Standing blocks from Ground Zero on the week of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Paul Rieckhoff opens with the news dropped by New York City Mayor Mamdani: thousands of documents confirming what 9/11 first responders have known and shouted about for 25 years. The government and city leadership were not truthful about the toxins, the danger, or the risk. As a first responder himself, Paul is not surprised — he’s furious about the lack of action. He names the names Mamdani wouldn’t: Giuliani, Bloomberg, Adams. If anyone lied, and it can be proven, they belong in jail. And every politician who plans to show up Friday for a photo op? Stay the hell away. Let it be about the survivors and the heroes.
Then a replay worth revisiting: Paul’s conversation with former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 and the Afghanistan withdrawal. Mullen does something almost no senior leader has done — takes personal responsibility. He walks through the failure of imagination on Iraq, the graveyard-of-empires hubris, the debacle of Abbey Gate, the digital Dunkirk still underway, and why he now names our own division as the single greatest threat to the republic. It’s a masterclass in accountability, humility, and what leadership is supposed to sound like — and a brutal contrast to the bloviating we’ll hear all week.
In this episode
- Paul opens from Lower Manhattan under the Tribute in Light on the week of the 25th anniversary of 9/11
- Mayor Mamdani’s release of thousands of documents confirming the government lied to first responders about post-9/11 toxins
- “They lied. Our friends died. And more will die this week.” — Paul names Giuliani, Bloomberg, and Adams by name
- Why every politician — Trump, Mamdani, all of them — should stay the hell away from the 9/11 ceremony
- Admiral Mike Mullen on why the number one threat to America is no longer the debt — it’s us
- Mullen’s rare admission of personal responsibility for the Afghanistan surge and what he underestimated
- Abbey Gate, the August 31 deadline, and why the withdrawal was sequenced backwards
- The digital Dunkirk still underway — Mullen personally working to get Afghan families out weeks after the fall
- How close January 6 came to something much worse, from a man who sat in the chair advising presidents
- Why a true independent third-party movement gets crushed by the two-party machine — and what it would actually take
