Interview With Navy Secretary Ray Mabus

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Comedy Central
October 6, 2009

The Daily Show (Comedy Central), 11:00 PM
JON STEWART: Welcome back. My guest tonight – he is the United States secretary of the navy. Please welcome to the program, Secretary Ray Mabus.
(Applause.)
Welcome, sir.
SEC. RAY MABUS: Thank you.
STEWART: Nice to see you. Are you – do they salute you when you are – you’re a civilian in charge of the Navy, but what is your official – are you considered ranked? Do they salute you? How do they address you?
MABUS: Oh, yeah. They salute you.
STEWART: They do salute you.
MABUS: They don’t salute the secretary of agriculture, but they salute you. (Laughter.)
STEWART: Can you imagine if they saluted the secretary of agriculture? One of these – hey, potato head, nice to see you.
You are in charge of the Navy but also the Marines. Not everybody understands it’s also – the Marines are under your office as well.
MABUS: That’s right.
STEWART: Which is the stronger – (laughter) – in terms of fighting force?
MABUS: I love all my children equally. (Laughter.) You know, you don’t go out of your way to make either Marines or sailors, which includes SEALs, angry.
STEWART: Navy SEALs?
MABUS: Navy SEALs.
STEWART: Rob Riggle was on our program. He was – (inaudible). He was a Marine, and he was the one who told me, he said that the Marines were a department of the Navy – the men’s department. (Laughter.) That’s how he referred to it. Is there anything you’d like to say to that?
MABUS: I would never disagree with Rob Riggle.
STEWART: No. I didn’t either. He’s a big guy. Do you get – what – as a civilian, are you in the war planning meetings like for Afghanistan or do you just execute it? How does it come down to you? Let’s say we make the order that they want the Marines and Navy, they want to use you strategically. How does that work logistically?
MABUS: My job is to make sure we have the sailors and Marines, make sure we train them, make sure we got the right stuff – boats, guns, planes – and then send them off to whatever the president decides they need to do –
STEWART: Or the Joint Chiefs. Did you – now, you have said you want to – this is something else I didn’t realize – women do not serve in submarines.
MABUS: That’s right, but they will soon.
STEWART: They will soon. Now, is that something you can change unilaterally or what would be the process like bureaucratically that you’d have to go through?
MABUS: You decide to do it. We got a – (laughter).
STEWART: You don’t have to ask anybody?
MABUS: You don’t have to ask anybody. You have to tell Congress.
STEWART: That’s it? What are waiting – so you can do it, like what’s – let’s say you decided – you know what, instead the Navy hats we’re going to wear birthday hats. Can you just do that? You’re like the emperor of the Navy. You’re not the secretary. But you wouldn’t have to –
MABUS: This is the coolest job in the world. (Laughter.)
STEWART: Oh, my god. Can I have a submarine? But you know, so why not just – is that a problem having women in the submarines? Because I know – you know, look, it’s eight months, you’re underwater – you know? But –
MABUS: No, it’s not – it’s not a problem. We announced – the chairman of the Joint Chiefs said it ought to be done – chief of naval operations, who is the uniformed head of the Navy, and I all think it ought to be done and we’re moving to do it.
STEWART: Will it take – it won’t take long?
MABUS: It will take a little while because you get – you’ve got to interview people. You’ve got to be nuclear-trained to be on a submarine, so –
STEWART: What’s nuclear training? How would you – how would a fellow get nuclear-trained? Is that like getting a merit badge? How would you –
MABUS: It’s the same idea. Takes a little longer, a little more dangerous – (laughter) – to do it.
STEWART: So it’s a merit badge that could cause genetic mutations inside your body. All right, all right. That seems reasonable.
How do you feel about the morale of the group right now? You know, we see everybody here, mostly Fleet Week they came in, the nicest – you know, I think we all think of sailors back to our Popeye days, and I think of it back to my grandfather and he was a maniac. (Laughter.) These guys, it’s as though they’ve raised the standards over the years or something. The quality of people is pretty tremendous.
MABUS: Oh, it’s incredible. I was in the Navy almost four decades ago.
STEWART: Really?
MABUS: Yeah. And, you know, we never left port without leaving a couple of guys behind in jail.
STEWART: Yeah? (Laughter.) That’s what my grandfather used to say. (Applause.) That’s what sailors were back then.
MABUS: But today, today these guys – and women are incredible. They – they –
STEWART: Smarter, physically fit.
MABUS: They’re well-trained. They’re incredibly skilled. They’re incredibly patriotic. They’re doing the dangerous, dirty, hard work all around the world – not just in places like Afghanistan or Iraq but all around the world. They’re delivering disaster relief right now to Indonesia, to the Philippines, to Samoa. They’re –
(Cross talk.)
STEWART: Tremendous ambassadors. But I remember my grandfather telling me stories about the Navy. They used to greet each other. There’s a standard, I guess, Navy greeting: “how’s the syphilis?” (Laughter.)
MABUS: You want to go with the overhead?
STEWART: It’s back in the ’30s, back in ’30s. Let’s go to the overhead. So what about this now, gays in the military. Is that something else you could unilaterally say, okay. We’re lifting that for the Navy or the Marines, or is that a larger issue?
MABUS: No. That’s not just an idea. That’s like gravity. It’s a law.
STEWART: That’s a law.
MABUS: That’s a law.
STEWART: Okay. So you can’t just repeal. Is that something that you feel like has the momentum now within the armed forces and all the branches that it will get done in your term or you’re not sure?
MABUS: You know, whatever Congress – whatever the American people working through Congress tells us to do on that law, we’re going to – the Navy and the Marine Corps can carry out any mission –
STEWART: Right.
MABUS: – that’s given to them.
STEWART: Do you think it’s a good idea to leave anything really to Congress at this point? (Laughter.) And this is just me and you talking. (Laughter.) But I don’t know if you get C-SPAN in your office. (Laughter.)
MABUS: We only get Comedy Central in my office. (Laughter, applause.)
STEWART: You know, that’s what we call C-SPAN here. (Laughter.) Within the armed services itself, do they think it’s a good idea or any idea that time has come?
MABUS: I think what the armed services are ready to do is whatever mission they’re given. And if this is one of them, yes, they’re ready.
STEWART: That’s so impressive about the military because it is – and you meet it from top to bottom. The guys there, you think they’d be more political. You think they’d be more invested in sort of that back and forth partisan chicanery that goes on here, but to a man, to a woman, every one of them just says, I serve to the pleasure of the commander-in-chief and the Congress and when they give us our orders, we execute it and we win, and that’s what we do. You tell us what to do and we’ll do it. That’s an impressive quality.
MABUS: You know, we’ve got a little over two million people in uniform. We’ve got 300 million Americans. So we’ve got less than 1 percent of America in uniform. Those are the most highly skilled, the most patriotic, the most dedicated people you’ll ever meet. And people just don’t get to see them enough. I mean, the Navy and the Marine Corps, we’re always the away team. If we’re doing our job, we’re always somewhere else and the people don’t get to see that sort of skill level, that sort of training, and that sort of representation of America that’s going on all around the world and we ought to be really proud of them.
STEWART: Very proud of them. So you’re saying two million of them, 300 million of us, but they could still take us? (Laughter.)
MABUS: They can still take anybody.
STEWART: Not if I get my asthma medicine. You’re in trouble, buddy. (Laughter.) It’s a pleasure to see you. And you’ll come and see us again on Fleet Week. We’ll see the fellows and the ladies that will be coming into the studio again and we’ll have a nice time.
MABUS: Come on out to the ship, do the show.
STEWART: Oh, my God. I think I’m going to throw up now. (Laughter.) Secretary Ray Mabus. (Applause.)
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