you brought up general mccaffery. he trained me. he was the head of the infantry school when i was a second lieutenant, which is where you go to learn to be an officer. one of the key things you learn there, i know you know this, is you learn about the role of the military in our republic. and the separation of powers. he was a role model for me. so when i show up, you know, i took the job 73 days left. the election has been lost. i m not an election denier or anything like that. now, all of a sudden, like, this is going to go really well. i was completely committed to drawing down in afghanistan, iraq and somalia. but then you could have never predicted what happened on 1/6. your point, your question, though, is, you know, really, really valid. i was committed. i took an oath to the constitution, not to any single individual or man. that s what all our military
people thought i was a sap taking the job and thought i was going to be a figure head that was going to be manipulated by the administration. you know, i did serve 36 years in uniform. every single president, democrat, republican. then i served 13 months you had a distinguished combat record, and people knew that. there was a concern that you would be used. some of the aides around you were going to push you in directions you might not want to go. that was the biggest concern, david. you re right. some of the aides that trump put around you, did you get any pushback from them? absolutely not. never got even a hint of that. remember, i was trained by general mccaffery. right. so i wasn t going to violate my oath. remember, you know, i was representing the armed forces, not just currently but generations, back to the founding. there was no way i was going to do something like that. right. katty. when you watched on january
gun here. nato and the individual countries have got to hustle, game changing technology into ukraine. until it appears and starts being employed, it s all words, not facts. general mccaffery, i ask you this question on a pretty regular basis, but help us understand if not by naming the weapons systems, maybe another couple months that will mean something to me, but help me understand the difference between what they re asking for and what we re willing to give them and and help us understand why that is. well, look, between secretary blinken who takes the lead on this, had the state department s lead agency on foreign military and providing technology and secretary austin, they ve done a brilliant job during the first two phases of the russian offensive. it s been amazing. they organized european command, they ve hustled this stuff across the border.
an act of war. putin is trying to put that out there as a threat to stop us from helping. putin has a bit of a problem here, too. if he treats this as an act of war and if he attacks the u.s. ore nato ally, then he s pulling us in. and whatever we may do in terms of providing jet fighters or humanitarian aid or stingers and javelins or economic sanctions, putin does not want the full force of the u.s. military and ukraine coming down on him. if he takes that active things and pushes it too far, they don t want that full scale presentation. they re stretched. he doesn t want to walk that line. a lot of things putin has said would be an act of war. as far as the drone issue, if we were providing drones to the ukrainians, that would be one thing. if general mccaffery is talking about us flying drones and operating those drones for primarily targeting purposes,
having planes as well. it s getting those governments to saw firmtively say, yes, we will give up those planes. at the moment they re not saying that. there has been discussion that we ll do it if you give us this. they should. they re asking for six f-16s, which we ought to be able to provide. let me ask you about potentially providing offof this. are you at all concerned putin would see this as an act of war, this military hardware, or a step further, i m going to what general barry mccaffery told me, drones could be effective, drones that were made in the united states and passed on to different countries that would be able to get that to ukraine. could that be seen as an act of war, either of these two measures? there s a series of steps. i ll try to get through this quickly. but up front putin has been saying a lot of things are an act of war. he said the swift sanctions are