YouSaid · the spoken record

Michael Mullen

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71

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2019-10-22

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2019-10-22

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1. “Department Citrons in every state. Yeah, exactly. No, I think that's true. I think that's absolutely true. But I think that, and I would, and Bob Gates, I've never said it then, but I felt strong enough about it is take the $50 billion out of the Defense Department, give it to the State Department, please. Now, there will be arguments about would they spend it well, and I understand all that. The point is, we need to support diplomacy. We don't need to lead diplomacy. I've talked earlier about it's too easy to go to war. I'd love to have a strategic view of Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan. What are all the departments, all the agencies going to do, and how does a military fit into the strategy as opposed to let's use the military and then we'll figure the rest out after they're in. And we've done too much of that from my perspective. So I think that investment is really critical.”

   2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “Well, Mattis said it very succinctly, or I think early in his, maybe in his testimony, to get confirmed or early in his tour that, you know, if you're not going to fund the State Department, you're going to need to buy me more bullets. And that's what we believe. When President Obama was in and Secretary Clinton was Secretary of State, we made a conscious decision to testify at each other's committees. So Gates and I would go testify with her and the Foreign Relations Committees, and she would testify with us. And that was meant to be a very strong message in lots of ways. I think the State Department is badly underfunded. They don't have an appetite like we do to put their budget together and defend it. That's another issue. Yes. But it is something that I think we need to invest in that.”

   2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “Lieberman. Joe Lieberman standing on the third stage because he had voted for, et cetera. And I get this big booming applause. And Lieberman looks over. He says, how do you like that, Mike? I bet you never thought you'd be the most popular guy in gay Americ”

   2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “Two of them that day in the president, and so Vice President Biden were both very gracious. And it was electric. I mean, it was.”

   2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “As far as I'm concerned, they do. The difference for me, anyway, the difference on the transgender piece is I actually knew a fair amount about the gay and lesbian issues, the transgender piece, certainly three years ago when that really started to be addressed. There's a lot I still I didn't know. I've gotten smarter on it now, but it's basically the same thing. And I think the argument that it costs money to do that is specious. It's precious little money, quite frankly. And I think the numbers upwards of 90% some number like that don't have any medical procedures, if you will. Of those who are transgender. So it still applies. And then I get your question. But that day, you know this as well as I, when you're on the stage with a president, there's only one person that gets a round of applause. That's the president.”

   2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “sentences I ever said in my life because it was values based and it was just you know I was just true to my values and it funded what I didn't appreciate is it fundamentally changed the terms of the debate from a debate about sex and those kinds of things to values and even those like Senator McCain even those who opposed it I never got questioned on the values aspect of it from that point so just”

   2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “And so he basically sustained or he resisted that to get to where we got to. And I have great admiration and appreciation that he would give us the time to do that. The values-based aspect of that, when I heard him on the campaign trail in 2008, when Don't Ask Don't Tell was past ninety three, I'm at sea. I'm sea over ship. I'm not paying much attention. I'm just carrying out the law. But when Canada and Obama said this is something he's going to do, boom, I start to pay attention because I'm chairman and then I put together a small group to try to study it. And there'd been precious little work done on it, quite frankly, from the early 90s until this happened. And then we go through the process and it eventually, the testimony, people say, give me a lot of credit or you were really courageous. It was one of the easiest.”

   2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Well, a couple things. One is, and President Obama, this was my sense, I didn't do much, I didn't sense much or see much on the domestic side when I was in that job with him for two and a half years, but I know on the don't ask, don't tell piece he was getting killed by his base, then the base was worried that the military would roll him, etc. And he trusted us.”

   2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “But to his credit, Stan McCrystal did the right thing when he certainly sensed that he could have lost the confidence of the commander in chief and the right way to do it is to put your letter in, which is what Stan did.”

   2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Speech he gave in London, which preceded this incident you talk about. And I think then he and the president met somewhere in Europe just to be clear. And then obviously this other one, the Rolling Stone article. I was literally halfway through it when McCrystal called me and he says, have you seen it? And I said, I've seen enough of it. He says. He said, Should I come home? I said, yeah, should I draft my letter? I said yes. And so he just got on a plane. And we moved from that point. But it was an extraordinarily difficult thing to deal with because he was so, it was such an extraordinary officer. And I'm sure it was a tough decision. I talked to the president about it before he made the decision, and I'm sure it was a very, very...”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Did then still do he's an extraordinary American. I actually brought him into the Pentagon from Iraq, and I can remember how many years he was over there. It was a long time. But I wanted him to make changes in the Pentagon, in the joint staff, if you will, that I watched him make on the battlefield. And then unexpectedly, unexpectedly, because we had General McKiernan was in Afghanistan. And both Dave Petrace and I and Bob Gates all agreed that McKiernan wasn't a good match for the mission. He's a good guide. Didn't do anything wrong. He just was not a good match. So we ended up bringing Stan in. And I spent a lot of time talking to Stan before he went about what I've observed is a three-star making four stars. Everybody's got to grow a lot. And his challenge was he was going to have to grow under the Kliegelitz. So there was this.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Yeah, I think it's a fair question. My sense is that we didn't really need, I mean, in the one case we wanted a sofa status force agreement. But for our presence there, we really didn't need it similar to other countries around the world. 10,000 is about the same as zero because I'm spending all my time protecting myself, so I can't really carry out that mission. From where I sit, it looked like there was just absolutely no doubt we were getting out. And I thought the sofa was almost, it became a cause to make this happen as opposed to a real desire to be there and protect our interests at the time.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “Not too long after he got there, which he did, I would argue almost on good faith. But President Bush, who could have approved that, said, no, this is going to have a big impact When we took it to him in December, I think. This is going to have a big impact on the next president. I want to leave that decision for him. And I watched President Bush do that on two or three major parts, and I admired him a lot for that. President Obama recognized the immediate need, and so he approved that first one. And then we went into the longer term, the Rydell review, which then got us into the nine meetings and his decision to deploy troops at the end of that year.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “There was no question that from my standpoint, and I was asked shortly after I took over as chairman, I think the comment was, and it was like Skelton that asked me about troops in do we have enough in Afghanistan? And we clearly didn't to do the mission. And I said basically in Iraq we do what we must and in Afghanistan we do what we can. And that really got Chairman Skelton's attention at the time. But we were very short. We were running what I would call what we call in the military an economy of force operation. There wasn't going to have any long-term impact. And that's what obviously President Obama, when he took over, you know, walked into. And one of the things that I don't think is widely known, President Bush, and I watched him do this on a couple of issues, but the 10,000 troop deployment that we asked President Obama to approve, which turned out to be...”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “dedicated to our country, cared about America, and wanted to do the best they could. I mean, for obviously their beliefs are different. We're different. We saw that manifest in the policies and in their decisions. But I found them both. And I got to President Bush in the middle of the Iraq surge. This is six and a half years. They've had a very tough war.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “So, a fun story about that is President Obama comes in, you may remember this, and Bob Gates and I, like two or three weeks in, we go on the Sunday shows, separate shows, and of course one of the questions is going to be, okay, you've been with new president. What's he like? How does he compare to Bush? I wasn't going to answer that question because it wasn't going to go well no matter what I said. And Bob Gates answered the question. Bob and I live next to each other on Navy Hill across the Street from the State Department. I saw Bob that afternoon. I said, what were you thinking? He goes, I have no idea what I was thinking because he got a call from the White House that wasn't a great call is what he said. What I take away from my cherished and privileged time servant four years as a chairman for two different parties and two different, obviously two different people, extraordinary people.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Reconnoiter. Well, anybody that remembers it, you remember what a spectacular day it was. But that was a significant distance across Washington, DC. And with the exception of the National Guard members who were guarding the monuments, Washington DC was empty. When I was a kid, there was a movie called On the Beach Nuclear. And it ends up with this couple, you know, at the end of nuclear war, and they're the only two on the beach. I literally had that kind of feeling that day. There's nobody in Washington, D.C., which was really, really eerie. And we didn't really know where it was going to go or when the next attack was going to end, but all of us had to figure out how we were going to move forward, which we started to do literally within hours.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “He really was a strong leader at that point in terms of getting us together. This is what we're going to do, got us focused, and then we started to move forward to figure out who did it and respond, if you will.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “Yeah, I was in the middle hit the building. It actually flew in, and I wasn't in my office. I was about 75 or 100 feet away at a meeting with the chief naval operations. But my two assistants, and we were up on the fourth deck, my two assistants looked out the window and saw a 757 fly in under their feet, if you will, that day. And we lost 42 sailors that day that were in our command center. And we didn't know there's been criticism about what we knew what we did know. We didn't know what was going on. I mean, we knew we'd been hit. We didn't know where the next attack was coming from. And so it was very important. We obviously exited the building. It was important to find our people, which we did by about midnight that night, and then to start to rebuild. And then right away, and this is where President Bush, I thought, was exceptionally strong.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “It was, I'd been back a week. I'd been down in Norfolk. Actually, I'd gone down in Norfolk to take command of Second Fleet and literally seven days later, the USS Cole, one of my ships, got hit. So Deb and I are with seventeen families the next day after Cole got hit. And then I got moved up to the Pentagon very early. I was there seven days and the plane hit the building. After it was all over, I talked to my boss and said, you got to stop moving me around. This is not going well. But it was the day the world changed from my perspective.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “We call them firsties, and that's what I talk about as much as anything in the course, and we go through this failure as well. I actually bring in the class my evaluation, which was, I call it an F for failure for you flunked, you have no future, find something else to do, all those things, and yet I persisted.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Commander level I screened, and I was lucky to do that. And then I had several commands after that as well. But it still sticks with me. Actually, it's Buoy 11 down in the Thimble Show's channel in Norfolk, Virginia. And I looked at it with scorn every time I went by it after that day. But I made a mistake. And it was mine. The other thing I was captain of a ship, I was 26. I was very young. But what I learned about the Navy is accountability for the institution that I was in charge of. They gave me the responsibility and it was, and I was completely accountable. And accountability is something that is very close to my heart. I teach leadership at the Naval Academy right now to seniors.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “Up here. Well, it was tough. And first of all, I found out who my friends were and who they weren't. I couldn't have got, I had two major failures. I had two major failures, another one later on in my career in a ship. And I couldn't have gotten through it without mentors that showed me the way and supported me and thought I still had a future. And when I talk about this, when I teach leadership or talk about leadership, it's the first thing I talk about. Because we're all human. We're all going to fail. And it's not about the failure. It's about what did you learn? Did you, you know, get yourself up, dust yourself off, learn the lessons, improve, and move on. And so those are the things that I learned. And I loved going to sea and I loved sailors. It took me in my career, it took me 11 years to recover from that professionally. And I actually, in the Navy, we call it a screening process, but on what was the last screening look for command again at a senior level, at the 05 level.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “Had not existed in the 50s at all. There was a lot of churn in the country, and it was political leadership, which was the spies. And in that time, I mean, one of the things, and I don't know if this is true, I'm not enough of a political historian, but that was a time. I think Johnson and Nixon that sort of turned the country against the office of the president in a way that had not been the case certainly with Roosevelt and Eisenhower in those years. And I'm not sure we've recovered.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “I could only go so far, but what was breathtaking about it for me and I was a kid that grew up as very excited about John F. Kennedy, what was breathtaking for me is that Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon all did the same thing, which was delay a significant action to not increase or to not to avoid the war so that they could get to their next political election. Particularly while I knew that about Johnson, I knew it about Nixon. I didn't know it about Kennedy. And it really sort of took the breath out of me when I saw that. Natural politics, I understand that, but it really took the breath out of me when I saw that. So those were very hard lessons from a very difficult time for the country. And it wasn't, you know this, it wasn't just Vietnam. It was a social upheaval of the time. It was drugs in a way that certainly”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Decision. And I give, honestly, I give political leaders on both sides of the aisle great credit for supporting that outcome, if you will, or that output, because I remember when it wasn't the case and it was exactly as you describe. Other lessons is how you get in and how you get out. I mean, war is too easy to get into and it's serious an example, Iraq's an example. It's awful difficult to get out. And is this something really worth our national interests? At the time, one of my things I'm doing right now is I'm on the Ken Burns' Better Angels Society board. And so we see what he's doing in terms of these documentaries. The Vietnam one, which was last year, I think, was very difficult to watch for me. I got an advanced copy.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “Two years later, I was on a ship on the east coast, a different ship that actually got pulled to go through the Panama Canal and go back out there. And this is 72 now. And now I'm sort of, I've gotten to the point now that I'm really wondering about all of this and trying to understand it better. I didn't go back. I actually got pulled off that ship literally the night before it ended back up on the gun line. The school”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “It opened up the world to me. And in one way, it was very exciting. I was also doing something I really enjoyed, which was going to sea on ships. I didn't know that before I got on it. And then I'm fighting a war. And I'm brand new. I'm a brand new officer. I'm just trying to do my job essentially by the DMZ firing thousands of rounds in support of Army, soldiers and marines that were up fighting around the DMZ over the course of several months in late 69 and early 70. That was my first experience. And it was really focused on that more than anything else. I wasn't into the politics of it or why we were doing it.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Well, not unlike what I said when I showed up in the academy in 64 and 68, I graduated in 68. So Martin Luther King was killed in April before I graduated. Bobby Kennedy got killed the night before I graduated in the city of Chicago that summer where there's a Democratic convention. I mean, I remember the riots and the burnings. I was actually dating my wife. She wasn't my wife at the time in Washington. And I remember Washington being in the spring of 6th Jade being locked down. I couldn't get there by the National Guard because of the riots and the fires, etc. So really, really tough times for a country. And then I go to a ship. A year later, I deploy them off the coast of Vietnam. Not unlike going to the academy opened up the country, going to the Western Pacific and seeing the Philippines and Japan and being off the coast of Vietnam.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “But I couldn't believe him in a year. I'd need another hundred thousand to come in in order to relieve them at the end of a 12-month deployment somewhere. That's where that other hundred thousand”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “I understand. Actually, and the reason I want to hundred thousand piece, the 350,000 size army I could put 100,000 somewhere. These wars don't end in three months, which all of us would like to happen, but empirically that just hasn't happened. So I could put 100,000 somewhere, but I couldn't relieve it.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “have when we went into a rock. And this is, you know this as well as I this is the most significant decision any president ever makes and what I want to have for the next one and it's almost become too easy to go to war I want to have for the next one is that debate I want to have a raging debate in the country that says yes we're going to go to war for this or no we're not because of the sacrifice that I've seen and I've seen certainly on the battlefield”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “Since Grenada, we have not predicted one time where we would be in conflict. So we're not very good at that anticipating it. What I would do, I personally believe we need to reduce the size of our army by about 100,000 to about 350,000 or so. I don't have an exact number. And the next time we get into a situation where the president wants to go to war, we're going to have to call up a half a million kids. And so that the conversation about possibly going to war is happening at every dinner table in every family that's got an 18-year-old son or daughter, and that they bring that to their elected representatives, and then we make a decision, yes, this is worth going for because I'm going to call up a half a million kids. There are challenges associated with that. But to me, that's the debate we did.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “From these wars and this really Iraq, and Bob Gates and I agree on a lot of things, but one of the things I just didn't agree with Bob on was when he said the president or the next president or next secretary of defense would be crazy to send 100,000 people somewhere. And I get that, and I don't think it'll happen immediately. But since 1983, we have not predicted, and that was Grenada,”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “I agree. We're less than 1%. We're about a half of 1% in terms of overall population. We come from fewer and fewer places. There are so many families in the country that don't have anything to do or know anything about the military. It's been one of my worries for a while. I worry that we almost treat our military like the French Foreign Legion, which is we'll pay you pretty well in the compensation package these days is decent. Please go off and fight our dirty little wars and let us get on with our lives. And I think that's a really bad outcome for the country. I spent a lot of time in the veteran space right now as a retiree and trying to support veterans in lots of challenges that they have when they return home. But it is different. It's dramatically different than it was post-World War II. One of my learnings, David,”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “I know. It is, I mean, and my mother would say that somehow I usually for the big decisions, I made them pretty well. That's not to say I didn't make some bad ones I did, which I just soon not talk about. And I was 17. I got on a plane. I'd literally, the first time I'd ever been on an airplane.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “It is particularly these five kids. And I was the oldest of them. I actually, and I was a decent high schooled basketball player. I actually was on my way to University of California, Santa Barbara on a basketball scholarship when the Naval Academy came by and recruited me at the behest of a Friend of mine who had gone to Annapolis a year before and his father had chased me and said, you really ought to look at this. And had I gone to Santa Barbara, it would have been a disaster. Why is that? Too social, you know, too much booze, you know, too much social life, not enough studies. I would have been home. And I'd seen friends do this. I'd have been home who graduated ahead of me. I'd have been home the next year at the local junior college. And I didn't want to do that”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “In his office, and then my parents met at Republic Studios. And when they got married, my mother quit and raised five kids. She quit work and raised five kids.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “California to chase his dreams and ended up in the early forties on the road with Gene Autry. That's how his profession started. And then he became a publicist and was, I would call, a publicist for an A-list group of entertainers in the 50s and 60s and early 70s. And I lived in a little place called Studio City, which was aptly named for all the studios that were in the neighborhood, if you will. But I also grew up, I mean, many of the kids were in the industry, and we were just kids. And so they were my friends and didn't pay a lot of attention to what industry were in per se. But I did, what I did take away from that and grounded by, you know, I've been grounded by two women in my life, my mother and my wife, and my mother who actually was in the business as well, worked for Jimmy Durani.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “Actually, it started here in Chicago, interestingly enough, because my dad was from the south side Went to University of Illinois, journalism major, and then went to”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “I think he's being played, sure. I don't think he's in danger of being played. I think he's being played. That's my view.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Because of his leadership, and quite frankly, because of the heritage in his family. So I think he's actually as clever as his grandfather, which is worrisome.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “Kim Jong-un is a really bad, dangerous guy, and I have no respect for him. The information I have received intermittently over the last year or so is that there's been nothing substantial that's happened, in fact, in terms of what we'd like Kim Jong-un to do, which is denuclearized. We're in a bad place with China right now, generally speaking. I think we need to make this happen. We need to put a ton of pressure on China. They're not very pressure receptive right now because of our relationship with them. So I think it's in its own way, it's as dangerous as it's been. I worry that all these countries work undercover, if you will, to develop capabilities. So I worry that somehow he continues to develop the capability. And I felt that peninsula was as dangerous as any place in the world for what I would call sort of an explosive outbreak on the peninsula because of his army.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “No, I'm sure they were. It's one of these things that I'm not there, so I don't know. I do know in conversations, I do know over the last year or two that the president spent a lot of time listening to Joe Dunford. And I think up until General Mattis' Secretary of State, Yeah, sorry, General Dunford, who was a chairman until three weeks ago. And I do know that he listened to Secretary Mattis for the vast majority of time Mattis was there. But I don't have enough information to substantively comment. I mean, I see an awful lot of media reports that he doesn't prepare, he doesn't read, and all those kinds of things. But I literally have never had anybody tell me that. I really can't comment on that at this point.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Well, for the record, actually, to say enjoy is not the right word, but I thought President Obama, who was an infinitely curious president on these major net security issues, I didn't mind the length of that because I thought he asked pretty good, insightful.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “I don't disagree with that. You're choosing when to like it and when not to like it, and I don't think that holds a lot of water over the long term. Certainly the intel, I think that they use or they said they had with respect to being very accurate. I accepted completely. What took me back about that attack is how sophisticated it was. And that just subsequently couldn't have come from anybody but Iran. And that was that later on it was confirmed. So I but it also just as an observer of politics in Washington wouldn't be the first time that someone sort of chose a convenient spot on a given issue to support whatever the policy or the politics were at the moment.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “He joked about the president. Yeah, from the president. I wasn't surprised. I mean, the president doesn't leave those comments or those criticisms alone very often. So I wasn't surprised. I still think, well, that could be a beginning, I certainly haven't seen the president speak in any way except very positive about the military writ large. He talks about the budget increase. He talks about the best troops in the world. I mean, he's been very supportive of our military since he became president. So I think, I mean, I'm having watched what's happened to other institutions, you know, my antennas are up, but I'm not overly concerned right now that he's coming after that.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “Well, I think certainly the institution takes notice when they see somebody as revered as Secretary Slant, you know, General Mattis is criticized. I guess based on what General Mattis or Secretary Mattis said in his speech to then generate the comments.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

49. “Well, I mean, certainly from what I've seen in terms of using the military assistance, military aid to pressure somebody for political gain is something, first of all, I've never seen it. That doesn't mean it's never been done before, but I've certainly never seen it, and I've dealt with a lot of military aid over the course of my career. And I was actually stunned that it was out there to be utilized in that regard.”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

50. “I don't know how it could. I actually, one of the things I try to encourage those who care about these institutions, mostly those who have left them that they think about how to rebuild these institutions because we're going to need to do that. And the media, which quite frankly was struggling quite a bit long before President Trump showed up, also has to, I think, figure out how it fits in the 21st century given the changes that are going on in the media. And I'm a big fourth estate supporter, absolutely vital for the country. How do we get that right for the future as well?”

    2019-10-22 · The Axe Files with David Axelrod · Ep. 352 – Admiral Michael Mullen · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source