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

All right. Hey, everybody. It's me, Sam Stein. I'm drawn by Bill Crystal. I am sitting in for Andrew Edgar 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 a justice, but it's about this congressional candidate in Florida. There she is. Tabram. 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. So 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 decamped from Illinois, went to Florida ran again for office, won the primary this time. Likely 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. Gets 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. So that's why Andrew's a little busy this morning. Yeah, he was busy updating the piece to the last minute. It was 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 and a gestational issue. I think he's vomiting from the nerves of having to publish this piece. Let's not bring that curtain back too much, Sam. I've always been a little bit of a believer in the black box theory of running a media company. You know, you don't want people to know that. You don't want them to see too much about how what's going on behind the scenes. But that's why the book is a success is that we're transparent about this. 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 Dan Driscoll. Dan Driscoll, Army Secretary, resigns. I guess this was sort of, "Oh, hey, there he is, the man." 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 Dan Driscoll. I'm doing great. I have nothing left to talk about about my piece later. You guys already already already did. We already did. I'm going to stick around for a little bit. Then I'm going to go do my business, but Dan Driscoll bill, like obviously this has been in the ether for a while. It looks like the reasons he retired was essentially he hikes up 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 stuff, which was really just hexath trying to fire. General C disagreed with. Finally, Driscoll says enough, and he goes to Trump, the Atlantic, in this story, where he constantly goes to Trump, with his resignation letter and talks to him about the things that he thinks are going poorly at DOD. Obviously, it's a bit frightening to see all the civilian leaders gone and and Senate 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 disarray, 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 hexath from the beginning, and I think hexath 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 at all this, and there were some tensions, but Hexath has just gone after, obviously, all the surfaces, but really especially the Army, especially the firing of the very well-respected Army Chief of Staff, Randy George, during the war. And Driscoll, 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, both cases, but no, not people who are confirmed by the Senate for 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, he 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, Driscoll had gone to his Georgia's retirement ceremony, I think, and I think it went recently to another retirement ceremony that someone else that's reinforced up by Hexath, so he wasn't being shy about signaling his displeasure with the way Hexath was sheeding the military, which is really both outrageous and sort of scary in terms of firing all the generals with you, alluded to Sam. But Driscoll also let it be known that he had gone to Trump to explain what Hexath 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 didn't really realize, I have confidence, my secretaries, I don't like manage these departments. He personally met, that's a kind of rare, honestly, Army Secretary, it's not that high up enough to meet necessarily personally with the President a lot. He meets personally with Trump, I assume he requested that, oh, yeah, I was, he requested that meeting, maybe Vance intervened to get him the meeting, and so now Trump's on the spot. Trump has signed off on what Hexath has 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 was 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 allude to, which is leaking, or at least having people leak, or 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 allude to, which is that it's, hey, Donald Trump knows about the problems with Hexath. Donald Trump can't feign ignorance about the fact that people in the Pentagon think Pete Hexath 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 Hexath, but like even that Hexath is probably the most problematic cabinet member for Trump. And it's very bizarre to me that Trump just doesn't see it or choose not to see it, because he's willing to throw other people over the side. But why not Hexath, Andrew? I do think Hexath has a little bit more, thanks for covering again for everybody, by the way. I do think that Hexath has a little bit more baked in buoyancy than a lot of the people that Trump throws in. There are a lot of these guys who end up in Trump's orbit, who he knows that they serve all of their credibility with the mega base. And with Republicans in general comes through Donald Trump, right? Hedexath is a little bit different because he has the pre-existing Fox News brand. He speaks the language of the mega warrior. He has 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, like in a hostile way. Maybe he could try to quietly get Hexath to submit his own resignation, but Hexath 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. So I do think there are certain senses in which Trump is more stuck with Hexath 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. But I think that might drive some of Trump's hesitation versus just some random faceless figure that might just have built. Let me just put it to you. After the Renee Good, Alex Prattie, Fiasco, and all the stuff with ice, Trump cut bait. He did. Okay. Trump has, you know, 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 don't want, 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. Hegg Seth has overseen the biggest military disaster in decades. And 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? Like what is the deal? I think two things. I mean, yeah, I think that ladder one problem. It's hard. I mean, it's hard to switch sectors. Obviously, the middle of a war, you should literally wait till there's a moment. I remember in September 2006, I was a huge critic of Rumsfeld, McCain guy, pro pro the Iraq war, pro the surge, but Rumsfeld had done it, obviously, totally mismanaged it. It was incredibly stubborn. And I remember having a conversation privately with a very senior person in the Bush administration, he said, could he get rid of what is going on? So we can't make the change to the election. We cannot change sectors 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 sort of cannot, you have to wait till November. I think it's a little weird because you maybe, but the other thing is you would have to replace him. And there is a war going on. And they would, they'd be, I guess, the undersecret, the deputy secretary would become active sector 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, if 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 Bondi, but replaced him with Herbert Blanche. He got rid of obviously a gnome, replaced her with Mullin, who were arguably slightly more competent, slightly less insanely controversial, people who are willing to execute the mass deportation policy, willing to execute the prosecution of political opponents. I mean, the defense thing, what hexath is doing is so extreme as the way I would put it, so radical that it would be hard to get someone else to go who wants to any future anywhere in the natural security world to go in and continue firing generals so we can politicize the military, go in doing the woken sanity stuff in terms of, you know, the kind of stuff the hexath just says every day, the chest pounding. I mean, it is a hexath 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, 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 hexath, this hexath, this hexath, this use the military, could he 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, can be damn just sticking out loud here, you, you don't, I don't know, do you really want to go in and do what hexath's doing? You have to be willing to burn a lot of bridges to do what hexath's doing. Why do you have to do what hexath's doing? So you think this is Trump's directive and not hexath just because hexath's written about woke generals prior to I think some of it's some of both and hexath's been obsessed with this in a while, 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 maybe it's against the loss of war to be blowing up these boats. He doesn't want a military that's saying why exactly is the National Guard still deployed in DC till the end of the Trump administration? You know, there are obvious election issues, there are obvious well laws of war issues where Trump just wants no questioning and hexath, you know, weirdly, it's not a pretty good because he's intimidated a lot of people and fired people. There hasn't been that much of a rebellion with from within the military. I wonder if this is a huge question. I don't know. We have to see. This is what I know. I'll bracket that. 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'll get to Andrew's important, really fantastic piece. But yeah, so I mean, that 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 to really watch over the next two months. I think you're right to say the same. 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 trumps in the Secretary of Defense's desire to keep troops the same level of troops basically, especially the Navy in the Gulf. I mean, if I'm in the committee, 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 concurring. It says, I 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 it in the Navy. Cautil is not concurring. Cautil is a Hegseth Trump pick. He was literally put in there because he sucked. There's a very good New York Times article about this a month ago ago, right? He sucked off the Hegseth to get this job, when Hegseth fires his predecessor who had the unfortunate from Hegseth's point of view, fact of being a female, although very well-qualified, I would say, person to be chief of naval operations. And so he fired at Frank Kennedy, I think her 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's from the previous regime. 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 if it's 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 points in that before I go. Actually, a couple random points here. One, Driscoll is also not a, you know, establishment pick. He's a Vans guy, as 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 this shit, he takes to Twitter to mock Canadian cadets. Did you see this? No. He 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 and 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 trying to catch up with the other bastards, the conspiracists out there on the right who have a lot of big YouTube following. So go do that. Finally, I just had to notice this last point. Amber Hale, 9813, who commented around 10/20. 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 Andrews. That's Andrews mom's pen name. What do they call that online? I'm going to devote my life to winning you back. And I know I'm not beloved and in your opinion is held by a lot of people out there, but I'm going to work my best. All right, Andrew. Guys, go read Andrews pieces. 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 Eger. Amber's second least favorite bull work personality. Hey, hey, everybody. Yeah, I was it's been a crazy morning. 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 C 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 and 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 armed forces in general. They care about this stuff a lot to big part of why a lot of them 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. 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. No, that's a very good point. I was thinking about people in Tom Cotton, Brian Mass. There are people who have 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 difference from colleagues that Mark Wynne 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 has. Yeah. Okay. 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 from that story. 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 stay 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 suit. 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 it. I would see the Justice Geiger 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. I think he uses that term, something like very close to that, right? A lawful. A likely unlawful. That's pretty striking. And I think he has taken advantage, I can put it that way, of some of the jurisdiction 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, right? This is a stay against Trump going forward. So I think that Roberts did this is pretty significant. We don't, and now it doesn't change the fact that he's going to truck ahead and try to build as much of the ball when it's possible, Trump will. But I was striking, you're right to call out the fact that Roberts not just joining the three liberals, but writing for the minorities is pretty striking. Yeah, it's just he's such an institutionalist, right? And like 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, you'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 plaintiffs, 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 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. They've got to assume they will go ahead and try to prohibit the use of funds for the ballroom. That's something that was discussed. Remember a year, I mean, early this year, the ballroom thing caused such a ruckus that the Republicans wouldn't appropriate a billion dollars for the ballroom, right? And now Trump has found some other pot of money. Anyway, it's a 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 political salience for the ballroom. And the ballroom is kind of a symbol for the for the other issues of Trump 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. So 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 Seoul. So if you've been listening to this show for a while, you're going to know how much I love soles out of office THC gummies and their sparkling beverages. The sparkling beverages have been absolutely critical. This very hot summer. They're fantastic. Now, soles launch something new. Mood gummies. Sole is a wellness brand that makes delicious hemp derived CBD and THC products that are designed to make feeling good simple. Soles new mood gummies have precise dosing. They got clean ingredients and formulas designed for predictable effects. So you can choose how you want to feel while you're staying in control. What I like about soles that they make it really easy to pick something based on how I actually want to feel. Look, I don't always want to feel the same thing when I'm going out or when I'm hanging at home or if I'm just trying to wind down. That's where soles mood gummies can help. Need a little energy? Well, the uplift gummies give you a bright social buzz. One one down. Mellow is perfect for a cozy night and for unplugging or just try balance. That's the gummy that's great for a just right anytime vibe. Perfect when you're listening to, I don't know, your favorite podcast like this one. Whatever the moment, there's a sole mood gummy to match. Make today a good day and get yourself some sole gummies. Right now, sole is offering our audience 30% off their entire order. 30% go to get sole.com and use the code bullworktakes. That's get sole promo code bullworktakes for 30% off. Welcome back. I'm going to throw this to Andrew in a second to talk about his fantastic piece this morning, which also got the great advantage. It can be a day off and 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's just has had a, you know, moment where she realized that she spoke too early or fast earlier. Maybe she's just trying to, you know, patch up things with Sam. Sam so sensitive turns out who knew? Did we know he was that thin skinned Andrew? I don't know. We're going to have to implement a new, a new element in morning shots. It's the Amber tracker. We're going to get her get her power rankings of the different bullworkers every given day. You know, who's up? Who's down? Who's made her happy? Who's made her mad? Don't give. Don't give people ideas. That'll be a huge reddit group now, would like probably already is from all I know. Okay, talk about your excellent piece here in this morning school. Okay, well, 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 and 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. So she won't be there at the end of the year. But this is something like D plus 20. So she's the Republican. Sam said she won the primary. It's not quite true. There was no primary. She ran unopposed. So she the primary was canceled and they waved 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 formerly 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 alleged beginning in 2023 had embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars in pandemic money and COVID PPP 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 and no one seems to know that she's the same person and in the meantime she has dropped the notion that she's a person who's under felony indictment. So I called her yesterday. I got her on the phone and I started asking her questions. And I just started off by saying, are you the same person who was running in the 11th district in Illinois? And 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 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 available. You can see them on pacer. Is that 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 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. And second, actually these charges have been dropped and she's countersuing from the campaign manager this morning. So 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 know, you say you're not this person, but here are these campaign materials for you now. And they 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. So 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 or 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 of hers 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, presumably she's had to spend through some of the 300K. So the whole story is very weird. very strange and and I don't know what all much to say about it other than that. I don't know if you is there anything else you wanted me to hit up on this bill? No, 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 and certainly in a maggot world to some success, some financial reward, you know, a George Santos 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 and I don't I must be on their mind a little bit. She's pardoned other people, including I think you make this point in passing in the in the in the morning shots right the former governor of Illinois who also was a convicted of crime so he's yeah if you're in Illinois you the idea of a partner cursed you. I was so worried about the money I mean this is what right now I don't know anything I should make this clear but I mean if maybe she thinks honestly or maybe one would think 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's sort of can't be clawed 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 belated don't we know candidates have paid for their rent and bills and so forth from candidates who dollars whether someone told it 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 seems it's pretty it is mega world is produced a lot of craziness I mean can we really they a lot of congressional candidates you can't quite believe want to do them for that one like George Santos you know but this is kind of another level yeah she shares there there's one interesting piece of connective tissue with the George Santos story which I didn't get in the piece because I 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 this woman detanya raccliffe is her name who was the treasurer listed on the original FEC forms for both T Brown in in in Florida and Tidora M Brown in Illinois but but but detanya 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 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 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 mega 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 the 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 kind of Republican they're afraid of an American black woman she says there 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 that 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 what's happening now because again she vanishes she re-emerges 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 um once she's finished with her drive at noon today um and uh and I guess we'll have to see whether we will need an update in morning shots tomorrow um my my impression on the phone was that she was just kind of trying to get me to inspect the story and uh and and I'd been lied to a lot by this campaign already so we didn't uh we didn't honor that request to not publish um but you never know you know we'll we'll we'll let you know tomorrow what we get over the transom we will I'll save some space there in warning shots for you know if something notable comes comes to you there but I agree I wouldn't hope my breath and I do think we'll I'm not sure what I'll write about tomorrow but um I think the hexath stuff remains just such a big story I mean Sam was right to stress that it's what if one of these things happened educating it 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 Iran 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 the uh from the hill about you know we're not confirming probably hexaths likely nominee uh to replace um the previous army chief of staff who and this nominee is a guy who had been met excess military aid so it would be another case of hexath putting someone in to a extremely senior position I was in one of the chiefs uh you know who's kind of his guy and yeah and this hill where publicans even blocking it that you put all that together you have a really really unusual I mean blanches unusual and violence unusual and THS is horrible and I just sorry but I 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 in the way the laws have worked you know the are supposed to be the way it's supposed to be working you know I make one last point on the military thing if I could just because I think it's this country the American founders were very suspicious of a standing army though of all republicans with a small r war back then because standing armies were raised in which kings started wars abroad and also enforced their their their kingdom at home so there's no stand so that's why for the constitution says you have to reappropriate congressman's appropriate funds every two years for the military there's no you can't have an ongoing you know and the 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 affirmed the first almost century and a half of this country I'm famously as we got it getting ready for world war two we had a tiny 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 two the new world we're living in Cold War Soviet Union the experience of world war one and two 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 two and as large military and we've had clashes we had true and foreign recArthur we had Vietnam some real Czech Kurdistan may quitting and running as George Wallace's vice president we sort of forgotten that but that was you know 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 you know and the degree to which therefore hexteth 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 of having a military that works well in a democratic republic so all these small are is the radicalism of what hexteth doing in that respect is maybe beyond a little bit even the bad things that are happening with other departments where things are being done things there shouldn't be done are being done but this is a pretty fundamental thing so just that's my thought on the build 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 and then this just and and I guess maybe ice at 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 cover, we write this daily newsletter, and it's news of the day stuff, we're trying to keep our eye on 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 and everything, and I'm popping back up and it's like, oh, the army secretary met with who and did what and what's happening at the Pentagon. I mean, you can't take your eye off the ball, at least 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 insane, but just like you can't stop looking at these guys for five seconds or you come back into some completely new insane story that I don't know, it's a weird, it's a weird, but that's why they have two of us, right? That's why I keep us both. Good point. Well said, Andrew. That was a good pitch for the need for both of us to keep our drive. Exactly. Exactly. Are you listening Sarah Longwell? Okay. Actually, speaking of Sarah Longwell, 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, it's my understanding isn't a good book, although I have not yet had a chance to peruse it, many people around here have, you were mentioning that you have something to say about this book. Howdy and 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, in a big event here in DC. I'm going to do an event with her a 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, howdy and elephant, 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 Bullworker, people you all are familiar with. If you've seen the focus group podcast and heard Sarah talk about it and heard the rest of us talk about what she's learned from that and her own experience is just being a never-truck Republican from the beginning. There are a couple of stories in there about me and how we all got, we met in 2017 or met once again, we met her wedding a few years before it turned out and how we got the people were going actually and got the other enterprises we've been involved in that ever Trump stuff and the Republican voters against Trump stuff going and so, yeah, it's a very entertaining read. First person, a lot of Sarah's own experiences and kind of autobiography in there. A bit of very shrewd, needless to say, with Sarah and 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 or buy it in a bookstore. People still go to bookstores. I do. I don't know. You're a generation, not so much. I don't know. You've been in one or two or in your time, right? Yeah. That's right, yeah. So go to the store and get it next week with how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you, Sarah, along well? Yeah. Yeah. All right. I think we can leave it there. I don't know, man. A lot of crazy stuff going on in the world. I'm still just, I'm still just coming down from this, this crazy story. So thanks for putting up with me, thanks for putting up with me being late and everything. Thanks to you all out there 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. Over at theboer.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.