➡ Ed DeMarsch and Scott Ritter discuss the tense situation between the U.S., Iran, and Israel. They believe that Iran has the right to defend itself, but also hope that war can be avoided. They suggest that President Trump could lose his presidency if he chooses to attack Iran, as it could lead to significant losses for the U.S. and global economy. They conclude that a diplomatic solution is possible and preferable, and warn against the consequences of a war of choice.
➡ Israel wants Iran’s missile program to end and its influence in the region reduced, but it’s uncertain if the Trump administration will consider these points in negotiations with Iran. The situation is complicated by domestic politics in the U.S. and concerns about potential military conflict. There are fears that an attack on Iran could lead to severe retaliation, including the possibility of Iran striking U.S. military assets in the region. The U.S. has the capability to defend its allies, but the situation remains tense and unpredictable.
➡ The text discusses the potential vulnerability of U.S. aircraft carriers and the potential for conflict with Iran. It suggests that the U.S. relies heavily on its carriers for intimidation and power projection, but these could be easily sunk with modern weaponry. The text also criticizes President Trump’s understanding of global politics and military strategy, suggesting he relies on intimidation and bluffing. It concludes by suggesting that a significant military conflict, resulting in many American casualties, could end Trump’s presidency.
➡ The speaker criticizes Donald Trump, calling him a coward and a bully who bluffs but doesn’t stand for anything principled. The speaker suggests that Trump’s bluffs are believed because he represents the United States, and encourages other nations to call his bluff. The speaker also criticizes Pete Hegseth for his arrogance and for bragging about the U.S. military’s capabilities, arguing that other militaries also perform amazing feats. The speaker concludes by saying that bragging makes one look foolish and stupid.

Hi, everyone. Ed DeMarsch here. Please take two seconds to, like, share and follow this video. It helps us beat the algorithm. And also check out trendsjournal.com for the world’s best trend forecasts. That’s trendsjournal.com we are completely independent, no ads, and we answer only to our subscribers the way news is supposed to be delivered. If I were the decision maker in Iran, the Abraham Lincoln would already be sunk, American bases would already be destroyed, Israel would be eliminated, and I’d be carrying out massive operations against the Kurds in Iraq. The Baloch I’d be wiping out of us.

I’d be killing anybody suspected of the MEK ties. I’d be sending assassination teams around the world to kill the Shah. Son, I would kill everybody. But that’s just me. I’m not Iranian. I’m just a bloodthirsty son bitch who doesn’t believe in standing by, getting hit in the face first. The Iranians, unfortunately for them, are very civilized. They’re very proper. And I believe that their government still holds out hope that war can be avoided. And so they’re not going to take, I believe, the actions that would be necessary to preempt this. Iran has every right to. I mean, the statements made by the United States and Israel already justify this.

I don’t think that Iran’s defenses are strong at all. And I don’t think Israel’s defenses, despite all the money they spend on defense, are strong. What both sides have a lot of is offensive capability. They have the ability to strike at each other. In other words, what I’m saying is Iran cannot do much to protect itself by shooting down Israeli aircraft, Israeli drones, Israeli missiles. But what they can do is retaliate against the Israeli homeland with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. Your friend Bibi has been talking about Iran getting a bomb since 1992. In 2006, he said they’ll be building 25 bombs by the end of the decade.

Hello, my name is Evan demarsh with the Trends Journal. I’m happy to be with Scott Ritter today. You could find his writing@scottritter.com and videos. Scott, thank you for joining the Trends Journal. Thanks for having me. We have a lot of videos there just to get the viewers up to speed on what’s going on. And we’ll give it a little bit of a historic perspective with the Buchanan piece from years back. Scott, Right now, the most updated news reports are that the Trump administration’s open to dialogue with Iran. Iran seems like it’s willing to negotiate some kind of a settlement, some kind of a deal.

It’s. Trump is still threatening that the, the armada of ships are headed to Iran. Where do you see this going? And do you see this, do you see a window for Trump to get out of this diplomatically? Well, there’s definitely a window for Trump to get out of it diplomatically if he opts to take it. One of the problems facing Trump is as you start to deploy military forces into the region, you’ll reach a point of critical mass, meaning you’ve deployed so many forces forward that it becomes too expensive to pull them back and then send them back again.

Meaning at some point in time, the decision’s been made for you. You, you need to take action. You know, we, we had this experience when I was a weapons inspector in Iraq where, you know, the United States would surge military forces forward to support an inspection team that we all anticipated would be blocked by the Iraqis and inspectors would be taken hostage and then us Would go to war. But either the Iraqis, you know, chickened out or the inspectors were very diplomatic. That happened on an occasion, and war was avoided. But it, what happened is after years of doing this, for about two years, three years, the US Surging forward to back, the Pentagon said, we can’t keep doing this.

It’s too expensive. And so the decision was made to, you know, force a conflict, a Desert Fox in December of 1998, then, you know, go into the long pause, awaiting the political opportunity to go to war. But they took the inspectors out of the equation. You know, we saw this in the build up to desert storm in 1990. At some point in time, what’s called the tip fiddle, which is the troop phase list deployment, we started surging troops, so many troops forward, so much logistics forward, that by October, it was inevitable we were going to war.

We weren’t going to reverse. You couldn’t hit the reverse button. And so one of my concerns is that Trump, you know, the military is going to tell Trump, hey, boss, we just, we just spent a whole bunch of money deploying air defense forward and everything. You know, if you don’t pull the trigger, we have to start pulling these assets out because we don’t have the budget to keep them deployed there permanently. And we have other commitments globally. You know, we’re not going to be able to do this again. And, you know, Trump would be sort of in a box himself in.

So I’m hoping Trump’s looking for diplomatic offer because the other message is being sent to Trump is if you Attack Iran, you’re going to lose the midterms and your presidency is over. Because we’re not going to win. I mean, let’s just be clear about this. We’re not going to win. We can do tremendous amount of harm to the Iranians. The Iranians know this, but they have the ability to strike us hard. They’re going to, they can kill. You know, some reports say that their number is 500. They want 500 coffins going home. Well, that’s a low end.

You know, there’s a potential for them to kill far more than 500. Plus basically flip Tel Aviv upside down, make it look like Gaza, plus terminate oil production regionally, destroying the global economy, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. We don’t have sufficient force to open it up. You know, this would be the end of Donald Trump. He’s not going to get the quick victory he was told he could get. That’s just not going to happen. And that will be the end of him. He will be finished. The economy will be wrecked. He’ll have violated his pledge not to get us involved in military entanglements that never end and cost trillions.

And it’s a war of choice. It doesn’t need to happen. So what Trump’s looking for is a face saving way out. And I think the Iranians are smart enough to know that they have to give him something. They aren’t going to bend the knee. The Iranians are just not going to give up their ballistic missiles. That’s the only reason why we’re still talking. If Iran didn’t have this ballistic missile capability, we’d have already bombed them because they’d have limited retaliation capacity. We’re scared of them because they have the missiles. They’re not going to give up the missiles.

What they can do is enter into a negotiation on the, on the nuclear issue. And, you know, there’s a new reality about Iranian infrastructure, things of that nature that the Iranians, you know, can factor in. I think the most important thing for the Iranians, though, is not to be seen as provocative because they understand the political calculations here. And if they are provocative and Trump is able to point to their provocation and say, I’m justified in carrying out military action, that changes the political decision. It’s not going to change the outcome, but it changes the political calculation.

You know, this isn’t about, you know, whether or not Trump’s going to emerge victorious in the midterms. Who cares at this point? What this is about is making sure Trump doesn’t feel comfortable pulling the trigger. And Trump can’t feel comfortable pulling the trigger so long as the Iranians are willing to negotiate. And any decision to attack Iran would be seen as a war of choice, not of necessity. So I do believe that there’s a diplomatic way out of this. But no, I’ll just say it one more time just in case any of the Trump administration people listen.

You can’t win if you attack Iran. That’s the end of your presidency. And if you screw up bad enough with what you’re doing with ICE in Minneapolis and then what you’re doing with Iran, you could lose the House. So that means impeachment. You’ll be impeached every day of the week for the rest of your term. If you lose the Senate and Trump behaves egregiously, it means conviction. That means that the president, states will be in an ordinance jumpsuit before his term is up, and so will everybody in his Cabinet. That’s your future. That’s how bad you’ve screwed up.

So don’t bomb Iran. You’re not going to win and you’re going to lose everything. You know that. That’s it. I don’t know if they can recover from Minneapolis sufficient to hold the House. So they’re already going to be screwed. But, you know, maybe they can stay out of jail, but if they bomb Iran, there’s a good chance we’ll lose the Senate to the extent that conviction becomes possible. Channel 12 stationed out in Israel, said that the Israeli government gave three terms that make a good deal for Iran, and one is no nuclear program. The second point is the ballistic missile program has to end.

And then the third is stopping the feed of the proxies in the region for Iran. So basically, Israel saying that they want Iran to be essentially neutered so that Israel could do whatever it wants in the region and be the sole power. There’s. Do you think that the Trump administration is going to look at those three bullet point items from Israel and use those with negotiations to Iran, or do you think Trump’s going to negotiate outside of Israeli, complete Israeli influence? If we were past the midterm elections and Trump had a majority in the House and a majority in the Senate sufficient to allow him to continue to govern effectively for the remaining year and two years of his term? He might listen to the Israelis.

But this has now become an American domestic political problem, and Netanyahu just doesn’t matter at this point in time. I’m sure the Americans will listen, they will nod, but this is about Trump making a deal that’s good for him politically here at home. And, you know, he’s, he’s disillusioned his MAGA base and, you know, there’s just a better than even chance that, you know, he’s going to lose the midterms decisively already going to a war on behalf of Israel would be fatal to Donald Trump. And listening to Benjamin at this point in time is stupid. The other thing I know what Channel 12 reporting, but there’s other reporting out there too, that many Israelis are cautioning Trump not to attack because Israel can’t, it will be destroyed, will be physically destroyed.

That the Israelis are concerned that there isn’t a knockout blow and that the Iranians will just simply take Israel off the face of the earth. And so I’d be cautious about going forward with, you know, what channel 12 saying. There might be some politics at play here where Netanyahu has to save face by saying things. But behind the scenes, the Israelis don’t want to commit suicide. And I’m hearing that there are many Israeli voices that are being heard that say if you can’t knock them out, don’t do it. That if you’re going to strike Iran, you have to knock them out.

You have to knock them out soon. Three to five days, that’s it. We can absorb 700 missiles. We can’t absorb anything more than that. If you can’t knock them out, we’re screwed. And so don’t try, you know, if you’re gonna strike the king, kill the king and fast. You, you mentioned before the armada is headed into the region. A U.S. official told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday that that’s one of the, that’s one of the reasons why Trump’s negotiating. They want to make sure and didn’t strike already. It’s because they didn’t have enough anti missile assets in the region.

And when I read that, Scott, from previous conversations we had, is there such a thing as having enough anti missile defenses in that region? Does the US Even have enough anti missile defense systems to secure not only Israel, but allies in the Gulf from an Iranian response? Do we have that to even send to the region to defend our allies? Well, people have to understand the United States possesses the most powerful expeditionary capable military in the world. So we have the resources, you know, we have to rob Peter, to pay Paul. You know, we’re going to be pull, pulling assets from the Pacific, pulling assets from Europe, pulling assets from, you know, homeland to surge into the Middle East.

This isn’t a permanent Redistribution of power is just temporary. But you know, we are going to be layering Israel and our bases with air defense capability that’s both ground based but also sea based. You know, the Aegis capable destroyers and cruisers, you know, have significant, you know, anti ballistic missile capability. In fact, they were designed and upgraded with that in mind. If you take a look at, you know, the deployment of Aegis destroyers, for instance in Rota, Spain, you know, their purpose is to deploy in times of crisis up into the North Sea and use their anti ballistic missile capability to shoot down, you know, Russian missiles, to protect Europe, to shield Europe.

And so I don’t know how many, you know, Aegis capable ships are in this Abraham Lincoln battle group, you know, four or five. But it’s, you know, that would be significant anti ballistic missile capabilities to protect regional allies. The problem is the, the Iranians aren’t the hootie. The Iranians have some very capable anti shipping ballistic missiles themselves. And hopefully one of the things that people are telling Donald Trump is that we could lose to Abraham Lincoln. Boss, you know, this is not, this is not going to be easy. And the Iranians have been preparing for this for a very, very long time.

I mean they have the plans and we’re not taking them by surprise this time. It’s not like we get to lull them into a false sense of complacency by saying, hey, on Monday we’re gonna have nuclear talks that could end this whole crisis. Why don’t you all go to bed and then, and then let the Israelis do a surprise attack to kill everybody. That’s a one trick pony and it’s already done its show. It’s not going to happen again. So you know, we’re not going to be decapitating these guys. Which means they’re, and they also understand, you know, what Israel and the United States will be trying to do in terms of targeting ballistic missiles.

They’ve already done this once. There’s not going to be a secret army of drones flying around with COVID operatives in the rear area knocking out air defense. We’re going to have to come in heavy and hard and clear a lane and the Iranians are going to resist. And while we come in, they’re not going to be delayed. They have their missile launch capabilities leaning forward and they’re just going to hit the button and go and it will be an ugly day. Scott, back to the USS Abraham Lincoln. Obviously the aircraft carrier fleet is something that the United States military prides itself on.

It’s if, if something ever happened that, let’s say, you know, God forbid, a war did break out with Iran and it got to the level, to the. It escalated to the point where Iran did sink a carrier. What would that do? As far as the US Position, would that be like something that Trump says, well, this is a threat to our existence. We’re going to go nuclear. What do you think would happen if the Iranians did take out a carrier? War games in the Pacific where the United States has taken on China over Taiwan. And this was played out in a, in a novel that leaned on these war games, a classified war game.

So what really happened? I don’t know because I’m not read in, but from what I’ve heard and read, there are scenarios in which China destroys an American carrier battle group. And because American sea power, and therefore our strategic position depends on a carrier battle group’s ability to dominate the seas and project power, this was interpreted as an existential threat, plus the loss of several thousand American lives. Sick of carrier. You’re taking down a small city is also something that can’t just be absorbed. And this led to the United States using nuclear weapons in a demonstration against China by hitting a Chinese city in this war game.

So that’s part of the escalatory. And you go back, I’ve been, you know, studying the history of U. S. Russian arms control in the lead up to what’s going to happen this Friday, the end of the new START treaty. And I was struck by, you know, President Nixon was, you know, urging his Joint Chiefs of staff to give him options. Give me options, they said, give me options. And because the only option he had was total nuclear war that would kill, you know, 60 million Americans, 90 million Soviets, and, you know, bring, bring the world to an end.

And what are the options that that was, that, you know, they were playing with and that they were concerned, the Soviets, where was, for instance, they. There was real concern in the Nixon administration that the Soviets would launch one or two nuclear weapons against Europe and take out, you know, a critical city and then the United States would be stuck. Because now the United States has to make a decision. Do we retaliate? If we do retaliate, we lose America. Are we going to commit suicide over two European cities? And the fact that the Nixon administration was asking the question, what do we do? Means the Soviets were onto something.

And so what Nixon said is, we need the same option. We need the ability, as things are escalate, we need to pick one or two Soviet cities that we can hit with nukes. And now The Soviets have to decide do they want to retaliate or lose everything or accommodate us. So I think this idea of hitting a Chinese city with nuclear weapons, not far fetched. It’s based in history. And I’m here to tell people past patterns, repeat. All right, if people like Scott, you’re not in this, you’re not in the government anymore, what the hell do you know? Past patterns, repeat.

Idiots. Okay, past patterns, repeat. And what was good for Nixon in the early 70s, the same strategic thinking goes on today. Read the language of our nuclear posture and what nuclear deterrence are you see? Go back and read the original language of PSYOP61, PSYOP64 and all that. It’s the same language, guys. Past patterns, repeat. So if we were considering options of a limited strike to take out one or two cities, you know, escalate to de. Escalate to tell them, okay, we’ve gone nuclear now, you can back off or we can, everybody dies. That’s part of our strategic thinking today, 100% guaranteed.

And so now we come to Iran. If we can’t let China sink an aircraft carrier without nuclear retaliation, we can’t let Iran seek nuclear carrier without, you know, without nuclear retaliation. So if Iran sunk the Abraham Lincoln, we would strike Iran with nuclear weapons. There’s no doubt in my mind. So, so, so basically Iran has to then just take it essentially from this carrier group because if it actually is successful in defending itself against this carrier group that’s in the region, that’s headed to the region, I don’t know exactly where it is yet. They’re, they’ll face complete destruction.

So they really, they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. What, what could, what can Iran do? Sink the Abraham Lincoln and then face nuclear destruction, Nuclear annihilation. They don’t know that that’s coming. This is Scott Ritter, you know, spouting off on Gerald Smarte’s show. No, I believe I’m right. But they don’t know that. And they’re not going to sit there and take it. They’ve already said they’re not playing that game. They’re not going to pick up the phone and say we’re getting ready to strike Aloudade Air Base or Al Asad Air Base. Why don’t you put all your boys in the bunker so we don’t kill anybody.

They’re just going to take it out. And if the Abraham Lincoln launch strikes, it becomes a legitimate target of war. I mean, I’m sorry, the United States. You want to play Big boy games. You pay big boy prices. But what we’ve done is we’ve created so much dependency on carrier battle groups that we don’t have a backup plan for power projection in the oceans. And, you know, securing sea lanes is a very important part of our national security strategy. And so, you know, if people started realizing, hey, we could sink aircraft carriers. This isn’t World War II where we have the Coral Sea.

We lose some carriers, battle Midway, loose some carriers and go and just keep building more. What we got, 11, 12, you start sinking them, there’s zero survivability, and you lose the intimidation factor. And the other thing that happens is once you show that you have area denial weapons, meaning ballistic missiles that can reach out and touch at a given thing, you start pushing to carry your battle group out into the ocean where it’s, you know, embarked air wing isn’t as effective. You know, if you got to start launching and have two or three refueling sessions before you get to the target.

Limited time over target, refueling sessions back, there’s vulnerability. Each one of those fueling stations now can be interdicted with fighters, with missiles. It’s just not a good way to fight war. So, you know, we need to maintain the perception of the invincibility of the carrier battle group, that when we deploy a carrier battle group, it’s supposed to send fear down the spine of every human being because, you know, oh, my God, the might of America is there. If Iran shows that you can sink it, you know, that means that nobody has to spend billions of dollars to build an aircraft carrier to fight an aircraft carrier.

Just need to spend a couple million dollars to build a missile that can sink an aircraft carrier. Are they obsolete now? Are carrying groups you think, do you think they’re obsolete, or do they serve a purpose if nothing more than intimidation? Well, I mean, they serve a purpose in terms of force projection. The Somalis certainly can’t sink it. But you know what, here’s the deal. An Onyx anti shipping missile that the Russians have can sneak an aircraft carrier. If the Russians, for instance, gave the Onyx missile to the Houthi, we may have one or two less carriers today.

And so we’re at the point right now where the aircraft carrier is absolutely obsolete in terms of, you know, modern warfare, modern power projection. That’s just. It’s not worth the expense. It’s a very expensive weapon. It’s a prestige weapon, It’s a legacy weapon, but it’s not a survivable weapon in a modern war. I have two More questions for you, Scott. Thank you, everyone. Check out scottritter.com. scott, do you think Trump knows what he’s doing at all when it comes to Iran, the Middle East, Russia? How much faith do you have in Trump’s ability to understand these conflicts and crises across the world? Do you have, on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being you trust him with, with your.

With your whole heart? I don’t trust him at all. First of all, Donald Trump doesn’t know a damn thing about the world we live in. I mean, not, not in terms of traditional, you know, geopolitical power. He doesn’t know anything about the military. He, I think he lacks a fundamental understanding of economic reality. Globally, he doesn’t know anything about, you know, diplomacy. What Donald Trump is good at, this is where he’s shown, is he’s good at reading the room and he’s good at bluffing and he’s good at intimidation. So he can succeed domestically. We saw this on the Apprentice.

I keep telling people, if you want to know how Donald Trump thinks, how he works, watch the Apprentice. It’s controlled chaos. He just goes in there and he just is disruptive. He’s just making people turn against people and he’s observing people until there’s a survivor that comes out. But even that survivor has vulnerabilities have been exposed throughout the whole thing. Trump doesn’t want a strong, empowered person standing before him. Trump is afraid of strong, empowered people. What Trump want is a person that has the gumption to stand up, but a person that has so many weaknesses that Trump can exploit these weaknesses and take control of this person.

So what Trump is doing is he’s playing the Apprentice on a scenario by scenario basis. Look at Venezuela. You know, he launches this Delta strike to take out Maduro. The CIA is in there buying people off, and my God, we. It’s working. I mean, he’s opening up a U. S. Embassy in Caracas. I’m just telling you right now, that means Venezuela sold out. Absolutely sold out. Everybody is in the pocket of the CIA. We. Why? Because Donald Trump took it to limit deployed things, did some demonstrations, you know, sent Delta force in, you know, to seize Maduro, and everybody went, oh, my God, we’re done.

You know, but had Venezuela stood up and said, bring it on. Four million guerrilla war, blow up the oil fields, launch drone attacks against American targets, come at us. Donald Trump, Donald Trump couldn’t have done that. He’s not very brave, okay? He’s a coward at heart. I probably shouldn’t say this, but I just did. So the FBI will come through my door. But Donald Trump, let me put it this way, had that lead CH50, MH54 that went in to take Maduro. You know, it got hit by gunfire. And if you look at Donald Trump when he talks about this, that was a close one.

He saw his presidency go downhill. Because if that lead MH47 had gone down and taken 30 or 40 Delta guys with it, and suddenly we had a whole bunch of dead bodies in Caracas. We’re sitting in search, and it’s Black Hawk down all over again. And we now have hundreds of Americans on the ground surrounded, out of ammunition, dying. There is no Pakistani army or Malaysian army off there in some UN base to ride to the rescue. Nobody’s going to ride to the rescue. We tried to send in the rangers. They get shot down, and now we have hundreds of dead Americans and potentially thousands of prisoners because they’ll run out of ammunition eventually.

That’s the end of Donald Trump’s presidency. That’s the end of it. And he saw his life flash before the eyes when that helicopter got shot, but he got away with it. He bluffed. The CIA was there, bought people off, and everybody gave up. So he won in Venezuela. He’s trying to do the same thing in Iran right now. You know, you got to negotiate. I got a big, wonderful fleet coming up and I’m doing all this stuff and we’re gonna, we’re gonna take you out and all that stuff, you know, But I don’t think the Iranians are going to capitulate.

But the Iranians are smart enough to know that they have to create a diplomatic off ramp. And Donald Trump, I believe, will take it because we come back to my assessment, he’s a coward. Donald Trump can’t take a 10,000American casualties. He doesn’t have the guts for that. He doesn’t have the balls for that. Donald Trump’s a coward. He’s a bully. His whole thing is to pasha. But when Vladimir Putin stands up and says, Vladimir Putin’s a stronger look at when, when anybody’s there, he’s a strong guy. I mean, Al Qaeda became a strong guy. You know, that’s the point.

Donald Trump is a coward. He doesn’t stand for anything. He doesn’t stand for anything. That is principled. He, you know, and so I just think Donald Trump’s bluffing. Bluffing, bluffing, bluffing. But because it’s the United States, many people believe the bluff and aren’t willing to call them on it. And so they buckle again. I mean, if I were Europe on Greenland, I would have deployed 500 special forces, gone in, arrested every American service member, put them on an airplane, thrown them out, dug in, and tell Donald Trump, come and take it. Come and take it. And we’re taking out Ramstein.

Won’t be the Russians to take out Ramstein. We’re taking out Ramstein, come and take it, and we’re taking everybody in Europe prisoner. You want a war with Europe will give you a war with Europe, and Donald Trump will go, I didn’t want this. I’m a coward. Oh, my God. I didn’t want this. Call is bluff. Call his bluff. You’re saying, I’m all about now. Now this is this, you know, and even economically, what. Look what happens when China steps up. You know, Trump folds like a house of cards. He spins it so it looks like he.

Like, I made China do this and that and the other thing. But, you know, but then. Then you got India. I mean, I don’t know if the reports are true, but now, in order to get a trade deal with America, the Indians are like, oh, we won’t buy any Russian oil. I don’t think that’s true, because India is a member of bricks. And, you know, but my point is, there are nations in the world that. That won’t call his bluff. That will back down. And that’s empowering. What happens to a bully when he goes to the playground and he finally gets the courage to go up, somebody go.

And then, oh, yes. Oh, look, that works. He goes, bam. That’s the end of the bully. That’s the end of the bully. But the problem is, it’s not just punching him in the face, though. It’s punching the United States. And I don’t want that to happen, because that means war. That means dead Americans. That means dead other people as well. This is. This is just the wrong man to have as the president. United States. Wrong. My last question, Scott. I’m going to play a quick video. It’s Pete Hagseth. He’s with Trump. This is from last week.

I just want to hear your assessment on what Hegseth saying right here. No other military in the world could have executed the most sophisticated, powerful raid, not just in American history, I would say in world history. What those men did going downtown, another country, their most secure place in the most secure base in the middle of the night without anybody knowing until those simultaneous bombs dropped three minutes before the helicopters dropped, no other country could coordinate that. No other president would have been willing to empower those warriors that way to be that effective. And that sends a message to every capital around the world that when President Trump speaks, he means business.

And we are reestablishing deterrence at the war departments. Thank you. He was referring to Caracas there. What’s your take? How accurate was Hegseth with that assessment? Not accurate at all. I mean, come on. No other president would have the courage. Jimmy Carter sent, you know, Delta Force into Iran in a bigger mission than this. It went south. It didn’t work, but he had the balls to say go. So, hey, Pete. Other president, Richard Nixon sent the Sante Raiders. Pete may not. May have forgotten about that, but they went in to try and rescue American prisoners of war.

A raid on a prisoner. A prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam. One of the ballsiest missions in the history of. Ballsiest missions. You know, sorry, Pete. I mean, Pete Hegseth is just, you know, he’s a braggart. He’s 100% a braggart. Because once you get all the details of what happened here, all the preparation that went in, this was a mission that, you know, you. You would have really had to try hard to fail. And the people that were executing this mission were very good, and it almost failed. I just want to tell Pete that C8, that MH47 got riddled, you know? It did.

The damn pilot got his legs blown out, not off, but got hit. Had that gone down, Pete, how would you have looked? I mean, it was a foolish raid. They miscalculated. They got lucky. But to sit there and pretend that the only military that has balls today is the military that exists today. Hey, Pete, the guys I fought with, we had big balls, too, pal. You know, we didn’t shy away from. I just despise Pete Hegseth. He acts as if he’s the biggest, toughest man around because he goes. Goes and does PT with people. But, you know, Secretary of defense, supposed to be a thinker.

You know, I could go hire any PT specialist to do what he’s doing. That’s not leadership, okay? You’re not supposed to be the platoon sergeant. You’re not supposed to be the company commander, platoon commander. You’re supposed to be the secretary of defense, which means shut your damn mouth. When you’re out there talking about things critical to national security, stop bragging, because the people who know know, and it just makes you look foolish and, you know, just to sit there and pretend. I’d like Pete to meet at the Aladinov, you know, talk about Operation Potok. You know, men crawling through a pipe 15km through toxic air environment, multiple days in the pipe to crawl out and attack the enemy from the rear.

That’s balls, Pete. When was this? When was that? When was that? That was during the, the liberation of Kursk. So I think it was fought this past summer. But I’m just saying that you know, other militaries perform amazing feats of, of, of, you know, operational art and the arrogance of. Peter, look up, you know Delta Force trains all. They better be good Pete, because we spend a hell of a lot of money training them, okay? So stop bragging. You know, if they did well, pat them on the back, give them some medals but shut up because it just makes you look foolish and stupid.

On that note, Scott Ritter, thank you for joining the Trends Journal. We’ll have all his links below. Scott, always great to see you. Okay, thanks.
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