We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at fdr LST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and if you want
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at the Federalist dot com as well. Today I'm joined by my colleague Sean
Fleetwood. He's a staff writer with us at The Federalist. Covers the Pentagon
and other broader military issues for us, in addition to many other things.
Sean, you're kind of a general list, but if you have a specialty,
i'd say that's what it is, in addition to sports, and maybe
we can get into that a little bit too. Thanks for coming on the
show, Sean, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me.
I think this is our first podcast together too, Yeah, I think
it is. All the listeners have heard you host other conversations, especially on
military issues, and I actually wanted to start with one of the biggest stories
as we're looking back on twenty twenty three. You know, the Tuberville hold,
which you covered better than so many people in the media, and you
covered, by the way, like from outside of DC, better than people
who were sitting in the press gallery in the Senate for months watching this unfold.
This is one of the biggest stories of twenty twenty three. And if
you talk to people that are sort of leaders in the pro life movement in
the conservative movement, they feel like what Tommy Tuberville did was a landmark not
just in the post Doobs climate, but a landmark in the broader pro life
movement in the last sort of half century of pro life politics, because it
was, you know, kind of a politic that comes from outside the religious
right. You know, people didn't really know what to make of Tommy Tarberville
when he stepped into Congress, but they certainly didn't expect him to go to
the mat on the life isshield, and they certainly nobody expected anyone to sort
of force this central question to ask the Republican Party elected Republican politicians to pass
this test, what will you prioritize Will you prioritize cultural conservatism or the Pentagon
And a lot of elected Republicans failed that test. Miserably because Tommy Taberville sort
of forced them to take the test and to say, listen, Democrats can
change this policy at any time. So is it more important to you to
prioritize demanding that Democrats change this policy, demanding that the Pentagon changed this policy,
or you know if or is it more important to you to defend your
voter's positions on all of this. And people in the pro life movement are
really not used to seeing that from elected leaders, especially ones that aren't uplifted
politically by the religious right. You know, Tommy Tarberville is just a really
popular football coach who ran, you know, a campaign in Alabama, a
red state, and notice what it is. But to see this out of
him really interesting. So so, Sean, now that you started covering this
in March, when the hold happened originally and it evolved into something much bigger,
now that you have some distance from it, the hole ended earlier this
month in December, what do you make looking back on that nine month hold.
Yeah, I was really surprised that he, of all people, would
have done it because coming in, like when he was first sworn in,
you know, you kind of heard rumblings like, oh, he's just a
squish. He's your typical milk toast Republican who's not really going to fight on
the big issues. So when he first started initiating these holes against the Pentagon
policy, I was genuinely surprised that he did that, and even more surprised
that he continued to do it as long as he did. I've never I'm
not someone who gets angry at politics. Just growing up in this era,
you're always ready to be disappointed by the Republican Party. But I was genuinely
just infuriated at how his colleagues just kneecapped him. Republicans have such limited leverage
in Congress with Biden in the White House, and I mean they're in the
minority in the Senate, but you have this power to initiate holds on these
individual nominations, and then that's what he did. He was using his legitimate
power, and he could have kept doing this, and I wish he would
have. But of course the Republicans in the Senate just get weak, need
they listened to these baseless theories and talking points put out by Chuck Schumer and
the Democrats and these Biden appointees and Pentagon officials talking about how this harms military
readiness. Well, if that was the case, then you would have dropped
the policy months ago. Like if the military readiness and national security was actually
at stake here and the country was on the precipice of some gigantic war,
you know, terrorists were going to attack the homeland. If this actually jeopardized
national security, you would have paused the abortion policy months ago. But of
course they didn't do that because the talking point about military readiness was complete bs
from the start. It was an emergency. It was a five alarm fire
if you listened to Chuck Schumer and then eventually Mitch McConnell Joni Ernst that Tommy
Tuberville had put a hold on sort of voting on these nominees on the Senate
floor, even though, by the way, there were workarounds, and even
though the Pentagon would not be clear about how many people after Dobbs. So
the Dobb's decision comes down, the Pentagon says, just a slight refresher for
everyone. The Pentagon says, we will pay for abortion travel. If one
of our employees needs an abortion in a red state, they have to travel
to al state to get it. We will pay for it. Now,
there's a long standing rule against taxpayer funding for abortions, so they're saying it's
abortion travel, which is different than the abortion itself. But of course in
this case, there's no abortion without the abortion travel, so you could sort
of parse that distinction as much as you want. But the Pentagon would never
say how many people had actually benefited from this policy, since they sort of
did it by an administrative decree. After the Dobs decision came down, they
acted like it was a five alarm buyer that these nominees weren't being confirmed because
Tommy Taberville had put a hold on over this policy. Meanwhile, they could
easily have just eliminated the policy. They wouldn't tell us how many people it
was affecting because the number is clearly very, very small, and what they
wanted to do instead was to force the hand of Republicans on this issue.
I think, Sean, this is a theory off float to you. I'm
curious about it. I think that they are increasingly worried about what they sort
of pejoratively describe as isolationism, that's actually more just skepticism of the military industrial
complex that they're not used to getting it from the right. They're used to
having rubber stamps from the Republican Party. They're used to every Republican senator,
with the exception of maybe Rand Paul, conducting themselves like Mitch McConnell when it
comes to military issues. And they really, really really did not want to
give in to an anti Pentagon policy by Republicans or an anti Pentagon stand that
Republicans were taking because it taps into this broader fear that they're losing control and
that they're losing this important bulwark of support from the Republican Party. And they
kind of stood firm on this over that. I mean, obviously abortion politics
are important to the Biden administration and has broader progressive coalition. That's part of
my theory, though I'm curious what you think of that. Yeah, I
definitely agree with that. I think, you know, obviously they don't want
the pr loss if they cave to it in loud tib world to continue doing
this, but I think institutionally they didn't want the loss either, because if
Tuberville can do this with you know, this specific policy on this specific issue,
then what else can Senate Republicans do in the future, you know,
using this tactic, and they did not want to set that precedent. And
I don't even think, you know, the Mitch McConnell's, Dan Sullivan's people
who were clearly in line with Chuck Schumer and against Tuberville. I didn't think
they want wanted that institutional change either. They love the status quo. They
love the I know, the terms overused, but the uniparty you know,
status of Washington, d C. Where you just ram everything through no second
thought to what's actually in these omnibus massive spending bills, that they wanted to
keep that in place. And I think Tuberville's office you mentioned, you know,
like we don't exactly know the number, but I think Tuberville's office estimated
it was a couple of months ago roughly like a dozen service members that had
actually used this policy. So again it's not even about about as it's not
even like a major number of people that were actually using it. But I
mean Tarberville was essentially backed into a corner where he was left with no good
options. He could continue the policy and then his Senate Republican colleagues aside with
Democrats and changing the rules, which would set a really bad precedent for changing
Senate procedure just to allow for partisan nominations to be rammed through. Or he
could do what he ultimately did, which has dropped the majority of his protests,
and you know, essentially allow these nominations to go through and mass.
And so you know, I don't blame him at the end of the day,
I don't think Republican voters should either. They should be directing their fire
towards Senate Republican leadership and people like Dan Sullivan and Joni Earnst and Lindsay Graham
and the rest, because they're ultimately the ones who are responsible for what happened
a couple of weeks ago, right, And you know, the way that
it ended was entirely I mean, there's something about it, Like I actually,
from what we report and what I've heard, there were very reasonable fears
about this ending in a precedent that would genuinely be bad for the way the
Senate operated. In order to get around at Schumer played his trump card and
said, basically, we're going to change Senate precedent forever for confirmations, or
we're just going to change it on this. But then you know that does
obviously open the door up to other changes. It's sort of like the same
conversation about the filibuster. But anyway, so he exactly if Tumberville's backed into
a corner, Conservatives who had supported Tuberville in the Senate are backed into a
corner, and instead of having the support of Mitch McConnell and Joni Ernst,
that, in my mind, Sean really would have Dan Sullivan's another good example
that really would have sealed this if Mitch McConnell had said, we are you
know, we know that this policy does not mean that much to you.
Lloyd Austin. We know that, and we urge you to change it.
We are standing with Tommy Taberville. I don't know. I think that would
have kind of sealed the deal and would have given Tuberville the success that his
voters wanted from him and that Republican voters in general would support. Because Sean,
this also opens up something much bigger that you've covered very closely, which
is the decline of well, let's say it like this, the rise of
mediocrity at the Pentagon. And that's what people really see this as about.
A proxy war, not just over sort of culture versus military and what the
priorities of the Republican Party are. But for the Pentagon, this is doubling
down on an ideological commitment that that exemplifies the ways in which they've sort of
declined in recent decades. Can you speak a little bit to maybe that dynamic
here, Yeah, I mean, I think you're the nail on the head.
There's kind of been this sentiment within the Republican Party that, oh,
we're for a strong military and therefore we have to fund it at all costs
without a second thought. But what we've been seeing in recent years, I
would say, really started under the Obama administration, has really come to fruition
here in the Biden administration is this promotion of leftist ideologues throughout the military,
promoting them to high ranking positions. I mean, you look at the military
leadership right now. Joe Biden nominated Charles Q. Brown is his name.
He was from the Air Force. He is now the chair of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff. This is a guy who, after the whole George Floyd
thing, was fully on board with the whole DEI diversity equity inclusion, which
is just like an offsheet of neo Marxism. You know, he's totally on
board with that. He talked about you know, when he was the Chief
of Staff of the Air Force, he hired for diversity when staffing his office.
This guy's now the chair of the Joint chiefs of Staff, one of
the highest ranking positions within the military that was previously held by General Mark Milly,
who we all know as a big fan of the communist Chinese and would
willingly alert them to any military action the United States would take in the future.
But he's just one of like many examples I've been reporting on a lot
of different of these nominees that Biden's been putting forward. They just have these
horrendous track records of promoting electist politics, endorsing this dei ideology. And that's
really I think having a trickle down effect. I think a lot of people
are looking at the military now and are seeing that it's not the same institution
that it was twenty thirty years ago. You have parents and grandparents who are
now saying, I don't want my kids to serve in this military. It's
not the military that I served in or my dad served in. And that's
a really damning thing because for a long time. You know, the military
has been a generational thing, right like my father served, my grandfather served,
and so therefore I have an obligation to serve my country in the same
capacity. Leftism has become so embedded and entrenched in the upper rankings of the
Pentagon, and it's trickling down into the rank and file that now you're just
dissuading people from even considering involving themselves in the military or enlisting. And we're
seeing that play out the recruitment shortfalls that the military has been experiencing since Biden
took off. This has just been astounding. Every branch of the military,
with the exception of the Marine Corps for the fiscal twenty twenty three year missed
their recruiting targets. For the Army, it was about ten thousand, the
Navy about six thousand, and I believe the Air Force was around three thousand
or something like that. But that's just how bad it's getting now. Obviously
there are more factors going into that. You know, the poor fitness and
overall health of gen Z and younger generations is obviously a big factor as well.
But I don't think you can discount the just purge of our military,
of anybody who loves their or anybody who has a semblance of conservatism in their
body, that they just don't want these people in the service. And I
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of questions about that and want to put one more point on the Tuberville conversation
before we dive into the sort of terrifying, deeper issues in the military.
But one final thought on Turberville is that if you talk to people sort of
with knowledge of his motivations from March until December when the NDA controversy popped up.
And by the way, I also think maybe the media was wrong to
say tuberville hold is gone. It's true that you know, the vast majority
of these nominations are now going to go through, but some of the most
important ones that are four star generals, Democrats are gonna have to use a
workaround to confirm them because the hold. Tuberville did not release the hold on
some of these most important nominations. And that gets to this point about Republicans
letting the media set the tone of this entire debacle, of this entire conflict
that Mitch McConnell's of the world still do not realize that if he had taken
this easy and obvious step, not just of ignoring the Tuberville controversy for a
little bit, but of you know, saying, the media is going to
make this position really unpopular. They're going to say Republicans are harming military readiness,
et cetera, et cetera. But if we go out there sort of
boldly and challenge that narrative and stand with Tommy Tubberville and get the Pentagon to
relent on this woke priority, we can easily win this fight. We can
endear ourselves to voters, we can improve the military, and we can make
a really important point. They still haven't learned that they still cling to these
these narratives. And when you talk to people you sort of know about what
Tuberville was thinking, they'll say it made him dig his heels in harder that
he was being attacked by the media and then by other Republicans because it was
so ridiculous. And that's clearly somebody who comes from the world of like athletic
competition on the highest level, who is deeply irked to come to DC and
learn how contemptuous Republicans are to their own base, and it made him,
It made it stiffened his spine, it stealed his spine. And if a
whole lot of other Republicans acted like this, it would be a very very
different party, at least on the Senate side. Yeah, I mean his
is basically the message was, you know, guys, it doesn't have to
be like this, like here's what we can actually do, here's how we
can actually fight. But again, Republican are more interested in the status quote.
They do not actually care about these big culture war issues. What's remarkable
to me is people like Joony Arst going to the Senate floor and being like,
oh my gosh, Biden's Pentagon policy is so radical, so dangerous.
But I'm also going to side with Democrats if you know, they put up
this rules change. But also at the same time in pro life, none
of those things actually comport together. But it just goes to show that they're
just a party of talking points. And I wrote an article about this a
couple of weeks ago. They're just a pattempt and political party. They go
out to their voters and gin up this. But the Democrats rhetoric right because
they know that Republican voters are not going to vote for Democrats, so they
play up this notion that the Democrats are so evil, just keep the focus
on them instead of our failures as a party, and that's how we get
reelected. And they do this every two to four years when they're up for
reelection, and Republican voters basically left in a hostage situation, like, I
mean, you can't vote for Democrats because they'll destroy the country, or you
can vote for Republicans, which are basically just Democrat party light, which is
just slower decline, which says, you know, another thing about Republican voters
needing to get involved in GOP primaries. But that's a whole nother conversation.
But yeah, we reversed by the way on the left, the activists are
the hostages and the party is The activists are the hostage takers. The basis
the hostage taker, and the party is the hostage. They're sort of held
hostage to these a the sort of radicals in the media and the radicals in
their base who demand that the Pentagon pay for abortion travel, and some of
those id lugs are now in fact in positions of power in the administrative state
in places like the Pentagon, so they're broadly held hostage to that, even
though it doesn't represent the like American public in any way whatsoever. It's a
very small, narrow, unrepresentative slice of the American population. Yeah, and
I just to add one more thing on the whole Tubberville thing. I have
it on good authority that you know, Tommy Tubberville, when they were doing
the National Defense Authorization at negotiations the House past version of this bill, the
original past version included a provision that nuked the Pentagon policy, and it got
to the Senate and it was in negotiations and deliberations with the Senate version,
and Tubberville actually I have it on authority that he had the votes to actually
include that provision in the Senate version, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and
the Senate leadership came in and basically just completely ruined the whole thing and ncapped
it. But I think that goes to your point, like they are more
concerned with placating the radical activists in their base, contrasted with the Republican Party,
who is not interested in fulfilling any of the or wishes of their own
voters. So I think that shows the dynamic that we see play out in
Washington on a regular basis, where Democrats are just destroying the country and Republicans
are just standing there and watching it and in some cases helping further it along.
It's amazing, Like what establishment Republicans care about? Like I get this
question sometimes, especially from people on the left. You know, why would
establishment Republicans be concerned to see the Dobbs decision come down when you know generally
they the pro life. You know, they might not care about it enough,
but you know they they're pro life, So what would be the problem?
Well, because their priority, and it's very easy to understand how somebody
who's in DC for a long time comes down with this ideology. Their priority
is power. And if you are on the good side of the military industrial
complex machine, and I'm talking about lobbyists, I'm talking about the Pentagon itself.
These are lobbies with a lot, a lot, a lot of money,
the revolving door is intense, and so if you're on the right side
of them, you feel as though you're perpetuating your party's power. And obviously,
Sean we know, you know, kind of coming from outside the elite
Republican circles that they use their power basically for nothing because they're so worried about
losing their power that they won't take tough stands, and they won't you know,
they won't do things like actually, to his credit, rond de Santis,
if you are pro life, if you believe life begins at conception,
then you bring a six week bill like Rondosantis did in Florida. But other
Republican politicians are so anxious about losing their power that they don't actually use their
power. That's the I think insight, you know, having been in DC
for a while now, that's I guess the best way to explain why they
see things the way that they see them. And that's what explains, you
know, why ostensibly pro life politicians want to be on the side of the
Pentagon and the defense lobbyists and their friends in the media. That on that
point is because they ultimately are easily persuaded to taking stands that protect their power
as opposed to potentially challenging their power. I mean, Republicans are focused on
winning the next election and Democrats are focused on winning the next generation. I
think you really saw this kickstarted with the Obama administration. I mean, you
go back to Bill Clinton's presidency that first midterm where Republicans just came in and
wiped the floor in that first midterm, and Bill Clinton kind of pivoted back
to the center. He said, you know, we're just going to not
go as far to the left. We're going to work with Republicans. And
I mean, ultimately he ended up getting re elected, but I think that
showed wilfulness among the Democrat Party that we care about elections too, we care
about maintaining our power as well. You know, after every election. When
Obama came to power, it was a whole different ballgame because it was really
the first time you saw this radical Marxists take power and a lot of these
people were infiltrating and occupying high positions within the White House and within the administration,
and that mentality changed. It wasn't you know, we need to you
know, pivot back to the center after the twenty ten elections and work with
Republicans. It was, no, we're going to double down on radical leftism.
We're going to put our foot to the gas pedal and keep going and
going. And you saw this after the twenty fourteen midterm elections where Democrats lost
the Senate, they continued to go further and further to the left, and
they didn't care ultimately. I mean, obviously they hate Donald Trump, but
I think in the long term, they don't see elections anymore as I would
say, you know, these major cataclysmic losses as they used to. They
see it as a temporary setback because they know the pendulum will ultimately swing back
to the other side. That sure, Republicans may have the White House or
a Chamber of Congress now, but in a couple of years it's going to
come back to us. And when we get power, we're going to do
the same thing we did under Obama. We're just going to ram through every
radical policy imaginable because at the end of the day, they're not focused on
winning the next election. They're focused on securing power permanently going forward in the
future of this country. And that's what you're seeing play out now under the
Biden administration. Just every radical policy you can think of, whether it's the
open border, the co opting of our military, the weaponization of the doj
and FBI to go after anyone who's not a leftist, and in top leading
political candidates of the opposition. It's all an attempt to further and solidify power
permanently, and that's the end game here. And I don't think Republicans are
smart enough in Congress to recognize that that's what's happening. And if they do
recognize that, they just don't care to do anything about it. And this
is also something that explains why you have these hardened military leaders, people who
have seen war making an alliance with sort of what people used to kind of
dismiss as like the hippie left, because they also saw their sort of cultural
conservatism as a threat to their power. They read the writing on the wall
because you know, they actually have some people in their own ranks. Now
there's the infamous like CIA recruitment videos that are absolutely hilarious, and some of
the military recruitment videos too recently that have taken a woke turn. It's yeah,
putting it to put it lightly, and maybe you can talk to us
a little bit about just what we've seen in the last year. You have
she Din Pang reportedly telling Joe Biden that he hopes to take Taiwan peacefully.
It's just basically him saying that he hopes to take Taiwan, and you know,
there's basically no way that you can invade Taiwan peacefully without you know,
I think reasonably triggering a military reaction from the United States, potentially from Australia
other places. You have what a record highs just in the week before Christmas
of people crossing of migrant encounters on the border, so about thirteen thousand people
in one day. That followed a day the week before where there were twelve
thousand people in one day. Truly stunning numbers. And basically you have vast
walls of territory controlled by cartels on our border. You have a hot war
in Ukraine, a hot war in Gaza, and our military is in the
shape that it's in right now. It has made this alliance with a coalition
in order to preserve its own power. As we were just talking about Republican
seeing this in the same way, it's sort of the self looking ice cream
cone. They've made this alliance, and it's really in addition to all of
the sort of corruption and decadence and excesses of our military right now, has
contributed to the weakening of our ability to defend ourselves and Sean, maybe you
can talk a little bit about that. I like Matt Stoller's point that mergers
have really heard our military, that consolidation among defense contractors has really heard our
military. But talk to us a little bit about from your perspective, what
some of the top line problems looking back on what's happened over the course of
last year. What can we know about how harmed or how much you know,
how many impediments there are to our ability now to defend ourselves. There's
so many avenues that could go off on them, but I'll try and keep
it con That was a big one, Yeah, I mean I mentioned the
recruiting crisis earlier. Obviously that's a big problem. I think it was the
New York Times that put out an article maybe it was a couple of years
ago where they analyzed, like where the US Army draws the majority of its
recruits, and it's unsurprisingly found out that they draw a large number from the
South, which is predominantly conservative. What was really telling to me, and
I think you kind of saw this among some other conservative thought leaders of people
like Jesse Kelly have put this forward a couple of years ago when the Defense
Department initiated a COVID vaccine mandate for service members. To date, I believe
it's roughly eighty four hundred or so service members were fired or removed from service
because they did not want to get the COVID shot. I think that was
really an indication there that the Biden administration was more interested in kind of purging
the military of people who not just love their country, but who would question
kind of unethical, immoral orders. And obviously, when you join the military,
you know you give up a certain number of your freedoms, you know
you're going to have to follow orders. But there's always been this respectability and
devotion to country and constitution to protect the country from enemies for and and domestic.
And I think, you know, people like Lloyd Austin, Joe Biden's
administration, the Marxists running it, they saw an opportunity not just to get
rid of these people, but make an example out of them that you're not
welcome here in our military. And I think that part of the element,
an element of this DEI type promotion, this kind of racialist nonsense that's coming
out of the Pentagon, this celebration of LGBT pride and all of this stuff.
It's really to dissuade a lot of these people, these conservative leaning people,
America loving patriots, from enlisting in the armed services. They aren't destroying
the military, they're creating a new one. They just want compliant leftists who
are just going to listen to whatever they say. And I think you're seeing
this in some of the recruiting efforts that they're doing the Navy. A couple
months ago, The Daily Caller revealed that the Navy had hired this Navy sailor
who was an enlisted drag queen to be a digital and ambassador to work on
digital recruitment for the Navy. And as I mentioned earlier, yeah, as
I mentioned earlier, the Navy, you missed their recruiting target, so obviously
it didn't work out so well. But that's just really what they're going for
that they're not interested so much in the national security element of it all.
They're not interested in preserving American hegemony and projecting strength on the world stage.
They're more concerned with treating the United States conservative as a bigger enemy than the
communist Chinese, or the Russians or the Iranians or whoever it is. And
that's I think what you're really seeing play out right now. I just want
to ask a question about that to someone who follows this. A lot of
people would look at it and say, if it's true that our sort of
military, let's call it the blob, let's use that terminology. If it's
true that the blob is a bunch of warmongerers who, for example, were
eager for hot conflict in Ukraine because you know, it's good for their bottom
lines. There have been leaked conversations from the people at some of these defense
contractors admitting as much that it's good for their bottom lines. You don't need
to see them admitting it as much to you know, see the figures about
how it's good for their bottom line. So if that's true, why also
would they want to weaken? Like just square the circle for me, Sean,
because I know you we all have theories on this, but square the
circle for me on how the Hawks are also you know the Hawks that are
also kind of seem eager for a hot conflict over Taiwan, seem eager for
the hot conflict in Ukraine. How are they also kind of trying to denigrate
the military, Like how do these two things. How do these two pieces
of the puzzle fit. Well, I don't necessarily, that's the thing,
Like, I don't even know if they do. I think that they just
see objectives and they go for them. They want the takeover the military.
But at the same time, they're perfectly willing to send these people over to
die and conflicts that have nothing to do with us, you know, places
like Afghanistan. And you kind of saw this in the withdrawal right where we
pull out and tragically over a dozen American service members get killed. You know,
Joe Biden's checking his watch. These people don't actually care about human lives.
They just care about power and money and if that means you know,
you know, creating a new military in the process. They're completely willing to
sacrifice these you know, leftists that they're bringing into the military. They don't
care about human life or American life. They just care about money and power
and greed and selfishness, you know, all the term they're exactly yeah,
yeah, exactly. They're more interested in I guess the short term gain over
like the long term consequences of what actually is going to happen to the United
States. If this is the kind of military that you're projecting and the weakness
that you're project acting on the world stage. You know, China they look
at us right now and they're laughing at us. Joe Biden, I mean,
his family's kind of thought and paid for by the Chinese. But you
know, the Biden White House, they don't care about that. Anthony Blincoln
doesn't care about that, that the China sees us as weak. They just
care about, you know, securing their own power at home first, and
then everything else globally is kind of secondary to that. And I also think
maybe there's going to be I'm curious for your take on this looking ahead to
twenty twenty four and beyond, they're going to increasingly panic. You know,
we saw them actually change on the vaccine, and I think it is going
to be true that some of the people, because of the short termism,
that are just kind of itching for a conflict in Taiwan. And by the
way, I'm not saying that to dismiss the reality that there are good reasons
potentially for a hot conflict over Taiwan. If China invades, that's a huge
detriment to our ability to support ourselves technologically, and you know, I think
they're starting to realize that military readiness has been severely hampered by some of these
goals. Sean, have you seen any signs of that? Do you think
that they're you know, whether or not it's successful, that there will be
some sort of like internal effort to self correct. People said they put out
the military put out a recruitment video recently of like a white guy. People
are like, you know, they're ready to go to war when I'm trying
to recruit white men again. Do you see signs of a self correction afoot,
perhaps because the sort of folly of the short termism has become increasingly apparent
to folks. Yeah, to a certain extent, I think that's kind of
true. I mean, the National Defense Authorization Act discussions, the bill that
just got past, they really fought tooth and nail to keep a lot of
the DEI kind of Marxist stuff allowed the Pentagon to continue doing that. So
they're obviously still fighting on that to keep that stuff in there. But I
do think to your point, I think they're starting to come around that,
you know, if we want to continue to maintain our power here at home,
we're going to still have to deter powers like China and Russia abroad,
and so there's kind of I think a little bit of that pivot as you
mentioned in the ad to kind of cater back towards some of these alienated people.
But I also think you're seeing it play out in some of these military
actions throughout the world. I mean, I think it was a couple months
ago where that I think it was an F thirty five jet, which is
like one of our most advanced fighter jets in the forces. It got lost,
like we lost it. We couldn't find it for like a day or
something. And this is like a very expensive piece of military equipment, like
equipped with very sophisticated technology, and we lost it and we couldn't find it
for like twenty four hours. That's and that's just one example. I mean
there's several examples throughout the Forces that you can look at of just us just
completely I guess screwing the pooch on. I mean, you look at major
investments and in these heavy heavy duty artillery and and and uh, literal combat
ships, which was supposed to be like you know, the next big thing
of naval warfare and you know, can detect under sea minds. We spend
hundreds of billions of dollars on them, and turns out they're a whole you
know, they're bust. They don't work as they were promised to, their
constant need of repairs. So I think they're starting to slowly come around to
the idea that, you know, maybe what we're doing isn't exactly on par
with what we need to do in order to secure America's security on the world
stage. And uh, you know, it's panning out in the on the
home front with respect to our troops, and it's also panning out in the
technology that we're investing in with respect to the Pentagon's budget. Is there anything
else shown you think people should be aware about when it comes to these questions
of our military's readiness. And you know, by the way, I actually
think, as you know, dubvish, as people may think that I sound
on things like Ukraine or Israel wherever, there's a really good case for the
Reagan doctrine of building up your military. And obviously that has different, you
know, implications for the deficit, and we could have that conversation, but
building up your military just two huge heights for the sake of deterrence, and
you know that can have some economic benefits as well, not the ones that
you know, the Ukraine hawks say are just revitalizing the streets of hollowed out
rust belt Ohio. Is the fun new line about what's happening in the military
built up to manufacture munitions for Ukraine. But it's there are all kinds of
benefits of having you know, a big military, a big military budget,
and obviously a domestic onshore manufacturing operation when it comes to all of these technologies.
So I actually think there might be a case for a higher Pentagon budget,
maybe a Pentagon that can pass an audit first and then you can increase
the Pentagon budget. But I think there's a serious case for that. That
said, we are not in a position where the Pentagon can come close to
passing an audit. We are not in a position where we should want to
increase the resources given to some of these folks that seem to deserve nothing.
And that's I think probably the worst part of the kind of tensions here.
That tension is the worst part of the problems here. So with that kind
of context, that's that's sort of my take on the thirty thousand foot view
here, Sean, Is there anything else you think people should know about this
problem as someone who studies a pretty close looking ahead into the new year,
Yeah, I think. I think it was the NBC debate of the GOP
presidential primary. I think the one with Hugh Hewitt, and it was kind
of a question that kind of got tossed aside because it's not as interesting as
culture, war issues or abortion. But he asked the candidates about the current
state of the US Navy, which I was really excited about because I'm a
nerd over this stuff. But the Navy, if you go back and look,
it was really this premier force throughout American history. In his second address
to Congress, President Teddy Roosevelt talked about how a strong navy isn't a declaration
of war. It's a way to bring peace, a way to bring peace
to the world and bring stability. And really that's what America's Navy has been
for the past couple decades. We've brought peace and stability through strength and projecting
strength. We've done that through building up our military, and really what you've
seen in recent decades is a decline in the overall power and capacity of the
name, we haven't hit our shipbuilding targets in over twenty years. The number
of shipyards have just declined in recent decades. The budget of the Pentagon budget
that gets debated by Congress every year because there's so much politicking over the NDAA
private shipyards that we contract, they don't have. They aren't able to plan
out in advance, you know, how they're going how many ships they're going
to build over what period of time, how much money can we use on
this part or this aspect of it. And because of those inconsistencies, you
know, that's contributing to our failure to build a sizeable fleet. At the
end of the Cold War nineteen ninety one, we had over five hundred ships
and the navy less than About ten years later it was down to a little
more than three hundred, and today we're covering anywhere between two hundred and ninety
to three hundred. So our navy is just suffering massive problems. Personnel issues
obviously a big one. Meanwhile, China is built up this massive naval force.
They have the largest navy in the world. In terms of technology.
We're still a little bit ahead of the game, but I mean our navy
is in decline, and if you really want to have a stable geopolitical environment
throughout not just the Indo Pacific, but the world, you need to have
that strength and project that strength to our adversaries to let them know that,
yes, we're committed to defending not just our interests but the interests of our
allies, and we're not doing that. We're a nation in decline, We're
a military in decline. And countries like China and Iran and North Korea and
all the like, they're seeing that and their actions show that they are actively
seeking to achieve their own objectives irrespective of what the United States is saying.
Sean Fleetwood, staff writer at The Federalist. You can follow him on Twitter
at Sean Fleetwood, but Seawan is spelled Shaw and the right way there you
go. Thank you so much for joining the show, Sean. Thanks to
Sinsk. You have a good Christmas, you too, You've been listening to
another edition of The Federalist or Radio Hour. I'm Emily Dashinsky, culture editor
here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the You can email
the show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on ex at
FDR LST and we'll be back soon with more. Until then, be the
lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray.