Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Really quick before we get to the guest. I'm going to be doing a little holiday mailbag segment for Bullwork Plus members.

It's a good time of year to give somebody in your life a Bullwork Plus subscription and go to

the Bullwork.com and get signed up for that. You get access to the secret podcast. You get access

to JVL's triad, the best newsletter in the business. And now I'm going to be asking your more fun questions. We asked about this about a week ago for you to submit some questions.

I'm going to tell you, I got, I got some boring questions, and I got a lot of rants disguised

as questions. It's a holiday mailback. Send us some fun stuff, too. You know, send me some

fun questions about your life, and then I'll do serious stuff to it.

The email is Bullwork Podcast at the bulwark.com. We're going to start doing it at the end of the show from time to time. So I'd appreciate it if you could, you know, I don't know, titillate me. Make me laugh. Send me some fun questions. All right. Today's guest. He served for 38 years in the U.S. Army and retired after being commanding general of the U.S. Army Europe. We're welcome him back to the show, but it's the first time I'm welcoming him as an official member of the team. It's Bullwark Military analyst Mark Hurtling. What's going on, sir? Hey, Tim, how are you doing today? It is great to be a part of your team and the

bulwark team and all the great people there that I've come to know over the last month.

Super group of people. We appreciate your expertise. I also appreciate your running circles

around some of the other folks on your output. Okay. I'm looking side eye. Some of my other

colleagues saying you've got to keep up to the

Hurtling standard now, which I appreciate. Yeah. Yeah. Out this morning, Politico got an

interview with President Trump in exchange for providing him with a new fake trophy. They named

the most influential man in Europe. I want to read you one of the highlights from that interview.

Again, this was about the most influential man in Europe awards I want to read you one of the highlights from that interview. Again, this was

about the most influential man in Europe awards. Trump said this about our allies in Europe.

Most European nations, they're decaying. They're decaying. They should be freaked out by what they're

doing to their countries. They're destroying their countries and their people. The questioner

asked, does that mean they won't be

our allies anymore? Trump replies, well, it depends. You know, it depends. Then the reporter asks again,

do you think that many of them are just weak or do you not really want to be allies with them?

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