Left Face

Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson start with the congressional hearing featuring former special counsel Jack Smith. They argue it was performative clip-hunting ahead of the midterms that buried what Smith actually said about January 6th. They also cover the senator whose "gotcha" text messages fell apart when it came out that Smith was at an Iowa Hawkeyes game, not in Atlanta.

Most of the episode breaks down Secretary Hegseth's annual State of the Forces address, delivered this year to E-6s and O-3s instead of generals. The hosts go through the main pieces:

• Another 20 percent cut to general and flag officers by January
• Project Meridian, the think tank of Elon Musk, Newt Gingrich, and Palmer Luckey
• The new Autonomous Warfare Command
• The American Corps of Cadets ROTC push at schools like Liberty and Hillsdale
• A new Office of Religious Affairs reporting directly to Hegseth
• A proposed "Fortress America" megabase and an energy self-sufficiency mandate for every installation

Dick, a former intelligence analyst, weighs in on where drone warfare is headed. Adam questions what the religious office and the school list are really for.

They close with Tennessee's failed lethal injection and their views on the death penalty, deterrence, and the cost of getting it wrong.

In this live episode recorded at COATI, Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson talk about a contradiction in military life. Service members risk their lives to bring voting to other countries, but veterans and active-duty troops often vote at lower rates than the public they serve.

The hosts share their own stories. They talk about checking out of local politics while moving between duty stations, voting absentee in home states they no longer followed, and not realizing that the Colorado they'd retire to was being shaped by elections they ignored. They make the case for Colorado to drop state income tax on active-duty pay so service members have a reason to register here. They also explain why Colorado Springs' southeast side, with turnout well below the rest of the city, has the most at stake.

The conversation then turns to the midterms. They cover the Iran war as a motivator for military families, the eight suicide attempts the Navy confirmed in the Lincoln strike group, the growing gap between public will and military orders, and why veterans should use the credibility they carry at the family dinner table. Adam and Dick close with how they each went from active duty to civic engagement and running for office.

Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson cover three stories this week. First, three Republican senators, including John Cornyn, are calling for an investigation after reports that a Russian oligarch with ties to Putin paid for part of Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding celebration. The hosts compare it to the Hunter Biden coverage and to a House ethics filing that let Rep. Jeff Crank accept wedding-related gifts from donors without itemizing them.

Next, Dick gets on his soapbox about a Northern California sheriff who seized ballots without a warrant and was ordered to return them. The conversation turns to the "constitutional sheriff" folklore, pandemic-era standoffs in rural New Mexico, and a county clerk's publicity stunt about hiring Tina Peters.

The episode closes with an expanded Hormuz Watch on the UN General Assembly, where Trump defended the war and Iran's president held up photos of the girls' school destroyed early in the conflict. Adam and Dick debate whether Iran's selective framing holds up, why the U.S. strike was so hard to defend given how much planning time there was.

Adam and Dick record on backup equipment at Plan B Studios and cover a lot of ground. The episode opens with the Project Taurus town hall, where supporters and a bipartisan group of opponents spoke and City Council voted to delay its decision until a week after the next election instead of adopting a moratorium. Adam, who spoke at the meeting, and Dick, who has built data centers, dig into the military and classified-data sales pitch, the noise claims, and the push for an April moratorium ballot measure. From there: Rep. Thomas Massey's articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth and whether Speaker Johnson sent the House home to avoid them, Mitch McConnell's return to the Senate, Libertarian Party yard signs and why the movement struggles to function as a party, and the Hormuz watch, covering diesel over $6 a gallon, fuel shortages abroad, reports of damage to U.S. bases, and Vice President Vance's back channel calls with generals. Next week's episode is live on Sunday afternoon, starting around 4:55.

Hormuz and the Red Sea heat up as tankers burn and a Saudi pipeline goes dark. Witkoff and Kushner cozy up to Putin in Moscow. The GOP's midterm convention delivers culture-war theater and Trump's out-of-nowhere $5,000 bribe. Plus: the reflecting pool scandal nobody saw coming.

Adam and Dick break down a rough stretch for military leadership and election security. The Secretary of the Army just resigned amid friction with Pete Hegseth, following the ousting of the Army Chief of Staff and roughly 80 general officers pushed out or sidelined — more than half of them women or people of color. They talk through what that institutional knowledge loss actually costs, and where AI-driven weapons systems are already outpacing the ethical debate around them. Then: the Supreme Court's ruling letting the Postal Service restrict mail-in ballot delivery in states that haven't handed over voter rolls, why that looks like a direct federal intrusion on a state-run process, and what it could mean in a state like Colorado where the vast majority of ballots go through the mail. They close with an update on CD5VC's veteran outreach training for candidates and staff, and a preview of the September 27th "Our Voice, Our Future" podcast marathon, including a segment on veteran suicide with the team behind the documentary In Country: The Battle at Home.

Left Face returns with hosts Adam Gillard and Dick Wilkinson digging into the ouster of the Army's chief of staff following an inquiry into a costly helicopter flyby at Kid Rock's property, then turn to a rare competitive debate in Colorado's 5th District between Rep. Jeff Crank and challenger Jessica Killen — covering inflation, tariffs, and each candidate's attempt to distance themselves from their party's edges (Bernie Sanders on one side, Thomas Massie on the other). The hosts dig into tensions between the Democratic Socialists of America and the party's moderate wing, a local data-center moratorium petition effort, the ongoing Hormuz shipping standoff, new "economic D-Day" tariffs on Canada, and the Kennedy Center's contested ballroom/bunker expansion. Veteran perspective, unfiltered commentary, Pike's Peak Region.

After a few weeks off, Left Face is back with a "Russian roulette" grab-bag episode covering the fallout from the Strait of Hormuz standoff — including new casualty numbers, extended ship deployments, and reports of a mental health crisis aboard a carrier still in theater. We break down Trump's Air Force One decoy maneuver leaving a NATO summit in Turkey, an Air Force major's court-martial-bound protest, and a full political roundup: Jon Ossoff's viral shot at the White House, Lindsey Graham's sister stumbling through a Senate debate, and the FBI raid tied to Rep. Eric Swalwell's past ties to a convicted Chinese spy. Veteran perspective, unfiltered commentary, Pike's Peak Region.

Dick and Adam cover Fauci's contempt-of-Congress hearing before Rand Paul's committee, the fallout from Lindsey Graham's death and his sister's appointment to his seat, and the ongoing "where's Mitch McConnell" saga. They dig into Trump's request to the Supreme Court to restrict mail-in voting without an underlying case, the SAVE Act, and what mechanisms — if any — exist to check the 60-day War Powers cycle on Iran. Also: the Hormuz Strait closure, Saudi's muted role in the escalation, and the Doge-cuts-to-food-safety thread connecting a wave of measles cases and blueberry recalls back to the broader budget fight. Plus, a first look at the upcoming live all-day 809 Podcast Collective event downtown.

Adam and Dick track the widening Iran conflict as Trump's war notification clock resets past 60 days, unpack Hegseth's testosterone screening order alongside his beard-waiver crackdown, and dig into a rough week for ICE — shootings in Maine, Houston, and Aurora tied to unqualified personnel and no accountability footage. Adam also reports from inside El Paso County's election audit (spoiler: it checked out, again) before closing on the DSA-backed Maine Senate campaign that torched itself over a Nazi tattoo and a vetting firm's failure.