00:00:07
Speaker 1: And that's Ken Harbaugh writing about this in The Atlantic magazine. Ken of The Ken Harbaugh Show, retired U.S. naval aviator and officer from the front lines in Ukraine. Ken, you have put yourself in harm's way many times to tell the story to the American people about what's happening on the other side of the world. You're just back, your latest trip. You've talked about and we just saw your experience in this iron sarcophagus, which is an innovation of the Ukrainian military, Ukrainian engineers, Ukrainian entrepreneurs who have put this together out of necessity in the middle of this war, where the front lines have become an unprecedented killing zone, where drones hover above and nothing lives below.
00:01:09
Speaker 2: Indeed.
00:01:09
Speaker 3: There is roughly a 20-mile-wide zone of death, as they refer to it all along the Ukrainian front, where anything caught out in the open is almost certainly going to be hunted down and struck. And it is so bad that Ukrainian units who are in those frontline positions to stop the Russian advances, the most dangerous unit Evolution for them is rotating out. 80% of casualties now happen when they're trading out people. And so they try to put that off as long as possible. I've talked to soldiers who are in those frontline trench positions for over 300 days. And as bad as that is, it is infinitely worse for the Russians. The average lifespan of a Russian infantryman at the embarkation point where the Russian command tells them to go take a position is is 30 minutes. That's how long a Russian infantryman is expected to last at the front in Ukraine because they just don't care about lives. And everything you see in this film we're putting together that you read about in this Atlantic article when it comes to what the Ukrainians are doing, everything they do is about trying to preserve the loss of life, trying to save Ukrainian soldiers. They'll even give up land strategically to preserve Ukrainian lives. And they do that to incredible effect. demanding that the Russians pay an extraordinary price for every inch of territory. Last month, the Russians lost close to 40,000 soldiers in Ukraine.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: There are reports that range from half a million Russian soldiers killed in action to over a million soldiers killed in action. Where do we think the real number is?
00:03:00
Speaker 3: It's about 1.4 million killed, wounded, or missing. And the reason we can be so confident in those numbers, especially the ones recorded in the last couple years, is that the vast majority of casualties now come at the end of a kamikaze drone, and those kills are recorded.
00:03:22
Speaker 2: I've seen it.
00:03:23
Speaker 3: I've been in a bunker with a combat kamikaze drone unit at the front in Kherson and watch them fly these drones into Russian soldiers. Every single one of those kills is documented. This isn't like guessing after an artillery round goes downrange in World War I. It's not like the Vietnam body counts where they were constantly inflated to try to impress political masters back at home. This is a war being fought in Vietnam. in vivid detail, and at least a million, but much closer to 1.4 million Russians, that's 1% of their population, have been taken.
00:04:05
Speaker 2: Off the battlefield. I was going to ask you about that.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: Do you have an observation about that as a naval officer about the Russian tolerance for casualties in this society? I mean, first off, How long can Russia go without a draft? And where is the manpower coming from in an army that's been able to sustain 1.4 million killed, wounded, missing in action?
00:04:39
Speaker 3: I'm glad you asked because it's not coming from Russia anymore. And that is the next story I really want to chase. I spent some time. completely unsupervised at a POW camp for Russian captives in the west of Ukraine. They don't let many people in there, but I was able to get permission to visit this POW camp, and at least half of the inmates there were non-Russian. They were Africans. They were from Asia. There was a Chinese citizen in this POW camp. who had been bribed into fighting for Russia. And when they were able to talk candidly with me, they're very afraid to, of course, because there are infamous examples, including one that was filmed of a Russian POW who was traded back to Russia and was killed with a sledgehammer for talking to the Western media. So it's tough to get them in candid moments. But when they have those candid moments, They say invariably that they were lied into this war, that nothing was worth the price they paid, and that they were the lucky ones. The best outcome for a Russian recruit, especially one being dragged off a street in Africa or some poor town in Asia or one of the far-flung provinces of the Russian Empire, Their best case scenario is winding up in a POW camp in western Ukraine because far more likely their outcome is going to be some nameless corpse in a trench at the front line, some of which have lain there for literally years. The Russians don't even pick up their dead.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: Any North Korean soldiers that you saw?
00:06:22
Speaker 3: They are segregated. They are very careful with those soldiers. I did not get the chance to speak to North Korean soldiers, but there are plenty of North Korean soldiers. The Ukrainians are being smart about the access to them because of the trove of intel that that might provide. But there are another 50,000 on the way. If you If you need the answer as to whether Russia can sustain this fight just in terms of manpower, no, they can't. They have to beg North Korea to bail them out. They have to go throw their money around Africa and Asia. And now it's to the point where the.
00:07:00
Speaker 2: Jig is up.
00:07:00
Speaker 3: The word is out. Folks know that you're not going to get bodyguard training in Russia. You're going straight to the front, and your lifespan is 30 minutes at that point.
00:07:11
Speaker 1: What do you make of the current situation right now in Iran and where these two theaters connect? You have Ukrainian strikes in the Black Sea against Iranian ships. Are Ukrainians talking about these theaters merging? Do they view it as increasingly a global conflict?
00:07:36
Speaker 2: Of course they are. I mean, there are.
00:07:40
Speaker 3: really well-sourced reports of Ukrainian special forces in Africa, in Africa, advising groups there on how to take on the Russian mercenaries. Ukraine has turned this, well, I shouldn't say that. It is a global conflict, and Ukraine is just meeting the reality of that global conflict. They are begging the Americans to pay attention to the fact that the intel being provided to the Iranians to target American bases is coming from Russia. The fact that our flagship base in Saudi Arabia took a direct hit and a very specific direct hit at a facility inside that base, the Iranians don't have the organic capability to develop and act on that kind of intel. It's coming from Russia, and the Ukrainians have mapped out the pathways for that intelligence They realized long ago that this is the first battle of World War III, the first war of World War III, and we are very late to that realization.
00:08:45
Speaker 2: Are we in World War III?
00:08:48
Speaker 3: You know, Terry Vertz, a former F-16 pilot, commanded the International Space Station and the space shuttle. And if anyone... can provide a perspective on a global conflict like this. It's someone who has seen the whole Earth at a glance. Very few people can claim to do that. Terry told me that if Ukraine wins, this is the last war of World War Three. If Ukraine loses, it's the first battle of World War Three. So either way, the answer to your question is yes, this is how it starts or this is how it ends. But Russia absolutely sees itself at war with the United States. It's just up to us to meet that threat, to realize that threat absolutely exists. And I don't think Trump or Hexeth get it at all.
00:09:38
Speaker 1: Does the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have credibility in your view?
00:09:43
Speaker 2: It is waning.
00:09:45
Speaker 3: The credibility he has maintained is because of his projection of integrity and the fact that he doesn't strut at the podium like Hegseth does, even when they're on the same stage together. But it begs the question, what are you doing with all of that integrity? What are you doing with all of that military bearing? If we are still seeing extrajudicial strikes in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, the If we are still seeing an Iranian noncombatant a thousand miles from the theater with students on it being sunk without aid rendered to the shipwreck survivors, a clear Geneva Convention and American military rules contravention. If you are still seeing this idiotic war with Iran depleting our missile stockpiles, what good is it to be an upstanding general with integrity not peacocking like Pete Hegseth does if you're not using that integrity to stop the worst excesses of the Department of Defense.
00:10:50
Speaker 1: Does your generation of veterans, not asking you to speak for all of them, but to give me a representative sample of the NCOs you know, of the junior officers that you know, particularly those out of.
00:11:10
Speaker 2: The Marine Corps and the U.S.
00:11:12
Speaker 1: Navy. Do they have confidence in the chief of naval operations, who was clearly risen to his job after a political campaign to secure it that's unbecoming?
00:11:26
Speaker 3: It doesn't help that that rise to power, to that position, was on the backs of other people. If there's anything... that a sailor, soldier, airman, marine can sniff out almost instinctively, it's the blue falcon. It's the one who climbs over other people to get into a position of power or favor or privilege. And that's usually an aspersion cast at, you know, a junior officer or, some young enlisted who was really eagerly trying to climb the ranks and only looking out for themselves. By the time you make it to general or admiral, you hope that that kind of behavior, that kind of character flaw is weeded out. But, and I'm sure you know the story of the current CNO climbing over the backs of others and the many generals and flag officers who have been purged by Hegseth for daring to be able to think for themselves. The current CNO is in that position because someone else was knifed in the back and he did whatever he felt he had to politically to become the chief of naval operations. And that stink doesn't come off.
00:12:45
Speaker 1: The army chief of staff in a similar boat.
00:12:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the former chief of staff refused to go along with Hegseth's insistence that that generals be stricken from the promotion list because apparently they were minorities or women. And that was too much disloyalty for Hegsat the Bear. And General George was out the door.
00:13:12
Speaker 2: And General Donoghue out the door as well.
00:13:14
Speaker 3: General Donoghue and General Donoghue. I mean, the last man to leave Afghanistan, a legend within the U.S. Army, commanded Delta Force. This is not some political general. This is not some woke DEI general.
00:13:29
Speaker 2: And when you.
00:13:32
Speaker 3: Force someone like that out, it shocks the conscience even of the MAGA faithful among the rank and file. They're like, wait, now it's going from being political to actually potentially affecting my life. Because at some point, the incompetence catches up with you and the folks bearing the burden, the folks on the front lines are have to bear the consequences of an incompetent leadership. And in the military, that means lives.
00:14:00
Speaker 1: I have speculated about things that I think are necessary for the next Democratic candidate to promise as one of them becomes the nominee and ultimately the president. And they'll take power at noon. on January 20th, 2029, as is constitutionally prescribed. And I mean this serious as a heart attack, which is between the oath and the requisite salutes and ruffles and flourishes, there's going to be time, a couple minutes, to sign executive orders.
00:14:41
Speaker 2: I said the first one has to.
00:14:42
Speaker 1: Be the firing of the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the sealing of his office. I think there's two more that get signed. I think it's for the Chief of Naval Operations and the Army Chief of Staff.
00:14:58
Speaker 2: In the appointment of.
00:15:00
Speaker 1: General Donnie, it was recalled to active service to become the Army Chief of Staff because we have a first-order disaster in the U.S.
00:15:13
Speaker 2: Military right now.
00:15:16
Speaker 1: As these people run for office, run for president, Not all of them will have served, but I think it's requisite upon all of them to know the difference between a Coast Guard and a Navy and an Air Force and a Marine Corps and an Army uniform and the branches of service and so on and so forth within those. But what do you react emotionally when you hear me say that as a first order piece of business?
00:15:49
Speaker 2: That the leadership of the U.S. Army and the U.S.
00:15:53
Speaker 1: Navy, at the moment of the change of power, they got to go.
00:16:01
Speaker 3: Well, I want to pick up something in particular that you said, which is their offices need to be sealed. I don't know whether you meant that rhetorically. I think unless there's a real accounting for the actual crimes that have been committed, conducted in our name, that we will not learn from this. And I think about the 24 hours immediately following Magyar's election in Hungary, defeating Viktor Orban after, what was it, 14 years of him entrenching his power, and the rush to destroy documents, the number of shredders that overheated in Budapest from the Orban government functionaries lackeys trying to cover their tracks i i think we'll see the same thing in 2029 in january of 2029 and the one of the top priorities has to be putting people in place to make sure that we can have that accounting because we know what happens in american history in human history when you don't reckon with a past like this it comes back to haunt you when Reconstruction collapsed. We suffered generations of persecution in the South as a result. After we failed to reckon with the actual ringleaders on January 6th, that is coming back to haunt us. I think we have an opportunity, if we can find the political courage, to do exactly what you're talking about and not just dismiss the Kash Patels and the others who have enabled these crimes. but to dig into them and to document them or preserve the documents and have a real reckoning.
00:17:46
Speaker 1: We talk about you and I on these programs and off of them about propaganda. We're subsumed by it. We're surrounded by it. You go to Ukraine to break through it, to risk your life. As all the great war correspondents do to tell this story about, about what's happening in this, about what's happening in this moment. Um, let's, let's talk about, uh, Donald Trump's fundamental fitness in a moment where 66 times he said, we've won a war. that we're clearly losing and failing to meet every single significant strategic marker that he has laid out. And the propaganda doesn't stop.
00:18:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:18:55
Speaker 3: And it's getting worse by the day. We just saw the Houthis... move to secure their control over the Bab al-Mandeb. We have the vaunted east-west pipeline through Saudi Arabia being shut down because of Houthi strikes backed by the Iranians. The most frustrating thing for me about all of this is that we saw it coming. If we had just had a president who could let someone tell him the truth, there seems to be no one in in his orbit, who can walk into the White House, who can walk up to the Resolute Desk and say, sir, this is a bad idea. Anyone who dares tell him bad news about a plan that he wants to see enacted is shown the door. And I think we see the consequence of that in this disastrous war with Iran. It's going to be his legacy. As appalling as as everything else has been from January 6th to the overreach of ICE and the persecution of Americans and of our neighbors. not sleepwalking, thrusting America into this conflict that any junior lieutenant who flew a mission over the Strait of Hormuz 20 years ago, as I did, could have told you was a terrible idea. The fact that our commander-in-chief with an $ 80 billion intelligence apparatus at his disposal could not see what I could have seen 20 years ago is just absolutely damning. And it threatens the whole world. That's what really scares me. This is nowhere close to being over And the nuclear question remains.
00:20:34
Speaker 1: So far as I understand the details of the story, Pete Hegseth's wife, Jenny, third wife, known around the Pentagon as Yoko Ono, liaised with Barry Weiss and was the facilitator of the interview with of the shot down airman, one of two, that gave his story over the course of that maiden inaugural episode of this season, which was down 25%. The credibility of the program eroded. We live in a time where trust has collapsed in very nearly every institution. I'll tell you one guy who I trust is General Barry McCaffrey. General McCaffrey's in his 80s. He's on that list of greatest living Americans for sure right now. A diplomat, a warrior, a statesman, a soldier, a man who was in the generation of officers that rebuilt the U.S. military after the Vietnam War. And he listened to the story. And long story short, he called bullshit on it. Uh, I've, I've, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not an experienced skydiver. Uh, I've done more than 30 jumps, but less than 50. And, um, but you don't hit the ground at a hundred miles an hour from an airplane and, and survive. And you look at the military and you look at it in terms of, um, Private Jessica Lynch and the concocted story, the stories, the exaggerations around Pat Tillman. The military has been known to embellish and lie. I trust the Hegseths as far as I can throw them. I can throw Barry Weiss probably no further than Pete Hegseth, which is not at all. I don't trust these people at all, right?
00:23:00
Speaker 2: Zero.
00:23:02
Speaker 1: And so do you believe that story as a guy who's gone through all of the training? When you hear that, and I mean this seriously, Donald Trump slandered John McCain and thousands of allied airmen shot down in harm's way. veterans of the 8th Air Force, the 11th Air Force, all those World War II veterans, right? It was some of the most dangerous service. That's a real possibility. You flew into combat. They were shot down. He did get out. All I'm saying is, does that story make sense to you?
00:23:47
Speaker 2: Does it add up?
00:23:49
Speaker 3: The part that I want to focus on, look, it doesn't seem likely that you hit the ground going 70 to 100 miles an hour and can still climb a 7,000 foot or 7,000 meter, no, 7,000 foot peak. But the piece of the story that really offends me is the fact that this guy, this backseater, this wizzo just wants to do his job. He wants to go back into the cockpit. He never asked for this notoriety. It was Pete Hegsteth who forced him to go on camera, face uncovered, voice not disguised, and be a pawn in Pete's propaganda game. That's the kind of cynicism that I think really, really turns the average service member off. Because, you know, we can, it's bad enough when a service member intentionally decides to politicize their service to make a political point, but when you are used to against your will to try to provide cover for a stupid war like this. It helps explain how easily they can just dismiss KIAs from the defense casualty analysis system, how easily they can lie about what the families of dead service members said to them when When someone like this wizzo is just a pawn in their propaganda game, it's of a piece. No wonder they can erase four dead from the casualty toll in this war. No wonder they can say, family said, finish the job, sir, when the family say they never said that. I think it all adds up, and it really sours the American people for sure, but I think in particular the American service member on the leadership that they're getting or not.
00:25:43
Speaker 1: I ask you this question every time I see you on these programs.
00:25:48
Speaker 2: Is Ukraine winning this war? 100%.
00:25:50
Speaker 3: 100% because, well, look, there's a couple of ways to measure this. The reflexive answer I give to this question is they have no choice. If Ukraine loses this war, Ukraine ceases to exist. If Ukraine loses this war, every part of Ukraine is going to be Bucha or Mariupol or Kherson, they will not countenance that. If Putin loses or if Russia loses, a few generals fall out windows or die by suicide with two shots to the head. The stakes are existential for Ukraine. They will fight with everything they have. They will win because they have to win. But more specifically, they have a technological edge. They are hitting the Russians in areas that actually undermine Russia's war effort, Russia's Main response is to hit civilian infrastructure to take out power. Life is going to be much, much harder for Ukrainian civilians, but much, much harder for the Russian military. And that's how you win a war. Russia's tactic of hitting population centers is not actually breaking Ukrainians' resolve. It's not actually weakening Zelensky's government. If anything, it's hardening it. By contrast, the casualty ratio at the front now I'm sorry, the differential is approaching nine to one. Nine Russians killed or wounded for every one Ukrainian killed or wounded. And ultimately, that's the heart of the Atlantic piece and the documentary that Charlie Sadov and I are building out of it. Ukraine is a country and a culture that is focused on life, and Russia is a death cult.
00:27:39
Speaker 1: Last question, Ken. Take us inside that sarcophagus. That was not a new model that they rolled out for you.
00:27:47
Speaker 2: That was a full-use, real deal.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: The smells, the blood, all that has gone on in that small space that you shared for a moment. As that thing closed and took off, take us inside the smell, what you heard.
00:28:08
Speaker 2: What you could see and what you were feeling?
00:28:14
Speaker 3: I don't want to take too much credit because I spent three minutes in that thing and it was enough for a lifetime. The longest rescue mission that the mall, that is the name of this armored sarcophagus, has been on was 67 kilometers and six hours. A wounded Ukrainian soldier spent six hours in that thing, dodging drones and mines and racing through the dead of night and into the dawn to try to make it to safety. I think the most telling part of the Atlantic article, and Charlie and I have to figure out how to get this into the documentary, is the reaction of the soldiers to this armored sarcophagus. They all hate it. Every single soldier I talk to said they despise the thing. And when I brought this back to the medics who operate it, they laughed and they received it like a bad Yelp review. And they said, Mr. Ken, the only reason you're hearing that soldiers hate it is because they're alive to say they hate it. This thing saves lives. The ones who don't get out in the mall aren't able to tell you how they feel. And that is is such a Ukrainian response to a horrific reality that the only thing almost as bad as dying in a trench is being evacuated by this mall but it is your last chance one of their recent missions evacuated a soldier that they had tried to get conventional way with armored vehicles six separate times six or multiple armored vehicles destroyed trying to pull this soldier out they finally made the decision to send in the mall that soldier had been waiting with a tourniquet on his leg for 33 days and the mall saved his.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: Life extraordinary stories and reporting from ken harbaugh from the front lines in ukraine once again ken harbaugh of the ken harbaugh show member of the save america movement steering committee, really an extraordinary American patriot. And history will recall one of the great war correspondents of this era as he continues to accumulate his latest work in The Atlantic magazine, an extraordinary accounting of the war between Russia and Ukraine that has taken 1.4 million Russians killed, wounded, and missing in action. This is a staggering number, three times the total of America's killed in action in the Second World War, a war being fought on European soil, rarely reported on in the United States, rarer ever even on the networks, but you can read all about it if you follow Ken Harbaugh, and you should because reading makes you smarter, and free people are not sheep They are informed. And with that, have a good afternoon. I'm Steve Schmidt of The Warning. And thanks again to the Save America movement.
00:31:31
Speaker 3: Thank you, Steve.
00:31:36
Speaker 2: All right. I got to jump over to my line.
00:31:38
Speaker 3: Thanks, Steve. Appreciate it.
00:31:40
Speaker 2: Bye.
Speaker 1: And that's Ken Harbaugh writing about this in The Atlantic magazine. Ken of The Ken Harbaugh Show, retired U.S. naval aviator and officer from the front lines in Ukraine. Ken, you have put yourself in harm's way many times to tell the story to the American people about what's happening on the other side of the world. You're just back, your latest trip. You've talked about and we just saw your experience in this iron sarcophagus, which is an innovation of the Ukrainian military, Ukrainian engineers, Ukrainian entrepreneurs who have put this together out of necessity in the middle of this war, where the front lines have become an unprecedented killing zone, where drones hover above and nothing lives below.
00:01:09
Speaker 2: Indeed.
00:01:09
Speaker 3: There is roughly a 20-mile-wide zone of death, as they refer to it all along the Ukrainian front, where anything caught out in the open is almost certainly going to be hunted down and struck. And it is so bad that Ukrainian units who are in those frontline positions to stop the Russian advances, the most dangerous unit Evolution for them is rotating out. 80% of casualties now happen when they're trading out people. And so they try to put that off as long as possible. I've talked to soldiers who are in those frontline trench positions for over 300 days. And as bad as that is, it is infinitely worse for the Russians. The average lifespan of a Russian infantryman at the embarkation point where the Russian command tells them to go take a position is is 30 minutes. That's how long a Russian infantryman is expected to last at the front in Ukraine because they just don't care about lives. And everything you see in this film we're putting together that you read about in this Atlantic article when it comes to what the Ukrainians are doing, everything they do is about trying to preserve the loss of life, trying to save Ukrainian soldiers. They'll even give up land strategically to preserve Ukrainian lives. And they do that to incredible effect. demanding that the Russians pay an extraordinary price for every inch of territory. Last month, the Russians lost close to 40,000 soldiers in Ukraine.
00:02:46
Speaker 1: There are reports that range from half a million Russian soldiers killed in action to over a million soldiers killed in action. Where do we think the real number is?
00:03:00
Speaker 3: It's about 1.4 million killed, wounded, or missing. And the reason we can be so confident in those numbers, especially the ones recorded in the last couple years, is that the vast majority of casualties now come at the end of a kamikaze drone, and those kills are recorded.
00:03:22
Speaker 2: I've seen it.
00:03:23
Speaker 3: I've been in a bunker with a combat kamikaze drone unit at the front in Kherson and watch them fly these drones into Russian soldiers. Every single one of those kills is documented. This isn't like guessing after an artillery round goes downrange in World War I. It's not like the Vietnam body counts where they were constantly inflated to try to impress political masters back at home. This is a war being fought in Vietnam. in vivid detail, and at least a million, but much closer to 1.4 million Russians, that's 1% of their population, have been taken.
00:04:05
Speaker 2: Off the battlefield. I was going to ask you about that.
00:04:08
Speaker 1: Do you have an observation about that as a naval officer about the Russian tolerance for casualties in this society? I mean, first off, How long can Russia go without a draft? And where is the manpower coming from in an army that's been able to sustain 1.4 million killed, wounded, missing in action?
00:04:39
Speaker 3: I'm glad you asked because it's not coming from Russia anymore. And that is the next story I really want to chase. I spent some time. completely unsupervised at a POW camp for Russian captives in the west of Ukraine. They don't let many people in there, but I was able to get permission to visit this POW camp, and at least half of the inmates there were non-Russian. They were Africans. They were from Asia. There was a Chinese citizen in this POW camp. who had been bribed into fighting for Russia. And when they were able to talk candidly with me, they're very afraid to, of course, because there are infamous examples, including one that was filmed of a Russian POW who was traded back to Russia and was killed with a sledgehammer for talking to the Western media. So it's tough to get them in candid moments. But when they have those candid moments, They say invariably that they were lied into this war, that nothing was worth the price they paid, and that they were the lucky ones. The best outcome for a Russian recruit, especially one being dragged off a street in Africa or some poor town in Asia or one of the far-flung provinces of the Russian Empire, Their best case scenario is winding up in a POW camp in western Ukraine because far more likely their outcome is going to be some nameless corpse in a trench at the front line, some of which have lain there for literally years. The Russians don't even pick up their dead.
00:06:20
Speaker 1: Any North Korean soldiers that you saw?
00:06:22
Speaker 3: They are segregated. They are very careful with those soldiers. I did not get the chance to speak to North Korean soldiers, but there are plenty of North Korean soldiers. The Ukrainians are being smart about the access to them because of the trove of intel that that might provide. But there are another 50,000 on the way. If you If you need the answer as to whether Russia can sustain this fight just in terms of manpower, no, they can't. They have to beg North Korea to bail them out. They have to go throw their money around Africa and Asia. And now it's to the point where the.
00:07:00
Speaker 2: Jig is up.
00:07:00
Speaker 3: The word is out. Folks know that you're not going to get bodyguard training in Russia. You're going straight to the front, and your lifespan is 30 minutes at that point.
00:07:11
Speaker 1: What do you make of the current situation right now in Iran and where these two theaters connect? You have Ukrainian strikes in the Black Sea against Iranian ships. Are Ukrainians talking about these theaters merging? Do they view it as increasingly a global conflict?
00:07:36
Speaker 2: Of course they are. I mean, there are.
00:07:40
Speaker 3: really well-sourced reports of Ukrainian special forces in Africa, in Africa, advising groups there on how to take on the Russian mercenaries. Ukraine has turned this, well, I shouldn't say that. It is a global conflict, and Ukraine is just meeting the reality of that global conflict. They are begging the Americans to pay attention to the fact that the intel being provided to the Iranians to target American bases is coming from Russia. The fact that our flagship base in Saudi Arabia took a direct hit and a very specific direct hit at a facility inside that base, the Iranians don't have the organic capability to develop and act on that kind of intel. It's coming from Russia, and the Ukrainians have mapped out the pathways for that intelligence They realized long ago that this is the first battle of World War III, the first war of World War III, and we are very late to that realization.
00:08:45
Speaker 2: Are we in World War III?
00:08:48
Speaker 3: You know, Terry Vertz, a former F-16 pilot, commanded the International Space Station and the space shuttle. And if anyone... can provide a perspective on a global conflict like this. It's someone who has seen the whole Earth at a glance. Very few people can claim to do that. Terry told me that if Ukraine wins, this is the last war of World War Three. If Ukraine loses, it's the first battle of World War Three. So either way, the answer to your question is yes, this is how it starts or this is how it ends. But Russia absolutely sees itself at war with the United States. It's just up to us to meet that threat, to realize that threat absolutely exists. And I don't think Trump or Hexeth get it at all.
00:09:38
Speaker 1: Does the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have credibility in your view?
00:09:43
Speaker 2: It is waning.
00:09:45
Speaker 3: The credibility he has maintained is because of his projection of integrity and the fact that he doesn't strut at the podium like Hegseth does, even when they're on the same stage together. But it begs the question, what are you doing with all of that integrity? What are you doing with all of that military bearing? If we are still seeing extrajudicial strikes in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, the If we are still seeing an Iranian noncombatant a thousand miles from the theater with students on it being sunk without aid rendered to the shipwreck survivors, a clear Geneva Convention and American military rules contravention. If you are still seeing this idiotic war with Iran depleting our missile stockpiles, what good is it to be an upstanding general with integrity not peacocking like Pete Hegseth does if you're not using that integrity to stop the worst excesses of the Department of Defense.
00:10:50
Speaker 1: Does your generation of veterans, not asking you to speak for all of them, but to give me a representative sample of the NCOs you know, of the junior officers that you know, particularly those out of.
00:11:10
Speaker 2: The Marine Corps and the U.S.
00:11:12
Speaker 1: Navy. Do they have confidence in the chief of naval operations, who was clearly risen to his job after a political campaign to secure it that's unbecoming?
00:11:26
Speaker 3: It doesn't help that that rise to power, to that position, was on the backs of other people. If there's anything... that a sailor, soldier, airman, marine can sniff out almost instinctively, it's the blue falcon. It's the one who climbs over other people to get into a position of power or favor or privilege. And that's usually an aspersion cast at, you know, a junior officer or, some young enlisted who was really eagerly trying to climb the ranks and only looking out for themselves. By the time you make it to general or admiral, you hope that that kind of behavior, that kind of character flaw is weeded out. But, and I'm sure you know the story of the current CNO climbing over the backs of others and the many generals and flag officers who have been purged by Hegseth for daring to be able to think for themselves. The current CNO is in that position because someone else was knifed in the back and he did whatever he felt he had to politically to become the chief of naval operations. And that stink doesn't come off.
00:12:45
Speaker 1: The army chief of staff in a similar boat.
00:12:48
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely. Well, the former chief of staff refused to go along with Hegseth's insistence that that generals be stricken from the promotion list because apparently they were minorities or women. And that was too much disloyalty for Hegsat the Bear. And General George was out the door.
00:13:12
Speaker 2: And General Donoghue out the door as well.
00:13:14
Speaker 3: General Donoghue and General Donoghue. I mean, the last man to leave Afghanistan, a legend within the U.S. Army, commanded Delta Force. This is not some political general. This is not some woke DEI general.
00:13:29
Speaker 2: And when you.
00:13:32
Speaker 3: Force someone like that out, it shocks the conscience even of the MAGA faithful among the rank and file. They're like, wait, now it's going from being political to actually potentially affecting my life. Because at some point, the incompetence catches up with you and the folks bearing the burden, the folks on the front lines are have to bear the consequences of an incompetent leadership. And in the military, that means lives.
00:14:00
Speaker 1: I have speculated about things that I think are necessary for the next Democratic candidate to promise as one of them becomes the nominee and ultimately the president. And they'll take power at noon. on January 20th, 2029, as is constitutionally prescribed. And I mean this serious as a heart attack, which is between the oath and the requisite salutes and ruffles and flourishes, there's going to be time, a couple minutes, to sign executive orders.
00:14:41
Speaker 2: I said the first one has to.
00:14:42
Speaker 1: Be the firing of the FBI director, Kash Patel, and the sealing of his office. I think there's two more that get signed. I think it's for the Chief of Naval Operations and the Army Chief of Staff.
00:14:58
Speaker 2: In the appointment of.
00:15:00
Speaker 1: General Donnie, it was recalled to active service to become the Army Chief of Staff because we have a first-order disaster in the U.S.
00:15:13
Speaker 2: Military right now.
00:15:16
Speaker 1: As these people run for office, run for president, Not all of them will have served, but I think it's requisite upon all of them to know the difference between a Coast Guard and a Navy and an Air Force and a Marine Corps and an Army uniform and the branches of service and so on and so forth within those. But what do you react emotionally when you hear me say that as a first order piece of business?
00:15:49
Speaker 2: That the leadership of the U.S. Army and the U.S.
00:15:53
Speaker 1: Navy, at the moment of the change of power, they got to go.
00:16:01
Speaker 3: Well, I want to pick up something in particular that you said, which is their offices need to be sealed. I don't know whether you meant that rhetorically. I think unless there's a real accounting for the actual crimes that have been committed, conducted in our name, that we will not learn from this. And I think about the 24 hours immediately following Magyar's election in Hungary, defeating Viktor Orban after, what was it, 14 years of him entrenching his power, and the rush to destroy documents, the number of shredders that overheated in Budapest from the Orban government functionaries lackeys trying to cover their tracks i i think we'll see the same thing in 2029 in january of 2029 and the one of the top priorities has to be putting people in place to make sure that we can have that accounting because we know what happens in american history in human history when you don't reckon with a past like this it comes back to haunt you when Reconstruction collapsed. We suffered generations of persecution in the South as a result. After we failed to reckon with the actual ringleaders on January 6th, that is coming back to haunt us. I think we have an opportunity, if we can find the political courage, to do exactly what you're talking about and not just dismiss the Kash Patels and the others who have enabled these crimes. but to dig into them and to document them or preserve the documents and have a real reckoning.
00:17:46
Speaker 1: We talk about you and I on these programs and off of them about propaganda. We're subsumed by it. We're surrounded by it. You go to Ukraine to break through it, to risk your life. As all the great war correspondents do to tell this story about, about what's happening in this, about what's happening in this moment. Um, let's, let's talk about, uh, Donald Trump's fundamental fitness in a moment where 66 times he said, we've won a war. that we're clearly losing and failing to meet every single significant strategic marker that he has laid out. And the propaganda doesn't stop.
00:18:54
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:18:55
Speaker 3: And it's getting worse by the day. We just saw the Houthis... move to secure their control over the Bab al-Mandeb. We have the vaunted east-west pipeline through Saudi Arabia being shut down because of Houthi strikes backed by the Iranians. The most frustrating thing for me about all of this is that we saw it coming. If we had just had a president who could let someone tell him the truth, there seems to be no one in in his orbit, who can walk into the White House, who can walk up to the Resolute Desk and say, sir, this is a bad idea. Anyone who dares tell him bad news about a plan that he wants to see enacted is shown the door. And I think we see the consequence of that in this disastrous war with Iran. It's going to be his legacy. As appalling as as everything else has been from January 6th to the overreach of ICE and the persecution of Americans and of our neighbors. not sleepwalking, thrusting America into this conflict that any junior lieutenant who flew a mission over the Strait of Hormuz 20 years ago, as I did, could have told you was a terrible idea. The fact that our commander-in-chief with an $ 80 billion intelligence apparatus at his disposal could not see what I could have seen 20 years ago is just absolutely damning. And it threatens the whole world. That's what really scares me. This is nowhere close to being over And the nuclear question remains.
00:20:34
Speaker 1: So far as I understand the details of the story, Pete Hegseth's wife, Jenny, third wife, known around the Pentagon as Yoko Ono, liaised with Barry Weiss and was the facilitator of the interview with of the shot down airman, one of two, that gave his story over the course of that maiden inaugural episode of this season, which was down 25%. The credibility of the program eroded. We live in a time where trust has collapsed in very nearly every institution. I'll tell you one guy who I trust is General Barry McCaffrey. General McCaffrey's in his 80s. He's on that list of greatest living Americans for sure right now. A diplomat, a warrior, a statesman, a soldier, a man who was in the generation of officers that rebuilt the U.S. military after the Vietnam War. And he listened to the story. And long story short, he called bullshit on it. Uh, I've, I've, I'm not a, I'm not a, I'm not an experienced skydiver. Uh, I've done more than 30 jumps, but less than 50. And, um, but you don't hit the ground at a hundred miles an hour from an airplane and, and survive. And you look at the military and you look at it in terms of, um, Private Jessica Lynch and the concocted story, the stories, the exaggerations around Pat Tillman. The military has been known to embellish and lie. I trust the Hegseths as far as I can throw them. I can throw Barry Weiss probably no further than Pete Hegseth, which is not at all. I don't trust these people at all, right?
00:23:00
Speaker 2: Zero.
00:23:02
Speaker 1: And so do you believe that story as a guy who's gone through all of the training? When you hear that, and I mean this seriously, Donald Trump slandered John McCain and thousands of allied airmen shot down in harm's way. veterans of the 8th Air Force, the 11th Air Force, all those World War II veterans, right? It was some of the most dangerous service. That's a real possibility. You flew into combat. They were shot down. He did get out. All I'm saying is, does that story make sense to you?
00:23:47
Speaker 2: Does it add up?
00:23:49
Speaker 3: The part that I want to focus on, look, it doesn't seem likely that you hit the ground going 70 to 100 miles an hour and can still climb a 7,000 foot or 7,000 meter, no, 7,000 foot peak. But the piece of the story that really offends me is the fact that this guy, this backseater, this wizzo just wants to do his job. He wants to go back into the cockpit. He never asked for this notoriety. It was Pete Hegsteth who forced him to go on camera, face uncovered, voice not disguised, and be a pawn in Pete's propaganda game. That's the kind of cynicism that I think really, really turns the average service member off. Because, you know, we can, it's bad enough when a service member intentionally decides to politicize their service to make a political point, but when you are used to against your will to try to provide cover for a stupid war like this. It helps explain how easily they can just dismiss KIAs from the defense casualty analysis system, how easily they can lie about what the families of dead service members said to them when When someone like this wizzo is just a pawn in their propaganda game, it's of a piece. No wonder they can erase four dead from the casualty toll in this war. No wonder they can say, family said, finish the job, sir, when the family say they never said that. I think it all adds up, and it really sours the American people for sure, but I think in particular the American service member on the leadership that they're getting or not.
00:25:43
Speaker 1: I ask you this question every time I see you on these programs.
00:25:48
Speaker 2: Is Ukraine winning this war? 100%.
00:25:50
Speaker 3: 100% because, well, look, there's a couple of ways to measure this. The reflexive answer I give to this question is they have no choice. If Ukraine loses this war, Ukraine ceases to exist. If Ukraine loses this war, every part of Ukraine is going to be Bucha or Mariupol or Kherson, they will not countenance that. If Putin loses or if Russia loses, a few generals fall out windows or die by suicide with two shots to the head. The stakes are existential for Ukraine. They will fight with everything they have. They will win because they have to win. But more specifically, they have a technological edge. They are hitting the Russians in areas that actually undermine Russia's war effort, Russia's Main response is to hit civilian infrastructure to take out power. Life is going to be much, much harder for Ukrainian civilians, but much, much harder for the Russian military. And that's how you win a war. Russia's tactic of hitting population centers is not actually breaking Ukrainians' resolve. It's not actually weakening Zelensky's government. If anything, it's hardening it. By contrast, the casualty ratio at the front now I'm sorry, the differential is approaching nine to one. Nine Russians killed or wounded for every one Ukrainian killed or wounded. And ultimately, that's the heart of the Atlantic piece and the documentary that Charlie Sadov and I are building out of it. Ukraine is a country and a culture that is focused on life, and Russia is a death cult.
00:27:39
Speaker 1: Last question, Ken. Take us inside that sarcophagus. That was not a new model that they rolled out for you.
00:27:47
Speaker 2: That was a full-use, real deal.
00:27:51
Speaker 1: The smells, the blood, all that has gone on in that small space that you shared for a moment. As that thing closed and took off, take us inside the smell, what you heard.
00:28:08
Speaker 2: What you could see and what you were feeling?
00:28:14
Speaker 3: I don't want to take too much credit because I spent three minutes in that thing and it was enough for a lifetime. The longest rescue mission that the mall, that is the name of this armored sarcophagus, has been on was 67 kilometers and six hours. A wounded Ukrainian soldier spent six hours in that thing, dodging drones and mines and racing through the dead of night and into the dawn to try to make it to safety. I think the most telling part of the Atlantic article, and Charlie and I have to figure out how to get this into the documentary, is the reaction of the soldiers to this armored sarcophagus. They all hate it. Every single soldier I talk to said they despise the thing. And when I brought this back to the medics who operate it, they laughed and they received it like a bad Yelp review. And they said, Mr. Ken, the only reason you're hearing that soldiers hate it is because they're alive to say they hate it. This thing saves lives. The ones who don't get out in the mall aren't able to tell you how they feel. And that is is such a Ukrainian response to a horrific reality that the only thing almost as bad as dying in a trench is being evacuated by this mall but it is your last chance one of their recent missions evacuated a soldier that they had tried to get conventional way with armored vehicles six separate times six or multiple armored vehicles destroyed trying to pull this soldier out they finally made the decision to send in the mall that soldier had been waiting with a tourniquet on his leg for 33 days and the mall saved his.
00:30:11
Speaker 1: Life extraordinary stories and reporting from ken harbaugh from the front lines in ukraine once again ken harbaugh of the ken harbaugh show member of the save america movement steering committee, really an extraordinary American patriot. And history will recall one of the great war correspondents of this era as he continues to accumulate his latest work in The Atlantic magazine, an extraordinary accounting of the war between Russia and Ukraine that has taken 1.4 million Russians killed, wounded, and missing in action. This is a staggering number, three times the total of America's killed in action in the Second World War, a war being fought on European soil, rarely reported on in the United States, rarer ever even on the networks, but you can read all about it if you follow Ken Harbaugh, and you should because reading makes you smarter, and free people are not sheep They are informed. And with that, have a good afternoon. I'm Steve Schmidt of The Warning. And thanks again to the Save America movement.
00:31:31
Speaker 3: Thank you, Steve.
00:31:36
Speaker 2: All right. I got to jump over to my line.
00:31:38
Speaker 3: Thanks, Steve. Appreciate it.
00:31:40
Speaker 2: Bye.
