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Will Cuba become the 51st state? · Profits & Politics

0:15
SPEAKER_02: Hey, good morning, folks.
0:16
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Morning Call Show.
0:18
SPEAKER_02: I'm Bob Sellers here with Jerry Burt, a couple news vets trying to take a look at the right and wrong in between the right and left.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Jerry, what do you have to I got a ton of stories, but this just in, um, do you remember just uh I think a day ago or two ago, five terrorists were arrested for trying trying to bomb Royal Air Force Air Base on which our military was stationed.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: They are now all five of them.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you saw the picture of them all uh on the ground without shirts on because the people were afraid they were wearing suicide bomber vests.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Right.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: All five are now being released on bail.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Out on parole.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean out on bail.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: That's a soundbit.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: No, it's in, but here is here's the reasoning, okay?
1:06
SPEAKER_00: I got a soundbite for you.
1:08
SPEAKER_04: Five men who were arrested are being released on police bail this afternoon.
1:14
SPEAKER_04: To be very clear, this does not mean that the investigation is over.
1:20
SPEAKER_04: They are subject to stringent conditions on their movement and contact with others.
1:25
SPEAKER_04: They absolutely remain under investigation as we explore multiple lines of inquiry and inquiry.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: Did you hear that?
1:34
SPEAKER_00: But thank God they're under strict they're they're under stringent, stringent conditions.
1:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'm sure they'll stay there.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they'll they'll never do that again.
1:43
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:44
SPEAKER_02: No.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: I d I mean they've probably been told this wasn't the right thing for them to do.
1:50
SPEAKER_02: And I I'm sure they wouldn't do anything wrong again.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure.
1:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I'm sure they'll stay there.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure they'll show up for their court dates and everything.
2:01
SPEAKER_02: It's not like uh it's easy to get off uh the you know, England off the islands over there into it's just well, I mean are they afraid of being called homophobic?
2:15
SPEAKER_00: I mean Islamophobic.
2:17
SPEAKER_02: Right.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's part of the reasoning?
2:20
SPEAKER_02: Um Well, yeah, there's a lot going on there, but um in this case, I don't think it's Islamophobia, you're saying.
2:31
SPEAKER_02: You're looking at the military and personal threat that these people pose.
2:38
SPEAKER_02: And the fact that you release them has nothing to do with their with their ethnic background.
2:44
SPEAKER_02: They they could have been Jewish, they could have been Native American, whatever.
2:50
SPEAKER_02: You're suggesting maybe this isn't the right thing to do with people who are threatening, not just some lone guy, right?
2:58
SPEAKER_02: No, five of them.
3:00
SPEAKER_02: There are five of them, so it's organized.
3:02
SPEAKER_02: And if they got five guys organizing it, there are five more somewhere else.
3:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and they had a white van stacked with explosives.
3:14
SPEAKER_00: Make sure you all come back.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what are they gonna give them?
3:17
SPEAKER_00: Tea and crumpets?
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Not good.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm all worked up.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Um the uh let me see what else I have here.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: This is the woman uh she wrote the 1619 project.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: Uh where which bases everything in history in the United States is goes back to race and slavery.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the original plan.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: She was growing, she was as her daughter was getting older, the this writer started to feel guilty that her daughter was probably gonna get a better education than those because they had wealth.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: They had money.
3:54
SPEAKER_00: And that wouldn't be fair.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: And that wouldn't be fair.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: So the mother, this is a mature, rational woman, a writer.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: She decided that she was gonna put her child in an under-valued school with lots of other uh black students so that she would get the same education or non-education as the other students.
4:18
SPEAKER_00: Um she said, uh, but now she's regretted that.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: She came out and said, she said, um her daughter has come out now.
4:30
SPEAKER_00: The mother had already come out and said that she was um uh she realized that it was a mistake to put her daughter in a in an undervalued school.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: She said um the author that has now said um that her daughter was so frustrated with the decision by the mother that she then handed over a list to the mother of better schools that she could attend to finish her high school years.
4:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Uh I and then the mother said to herself, I can't believe this.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: My child came up with the exact opposite of my life's work.
5:06
SPEAKER_00: And every school on there is a school that screens and has hardly no black students.
5:11
SPEAKER_00: How dare this child.
5:14
SPEAKER_02: I know.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: Um look, I have moved to particular zip codes because of the schools.
5:22
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
5:23
SPEAKER_02: Same here.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people do that.
5:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
5:27
SPEAKER_02: And it matters, in my opinion.
5:30
SPEAKER_02: It's not a guarantee of success in life.
5:32
SPEAKER_02: It's not a guarantee.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: But I I also understand the frustration that there are some schools that are uh where the students are underserved.
5:43
SPEAKER_02: And I I I don't want to you know trivialize that.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: We need to make all of the schools better.
5:51
SPEAKER_02: But if you have the capacity to send your kids to a better school in in a public school, I'm not saying I've got to go to a private school.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: That doesn't seem fair to your kid.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, we were in one town and we had all our children, it had a great public education system, and we had all three of our kids in a Catholic school that was really horrible because the teachers at the Catholic school were getting paid half of what the teachers at the public school were getting.
6:21
SPEAKER_00: Then one day I was in the driveway with my then wife, and we see the neighbor's kids coming home with shiny new laptops that the public school had just given them in fifth grade so that they could become computer literate.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: And I looked at her and she looked at me and said, That's it.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: The kids are out of Catholic school, they're going right in the public school.
6:41
SPEAKER_02: Right.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: You can't mess around.
6:43
SPEAKER_02: And it worked out.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: So in the follow-up interview, the daughter joined the mother and then berated the mother for using her childhood as a social experiment and said, She put me on the line to help a school, but it didn't work.
7:00
SPEAKER_02: You know, she's not wrong from from what I understand of that situation.
7:04
SPEAKER_02: That daughter is right.
7:06
SPEAKER_02: And that's um, I, you know, using your child as a political weapon seems wrong.
7:17
SPEAKER_02: And that can be done in many ways.
7:19
SPEAKER_02: And in this case, she has a lot of that's quite uh audacious to send your kid to an underperforming school just to make your point.
7:29
SPEAKER_02: Now that you've been well educated and you've made yourself a name for what you're published and all that.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: Um well, I'm I'm gonna move on to the news of the day, the headlines.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: Um, and we do have a guest.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: Yes, we do.
7:44
SPEAKER_02: You want to set it up first?
7:46
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're I think this is what you're talking about.
7:49
SPEAKER_02: I want to bring this up right here, set that up if you will, and then we'll bring in the gentleman who's uh uh gracing us uh with his uh knowledge in just a moment.
8:00
SPEAKER_02: Set this up, if you will.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: The um now the the U.S., all eyes are on Iran, but there's a lot of stuff happening around Cuba now.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: U.S.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: Central Command uh is laying the groundwork for potential action in and around Cuba.
8:19
SPEAKER_00: They've they they've deployed all kinds of police forces, medical personnel, and other support units within just the past few months, according to an internal army message reviewed by CBS News.
8:32
SPEAKER_00: Well, I guess it's not that smart for CBS News to be, you know, releasing internal army messages.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: Um but then when they asked Trump about it yesterday, he said, uh, he said, we'll talk first.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk.
8:47
SPEAKER_02: So Well, that's that yeah, that sounds like, yeah, we'll talk.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh make you an offer.
8:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, you offer so first of all, he takes a couple of months to totally surround Cuba with military, and then he goes, that's a nice, that's a nice country you have there.
9:05
SPEAKER_00: Too bad if something happens to it.
9:07
SPEAKER_02: Would hate to see anything happen to us.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: It's so beautiful this time of year.
9:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yes.
9:12
SPEAKER_02: Well, let's bring in let's bring in our guest, Jerry.
9:15
SPEAKER_02: Would you like to uh introduce this gentleman who is retired Army Ranger Captain Barry Todd?
9:21
SPEAKER_02: Tell us a little bit about him.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: Um well, he uh actually, sir, could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
9:29
SPEAKER_00: I read your bio.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: Your bio is very impressive, decades in the military.
9:37
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you both.
9:38
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it, Bob and Jerry.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh, my background, I did 21 years in the Army Rangers, uh, and uh now I've been married for 40 years, and over 40 years, I have three wonderful children, four grandchildren.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: I had a best-selling book about a year and a half ago.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: I own a national company, and I'm uh uh uh what you would call a uh Christian, uh veteran Christian conservative.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, welcome.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the podcast.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh sir.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: My son, my my son just graduated West Point.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: I hope he has half as good a career as you have.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
10:15
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: Please pass on my uh congratulations to it.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and Jerry, as we know, the Army Rangers are the real deal.
10:23
SPEAKER_01: I mean they are so it is the oldest special operations force in the entire military.
10:31
SPEAKER_01: As we say in the Rangers, we've been stacking bodies since 1645.
10:36
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
10:36
SPEAKER_01: Wow, yeah, yeah.
10:38
SPEAKER_02: We appreciate your service, sir.
10:39
SPEAKER_02: We appreciate you joining us.
10:41
SPEAKER_02: Could you, I don't know, could you if you heard us uh chatting about Cuba, uh, but what are your thoughts about Cuba?
10:49
SPEAKER_02: And you know, it has quite a history with the United States.
10:53
SPEAKER_02: You could go back to uh when Kennedy uh uh had the Bay of Pigs uh uh an effort that went wrong.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: And you had the liaison between the Soviet Union and Cuba, Fidel Castro, and um Russia has a little bit different relationship with Cuba now.
11:13
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of people have asked the question before: why don't we take efforts to um liberate, if you will, Cuba?
11:24
SPEAKER_02: Uh it looks like an easy thing to do on paper, and I assume it's not all that easy.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, no combat situation is ever easy.
11:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and even what they're doing, which is putting an economic warfare stranglehold on them.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: The uh I think that's a good way to go, but I do anticipate if Trump continues down this road uh with his current administration, he's gonna have to put boots on the ground.
11:50
SPEAKER_01: You've got to go in and take these people out, just like he did in Maduro.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: Uh they swoop, you know, they swept in in the middle of the night, took out Maduro, and it surprised them all so much, all the rest of them just said, okay, we give up.
12:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh we could do the same thing.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: We have the technology, and they don't have it.
12:08
SPEAKER_01: No matter how much we found out going into Venezuela, that the resources that were given to them by China and Russia had no effect.
12:20
SPEAKER_01: It really didn't affect us.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: I do believe that we need to take care of our own hemisphere.
12:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we've been saying that for years.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: We were allowing all of this communism and these drugs and all this bad stuff to go on for literally 50, 60 years.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: We never had a president or an administration that had the courage to stand up and set it all right.
12:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: Now, do you think there's talk that there may be military action by Christmas time?
12:51
SPEAKER_01: Do you do you think surprised?
12:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh I the uh it would make sense.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh there right now, their economy is in full collapse, they're in spiral mode, just like Iran.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean, right now, Iran's currency is 2.5 million rivals to one dollar.
13:15
unknown: Yeah.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: All right.
13:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's absurd.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: And they're saying they control the Straits of Hormuz, which we know they don't.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: We have 13 million barrels of oil going through the strait every day.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: That's only 6 million from its high when the war started.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: Six more million per day, and we're back at normal.
13:36
SPEAKER_02: So let me ask you about um since since you brought up uh Iran, um the the quandary with dealing with Iran, the Iranian leadership, is the mullahs don't care whether the economy's good, uh, even though they have what, 93 million people that live there who do care, but the mulas that run the country are not the same.
14:00
SPEAKER_02: And we've always uh hoped that there might be some sort of revolution from the people there and there'd be a change in leadership, but that hasn't happened.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: Do you think that should be uh on the agenda here of regime change, which we haven't heard in months?
14:20
SPEAKER_02: Or do you think we should just uh uh apply the economic pressures, make sure the strait is open, make sure they don't have nuclear weapons.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: Are all of those things achievable without putting boots on the ground, without there being a revolution?
14:36
SPEAKER_01: Great question.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: First, you have to understand history, though.
14:40
SPEAKER_01: And if you go back to the Iran prior to 1980, 79 when the mullahs and the IRGC took over, it was the most advanced nation in the entire uh Middle East.
14:56
SPEAKER_01: It was unbelievable.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: With the shock got to go to school, everything.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, you have to understand if you have not read the Quran, right, and understand uh this these religious zealots, you you will not get a full understanding that they will never accept us as equals.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: That's right.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: That is impossible.
15:20
SPEAKER_01: If you go and read the Quran, the Muslim faith will never intermingle in a cohesive way with Western civilization.
15:30
SPEAKER_01: It can't, right?
15:32
SPEAKER_01: Because of the way the Quran's written.
15:34
SPEAKER_01: I've read it six times.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible for it to happen.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: So until we start coming to grips with that, we're gonna continue this.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: And I see Boots having to go on the ground because the only way you're gonna end this is to kill those guys.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: They've been killing Americans for 47 years.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: And I love our president, and I'll vote for him again, but I disagree with him here.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: He should have gone in five months ago, but since he's delayed it and we got the straight open, okay, right after the election, go in and take all the bad guys out and just just kill the whole damn thing.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: You know, we we don't want to lose any soldiers.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna there's gonna be uh uh civilian losses, and and that always happens in war.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: You try to avoid it, but don't tie our troopers' hands and let them go in and do business so we can stop losing Americans that we've been losing since 1979 at the hands of this regime.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: After sorry, after reading the Quran as many times as you have, what what is what is something about the religion that Americans are missing?
16:40
SPEAKER_00: There's been a generational attitude that, oh, Islam was the, you know, it means submission.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: It means it they come in peace.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a peaceful religion.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, it well, it's because our schools have indoctrinated our children instead of giving them history.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: They tell them what they want them to think and not what actually how to critically think.
17:01
SPEAKER_01: They don't make them go read the Quran.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: And the key thing is that six times in the Quran, it says kill the infidel.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: If they refuse to convert, kill the infidel.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: All right, women are second-class citizens.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: And name me one nation, all right, one nation that has converted to Islam that was done peacefully, like a lot of Christian uh countries are.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: They've all been done by force.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: Every you can't name me one that hasn't converted to Islam except by the by the point of a spear.
17:36
SPEAKER_02: Now, I know the I know people who have relatives in Iran, and they make this point.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: The mullahs didn't come from Iran.
17:44
SPEAKER_02: That those came into there.
17:46
SPEAKER_02: So could you describe how the people of Iran, whom you were describing as pro-Western before the mullahs took control, how they are different from the mullahs.
17:58
SPEAKER_02: And then I might throw in also this there's the IRG.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that would be their army, is something we would have to deal with.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: But the but just like the IRGC, they're gonna die to the death.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: They're not like the Iraqi army when Hussein was there and they all collapsed.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: They're gonna they're gonna go down with a fight, right?
18:20
SPEAKER_01: That being said, they don't have the training and the technology to meet with our capabilities and most importantly, our warfighters.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: Our war fighters are deadly.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: When we train our war fighters, we're trained to go up five to fifteen to R1.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: That's what they're that's the level they're trained at.
18:39
SPEAKER_01: They're not trained just to go one-on-one.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: So the the mass is different.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and in answer to your question, uh, the the civilians want to rise up, and what you're not seeing, I just spent a month in Europe with my wife.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: What you're not seeing on American television, or there are protests happening in Iran right now.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: You're not gonna see it on American television because they don't want you to see it.
19:09
SPEAKER_01: But they are rising up.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: Now they're they're getting slaughtered, but they are rising up, and they don't have any organized partisan force going up against these mullahs in the IRGC.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: That's what they actually need.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: Just like we did in Afghanistan with Russia in the 80s.
19:29
SPEAKER_01: We need to do the same thing there.
19:31
SPEAKER_01: We need to get the uh some of the uh uh CIA folks in there, arm these guys, give them the weapons they need, and help them organize to fight back against these mullahs and the IRGC.
19:47
SPEAKER_02: Well, I I appreciate you enlightening.
19:50
SPEAKER_02: I remember going over as a journalist to Iraq, and the one thing I learned there is their culture is not our culture.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: And that's the and it's so much of it is based on the Quran that the idea that they think like we do uh is totally wrong.
20:08
SPEAKER_02: But I think again, to underscore your point, where it was a very pro-Western country under the Shah, which by the way, we did install.
20:19
SPEAKER_02: Um it's it's quite a dynamic there.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: It's very confusing.
20:25
SPEAKER_02: Um, what do you think?
20:26
SPEAKER_02: I'd I hate to ask it this way, because I assume people like yourself are at least floating these ideas in front of the president.
20:36
SPEAKER_02: And it could and we also know the uh uh pottery barn uh you broke it, uh you own it.
20:44
SPEAKER_02: Uh we understand that, and we saw that happen in Iraq, we saw it happen in Afghanistan, and there must be just as many people saying, uh, we don't want to go in there.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: Well, but there's a difference.
20:57
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: And you gotta get again, I'm gonna go back to history.
21:00
SPEAKER_01: And this is a huge difference, Bob.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: For since Truman became president, we've had feckless leaders in the presidency.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: These men would not let our warriors do their job.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: It started with MacArthur, all right?
21:17
SPEAKER_01: It happened in Vietnam.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: They tied the hands of Westmoreland, making them do this war of attrition because they didn't want it to know that we were in a war.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, if you ever go back and watch the movie, uh We Were Soldiers Once, from the We Were Soldiers Once in Young, Kal Moore said it right.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: They finally figured out in 1965 after the Battle of Adrang uh Valley, that oh, we're in a war.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: Really?
21:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, if you would just be honest with the American people and let them know what's at stake up front, that'd be fine.
21:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's just like all these general officers now.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm a retired captain, but these general officers, name me one general officer that's on active duty right now, outside of the one.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: That just took out the Venezuelans that's won a war.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: That's won a war.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Because they're not trained that way anymore.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: And that's what I love what Pete Hex is trying to do.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: He's trying to get them back to war fighting, lethality.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: You close with and you kill the enemy.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: These people are not our friends.
22:22
SPEAKER_01: And so we need to, and that's what this administration is trying to get the war department or the old Department of Defense back to.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: We have one job and one job only.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: It's not protracted wars, and that's what the American people is worried about.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: It's not the uh go in and kill the enemy, take it all.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: They need to go back and read the Bible, read first and second kings.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when God went to war, there was nothing left.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Bravo.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: You know, I just want to I've been thinking about this where the um Middle Eastern countries uh like Iran, they are really perfecting the art of asymmetric warfare.
23:07
SPEAKER_00: I go back to history and look at the high watermark of Islam and the caliphate.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: They they they were all the all of Spain, and they were at the gates of Vienna, you know.
23:18
SPEAKER_00: People people don't remember that.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: It was a it was a religion of conquest.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: But now they're not arriving on horseback, they're arriving on passenger planes, you know, uh undocumented aliens.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a flood, it's a non-stop flood, and they really are affecting whole countries and whole cultures.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Look at England.
23:39
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I love it.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: When I was over in Europe, I was in uh several different countries while I was there.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: I was finally seeing on the news over there were Germany, uh, Italy, uh, even France.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: These people are starting to speak up.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: They're tired of it.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: They're tired of being told one thing, oh, and it's gonna be all nice, and then they see their sons, their daughters, their brothers, their sisters getting killed on the street by these lunatics.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: And it and it's absurd, uh, are getting raped.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's it's it's it's crazy.
24:10
SPEAKER_01: And then start holding people accountable, you know.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: The it just it just blows my mind that we sit back and we want to we want the military to protect us, but when we send them in, we're more worried about blowing up the church than we are killing the bad guys.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: Or blowing up a mosque.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, a mosque.
24:32
SPEAKER_02: I don't think about a mosque.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: All right.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: Well, let me tell you something that I'm sure you're well aware of.
24:37
SPEAKER_02: When I was over in Iraq, there were missiles that targeted certain sites, and they were sometimes right next to a mosque that wasn't touched.
24:49
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: And that's how good our accuracy is, but this is how stupid the generals were and the senior officers that didn't have the moral courage to stand up and say, I'm not doing that, I'm a war fighter, all right?
25:03
SPEAKER_01: And that's why they hate Pete Heggseth and a lot of the other warriors.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: My son was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor for his actions in April of 2009.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: He was in a mounted convoy in the second vehicle.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: And the when I was talking to the commander of that platoon when they when they came under attack from us, and this is how crazy these people are.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: He was driving this suicide bomber along with other forces, was driving a dump truck with over uh uh 30,000 pounds of explosives trying to get in to a Ford operating base outside Mosul.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: Now, luckily, my son's platoon stopped it, but it cost them several of their lives.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: But this is this is how stupid the rules of engagement were when he was there.
25:56
SPEAKER_01: The first person to come in contact with an enemy force, they had to use the lowest lethal weapon.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: So the guy in the first vehicle who had a freaking machine gun on the turret wasn't allowed to use a machine gun, he had to pull out his damn nine millimeter.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: Who the hell thought up that kind of stupidity?
26:18
SPEAKER_01: I would, if I was, I you remember that Marine colonel that went on Facebook about the withdrawal from Afghanistan?
26:26
SPEAKER_01: If I had been on active duty, I would have gone all over social media.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: I would have been like David Hackworth in 1970.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
26:33
SPEAKER_01: And they put your son in an all-on-60 minutes.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: They put your son at risk.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: They put every American at risk because they're not allowing them to do their job.
26:41
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I love what's happening with the war department.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: They're starting to hold these senior general officers accountable.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: They're so used to getting up there, ooh, I got a star, and I'm gonna get out and get a big job with some contractor and sell the military a bunch of crap.
26:59
SPEAKER_02: I have a friend that uh I have a friend that works in a Pentagon.
27:02
SPEAKER_02: He says, as soon as you put a star on the shoulder, that's when it becomes political.
27:07
SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah.
27:08
SPEAKER_02: Oh, it gets political way before that because there's so many kernels floating for it.
27:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, let me wrap up, let me wrap this up, our conversation back to where we started at Cuba.
27:19
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, it's been like a behind a curtain for such a not the iron curtain, but behind a curtain.
27:28
SPEAKER_02: So much we don't know.
27:29
SPEAKER_02: And for the longest time it was protected by the Soviet Union.
27:33
SPEAKER_02: And it seems like we've had some effect with an economic uh those sanctions.
27:40
SPEAKER_02: But what could go wrong uh with Cuba?
27:44
SPEAKER_02: Obviously, there's always the risk that Americans die in any effort.
27:48
SPEAKER_02: But but what do you worry about going wrong if we were to try to take steps to uh I guess the way it would be uh described is liberating Cuba, not finishing the job.
28:04
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: If you ever notice we went into Germany, we went into Japan.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Did we leave?
28:13
SPEAKER_01: No, we didn't.
28:15
SPEAKER_01: We didn't pull out.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: And look at those countries now.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: They're our allies.
28:19
SPEAKER_01: Even though we have our own interfighting, we stayed there for a full generation.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: You have to stay there for a full generation.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: And Cuba's close enough that if we go in and liberate them, I'd make them the 51st state.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: And I initially I'd make them a territory, I'd assign a governor, let the FBI, all of them go in there because it's right there.
28:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, heck, we you remember in the 70s and the 80s, we used to see boats of refugees come to the boat.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Mario Lito.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 90 miles.
28:51
SPEAKER_01: It's right there.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: It makes no sense.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Well, Captain, you know, we've had boots on the ground in Cuba before.
28:59
SPEAKER_00: Remember the Battle of San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: And we won.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: And we won.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: It could be done.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: Yes, it can be.
29:10
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, sir.
29:11
SPEAKER_02: Um, um, Captain Todd, uh, your wealth of information and insight based on your experience, and uh, we appreciate you appreciate you so much for being with us today.
29:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, you're a great guest.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have to have you back to talk about.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to talk about the politics of the Department of War.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: I love it because I think they're getting rid of the politics.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a beautiful thing.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: It's a beautiful thing.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh no politics in the war department.
29:41
SPEAKER_01: None.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you, sir.
29:42
SPEAKER_00: Have a good day.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much, you both, and God bless your families.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: Be safe.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: Yep, and stay with you, and thank you for your service, sir.
29:49
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that was good.
29:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Um, as a palate cleanser, Bob, after all that heavy talk, I have we're gonna go back to England again.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh the BBC is facing a backlash over a story in which it claimed that a new fingernail trend is racist.
30:12
SPEAKER_02: So women trend.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: Have you have you seen this on Instagram?
30:18
SPEAKER_00: No.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Women are posting uh pictures of their fingernails uh which um have no polish on them or natural.
30:27
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, uh, but they say it's a new, it's a growing trend, and they're they're just clean hands, clean fingernails, but no nail polish, no garish colors, you know, no, no uh gluing rhinestones to the tip of the nail.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: You see where this is going, right?
30:45
SPEAKER_00: The according to the BBC, nail art is linked back to black, Latino, and Asian communities, uh, and the high status connotation of the new bear look could stigmatize the more bolder manicures preferred by some minorities.
31:07
SPEAKER_02: So, what should I infer from all this?
31:11
SPEAKER_00: That again, the the Brits are losing their damn mind.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, first of all they're letting terrorists go.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: And don't, you know, everyone must paint their nails like a garish color and put rhinestones all over them to in solidarity.
31:27
SPEAKER_02: Well, you know what's interesting is I know kind of first hand the the cultural um inclinations toward doing things with your nails.
31:41
SPEAKER_02: I I let's just say I went out a very long time with uh somebody that worked in an emergency room uh in uh South uh Los Angeles, in Los Angeles, and uh worked with a lot of people who really fixed up their nails.
32:00
SPEAKER_02: And she actually got into doing that because it was and doing certain things with their hair.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: Um as of course nowadays, what would they call that cultural uh what are the appropriation?
32:15
SPEAKER_02: Appropriation, yeah.
32:16
SPEAKER_02: She was just uh amused by it and took part in it.
32:20
SPEAKER_02: But uh I guess it's a statement that in England they're just growing them out and not doing it.
32:25
SPEAKER_02: So that's that's right.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: Right, right, right, but like it's okay if you're a person of color, and I'm simplifying here, and you do like doing that, but if you're not a person of color and like presenting them a different way, that's racist.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: You see, racism only goes one way.
32:45
SPEAKER_02: I've been told that, by the way, because and here's the reason I was given.
32:50
SPEAKER_02: Even though, look, it makes sense to me that if you're a person of color, there's a possibility that there are some people that don't like white people for various reasons, okay?
33:01
SPEAKER_02: And but I've been told that that is not racism because whites are not oppressed.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: Right, right, exactly.
33:09
SPEAKER_00: But I have a story along those lines, if you'll bear with me.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: Well, as I I'm not surprised.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: I had I I used to have a show called Chasing News, where we used to give all our young reporters iPhones, and they would go out and shoot the story, you know.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: So I had a reporter, a beautiful, lovely African-American woman, and she was doing a story in Manhattan, and I asked if I could tag along with her just to check up on her, see how she's doing in the field, and offer any assistance.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: So we drive into Manhattan, and we're we finished the story, and it's still pretty early in the day, and we're pretty we're in upper north, upper west side.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: And she says, You know, I have my two aunts who live on Sugar Hill in Harlem, which is where all the black doctors and lawyers used to live, you know, and still do, many of them.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: So she said, Do you mind if we pop by so I can say a quick hello?
34:04
SPEAKER_00: I was delighted.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yes, of course.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: I've always wanted to see Sugar Hill, and I wouldn't mind meeting your aunts.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: So we drove up there.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, I get a spot like right like Mannox.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: I get a spot right in front of the of their beautiful townhouse, and uh it's one of those old brownstones, beautiful.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: And they owned a whole building.
34:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh so we get out and we're at the bottom of the steps.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: And she turns to me urgently and she says, They might not let you in.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: Um, they believe that white men are the devil, as serious as a heart attack.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: White men are the devil.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: They may not want you in the house.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: Um so we'll have to play it by ear.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: And I said to her, Look, I'm I'm Irish, I'm a citizen of the world.
34:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm welcome everywhere.
34:52
SPEAKER_02: You know.
34:54
SPEAKER_02: And how'd it go?
34:56
SPEAKER_00: It went great.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: It went great.
34:59
SPEAKER_00: Within 15 minutes, I was on the couch drinking, they were serving me tea, and I had biscuits, and on top, you know, tell me about the house.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: Where how did how did you grow up?
35:08
SPEAKER_00: They lived there their whole lives.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: They were both in their 80s and told me the whole story about how their father was a doctor, bought the house.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: Sugar Hill was where all the people hobnobbed.
35:19
SPEAKER_00: It was a great time.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the thing is, they may have thought I was the devil, but they still let me in the house.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it just told me that racism uh can be anywhere, really.
35:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, it depends on how you grew up and what you were taught.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: You remember the the South Pacific, you have to be carefully taught to be a racist, yeah, you know.
35:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:42
SPEAKER_02: And then the of course the joke on them is you are the devil.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: So touche.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: All right.
35:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those that know me would agree.
35:57
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: Uh great story to end it on, Jerry.
36:00
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Bob.
36:02
SPEAKER_02: Have a good day.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: You too.