Normally, are there any avenues for sailors to seek any mental health care on board?

Yeah, there certainly are avenues for sailors to seek mental health care on board a ship.

However, it was reported to us that there was just one psychiatrist on board for the 5,000 sailors and Marines on the USS Lincoln.

However, that number of the eight sailors who attempted to jump, that is across the battle group.

That's all the ships that are with the Lincoln, too.

It's not just the Lincoln, just to clarify that stat.

I see.

Now that these sailors are back stateside, what kind of readjustment will they go through?

Are you worried, Natalie, about these types of investigations having some kind of a chilling effect on the relationship between you and your sources in the military?

I'm not worried about them having an effect on my sources in the military.

I'm worried about the bigger message it sends to our entire military and our larger service members' families.

And They're really unhappy and they're scared right now.

We're hearing reports of people being told in not so many words to not talk, to talk amongst themselves, reach out to the command, reach out to their classified groups.

Remember OPSEC, but no one's really telling you when to talk.

Yeah, no one's really telling each other how they should communicate.

Can you tell us a little bit more about your latest reporting?

Or is it also I just have to ask, is this a sense of shame or embarrassment? If this is a high ranking person or this is somebody who was privy to this kind of information, it's difficult for them to reveal it at this point.

Yeah, I don't know that shame or embarrassment would be their first call at this point.

I think just point blank, they're not going to divulge this information about this service member or the information that they were privy to.

And the overarching issue is that these markets shouldn't have even been available for people to make bets on.

There are a lot of different operations and pieces of information that military members carry with them every day.

But the availability to bet on their outcome or the probability of people predicting their outcome, rather, is something so out of pocket, it's hard to imagine.

even placing money on something like that.

What is going on? You're seeing these repeated alleged instances of trading on secret information, military information, before the operations.

Wow.

Um, it's, it's getting further and further.

And so, um, the supp- the biggest supply is food, right? So the, the photos that have been all over the internet and social media of the food, like the mystery gray meat, this is not new news.

This has been reported, um, the USA Today broke it in, in April, and they were showing, um, you know, strange mystery meat, boiled carrots, um, strange food items that you would not expect to see.

Uh, we saw reports of, uh, sailors saying that they hadn't had milk in three months.

They were eating dry cereal for breakfast.

And to the naked ear, maybe that doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but we're not talking about one bad day at sea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's not been smooth sailing.

And the thing I think everyone needs to remember is that it is our administration's job, our leader's job to make sure that our sailors and our service members have absolutely everything they need to the best of our ability.

There are incredibly unique situations where that will not happen, and everyone knows that, but letting it go for this long, to go this depleted, to be run this down.

And I'll tell you, the number one most important piece of readiness is courage, and the m- biggest amount of courage anyone could ever show is asking for help.

Yeah

...

I think any human being could empathize with her.

What is your understanding of the situation right now?

Thanks for having me on, Jesse.

My understanding is the representation is crystal clear, coming directly from our sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

These are immediate family members sharing their private one-to-one conversations and service members who are just sharing their day, sharing their life, getting through it, coping, communicating in the way that they can safely, not putting anything at risk.

They're just sharing their life.

But what they're sharing is something that's really hard to imagine living.

We understand that, right? But what are you hearing about the USS George Washington? Is it going to take the Lincolns' place?

Officially, we have heard they are en route.