Three years ago, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller was drummed out of the military for calling out our leaders' failure in Afghanistan. At the time, Pete Hegseth stood up to support him, and now Scheller is leading a push to get Hegseth confirmed. Charlie talks to Lt. Col. Scheller about his experiences with Hegseth, an also reacts to a Trump press conference in Mar-a-Lago.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Hey everybody, today on the Charlie Kirk Show, Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, who's leading a group of rank-and-file service members in support of Pete Hegseth, joins the program. Also, what is with all these drones? Where are they coming from? What is the mothership? We dive into that. Is there a mothership? Everybody, you have to come to AmericaFest. It's AmFest.com.
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Learn how you could protect your wealth with Noble Gold Investments at noblegoldinvestments.com. That is noblegoldinvestments.com. It's where I buy all of my gold. Go to noblegoldinvestments.com. OK, everybody, that was a dynamic press conference President Trump was holding at Mar-a-Lago.
I want to just emphasize what he said at the end, the tale of that, that Zelensky has to be ready to make a deal. You know, that is a statement that not a single major American politician has said since the beginning of the war. It's always, oh, we have to just support Ukraine until they win. We have to defeat the Russian monster. OK, but what about making a deal?
coming to the table, ending this war. President Trump also commented on Pete Hegseth, and he says he loves the military. He loves the military a lot, and he has the back 100%. He also commented on the drones flying over New Jersey. saying that there's something weird going on there. By the way, we're going to be covering a lot of ground on the drone story.
But isn't it refreshing just to hear from a president who is able to, without any notes, any preparedness, take open questions from the media, be able to have back and forth, dive into any possible topic, Syria, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, economy, soft bank, investment, inflation. TikTok, President Trump says he has a very warm spot for TikTok. He says that in the press conference.
No teleprompter, no rehearsed, just off the cuff. What's the best question you have? Masterclass in handling the media and directing the news cycle. And I think they're trying to hand over a damaged country to President Trump. We already know what they've done with inflation and the open border. But there's some suspicious stuff, not just happening with the drones, but internationally.
There are some things bubbling up with Syria, Russia, Ukraine, the Israel situation. And President Trump is about to be handed. Very difficult situation on January 20th. And that is, by the way, an interference and an interruption in the peaceful transition of power. Isn't the whole idea of the peaceful transition of power that you're not going to try to ruin the country on the way out?
President Trump is going to be inheriting new problems that he wasn't even campaigning against. Problems that he was not even able to bring and advocate to the American people. Our next guest is Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller. He is leading vets for Pete Hegseth, all about Pete Hegseth's confirmation battle. And also, we're going to talk about drones over New Jersey. By the way, I'm curious.
Email me, freedom at charliekirk.com. What do you think these drones are? What do you think it is? Email me, freedom at charliekirk.com. Joining us now is Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller. Honored to have him on the program, who is leading a charge to help confirm Pete Hegseth's Great to see you, sir. Thank you for taking the time.
Please introduce your background on how you first met Pete Hegseth and why you're so passionate for his confirmation.
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me on. I'm a lieutenant colonel from the United States Marine Corps, served in Iraq and Afghanistan, combat vet. My whole life has been serving this country over the GWAT generation, the same wars that Pete Hegseth fought in. I got out under weird circumstances on August 26, 2021, during the Afghanistan withdrawal. It was just a long list of mistakes that I saw.
I've got a master's in military science. I've been studying foreign policy my whole career. And it was just obvious the mistakes that were happening. And I had been playing the game long enough to know that no one was going to be held accountable. So I made a video in my uniform demanding accountability of my senior military leaders.
And at the time, I didn't mention any politician and it wasn't political. I thought holding senior military leaders accountable would be like one of the last apolitical things we could all agree upon. But when you get thrust into the stratosphere of these types of things, you know, it's just it's it's hyperpolitical. And that's kind of what happened.
Every headline was Lieutenant Colonel Scheller criticizes President Biden. When at the time, I wasn't saying anything about President Biden. I was just sick of, you know, the apathy and the lack of accountability in the senior military ranks.
Well, after that, I was fired, later given a gag order, imprisoned in solitary confinement, court-martialed and drummed out of the military, short my retirement. And that was a six-month process. It didn't happen quickly. And I didn't make a single interview during that whole process. Meanwhile, the media was slandering me.
I mean, the Marine Corps released my medical records to an article called Task and Purpose. And it was, I mean, they were comparing me to all these things, the classic Hitler, white supremacist, all the things that the left will try and do. And at the time, I wasn't even familiar with all that because I was just a Marine, I wanted to serve my country. I was like,
thrown in the fire of getting a PhD in left-wing political tactics. So I got out Christmas Eve 2021, and then I hit the media circuit for the first time. And I did all the shows. I did Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Laura Ingraham, Jocko's podcast. I went on the PBD podcast. But one of them was Pete Hegseth. So I did a Fox & Friends hit with him. And then I ended up writing a book.
And when the book came out, I went out and promoted, did another hit with Pete. And then he actually brought me to Tennessee to do a one-hour in-person segment called Modern Warriors. And actually, Waltz, the incoming National Security Advisor, was one of the five people. So it's kind of an interesting show. And you go back and look at that now of all the picks.
But Pete's just, to me, always been one of those down-to-earth guys. I feel like, in a lot of ways, I see myself in him. And I think that's why all the Warriors are rallying around him. And so, you know, after I wrote my book, I did media for another two years. Everyone wanted me to go into politics. And I'm just not a politician.
I've always loved the military and been focused on wanting to make the military stronger. And I kind of just went out and started living life, started a business and dropped out a little bit. And it wasn't until Pete got the nomination and everyone started attacking and canceling him with the anonymous sources that I felt the need to get involved.
So how have those meetings been going and what exactly are you doing to help lobby people on Capitol Hill for Pete Hegseth?
Yeah, the takeaway is, bottom line, the warrior class overwhelmingly wants Pete Hegseth. I mean, I called everyone. I mean, if you remember Scott Mann, the Operation Pineapple guy, if you remember Matthew Lohmeyer, who asked the question to President Trump. I've talked to all these guys on the phone, the Black Rifle Coffee guys, Eddie Gallagher. I mean, the list goes on and on.
I've talked to probably 50 influential military influencers. Not a single one doesn't overwhelmingly support Pete Hegseth. I've spoken to the congressmen that I respect the most, whether it's Mast, Mills, these actual warriors of our generation, they all support Pete Hegseth. And so first step was making sure that I could get the pulse of the community.
And once I realized that the pulse of the community was absolutely wanted him. I had to figure out how I could unify this voice. So what I've done is I've gathered up all the petitions out there because there's a Navy SEAL petition with over 3,000 signatures. There's a Heritage Foundation petition. There's a Green Beret petition. There's a Vets for Pete petition. So I've gathered all of these up.
And then I plan to go up to Capitol Hill on Wednesday and meet with U.S. senators and their staffs that are willing to to talk to me. So I've got at least 10 meetings on Wednesday, which is huge.
And, you know, you know, one of them, like Ricketts office, who's meeting with us, he's the chair of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, being able to hand him these petitions and tell him exactly what I'm telling you. You know, Pete Hegseth is obviously a smart guy, Princeton, Harvard, great orator on Fox and Friends. But the reason
that veterans want him so bad is because he's an outside establishment pick. Not only is a combat veteran from our generation, but you know, the last two general officers have literally gone from the board of the military industrial complex, the sec depth, and then they go back, you know, Austin is Raytheon. Mattis was general dynamics, Dunford, Lockheed Martin. I mean, it's,
The ties to the military industrial complex is a real problem. But even more so, these senior military leaders that get selected, they protect the status quo. Why? Because their authority comes from navigating the current system. And the current system is what needs overhauled. And that's why I think someone like Pete Hegseth is so important.
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One of the reasons you made the video you did at the time, and I want to play that video here, this is cut 23, when you were relieved of your post, is that you did not feel as if we were a mighty fighting force up against the enemies that wish to kill us. Play cut 23.
We have a Secretary of Defense that testified to Congress in May that the Afghan National Security Force could withstand the Taliban advance. We have chairmen of Joint Chiefs who the commandant is a member of that. We're supposed to advise on military policy. We have a Marine combatant commander. All of these people are supposed to advise.
And I'm not saying we've got to be in Afghanistan forever, but I am saying – Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, hey, it's a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, the strategic air base, before we evacuate everyone? Did anyone do that? And when you didn't think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, we completely messed this up?
And from my position, potentially all those people did die in vain if we don't have senior leaders that own up and raise their hand and say, we did not do this well in the end.
What happened after you made that video?
It got real weird, Charlie. After I made that video, I was fired the next day immediately. I knew that I was risking my career. If you watch that video in its entirety, I call the shot. I say, I know I'm risking my career, my retirement, my family's stability. It did end up losing really all three of those things. But there should have been an investigation that took place.
But like I told you, I was shot right into the political realm. The cardinal sin in the military is making your bosses look bad. And so I was fired immediately. And I was told at that time that if I just shut my mouth, that the generals would take care of me.
So the best case scenario, I would be hidden in a cubicle and make PowerPoints for some general officer for the next three years limping towards my retirement. And I just knew I couldn't live my life that way, number one. And number two, I fully believed all those comments I made and no one was addressing the content of my statements. And that's what really deeply bothered me.
So it became this fight, you know, and I continued to fight all the way to the end.
So if Pete Hegseth is to be confirmed as secretary of defense, what can he do from a policy perspective to better prepare the American military to fight our enemies?
Yep. So Matthew Lohmeyer, there's a lot of people out there advocating to get rid of woke generals. And I think there's a lot of generals that need to get cleaned out. Historical precedence for George Marshall after World War One is probably the best example. That being said, just going after woke ism is actually attacking the symptom, not the root cause.
The root cause is that you have general officers that it takes 40 years to make a four star general. Every evaluation for an officer in the military is a subjective evaluation, i.e. I'm trying to please my boss and get a higher evaluation than my four peers.
And so the people that are four-star generals have literally pleased their boss for 40 years more so than all of their peers that are competing for the same jobs. And I'll tell you what, it should be based on the best performers, but pleasing your boss and being the best performer diverge at certain places in your career. Anyone that's worked in a bureaucracy understands this.
And so the reason why wokeism is so prevalent, one, because some of the moves that President Obama made, but two, more importantly, the general officers are so fickle, they care most about self-advancement and they'll do whatever is the topic du jour and they have no backbone.
I mean, when Carter Hamm was in Germany and Benghazi took place and he was watching on screens Americans fighting 1V1000 and he had eight military options and he was told to stand down and he did. Why? Because he's conditioned to please his boss. And that's what all general officers do. I think what Pete Hegseth needs to do is he needs to get into the military.
He needs to clean out a lot of the archaic leadership, but then he needs to implement a performance based system.
Because at the end of the day, if you've got the best performer, if I as an infantry officer go against another infantry officer and the best one wins and whatever that competition is, then all other things go away because the focus of the military should always be on lethality and winning.
And so how did we get away from lethality, winning, destroying the enemy? What specifically, what year, what period of time did that start to change?
You look back to the last generation that won a war. It was World War II, and we didn't have the national security establishment then. World War II is when we literally built the national security establishment that we have today. It went through the National Security Act of 44, 47, 50. And then finally, what structured what we have now is the Goldwater-Nichols Act after Vietnam.
Where we really went off the rails was Vietnam. I mean, Korea was still a generation of World War II vets, and the rigid structure of the current DOD was not in place yet. What happened was we created this military industrial complex. We created this system of officers that are self-pleasing.
And in Vietnam, what we did after our loss, instead of going back and holding the general officers accountable, we let the general officers sing the song. that it was the draft and the drugs, and it was the junior service member. And what we really did was we empowered these general officers that failed.
I mean, if you go look at someone like Khe Sanh, where we lost hundreds of thousands of lives, and then it was strategically important one year and then not the next year. I mean, these are huge failures that no general officers were held accountable. The massacre in Vietnam, My Lai Massacre, if you look at that, only company-grade officers were held accountable, no general officers.
So somewhere along the way, starting with Vietnam, we stopped holding general officers accountable. And we need to get back to that. And I think this is such a breath of fresh air when we're talking about President Trump and Pete Hegseth.
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Yeah, there's only a few things that the drones would be up there for. And at the middle of the night, it really dwindles it down. So I'll start with it's the government absolutely knows what's going on. We have such a robust capability that, first of all, they know what's going on. Second of all, what they're doing is really the deeper question.
The best guess that I can come up with is it's some type of CBRN, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear detection system, or they're just testing capabilities. But it is disheartening that the government, John Kirby, no one is being transparent about it. I think it's just another head shake in the long list of things that don't make sense.
We the people probably deserve answers, especially with the coverage this is getting. But my position is that it's the government.
Yeah, and so if it is the government, what would they possibly be doing, sending drones in the sky to surveil us, to be looking for something?
Yeah. Like I said, there's only a couple of reasons you would do it. One would be a training op. Two would be you're looking for somebody, which you probably wouldn't do at night. Or three, you're using a different type of detection capability to try and find something like a seaburn capability. So if they're actually employing it, that would be my best guess.
Or they're just gauging the temperature of the American people and what the reactions would be. But this is absolutely something the government knows what's going on.
Going back to our original topic here in closing, do you believe Pete Hegseth will be confirmed? And how can our audience help?
I believe Pete Hegseth will be confirmed. We have the three senators that are on the fence. I think Joni Ernst is coming around. You know, I look back at Secretary Austin and there was only two votes for no against him. One of them was Josh Hawley. And I'll tell you what, right now, Republicans sitting at 53 votes. We can't afford to lose a single one.
And for all the Republicans that voted for Lloyd Austin, he was maybe one of the worst secretaries of defense we've had in a long time. Resetting the military is critical. Recruiting rates down significantly. Warfighting capability down significantly. We need a disruptor. We need someone like Pete Heck that if you want to support him. You can go to my website, AuthenticAmericans.com.
We have a petition or you can find one of the petitions floating around on X. All of those will make their way to me. And at the end of the day, call your senator. Please call your senator and let them know that you support Pete Hegseth. We the people need Pete Hegseth.
Yes, we do. And any senator that stands in the way that's a Republican will face a primary challenge, especially if they voted for Lloyd Austin. Thank you so much. God bless you, sir. Thank you. Email us freedom at Charlie Kirk dot com. Amfest is just hours away, everybody. That is America Fest. President Donald Trump, of course, is our keynote of the entire event.
But we also have Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, Steve Bannon, Patrick Bet David, Ben Shapiro.
Speaker Mike Johnson, Don Jr., Matt Walsh, Tim Poole, Ben Carson, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Michael Moles, Ted Cruz, Rob Schneider, Byron Donalds, Ana Paulina, Matt Gaetz, Danica Patrick, Brett Cooper, Jack Posobiec, Riley Gaines, Brandon Tatum, Tom Homan, George Janko, Ali B. Stuckey, Sage Steele, Roger Stone, James O'Keefe, and more, everybody. I mean, this is the star-studded event of the year.
We can't even fit all those speakers on screen. It's remarkable what... The team has done, and this is the event to celebrate, to get fired up, to get filled up, to get encouraged, to get ready to fight, especially if you live in Arizona, Nevada, Utah. Get in the car and come to America Fest. And tickets are running thin. This will be the biggest America Fest ever. It already is, by the way.
The tickets are bigger than last year. And at this time last year, the event had already started. Go to AmFest.com. That is A-M-F-E-S-T dot com. Promo code Charlie for a special discount. And to hear President Trump's first rally post-election win. That's right. His first rally speech. A-M-F-E-S-T dot com. AmFest dot com. Thanks so much for listening, everybody. Email us as always.
Freedom at CharlieKirk.com. Thanks so much for listening and God bless.
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