with me now, courtney cubie. it is good the speak to you. give us a sense of what the security establishment right now in the u.s. is assessing taking place in syria. >> that's the big question here. what we know so far, this rebel group has taken three of syria's five largest cities. now, with the acknowledgment that they have taken homes and why that is so important is because that puts them essentially on a direct path to damascus, and that is what u.s. officials are telling us they are concerned is going to happen. the belief is that this rebel group could in fact take damascus relatively soon. now hts is an affiliate that used to be part of a terror network throughout that region. it is a u.s. foreign terror organization designated by the united states. and the director of national intelligence says hts has a goal of toppling the assad regime and installing a religious islamic rule or law. that is their goal. essentially putting in sharia law in syria. we heard from a number. i'm here at the reagan national defense former in california.

[indiscernible conversations] >> ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back courtney cubie. >> thank you so much. please continue your meal, anyone who has not done. the desert is amazing, so i highly recommend you finish all of it. it is army navy game. think of all the calories you will burn tomorrow when you are cheering, right? eat up, friends. our next speaker is the senior vice president for leadership programs and a chief learning officer at the national medal of honor center for leadership. that is a long title. a former u.s. army officer with the 101st airborne division. yeah, hey. he previously served at johns hopkins carey school of business. please welcome to the podium dr. justin fash. >> good afternoon, everyone. it was almost two years ago that tom came to me and said i would like to do an event around the army-navy game. and i was prepping for my classes at hopkins and i said, i had the of the perfect name for that. i had been reading a book that talks about the idea in business called were the rivals. here we are at an annual event that i think we are going to do, the wo

our courtney cubi breaking that story yesterday about how his fox colleagues were concerned very recentlyfrom these relatively small veterans organizations that he was in charge of, and then you're asking him to be in charge of an organization, a department with a budget that's nearly a trillion dollars. i think that's why you're seeing many of these u.s. senators starting to question whether or not it's worth the political capital to spend on a nominee like hegseth. i think the big difference though, between hegseth and the matt gaetz nomination which we also saw go down in flames, is that pete hegseth is someone that the senators generally like as a person. they find him to be charming. they have had a good experience with him in his capacity as a fox news host and on the campaign trail because he's essentially kind of a republican advocate for many of these different senators, whereas matt gaetz, many of them did not have a very good personal relationship with him. in fact, in many respects, matt gaetz was just disliked. so that i think is giving him a little bit more runway than gaetz