Jocko Podcast - 353: If You Have The Wherewithal To Do Things, Then You Should Do Things. Congressman Candidate (WI) Derrick Van Orden

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

Derrick Van Orden. Navy SEAL (ret.) 26 years of service. husband, father, and Wisconsin 3rd District Congressman candidate 2022. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 353 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willick. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do and more than can be reasonably expected, but your country is at stake. Your wives, your houses, and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships. but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer,

you will render that service to the cause of liberty and to your country, which you probably can never do under any other circumstances. And that right there was a quote from George Washington, encouraging his men to re-enlist in the army. And he made that speech on Tuesday, December 30, First 1776. This was less than a week after the successful attack at Trenton and great victory for Washington's

Army, the one that everybody knows about, crossing the Delaware River and able to achieve this victory. But the men had suffered greatly. Prior to that, they'd lost a Battle of White Plains in October. The battle at Fort Washington in November, their uniforms were. When you read about what condition they were in, they were just in tatters and rags at this point. Some of them didn't have shoes.

By the way, December in the Northeast. So this is the last day of the year, December 31st. And interestingly, most of the soldiers enlistments, they'd enlisted for a year or two years. And so a lot of the soldiers, their enlistments were up at the end of the year. And this was a potential disaster for the army. But through this personal appeal, Washington convinced about half the men to stay and carry on. And they were able to defeat the British at Princeton and kind of revived the morale of the Continental Army.

But that just put that question into my mind is, when is enough enough? And we call on our service men and women to do so much. and it's amazing when they decide to continue to serve. And it's an honor here to have one of those men with us tonight. Retired seal, 26 years of service, husband, father, teammate, friend of mine, who deployed to Iraq, deployed to Afghanistan, Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, Central America. And he's looking to continue his service now. His name is Derek Van Orden.

We used to call him Van O. That's right. Van O. Derek. Thanks for coming down, man. Thank you for having me. Good to see you. It's good to see you too.

They don't call me DVO. DVO. I don't know why. I mean, I do. Oh, because you got to have the three letters. You know what, man. That's a little too close to deviant. I don't know if I like that.

Yeah. Speaking of that, man. So I've never been to your place here. It's marvelous. and went to the head. That's the bathroom for folks who are in the Navy. And like 30 guys were just talking to echo about this. They're all looking at me like, what are you doing?

I look like, you know, the hill and came rolling in. But it's a wonderful facility here, man. Yeah, that's, well, it's a mixed martial. So I guess your point is a mixed martial arts gym. It's literally the middle of our professional pro-MMA practice is going on out in the gym. So it's the alliance team, which trains here out of victory with some incredible fighters, some champs in there. Dominic Cruz just saw Dom.

And so, yes, they're athletes in peak physique in the prime of their athletic careers. Well, I'm certainly in my prime. You're like Doc Holiday. You are in your prime just like Doc Holiday, apparently, at this point. No, awesome to see you, man. So let's start at the beginning. Let's start at where you came from. Let's figure out how you got here today.

Okay. And let's talk about that story. So when and where were you born? Well, to begin in the beginning, as they say, I was raised in abject rural poverty by a single mom. My dad was not honorable. No other way to describe that. He abandoned us when I was an infant. And I dropped out of high school and I was 16 years old.

Hold on a second. You got really quick through a lot of years. Oh. So I was. So you're born. So I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My father abandoned us. We had to move in with my grandmother in Laverne, Minnesota.

What's Laverne, Minnesota? For some reason, I haven't heard of this metropolitan city. Well, you should have because Ken Burns did one of his documentaries called The War. Okay. It featured the Palace Theater, which is on Main Street in Laverne. And we lived in the apartment above the palace theater once we got enough together because we had to live with my grandmother. We were that poor.

So what's the population of Laverne? Gosh, I don't know now. But it's a small town. It's a small town. What was your mom doing to make ends meet? She was one of the first female sports reporters in the country. And she's always been a stats head. I mean, she died nine years ago, eight years ago now.

My mom, she's wonderful, Carol Ann Mulligan. She's like, you know, this tall, five foot nothing, and hard is woodpecker lips. She's tough man. And then she got a job with the company called INA, which became Cigna insurance. And that's how we wound up in Wisconsin. So I grew up in Wisconsin,

southeastern Wisconsin, because my mother got promoted. Wait, so when did she leave sports reporting? Oh my gosh, that would have been. That was prior to the insurance thing. I don't need the years. So she was doing that sort of. Right, it was kind of on and get off that sort of stuff,

right, because it was just weird to have a woman reporting sports. Now it's common. Yeah, it's normative. So she didn't, so she couldn't quite pull off a career in sports reporting. No, that wouldn't happen. But then she went to the insurance business? She started as a secretary. Okay.

And then she got promoted. She was very bright. And she went up retiring, running the West Coast for Cigna. Okay. She ran this whole office. And it was interesting. She's sitting around hearing these stories, it's fascinating because it helped me later on in my career as a seal that she was like, wait a minute, if we have this phone and

anyone has a phone, they can call this number. And if they have the ability to understand what's going on with this. phone they can get everybody's insurance information. So she was one of the first people to get into cybersecurity because you had the modem. You know what I mean? It didn't matter. There was no encryption there. It was if you could have a modem, you know, that sort of stuff. So she started doing, remember that? You guys aren't. How old are you? 44. All right. You remember. You're old. You remember dial up. Yeah. Well, yeah. Look at that. I'm down for the dial up. AOL. Yeah. Yeah. You do. So, um,

She did that and, you know, not having a father figure as a dad, my uncle Bob, which is her oldest brother, she's one of ten, Irish Catholics. And Bob left Worthington, which is outside of Laverne when he was 16 years old, joined the Navy in World War II. There's this great picture of him. He's sitting like this with his hands over the rail of an ammunition oiler right off of Iwojima. No shirt on, you know, just hanging, being a sailor. And it's just so fun, you know. But, yeah, so Gunny went to, she was in the Navy, and then, you know, they demobilized everybody after World War II. So he goes back to Minnesota, can't find a job.

And he's like, man, I need a job. This is Uncle Bob we're talking about. This is Robert Francis Mulligan. The oldest brother of your mom. Of my mom. Got it. So he was one of ten. And so he wants up going back to Minnesota.

This is so fun because we're insane. Diego. And he goes to the Marine Corps, and he's like, you know, can I join the Marines? He goes, yeah, there's some staff sergeant there. He goes, okay, here's your, you know, bus ticket to San Diego. And just, you'll go to the bus station, take your cab to MCRD, which is right down the road from here. And, you know, then you're there. And, you know, Bob's looking at his feet. It's called, it's museum feet. You know, you don't want to be in a museum anymore. You kind of shuffle your feet. And the staff starting the lieutenant, he goes, you don't have enough money for a cab, do you? And he's like, nope. So he gives him money for a cap.

So Bob takes the bus, cab, MCRD, Marine Corps. You know, fast forward 20 years or whatever it is. He sees this warrant officer and in that Marine Corps they call him Gunners. And he's like, hey, man, I think I know you. And he goes, were you a recruiter in Minnesota? He goes, I'm the guy that you gave the money for the cab. And the gunner looks at him. He goes, do you know how many people I had to give money for a cab?

So we think that things are difficult now. And we're getting, trust me, man, the economy's going to go and we're getting into the tank. It's bad. But the level of affluence that we have in the United States of America now is unprecedented in the history of the world. And that goes across all spectrums. I mean, that was like you didn't have anything. So Bob does 20 years.

He goes to Korea, grievously injured by a Chinese communist soldiers throwing a Chewom grenade into his foxhole. And then he winds up going to Laos. in 1962. Retired becomes a police officer in a small village in Wisconsin called Shinnequa and retired as the chief of police, the fire chief, and the village administrator. And he ends up being

your, you say your father figure. Correct. What did you have for brothers and sisters? I have one brother. Older, younger? Older. Okay. Yeah.

Now, what, you're now going to school? You're living above this theater in Laverne? Right, till I was in second grade. Okay. And then we moved, mom got promoted, and we moved to Heartland, Wisconsin. Heartland? Heartland? Heartland.

Just straight up, Heartland, Wisconsin. Yeah, man. So we grew up there, were still very poor. And the apartments we live in now, I think, are Section 8 housing that we lived in then, are now, I believe, Section 8 housing. And now this is where you go to middle school? Is this where you go to high school and stuff? No. So we, Mom got promoted again.

And then we moved to Oregon. Oh, okay. Right. And that's where I was in high school for a year and two weeks of my sophomore year. Were you playing sports growing up? I wrestled for my freshman year. But I never was into those types of things. I just, I never was.

My brother's super big in professional sports, clearly. My mother was because she was a sports reporter. But just never did much for me. What were you focused on? Were you focused on academics? No, you know what? I wasn't. I mean, I read, I've always been a huge reader.

Like from when I was a little kid, I was always reading. And I was kind of more, I don't know how to put that. I just, I was, I was into exploring the world from a different perspective because, so we were so poor. I mean, like dirt poor. And I knew I could never collect material objects because of that. And so from when I was just a little kid, I started collecting relationships with people. And I have the same friends that I've had since I was 14.

Because I understand the value of human beings. And I understand the value of the intrinsic nature of somebody's intellect, vice, you know, their physical being. And they're clearly intertwined. One is part of another. But so for me, that's always been my thing. So I've always really focused on humans. and the additive value of people

you know the synergistic effect of getting together that's how you create and so I've always done that and you know I've done some art stuff and whatever but what's art stuff or whatever well sketch I write poetry

and you know believe it or not so when you're in school are you like hanging out with the the freaking poetry club is that what we got going on? No I would Wait, were you wearing all black and like, oh my gosh.

Dying your hair black? Hey, who's wearing all black here? Let's just, you guys, is this camera working? So, no, man, I was kind of an outsider because, again, you know, children can be very cruel. And when I say we were poor, I mean, we were poor. So I was ostracized because of my poverty. And then when we moved to Oregon, it was a very affluent community. And, you know, I wasn't just on the other side of the tracks.

on the other side of it, you know. So that can be very, you can take that one or two directions, you know. You can consciously choose your path. And you can choose to ride that into the dirt and get into this destructive cycle. And we've seen this happen over and over again, you know, intergenerational poverty and all these things. And people feel like they have no way out. I mean, I was the, did you ever see someone walk around at their head down?

Yeah. And they walk like that. all the time. Somebody, I ran into them. Where did I see him? They're like, oh, you're, so I had dropped out of high school. I was working. You know, I've been supporting myself to self-16. And someone's like, oh, I remember you from high school. You're the guy that always walked with your head down. And I was like, wait a minute, you're right. So I started walking with my head up. And just that simple. When was that? I would have been 17 or 18. So when you're 17 or 18, someone said, oh, you used to walk around with your head down. You're the guy.

they recognized me, you're the guy that would walk under your head down because I wasn't self-absorbed but he was like, I felt like because we were so boring being just the other that I shouldn't be interacting with the world around me. So I put my head up and I was like that one physical gesture of going, you know, I am here

and I'm part of the equation and then that slowly opens up your aperture and you start looking around and like, oh, what's going on here? Can I do something here? Can I do something there? You know, the visual feedback that you get from another person actually enhances your ability to have a relationship with him, which I think is very important. Yeah, that posture thing is huge. I had JP Denel on this podcast. Okay.

And I work with him still, but, you know, I talked about, and this was a long time ago, I talked about the fact I was watching him, like, I'm in a, like, sitting in a doorwell or something on a street in Ramadi. And I'm watching JP, like, maneuver. And he's, like, walking with his chest out, his head up, like, like, I'm here. Just like I'm here. I'm going to get it. And, you know, a lot of people, your instinct is to, especially in combat, is to get small. Get small. Right.

And he's like, no, chest up, head out. And that became a thing. You know, this whole posture thing. I mean, Jordan Peterson talked about, you know, stand up straight with your shoulders back. I was like, oh, yeah, that was JP to now. And it sounds like you made that transition at 17 years old when someone said, dude, you're walking around with your head down. Yeah, it makes a difference. Yeah, it does.

And I think that, I don't think, I know that. people now, you know, they can go, oh, this is a brash, you know, person. But when I sit down with them, talk to them, they understand that that's not posturing, it's posture. So there's a difference between the two. One is something that's internalized and the other one is a projection. So if you have posture, that's, that's, you've internalized that, you're posturing, you're pretending. I don't pretend about really anything. So you're going to high school. So you're going to high school, you're ostracized, and at some point you say you decide to drop out high school. I'm out. The institution no longer had anything to offer me. That is a direct quote from

animal house, I think, yeah. It's a direct quote from what? Animal House, I believe. Okay. So you decide, what did your mom say about this? She was not happy. Yeah, I was going to say there's no mom that's like, oh, cool, you're dropping out of high school. No, she was not happy at all. What was your plan? I didn't have one. Just I'm not going to school anymore? I'm out. Had you already been working? Yeah, I started working, I think, when I was 14. And so what are you doing? I work at a movie theater. Cool.

And then I worked at a gas station. Roger. Yeah, Chevron gas station. Puping gas, fixing cars. And now you must, what's your reasoning behind dropping out of school? How are you coming to this conclusion? I was a 16-year-old. It was, I don't think the environment was oppressive.

I just didn't fit. Okay. And I just didn't want to be part of that. So you tell your mom, what was it in the school year? Was it in the summertime? It was two weeks into my sophomore year. I'm out. Yeah.

I did. I'm out. And then I moved out. So what did you get for a job? I was working. It's a gas station. Oh, okay. So the gas station job, you move into an apartment or something?

Yeah. That was it. I mean, so, you know, do I recommend this life path? I did that. I got an undergraduate degree at 44. I get accepted to law school of 50 and all that sort of stuff. Would I recommend this path? That's a very complicated answer because in some ways I would say yes.

In other ways, I would not. And I was thinking about this because I was going to come talk to you. If you look at what's taking place in the world right now, I think if more people had more adversity growing up, that they would be able to thrive more. I'm going to get elected to Congress next year. That's happening. Actually, this year, November, I'll take office next year.

And I started from the meanest circumstances you possibly can. I mean, abjectural poverty, broken home, single mom, enlisted guy in the Navy, and, you know, I'm going to be in the highest levels of power in the most powerful country in the world within a single generation. I tell people this all the time, man, you know, what's that called? it's the American dream, right? I'm the embodiment of the American dream.

I lived on five of the seven continents as a frog man. Africa, I lived in villages, in Afghanistan. I lived in cosmopol and European cities, Iraq, you know, all in Asia, everywhere. And it's the American dream, man. It's not the Argentinian dream. It's not. It's not. It's the American dream because this is the only place that my story can happen every day, like all the time. Look at Winston-Sahers. Yeah, amazing.

Immigrant the United States. She's a lieutenant governor. Virginia. So that's what I think is important about these growing up where things aren't handed to you as much because I've fought for everything I've had everything my entire life. And I know what that means. And then I can assign value to that. So I'm guessing you didn't quite see this trajectory when you were putting some premium gas into some guy's Chevy for $4.75 an hour. Because I worked at Wendy's. Did you really?

Yeah, I worked at Wendy's. What did you do there? I was the burger cook guy. Okay. Which I would make burgers. And it's interesting. You go to Wendy's, the burgers are fresh, which means when eight people walk in, they make a rough guess.

Sure. You know, and they'll go, put on 10. So you put on 10. And if two of them don't sell, they go into a bucket. And that bucket gets turned into chili. But, you know. I did not know that. Yeah.

So I'm working at Wendy's. You know, and I knew I wanted to go in the military at some point. At what point did the military? seem like the call actually let me hear the worst day of this of the 17 year old van o working at the gas station not eating just no food just not eating not enough money you got to make rent and i got to pay for gas for a car about a i say uh 1969 Toyota Corona Corona Corona Corona it was built in September 69 same month and year that I was born It was red with a white racing straight, man.

$500, boom, cash on the batter on the barrelhead, right? You've got to pay for gas because you've got to go to work. You've got to make rent. And sometimes you don't have money for food. And what's tragic, Jocko, is people are getting there again in America. They're having to make those decisions, and it's shocking. So, yeah, not eating was, you know. I mean, right now, clearly that may be a good thing, dude.

I tell people, like, you know, we're nine meals. You can use some more of that, right now. We're like, we're nine meals away from Anna. at any point, right? And I'm like, I'm like 15 to 20 miles away for energy, let's be honest. You know, I mean? Like, I could be a castaway for a while and it may be a good thing. Yeah.

So, so sometimes you're not eaten. You're 16, you're 17. You're still working at the gas station. At what point do you go? So I went out. This ain't working. Check. I went out with a buddy of mine.

His name was Kurt. And, you know, we're drinking beer. We're in Oregon. And I'm like, let's join the Marine Corps. And he's like, yeah, let's join the Marine Corps. Oh, yeah. So we got, you know, we get all tuned up. And we were like the best Marines for six hours.

And I wake up and I call him. I'm like, I do not want to join the Marine Corps. And he's like, I do not want to join the Marine Corps. I go, let's join the Navy. He goes, okay. I picked him up. We went to their Gertieing office. What?

No, that was it. That was exactly as much thought that went into it. Now, remember, now Gunny was, he was a Marine. My, you know, the guy that I aspired to be. What made you say, like, you're fired up to go to the Marine Corps, six hours. hours later I don't think so what was sobriety did you did you understand anything about the military and we're just like hey no you know Marine Corps that seems cool they got cool uniforms they carry machine guns yeah no and you know what it's interesting if you want to I mean not to

over spiritualize things or get to philosophical about stuff sounds like we're about to sure there's there's been several inflection points in my life or it's just kind of like you know, throw your chips to the wind and see what happens. Because at that point, I was going nowhere. And I realized that, you know, I guess alcoholics call it an epiphany. You know, like you have this moment. And I kind of had that moment where I realized this is just not, I don't want to live this way the rest of my life.

Right. And so there had to be a change. And, you know, how do you change like that? I'm a high school dropout. I couldn't get accepted to call. You know, any that stuff, right? And it just really was an epiphany. So I joined the Navy.

Did you have to get your GED? How'd that work? They gave me six months to get a GED. I was offered three different programs. Seamen apprenticeship, fire an apprenticeship, and airman apprenticeship. Okay. That's it. There's no other options.

So just so everyone knows what that means, that means... Menial labor. The lowest jobs, the most menial jobs that you can get in the Navy. Correct. Those three jobs in the three different broad departments in the Navy. in the Navy. Yeah, straight up meaning of labor. And so I just like, okay, you know, I signed on.

I got stationed at Naval Weapons Station Concord. Hold on. So you said it took you six months to get your GD before you to leave? They gave me six months. They're like, so I wanted to Dap the delayed entry program. Yep. They said, once you're active duty, you have six months to get a GEDA. So I went to my first duty station, Naval Weapons Station Concord.

What was this? 1988. 1988. Man, they were hurting for some people then. Listen, dude. Reagan wanted the 600 ship Navy. That's right. You could like, where's, here you give me this trench.

So you could like wipe the blood off a knife you just stab somebody with and they're like, don't do that again. And they'll let you in the Navy. But come on it. Right. But now, you know, that's something I was alluding to earlier is that, you know, our standards now, people have not faced this adversity. And so we're taking, we set all these prerequisites for guys to go to different programs,

especially specialized programs that, you know, they're kind of unrealistic. But, yeah, so I would drive up. up over the Benicia Bridge. I can't remember the name of that. Mayor Island. And I would take classes and I took my GED. You know, got that within the six months.

So you're 18 when you actually get in the Navy? I was 18. I turned 19 in boot camp. Okay. So you turned 19 in boot camp. How was boot camp? You know, I mean, it was just boot camp. Was it a shock to your system?

Were you like, no. I was not one of those guys. Were you totally happy to be there? It's three hots and a cot, man. You like food. Yeah. I mean, yeah, apparently.

Oh, everyone understands what you're saying. So, yeah, I mean, it was just what you're doing. And that's kind of how I live my life. I approach it. Like, this is what we're doing. And so let's just do it. Let's crack on and let's do it the best that we can. And that really paid off in buds.

I'll tell you a story, though. So in order to get to buds, right? I joined the Navy. I'm working on it. Do you know about the seals at this point? No, I had no idea. Like, yeah. It wasn't like, hey, Derek, check this out.

By the way, you can never do this. You're going to work in a timebook because you're a scrub. You know, that's essentially what I said. So I cleaned toilets and painted. So you get done with boot camp? Get done to boot. Where do you get stationed? Naval weapons station Concord.

Concord, California. It's closed now. Okay. There's an ammunition station. You show up there. You're an E1. Yeah. Maybe an E2?

No, I made E2. I can't remember. E1, it doesn't matter. But you're a very low ranking individual. I am. Right. But I still had this sort of You know, I mean, I was a smart aleck, you know, to put it mildly

You're a smart aleck at 50, how old are you? 53. You're a smart aleck with 53. When we worked together, you were a smart aleck at 40 something. So I can only imagine it was even worse when you were. Here's the difference, Jocko. I have now earned it. I've earned it.

When I was a young man, I didn't. I was a brash young man and I didn't have humility. And so I decided to go to core school, because I had a friend who worked at the clinic. And I wanted to go do that. So I had to work for six months, eight months or whatever. After hours, I struck for a rate for all your civilians that's applying for a job. Did you apply for the job as Corman? I was a right.

So I made BM3, Bosen's made third class decorating. And then I went. and became a corman. But so here, here was the turn. A quarter inch shackle turned my life around. And that's a shack.

I don't know how to describe that. It's a fastener. It's a fast. It's like notical metal thing, right? And so I was standing on the fantail of the YATB, that's yard tugboat 828, Kataha Kasa, all yard tugboats in the Navy were named after

American Indian chiefs, case you're wondering. So I'm on the fantail. That's the back of the boat. And, I get beaned in the back of the head with a quarter inch shackle. And I turn around and there's nobody there. And I'm like, if I don't change my ways, these people will kill me.

And that really opened. That was a reality check. And I don't encourage, you know, changing people's, you know, behavior modification through violence, but I'm just telling you my story. And I was like, wow, I need to, you know, know, change my ways now. And I did. And then I got to course school. So you apply, do you have to apply to go to course school? Oh yeah, yeah. So I worked at the clinic on base after hours. And it was like six or eight months. Got it. And I had to take a series of tests. I did all these, um, the general

military trainings. I did a whole bunch of correspondence courses like the NATO handbook on surgery and all these things I did, which is a course for physicians. I ordered it. Used to be able to order all least Bush or the Navy. And I just have a knack for it. You know, I'm, I know I seem like a goofballed him, but I'm actually a knack for nerding out and studying on something. Yeah. And passing tests. Because I had been reading since a kid. You know what I mean? It wasn't, it wasn't strange to me to garner knowledge from the written word. And so being able to read things, absorb information, and then take things from disparate sources, combine them together to understand the best way to do things is just something I'm I'm just good at it. It's intuitive to me. I don't have to work at that.

So you apply to go to core school? Right. And then I got accepted and I put everything I owned in the entire world on the back of my motorcycle and drove like everything, drove from Cocker, California to San Diego and checked into core school here. How long is course school? 11 weeks, I think. I mean, that was a while ago, dude. They didn't even have course school here anymore. And you still haven't heard about the SEAL teams yet. No. So that revelation must be coming. Okay. So there was three guys that joined the Navy to be seals. One's name is Rodney. Unfortunately, he was killed working for the CIA after he got out of the teams.

He graduated. Another one's name is Andy. He did. I don't know how many years got out. And the other one's name is Jeff. And Jeff didn't make it to buds. In a way, they're like, hey, I'm going to be a seal. This is at core school? This is at core school. And they're all like, you know, and I'm, And I'm like, what's the seal stuff? Like, well, you have guns and planes and boats and, you know, fast cars. I'm like, well, I'll go do that. And they're like, you can't just say, I'll go do that.

And I go, why not? Why can't you just say, I'll go do that? So I was kind of mocked a bit. And then you had at that point three chances to take this screening test. Did you do the same thing? What class were you? 177. Okay, so I was 1084.

And so remember you had three chances? Oh, no, you're, yeah, you're in either, weren't you? Yeah, yeah. I just did it in boot camp. Oh, because they let you do that. Yeah. Yeah. I did in boot camp, passed.

Yeah. So I failed this twice. Mm-hmm. And back then, like you failed the street times, you're out. We don't want to see you again. You're dead to the world, right? Get out of here. This is while you were a corman.

This is while I was in course school. To get a billet to buds. To get a billet to buds. Got it. And fail once. What'd you fail? Swim. Okay.

I didn't know how to do. do the side stroke. I've been swimming since I was, you know, a kid. I just don't know how to do a formal stroke, right? So I failed this thing twice, and they started renovating the barracks, which is the, not the oldest, but the second oldest building in San Diego at the Naval Hospital. That was our barracks. So they move us to 32nd Street, the Navy based on there. And by now, this is, this is a personal thing at this point, because of the push-ups, sit-ups, run, I don't know if you did dips. Anyway, Right, crush all of them. Pull-ups.

Pull-ups, right, crush all of them. Can't do the swim. So I go to the pool. There's a nine-year-old kid in the pool, and he's doing the side stroke. And I'm like, hey, dude, can you show me how to do that? Because there was no mentoring, man. Just like, go do this.

Yeah, no mentoring. I go, hey man, can you show me how to do that, a nine-year-old kid? He's like, yeah, just grab an apple, pull the apple down, get it with your other apple way, grab another apple. Oh, dang, look at that. This kid was good. Right, that's a side stroke.

So, you know, I did it past test. That quarter and shackle gave me the humility, which was the thing that I was missing as a young man, to be able to ask a nine-year-old kid how to do the side stroke. And then... Somebody hucked that thing at you, this shackle? Yeah. And they just didn't give a shit.

No. Listen, man. I mean, right in the back of the head. And then, so, you know, the tub, which actually beautiful boats, There's a big wide fantail in the back, and then there's the O-1 level, which is where the coxswatt is, you know, the wheelhouse. You know, clearly they were up there.

So I've had the ability, Jocko, and I think you have also an echo, unfortunately I don't know you well enough. Hopefully I will in the future. I don't, whatever you're going to say, I doubt he has. So there's people in the world that have the ability to understand when they're taking part in history

or where things are significant to the point where you should modify your behavior. Well, that's what I think. One of the key points about this is a lot of times when you get hit in the head with a shackle, you look at everyone else and say, I can't believe they're doing this to me. I can't believe that someone, you get mad. You get mad at the Navy, you get mad at the people on your tugboat. You get mad at everybody else.

Right. When what you actually need to do is say, well, there's only one person I can control. And that's me. I'm the one that got myself on the back of the. this tugboat. I'm the one that got myself around these bunch of people. I need to do something to get out of here. I need to take ownership of my life and move forward.

And that's a huge difference. And it's a huge difference in mentality that can be the difference between staying where you're at. I mean, you obviously did the same thing at the gas station. At some point, you're like, you know, being hungry sucks. And I could be mad at my paycheck at the gas station. I could be mad at my car for using gas. Or I could say, hey, I put myself in this situation.

I need to get myself out of it. where's the recruiter? So that's the thing that you're talking about when you explain that to me. I think, yeah, well, that's going to have, that's a difference between moving forward, moving up, improving your station in life or staying where you're at.

Yeah. And if you have the wherewithal to do things, you should do things. I mean, some things are just that simple. You can sit around and hang out or you can continuously try to improve yourself. Yeah.

And so I've got friends like that. One of them I've got to give a shout out to him. Mike Emmer, he's a dude up in our village in Butternet. He's just always doing things. He just got into sailing with his family now. So he sails on, this is a farmer who now has this big boat, sailboat that he runs his kids around Lake Superior on because he is always, him and Liz, she's just wonderful, have always kept their eyes open.

And when people have their head down, we talked about that earlier with your posture, You just don't see the world around you. And I made a conscious decision to not do that. I made a conscious decision to be part of the equation. And I think more people, they should understand that. Like, I mean, not to get overly political here, but I talk to people, I'm like, hey, you know, you can go outside and you can stare at a hill.

It doesn't matter how long you look at that, the cavalry's not coming over the hill. They're not coming. You know, it's you. You are the cavalry. So when you care enough about something, you got to understand you are the person that can affect positive change. So I empower people and I go talk to them. I go, look, man.

We always talk about the guys who jumped into San Mary Iglese or whenever the beaches in Normandy or the Marines in Kaysan in Vietnam or in the Argonne Forest in World War I. We think about them as these people that at the singular point in time when their country, our country needed them, they stood up. and they bodily entered into something knowing that they may not come back alive. In the same vein, that's who the people that care about the United States are now. I hope to God they never have to get involved in physical combat. We've both been there, and it's a horrible thing, and war should be horrible so people don't want to get engaged in it. But they're doing that now, and they have to show courage, because courage is contagious.

We've seen this. A lot of people out in the civilian world have not. And I'll give them an example that people can understand because it's kind of funny. During the lockdown, there's, it's a, I think it's 323.3.1. Is the statute in the Wisconsin state law that says that the governor has the ability to exercise emergency powers. It's like a 30-day window. So I'm like, okay, check. I don't know what's going on.

It's like, your dudes in combat, you're like, go do this. It's like, well, sir, I think we should have a, you know, no. Emergency situation. Boom. Got it. Right. But then when that emergency ends or the legal authority ends, then it's time to challenge authority. The same person that is a law-bying citizen, right?

That's your duty to follow the law when you're in a crisis situation. It's the same person that says, no. When that expires, that is your duty as a citizen, is to stand up for what's – anyway. So this lockdown's going on, and I'm like, I'm no longer compliant with this. the legal authority has expired, I will not do this. I'm not. So I go to Walmart because I'm a smelly, you know, dirty Walmart shopper. I am.

And I don't have a mascot. And someone who recognizes me, they have a face shield and a mask on. And dude looks at me and he's like, what are you doing? I go, I'm not complying. And he said, well, I'm not either. And he takes his stuff on it and throws him into his cart in Walmart. And courage is contagious, man. He didn't die immediately?

No, but listen. Listen, don't get me wrong. You know, I had COVID twice, and it was horrible. And a lot of people died from it. And if you want to wear a mask right now, wear it. I mean, 100%. If you want to wear a mask and a face shield, you want to wear gloves,

you want to hand sanitize and all that stuff. That's your ability as an American citizen to choose the way you want to live your life. And now everybody's coming around. The CDC just said that. People should be able to choose. So they should have been able to choose. Back then, I wrote an op-ed in, like April of 2020,

called Freedom War of Fear. and it laid it out like you got to pick because you can't have both. What's your book? Extreme ownership. Well, there's a bunch of them. Dicotomy of leadership. But you talk about fear and stuff, right?

Oh, Mikey the Dragons. Their kid's book. Okay, mind killer, right? You can't function if you're terrified. So I think it's just a different way of thinking about how we should interact as citizens. And so you want to do that stuff? Go ahead.

I'm just not going to. I will not join you, but I won't mock you either. Because it's your choice. All right. Speaking of choices, you choose to figure out how to swim from this nine-year-old kid. Now you pass your test. I pass my test. And you're going to butts.

I go to buds. Did you have any clue about butts at this point? Absolutely nothing. And again, that's why I succeeded. So I did it. 184 and graduated with 104. Neil Roberts? Yeah.

First guy killed in Afghanistan. We have got our... I was a team two with them, yeah. Okay. So we had our arms over each other. shoulders graduating from buds. I mean, he's a great man. They call him Fifi, man. Yeah, super guy. But so I got there and I'm like, hmm, I don't know what to do here. And I show up at like, you go to A.B. Brights. Is that still there? That's still there? So you got your pants,

you know, that you can stand up by themselves. Because they're starched. Like seriously, that's not a joke. You can stand them up. And so it's like, I pay all this money to have these things done and I go down. I'm not going to, I don't know what his first name is. I'll just call him C. That's the first letter of his last name. I don't embarrass a guy, you know. And it's like four in the morning.

I'm wearing this uniform. Then I'm walking like, what is that, Pillsbury Doebor? Anyway, or a gingerbread man or whatever. And this guy comes up to me, he looks at me up and down. This is an instructor? No. This is a fellow student. Okay.

He looks me up and down. He goes, you're not going to make it. like whispers to me. And I'm like, well, what do I do now? I just pay all this money for these uniforms.

Like, do I get a refund or, you know, do I leave? So I'm like, all right, well, I guess I'm not going to make it.

And so I go to class. And, you know, one thing leads to another. And it's very difficult, seal training, in case you, I haven't read a book

or anything. And then it occurred to me. I mean, I actually have a moment, again, another one of these epiphanies, when I understand, exactly what the deal is.

We're sitting on the beach, we're PT and we're looking in towards the compound. So the oceans at our back. And the instructor, he's looking out to sea and we're exercising. And it starts to rain, which is bad, you know, but you'll get through it. And then it starts to lightning and hail. It's like storm. The rare, rare recursion for San Diego. Exactly.

So working on that tugboat, moving ad, ammunition when it's their hero. I can't remember it's. Oh, yeah, Hero condition, right. That's when there's electric stuff in there or you've got to stop. Things will blow up.

And so I'm thinking, wow, this is bad. We're standing on the beach, you know. The only thing we don't have is a golf club holding up there. And the instructor, he goes,

and halt, you know, in buds, that's not like smoking me if you got him. You're standing at rigid attention. He runs into the compound. I'm like, well, good, we're going to get us off this beach. We've got to get out here.

It's a lightning storm. And he comes running back out, and he has a dive mask on. And I'm like, oh, this is the contract. So my part of the contract was I'm going to show up here every single day and do everything I possibly can to meet your standard. My instructors, not my standard, your standard. And his part of the contract was he's going to show up every single day and make sure that I adhere to his standard.

and it was like a light bulb appeared above my head. So it was just raining so hard that he needed a dive mask. Because he couldn't see if we were performing the functions to his standard. Check. So that was that was it. I'm like, I get buds at this point. Well,

how deep were you into buds a couple weeks? That was PTRR. Oh, it was fourth phase. Didn't even class up yet. So when I started, there was guys who like sandbag. So they're like,

you have to do the, O course, and I'm just making up these numbers now in 10 minutes, and then it had to be 930, and you know, you had this progression, right? So they would do it just passing on purpose, because I knew they were better athletes than me. And I took the opposite approach. I was like, I'm going to get up every single day and try as hard as I can, everything I do. Like, every single thing I do, and then I'm going to get better. I'm not going to stay the same, you know, or decrease. I will get better. And I know. know I can do this because there's somebody where a trident making me do it so it's possible.

And so I did that. That's how I got through buds. And I swear, man, third phase out at the island, we're flying back. And I was certain that plane was going to crash because there's no way I could be graduating from buds, you know what I mean? What was the, what do you remember about like Hellweek? Was Hellweek a challenge for you? It was, but I was a boat crew leader because I was an E4.

Oh, you had E4. I was an E4. We don't some heat, dude. Yeah. I've found, yeah, I have found personally that when you are in a leadership position and you have people that you need to be concerned about, then you're putting their care above your own, which I've done my whole life. So that was just, you know, something that you do that it actually makes the time go by better because you're not worried about yourself. You're not, you're not focusing internally. You know, this is hard.

I'm freezing and, you know, I'm chafed and whatever. You're looking out for your men. And you're allowed. You get this. But you're like, this person is having a bad time. And what can I do from my position to make this better for them so that we can accomplish the mission? And, you know, if someone couldn't make it in Buds, people are like, oh, you should help them

and carry them along. I took, again, the opposite approach. If this person can't get through buds and we're going to carry them through buds, what are they going to be like when they get the steel teams? So there's You can take that to an extreme If somebody was having a bad day You help them out

But if someone was consistently performing below Par I don't want them around No So for me Hell Week was I mean very challenging But at the same time

I think it was easier for me Than any of the guys in my boat crew Because they were more focused On them getting through this And I was more focused on Getting us through it I liked Hell Week because there's nothing I could fail Like everything else

Because I wasn't good at anything I wasn't good at running I wasn't good at swimming It wasn't good to the O course I was going to tell everybody that You're always I was always like if you know This could I could fail this swim I could fail this run I had to just put out so hard

But Hell Week was like oh we just got to finish bro I could do that Just not quit That's my game You want to play that game That's my game No sleep and no quitting That's my game All day

If there was a pro sport I'd be doing good at that sport Yeah. So Hell Week for me was fun. What about the water? Was the water all good for you? Pool comp and all that stuff? Yeah, I, so I failed pool comp the first time.

Me too. Do you know why I failed pool comp the first time? Because I forgot the end of the brief. What was the end of the brief? Kiss the regulator and ascend. Yeah. What did you just? I just sat there.

So I did the whole everything. Yeah. And I just forgot the end of the brief. Kiss the regulator and ascend. And MacArthur was my instructor. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And he did brer. And he just. pulls me out at a pool, you know. And he's like, what is wrong with you? And I go, well, what do you mean, Steve McArthur? He goes, dude, if you had just kissed the regulator and ascended, you'd be fine. And I was like, oh, check, Raj.

That's the end of the brief. So, no, the water worker's fine. I mean, I had to struggle with swims. But, um. Like passing swims? You're a slow swimmer? Dude, a nine-year-old taught me how to do the side stroke like two weeks before I went to butts.

So, in fact, yes, I was a slow swimmer. It was actually about three months before I went to Buds because in that interim period from course school to go into Buds, I worked at the Naval Hospital and I collected dirty linen. It's awesome. But I also, so the linen collection shop at Balbo and Naval Hospital, I don't know if it's still there, was down in the basement right next to the morgue. And I was like, I'm going to go to Bud's training. And I should understand more about human physiology because I'm going there.

and so I would go do, it was like Wednesday morning he was the autopsy instructor. So I would go do these autopsies. You know, I would stand there, I finally worked my way up to weighing organs, but just to really truly understand physiology because you read that in a book

and you can do a cadaver lab and that sort of stuff. But when you have someone that is newly deceased, you have a much better understanding of how things truly work in your body. It was a fascinating experience. actually. So it was an interesting little off-ramp we just took into the morgue. Well, I mean, so I was a Corman.

Right. And then I went to the 300 F1 program down in San Antonio, Texas, after I graduated from Buds. And then I went finally after two platoons at Team 4 in South and Central America and then Bosnia, I finished the 18 Delta course, of which I was the distinguished honor graduate of my class in case you want to go. Boom. You know why? Because they didn't want to go.

because I was a frogman. I don't want to take six months off to go work with the Army going to school anymore. I want to stay in a platoon, right? That was my thing. If you're a seal, you should be in a platoon. Yes. And if you're in a platoon, you should be at war. That's it.

And God bless them, the guys that do 27 years at trade at it in Mar-Ops instructors, you know, thanks. That's so no one else says to do that, but you get the deal. The seal's natural environment is combat, cut, dry, period, over. But yeah, so I didn't want to go. I'm like, Army, Special Forces guys. I have so many SF friends, you know. They're good dudes. I'm like, how do I beat them?

Ah, academically. Right? So that's, they're very serious about academics. That course was really hard. That was a hard course. I didn't go through it, but I remember you would kick guys asses. Right.

So when I graduated, the commander had to give me their commander's excellence going. You love that. It was just like their hand is shaking. You know? So, and it was just very, very interesting. And if you're going to do your job, do it the best you can.

I mean, everyone should take that approach of life. Have you ever seen this, it's a documentary called Hero Love Sushi? I have not seen it, but I know about it. It's fascinating. I started watching it, bro, and honestly, it didn't really grab me. And I don't have a bunch of time to be watching movies that aren't getting me out of the gate. And it just didn't do it. I'll get to it at some point.

I think when I'm older, like maybe 65, 70, I'm going to roll into that. Because I've heard it's great. You know, the guy's totally focused, and he has the most popular sushi place in the world, and there's a hard to get to, and it's this little shack on the side of the road or whatever, a really small thing, and he's the best in the world. What I got on all of that is that you have the attention span of a net. I may. I may.

No, so this guy is talking about, you don't have to be proud of your job, but you have to be proud of your work. Interesting. That's the whole crux of that movie. That's why it's so fascinating. And you've got to get to that. So you can be doing anything just do it the best you can all the time. That's 100% and by the way that's the way. If you don't like your job The way out of your job is to do the job to the absolute best of your ability That's how the way to stay in your shitty job that you don't like is to not perform well at it and it's not gonna work out well for you gonna stay in that job or you need a even worse job

Right so you're flying back from San Clement Island which means you're graduating from buds yeah and you get stationed where do you what do you get Seal Team four did you pick East Coast I picked Seal Team four And this is why, because Seal Team 4 was the only SEAL team I was aware of that had been in combat since the Vietnam War. And just like we just talked about, man, a SEAL's natural environment is combat. So I put that as my first choice because I thought that was the team that has the highest probability of entering into combat. Yeah. And so that was in Panama. This is, that was Panama was 1989.

And so now it's 1990. October 23rd, 1992, I graduated from Bud, so it would have been 93-ish or whatever. So at the time, that was it, man. That was the show. Yeah, and at the time. Carver and Arconics operations and all that stuff. Yeah, at the time, the SEAL teams were geographically oriented.

Correct. And so that meant that different teams had different geography that they covered, and SEAL Team 4 at the time covered Central and South America. That's correct. Which means every Spanish-speaking person in the SEAL teams went there immediately. And there was things going on down there. There was the counter-drug stuff. There was revolutions going on.

So there was, that sounded like a good place for you, the way you looked at it. That's where you wanted to go. Yeah. And I tell you what. You were smart at me. You know, I wanted to go to SEAL Team One because I thought we were going to NOM. I was like, bro, Team One, Vietnam. There's got to be stuff going on.

You know, I went to Vietnam. In 1998. Well, that's awesome. On the recovery missions? Joint Task Force, Full County. Yeah. Yeah, man. So I went to Team 4.

I did two platoons there. How was it when you showed up at Team 4? Because that's the other thing, at Team 4, and that was a guy, I had a bunch of friends that went to Team 4, and Team 4 was like an awesome team at that time. Yeah. Team 4 was the East Coast, or was the East Coast equivalent of Team 5, much more relaxed. But super, super professional. So you would do, I think, six weeks of Land.

warfare at Pickett and then you'd go down to Panama and you spent your first month and half living in the jungle doing I actually did that trip from team one did you really yep we went down there and did 34 days or something out in the J right so you seriously knew what you're doing yeah and I really I really appreciated that a lot and that's why I I volunteered to go to trade at because I was not satisfied with our land warfare training I thought it was completely inadequate coming from that background at team four So I did those two platoons and then here's your job. Corman and intelligence.

Oh, that's right. You were a medic and intel. So I did eight platoons as a corpsman and a medic. And I mean, you don't really do that anymore once you become a chief. But it was still my specialties, my forte as it work. And how were those deployments? They were very interesting. I mean, I got my first.

So this is like 94 you're going on your first deployment? 94-95. 94-95 would go on your first deployment. I got my first Navy chief. human metal when I was in STT at the time, which was interesting. I told that because I got my second one down on my first deployment. The first one was because some guy got shot at a basketball court outside of a grocery store in Virginia and I went and saved his life.

It's, you know, as you do. And then there was another terrific accident. So I was a new guy, but I'm like, I stick to my guns, right? And I paid the man for it several times. But I would insist on bringing my medical gear back to, we were staying like, four different condos in Salinas Ecuador. And I would insist of packing up all of my medical gear and taking them back to my room every night after training.

And like, new guy, we want to. I'm like, I don't care. You know, tune me up if you want, but I'm going to have my stuff. Like 2 o'clock in the morning, like, a big thing. This car was driving and they lost control and hit a cement telephone pole. You split the car in half and shot bodies all over the street. So I was like, holy bean bags And I had all my stuff

And made the naval base This is written in this little Navy Chumanel And made the Navy base reopen their clinic And had all my stuff and all the guys, my God But I just, I miss sometimes being around seals Because they just perform You're like, bam, they can be sitting around doing something They are on it

So everybody has that You're nascent medical training and they all just performed. I'm like, this, this, this, got checked. We saved everybody's lives. So that was part of the reason that this, you know, deployment was so terribly interesting. And then 96 rolls around, 95, 96 rolls around.

And the war was going on in Bosnia-Herzegovina. So is this now your second platoon? This would be my, this wasn't even a platoon. I'd done two platoons, and this was like kind of an, augment thing is really weird. So they're trying to figure out a way to implement the Dayton Accords that were signed in 1995 after Storm 95, which is a Croatian offensive that kicked the Serbs back. So they signed this Dayton Accords and they're trying to figure out how to implement them.

Prior to that, there was a program called the Joint Commission Observers, and those were Tier 1 guys that were going in and, you know, doing J-TAC stuff and whatever. And so this transitions to how are we going to maintain this presence on the ground? So they transitioned from the tier one guys to theater soft and SF had this mission. And they wouldn't let us do it. Were you around for you? What were you doing? So 19.

What year is this? 96. 96. I was in training cell at SEAL Team 1. Okay. So you remember the JCO stuff where guys got to go to Bosnia? All right. So they come back on the grinder at Team 4 and which it was just part of a compound, you know.

I'm in the East Coast. And they're like, okay, SF can't man this mission. We're going to let SEALs do it. So everyone was like, you know, yeah, we're going to war. I'm excited, right? And they go, we're taking E7 and above. And I'm like, I'm an E5. Yeah.

So I'm like, come on, man. So everybody goes to the language lab, signs up. This is something that I learned. And I think, I'm not sure. I hope that I'm wrong, but I see the military going back to the way it was in the 90s. politically and all this stuff, right? I mean, I do believe we are auguring in. The Department of Defense is broken right now.

So everybody goes and signs up on, you know, like this legal pat. And then they call them in, rank, you know, one, the next, next, next, next. And everyone's like, well, actually, I got to mow my law. Well, my daughter's in soccer. Well, you know, and they work their way down. They get down to E5 Derek. So some of the guys that signed up weren't really wanting to go. You understand this concept when you're standing in a group and you need to be like, oh, going to work, yeah, I'm a seal.

That's great. And they get really excited about it. But then when you get them on one-on-one, they don't want to be there. You know what I mean? They join the canoe club. They want to work out and all that stuff. That transcends all spectrum. You know, that's not unique to seals.

So they get down to me. That's freaking crazy, dude. Right. And so I go in to see my CNC. His name is Perry. It's a total redneck, awesome guy. And he goes, well, Van Ordin, what you doing? I go, Mass Chief.

General Patton had to petition General Pershing as a second lieutenant to be included on his expedition during the Mexican-American War. And he goes, you try to tell me you some kind of GD General Popper? He did not abbreviate that. And I said, no, Master Chief, but I'm telling you my bags are packed right now and I can leave in ten minutes. And he's like, beat it. Now, at this point, are you married? Yeah. You're married.

When did you meet your wife? In San Diego, right before, right after I, no, right before I went to Buds, we got married right after Buds. Got it. So I spent, I was a seal for just under 22 years, and I spent 16 years away from home. So I took every single training trip. I went to every single school I could. Because, again, you have to find, if you're doing something, you're doing something,

do it. Don't, and that's a biblical principle. You know, be either hot or cold if you're lukewarm, I will spit you out. That's in the Bible, man. So if you're doing something, do it. And so I got every single qualification I possibly could. So in case something came up, I would be the one selected to do it to go defend my country. I mean, I'd live my life that way, right? How fast did you have kids? Did you have kids? Did you have kids? We had a team four. By the time we got to team four, we had two kids. Damn.

Yeah. And we have four now. I have eight grandchildren. Impressive. Gosh, they're so awesome. Everything you hear about being a granddad? Not even close to how cool it is. Seriously.

They're just wonderful. But yeah, so I went on that deployment. It was very interesting. I remember, so we had these different houses. I didn't live in a base. My house was Whiskey 40. So it was a multinational division Southwest. I worked for a guy named John Cass was a British colonel,

reported to the Special Operations Command of Control Elements, Soxie, that was in Bonne-Luca. The guy named Repass, Mike Repass, was a major at the time. I wound up working for him again when he was a two-star in Germany. It's really cool. But we went into Sarajevo, we fly in. We went to another Joint Commission Observer House, the SF guys, and kind of like slowly get you in. There's two seals there in my house when we moved out to Bugano, the name of the town we lived in. and then like seven to nine SF guys.

I get up every morning. I drive out and I talk to all the military and local political figures and police figures. And the mission was to provide a ground truth about what's going on. And I had so much responsibility as an E5, like to plan these missions and go out. And I had like a pistol and a butt pack with one other seal with a pistol on a butt pack. and you're going out and, you know, talking to these people that just want to kill you. And the level of, I guess the Yiddish term would be, Hutzpah, you know, you've got to get out there. And I'll give you this example, man.

So we go up to Banja Luka to the 117th VRS. That is a Serbian military unit. I wanted to go check in with these cats. And it's kind of on, sort of on a little hill. but back then you for satcom you had to have the right look at it on asthma remember like you had to point at a calm guy so okay yeah right you know you get it other people don't you know where's my phone you know i can talk to anyone anywhere right so back then you had like boom i had to get the satellite so i had i do the the math problem i look at where i'm going i realized that i'll have to point this this antenna into a mountain

and i'm not getting comps and there were no cell phones right so i i understand that you know, it's just me and my buddy Mick. So we go up there and I'm late, or excuse me, we're on time. This guy's not there. His name was Chulich, Colonel Chulich. We walk in and there's this dude standing right there who has got rosy cheeks like mine, a huge white beard, fatter belly than me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this guy looks like Santa Claus.

And I start chuckling. So this is a Serbian base. Remember, NATO had been bombing the Serbs, and they are. Yeah, what was it? 64 days or something. Right. They want no part of us. And so they are not happy.

And they're like, what are you talking about? And my turp, his name is Zoran Azuminidich. They called him Zorka because he was fat. And like Zorka like Orca. Okay, got it. Right. So Zorin, they're like, he's starting to worry. And they're like, what are you laughing at?

I go, all right, well, it's look like this is going down right now. And there's like 400 Serbs area. And two of us, we have 31 rounds of 9 millimeter with us. Like that's it. So I go, okay. Hey, in the United States, we have a guy's name is Santa Claus. And you look just like him. That's what we're laughing at.

And they start laughing. They go, oh, they're Serbian Orthodox. They have St. Nicholas. They're like, that's what we call him too. I was like, okay. And then so we sit down at this table. Chulets, yeah, that really happened. You almost had an international incident because you were laughing at.

At sand sand it didn't help it. Right. It gets more banana. So we're sitting at this huge table. And Chulich is supposed to show up at the head of the table. And whenever you use an interpreter, you put him in between you and whoever you're talking to, right? So they should just be a conduit for language. So he's sitting there.

This guy is just late, late, late, late. And we're sitting there drinking Shliuivica, which is a plum brandy. It's excellent, actually. In France, they call it O'Divie, Water of Life. made with a mirror bill blow in case you're wondering but um so this guy finally shows up and my my radio is in this rucksack and this dude he's dressed like a russian mafia guy this is the dude that just showed up the colonel who should have been there like three hours before he was in boni luka goofing off anyway black leather jacket hair slick back and he's like you know uh serbians are great warriors i'm like

yeah they are he goes uh serbians kept um um um Europe, say, from the Ottomans for 300 years. I'm like, yeah. Serbians could kick NATO out of here any time we want. I look at him, I go, you see that radio right there? You keep that up. I'm going to rain fire from the sky on you in 10 minutes. Is that clear?

And Zoran, remember, I'm going to eat five, dude, talking this Serbian colonel. So Zorn is there, he's just like, like instant sweat. Like he just ate a ghost pepper. And he's like, I go, Zorin, you tell him exactly what I said right now or you're out of here. And he's like, okay, you keep that up. He's going to rain fire from the sky on you in 10 minutes. And Chulich was like, what I meant to say was the Serbians and NATO can have an effective working relationship to make sure that we secure peace in Bosnia. I might go check.

So we get down with the meeting. It went really well after that. we get back in the car and soren's like Derek do you know where you're at and I go yeah I'm a cool of camp and he goes do you know what happened to cool the camp I'm like no so what I failed to notice is that like all these buildings were freshly painted and everything was nice they'd been destroyed

by NATO so when I told that guy I'll be raining fire from the sky in you in 10 minutes he understood what that meant that terribly interesting yeah that's crazy that's when I was an E5 dude yeah it's crazy It's crazy the amount of responsibility you can get in the military. I was one of the guys that ran the six platoons.

The mission was declassified in like 2009. So we protected the top six Iraqi officials. And during the election cycle, I had this guy named Ibrahim El Jaffrey. So I was a platoon chief this time. So this is team one? No, this would be team five. So I was at team four. And then I went to 18 Delta.

I went to team one. Okay, so one pay compil tune there. All right, so hold on, slow down a little bit. So you're at Team 4, you get done at Team 4. Correct. And you get done with a Bosnia deployment, which is an awesome deployment for back then. It's like you were. It was the only war we had.

The most stoked you could possibly be at that time. Right. And then you get forced to go to 18 Delta against your will. Right. But you go down there and kick ass. Correct. Graduate number one guy in the class. That is correct.

Now you, now what happens? Okay. So I was supposed to go to Damnick. You know how you have C daddies and they lay out your whole plan for you. And the Corman Detailers for the name is Tom. He's a very good guy. I don't know where he's at now. So the plan was for me to finish 18 Delta and at that point they were only taking 8491.

So that's the senior level, it's for your audience. So there's 8492s. That's the basic, you know, Special Forces medic and then the full graduate of the Army Special Special Forces Medical Sergeant's course. At that time that Damnack was only taken these guys. So that's why I had to go to 18 Delta. Tom sets all this up. But then I'm sitting there, remember this is 98, 99-ish.

And I had been gone for the five and plus years I was at Team 4. And Sarah and I had three kids at the time. She's the San Diego native. And I really felt horrible. You know what I mean? Because I'm a husband and a dad and all the stuff. And her family's still here. They're wonderful.

So I was like, you know what? I'm going to ask to get assigned to the West Coast so that I can continue to work as a Frogman, as I should, but she'll have more support network around me, or around her, sorry. So we're sitting in this meeting, you know, Tom pulls all the corner, and where do you want to go, where do you want to go? And he's asking him, you know, south, coast, whatever. And he looks to me and he's like, you know, just skipping over me.

And I said West Coast, and he was like, what? I go, yeah, West Coast, man. He's like, check. Goes around everybody. I put in five, because that was the SIL Team 4. Then I put in three. Then I put in one. Now, this is the person that decides where you are going.

Like, it's up to him. Where did I go? Team 1. He was so mad. And at me personally. And I mean, it was a great experience there, but it was just so different. Like, I got yelled at, I would say, 40 times. the first two months I was there because I'd like the wrong pair at team one when did you

get there gosh he was 98 late 98 so FAC was there and you know the so you so I left in 98 okay so you had just we just missed I left I left in the spring of 98 so if you didn't get there until I can't remember me it was it was I deployed in 2000 so whatever that cycle would be yeah so yeah I left in the spring of 98 but yeah at that time Just, we called Team One, Stalawla, Team One, because it was like strict and it was traditional and it was uniform inspections and haircut inspections and all these kind of things were going on. And I loved it. Yeah. And.

Well, that's why you wrote a book called like Discipline equals Freedom. And I didn't. Let's just be really clear about that. You know what I mean? Yeah. And it's one of those things where, you know, that's where I was kind of raised, you know, from a young kid to, you know, that's where I've got all my first experience. And, you know, like, you talk about Fackety, Fackety was like my...

It's a legend. And like a legit friend who looked out for me and my group of friends. We were all kind of his boys. And, you know, we were freaking busted our ass. And that's what... Yeah, you know what happened. I remember you checking out because you were there with Chris. Yep.

Yep. Yep. Yeah. That's when I was checking out. And I was Sailor of the Year at Steel Team One. Well. Yeah. That was, but I was the...

The only E5 in history. You made E5? I was a sailor of the year as an E5, which was crazy. But part of that was because of fact. Like fact, like, you know, I was worked hard for fact. I worked right for them in training cell and stuff. But yeah, it was this very strict environment of much more militaristic than the other teams. And I went from there to team two and team two was similar.

Right. It was stopped. No, we called it Stalin. Yeah. It was pretty stylish as well. They were the same. C-L-Team 1 and Tilt-Team 2 were definitely on the spectrum of way more militaristic. Way.

So that's, and you know what happened at Team 1? A lot of guys from Team 1 would hated it and would go to Team 5. They would go down the street, Team 5 and just be like, oh, now we can act like humans. Right. And be chill. And that would be cool. That's a nice transition. Your transition in the opposite direction is not a nice transition.

It was like I'd had the wrong pair. There's like a Matrix. So Dean Cummings, he's a great dude. I mean, he was the CMC there. And it was always like, Van Arden, you know, this hat and the socks and this shoes and whatever. I'm like, so finally I go, hey, Master EFund. Now, remember, I've done two platoons, one combat deployment to Bosnia. I got the Defense Meritory Service Medal as E5,

was the most highly decorated guy for my rotation because of some other stuff that I did there, right? Honor graduate of my Army Special Forces Medical Startens course. I'm not some new guy that just fell off, you know, the Bud's train, right? I am experienced. At that point, I was a journeyman seal. Yeah. You know what I mean? Not a master.

I was a journeyman. And finally, I'm like, hey, Master Chief, can I get like a matrix of what I can wear with what? Because I'm not doing this on purpose. I just don't know what you expect me to wear every day. So PT is this. And then he was like, thwart, and I go, I'm not joking. And then he realized I was sincere, you know? Dude, the guy you're talking about Chris, who's like one of the biggest studs in human history.

But we were in buds together. And then we get to team one and we're going on a run. Like we're new guys. Yeah. And he walks out for the run. He's wearing a visor. Like a visor. Like, you know, I don't know.

He still wears a visor. We used to cut those hat off. Yeah. Yeah. So he walks out with a visor on. And Facaddy, who didn't know us at the time, we're just new guys, looks at him. And he goes, if I see you wearing that again, I'm sending you to the, the fleet.

Like, we just got that with buds. And he's telling him he's going to send him to the fleet. And by the way, this guy, Chris, is like this a total stud in every way. He's one of those mutant humans. Yeah, he's a mutant human. Yeah, he's incredible. And he relieved me in Iraq. Okay.

I got a cool story about that. Remind me that. Nice. So you eventually figure out what you got to do to keep your, keep from getting your ass chewed at Steel Team 1. Correct. do a paycom deployment and then force 21 came up out remember that thankfully thankfully thankfully well thankfully and no there's some very distinct I mean like hardcore

negative squelay because of force 21 the first and foremost one is it seals don't know to do stuff anymore yeah I guess the the thing is at that time it was needed it was needed and it was lucky because if we would have gone from the old system into what we ended up to playing as once 9-11, it would have been really, it would have a much harder transition. We would have pulled it off. And when I say seals don't want to do stuff anymore, I mean, we're stone cold killers, right? That's not changed. I just mean, like, the day-to-day sort of things.

We've lost that, we've lost the ability to, like, learn how to sew your own gear because people, I'm like, I know how to use an industrial sewing machine, as did everybody in the seal teams, because you'd make your own stuff in the parallel off, right? Things like that. How do you build a duck and whatnot? But, so. What was your job in your platoon at Team One? I was a Corman.

And I was an intel guy. That's what I did. That's your thing. That's your thing. I got it. But so, Force 21 comes around. And again, I was distinctly dissatisfied with the land of warfare training that I got at Team 1.

It was not adequate. Because remember, I came from Team 4 where you spent, that was what you did. I mean, you lived in the J. And so I'm like, there's not. no war going on. There's nothing. I go, I'm going to. And remember, it was over at Brown or Turner Field. What's the, you know, next to the EOD buildings over in Coronado? What do we, what do we talk about? That field, Turner Field or? Yeah, Turner Field. Okay, so this is, this is how discombububulated this was and it's fascinating. They just put the road cones.

Like they put a road cone with like team one, team five, team three, trade at, and you'd go stand behind the road cone. That's how I got to trade it. I literally, I stood behind a road cone because That's how they figured out how to detail people. Yeah. It was kind of cool, actually. It's sort of cool, but it was a mess. And so I walk over to the building, the Starship, you know, I don't know if they're even there anymore, the one that was shared by one and three. And we started trade out.

We had like the second floor or whatever it was. I walked in an empty room. It's me and Jeff Green. Then we're like, we're it. Like we're the land. That's the beginning of trade. Land warfare. And so I went through everybody's.

safes in all of the teams. And I took all of their documentation going back to the Vietnam War, you know, the type stuff after action reports. And I consolidated all those things. And we wrote all of the curriculum for land warfare and then special reconnaissance, taking the lessons learned going back from our forefathers that gave us our, you know, fierce reputation. And then worked those over and over again.

But I get there. We start doing that. And then September 11th. happens and I was down we lived in Navy housing and I'm like what the heck we got a phone call from a guy named Andy Dalton retired SEAL senior chief his wife Cheryl just beautiful people it's wonderful oh sorry and there he's at team two at the time and they're like turn on your television so we turn it on and we're like what the heck is going on and um so I go hey honey keep the kids home from school I do not know what's happening I drive

to the team area. We get snipers up in the building. We don't know what's happening. And I remember I went with this big VAT board, this big whiteboard, and I took a red marker and I wrote war. And these big letters right there. In that point, we had desks and everything.

Like war, like it's on. And so from that point on, I tried to get out of there because we're at war, right? And Lampi was the skipper there. And every morning I'd go in his office, just like I do Perry Bruce. like okay I'm ready to go bags your pack he's like you're going to Afghanistan when I go to Afghanistan Vano and I'm like ready to go every morning every morning ready to go ready to go

and then we're going out to Nilean I think I was gone I mean like 290 days that year and finally he's like okay you can go leave me alone so I I wheezzled my way into an L&O position for the siege of and I worked that for about a month and then I was down working for the chief of station in Kabul because I identified a problem. I looked at the entire spectrum of all of the operations that are taking place. And I'm looking, we were completely, we were not employed to the capacity

that we should be as SEALs. And it's because we didn't have assets and authorities and all this stuff. So I laid this plan out. I'm like, if we tied this asset to this person who has control over this, then we can execute the mission better of SEALs. And I went to John,

gosh, what was his name? Seleski. Colonel Seleski was a siege, Sotomayor of commander, I said, Colonel Navs office not being employed to our capacity. He's like, I know what's going on. I said, sure, if we do this, this, this, this, and this. And he goes, sorry, beat it. He was the finest joint warfare fighter

I've ever worked with. I mean, Repass was another one. He was another army guy, unfortunately. I wish he could lay out this list of seal admirals I can say that about. There's a few, but yeah, John was just, he was amazing. And he's like, get down there and get it on, Vano. What's up?

Beat feet. So we tied together for Theater Soft, the first real interagency integration. Nice. Like biometrics. You remember biometrics? So everyone's like, you know, so I was there and I was sitting around, you know, reflecting, because you should reflect. And I was looking at one of those charts where it has all the people on a targeted list.

And I was like, we don't know who is still around off this list. We don't know. And so I went and talked to a guy named Jacks. He's still a super good friend of mine. He's the senior FBI agent in the country. And his office was right around the corner from mine down in Kabul at the annex. And I'm like, Jacks, how does the FBI know who people are after they're deceased? And he's like, well, you know, we do fingerprints.

We do all the stuff. And I go, well, okay. So how do we do that here? And he's like, well, I don't know. I mean, this is a huge story. So I figured out a thing for us to be able to initially fingerprint folks. So the first time, this is why I am the Forrest Gump of the SEAL teams. So the first time that Theater Soft ever used biometrics in Afghanistan, really in the War and Terror,

was because I cooked up this idea with this dude who was on the Memphis SWAT team. and so we went out through this very complicated series of stuff that he seen with 30 and 47s and all night and you know a big target deck and everything and he had like the Johnny G man you know 1930s FBI fingerprint kit the blue suitcase with the silver corners to fingerprint these you know

the enemy combatants that were no longer around that's how all that started that was an incredibly interesting thing, man. And then I rolled back and I went to Team 5 or I was a potential tooth. What year was that? What year was that there were you in Afghanistan for the first time? 2003.

I left October 13th, 2003. I remember that because it's the... That's when you left Afghanistan? For my first tour, yeah. Wait, you left for Afghanistan? No, I came back. Got it. I came back.

So it took me, I was there for six or seven months. So, you know, do the math between September 11th to, that point. Yeah. But that's the birthday of the Navy. Jocko. There you go. I was not aware of that.

What? Yeah. What can I say? Horrible sailor. I'm a horrible sailor. Sorry, but yeah, I came back then I went to Team 5 where I was a platoon chief. So you get to Team 5 now, it's 2003.

So at this point, we are full on, like everyone's going to war. It's in it. Iraq opened up. Right when I got back from Afghanistan, I remember when we invasian. but it was right around there. I saw it was, so the plan for that was 10.03 Victor. So 1003 was the baseline operational plan.

And then the letters on the end are how many, how many different versions of it. Right. So it got down to Victor. So 1083 Victor was the plan where I left. And all the heavy lift aircraft started leaving Afghanistan when I was there. And I'm like, there's only so much heavy lift aircraft. And I go, oh my gosh, they're going to do 10.03 Victor.

So me coming back, I don't know, the periodicity when that actually invasion kicked off, but I knew it was going to happen because of the heavy lift aircraft lady. So, you know, I'm a platoon chief and I want to go to war with my dudes. I mean, I, there's one of these books written by Dick Couch that they interviewed us when I was teaching land warfare. And in that book, I'm like, he's like, what do you want to do essentially? I'm like, my goal is to become a platoon chief.

Like, that's it. To me, that's a pinnacle of an enlisted SEAL's job. It's been a opportunity. Then I was a troop chief later, but that was, you know, the thing. And then we wind up, they get this mission, this mission set protecting these Iraqi dignitaries. And I'm like, oh, man. So, I mean, not that it's not important, but the war was not going well at the time. And again, I said this earlier, but that mission is declassified in 2009.

So the top six Iraqi officials were protected. by seal platoons. Then it's kind of cool. They randomly assigned NFL football teams. Names, that was your call sign. Guess what mine was? No idea.

Packers. Oh, there you go. From Wisconsin. I'm like, this dude might live, man. Like, whoa. So, yeah, we protected a guy. He was a deputy vice president. His name was Ibrahim Al Jaffrey.

He was a family physician at six kids. fled Saddam, lived in Iran, wound up in London. And it was really, It was really, it was amazingly interesting to do that mission. And all the bros are out down. You guys are doing your gig, you know. And I was essentially, I went to every place in that country running protection for a guy that's running a political campaign during a war where everybody wants to kill you.

Yeah, no, it was a miracle. Not just a miracle. It was freaking awesome work by the guys. Yeah, to keep all those guys safe. I mean, there was everybody wanted all the, well, not everybody, but a big number of people wanted to kill one or any one of those people. And that leadership was kept alive for how long was that mission? Because you said I was out doing, I wasn't doing anything.

At that point I'd come back, you know, I really, you know, my timing was really, really good because I was, went up to just DAs for my first deployment. which was just awesome. As we left, that mission came up. Right. And then when I came back, it was over. So I had awesome timing as far as not having to do that mission. It lasted through, I mean, I came back after the elections. So again, the Forrest Gump thing, man, remember everybody's fingers?

Yeah, yeah. All right. So there's a picture of this guy who became the first democratically elected prime minister in Iraq's history, right? There's a picture of him with his finger up in there. I'm standing directly behind the camera that took that picture. because I was responsible for his security. So, oh, back to Chris, man. So he's coming in and Bliff is there and we're rotating out, right?

And two really funny things happen with him. One, it's a prestige thing. So wait, so he's coming in with Team 7? Well, who's he coming in with? Your Team 5 must have been. Yeah, I don't know who it was. He was the chief and Bliff was his O I see, you know. And so two funny things happen.

There's a cultural thing in some Arabic countries, Iraq being one, where you want to be as close to the center of power as possible. I guess that's here in the United States too. So we would run these motorcades, right? Lead limofollow, and then you'd have elements ahead of you and then behind you. So if anything happened, you can sked out all and these guys get in the gunfight. So you're protecting the principal. and I talk to these guys over and over again. I'm like, look, you're very important people.

I get that. You know, you're the minister of whatever the heck. But our sole function is to make sure that echo lives. You know what I mean? We're going to help you, whatever we want, medical. But that will not be to the detriment of making sure that echoes a lot. Check? So they always try to weasel into this convoy.

And these guys had one of those beautiful old Mercedes-Benz, like the powder blue. You know, I'm talking to the big, just awesome. And the guy's name was Adnan Phil Phil. He was his security chief. Phil Phil Phil is Arabic for pepper because he had a real hot temper, you know. And Chris is in the car with,

and we're sitting there, you know, blazing through Baghdad. And look in the mirror. You know, it's interesting. When you're in combat, you get to that point where you see everything.

Do you know what I mean? Like things are happening over here. And you have a full holistic understanding of your environment. And that's really why I think people miss being in that, you know, in combat because you are completely alive. Anyway, so I'm talking to them like, oh my gosh, a second. This guy has wheezzled behind us in this powder blue Mercedes. It's on out of Phil Phil. So I just open up my door like this, this up armor.

And I point my M4 back at him. I mean, clearly I'm not going to shoot him. But I point my M4 at him. It's like, bry, and it goes back to the back. of the line of this, you know, huge motor game. And Chris was like, what just happened? He actually used some expletives. And I'm like, I'm trying to tell you,

these people are going to keep doing that. They're on our side. But it's very important that they understand the ground rules that are being set here. And that's going to happen over and over again. Chris, it doesn't matter how hard you try. They're going to keep doing this. And then the other thing was funny.

We're down at, do you remember who Terik Aziz was? I remember that name. Saddam. Hussein's foreign minister, the guy with the big sunglasses. Okay, so his house was taken over by a guy named Abdulaziz Hakim, who was part of the Dawa party, and it was right by the, you exited the green zone, went over the 14th July bridge, and it's like right there. So that's where all these meetings are taking place.

So we have to go down there. They only take the AIC, which is the agent in charge. That was the, you know, renamed OIC. They'd take him inside. They didn't want anybody else there. So we've got all these cars around. And I have my car. and my body armor's in there, my helmet's in there, my rifles in there, and I have a pistol.

And we'd set up everywhere, and you'd be there for hours and hours and hours. So I'd go around and check on everybody, you know, good to go. I'm in Chris and Bliss car. And I'm like, okay, so if we have an indirect attack, mortar, artillery, whatever, you just got to wait a minute and see if it develops into a complex attack. meaning so they mortar stuff and then they can use that to make everybody go to ground and then they can start

infiltrating with ground troops so I go so if that happens and you just wait a sec and then you punch out a perimeter immediately so that no one can infiltrate your lines and you got to just you got to do it like boom this happens go and I open up the door I hop out and boom like right over there huge explosion I go just like this and I sit back in the car

seriously I said just like this and I sit back in the car Wait a minute. Okay, go. And then I realized I don't have a rifle. I have my pistol. So you remember that little the Green Army man, the medic, running with the pistol?

So I'm running in Baghdad with the pistol. I started... Wait, where was your freaking weapon, bro? It was in my vehicle, which was right next to theirs. Like, right there. Oh, so you went over to tell them what to do? I was going in,

I was briefing them about how to handle different attack scenarios. And that one time you didn't. The one time. You know, that happens. That's freaking awful. And so I'm like, you know, running to a perimeter with a pistol in my hand. I start chuckling because I'm like, I just look absurd at this point.

But I'm a very good pistol shop, by the way. And what it turned out... That ain't going to cut it, bro. They're not going to cut it. No, seriously. I know. Hey, listen, I think we should discuss things warts and all, you know. But what happened was the Iraqi police had had an AD with an RPG.

So that was not an impact that was an outgoing But they had that moon dust out there You know so you couldn't tell it looked like a mortar round coming It didn't sound like a mortar round but it it looked like one because of the impact So that's my funny seal story right there What did you learn from a leadership perspective on that deployment? That's a tough deployment from a different Angle because you got guys that are pissed to be doing this job right, but it's a very it's a strategic mission to keep these guys alive.

I learned, well, I didn't really learn it. It's just reinforced some things for me. The mission always comes first, no matter what. And the mission's America. It's not some of this woke bullshit that these military officers are coming up with now. Sorry for swearing, but that ain't the mission, dude. The mission's America. And that's got to happen every day.

That's why, you know, my fat, bald person, I'm running for Congress now, because the mission is America and America is being failed by our leadership. Anyway, side note. So mission comes first. And then I also learned to let some things roll. And this is why. We were late. So the doctor lived in the Catea, which was like a neighborhood right outside of Checkpoint 11.

So Checkpoint 11 went from the Green Zone to route Irish where everybody's getting killed all the time. You had to drive down a mile or so, whatever. Button Hook left into the Codacia to pick that. this guy up. And so we're late and I'm like, you know, frick, frack, frack, frick, you know, being a seal sailor guy. We're living in Uday Hussein's, one of his joints. I think it was Grey Wolf was the thawb there. But anyway, so we're late. And then, boom, just massive, massive car bomb goes off, right at checkpoint 11. Like, it was so big, it blew a car like 50 feet up on top of a tree. And here's what happened.

They knew we were going to the Codicea. And they had this huge bomb, and the traffic keeps going forward and forward and forward and forward. It finally gets to the checkpoint, and they clack themselves off. We were supposed to be in that line, passing. It would have killed the entire platoon, except for the one guy we had working at the jock. So that was a real lesson.

Yeah, should you strive to be on time? Sure. but you need to make sure that if things are going a little hinky, try to figure out why. I used to have, you know, my thing was, my joke was, but it wasn't really a joke, but it kind of was. You know, you'd have no-go criteria. Like, hey, we don't have the aircraft cover we want.

That's no-go, or we don't have enough vehicles. And I used to joke, but I would, serious, I'd be like, no, it's, we have, in my task, you have go-go criteria, which is we're going. And we don't have aircraft, we'll call tanks. But occasionally, even with that attitude, I'd be like, well, okay, we don't have this. We don't have that. We, you know, this isn't working out. We haven't talked to these people.

And I'd be like, the universe is conspiring against this operation. And we're not going to do it. Right. So it's just like a gut feeling where I'd like I can, there's, I'll cover obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, obstacle, no factor, no factor, no factor, no factor. No factor. No factor. This, there's, this is, this is, we're not doing this. Well, that's a function of maturity.

Yeah. It really is. And sometimes you just look at things and you're like, non-starter. Yeah. Yeah. And that's okay. So you get done with this deployment. In Iraq.

In Iraq. Correct. And then what's your next move? So that's your platoon chief deployment. You get done with that deployment. What's your next move? I came back and I'm a plank owner at what was known as the support activities. Support activities.

Correct. So you're going there. and the support activity basic mission is to gather intelligence, we'll say. It's like a combination of all the ints. And, you know, I just had an act for that too. So I was one of the first five guys, you know, sitting around trying to figure this out. Rob Newsom was the first skipper. He's a retired cap.

Now he worked for the 76ers doing some stuff. No idea. Yeah. But, yeah, that was a very, very rewarding time. to build something else up from the ground. Because I only built or helped build. You know, this is not clearly this is a whole team effort, but help build the special connoissexed land warfare part of trade ed.

And then doing that, it's like the whole team, which was fascinating. And then I did some deployments from that that are not really a topic for discussion. Right. And how, but how long did you spend there? Like three years? It couldn't have been that long, actually. Well, I came back from Iraq, and then that would have been 2005 or six.

I think I left there in 2008-ish. It's like two or three years there because I went to Special Operations Command in Europe after that. After that, but didn't you go to seven first? Yeah, sorry. Because I know that's when you and I really, that's when you and I crossed back. I think we'd met each other along the way at some point. Right. But we, I didn't actually PIDU.

Right. until I was at trade at and you were at Team 7. And I was a troop chief. So I went from, you're right, it was Sport Activity Team 7, Special Operations Command Europe, and then I retired out of Sinciel Swick. So, okay, so you do, you're doing working with the INS, and by what you mean by that is human intelligence, signal intelligence, all that kind of intelligence gathering, we'll say you did that for a few years.

I'm not going to talk about that here. And then you go. Well, you want to see something cool? Keep talking. Go ahead. Well, you're breaking stuff up. I want to show you one of the coolest pictures ever. Oh, okay.

Because this was on my last appointment from Afghanistan. Check that one. That's a winner. That picture's taken about three or four months after the boat scene on Active Valor was filmed. The boat scene on Active Valor was filmed. So Active Valor is a movie with a bunch of seals in it. Right. I'm in the movie.

When was that filmed? Gosh, it was, it came out. That wasn't until later. It came out in 2012 or something, but that, it took like three years to film that movie because everybody except for the officer in the film deployed to combat during the filming of that movie. What happens if someone gets killed that's going to wreck the movie? You're like, well, thanks.

Deeply appreciate your caring about us. You're going to have to rewrite a script. It will take you eight minutes because there was no script. Yeah, that was, I think it came. came out in 2012, so they started filming that in 2009-ish, because I was, I was working up to go to Afghanistan when that was filmed. And that, so here's, here's what happened with that movie. Well, let's talk to Seal Team 7 first. Okay. Well, this is at Seal Team 7. Right. So, really? Yeah, so check this out. So I am a troop chief at Team 7. And then the super specialized

mission came along that I had done previously. And I'm the only one at the team that has done this. And I'm the only one with the qualification. Well, there's two of the guys are the same qualification is me, but I'm the only one that has actually done this mission working for this other subset of people doing this stuff. So the skipper's like, I don't know what I'm doing. I mean, God bless him. He had no idea. He goes, you can pick anybody you want from the team and take him to go do this. So me and the guy who I won't mention, he's actually right next to me in that picture because he's still active duty. We went through everybody's records at Team 7. I'm like, you know, this guy, this guy, this guy, this guy, and then we need comms guys and all these other

folks. We put together this little group of folks to deploy to Afghanistan to do this super specialized mission. That was at Team 7. So it went from being a troop chief. We had 56 or 66th or that was after you did your troop chief. That was my troop chief deployment. So we we sent guys to Balad Iraq was not happening. They're wearing starch uniforms and they have no magazines and their guns. The Walker is saluting people in Iraq and I don't want any part of that. And And then there was a small group that went to Afghanistan to get reattached to the C.Gi Soto for the first time since Red Wings happened. And then I took another group of guys over here.

So my guys got farmed to Balad to do nothing. A small group of them, it's declassified now, went to Yemen. And then we went to Afghanistan to do this other subset. So we didn't have a traditional, you know, task unit go out and, you know, like bruiser. We didn't, it just wasn't available. Yeah, it wasn't happening. No, it wasn't. So I went and did that.

How'd you like being a troop chief? You know what? It was interesting, but it's not, it's not, it's not, it wasn't like his hands-on. The logistics part was, you know, it was more difficult to get done. And then you're managing personalities. You know, I would prefer to do this. Yeah, I mean, I guess if your troop gets all split up, then you... If we had a traditional, true, or traditional air quotations, you know, 05, 06, Iraq,

or if we could do like 03 Afghanistan, where you are seriously getting it, that would have been much different. But in effect, you know, I had guys, like one of my guys, I'll give you an example of why... One of my guys, I think I had six seals with me. So going from like 60 seals to six. But they're all like, you know what? We were doing that, like driving around in thin-skinned vehicles by ourselves during the day in Afghanistan.

And your QRF is not coming. So the level of stress that is applied, I mean, it's so much easier, and you know this, to go with 50 dudes and lock something down and go in and just, you know, do seal stuff. and that's great and it you know we get a lot of it's very stressful that's really stressful when you got to plan

these things in detail intricate and if you make one mistake it's over and I did that for several years I mean it's upper division warfare is what I call it

upper division warfare yeah it is totally because you have to have a holistic understanding of all the thresholds going from the ELMT the electronic warfare perspective all the way down to

how do I ship my gun way different than you know go that way so when you build this picture you have um you have like a a global perspective but for a local area and you understand you have all these triggers that if they start getting pinged you got to bail and sometimes you intentionally trigger them so yeah interesting troop chief thing. In a way, it was not as exciting as it should have been, but you're, again. That's the first place, like I said, that's the first time that I, like, remember you, P-I-Ding, like, oh, yeah, that's, because, you know, I'd seen you around and you were an essay, whatever,

but that's the first time I remember you, like, we were out at desert training and, like, meeting you and hanging out and running the FTXs and all that stuff, having good times. Yeah. carrying some, you were carrying some, you know, some wounded men out there, which,

I know. Which seems to have left a mark on some people emotionally at this juncture. I was a little bit crazy when it came back. So, all right, man. Hey, listen, I got, I'll tell you something.

I don't know if your, your viewers understand. I remember when you came back and you went around the teams and you gave a brief that you called the pressure. Remember that? Yeah.

pressure. And at that point, because I didn't know you either, you know what I mean? You're like some dude, bad haircut, probably lifts too many weights and drinks energy drinks, you know, whatever. Total dime it doesn't seal. Let's just be honest. It's good to be the diamond in the rough. But you gave this brief, and it was, you called it the pressure in it. It was, what you're doing is you're conveying, I mean, this is my perspective, obviously you wrote it, conveying the burden of leadership and the fact that you truly at that point got it, which is a lot of officers never get it. And I was watching you, and I thought you were much younger than me at the time, I don't know, but I was like, this guy gets it. Like he understands ramifications of poor

decision making, and things are real. And it just doesn't affect, you know, your reputation is I'm a great operator, you know, that it affects families. and that it affects the nation. And I understood that. That's when I really got to respect for you. Listening to you see that, because I could see your heart was breaking when you're discussing this

and that you weren't making anything up. Being very genuine about leadership is really important. And we're missing that, dude. We're missing that from the tactical, strategic, and operational level throughout our country and private industry and the government especially. It's terrible. So now you guys know.

Yeah. I haven't given that brief in a long time. And I remember thinking about it and, you know, thinking about the experiences that I had, you know, when we deployed in Tasking a Bruiser, you know, we hadn't lost any guys on the West Coast yet. Right. And, you know, even looking into, you know,

we were just talking about the workup and you're going through the workup And like a down man was like a theoretical thing, a problem solving event that you're going to get and you're going to go through it. And okay, now that person gets, you know, you're back to life at the end of that training mission. And obviously that's not the reality of the situation. Correct. And trying to make sure to convey that to the guys. And that's, you know, when I got done with that deployment, you know, the admiral who I knew was like, where do you want to go?

And I 100% just said, I want to go to trade at. I want to go to trade at and run training. And the reason is because, first of all, all the guys in my task unit were all going to go right back into another platoon. And they were all going to go right back overseas into that meat grinder. And it didn't look like, you know, this was in 2006 when we got home. It was still, you couldn't tell when it was going to stop. It just looked like it was going to go on indefinitely. We saw some indications that looking in hindsight, you could see that, oh, that was.

an indication that things were going to settle out, but you couldn't positively identify them at the time. Coming home from deployment, I was like, no, this is going to last. We're going to have to do this in all these other cities. It's just going to continue. Everyone's going back to this meat grinder. And I want to make sure that I can convey these lessons to the guys that are going to go back over there and get in it. And that's what, that's, that's where that came from. So you, you went to trade at for the same reasons I did, but six years later. Yeah. Yep. It was to pass on those lessons. Right. And get. things headed in the right direction.

Increase combat survivability of seals. 100%. And that's why, you know, we're out at an island or we're out at the urban training sites. And it was like, you know, I remember feeling I'd see a guy like in an urban environment standing in the middle of the street

and I would literally have a sick to my stomach not when I'd see a guy standing in the open. This isn't training. And I'd, you know, get over and be like, you know, go find cover. Because you're waiting for the guy to get shot. And that's a horrible feeling. And doing the best to pass those lessons on, that's, you know, that was the goal.

Yeah. That should be everybody's goal. Yeah. It's, I, when you take that and you transition it to a civilian life, I tell people a couple things frequently. It is the minimum responsibility of every American citizen to pass on to their children in a country where they have at a minimum the same ability to choose, to have options. And we're failing at that as a society collectively. If you think about what the government did to the population during this COVID crap, you can't

deny it. There's five elements to the First Amendment. There's freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom to seek redress for grievance. this, right? All of those were smashed into the ground during COVID. So it's our responsibility to make sure that doesn't happen again. How do we do that? We take the imperative knowledge from what we went through these last two years and we apply that nakedly, meaning we don't try to read into it. We just look at it and say what it is. And the government now is trying to hide everything. We're

trying to do everything back. Yeah, which is one of the worst things possible. When you make a mistake, you know, you go, hey, look, I made a mistake here. And this was this was horrible during the whole thing. because, hey, if you think that this thing spreads this way and it's good, and you look up three months later, and that turns out to not be true, you say, hey, listen, I made a mistake here. We thought it was this. It was that. Here's the adjustment. You know, I wouldn't send you out on an operation and say, hey, you know, I want you to hit this target from the north. And you go, okay, okay, boss, sounds good.

And you hit a couple IEDs on the way in. And you go, hey, Jockel, there's IEDs here. I don't go, well, you just keep going where I told you to go. No, I say, hey, look, I made a mistake on the analysis of the scenario. Back out. let's figure out a better way. No factor. And by the way, you're not, you don't lose respect for me.

You go, oh, well, Jocco was willing to admit that he made a mistake of the analysis of this. And learn from it. And learn from it. And now we're going to make some adjustments. And to see the egos come out where there's no admission that, hey, you know what, I actually, I made a bad assessment here. It was wrong. And here's the adjustment we need to make.

As far as I can tell right now. And by the way, there's a decent chance to be wrong again. Which also is why I'm not overcome. committing and overstating things. Right. You know, I always have fun when I work with companies and I'll say, how often do you, I know, how often you people think I have to admit that I'm wrong? And people will think, oh, you know, because I talk about being humble and they go, oh, you admit that you're wrong. And I go, no, I hardly ever have to admit that I'm wrong.

And the reason I hardly ever have to admit that I'm wrong is because I hardly ever say, I'm 100% right about this thing. This is how we should do this mission or this is what this means or this is how you should interpret this. No, I say, hey, this is what it looks like from my perspective. Let's take a small step and see what we learn. So I agree with it mostly there, but to me it's not, this is how I think we should do this. That's, okay, when people, and this was one of the things that we had to break when we were writing all that curriculum for SR and land warfare. This is how this is done.

When you say to somebody, this is how this is done, you're over. because this is how this was done at this time in this place with this series of variables. Yeah. Well, so you actually agree with what I said because what I said is sort of. Well, what I'm saying is, hey, this is what I think we should do right now. Not this is what we should do. Yes. This is what I think we should do right now.

No, no, no. This is not what, okay, there's a difference. So this is what we should do is different than this is how this is done. So this is what we should do means that. this is the way that I think at this particular time this should be done. Right. Because of these variables. It's open.

It's open. This is how this is done. It's closed. It's wrong. Yeah. Decision making is not taking place. Yeah. So that's why I hardly ever have to admit that I'm wrong because I hardly ever say,

Hey, I'm 100% right about this thing right here. No, you're not going to catch me saying that. Because how often can you be accurate with that? It's very, very seldom that you're going to be in a scenario where you know something with 100% certainty. It almost never happens. And I would rather, even if I'm 99% certain, what do I gain out of imposing some directive on you?

If you're working for me, what am I going to gain out of that? You've got your perspective. There's a decent chance. You see something I don't see. So my mind's open. Hey, Derek, I think this might be a good way to do this op. And you go, well, I don't agree. Okay, well, what do you think?

Let's talk. And my gut, my bias, is to go with what you say. Okay. That is my bias is to you come up with a way to do something. It doesn't matter if I'm, here's the other interesting thing. It doesn't matter if we're peers or I'm your boss or you're my boss. My bias is to go with what you say.

Now look, if you're totally off the res and your idea is just ridiculous, well, it's very easy for me to articulate, hey, Derek, I know you want to do this, you know, jumping parachutes out of the space shuttle, but it's going to be really hard for us to get the space shuttle for this. operation in a short period of time. I thought you were wheeling heat, Chuck. Exactly. It's very easy to articulate that. But if I'm having a hard time articulating why I think something should be done a certain

way, then that's a big indicator that maybe it's not worth arguing and maybe it's just easier to say, okay, you know what, Derek? Let's roll with your dice. If you're incapable of articulating appropriately, the methodologies that you're applying to a problem set, you have not thought them through well enough. Boom. Yeah. Someone taught a seal how to read.

What's up? It's a real good indicator of that. So you roll out on this deployment. You're doing some, what'd you say higher level? What did you say? Upper division warfare. Upper division warfare running around without a ton of support, if any. And you get done with that deployment.

We won't go into the details of that one. You come back. What's your next job? okay, I was going to go teach what I was doing because I believe you should do that, right? Like we talked about that. But then they came, so I was a senior chief at that point and the billet, the job, was for an E7, not an E8.

And that's when they went through and they said, hey, look, you used to be able to do one up, one down. So the billet is for an E7, and E6 could go do that or E8, right? You could do one up one down on the right. No more of this. We don't have enough guys to do this stuff. it's an E7 billet.

So I'm like, oh man. So I go check in and it's down at the elephant cage at advanced training and I was just kind of sitting there and they're like, we got to find an E7 billet, you know? And there was not,

because that's a platoon chief job. And I just got done being a trip chief nerd, you know. So finally I go up to Warcom this is like a month into this and I feel like I'm stealing money from the government, you know what I mean? Because I'd go in and check and I go,

oh, we got nothing to you do. And so I go up to Pugs as the guy and um pugs right so i'm like pugs dude i need a job and he's like well i don't know so he pulls up the list of like all the seal billets on the planet right and bosnia i flew through germany stuttgart bublingen is actually the name of the town on the way there and on the way back and i'm like and um my wife she did like a semester in germany in college so i'm like right there I want to go there.

He's like, okay. So I get a billet, I get a billet as the J-35, which is the contingency operations NCIC at Special Operations Command Europe. That's why I went up there. Yeah. And, you know, I have a knack for this stuff. The upper division warfare stuff applies.

I understand how to, you know, take very complex problem sets and distill them down into readily available and achievable solutions. Like, it's just something I'm good at. And so I wrote all the contingency op, the soft response to contingency operation's plans for all the countries in Europe. And then we developed further. Some of them being executed right now, I'm sure.

Yeah, the Conventional Warfare campaign plan for the Ukraine is one of them. So at that time when I left in 2012, me and this other guy named Derek, who's a retired Special Forces Colonel, we gave the Ukrainians a month. So we were planning for Iraq, Russian invasion of the Ukraine in 2000. That's 2009, 10. Right. People think the military doesn't do stuff. We do. But we gave them a month because the authorities are different. What do you mean

you gave them a month? We thought within a month the Russians would take over the entire country. Oh, got it. Like we gave them a month. DoD, I think it was giving them about a week. But, you know, intuitively, Derek had multiple combat tours as a special force officers. It's a fantastic officer. but we gave them a month because we knew it better and then they changed the authorities when this happened so you could give them javelins and stingers also the the weapons that are doing this so the crux of the planet

I thought getting real deep into it is disaggregated small unit operations facilitated by high tech weapons that's it you know and then also you have external intelligence and all that stuff and that's just taking place so That truly was an amazingly, it was very intellectually stimulating to do that. You know, at that point, because I broke my back and all this stuff,

and I can't carry a rock anymore. And that's really why I got out of the teams is because I just couldn't do the job physically. I didn't want to Brett far as myself, you know what I mean? Which, Brett should have just retired, dude. Green Bay, why'd you go to Minnesota? Brett, I'm looking right into the camera. Why did you do that? So doing that really kept me engaged in

In what was taking place really at that point globally And so Benghazi went down when I was there And there were still Socalf was getting stood up Special Operations Command Africa And there was a commanders in extremist force Sharing Agreement So I was really

Very deeply involved in the aftermath of Benghazi and everything the Clinton folks told you and Obama is a lie. In terms of what? That should not have happened. And as it was happening, it should have been stopped. And could have been stopped. Right. So, I mean, background on that, Jimmy Carter, who previously was the worst president in American history,

only superseded by the current one, Joe Biden. He is terrible. He just is. It's very difficult to watch. It's terrible. I mean, it's painful. So Jimmy Carter did something called Chief of Mission authorities. The American ambassador's real title is Chief of Mission.

So the Chief of the Diplomatic Mission, that's the real title. And Carter said, look, no military forces will go into a country without the approval of the chief of mission, unless it's a Title X designated country. Meaning so Title X is the Department of Defense thing. and we're like, hey, we're going to invade Iraq. That becomes a Title X deal. The military can move troops back and forth into that country without going through the State Department. That was not the case for Libya.

You know what I mean? It wasn't. So Ambassador Stevens had to approve the troops that were on their way to Benghazi had to approve them landing in the country, but he was dead. And the State Department didn't answer the phone. Tina Cade Nell was there along with Secretary Clinton. She's ultimately responsible. They just didn't answer the phone.

And birds were spinning up and ready to roll. If you look up Jackalstone 12, I think, just Google it. Jackalstone is a Special Operations Forces annual European exercise. You probably did it if you were two. Did you? No. Okay. But I know what the exercise is.

Okay, so that was taking place in Split Croatia. And you know that the SIF is there and they have a full pack. None of this is classified, by the way. They have a full package. They've got shooters. They got comms. They got medical. They have resupply, you know, water, everything.

That bird was going there because that's why it's there in case something like that happens. And the agreement between Sokhaf and Sok Yur was in place because Sokhaf didn't have a SIF yet. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So, but no one answered the phone. So you can't land that plane. And Ty Woods, man.

Did you know Ty? Yeah. Okay, he's a total friend of mine, man. And I didn't know Glenn. He was in my class. He was in my class? Ty was? Yep.

Yep. And he ended up getting rolled. But he spent, you know, also. Right. So, shameful. And that, I truly, I mean, I knew it before because I'd seen it on a macro level. But I hadn't really seen on a, excuse me, on a micro level. I've seen it, but on a macro level, I hadn't seen really the hardcore ramifications of incredibly poor decision making.

Other than the fact, we invaded Iraq when we did. I mean, that was a big thing. But that really, really brought it home that you just can't do that. You have to be, if you're in a position of leadership, your phone is on all the time. Yeah, well, actually, superior to that is when you're in a position of leadership, you set up decentralized command where people can make decisions without having to run things all the way up to the time. top yeah that's what you do that's the yeah I mean that's that's what things should function great on that depressing though yeah so so this is what you're doing you get a really good look strategically at the world for this tour that you do right at Sock you're

in a J-35 billet doing planning and contingency planning and that's just a great view to go from being a troop commander literally on the ground and then even as a troop commander being for this particular deployment at a more even more tackle level than a normal troop command but true correct but doing a strategic level mission yes and then but you're on the ground doing it yeah that's the difference and then you get to go to a situation where you're seeing the strategic planning for these things that take place in the future so there's a really good education for you it's tremendous and you do how many years over there 20 oh I did three years there. And how many kids do you got at this point? Four. They speak German at this point? Nine.

Two of them graduated from high school there though. Okay. But it's an American high school. It's an American high school. Yeah. Yeah, I just, one of my buddies ran into a team guy and his kids are all speaking German because he came back from there. I probably put him in the local schools, which you can do. Yeah. We chose not to check. Uh, you get done with that. What's your next job after that? Center for Seal and Swick Excellence. Which is the schoolhouse? No. That is the command that writes all the advancement exams for SEALS. It writes the enlisted ladder. People don't understand when you join the Navy, the Navy plans out a career for you for 30 years.

So even though you think you're joining it on a six-year enlistment or eight years or whatever it is, you know, active and reserve, the Navy has a plan for you. I don't know what that stands for, but they budget for you being in the military for 30 years. And what, at least the SEAL teams have done, I don't know if other communities do this, but you backwards plan on that. So by the time you're in E5, you've gone to this school, you've done this job, E6, 7, 8, and it goes all the way up.

That's the ladder to make sure that everybody is hopefully on par with their institutional knowledge. So I did that, and it was really fun, right, in the advancement exams, because I'd call all my buddies. I'm like, hey, will you go down to Florida with me for a week? We'll get locked in a skiff, you know, a big safe. And we'll go through the previous exams and then we'll write new questions, updating the TTPs and all of the things for the SEAL teams.

Then in order to get promoted, seals would have to take that. So that was awesome too. That's a way to get back to the community. But I went there because I needed to like get my medical situation in order. And it took like a year and a half. Because at this point you're just a beat up old frog man. You know what I mean? That's why I'm fat right now.

If I go PT right now, I can't walk. I mean, I've got a handicap placard from my car. Damn. Yeah, damn. So, I mean, my knees and hips and back. I got a ricochet in the face. He was in training. It counts for nothing.

I didn't even get a free dental appointment because of that, you know. So, yeah, I went there to, you know, dual purpose. Get myself physically, you know, up to par, at least documented appropriately. So that when I retired, because I knew I was going to retire, you know, it would be less of a burden. and so that's really what I did there. And again, I've had the ability and the luck and I think I'm blessed, man. I mean, I am. I have a deep and abiding faith in God.

And I look back, you know, all the way back to getting hit in the head with a shackle. How that led to all this stuff? You know, there's, there's, I am one of the luckiest human beings that has ever existed. And I am so full of gratitude, man. I mean, I just, I get up and I'm just full of gratitude. And I wish that more people would understand the gifts that they've been given and understand they're a gift. And when I talk to folks about the cavalry thing, like the cavalry's not coming over the hill, I tell them, like, I go look, man, you're placed here at this time. You know, with these people in this circumstance by God, like you're put here for a reason.

And from my perspective, what I'm doing now, and the people I'm speaking to, it's still. to save the greatest country that has ever existed in the history of the world. Like, the United States of America is an exceptional nation. And I don't tolerate anybody talking crap about America. It's not going to happen. And these folks that I'm dealing with, like, you were placed here by God for that to save the United States of America. And that's a gift. And you've got to accept a gift.

And oftentimes gifts, you get this. oftentimes gifts can be perceived as a burden. You know, the gift of leadership, the talk you used to give the pressure. You're in that place at that time with those people in that circumstance, and these things happen, you're exercising the best judgment that you were capable of doing. You had the best assets in the world. You're certainly working with the finest human beings that have ever existed. Contextually in warfare, for sure.

And then around the block, you know, you're there for a reason because you were given the gift to be able to exercise that mission. If you're capable of doing something and you don't act on it, you're not giving glory to God. You're given the intellectual or physical ability to do things. If you don't do them,

you're falling short. I believe that. Other people need to understand that. What was it that made you decide that you were going to retire? You're at, how many years was this? that was I would say 24 I guess That's when you made the decision

Yeah and I retired at 26 And how many kids did you have that was You were up to your four at this point Yeah I just I knew that I couldn't do the jobs the level that That it deserved Did you have a retirement plan What you were going to do when you retired? No

No man we had bought a farm in Wisconsin Probably I don't know 10 years before that And I wanted to just go back to my farm Who is taking care of the farm? My neighbors. How many acres is the farm? It was 80. And what kind of farm is it?

Hay. And we raised animals and all that stuff. So I got out and I did this corporate leadership stuff with Larry for a couple years. I mean, I didn't stop working. And I did that and then. What corporate leadership? Were you just helping corporations with their leadership type thing? And executive coaching sort of thing.

I mean, the stuff you do, but not nearly at the same. same level. I mean, you've taken it beyond. And it wasn't interesting to me. So I'm like, you know what? Let's go back to the farm. Where were you living when you were doing that? That was, we lived in Maple Grove, which is in Minnesota. Okay. So you moved to Minnesota after you retired? For like a year, because we wanted our youngest son to be able to graduate from high school. At that point, he had gone to four different high schools. So we found a nice Christian academy. That's really why I did all that stuff so that he could have that period of time where he could actually graduate from high school in a place that.

And where we lived is fantastic. It was butternut, Wisconsin. It's a very small place. And we just wanted him to be able to round out his education in a Christian setting. And that was not available there. And then we went back to the farm. And the cafe in town was called the Butternut Cafe. Surprisingly enough.

It failed. So the owner of the building, the person running the cafe, it didn't work well. So it closed. There's 326 people in the village. And these people had, they had taken care of our farm

for like a decade. I went to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and was stationed in Germany for three years. Nothing happened to that place. Not a window broken. My neighbors. Tom and Maria,

bulky, they'd mow our front lawn, it was like an acre, and they would not take money for gas. We are not your servants. We're your neighbors. I mean, that's what these, people think that Americans are like these, the image of Americans, it's not Manhattan, dude. That's it. I mean, I live in America, and people bend over backwards. We have so much more in common with each other than differences, and it's being exploited by these folks that are trying to do, I think, horrible things for the country. But that's really America. Where I live now in Perry Dishine, It's America, you know. So this place closes, the village takes a huge shit.

And I'm like, bam, man. So I talked to Sergei, and I'm like, let's get this going again. So I bought the building from a bank, gutted it, put in new equipment. I worked in a restaurant for, I don't know, like a year or something before I joined the Navy. Sarah was a waitress for, you know, three months in high school. But, you know, I'm a quick study. I love cooking. I've cooked around the world, you know.

I did. I've made bread on five continents, dude. Like made bread from flour. I haven't made bread on one. You should try it. It's cathartic. So we got the cafe going again and then sold it to a local lady, my BFF. Her name is Bobby Munoz.

She's awesome. And, you know, I know how it's running. So so many people talk about things. And a lot of people have money in there. They'll throw money at problems. You know, the government tries to throw money at problems, right? If you say you're going to do something, And the most valuable gift you can give somebody is your time.

You have a finite amount of time on this planet. Now, as a Christian, I believe that there's something beyond this, but a lot of people don't. You only have so much time. So if you really care about somebody, give me your time. Sit down with them. Give them time. So we gave two years of our time back to that village because they're so dear to us.

and, you know, I walked away net neutral. But the impact of showing people demonstrating to them that you truly care about them is priceless. You know what I mean? No, absolutely. You build this business backup. You sell the whole thing to your BFF. Your BFF.

What's your BFF's name? Bobby. Bobby. but Bobby's a female. Female. Female. Okay. She's awesome.

So Bobby's now running the business. She has, she had Jenny run that and Bobby started bobbers on the lake and butter. Nut Lake. If you want to go by, get a beer. Okay. Well, this is important to put out because people are going to want to hit these places. Yeah. Bobbers on the lake.

It's in Butternut, Wisconsin, run by Bobby Munio. I actually want to go to both these places right now. And I don't even drink beer. So. Right. Bobby is a whirling dervish. I mean, she is on the go. I mean, you have all these different, you know,

entrepreneurial adventure. She's got the same thing going. I mean, she's just, bam, babe, babe, bam. Okay, so you sell that business and now you move back to the farm? No. I'm living on the farm. Okay. You're living on the farm.

And then I'm turning 50. So this was three years ago now. And I'm like, this is another point in my life where you can either, you know, kind of like just stay, stay. stagnant or you should do something to keep yourself rolling, right? So I'm like, I'm going to go to law school. And just like Buzz, man, you can't just go to law school? Why can't I just go to law school, right? So I studied for the LSAT for a month on the Khan Academy, which is awesome, it's free, you know, and took it and I got accepted to law school, Mitchell Hamline in St. Paul.

But during, so during this period of time, we did what we call cousin. camp. So we got all the cousins. So, you know, my brother-in-law's and all the kids together. 570 people. Not that man. We get them all together and they were given Sarah, excuse me, hard time about how difficult it was. Because at this point we had four grandkids, I think. And we're having, yeah, we had, we were having, we had three, we're having our fourth, fifth, and six grandkids. They're going to be born in a two-month window. And, um, So they're giving Sarah Jane a hard time about how difficult it was to visit our farm way up north. And it was like an hour and 45 minutes to the closest regional airport.

And then if you're flying there, it's an extra 200 bucks a person. You know, I'm not a wealthy guy. We live in our enlisted retirement. I can't afford that stuff. Or you fly into Minneapolis and it's like a four and a half hour drive. So I'm like, check, got it. I missed the kids growing up. I did.

You know, I was working, deployed, training, all that stuff. So I set preconditions Two of them I love that place up there It took us 15 years to get the house You know up to It was just perfect And

I'm like two conditions Wait the family wants you to move My wife wants us to go someplace Closer to an airport So that our grandkids can visit us And we can visit them more regularly Right and I had missed our kids growing up Yeah

Because I was a frogman Natural Environment Combat And so two conditions. It has to be in Wisconsin, and it has to be a hobby farm. So I get on the old internet in the kitchen and the farm. I find this place in Hager City, which, oh, I did a one-hour circumference around the airport. The airport, right?

And it had to be on what I call the right side of the river. That's politically and, you know, geographically correct. And so I find this place in Hager City. I call them what's going on the market the next day. Small hobby farm, old farmhouse, 19 acres, 13 tillable alfalfa, not hay anymore. I check. I drive down the next day. I look at it.

I go, okay, this is it. Put in an offer by the house. Move down there. Did you sell the other place? We sold it after a couple months. So it's gone. Excuse me. So interestingly enough, this is how I wound up running for Congress.

because Sean Duffy, who was my rep for the longest time, if you look at Wisconsin, the Ashland County is like right in the middle to the top, right? And it's right next to Lake Superior. Just past Glidden, which is the next village up from Butternut, it becomes very liberal because there's a environmentalist liberal arts college here, North Flint's College, right? So Sean and his crew would stop in Butternut.

and he's a U.S. Congressman. Now he's on Fox all the time with Rachel Campos Duffy. Great couple, nine kids. So they would stop in our village and I'd cook for him and his staff. So if something was coming up, he'd be like, oh, I'll just call Sean and ask him what's going on, you know. And so I moved down, and that's in Pierce County, right, which is in the third congressional district, not the seventh congressional district.

I don't know any of this stuff. I never track politics or anything, right? So I'm like, oh, this impeachment was coming on. I did human intelligence for a very long period of time. I read the steel dossier, and I knew it was absolute junk. This is manufactured. This is not true. It was submitted by a guy who was a former British intelligence officer

that was clearly colluding with Russian intelligence officers to produce this thing, and it's paid for by who? No. I knew it was junk, right? So I'm like, who's my congressman? You know, because it's not Sean anymore. guy named Ron Kind. I'm like, oh, hey, Ronkind,

what's your stance on the impeachment of Donald Trump for the Russian collusion stuff? Didn't write me back. Nothing. Crickets chirping. And I'm like, what? Dude, the job title is representative. It's not your lordship. You know what I mean?

This is not how representative democracy is supposed to function, and it sure didn't with Sean. So I'm getting steamed, and I start looking into this cat. Right? I mean, finding terrorists in Pakistan is super hard. You know what I mean? It's very difficult. It is not difficult finding out what politicians are doing. So I started looking at this guy from the perspective of doing human intelligence and finding out what this cat had been doing. He'd been in office for 22 or 23 years at the time. Sane stuff in the district, you can find it in newspaper articles and interviews. And then I compare that to his actual voting record. he was just wrong. He would say one thing, go to D.C. and do another thing because he was working for the behest of special interest groups,

not the people he's representing, right? So the impeachment vote goes down. He is number 435 out of 435 representatives to cast his vote, made public on the floor because he had to. He told everybody in the district he wasn't going to vote for that impeachment because it was junk. I'm not doing that. Well, he did it. hoping to slide it under the radar.

Nope. So I sent a text message to this guy named Jim, who worked for Sean? I'm like, Jim, who are you guys running against this guy? And he writes me back and he goes, you. And I write him back and go, ha, ha, ha, ha. And he didn't write me back. So when you write something and somebody writes,

ha, ha, ha, ha, and they don't write back, they're not joking. And I was like, oh, yeah. I should be right. I fixed problems for decades. so why aren't I fixing this problem and I decided to run for Congress so I got a hold of the RPW Mark Jefferson is the executive director didn't interview with him and he's like well yeah I guess you know and I formed this nasient political group you know is this is this 2019 this would be 2019 yeah

so in 2019 and um I formed my my team I didn't know what I was doing here's here's the me People like, they're in these metrics. So Ronkind had been in office for at that point, 24 years, 25 years, something like that. He had $3.1 million in the bank. He had a functioning political organization. And he had 100% name recognition. 100% kind, right? They have those kind bars.

That's not him. I had never thought about being in politics ever, my entire life, right? We moved to the district to be closer to the airport so we can visit our children. So the only person that knew my name was my wife, right? I have no money at all. Zero name recognition. That's the starting point. I decide to run for office.

72 hours, I announced my candidacy. They locked down the entire planet with COVID. Boom. So I ran a nine-month campaign against those odds. I came within like two and a half point. of beating this guy and he wanted to spend over six million dollars against me. That's why he resigned. Because I announced my candidacy.

I lost and I tried to, this is amazing. You know, you can say whatever you want about the 2020 election, but I did the math. I look at this, I lost by 11,000 votes. I can't make up 11,000 votes. You know what I mean? Even if we found statistical anomalies and all that stuff, that's what I mean. I can't, you know, I'm not going to be able to overcome that. try to call that cat. I go, that night, like four in the morning, calling to concede the election,

right? Because you should. He wouldn't take the phone call. Interesting. Not interesting. That's an egotistical person whose entire being is based on being a politician who liked being called the congressman, had people open their doors for him. And I got so close to beating him. Like all throughout the night, I was ahead. And then like 15,000 votes show up at, you know, 2.30 in the morning or whatever, you know, I get a check. They're counting. ballots that come in. I get it. Um, he was so angry, he wouldn't take a phone call. That's someone who has no business being in leadership anywhere, right? Mm-hmm. I've heard of sore losers. I'm, sore winners. What? No. So, um, yeah, I decided to to run again because I was talking

Sarah Jane. I mean, really that night, I go, this is not going to bode well for the country, not me personally. I mean, my ego, it's over here. This is not. not about me. It's not. It's about our country and our grandkids. At that point, we had six grandkids. We had eight now. So I understood that. I had no idea it was going to get this bad, this fast. No one could predict this. You just can't. You could not. But I decided to run again. I waited. I shepherded everything. I did some changes in my team. And then we wound up Brandon, the number one political campaign in the entire nation for 2021, from Prairie to Sheen, you know, 5,600 people.

And then... What makes you classify something against the number one political campaign in the whole country? So what... The inside baseball stuff, because everybody understands intuitively or they just know it, is that in order to get a word out, you have to be able to raise enough funds to get the word out. You know, I don't get any money from my campaign. You can take a salary from a campaign. I don't. I just don't think that's...

You should do that. but you have to buy television advertising cable you've got to print media you got to pay a staff you know all this stuff gasoline whatever so um yeah we we raise more money than any republican challenger in the entire nation in 2021 what what drove that me and my team I have an exceptionally good team I am so incredibly proud of my team and you you can perform at a high level for only certain period of time you know this you got to sleep at some time so how do you how do you how do you pull off sustained superior performance, you make sure that you assemble the best team you possibly can. So I have incredibly dedicated people who are all on board for the right reasons. I interviewed

every single one of them personally and make sure that they're in this for something beyond themselves, which is the country. That's why we're successful. Our mission is completely pure. The message is pure. And we're here for the right reasons. We want to save our country. And that's very, very rare, I think. There are some fantastic people in public office and leadership. Or now, they're Fantastic a lot of them but other people are just kind of there. They're the dude that was the Mar-Ops instructor for 15 years You know, a trade-it. They're doing a function But you know, why are they doing it? That's why we're successful So what does this look like from here on out from what what's the next? How many months are we right now?

We're 42 days. Forty-two days away like that and what does the next 42 days look like? I work I meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting this is my schedule I've been doing this for three years dude who do you meet with I meet with a bunch of different people my favorite meetings are with the guys in the district

the people I'm going to be representing what is going on man like how is your farm doing what is affecting you so that you can or cannot provide for your family as well biggest thing we get input costs through the roof Joe Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline.

Okay, check this out. Guy named Tim Michaels is running for governor. And he spent a friend of mine for, I don't know, three years now or something. His dad started a company. He had a couple hundred employees. He has like 8,000 now. He's going to win. He calls me, like the day or so after Biden gets sworn to go,

and he goes, Derek, I just had to lay it off 700 people. And I'm like, what do you mean, Tim? He's like, we were doing the electrical substations for the Keystone Pipeline. on. And Biden just went, freak, shut that off. So the cascading effects of these things, people don't understand. And I do intuitively, because I wrote all these plans and did this stuff, and it's something I'm good at. So here's what happens when you stop natural gas movement and production. Do you know where fertilizer comes from, Jock? Yeah. Natural gas. That's the nitrogen that comes from. That's where it comes from. The Wisconsin's third

district is one of the top five users of propane and natural gas for home heating in the country. It gets 20 degrees below zero. You're not going to put an extra sweater on it like your mom used to tell you. What about solar? Okay. So check it out.

We want our grandchildren to have power, right? But we have kids now. So the Biden administration is trying to skip ahead. The generation, you can't do that. The guy named Brent Ridge runs dairy land power, one of the biggest co-ops in my district. And we have a lot of co-ops because of rural. They did the math. So the Biden administration wants to be carbon neutral by 2030.

Okay? Oh, a noble goal. You know what that takes? You have to double the amount of all of the nuke plants on the entire planet. So that is not a real goal. It's just not. So people are eating it right now because of these horrible policies. Just that simple. It's got to stop, man. Yeah, you know, people that are in business with me, and there's a lot of them, you know, we've got a lot of different businesses.

Sure. And anyone that works with me knows that when I'm looking at things and we're assessing something, I'll get to a point where I say, all right, run the numbers. Right. You know, which is, okay, well, tell me what this is going to cost, how much we're going to put it into it. What's the ROI look like?

What's the risk? Run the numbers. Tell me what the numbers look like, because that's ultimately, and then the numbers, you have to put that into the calculus of your gut feeling, for sure. But you can have a really strong, positive gut feeling like, hey, this sounds like a great idea. And then you run the numbers and you go, hey, it's probably not going to work, man. Like that's just too much. Sometimes you go, you know what, this is not a bad idea.

You run the numbers and you go, hey, this actually makes sense. We can go for this. And that's why I kind of, you know, when you mentioned the closing of the pipeline, to kind of, you know, because emotionally you think, well, this seems like a positive thing. You know, people can look at it, go, hey, well, we don't want to have to put pipes through fields and then you run the numbers. Right. And you just run the numbers.

And it's not even really that close. You know, it's the type of math that you just said. Oh, we got to double the number of nuclear plants in the next three years if we're going to get there. That's what it's going to take. In the world. In the world. Right. So check this out, man.

We don't do enough running of numbers. Right. So you know when you go to your house, let's say you're going to wash your hands, and you turn the faucet on, and a little train car comes with water, right? And then you pour the water out of the train car. No. How does it get into your faucet? With a pipe.

Yeah. Because it's the most efficient way to transport fluids. Not even close. Right. And then you want to like light your gas stove. Does a little train come? And then you get gas. No, that comes from a pipe too.

Now, trains themselves, I'm in Prairie D. Shane, it's like Train City, USA, man. Transporting bulk items like coal, for instance, and some other large POL things, if you're going from point to point, you have to have a railhead, right? So there's room for both of them. That's what folks don't understand. But we have a carbon-based economy. and if you shut off the fossil fuels that produce carbon, you're going to destroy the economy. That's what's happening right now.

You look at the food cost, dude. Farmers have not locked, wait, check it out. Farmers have not locked in fertilizer prices for next year. So it's going to keep going up and up and up. There's two fertilizer plants that just closed in England. There's one in Finland that went down. I think they're only going to produce 24% of the fertilizer that they did before. Russia is not going to export fertilizer anymore, probably for the foreseeable future, at least five years.

I mean, they hate us right now. And there's these weird tariffs that we put on Morocco where they produce some fertilizers. What can Congress do? One thing right now. Put pressure on the Biden administration to make sure that they open up permitting and then get rid of the tariffs on Morocco. So looking at all of these problems, people get really worried about a lot of stuff. and the current leadership of the Republican Party, Kevin McCarthy in the House, we actually have a plan. And they've done a tremendous job of looking at all the problems and figuring out which one of these from the federal level will we have the greatest probability of having the greatest positive effect.

You know, that's how you're supposed to govern. So I'm actually very excited. The polls are looking outstanding for us. when I say us I mean my team I'm the head of the team but us we've done this together so I anticipate you know being elected in November

and giving it a go man it's not funny I think about that dude I come from the meanest circumstances the meanest well you know when I kind of open with that thing from George Washington that

I'd heard that quote read that quote a while ago and you know you think about you know, I, I just know your career and know what, you know, as an average team guy, what you've done, what you've been put through, what your family's been put through. And it's like, how much you're going to ask from somebody? And I look at the political arena and it makes me sick to my stomach. Like, I don't, I just think that just sounds, the whole thing sounds awful.

When you show me your calendar and I know you're going to a bunch of meetings with people that half of them, you know, are horrible people, half of them are awesome people. this craziness going on. I would not say that. Okay. Fast majority of them are awesome. Okay. Like fast.

Well, I know that when I look at what happens to politicians and you're going to get just, you know, your life becomes this target, right? And so I know that there's a ton of sacrifice that you and your family are going to make again in order to do this. And yeah, I guess you wouldn't be setting meetings with people that despise you. But look, the press is going to absolutely, a large majority of the press will absolutely despise you and they're going to do everything to attack you.

They're going to attack your family. They're going to attack your values, your home, your people, your community and everything. So the fact that you're like, yeah, cool, Roger that, going to step up and try and make this happen and it looks like you are going to make this thing happen. Yeah, I'm not going to want to wood there. When you look at all the divisiveness in the country right now,

one of the things that I've given an answer to a bunch is something that we already kind of discussed, which is, hey, I look at something from my perspective and I think, well, you know, Derek has a good point there. Maybe he's right about this. Instead of me thinking, well, Derek doesn't agree with every single point that I have. So therefore, he's completely wrong about everything and I actually hate it. How are we trying to open people's minds up to get, hey, you know what, I get that you see things a little bit differently. You come from a different background than me. And I understand your idea.

At least I know where you're trying to go. And it seems like in most cases, we can be at least somewhat aligned. You know, you want for food prices to come down. Right. That seems like a universal. Universal thing. Who would say, no, we think food should be more expensive. So what we really should be talking about is if you want food prices to come down,

and let's say you're a conservative, you're a conservative Republican, and let's say I'm a left-wing Democrat. And I want food prices to come down. So we're actually aligned on where we want to go on that particular subject. But it's like there can't even be agreement on that and we can't have a logical discussion about,

well, okay, well, run the numbers. Show me the numbers that you're looking at and I'll show you the numbers that we're looking at and let's have a discussion about how we can actually make the food, prices come down. Let's try and figure something out. How do we cross that bridge? Well, how I plan on crossing that bridge. First and foremost, everyone needs to understand that I will work with anybody who is willing to put the interest to the country above their own. I don't care

who you are. I will work with you. And I've proven that over 26 years and working the most diverse environments and hostile, straight up hostile environments, people trying to kill me. environment. So if you're going to put the betterment of the country in your congressional district above your own personal interest, I'm on board. And this is what I tell people. It echoes what you're saying. I said, you're going to agree with people oftentimes 90% of the time. You know, if I agree with somebody 90% of time, that's a big win, right? How many people here can look themselves in the mirror and honestly say that you have a lot of the time? And honestly say that you agree with your spouse 90% of the time. Almost nobody, right? So finding common ground, that's the term.

Finding common ground is imperative to make sure that you can actually govern. And when you do things strictly on party lines, you lose the ability to closely identify common ground. How Congress has gotten around this is, say, put these big omnibus bills together. So you're going to, using your example, this is going to unleash American energy, therefore the input costs for farming are going to go down. That means food costs are going to go down. Or this is going to decrease the price of diesel fuel, which decreases the transportation costs.

You understand, right? And then they'll put something in here, like, but we're going to have red flag laws, and you're going to have your guns confiscated by the state, which I fundamentally did. That is just wrong, right? And they put them in the same bill so that they can vote on it for or against it,

and they can justify it when they go back to their district. That's got to stop. It has to stop, because in no way, shape, or form do I support red flag laws? I'll give you an example. A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the right for the people to keep them bare arms shall not be infringed. That's the entire text of the Second Amendment due. So that's out, but lowering food cost is in.

So in order to hold Congress accountable, Congress has to write clean legislation so that I know exactly where Jocko and Echo sit on an issue. That's got to happen. Are we going to be able to pull that off? I don't know. But one of the things that I will do that everybody can count on is I will do me. Meaning, like the first pledge that I make to everybody is I will not buy, sell, or trade, individual stocks as long as I'm a sitting member of Congress. I will not do that. And people are like, well, what about this guy? What about that guy? What about that guy? I'm going to do me. I'm going to

make sure that all the things I'm doing are as morally and ethically and legally correct as I possibly can as a human being when I'm in Congress. I'll start there. And courage is contagious. We talked about that. I mean, ideally, people will see that. And the people that I'm working with, they'll want to do that too. I mean, people inherently, you know, they want to do things in a way that's beneficial for other people. The American people are benevolent with the most generous country that has ever existed, our populace, you know, the regular people on the street. So if you give them the opportunity to do what's right, a lot of people are going to do what's right. They just need to see somebody else do it. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And I think America right now, you know, you're looking at anybody looks at some bill that's coming before Congress, coming before the House, and it's whatever, 792 pages. They don't even read it. And there's not one person in America that goes, that seems like a good thing. And you could go down a whole laundry list of things that every American says, this is. is bullshit. What this is bullshit. What you just talked about like having these multiple different.

Omnibus bills. Yeah, Omnibus bills. We got all these different categories that are being voted on in one bill. Every American, every American goes, that's bullshit. And there's only so long that the politicians can continue to get away with this bullshit before Americans. Because you got to remember, where are the people that were like, oh, you're going to raise the attack.

on tea by two two cents per per freaking giant bundle of tea yeah no actually we're gonna we're gonna fight you at some point Americans go hey this is bullshit and we're gonna get rid of you people that are doing these things that are clearly wrong they're so clearly wrong everybody knows it and eventually we say yeah we're done now look I don't even think it's good I think it's gonna be a change like Like you're like you're the personification of this change, right? That's not like everyone's going to get voted out tomorrow, but people go, oh yeah,

here's a guy that just went in there and said, yeah, this is a dumb idea. Hey, you guys can't pull a wall over the American's eyes anymore. I think over the next several years, maybe even take five, maybe even take 10 years, we're going to get rid of these things that are, for lack of a better word, bullshit. Right.

So I want to be very clear. I am absolutely, I 100% disavow any type of political violence. I do not condone it, and that will be the destruction of America. If we take up arms against each other, I'll have no part of that. First time I went to combat, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Civil War. Went to Afghanistan, turned into a civil war. Iraq turned into a civil war. Worked in the Horn of Africa, civil war.

I'll have no part of that in the United States of America. So how do we prevent that from happening, which I will do anything to prevent that from happening? Political violence cannot be part of a discussion in the United States of America. It cannot. So how do we do it? We do it by what you're saying. We exercise our rights as American citizens and we get into office and we make the change from the inside. And here's what's, this is fascinating, dude.

Okay. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. you know who said that? John F. Kennedy. JFK said that, right? So he said that in 62, 61, 62.

So we went from that, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. We went from that to, you're going to do everything I say you're going to do. You're going to lock your church. You're going to close your business. You're not going to be able to speak to each other freely.

You're going to go to this store, but not that store. You're going to get a shot or you're going to get fired. You're going to do everything. You're going to give me your money, the sweat of your brow. And if you don't willingly do this, I'm going to use the full coercive power of the federal government

to compel you to do this. You got that? Who's that? That's AOC. So the Democrat Party went from JFK to AOC in 50-some years. How? Republicans let them. something goes wrong on a mission

who's the first person you look at dude it's you what did I do or not do that led to the failure of this mission hopefully you're saying what did I do or not do that led to the success of this mission right never take anything for granted so we as Republicans have let people get away with this for such an extended period of time

and we've done it by saying oh they have the best interest of the country at hand they really do they want the same thing that we do yeah some aspects you do but in others, they don't. And there's people that want to fundamentally change the system of government that has proven to be the best one in the entire planet, like ever in history.

You know what I mean? We're one of the youngest countries in the world. We have the oldest standing constitution in the world. Why? Because it is an incredibly functional and beautiful document. There's people that want to throw the Constitution out. Why? Because they're not getting the way.

They're not getting their way. So the beauty about our constitution is something's wrong, in it, the mechanism for changing it is written into the document itself. It's the amendment process. You know what I mean? So use it. And they're like, well, it's so hard. Yeah. It's supposed to be. It's supposed to be, right? So are we changing stuff? Yeah. Are people waking up to how destructive this, the policies have the destructive effect that the policies you're having? Yeah. I mean, I see people that are just beside themselves. That $10,000 college thing? they want to give $10,000 for, you know, student debt relief?

Check this out, man. 75% of my district does not have a four-year degree. Only 9% of my district, 9% has a graduate degree. And I did a roundtable with some folks. And they're all blue-collar folks. This is, what, 21,000 square feet? Yeah. Okay.

This gym is 21,000 square feet is what he's referred. Yeah, sorry, the gym is 21,000 square feet. We do this thing at a HVAC place. It's probably 18, 20,000 square feet. Two brothers got this thing going. They don't have high school. They have high school degrees and then trade school. We're in this, you know, beautiful business.

All the people is your real estate agents. No one had a 40 degree. And we're like, well, what do you think about this? Like, well, this is absurd, right? So I do this round table. I go to a place to get lunch. I'm talking to Hannah, is her name, H in the beginning, H at the end. I remember because she said that stuck in my mind.

And we started talking. She goes, oh, this is great. You know, I graduate from college. I have all this debt. You know, I'm working here as a bartender. And her degree was in, gosh, She was like, public or communications with the art major or art minor, right? I'm like, well, you know, kind of get what you pay for there.

And she goes, yeah, I think it's a great idea. Okay, hand, hold on a second. Let's say this place is banging on a Friday night. And there's, there's 100 people here. And you go, all right, time out. 91 of you go over there. Okay, and the other nine, you sit here. All 91 of you are going to pay for everything they eat and drink tonight.

And you're going to sit there and watch them. I go, would they be mad? She goes, well, yeah, that's just unfair. And I was like, okay, so 91 folks, even if they were just getting it, you know, you're talking $25 a person, maybe? I mean, they could have lavished dinner, right? So this is $2,500 out of every single American taxpayer's wallet to pay for somebody to have dinner on you.

No, that doesn't make sense on any planet, right? And I told her that. And she's like, wow, yeah, that is just unfair. I'm like, Hannah. Hannah run the numbers. Walk the dog. That's what I call. Walk the dog on this.

You know what I mean? It doesn't make sense. So people are seeing that. And there's so many reasons to be discouraged, Jocko. And you can always find one. You can always find no. You know, no's easy. It is.

It's easiest in the world. No. And it's easy to get discouraged. It's easy to get down, you know, with all the start. circumstances. But I'm telling you, if you wake up in the morning like I do and you just have an overwhelming sense of gratitude like we talked about, just be so gracious. Look at yourself. Look at the things, the opportunities that you have as a human being in the United States of America

right now to create something, to do something worthwhile, to help somebody out. That doesn't exist in a lot of countries. And when you just take a minute and go like, yeah, you know, I'm going to go buy that cup of coffee. I do that for cops. And they're like, I'm sorry, sorry, I can't accept a gift. I'm like, you're not the boss of me, dude. Like, I don't work for you. Police officer X, you know, I'm buying you this cup of coffee, dude. Or you help out a homeless person, like help them out, not just throw money at them because that doesn't help anybody. I mean, it doesn't. The ability to do that is unique. And we got to remember that. And you've got to tell your friends. And you've got to encourage your friends to tell other people. Because you've seen the downward

spiral, you know, when things start going bad and then it's just that. It's this negative feedback loop that people get into. We're in a negative feedback loop, but the inputs are coming from our government. And we should be in a negative feedback loop right now. So how do you get out of that? You put goodness in there. That's what we're doing. It's, I mean, some things are so basically, you know, philosophical. It was interesting teaching special reconnaissance because you have time to reflect. When do you have time to reflect? I mean, they started with videos. Remember, they're like two minutes long, then they made them one minute, then they made them 30 seconds. Oh, you're just talking about social media videos? Yeah, they're like,

what, seven seconds now? Yeah. So there's been a crunch of the attention span of people and it removes your ability to reflect on something. You truly don't understand something until you ponder it. And teaching special reconnaissance and doing special reconnaissance missions, you have time to ponder things. Yes, you do. And sometimes pondering while you're freezing and starving, you know. But again, starting as a kid, you know, reading so much, reading takes time and reflection. And when you're putting an author's voice inside of your mind because you're reading it and you're, you know, you're hearing that inside.

You're not receiving this like a television image. It's you internalize it. So we're putting some good in there. Yeah, we're injecting good into the cycle. Seriously, so be encouraged. Listen, people, I want you to be encouraged. You live in the best country in the world if you're in America right now. And if you're not, move here legally.

Emigrate to the United States of America and we'll welcome you with open arms if you do it the right way. Check. That gets us, I think that gets us up to date. That's where we're at, right? These are excellent, by the way. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Thank you.

Appreciate it. I haven't had one before. I guess you have this whole line of everything, right? We got a line of a bunch of stuff, you know? We got a, we're making supplements here. Okay. We've got clothing. We got factories.

We got two factories in Maine. We got maybe three factories in Maine, depending on what you're counting as a factory. And we just consolidated, we're in the process of consolidating our two factories in North Carolina to one factory in North Carolina. Well, back up. Why don't you have a factory in the third congressional district of the state of Wisconsin? We can talk about that.

Let's talk about that. We can go out there and check it out. And as we grow, which we're growing very rapidly right now, and the reason we're growing very rapidly is because people want American-made stuff. Sure. Hey, dude, we've got power. We've got rail during the summertime. We've got the Mississippi River to move commodities up and down.

And I have the most fantastical, hardworking, ethically sound, badass Americans in the world. Well, that is outstanding. And that's what we're looking for. You know, we've kind of a little bit maxed out of resources or human capital up in Maine. We're still getting people that are, I mean, the beautiful thing is we've got people coming in from all of the country are moving to Maine, moving to North Carolina, knocking on the door, I want a job. I want to work here. It's outstanding. And so that's been a huge part of it.

Just growing that. But yeah, we make boots. We make jeans. We make hunt gear. So American made hunt. hunt gear. I don't think there's anyone more patriotic in the world than hunters in the in the country than hunters. Hunters need to vote like 30% of hunters vote. Oh really that little we all sit around and are you know griping about this and that they don't vote if you're a hunter vote yeah register and

vote no doubt about it you there's no doubt about it though if you're not part of the problem for hunting rights for gun rights for conservation right like you you definitely want to be voting if you're not voting right now but they definitely I mean I saw a bunch of hunters over the past. You know, September, the past hunting season for me. And everyone is just so excited about being able to buy stuff that's made in America. Yeah. Because this is, you're literally taking money out of our economy. When you buy something from overseas, you're just giving that money, not only giving it overseas,

but they don't care about the environment at all in these overseas factories. They definitely don't take care of their workers. Their workers have no future. They're slave labor. It's horrible. We are paying the Chinese Communist Party to, oppress their people and plot against the existence of the United States. That's what is happening.

I know. And that's what me and my friends are doing to push back against that is bringing manufacturing back to America. I mean, you love it. We have literally brought machines that were outsourced to America from America 30 years ago. We've bought them and have brought them back to America and are putting them use. That's what we're actually doing it right now. I mean, we got great documentation of this too.

So that's what we're doing. Well, I tell you what, dude, let me get elected, keep working hard, and then student official visit. Yeah. Well, because I, listen, I will do anything to help the people that I'm representing. Those three conditions, morally ethically and legally correct. Then we got, we have to find ways that meet those parameters with the end state of your congressional district, the state and the country are better off because of it. Yeah. And it's just a little nose to the grindstone, dude. You really got to think about what's taking place and then act on it.

Yeah, well, a huge part of what you're talking about is, you know, you've said it's multiple times, is you've got to put your country first. And, you know, when I've, as I've gotten involved in the, in these industries, you can look back very easily in the last 40 years, 30 years, really, of the history of the companies in America, where you can increase your profits, your short-term profits by a little percentage, and therefore you make this, and oh, you know what, we can, it's going to cost us more to get it over here. It's going to cost us to transport it. It's going to cost us time, but we got plenty of time because we're big, and it's going to save us, you know,

38 cents a garment. right let's do it and that's what they did right and they did that over and over again and then they spread the lie of not now what they what we were up against is they said oh you can't it's impossible to do this in America right it's impossible it's like are you kidding me this is America it's America this America we outproduce the world right and we can build anything we can make anything and that's what we're doing and look it starts with boots and clothing and jeans and jiu jit two geese and rash cards that's where we're starting I don't know where we're going to finish yeah but that's what we're doing

So we have a globally integrated economy, right? It's carbon-based, and I'm okay with that to an extent. What I'm not is I'm not a globalist. And I understand that we need to make sure that we're putting the interests of our people first. And the best example of this is, let's say your 98-year-old person, osteoporosis, whatever, and you see someone being assaulted, can you help that person? No. I mean, you can call police, but you can't get in there.

So you have to be strong in order to help somebody. And this administration either doesn't understand that or they don't care. So when you are, the difference between equality and equity is everyone should have the everyone should have the ability to start with a level playing field

you know what I mean and then you you succeed or fail predicated on your God-given gifts and your drive right but if I force you to perform less

so that you have equity vice equality it ruins everything that's Thomas Soul is brilliant Yeah, we've been kind of exploring bringing him out to bring him on the podcast. If you do, can I come here?

Talked about him a bunch and he's definitely had a big influence on the way that I think. Equality of opportunity, not outcome. Yeah, that's it. Just brilliant, man. Yeah. Yeah, so Echo. Yeah, what's up, man? You have any questions?

Yeah, let's rewind a little bit. Oh, oh, real quick. You're working at a gas station. Yes. Did you have any roommates at that time? No, I was working at Drystale Chevron. So you could work at Chevron and have your own apartment. Granted, we're starving for sure.

Wait, so check this up. You guys, do you track Dennis Prager? Yeah. Okay, so Prager, you, they did, you know, those series of four-minute videos. They did this one. If you do three things, it doesn't matter where you start, on the lower socioeconomic scale, you're going to wind up in the middle class. You graduate from high school.

You do not have a child out of wedlock, and you have a full-time job. That could be at the gas station. That can be anywhere, right? So you do these three things. Statistically, you're going to wind up in the middle class. It just takes those things. And a lot of people give guff about intergenerational wealth transfer, right?

Well, we were raised dirt poor. But my mom, because she was a hard worker, when she died, she had a home. And we sold the home because we didn't want to live there. and then we had to pay a bunch of taxes, and then we received this, you know, a little nest egg for my mom. That's money that went from one generation to another. That is intergenerational wealth transfer.

And all it takes, I mean, that's what it is. I mean, you don't get to make up the, or SEALs make up definitions of words all the time, by the way. Yeah. They'll change your name. Jason, I'll say his name. Jason Cabell? Yeah.

Okay, so J-Bell's his name. nickname. He was in buds and they're like, Were you in buds with him? No, I was not. He's after me. Oh, okay. So Jay Bell's his nickname, you know, Jason Bell. He was my LPO when I was at Team 7. Okay, he just finished directing

an episode of SEAL team. Oh, right. Over in Jordan, I think. Yeah, so we're buddies. He asked me, he's like, hey, I want you to play Airship's captain in the movie I'm directing with Nicholas Cage and I'm like, okay, I was working at the cafe. I've never chased acting before, but he called me because they're friends. I'm like, sure, I'll do that. But So Jay Bell, he's in buds, and they're like, get over here.

And like, get over here, cable. And he's like, it's Cabell. And he's like, don't church it up. Your name is cable. So it'll literally change your name. So, sorry. Yeah. Gas station, poor.

Yeah, but you had your own apartment, though. Sure. I'm just saying it seems like here in San Diego anyway, if I work at Chevron, I don't think I'm getting my own apartment. Then move. Can you? Or get a different job. Well, honestly, there's people that here that live here that work at Chevron that live somewhere. They have apartments or something.

Right, but with a roommate or something like this. Look, actually, you know, when guys are in the military here, especially their young guys in the military, if they got a family, they're either having to live on house bazing or maybe they go out in town. And a lot of them are on Wick and Snap rolling stuff. So when we were raising our kids. And this is a, it's a choice that you can make. So Sarah was an RN. She was an ICU nurse and I was a E4, I guess. And we had our second child, and I think I made E5 by then.

And we just looked at it and said, hey, look, her economic earning potential was three times what mine was. But we said we have these kids and we chose to invest in the children. You know what I mean? So Sarah stayed at home since we had our second child. and we supported ourselves off a single enlisted person's salary. And we had, what's that, it's the WIC, women, infant, and children, you know, like coupons to get milk and all that stuff. I mean, we're poor. But relatively speaking, you know, if you projected across the globe, we're still incredibly wealthy.

If you look at that in perspective. And I think when the Department of the Army just came on and said, hey, instead of paying enlisted people more, put them food stamps that's an issue yeah well that's a way for them to save money in the long run right which is not giving you're not raising their base pay which means you don't have to pay their retirement as much but echo what was your what was your point in saying that like it's making the comparison but you make a good point too because and this was actually kind of maybe a few years after that I remember I had a roommate too though but my portion of the rent was like four hundred fifty bucks or something and I was making

like 300 bucks every two weeks. So I was making like 600 bucks. Where was this? You know, I know. Okay. Well, you were living large.

So your point is, wait, were you moving, moving company? No, no, no, what was this?

Moving cover with my first summer job. But you made good money moving, right? I was a part-time bouncer at that time. You ain't gonna make a bunch of money for being a part-time bouncer. No,

no, no, no, I'm just making the comparison with, like, how much you can make versus what you can kind of live off of and have your own apartment and whatever. And you know what I'm biased.

That's why. because I'm like I look at like the apartment rent right now and it's like 3,3,500, 4,000, 4,4,300 is what I'm hearing. You're saying in San Diego. Yeah, exactly. But where? In UTC. Yeah. Come on, man.

There's places in even in San Diego, which is super expensive. There's places that are way cheaper than that. In fact, I would actually even say most places are going to be way cheaper than that. Definitely. In all of probably California, really, when you think about, I mean, there's certain designations. cities that's like, okay, it's crazy. But everywhere else is probably a lot cheaper. But you make a good point where it's like, yeah, I worked at Chevron, but then even

you saying like, oh, yeah, you're starving. It's kind of like, okay, that's kind of the deal. No one's really starving now. You know, everyone's got their phone and they got their this. I'm thankful that people are not hungry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, fully. But that's a whole different thing, though. Right.

Then as far as like what I was kind of trying to compare. Yeah. But I don't think we're way off. I think it's kind of similar. I think just now we're just distracted by way more things, you know. But you also got to look at what you're going to accept and what you're going to do about it. Because this, I was in Iraq, we hit this target building, and we roll in there. And there's a family, whatever, live in there, and there's a bad guy.

And we got the bad guy, and now we're like looking at this place where lives. And in the, it was basically one big room and then like two smaller sleeping rooms. But in the one big room, there was the kitchen where they made the food. And then there was like a sink to make, to do dishes. It was the kitchen. Then there was a small bench or table to prep the food. And then right next to that was the shitter. It was like, well, it wasn't a toilet.

It was a trough that had a little hole, but you would shit right there. And these things were separated by no more than five feet. Yeah. If I moved in there, within 30 seconds, I'd be assessing how we're going to be. assessing how we're going to do this different, what change we're going to make, we're going to make this thing better, we're not going to, we're not going to shit where we eat. That's just a general role. We're going to make change.

Now, this family had been living there for a long time. And I noticed that wherever we would go, there would be some guys in a platoon that would be like, oh, we're moving into this building now. Cool. Here's what I'm going to do. They start fixing stuff. They start making stuff. They start building stuff.

They'd get everything set up. They'd get a fan from somewhere. They'd rig that. They'd make it work. Guys would just take action to improve their situation that they're in. And some people aren't. So if you're in an apartment and you're working at Chevron and you're starving, you go, hey, you know what, this sucks.

I think this sucks. I'm going to go and see what the U.S. military, if there's an opportunity for me there. That's Derek. You know, I'm working at Wendy's. Guess what? Working at Wendy's sucks. It sucks working at Wendy's. They have these fantastic potato register.

Oh, believe me. I'm not knocking. I can't say I didn't really dig Wendy's. Right. But I'm looking at it going, hey, you know what, this sucks. want to do this. I don't want to do this for a long time. I want to find something else. Okay. What options do they have in the U.S. military for me? You and I both kind of look towards the military, but no matter where you're at, you look around and go, hey, you know what? Where

I'm at right now kind of sucks. And if you're thinking that right now, then you say, okay, why does it suck? What do I need to do to improve it? How can I start building in the right direction? When we looked at how things were being manufactured, the only way to manufacture something to do it overseas that sucks right and my my business partner Pete said that sucks I want to make stuff in America had to go and find a freaking loom and pull it out of an abandoned factory and get that thing working again and find people that knew how to work it why because it sucked and we're gonna do something about it it sucks that we couldn't get boots that we wanted that were made in America cool

that sucks what are we gonna do about it so if you're in a situation that sucks don't just sit there in grovel in it figure out what you can do to make some And listen, are there hard times that hit people? Yeah, you know, that's a classic extreme ownership question that I'll get. Hey, I've been hit with this disease, been hit with cancer. I mean, I remember distinctly, I got to ask this question at a live event. A woman said, you know, my child was a daughter, daughter has cancer. How can I take ownership of that? What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to take ownership? How is that my fault? And I said, no, it's not your fault, obviously that your child got cancer, what you take ownership of is how you respond to it.

Right. So, so I see what you're saying. So here is the, the nexus of personal responsibility and governmental control. So the government's job is to make sure that the playing field is level. And also, we've gotten to the point where we seem to have demonized labor. So we have to not take away the dignity of labor. You know what I mean? Like I have a picture in my phone. I'm handing a young guy named Joey

his first paycheck that he ever in his life. You know what I mean? He'll remember that $250 the rest of his life. Raleigh Beavins handed me my first check at a movie theater. I remember that. Remember the guy's name. That was 50 years ago or whatever, you know? No, 50 on 53. So 35 years, 40 or whatever. this. I don't know. So I remember

Raleigh Bevan's doing that. So what has taken place in the United States of America is that for some reason we've allowed these folks to convince people that if you work with your hands you're lower and you're lesser. So even for some people

they're okay with their circumstances by working at Wendy's. And we have to understand that it's okay if that's what you're going to do. But then again if you want something more, that's the part where you've got to look inside and I think that's what you're articulating. If you're not happy with your circumstance and the level or the playing field is level

because the government has set conditions for everybody, level, and you're living in a place where you don't want to be, it's up to you to facilitate that change. Yeah, right? Of course there's people. That's another leadership question I could ask. You know, I got Fred and Fred, he comes to work from nine to five, but he's not motivated to do anything else. He's perfectly fine.

Just work. And I say, oh, you've got a great person then. That's satisfied with where they're at. They're doing their job every day. They're working hard. It doesn't mean turn your back on them and think, well, I'm never going to pay attention to Fred again. No, it means every six months, you check in with Fred and you say, hey, Fred, I know you're waiting for kids to, you know, get through middle school where you're going to a lot of their games. Now that your kid left middle school, are you thinking about maybe moving into a leadership position?

No, I want to wait until the Donald High School. Hey, cool, no problem. I appreciate the work you're doing. Are you familiar with the concept of the regimental corporal? Speak to me on the regimental corporal. All right. So in the British Army, they have something that's called a regimental corporal. Like in the American military, you have to promote, promote, promote.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so they have people that are corporals. Yep, for life. Right, because they are the best weapons technician in the world. And they really want to do that. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that's, it's not the English dream, clearly, but that's where that guy wants to be.

So the beauty of the United States of America, we've got to get back to this because we're getting away from it, is when you work yourself into a place where you're, content it's okay to be content I mean it's nice to be content not complacent there's a difference so when you're content with your family situation your school and your job and all that stuff that's awesome that's your American dream man you don't you don't have to have a mansion in Beverly Hills we've been just fooled I have guys that tag me in social media yeah of like plumbing installs that are super freaking

dialed or right they're putting an electrical subpanel and everything is squared away and they're like yeah check it out hell yeah Absolutely 100%. That's a trade. That's a skill. And that's awesome. And I'm super stoked when I see that stuff. And that's, again, one thing I'm very lucky is that, you know, I work with my consulting

company, Eshlam Front. We work with companies all over the country and all over the world. And so I get to travel into wherever North Dakota and go out and check out the oil rigs that are being drilled. Is that fascinating? The guys work and what they're doing? Those freaking guys are awesome. The linemen up in Michigan, you know, hanging wires going through Wisconsin.

Yeah, in Wisconsin. All over. Right. And these people are skilled. They've got a badass job. They know that their job is completely me. They literally supply power to the country. It's freaking outstanding.

So linemen, right? Yeah. I'm going around right out the Great River Road, Highway 35, goes along in Mississippi. I'll have the largest contiguous. section of the Mississippi River of any congressional district in the country. Boom. Bam. It's beautiful.

See this great house. It's on a corner. Big garage. It's like a three-story place. Truck in the driveway. This new pontoon boat with like a 250 horsepower motor or something outboard. It costs more than my truck. And so I whip in there because I want to put a yard sign in this guy.

I go, hey man, do you mind me asking what you do for a living? Lineman. Lineman. went to trade school for two years and he had two kids and I can't remember his wife's name for Pete Six. She was a radiology technician not a radiologist but she

okay she went to trade school so you got these two people who went to trade school graduated from high school and they're bawling dude I mean they're living their American dream they've got their kids in school and I'm like why is that wrong and you

you can't fix a toilet with the degree 13th century French poetry. And you just can't. So why have we demonized the things that build this nation? You know what I mean? You can't pump the air conditioning in this room if you have a degree in communications. You've got to be a metal worker.

You know what I mean? You have to be a sheet metal worker to make ducting. So one of the things that I'm doing, Jock, is I consider myself, and I think that the federal government needs to do more cheerleading. Like we have to cheerlead. I got endorsed by 16 and the 19 sheriffs in my district. You know what I mean? Because they know I have their back 100%.

I've lived in ungoverned space. I'm unwilling to do that in the United States. How do you prevent that? You support the police officers. That's what you do, right? So I'm all in with these guys all the time. And I'm also all in with people that are going to trade school. So we have to have people in positions of power go,

it is so awesome that you are protecting me when I say. I tell them this, okay, dude, so I'm a Christian. I was never afraid of being injured or killed. It was not part of my calculation. You know what I mean? For me, I've read the end of the book, I've seen the end of the movie. I know what happens.

I used to joke, you know, with my wife about this. And it was just kind of a freak. She's a frogman. Well, she's a frogman. No, she's a frogman. wife, you know what I mean? So, I was never worried about that. What I was worried about was my family. Do you know what I mean? I was worried about my family. And the most precious gift you can have from my personal experience in a combat environment is like a two-hour nap. Right?

It's nice. You get two hours asleep when things are squarely. Why can you get that two-hour nap? because your brothers have guns and they're looking out and they're protecting you in your sleep. That's something I cherished and I still do. Who does that for my family? Police officers. That's a gift. And when people are demonizing them, they just don't understand that. These people are literally watching your children as they sleep to make sure they're not harmed.

What is more honorable than that? And noble. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, same thing with the guys and gals that are building. our country. It's honorable. It's honorable. It's honorable and it's noble.

And things don't work without that. So the federal government needs to cheerlead. We need to tell people you're only here because these people are working so hard. That's why you could drive your car to work. That's why you're eating. That's why you have clothes. These are things that don't take these fancy pants degrees. I don't have an issue.

I mean, I went to law school. you know what I mean? I get it. Higher education is very important. Graduate degrees are important. By the way, I finished my first year of law school and then did full-time Congress. So I'm technically on a sabbatical, which... Got it.

You may or may not get back to. Well, I'm going to have a greater positive effect writing laws than I will interpreting them. And again, you know, I got into that. I went to that for intellectual curiosity, not to, you know, be Perry Mason or something like that. Anyway, so that's the next thing I'm doing, cheerleading. Check. Like, Echo, was that the only question? That was the only one.

That's the only one. I was trying to comparison. He's got to test him a little bit. You know, he's going to be up against the big dog, the big, uh, tough questions. That's it for right now. Okay. Right on. Derek, any closing thoughts, man?

Um, gosh, I, uh, I, again, I want people to be encouraged. And, you know, how are you encouraged is you, you, you sit down and you, you practice, actively practiced gratitude for what you got. And you understand that you are empowered to change your circumstances. And I know that because I was raised dirt poor in a single home, high school dropout, the whole works and jerks. And I'm going to Congress next year. So if I can do this, you can do it.

It's the same reason. I told you, man. I knew I could graduate from Buds because there is a seal with a trident on. in front of me. Right? Yeah. It means it's possible. So act.

Right? It is possible. So act. Awesome words to close on. Thanks for joining us, brother. Thanks for your service. Well, thank you for yours. Echo, it's really nice to meet you, man.

Likewise. I'll give you my phone over. You can call me. Sounds good. I think you already got it. Well, God bless you guys and your listeners. And I just wish you the best. Oh, hey, where's that thing?

Oh, we got a baseball bat? Check this out. So this was made by the Three Brothers Bat Company. It's in Wisconsin. Got a hold of these guys. A couple of played college balls. It's actually four brothers and a sister. But they decided to start making baseball bat.

So this bat is, it meets all the standards to be used in Major League Baseball. And these dudes just bought this whole building and started making these things. Yeah. So what happened with Bats is I did like a, okay, long story on the Bats. Here's the long story on the Bats. When I went to Iraq, Platoon Commander, 2003. When did you go there for the first time, 2004?

I was in Afghanistan in 2003. I was in Iraq in 2005. When you were Afghanistan in 2003, was America sending a bunch of stuff over there just like care packages and like sunscreen? still are okay so that was going on and for whatever reason you know they're sending sunscreen and like Eminem just all this stuff and they would send baseball gloves and baseballs and baseball bats so for whatever reason we had a bunch of baseball bats so we're living in a you know this was 2003

the war had kind of well this is this fall of 2004 2003 so the war wasn't very deep there wasn't all this infrastructure there wasn't like a Wendy's on the and everything like this yet and so we were briefing in this crappy room with a you know like a sheet hung up on the wall and I would brief I would go get one of the bats from this MWR the morale Welfare and Recreation bucket which had three baseball bats in it that somebody some cool person from America threw them into a package and sent them to support the troops yeah which is beautiful and so I would walk over there grab a bat and that's how I'd brief and one of my friends has a has a video of me briefing with the bat and you know that's just like how I would point to like hey

we're gonna go down here we're gonna move over there and so then when I was a task unit commander it kind of continued on that we had like a briefing bat and then we did a video the other day and I was just like talking about leadership or something I was holding a bat and I forget what bad it was it'll be that one in the future in the future will be this one but then now a bunch of people now I have I think I've received five baseball bats from various people, custom baseball bats. I mean, you can see there's another one right over there. I got a few of them at home. But yeah, this one is, this one's awesome.

Made in America. It says Def Core, Pro Model, Def 434. Three Brothers Bat Company, dude. That is in my district. And that is another example of people saying, I have got a good idea. I'll tell you when I've got to get out here. there's Wester Concrete Company. Joe just died, gosh, it must have been six or seven months ago.

Joe had like six kids and they had a house and marries his wife. And he's like, I got an idea. I got an idea how to make concrete this certain way to make this stuff and it's going to work. Mortgages his house again. So you want to talk about risk, homeless Wisconsin, six kids. And that would happen if he failed. But he's like, I have an idea. He died a billionaire.

Check. Because he was like, I'm sick with it. Check on the billionaire part. Not so much to check on the dying part. But I mean, if you're going to die, you might as well do it as a millionaire. Right. Right.

So that's one of the things, with people demonize business people. I'm like, the hardest that I would say the wealthiest people I know are some of the hardest working people I know. And, you know, that's their thing. That's their metric. As I started off, you know, I still do this. I collect relationships with people.

To me, that is my metric of success. How many people do I know? At what level do I know them? How can I help them? Will they reach out to me if they need something? And can I facilitate that need? That's my metric of success. It always has been.

Sarah Jane and I live on my enlisted retirement. You know what I mean? Because we don't chase Nichols. It's not my thing. But if that, if you're a businessman, you're metric or woman, your metric of success more likely than not is financial. So therefore, if you're doing this, and that's the metric of success, you should be wealthy as a business person.

If you're a doctor, you should be caring people. So I'd love that about this job because I get to meet the most fascinating people, like those dudes that made that bat for you. And it was an offhand comment. You know this jaco guy? When did you meet him and when did they get the bat to you to bring it? hand carry it to me. That got shipped overnight to my mother-in-law's house. It was delivered yesterday. Check. So I talked to the cats and they're like, oh, you know this Jericho Willink guy?

I'm like, you know, and they said it like, you know, because apparently he's a big deal. I mean, I don't know this stuff, dude. Like, I didn't know you had this. It was like, you don't know he has all this stuff because I started looking into it and you wrote all these books and everything. I go, like, if you're an accountant, you know, would you like go watch a movie about tax season or You know, you wouldn't. I was like, so why would I be looking into Chaco? I know the dude, he's an awesome cat. You know, why would I be following him around?

So I didn't. But they're like, that offhand comment, I know, soccer came here. And I go, yeah, man, I've done it for like 30 years, I guess now, from Team 1, right? And they're like, you are kidding me. I'm like, no. So they follow your podcast, they watch it.

I think that they've taken a lot of your lessons because they're incredibly squared away dudes. Sure. And family's awesome. And just their name, they have, you know, too many siblings to put it on a lot. bat. That's why it's three brothers back company. But yeah, so that was made for you.

And I have one. It's in my office, which I think, again, cheerleading for people is what, that should be a primary function of politics. I mean, clearly you must write functional policy and translate ideas into action and you do that through

the written word, vice a gun like we used to do. But the rest is just telling people about other people. You know what I mean? Like if if I could if I could tell you about all the people that I know and what they've done, it would just be an endless conversation. And to me, that means I am the most successful person in the world because that's my metric of success.

Jack. Awesome, man. Well, like I said, thanks for coming down. Yeah. Appreciate it. God bless you, man. Thanks for the service of your family, by the way. what the what the military wives and spouses for the bomb go through incredible the kids that grow up

you know without dads around without moms around really really challenging so thanks to your family as well and I'll pass it on I wish you fair wins fair wins following seas and a lot of votes there you go get them all right bro thanks cheers oh one more thing I forgot van Orden for Congress com. Van Orden for Congress.com on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram, you're at Derek, D-E-R-R-I-C-K,

Van-O-R-D-E-N. And you're up on all those different platforms. You got a YouTube channel as well. I do. So we can, you can explore. You got lots of 30-second clips on there.

Those are your little ad spots. I do those. I also make these little videos and just try to explain things. Where do you put your little videos? They go mostly Yeah, my social media. Okay.

And then we also rip them over to YouTube. So it's all out there if you want to get a feel, a better feel. If over three hours of conversation, if you don't think like you feel, feel like you know Derek yet, you want to get to know, you might know Derek. Do you know Van O? Do you know Van O. Do you know Vano? DVO. All right.

DVO. All right. Thanks, man. Thank you. You bet. And with that, Derek Van Orden. Van Oden. Vano. DVO.

DVO. That's what we're going with. Yeah, DVO. DVO has left the building. A lot going on in the life of DVO. Some pretty important themes throughout the talk, the discussion. And you know what I just realized, you know, he was in that movie. Did you know he was in that movie?

He mentioned it, but then we, and I, like, pulled him back to talk about something else. And then he's using the movie. The movie is called Act of Valor. I did not know that. Yeah. So he was he played a scene in that movie. He was an interrogator and came in and he was pretty funny. Just he was kind of like just him with but being we're super aggressive

But yeah man what a what a dedication to jump back into this stuff and get after it But um hey with that appreciate everyone listening appreciate the support and if you want to support you mentioned something real quick okay thank you I was waiting for you to chime in with something and we were just sitting there looking puzzled all the time

I wasn't looking about the movie actually okay and him playing himself not much of a stretch not not a demonstration of range you know similar to you to my spirit yeah yeah pretty much exactly same thing but you guys did mention something in passing

seemingly insignificant but it's stuck with me. You're talking about, he talked about the incident where he left his rifle in the other car. And he just has his pistol. And you said, that's not going to cut it. It's real quick. Why is that? I mean, I can kind of maybe understand, but obviously I've never been in a gunfight. So what he's talking about is the enemy puts indirect fire on you, which is mortars, maybe rockets. Rockets aren't really indirect, but they basically are lobbing bombs. you. The purpose of them doing that is number one. That could be just a singular purpose. Hey, we're just going to try and randomly throw some bombs at people and kill whoever we can. Random mortars, maybe we kill one or two Americans. But they could also do it. So when mortars are coming, you have to get, you have to take cover. So now we get, the enemy can get you to take

cover. So they drop a couple mortars while you're hiding. They commence a ground assault, either with a vehicle-borne IED. That's what they would do in Ramadi. It was a, It was very aggressive. They would hit you with indirect fire. As the indirect fire is hitting, they start laying down machine gun fire. As the machine gun fire is coming in, then comes IEDs, vehicle-borne IEDs.

And they overran several friendly positions in Ramadi by doing that. Horrible. So he gets mortared. And he had told the guys, Hey, when you get mortared, give it a second, see what's going on, let it develop and see what's developing. But then as soon as it kind of stops, boom, push out perimeter. So then if anybody attacks, you can fend them off.

So he's pushing out to set perimeter. And all he has is a pistol. The pistol's not a good weapon for a freaking gunfight. And that's really the part that I was wondering, like it's, I feel like I understand it kind of. But the way I've heard you say it and my friend Jeremy, he mentioned this one time we were talking. He was like, yeah, a pistol was no match for a rifle. I was not even close. So I'm like, okay, see, how you say it's not even close?

Like, why is that? Because a rifle you can just aim it better, more range or range is, the range is 10 times as much. 10 times. Yeah, like sure, you can shoot someone kind of at 50 yards with a pistol. If you're really, really good, anyone, just about anyone can pick up a rifle and shoot someone at 50 yards. Like almost anywhere. But you can also shoot someone at 500 yards. Yeah, I see.

So it may even be more of it because, because really might be like 12 or 15 times more accurate and ease of shooting. Yeah, just for a rifle. And then the impact, right? You know, the impact of a rifle round is devastating. You know, it can punch through body armor, certain levels of body armor.

It can grip through a car, you know, certain parts of a car. So you're just going to get better penetration with a battle rifle than you are with a pistol. Pistol. And what's funny is when I got to the SEAL teams, we used to use the MP5, which is a 9mm sub-machine gun. A sub-machine gun is basically a machine gun

that shoots pistol rounds. So they're small, small little bullets. And luckily, we went away from that because it's cool for literal close-quarters combat. So if you're inside of a building, then there is some potential for it. Actually, I think that the that weapon, the a submachine gun like the heckler and Contra MP5, I think he's a great weapon for like home self-defense because it's not going to penetrate through a bunch of walls. It's really easy to shoot like really easy to shoot.

So if someone, you know, let's say you want to get your wife a self home defense weapon, Now look, she could also get a shotgun You know, maybe a smaller gauge shotgun Like not a 12 gauge shotgun, but like a 20 gauge shotgun Pretty easy to handle Kind of a point and shoot scenario So that would be one option, but I think a good option Another good option would be a little submachine gun

That she feels super confident shooting Can we shoot machine gun in the California? Well, it's a semi-automatic. Semi-automatic. I don't know what the legality is on the MP phone. Well, no, you can't have a fully automatic weapon in California. No, I don't think so.

Without certain, like, criteria. They have, the laws in California for weapons are really kind of ridiculous. Yeah. Because all they do is they create a law, and then the gun manufacturers create things that get around the law. Yeah. And it's just weird. Yeah. They just make this weird dance.

It's a weird dance, yeah. Instead of just being like, hey, look, this is what you, and it doesn't make any sense. The whole, I mean, look, you hear this stuff all the time about, what is it? Like, what's an assault weapon? Yeah. And, well, an assault weapon is this type of thing.

Air 15, assault rifle 15? No. But it's because of, like, the shape of the grip. Like a pistol grip makes it an assault. A muzzle suppressor, a flash suppressor, makes it an assault weapon, according to this weird thing. So instead of having a pistol grip, they'll like put this weird shape thing that serves the same function as a pistol grip.

Yeah. But it's actually not a pistol grip at all. Yeah. But it is a pistol grip. It gives you the same function. They just do all this dumb, silly things. And then the gun manufacturers make something that just overcomes that. Maybe it's a little bit awkward or whatever.

Yeah. Not as cool. But it's just a silly dance. It's just like you said, it's a silly dance. Yeah. And when I was browsing, one of the guys there said something real, one of the main guys there, he said something really, one of the main guys there, might have been the owner. He said something interesting where he's like, yeah, well, one of the main problems is the people who make the laws and even propose the laws, they don't know anything about guns. They don't know anything about it.

So they, it's the, the mere conception of the law comes out of ignorance. Yeah. It's just, it's just dumb. Yeah. It's just dumb. So it's one of the things about California that's just really bizarre. Yeah. It's just bizarre.

They make laws that literally don't make sense. Yeah. Yep. When they land, right, it's like, wait, like, what's the issue here that this solved? And they're like, this. Well, that didn't even solve it. Didn't even solve it. It actually kind of made some more issues.

Yeah. And they made a lot of people mad who were kind of in the know. Meanwhile, I can buy Desert Eagle, 50 calibers. 50 caliber round. I can shoot with one hand if I want to. That seems kind of dangerous. Could be. I mean, depending on what kind of thing you're shooting at.

How dumb you are. I'm pretty dumb. Yeah. Let's face it. But, yeah, that is, that's interesting, though. That's good, interesting to know about the pistol versus rifle. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't realize it was that much of a difference.

Oh, it's a huge difference. It's almost in comparison. Probably because I'm thinking of movies, you know, like, you know, lethal weapon, remember? Yeah, but what part? I don't know. He was just really good at aiming. So he would be like at what distance. I don't know.

Oh, yeah, he shoots the smiley face into the target, right? Yes, yes, yes. That was one of the parts for sure. Yeah, that's really, depending on what range, that would be difficult to do. I think in the movie it was far away, like pretty far shot. Yeah, he pushed it all the way back. That was kind of the thing. Yeah.

Very interesting. There you go. He said a lot of cool stuff, though. And, you know, I like hearing cool stuff, like, presented a certain way. But at the same time, I do like kind of like what it says. And when you think about it, you be like, oh, man, you know, how it kind of dawns on you, like certain things. He said, if you keep your head down, you won't see the world around you. That's a really good point.

And even metaphorically, you know, like if you stay in the house all the time. Or if you don't, you know, like they say work-life balance, I get that that's a thing or whatever. but let's say you don't see your friends or you don't socialize or you don't talk to a bunch of people as much because you're focused on this or that or whatever you'll miss out a lot of beneficial like beneficial stuff for you and your whole goals right you can miss out on key elements of those goals if you keep your head down in all these different ways

when I was my first seal platoon we my leading petty officer he had this thing like he would want to go out party right and he would say always go out go out. Yeah. Oh, you know, we're gonna always go out.

And I took that because I was like, art and core, right? And always go out. Like always go out. Surfing, go out. Like, there's a training mission. Always go out.

Always go out. So yeah, always go out. Party cool. Get it. I approve of that when I was younger, you know. Not from older.

I'm not so much supported that. You know what I mean? But always go out. Always go on the mission. Always step up. Always volunteer. Always go out. Always.

So waves always go out. You know? Snow, always go out. Yeah. Always go out. So I kind of adopted that attitude a little bit, not only strictly with going out and partying. This guy one time he was super drunk.

And he's, I think he had to go to the bathroom and we pull back into the barracks in Guam. And he, like, gets out of the car and it's dark. And he goes running across the, from the parking lot to the barracks. There was, you know, maybe a hundred. yards of grass. And he goes running. And I'm just kind of walking because I'm not in a rush. I think he had to go to the bathroom.

And all of a sudden he just like disappears, falls. And then I just hear this, ow. Yeah, he fell in a hole or something. He's just like, ow. Yeah. So there you go. With that, we talked about some of the stuff today.

Hey, Jocco Fuel, get yourself some of these go, the new, improved flavors. I am apologizing for the previous flavors. Comparatively. Comparatively speaking, the new flavors are just amazing. And look, with the old flavors, it was like, oh, you know, I got my favorite flavor. Don't really like that one.

This one's okay. Yeah. Actually don't want to drink this one over here. You know, it's kind of that thing. Yeah. Now, no matter what, you can go party mix. Yeah. And you're going to like them all, right?

You can grab one, grab the other. They're all freaking tasty. So if you were a little bit maybe cautious or concerned before you tried to be like, now you can just get right in there. Just get right in there and get yourself some go. So Jaku go. Fully good for you, by the way. Which is a totally different thing.

I was watching the show. Netflix show. I don't know. It wasn't my show. My wife was watching it. Your wife's watch a show you're observing. I'm in the vicinity in my eye, I saw. And they were making this scene of this girl.

She was trying to travel. She was running away from some killers. I don't know, something. So she was driving up to Maine, by the way. And she stops at this convenience. She's all disheveled. She shops at this. And she's a disheveled character just to begin with, you know.

Like it doesn't have her shit together kind of thing. She stops at this convenience store and just gets like, in the scene, I see what they were trying to portray there that she's just like. She's just like doesn't make the greatest of decisions in general. So like what did she get like chips? Yeah. And like, you know, not a good, not a sandwich or not a, you know, she's getting chips. And then she gets an energy drink.

And it was like a recognizable brand. Oh. And I was like, hmm, interesting how they chose that brand for to, to convey this message about this character and this point of the story. Interesting. And I was thinking, oh, because, you know, it's a brand you recognize. You're like, okay, cool. Oh, I recognize the brand on the movie

Kind of a thing. I was like, oh, that'd be cool if there was some Jocko go in there, right? But it wouldn't fit the character. It would not fit the scene. Exactly right. She would have to be squared away. Squared away. She had to be legit.

Exactly right, man. I thought that was kind of interesting. Bro, without opening up a can, ADCC, you and I just went to the ADCC championship. Which was awesome. We'll do some kind of a thing about that. A little debrief on that at a future time. But we had the ready to drink milk there.

How many of them did you have? Oh, one. Really? I had like, because I was there for two. How did you only have one? Well, because I drank one and then it was like the next opportunity I had, they were like, Brian was like, because he couldn't give him away or something like that. Something happened where they couldn't get away.

You got scammed. Yeah. When they were like, oh, here they are. I had like five a day. I was there for two days. Yeah. They're freaking so tasty and so good for you. Hey, and this is cool.

Good news. We have been having a hard time finding the manufacturer for it. We just got cleared hot. We just built that relationship with this manufacturer. We got millions of ready to drink milk coming. It's delicious. Way better than other brands, which you and I just had a little taste test comparison,

and it's not even close. It's not even close. And this is a big brand. We tried. As a matter of fact, my daughter, Rana, did a taste test While we were at camp, chocolate milk, legit chocolate milk.

Yeah. From a milk carton, like ready-made chocolate milk, but not any kind of just chocolate milk that's just made to taste good versus milk. Chocolate milk. She picked it. My daughter ran it does not play around. Like, she's going to tell you what's up. She's looking at school.

Yeah, she's kind of like offensive, right? She's kind of like going to bring it. She kind of raised her eyebrows. She's like, oh, damn. Yep, the milk. So we got ready to drink milk coming worldwide. Well, not worldwide, really. Nationwide.

You're able to order it. So check that out. Joccofuel.com. Go to Wawa. Go to Wawa and just clean the shelves in there. Let them know what's up. The more you buy from Wawa, the more flavors they're going to bring in. The more will open up that supply chain.

So going to Wawa, clear shelves. Vitamin Shop. We got pink mist at vitamin shop. Right now it's the only place I think you can get it. We had to run that first run of them. Vitamin shop's been awesome. They got everything in there. So go in there and just get some pink mist.

It's tasty. So we're at ADCC as you mentioned. And I'm not going to say who. Actually, I'm going to say who with my wife. She was like, hey, this pink one is good. This would be perfect with vodka in it. She said it. She said it.

And I was like, you know what? You're kind of right. Because remember back in the day, Red Bull vodka or whatever, right? Like, that was like kind of like a death trap kind of thing. Like you're not doing the right thing with a Red Bull and a vodka. And then drinking them all night. That's bad. But think about it.

The Pink Miss might balance out some of the repercussions. Look, it's not the right thing, but it's not, it's less wrong. It's less wrong. Yeah. Than going with Red Bull and vodka. Yeah. It's definitely less wrong than that. Kind of balances itself out a little bit.

It's not bad. It feels it's not a balance, but it's a move in the right direction. Let's face it, we're not going out and drinking vodka and thinking that this is going to make it okay. Yeah, yeah. But if you felt like a violation, if vodka's kind of on the schedule, which I don't recommend, right, it's not on my schedule at all, zero percent. But if it's on your schedule and you want to mitigate the issues that you're going to have, then it's not going to mitigate you going to jail. It's not going to mitigate a DUI. It's not going to mitigate you getting arrested.

It's not going to mitigate you spending all your money on stupid shit. It's not going to mitigate any of that. No, probably not. It may give you a little bit of a less hangover in the morning. We'll go with that. So there you go. Jogglefuel.com.

Get some of that. OriginUSA.com. Just got back from my hunt. It's another one. We should just do a podcast about the hunt. Lots of lessons. But, hey, we made hunt gear. Remember I had said if the hunt gear wasn't ready,

I was hunting in a loincloth. That was my plan. Luckily, they didn't have to break it into the loincloth scenario. Everything is freaking legit, man. It's just so good to go. Super stoked. The team from origin, the team in North Carolina, the team in Maine, everyone putting that stuff together is just turned out freaking legit.

So stoked. And everyone's kind of stoked, man. Everybody that I saw that hunted was like, hell yeah. Yeah, hell yeah. Thank you for making this in the United States of America. Yeah, that's legit. So. Did you shoot anything?

Yes, I shot an elk. Hell yeah. I saw the pictures. I just wanted to see what up. Bro, there's a lot. And there's a lot of people. This is a very tough year for hunting. There's been a lot of rain out west.

So there's been a lot of grass. A lot of grass means there's a lot of eating. That means the elk are fat. Which means apparently, And talking to hunters, they're like, well, all that fat on the elk means it's harder to kill them. Oh, for real. Because they bleed less. The blood doesn't flow as easily.

So it's been a really challenging year. There's a lot of people that didn't get elk. And it's been a tough year. I was very lucky, very fortunate to get one. To score. Yeah. And I'm at a point now. I got four elk with four arrows.

Which is kind of, as I told that to Laif and Laif, like, dude, you are, you freaking lucky bastard. I'm like, I'll take it, man, 100%. Yeah. So what do you, what did you do with the elk? What do you mean? What did you do with the elk? Eating it. Oh, so you bring it back?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course, man. Oh, yeah, you drove, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, okay, I understand. Elks for dinner, bro. Yeah, I understand, but, you know, I'm just saying, does everyone, like, if you shoot it, is that the common thing? Oh, of course. I mean, it's, you know, it's a few hundred. pounds worth of meat.

Yeah, but I've heard of like, oh, they'll give it to the who, you know what, I'm thinking of this. Actually, a few stories I heard in like it, it was in a different country. Oh, okay. And then they give it to like the village or something like that. Oh, yeah, if there's villagers that were like starving. In Utah. In Utah.

There's no village you're starving in Utah. Yeah, yeah, I didn't think so. But so we got the stuff made in America. OriginUSA.com if you want to support American company that's bringing, like I told Derek, is there anything cooler than buying machines in another? country and that were sold to that country and bringing them back to America. Yeah. Conceptually.

Pretty cool to beat that one one time. Okay. Remember back in the day the little, it's this little, wait, when? Back. Okay. It's called roller racer. Do you remember that thing? What is it?

It was like, okay, so think of a skateboard. Okay. Think of a hard bicycle seat. Okay. But a little bit bigger. Okay. Bicycle handlebars on a half of a super skinny. skateboard with a pivot and then the front of the skateboard so you sat on it with

handlebars down like this and you wiggle it back and forth and it would go I kind of remember like seeing people on that thing yeah yeah it was like a little fad in have one as seen on TV scenario back in maybe 90 maybe be probably before that 80s 80s anyway so one of our friends neighbors had that and they left it out on the road they lived right up the road so I didn't steal it, but I just wanted to use it. So I grabbed it and I used it for a few days. I was going to bring it back.

For real, for real, I know a likely story. This is not sounding good. I didn't bring it back. But the plan was to bring it back at some point, right? So I was using it. And then I just left it out in my yard. That's how, right? I'm going to call it.

A few days later, it was gone. And then we passed by that house every day. And I saw it back at their house. I was like, oh, they came in kind of took it back or whatever. Then the guy, the kid. Me in a good way? Like, oh, they grabbed it back, no big deal? Or kind of like, what?

Totally neutral, in my opinion. I was like, oh, it's theirs. You know, like, I wasn't going to return it yet. And I still wanted to play with it for a little bit. But hey, man, it is there. So whatever. And then the kid confronted me about it. He's like, hey, you thought you were all slick, huh?

And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, yeah, because you ripped off the roller racer and I ripped it off back. That's what he did with the looms. That's what you guys did. Same exact thing. Man. I thought it was cool. How your brain works for the first time I've kind of started to ponder.

Like how you got to that story from what I just said and try to connect them. It's the exact same thing. That's what I'm saying. OriginUSA.com. Get American-made stuff. We'll leave it at that. We won't. We'll try not to lure out any stories of madness from you.

Also, speaking of madness, Jocko store. with the store, it's called Jocco store. So you go to jocco store.com so you can get your discipline equals freedom shirts. We got a new one out. Standard issue. There's nothing standard about it. It's freaking awesome.

This is the feedback I'm getting from the field. But yeah, it's a good one. Also, we have the shirt locker, which is the subscription service. Seems like you've been getting a little wild on the shirt locker designs. Yes, and we're going harder even in the next few. Let's say the next three months are going to be kind of like,

okay, I see, I see what you did there. We're very excited about the new design. Check. Right on. That's jocco store.com. Subscribe to the podcast. Don't forget about the Jocko Underground, right? jocco underground.

We don't know what's going to happen with this platform. Did Derek say anything today that could get us banned? He mentioned Donald Trump. Oh, yeah, there you go. That could be a flag. He said the word Trump. So, yeah, that could be grounds. So in the event that we get banned because we don't control the platform that

You're currently listening unless you're on Jocko Underground. If you're on Jock Underground, we're good. We're still here. We're talking to you. But if you're not, you're like, wait, what happened? What? Jocko and Echo just got lazy. They stopped making podcasts.

Hopefully that doesn't happen. But if it does, we'll be ready. Jock Underground.com. $8.18 a month to support that. And if you, we make a little extra podcast for that, we answer your questions if you want to get involved in that. If you can't afford it, we still want you in the game. Email assistance at joccoe underground.com.

We got a YouTube channel. We got psychological warfare. We got Dakota Myers got flipside canvas.com. I've written a bunch of books. Publish some books. Published book by Holly McKay. Check that one out. And then you know the books that I've written.

If you don't go to Amazon and put in Jocka Willink. And then you'll see books that I've written. And you can order some of them. You can order kids books. Get the kids before you even, you know how you've got to get the oxygen mask on yourself first. Yes, I do. If you go to Amazon right now to go, you know what Jockel sounds like?

He's going, knows what he's talking about here. Don't order the adult book. Get your kids that wore your kid books first. Get the oxygen mask on them. Then save yourself. So the opposite of the airplane. No,

it's the same in the airplane. Oh, you're right. Yes, okay. Opposite of the opposite of the, you're right? So I could see how you get confused.

You know what I'm saying? Because it seems like, hey, save the women and children first kind of a scenario. But hey, you can't save nobody if you're suffocating. Is I'm saying? But we're,

If you're cognizant enough to order something from Amazon, order the kids books first. Because you, look, your life is half over at this point. You know, you got kids. You've kind of already blown it in some cases. Right, you're one foot in the grave. But your kids, they got their whole life ahead. Might as well get them on the path.

It's true. It's true. Let them rise up. My daughter was, she learned her timesables last year. And then this year, she's in literally the, where the word kid won, Mark. Yeah. Same exact scenario. But she learned her time table, but she forgot a lot of them.

So she's doing this other stuff. You know, you know how you kind of need to know the time tables, right? 100%. Same exact deal. She starts crying and all this stuff. She doesn't know her times tables. She's nine years old. She's all this stuff.

I was like, we read that flashcards made them. Boom, right on the spot, man. On the spot. I said you read this whole book twice, by the way. And you're still crying about this right now. So immediately these flashcards on the spot. We went slow. A lot of it was review.

She already knew it. But so, boom, ironed out the wrinkles, easy money. Back in the game. Back in the game. Back in the game. The manual, yep.

Warrior kid, get your kids on the path. Eschlein front, have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Oh, you heard me talk about a little bit today. When you got problems in a company, in an organization,

the problems are leadership problems. You want us to help you solve those problems with these principles. We go to echelonfront.com. We have some live events you can come to. They get sold out. Next one we're doing is at Atlanta. sold out, sorry. But if you want to go, go to there, check out events, come to some of our live events. We have an online training academy where, look, leadership takes practice, not once a year,

not once every six months. You need to get in the gym, the leadership gym, the life gym. Extremeownership.com. Come on there, take some courses. We're on there live a bunch. You can ask me questions. Go check that out. and if you want to support service members active and retired you want to support their families gold star families check out mark lee's mom mama lee she's got a charity organization if you want to donate to that or you want to get involved go to america's mighty warriors dot org and don't forget about micah think taken taken vets out into the wilderness so they can find solutions to their problems in the darkness.

They can find the light. Heroes and Horses.org. And once again, if you want to follow and support Derek, Van O'Horden, DVO, that's what we're going with? Yeah, DVO. You want to support him, Van Orden for Congress.com. And then on Facebook, on Twitter, on Instagram.

He's at Derek Van Orden. You can see the guy's got a big heart, and he's trying to help. I say we go support him. And certainly, if you're in that district in Wisconsin, he brought me cheese, bro. You see that? Yeah. He brought me cheese. He brought me cookies, which you ate.

I sampled, yes. You ate the cookies because we're not, the discipline doesn't allow cookies over on my side of the table. Cheese curd, which I have not tried before. Apparently, I got to cook it. No. No, no, no. He said deep frying or something. Oh, you can.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Cheese curd is like, do you know what that is technically? Well, you know, my wife is from the Tillmook cheese factory area. So we go visit that one every year when we go, when I go. But it's the pre, it's like it's one of the final processes before they do another one or two processes to make actual cheese. So it's like the base. Does it taste good? depends how you do it that one does because there's like garlic regular cheese curd not really it's like

i think i think that stuff's getting fried in a pan that's what i think yeah i can see that i've never had fried it's cooked that one solid it just seems i don't know too because he brought it in like a bag you know what i don't think it's supposed to be refrigerated i could see how he pulled it out of the bottom of like a travel bag i've dv was not forward thinking on his transport of He's curd for Jocko. I think you might be right. For J.K.O. J.K.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But we appreciate it, Derek. We appreciate it. We will try it out. We will see what's up. Of course, that's, that's Derek Van Orden on all those social media.

And Echo and I are on there, too. If you want to follow us on the Twitter, on the gram, on the Facebook. Echo's that echo Charles. I'm at Jocko Willink. Watch out for the algorithm because it'll kind of, it'll kind of grab you. And thanks once again to Derek. for joining us. Thanks for sharing some of those lessons learned.

And thanks for everything you have done for America and what you are trying to do for America right now. We are here to support. And thanks to all of our military personnel that have served and are serving. Nothing more important than what you do to keep us free. And we are grateful for your service. And thanks to our police and law enforcement,

firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service all first responders as Derek pointed out you're the one that protects you're the ones that protect our kids as they sleep at night and keep us safe and we are grateful for your service as well and everyone else out there and we start off with some George Washington today close it out with little George Washington as well he said to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace. And that goes for life as well.

And you take a guy like Derek up from nothing. And he's prepared for war his whole life. And I think he's going to be ready for whatever politics can throw at him. And for the rest of us, I think we also have to prepare for war because it's coming. And look, I'm not talking about outright literal war, but in some form, in some form, you will be at, war for your health for your business for your family for your community war comes in many forms so be prepared for it and of course the best way to do that is to go out there every day and get after it until next time this is echo and jaco out