Military Madness

Talking Feds closes out 2025 with a close look at the institutional damage and lawlessness Trump has imposed on an essential arm of the U.S. government: the Department of Defense. CNN's Natasha Bertrand, the Washington Post's Alex Horton, and retired Major General Steven J. Lepper take Harry inside a Pentagon transformed by cowboy-in-chief Pete Hegseth. Why is the U.S. blowing up boats near Latin America? Did Hegseth oversee a war crime in the Caribbean? And what are the potential domestic dangers of the legal reasoning powering Trump's new uses of the military? Mentioned in this episode: Natasha's reporting: https://www.cnn.com/profiles/natasha-bertrand-profile#about Alex's reporting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/alex-horton/ General Lepper's analysis: https://www.justsecurity.org/author/leppersteven/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices