Transcript: Ret. Gen. Stanley McChrystal on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan," May 18, 2025

The following is the transcript of an interview with Retired Army General Stanley McChrystal that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on May 18, 2025.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We're joined now by retired General Stanley McChrystal, whose new book is "On Character: Choices That Define a Life." Good morning to you.

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Thanks for having me, Margaret.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So you write that character is a choice built upon our deeply held beliefs. Sounds like you really think there's a lack of it these days, we certainly see there's a loss of trust in many of our country's institutions, whether it's the federal government, journalism, the courts. How do you describe our national character right now and the leaders we have?

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: I think it's confused. If you look at polling, as you just referred to the lack of trust, like 22% of Americans a year ago had trust in the U.S. government. Only 34% had trust in other Americans. So I think we all sort of intuitively know we have a real problem, but what I would argue is our national leaders are not the cause of the problem, they're the symptom of the problem. The cause is us at our individual level, our unwillingness to think about character, to talk about character, and to demand character. And I would also argue that we're also the cure. There is a symptom that we see and we're distracted by it, all the things that we are disappointed by, people lying, people doing things that we find beneath us. As a nation, our character is our fate. And so what I'm trying to do is convince people to start a national conversation on character with the idea it starts at the bottom, not at the top. We need to start it down where things actually happen, on farms, in schools. We've just sent out 240 copies of the book to college sports coaches to try to have them start just to talk about character. And so that's what I'm passionate about.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, I admire the effort. You know, it's interesting to look at where this began, not pinning it on a person. I understand you're trying to do that. But is it a symptom of, it's always been this way we just have more transparency, and thus we know more about people's flaws? Why does this seem to be building as a problem?

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Well, we've always had a problem with certain evil in society and corruption, lack of character, but I think the fact that we see everything so much now we normalize it. We start to accept things in celebrities or leaders that I frankly think we wouldn't have accepted even a generation ago. And that's sort of our problem. We give them our likes on social media, we spend our money with them, we vote for them, and we know better than that. And so I think the responsibility, again, arcs back to us.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You're not a Democrat or Republican you say.

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Right.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Though you did endorse Joe Biden and Kamala Harris--

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Right--

MARGARET BRENNAN: --In the last elections. Most retired military try to stay out of politics and make an argument that that's crossing the rubicon in some ways.

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why did you?

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Well, of course, you go back to Dwight Eisenhower and Ulysses S. Grant, they actually went into politics.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Fair.

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: So there is some tradition, but that was not my goal to get into politics. I just felt that we had hit a period in which we were so adrift as a nation in terms of character, we were accepting something that is not as good as we are capable of. So I made a decision, and I'll be honest, it was tough, because there's a lot of pushback from peers and from outsiders that say you shouldn't get political. But I don't think that saying that America should stand up for its values and for its character is necessarily political.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And we had, in the past, conversations with other guests that question about what does America stand for, and does it matter. There is a shift more towards pragmatism, or what's in it for me, on the national scale. That's very much in our politics right now.

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: And I think it's a mistake for the nation. If you think what really helped the United States in the modern era, we'll call it after World War II, people admired American ideas. They admired American democracy. They admired our social, our culture. They didn't like every part of it, and they knew that we as a nation made mistakes, but countries and people wanted to be more like us than they wanted to be like the Soviet Union or other enemies. And as long as we are an example that people want to be, it gives us extraordinary influence and power. When it becomes transactional, when we, when we become somebody that just wants something from them, and we're unwilling to be generous, we're unwilling to sacrifice for larger ideals, we lose some of our moral standing and I think some of our national force, our power.

MARGARET BRENNAN: At the Pentagon right now, we hear a lot about values and culture sort of being at odds with the mission.

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Or that's how it's being described, right? Secretary Hegseth has talked a lot about restoring the warrior ethos. That's part of his justification for eliminating diversity programs or DEI. Do you think DEI really "hurts lethality"?

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: Yeah. I am completely aligned with Secretary Hegseth on the idea that we need to defend the nation, that the defense department needs to be as effective as it can be, and that a certain warrior ethos matters. We just define it differently. In my experience, we tend to understand that everybody can contribute, particularly in today's modern wars. The idea that everybody's got to look a certain way, got to have biceps of a certain size, there's got to be a male, straight, all these things, is not my experience. In the counter terrorist fight, where much of my experience was, it became a meritocracy. You didn't care what somebody looked like or how old they were, what their gender was or sexual orientation because it was too important to get the job done. And I would argue now America needs to harness talent from every corner of our society, everyone. I would even argue that if we went back to a draft, we could draft people with physical disabilities because much of what we do, that's not a block to that. And so I think we need to think about what do we need to field the most effective armed forces, and I think that the DEI thing is, frankly, a distraction. It's not helpful.

MARGARET BRENNAN: In terms of national character, when you were commanding forces, the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan, ISAF, you know very well that country. The Taliban's since taken over. We have seen them strip women and girls of even the right to have their voice heard in public. You have seen them carry out retribution against Afghans who worked with our country and put their lives at risk. This past week, the Trump administration said Afghanistan is safe enough for people living here to go back. They stripped the legal protections, the Temporary Protected Status. They are ending some of the programs that helped to evacuate our American allies there. What do you think that says about our character now?

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: I think it's disappointing. I personally disagree with that decision, but I also think it sends a message. What about people who we ask to ally with us in the future, that we asked to partner with us, they look at what happened in the past. And so I think our national character should be bigger than that and we're capable of being bigger than that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: General McChrystal, thank you very much for sharing your reflections.

GEN. MCCHRYSTAL: You're kind to have me. Thank you.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And your book "On Character: Choices That Define a Life." We'll be right back.