordies into Iran. They would have been a part of this fight for 200 straight days. And that's where the failures come. It's just a failure to plan.

And then once the planning has happened, it's a failure to communicate. It's a failure to take accountability. And that's what we see out of Trump, who when he said that the family members are there. He thought I just said they're not, this is not happening.

These people are going on the news. Good reaching out on reddit on boards and saying, "This is what's going on. They're sharing photos. They have the proof.

They have the receipts." And Trump is saying, "It's not true. That's not happening." Or hexeth says, "It was essentially overblown." And that's a huge failure because it's not just a decision here.

This is a regulation. This is their violating regulation. So in the army side of the house, we have Army Regulation 600-20. And not to get to like, doorky technical on it. But within that regulation, it says that a commander,

like whether you're a company commander or a captain of a ship, or whatever, it says that all aspects of unit readiness fall to the responsibility of the commander. It also says, "Commanders must take necessary measures to quote, "promote and safeguard the morale,

"physical well-being, and general welfare "of the people under their command." Now, what's frustrating is I've seen this come up in a myriad of MAGA comment sections, where these people are talking about the USS Lincoln.

And they're saying that you got to just do whatever is necessary to accomplish the mission. No matter how much you're suffering, just do the mission. And then they'll do something stupid like comparison to World War II.

Like, "Whoa, those guys back then, they had it much harder."

First of all, understand that we've moved on from World War II.

We have developed a modern warfare capability that is better than what we did in World War II. We've evolved. So using that as the reason is just not acceptable. But also, when you talk about these types of things,

the standard is what we're going against now, not the standard 70 years ago. Taking care of troops is not something leaders do instead of accomplishing the mission. It's a part of it.

You have to do this. This is a part of accomplishing the mission. We are not fucking Russia, where we just send soldiers and sailors into the line of bullets as cannon fodder. We have a higher expectation.

So this is happening right now and they're violating their own standards. And this is something that P. Hexeth came out.

“If you remember, he awkwardly walked out”

to those that hall of generals and fly out told them, we will take care of the warfighter. And now this is what we're seeing.

and avoidable hardship.

“And if sailors are exhausted, because Iran has been attacking them all night,”

yeah, that's war.

You're going to be exhausted.

But if sailors are chronically exhausted, because the leadership is managing the work, rest schedules, is we're hearing. That's a leadership problem. If the supplies can't reach the ship,

because the tactical environment is dangerous, that's part of war. It happens. But if the supplies aren't reaching the ship, because they failed to plan,

that's a leadership problem. And I'm starting to lean more and more as I hear about this and watch and look at how

I've ran logistics as a logistics officer,

they failed to plan. And now they're making excuses. Donald Trump said that these soldiers have not been deployed and long not nearly long enough. That's a direct quote.

Hexeth dismissed it and all of it is leading to a collapse in morale. And I'll just say this one final thing, when it comes to morale within the Navy. Leadership, when it comes to the military,

not just the Navy, is understanding that a sailor's toughness, because these are tough sailors. They've been doing this for 200 straight days, they've been fighting this war. Understanding that these sailor's toughness

is a resource that you as a commander are responsible for managing, not something you're entitled to consume until there is nothing left. And that is what Hexeth is. He's leeching all of the readiness,

whether it's weapons, munitions, soldier morale. And the Abraham Lincoln is just a broader or a more specific problem within a broader issue that Hexeth has created. So I just wanted to talk about how, yes, this is happening, but it's more of a leadership problem.

It's more of these guys are ordering sailors to continue fighting, keep extending their deployments and keep demanding more from them, but also abdicating the responsibility for preserving them as not only human beings, but as a force that is supposed to be ready to fight at a moment's notice.

And it's causing us to have a real morale problem. And it's going to end up biting us in the ass in the long term. And you're saying it's not something we're supposed to tough out, like keeping them around high, keeping your shoulders taken care, as you said, is part of the mission inevitably.

And it's not, it's like you said, it's not a supply route being disrupted or something that's causing this. It's literally negligence. Absolutely, like if you can look throughout a history,

“morale is one of the key things that will lead to a collapse of an army.”

If there is, you look, you go back to the, the continental army. These were soldiers that were supposed to lose rather quickly to the British military. And they were ill-equipped, they were ill-prepared, ill-trained, but they had high morale, and they found a way to win, and eventually defeat the British military.

morale is something that the military, whether it's the navy, the army, marines, whatever, recognizes as a key pillar to maintain as a part of resilience and readiness. And what I'm seeing now is this culture war department of defense, where he takes out the standing there saying, I just want to do push-ups. I want us to be hard.

It's almost like this David Goggins mentality of stay hard, keep pushing, keep, if you get hurt, drive through the pain, and that's not the modern military. And what we're seeing now is a readiness problem because of this focus on just staying hard rather than ensuring morale is maintained. And it's going to affect us in the long run.

It's going to affect recruitment, resilience, and preparedness. And in fact, it's a lot of times when you start seeing some really terrible things like fragging take place or soldiers jumping off the sides of ships because they're so tired of the optempo and the disrespect and things like that.

So Chad, I've never been on an aircraft carrier, but I've worked in a lot of places that

required an enormous amount of focus precision timing like a very well-oiled machine where if there's any failure anywhere along that line, you have serious problems. And so this is one of my concerns with this story is because it's not knowing much about it. I do know that an aircraft carrier completely loaded with fighter jets and sailors is a very well-oiled precision-based, like highly-focused operating machine, like the whole thing together.

“And for me, I think, like when you start talking about fatigue, morale, maybe mental issues from”

200 days, like where is your risk level being on that ship with all of this happening? And all of the focus and precision that needs to go on for them to be successful in their mission.

It becomes more exponentially dangerous and actually compounds when you have high adrenaline dumps,

“that cycle of adrenaline dumped, adrenaline dump, and you're not getting a reset of some sort of”

rest. It doesn't even necessarily have to be sleep, although that's ideal. And in fact, the US Army has a standard for the amount of sleep, a soldier's supposed to get every night, even in a wartime situation. Now obviously, not every thing's perfect. You want to defend yourself, and your buddies, to your side. So you can't just, I got to sleep in the middle of this battle. But there's a reason there's a standard for that, because there are a lot of this stuff. This isn't

1775 here. We're dealing with really highly technical pieces of equipment that if someone,

someone falls asleep at their station when they're a part of the defenses. Yes, there's redundancies

where the computers may automatically engage on behalf of a sailor or a soldier if they're using the sea ram, which is a failing skin that shoots mortars out of the sky. But if that, if that's,

“there's a misidentified target. That's what that humans for. To say, wait, hold on, let me double check”

that. And that's when you start getting friendly fire incidents. That's when you have start having more accidents. But on the other side of the argument, morale is a combat multiplier. As I said, when you have soldiers that are extremely motivated, or sailors, and they want to, they want to get after it, and they want to win the fight, they can be at a disadvantage. They could

be down three to one, four to one, and find a way to excel and win. That's what Ukraine's going through.

They have a manpower disadvantage, but they have a much, much higher morale. They have a much higher level of resilience because one, they have an existential crisis at their front door, but also their commanders flat out just care more about their well-being. And I'm going to talk about this in my least worst part of the week here in a bit at the end of the episode, a specific example of this. But it is a combat multiplier. So if you are wasting morale, it's just like you

are wasting munitions. And so people can get hurt. People can get killed because of exhaustion. Or because people just stop caring. So they kind of just kind of go, "Um, I'm over it." And it's a very dangerous situation. And it's a commander's job to ensure that that is taking care of all the way at the top to the commander-in-chief, all the way to the top. Well, I want to add a non-strategic perspective. I don't know a lot about the make-up

of the US Navy today, but these are people who signed up to defend their country, and have been sent to essentially enrich the cushioners. So the least we could do is, you know, refuel and give them cooked meat. I mean, aside from the fact that it would be better for the war effort, these are people who are fighting an investment scheme war right now for Trump's buddies. And hexet would rather do a machismo performance than support them through that.

What's the normal time at sea? They keep here in 200 days, but I don't even know what that would normally be. Have they been out there twice as long? Or like... It varies. I mean, it just depends on how far what the operations are. 200 days is like the new long, essentially. If you're in a high-op tempo fight where you're like running through munitions 24 hours because you're having to defend yourself while also offensively

engage. A lot of it has to do with the amount of munitions, the amount of actual psychological exhaustion that comes with it. So it could be as little as 30 days. It could be as little as two weeks, depending on how crazy it is. But traditionally, most of these ships will be out on a normal just float for no more than nine months. That's a lot. If it's training, it's usually six months, but these guys have been redeployed in it and the link in is not the only one. We heard of the

Eisenhower. This happened a couple months ago. This is the same story it was told about the Eisenhower

“just a few months ago. And that's why I'm like, this is a pattern. And so these sailors”

they will understand that they're going into war and it's going to be hard and it's going to be exhausting and difficult. But there's also a rest in recovery cycle that is necessary. You have to be able to disengage and go to a port to relax a bit, to decompress, to have your family realize at least for this moment, they're safe and we can talk to them. It's why during a deployment where I went to 12 to 14 months, the plymus to Iraq, you get two weeks of leave that you get on a

to the war zone. They don't get that opportunity right now on this ship. So they've been running

nonstop for these 200 straight days and that's unreal. And I will say one last thing that morale is so important and I wish hexath would realize this that it is actually a tactic to deliberately attack your opponent's morale. That's exactly what propaganda, psychological operations, sleep deprivation, persistent harassment, all of this stuff, the enemy uses to attack. And if we were

“if I think if hexath were to realize this is a tactic that Iran is using to continuously keep our”

soldiers away or sailors, I keep saying soldiers to this one. I was, but sailors awake or keep everyone on alert, but also release these Lego videos that everyone laughs at. That's a propaganda tool that makes those sailors feel like shit because it's, they see everyone kind of laughing at Trump about it, but this is their mission. And I'll have to say that that's kind of why I'm like, yeah, it's funny that they're making fun of Trump and his decisions in Epstein. But in reality,

that's a propaganda tool to try to undermine our warfighters' ability to conduct their mission. And it has an impact on their morale. So if Trump and Hexath took this seriously or even cared a little bit, they would realize that not only is what they're doing, the causing this morale problem, but the enemy's going to use that. The Iranians are going to use that against

“the sailors that are conducting these operations. Yeah, I'm just looking at, you know, the”

navy subreddit here and people are sharing photos of the meals, they're sharing text messages, and this is weak, man. Like this stuff is, I say this derisively, this looks like prison food, this looks like a New York City public school cafeteria food, which is a joke to say that the navy, when I was in the army, the navy used to eat so well, like they used to have such

amazing food, and we used to joke about wanting to go out of their ships and get all the great food.

So if they're down to grey meat and tortilla shells, there's a supply planning problem that has taken place. Yeah, and people are reporting, no clean toilets, no water fountains, undercooked food, not getting male regularly, so they can't get deodorant or body wash or rationing everything. So it's not just food, you're seeing photos of these awful looking clamshell meals, but it's like hygiene supplies, too. Yeah, and there are, and not for

nothing, there are women on board these ships as well. So the this famine and products become problematic as well, and they have to find ways to kind of find alternatives as best they can. Oh, and also this is a hygiene on a ship. I mean, just in terms of the spread of disease, I mean, we're not talking, it's not merely for the smell of your wondering about like the deodorant in the body wash, like this is the spread of disease on a ship is a huge risk.

Yeah, disease is one of the biggest killers in most wars, actually. So the fact that they have an out plan for this, the fact that we have a leadership at the top, like I can understand if you have a ship captain, that is, is bad, then you remove them, but there's no way to remove the president of the United States and his bullshit right now unless there's an impeachment,

“it's just not happening. And so the best way to take care of troops is to give them good leaders.”

And right now, the very top has leaders that do not care about them and are doing nothing to

ensure that they're well-being was taken care of because as Donald Trump, who has never served

a fucking day in his life. He had not only did he have, he got the temporary exemption for school, but then he got a temporary medical exemption and then turned it into a permanent exemption. He goes out and says some dumb shit like when a reporter asks him, how do you feel about these sailors being out as long as they have? He says not long enough. Do he's never served a day in his life? He's never been in a fox hole. He's never had to had to hot bunk with another, another dude,

because he can still feel the warmth of the guy who was sleeping in the bunk, you're about to sleep in because you switch out bunks. And so it's just disgusting. And I did want to bring up the leadership aspect of this whole link thing because I don't think anyone was really focusing on it. They were just more looking at the actual conditions. Matt, do you have any more thoughts or questions on this for Chen? Uh, yeah. So the war starts. And this is something that's kind of been on my mind.

And Chen, I, I was thinking leadership a little longer. We kind of think alike. The war starts. The president of the United States, who is the commander in chief, comes out and says two weeks. Everybody in the Middle East, on their way to the Middle East, everybody that's there serving, I am sure heard that. Now, they were probably told something quite different before they went.

not uninformed about that. I do know that when you, when you are deployed, there's typically a

time that you're supposed to be there, but you also don't know. Like, yeah, could be much longer. Um, how does the president's words? Not even talking about what he said today with not long enough, but the things he has said throughout the war, how could that affect morale? Because it seems like it would be just terrible for it. It'll impact morale, but more like worse, it'll impact trust.

“Like, you have to be able to trust your leadership. And if your leaders are like, oh, we're going to”

be done in two weeks. And it's happening every two weeks. It's a new liner excuse. It breaks down trust. You're right that what ends up happening is usually you have a cycle where you're there for, in the army, it's for a year, it could be 14 months. Um, could be even longer. If there's like back when the surge took place when we were in Iraq, but you generally know that rotation. And there's nothing stopping this administration from from planning an adequate rotation. This isn't fucking

World War III here. This is our war of choice against Iran for God's sake. It's not like we're fighting China here. And need to have six carrier battle groups continuously engaging. They can rotate these ships in and out. They just aren't. And I don't know why this is happening. It's almost like they wait for an emergency to happen. And then they rush a new ship in Eisenhower had an emergency

“happened. Not emergency, but it became emergent where same problem. These are these are floating”

operational hotels, basically. 5,000 people live on these things. And shit's going to break and they just weren't prepared. So they rushed in a new ship, rotated them out. Didn't learn their lesson apparently. And Trump comes out and says things that both lift their morale. Like, oh, it's almost done. We got a deal. And then it doesn't happen. And so you're telling you're on the phone with your wife. Like, oh, do you hear Trump? We're going to be done. Let's, we're going to go. And that's one,

one of the things that Bush after he learned his lesson from that stupid mission accomplished.

Where mission accomplished stopped doing. And Obama never did that crap. It was always realistic,

hey, you're going to be a part of the rotation. We don't know when this is going to end. They're being truthful with us. These are grown as people who made a decision to raise their hand. And they should understand what they're getting into. But there's also an expectation that their leadership is going to be truthful with them. And also empathetic and communicate. And they're just not doing that. And now they're basically saying, anyone who says anything bad about the deployment and

“winds about it, you're just, you're just a pussy or something like that. That's what is being said”

to these. And it's coming from like the fucking talk. And that's what's wild to me. And so yeah,

absolutely. I can't give you an analysis on how the morale is because this is never happened.

This is never happened where the president and the secretary of defense will sit there on TV, where all of their troops can see and say, you don't matter. Sack it up. That's exactly that. And that's what's happening greatly. Well, yeah, I just can't imagine being in a theater of war and not only battling an enemy, but you're battling your own physical and mental limitations. You're being tested daily and over 40 different times during over this period, you're put on this

exhaustive emotional roller coaster being told there's ceasefires constantly that never pan out. And how does that contribute to the overall decay of those individuals who are already being pushed to the limits? And that's kind of what I was referring to. Like he is only making it worse with his own need to be heard daily about everything, which only serves him. It doesn't serve anyone else. And I say that there's a broader, I've made this argument and this has to

be a separate episode because I have a laundry list of reasons why I stopped thinking the Republicans even though they say they support veterans and service members absolutely do not. And so I'll just find like kind of close out with what ends up being the saving grace is you don't work for these leaders. And you work for them officially, but you're not on that ship fighting. You're not in the foxhole, you're not in your MRAP or kicking indoors in fullusion or whatever because of the president.

You're not like, oh, the president, I'm doing this for him. No, it's your buddy. And so you lean on each other. You lean on your your your bunkmate, you lean on the the dude you're in a chuous, which you was a containerized housing. You know, it was what we lived in in Iraq. So you're in your tent. And so that's where you get uplifted. You joke, it's kind of like you embrace the suck as what we say.

realize that the the command doesn't care. Those commanders are always removed, always removed

for the most part. They get caught and are always removed. But now, as I said, kind of at the beginning of this, they're not being removed because it's the fucking president and the secretary defense. And the the president's secretary defense promoting people to commanders who are more loyalists.

“Are they encouraging existing commanders to behave this way? Or is it literally they're not filtering out?”

They're just not filtering out people who would be compliant or what's uh, how do they end up with with so many people? Because it does seem like it's it's the boat CEO's that these people are that the, you know, the leak texts that I'm seeing are complaining about the CEO. They're not talking

about Trump explicitly and then, you know, at least in what I'm seeing. I'm sure there are some

broader complaints happening, too. Like how, how are the people in those more local positions ending up being like loyalists? Well, it's a combination of one, you have two types of people. You have those people that see how awful this administration runs the military and how little they care about the rule of law or soldiers themselves or sailors and Marines. And they they decide to resign. Those leaders, the good leader start to resign. They retire early.

“Generals and admirals who have one, two, three even kernels, they've been in long enough that they”

can retire with a full pen with their full retirement pension. And so they just see what's happening

and then they retire because they don't want to lose that because of retaliation. If they go

and speak out, that could be some sort of in-sabordination. You could be court-martialed. So they're just like, which not just wanting to not participate in or not wanting to participate in it. It's literally fear of consequences or fear of losing. Yeah, fear of that. That's a great benefit. And then, and then on the other side of it, you have the, the, the, the other side of it is the commanders that are bought into the new system. And they agree that all this, they're soft and fat and

whatever. And they buy in either they buy in, which is one thing, or they're the worst part of it they fake buy in. And so they just play the game as a commander or an officer or an on-commissioned

“officer to ensure that they take care of themselves and roof up the ranks. Those types of people,”

you end up with the worst types of leader leading troops. And all of the good leaders are either pushed out as we saw, as we continuously see with Heggseth rejecting the promotion boards for good officers. And he's doing it. There's no way around it. He's doing it for racist and sexist reasons at this point. There are good leaders that are women. There are good leaders that are people of color. And he is interjecting himself and, and stopping those promotions, much to the, the anger of

their fellow peers, their fellow generals and admirals. And that leads to further realized Ignatians. You saw one of the greatest leaders that were of our time right now. The South Com commander saw what was going to happen in Venezuela. Saw what was happening with the Boats strikes in the, in the Gulf of Mexico, not the fucking Gulf of America. The Gulf of Mexico saw that taking place in resigned because he could, he went forward and couldn't impact the decision

making at his level, which is wild to me because generals have a lot of power. And so what's happening is these leaders are resigning or they're faking it or they enjoy it. And those faking it enjoy it are the ones now starting to make the decisions with Heggseth and Trump. And often those are not great leaders because they, they made it to where they are riding on the coattails of better leaders that resigned or they are just kiss asses that brown nose are way up and will

Evan flow with whatever leaders need, and that's not the type of leaders these sailors and soldiers need. So I was, I have a military strategic question about this whole thing, which I'm sure is being covered a lot and we've got into the leadership. But you know, in order to, as you mentioned, they were not prepared. So instead of learning their lesson there once again, replacing the USS Lincoln with another ship, but with the George Washington in this case, bringing it in from the

Pacific, I assume it had a role in the Pacific theater. What effect does that have on whatever the mission of that ship was and does that leave us with a weakness there? So in general, we have at least one often, two carrier groups, not necessarily because we expect China to move on time one at any moment. That's something we would likely see happen over time. And I spoke about this before, but it is a deterrent in that it's a reassurance for our allies and partners, whether it's Taiwan, Japan,

South Korea. For us to be there, we'll often go to South Korea and have them there in a defensive capacity in case there's like a ballistic missile test just to make sure, hey, is this missile going

preparatory case. And we just saw this is a whole other thing, saw Trump pull out. He's pulling

out of exercise of South Korea because his buddy Kim and it's a literal quote where he's like my good friend Kim Jong-un was he had a problem with these exercises. That's wild to me. That's a whole other thing. But as I said, it was an exhausting newsweek, but the and it's only Monday apparently.

“But the way the map has the question, I think. Yeah, I don't know. Now you look like you have”

something to say here we go. I'm just gonna laugh. I'm bouncing all over because it's just exhausting. And so what ends up happening is is China takes note. They take note that, oh, there's no deterrent here. I can do things that are a little bit more blidrant. Like I can fly my aircraft

over Taiwan and enter their airspace knowing full well that if Taiwan engages, the United States

is not fully prepared to respond. Now we have capability that is based on land in Japan, ready if necessary. But an aircraft carrier is a theater altering capability because it's not just one thing. It's a carrier strike group or battle group depending on the sizes. And these provide a capability that change people entire country's minds. China decides they're going to do something crazy. You park two carrier battle groups off of their coast and suddenly they're rethinking

“their decisions. And so that is why we have such a powerful expeditionary force when it comes”

our Navy is so that we can influence around the globe. And when we start pulling that capability or that capability is flat out degraded because we've fired all their munitions and are destroying the resilience and morale of the sailors on those ships, those countries start to make calculations on, oh we're learning something now. We know how to inflict pain or we to be in this situation. And so because we have no capability in that theater, China is going to take note and

start doing things that are a little bit more in the belligerent realm of, yeah, we're going to start spraying more of the Philippines boats with our water cannons. We're going to start running into them and running other ships around. And it's all this gray area stuff that doesn't necessarily start a war. But when the US Navy's there, we can be that get on the radio and be like

“knock that shit off and they'll listen. Now we're not there. And so these countries are starting to”

wonder, can we be relied upon? And that I don't have an answer for that at this point. If you look at the Europeans, they would say probably not given our current, like last almost two years of history with Trump. Quick question from an every man. What's a water cannon? It's, I mean, you've probably seen them. They're in like New York Harbor. They have those boats that are fire boats that can shoot water out of, they pump it out of the, that is what it was imagining from the Latin route of the

words. But what's the military relevance? Like these other spraying? Well, so what they'll do is they'll yeah, they'll go up to like their coast guard. It's their coast guard or their merit what they call their maritime militia. So it's not necessarily their actual military ships will pull up next to Philippine ship fishermen or Taiwanese or they won't do it to Japan because they're scared to Japan. But they'll, they'll do it to these like the Vietnamese and they'll roll up next to them. They'll actually

ram the boats. If there's videos all over where they'll ram the boats and then it's the boat

doesn't move out of the way. They'll just turn their water cannons and these are powerful cannons.

And they'll just spray anyone. They'll break all the glass in these, in these fisher boats and they and often they, they'll even go after the opposing or not opposing. But these countries like Vietnam, Philippines, et cetera, their coast guard and do the same thing to them. And it's all a part of this expansion into the, the South China Sea with the island building and then wanting to control everything including Taiwan. This first island chain is what they call it. And this first

island chain is where they do these types of things. And the really the only counter out there is when either Japan, the United Kingdom, France or the United States is out there countering them. And the United States is the only one that can actually maintain a permanent presence. And right now we don't have a presence at all. We probably have submarines, but those are not designed to deal with a, like a coast guard boat out of the other Chinese. So China has more

of like an ongoing harassment campaign in the region that isn't really, consists of things that aren't really acts of war, but create instability for, you know, the other countries in the region. And our lack of presence there is is allowing them to, or you think, is it least going to continue to allow them to increase that? Exactly. And that's what they do. It's just kind of put

territorial waters of another country, whether it's Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, again, Japan they don't really mess with, but these are other countries that are operating their territorial waters in what historically China thought was their territorial waters. And China

back a few decades ago created the what's called the nine dash line. And basically a Chinese

think tank just drew lines on a map and said, this is all China, historically. It's not true, it's a made-up line, but since then China has determined that everything within that line, which encompasses the territorial waters of Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and some other smaller countries, Malaysia, I believe, but they'll go to these islands and force the fishermen, the people away from those islands. And then they'll plant their flag and start building and say,

this is China now. People will say, well, that's not necessarily that huge of a deal, they're not taking the mainland. We have to understand that. I mean, if China is allowed to keep that territory, it extends China's territorial waters out to that space. And so now they have the fishing rights and they have the oil mining rights. And it's their island now. So allowing them to do this is something that the United States has been countering for many, many years now.

“It's something that's why we always have this presence there to ensure this doesn't take place”

at a faster rate than it is, without our massive presence with a carrier group there, it's much easier for the China to do this. When I left earlier, I had imagined FDR telling the American people that we weren't going to storm the beaches of Normandy because his friend Hitler had called him and it's a nice town. That's what made me laugh, like just the ridiculousness of it, not that it's funny, but they were ridiculous and it's not all you. Yeah, friend, come to an

is not a phrase you hear very often. Yeah. This is not what I've ever heard of anyone else on Earth say that. Well, it's the same thing as Putin. He does the same thing to Putin. It's absolutely blows my mind that the Republican Party allows that rhetoric when just five years ago, we looked at

or ten or whatever years ago before the Trump era in his first term. We looked at Kim Jong-un

and we looked at Vladimir Putin as thugs, as terrible despots who do terrible things to their people. And now we're making foreign policy decisions and national security decisions based on I, he's my buddy and I don't want to upset him. This can't literally what we're doing. Allen for saying she was friends with George W. Bush as we should have just to be clear. I'm just saying we should hold our our presidents to the same scrutiny as our daytime talks. I'm not absolutely

“his. Can't be friends with him. Yeah. That's what's so it's just the continued failure”

after failure like the president has a duty to come out to the American people. This is problem number one. Why in morale was immediately problematic. He didn't come out and make the case for why we were even doing most of the things we're doing. Traditionally, the president will come out and say, this is why we're doing this. This is what's going to happen. This is my plan and none of that happens because I don't know if it has a clue. I don't think, yeah, I don't think he

has a plan. I think he has this button where he's like, oh, the military will figure it out. And you still need commanders intent all the way to the top. And he just isn't providing that. And then he changes his mind. It's about nuke. It's about regime change. It's about opening straight or arm moves. Who knows if I can spin the wheel. So he's flying by the seat of his pants. And yes, if you if I've seen the seat of his pants lately, yeah, I was going to say, yeah,

if you've seen the seat of his pants lately, you could tell how he's flying by it. Matt, I got a question for you. Um, reading the US, the US diesel inventory is at a 30 year low right now. What's going on over there? Yeah. Why is that happening? Um, because we have less than we did before 30 years ago. That makes sense. Okay. And a new story. Okay. Um, why back to around. Why I'm not. Because they haven't brought the food to them. Okay, short podcast. Let's go

wrap it up. Yeah. At least worst. Now, uh, so diesel, you know, from the beginning of this, a lot of people

been saying, diesel is going to be the story when this all unfolds. It's always going to be about

“diesel. And, and I think this is why we hear so much about the oil prices from the administration.”

They don't talk about, I don't know if you noticed. They don't talk about fuel prices. I talk about oil prices because nobody buys oil. They buy gas in diesel. But what's the problem? Um, massive damage to refineries in the Middle East Russian has not seven and a half million barrels a day refining capacity offline. All the big beautiful tankers coming to the United States that everyone

horror watching that because they didn't know that those tankers were going to take our diesel

and our fuel away. And that was going to make ours much more expensive. Uh, but yeah, we've exported

“an enormous amount. Uh, another key thing is that here's the thing about diesel.”

Diesel's a lot like natural gas. Um, we make right about the same amount of diesel that we use. Like there's no access. There's no access. So how we build inventories is seasonal based on seasonal demand. So in the summer, spring and summer months, we actually build a cushion of diesel inventory because we're not using all the heating oil, you know, and all that stuff. So we kind of build up an inventory and then we get into winter. We have extra for the winter. And this is why diesel

markets have been tight for years, though. It's because it's always been a very tight market for

quite a long time. Uh, and now we're not going to have the inventory we need for winter. Now, the United States isn't going to run out of diesel, but there are a lot of places around the world that are going to have significant problems. And so our inventory is down to a 30 year low.

“It's right at 107 million barrels I believe, um, which is really low for diesel inventors.”

Another problem is the type of crude oil that makes the most amount of diesel is the simplest way to put it. A heavier middle distillate and heavier crudes produce more diesel than gasoline. And that just happens to be the kind of oil that comes out of the middle east, right? And also when you look at our SPR, roughly half of the oil in our SPR was that kind of diesel. And the other half was light crude. Now, you can still make diesel with light oil, but it doesn't make as much, right?

So even if we got, say we got the refining capacity back, but the oil wasn't back yet. We would still have a diesel shortage, because that's the oil that makes the most diesel. And we already refined on those very thin margins. Or vice versa, getting the oil back doesn't help either, because we don't have the refining capacity. So we're in a catch-22. I don't even know if this

is what you call a catch-22, but basically we're going to screwed both ways, um, because we don't

have the capacity to make diesel. And we currently don't have the oil to make the right kind of oil to make the most diesel. Because with the right kind of oil, you can get two or three more gallons of diesel per barrel of oil. So when you're refining, you know, tens of millions of barrels a day that accumulates a lot of additional diesel. So, you know, like Jeff Curry, global commodity analyst expert guy, he's really sounding the alarms on inflation that he thinks is coming, diesel prices that

he thinks is coming, regardless of what happens with the oil prices. Today, oil prices hadn't changed at all in diesel, wholesale diesel was up 10 cents a gallon, even without oil prices moving. And it's something I've also been telling people, like when it comes to diesel, it's probably going to continue to rise no matter what happens with the oil prices, because inventories are getting that short. So we're going to go into winter, and although something that could oddly

save us, this L. N. No thing that doesn't make a warmer winter, um, maybe we don't use this machining oil, but we're going to go into winter, especially Europe with record low diesel inventories and record low, um, natural gas inventories in Europe. So they're really going to be suffering over there. But high diesel prices equate to high inflation across the board, food, and what they call dirt and diesel type commodities. So a dirt and diesel commodity is anything that is either extracted using

diesel or comes from the dirt. So anything you mind, like iron or steel, asphalt, aggregate, concrete, cement, like tons of commodities that we call dirt and diesel commodities, diesel gets really expensive inflation across the board. So they're expecting very high diesel prices to continue, regardless of what happens in a wrong, um, and inflation to follow. Can we pull from the SPR, the street reserve? I mean, I know we're way low on that, but is that

“going to be their answer? So the SPR is down to 292 million barrels today, I believe, and what I'm”

not sure of because they haven't kept good data on how much of the oil that's left in the SPR, is the heavy that makes more diesel or the light that makes less. And the problem with the SPR is we don't know when it stops working. And that's the thing. That's the thing that concerns me the most. So this whole thing about dropping the levels of the SPR to a point where it quits working is entirely theoretical. Like we don't truly know when it stops working. And the reason it stops working

extract the oil out of it. But at some point, your water oil contact line within that cavern,

“when you start pulling that oil out, you're getting as much water as oil. And once you get to that”

point, it's basically stopped working because we don't have the capacity to separate that water and oil on those sites. So you could still get some oil out of it, but it would be reduced by probably 90 percent once that begins. And the scary thing is that could start tomorrow or that could start in three months from now. We have no idea. And if you ask 10 different experts and 10 different engineers, you'll get 10 different answers. And the United States recently lowered that level

to 70 million barrels that came straight from Chris Wright. So we could drop down to 70 million.

There's nobody that agrees with 70 million. It's always been around 250 million to 300 million

as where they thought we would start having problems. Now we're below 300 million. I'm not aware that we're having problems yet, but the really scary thing like I said is it's

“important to know what you can do before you have to make the decision to do it. And right now we”

don't know what we can pull out of the SPR. It might start at 280 and it might last until 150, like who knows? It's all theoretical. So having a wait and see type approach in a situation like this is very bad. Like you kind of need to know when you run out of stuff. What would happen if the SPR completely ran out unexpectedly? Generally I would think that there'd be fail-safes, but I think that we are at a place to prevent this, but I feel like. So a theme in many of the

stories that we discussed, which is that we're dealing with the level of unsafety and lack of fail-safety that are someone unprecedented, at least in recent modern America. What would happen? What would happen if let's say some kind of restructuring of the government so that it lexials and people with experience are gradually moved out and people without expertise and egos are more in control hypothetically? Or to, I don't know, change the way that we measure the

SPR and we were to suddenly run out without realizing it was coming around the bend. What would that do to America? Hypothetically. If we couldn't pull more on the SPR. Yes, let's say the SPR we're pulling more oil into the SPR to expand our, you know, to refine more diesel and or to compensate for this crisis in general that we've created, but that's neither here nor there. Let's say that happens and then all of a sudden let's go. Oh, estimates were wrong.

SPR is done today and it's, you know, all good to be clear. Between the United States Canada and Mexico, we can produce enough oil and diesel and gasoline. So like we're not going to have shortages in the United States, but we will no longer be able to help anyone else in the world. Well, we won't be able to help our allies or anyone else. So all of this oil that's been coming out of the SPR, we've either been sending it directly to them or we've been refining it for them

and then sending the refined products to them. Basically, all of that would stop. And once that stops, you have Asia, which is the manufacturing hub of the entire world and you have Europe, different parts of the world start bidding aggressively on oil and also on refined products. And what that means is skyrocketing cost for oil and refined products. We won't have shortages, but we will have to pay those same costs, right? So the cost will affect us. The inflation,

global will happen. So that's, it's going to be a domino effect, right? So taking the SPR away right

last week, we pulled roughly 6 million barrels out of the SPR. That's like taking another 6 million

barrels of oil off the global market. Basically, instantly, just like that. So that's the domino effect that would occur. And the highest bidder wins. And they know it. So it's the prices would get really high. So the effect for the American consumer would still be pretty rough in spite of our oil or gas

“capacity, not necessarily changing. Yeah. Honestly, my bigger concern is the overall inflation”

would come with it because, you know, people focus so much on that dollar amount that goes in their gas tank. And that's understandable. But they don't, there a lot of that inflation is kind of hidden throughout their personal economy. And they don't realize maybe you're spending $100, $80, $100 more a month on gas, but what you don't realize is across your entire own personal economy due to those inflationary things that are happening. You might actually be spending $300 more a month

Like downstream costs of shipping oil getting more expensive, things like that. Like it drives up the price of that products that are not necessarily diesel based, but are using, even if it's not necessarily from the company paying more for shipping, it's from a company

that pays that company more. You're getting second and third order costs in ways that you

wouldn't necessarily be able to track by every rise in prices. Every other thing in your life gets slightly more expensive and it compounds to a level that is higher than what you're actually paying an additional fuel charges basically. Yeah. Well, in the SPRs, it's interesting because it's not, we haven't had it forever. It only came

“about like the 80s, I think, because it was in response to the young poor war. And this is where my”

focus comes in as a lot of it was foreign policy driven and that after we supported Israel, all those OPEC countries conducted in oil embargo and we determined we can't have this happen again.

And that's with the SPRs, it's to prevent shocks. And so what you have seeing is if

if these countries that have oil leverage across the globe see that the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve is no longer there, they can shut down production briefly and it causes our gas prices, not just ours, but around the globe to go up huge amounts. And so they can gain leverage over us in a manner that is really, really problematic because the strategic petroleum reserve originally was like, oh, we could if we piss off Saudi Arabia and OPEC decides to decrease

supply, we could weather it. But if we don't have that buff for any more, then we could start

“to once again, it's like the 70s where the whims of other countries and we have gas lines”

even in a way, well, not necessarily gas, because as you said, we can make our own, but it becomes like $5 or $6 a gallon gas and I also have a military concern there too, because without the ability to fund our lubricates, so to speak, our military becomes well, we have this problem in the United States where we only see how anything affects us and we don't realize what affects us because if it doesn't affect us directly, we don't see it.

So we built this U.J.S.P.R to protect us. But what most people don't realize is when we don't have the S.P.R to protect us, we also don't have it to protect anyone else. We have allies all over the world that depend on refined fuel product exports that come straight from the United States, especially in Europe, South America, and if OPEC can cut off other nations, I'm not talking about an oil embargo against the United States, I'm talking about the nations they do provide

oil for, then we can't be there to help them and they are at the mercy of OPEC, like we were in the 70s, but that does affect us because it makes our prices go through the roof and maybe you can say, well, at least there's not a mile-long line at the gas station and I'm like, well, there wouldn't be anyway because nobody can afford it now, like it. So we often fail to see that the global economy is real and it exists and we live within it and everything that happens to

everyone affects us in one way or the other and we're so busy looking at ourselves in the mirror

“that we don't see how that happens until after it happens and then it's like, what's happening?”

We don't get oil from the straight-of-formers, we don't get, you know, and it's like, so, what does that have to do with anything? It's like, nobody ever played Monopoly. Speaking of that interconnectedness, we talked about this mentioned at briefly the beginning of

the episode, but Trump and you never know, I don't know if this is lip service or a legitimate

threat, but as we've discussed many times in this podcast, most people don't have the luxury of treating Trump's threats as anything other than real. Trump is starting to bomb Oman. Oman, I believe, is not an OPEC country, but I think that the biggest non-OPEC oil producer, how does that affect our calculation here? If we're burning through our SPR here and also creating more conflicts with oil producing countries, he's mad at Oman because they're the ones negotiating

with Iran and not the United States because at the end of the day, some progress has to be made like in the straight-of-formers, like it has to happen, or the entire economy of all the Gulf Coast countries is going to suffer around the world as well. I don't know exactly what he thought he would get out of saying he's going to bomb Oman, like he's not going to make it any more friends

States. They tried to help. Oh, why? You know, along the way, and just the way Donald Trump manages

everything. You know, Chad can attest to this. Like Saudi, you know, Kuwait, Bahrain, the UAE. They're not happy with the United States right now. This has turned into a giant cluster and they're stuck in the middle of it. Some of those countries got pulled into it. They didn't want to be a part of it to begin with and they got sucked into it. Now they're targets and they're losing money because they can't get their oil out of the country. Like this is a giant cluster for all those countries over

“there. Even the ones that are allies and they're not happy because and I think right now the”

thing they're the least happy about is the complete in action of the United States. You know, shit or get off the pot, dude. Like either do something or leave. But right now, you're not like we haven't struck anything over there and I don't know how long and Iran is striking tankers daily and the hoothies are striking or fineries daily and the United States is just sitting there. No response ever. We haven't done anything in weeks and everyone else is still getting attacked

over there and we're just sitting there. Hey, we got our blockade up. They don't give you shit about our blockade. Our blockade didn't help in them in any way. So yeah, of course they're not happy. It's the worst of all scenarios for the Gulf Coast countries quite frankly. When they started going into this, I believe the main Gulf Coast countries went to Trump and said,

“either completely finish it or don't do it at all. And so we're now operating in this like you said,”

should I get off the pot? It was the burnout operating. Well, now should I get off the pot if they leave? It's actually, it's just as bad for these Gulf Coast countries. And so what ended up happening is the worst possible outcome for the Gulf Coast countries to place. We didn't finish the job, quote-unquote, but also we are not assisting to find a way out of the mess at this point. So, of course these countries are going to have to find alternate ways around it and Donald Trump

has not a diplomatic foreign policy bone in his body. He does not understand. This is, Oman is a country that hosts American forces. They've cooperated with us for decades. They are mediators for us. They've negotiated with Iran on our behalf. And then Trump gets mad one afternoon and says we're going to, he's not once but twice. We're going to bomb Oman because they're negotiating with Iran. Of course they're negotiating with Iran. There's no alternative.

The U.S. isn't doing it. And so it's just all of this, this lies. And different, and it just compounds with, I don't know, do you guys see the thing where he came out and said that gas and Iowa was like $1.85 or $1.95. And so he comes out and says gas and Iowa was $1.95. And he had to say he had to qualify. Well, it's at a place at one specific or two specific places and you know what he did. You got some fucking MAGA gas station to lower their prices for like five minutes for,

to $1.95. Yeah, for take a picture. And so he could say it to the media. And gas and I was like 3.95 a gallon on average and gas in the U.S. Last time gas was under two bucks. A gallon was in 2020. And so that's all it is. It's just bullshit. And, and so these golf course countries, they go, we can't rely on the United States anymore. So we've got to make these deals and they're

not powerful enough to take on Iran directly. So they got to make their own negotiations. If

Oman, if it means that Oman gets things through the straight of hormones safely or of Saudi or Kuwait is able to move through and it means that they got to negotiate with Iran. So be it. Unfortunately, we've created that that made it so they have to be bed fellows now. And the Iranians are perfectly happy making these deals that benefit them. And Trump, all as he can do is sit there and go, well, I'm just going to bomb you. And then I'm going to bomb you. And then I'm

going to bomb this guy over here. And that's all he's got. Because he can't, he can't think about solutions in a way. And I don't know where any one of his advisors are. I think he's just taking this on personally in a way that he's now. It's just, I'm going to try to make the decisions. And apparently we're going to potentially bomb Oman. And it's the same thing that's going on with this bullshit with

Israel that's in Hamas. And he wants 10 billion from South Korea. Yes, yes. The whole protectionist

money checked down Mafia type thing where he told South Korea if you want us to keep protecting

“you from North Korea, you need to give me 10 billion dollars. Yeah, it's a nice little country. I got”

there a bishan, something happened to it. I got South Korea. I think you have there a bishan, somebody milleterized it. That's a joke I shouldn't have done. You're act would be great in a dry cleaner in Jersey. I haven't tried a book and gave it up for years. Flashbacks to Steve Bushimmy in

update us a little bit on the talks with Hamas and the US and Israel? Yeah, for sure. So just real briefly Jared Kushner. It's just Jared Kushner right now. Witkoff didn't go for some reason. He met with Hamas in Cairo. To be honest, this isn't the first time they've done this. They've

talked to Hamas before, which is kind of strange because traditionally we've always heard that we don't

negotiate with terrorists and Hamas is considered a terrorist group officially by the United States.

“But nonetheless, they feel that the only way to get through this whole problem with Gaza is to”

negotiate with both Hamas and Israel. The interesting thing is, is Hamas is being more of a ball player and acquiescing and helpful in the scenario than Israel is. Hamas has accepted this broad framework that Trump has put forward from the board of peace, which is his board of peace grift. That's a whole other thing. But they're agreeing. We will move towards the disarmament, but we want Israeli forces to withdraw and the Israeli attacks to stop as the process moves forward. And so the Israelis

have come forward and basically said no, because they believe it is a chicken and egg problem. Like if Hamas has their weapons, if we pull out, though, where you take everything, but Hamas believes, well, if we give up our weapons, Israel's going to come and wipe us out. Hamas is saying, well, we can do a phased withdraw or turn in of our weapons as they face out. And the United

“States says that's a good idea. We'll do that. And Israel's like, nope, fuck off. We're not doing that.”

So basically, there's this maximalist position coming with Netanyahu. And he has come forward and said,

regardless of what Hamas does, we're going to destroy Hamas. And it got worse when Eta Mar Ben Gavir, who is Israel's national security minister and a member of Netanyahu's governing coalition. He's really close to Netanyahu who came out and said in public that when it comes to Gaza, they need to resume targeted assassinations in Gaza and take down 30 to 40 every night. And he's not just talking about people who pose these immediate threats. He said, quote,

these are people that are not worthy of life and shouldn't live. And it does not matter if they pose a threat. This isn't, he's not saying, well, if we have intelligence on a specific Hamas fighter commander repairing attacks, so let's go target them. He's saying, we need to kill dozens of people every night when they don't pose an immediate threat because we have decided they don't deserve to live. That, for me, means that there is no negotiating position

“for Israel at this point. And they're operating from a stance of total war. And the only thing”

holding them back is the United States trying to find a way to keep this from being an absolute tragedy and genocide in Gaza. And I think it's actually causing a major rift between the Trump administration and Netanyahu's administration, who are both facing elections here soon.

But they're basically saying, we should increase the killing. I don't care if Hamas wants to

negotiate. And so that's kind of where we're at right now with Ethan Arbenke beer being the most extreme voice. But this is a guy that Netanyahu listens to. An administration that constantly competes with themselves for couldn't possibly say it more obviously. He's saying it more obviously than he's ever said it before. It's not about getting hostages back. It's not about Hamas. This is absolutely about just exterminating the Palestinian

people. He said Gaza. He did say Hamas. Yeah, it wasn't Gaza. It wasn't Gaza. It wasn't Gaza. It wasn't Gaza. It wasn't Gaza. It wasn't a whole Hezbollah. It wasn't the Houthis. It was Gaza. It's what they said. It doesn't matter. And you know, for those who don't know, they've been executing people with no connection to Hamas for years now. This isn't new, but we've essentially at least played a propaganda game and pretending that wasn't what they were doing for a long

time. And you know, I'm obviously throughout the conflict since October 7th, they've been plenty of you know, literally the idea of calling people and letting them know that they were about to be drone strike. And you can get out of your car and or will kill everyone in the car. You know, scheduled executions of people who had no connection to Hamas. But now this is like a, you know, as a matter of like open policy, I mean, you know, it's like

I said, they, they, it didn't feel like they could make it anywhere obvious before. It's, it's hard to be shocked by the depravity of Ben Gavir and the entire administration. But they couldn't, I mean, they're, this is like a, this is like a scorched earth PR. Like, like, you know, this is, this is a scorched earth approach to the public messaging, which feels shocking. Did you see the billboard? And that they put up, I don't know if it was in Jerusalem or if it was in Tel Aviv or wherever. There's a billboard

that was put up that showed it's part of Netanyahu's campaign. And it showed the Iatola,

and put them all in the same boat saying these are all the anti-Israeli terrorist, basically,

“the mayor of New York. Oh, isn't it fun to know that the NYPD, which has a military budget”

larger than every country in the world, other than five countries? That's the New York City Police Department to be clear has a larger budget than any military in the world, other than five other countries? Isn't it fun to know that the NYPD conducts and spends millions of dollars on trainings with the IDF and also provides the service that is the mayor of New York's private security force? Isn't that really reassuring to know? Not if you're Mamdoni. Yeah, that's insane.

That's the same organization. They're doing cross-trains. I don't know while I don't know if they're doing PR about calling them a terrorist leader. Yeah, I don't know if they can find it and throw it up on the YouTube video, or whatever, they clip it out for Tik Tok or whatever, but yeah, and it's a real thing. They put them up there and it's his picture in the same

breath as Machba Kamini. It's like a thing, second thing, second thing stuff. Sorry, I don't have

a lot to say of that other than the shame how many of our own country's leaders were completely okay with the Islamophobia, the levied against him before it became an international concern. So to see how many American and New York Democrats didn't stand up when people started turning

“Islamophobic against Mamdoni. If you want to talk about the spread of hate, unfortunately.”

Well, hopefully least worse will make us feel better. Yeah, sorry. I know that I wish I had a I want to end that I better note than that. I'm just a mad now. Mad, is there anything you'd like to say on this issue? I know it's a really down or story. I mean, I don't think down or that's down playing yet, but I know it's a dower. No, not really. Yeah, that's fine. I'm not trying to silver lining anything, but the only only, you know, advantage of seeing them go to this

complete scorch earth. We are talking about it this way is like, like you said, they've got elections coming up. It wreaks of desperation, hopefully the internal dissonance in their parties is a weakness that will allow us to make some, you know, allow human rights to come back into the forefront. I believe Netanyahu is actually significantly down in the polls, like even these rallies are not super happy with them. I mean, he's been charged. He's supposed to, I mean, the

only reason he's trying to stay in power is that he's going to go prison. If he, no, yeah, he's pulling a full Eric Adams right now. Sounds like a full Trump. Yeah, sounds from here. I know, I'm, I'm localizing it. That's, uh, Eric Adams is our Trump if you didn't, if you're not familiar with New York City politics, and he's now. I'm familiar. And Albanian citizen, because does anyone want to guess why he's in Albanian citizen? Albania. Because there's non-extradition.

Bingo, non-extradition policy. So any of those charges turning out to be true and the Trump pardon that he really was, you know, banking on could suddenly be, you know, if Trump's in trouble, too, uh, Eric Adams could suddenly be in trouble. We're not for his longstanding relationship and love of Albania and the Albanian people, um, and a language in country he definitely knows about and can pronounce. And on that note, I'd like to go to something slightly lighter. This has been

a rough newsweek. And as we've mentioned, we're recording it on Monday. So let's talk a little bit

“about if not the best thing, the least bad thing that happened to each of us this week,”

something a little bit more hopeful in a segment that we like to call the least worst part of my week. Matt, you want to go first? Sure. My new favorite people in the world are the Kauaiheavas.

Now, if you're not familiar with the Kauaiheavas, they are a tribe in the Amazon that have never

been contacted by anyone outside. And I don't know about you guys, but I love these people like when you hear stories about these tribes around the world, I'm like, I sit in envy, like, no Walmart and like unbaved people in sunflower covered sweaty pajama pants, like it's the greatest, like, how can I go be a part of that's that's Portland. That's Portland, Oregon. What are you talking about? Okay. No, he's saying he's doing a little free of suburban access.

He's saying humanity has, and this has bestowed to such a point that he envies these uncontacted tribes for their, I got to seem subsistence farming and getting up very early, but freedom from capitalism. Yeah. And low resistant to political disease, but as long as we leave them alone, that's not really a problem. Yeah, really just freedom from the outside world, freedom from people. Like, actually, the last book I wrote, Coinda, was about the Hadzabi tribe on the

fine folks goes way back, even though I recognize they might eat me, I still love them. So the Colahoeva tribe. Yeah, I mean, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah. The country of Brazil has actually drawn a map for them. And this is a huge thing because in the Amazon, these tribes, especially this tribe, is under fire from land grabbers, loggers, corporate type, right? Corporate type capitalist types

that basically want to snuff them out and steal their territory in their land. So the

country of Brazil has drawn an actual map for them, a demarcation line, if you will, and said, this is their place. Then they were very generous. They gave them a bunch of land and said, nobody can touch this. And I'm just like, wow, I can't imagine the United States ever doing something like that, like not in present day. You know what I mean? And so I thought it was a great story.

“They just angry, open a continent. I think they're good. Well, yeah, that's what they said.”

They put a Trump casino. Oh, they're good. Well, it'll give you some autonomy. But this tribe, these people have been threatened for like decades, right? And so Brazil is protecting them. And

they've drawn them a map. They've made it official. The president's supposed to sign it. And that's

the only thing has to happen. And that is their territory in their land. And they have, you know, a demarcation and everything. And I read this story. And it was just, I was just fascinated by it. So that was what I wanted to talk about today is the call. I don't even know if I'm saying it right. Kala Hiva could be Kala Hiva could be Kohova, like, you know, who knows? But good for those people, they have their spot. They have their spot, which is really all any of us wants in this world.

It's just to have our spot, right? Yeah. That's got his spot. Look, I mean, well, there are people who try to contact these uncontacted tribes. Or they try to, I mean,

the worst example of this is like evangelical missionaries try to like, oh, you know what,

“these people need Jesus or what? No, they're clearly their way of life is work. It has survived”

the test of time in the way that no other civilization, you know, if you want to talk about consistency of a way of life, right? And also like, I don't know, you know, specifically about the specific of germ conditions of different communities, but generally more isolated peoples have lower germ resistance and being contacted can be a real risk to them. And which is why when these missionaries get killed from a distance by a bow and arrow, it is pretty hard to feel bad for

them. But that does happen occasionally. And so try to contact and actually respond to violently, which is like, you know, completely rational because this is like, it is an existential, like, just the presence of a person with like modern resistance to disease can be, and I don't know how much understanding there is, but like that, just like the presence of a person can be a huge threat without any kind of like, you know, direct contact. Yeah, because we're all carriers of

27 different things. And it's how ironic is it is that just our presence around them could kill them. But if I had to take 20 bucks out of my wallet and put it down and say, who's going to be the last people left surviving on Earth, it's going to be those people. It's not going to be those people. No McDonald's in Kawahiva land. You understand what I'm saying? It's like the Sentinel, he's the Indians. No one's in India. No plastic in their water. Yeah, the Sentinel, he's, I believe, are actually

un-contacted, right? Yeah, they're the, there's the one that they remain, you know, they're protected by India. That's the one that that dipshit YouTuber, I can't remember his name, he's like, from Russia or something. Yeah, he wasn't also even jellicle or, or am I complaining? No, he was. He was, yeah, that wasn't even

“well, it's happened more than once. That's what I'm believing to before. No, even jellicles,”

YouTubers. It's a series of white people with poor international understanding of boundaries. Take it upon themselves to approach people whose main characteristic to the outside world is being approached and lo and behold, sometimes it has consequences. Well, I think so. Go ahead, yeah. Well, I was like, I was just, I used the one that left them a coconut, a diet coke and like you said, you have no idea that diet coke. You lit it like that diet coke, because they covered in all kinds of

gross germs from Western, he survived. He ended up leaving the island, but the Indian authorities arrested immediately and said, you know, that's, that's a no go. So, was he trying to do the gods just to be clear? If you should make some fucking luck on YouTube, if any of you are listeners are thinking of making contact with an uncontacted truck, there's a reason they're uncontacted.

of these people wanted to be contacted, it would be really interesting. Yeah, they would just step across the line that the developers have moved up to the exact, like, a millimetre of where they're allowed to develop. I mean, Brazil is great to do that, but it's literally like deforestation up to the line where these territories are protected. And there's factories. Exactly. Yeah, because, you know, they'll, they will develop the absolute maximum amount. So, yeah, if they wanted to,

all they would have to do is walk up to that line that no one else has allowed to cross. These people are stupid. They see airplanes and shit. They know what it is. Like, they see boats. Like, it's not like, they go on dinosaurs, but yeah, they see them. Yeah, I don't know the word dinosaurs, necessarily going to be the the most communicated part. I mean, in their language, yeah, you know,

“we're the concept to Tonka, you know. Chad, what is the least worst part of your week?”

Mine is wildly different. I post a video about this because it's just so awesome. So, two Ukrainian soldiers were wounded on the battlefield. They got hit by a drone, suffered multiple fractures into their legs, arms, head and head injuries. The Ukrainian sent a mobile UAV like an

unmanned surface vehicle. It's basically just a drone truck to go pick them up, rush away to

for that truck to show up, hit that truck and, and then wounded him further, they're still alive. But their commander, who had his drone, his units drone over the top, the commander of the 477th of the regiment, they're the commander of the assault company there, got in a truck, like a Toyota Tacoma. This is I'm not leaving these guys out there. drove into the battlefield and this, this like Toyota Tacoma basically, I don't know if it was a Tacoma, it was just like a

four-range or something. Just a small, a small truck, whoever wants to sponsor us. But yeah, I don't know, he's brand names, no free publicity. Yeah, so drove out there, picks these guys up and throws them in the back of his truck in the middle of a battlefield and drives away. He's single-handedly loaded them in the middle of a battle and got him out of there, got him out of the safely. And this is one of those things where I tell people, this is exactly

why Ukraine should be in NATO. This is exactly why Ukraine shares our values, because that is exactly what all of us in the Western countries, others Canada, the United States, UK, France, doesn't matter.

We never leave anyone behind on the battlefield. We always come back. Everyone comes home in one

shape, way or one way or another, whether you're coming home in a coffin, unfortunately, you're

“coming home on a plane to see your loved ones. Everyone comes home and that's how Ukraine operates.”

They're just like us in that regard, whereas Russia, they would have probably tried to kill them so that they wouldn't have been captured to give up in intelligence. We've seen that time time again where the Russians will see it wounded soldier on the battlefield and decide to saving them, just kill them so that they can't be an intelligence threat. And I just, it is just an incredible heroic. Once again, just highlighting the resilience and the

heroism of the Ukrainians. So there's a super cool. If you want to see the video, not to try and chill my own stuff, but I have it on my TikTok, I've made a video, and you can see the actual video, or you can pretty much anywhere, it's anywhere. Just go Google the 477th Regiment Rescue, and it's super cool. And once again, super proud of the Ukrainians, because I got to work with them and train them in Germany. Hell of a pickup truck commercial, too. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't want to say any brand names on the podcast, like I said, but that one's up for the group. Up for grabs, I feel like, look at that track, and he's getting full of them out of there.

“That's four wheel drive. He did that single handily, you kidding me?”

It wasn't a cyber trucker. I can tell you that much. Twist my arm. I'll tell you the least worst part of my week. Since everyone's demanding to know about it, I had a really good week, and I'm happy to announce, and I know that my co-host, my panel here, do not know. This nor does our producer, that I proposed to my partner in Friday, and we are engaged.

Oh, that's amazing. Congratulations. I'm really happy. We've been together for a while. We already

lived together, and we love each other very much, and I'm really happy to finally do it. I'll tell these guys the story off the year, but I don't want to get two personal in this moment, but I proposed at the Cyclone at Coney Island, which is a place that's very important to both of us, and a place that my family has been going for over a hundred years, and it was just a really special place of really special moment for both of us, and we just had a beautiful day at the beach,

and I am engaged to be married, and I couldn't be happier about it. That's amazing. Congratulations. It's more than the least worst part of my week, but it is technically the least bad thing that happened to me this week. I would even say it was the best part.

I was at Paul and Allergy, but I also am very moved. It's hell of a week, but I'm glad it was reading

one way or another. I love how we had the most bummer episode. I think we've ever had the whole time.

I'm sitting here with an engagement ring in my pocket, while you guys are having a bad day,

“just like, well, I'm going to propose to you soon, so. Yeah. That's how I felt. It's awesome.”

Well, thank you. I am feeling great about it. I am very happy. Congratulations to me on that

regard after the most bummer episode that I was perhaps oddly buoyant throughout. Well,

“unless anyone else wants to congratulate me on being engaged, that's the end of our podcast.”

This has been American Power from Findout Media for Chad Scott and Matt Randolph. I am your host, Matt Towson, and remember, Power Corrupts, but American Power Corrupts, American Lee.