BREAKING: Trump Says 18 Deaths Are “Small Potatoes” | Command Post

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1:00Welcome to a special edition of Command Post. I'm joined as ever by our very own Lieutenant General Mark Hartling. General, we got to react to a pretty bizarre interaction President Trump had today with the press. You've seen this, right? You watched what he said. I have. And we do have to do a special Command Post on this because if we were truly in a Command Post, this would be causing a whole lot of chaos and dysfunction in terms of how to figure this out. What are you saying? Especially if you're in a Command Post and you hear your Commander in Chief say what he just said, we might as well just hang it up and pack up the tactical operation center and go home. Well, you know, you raise an interesting point. We have to start with this. Are we at war? This has been a question that we've gone back and forth on a bunch for reasons mostly of the administration trying to avoid congressional oversight. The President just shared this today, September 4th on his social media platform that the

2:01lunatics, Democrats, whatever wanted us to lose the war in Iran, not an excursion, not a special military operation. The war he wants to win the war. And then also today, same day, same person, he was asked, is this a war? Chris, can we play clip 4 please? The Vice President said yesterday that he would not describe the conflict with Iran as a war. But the U.S. resumed strikes for the first time in recent weeks. Can you explain to the American people if this is not a war, what exactly is it? Well, actually what, a lot of people don't call it a war. I call it a military conflict because it's small potatoes for us. It's not a big thing. We did Venezuela and we did this. In Venezuela, we lost nobody and this we lost 18 people. And in Vietnam, we lost 100,000 people and in other conflicts, you lost tens of thousands of people. I would say that it's intermittent. We do intermittent strikes. So I heard what he said and it was interesting because I think that there's a lot of truth

3:04that we're not fighting right now. There's no fighting. We take it out a lot of oil. We control the harmless strip. We control it very strongly. Mr. President, 18 people have died in this. Because certainly there's a Bill X-Malt potatoes. 18 service members have died. We're seeing record-long deployment. You initially said this was... Record-long? Why is it record-long? So, how long were we in Vietnam? How long were we in Vietnam? We're seeing record-long were we in Vietnam? We're in five months now. We've been, and you know what we did in five months? Then I could have a nuclear weapon. That's what we did. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon because if they did, you probably wouldn't be standing here very long. Where do you want to start with this? I don't know. There are so many things in there we could pick apart. There were not a hundred thousand people killed in Vietnam. There were about 55,000. The Vietnam war comparing the length of it to this intermittent conflict, as he calls it, is just silliness. It is not a matter of how long we were in a war.

4:04It's the timing of how long individuals are deployed during a certain period of time. There was nobody deployed to Vietnam for 10 years. So, there are so many things, Ben, that are infuriating about this. But the one that takes the cake, obviously, is 18 deaths are small potatoes. This is a small potatoes. That's the part that I think the President, as much as he's trying to put something in context using other wars, other fights, other deployments, the more he is really radically screwing it up because he doesn't know what he's talking about. Even the earlier clips about what the lanes are open in the straight of our moves, the ships are coming out, we're getting oil out. The one big one was we control Iran.

5:05I didn't know we could control another country. But again, we could sit here and turn this into a war college seminar and break down the words that he used just now to a bunch of people standing around his desk with a lot of people standing behind him at the desk and him pontificating about a subject he knows very little about as the President of the United States and the Commander-in-Chief. Yeah, it seems to me with all of his statements what he's really struggling with is how to think about and how to talk about the cost-benefit analysis. And it is a very difficult thing to do. It is a thing presidents have to do. It's a thing senior commanders like you have to do, where you have to say, are there national security objectives that are worth asking people to give up their lives? And sometimes the answer is yes. And we're very lucky that we have people who are willing to give up their lives for a greater cause.

6:05Trump here is struggling because he can't really articulate factually what the greater objective here was because he's changed it so much. It wasn't regime change. It certainly wasn't helping the Iranian people. That didn't work out. He's falling back on this. Well, they won't have a nuclear weapon. Which wasn't exactly what his rationale was when he began Operation Epic Theory in the first place. He said that was already accomplished. And also, it's not clear that it is anything to do with what's happening now in the street of four moves. He can't come out and say, well, all these people died and were actually slightly worse off than we were in February before this was started. So instead he's saying, well, it's not as bad as Vietnam. It's not as bad as Vietnam. So, so there. I don't know how that argument is supposed to be persuasive. The other part of the argument that I found a little a whole lot offensive. I won't say a little offensive was when he did mention, you know, the denuclearization of Iran. And he said, if I hadn't done what I had done, you'd be dead right now, saying that to a reporter in effect, saying, well, they would have put a nuclear weapon on your head.

7:10And Israel wouldn't exist anymore and they'd be shooting it Europe. But how do you go from trying to contain a nuclear production facility to immediately assuming this nation is going to start throwing nukes all over the world, and especially at a reporter in Washington DC standing in the Oval Office? It just is so. There are so many words to describe it, but the one I keep going back to is silly. It's silliness. We are we are run right now by a couple of guys who are doing thing only for their political survival. Nothing else. Nothing that's helping the United States of America. It is their sole political advisor. And they're trying to make us as Americans feel dumb about what they're doing. And it's increasingly obvious to anybody that understands national security or how things work that they are not doing anything for us.

8:12They're doing it to survive or to attempt to survive. You mentioned this earlier. Trump also said in the course of his rather disorganized statement. We have essentially taken over Iran. Chris, can we play clip one? We have been there, Venezuela, and we have essentially taken over Iran. Now, there's been no shooting for days before the hit that we gave them the other night to wipe out their radar. They had very sophisticated. They brought in radar because we knocked it out once. Now we knocked it out twice. Now we don't notice any activity. I think they're tired of putting it into getting brought up. But the straight of our moses take in a lot of ships. We're getting a lot of ships out of there. A lot of oil is coming out of this rate. There are no mines whatsoever. We have no mines. You know why? We took out all the mines. They had some mines. We took them all with our mines we were. They go underwater. Nobody can see them. The best in the world. So we're doing a great job. And we will, I would say it's a military conflict.

9:14If you want, some people get caught away. I don't think it matters what you call it. What matters is the fact that we have had tremendous success. We stopped Iran from having a nuclear weapons. General, I want to meet you hypothetical here. You're a commander. And one of your subordinate officers comes to you on Monday and says, good news, general. We destroyed the target. And you say great. Then he comes to you to say good news, general. We destroyed the target again. The same one. Is that good news? That's not good news. And I'd also be looking at other people in the tactical operation center, this the command post and saying, do we have minesweepers here? Because there are no minesweepers in the United States Navy right now. Yes, they disabled some of the mines, but his implication is there's these boats that are going underwater and taking care of the mines that are, and that's not true even in itself. But you know, Ben, I've been trying to figure out what must be going on in the

10:16other side of the country. I've been trying to figure out what must be going on in either the obelophess or the situation room. And I think I've come to the conclusion that he has a lot of people who are very knowledgeable come in and tell them what they're striking, what their, their kinetic strike packages, what intelligence they're gaining. And he's picking up snippets of things and feeding them back to the press like today. And it's just confusing as hell. And he probably said, well, what did you hit last night? And they said, well, we hit, you know, a mine lane missile, we hit a radar. Oh, you hit a radar? Oh, that's good. I know a little bit about radars. I kind of know what radars are because my uncle was an MIT professor. And that becomes the topic of discussion to the press. I think that's what's going on. I'm presuming that. But I've talked to bosses in the past where I've tried to give them a load of information and they latch upon a snippet. And that becomes the key story.

11:18And it's not accurate and it's not helping the American people. And it's not the fact that we're not in a war. We are in it. And he also said, you know, we haven't struck in a couple of days. They struck on Wednesday. That was two days ago. So, okay. Yeah, so weird flex, but okay. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. It's destroying, athlete, creator, and YouTube Maxor. YouTube Premium enhances how I use YouTube with awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite training videos before I hit the gym. So, no Wi-Fi doesn't turn leg day into loading day. Plus, I get ad-free videos, background play, and so much more. YouTube Premium is like YouTube got some extra gains. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Hey, what's up, guys? It's Hayley Bailey. Okay, I need to tell you about something. I just got YouTube Premium. It's got tons of awesome features like offline downloads so I can download my favorite videos before I travel and watch them whenever I don't have Wi-Fi.

12:18Because we all know airplane Wi-Fi is the worst. I get ad-free, I get background play, and there's like a ton more in there. You should try it. If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. So try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Try out eligibility varies. Terms apply, cancel anytime. That's a mouthful. Right now at Subway, try the 499 Sub of the day. Get a different 6-inch sub every day for just 499 each. Like meatball marinara on Mondays, tuna on Tuesdays, and the BMT on Saturdays. It's a different 6-inch sub every day. Pack with protein and your choice of chopped veggies for just 499 each. Or make it a meal with chips and a drink for just $2 more. But hurry, it's only for a limited time and only at Subway. After participating restaurants, prices higher in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii, and on third party delivery, add-ons, taxes, and fees for delivery additional. What do you think of the statement we have taken over Iran? Uh-huh. Yeah, it's the 51st day, I guess, because it only has 92 million people. And it's three times the size of Iraq, and it is...

13:21I'm not sure what taken over means in the first place. If he's saying we've secured the straight of hormones, that would be a stretch. But taking over Iran is an impossible task. And if so, we're in big trouble if we've done that. Yeah, I cannot... Maybe he means since he's sort of tensed, I think, in financial, monetary, sort of narrowly economic terms, that, like, we have a blockade on their southern coast, so he's taken them over economically. But even that is not really true. I have no idea what he's talking about. Well, this is the commander-in-chief, remember, Ben. This is a guy who is supposed to have control and understanding of the intelligence community, the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Commerce Department, everybody else. And he's comparing basically a snatch-in-grab operation in Venezuela, which was highly successful by special operations forces, a relatively small group

14:26with a lot of aircraft, but a whole lot of intelligence and a synchronized coordinated action, with attempting to return to normal in a major oil platform and against a major country that is having none of his nonsense. It's just... It is not comparable, so I'm not sure why he keeps going back to Venezuela. Yeah, well, he did it again. Sorry, Chris. I'm going to go a little bit out of order here. Because this is actually the clip that I think is the most troubling, and it sort of wraps up everything that we've been talking about so far and adds a new, very unsettling, spice to it. So, Chris, if we could play clip three, and then generally I want to hear your response. We've been in there for five months, and in five months, what did we do? We stopped them from having a nuclear weapon. If we didn't go in there, you wouldn't have Israel right now. You wouldn't have them in the east,

15:26and they probably would go out European cities and our cities next. But we stopped them from having a nuclear weapon for five months. And we lost 18 souls, 18 great souls. I was there to greet the families of those people that dove in there. I got very friendly with some of the families. They were incredible families. And one is too much. But in Vietnam, we lost tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan. We lost a lot. Sleepy Joe Biden lost 13 just by standing at an airport, and an airport that they shouldn't have been, because they should have used Bagram, not the local little airport right in the middle of the city. They lost 13, but they lost 78 people in terms of their arms, their legs, their face was just wiped out. You don't mention that. What we've done is amazing. Let's put the Bagram airfield to rest first, Ben.

16:27Okay. Let's start with that. So the two airfields in Afghanistan that the US forces were using. Bagram was one of them. When you get a message from the Secretary of State Pompeo that a deal has been reached with the Taliban. Under the Trump administration. Under the Trump administration. And we will withdraw by May. What you do is a military commander as you start looking for facilities where you can withdraw from. Closing them down as fast as you can and narrowing it into one place. That is what we did. And under the Biden administration, they didn't do the closure in May because the military came back to the president and said, we can't get out of here that fast. We need more time. So they extended it till the August timeframe. And it was it a mess was the non combat and evacuation operation conducted in Afghanistan a mess.

17:28Yes, it was. Were 13 people killed at Abigate because of an explosive device. Yes, they were. Suicide vests are relatively common in many Middle Eastern and far Eastern countries. So that's a further explanation, but he keeps coming back to that that there were 13 people killed at Abigate. And that's true. But you have had 18 people killed and 700 plus wounded in a war of choice. You can't blame that on Biden's actions in Afghanistan. You just can't do it. So this is the whole face of this been. And what we've been talking about because of the confusing language, the unsupportable comments, the lack of understanding of what is happening. Boils down, I think, to one issue.

18:29And it's why we're I think on the air tonight talking about this in a special episode of Command post. We have lost trust in our leaders. And when you lose trust and they continue to feed the fire and feed the flames of that loss of trust, you're going to do nothing but cause people to be pissed off. And truthfully, I try and be an analysis. I try and give analysis. I try and be an analyst and stay true to my military roots and say, here's what's right. But this is really starting to piss me off. And I think it's pissing off a lot of other people too. I understandable that it would be. I mean, it's pissing me off. I mean, we have to talk about the way the president of the United States sitting in the Oval Office just gave this weirdly gruesome, but also sort of. It's just like very sort of weirdly like grossed out, but unfeeling sort of inhuman kind of description of I don't know if these were soldiers who were killed or wounded or what he's talking about.

19:36We know Trump as a whole long history with wounded soldiers and he hates seeing people who have suffered combat wounds. Like that is not to my ear a respectful or productive way to talk about people who were wounded in the service of the country. I mean, it's just gruesome and awful. He's describing a video game or a movie. It's war porn is what I call it. It's war porn. It's the same reason we're seeing repeated images of sent com striking targets. It doesn't matter a bit. It matters that the sentron commander is hitting the targets he's being asked to hit, but the American people who they think they're impressing this dates back to desert storm and early days of these shock and awe campaigns where if you show enough explosions of things getting blown up. People think you're successful and that's not the case. You're not always successful because you blow things up and you can't kill your way out of this.

20:38And whenever the president keeps saying I'm going to obliterate Iran and we're going to strike him again and kill more people. It's his attempt at saying we're going to be able to kill our way out of this and that's not how you end a war. Yeah, also it's made he's been very clear he's not going to do it. He's threatened it like 18 times by now and never followed through. So maybe that's the art of the deal. I don't know, but you not in the Iranians you take it seriously at this point. Moving on from Iran, we also have to talk about another maddening thing Trump said at his press conference because why not throw it a little Putin while we're there. Chris, we played a last clip. Please clip number two. You watch that Putin would never attack NATO territory. Now Germany is blaming Russia for an explosive drone found at a German airport. Isn't that an attack on NATO territory? I don't think that Putin will be, I speak to him. I know him very well. Putin's not looking to attack NATO territory.

21:40I have a follow up question. Can I play reporter now? Yeah, go for it. All right, Mr. President. Why did you send CIA director Radcliffe to Moscow on a secret mission? If Putin's a okay and everything's fine and oh, by the way, why why also did the intelligence community just release notification that Putin actually is trying to attack and bring asymmetrical war for against several NATO member countries? It's a great question. This is this reminds me of the moment in Trump's first term when he had a summit with Putin in Helsinki, Finland and someone asked him, well, what what about the very well researched well documented pretty obvious case of Russian interference of the 2016 election. And he said, oh, well, I trust Putin. I don't see he said he didn't do it. So I guess he didn't do it. And he sided with Putin over the American intelligence community. This is one more point to that. Yes. The president is trying to coordinate an exit strategy from Iran.

22:46And he was the prime minister of Iran this weekend or this last week. He was in a Kurdistan along with Putin and she and the Belarusian president and a few other people in the Shanghai cooperation council. And we're doing the G20 and inviting and secretary Besson is inviting the Russian finance minister to Asheville, North Carolina. She and Putin and the prime minister of Iran are all coming together inside of Kurdistan. And in fact, Putin said at that conference to the prime minister of Iran, we will continue to support you in your actions against the United States. I'm glad that's the guy he trusts. The idea even even if you assume that Putin and Trump talk all the time, which frankly they might, I mean, we've seen reports that effect could be even if you assume that they actually have an open and honest relationship don't laugh.

23:57Even if you assume that the things they say to each other, the other one takes seriously, the idea that a Russian drone attack on a German airport would be met with a hey cut that out. You know, that's not right. I mean, this is it. Look, I know Trump gets very upset when you say that he's got some weird thing with Vladimir Putin and the Russians, but he could do something at some point to just abuse of this notion and at every opportunity, he behaves like look, look at this way, if he were on the Russian payroll, he would not do a lot of things different, at least in his own personal behavior and rhetoric. I mean, it's preposterous, right? This was an attack on Germany by Russia. It's a serious thing. Historically, when Germany and Russia start fighting bad things happen. Am I wrong? It's happened a couple times in the past, I think. Yeah. And then they usually switch sides and they become friends with each other and attack other people too. So yeah, yeah, not good.

25:00But it has been, I don't want to say a unique week. It's been a normal week as we head into the Labor Day holidays. And that's really unfortunate, because while all this is going on, you have the Supreme Court allowing things to happen. You have Trump focused on an arch right outside our Arlington cemetery. You have a week off and Kushner going to Moscow and Kiev this weekend. Don't know what's going to come of that. No, they're going to break it. But they're going to Moscow first. That's an important factor. So yeah, there are a whole lot more stories, Ben. We get to you and I get to focus on the military and links to national security connections. And I don't think either one of us has trumped a arrangement syndrome. This is more of a syndrome of we're seeing what's going on. And it's not good for the American people and for our nation as a whole.

26:09So yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. Just before we get out of here, I just want to ask you, since you were at the commander of US Army Europe, it's been a lot of time with their European allies. If you saw two personal representatives of the president going, as you said, first to Moscow, then to Kiev, the message there being first we're going to go meet with the Russians, then we'll tell the Ukrainians what the Russians have to say, right. We're going to go meet with our friends first, then the people were negotiating against as opposed to the opposite. And you saw what what president Trump said about like, ah, don't worry about Putin. I'll talk to him. I'll tell him to cut it out. What based on your experience with our European allies and our non-European allies as well. What do you think they're hearing? What do you think they're thinking? I'll tell you what I used to get, Ben, and I think it'll shed some light on this. Every time I would travel to one of the 49 countries in Europe, I would get what was called a roll up. And it would be a black book that I could read in the airplane over a couple of hours. And it would be, here are the things that you have to be aware of in X country.

27:18And then here's the roll up of what we've seen over the last 24 to 72 hours of what has specifically happened. So this is fresh in your mind. So they give you the breakdown between long term stuff and what's happening right now. So you know what's important to the people you're meeting with. When I go to those other countries, the purpose normally was going to meet my counterpart, my military counterpart and having theater security cooperation discussions. But the first place I'd go when I got off the airplane was the US Embassy. And the second place I'd go after the US Embassy in getting basically a country team brief from the ambassador and his staff, which usually included intelligence people from the Central Intelligence Agency and the DIA. Then I would go to the highest ranking government official of that particular country and pay my respects and tell them that I'm aware of the things that they were doing and that I would either be supportive or this goes contrary to the US government.

28:22Then I would meet with my counterpart military commander and we would discuss our, you know, the issues that were important to both of us. But you can see the kinds of things that we talked about today are the kinds of things other countries are talking about. They all watch the United States. We may not watch Moldova or we may not watch Croatia's intelligence systems or the government of, I don't know, Serbia. I mean, they're all watching us and they're very astute at discussing who we are and what we do. So if you don't think both Zelensky and Putin know what's coming to them and how they can outplay them. It's like preparing to go into a car game and who you know you're playing with. And as much as I don't know Jared Kushner or Steve Whitkov.

29:24I think that they do not have the kinds of savvy outside the business world that you need when you're dealing high stakes negotiation with foreign government. But that's just me. Well, they haven't shown us the goods yet, but if they do, we'll do another episode of Command Post and I will eat my hat. General, thank you so much for joining me for this special episode of Command Post. Always a pleasure. Thank you Ben and happy Labor Day to all of those who labor out there. Yeah, have a good long weekend. So if you've ever furnished a restaurant, hotel or an office, you know the trail. Five vendors, five invoices, five delivery windows. But there's a better way to do this. Creighton Barrel Contract is a business to business program that covers three brands. Creighton Barrel, CB2 and Creighton Kids with one account, one order, one delivery. They've got durable plates and glasses, contract grade furniture, and lighting that looks custom that's built for the wear of busy space actually takes. And the best part is you're not doing it alone. A dedicated rep handles your project end to end from volume orders to design curation plus members get 20% off.

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