Former Space Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lehmeier tells Glenn that the timing regarding the China spy balloon is ‘curious’ and that timing ‘almost always’ matters. He explains why having a balloon in the headlines likely is better for Biden than other, underreported scandals. Plus, Lehmeier tells Glenn about possible alien/intelligent life beyond Earth and our current Cold War with China…

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

GLENN: Matthew Lohmeier is on with us. Hello, Matthew. How are you?

MATTHEW: Glenn, I'm well, thank you.

GLENN: Now, I should say thank you, first of all, for your courage. You had a nice position, as a lieutenant colonel, at space force.

And you came out, and started talking about the dangers of CRT. And what was being done by the Pentagon.

And they didn't like that very much.

MATTHEW: Yeah. Well, thanks for first bringing up this. I did have a good position, so to speak. And I was in command of our nation's space-based missile enterprise, which implies senior military leaders at some point, did, in fact, trust me to be a good leader.

And to make proper strategic assessments, and what not.

But the fact is, I didn't just write an exposé, or a book that I then made public, without first bringing up some of my concerns with senior military leaders themselves.

The entire chain of command of the space force, had been aware of what should properly be characterized as overt left-wing political talking points. Anti-American sentiment in the workplace.

And I was bringing that to their attention. Which included Marxist rooted Critical Race Theory.

In the form of diversion and inclusion trainings.

But they agreed with me, that it was a big problem. That the fact is, who are you going to hold accountable for it?

Are we in the proper climate, that wee created for ourselves, to hold some of these activists accountable?

And apparently, the answer was no, we weren't in a position to try and hold them accountable. And so that led to a former written inspector general complaints, which was dismissed right during the election season, in fact.

And so I wrote a book about it. That was in a unique position, in uniform, to see what was happening, within the ranks of the military. And how divisive that ideology can be.

I've often said, what Marxism does to someone in China, it will do to an American.

And CRTers were increasingly aware, destroys everything it touches.

So it was important to talk up about that, but we've got, as you've mentioned, bigger concerns on the horizon and happening in the country at the moment.

GLENN: Well, before we leave this subject, today I found out that the recruiting for the military is down 25 percent off-goal.

And I saw what the military said. They said, that's because the youth. You know, they just -- they -- they don't see the military as relevant.

Really? How come all of a sudden, after Afghanistan, and after the CRT nonsense.

Your recruiting went down the tubes. That didn't play a role?

MATTHEW: Well, yeah.

One thing, it's easy to tell at a glance, at any given moment, how our recruiting efforts are doing.

But what it's not easy to assess realtime at a glance, is how our retention efforts are doing.

And that's often left out of the headlines. But I talk to service members all the time. They reach out, both thanking me for my book, and also seeking for help, quite frankly. And how to navigate the current politicized workplace in the uniformed services. But they are telling me.

And this is anecdotal, I get it.

but it's real world on the ground Intel, that they and a bunch of people, that are currently in uniform, their active duty service commitments aren't up yet.

But when they are up, they will be getting out of the service.

And so not only do we face recruitment issues. We're going to have a really difficult time, this year and in the next year, retaining folks who have served for a very long time. It's a really tough position to be in, and it's not just COVID's fault.

And it's not, you know, pick the issues that senior defense officials want to point a finger at. And shame and blame.

It's the very policies pushed down the pipe, and hoisted upon our service members, that's hurting morale. And dis-incentivizing them from continued service.

GLENN: We're talking to former Space Force Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier.

You can find him at MatthewLohmeier.com. Or follow him on Twitter. @MatthewLohmeier.

I want to switch to the balloons that we've had. I mean, you, as, you know -- you were in charge of our space missile defense.

Do you think we're shooting aliens out of the sky in balloons?

MATTHEW: You know, I'm open to a lot of ideas. But I will tell you, the entirety.

The timing of all of this is really interesting as well.

One of the things that's become quite clear over the last ten days, is that senior military leaders, Jim Mattis included, apparently. And White House officials have known about Chinese spy balloons for years, violating the sovereignty of countries around the globe, and potentially including our own, and apparently not informing the sitting commander-in-chief, at the time. Why we've decided to start shooting them out of the sky. Over north America now, is, in fact, curious. The timing is curious.

And perhaps the timing matters. It almost always does. And perhaps it's really convenient. This sounds like conspiracy theories. And, in fact, it's not.

The fact that we've been trained for the past couple of years, to ask important questions. Perhaps it's really convenient to have those shoot-downs in the headlines right now, instead of any number of things that have been in the headlines.

I mean, there's been a classified document scandal at Joe Biden's residence. There are more revelations about Hunter Biden's corruption with his dad, while he was the vice president, and in dealings with Middle Eastern countries and in China, than at any other time that we've known of before now.

And we've got information that's coming to light about Jim Biden's dealings with the Saudis. We've got a reporting, that came from Seymour Hersh.

GLENN: Hersh. Do you believe that?

MATTHEW: Well, I think it's entirely plausible. And that's important. The guy has done phenomenal reporting for decades. And some of the details he shares in an interview I watched yesterday, are entirely plausible.

GLENN: Right.

MATTHEW: And, in fact, you take a look back, earlier last year, and Joe Biden, because he can't help himself. Is making statements about the Nord Stream two pipeline, ceasing to exist, if Russia, in fact, invades Ukraine.

They do, and then the Nord Stream 2 pipeline ceases to exist. At least temporarily.

And then of course there's the imminent release of the Jeffrey Epstein visitor logs. Unless -- so all of that is swirling about in headlines. And then the shoot-downs come.

Now, I think that the first balloon, that we shot down, was in fact, a spy balloon from China.
They essentially admitted as much.

GLENN: What do they get, that they couldn't get a satellite.

MATTHEW: Well, altitude matters.

So every country that has a space faring capability is engaged in spying on our adversaries.

But you do that, outside of the sovereign airspace of nations. And in space. And we do that with optical capabilities. And we do it from higher up as well. But the closer you are to the earth, the fact of the matter, the better images you're able to take. But what's most concerning, not just more images.

I'm guessing -- I shouldn't say I'm guessing. There are enough images, the world over. It's like, what good does one more image do?

The fact is, depending on what capabilities were aboard that first balloon that we shot down, I think it was on the board in February.

There's any number of other signals, transmissions, code, that could have been either interfered with, tampered with, or received or retrieved by the Chinese Communist Party.

And so is this a first-time event? Likely not, apparently.

But it's totally bogus, that we were told it's the American people. That the concern was for the American people on the ground.

And that's why we weren't shooting it, out of the sky, and we're letting it traverse the entirety of the country.

I mean, any American city, who has been at the commercial airliner. Can take a look around. And tell you, that most places over the continental United States, don't have people living there.

I mean, it's just desolate. And the moment that thing left overhead, any major US city, it should have been brought down.

And it didn't need to be obliterated. I mean, we could have just brought it to its knees, and brought it down, and kept it intact, and tried to be transparent with the American people, about what it is that we think we saw.

And yet, we didn't do any of that. We shoot it down over water, send it to FBI headquarters of all things, and then complain that we can't quite recover all of the capabilities that were aboard the balloon.

I mean, and here's something that is important as a principle for your listener to keep in mind. In relative peacetime, it's difficult enough, as we've seen.

To stitch together, an accurate view of the things that are taking place in politics. But when you're talking about relative wartime. Increased and heightened wartime. It will be near impossible. Because deception is an important part of grand strategy.

GLENN: I unfortunately think that we're getting deception from our own government, to our own people.

PAT: Right.

GLENN: And, you know, one of those things is that China is the new model, which I believe they believe.

But -- but that, you know, they're -- they're -- that they're not hostile to us.

There is plenty of evidence, that they are fighting a war, that we refuse to involve ourselves, or even recognize.

And we're going to pay a high price for this. Do you think that's right or wrong?

MATTHEW: I think it is right. In fact, you almost -- okay. If I was Xi Jinping, I would try to avoid a shooting match with the United States at all costs.

In fact, I didn't see the show that you had mentioned that you had done last night.

GLENN: Uh-huh.

MATTHEW: But you referenced a 1999 manual. I presume you're talking about the work you're calling unrestricted warfare.

GLENN: Yes, exactly right.

MATTHEW: By these two Chinese colonels.

Nothing -- in that book, the overarching premise of the strategy to defeat the West, and the United States in particular, is that nothing is off the table, as far as how you pursue the destruction of the United States.

It doesn't have to be direct kinetic conventional warfare and tactics.

And so, again, the American people have to ask themselves, the question.

Must military force be used to destroy a country?

And the answer is of course not.

And the Chinese are aware of that. And so to your point, Xi Jinping, more than frankly, many American people are willing to acknowledge at this point, is well aware of the fact that we're in a kind of code civil war ourselves.

So that combination in combination with the fact that we are indeed in a Cold War with China. And the Chinese Communist Party, and Xi Jinping, is a terrible combination.

And if I was him, I would sit and watch, our own disintegration, from within our own borders.

I would watch bad policy decisions being made by people like Joe Biden and the Biden administration.

And I would cheer that on, and I would influence it in every possible way, that did not involve direct kinetic operations, so that I could emerge. The benevolent superpower, we didn't need to shed a drop of blood, to rise to preeminence in the world stage.

Not only does that allow him to keep some semblance of a reputation intact, it allows him to make claims about the superiority of their worldview and ideology.

The Communist, the Marxist, the Maoist worldview, and it was superior to the capitalist worldview.

And, look, they crumbled under the weight of their own foolishness, while we emerged the -- the global hegemony, not just a regional hegemony, but the global hegemony.

GLENN: All right. Back in just a second. This is a fascinating conversation, and I want to go back to space in a minute.

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(music)
We are talking to Matthew Lohmeier, former Space Force Lieutenant Colonel, a hero in my book. About everything that's going on right now in the world.

Matthew, a quick question.

Do you see war as something we are blindly marching towards right now?

MATTHEW: That's entirely possible.

If you take a look at the national security strategy, and the national defense strategy, both documents are clear that the United States considers China a top security and defense priority.

Now, we're not the war department anymore. We're the Defense Department.

And we're very careful on how we approach a lot of these things. But the fact is, that's been true for a number of years.

We're in a Cold War with China right now.

And it's easy to look back in retrospect, at the USSR, first Cold War within and kind of paint it into a neat picture.

But the fact is, this Cold War idea, is based upon an ideological, geopolitical struggle for global influence.

And just like the Cold War, we're involved in an ideological and geopolitical struggle. For global influence, with China. And they consider themselves at war with the United States. They're just going to be careful about how they approach them.

GLENN: Right. I have about 90 seconds left.

And I just have to ask you. I've seen more stuff from UFOs come from the Pentagon than ever before.

And, you know, the people that I talked to, I strangely find myself at a place going, I think that we may be headed towards a time when we're going to be visited by somebody.

Do you believe -- do you believe that?

MATTHEW: You need to give me more time than the remaining 60 seconds for questions like that.

Here's -- it's funny, I was just chatting with some folks last night about this.

You know, we're quick to want to believe in something like alien visitors from another star system or another planet.

And slow to believe anymore even stories from the Bible, that angels, in fact, come and visited the earth. Now, did they come in balloons?

Absolutely not.

We've got an increasing global military threat from advanced nations all over.

It's far more likely that much of what people have been seeing, has to do with governments.

Now, that said, I am entirely open to the idea, that, of course, intelligent life exists out there.

But to the point you made earlier, are they going to come in their -- advanced spacecraft, just to get shot down over a field? Over the United States, and say, well, shoot, we didn't anticipate the Americans had missiles.
(laughter)
I mean, so there's a lot -- a lot of easy --

GLENN: Right.

MATTHEW: Speculative conclusions we can jump to. But often the simple, realistic answer is more likely the right one. And governments are at work right now, vying for power. And so much of what we're going to see in the headlines has to do with that. And probably not aliens. But about it you want to get a visit from aliens, maybe, you know, get yours some religion and pray a little bit more.

GLENN: Good for you. Good for you. Matthew Lohmeier.

Thank you so much.

Former space force lieutenant colonel, author of the book, Irresistible Revolution. You can find him or follow him @MatthewLohmeier. And MatthewLohmeier.com.