Former Defense Department Inspector General Joe Schmitz, co-founder of the Blackwater security firm and a foreign policy adviser to presidential candidate Donald Trump, gave his review of the Republican National Convention’s first day to SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily.
“I was in the arena, so I wasn’t watching how the media was spinning it, at least not live,” said Schmitz, “but I thought it was fabulous. I thought it not only hit home with the folks in the arena; I was texting with my wife during it, and she was watching it, and she just thought it was fabulous, too, from what she was watching.”
Bannon noted that the media aggressively cut away from parts of Monday night’s speeches because “they clearly didn’t want some of that message that came through last night to be promulgated to a larger audience.”
Schmitz recalled that when he was DOD Inspector General, he had a sign over his door with “symbolic torches, Roman torches, shedding light on the subject,” framing the quote, “Men who do evil deeds hate the light.”
“The genius of Donald Trump, politically, is that for the first time in decades, he is on a national podium, and he’s speaking truth to the American people,” said Schmitz, who added:
The American people are not stupid. They know what’s happening to our country. They know what’s happening to our allies around the world. They know that we’re up against a very, very formidable enemy, and our current Commander-in-Chief won’t even call the enemy what the enemy calls itself.
“From a military strategy standpoint, it’s the antithesis of Sun Tzu, The Art of War, what the current administration and what Hillary Clinton is doing with political correctness,” he said, adding:
What Donald Trump is doing for the first time, which I believe resonates with millions and millions of previously disenfranchised voters, is he’s telling the truth. And he’s being a real leader, whereas we just haven’t had leadership in the White House for years and years.
When Bannon asked about political advertisements in Ohio featuring former flag officers who portray Trump as dangerous, with Hillary Clinton the safe alternative, Schmitz replied that “on a personal level, Donald Trump is much, much more presidential than Hillary Clinton.”
“I met with him, and I’ve observed Hillary Clinton for the last eight years, and everything she touches is a disaster,” he continued. “I mean, just look at Egypt, Libya, Syria. … Everything she touches, from a leadership standpoint, it just goes the wrong way.”
His assessment of Obama as Commander-in-Chief was comparably bleak.
“I couldn’t imagine a worse, but then you have Hillary Clinton,” Schmitz said. “The rank-and-file, the non-commissioned officers, the junior officers are flooding out of our military. He is so bad as a Commander-in-Chief leader.”
He recalled seeing photos of the Nice, France, terror attack on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, and directly beneath them was a headline about the Secretary of Defense “rolling out procedures for transgender surgeries in the military.”
“I saw that, and I just couldn’t imagine how much more demoralizing that headline could be for the warrior class,” he said.
Bannon noted that retired Army General Michael Flynn hit on that point during his speech at the Republican National Convention, prompting Schmitz to observe that “the unfortunate thing about General Flynn is he followed Mrs. Trump, and Mrs. Trump just hit it out of the park.”
“Everybody was so pumped, and excited, and ready to celebrate,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s tough to follow such a class act.”
Turning to policy matters, Schmitz rejected the charge that Trump’s foreign policy would amount to isolationism.
“Just the opposite,” he said, explaining:
What you’re gonna see is, instead of our Commander-in-Chief hiring the Muslim Brotherhood to advise them on the enemy, you’re going to see Donald Trump hiring the very best experts he can find, regardless of political party. He will take control of the White House and start driving the ship of state in the right direction, where right now, it’s going in the exact wrong direction–and fast.
When Bannon asked if he seriously thinks the Obama administration has subcontracted counter-terrorism policy to the Muslim Brotherhood and its many affiliates, Schmitz replied, “I don’t think it; I know it. I’ve had people inside tell me, knowing that I’m the former DoD Inspector General, that they’re in there, at very senior levels.”
Turning foreign policy around will not be an easy job, but Schmitz said, “There are many things that can be done immediately, and can be done in the first 90 days, and should be done in the first 90 days.”
“But there are some things, because of the long period that has led up to where we are right now, the long infestation of political correctness – I mean, it is very, very deep, and the bureaucracies in all of our national defense agencies are very entrenched,” he said.
If given the chance to clean house, Schmitz said, “I’d start right away, from Day One, and, as they say, a lot of heads are gonna roll.”
When several callers noted the intensity of media and cultural bias against Trump, as even children are slammed with constant anti-Trump messages, Schmitz noted that Hillary Clinton is reportedly outspending Trump 14 to 1, with effectively zero negative advertising currently directed at Clinton, and yet polls show the two candidates in a dead heat.
“During that period when Hillary Clinton was outspending Trump 14 to 1, in the main battleground states, Donald Trump is up by five percentage points. It’s huge! It’s just huge!” he exclaimed.
Political analysts widely credit the Clinton email scandal and public revulsion at the way charges against her were swept under the rug for driving her numbers down in the polls. Schmitz, as a former inspector general, noted that under Clinton’s “extraordinary circumstances,” he would have been obliged to do two things: “One, I would have to tell my agency head about it, and within seven days, I’d have to notify both Houses of Congress.”
“I mean, the FBI Director referred to it as ‘extremely careless,’” he noted. “The issue isn’t whether Hillary Clinton is a criminal or not. The issue is she is a really bad leader. I mean, any leader in the Navy would have been cashiered immediately, and would have been thrown into prison.”
“At some point, ‘extreme carelessness’ becomes treason, and you could actually see a life sentence,” he said.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
LISTEN:
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.