Hour 3 - Thank You, Veterans 

Buck Sexton (0:00)

Third hour, Clay and Buck kicks off right now.

Thanks so much for being here, everybody. Appreciate you. We have David Rutherford with us. He is the host of the David Rutherford Show, which if you're watching on the YouTube, and I hope you are, you can see in the background. And he also has some rad tattoos on his forearms. He is a former, there we go, former Navy SEAL, and hey, Ruck, happy Veterans Day. Thank you, sir, for your service. Appreciate, I appreciate you and what you did for the country. And let's talk about this, though.

David Rutherford (0:34)

You know what, when you say that to me, you know what, I immediately.

Buck Sexton (0:39)

What? Did he, I can't hear him.

Can you guys hear Ruck?

Adam Makos (0:45)

Not coming through.

David Rutherford (0:48)

Check Roger, check, check. One, two, three.

Buck Sexton (0:51)

You're back now. You cut out for a second and you were about to say something funny, I think. So why don't you go ahead and repeat.

David Rutherford (0:57)

I was. What I was going to say is every time you come on and you say thank you for my service, immediately, I think, thank you for yours, brother. You serve too. Like it's somehow like the agency personnel or bureau personnel. Like you guys don't get a day of thanks for your service. So what I do is I clump you in with us. So thank you for yours too.

Buck Sexton (1:17)

Well, I appreciate that. I remember moving with some of the GRS guys. And I think they had one grenade and I was like, why only one? And they're like, well, Buck, if we get shot and then it's up to you, you're going to get shot too. So I figured we'll finish ourselves off. And I was like, it's a pretty rough conversation to be having at the office. But okay, just a little CIA analyst. I'm like, I got my little stock M4 here. We'll see what I can do with my iron sights. So anyway, Rut, I appreciate that.

Tell me about Hegseth and what's going on there because the impeachment failed. We've had some veterans call it, I'd say probably 10 to 1 in favor. But I wanted you to work me through because you understand this culture. You were a Navy SEAL. You understand military culture and the ethos of the war fighter. What have you seen over the two years under this Department of War now, formerly Department of Defense?

David Rutherford (2:12)

So they had three major issues. First and foremost, the DEI stuff destroyed morale. So you had to get morale up first in the numbers. And the numbers don't lie, right?

61,529 for Army, Navy 45,112, Marine Corps 27,000, Air Force 32,124, and Space Force 761 So check Roger. He's killing it there, right? The second aspect is, you go into that Pentagon, and you think it's like he's going to reign supreme over one of the most sophisticated machines that exists from funding and projects and development and operations and all that. He's just going to come in and everybody's going to like snap to and do whatever. He says, we've seen that years over years over years, that just because you're the Secretary of War doesn't mean everybody gets in bed. And then the last and third part of this whole thing is, he's sole job is to execute the command authority of the President of the United States. And when I look at those three things, I think he's killed the absolute morale and getting people back to want to serve.

He's struggling with the people that are downstream of him, all the admirals and generals. And then the other one, in my mind, he's executed perfectly what the President wanted him to do. Whether you like it or don't, he has followed through with that.

Buck Sexton (3:38)

Yeah, on the recruitment side of things, I've been hearing for a while under the Biden years, friends of mine who were former military and they were just saying, look, when kids, meaning young men, you know, 17, 18 year olds are thinking about it, would come up to me and say, should I join up? Some of them, and these are these are like GWOT vets who did the stuff that you did, like they did the whole bagging and tagging bad guys and everything else. And they're like, well, I don't know.

You know, it's like it's I can say this in the CIA side, a friend of mine who's been in the agency for like 20 years now said, look, man, every day has turned into Transgender Appreciation Day at Langley. Like it's just the politics had just gotten crazy.