Mark Hertling

I've been in staff meetings that have been much worse.

So everything's going fine.

Yeah, Tim, I tell you, you know, watching these guys, these ICE officials who we don't know how they're recruited.

We don't know how they're trained.

There's stories now popping up about some lapses and even vetting them.

Another story about some of them being January 6th participants.

But the thing that's just been bothering the hell out of me is the fact that these guys are wearing masks with no identification whatsoever.

And they're thugs.

They are thugs, and I'll add to that cowards.

You give me any one of those guys without a weapon and without a badge and without an association to the federal forces, and they would be a nobody.

But they're using that generated power to really—

influence what's going on in the street in a negative way.

They're countering what our constitution says is right in terms of the freedom of speech and the right to legal protest.

It's why we formed our nation and given it some of the values and ideology we have, they are just counter to everything we are.

So, you know, after watching these for a couple of months, these guys doing these kinds of things, every time I saw them, it reminded me

of the Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi police forces early on, because they would all wear masks and they would tell their commanders and the US forces, well, we're wearing it because people don't like us associating with the US military.

Okay, got that.

But as they became more and more

capable and more and more effective in terms of security actions, and they were doing things the right way, we noticed that both the Army and the police forces started taking those masks and kafias and the scars that they were wearing over their face, they were taking them off.

It was because they were generating pride in serving their country.