Mark Esper

Yeah, and politics is doubly hard because you have politicians who are trying to gain political points.

And so they'll kind of try and attack you, criticize you, pull a thread of something that is a quarter truth and kind of portray you as something else.

And to me, I've always found that very frustrating, very troubling because I like to play above board, be honest with people.

be up front.

But that's the nature of politics, and unfortunately so.

But I think you have to just kind of try and stay above that and stick to your core principles and be very clear about what your priorities are and who you are.

And again, I grew up in the sense of beginning West Point at age 18 and was taught a core set of values and fundamentals from the West Point motto of duty, honor, country.

But to the basic things, we talked about some of those

you know, train as you fight earlier, but always it was put your people first.

In other words, in other words, make sure you're taking good care of your people, which means hard training and discipline and all that other stuff, but also making sure they're cared for.

And as P as, as long as people understand you have their best interests at heart, I think they end up trusting you and it can kind of sift through all the noise, all the politics, all the criticism.

Yeah, and many times in politics, the truth doesn't matter.

It's, you know, how can you advance your goals through whatever means?

How can you elevate yourself?

How can you...

uh promote your own your own re-election or promotion and so you have that at play too which again is not typically a military ethic at all the military ethic is about promoting and enhancing the team even to the point of self-sacrifice and so they're very different environments to operate across over right yeah that's right yeah and as secretary of defense you have to have a foot in both camps you have to

protect the military and the institution.

But on the other hand, you have to be smart enough, clever enough, adept enough to play in the political environment.

And, you know, you can get caught between, betwixt and between on some of those situations.

Oh, absolutely.