Law Before Loyalty

A headline said the quiet part wrong: a former Navy combat pilot and astronaut under investigation for “serious misconduct” because he affirmed the most basic military truth—refuse unlawful orders. We zoom out from the hot takes and lay down the actual hierarchy every recruit learns: Constitution, law, mission, order. When number four violates one through three, refusal isn’t insubordination. It’s duty.

We walk through the law that backs it—Article 92 of the UCMJ, the legacy of Nuremberg, and the real-world stakes JAG officers navigate when commanders tread near red lines. Then we follow Mark Kelly’s arc from the shooting of Gabby Giffords to the Senate, not to romanticize a politician, but to show how biography collides with a culture that rewards outrage and punishes clarity. Along the way, we dissect media framing that lops off the keyword “unlawful,” turning legal literacy into a panic about discipline, and we unpack the quieter machinery of administrative coercion: stalled promotions, vague investigations, and the slow sidelining of professionals who say no.

This conversation widens to the long tail of power. We connect historical debts—like Haiti’s coerced payments to France—to present instability, because justice is more than sentiment; it’s math with memory. And we scrutinize the rise of legal theater around high-profile cases, where press conferences outpace evidence and collapsing prosecutions teach the public the wrong lessons about how law actually works. If institutions keep bending to loyalty tests and performance politics, the bones will snap. Until then, there’s still time to hold the line: obey lawful orders, refuse unlawful ones, and insist that creeds mean what they say.

If this resonates, share it with a friend, leave a review, and subscribe so you don’t miss the next deep dive. Your voice helps keep the conversation anchored to facts, law, and the Constitution.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening Rant And The “Misconduct” Headline
• 3:29 Lawful vs Unlawful Orders 101
• 7:31 Why Saying “Refuse” Scares Politicians
• 11:59 Mark Kelly’s Path From Tragedy To Office
• 18:06 Creeds, Oaths, And Constitutional Duty
• 25:02 Administrative Coercion And Quiet Purges
• 30:08 Media Framing: Bill Maher Clip Dissected
• 36:08 Article 92, Nuremberg, And Legal Basics
• 41:48 The “Department Of War” Statement And Reply
• 48:03 Debating Foreign Policy And Killer Mike
• 53:58 Haiti, France, And The Debt Of History
• 1:02:18 Comey, Letitia James, And Legal Theater

Transcript

SPEAKER_06: 1:32

Welcome, welcome to the Rao McLean Show. It's your host, Daryl McLean. Independent media that won't reinforce travelists. We have one planet. Nobody is leaving, so let us reason together. Okay, let's buckle up. When I you know what a headline flashed across my screen? Uh Senator Mark Kelly under investigation for serious misconduct. I had one of those moments where you laugh. Not because it's funny, but because the alternate is uh to flip a table and start yelling, uh, circa Samuel L. Jackson reading the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So Mark Kelly, uh Navy combat pilot, Mark Kelly, the astronaut, Mark Kelly, the man who literally strapped himself to a controlled explosion, rode into the heavens, and trusted physics and prayer to bring him back down. And that man is being investigated for misconduct. So let me walk you through this slow. Like I'm teaching a boot camp class, and the class still can't figure out how to lace their boots, right? He didn't. He didn't sell intel to a foreign adversary, he didn't misuse classified information, he didn't break the chain of command, he didn't compromise national security, he didn't lay hands on somebody in uniform. No, his crime, his grand earth-shattering act of serious misconduct, was saying that troops should not obey unlawful orders. So let me pause right there and hand out reading glasses because apparently half of the political class can't see anymore. Unlawful orders. I'm gonna say it for the people in the cheap seats and the ones pretending they forgot. Unlawful, not unpopular, not inconvenient, not politically troublesome, not the president might frown at you. Unlawful. Now that distinction is actually the backbone, the backbone I say of the United States military. It's the one thing drilled into you so deeply that week by week, three of boot camp, you can say it in your sleep. As a master at arms in the United States Navy, that distinction wasn't academic, it was survival. As a federal law enforcement officer under the Department of Homeland Security and under Federal Protective Services, that wasn't a suggestion. It was policy training, legal doctrine, and our moral compass. Every recruit learns the same hierarchy: constitution, law, mission, order. If number four violates number one through three, you don't obey it. You stand your ground even if your voice shakes. You refuse even if it costs you stripes. You do not, under any condition, become the instrument of an unlawful command. So the question isn't why Mark Kelly said it. The question is why saying it suddenly feels dangerous. Why is Mark Kelly under investigation? Let's be honest, because the word refuse makes insecure leaders break out in hives. Because someone with a shiny title and thin skin thinks loyalty to them is more important than loyalty to the United States Constitution. Because the political culture right now has an emotional range of a toddler with a megaphone offended by everything and accountable to nothing and no one. Noam Chomsky warned us about this drift. This is a slow transformation where dissent gets relabeled as instability, questioning becomes insubordination, and the people entrusted with power be uh begin treating scrutiny and security as some type of sabotage. And as somebody who regularly likes to read and listen to witty people like Gorvadal, I would say, you know, somewhere if he was around, he would be sipping a bourbon, raising an eyebrow so sharp it could cut a steel, whispering, in America, the only unforgivable sin is telling the truth before the powerful people have prepared the lie. Mark Kelly's misconduct wasn't misconduct, it wasn't an indictment of the system. It was it was nothing more than the truth. He didn't create a crisis, he touched his sore spot, he didn't disrupt military tradition, he defended the only part of it that matters, lawful obedience rooted in the United States Constitution. But here's where it gets cold. This wasn't random, this wasn't accidental, this wasn't bureaucratic static, this was a signal, a flare shot across a bow, a not so subtle message from the political class to the ranks. We hear you, we see you, and we don't like it when you make you think for ourselves. Veterans know, messages like that don't originate from the bottom. Privates don't come up with stuff like this. This stuff trickles down from the high towers, from the folks who believe patriotism is something you perform on television, not something you bleed for in a uniform. And if you have ever watched a republic grow uneasy, you know this smell. This is how institutions tighten their grip. This is how democracy starts sweating. This is the moment where speaking truth sounds like sedition, and blind obedience gets rebranded as loyalty. But let me tell you one of the ancient truths that every real service member knows. A military that cannot distinguish between a lawful order and an unlawful order is not a military. It is nothing more than a blunt instrument for people who are in power. And free nations do not survive blunt instruments. The Republic doesn't crumble when enemies attack on the outside, it crumbles when silence becomes policy. And I'll say this that moment is fastly approaching. This Mark Kelly situation, this kind of moment, historians circle and read and ready can say, yes, that was it right here. That was the warning shot. And let me dig into this a bit more by telling you how Mark Kelly even became a senator. Let's let's just go back in history for a moment. Now, as people close to me know, I originally wanted to be a history teacher and a wrestling coach. And so a lot of times when I'm staring at the face of what seems like political chicanery and foolishness, in order to not uh explode, I look for a historical comparison. And sometimes I will just dig into the history of a person, place, andor thing, and see how do we get to where we are. It makes it more impersonal, uh, makes it a bit more impersonal and a more academic. So here's a brief history of how Mark Kelly even rose to power. Because Mark Kelly did not stumble into politics, he was pushed into politics by tragedy, by grit, and by a national moment that rewired the country. Now, before Washington ever learned his name, he was already the type of American myth. Then it doesn't have to involve a lot of exaggerations. He was a Navy captain, a combat pilot, and a NASA astronaut who flew missions for shuttle missions, and spent his adult life strapped to machines that could kill him if a single boat said quit. Then it was around uh it was in January, January 8th, uh, 2011, when his wife, Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords, was holding a press conference on your corner, even outside of a Tucson supermarket. The most harmless form of democracy there is a politician standing in the open, hearing the people that they serve. A gunman walked up and shot her in the head at point blank range. The bullet traveled through the left hemisphere of her brain, but the doctors weren't sure if she would live. Now, they definitely didn't think that she would be able to speak again. But Gabriel Giffords lived. She fought, she caught her way back through surgeries, therapy, relearning words, relearning motions, relearning the world. And Mark Kelly, her husband, was right there. Not as a candidate, not as a public figure, but as a husband watching the ugliest part of American violence explode right into his living room. That shouldn't miss us, even though it was all the way in 2011. Because the shooting didn't just wound Gabriel Giffords. It launched the next chapter of their lives. Together, they became activists. Remember this, together they became activists against gun violence, founding the Americans for reasonable solutions, which later became part of every town for gun safety. Kelly himself became a national voice, calm, measured, but unshakably serious in a debate over common sense gun reform. For years, people nudged him towards politics. He resisted. But Arizona wasn't changing. John McCain was gone, Martha McSally was weak, and the state needed someone with credibility that wasn't manufactured in a focus group. So, in 2019, he announced finally that he was running for the United States Senate. He ran on service, stability, constitutional duty, and a voice that feels like a politician, less like a politician, and more like a man who lived through enough to skip all of the political nonsense. In 2020, he won this special election to fill the seat for the late Senator John McCain. Now in 2022, he went on to win re-election outright, solidifying his position as one of the most visible moderate Democrats in the United States at the time. And here's the twist of fate. The man whose wife was shot in the head while doing her job is now being investigated because he told service members to honor the law and do their jobs, not the whims of political power. Now, history has a funny way of circling right back to itself to hope that we are paying attention. Sometimes it's poetry, sometimes it's irony, sometimes it is a raw, bitter truth that a man shaped by violence is now being punished for upholding the very principle that we were supposed to protect his wife in the first place. So let me get deeper into why this matters. And I'm gonna go past uh Kelly at the moment. Because Mark Kelly is just chapter one of the opening before the real uh symphony starts. And before I talk about purges, uh ideological pressure, our filtrations, our political shadow boxing, we need to anchor ourselves in words that made me who I am and admit a lot of people who we are. The things that we recited before we ever touched the weapon, before we ever set a watch, before we ever enforced a regulation and protected a building are guaranteed a federal employee protection as we guarded them. The words that shaped our backbone because this was this was the whole meeting of potatoes. This is what we are messing with. This is the sailor's creed. I am a United States sailor. I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America, and I will obey the orders of those appointed over me. I represent the fighting spirit of the Navy and those who go before me to defend freedom and democracy around the world. I proudly served my country's naval combat team with honor, courage, and commitment. I have committed to excellence in the fair treatment of all. This is the Master at Arms Creed, and it's probably a change. This was from 2006 to 2015 when I was around. And it is I am a Master at Arms. Hold allegiance to my country, devotion of duty, and personal integrity of all. I wear my shield of authority with dignity and restraint, promote by example, high standards of conduct, appearance, courtesy, and performance. I will seek no favors because of my position. I perform my duties in a firm, courteous, and impartial manner. I strive to the merit and respect of my shipmates and all whom I came in contact with. Now let me take this up one level because when you um were like me and you you left the fleet and you walked into the place like the Department of Homeland Security, we actually weren't leaving the oath behind, we were expanding it. And while the Department of Homeland Security actually never issued a formal creed, it lives by mission principles that once drilled into every federal protective officer as well, every inspector, every agent who ever stood a federal post. So I'm going to speak those missions principles like it's a creed so the people hearing this out of my voice can hear the continuity of the duty that never left, that Washington never seems to understand for some reason. This is the Department of Homeland Security Creed style. I am a member of the Department of Homeland Security. I safeguard the homeland with integrity, diligence, and respect. I protect the nation from threats of foreign and domestic. I uphold the law and defend the United States Constitution. I have a professionalism, impartiality, and duty to the American public. I stay in the watch to ensure the safety, security, and resilience of our nation. Here's Federal Protective Services mission style. I am a Federal Protective Service Officer. I protect federal employees, visitors, and facilities with vigilance and resolved. I deter and detect and respond to threats against the federal government. I enforce the law with fairness, courage, and restraint. I safeguard public trust and uphold the United States Constitution. I swore to defend. I stand ready to protect, ready to serve, and ready to secure the institutions of our democracy. Now that the creeds are on the table, now that the oaths are on the table, the creed of the sailor, the creed of the Master at Arms Mission, the Principles of the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Protective Services, now we talk about what's happening today because what's going on inside of the armed forces, especially inside of the Jazz Corps, is not a misunderstanding. It's not a routine turnover, and it's not a coincidence. This is a kind of quiet shift you only watch if you have lived inside of a machinery of the government long enough to hear when it starts making a new sound. This is what uh people in social science calls administration coercion. You don't fire anyone, you don't announce anything, you just apply pleasure until integrity becomes inconvenient. And that is how the Republic gets purged without a single shot being fired. Reassign the principle, they're not fired, they just move out of the way. Freeze promotions, careers don't collapse loudly, they suffocate quietly into stalled paperwork, open vague and blurry investigations, conduct unbecoming, alignment concerns, command climate issues. These aren't charges, they're air fresheners for corruption. Reward the obedient. Sugar tastes better than discipline. Promote the ones who salute before they fake. Label the um constitutionalists as troublemakers. Anyone who says this is lawful suddenly becomes a team player. And this is happening right now. The Jags, the very lawyers whose entire purpose is to tell the commanders when something crosses the lines of legal, a nation that begins to sideline as military lawyers is a nation preparing itself to violate the law. And I'll say this as someone who stood in a federal building at 3 a.m. watching the doors, protecting judges, guarding prosecutors, scanning cameras, listening to the smallest sound, trying to see if I can find a threat. When the system removes the people under the law, the system is preparing to break the law. The chilling part isn't the purge. The chilling part is the silence. Commanders feel it, service members sense it, Jags officers whisper about it, federal employees feel the same tension, and that kind of s uh settles in the air when the higher ups start looking for yes men instead of professionals. And I I think about it like this America will never have a fascist regime outright. We will call it something polite like enhanced patriotism. We aren't the regime, but we're definitely on the driveway, hands in our pockets, kicking the gravel, pretending we're not walking towards something we swore we would never allow. And this is the truth of the matter. Spoken plainly and without apology, uh republics, democracies, etc. They don't die when people revolt. It dies when good men become too cowardly, I'll just say. And and when they decide to stay quiet. Not the extremists, not the corrupt, not the opportunists, not the grifters. It dies when the people who know better, the ones who know the critics, the ones who know the oaths, the ones who have a shit of authority, fall silent. But if you know that you didn't swear an allegiance to silence, you swore allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, you swore allegiance to duty, you swore allegiance to integrity, and that oath doesn't expire, it doesn't dim, and it doesn't bend. Now not now, not ever. And that is why this whole thing with uh Mark Kelly had me on high alert this morning. Right back more than the Rome Clean show, and I'm gonna get into some of this commentary to show how it it permit I just have to get to this uh Bill Maher stuff. And uh we will dive deeper. So first let me go to the actual video that is being uh talked about here, and then we're gonna hear the framing and see why this is is uh troubling problematic.

SPEAKER_03: 23:44

I'm Senator Alyssa Slotkin.

SPEAKER_02: 23:46

Senator Mark Kelly, Representative Chris Deluzio.

SPEAKER_03: 23:49

Congressman Maggie Gulinian, Representative Chrissy Hoolin.

SPEAKER_02: 23:52

Congressman Jason Crow, who was a captain in the United States Navy, former CMA officer. Former Navy, former former trooper and army ranger, former intelligence officer, former air force. We want to speak directly to members of the military and the intelligence community to take risks.

SPEAKER_03: 24:08

We know you are under enormous trust. Americans trust the military.

SPEAKER_02: 24:15

This administration is leaving a uniform military. Intelligence community against American citizens. Uniform military just coming from right here. You can refuse illegal orders.

SPEAKER_11: 24:36

You must refuse illegal orders.

SPEAKER_03: 24:39

No one has to carry out the violence of the Constitution.

SPEAKER_02: 24:43

We know this is hard and that it's a difficult time to be a public servant. Your vigilance is critical. Don't give up, don't give up.

SPEAKER_03: 25:07

Senator Alyssa Summit.

SPEAKER_02: 25:09

Senator Mark Hill, Representative Chris Clean.

SPEAKER_03: 25:13

Senator Christopher. We know we are under enormous trust. Americans trust the military.

SPEAKER_02: 25:37

This administration is giving our uniform military. Uniform. You can refuse illegal orders.

SPEAKER_03: 25:57

Refuse illegal orders.

SPEAKER_11: 25:59

You must refuse illegal orders.

SPEAKER_03: 26:01

No one has to carry out the violence of the Constitution.

SPEAKER_02: 26:06

We know this is hard, and that it's a difficult time to be a public servant. Your vigilance is critical. More than number.

SPEAKER_03: 26:19

The American people need you. We need you to stand up for the mobs.

SPEAKER_02: 26:27

Don't give up. Don't give up. Don't give up the ship.

SPEAKER_06: 26:31

So yeah, I played that twice on purpose, only because I want you to hear what they said versus what is being said in this clip. Let's go to the overtime and real time by Bill Maher, and so we can get into what was actually said and then the framing of what was said.

SPEAKER_10: 27:01

No, what the hell? This is what I'm talking about with mill about like with the things that bother me versus the things that don't bothers me. You see, the the the bullroom, I give a fuck. I don't care about the bullroom. I care about that. You just, I mean, like, it just and um also like did you see the thing about um the six Democrats who uh are all military service and intelligence work in their background said, Look, you don't have to follow orders.

unknown: 27:31

No.

SPEAKER_10: 27:32

I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_06: 27:33

Now, I understand what they mean. Now listen to the the word that was should that was missing. Did did they say, did you hear in that video that I just played, you don't have to follow orders? No. That is not what was said. So the entire premise of how he starts the conversation is false, because it's built on false information. They all said specifically and clearly, you do not have to follow a lawful, you do not have to follow illegal orders. Let's go back to the show though, for the sake of uh argument here.

SPEAKER_10: 28:09

Democrats who uh are all military service and intelligence work in their background said, Look, you don't have to follow orders. I don't know about that. Now, I understand what they mean, because this thing with Venezuela is not legal. But what do you think about telling people in the armed services you don't have to follow orders? Now, Trump, of course, went ballistic and said, uh, George Washington would have hung them. Sedition, death, you know, he goes right to that, and then today he walked in back. I didn't mean death, you said death.

SPEAKER_05: 28:45

And meanwhile, those those lawmakers have to reach out to the U.S. Capital Police and the House Sergeant and the mum speakers getting getting death threats because they're afraid. Those members fucking Mark Henley, who's membered to get a beginning. I mean, to get death threats, he understands that. So it was wrong for Donald Trump to say that on the court. Here's the point. The military, there's a military rule that says you must follow legal, local orders. It's it's already in a military contract. They know what they're taking.

SPEAKER_10: 29:23

Who's to say what that is? Aren't the courts looking at that right now? And now you're gonna say to 21-year-olds on the USS Enterprise, you have to disagree.

SPEAKER_05: 29:32

Because there's an effort under the way to politicizing the military. I'm understanding. And and then the point was don't give up the ship. You you have you've taken the oath, don't give up the ship.

SPEAKER_10: 29:46

I it's once you say to the military, you you get to decide as opposed to yes sir, no, sir, follow orders. It's it's a dangerous area. What about what we say?

SPEAKER_06: 29:57

Okay, so let me go ahead and correct the record here. So we've already seen that one thing that Bill Maher, so obviously a member of the media, Bill Maher not only has the show Rooftime at Bill Maher that airs on HBO, it also airs on CNN now. So do the U.S. military members have to follow unlawful orders? No. In fact, we're actually required not to. There is no gray fog here. There is no poetic wiggle room. A service member is legally uh legally obligated to refuse unlawful orders, and not just morally, but legally, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, though, under the federal law and under the very DNA of the American military tradition. That's the part that politicians conveniently forgot when the suits got together and they were an outrageous week. Now the law itself says it loud and clear. Again, I was a master at arms in the United States Navy. Under the Uniform Code Military Justice Article 92, it says you must obey lawful order. The word lawful isn't just there for decoration. It's the whole point. You do not obey orders that violate the Constitution, orders that violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice, orders that violate federal or state law, orders that violate law and armed conflict, orders that violate basic human rights, orders that target civilians, prisoners, or protected persons, orders to commit war crimes, torture or assault, orders given outside the authority of the person given to them. If you follow such an order, you're actually criminally responsible right alongside the person who gave it to you. This is why just following orders died as defense during the Nuremberg trials. From basic training, the Bible in the racks, every service member is taught this. Every branch drills it into us. Two truths. You obey lawful orders, you refuse unlawful orders, even if the rank is big, shiny, and screaming. Nobody outranks the United States Constitution. Not a general, not an admiral, not a colonel, not a captain, not a president, not a senator on cable news, fishing for sound dates. And let's be real, it takes the backbone to refuse one. Refusing an unlawful order is one of the heaviest responsibilities in uniform. You're risking disciplinary action, career retaliation, and social blowback, political heat. But that is what separates the United States military from the armies of tyrants. We are loyal to the law, not to the men who sign your paychecks. Now, what the political people in DC or wherever they all get wrong all the time, or they pretend not to know, folks like JD Vance, who wore the military, who wore the military uniform as a Marine, and others before him play this game where they pretend military must do what I say. No, the military must do what the law says. Congress writes the laws, yes, but Congress cannot order someone to break the Constitution. So when lawmakers tell troops to disobey illegal orders, that is literally what the military. Already trains us to do. But when lawmakers accuse accuse troops of disobedience for rejecting illegal orders, that's when they veer into authoritarian cosplay. As a master at arms, I already know the creed. I was literally trained with this devotion to duty, personal integrity above all, and the shield of authority worn with the straight. Authority without legality is not authority. It is illegal. It is actually abuse. So bottom line: military members must obey lawful orders. Military members must refuse unlawful orders, and the law protects us when we have to. Anyone saying otherwise is either misinformed, performing, or hoping you are too stupid to know or you're not paying attention. Got it? So I just did the work for you like I did on the previous show. Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 92. It fully defines what you are supposed to do with lawful and unlawful orders. Go back to the Nuremberg trials and go look at what happened when the soldiers said we were following orders. We did not accept that. They were found guilty. And the rest, as they like to say, is history. Now I'm going to move on to James Comey and Letitia James. Uh but first I'm going to get to something that the Defense Secretary uh said, and because I have to well look, I I didn't have to, but because I wanted to, because I'm a public figure now, I had to step right into it. So the mill the the the defense secretary Pete Hexek is very active on social media. And uh he posted on uh Twitter, he posted on Facebook uh calling them seditious traitors and and so on and so forth. And so i i if you are following the Department of War as it has been uh labeled by them, he put out a statement that said, and I quote This is the official statement, by the way, three days ago as if I'm reading it. The Department of War has received allegations of misconduct against Captain Mark Kelly, United States in retirement United States Navy retired. In accordance with the Uniform Code of Military Justice 10 USC 6088 and other applicable regulations, a thorough review of these allegations has been initiated and determined further actions, which may include recall to active duty for court martial proceedings or administrative measures. This matter will be handled in compliance with military law, ensuring due process and impartiality. Further official comments will be limited to preserve the integrity of the proceedings. The Department of War reminds us all that individuals at military retirees remain subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice for ethical offenses. And federal laws such as Article 18 USC 2387 prohibit actions instead intended to interfere with the loyalty, moral, or good order and discipline of the armed forces. Any violations will be addressed thoroughly through appropriate legal channels. All service members are reminded that they have a legal obligation under the Uniform Code of Military Justice to obey, get this, lawful orders, and those orders are presumed to be lawful. A service personnel philosophy does not justify an excuse for disobedience, otherwise lawful order. Now, so this is what I said to the Secretary of Defense. It is difficult not to notice the familiar choreography here. The government issues a sternly worded communique invoking the full ritual of the legal citations, statutory reminders, and solemn declarations about good order and discipline. And yet conspicuously absent is any examination of the context of or any political unity of such statements. Historically, when an institution stresses the presumption of lawfulness of its own directives, one should play closer attention not because the orders are necessarily unlawful, but because the power system tends to obscure their own deviations behind formal language. The text reads less like a natural legal clarification and more like a preemptive attempt to discipline the boundaries of acceptable dissents. The invocation of 18 USC 2387 is particularly telling. This statute has been deployed time and again not to guard against genuine subversion, but to suppress unwelcome criticism, especially when such criticism exposes institutional failure or misconduct. To imply that questioning authority risks undermining loyalty or morale is a well-known technique of bureaucratic self-protection. Democracies, at least in theory, function on the assumption that loyalty flows upward after the accountability flows downward, not the other way around. Moreover, the remainder and the reminder that the retirees remain subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice is technically accurate, but selectively emphasized. One might ask why the full coercive apparatus of the U.S. military law becomes deactivated in some cases, but not others, particularly when far more consequential misconduct by senior officials has been historically ignored, minimized, or retroactively justified under the banner of national security. The statement's closing line that service members' personal philosophy does not justify our excuses, obedience deserves special scrutiny. The phrasing implies that moral reasoning is an inherent rather is an irritant rather than an existential safeguard against unlawful behavior. But the Nuremberg principles, which the United States ostensibly endorses, rest on the opposite premises. Individuals have an obligation not to obey unlawful orders, and personal consciousness is not merely permissible but required. If the aim is to defend the integrity of the armed forces, transparency would serve far better than admonitions. The public doesn't need more reminders about the reach of the military law. It needs assurance that such power will not be deployed selectively, politically, or punitively. Until then, declarations like this function mainly as signals not of justice, but of just institutional anxiety. So we will see if I get a letter from the uniform uh from the Department of Defense. And and just for the record, uh the six senators who uh the Congressator CIE officials who said this are getting visits from the FBI as if the FBI does not know that they said the word unlawful.

SPEAKER_10: 40:40

Look, you don't have to follow orders. I don't know about that. Now, I understand what they mean, because this thing with Venezuela is not legal. But what do you think about telling people in the armed services you don't have to follow orders? Now, Trump, of course, went ballistic and said, uh, George Washington would have hung them. Seduce your death. You know, he goes right to that and then today he walked it back. I didn't mean death. You said death.

SPEAKER_05: 41:09

And meanwhile, those those lawmakers have to reach out to the U.S. Capital Police and the House Sergeant and the Mum's speakers getting getting death threats because it's getting afraid. And look, say Mark Kelly. Those members. This is looking Mark Kelly who's married to Gabby Gifford. I mean, to get death threats, he understands that. So it was wrong for Donald Trump to say that on the course. Here's the point: the military, there's a military rule that says you must follow legal, local orders. It's already in a military contract. They know what they're taking.

SPEAKER_10: 41:47

Who's to say what that is? Aren't the courts looking at that right now? And now you're gonna say to 21-year-olds of the USS Enterprise, you have to decide?

SPEAKER_05: 41:56

Because there's an effort underway to politicizing the military. Understanding. And then the point was don't give up the ship. You you have you've taken an oath, don't give up the ship.

SPEAKER_10: 42:11

Wouldn't you say to the military, you you get to decide as opposed to yes, sir, no, sir, follow orders? It's it's it's a dangerous area.

SPEAKER_07: 42:19

What about what we say in ninth grade civics class, though, about the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution? That goes back to undereducating Americans, period. I think that there's a goal in public schools to make sure Americans are dumb. And I don't just mean Americans that look like me. To make sure the average working-class American is dumb. The average. Yeah, I do. Because I think that the average class.

SPEAKER_10: 42:39

Well, again, that's that's the Democratic portfolio is educated.

SPEAKER_07: 42:43

I'm gonna give a shit with some other things you want. It hasn't been good for America. I happen to believe in this republic, and I think that as young as we are in 250 years, we stand the greatest chance of being one of the greatest republics ever to have been formed on earth. But we are giving up too much. And part of what you give up is the adherence to the United States Constitution and the understanding that that constitution can transform. It can be amended, it can be grown. I personally think the 13th Amendment needs to be re-amended so that we don't have an excuse for slavery, period. That ends the need for putting up in the state prisons in the same way, reduces the prison population from what used to be a half a million to over two million now. But I think that soldiers do have a responsibility to adhere to the Constitution. I think if you're sitting on orders to disrupt a First Amendment constitutionally protected thing, I think the soldiers should say absolutely not. George Connelly said years ago, you know what's the club and you may name it. What we're doing is picking members of the club who are gonna come on the jet together afterwards, to whether no Democrat or Republican. They went to the Humber, they went to Yam, they went to Moorham, they went to the Hammer together, they're still gonna be friends because the bourgeoisie and the claims is gonna be okay, but we the working claims, the people gonna wear shit like this to work every day, we're gonna get bumped over in this. And people who wear shit like this every day usually do this and say yes, sir or no, sir. So for me, I would rather have soldiers be strictly adherent to the United States Constitution and not following the order that's not council.

SPEAKER_10: 44:18

You're asking I mean the military is just different. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_06: 44:25

You're asking you're asking No, the military is not different because the military has already been told, according to the articles, to already do this. The military is all sorry, uh, Bill, uh we we we can walk and chew gum at the same time here. If if oh, you should follow orders. If if if the president told them to assassinate Bill Maher, would he have the same have the same uh belief system? I highly doubt it. I I doubt he I think he'd be screaming at the top of his lungs. Oh, that they need to obey they need to not obey that. They did this is unlawful. This is silliness. This is the same person who, when George Bush was president, was with running around in the group saying he was a war criminal, etc., etc. Just just just ridiculous.

SPEAKER_10: 45:25

Kids who probably don't know anything about the Constitution to make that decision.

SPEAKER_06: 45:31

And I'm sorry, I think I skipped over a bit, but what I have to say here is that he's missing is is that the senators said, you know, who do know about the Constitution, Bill Maher is missing the point that they said that they would have their backs. That's a big point that has gone missing in this. The big point that has gone missing, and that if you I paid attention to the video, it was the senators, the lawmakers, you know, the co-equal branch of government saying, We will have your back. That's the big thing that Bill Maher's missing. You disobey the order, whatever, you you write the letter to your congressmen and your senators, and they will have your back because it will be a federal charge, and the only people who can get you out of those federal charges are who? Thank you for this attention to this man.

SPEAKER_10: 46:21

Make that decision. I know, but we haven't fixed it, but we have a fucking schoolhouse.

SPEAKER_07: 46:28

We gotta just take it, brother. We we can't just take a fit of an ignorant proletariat.

SPEAKER_10: 46:33

But like you'll be okay if they did that with Obama, because he blew up.

SPEAKER_07: 46:36

I don't give a fuck. We can't look at that. We knocked him up from the shit. As a black person, I saw slavery returning to Libya. I saw I saw a man who was willing to help black people in their fighting and a struggle, um, by giving billions, ignore. I saw someone who wanted to unite Africa under one currency and have a potential United States of Africa, and I know how dangerous that is to you in the United States. I saw that crushed. And as an American, I had to shut the fuck up, go with the Republic. But that's something if I never had a chance to talk to Obama, I'd really say. I see Qaddafi has been not as bad as they said. Because I can't see any president I have as good guy. I love Obama. The symbol of Obama is up in my motherfucking house. He's a black man, he became president, and he did more drone bombings than any other US president before. He and Hillary Clinton disturbed a country called Libya in which you used to have a free house, re-education, free, and now it's not free anymore. And there are people who look like me that aren't free. So as much as I love my Republic, you know it was a very repressive dictator.

SPEAKER_06: 47:38

Now think about how pathetic, how absolutely pathetic that sounds. One guy says, look, here is the fact, here's a history. This happened through this administration, through this person, and then the immature response from the the the host that Bill Maher is, oh, what about his oh well he are you saying that he's good? Even used there was facts pointed out what that one government did to another government. And because Bill Maher has some type of either amnesia or his addiction to pretending like the government he is sitting in is perfect, his brain does not know what to do except say, oh, uh uh uh so he must be good. No, governments are neither good nor bad, these are decisions being made by adults in a room, and the people who make the decisions affect other people who are not in the room. Hence when D. Killman Michael Render, also known as Killer Mike, pointed out the fact that these are the policies that were being passed in Libya that were active, and and this is what's happening now. Bill Marr has to gloss right over that because he does not want to either does not want to deal with those facts or he is ignorant, hopefully ignorant of those facts. He he glossed right over the mention of housing. He glossed right over the mention of slavery returning to the area and had to say, oh, he was repressive. What about right now? What about the slavery that is happening right now because of US foreign policy that has been burdensely battlesome in the Middle East and that includes Democrats like Barack Hussein Obama?

SPEAKER_07: 49:33

I hear what you're saying. We're living under one now. We ain't storming a fucking one now. You know what?

SPEAKER_10: 49:39

He's walking down an American neighborhood. Okay, if you think that's the same as Libya, but let's let's have some perspective.

SPEAKER_07: 50:30

What I'm saying was Hayley has been coming sensating. And if the incominations want to take some form of problems, I think one who threw colonies or the colonists represent. So one of them can be ultimately.

SPEAKER_10: 50:47

I mean, the people who are the people who have been repressing the people in Haiti for a very long time are not French.

SPEAKER_07: 51:00

We don't put the dictators in the place.

SPEAKER_10: 51:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_07: 51:10

Haitian things go to the French from Haiti anymore. I'm just saying Haiti's Haiti. What's going on? Haiti's still sending money to France.

SPEAKER_05: 51:22

That's what I know. Okay. And we need to do more to help countries like Haiti, especially.

SPEAKER_07: 51:27

So what's to do more? I would say we need to reparate countries we've colonized. There's there's there's a payment to be made to help countries get. So we took Libya. What have we done to help their country get become democratic?

SPEAKER_06: 51:39

So look, um, let me let me just do this right now. Um to because I've heard them talk long enough about that, even though I may or may not go back to it. So you ever notice how nations love to bring about entitlement, liberty, democracy until you bring up the one bill they didn't never pay. And when we talk about this, we have to think about Haiti in context. And I'm actually talking as someone who had to do a disaster relief mission in Haiti. So let's talk about it. Haiti, the little island that took on the world's greatest slave empire in a won, is the only successful slave revolt in human history. Haiti did what Rome couldn't, what America wouldn't, and the French never imagined. Enslaved people broke their chains and then broke their captors. And how did France respond to losing its wealthiest colony, its sugar crown jewel, the island powered its economy? France said, You want freedom? Beautiful, pay us for it. Imagine fighting for a man for your life, beating him, and then he charges you rent for the privilege. That's what happened. In 1825, France sailed a whole quadron of warships to Haiti, not to trade, not to negotiate, but to show the flag and cook the gun, and France so Haiti, you will compensate us for the loss of our enslaved labor, or we will re-enslave you. Now that is not diplomacy, that's the most gangster economic threat in Western history. And Haiti, a brand new nation, made of formerly enslaved people with no allies, had no choice. They signed, they borrowed money from the French banks to pay France itself. They fell into debt and the trap designed to keep them from crawling. Let me put it plainly here. Haiti paid its enslavers until exactly 1947. You know, think about that. My grandparents weren't even born a part of that timeline. One of them was, because my granddad was born in 1937. But so that's not ancient history. That's like yesterday, with the serial numbers filed off. Now, fast forward to the question that we get all the time that you just heard Bill Maher ask, is France still living off of Haiti today? So let me give you a rule, uh a real smooth, sharp, not actively, but absolutely. So no, France does not have a pipeline running for uh Haiti to Paris right now. But nations move through history like people move through money. If you robbed somebody rich 200 years ago and invested every dollar that they've been broke and they've been broke ever since, you are still living off of that robbery. Haiti started its national life with a ball chain made of gold. Gold that sailed straight across the Atlantic and dropped into French banks. That money built French institutions, it cushioned French budgets, it protected French elites. It multiplied through centuries of compound interest. Meanwhile, Haiti, the nation that dared to say we are free because God made us free, was stuck, tried to build a country while paying the ransom for its own liberty. And that's why you see so much of the instability. That's why you see so much poverty. That's why Haiti keeps getting pushed into the arms of foreign helpers who always seem to help themselves just a little bit too much. This wasn't destiny, it wasn't fate, it was engineered debt and engineered extraction, and France still refuses to pay it back, still refuses to acknowledge the scale of theft, still gives speeches about friendship and partnership, like none of this ever happened. So let me make this very plain again. For the people in the back row, France is not stealing from Haiti today. France is still benefiting from the wealth it stole yesterday. And until the day France repays the ransom, or at least admits it, the conversation will not be over. Because justice isn't just about how you steal now. Justice gives back what you took. Now I know somebody's gonna listen to this and say, Darrell, why would you bring up a history? And then I'll just say this is because the past is never the past, the consequences are still living in the present. That is not about guilt. It's about math, it's about accountability, it's about truth, and it's the only thing strong enough to disinfect history. So to answer the question one last time, are the French still living off Haiti? No, with not with new chains, not with new ships, not with new threats. But yes, they're still standing on old memory, old crimes, old interests, old advantages. And until that ledger is acknowledged, the world will keep wondering why one of those most courageous nations on earth has struggled to stand tall since they got their freedom. But Haiti will rise again one day. It always has, and it always will, because a nation born in liberation cannot and will not stay down forever. Now we have to get to James Comey and Letitia James. I'm not going back to the Bill Mark. That's available for you to watch on YouTube. It was the overtime segment. Let's go to Letitia James and James Comey so we can get out of here. I haven't getting far enough about these things lately, so the shows have been running a bit longer. But um now let's talk about the legal theater that became the uh James Comey and uh Letitia uh Letita James case that were hyped, paraded, live streamed, webonized, turned into headlines, and sold to the public like political payback wrapped in a bow. And then, just like a flimsy courtroom drama with bad acting, dismissed, tossed, dropped like a script even a lifetime movie wouldn't buy. See, America is now in love with the illusion of accountability. The illusion of accountability, but allergic to discipline of justice. We crave perplos, we crave mugshots, we crave humiliation, but the law, real law, it doesn't care about how angry you are, it doesn't care about TikTok clips or Twitter rants, it doesn't care about your favorite politicians' promise to get 'em. Courts don't deal in emotions, they deal in evidence, they deal with a procedure, they deal in the burden of proof and a phrase half of the country refuses to learn, but still has loud opinions about. So when the cases collapse, it wasn't because James Comey is a choir boy or Latita James is untouchable. It's because the charges were built on a wet cardboard held together with political duct tape and wishful thinking. So let me say it like this. Politicians promise the consequences they knew they couldn't deliver. They weaponized public anger without understanding the law, they sounded the trumpet without checking if the cavalry even existed. And when the courts, in the dry, cold, beautiful, unsentimental way, simply replied No. That is the moment where I would lean in to what I said earlier about no com no chomsky. States manufacture narratives far more easily than they administer justice. I had to recline back in my chair as I sit here screen and I take this. In America, failure is an art form, and lying is a patriotic duty. Look at the cycle. Promise a takedown, lead the investigation, tease the indictment, celebrate prematurely, watch the case implode, pretend like nothing happened, when the case collapses, when the case does eventually collapse, silence, shrug, technical issue, biased judges, deep state interference, pending appeal, no accountability for the people who lie to the public, no explanations for millions wasted, no apology for the outrage machine that they turned on high, they just move on to the next target like addicts chasing the next political high. But the damage is cumulative. Because what does this teach the country? It teaches people that justice is just a vibe, not a process. It teaches people that the courtroom is a battlefield, not a safeguard. It teaches people that law can be molded like clay shaped by whoever wins the last election. And that right there is how republics die. Not through tanks rolling through downtown Pennsylvania Avenue, but through cynicism. And if you tell a nation long enough that a law is a joke, eventually the nation will become a joke itself. And here's a deeper warning. These cases and their collapse, they are not the end of the story. They reveal some of the story. They are flashing red lights showing us how fragile the system is becoming. Because every now and then the courts still hold the line. They still say no. They still show us that the backbone of the republics aren't fully broken. But make no mistake, the bones are being bent. They are being bit in the military, they are being bit in the courts, they are being bit in Congress, they are being bit by pundits and influences and politicians who treat the constitutions like it's an optional reading. If we keep bending them, if we keep letting the system become a loyalty test, a weapon, a tool for theatrics, eventually the bones are going to snap. And when the bones snap and infrastructures fall with them, boom. Now we are a banana republic. Thank you for tuning in, and I will see you on the next episode.