Morning Shots Live: Army Secretary Resigns After Warning Trump About Hegseth

0:00All right, hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein. I'm drawn by Bill Crystal. I am sitting in for Andrew Eger on this a morning shots live. Andrew's going to join us when he gets his wits about him, but Andrew folks need to know this. We're going to pull the curtain back before we get into the real stuff. Andrew wrote a real banger of a morning shots this morning. Okay. People should go check out the piece. It's about this Congress. It's hard to even do it, Justice, but it's about this congressional candidate in Florida. There she is. Tebron. She won her primate. So she's the actual general election candidate in Florida's 24th district, the very Democratic district. She's not going to win. But what's crazy about her is that we dug into it. She actually has already run for office earlier this cycle, not in Florida, but in Illinois. Okay. She ran earlier this cycle in Illinois, lost. She's under felony indictment for wire fraud, I believe, having to do with PPP loans. So she de-camped from Illinois, went to Florida, ran again for office, won the primary this time.

1:03likely is going to have to face trial shortly after the election. And here's where it gets crazy, Bill. Andrew calls her up as a good reporter does for this piece. Get's her on the phone, says, hi, I want to talk to you about why you ran for office in this trial that you're facing and the indictment. And what does she do? She says, that's not me. Those are two different people. It's the same person, folks. That's why Andrew's a little busy this morning. Yeah, he was busy updating the piece to the last minute, with the campaign manager, I guess, called hours after the deadline to say, oh no, we want to clarify a few things, but they didn't really clarify a few things. And anyway, you should read Andrew's piece and he'll come out, hopefully if he resolves his mind or tech issue that he encountered. And he can discuss it in the second half of our morning shots. Yeah, a tech issue, a tech issue in an gestational issue. I think he's vomiting from the nerves of having to publish this piece. Let's bring that curtain back too much, Sam. You know what I mean? I've always been a little bit of a believer in the black box theory of

2:03running a media company. You know, you don't want people to know. You don't want them to see too much about how what's going on behind the scenes. Well, that's why the book is a success. All right, let's get into the real news. Look, there's a lot to talk about. I actually want to talk about something else, but we're going to start with dangerous school. Dangerous school, army secretary resigns. I guess this was sort of, oh, hey, there he is. It's not true. Okay, look, get your get. No, no, no, no, no, we don't need to get you. You were doing great. Let's get to the end. Great. I have nothing left to talk about about my piece later. You guys already already already did. I'm going to do this, but I appreciate it because thanks for covering for me. But yeah, I'm going to stick around for a little bit. Then I'm going to go do my business, but the and Driscoll bill like obviously this has been in the ether for a while. It looks like the reasons he retired was essentially he likes just messing around way too much in the rank and file. Driscoll didn't like it. Driscoll was fighting it. A lot of this anti-woke

3:08stuff, which was really just heck's of trying to fire. General C disagree with. Finally, Driscoll says enough and he goes to Trump, the Atlantic in this story where he goes to Trump of this resignation letter and talks to him about the things that he thinks are going poorly at DOD. What did you, I mean, obviously it's a bit frightening to see all the civilian leaders gone and sent a confirmed position is gone and just utter chaos, it depends on which I can't either recall seeing before. But what did you make of sort of operationally what this means? We've never seen this degree of chaos and disser. And it's dangerous, but it's the Pentagon kind of an important place. Driscoll just because Driscoll is very good friend of ants. They were yellow school together. And he was imposed on heck's ethno-to-beginning. And I think heck's eth always thought, probably correctly, that Driscoll was an obvious candidate to succeed him. If you're secretary, I think Asper had been secretary of the Army and became secretary of defense, so it's not like no one's ever thought of that promotion. And so he didn't like Driscoll from the beginning. And then, but then they tried to make it work and all this and there was some tensions. But heck's eth is just gone after obviously all the surfaces, but really especially the Army,

4:10especially the firing of the very well-respected Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, during the war. And just I think probably took this as a bit of an occasion to leave anyway. Maybe he was going to think about it and to do so. But again, we now have no Army secretary and no Army Chief of Staff, you know, civilian or we have an acting obviously in both cases, but no, not people who are confirmed by the Senate for those those jobs. But it's very interesting to me just as a matter of like inside Washington, baseball. So Driscoll could have just left. He decided to however leave now. We could have waited a month or two. It sounds like after the election, for example, he decided to leave now and he decided to basically tell the Atlantic or have someone tell the Atlantic, obviously, that he had two things that he had real problems with the firing of Randy George. I think we knew that already. Just could have gone to his George's retirement ceremony, I think, and I think it went recently to another retirement ceremony that someone else that reinforced up by heck's eth. So he wasn't being shy about signaling his displeasure with the way heck's eth is

5:12sheeding the military, which is really both outrageous and sort of scary in terms of firing all the generals as you alluded to Sam. But Driscoll also let let it be known that he got the Trump to explain what heck's eth was doing was wrong, which I think is very important. Don't you, Sam, and you've been around Washington. I mean, that puts Trump on the spot. Trump can't say. So that was, yeah, I don't really realize I have confidence. My secretaries, I don't like managed these departments. He personally met, that's kind of rare, honestly. Army Secretary is not the high up enough to meet necessarily personally with the president a lot. He meets personally with Trump. I assume he requested that, oh, you have a question that meeting, maybe Vance intervened to get him the meeting. And so now Trump's on the spot. Trump has signed off on what heck's eth is done. Even more than a president would normally sign off on a sec death. Yeah, that stood out to me. There's two layers of it. One is that you could have submitted a letter explaining why he's resigning to Trump, but he chose to go there and talk about it in person. So that's one element. But then the meta element that you alluded to, which is leaking or at least having people leak,

6:15or maybe he didn't even leak, but people who knew about it felt the need to say, hey, Trump knows about this. He went right to Trump. Why do you need to put that detail out there? Process it for your reason you alluded to, which is that it's, hey, Donald Trump knows about the problems of Phexat. Donald Trump can't feign ignorance about the fact that people in the Pentagon think Phexat is running the place into the ground. And this, you know, this puts a little bit of pressure on Trump. I don't think Trump, Bill, you don't think Trump does anything. I guess this is a good question for Andrew too. There is a case to be made that Trump obviously should act on Hexeth, but like even that Hexeth is probably the most problematic cabinet member for Trump. And it's very bizarre to me that Trump just doesn't see it or chooses not to see it because he's willing to throw other people over the side, but why not Hexeth, Andrew? I do think Hexeth has a little bit more, thanks for covering again for everybody's job. I do think that Hexeth has a little bit more baked in boyancy than a lot of the people that Trump throws in. There are a lot of these guys who end up in

7:19Trump's orbit who he knows that they serve all of their credibility with the mega base and with the publicans in general comes through Donald Trump, right? Phexeth is a little bit different because he has the pre-existing Fox News brand. He speaks the language of the mega warrior as a giant online following of his own. He has people invested in his political project for the military. It would be a little bit politically precarious for Trump to throw him overboard in a hostile way. Maybe he could try to quietly get Hexeth to submit his own resignation, but Hexeth has his own presidential ambitions in the future, as we've all been talking about for all this time. I think that he doesn't want to have to get off the Trump train early until he would choose to do so. I do think there are certain senses in which Trump is more stuck with Hexeth than he might be with other people now. That doesn't mean he wouldn't ultimately try. Trump has never backed away from these sorts of fights. Obviously Elon Musk is a guy who had even more credibility and Trump was willing to cut him loose and throw him overboard. I think that might drive some of Trump's

8:20hesitation versus just some random faceless figure that that might just put it to. After the Renee Good, Alex Prattie, Fiasco, and all the stuff with ice, Trump cut bait. He did. Trump has didn't stick up for Mac Gates when he didn't need to. Bondy after the Epstein Fiasco, he said, fine, push them. So, Nome's gone, Bondy's gone. There's cases where Trump's willing to say, all right, I'm going to put all the blame on that person and we won't switch the approach, but we're going to switch the person out. Hexeth has overseen the biggest military disaster in decades. It's on Trump and it's going to hurt them in the election. So, is it just get through the midterms and we'll deal with this? What is the deal? I think two things. I think that latter one is hard to switch, Sec Defs. Obviously, the middle of a war leaves you wait till there's a moment. I remember in September 2006, I was a huge critic of Romsfeld, McCain guy, pro-Europeo or pro-Thee-Rach

9:21pro-Thee-Surg, but Romsfeld had done it, obviously, totally mismanaged it and it was incredibly stubborn. I remember having a conversation privately with a very senior person in the Bush administration. I said, could he get rid of him? What is going on? We can't make the change to the election. We cannot change Secretary of Defense when we're under assault from Congress and so forth. And I do, there's a little bit of that more conventional. You have to wait till November. I think it's a little weird because you maybe put the other things you would have to replace him. And there is a war going on. And there would be, I guess, the undersecret, the Deputy Secretary would become active secretary of defense. He's a business guy. Fineberg, he doesn't, you know, is even less than XF. Well, it's unfair, but it would be a little weird to make him sector. I think so. I think there are reasons why someone might be saying to Trump, you got to wait till November. But I also very much agree with Andrew. I think we underestimate these other, he got rid of Bondy, but replaced him with Herbert Blanch. He got rid of obviously of Nome, replaced her with Mullin, who were arguably slightly more competent, slightly less insanely controversial people who are willing to execute domestic deportation policy,

10:21willing to execute the prosecution of political opponents. I mean, the defense thing, what XF is doing is so extreme as to where I would put it. It's so radical that it will be hard to get someone else to go who wants to have any future anywhere in the national security world to go in and continue firing generals so we can politicize the military, go in doing the woke insanity, stuff in terms of, you know, the kind of stuff that XF just says every day, the chest pounding. I mean, it is, it, it, it, hexas, in a weird way, because he's more radical than more outrageous than less qualified probably than the previous people he's fired in a funny way. He has more, more, his little harder for Trump to get rid of him, maybe at this point. And Trump wants to use the military obviously in various ways over the next two years. And is he confident if you replace this XF, this XF, this XF, this used the military, could you still get away with using the military? And we said all that, maybe there's a Mark Wayne Mullin type replacement, right? Someone from Congress who's equally, but you know, honestly, if you're even a very strong Trump loyalist who's on the armed surfaces, could be, I'm just sticking out loud here. You, you don't, I don't know,

11:25do you really want to go in and do what XS do? You have to be willing to burn a lot of bridges to do what XS do? Why do you have to do what XS doing? So you think this is Trump's directive and not XS just because XS is written about woke generals prior to, I think some of it's some of both in XS, but obsessed with the CINILA. But Trump wants a military that will do what he says in key moments, whether it's blowing up, he doesn't want people to be objecting to it. Maybe it's against the laws of war to be blowing up these boats. He doesn't want a military that's saying why exactly it's the National Guard still deployed in DC till the end of the Trump administration. You know, there are obvious election issues, there are obvious laws of war issues where Trump just wants no questioning. And XF, you know, weirdly, it's not a pretty good, because he's intimidated a lot of people, fired people. There hasn't been that much of rebellion within the military. I wonder, this is a huge question. Well, we have to see, this is what I will bracket that post piece. That post piece from a couple days ago was a fairly significant. Well, so let's talk about that for a minute. And then we get to Andrew's important, really fantastic piece. But yeah, so I mean,

12:25that hasn't, I agree with that. There's leaking now, which is pretty astonishing. There still isn't the literal kind of rebellion that we have had in US history where, you know, forced our generals resigned with statements about why they're residing and going public and so forth. And we haven't quite gotten to that yet. I mean, yeah, but Dan Drist, we also haven't had army secretaries go to the Oval Office. Right. So I think we're maybe one step. This is something you really watch over the next two months. I think you're right to say this, Sam. I mean, it's really an important thing. This leaked to the post that had both the three combatant commanders and the chief of naval operations, not concurring in Trump's, what in the Secretary of Defense, this desire to keep troops the same level of troops basically, especially the Navy in the Gulf, I mean, in the committee to the Iran War was interesting. It's not Mark Hartling has an excellent piece about this, which really explains what these documents are like and not concurrence, that's mean they're not going to go along. That means they think it's unwise and too risky. But the most striking thing for me on that was this chief of naval operations that had a Navy

13:28carol is not concurring. Cautil is a Hegseth Trump pick. He was literally put in there. He sucked. There's a very good New York Times article about this a month ago, right? He sucked off the Hegseth to get this job when Hegseth fired his predecessor who had the unfortunate from Hegseth's point of view, the fact of being a female, although very well qualified, I would say, person to be chief of naval operations. And so a fired animal Frank, Frank, I think your name is French Eddie, put in Cautil. If Cautil is not concurring, Cautil is not, you know, the equivalent of like Mark Millie or someone who is from the previous regime. Right. Cautil is a guy who was a dubious appointment. I think a lot of my friends who know the military said because he was catering to Hegseth and to Trump. So I think that maybe fits into your point. It actually that maybe the depth of discontent and the rebellion within the military is greater than one can see right now. Yeah, let me, I'm going to head out and hand Lorraine's to Edgar in a second, but a couple of points in that before I go actually a couple of random points here. One, Drisco's also not a, you know, establishment pick. He's a Vans guy,

14:33as you know, and so like for him to speak up clearly, there's real tensions there. Two Hegseth, not covering himself in glory during any of this. I don't know if you guys saw this. As the walls are falling in and as the Iran war is not going well and all the shit, he takes to Twitter to mock Canadian cadets. Did you see this? No. He's like, put up a mocking post about these two Canadian cadets. These are kids and he like went to Twitter to mock them with an unflattering photo. I mean, the guy is like a child that's ridiculous. All right, non-related to Hegseth before I go. I've noticed in the comments a couple of people were talking about, well, you know, the algorithm is not rewarding. The bull work and it's disappearing from the feed and I'm looking into that, you know, I don't really have much power to figure out what the hell's going on with the algorithm, but I'm on Google and looking into it. But there is one way to just sort of get around the algorithm and that's just to subscribe. You can subscribe to our feed. It just subscribe, hit that button. You can pay for a YouTube subscription to support this work. You get commercial free stuff and all that great stuff from a paid YouTube subscription. So go and do it. We're

15:37trying to catch up with the other bastards. The conspiracists out there on the right who have a lot big YouTube following. So go do that. Finally, I just had to notice this last point. Amber Hale, 9813, who commented around 1020. I won't lie. Sam is a beloved bull workian, but he is my least beloved in Amber. You and a lot of you and a lot of other people, Amber, I hear you. That's Andrew's mom's pen name. What does that pen name? What do they call that online? Yeah, yeah. Burner account. Yeah. Amber, I'm going to devote my life to winning you back. And I know I'm not beloved and in your opinions held by a lot of people out there, but I'm going to work my best. All right, Andrew. Guys, go read Andrew's piece. He's going to talk about it. It's so delicious. It's fantastic. Take care, guys. I'll be in touch. Hi, I'm Andrew Egger. Amber's second least favorite bull work personality. Hey, hey, everybody. Yeah, I was it's been a crazy

16:37morning. We're going to talk about it a little bit more in a little bit. We have a couple more things to talk about first. I have one last thing that I wanted to do on on this Driscoll story. Just because you were you guys were talking about like is there some guy down in Congress who Trump could the in theory pull out and plug in to finish Hegseth's program if the if the sea under Hegseth got too hot. And I just wanted to pull this one little chunk out. The the army has been without a top commander since George's firing. Hegseth is expected to nominate a general Christopher Leneve to lead the army, but Capitol Hill is already signaling that Leneve would struggle to be confirmed because of many lawmakers and typically to Hegseth quote, we are not going to reward Hegseth for what he did to the army. One congressional staffer told us. So look, these mega Republicans out there, you can say a lot of terrible things about them. It's almost all fair. All these guys in Congress who haven't stood up to this stuff, but they have had an up close and personal seat to see to watch in real time as Hegseth does all this stuff to the army to the to the armed forces in general. They care about this stuff a lot to big part of why a lot of

17:41them are in politics to begin with. The idea that there are like a bunch of these guys who are both like actually quite qualified and who would be willing to continue this program. I'm not sure that's true. And I think that that might Trump if Trump knows that's true. It might actually in a perverse way protect Hegseth in this job. I don't know what you make of that bill, but that's just a thought that I had reading the piece. Now that's a very good point. I mean, I was thinking about people in Tom Cotton, Brian Mass. There are people who've been in Congress now about a decade and are pretty one of the Senate, one of the House. They were pretty senior in armed services and wouldn't be crazy appointments. And probably we get some of that deference from colleagues that Mark Wayne Mulling got when he was appointed nominated for DHS, for example. But I think you're right. Trump can't be confident that they would behave the way Hegseth is. Yeah. Okay. Well, is that is there anything else on that story or should we turn real quick to the ballroom? We can do the ballroom quickly, but then we need to get to your huge story. I don't want to take too much time away. I know. Yeah. Yeah. We barely mentioned the ballroom today because I was working on this other thing all day yesterday. Trump's going to probably get his ballroom. It turns out it's not completely a done deal yet, but the Supreme Court yesterday threw out the

18:44stay that was currently in place on the ballroom. It was a five four decision with the chief justice with the minority, which almost never happens in this Congress that it's all of the conservatives on one side other than Roberts and Roberts with the Liberals in a five four dissent. They basically said that the historical preservationists who had brought the suit had no standing to sue. They did not weigh in on the merits of whether the president is legally allowed to just knock down the East Wing and throw up a ballroom there instead. It seems pretty obviously contravened by federal law, which is another way of saying it is illegal for him to do that, but the Supreme Court said, we can't weigh in on this. The important primary thing for us to consider is that this particular lawsuit can't exist because these preservationists lack standing bill anything on this before we move on. Yeah, the fact that chief justice Roberts wrote the opinion in the dissent, which he assigns the opinions and he could have assigned to the Justice Kagan or something like that. He wanted to be front and center in and he says it's likely that Trump, what Trump has done is illegal.

19:49I think he uses that term, something like very close to that right? Like the unlawful. Likely unlawful. That's pretty striking. And I think he has taken advantage. I can put it that way of some of the jurisdictional issues, the standing type issues in the past to help the court duck dealing with the merits and basically most of those cases almost all probably let Trump get away with certain things at least for a while. This is a stay against Trump going forward. So I think that Roberts did this is pretty significant. We don't, and it doesn't change the fact that he's going to truck ahead and try to build as much as possible. Trump will, but I was striking. You're right to call out the fact that Roberts not just joining the three libels, but writing for the minority is pretty striking. Yeah, it's just, it's, he's such an institutionalist, right? And it has seemed like he has been pushing, released like trying to finesse a lot of these things so that there aren't just aren't that many five four decisions. He ends up with six threes in various cases. He's almost always with the majority whenever it's a six three. It's not always all the conservatives against all the liberals either. You can end up with these weird six three splits where you know,

20:52you've got Roberts and Elena Kagan and, you know, just a sort of institutionalist coalition making these cases. But I guess in this, in this instance, he felt pretty strongly that this thing should be illegal and that, and that the standing issue was not where this should have been decided. But that's where you get the other five conservative justices coming in. It is possible someone else will sue and we will, we will see some kind of new, new lawsuit come up. But this seemed like the one. I mean, I think that that these standing things tend to get hashed out pretty early. You go and you find a bunch of plaintiff possible plaintiffs and you're like, who actually has the best case that they can, they are harmed by this that they can bring this case. Some of these cases are just hard to bring too because the president just does something and it's obviously bad, but it's hard to find the sort of just disable, you know, plaintiff. Which is why, which is why we have a Congress which passes the laws in the first place and appropriates the money. Now, interesting if the Democrats take Congress, this puts it right in their court that got to I assume they will go ahead and try to prohibit the use of funds for the ballroom. That's something

21:56that was discussed. Remember a year, I mean, early this year, the ballroom thing caused such a ruckus that the Republicans wouldn't appropriate $1 billion for the ballroom, right? And now Trump's found some other pot of money. Anyway, it's very easy thing for the Democrats to at least do. They might be able to pass it through both houses, depending on what happens in the Senate, obviously, in November. And then Trump would veto it. I don't know. In a weird way, this makes the political salience for the ballroom and the ballroom is kind of a symbol for the for the other issues of spending a lot of time and money on his decorating process of projects in Washington instead of worrying about the public out there, the citizens out there. It might help the Democrats make this more of an issue. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see. We're obviously going to keep covering it. Let's throw to a quick ad and then we'll come back on the other side. I can, I can yap about this crazy story from this morning. This message is brought to you by Sol. So if you've been listening to this show for a while, you already know how much I love Sol's out of office THC gummies and their sparkling beverages. The sparkling beverages have been absolutely critical. This very hot summer. They're fantastic. Now, Sol's launched something new.

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24:02use the code bullworktakes. That's get soul promo code bullworktakes for 30% off. Welcome back. I'm going to further stand here in a second to talk about his fantastic piece this morning, which also got the greater energy. It can be a day off since Kathy Young also had a very interesting piece about Putin, which people should also read. But first of all, I just want to note here for the record that Amber is back in the comments and saying, I love you Sam. So I don't know if that's now I don't know if she's being I don't want to question her sincerity. Maybe she just has had a moment where she realized that she spoke too early or fast earlier. Maybe she's just trying to patch up things with Sam. Sam so sensitive to her. Who knew who we did we know he was that then? Skins Andrew, I don't know. We're going to have to implement a new element in morning shots. It's the Amber tracker. Get her get her power rankings of the different bullworkers every given day. Who's up? Who's down? Who's made her happy? Who's made her mad? Don't give

25:02people ideas. That'll be a huge reddit group now. Follow you already. Talk about your excellent piece here in this morning's book. Sam's still a little of my thunder off the top, which is fine. That's fine. It was a good teaser. This is a very strange story. I should start by underselling it a little bit. This is not a person who's going to be in Congress. Her name is T-Brown. She is running right now in Florida's 24th congressional district, which is a very blue district. It's currently Frederica Wilson's district. She's retiring. She won't be there at the end of the year. This is something like D plus 20. Sam said she won the primary. It's not quite true. There was no primary. She ran unopposed. The primary was canceled and they waived her through to the general. She was the only person running on the Republican ticket. Come to find out that T-Brown of Florida bears a really striking resemblance to T-Dora Brown. T-Dora M Brown, who was

26:02formerly running for house in Illinois. Illinois's 11th congressional district. Chicago suburbs district. The interesting thing about T-Dora Brown is that this candidate was widely known to also be under indictment for felony wire fraud. She and her ex-husband prosecutors Oledge, beginning in 2023, had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic money and COVID-PP funds and that they had invented businesses and invented employees and set up fake bank accounts and fake checks and all sorts of fake things to get this federal money. They had essentially just spent it on themselves. This is a known fact about her when she's running in Illinois. But then she loses the Illinois primary. Suddenly T-Brown, very similar looking person, same name, also from the same part of Illinois, surfaces in this Florida race and is waived through to the general election. No one seems to know that she's the same person. In the meantime, she has dropped the notion that she's a person who's under felony indictment. I called her yesterday.

27:04I got her on the phone and I started asking her questions. I just started off by saying, are you the same person who was running in the 11th district in Illinois? She immediately just flatly denied it. Straight up denied it, repeatedly denied that she is this person. She became extremely suspicious. The second I started asking her about this, she asked me if I was the police. She then put me on speakerphone and started patching another campaign people. Then she started saying that she had a really busy day and that she had an exclusive NBC news interview that she had to get ready for. So she was going to have to call me back and she'd call me back this morning. She never did call me back this morning. Her campaign manager, about five minutes before we were going to publish the piece this morning. Finally did call me back. I had sent over a detailed list of questions last night. She finally did call me back. Unlike T Brown herself, this campaign manager very belatedly did acknowledge that this is the same person who was formerly running in Illinois. This campaign manager then claimed to me that these charges were dropped. This criminal case into her was dropped. Everything that I can see online, these court records are publicly

28:08available. You can see them on Pacer. That's not true. This is an ongoing matter. It's set to go to trial in a number of weeks. There have been a number of motions from both sides basically haggling out what that's going to look like. They have agreed on pre-trial proceeding starting on November 20th and an actual criminal trial to begin on these wire charges, wire fraud charges in early December. But the only comment I can get from the campaign is first. I'm not that person from the candidate. Second, actually these charges have been dropped and she's counter-suing from the campaign manager this morning. It's a very strange, very surreal thing. There's a long paper trail. Even if she had not admitted to me that this was true, there's a long paper trail that makes it very obvious even if you can see in the picture. It's the same lady twice. But there's a long paper trail connecting these two things. She was going through yesterday for a short period of time and seemingly attempting to cover that trail. I had emailed her basically saying, well, you say you're not this person, but here are these campaign materials for you now.

29:10They point back to this Instagram account that involves your businesses from yesterday. After I email over for this comment, she changes her Instagram bio to take out some of these details. As you can see up there, take out some of these details about these companies that linked her back to her when she was running for Congress in Illinois. The whole thing is very shambolic. The whole thing is extremely strange and surreal. Again, I don't really get what the point of it is because she's not going to win. She's not raising any money. She loaned herself 300, she loaned her own campaign, $300,000. Not sure where that money is coming from either. The federal government is going to have a big claim on a lot of money if she's found guilty of these wire fraud charges. But she loaned her own campaign, $300,000 to get going. Filing show, she's only raised about $7,000 organically since then. For example, she's had to spend through some of the 300K. The whole story is very weird, very strange. I don't know what all much to say about it other than that. Is there anything else you wanted me to hit up on this bill?

30:10No, no, that's a really excellent summary of how crazy it all is. I mean, I suppose she might just love the celebrity and figure out what to be translated in this current world we live in. It's certainly an amalgamation world to some success, some financial reward, a George Sancto type thing. Even if she's guilty and even if she's not going to win, obviously, and even if she is going to go to trial and maybe Trump will partner, she's a mega type. I must be on their mind a little bit. She's partnered with other people, including I think you make this point in passing in the morning shots, right? The former governor of Illinois who also was a convicted of crime. So if you're in Illinois, you have the idea of a partner, cursed you. I also wonder what the money, I mean, this is what I don't know anything to make this clear, but I mean, if it maybe she thinks honestly, or maybe what we're thinking in those circumstances, I'll put it where this one, that if you lay it, if you give 300,000 dollars to your campaign, it sort of can't be caught back quite the way it can be if it's sitting at a personal account of yours, but you still, the way the campaign rules work sometimes, you can still use that money after the election for other expenses that are allegedly vaguely election, you know,

31:15belated, don't we know candidates have paid for their rent and bills and so forth from campaign, if it's who knows whether someone told you that's a kind of clever way to not let the government just get that money back if it's been illegally obtained. So who knows? I mean, it's pretty, it is, Maga world is produced a lot of craziness. I mean, can we really make a lot of congressional candidates? You can't quite believe. I want to do it over there one like George Santos, you know, but this is kind of another level, you know, she shares there's one interesting piece of connective tissue with the George Santos story, which I didn't get in the piece because I was not really able to like hammer it down exactly, but her part of the reason I was initially able to connect that these two candidates were the same is that they had the same initial treasurer when they filed us this this woman, detanya raccliffe is her name, who was the treasurer listed on the original FEC forms for both T Brown in in Florida and Tidora M Brown in Illinois. But, but,

32:18detanya raccliffe is not her campaign treasurer anymore. Her treasurer now is this guy Thomas Dattweiler, who is a pretty well known compliance treasurer for a bunch of different candidates, but his name actually came up in the George Santos story because he was the the guy who was written about a lot of sort of the the shadow treasurer behind a lot of a lot of the the weird campaign finance stuff with with Santos and I did not get into that in the piece and I don't even have it at the front of my mind to to talk fluently about it now, but, but because you mentioned Santos, there is that interesting connection there too. Let me drill down on one other thing you said, which is the whole pardon angle, the possible pardon angle, because I kind of didn't talk about that a minute ago and you're right to bring it up. I think that is the most obvious gloss of what this woman was up to when she was running in Illinois. At that time, she is leaning very hard into a pretty standard maga type playbook, which is that she is she's a black woman. She's in her campaign material. She's talking about how she is a former lifelong Democrat who quote was waking up to what

33:22the Democratic Party was doing to her community and her country. And here's a quote that she gave to a local paper at that time. Again, this is when it is known that she is facing these felony charges. It's not like the situation now in Florida where she has just kind of hoped no one will notice this. So this is in Illinois quote, they came after me because I'm a Republican and I'm an American black woman. If I was guilty, why would I run for Congress? Why would I put myself in the limelight? It just doesn't make any sense. So there are echoes of what we've seen a lot of these guys do. This this this attempt to say, you know, this is weaponized justice against me because I'm a Republican because I'm the the kind of Republican they're afraid of an American black woman. She says and and and you could see a situation where a candidate is trying to take that case forward all the way to the big guy. You know, the this guy who has this soft spot for white collar criminals of various kinds who you never know. I mean, as Hail Mary strategies go, it's not the worst Hail Mary strategy anybody's ever thought of. I don't know how that how that narrative explains

34:22what's happening now because again, she vanishes, she reemerges in Florida and when I called her yesterday, her first blush response was to deny everything. Deny that she's this same person in facing these charges. So plainly, it's not just that she wants to be known as this wrongfully accused Republican who who needs to be on Trump's pardon radar unless I I don't know. It's parts of it at a certain level just boggle my mind because it doesn't seem like sane behavior. But, uh, but I guess, you know, this this woman, this campaign manager has promised to send along certain exonerating documents once she's finished with her drive at noon today. And, uh, and I guess we'll have to see whether we will need an update in morning shots tomorrow. My my impression on the phone was that she was just kind of trying to get me to spike the story and and and I'd been lied to a lot by this campaign already. So we didn't we didn't honor that request to not publish. But you never know, you know, we'll we'll let you know tomorrow what we get over the transom. We will save some space there in warning shots for, you know, if something notable comes comes to you there, but I agree I

35:26wouldn't poke my breath. And I do think we'll I'm not sure what I'll write about tomorrow. But, um, I think the headsets stuff remains just such a big story. I mean, Sam was right to stress that it's what if one of these things happened, okay, didn't get along with the army secretary. Or there's a leak of a document with, you know, senior generals not being very worried about how risky it is to continue to vote in the number of the resources we are to erode or some of the other leaks we've seen in terms of the munitions and stuff. You do put it all together and then the the quote was it that from the hill about, you know, we're not confirming probably hexas likely nominee to replace the previous army chief of staff who and this nominee is a guy who had been excess military aid. So be in another case of hexath putting someone in to a extremely senior position. I was in one of the chiefs, you know, who's kind of his guy and the and just hill Republicans even blocking it that you put all that together. You have a really, really unusual. I mean, blanchors unusual and violence unusual and THS is horrible and I just sorry,

36:27I don't want to rank the how horrible they are, but excess degree of of of unusualness, but I'd say, but I would say extremism in a certain way in terms of being willing to challenge the way the department works and challenge the way the laws have worked, you know, are supposed to be where it's supposed to be working, you know. I make one last point on the military, I think I might could just because I think it's this country. The American founders were very suspicious of a standing army that were all Republicans with a small r-war back then because standing armies were ways in which kings started wars, broad and also enforced their their their their kingdom at home. So there's no stand. So that's why for the Constitution says you have to be appropriate Congress and appropriate funds every two years for the military. There's no you can't have an ongoing, you know, and five year appropriation or an entitlement for the military and there are there many, many expressions of the fear and weariness about a standing army and we didn't have much of a standing army except for the Civil War obviously, for the first home essentially and a half

37:29of this country, I famously as we got to getting ready for World War II, we had a tiny little army and thank God George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower and others were able to build it up unbelievably quickly but it was a huge task to do that. After World War II, the new world we're living in, Cold War, Soviet Union, the experience of World War II, we decided correctly. I think we have to have a standing army and quite a large one as it as it happened. And so we spent decades working very hard as we the country but really civilian leadership, military leadership, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, each of them had their own slight takes on this but actually worked together to have how do you make a standing military safe for democracy? And how do you make it work well and professional and how do you make it not politicize but also responsive. I mean huge amounts of very serious thought from when it to this and I think it's a pretty good success story. I mean we've had what 80 years since yeah since World War II and as large military and we've had clashes, we had Truman Fire and Ricc Arthur, we had Vietnam,

38:30some realtor Curtis LeMay quitting and running as George Wallace's vice president, we sort of forgotten that but that was sort of a kind of a civil military relations issue but basically nothing really threatened the civilian control of the military on the one hand and military professionalism on the other I'd say. And the degree to which therefore Hexeth is really could be undermining or trying to undermine I think it's fair to say something that's been a real achievement over eight decades and in a way over two and a half centuries in the sense that you know having a military that works well in a democratic republic, Swaldi, Swalar is the radicalism of what Hexeth is doing in that respect is maybe beyond a little bit even the bad things that are happening in other departments where things are being done things that shouldn't be done are being done but this is a pretty fundamental thing so just that's my thought on the ability to situation. Yeah yeah in terms of the permanent damage I mean I think you'd have to at least say the big two are what Robert of Kennedy has been doing at to the public health apparatus

39:35and then this just and I guess maybe I said DHS would be the third in terms of even if you yank these guys out just putting putting these sort of systemic forces back together is not an easy task it's not the not an overnight job and it will take a lot of blood sweat and tears just to get it to where it has been and hopefully we can. Can I just make one kind of meta point about how strange it is to to cover I mean we write this this daily newsletter right and it's news of the day stuff where we're trying to keep our eye on every all the major stuff that's going on in the Trump administration. I pull out of that for like two days to put my head down and nail down this much smaller scale crazy story we were talking about a minute ago and like I pop back up we publish it this morning we publish it late because like I said their campaign manager gets me on the phone just as we're trying to publish everything and then I'm popping back up and it's like oh the the army secretary met with who and did what and what's happening at the Pentagon I mean like you can't take your eye off the ball at least if you're if you're out there if you're one of you guys I recommend taking your eye off the ball periodically for your mental health because it's

40:40insane but but just like you can't stop you can't stop looking at these guys for five seconds or you come back into some completely new insane story that that I don't know it's it's a weird it's a weird but that's why they have two of us right that's why good for you to both her good point it's well said that it was good good pitch for the need for both of us to keep our job exactly exactly are you listening Sarah Longwell okay actually speaking of Sarah Longwell I was I was going to just wrap up the show but since I happened to bring her up you were mentioning she's got a book coming out obviously she's it's it's my understanding is it's a good book although I have not yet had a chance to peruse it many people around here have um you were you were mentioning that you have something to say about about this book howdy now elephant it's out next week you can pre-order it today from the publisher from obviously whoever you wish to pre-order it from Barnes and Noble Amazon St. Martin's Press is the publisher if you like going right to their website Sarah's beginning a book tour really Thursday night actually a big event here in DC I'm going to do an event with her week from Thursday and Cambridge Massachusetts where I mean they've sold out a big auditorium so I think this book will sell well as it should it's Sarah's thoughts how do

41:46you know how to fix their how to save their how to defeat the current Republican Party how to defeat Maga a lot of it based on her work with focus groups which obviously people at the book work or people you all are familiar with if you've seen the focus group podcast and her Sarah talk about it and her the rest of us talk about what she's learned from that and her own experience is just being an ever-trumped public of the beginning there are a couple of stories in there about me and how we all got we met in 2017 or met that once again we'd better have wetting a few years before it turned out and how we got the bulwark going actually and got the other enterprises we've been involved in the never-trump stuff and the Republican voters against Trump stuff going and so yeah it's a very entertaining me first person a lot of you know Sarah's own experiences and counterpart of biography in there a bit of very shrewd needless to say with Sarah and it's intelligent and shrewd thoughts about how to how to win this fight against Maga and against Trump and against authoritarianism so people should get the book and order it today

42:47or buy it in a bookstore people still go to bookstores I do I don't know your generation not so much I don't know you've been in one you've been in one or two or your time right yeah so let's try to get a next week with how do you know if it by Sarah Longwell yeah yeah all right I think we can leave it there um I don't know man a lot of crazy stuff going on the world I'm still just I'm still just coming down from this this crazy story um so uh so thanks for putting up with me thanks for putting up with me being late and everything thanks to you all out there for uh for for for watching thanks for reading we hope you will go check out the newsletter especially today because again it's it's just really fun um uh over at the bulwark.com the morning shots newsletter that Bill and I write subscribe to the YouTube channel if you are not yet subscribed or on substack if that's where you're watching this thanks Bill thanks to you all out there and we will see you next time