CLEARING THE FOG with Lt. Col. Chris Ophardt 5/21/26

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Clearing the fog with Lieutenant Colonel Christophart's hidden military narrative. On the Liz Camelin channel with Nick Summers, Talk 94.5.

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Oh my goodness, he's here. The Lieutenant Colonel from the Army. Christopher Hart. Good morning, sir.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

But can you come here and sh whip my computer into shape?

SPEAKER_01 0:24

Yeah. Normally that means it ends on the trash heap and goes into the electronic shredder. Perfect. Outstanding.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

Goes on the pile of electronic waste.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 0:36

Anyway, how are you, sir?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

I'm doing great. It's, I mean, Memorial Day's coming up.

SPEAKER_03 0:40

What do you think about the um yeah?

SPEAKER_01 0:46

So I'm giving the sermon at 11 o'clock at the Myrtle Beach Christian Church right up the road. Yeah. So we're gonna Do you go there? I do.

SPEAKER_03 0:54

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Yeah. It started back in uh November. Nick Nick slowly groaned me down.

SPEAKER_03 1:01

No why do you think that's it? Talk about recruiting.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

No.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

He is a recruit too.

SPEAKER_01 1:05

Yeah, it was the nice part was he just said, you should come check it out. Yeah. And then the youth group came and my daughter met him, and then it was like my daughter was like, Hey, you should go check that out. Next thing you know, we're all going to church there. They have a great youth group. The youth group is amazing. Like the kids love it. They really love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Future of that church right there.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Exactly. Well, that's that's the whole point. You know, you want to get the kids involved. And they want to they want to be there, you know. Some are retired or I'm a uh recovering uh Catholic, as I like to say.

SPEAKER_00 1:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

So we all say that. Yes. So, you know, it was like at by the end, it was like, do I really want to go to church anymore? It's just not fun. Which, you know, I know it all has to do with your priest at the time and what parish you're in, all that good stuff. But you know, that's why I here found Myrtle Beach Christian.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

Yeah. Okay. Well, there you go. There's a live endorsement.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

There's my uh my my Myrtle Beach weekend.

SPEAKER_03 1:55

That's a really so uh we'll be in the parade in the Market Common on the Veterans Welcome Home and Resource Center's Deuce and a half trip.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

We'll be yeah, we'll be in the trip. Ooh, the truck. Deuce and a half. Javi's coming and my daughter, we're gonna be whipping out t-shirts. It's many people's t-shirt cannon. Oh no, my arm.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Your arm? Yeah. Which is a canon. I've seen it. If I can hit you in the head, it's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

If you're ten points.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Headshots are ten points. Two points if it lands in a in a puddle. Oh, yeah. That's extra points because people still have any puddles right now.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

So I was gonna say, what does that mean there's actually rain? So the golf courses and your yards.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

It might rain a little on Saturday, but it'll be after the parade.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

Anyway, um, what have you been paying attention to lately? Because we have the the Cuban indictment. We have what's going on in Iran. Is Trump being a wimp? We heard um that he Netanyahu wants him to bomb again, and he said no, everybody stand down. Trump is saying let's let's find this peace deal. We have Johnny Joey Jones re-enlisting.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yeah, so so much to talk about.

SPEAKER_03 3:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

So we've got oh well uh Johnny Jones, we can talk about that. J J J Triple J. Triple J. Well, Triple J. Triple H, Triple J. Um I mean, it's it's a recruiting tool. I mean, that's what it is. And as he said, and there's examples throughout history of doing this with people for recruiting, um, for you know, wounded warrior care. So who better to go talk to people that have been injured in combat or training accidents than him to explain what's gonna happen and how they're gonna take care of you? Yeah, how to best navigate how to best navigate it, how to do so. I mean that's that's what it is.

SPEAKER_03 3:40

You guys are both people who served, and so I don't see it as a good recruiting tool, quite honestly. But I I I'm not a military person, so it's one of those.

SPEAKER_01 3:53

No, it does not recruit people like, hey, look at it I want to be like that guy. It's right, they're gonna take care of me if something does happen. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

That's where it comes into. That guy can do it.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Well, uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

I mean, and I should get off my butt and do it.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

It's like when you meet someone who's um deaf, but they've are running a business and they've overcome these things. Like, is that a recruiting tool, or is it look at this person and the strength that they've had and and if anything happens to me, because quite frankly, as I I've learned too many times in Iraq and Afghanistan, you're more likely to die not in combat when serving in the military than you are in combat. So you could be driving down the road home from whatever.

SPEAKER_03 4:35

We've seen many of those stories guy changing his tire on the side of an American highway. You know, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

So it's like, how are you gonna overcome? Is there a brotherhood? Is there a sisterhood that's gonna help you overcome that?

SPEAKER_03 4:47

And that's one of the things that's the one thing, you know, I it's like your story's already written.

SPEAKER_01 4:52

Right. I mean, in a way. So I mean I like to think I can change it, but I know that I'm not.

SPEAKER_03 4:58

Well, someone described it to me as this when the water is coming down the waterfall, it'll go in and out of all the rocks, but essentially you all end up in the same water basin. Yep. And so you may take a left and a right and whatever.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

I like that.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

But you know, your story's already written. And if you kiss it up to God and you try not to worry about things and try not to let certain things imprint on you, live with every day. You can just try and be happy. I mean, it's hard. It's hard to be happy with everything that's going on.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

I mean you're you're you're heading in the right direction, correct? You have a choice of making it so that it doesn't end up well. Like you don't end up in the basin because you can not end up in the basin. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

Yeah, but the people who are always worrying about everything. Um, and I I'm a I'm definitely guilty of that. Like I worry about a lot of, you know, a lot of my life is um uh is keeping others alive.

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

You know, family members, pets. I mean, I have to keep everybody Me.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

You know, it's hard.

SPEAKER_03 6:06

It's you know, and a lot of people they understand what I'm talking about. A lot of people depending on you. You you're going through that, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:12

You know, family, friends.

SPEAKER_03 6:15

Yeah. And so um, you know, you have bigger fish to fry and whatever's written is written.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Just happened.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Yeah. It's just are you gonna take the easy road to that? Or are you gonna make it more difficult? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

So yeah. Um, but Cuba, speaking of controlling your own road. So Cuba, I think they're using the Venezuelan playbook here.

SPEAKER_03 6:35

Um I know I'm thinking death ray all over again. You think they're gonna go in and so that's the problem.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

I don't know if they are um because we don't have the assets like we did in because they're all over in the Middle East right now. Um, but I mean they know the regime's gonna call up.

SPEAKER_03 6:50

Do you think they have drones from Russia and Iran like Axios reported? Really?

SPEAKER_01 6:54

100%, yes.

SPEAKER_03 6:56

You think that's true?

SPEAKER_01 6:57

Absolutely no doubt. I don't think we see it as a threat. It's not a threat, though. I mean, they're not gonna bomb Miami. I mean, they just know that that's not in their best interest. You have to remember, all these people, these are why can't we find them?

SPEAKER_03 7:08

It's a small island. Where the heck are the drones? I don't think we care.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Well, I mean, you gotta remember that they're not when you think of these drones, they're not the big ones you see on TV, the reapers and stuff. It's like I have four four of them in a closet at home right now. They're the same size as the right now.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

You're really scaring me.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Well, I mean, because that's what you buy off the shelf, and that's what they're using, is essentially off-the-shelf little drones that you buy your kid at Christmas.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

It's surveillance. Seriously, that's surveillance stuff.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

Surveillance stuff.

SPEAKER_03 7:36

So 300 drone drones.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Are they that's what we call a drone?

SPEAKER_03 7:40

They're in an airplane hangar somewhere.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

It's probably somebody's closet. That's how small they are. They're probably I mean, that that's it's in a garage. In a garage. I mean, that's how that's why it's so hard to find them.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

We have been conditioned to think now, now that a drone is when it really just what you said. It's a spread munitions.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

So many of them are spread munitions when we're in the military. So we used to have missiles that put all these little bomb droplets. Oh my goodness, you know, they wanted to make treaties to outlaw them and everything. That's all these are, is there's you know, a hundred tiny little drones with small explosives put on it that when put all together make a big explosion.

SPEAKER_03 8:17

So is um Trump said he's gonna stop by Cuba and pick it up on the way home from Iran.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah, just pick up the whole country. I mean, why not?

SPEAKER_03 8:27

That's what he said. I'm gonna stop by there on the way home.

SPEAKER_01 8:29

I mean, again, we go back to the the Cuban people, I I get it, they're oppressed, they took all their guns away. I mean, we we see the similarities here to all these regimes as people scream for gun control. Um and uh the rest of the Communist Party, now that we're you know, this is his brother, right?

SPEAKER_00 8:50

Yes, Raul.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

Who's also in his 80s now.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

95 years old.

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Yeah, so it's like when so essentially we're saying, who's gonna step up and say, hey man, we really don't want to do this anymore? Like we're so tired of it.

SPEAKER_03 9:04

I have to say something about this. I mean, there's something about how communism extends the life of the leaders.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:12

Because there are a lot of They live great. Someone explain this to me. Like, so how do these people stay in power forever? They never age, they like never get sick, they never So I mean part of it is I don't understand that you know, the the liberal left loves to crush rich people, right?

SPEAKER_01 9:31

And they're oh, it's all the rich, it's capitalism's evil evil, you know, affordability is just slang for socialism. We're gonna we're gonna have the government put price controls in. Somebody still has to be in charge. So it normally ends up being a dictator who consolidates power over the party, the socialist party of whatever, or the communist party, whatever, and then they get all the money. Yeah, they get all the money, they get all the health care, they get all of the top drugs, meanwhile, everyone else is equal, quote unquote, beneath them because this is an amazing system. They're all equal except for me who's in charge, and all of my cronies who are in charge. Yeah. I mean, you look at the liberal states right now, it works the same way.

SPEAKER_03 10:12

I know it.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

You know, I mean, that's who gets the best of everything, the people in charge, because that's how we do it. Yeah, that's how socialism works. And speaking of, you got you know, a governor in Maryland who more who I've just learned, which apparently I was out of the loop, completely inflated his whole military record.

SPEAKER_03 10:32

Yeah, so tell us about that. You wanted to bring that to our attention.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

This was crazy. You sent me the article I read, I was like, what?

SPEAKER_01 10:37

I was so angry. My brother uh tell us about this. Sent this up to me.

SPEAKER_03 10:41

So tell us why it matters.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

So it matters because well, let's say this. If you're in a bar and you hear a guy talking about all his military stories and it's just random, like public place, he probably didn't actually do all that stuff. I mean, that's like the story, right? You inflate a little bit, it's the guy, he's probably had a couple drinks. Um, but it's important because you don't want to misrepresent what you did. A, for your own person, we talked about you know, JJJ to open. He, I mean, and we talked a story off the air about yeah, he struggles with how he got injured and he, you know, took it let his guard down for a couple seconds, and someone else died. Someone else died because of it, and he's living that nightmare every day. He's like, I looked away for two seconds and and did the wrong thing in his mind did the wrong thing. Who knows? Exactly. So now you have a guy that's bragging about things that he didn't do.

SPEAKER_03 11:32

Not not him, not him, somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 11:35

Um Westmore, governor of Maryland. So West Moore, governor of Maryland, he's inflating what he did. He says he was special operations, never actually served in a special operations unit.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

That's hard.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Um, says that he was 82nd Airborne, got attached to the 82nd Airborne.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

But if you have somebody who's lying. If you have somebody that's lying about something that's so easily verified, what does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Mind-boggling. You talk about the the liberal establishment and the newspapers like to say that's the fourth estate. We fact-check everybody. Like, how many times do we fact-check Trump on a daily basis, right? And they didn't fact-check the governor of Maryland? Like the guy was running for Maryland. So right now Is that stolen valor? So the problem is he never he never so stolen valor is specific to awards. So he never inflated his awards. He inflated his jobs of what he did in the military.

SPEAKER_03 12:31

It's kind of like it's a character flaw, so it's a character flaw.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

Now they'll use army regulations says that he, you know, got improper. He did, but he's not in the army anymore. So and he never retired, so it's not like Kelly, where you can bring him back on active duty and try to punish him. But you should call him out and you should ride him. I mean, it's it's like the guy and the World War II and Vietnam veterans know this. It's the guy that goes in and says, I was over in in Vietnam, and he actually never left the airfield in California.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Like Blumenthal.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

Like like Blumenthal, yes. Another good example. So it and and it's and it's and it's this gray area, it's not a gray area. He's wrong 100%. But there's no like legal ramifications for it. So that's where you struggle. And there's the article has like eight or nine examples. Like he didn't just do it once, like he didn't misspeak once. Multiple occasions in different areas in commencement speeches at military academies, in interviews with military magazines, like it was almost like he was so upset that he didn't serve and do the things that everybody thought he did, so he felt like he needed to lie about it.

SPEAKER_03 13:42

That's so it was a lot about a person.

SPEAKER_01 13:45

100%.

SPEAKER_03 13:46

And it's that imposter syndrome. So if he's willing to lie about something that's so easily, what else is he lying about?

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Yeah, I mean, I face the ch I face the challenge all the time. That people go, Oh, you went to West Point because I worked there. No, I did not go to West Point. I went to Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. Plug. Um, but I was stationed at West Point, or I was an artilleryman that went with an infantry unit. You just literally it takes two seconds. You know, I was telling Nick the brochure at my church had colonel, C O L dot, and which is not my proper rank. I am a colonel, but I'm a lieutenant colonel, and the nickname is colonel is when you walk around. So I just said simply like, hey, can you just change it? It was one week, you can change it. But a lot of people would have been like, Oh, what's the big deal? Just let it go. No, you can't let that stuff go. You have it's it's I never achieved that rank. I'm never gonna tell anyone that I was a colonel. I was a lieutenant colonel.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

And the nickname when people come up to me can be colonel. That is appropriate protocols, but I am not a colonel. The full bird colonel is what we used to call them. Full bird colonel. I was just gonna say it. Yeah, full bird.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Full bird colonel. So quick question from the text line. Someone's just wondering, uh, you you have been kind of your opinion on the Secretary of War, Hegseth hasn't always been the greatest. Wondering if anything has changed, or do you still feel feel he's in over his head?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

It's still exactly. We're sitting in Iran right now, and this is where I was worried about Hegeth. Because now Trump has no good options. It's Iran, and honestly, the only thing he has left to do is to restart because Iran is doing the playbook. Wait out the administration, we're gonna draw this out as long as possible until it becomes so painful that people lose elections and then they'll forget about us again. And that's what they're doing, and that should have been brought to him up front, and that's what the Secretary of War is supposed to do. Secretary of the War is like, hey, the generals say we can win, we can, a hundred percent. Mr. President here was talking with the State Department. Here's what could happen if things go wrong.

SPEAKER_00 15:39

But we don't know that he wasn't given that option. We don't, and I think that Trump, I don't think he wants to push the button on anything yet.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

No, he doesn't.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

So I don't blame Heg says. I just that's where I differ with you.

SPEAKER_01 15:50

I know. That's where we've gone back and forth. I just expect a lot out of him, I guess. You know, I got it. But um, and he doesn't necessarily sometimes no, he's never misrepresented his military service. No, but um sometimes it's like you just gotta be more forceful, more forceful. And I sometimes I feel like and he should have been carrying the more forceful, for that goes along with her what are they?

SPEAKER_03 16:16

Like he never flubs anything.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

I do a lot.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Just off air.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

There you go. But he never grows on a micro. It was great talking to everybody. Yes, I do. I make lots of mistakes. He knows I love him, but I won't admit it publicly.

SPEAKER_03 16:32

Yeah. Chris Hope like grows on you.

SPEAKER_01 16:36

I grow on you?

SPEAKER_03 16:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Oh.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

You grew on us. He's like eight feet tall. It's more like you grow on him. Well, you know, when we first met him, I first met him. And I was like, I like this guy. Yeah, he's great. I know, and then look what happened.

SPEAKER_01 16:52

Look what happens.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

I don't even know how many years it's been, but it's been a long time.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Ooh, almost sixty seven years.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

You're part of the family.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

Yeah, I am. We gotta go. Well, Nick Nick again is pulling me off. Yeah, look at the big thing. Gotta pay the bills. Let's pay the bills.