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| Trump Calls for War Crimes in the War in Iran | | View on Our YouTube Channel |  | Washington, DC Apr. 08, 2025 - Welcome back to Christian Press Daily News and Commentary for April 8th, 2026. I am Larry McDowell and today we will again concentrate on one story, but with many facets this time - The War in Iran. Let's start with where we left off yesterday. Read more... |
| Bill Clinton Commentary on Pete Hegseth | | View on Our YouTube Channel | Apr. 07, 2025 - (NOTE: This is an audio to text transcription, so there may be a number of inaccuracies that were not corrected. I apologize, but at least you have a textual representation of the broadcast. Editor)
This is Larry McDowell from Christian Press for our daily news and commentary on April the 7th, 2026. I got a special show for you today. I've got an audio clip of a speech made by former president Bill Clinton concerning all of the firings that Pete Hegseth has done and its impact on our military, especially during a time of war. We need to take a look at this very closely. And I think Bill does a really good job with this.
Now, I've heard him speak live once in my life. I attended a campaign gathering in Durham, North Carolina in 2008 when he was campaigning for Hillary Clinton on the back of a pickup truck. Now, Bill Clinton has a presence that you recognize immediately when you hear him speak. He gave a short speech that evening. I got on the rope line and I had not realized how tall he was. I'm a pretty tall guy myself, but I had to look up to Bill and he had a handshake like a vice grip. He was a man's man and his presence could be felt with any speech that he gave, but this speech, I believe, is his best and I want to share that with you today. So, we will begin this speech in just a second here
[Bill Clinton's speech begins...]
All right, let me ask you something and I want you to really think about this before you answer what was the sorry about last time the united states of america fired its army chief of staff In the middle of a shooting, take your time, think about it. The answer is it hasn't happened. Not in Korea, not in Vietnam, not in Desert Storm, not in Afghanistan. Once in modern American history, until two days ago.
On April 2nd, 2026, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called General Randy George, a West Point graduate, a veteran of Desert Storm, Iraq, and Afghanistan, a man who has served under seven presidents of both parties and told him to retire immediately, effective now. While American soldiers from the 82nd Airborne are deploying to the Middle East, while at least 13 of our service members have been killed, while over 200 have been wounded, while an F-15E Strike Eagle one of our finest aircraft was just shot down over Iran. And as I speak to you, we still don't know the fate of one of its crew members.
The man running the Pentagon just fired the general responsible for getting those troops their equipment, their reinforcements, and their way home. Now, this didn't start on April 2nd. This has been building for over a year. And when you see the whole picture, the firings, the promotions that were blocked, and three words that should keep every American up at night, you'll understand why I'm sitting here talking to you today.
We'll come back to all of that in a moment. I want to be clear about something. I'm not here to score political points. I've been out of office for over 25... Okay, as you can see, Bill there is definitely not happy with the situation as it's going along there. I'm going to continue to play this and I apologize for the abruptness of that last slide. And let's bring it back up again. Okay, and we will continue the audio.
President Trump fired General C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. C.Q. Brown was the highest ranking military officer in the United States. He was a decorated fighter pilot. He was the first African American to serve as chairman. And he was fired via a social media post on a Friday night. That same night, Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman ever to serve as Chief of Naval Operations, was also removed. Some with General Jim Slife, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Air Force. The Atlantic Magazine called it a Friday night massacre, and they weren't wrong. But that was just the beginning. Over the following months, Secretary Hegseth intervened in the promotions and assignments of more than a dozen senior officers. By this week, Senator Alyssa Slotkin has counted over 20 generals and admirals who have been removed. Over 20 in barely 14 months.
Now let me put that in context. When I picked my defense secretaries, Les Aspin, Bill Perry, Bill Cohen, I chose people who understood that the Pentagon isn't a cable news segment. It's the largest, most complex organization on Earth. 3.4 million people. A budget that exceeds the GDP of most countries. And you don't run it by firing everyone who disagrees with you. You run it by listening to the people who know more than you do about how to keep Americans safe. And here's what you need to know about Pete Hegseth. He's a former Fox News host. He's a former Army National Guard Major, and I respect his service. I respect anyone who puts on the uniform. But he has never commanded a division. He has never managed an organization of this scale. He has never sat in a Situation Room and made the kinds of calls that these four-star generals have made for decades.
Now, here's the honest truth. What we're looking at right now isn't one crisis. It's three. All happening at once, all connected, and all feeding off each other. And I want to walk you through each one because the details matter. The first front. Three words: No quarter, no mercy. On March 13, 2026, during a Pentagon press briefing on the war in Iran, Secretary Hegseth said, and I'm quoting directly, "We will keep pushing, keep advancing, no quarter, no mercy for our enemies." Now, most folks hearing that might think, "Well, that's just tough talk." But here's what you need to know. No quarter has a very specific meaning in the laws of armed conflict. It means you don't accept surrender. You don't take prisoners. You kill everyone. And it has been expressly, unambiguously illegal since the Hague Convention of 1899. It's prohibited under Article 23D of the Hague Regulations. It's a war crime under the Rome Statute. And it's a war crime under our own Department of Defense Law of War Manual. the rules we wrote for ourselves. Legal experts at Just Security published a detailed memorandum on this.
Senator Mark Kelly demanded a formal clarification. Over 100 US-based legal scholars have now stated that these words, coming from the Secretary of Defense, constitute the language of a war crime. I dealt with war. I dealt with Bosnia, with Kosovo, with Iraq. And one thing every commander-in-chief learns, or should learn, is that the laws of war are not optional. They aren't something you follow when it's convenient. They exist because once you cross that line, you cannot come back.
The second front: the blocked promotions. On March 27th, the New York Times reported that Hegseth personally struck four officers from a Brigadier General promotion list of roughly three dozen names. Two were black men, two were women. Both Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and Army Chief of Staff, General Randy George, refused to remove those names, citing the officers' exemplary, decades-long records of service. And when they refused, Hegseth removed the names himself, before the list went to the White House. The military has always promoted on merit. It's one of the great equalizers in American life. You go in, you serve, you perform, and you rise, regardless of where you came from.
When you start pulling names off promotion lists, not because of performance, but because of what people look like. You're not strengthening the military. You're destroying the very thing that makes it the best fighting force in the world. The Third Front firing the Army Chief of Staff during a war. On April 2nd, Hegseth fired General Randy George by phone while George was in a meeting. He also fired General David Hodney, who ran the Army's Transformation and Training Command, and Major General William Green, Jr., the chief of chaplains. The first chaplain ever fired by a defense secretary. Think about that. Georgia's replacement, General Christopher Leneve, Hegseth's former military aide. Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Leneve is "completely trusted" by Secretary Hegseth to carry out the vision of this administration without fault. Without fault. You don't want a general who executes without fault. You want a general who tells you when you're making one. Now, let me step back from the facts for a moment, because I want to talk about something at the heart of all of this.
When I was president, I had people around me who disagreed with me every single day. And thank God they did. because the worst thing that can happen to any leader, any leader, in any position, is to be surrounded by people who are afraid to tell you you're wrong. That's not strength. That's a trap. And it's a trap that has brought down more leaders throughout history than any army ever has.
What Secretary Hegseth's is doing at the Pentagon isn't civilian control of the military. We've always had civilian control. That's written into our Constitution. But there is a critical difference between civilian control and civilian domination. Civilian control means the elected government sets the policy and the military carries it out with professional judgment. Civilian domination means one person demands total obedience and punishes anyone who raises a question. And what we're seeing right now looks a lot more like the second one. They fired the Army's Chief of Chaplains, the person responsible for the spiritual welfare of soldiers going into combat. What message does that send to a young private getting on a transport plane to the Middle East? That even the person who's supposed to take care of your soul can be discarded if they're inconvenient. And let me address the warrior ethos language.
I believe in warriors. I believe in strength. But real warrior cultures, the ones that last, the ones that win, aren't built on fear. They're built on trust. You trust your chain of command. You trust that your leaders will make sound decisions. You trust that if you do your job with honor, you'll be recognized for it.
When you start firing people for their identity and replacing them with personal aids, you're not building a warrior culture. You're building a court. And courts are very good at flattery. They are very bad at winning wars. And here's where this connects to the promotion list. When Army Secretary Driscoll, a man appointed by President Trump himself, pushed back and refused to pull qualified officers off that list. That wasn't disloyalty. That was the system working exactly as it was designed. And the fact that he was overruled should concern every American, regardless of party. Now, I think a lot of people hear about generals getting fired and think, "That doesn't affect me." Let me tell you, It affects every single one of us. Here's how. First, wartime readiness.
Right now, we are at war. At least 13 service members have been killed, over 200 wounded. An F-15E was shot down, the first American fighter jet brought down by enemy fire in decades. The 82nd Airborne is deploying. And the four-star general responsible for getting those soldiers what they need to survive was just fired by phone. This is life and death. Second, institutional knowledge. Every time you remove a four-star general, you're removing decades of relationships with foreign counterparts, understanding of adversaries, and judgment forged in combat. Imagine you're building a house. The roof is half on. A storm is coming. And you fire the foreman because he didn't smile at you the right way. That's what just happened at the Pentagon. Except the storm is real, and people's lives are on the line.
Third, alliances and credibility. Our NATO allies are watching this. Our partners in the Gulf are watching this. When you fired over 20 of your own generals and admirals in a single year, how seriously do they take your commitments? How much do they trust your judgment? Fourth, recruitment and retention. Young Americans see a defense secretary who blocks promotions based on race and gender. He deco-rated combat veterans by phone and replaces them with personal loyalists. you're going to have a very hard time getting the best and brightest to sign up for that.
And fifth, the rule of law. When the man at the top of the Defense Department uses language that violates the laws of war, no quarter, no mercy. Every soldier, every officer, every JAG lawyer in the field has to wonder, "If I follow the rules, will I be supported?" Or will I be the next one fired? And that question, once it starts being asked, changes everything. The pattern here isn't complicated. You remove anyone who might say "no." You replace them with people whose primary qualification is that they'll say "yes." And you do it fast enough that by the time people realize what's happened, it's already done. That's not a conspiracy theory. That's a political strategy. And it's one that has been used in democracies around the world. Usually right before those democracies stop functioning the way they're supposed to.
Now let me address the warrior ethos rebranding. If you frame the removal of black and female officers as restoring meritocracy, then a purge looks like reform. If you frame loyalty tests as standards, then obedience looks like professionalism. And if you frame anyone who raises an objection as woke, then dissent looks like a character flaw rather than what it actually is. The duty of every officer who swears an oath to the Constitution. Here's what I find most revealing. When General George was fired, Republicans rallied behind him. Members of the president's own party praised his service, his character, his dedication. That tells you this isn't a partisan issue. This is an institutional one.
When the president's own allies are uncomfortable with what's being done in his name, that's a warning signal. This isn't about whether you voted for Donald Trump or Kamala Harris. This is about whether the institutions that keep us safe answer to the Constitution, or to one person's preferences. Now let me look forward. Not to predict the future, but to lay out the road in front of us.
The first scenario is course correction. Congress reasserts its oversight authority. The Senate Armed Services Committee demands real hearings. Bipartisan coalitions form to protect military promotion processes and reaffirm the laws of war. Secretary Hegseth is either constrained or replaced by someone with the experience the job demands. This has happened before. When things go too far, Americans have a way of pulling them back.
The second scenario, and the one that worries me most, is drift and normalization. The firings continue but more quietly. The officers who pushed back are gone, and their replacements don't push back. The military becomes a more politicized institution gradually, until one day we realize the generals advising the president aren't the best military minds in the country. They're the most politically convenient ones. This frightens me most. Not the dramatic collapse, the slow erosion. Because you can fight a crisis, but you can't fight something people stop noticing.
And the third scenario, the worst case, is escalation and fracture. The war intensifies. Casualties mount. New leadership, selected for loyalty, makes strategic errors. Because no one is left willing to say, "Sir, that's not going to work." allies distance themselves, recruitment plummets, and at some point, a military officer in the field faces a choice between following an illegal order and ending their career. And they choose the order because every example they've seen tells them that's how you survive. That's not likely, but the conditions for it are being created one firing at a time. one loyalty test at a time, one set of words, no quarter, no mercy, at a time.
Democracy isn't a thing you achieve, it's a thing you maintain. Every generation has to choose to keep it. Let me close with something personal. There are human beings in uniform right now affected by everything we've been talking about. If I could sit down with a young man or woman about to get on a plane to the Middle East right now, here's what I'd tell them: Your service matters. Your oath matters. The Constitution you swore to defend is bigger than any one person, any one defense secretary, any one president. It was there before all of us. It'll be there after all of us. Follow the law. Do what's right. and know that there are millions of Americans of both parties who have your back. Not because of your politics, because of your service. The Department of Defense is the most powerful institution in the free world, and its power comes not from its weapons, though Lord knows we've got plenty of those, but from the trust and professionalism of the people who serve in it. When you replace trust with fear, and professionalism with loyalty tests, you don't make that institution stronger. You make it brittle. And brittle things break at the worst possible moment. When the pressure is greatest, when the stakes are highest, when the lives on the line are the ones that matter most. America didn't become the strongest nation on Earth by demanding blind obedience from its military. We became that nation because we built a military that was professional, disciplined, bound by law, and led by the most capable people we could find, regardless of their background, regardless of their identity, regardless of whether they made the boss comfortable. That's our tradition.
That's our strength. And it's worth defending with the same vigor we defend anything else. I've been around long enough to know that no one speech changes everything. But I also know that the reason America is still here, still standing, is that ordinary people, people like you, pay attention. When they see something wrong, they speak up. They call their representatives. They vote. They teach their children that power without accountability is the most dangerous thing in the world. That's all I'm asking. Pay attention. Ask questions. Hold your leaders accountable. All of them, including me when I was in that chair. Because this country doesn't belong to any president, any party, or any cable news network. It belongs to you. It always has. And I still believe with all my heart that we're going to get this right, but only if we choose to. Thank you.
[Bill Clinton's speech ends...]
That is former President Bill Clinton with one of the greatest speeches I've ever heard from him, if not the greatest. Let me tell you a little something and give you a little background as to my observations about Pete Kachef. I spent 20 years in the military in a couple of segments, six years and then a break for college and then I finished it up. At the peak of my career, I was a senior systems controller for the deputy chief of staff of operations for 5th Signal Command, commanded by a brigadier general. I was, as part of my projects that I had to look over in operations, was 66 microwave facilities and satellite facilities scattered throughout Europe. It was not unusual for me to come in in the morning and the general will say, "Mac, I need you to get down to Catano, Italy and find out what's going on there." When I walked into that briefing, I had to know everything that had been going on the night before, before I came in very early in the morning and was part of the briefing of the general. I dared not know the answer of what was going on. I do not understand
Pete Hegseth can walk into a briefing of reporters and does not know what's going on in his own war. He's got all those people to help him, but he doesn't care about that. He's worried more about what he looks like on the camera. So cameras can't come in there and take pictures of him anymore because he might look bad. The former Fox News host. He's been trying to control the reporters, but he's been overruled by the courts on that one. They are allowed to get the news of what's happening in the Pentagon, especially during a war. I had all of those projects, billions and billions of dollars under me. But I do not consider myself qualified to be the Secretary of Defense. Pete Hedgeseth was a public affairs officer. He had very little under him. He was never in control of any kind of a combat. And he's controlling the Defense Department, whose budget is larger than most countries. This all goes back to Trump. Trump puts in these loyalists, these people that he think look good, but are completely unqualified. First, it's Nome, who allowed civilians to get assassinated because they were protesting against ICE. It did nothing about it. She was fired. And then our Attorney General, who was fired because she had turned the entire Justice Department into a vengeance department for Donald Trump, but she embarrassed him, so he fired her. There's no loyalty to Trump and those under him, yet they are loyal to him. This whole system, not just the Defense Department, which is the most crucial part of the mistakes Trump has made. One of the medical reporters or associates with MSNOW posted on X, that Trump is showing all the signs of dementia. Yet the vice president and the cabinet will not even consider the 25th Amendment. Congress has seen what Trump has done to the world, to the economy, and the millions that have been killed because of him due to lack of food and aid through USAID, medical care taken away from them, millions All these people killed. How many were killed back in the pandemic because he mishandled that? Yet the Republicans sit there and do nothing. Bill Clinton has been quiet. Have you noticed? Bill Clinton has been quiet 20 years. He has been quiet 26 years now. He has never said anything negative about one of the presidents. George W. Bush, all the mistakes that he made, the destruction of the economy in 2008, the wars that were unnecessary. Bill Clinton said nothing. Bill Clinton went with George W. Bush's father and helped out around the world. He kept his mouth shut. As presidents have done throughout history, they do not talk about current presidents. So for Bill Clinton to come out of the closet 26 years later, after he completed his presidency, and find that there is a concern that is really going to damage this nation. This is an Amistad moment. This is John Quincy Adams saying, we got a problem. This speech is of that caliber. I hope you were listening to it. This is Larry McDowell, one man's opinion. Yes, I'm a minister of God, but I'm also a patriot, a former soldier of 20 years who sees our military being destroyed by a man who is no more capable, certainly not as qualified to be in that position as even I am. He needs to be impeached, and he needs to be impeached quickly. Republicans, wake up. for Christian Press.
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