Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Episode 212 - Nick De Gregorio

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Nick De Gregorio is a candidate running in New Jersey's 5th Congressional district. At the age of 16, the September 11th attacks literally hit close to home. Living just 12 miles from Ground Zero, Nick, and his high school classmates could hear the fighter jets scrambling to respond as they watched the towers collapse on the news. He knew that day that he would volunteer to fight for his country in uniform. Over the course of nine years, Nick deployed four times, fighting in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Post military service Nick explored a career in the financial sector, becoming an equity derivatives sales trader at Bank of America. He received a Bachelor's degree from Bucknell University and Masters Degrees from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and the Walsh School of Foreign Service, with distinction. https://www.nickfornj.com   https://mtntough.com https://sole.com/clearedhot https://grammarly.com/clearedhot https://magicspoon.com/clearedhot  

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Before making that decision, though, he served as a Marine Corps infantry officer. in the wake of 9-11 with four deployments over nine years. He fought in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and he feels it's time to step up again and answer the nation's call with public service. There were plenty of things pre-military service and post-military service that I will allow Nick to explain for himself and why he feels like he would be the perfect fit for a congressman in New Jersey. If you want to check out his platform, and I highly recommend that you do, go to nickfornj.N.J.com. But until then, enjoy episode 212 with Nick DeGregorio. Smoke.

I'm looking at danger close now. Where the hell do we start? Where do you want to start? I guess from the beginning. I believe the story goes first there was light. I mean, are we going to go that far back or how... Genesis might be a little early for me. Where are you from?

Jersey. I can hear it a little bit. It's there. I didn't realize that. an accent until I landed at Minneapolis, St. Paul, and heard everybody else talking when I was on my way here, so. Had you never left Jersey before? I try not to. No, I'm just kidding around.

Most people say the opposite. They tried to get the hell out of Jersey as quickly as possible. I mean, Newark Airport's nothing to look at, so people think New Jersey is Elizabeth, and that's part of it, but there's some pretty nice areas in Jersey. Were you born and raised there? I was born in New Rochelle in New York. New Rochelle Hospital, is where my father. and my mother met. My dad's a doctor. My mom's a nurse. And the story goes, they met on an elevator.

And the rest is history. And classic workplace romance, which I believe is probably outlawed. Back in the 80s, things were a little bit more lax. But yeah, I mean, that's sort of where I got my start my start my start his own practice in Jersey when I was like a year old. So I don't even remember New York. Jersey's been my life for the duration, except for nine years in the Marines, of course. What type of medicine does your dad practice? He's a cardiologist. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So smarter than both of us. Probably so, yeah. Yeah, he did impart some wisdom on me, but probably took better with my brother. He's a mechanical engineer out in Arizona, so he's the brains of the operation. Interesting that neither of you, well, I guess I can't say interesting. I know a few families

that had medicine, mom and dad, and the trend continued, generated. Was there any pressure from your parents to do so? I wouldn't say pressure. I mean, I do think it is the family business. I'm not in it. My brother's not, but I have uncles and cousins, and it is kind of where people go, which is pretty surprising when you think about it.

My grandfather showed up here in 1948, right? Didn't speak English. First generation? Yeah. I mean, typical immigrant story came from Italy, 20 bucks in his pocket, had a will to figure it out and did, right? And so he worked in a die factory up in Haverston, New York,

for years. Learned enough English to join the Army, ended up out in Germany as a medic with the U.S. Army, and he would go home on like 72s and 96es, back to Italy to visit Pham, finds my grandmother. Three months later, they get married. I guess that's how things were done back then.

I think they call that a shotgun wedding. But it all panned out. I mean, once his time was up in Germany, he ended up coming back with his wife to the United States, and they set about making up an American family. And that's what they did. They stayed in Haberstraw. Grandfather went back to the dye factory.

Eventually became a postal worker, started delivering mail once he passed that test. And that was the first time in his life where he only had to work one job, one shift. And I guess that's where our story starts. So four kids he had, two of them are doctors now, a nurse, a medical technician. And that's all just one generation, you know. That's crazy that leap or the escalation up the lab. of socioeconomic status in one generation. Yeah.

I mean, I don't think that's abnormal, right? I do think... It depends on where in the world you're talking about. I think there's places in the world where it's almost impossible. Of course. I mean in America, though. In America, I think it's almost, you know, America, in my opinion, one of the things that I love about it is like in the creation of the country is like this rugged independence. And if you bust your ass, anything should be accomplishable.

So yeah, I don't think it's... a, well, I guess it's more a typical, depending on who you pay attention to in the modern era. People will say it's impossible and it's actually this country is founded on oppression and this, that or the other, and it's impossible to succeed. That doesn't resonate with me. People can believe whatever they want to, but I love stories like that. I think it's what the country is supposed to be about. And I'm a product of what that country is supposed to be about, right? I mean, in two generations to be able to say here that I'm running for Congress, I think that's a pretty exceptional story.

And I think America is pretty exceptional for it. Speaking of running for Congress, when did you actually go insane? Because who in their right mind willingly pursues that particular profession? Yeah. I mean, I guess I'll start by saying that I must be insane, right? But I don't relish necessarily this idea of a public life, right? And just in a similar way, when you join the military, there's an excitement, right? there's this idea of like, I'm going to serve my country. And that's a huge thing. I want that burden

on my shoulders because if not me, then who, right? And I joined the Marines after 9-11, right? I was 16 on 9-11. In living in Jersey. Yeah, 12 miles from ground zero. So, I mean, it wasn't just watching the towers come down on TV. It was hearing the F-15s rolling overhead, responding to the attacks. It wasn't just, oh, man, this is a dark day. This is a black guy for America. It's, Our communities have dead people now, right? And we're going to have to deal with that scar tissue for years, and we're still dealing with it. So it's a deeply personal thing. And when I was 16, I saw this all happening.

I said, all right, well, I'm going to be joining the military once I'm old enough, and that's exactly what I did. So it's, you know, it's been one heck of a journey. What did your parents think about you joining the military? Because it sounds like you were the first generation to go into military service. Yeah. So, well, my grandfather, of course, as I mentioned, Army guy. And then my other grandfather.

Second generation. I had to carry the one there. Carry the one, two. Second generation. My other grandfather was a Marine. Okay. So he probably always told you that the Marine Corps was better than the Army. He also told me that I'd never make it in the Marine Corps.

I mean, imagine being six, seven years old and hearing that. That's some motivation right there. I wonder where he got that philosophy of negative feedback and motivation. I have no idea. But, I mean, he used to have his coffee table books out. And, you know, as a little kid, I remember opening them up and seeing these really cool fascinating photos of Marines on Iwo Jima or Marines in Vietnam. And, you know, so the idea of military service wasn't just something that popped into my head on 9-11. I think, you know, I'd certainly

been primed, if you will. It was experiential in my family. My grandfather, my army grandfather, didn't talk much about it. It wasn't central to his theme or to his narrative, but my other grandfather, I think the Marine Corps was something he was exceptionally proud of. And so he talked about it a lot. And so that was the dinner table conversation growing up for me. So that's why I decided to join up. Obviously, the events of 9-11 really sort of propelled that and escalated it. For you and many more. Yeah. And to answer your question, I think my parents at first were like, dude, what are you doing? Like, this is a dangerous time to be thinking about this. And we did have a candid conversation. And I joke that I'm like the only 18-year-old that ever listened to their

parents. But, you know, when I had, the SATs that I took had come back, they were decent enough where I knew that I'd be able to go into school to a four-year college. And I was, you know, And I also was a pretty good shot putter. I played football in high school too, but track and field was kind of where my talents really lied. And I was getting recruited. And so they're like, you know, you may, you might squander an opportunity here if you don't try to pursue this.

So on one hand, I'm talking to the recruiter. He's coming to my house. Obviously, my parents are a little bit like not loving that. And on the other hand, you know, there's this opportunity to go for four years and maybe learn a little bit about yourself. And they said, why don't you do that? and if it's still something that is ingrained within you and you must serve in the military, then do it.

But it's not going anywhere, but this college opportunity might. So I said, all right, fair enough. I think the pull of the NCAA and wanting to compete in athletics was big. And so I think that was ultimately why I decided to do that. But pretty much as soon as I got back to back on campus at Bucknell University is where I went, I contacted the Marine Corps officer, selection officer, started that process right away. So you actually became a Marine Corps officer? Yeah, I did my OCS in the summertime.

Yeah. And then when I graduated in 2007, I was commissioned a second lieutenant and went to basic school in Quantico, Virginia. TBS. TBS. A forgettable experience. I'm not allowed to say that, but you are. Yeah. And then I selected infantry.

I wanted to go into the infantry. My mom always said, you know, why don't you think about going into the JAG Corps, be a lawyer? And I said, Mom, there's nothing wrong with law. But that is not why I'm joining the Marine Corps, right? I'm joining the Marine Corps, for lack of a better term, for vengeance, right? I want to go after these people that did what they did on September 11th. And I wanted to go to Afghanistan, right? And that was really the impetus of my desire to do this.

So infantry fit, right? I'm not going to carry a gavel, carry a gun, right? That's what I wanted to do. And three months after infantry school, I'm in Iraq, right? I'm with a unit of guys. What year? Is this eight? 2009, early Feb-9.

And, you know, I show up to this unit that's already ready to go, right? And the staff sergeant receives the boot lieutenant, staff sergeant, Broberg, and he was a rock star, right? And so there were two things going on there. One, this unit's ready to go. This unit doesn't need me. And then I'm sure on Broberg's mind, it's like, I did this. I trained these guys. I want to be in charge of these guys.

but he was this magnanimous guy who just knew he knew himself right and he knew what his mission was and the mission was to be the platoon sergeant so he gave me this unit it was a gift and these guys were great and you do have to kind of take swallow your pride a little bit eat a slice of humble pie when you show up to a unit where you've got lance corporals who are better trained than you are right with more experience anyhow, right? They've been to Iraq before. Most of the guys in that unit had already deployed. And I was in Quantico, right?

You've got to earn your leadership. Or you don't, right? And there are two kinds of officers, right? Yeah. Some of the guys don't ever figure it out. But humility, I think, was the answer to that, right? Knowing when you screw up and admitting it and earning the trust and confidence your guys, not necessarily because you know more of done more,

but because you're willing to learn from that. and you're not willing to use your rank as a shield against criticism. Yeah, the officer, the officer ranks the way it works in the military, you know, that by doctrine, the most junior officer is senior to the most senior enlisted person in the military. Tell us, Sergeant Major, that, right? Well, let me continue along my little story here. If the most junior officer feels like you're going to roll into a room, and flex with your caller device, it's not going to go your way.

So by doctrine, you are correct. But the situation that you're describing, I've encountered that in my own personal life. So I did 12 years enlisted in five years as an officer. And I flipped over to be in an O. And you end up in these rooms where, yeah, my caller device might give me, I don't know, positional authority or rank over people. But they've got a decade more experience than me. And you have to recognize that.

The officers that come in and think they're going to swing a butter bar around, and just cut through, you know, as it's a lightsaber and it's going to go through Kebler, oh, man, it's going to be a very rough road. But the individual that you're talking about, you know, I don't want to take away the value of senior enlisted leadership as well. I think for me, if I ever had success when I was an officer, it was because of my experience as an enlisted seal. And I look back at the mentors in my life, and they all were the most powerful ones,

were at like the E7 E8 mark. They hadn't gone all the way up. We called it a Master Chief in the Navy. What's an E9 in the Marine Corps? Sergeant Major. Sergeant Major. Okay. God forbid you guys have the same fucking rank structure to do.

It's your guy's fault. Yeah. You guys have all silly ranks. At least the Army and the Marine Corps jive together. For the most part anyway. Whatever. Whatever. Yeah, it gets really interesting when you're having conversations about a captain

between like the Marine Corps and the Navy. I'm like, are you talking a Navy captain or a Marine Corps captain? Because we're talking very different people here. Very, very different. 03 versus, I think, 06. That's right. But that middle, that middle ground of that senior enlisted leadership is, it's, I actually think it's, you have to have the officer leadership as well. But I think the senior leadership, senior enlisted leadership, especially because they stay with the units longer and they have that continuity, Pete, it's the invisible linchpin.

And I don't think that their influence in weight should ever be unrecognized. And oftentimes I think it is, especially from those officers who think that they're going to come in with a butter bar, lightsaber, and slice and dice. And it's just, it doesn't go their way. No. And I think in previous conversations that you've had with people, you talk a lot about how these frontline tip of the spear units, right, can't exist, can't survive, can't succeed without the 90% tail, right? Yeah. It's the same situation when you talk about rank structure. An officer's power and privilege is derived from good people who are willing to be able to be able to.

to follow that guy or that woman. Without that, you are nothing, and you're not going to be a successful officer. It's not going to be a successful leader. You're not going to be successful in anything if you can't get buying with people. Yeah. Jock does a great job of talking about that,

and he'll phrase it in the terms of, in many, he has many different subcategories that he talks about, but he also explains the importance of explaining the why to people, the buy-in. You cannot just impose your will upon people. It was actually he was just on Rogan's show. He was talking about, you know, leadership by mandate. And I don't give a shit what political spectrum people fall on.

Because if it was somebody from the right who was in a leadership position right now and they were leading by mandate, I would say the same thing. I think it's the incorrect way to lead. It's actually not leadership because it's imposing your will. And we're already seeing what happens when you try to impose your will on people over and over and over again. That's how you get resistance, right? Well, that's where you get to the point where people say, hey, man, cool, cool, you want me to lock down again? I have a bag of dicks here. Do you want to eat some of those?

I mean, that's what it comes down to. It's people, and then they're being told what they see with their own eyes is not correct. And so there's this disconnect between what people are actually seeing and what they're hearing and being told. Then the leadership by mandate. I'm actually, that's not correct to even phrase it like that. It's not leadership if you're using mandate. I would call that poor leadership. Or actually a long-term losing leadership strategy because you will get pushback, like you were saying,

to the point where people were undermined you. And I saw that many times and may have allegedly been involved in that when I was enlisted seal, undermining senior leadership that only wanted to just be like, this is what you're going to do because I'm telling you to do it. It's like, awesome, awesome. Wait till you're not paying attention, allegedly. I shouldn't tell you this story. I'm going to anyway. First off, if you ever start a sentence with, I shouldn't tell you this story, you have to finish it.

Yeah, I'm going to, I promise. So I was on a Mew, Marine Expeditionary Unit, for those who are listening, don't know what that is. It's basically sort of a 911 force that floats around in an ocean and can respond to anything from a humanitarian crisis where you need to have blankets out to a full-scale conventional war. And it requires a lot of unity and buy-in between the Navy who are running these ships and the Marines who are on these ships who are going to go leave the ships to go do those missions. And it's like, you know, you oftentimes hear these horror stories of the Navy and the Marines. Marines is not getting along. And I was fortunate enough initially to be on a ship, the Harper's Ferry, where the command really appreciated that we were there. And in turn, we really appreciated them being there and doing everything that they did for us. And there was this just phenomenal

friendship that we were able to forge. And then we had to dry dock that ship. We ended up on some other ship. I won't say the name of it to get anybody in trouble. I feel like this is where the story changes. And they hated us. I mean, they sat us down and they were like, you will not do this, you will not do that. And they didn't even give us a chance to be part of a team. It was hierarchical. And so I saw many times some of my Marines flipping some switches and touching things on the ship that maybe they shouldn't have. And, you know, you get what you pay for, right? If you're willing to take the time to foster leaders, if you're willing to take the time to be a good dude, right?

You can get a lot done. You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. And I feel like it's crazy that there are people, whether it's in the military or in politics or anywhere. that don't understand that lesson. Yeah. But it's repeated over and over and over again. Yeah, I'd be curious to see where the current administration, what their strategy will change to when the mandate full court press

becomes less and less effective. I don't know what they will escalate to next. I don't even know what's available, honestly, in their suite of options. But I see it every time that they push forward with that, I see it based off of what I just see people doing and hear what they're saying. I see it being less and less and less effective. Yeah.

I mean, I guess we'll wait and we'll have to wait and see, right? I have no idea what's going to come. What I can tell you that this is a nation that's been founded on liberty. This is a nation that takes its rights very seriously and that paid for these rights with blood and a lot of treasure over the course of the several hundred, the 200 plus years that we've been a country, right? That isn't something that we should just forego for safety. I think that there is a balance of liberty and safety that our population needs to be able to sustain.

And I don't think we should go all the way for one, all the way for another. I think that we've got to identify a place where everyone enjoys the liberties that they fought for with blood and treasure and maintain a society that is obviously safe as well. That seems far too reasonable. There's no way that that's ever actually going to come into being. What was your experience like in Iraq on that first appointment? Pretty quiet. I mean, that was 2009, right? So in 2007, you had the Anbar Awakening, which I think really changed the tide of the war. You had all these local leaders spying in, shakes, imams, malas, saying to themselves, actually this whole idea that the American government through the military wants to offer us is a hell of a lot better than being dominated by Al Qaeda. And so you had a couple of years from the Anbar Awakening to where we were in 2009. And we were up in Ninoa province. I had 28 Marines.

I had four light armored reconnaissance vehicles. I was with third light armored reconnaissance battalion, the Wolfpack. It's actually a great unit, great guys, is still in touch with a lot of them. And our job was economy of force, right? We were on the border with Syria, and it was our mission to interdict, right? To prevent weapons and foreign fighters from crossing,

to be able to get to the major cities to wound or kill Americans or Iraqis. And so pretty much every night, we would get ready. for the circus and people would try to jump over the border. Now, you had this economic dynamic though that you had to sort of separate out from the possibility of these harmful people coming. In Syria, at least back then, there were no taxes on cigarettes and in Iraq there were.

So there was an arbitrage opportunity for people to cross the border, come back, sell the Syrian cigarettes at Iraqi prices and make a couple of bucks. And we didn't care too much about that, right? Like that wasn't why we were there. I wasn't there to figure out that economic. economic problem. I was there to make sure that people weren't getting killed. So my guys and I would, anytime we saw that, we'd be on your way, right? We'd search the cargo and, you know, fortunately, most of the time, that's who we were dealing with. But then you also had these cases where you find

weapons. You have these cases where you find guys who don't have papers. You take their biometric data, you hand them over to the Iraqi police and they go and they do whatever they need to do. And that was our job, right? And it wasn't terribly glamorous all the time. You know, in Iraq, in the summertime, it gets pretty hot. So if you're working nights and then you're sleeping in the daytime, and we were out two weeks at a time, we wouldn't go back to base on a regular basis. They'd drop us water if we needed it from CH 53 helicopters. So, you know, trying to sleep in the daytime and work at night when it's 100 plus degrees out. You know, you get pretty tired pretty quick. So I think that deployment was was challenging in the sense that there were physical elements that required us to do some pretty

physically demanding things. But, I mean, there were a couple of pot shots here and there, but it wasn't terribly violent, right? Because two years after the Ambar Awakening, we actually saw that this was a country that was on the mend. And there were people who were talking Iraqi people, talking about, oh, when this war ensued, I will do this, I will do that.

And I remember we built this, like, 50-foot-long bridge to cross Owadi. And it helped this town out tremendously because it got them to be able to go to the market. They could do, like, a two-hour drive been back to the market rather than like an all-day thing trying to go around this wadi. So they were really psyched about it. They're really happy about it.

And I remember thinking to myself, wow, wouldn't it be cool in like 10 or 20 or 30 years? Like when this war's over and when, you know, Iraqi democracy has sort of stabilized and taken root, that I could bring my family to see this bridge that I'm so proud that I was able to help create. And I mean, two years later, what a laugh, right? Like in hindsight, what a joke that was. But at the time, it wasn't a joke. At the time, we really thought that we had done some great things.

And it's sad, right? Because I think two years later, obviously we leave. Within a year of that, you get ISIS. You know, America does a really good job of pretending that problems don't exist in places where they're not at or they're not looking at. The reality is problems exist all over the world, and we can either meet them or we can ignore them. And with respect to ISIS, I feel like a political choice, right, I'll be critical of the Obama White House. this political promise that Obama made, right, to leave Iraq, right?

This was the promise that he made. Now all of a sudden leads to something far worse, right? And we go back, we commit blood and treasure to that. And I think that this is a telltale sign and perhaps a story of warning for what just happened in Afghanistan, right? It's not too far removed. It's the global war on terror. It's the same guys who are fighting in Iraq, now fighting in Afghanistan.

and we're making the same mistakes. And it's not the warfighter, right? It's the politician. And that's a huge problem. Yeah. Yeah, it is a huge problem for sure. After, so you did multiple deployments. So where did your career go after your Iraq deployment?

Because you ended up over in Afghanistan, right? Which is where you originally wanted to go. I mean, that was a struggle to get there. I'll tell you that story. So after Iraq. That mic just a touch close. Yeah, sure. Thank you.

So after Iraq, I ended up getting sent to that Mew that I was telling you. about the Marine Expeditionary Unit. And that was great. I was happy. I learned a lot. If you're a marine amphibious operations are a huge skill set that you're supposed to learn and you're supposed to be able to employ in a littoral environment, it's the same thing as in the Army with airborne, right? You know, guys who jump from airplanes, from helicopters being able to jump in and fight a war from the air, we're supposed to be able to fight a war from the sea. So it was a great experience. I was all throughout the Pacific. I was in Singapore and Guam, the Philippines, etc. But one of the things that bothered me is once I was detached from Third LAR and sent to this Mew,

third LAR ended up going to Afghanistan and I was crushed. And I was like, man, that's why I decided on 9-11 that I wanted to serve. That was my opportunity. I was so bummed. So that was a seven-month deployment that I was on for the Mew. About month five, six, we get back, right? We get back to shore. We're off the boats and we're figuring out like transition.

How do we get our guys back to the States? And I start thinking, like, is there a way for me to sort of like, finagle my way to my old unit. So I sent an email to the S3 to the operations officer. And he was my company commander in Iraq and we were very close. We're still close. His name's Oscar Rodriguez. And I say, sir, this might be like a crazy pitch, but do you need anybody in Afghanistan? Can I like transition from the Pacific? Can I come over? And a day or two later, he responds like, we might be able to make something happen. Let me, I'll let you know. And it turned out that they were able to find something for me and that they wanted me to come.

I was going to be a platoon commander there. And he said, like, do you want to? I was like, yes, sign me up. And the plan was, go back for a couple of weeks, train up, just get sort of like the updated TTPs and get ready to go and fight a very different thing than you were just trained to go and do. And then in that two week period, I was told, all right, no, no, no, it's going to be another two weeks.

And then from there, no, no, another couple of weeks until the message, came back like eight weeks later, we're going to indefinitely suspend this. Like, we don't know when you're going to be able to go. And so I wanted answers. Like, why? And the answer was force cap limitation. You familiar with that? Yeah.

So force cap limitation is basically a political choice not to put more troops in a country. The reason being is you don't want to look like you're escalating forces. Yeah, it's a glass ceiling on the number of boots on the ground, essentially. Despite the fact that there are units that need people, right? That if you cared about mission success, if you cared about survivability, if you cared about adding value to a unit and getting guys home, you would put those troops into the country. So, bothersome to me, right? And I got to a point where I could continue waiting, waiting, waiting to see if this Afghanistan halt whatever fix. And I waited so long that my time and service

was up. And they said, do you want to stick around? You want to continue being an active duty marine or do you want to get out? And so I decided at that point to get out. And I knew that I'd affiliate with an active duty or excuse me a reserve unit but I was going to go to school I'd gotten into a couple of schools thought about you know do I really want to do this and ended up pulling the trigger on that so I became a civilian again with you know obviously reserve obligations did not like going back to school wasn't yet ready to go back to school what year was that 2011 what did you get your so you went to uh you got your four year degree prior to go in and we get OCS right correct yeah what did you get your degree in uh history classics okay

And then what were you going to study or what were you looking at doing after getting out? So initially I was thinking about going back to follow dad's footsteps just to be a doctor. Just cut people open. Digging around in there, seeing what's going on. Yeah. I mean, my favorite part of the Marine Corps honestly was like T-T-T-T-C and doing all the medical stuff. Yeah. I found a lot of satisfaction in that.

I did not find a lot of satisfaction in introduction to biology and organic chemistry, right? Like very different kind of world. Yeah, it's a different learning. environment, shall we say? And so when my reserve unit, 225 at a Long Island, awesome group of guys, when they said, hey, we're mobilizing, we're going to go to Africa, do you want to come? It was an easy decision to say yes. So that's what I did. Ended up becoming a team leader of like 20 or 30 guys. And we went to Burundi, and we trained the Barundi trained. There you go. I got that third time there. It happens to me all the time. We trained the Burundi Army for operations in Somalia.

And so for seven months, I lived in Bujumbura, which is the capital of Burundi, the poorest country in the world by IMF standards. Delightful people. And we used our skills on our Iraq deployments. And I had 20, 30 guys who had been to Afghanistan and had been all over the world. We had seen combat. Some were engineers. Some were infantry. Some were mechanics.

We imparted as much wisdom as we could in the seven months we were there. Then they went and they fall in Somalia and we went home. Right. How they do? They did great. They ended up in Somalia as well as the Central African Republic. We got word back from the defense attache that they did a great job. So we were really happy with that. But you know month six, seven, here I am just like the last time thinking to myself, how can I finagle my way to Afghanistan? I have yet to go to Afghanistan. And you're probably in 03 at this point? I'm a captain in a three. Yeah. And so I reach out to my, the Mew commander, well, the battalion landing team commander. Colonel Simmons. He was the most senior guy in the Marine Corps I knew at the time, who at least wouldn't feel weird emailing. And so I'm like, sir, you got anything? Like, I got juice in the tank. I want to go to Afghanistan. I'm sure everybody else does too. But you got anything for me. Or do you know somebody who at least could like help me along this path? And he emails me back. He's like, you're the luckiest boy in America. He's like, not only do I have a space that showed up yesterday over my dad,

I'm also like at manpower right now, which is human resources in the military. Like he had a two-year tour there before he went back to the fleet marine forces. So he's like, I can I can make this happen. You have a week to tell me if you want to do it. And I was like, well, what is it? He said it's this program called AFPAC Hands. You familiar with it? No.

It's kind of a weird name for a unit, right? It is. So AFPAC Hands was created like mid-2000s. The idea was, all right, our idea of counterinsurgency is to embed with people, right? and to do good things and to make them realize that our mission, our goals are their goals too. But we don't spend a long enough time with them, right? Every seven or 12 months, you get a new, like an Afghan guy will get a new guy who's in charge, a new American. How do you foster long-term relationships in seven-month increments, right?

You can't. Especially in that culture. They tell time differently, as you know. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, I, what they wanted to do, the intent initially, of AfPAC hands was like longer durations in country, years even if necessary. And travel by yourself, learn Pashto, learn culture, be able to sort of navigate roads on your own if you have

to. Like don't be affiliated with a unit of a bunch of guys who look like stormtroopers. Go and be amongst the people. And that program by the time I showed up to it got watered down many years later. Too risky operational risk matrix. Like just people freaked out. They didn't want to do that. They were worried that people were going to get their heads cut off. off on TV, right? Awful. But so this... Which is possible. Oh, yeah. But I also think, you know, one might argue in order to win a war in Afghanistan, that's, that might be required for us to go and be as bold as to go out there and put people out there. Well, there's a difference between risking and gambling, as I'm sure you would agree. I agree. And that's, you mentioned ORM. Oh, my God.

If I could want the rest of my life without hearing the term ORM, which for every year, mission that we've ever, ever done on the very first slide, it has the associated risk with it. But we spend so much time, you know, first off, identifying, assessing, mitigating, and then what's the residual risk at the end of it? Basically, in two seconds, described a process that takes fucking hours, if not days. But the reason that you do that is I'm willing to accept risk for myself and for the lives of others, but I'm not willing to gamble, specifically with the lives of other people. I don't know about you, but when I found myself in leadership positions, I worried far more about the people that I was with than myself, actually. What would keep me up

at night was not the thought of something happening to me. It would be the thought of something happening to somebody else, when, especially if it was tied to a failure on my part, whether it's in judgment, decision, or action. But ORM, I mean, that might be a risk that would be required. Yeah. I would argue that it was. And I would argue that the watering down on that program was probably not a good thing for the U.S. military strategic mission.

What does AFPAC hands stand for? That is a crazy one. Hands is just hands. Okay. AfPak is Afghan and Pakistan because there were hands over there as well. Yeah. Perhaps a recognition of the political dynamic that obviously bled into the Afghan conflict. You mean the hands in Pakistan that were supporting the Taliban or is that different topic?

Yeah, that's exactly right. Let's just not pretend that that wasn't happening. Fair enough. Know your audience, right? But for me, it was an opportunity to go over there. I mean, if my old battalion landing team commander had said, like, hey, you could be a cook, you want to go up? I would have said, yeah.

Right? Like, my desire to go to Afghanistan was very strong in the wake of 9-11. That was why I joined the military. So, AfPak hands presented an opportunity. And for the most part, AfPak hands were being. being sent at this time to like US Embassy Kabul or NATO ISAF headquarters and doing desk work, right? Doing paperwork, which is not the original intent,

but they needed to put these people somewhere. But there were still some guys who were being selected to go and do the ultimate, what was supposed to be the intent of this program, not to the degree of like going out by yourself, at least having some autonomy and having influence and being able to sort of interface with members of the government and other people locally.

How long would the tour be? So it was 212. month tours but because I joined up I told you my commander said hey this this just came across my desk it was because somebody dropped yeah they had done a year and then had a family issue and so there was still 12 months to go so I filled that guy's spot up so I did a year in Afghanistan but I remember like saying to myself I do not want to be in the US Embassy Kabul I do not want to be at NATO ISAF like I got to get one of these rare and increasingly more rare jobs where I'm actually out there like yeah with units

operating and doing the intent of this work. And so I continued to try to like finagle and talk to people and made people quite aware that I was an infantry officer with combat experience. So maybe that would help them to say like maybe this is the guy that we wanted that we do want to send to those forward units. And it all worked out, but in kind of circuitous way. Initially I didn't get the job I wanted. And I kind of had to horse trade a little bit.

So we end up in Afghanistan and I find out there's a lieutenant commander in his 40s. As a wife, multiple kids, he ends up getting the job that I want. So I go up to the smoke pit one night before everything's sort of like slapped and set in stone. And I was like, do you want to go? Do you want to be the Pat in Kunar, Nangar province, the provincial augmentation team leader? And he said, why? And I was like, because I do. Like I'm going to go out.

Kunar and Nangar are obviously rough neighborhoods. Yeah, they are. For people unfamiliar, it's right on the border with Pakistan. KUNAR is where Operation Red Wings occurred. The lone survivor. There's Asadabad, Jalabad. It is a gnarly section. Actually, Restrepo didn't occur in Koonar or Duna.

Okay. And actually, I would point people at the documentary Restrepo, because what you're talking about, maybe it's lost on people or maybe they don't know who haven't experienced it, especially up in Kuhnard. There's a lot of fobs or forward operating bases or what's the word for something that's even smaller? Cop. cop combat outpost so you're partnered with people and on the navspec war side of the house probably going to be six eight maybe ten months maximum and you rotate out and so the people that

you're working with and the elders of the villages they're constantly seeing new faces and it happens in restrepo you can see the shift in leadership and they go back and they're having conversations that have been had multiple times um I have I had a guy on the show who wrote a book, The Most Dangerous Place, and it was about not necessarily Conar or Coonar, but just that area. And it talked about how multiple units would roll through. And they wouldn't even, like the knowledge of why a piece of equipment was there and what it was used for was lost two generations after it was placed there. And so you can think about that with the same, and through the same lens of the relationships. So just imagine for people listening, you know, the point in all this is try to try to emphasize

the importance, especially in that culture of continuity. Like they tell time generationally. And the constant shifting of the new person who is telling them something that was told to them three new people ago, but then it's going to be reneged upon. It's very disruptive and it's very similar to imposing your will via mandate. Eventually, at some point, people just turn it off. They're like, whatever, man. We're going to do whatever the fuck we want to do.

And the only consistent people around here are actually the Taliban. So you know what? The next time that they're putting rockets in the ground or they're burying something, get ready to lob it in on you, we're not going to say shit. Yeah. So I understand. And I was trying to explain the importance of that role of having somebody there longer. So it's the same phase.

The unit might rip out, but that individual is there. So there's that continuity. Yeah. There's an Afghan proverb. You have the watches. We have the time. Right. Yeah.

And I mean, I think that that's the definitive. end of what happened with us in Afghanistan, right? And the fact that we left. And all they had to do is just let us keep looking at our watches and wait us out. But I mean, this job that I was horse trading, right, this was going to be out in some pretty, pretty tough neighborhoods. And that's what I wanted. I was a young captain.

This guy was a lieutenant commander, you know, 20 years old at my senior, maybe a little bit less, but roughly. And it had different things going on in his life. He had family back home. I did not. I was a single guy at the time. And so I said, look. look, I'm going to end up at this desk job.

Like, I'm going to end up in Mazar Sharif, and I don't know, doing, God knows what. And I want to be out with the green berets that you're going to be assigned to, actually going and talking to people and influencing, you know, positive change in these rough places. Would you consider changing?

He's like, yeah, it's no problem. And again, we ended up kind of having a mutual, you know, we were to our benefit, to our mutual benefit, we traded. And there was no issue with the command. They slapped the table on it. we talked to the boss the next day and everything was good. So that's when I ended up going out there.

And I ended up in, have you been out that way? Oh, I have. Okay. It's awesome for hikes. It's not steep terrain at all. Yeah, right, right. Very flat. It's like, you know, average golf course.

No, it's some of the most inhospitable terrain from like a vertical perspective. What is shocking to me is how they can build these little hamlets and, villages and houses like terraced into the sides of these mountains. One good earthquake, they're fucking gone. It's like sliding right off. A lot of these houses are just rocks stacked on rocks with no mortar of any kind, yeah.

You know how long it takes to do that? I know. I know. It's incredible. Yeah, my dad was a block and brick mason. I've stacked a lot of shit. Not like that, but I just, I was just thinking my head. I'm like, oh man, that's a long time stack of that stuff. You ever see Forrest Gump? Who hasn't seen it?

Yeah, good. Yeah, I figured. Yeah. Remember when him and Forest and Bubba, they land in Vietnam and it's like a big barbecue. Yep. So I came- You're talking to Lieutenant Dan on the shitter. Yeah, talking about wearing socks and whatever. Yeah. But a great movie and very much sort of a parallel that I can make to when I showed up to this Green Beret unit, right? Like here I am a Marine, right? We don't do anything wrong, right? We're supposed to, you know, you blouse your boots. You get a haircut every week and you've shaved your damn face. And then I show up and it's like somebody's playing sugar pie honey bunch drinking a Coors light. I didn't say that. No one was drinking Coors Light. Yeah. There wasn't a razor to be seen. Just basically Vikings walking around.

Yeah. But I mean, it was like a culture, a bit of a culture shock, right? Because it's like, you know, here are some dudes. It can be given. Conventional to unconventional. Exactly. It can be jarring. Exactly.

And I don't say it in a negative way. I embraced it. I thought it was great because you've got these guys who can handle that responsibility. for the most part, right? Like you've got these individuals who are big boys. They're adults, right? And they know what they need to do on a daily basis, and they do it in an excellent way.

It's a very different world from getting an 18-year-old and a boot drop in the Marine Corps and having to train that guy to be, you were senior in high school a few months ago. Yeah. Now you need to go and learn how to destroy the enemy. So a very different world and a very cool world, very exciting, and very fortunate on my part that I was able to experience that

sort of from the inside, right? And just to see how remarkable these guys are at what they do, at what they do. So I show up in Nangerhar. This is February 2014, like a couple days after Valentine's Day. I don't know why I remember that. But, you know, I end up at Cobb Dwyer. I camp, excuse me, at Camp Dyer. And I get introduced to these guys.

And initially it's like, I'm almost similar to like earning the trust of your Marines when you show up to a unit. These guys didn't want anything to do with me, right? Who's this guy? showing up in country, he wants to go out with us. You know, he could be a liability. So you have to earn your stripes. So that started with like sweeping hallways. That started with, you know, creating content that was valuable to them.

Oh, this guy has half a brain. And this is useful to us. Oh, this guy speaks a little bit of Pashto. Let's bring him in to the next meeting. And he can let us know, like when they confer amongst themselves, like what they're saying. Yeah. So you find ways to be used. And then eventually they said, hey, do you want to come out with us?

And at first it was under the guise of like, oh, we need to do a humanitarian aid. Like we need to give out blankets and backpacks and school supplies to kids. And so like, yes, I will do that, happy to do that. And then eventually it turned into, do you want to sit in on this ambush with us? Like, do you want to come out with us? I was going to say, you're huge. I would give you a saw and a lot of rounds. I'll do you one better.

I got a 240. 240 is a varsity level belt-fed weapon that can fucking rain down some heat. I would still give you an incredible amount of rounds of carry, though, because you're huge. I will one day get another tattoo and it will be a 240 somewhere. I don't know where, but that's the next one. I'd go on your penis. I'm not even going to touch that one with a 10-foot pole, man. I don't know why that seems to be the best spot, but then you could give it like a nickname,

Fire Dragon or whatever. I don't know. We should probably change the topic. Yeah, we'll talk about that some other time, I guess. But yeah, and that was what I wanted, right? Yeah. I mean, that was, and that sounds really meat-headed, right? Like, oh, this guy wanted to go and kill the enemy.

This guy wanted to go out. Like, what's wrong with him? My answer to that would be nothing. I agree. But I think to those who perhaps haven't had the experience of military service, Like maybe they do need some explaining. And maybe one day, you know, I have a two and a half year old daughter and a seven-month-old son. Maybe one day they're going to listen to this.

I want them to know. Yeah. And so, you know, look, I go back to 9-11. Think about what happened there. Think about our communities. This was not a death wish. It was not a bloodlust. It was a need to serve your country at a time where your country needed you, right?

And I wanted to be the tip of the spear. I wanted our enemies and still want our enemies to know that you, don't do that and you don't get away with it. So that's why I did it. And I'm glad that I did it. But I was thinking today, I was taking a walk with my uncle. He's got a place in Big Fork. Oh, sweet. Yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Small, well, it's still in the Flathead Valley. I was going to say subdivision, but that is more applicable to San Diego where I used to say. It's a small community in the northeastern corner of Flathead Lake. Beautiful. Yeah. And he was, I don't know, remember how we got on it, but we were just taking a walk, taking a hike. And,

And I started telling him, like, hey, you know, I decorated my son's nursery. He's like, that's kind of weird. Like, your wife do that? And I was like, yeah, my wife did it for my daughter. But for my son, for whatever reason, I wanted to have like a big influence in the way that room looked. And I picked, I guess it was a travel theme. That's what I told my wife.

But really, it's an aeronautical theme, right? It's like planes. There's a couple of military jets in there. but for the most part, it's like spaceships and travel, you know, like commercial jets. And I haven't told my wife this. And so when she listens to this, I think it'll be a bit of an epiphany to her.

But the reason that I think wanted to have such an influence in the decoration of that room is because I'm not sure I want my son to be in the infantry. I don't know if that makes sense. It makes sense? You know what you were saying about the desire to go and be on the front leading edge? I'll describe it as that.

There are quite a few people that would say that that's really abnormal. And to me, the desire to not want to do that is abnormal. But I think you and I, the point in all that is I can respect people's desire to want to avoid that at all costs, as long as they can respect my desire to be the one that actually goes and pursues that. Because it's the same thing. It's not a bloodlust. it's a desire. I mean, I knew I wanted to be in the military since I was 11,

and I still struggled to articulate exactly why. But I'd land somewhere near. It was a desire to want to do something that mattered, that had an impact. I joined in 96, so pre-9-11. It was very conceptual until 9-11 and then became very practical. But when it did become practical, I didn't want to outsource that to anybody else. I wanted to be the person to go do that. And I have no issue with somebody saying, man, I don't think I ever could and I just don't want to.

I can respect that as long as you can respect my desire because we need both and everything in between as well. Yeah, I'm with you. And I need to clarify my comment. It's not that I don't want my son to serve in the military. I'm agnostic to whether he wants to or not. I want, I'm going to be proud of him no matter what he chooses he wants to do. Same with my daughter. If he decides he wants to go to West Point or the Naval Academy, agree. but I do sort of, I guess it's selfish, in a subconscious way, want to guide him away from some of the horrific shit that we saw, right? When I started having kids, it was post-9-11, and I would have conversations with the guys that I was working with,

and then also spent just kind of a lot of time in my own head thinking about it. I wanted to finish what we were involved with, so they would not have to pick up the pieces. I don't want my kids to have the experiences that I did. And having said that, the experiences that I did shape the human being that I am today. I don't think you and I would be sitting at this table if I didn't have those experiences, but I would rather that my children find ways to have similar experiences absent the environment and the things that we saw and sometimes were asked to do.

I agree with you on that for sure. There's other ways to get there and I want them to find them that way. but I also wouldn't try to talk them out of it. All three of my kids, though, have expressed zero desire to join the military. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I remember having that discussion with my dad, you know, in addition to what we talked about in high school. And when I finally decided, yes, I'm going to pursue this, there was a sense of, I was worried. I was a young guy.

I was worried that my father would not approve, right? Like, you know, not having the approval of your loved ones. That's a tough thing. And so I remember, like, in tears on the phone with him saying, if I do this, we will use still be proud of me, dad. And I'm like struggling not to shed it to you right now. And he said, I'll always be proud of you, right? And I want my kids to know that too.

Like if my son Luca at 18 says, I'm enlisting, then God bless you. Yeah, I'll be with you. However, let me deal to the recruiter with you so they don't sell you a bill of bullshit. That's true. Yeah. Take dad and dad's going to be like, hey, what's up, fucker? Yeah. You can take all that bullshit.

You're about to promise. This is what my kid's going to do. He's going to get an enlistment bonus and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But you would be, as would I, the recruiter's absolute worst nightmare. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I wouldn't talk him out of it, but I would be there in lockstep with him to make sure that all the bullshit that happens to some people, not all, like not today. Pick somebody else for that. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, and then on the flip side, if you're a nursery guides, you don't want to be a pilot or something, that would be okay too. Yeah. All I could ask for for my kids is they find something that is enriching for them to the degree that the military was. enriching and empowering for me. Who am I to say what they need to do? You know, it's, again, the power of choice. One of the things that I also believe that this country is founded upon and it's so incredibly important because the areas in which we served, I would define them as largely

being devoid of choice. I mean, sure, you had some choices, but it was the glass ceiling of all glass ceilings. Man with places in Afghanistan where people never travel for their entire life farther than their feet could carry them. Yeah, you have choices, but they're limited. Yeah, yeah. We're very lucky to live in this country, to have the opportunities that we have. And I think you've got to pay it forward, right?

From my grandfather to my father to me and now to my kids, right? We have an obligation to leave America better than how we found it. Yeah, I don't think I could have said that better. I wish more people thought about it from that perspective. So how was the rest of that tour? It was good. I mean, it was 12 months, and I got home, I guess I had done what I came to do.

And, you know, I don't know if it was fate or if it was God or what, but ended up finding a girl shortly after I got home and she's my wife now. So, I mean, it all, it all panned out. And where'd you meet her? Just nearby. We actually went to high school, different high schools, but in the same town. And she's just, she's a Jersey Bergen County girl. I'm a Jersey Bergen County guy. We had mutual friends and got fixed, you know, fixed up, connected that way.

but um you know i had left school didn't want to and i knew after afghanistan i'm not going to go back and try to be a doctor like i'm not going to try to be something i'm not so i went um and i applied to school again and i ended up going to georgetown uh and got my MBA and i was at the school foreign service to doing international relations but really more than the education and obviously that's critically important and makes me who i am today and it's giving me the opportunity to go and pursue these wild things um it was a halfway house right being a military guy and figuring out how to be a civilian again. Really tough, right?

Were you still in the reserves at this time? I had left. Okay. I actually, I get really hazy and my understanding of how the reserves works, especially when it comes to calculating retirement time. These guys will start talking about the math. They're like, yeah, I did 13 years in the reserves. So it's 57 years active duty.

What the fuck are you talking? It's a little weird for me. I didn't stick around nearly long enough to have to do that mental math, right? Like some of these guys who retire, I guess they, No, it's like point system. Yeah, it gets crazy. Yeah, I just like, I'm the world's worst officer when it comes to admin. I just didn't even think about that stuff.

I can deeply respect that. I also would rate myself very low when a fit rep when it came to add disabilities. Yeah. And I wear that with pride. Yeah. As do I. I wasn't here for that. Yeah.

But, you know, I ended up at school, and I'm glad that I didn't try to, like, shove myself into corporate America or, like, try to go do some job because I actually really struggled the first year of, like, getting normal again. What were the, if you can think back on it, where were the places or the touch points where you noticed that you were struggling? The big one was this idea,

not being able to disassociate myself, that failure isn't always the highest stakes thing. Failure's not always going to get somebody killed. The Marine Corps does a really good job of training and getting ready for war, but the mental toll that takes on you as an officer, right? And saying, like, hey, the littlest mistake that you make could have the biggest effect.

they could literally kill somebody. The constant hanging guillotine. Exactly. And so I brought that with me to school, right? I brought that with me because that was my entire adult life, right? And so I failed or did poorly on some quiz early on in the NBA program. And, you know, I went home and I sobbed because I couldn't disassociate this reality that the stakes were not that low from my former reality,

which was like everything could get you killed. everything and I went and spoke to somebody right I think it's important that vets talk about this right like let's talk let's not hide in the darkness right I went and spoke to a health professional at Georgetown and had like three or four sessions and you know eventually said like I don't think you have anything serious going on I don't think you need like prolonged medical attention or care you just need someone to talk to man right he's like you need to find your people and at Georgetown there's tons of

It's a very vet-friendly school. So I took a bigger role in, like, the veteran organization and started, like, going out for drinks with those guys or going to dinner with those guys, and that's what I needed, right? Did you find that a lot of them were working their way through the same things? Yeah, and there are cases where PTSD is horrific, right? Of course, and we have friends who have dealt with that

and continue to deal with it. Perhaps we'll deal with it forever. And probably have friends, too, where it won. Yeah, many. Yeah. But for those of us, I think perhaps most people get it and there's a spectrum, right? Some get a very small amount of it, some get an inordinate amount of it. I was fortunate to be on the prior part of that, like the lower end of the spectrum.

I think a lot of my peers were as well. And so just the ability to sort of have fellowship, right, with these people, talk through it. And then the next time I fell the quiz, it was okay, right? It was fine. It was less bad. What are you doing feeling quizzes? How did I graduate? What kind of quizzes are we talking about here?

Really hard quizzes. But like, you know, it got incrementally better until it wasn't an issue, right? Until you realize, like, I could like sleep through the day, sleep through a test, and, like, everyone's alive and everyone's happy. And my family is doing great. Yeah, I think you're really accurately describing the recalibration of the stress release valve. It's what you are describing about. the constant like if you're five minutes late everybody just died if you are uh if this paperwork isn't filled out correctly let me lay out the breadcrumbs to everybody dying that has a weight and a burden

over time and it absolutely will infect the way that you think and just because you switch one day from being in the reserves or active duty to not don't think that that stress is coming out we'll use like scuba bottle as an as an analogy if you If you don't find a way to crack open the manifold and slowly release some of that, what I have found is that it will release itself at some point in time, which is not optimal for your own life or society in general. And it takes time. I think it took me, some people would still likely argue that I need to relax even more. My wife would tell that same about me. But I think it took me two to three years to really chill out a little bit.

it is still something that I struggle with. One of the biggest negatives that I think I took with me from my seal career was also the biggest positive. And that was just that unwillingness to quit. It can be taken too far. If you go down the wrong path with that mentality, you will grind yourself into pieces. And it makes complete total and utter sense in the context of doing that job. but I also think the other side of that knife

can cut so incredibly deeply and actually derail portions of your life. You have to learn how to manage that and I'm still not an expert at it but at least I'm more aware of it now. You said earlier that these experiences are things that made us who we are, right? And I think that's absolutely true.

And so when you think about this, it's almost like the military gave us the greatest gift, which also has a curse attached to it, right? And you can't divorce the two. You can't disassociate. You don't get one without the other. Exactly.

And so you have to look at this as a net positive, right? And if it's not a net positive at some point in your life, you have to figure out a way to make it that way, right? You've got to recognize the value of knowing how to lead, of being humble, having integrity, right? Even in times when most people, I think, walking around are not going to have it. And yes, there's baggage that comes with that, right? There are shitty days and shitty experiences and moments that you'd prefer to forget, but would you really prefer to forget all of it?

Or do you want to recognize that there are some incredibly useful, valuable tools that you learn along the way? Yeah. It's easy to say and talk about over a table. It's very hard to live. Yeah. And I say that through my own experiences of navigating my own bullshit, of which there's plenty. I would say it would be a bucket full, but a wheelbarrow might be more appropriate. And it's easier to carry shit in a wheelbarrow.

There you go. I would have gone with a sandbag analogy. I hate sandbags. Yeah. I like wheel barrels because the theory of a wheel has helped people since the wheel was created. There you go. Yeah. Marine Corps probably loves sandbags because it's harder, less efficient, and can be used as a torture device.

So therefore, primary. Our wheelbarrows have square wheels. Of course, I didn't. I was going to say they probably have none and they still expect you to push it forward. It's like a plow. Yeah. So where'd you go after getting your MBA? Where'd you find your way back into the civilian world?

Yeah, I, yeah, I worked. So I got my graduate, I got my degree. It's a cool day to graduate to be like a big boy and like have your, well, she wasn't my wife yet. But we got married shortly thereafter. And then the first job that I had in the civilian world was at Bank of America. I joined this program. I applied to this program called the Veterans Association program. They take 10 guys, male and female.

I don't mean guys in a gender sentence. Applicants. Ten applicants. I think a thousand people apply to this thing. So I had no expectation that I'd get anywhere near it. I said, if I get an interview, I'll consider it a win. It'll be an opportunity for me to mess up so that I don't mess up at it, like another more realistic interview.

It's going to be a practice rep. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. A resume writing exercise. Yeah. So, you know, I did what I did in the phone interviews. You know, they had my resume. I guess they liked it because they asked me to come to an in-person super day, all-day interview.

And I was like, wow, this is great. This is awesome. This was the objective, right? So I've succeeded. And this will be great prep for another time. It's actually a great way to take pressure off yourself. Yeah. Yeah.

As opposed, like, I have to say everything correctly at the right time. Yeah. And you just load yourself up with that. And maybe that's why I did well because I remember leaving the, you know, going down the escalator in Midtown Manhattan at the building. And I was with a guy who would eventually become a friend of mine, Will, who also got in the program. We were going down together. And I was like, I think that went really well. He's like, yeah, I think so too.

And a few days later, they called me and they asked me if I wanted the position. I was like, yes, absolutely would love it. So I ended up working there for two, three years. What did you do? Equity Synthetic Sales Trading. It's as exciting as it sounds. I'm going to be a little bit of a description of what you're. Talk. Did you cause the goddamn housing market crash? I promise I didn't do anything bad.

It sounds to me like you were involved in the big shorts somehow. No, not at all. It's a documentary. I was a little bit late. I didn't show up until 2019. I don't want any of that put on my shoulders. That was a nightmare. Yeah. That flipped a few people upside down. Oh yeah. That was brutal. Absolutely nuts. Yeah. So you're going to have to break it down into plain English. Yeah. Do you trade stocks? Like, do you have? I have a theory on trading stocks. I like to buy high and sell low. It's an advanced strategy that I'm trying to... How's it working out for you? Well, I'm working on the master class right now. What I'm going to do is release a series. How's it working? I'm not great at it. But I also don't

I don't invest a lot of time or money in that. Right, right, right. Do you like just kind of go with someone says, oh, you should buy this stock, you buy it and then it tanks? I have definitely done that. But we've all been there. Yeah. So, but you... I don't know where to look for right information. Everybody's full of shit. When in doubt, just buy the S&P, man. Like, by V-Vu, VO. This is not financial advice, by the way. I'm not offering financial advice. Nice disclaimer. But yeah, I mean, my job was trading stocks, but not the actual stock itself, like you and I might trade on like a Fidelity account or something like that. That's called cash sales in this world. Synthetics are derivative products, right? So like, let's say you wanted

to own Apple, but you didn't really want to own it. You could buy it from the bank who owns it, and we would pass on the economics and all of the benefit or decline to you, and you would give us a rate, like you would pay interest on the fact that we're lending our stock to you effectively, right? Why? Why would anybody create this system? There are a few reasons. It would be, like, leverage is like a big one, where, like, if you're a big pension fund, for example, And you want to have a lot of exposure to Apple, but you can only afford a little bit of exposure. But you're just like, you feel really good.

You think that the pension people, the people who pay into this pension one could really benefit from having a lot of this. And you feel really, you know, devoted to this idea that you have. You can go to the bank and say, I want to buy a bunch of this. And the bank says, that's fine. You know, we'll give you this much exposure and you'll pay us this fee, right?

And, you know, and that's how that goes. This sounds terrifying to me. It does it? Yeah. I mean, it's... The term synthetic where you kind of own it, but you don't, but somebody else does. Yeah. Are you sure you weren't involved in the big show?

I'm sure of it. I'm sure. So, but, yeah, I mean, it's just like a common way for institutional, like... I was going to say, this doesn't sound like an individual transaction. No. It sounds like the institutional level. Yeah, this is like a bigger kind of a situation, so... Was it fun?

I think the people were great. I enjoyed working with... I made some friends there. I'm still friends with them talking. on text all the time. Not, you know, necessarily my life's passion. We talk in suit and tie in front of one of those crazy terminals that has like the six monitors. Yeah, it's a Bloomberg terminal, which is pretty cool because, I mean, you have access to information that you otherwise wouldn't, right? Like literally any news story you can find it. And it's just a cool thing to have.

But yeah, look, I think it was a great opportunity for me, right, to learn about the markets, to learn about the economy, to save money for my family, like put money in the 520. pay the mortgage down. What's the $529? That's the savings account for, like college savings account for a kid. So, yeah, it was, I think it was a good three years. Yeah, I didn't see myself doing it forever and ever. I also felt like there's a sense of relevance and pride that you get from service.

Yeah. Certainly in the military that I miss. And I think that's actually one of the things, and I'm making an assumption, here for other people. But I say it, having lived through it myself, I think it's one of the toughest things to deal with. Yeah. Yeah. I think finding that should be the mission of every veteran once the veteran leaves, right? Finding a sense of relevance. And it can be nested in any mission, right? You don't have to serve in the military to feel like you're moving the ball forward in your life. And maybe moving the ball forward is for your family, right? Maybe it means being a

great dad and a great husband. It can mean many different things for many different people. But I think having a mission, right, and being goal-oriented as the military requires you to be, is one path to happiness, right? And to sustaining a sense of, like, I'm doing good things, even if I'm not wearing the uniform. Some people go back into the service, right? Good for them, right? Yeah. I don't know that that's certainly the answer to everybody.

Sometimes it's not good for them, though. Yeah, exactly. I have a buddy who got out and was pursuing other things. And I, again, I have to make an assumption. based off the actions that he took, but he decided to come back in and ended up losing his life in his first combat deployment.

And I look at that, and it's just like, fuck, man. Like you had gotten out. You started taking steps in a different direction. And at the end of the day, I just wish he was still here. I understand the decision that he made. But it's tough.

That relevance piece, He and I had brief conversations, and it was, they were a good amount of time before he made that decision to get back in, though. And, you know, a lot of the times we talk about, oh, I miss it. You know, you still feel that coin. The one that I think will hang guys and gals up is, why didn't do enough? It's like, well, what is enough? You know, first off, is enough you got to lose a limb? Is enough that you have to leave with the TBI?

I mean, what's the metric here that we're trying to use? And again, if people want to get back in, by all means, do so. But maybe take the time to identify and assess the exact reasons that you want to do so. Because enough may not be possible. And you might have to come to grips with that. I think the military, what's the word? I think that there are a lot of people who are interested in joining the military, who gravitate to the military, who will never.

feel that sense of satisfaction right it's always going to be what's the next thing what's the next thing what's the next thing I've fallen victim to that I mean in my story I deployed three times so that I can get to Afghanistan on the fourth time right yeah I still don't feel like I've done enough right and I never will and that's a you know a blessing and a curse right drive can drive you to do great things and it can drive you into a ditch too I could also rob you of all happiness absolutely I mean if you're never satisfied Right? If you didn't if you can never feel like the bucket or the glass or whatever metaphor you want to use is full at all. Yeah. You'll arrive at the end of your life with I would imagine a sense of regret never taking the time to actually enjoy what you were able to accomplish. Exactly. And I can say on Wall Street I've seen some people who who stay there not because they feel like it's a fulfilling line of work. Some people do and that's great. Like do what makes you passionate and makes you happy. But there are definitely some people in that line of work who are there because they need. You know. You know they're being compensated well and won't be compensated as well elsewhere. And so they

sort of say to themselves, when I'm 55, I'll live my life. Like, I'll just rack it up now. And then when I'm 55, I'll just, I'll have a great life. That's not me, man. Right? Like, that to me sounds like a prison sentence. I also wonder how often that actually plays itself out. Probably never, right? It's a nice idea. But I think it's an excuse, right? And I just, I don't think anyone should ever have to force the square peg into the round hole, right? Like, you got to find what makes you tick, and you've got to love it, and you've got to go and do it. I don't miss the 530 bus to Manhattan. I get up, and I get to spend a lot of time with my family, right?

And, yeah, there are things about running for office that are suboptimal, right? It's not glamorous at all. And I don't relish this idea of public service. And certainly my wife doesn't, right? the idea of being sort of on the firing line, right? Raising your hand. And this isn't 30 years ago. People are pretty polarized.

People don't like you just because you're of the different political tribe. Which is idiotic, by the way, in my opinion. I'm with you. I'm with you. I mean, you look back in the 70s and 80s, Congress was like 75% vets, right? Was it really? I did not know that. Yeah.

I mean, it makes sense, right? A lot of World War II veterans coming of age. Oh, yeah. A ton of veterans. So you had this golden era in my opinion of compromise because people weren't saying, oh, you're a Republican, oh, you're a Democrat. They were saying you're an American, right? You were willing to put yourself on the line in service to your country. Maybe they both fought on Ywo Jima, right?

Maybe they both were, you know, they fought and they had some common ground, right? The common ground could have just been we were Americans and were Americans before were Republicans or Democrats. We don't have that anymore, right? I think Congress is 18% vets now. And I'm certainly not saying that you need to be a veteran. It shouldn't be a prerequisite to run for office, but you should think America's exceptional, right? And you should be. That should be a prerequisite.

That should be. And a will to serve and a record of service should be a prerequisite. Because if you love this country, you can disagree on just about anything and you can come to compromise, right? Like you can figure it out as long as that baseline is attained. But right now we don't have that. Yeah. How did you make the decision that running for Congress was the decision that you wanted to make? I'm still not sure it is.

No, I'm just kidding. It goes back to the insanity. Yeah, yeah, exactly. At some point, I'd imagine you started broaching conversations with your wife. It's like, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hypothetically, what would you think about, oh, I don't know, running for Congress? Yeah, yeah.

That was a tough one, right? Because it seems like in the modern era, she's going to get drug into this as well as. is your family. Because it's like there's no, there's no boundaries. There's no boundaries. This was a circuitous route for me. You know, when I think about why I joined the military, it had nothing to do with anything but like serving your country in a time of war and needing to do that, feeling like a vocational requirement to do it. You don't tell someone who wants to go be a priest that you shouldn't do it. That guy's going to regret it for the rest of his life. And in a similar fashion, I feel like if someone had prevented me from military service, it would be an eternal

regret. I'd have to live with that going to the grave. You know, I, in deciding whether public service was something that I should endeavor into, it was not something on top of my mind until a few years ago. I ended up at Georgetown, as I told you, which is in Washington, D.C., took some leadership roles in some of the clubs at school and, like, tried to be useful, right? Use the leadership skills for what they were worth. And I would get feedback like, wow, you, you know, you do a good job. Have you ever, I guess in Washington, the next part of that is like,

have you ever thought about running for office, right? Like, that was not an unnatural. Sounds like a very Washington thing to say. Yeah, right, exactly. And at first I just thought I was like faking the funk, right? And just like tricking these people and thinking that that would be something I could do. And I never had any real interest in doing it.

And you keep hearing that. And then I met a guy named Rob Collins. He's my mentor down in D.C., just happened to meet him through a Georgetown event. And he's, you know, he, was Eric Cantor's chief of staff, and he's been around the block as far as Republican politics go. He was the first one to say, like me, you should think about running for office. And that was something I deeply respected because I respected his opinion.

He's always very gracious to me. He still is. And then we started talking about, like, well, like, do you run for dog catcher first? And, like, do you work your way up? And, you know, he always thought, you know, he basically sat me down. He was like, what are the things that you care about? And everything I talked about, he's like, those are federal issues, right? Do you want to run for mayor?

Do you want to be a council person in your town? It doesn't sound like it, right? It sounds like the issues that get you going, that make you tick are issues that are federal in nature. Why try to lie to people by saying that you want to run for mayor, right? Like, why do the stepping stone route when people will see right through you, just go for it? And that was years ago. I'm going to cough, sorry. Go ahead. People cough if it happens.

Yeah, it's especially different. these times but I'm good yeah um so you know I took that advice to heart and then kind of put it away and didn't think about it for a while went to Bank of America started working there and then 2020 happens and by 2020 do you mean the pandemic 2020 the elections got you yeah also the pandemic we're both right right and all think I think I can't even fucking remember how long we've been stuck in this pandemic and it's crazy man and to be honest I'm trying to forget at any election cycle because I know in like a year from now it's going to start up again, and quite frankly, I'm not ready for it.

Yeah. I just was so exhausted by hearing about it. Well, in New Jersey, we have elections every year, so stay away, man. That sounds great. That sounds great. New Jersey is now a flyover state. Well, I hope I can change your mind. But yeah, I mean, in having those conversations, I think that that's kind of what drew me there. And then 2020 happened and opportunity kind of arose. I think people, and I think it's getting increasingly clear, especially after you saw what happened in New Jersey this last election cycle, we've a lot of legislative victories on the Republican side.

The governor's race was supposed to be an 11-point loss for the Republican, and he lost by like a couple percent, right? This was something that could have been won in a lot of people's minds had we dedicated more resources to the outcome. So, you know, you have this idea of like, oh, New Jersey's lost, it's blue. Now it's purple, man, right? Like, and there's a lot of opportunity here. The gubernatorial canon, I'm telling you about Jack Chirrelli, good dude. You know, he won six of the 12 congressional districts when you measure out, like, by town by town. Six of those districts are one.

Only two of them are held by Republicans. It's a 10-2 state right now. It used to be six-six a few years ago. But, you know, I think the last. the last few years have been hard for Republicans in New Jersey, but I think people are starting to realize that common sense prevails. So I am not aware of what's going on in New Jersey. You said that there was some drastic changes legislatively.

Yeah. What reverse course or flipped? A lot of people think it's the same stuff that kind of made people reverse course in Virginia, right? Like this, the concepts of like parental control instead of government control, like letting parents have a choice on where they send their kids to school or whether their kids should get vaccinated, right?

These are things. Also not COVID. Scott, it's good. These are things that I think appeal across the aisle. You don't have to be a Republican or a Democrat to say to yourself, like, I just sat through a year of my kid learning on Zoom. And some of the things that I heard are not things that I would have expected my kid would be learning. Yeah. Like that's opinion.

That's not fact. People are starting to wake up, I think. I think people are starting to realize that common sense should prevail. And I think that the, you know, I don't want to get overly partisan here. And that's not what this is about. But I do think the Republican message resonates with a lot of people, even if they're not Republicans now, because they're seeing what's going on. We've seen the trajectory of the country. I have my dad on.

I've had him on a few times. He's like 114. So he's seen a lot of changes in the left-right political system. I don't remember he said it on air. But in talking with him, he's basically said, he's like, I don't recognize these parties anymore. Like what a liberal used to be is. apparently now not even acceptable to what a modern era liberal is, and I actually don't have a definition for that. But he also said, you know, what a conservative used to be, and what that

used to mean is also extremely different. So just what he is seen and the changes of his life, for me, it's actually very hard to, you know, when you say that the Republican narrative, I don't know if you use that exact word, resonates with a lot of people who aren't even Republicans. I think it's a very, it's becoming a very gray definition. And actually, I don't think a lot of people are doing a very good job of defining it. This is my one, not a political expert by any fucking stretch of the imagination. I think, if I had a guess, like if you forced me to put money on a wager as to where people sit politically,

I would say it's like 80% in between both parties. I think a lot of people, the common sense approach to me, like for myself, I'm very fiscally conservative and socially on some issues, liberal. I feel like I have a foot on each side. And I feel like that's a reasonable position for a lot of people. The extremes, I think, are getting farther and farther and farther and farther away. Yeah. So I don't even know what the hell it means anymore to be a liberal or a conservative.

It's just like it's almost as if the definition is becoming very leaky. Yeah, I mean, for me, I think that there are a lot of things that do change, right, over the course of time. One thing that I've always believed, and I won't speak for others, is that bureaucracy is not the answer to our prayers, right? That increased government, right? Providing more responsibility in size and scope to the government has never solved any of our problems and has led to the creation of so many of them. And so for me, I think this is about ensuring that people are empowered to make as many of their own problems. choices as they can. I think if you go back to the founding documents of this country, I think people view the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as something that grants power to the individual.

Those were documents in my understanding that limited the power of the government. It was not, the government was never supposed to be the answer to people's ails. Yeah. The Constitution is the answer to what happens when government gets out of whack, right? The Constitution confers power to us, It tells us what we can do, what we are in power to do. And what they cannot do. Exactly. Exactly. And that's lost somehow.

Exactly. Yeah. And it's tragic, right? I think the Constitution has been interpreted in many different ways and in many different styles. But I think it's in black and white there, right? We know what the government can and can't do. We know what powers we conferred to ourselves so that the government can never have them

against us. And yet it seems in so many ways that there are a lot of people. who would be comfortable seating rights back to the government, even though when you look throughout the course of human history, that doesn't end well. But I also think that the government, I'm not going to go tinfoil hat. So when I say the government,

I'm not talking about the supposed puppet masters. For the first time, I met a fucking crazy Q&N, people are drinking blood. He, the Masonic elites, he told me that I, because of my military service was a pit bull of the Masonic elites. And it continued to say a bunch of other things that I immediately tuned out.

And I was like, that's awesome. I was just trying to enjoy my coffee. I'm like, I'm going to go anywhere other than right here. But it was insane. It was absolutely insane. But for the people, for the government and the people who want to take rights away, they do it smartly because they do it incrementally. The Patriot Act is a good example of this.

I believe in the general concept, and I would like to believe that it was created with the intent of protecting American citizens, but that loss of personal privacy, the amount of information that the government has, it's concerning to me. And they're not going to give it back. No. They're not. So they might, somebody would probably say, oh, I don't want to give you, I'm not going to give you that right. Yeah. But then if you take a 10-year approach at taking it back. you know, 10% of time per year, over 10 years, it's gone. And I hope people realize once that

stuff is gone, it is gone. Yeah. And I'm going to tie this into an example that people probably won't like. And I talked about this, the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. There were people saying, if he didn't break the law, we should change the law. Listen up, motherfucker. If you think that you need to change the law there, you have to understand the cascading consequences and the impact it would have on your right to defend yourself. You might not agree with the verdict. You might not like the person who he is affiliated with. You need to trash all of that and look at the justifiable use of force. Changing the law to suit your narrative is so dangerous in the long term that I cannot even believe that people would fathom that as an approach. Yeah. Have you ever heard of the war powers

resolution? Yes. But if you asked me what was in that. I won't quiz you. Yeah. So there are a couple, but 1973 is the one I'm talking about. And this is sort of in the wake of Vietnam. There was this confusion. And there shouldn't have been right because the Constitution mandates, it confers power on the Congress to declare war, right? Like that's written in black and white.

But of course, with what happened in Vietnam, those lines were very blurred, right? The president actually took a lot of power and made a lot of unilateral decisions without the Congress to sort of perpetuate that war for many, many years. And so in the wake of that, as it was slowing down,

Congress came back and said, look, we need to codify, like, whose responsibilities are what. And what they came up with was, you have, they're like, there's a 30-day threshold and a 60-day threshold for you to inform us of, like, military forces that you're going to use in a time of necessity, right? Like, we get it. You can't, you can't have Congress, like, very slowly deliberating whether we should go to war if there's literally a crisis that we need to do it with right now. So here's, you get your 30-day metric, your 60-day metric. You have to inform us. And after that metric or after those metrics, like it comes to us. You bring those people back unless we've declared war, right? And from 1973 to now, Congress has never enforced that, right? They've

effectively ceded away the right to declare war to the executive, right? And why do we think that is? My opinion is that Congress knows that it would be bad for their careers if they were the ones who had their finger on the switch and doing what the Constitution actually required them to do. Oh, you're talking about where the accountability would land? Exactly. So why not let it fall to the president, even though that seems pretty authoritarian to have that kind of influence on our military forces? And so I think Congress needs to take that back, right? We need to be, Congress needs to be responsible for what the Constitution requires it to do. And I think that that that is something that we need to come to realization with that, like, Congress has sort of

like giving up its rights, right, which is the rights of the people, right? You get 435 members in the House and you've got 100 members in the Senate representing the people, right? They should be the ones making the decisions on if those people should be going to war. And that is constitutionally what is required, and yet it's not happening. Do you actually think that the House and the Congress right now are representing the people? I think that there are a lot of institutional elites who are in office in order to be in office. They run for Congress in order to run for Congress. They like the idea of the power. I think my opponent is very much the kind of guy who's spent his entire life and in Washington, right? He worked his way up from intern to speechwriter, yada, yada, yada. Now he's a

member of Congress. And I don't think that there is anything he would, I think he would compromise any principle in order to get another two years in office. How long has he been in office? He's been in office for six years, but he's been in Washington his whole life. So his name's Josh Godheimer. He was an intern for the Clintons during the presidency. He then became a speech writer. And then they moved him into the private sector where he made a bunch of money. And they've kept him there. And eventually he ran for... Who's they? The Clintons, you know, the establishment, in my opinion. So basically they've enabled this guy to now run for Congress, right? And every decision that he makes is not in the interest of the 735,000 people he's meant to represent. It's in the

interest of raising money, it's in the interest of getting another two years, right? And eventually, I think he wants to step into some other role. He wants to run for Senate or for governor. And he's not interested in what happens when he's a congressman. He's doing what is necessary to appease Nancy Pelosi and the Biden administration, and he's staying quiet when things need to be said, and he's being loud when he doesn't need to be because he thinks it'll get on votes. That to me is the great tragedy of what's happening in Washington, right? You don't have men and women of service. You have men and women who see an opportunity to ingratiate themselves rather than our nation. That to me is such a problem. And I think we need to get in there and we

need to fix that. What would you do to fix that problem? I would tell people that if I'm fortunate enough to get elected, then I'm going to make some really hard choices. Then I'm going to maintain and preserve the integrity that I learned as a Marine. And if that means that I don't get elected in two years, then I can live with that. What I wouldn't be able to live with is being malleable and my principles and in my authenticity so that I could get another two years. I'm not going to sell my soul to Washington. I'm going to do what's necessary

and what I think is right for the people who have charged me with representing them. And if at the end of that term, they say no more, then that's okay. What wouldn't be okay is if I continued to play this rat race that everybody else does. Do you think that limiting how long people could serve in government

would be beneficial? I'm for it. I look at the U.S. Senate has six-year terms, right? I think if you're a senator, you should get one opportunity to get reelected, right? So that way you have a 12-year opportunity to change. That's a long time. You should be able to get some shit done, so to speak, right? And I think Congress should be given the same, right?

So it's two-year terms, so you should get six elections, right? And if in 12 years you can't serve and get the things done that you've aimed to do, then you should probably go anyway, right? You're obviously not doing enough. So I think that that makes a whole lot of sense. And I'd be completely supportive of that. I feel like, again, knowing almost nothing about politics, that 12 years is far too long. What would you put it at?

Eight. So you get like a six-year term in the Senate and then you get two years and you got to go. We're going to have to rewrite some shit here, okay? We're rewriting shit. Yeah. Maybe it should be a four-year term instead of a six. I mean, that's a long time. It's, I worry about not everybody who seeks political.

office. But my worry is, is that they're there not seeking to serve the people, as you mentioned, that they are elected to serve. And I had somebody on the podcast recently, and he described, or he made the analogy, which I think is accurate, that it seems like the political system is a vat of Coca-Cola, and you're a tooth that gets dropped into it, right? It has all this big. Yeah. Beautiful enamel, right? And it's strong, but the same thing. system itself will eat at you until you get to the point where structurally you're gone. And I think limiting how long people could play in that pool would help. I don't think you should be able to be in politics for more of your life than you have been

outside of politics. I don't think that you should be able to be almost 80 and run the country, regardless of political party that you are in. I think there's some changes that it would benefit the country if it were made. And it would, I don't know, almost force people to focus on that service of others as opposed to service to themselves. I mean, you can look at just the net worth of people who, before they go into the political service and then the net worth and the positions and the jobs and the boards and the offers. Like, oh, that's so weird. I wonder if that's tied to it at all.

I wonder if those organizations had any influence whatsoever. Yeah. Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. I'm 100% on board with you. I think term limits are necessary. I think maybe we got to work the king says on how long we want that to work. We've already agreed on eight. Let's put a pin in that one. I don't know. Eight's a number that sounds reasonable to me, but I think that would be a good start. I think I worry about the 2024 election cycle, especially if it goes the way that the 2021 did. And the portion of that, that I'm talking about is people's lack of faith in the results. I'm not sure we could tolerate another round of that. That's very alarming to me, right? Like, how do you have a functioning democracy if a large percentage of the population do not believe that their vote is being counted the same as their peer, right?

In 2000, you remember Bush Gore and all the dimpled chads in Florida? Hanging Chads, bro. Yeah, what a mess that was. Yeah. So after that, Jimmy Carter, former president, of course, he enacts a bipartisan commission. And he says, we're going to figure out how to prevent something like this happening again because this could be like the Constitution doesn't say what to do in a situation like this. So we need to prevent that from happening. Yeah, because you have to have faith in the result. Yeah. And one of the big things that he came up with was, look, vote by mail is really problematic in the sense that it is in. indeed the most fraud prone way to vote. And it's common sense in a way, right? Think about this.

If you went and voted you to a poll, right, in person, that's, that's, which is how I've always voted. So you casting a ballot and that ballot is then received by the person who will eventually count that vote, or at least it will be passed on to very few people. There could be hundreds of people in the chain of custody if you're mailing your ballot in, right? And whether by accident or on purpose, that ballot can be lost. So it's alarming to me in New Jersey.

in 2020, it was all vote by mail, right? It was mandated by the governor of New Jersey that we would all vote by mail. Is that based around the COVID protocol? Correct. Okay. Which love Dr. Fauci or not, he said, no, we can vote by mail. Like, we maintain our social distancing protocols. We, you know, like, we should not say that in.

Fauci said you can vote by mail or vote in person? Excuse me, vote in person. Okay. Say, like, we don't need to forego voting in person. You know, you maintain your social distancing protocols. This is something that can be done. But it was opted by the governor in New Jersey not to do it. And I think a lot of people felt that that was a political decision, right?

And so that to me is alarming, right? If you're forcing everyone to vote by mail, there were provisional ballots, but those only get counted if you need them. And the only people who could actually vote in person were people with disabilities who wouldn't otherwise have been able to vote. I'm not sure why that was sort of the reason they decided to do it, but that was what they went with. And that to me is a concern, right? Because of that chain of custody that's so long, because of the possibility, the proneness of fraud for vote by mail. So that to me is alarming and something that we need to address, right? That to me, I think, solves a lot of it. I do believe that voter ID makes a lot of sense.

I think it's something. What's the argument against voter ID? Disenfranchisement, right, that not everyone has an ID. So my solution to that is, look, at 18, you got a selective service card. I got a selective service card. It seems as though we're gearing toward women getting those as well, another conversation for another day. But the bottom line is the government knows generally where you live when you're 18. And the government has this thing called a passport too, right? And a lot of people get those. Why not at the cost of the government, not at the cost of the individual, everyone is issued a passport, right?

Everyone has now the opportunity to vote. That is what you use to go and vote. This doesn't need to be difficult. And yet I think there are political reasons why people want this to be harder than it is, right? and want to say that voter ID is somehow a disenfranchising tool. All right, fine. If that's how you feel, then let's have the government issue that ID. Well, what percentage of people don't have IDs?

I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. And this is where I feel like transparency. It would be, it would blow a lot of the bullshit around some of this stuff. Because I will hear people say that. But then I want to know, like, what are you, what are we actually talking about? Can you actually explain to me what percentage of the U.S. population would be impacted by this? Is this actually an issue?

Yeah. Or is this something that you can say that shuts down the argument because it puts this into this taboo place where we can't have this conversation? I don't have the data to answer that. But what I can tell you is an anecdote that I think is important. Nikki Haley, when she was governor of South Carolina, she implemented voter ID. A lot of pushback from state Democrats in the legislature. Eventually it was pushed through because she said, if anybody, needs to go and procure an ID, the government will literally go and drive you and help you

procure that ID and then drive you home. And she said, like, 25 people signed up for that. So it would stand to reason to me that that's not really a big problem, right? And that we need to stop using that as an excuse. I mean, let's also take a look at in the course of your daily life, how many times you are asked for identification for things that I would say have far less gravity than actually voting on elected officials. I just got back from a trip. You know, if I wanted to order an alcoholic beverage, a restaurant that I was eating at, it requires an ID card. When I checked into the hotel, it requires an ID card. When I rented my car, it requires an ID card.

When I got on the airplane, it requires an ID card. And again, I'm not a political election by any stretch, but why is there such an emphasis placed on some things, but then on other areas that could have an impact at a national level, it is positioned as something that is disenfranchising? Voting is the most sacrosanct civic duty that we all do. Most people do. I think it is the lifeblood of democracy and therefore the lifeblood of America. I think it is infinitely more important than renting a car than buying a six pack of beer. I don't have an answer for you because I agree with you that we should have an ID to ensure that only citizens are voting in national elections. Yeah, I mean, I don't have an argument against that.

And I do think that if people don't have an ID, I would completely, I would love to allocate my tax dollars. That's another thing I would love to know is where the fuck my tax dollars actually go. I would like to dedicate my taxes towards a program that can get people those IDs because it could solve the problem. It's not an insolvable problem. I agree. You were supposed to answer all my political questions. How far did we get like 10%?

Oh, man, it depends on the topic. I wonder if that'll actually ever get changed, though. What are we talking about? voter ID. I wonder if it'll ever actually, well, I mean, because it's still from what I can tell it's up in the year, depending on what state you're in. Yeah, look, I think it goes back to the conversation of what kind of people do we have in the state and federal legislatures. And are they willing to work together for the good of the people in common sense? Or is this about tribalism and party? I mean, can't we just tell that based largely off the voting lines on any particular

topic that comes through? Yeah. I think it, look, it's sad, right? We've, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, right? Like, I wasn't alive in the 60s counterculture during Vietnam. I'm sure that was some pretty dark times for America. But, you know, certainly in my lifetime, this is the most polarized and separated we've ever been. And that's alarming to me, right? And that's why I'm running, right? The reason that I'm running is it's not for me. It's for my kids. It's for your kids. For the next generation. Maybe we'll have grandkids one day. My kids will never live in New Jersey. Well, I won't count Montana out. This place is pretty beautiful.

But I mean, like, that's the whole point of it, right? Why did we go and do what we did in the military? It wasn't for our own jollies. It was because we believed in a higher calling a bigger ideal. And that ideal is the United States of America. What are your thoughts on the woke ideology that seems to be slowly creeping its way into states? and federal government. I have a two and a half year old daughter, as I mentioned.

She's in preschool now. So I'll back up a little bit. When I got home from Afghanistan, finished up the grad school stuff, my girlfriend at the time, now wife, said, look, we've been in D.C., you finish your school. We can go anywhere in the world. Where would you like to go?

And the answer resounding me from both of us, and you're going to laugh and make fun of it was we both want to go home to New Jersey, yeah. I love it, though. Yeah, let me know when you're done laughing. Yeah, deep family roots. I get it. I get it. And, you know, it was about family roots, right? Like, it's nice to have grandma and grandpa nearby. For sure. And, you know, what's not nice is the property taxes. We pay, I'll tell you, we pay 15 grand and we have a 2,000 square foot home. We don't live outside of our means, but it's $15,000 every year to the government to live there. It's incredible. It's the highest property taxes in the country. And why did we go back?

Because, yeah, because of grandma and grandpa and grandpa, and because, you know, you always make this excuse as most New Jerseyans do. Well, we have the number one school system in the country, too. So, like, it's not going to nothing. We're not even sending my daughter to that school and what we're sending her to Catholic school. And the reason is because we're really deeply concerned about the New Jersey Education Association and the special interests that are sort of taking the focus off of the student and what the student is learning and really kind of putting it on other things. And I'm deeply concerned about critical race theory. I don't want my two and a half year old daughter to go into a school room and learn that she was born bigoted, right?

And that there is inherent racism in her because of what she looks like. That to me is racist, right? Yeah, when you're teaching people to look at race first. Yeah. Like, let's look at character. Let's look at the individual. All the things that Martin Luther King used to talk about, right? I'm not making this stuff up.

This was the discussion during the civil rights movement. And the discussion was equality, right? It wasn't equity. There's a big difference. Equality is, you know, think about the Olympics, 100 meter dash. Everyone starts at the same line. That's our goal in a system and a society of equality. Get everyone to the same line, right?

Don't make zip code the point by which you determine who should go to what school. Like, let's get people in a place where they can succeed and let's make choice a part of that. Equity, on the other hand, is trying to get everyone to finish the race at the same time. And that's, I mean, it goes against the human condition. It goes against the fundamental laws and wars of our land.

That to me is problematic. I will always fight for equality and I will always fight against equity because they are that fundamentally different. And I think it's an important distinction. Yeah, Jordan Peterson talks about it, right? The equality of opportunity versus the equality of outcome. Opportunity, absolutely. Couldn't support it more. I want everybody to have the same opportunities, but to expect everybody to have

have the same outcome. I mean, all that would accomplish is stifling success, right? Like you're not going to, you're not going to make unsuccessful people more successful. You're just going to make successful people less successful. Well, it's also, it also seems to somehow disregard the very in-your-face fact that human beings can gather information on their own and realize there's differences between people, whether or not we want to admit it or not. And some people are more physically capable. And some people are more intellectually capable. I'm sorry, there's a spectrum.

There's dumbdums and there's Einstein's out there and everything in between. Myself personally, I'm very close to the dumb dumb side. So I listen to people that are smarter than me, which is basically every person that I meet. And I use that as a way to navigate through life. But I don't understand. I just don't understand the attempt to make the outcome exactly the same for everybody, given that we are all so incredibly different. I think it is the role and the responsibility of government

to foster conditions for the individual to be as successful as he or she chooses to be. And that's it. And I think the minute you start to get more involved in the individual's life, that's when things go off the rails. Yeah, I don't want the government involved in my individual life. I, and maybe it's because I worked for the government and got to interface with some very,

high level three letter alphabet soup organizations who people think are super high speed but when you pull back the curtain it's a donkey with a fly buzzing around its head I don't need I I want to be responsible for the outcome of my life but I also do not look to the government to solve any of the problems that I have I mean national defense yes I of course I want the government I want and infrastructure and of course there are some amazing things the government is designed to do and they should absolutely do those things, but I don't want them making decisions for me. I had a, excuse me, I had a teacher, my sophomore year of high school was my English teacher, and he said something that stayed with me, and he said, you know, he goes, I believe that the

government exists to provide the things that individuals cannot provide for themselves. And he said, that's a very small list of things. I think national defense is number one on that list. Yeah. We can't do that ourselves. We cannot provide a common defense against an enemy and organized enemy from the external by ourselves, right? And so there is a perfect function that government must exist to do. So that to me is, those are the things that we need to be looking at for government to provide for us. And I think that we should come back to a place in our social understanding of democracy and the republic, where people realize, like, it's on me. And yes, there are things that the government must do.

but for the most part, I have myself and my family and my community to rely on. Yeah, a rugged sense of independence, not looking external for the solution to your problems. Oh, man, I would like to think that we can get there, but I have my doubts. Well, I'll do my best. What do you think would be the hardest part? I mean, so you announced your candidacy in November. When's the election? It was primary in June and November of next year.

What do you think is going to be the most challenging or difficult aspect along the way? Personally? Yeah. Or it's just when you look at the path that you know you're going to walk, what do you think is going to be the most challenging aspect? Maintaining a family life that's sufficiently rich for my kids. I told you my dad's a doctor. He was gone a lot. I saw him on Sundays.

He worked really, really hard. He was in practice. And that was, I remember that being difficult for me as a little kid, right? So I want to make sure that I'm more present with my family. Running for Congress, not running, but being a member of Congress, requires you to be away from your family. In D.C., a pretty good amount of time, right? Yeah. I mean, for them, for, you know, it's all dependent on the schedule, but for, you know, let's say swag estimate would be like four, three, four days a week. You're in D.C., three, four days a week, you're at home. That's a tough home life, right? And that was a huge part of the discussion that my wife and I had. And of course, she has some reservations, had some reservations about that. And we've worked through them.

because I think we both recognize the importance of this moment, right? And I owe her the promise of being a good husband and being a good father in spite of that difficult schedule. And I think her payment in kind is allowing her husband to pursue a goal that is not a personal goal, but one for his country, right? Allowing me to be me, right, to serve America. I did it once before in the military. Now I aspire to do it in a different way, but in swearing the same oath to the Constitution. This one would be more of a hypothetical because you haven't done the job yet, but what do you think would be the hardest part about being a congressman,

absent to family life, I guess more from a professional perspective. Compromise, right? I mean, it is indeed the lifeblood of our republic. You have to be able to talk to both sides of the aisle to get things done. But that, in a way, it's almost become a four-letter word on both sides. sides, right? It's not, this is not me blaming one side or the other. Yeah. Collectively, we as Americans, almost bristle at the idea of compromise now, but how do you, how do you sustain a republic if you're not willing to talk to the other, right? We've got to come back to a sense of

mutual respect for fellow Americans, regardless of what you think, there's got to be common ground. We've got to find it, and then we've got to exploit that mutually, right? We've got to work together to come to terms with solutions that our country desperately needs, that's going to be really hard because there's almost like a cultural aversion to it and thereby an unwillingness of most members of Congress to do it because they feel that it might upset their constituents. Well, there's also organizations competing for time and attention, and I'm saying largely talking about social media where it seems as if they make

more and more and more and more money and get more and more and more engagement by promoting things that are divisive. Yeah. And I don't know. I mean, I would agree with you. It's interesting because if you go online, let's use Twitter as an example, and I don't recommend actually anybody go there because it's a shit show. The things that I see people arguing about and the way that they choose to argue or communicate is insane. And then I have gone back and forth with people on the internet, as I'm sure we all have a little bit. And the other day I was thinking about, I was trying to think if I had ever had a conversation in real life that was as contentious as the ones that occur online. And I realize I never have. The people that I interface with on a

daily level. Like, we could talk politics all day long. I don't give a shit what side of the aisle that you were on. And it never degrades to the ad hominem personal attack where you, because that's like, if you take one layer past the, or skin a layer off of the onion, it switches to an attack on the individual as opposed to an attack on the idea, which I think an economy ideas are great. And you should attack all of them and let the best one come to the surface. But I don't, I don't know how to, I don't know how to bring people back closer together when a lot of the communication, and I'm as guilty of this as anybody else,

comes on devices through platforms that reward the divisiveness. I don't know how to walk that back. It's completely incentivized, right? We live in a system now where we are rewarded for being trolls, right? And I think that's hard. And I think the reason that that exists is because if you were to say something nasty to me to my face

and you saw that that may be yeah there's physical consequences like you well i wasn't going to say i was going to knock you out i was going to say like if i said if you said something nasty me and it made me cry right you would say to yourself oh wow that doesn't make me feel nice like that's awful such a pussy but like all that moral element right that that feeling of there is a an effect to the cause right like that's the response and i don't like that response i don't like i don't like making someone feel that way, that's gone on social media, right? Like, that's completely, um, void, uh, of the, of the platform. So people can say the nastiest things they want and they, they have no responsibility, no need to experience or suffer the consequences of saying that. And so what it's led to is, I think,

a deeper, a more cavernous fringe, right? Far left and far right, are becoming more disparate and more numerous because you're rewarded for being as edgy as you possibly can be. Yeah. And that's tough. That's tough in a society that requires people to come together. Yeah. And the internet is a vast tool that gives you access to information and not all of it is real. You know, not to keep going back to Brogan's podcast, but he has some amazing people on that talk about the malleability of social engineering and networks.

and the fact that state actors who absolutely have everything to gain by the United States being divided are looking at these tools going, oh, yeah, like, why would we need to have a direct kinetic engagement? We can just sit here and just manipulate the brains and divide them farther apart. I just not that there would be a simple solution to bring people back together, but I don't know the steps that we need to take to do so. But I agree with you, unless that happens, I mean, who knows how fractured. fractured or how deep the fracture will go.

I mean, I do think it starts with electing people who are willing to lose, right, and who are willing to say the things that are necessary to bring the Republic back together, right? How much of the people in office right now would you have to flush, though, to really be able to do that? I don't know. Because what did you say? It was 450 and 100? 435. 435.

Let's say that you're able to get 35 people with that mentality in in the next election. Is that going to be able to turn the tide, or are they actually going to be actually going to be actually completely marginalized and minimized because of the status quo that exists. Changes incremental, man. You said it yourself, right? You got to start somewhere. I know, but I want to flush the toilets on these fuckers. I think it requires, you know, Baldomero Lopez, does that name sound familiar to you?

No. So, famous picture, the Battle of Inchon, right, the Inchon landing in the Korean War. Was this guy a Marine? Yeah. Of course you know his name then. It's a bullshit, question. So he was a lieutenant. And there's this famous picture.

Everyone's on the beach and there's this bulkhead and everyone is like waiting. And it's like, what do we do now? Like, because there's just rampant enemy fire. And Baltimore Lopez gets up there and he's the first one in. He ends up dying in that battle. But it spurred all the Marines to come up and realize we got a job to do, right? I think that's the best answer I can give you. Yeah.

Did he get the Medal of Honor? He did. Some of the Marine Corps Medal of Honor citations will knock you flat on your ass. No doubt. It is one of the things that I, you know, the last seal team that I was attached to was Seal Team 3. And at the entryway, the quarter deck, nautical term

for people known as the front door slash foyer lobby. The gear that Michael Mansour was wearing on the roof when he jumped on the grenade sits there with his Medal of Honor citation. And there are the pictures of people who gave their life and the service of their country. And I've been to so many military installations throughout my career, but I used to always love the Marine Corps once because it's just like every hallway has this legacy of who came before you and what it meant to them to be a Marine or to be a seal and Monsour's example. And it is just awe-inspiring the level of service that some people are willing to take it to. And I mean, that goes back to our previous discussion about did we do enough.

Right? Because you've got guys who have done everything. Some guys give their lives. Some guys don't Everyone gives a little bit of something, but the question is like is what you were meant to give? Did you give it? And I think guys like us will always wonder. Well, like you'll never have an answer to that question. I'll go to my deathbed questioning that for sure. Well, especially because you have the comparison to your peers and it's yeah, I think that will be it's going to say an immortal question, but I'm not sure that's the right. phraseology to use a pretty advanced word like it two officers talking about big words there yeah but I mean what an inspiration to see those concrete and physical examples and I wish there was a way to when people would want to come and visit team three or come see where I work that's where I would start is right there and like just give them some time in that room because there's some amazing stuff in there there's silver star citations there's the Medal of Honor citation it's just

like the gear there with holes in it, you know, and it's just like, take it some time to take a look at what's possible when it comes to service and sacrifice as a human being. And, yeah, then we'll start the tour. Yeah, there you go. You miss me in a Marine? Actually, hold on. I cannot believe I even asked you that because I am very aware of the phrase, once a Marine, always a Marine.

I mean, you may be wearing a red shirt that says United States Marines on it right now. I only own Marine Corps shirts, yeah. What percentage of Marines do you think own red cars? Can I say more than 100? A thousand percent? I mean, I was driving by Camp Pendleton, you go by the parking lot. I just like, goddamn, guys, they have other colors. Not like everyone is red, but statistically much higher red vehicles on the Marine.

I had a red vehicle when I was in the Marines. Of course you did. Was it a vet or was it? No, it was a Nissan Pathfinder. But at least it was red. It was It fit in with the rest of the cars For sure

A sea of Actually you guys probably call it maroon Or something like that church it up a little bit I don't know what's that word I don't know that Red is good I tell you what man I appreciate so much about Marines

One of the things I appreciate the most about them Is the headspace That everybody's a rifleman That you are entering into a service Of arms A profession of arms Don't be mistaken You might be the guy carrying the gavel

But at the end of the day You know, you are a Marine. And it's not like that in the other services. I don't know if you experienced that in your time. But I also appreciated working with Marines. We would actually interface with them quite often, whether it be, oftentimes it was more like a blocking position perspective or going into their area of operations.

And largely I would describe breaking shit and then leaving so they could clean it up. But it was, you know, people talk about this rivalry between Navy and Marine Corps. I never honestly once felt it maybe a little bit pre-intuitive. 9-11 because absent an enemy, of course, we're going to fight each other. Yeah, exactly. But post-9-11, forget about it. Yeah, I mean, we had a real enemy, man. Yeah.

The joys of being able to make fun of other service branches, I think, quickly went away. That was just, I joined, you know, I said it in 07, I was commissioned. So we were at war for six years. Yeah. I never really experienced that. The vision was elsewhere. Yeah. So.

But you asked me a question. I want to answer it, man. Good for it. about if I miss it. Yeah. Yeah. I've thought a lot about this. And my wife asked me, which is why I was thinking about it.

I think the answer is, it depends on what you mean. Do, like, do I want to- We're wearing the uniform? Yeah. I mean, do I have the taste or desire to, like, go back and do the, and, like, do more of it, like, do another nine years? No. Do I have a nostalgia and an appreciation?

for all the moments that I got to have with those guys in that time, in that place. Yeah, I have so much nostalgia that it's painful sometimes to think about it because I'm like, wow, what an incredible experience and it's gone. It's fleeting. I already experienced that. I'll never have a chance to experience that again, right? That exact experience. So, yeah, I miss it for sure.

But it's not, that's not to say that I'm, like, disappointed that I left after nine years. I felt I should have in 20. No, I feel good. I feel good about what I did. It's fair. People, I think far too often people confuse service with the clothing that you're wearing, military uniform, fire law, law enforcement first responder. And it's, I hope that everybody in their life finds the opportunity and ability to serve

something greater than themselves. Maybe it's just a community. Maybe you go down and you volunteer at a library for anything, anything other than a service of the direct benefit of yourself. I think there is so much personal growth that comes from that. And enjoyment and satisfaction, actually. It feels a little weird to say that, but I think there is a lot of that that can come from it.

Yeah. You can't take things with you when you go, right? You get a finite amount of time on this earth, and you'll be judged here and up above based on how you allocated that time to others, right? I truly believe that, and that's the life that I try to live every day. where can people find you and support what you have going on? I know you have a long,

you got a long road to, to hoe here, but I mean, I'm glad that you got the opportunity to come out here. I appreciate you taking the time. No, I appreciate it, man.

I don't think it wasn't a heavy lift to come in Montana. Anytime you get an excuse to come up this way, it's totally worth it. It was amazing. So, thanks for having me. My website is nick for nj.j.com, N-C-F-R-N-J.com.

You jump on there, you'll be able to see my announcement video, and you can read a bio and you can take a look at some of the things that I believe. So if you have any interest, if you're listening now, I'd love for you to take a look. I'm going to let you close it out. Why should it be you over your opponent? Give me the pitch. Yeah.

I mean, look, I think we're at a crossroads in American history, right? There's no question about it. And I think we have an obligation to decide what kind of people we want representing us in D.C. My opponent is a lifer, right? He's the guy who's been down there and stuck around there and it's all he knows. And, you know, in his 20s, that's what he was doing. And in my 20s, I was in Iraq and I was in Afghanistan. And I served my country and I was willing to die from my country.

And I'm willing to serve my country again if people want me to. That's my story. That's actually a really good ending to a podcast. I'm going to close it up there. Thank you, Matt, for taking it. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you. Thanks for taking the time to tune in, whether you're listening, on an audio-only platform or you're watching on YouTube,

I appreciate that you take the time every week to tune in. People ask me a lot, what can they do to help me spread the word? And the answer is actually embedded in the question. The biggest thing you guys can do to help me if you enjoy the podcast and you think it would be helpful to others is subscribe and share it with other people. And if you have the time, go on to Apple Podcasts and leave me a rating and a review. If you think the podcast sucks, tell me it sucks and leave a zero-star review or the lowest stars possible. If you have a question, comment, or suggestion, you can go to clearedhotpodcast.com.

And there is a contact me button right there, which will land in my inbox. And the last thing, if people are interested in helping out, what you can do is fly the old flag. And by that I don't mean an actual flag because I don't have any of those. I'm talking about t-shirts or sweatshirts or hats. whatever it may be. Again, cleardotpodcast.com, click on the shop tab and hopefully something in there looks like it would be an item you would like to wear around town. And then you can tell people what it is when they ask you. But that is it. The biggest thing I can say is thank you. I truly appreciate it. Until next time. See you.