We don't elect a president based on policies we shouldn't. What? On yesterday's installment of Face the Nation, retired General Stanley McChrystal, who has a background that's very controversial, [00:00:15] made the stunning assertion that you should not pick who you're going to vote for for president based on policies. And we have a lot more clips where that came from now. First, if you're not familiar with McChrystal, Stanley McChrystal, let me tell you a little bit about him, and then we'll give you his statements [00:00:32] with more context. Now, he was a high ranking member of the military during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He even served as the commanding officer of all U.S. And coalition forces in Afghanistan. He was also highly involved in the cover up of Pat Tillman's death. [00:00:51] He was in the military. He died while serving, and it turns out that he was killed by friendly fire. And Stanley McChrystal was recalled to D.C. DC and resigned after a rolling Stone piece exposed some negative comments [00:01:06] that he had for then Vice President Joe Biden and other administration officials. Which is interesting, right? Because he was eventually pushed out of his role because of his criticisms toward Joe Biden. And now he's advocating that you vote for Joe Biden's VP [00:01:23] over Donald Trump not because of policy, but because of something else. So he elaborated on this a little more in a Washington Post piece. I'm sorry, a New York Times op ed. I'm going to give you some pieces from that in just a moment, but I actually [00:01:39] want to skip ahead to the video. Let's go to the next clip where he elaborates on why you shouldn't focus on policy. - You should focus on something else. - You talk about character. What is it about her character versus former President Trump that so convinced you to take this public stand and endorse her? [00:01:57] I think character is what a person does when they're under pressure. It is a combination of their deep seated beliefs, the things, their core values and the discipline. They have to execute those to live up to them. So I think when we look at Kamala Harris, we look at her history. [00:02:14] She came up as a prosecutor, an attorney general into the Senate. She has lived a number of experiences that I think build someone the kind of character that's going to be necessary in the presidency. [00:02:30] But let's be sure we don't elect a president based on policies. We shouldn't we should elect them for the character because we don't know what's going to come up. We didn't know that one term, Congressman Abraham Lincoln was going to be able to lead the United States through the Civil War. [00:02:46] So the argument here is policy doesn't matter as much as character does. Now, keep in mind that we can judge the character of the two candidates because they've both served in the white House. Now, Donald Trump, of course, is president and Kamala Harris as vice president. [00:03:02] So we have a little taste of their character. But I don't know. Jake, am I crazy for thinking that policy matters? No, of course it matters. Hey, don't scroll away. Come back, come back. Because before the video continues, we just want to urge you to lend your support to TYT. [00:03:18] You power our honest reporting. You do it at tyt.com/team and we love you for it. So it's interesting because McChrystal clearly disagrees with some of Kamala Harris's policies overall, and that's why he's trying really hard to avoid policy. [00:03:35] But at the same time, I don't think that he's wrong about the character part. Like, it doesn't mean that you don't care about policy. Of course you should care about policy, but you should also care about character. Because what does it mean? I don't like unfortunately, a lot of military guys use it as like honor and go to war and support your fellow man as we kill other people. [00:03:54] No no no no. Honor means hey, do you support the people that need you and and and are honest and decent and moral. Do you put the country before you consider yourself and especially of a good leader, right. [00:04:11] And not just if you're president, but any leader? Do you put the people that you're leading ahead of your own interests, and no one has ever failed that test more spectacularly than Donald Trump. He couldn't care less about the people he leads. He's a narcissist and and is obsessed with himself. [00:04:29] And every single thing he does is about me, me, me, me. That's why he called people who were in the military suckers and losers, because he just he genuinely doesn't get it. He does. He does not feel empathy. He's a different kind of person. There's a range that everybody is on the empathy spectrum and he's at near zero. [00:04:47] So he's like, why would you go and have honor and die for someone else in a military context, when you could just keep your life and and who cares about other people defending them? I'm just going to defend me. So that's why he bothers a lot of guys like McChrystal on that front. Oh no. Of course there are other factors as well. [00:05:04] Yeah. Look, I first of all, I do wonder what elections are going to look like in this country when Donald Trump is no longer the Republican candidate, when some other Republican is running against a typical Democratic candidate, are they going to use the same excuses about how no, no. [00:05:22] Who cares about how little the Democrats are going to do for you? The Democrats have better character, so you must support the Democrats. I just feel like there's been too many election cycles now where Democrats have skated by, by essentially telling us, we're not going to do much for you. [00:05:39] Yeah. Well, and we've talked about this a million times. There's good cop, bad cop. So you're totally right. On the other hand, hey, Republicans, can you please stop nominating con men lunatics because you give us no choice? How the hell are we supposed to go in that direction, if that's what you want? [00:05:56] And you think that you could deliver that for people? And remember, the Republican Party is just a giant scam. It's set up to help Rich people and corporations. - Unlike the. - Democratic Party. No, but that's why I say good cop, bad cop. The Republicans are the bad cop. And then on top of that, they give you crazy lunatics to vote for. [00:06:12] And it forces us into no choice at all. And then they go, oh, why don't you vote for our lunatic? Oh, just because he doesn't care about anybody else and is just running a con on America and trying to rob us blind? Yeah, yeah. That's why. Yeah. This election is just awful in so many different ways. [00:06:32] Right? Because Kamala Harris has and the Democratic Party overall has absorbed the nevertrump neocons. Something I've said on this show time and time again, Stanley McChrystal is a perfect example of the nevertrump neo cons. Okay. [00:06:47] Which is why you hear Kamala Harris's rhetoric be as hawkish as it is. Okay, so there's that. Her messaging has also kind of shifted away from appealing to working class issues and instead focusing on what she can do [00:07:03] to help businesses in the United States. You know what I'm saying? She's positioning herself as the so-called moderate, which, you know, in Democratic politics usually translates to Republican lite. And so, look, I'm just being 100% honest with you guys about where I am. [00:07:20] Okay. And you can get upset about it if you want to get upset about it. I'm not impressed by Kamala Harris right now. Okay. And I can't stand that. In election cycle after election cycle, Democrats get to be super subpar because the other guy has low character. [00:07:38] Yeah. But look. So, okay, let me back up a couple of things that Anna is saying, but which then continues to leave us in a in a spot that's hard to get out of. I do have a solution, of course. As always, we try to be constructive, but on character is it really great character for all the other politicians? [00:07:53] Well, 90% of them at least, who tell you one thing and then do the other, who tell you that they're going to look out for you, but then look out for their donors. I don't find it that much better character. Yeah, I get it. Trump looks out for his donors and himself, so he's worse. But hey, I'm not looking out exclusively for myself. [00:08:09] I'm mainly looking to help all my donors is not a great selling line on why you have great character. And that's all of the corporate Democrats and the corporate Republicans. So and then on this neocon issue, we have a tweet here, basically from Jeremy [00:08:25] Scahill, who's covered a lot of wars and is a really great progressive writer. And he said, if you're an American neocon watching Biden and Harris facilitating Israel's wars, which the neocons have wanted forever, then Harris is a solid candidate to support. Let's start with this. [00:08:41] Neocons should support Harris because they want to save democracy from Trump. Nonsense. So look, I don't I agree with that 75%. I don't think the neocons are coming to the Democratic Party just because they think the Democrats are going to start more wars, [00:08:57] or because they think both parties are going to start the wars that we want. But Trump's super unstable, so we prefer a stable person who is wedded to the donors. ET cetera. ET cetera. And so I think it's both. But I'm the reason I bring that up is because you guys aren't wrong. [00:09:14] The neo cons have come to the Democratic Party. They have I hate it. And the Democrats are, you know, saying things that make the neo cons happy, which I'm deeply worried about. And in fact, I'll add one last thing. Look, Donald Trump has promised bigger wars and bigger mayhem than Kamala Harris. [00:09:31] He's, you know, maybe even annexing the West Bank for Israel. He says that, you know, Iran will, you know, will attack them even more. ET cetera. ET cetera. But the military industrial complex, when they lean towards Kamala Harris, [00:09:46] make me worry that they know something we don't know. Well, I mean, look, I think in the case of the Middle East, Donald Trump is going to carry out what his donors pay him to carry out. And Miriam Adelson paying him $90 million in this election cycle wasn't for no reason. [00:10:02] I mean, obviously, she did that in order to get favors in return, namely, the annexation of the West Bank. But remember, military generals despise Donald Trump because there were a few areas in which he wanted less war or wanted to pull troops [00:10:17] out of certain countries. So pulling troops out of Afghanistan, that the person who got that into motion was Donald Trump. And I remember at the time covering that story with all these military generals, furious at him for doing so. [00:10:32] You get what I'm saying? So Donald Trump is more of a wild card, whereas I do see the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris as more stable in keeping the military industrial complex going. - Yeah, I hear you. - But look back to McChrystal. [00:10:48] On the other hand, Biden did actually withdraw from Afghanistan. Now he's threatening much larger wars, or Israel is threatening much larger wars in the Middle East that he's backing. But he did withdraw from Afghanistan, and McChrystal was basically fired by Biden and Obama. And nevertheless, he endorsed Biden last time around. [00:11:05] He's endorsing Kamala Harris this time around because Donald Trump is unnerving. So if you remember his even his own commander in chief at the end had to call other countries and say, don't worry, we're not going to nuke you because the military realized [00:11:22] what everyone in the room realizes when they spend any time with Donald Trump. He's a madman. He could do anything at any time. He's a loose cannon. And if a loose cannon holds the power of the nukes, we barely got him out of office last time without him pressing the button. [00:11:39] Yeah. I mean, look, they they can't stand the military generals, both retired and active, hate Donald Trump's rhetoric on NATO. In fact, in the New York Times op ed in which McChrystal endorsed Kamala Harris and explained why he says about NATO [00:11:57] character will dictate whether we stand by our NATO allies and against Vladimir Putin's continued aggression. Character will dictate whether we have a commander in chief who honors and respects the men and women who serve in uniform. The NATO part of that was a big giveaway for me [00:12:13] in regard to why he favors Kamala Harris. But final thing that I want to go to is one more clip in which McChrystal seems to struggle in giving a response. When asked specifically why he's endorsing Kamala Harris. Let's watch. Presidency certainly tests, and it can forge leadership over time. [00:12:31] But what convinces you now, ahead of a possible presidency, that she's ready, especially on national security and foreign policy areas, you know? Well, yeah. What do we know about anyone before they took a job like that, young President Kennedy, when he was elected, was a young senator. [00:12:47] He did pretty well. He struggled first through the Bay of pigs, then did pretty well in the Cuban Missile Crisis. Donald Trump had no background in it. What we've seen from Kamala Harris convinces me she has the strength. She has the values to deal with the uncertain crises that are inevitable. [00:13:05] All right, so McChrystal believes that Kamala Harris will handle international crises better than Donald Trump. Any final words, Jake? Yeah. Let me just say the things that he left unsaid. The reason why he's struggling with. Hey, what do you like about her character, what do you like about her policies, etc. [00:13:22] Is because basically what he's trying to say without offending MAGA and offending a lot of the troops who are MAGA is guys. Trump's an obvious lunatic. We already lived through this madman. So that's why I'm supporting Kamala Harris. Not because I think she's the greatest thing in the world, [00:13:37] but because the other guy is mentally unbalanced and that I agree with him on. Thanks for watching The Young Turks really appreciate it. Another way to show support is through YouTube memberships. 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