Speaker 1: What's going on?
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It
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smartphone or tablet, and again, thank you so much for
your support. So I was planning to do this topic
even before I heard the top of the hour newscast.
Brandon Dixon just did the same story. But I'm gonna
do it anyway. I'm not copying him, I promise. The
Pentagon has placed two top political appointees under administrative leave.
Is it under administrative leave or on administry? It sounds
like one would be above the other, like literally anyway,
they're on administrative leave after a probe into potential leaks
of sensitive information. According to three defense officials, two guys,
Dan Caldwell and Darren selnick So. Dan Caldwell is a
senior advisor to the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Dan Caldwell
was reportedly this is from the Politico story, was escorted
out of the Pentagon by security officers and had his
building access suspended pending further investigation. This according to two
officials who were granted anonymity to leak the sorry to
discuss the ongoing probe. Isn't this kind of weird? You've
got the story of this coming out and being leaked
out essentially by some anonymous people, when that's precisely what
they're trying to prevent, like this story relies on leaks,
story about busting some leakers. Darren Selnik, the Pentagon's deputy
chief of staff, was also suspended as part of the
same probe and escorted out of the building according to
one of the officials. Okay, so it sounds like they
got three defense officials. Two of them know of the
Dan Caldwell escort and one knows about the Darren Selnik escort.
The leaks under investigation include military operational plans for the
Panama Canal, a second carrier headed to the Red Sea,
Elon Musk's controversial visit to the Pentagon, as well as
pausing the collection of intelligence to Ukraine. So those are
the leaks that the Pegon is trying to figure out
who committed them, operational military operational plans for Panama, second
carrier headed to the Red Sea, Musk's visit to the Pentagon,
and we're not going to give Ukraine any more intel.
Those four stories. The suspensions come as the Trump administration
seeks to root out leaks, including at the Defense Department.
A March memo signed by Hegseeth's chief of staff asked
the Pentagon's Director for Defense Intelligence to look into unauthorized
disclosures and approved the use of polygraphs. By the way,
do you know how to beat a polygraph?
Speaker 1: You can?
Speaker 2: You can beat a polygraph? Should I tell people how
to do? This is not illegal? I don't think it's
illegal for me to tell people how to beat a polygraph.
It's it's called the pucker factor. If you every when
they sit you down and they start asking you questions, right,
they always start with you know?
Speaker 1: Are you you know? The age you are? Is?
Speaker 2: Your name? What your name is? And they do that
to get the baseline read right. Well, if you are
to clench a particular muscle upon which you sit every
single time you answer the question, it creates a spike,
and then that becomes the norm and that's how you
mask every single answer, true or false. And law enforcement
apparently knew this a long time ago, and they told
the guy who invented it, and then he proceeded to
test that theory and it turned out to be true,
and then he ran around the country advising and lobbying
against the use of polygraph detectors.
Speaker 1: A lot of detectors. So yeah, so.
Speaker 2: I mean they can be somewhat useful on occasion, I guess,
but you know, once you know, it's kind of like, well,
what's the point of these things? But and I'm sure
that these guys have been trained in how to do
that as well. It's not I mean, it doesn't take
a lot of physical training to master this maneuver.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: From Breitbart, it's not clear what their motives were, but
one official said that Calledwell, the senior advisor to heg Seth,
was leaking information to quote far left reporters to hurt
the secretary, And according to the report at the top
of the Hour News, it went to the New York Times.
Speaker 1: So I don't know to whom it went.
Speaker 2: Which reporters specifically, but that's another piece of the puzzle here.
It's also not yet clear what the unauthorized disclosures were,
but the Pentagon has been beset by a string of
leaks in recent weeks, prompting the Pentagon Chief of Staff
Joe Casper, to order an investigation. Casper's order came after
The New York Times reported that Elon Musk was planning
to visit the Pentagon, where he would be briefed on
quote war plans in a secure conference room called the Tank,
where top defense and military leaders gathered to discuss the
department's most pressing issues. While Musk did visit the Pentagon,
the meeting took place in Pete Hegseth's office, not in
the Tank. Also, the initial report was that he was
going there to learn about war plans against China or something,
and that didn't happen either. However, even before that, there
were leaks of classified information that was only known at
the highest levels at the Pentagon. Caledwell was most recently
at an organization called Defense Priorities, and Breitbart identifies Defensethorities
as an organization known for advocating foreign policy restraint. He's
a Marine Corps veteran of the Iraq War. He previously
worked at the Defense Priorities think tank.
Speaker 1: He played a key role in advising the Pentagon on Ukraine.
And this is who was the senior advisor to heg Seth.
Speaker 2: By the way, heg Seth referenced Caldwell in that that
messaging app you know that got leaked. Also that well,
that one didn't get leaked. They invited the guy, right,
They invited that reporter to the Signal Group chat. And
but heg Seth in that chat said that Caldwell would
be the primary contact to coordinate US military strikes on Yemen.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if that's the connection.
Speaker 2: Was it this guy called well that maybe, you know,
maybe got the reporter into the signal chat.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's related.
Speaker 2: Selnik, the other guy, the Deputy chief of Staff, also
performed the duties of the Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel
and Readiness. He served in the White House and the
Department of Veterans Affairs in the first Trump administration.
Speaker 1: He also.
Speaker 2: Was a former senior advisor to Concerned Veterans for America,
which heg Seth used to lead, but he only had
that gig after heg Seth had left the organization. So
those two guys shown the door today while the investigation continues.
Don't know anything other than that, but kind of important.
I feel like if they're you know, they run mole
hunt in the Pentagon as they should be, by the way,
as they should be. But there's there's a larger issue
at play, and there's a piece over at the Federalist
dot com. Cynical Publius is his name or Publius.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Publius sounds funnier, but it's a fake name.
Speaker 2: Cynical Publius is the nom depoum of a retired US
Army colonel and practicing attorney.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's Kurt Schlichter.
Speaker 2: I don't think it is, because I follow both of
those guys, and Kurt goes by his real name. He's
a retired colonel as well, also a lawyer, so I
don't know. But this other account, Cynical Publius, seems to
me to be a different person than Kurt Schlichter, who
I reference pretty regularly because he writes a lot of
fantastic columns over at town hall dot com. Publius Mister
Publius has a piece at the Federalists called fired insubordinate
officers reveal massive US military resentment against elected civilian command.
He says, this is a cancer that has been spreading
inside the military for a while. All Right, if you're
listening to this show, you know I try to keep
up with all sorts of current events, and I know
you do too, And you've probably heard me say get
your news from multiple sources. Why Well, because it's how
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they make the media landscape more transparent. All righty, So,
there is a cancer in America's military ranks, and it
must be expunged before it's too late. That cancer lies
in uniformed service members, widespread rejection of the uniquely American
concept of civilian control of the military, and disregard for
the absolute necessity that America's military officers remain apolitical in
the face of the constitutional will of the electorate. Again,
this is by a retired colonel and practicing lawyer.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he'll get it. That's why he practices. He says.
Speaker 2: Recent events reveal this cancer, and they include the relief
for cause, so you know, relieve of your command of
a Navy Vice Admiral Shoshana Chatfield after she reportedly refused
to hang photos of President Donald Trump and Secretary of
Defense Pete Hegseeth on her headquarters customary chain of command board.
You've seen this right where they take the photos of
the President and the Secretary of Defense in the whole
chain of command. They got all the photos in like
a triangle or a pyramid, you know, set up on
the wall, and she refused to put Trump and heg
seth on the board and told her subordinates in a
town hall that she would quote wait the administration out.
She would wait them out for the next four years.
They also include the relief for cause of Colonel Susannah Myers,
the commander of the US Space Forces base in Greenland.
Oh oh, maybe that's why Trump wants Greenland. We have
a Space Force base, a space base there, that makes sense.
Wait a minute, Susannah Myers. Colonel Myers, you wouldn't even
be in the Space Force, but for Trump, he made
space Force so bizarre she openly questioned to all of
her subordinates via email. Vice President JD. Vance's official pronouncements
regarding the US Grainland and Denmark. Since Trump's inauguration, numerous
other senior generals and admirals have been relieved by President
Trump for various publicly unspecified reasons. And he gives a
bunch of the others that have been relieved or fired
or whatever, and he notes that a president firing his
senior generals is not a new thing. He then lists
a whole bunch of them throughout history. He points out.
I am a retired US Army colonel. My service record
runs a typical gamut for an old colonel, with tours
in tactical unit, including service in Afghanistan and Iraq, interspersed
with service at high level military headquarters in and around Washington, DC. Nowadays,
I run an account on Twitter formerly known as x
with a little more than two hundred thousand followers. I
offer commentary on political and social issues, with a particular
emphasis on the military. As a result, I have many
military followers, including some still on active duty. I offer
active duty service members a conduit to anonymously share disturbing
military trends. And since Trump's inauguration, I have been flooded
with reports of insubordination in the ranks towards Trump and Hegseth.
Those reports ranged from fairly senior officers in the Pentagon
showing open disrespect around the e ring coffeemaker, all the
way down to junior enlisted disrespecting their president and Secretary
of Defense in the ship's galley or the chow hal
And then he goes on to talk about he gives
some examples, and then he goes on to talk about,
you know, we have our structure, as a commander in
chief is a civilian, and that has been a sacred
premise guiding our military for enlisted end officers alike. And
he would never in his career, he says, it was
a rare thing to ever hear anybody's political thoughts. Ever,
he says, I recall early in my career, senior officers
advised me not to vote in elections because doing so
might suggest that I was a political partisan.
Speaker 1: So he would he wouldn't vote.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's great advice. Same thing in
the in the reporter world as well.
Speaker 1: Journalists.
Speaker 2: Some journalists don't vote because they say, you know, they
need to be removed from the process so nobody can
accuse them of bias. And there's disagreement among reporters about
whether you should or shouldn't, whether all reporters should or shouldn't.
I don't believe you should not. I if you want
to go vote, go vote. I have no problem with
anybody going to vote, military or journalists. He goes on
to say, though, that the trends we are seeing feel
dangerously close to an embrace of nineteen seventies South American
style military juntas.
Speaker 1: Or junta. If you will.
Speaker 2: Think about General Mark Milly, remember that guy telling China
that he would warn them about US military activity. Or
how about Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vinman using his position on
the National Security Council as a springboard for impeaching a
president because he did not like the way that president
was lawfully discharging his duties. These are not the marks
of a Yeah, these are not the marks of healthy
civilian control of the military, says, They are instead marks
of a military approaching the rationalization of a coup. Recognize
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Federalist dot com and a piece by Cynical Publius that
is a fake name of a retired US Army colonel
and a practicing attorney.
Speaker 1: He's got a very large following on Twitter.
Speaker 2: I have followed him for a while, and because he
does a lot of stuff on military matters, he gets
a lot of feedback from people inside the military, and
he's saying that he's getting flooded with reports of insubordination
in the ranks towards Trump and Pete. Hegseath not that
people are disrespecting Trump and hexath to this s guy,
but he's getting the reports like, oh my gosh, this
thing happened, and he's getting all of these accounts and
a lot of it is just based on rumors. And
you know, that's spread like crazy, like an HOA Facebook group. No,
I'm kidding, Although it does the HOA really does. It
really does emulate a lot of a lot of other
areas of our society. Anyway, he says, the trends we
are seeing feel dangerously close to the embrace of the
you know, South American military juntas, okay, and that these examples,
and he gave a bunch of examples, Mark Milly, Alexander Vinman.
He said, these are marks of a military approaching the
rationalization of a coup. I attribute the breakdown quite directly,
he says, too, DEI policies and practices. Before you roll
your eyes, oh it's DEI that's the blame for everything.
He says, I want to be clear, I do not
mean that the advancement of officers for DEI reasons is
the cause.
Speaker 1: That's not what he's saying.
Speaker 2: He's not saying that, you know, people got elevated based
on characteristics that were not important or whatever. He's not
making that argument. He's talking about the implanting of the
DEI policies as a core ethos of military service. And
because by doing that, it now warps the way people
in the organization think. And I've been saying this for years,
which is like with this anti racism stuff, whether it's
you know, CRT, or it's DEI or Social Emotional learning,
like all of these you know, neo Marxist ideologies that
get smuggled in via these programs. They are a cancer
inside of your organization. Right if you bring in Robin DiAngelo,
you know, the white fragility author, you bring her in
to talk to the group, and you run through a
couple of you know, privileged walk exercises and such, does
your organization become less racist?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: And in fact, Harvard University itself, in its research, found
that the impact of these types of trainings make your
employees now more willing and able and interested in looking
for all of the racializing of every issue. It makes
the workplace worse, not better. And so when you you know,
when you smuggle this stuff into the millit terry, it's
not a surprise that it has a detrimental effect. Our
military has always been driven by core values, he says,
like don't give up the ship, duty, honor country, and
always faithful. And traditionally those values have been a political right, nonpartisan,
and solely revolved around the military's fundamental mission of defeating
America's battlefield enemies. That's it, right, you win, you go
to war, you win, that's the ethos. Somewhere in these
early years of the twenty first century, however, DEI also
became a central ethos. They embrace so called diversity for
diversity's sake, and the DEI policies became a core ethos
of America's military, a new warrior ethos grounded not in
war fighting, but in a purely political and public doctrine. So,
on the one hand, you have a president that's been
elected to purge that political doctrine of DEI from America's government,
And on the other hand, you have a generation of
senior generals and admirals who mistakenly view DEI as an
a political military ethos. Do you understand what he's saying.
I think he's got it right here. So when Trump
seeks to exercise his constitutional powers to purge a purely
political doctrine right, the generals and the admirals mistakenly see
it as an effort to purge a fundamental essential and
a political military ethos that gives them license to feel
justified in resistance, to resisting the lawful orders of their
commander in chief and engaging in insubordination because they falsely
imagine they are protecting a core con competency of our
nation's defense. Now, the good news is that we can
fix this, and he says it's not very hard in
the military. It just requires some guts by Trump and
heg Seth and the military department secretaries in the face
of a media determined to discredit their every move. There
are two parts to fixing it. Number one education and
number two example setting. All right, So spring is here
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couple of breaking news items. We got that wacko judge
boasperg Bosburg, Boasburg whatever.
Speaker 1: Issuing an order.
Speaker 2: The court determines that the government actions on that day
by refusing to turn that plane around, even though the
judge had no idea if there was enough fuel on
the plane to actually do that, in it demonstrate a
willful disregard for its order sufficient for the court to
conclude that probable cause exists to find the government in
criminal contempt.
Speaker 1: The whole government. The whole government is in criminal contempt.
This guy's out of control.
Speaker 2: And Thomas Crown, who is also an attorney, points out
that the US marshals are going to have a heck
of a time arresting Trump and hauling him in front
of the judge because the US Marshal's boss.
Speaker 1: I think it's Trump, So I don't know if.
Speaker 2: They're gonna have to get through Secret Service first, I
suspect I don't know.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, So that's a mess.
Speaker 2: Also, Maryland court documents reveal that deported Salvadoran national illegal
immigrant Kilmar Abrago Garcia's wife, a woman by the name
of Jennifer Vasquez. This is the Maryland dad, right, the
guy Chris van Holland, the US Senator from Connecticut or something,
I don't remember where, maybe Jersey, whatever.
Speaker 1: He's in El Salvador.
Speaker 2: He's flying down to El Salvador to try to I guess,
release an illegal alien and bring him back into the
country illegally, who was already ordered deported. I went over
this yesterday or day before. It turns out that this guy,
Kilmar al Brago Garcia, his wife had petitioned the court
for an order of protection domestic violence protection order against him,
not once, but twice. Just a Maryland dad, not an
MS thirteen gang banger. Although he said that if he
went back to El Salvador that his life would be
in jeopardy because a rival gang would want him whacked.
But even though El Salvadores like cracked down on all
of the gangs and cleaned up their country over the
last five years. Anyway, Yeah, the Maryland dad who was
ordered to be deported, the government just messed up and
deported him to the one country that a judge had said,
don't send him back there, which was l Salvador, because
that's where he's from, that's his home country. So he's
sitting in a prison now in El Salvador, his home country.
He is a citizen of El Salvador. But because the
judge I said, yes, you can deport him, just don't
send him to El Salvador, and the government threw him
on a plane with you know, two hundred other gang
bangers and foreign terrorists as designated by you know, the
Foreign Terrorist Organization, calling the gangs and cartels terrorist organizations.
Opens these doors for new types of punishments and stuff
and actions by the US government. And so they threw
him on a plane and sent him to El Salvador.
That was the mistake. So just can we wire El
Salvador like I don't know, one hundred bucks and say
give the guy a bus ticket and send him over
into your neighboring country and then then done, then everybody's
everybody's compliant. Now, well, I mean accept a Brago Garcia
who would now be in another country illegally. But he
didn't have any problem doing that. Obviously he was in
our country for a long time illegally. So anyway, those
are two developments from the Federalist piece about the military
and the lack of focus, the loss of focus I
should say on its traditional ethos and its adoption of
this DEI these policies as part of their ethos as well.
He says, you can fix this problem number one by education, right,
you got to reinvigorate training in every service and did
every every level regarding the military's duty of loyalty to
elected civilian leaders and their lawful orders. Make a standard curriculum.
Put it into every branch, everywhere. Example setting is the
second thing. It'll mean more of what we have already seen,
the relieving of officers, the relieving of kicking people out. Yes,
with the relief for cause of senior officers for insuborted behavior.
So yes, more of that. But that's not enough what
he advocates here Article eighty eight Court martials.
Speaker 1: Why this is what?
Speaker 2: Article eighty eight of the Uniform Code of Military Justice states,
any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President,
the Vice president, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, secretary of
a miililitary department, the Secretary of Homeland Security Pete Callaner,
or the governor or.
Speaker 1: It doesn't say my name, but it should. It totally
no okay.
Speaker 2: Legislature of any state, commonwealth, or possession in which he
is on duty or present, shall be punished as a
court martial may direct. This is under a section called
contempt toward officials like you're literally not allowed to do this.
It says it right there in your UCMJ. Article eighty
eight and he says it's a tool by which senior
insubordinate officers must be made. An example, I don't think
you're going to see generals or admirals breaking rocks at Leavenworth.
The mere act of initiating just a couple of well
publicized court martial proceedings will drive home the message that
politics is the domain of the president, not the oath
bearing members of the uniformed services. Good order and discipline
must be restored. There is a cancer in the ranks
of America's military, and it must be expunged before.
Speaker 1: It is too late.
Speaker 2: Also, Gary Shapley, remember that guy. The Wall Street Journal
calls him an IRS critic, but he's a whistleblower. They
did change the headline. They started off by saying Trump
picks IRS critic as agencies acting leader, and then they
changed it to Trump picks investigator behind Hunter Biden tax
case as IRS acting leader. And then they write the
story President Trump named Gary Shapley, the IRS criminal investigator
who criticized the government for its handling of Hunter Biden's
tax filings, as the Tax agency's acting commissioner. He's a
whistle blower. Okay, he's a whistle blow. There is a
word for this. It's called whistleblower, not critic. Yes, he
was an investigator, but he was a whistle blower. Shapley
is the Internal Revenue Service's fourth leader in less than
four months, as the Trump administration rapidly shrinks the agency.
During the Biden administration, Shapley rose to prominence as an
IRS supervisory criminal agent who came forward to Congress, hence
the whistleblower designation, and contended that the Justice Department had
slow walked its tax investigation into Hunter Biden. Yes, and
then it engaged in retribution against him for blowing the
whistle in a classic case of whistleblower retribution. Now the
AP credit where it's due. The Associated Press got it right.
An IRS whistleblower, they call him right out of the gate.
And now the Tax Collection Agency is planning to name
Shapley to one of the highest ranking roles at the agency.
It's sort of like the Tulsy Gabbard trajectory. Right, you
get put on the no fly list, then fast forward
a couple of years and you're in charge of the
entire intelligence community.
Speaker 1: Had that worked out for you lefties? All right? That'll
do it. For this episode. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: I could not do the show without your support and
the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast,
so if you'd like, please support them too and tell
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patron at my Patreon page or go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Again,
thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.