they said they were delayed because the servicemember had been involved in multiple casualties incident. is that a valid excuse? does that complicate things? it makes it a volume issue, perhaps, don, to put is in a very crass way. but i would say, no, you have a situation where you know that something has happened. you should have procedures in place to handle it. the department of defense has procedures. each of the services have procedures to deal with this. even down at the unit level they have procedures. so everything should really be running like a smoothly oiled machine at this point because there is precedent. there are ways to do these kinds of things. and the fact that the white house is scrambling after the president made the statements that you played, that is a real problem, because it shows that there are issues that are perhaps deeper than what we re seeing right now, and it is indicative that the staff work that needs to go into this kind of operation really isn t hap
crattic reasons why some of the letters had not gone out. most of them said they were delayed because the service member had been involved in multiple casualty incident. is that a valid excuse it makes it a volume issue, perhaps, don, to put in a crass way. but i would say, no. you have a situation where you know that something has happened, you should have procedures in place to handle it. the department of defense has procedures. each of services have procedures to deal with this. even down at the unit level they have procedures. so everything should really be running like a smoothly oiled machine at that point because there is precedent, there are ways do these kinds of things. and the fact that the white house is scrambling after the president made the statements that you played, that say real problem because it shows that there are issues that are perhaps deeper than what we re seeing right now and it s indicative that the staff work that needs go into this kind of operation reall
soldiers today, who is worried, but whose commander pulled together leadership and said, military policy isn t made by tweet. it s business as usual. they ve let that transsoldier know she has their support. that s happening on the on the ground. at the unit level. we re hearing over and over from the chain of command they re outraged. our folks say, i came in, and they re like, we have your back. so there s sort of i mean, you know, troops are going to be very careful. they work for the commander in chief. but there is a sense that, wait, we ve now been serving for a year. we ve got transgender folks, we ve got commanders. we ve got drill sergeants, pilots, submariners, special operators, doctors, marines. serving openly. serving openly as transgender. and so you re going to pull them out of their unit. they re battle buddies. their commanders are going to say, this is going to have an impact on my ability to do the mission.
one knew this was coming. as near as we can tell, no one in the pentagon didn t know this was coming. certainly our troops didn t know. the question is, what does this mean? i talked to one of our infantry soldiers today, who is worried, but whose commander pulled together leadership and said, military policy isn t made by tweet. it s business as usual. they ve let that transsoldier know she has their support. that s happening on the on the ground. at the unit level. we re hearing over and over from the chain of command they re outraged. our folks say, i came in, and they re like, we have your back. so there s sort of i mean, you know, troops are going to be very careful. they work for the commander in chief. but there is a sense that, wait, we ve now been serving for a year. we ve got transgender folks, we ve got commanders. we ve got drill sergeants, pilots, submariners, special
mike huckabee for one called this unconscionable, so i asked some experts how does it really work, and i was told that americans serving at the unit level always answer up to another american and that the president himself never can give a direct command over american units. allies, i m told, can set the operation or direct american units to conduct missions, but they never actually have direct command. i even went to the allied commander s office, the head guy who is running the overall nato mission, and he said the president always retains and cannot relinquish national command. americans can even opt out of assignments if they think it doesn t square with u.s. rules of engagement. that s on that point. another political story related to 2012. u.s. ambassador to china, jon huntsman, a lot of speculation he might run for president next year and that s super interesting because as a republican he s serving under