Latest / DEEP INSIGHT / 'Trump needs to be ASHAMED' Military grandma SHREDS Trump over mistreatment of USS Lincoln sailors

Transcript

'Trump needs to be ASHAMED' Military grandma SHREDS Trump over mistreatment of USS Lincoln sailors · DEEP INSIGHT

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves. The
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: president sleeps through his meetings, He golfs and trade stocks.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: See he doesn't want to do the job. He wants
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar, who.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Better by the news cycle that was his Senator don
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: as Off. I'm Donald Trump's many failures, but especially his
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: failed leadership and his betrayal of US sailors on board
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: the USS Abraham Lincoln, who are now serving an extended
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: deployment that Trump doesn't think is long enough.
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: They've been nine months at sea.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Now their families are condemning Donald Trump's dismiss all of
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: their horrific living conditions, including food shortages, which Trump.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Called quote fake news.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Today, they're also dealing with exhaustion and a lack of
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: basic hygiene and essentials, as well as they decline in
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: mental health amid reports that sailors have jumped into the sea.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: The grandmother of one sailor on board tells NPR this quote,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: He's just depressed with the conditions over there. You really
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: can't blame him. Donald Trump needs to be ashamed of
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: himself to let them suffer the way that they're doing.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: They're over there fighting for our country, and this is
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: the thanks they get. Democrats in Washington are now calling
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: for an investigation and for accountability from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: who insists the conditions are quote completely misrepresented. The letter,
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: signed by all thirteen Democrats serving on the Senate Armed
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Services Committee and other Democratic committee leaders demand answers from
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: heg Seth on the quote mounting evidence that conditions aboard
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: the carrier have deteriorated to the point that the safety
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: and well being of its crew could be compromised. I
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: want to bring in our Pentagon reporter, preshreether she broke
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: this story.
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: She's also a former officer in the Navy.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Ben and thom are still here, Kria. How do the
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: families feel. I'm sure you've talked to them since Trump
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: has been engaged on this story about essentially being called liars.
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Nicole, I mean they were furious when they heard
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: those comments, especially when he said that the deployment hasn't.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Gone on long enough.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: When I initially spoke to them about the conditions on
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: the ship. I wasn't even going to venture into the
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: politics or the policy, or the mission or the end
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: state in Iran, but they naturally just went there because
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: I think it's really hard to talk about this deployment
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: without talking about all of that, because that's really at
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: the heart of what's causing this moral issue and what's
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: causing the strain on this ship.
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: They hit a.
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: Modern day record, as I've been saying repeatedly in the Navy,
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: for the most continuous days at sea, two hundred and
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: eight days without a port call. That is unheard of
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: in the Navy. And the reason for that is because
• 3:06
  Speaker 4: there was simply no safe place to stop. And they
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: said that what really was getting to many of these sailors,
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: including the sailor who did jump overboard and jump off
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: the Abraham Lincoln and ended up getting medically evacuated to
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: San Diego, is this feeling as though this deployment was
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: never going to end, because this war was never going
• 3:26
  Speaker 4: to end. So for them to hear President Trump say
• 3:29
  Speaker 4: that the deployment should just go on for longer, I
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: had several of those family members text me and say,
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: let's see what he would have to say if his
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: own son was on that ship.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Ben Rhodes, it is a special way that a commander
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: in chief feels about the men and women whose lives
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: are at risk while he is president. You and I
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: both know this intimately, and it is a with careful
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: consideration that a president and normal president talks about the
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: burdens carried not just by the men and women in
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: the military and their family members, but about when things
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: don't go as planned. In this case, there was no plan,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: there was no effort to communicate a mission. There's been
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: no effort to empathize with the families, and when the
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: horrific conditions were reported by my colleague Pria, he called.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: The families liars.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: I talked in the last block about signs that everyone
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: is sort of too numb to realize how outrageous it
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: is that Republicans stay quiet and keep walking along like
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: zombies as Trump does everything to strength in China. This
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: to me is bananas that you don't have the Republican
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: led Senate Armed Services Committee halling Pete hegseeth and I
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: don't know why they don't ask Donald Trump what he's
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: talking about when he says the deployments aren't long enough.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: This is truly unprecedented.
• 4:59
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think this is such an important story
• 5:02
  Speaker 5: in part because it's a convergence of so many things
• 5:05
  Speaker 5: that are wrong with the second Trump term. Right, So
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: the first is why are we in this war in
• 5:09
  Speaker 5: the first place? And that ties into the fact that
• 5:12
  Speaker 5: there's a probably huge morale issue.
• 5:15
  Speaker 6: Why are those sailors there? Do they know? Are they
• 5:17
  Speaker 6: there to topple the Riady regime?
• 5:19
  Speaker 5: Are they there to eliminate a nuclear program? Are they
• 5:22
  Speaker 5: there to open the straight orf Our moves? Or are
• 5:24
  Speaker 5: they just kind of there because Donald Trump got talked
• 5:27
  Speaker 5: to him doing something incredibly stupid in Iran and can't
• 5:30
  Speaker 5: acknowledge the era that he's made. There was poor planning
• 5:34
  Speaker 5: about the way in which they'd be resupplied. There was
• 5:37
  Speaker 5: lack of preparation for Iran's inevitable retaliation against US bases.
• 5:42
  Speaker 5: There's lack of transparency about the destruction of the US
• 5:45
  Speaker 5: naval facility in Bahrain that was going to resupply that carrier.
• 5:49
  Speaker 6: So across the board in terms of what they're doing.
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: You know what Trump is doing, why he's doing it,
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: how he planned to do it, the confidence with which
• 5:57
  Speaker 5: he did, the transparency. All of those things contributed to
• 6:01
  Speaker 5: the fact that we have men and women who are
• 6:04
  Speaker 5: in harms way, who are living in squalid conditions and
• 6:07
  Speaker 5: desperate conditions with no sense of an ending for their deployment.
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: Maybe that's just now coming into play. Thanks for reporting
• 6:14
  Speaker 5: like Prias. And then when this comes out, what it
• 6:18
  Speaker 5: shows is the people that Donald Trump attacks are not
• 6:21
  Speaker 5: just you know, Jim Comi or Somali.
• 6:25
  Speaker 6: You know, you shouldn't attack any of those people. There's
• 6:26
  Speaker 6: some small immigran community Minnesota.
• 6:29
  Speaker 5: The point is that he will attack anybody, you know,
• 6:32
  Speaker 5: US service members who are under his orders, deployed in
• 6:36
  Speaker 5: harm's way. He will attack. If it poses any kind
• 6:40
  Speaker 5: of political risk to him. He will use the same playbook.
• 6:43
  Speaker 5: Oh it's fake news. Oh they're weak, you know, And
• 6:46
  Speaker 5: so just everything that is wrong is embedded in this
• 6:50
  Speaker 5: one story.