My New YouTube Channel 🎬

VIDEO: We talk Hegseth, U.S. military coups and what the Pentagon is saying privately

The first episode of our new YouTube channel responds to the backlash against our story this week about the avalanche of leaks threatening to bury Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Help us grow by subscribing to our channel (link here), where you can find the full episode.

Called “KLIPNEWS with Ken Klippenstein & Bill Arkin” (Bill, my editor, wouldn’t agree to “KlippyLeaks” 😩), we launched the channel so that subscribers can hear us go longer on stories that don’t always fit neatly into a written article. We also wanted to give people a window into the sometimes often heated debates Bill and I have on the issues we’re covering.

I’ve always hated journalism’s disembodied voice from nowhere. That convention allows the media to play god by pretending journalists are perfectly dispassionate observers bestowing the objective truth, like god giving Moses the 10 commandments on a mountaintop. In actuality, news articles are often the result of a debate between reporter and editor who don’t always see things the same way.

I don’t understand why media tries so hard to hide this reality. It seems natural and even healthy that people have different perspectives. I guess admitting this would require media to concede it isn’t the authoritative account of whatever it’s covering.

In our YouTube discussion, Bill and I agree on the importance of civilian control of the military and that it’s being eroded in recent years. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump waived the rule prohibiting retired generals from serving as Secretary of Defense — which hadn’t previously been done since the 1950s.

Not good!

But where we disagree is on why that’s important. Bill sees the necessity of civilian control as deriving from the Constitution, whereas I see it as more of a common sense thing.

We also caught a lot of flak for, in the view of some readers, being pro-Hegseth — which I am not.

So in the YouTube segment, I asked Bill point blank if he’s a Hegseth fan:

 KEN: Bill, are you a Hegseth fan?

BILL: Look, Hegseth is a buffoon and he's obviously not qualified to run the Pentagon, and he is an idiot. But, he is the Senate confirmed civilian leader of an organization, the military, that the founding fathers intended not to rule themselves. That they intended that the military be accountable to our elected representatives.

And, as much as we might hate Trump or hate Hegseth, I'm more concerned that we adhere to the principles of the Constitution, which means that you can't destroy the Constitution in order to defend it.

Watch the rest of Bill’s response, and mine, on our YouTube channel below. Oh, and let us know in the comments who’s right (Ken).