Hillary’s destructive leadership, a Navy SEAL turned media CEO’s perspective

Hillary Clinton represents everything that is bad and needs to be changed about politics in America. She has made a career out of manipulation, character assassination (on the women who slept with her husband), and an orchestrated schizophrenic foreign policy (at best) that has contributed to chaos in the Middle East, which has resulted in a massive human rights crisis dumped on Europe in the form of refugees.  

Trump or Hillary.

Bankruptcy, divorce, and aggressive tax write offs I’ll trade for character assassination, not accepting responsibility in crisis (see Benghazi below), a flawed foreign policy record, and perhaps worst of all, Bill as the first lady.

I have an interesting perspective of having served in two combat zones as a Navy SEAL, a career that included five tours in the Middle East, one in Afghanistan, a mix of other Asian countries, and now ten years on the outside as a business entrepreneur and author who’s traveled extensively abroad. I’ve seen the affects of the last 16 years of Bush and Obama play out on the global chessboard, and it’s a terrible fucking mess. I give them both a fail for their participation in establishing a U.S. foreign policy that has destabilized the Middle East (giving rise to ISIS and civil war in Syria) and created a massive human rights crisis with over half a million dead and more fleeing to Europe.

I have children, the next President is extremely important to their future, and we should take this election very seriously. We only have ourselves to blame for allowing Washington, DC to spoon feed us two terrible candidates.

The media war is in full swing, especially the liberal media but, unfortunately for the news media elitists, we have the Internet, and they don’t much matter anymore.

I can tell you to pay attention to the source (news outlet, and author), their motives and then make up your own mind. Don’t let the media make it up for you.

It’s easy for the New York Times editorial board to look down from their ivory tower and pontificate about what makes up a good leader but I’ll take my leadership recommendations elsewhere thank you. What the fuck does the Times editorial board know about leadership anyway?

What I know about leadership I learned from over a decade in the Navy, mostly serving as a Navy SEAL with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

When you focus on the attributes that make up a good leader, Hillary Clinton scores an F. In fact, if I were to teach a lesson on leadership to a classroom of children she would be an example of how not to lead. 

Benghazi is a case study in leadership failure.

I’ll speak to this overplayed topic only because I know the story intimately and lived it first hand when I received a text from a CIA friend that my best friend was killed in Libya. I cried in a San Diego airport parking lot for 20 minutes before mustering up the courage to call his family, long before the media knew and the official knock at the door that would come. 

To be clear, I don’t blame HRC for the death of four Americans (including my best friend Glen Doherty). Bad things happen in North Africa, it’s a dangerous place, the Americans that died were serving in dangerous roles, I’m sure they all knew and accepted this. It’s not what happened or why that’s important to me, it’s what happened after and that nobody was held accountable.  

A good leader admit mistakes upfront, they own them, it’s the quickest way to move on and learn. A bad one shifts blame, points fingers, and covers up. The latter is Hillary to the core. She took zero personal responsibility for the security and policy failures that directly contributed to the death of four Americans under her watch as Secretary of State. Instead she spun up the well oiled blame machine, and started calling in powerful favors curated from her elite connections in Washington and the New York media. 

She also told the Doherty family everything would be ok. We would come to learn very soon after she made this comment to the family, that everything would not be ok, far from it. 

Glen’s body was returned to his family by the US government without even a basic allowance to bury him.  Just a few attaboys from Uncle Sam. Not one dollar was contributed by the US government to his funeral but, he was touted as a hero and used in the national press by both politicians from all sides for political gain. 

His friends and I paid to give him a proper burial because the current administration would not. I’ll say it again because it’s hard to believe, “his friends and I paid for his funeral and burial expenses because we didn’t think the additional burden should be placed on his family and estate,” end quote.

 It would take over four years for the CIA to finally be shamed into paying out funds associated with his mandatory life insurance policy (there was a loophole that relieved the policy from paying out upon his death). 

Is this how we take care of our heroes these days? 

The poor treatment of Glen’s estate and the empty promises told to his family by Hillary Clinton are what motivated me to write, Benghazi: The Definitive Report with Jack Murphy.

The book was extensively sourced from CIA and State Department witnesses, it would detail the arm’s-length coverup of the truth, and witness coercion under the leadership of Hillary Clinton’s State Department.   If you want to read the full story I suggest you get the book. 

In Summary

I have a twelve year-old daughter, she’s amazing, and a natural leader. She inspires me every day. I would love to see a strong woman leader in the White House because it would set a good example for her and others, but HRC is not that woman. She represents the political royal elite of America, someone who’s clawed her way to the top, lying and cheating along the way, and left a trail of dead bodies and ruined reputations. She embodies poor leadership to the core. She’s a vicious boss people are scared of, Hillary is not a leader. 

You can fantasize about other candidates but the harsh reality is that this is a two candidate race. Hillary or Donald.

We have to choose one, and when it comes down to choosing House of Cards or The Apprentice, I’ll take the latter. The media has tried to make a monster out of Trump but, the true evil lies behind the soulless gaze of Hillary Clinton into the good hearts of Americans. 

Featured image courtesy of The New York Times.