Jocko Podcast - 441: Love Of Country and Aloha Spirit with Tulsi Gabbard

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

>Join Jocko Underground<Tulsi Gabbard (born April 12, 1981) is an American politician, United States Army Reserve officer and political commentator who served as the U.S. representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Gabbard was the first Hindu member of Congress and also the first Samoan-American voting member of Congress. She was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election,[2][3] before leaving the party and becoming an independent in October 2022.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is the Jocko podcast number 441 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willing. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. On January 27th, 1838, Abraham Lincoln delivered a speech to the young men's lyceum of Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln saw this is an opportunity to underscore the vital importance of the rule of law, particularly as it relates to threats to U.S. institutions. What follows is an excerpt from that speech that deserves our serious contemplation. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?

I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. Abraham Lincoln. And that right there is an excerpt from a new book. The book is called For Love of Country.

It's written by Tulsi Gabbard. Tulsi Gabbard, member of the Hawaii House of Representatives, member of Honolulu City Council, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee for a little while. She served four terms. That's eight years as U.S. representative for Hawaii's second congressional district.

She ran for president as a Democrat in 2020 presidential race, but she did not win her party's nomination. Despite her experience and intelligence and proven leadership, they nominated someone else, a guy named Joe Biden. But she's still in the mix, and maybe she's even more in the mix right now than she ever has been before. She's been on this podcast a couple times in the past 272 and 362. The first one is five hours long.

And it covers her entire life in great detail. And now, Tulsi, like a good leader has, you know, placed herself once again, it seems to me, at the point of friction with a lot of things. And what she does and why she does that in my assessment is so that she better understands what's happening. So she can learn from it. She can make assessments and calculate a way to move forward, which I think is a good plan for any human. and it's an honor to have her back with us here again tonight to talk through her new book and share some insights from her lessons and her experiences and her vantage point, which is a very interesting vantage point.

So Tulsi, thanks for coming back. Thank you. It's great to be back. Yeah. Like I said, that first podcast was five hours long and we went through your whole life in a lot of detail. We did. I re-listened to it, getting ready for this just so I didn't try not to rehash too much of that. stuff. And so if someone's listening to this and they want to know about Tulsi's background,

definitely tune into one of those. But you certainly, I would say, have gone through, well, I was thinking about this. You could say that you've gone through a transformation in the past few years, or you could say that you really haven't changed that much and that the world has changed a lot around you. Or, yeah, that the perspective is different. So I just, you know, when we hooked up to come back on here, that's what I was obviously you got this book and as I read through the book, man, there's a lot

of points that you make in this book that are from a perspective that you have a great perspective of that very few people I think have which is of not only being in the military, not only deploying, but then having the deep understanding

of the governmental side, the political side, the way that works and then the the politics of the parties themselves and the election process and all that stuff you have uh like i said you've been you're like you're like an insider yeah right an absolute insider that most of us don't understand the inner workings of the government and sure we read the textbook in high school and we watched uh school of rock sure that what it's called school of rock where they're telling you how the bill this is just a bill and all that stuff right so we all watch that yeah but man that doesn't tell you

there's no line in there that says there's a lot of slimy things that are going on. If only things actually worked in the way that the School of Rock described them. We'd be in a different place as a country. Oh, man. So, yeah. I guess we can go to the book and start reading through this thing. Yeah, I'll just start just because you said something that I think is important and also that I'm seeing and here.

hearing from a lot of people that resonates, which is, you know, is it me who has gone through a transformation or has the country and the world around us transformed radically over these last, you know, four or five, six years? And it's interesting because people will come to me like, God, Tulsi, what made you such a conservative or what made you such a this or that? How did you, and this is one that I often get is how did you go from, you know, endorsing Bernie Sanders in 2016 to writing a book about everything that's wrong with the Democrat elite today and why you left the Democratic Party? And if you just look at like the top lines, it doesn't make sense.

But when you actually look at, you know, for me, the reason why I've made the decisions that I've made in politics, why I've taken the positions that I've taken, and there's a very strong through line there that hasn't changed. That's rooted in the Constitution. That's rooted in doing my best to try to hold our leaders to account for the oath that they took when they entered that political office. I was at an event with the Lincoln Club of Orange County last night,

and this woman came up to me, and she said, I just don't get it. I love you. I love everything you stand for. How in the world could you have supported Bernie Sanders? And I told her, I said there was one reason why I resigned as vice chair of the DNC to endorse Bernie Sanders was because I knew then and know now that Hillary Clinton as president, commander-in-chief, would be the most dangerous thing for our country and for our troops and for the cause of our ability to live in a peaceful, prosperous society.

And so that was the way for me, Bernie Sanders has long been largely non-interventionist. it was an opportunity for me to be able to expose Hillary Clinton for who she is and the threat that she would pose to our country's ability to live in a secure free world or secure free country. And if you remember, that was at a time when she was running for president, everyone on TV and the talking heads, not just her cronies in the Democratic Party, but you turn on TV and people are like, it is indisputable that Hillary Clinton is the most qualified. qualified person ever to run for president in our nation's history. And even then, I, you know, I'm a Democrat in Congress.

I'm vice chair of the D&C. I'm like, what in the world? In the entire history of our nation, she's the most qualified one. And then they never backed it up. You know, it was a statement that was thrown out there and widely just accepted on its face by the Washington establishment. And because it was accepted on its face without any evidence or, you know, Or, you know, here's why we believe this to be true. No one would challenge it because you don't want to, in Washington,

you don't want to be the one person standing out and being like, y'all are wrong. Like, where's your proof to support this pretty, pretty powerful statement in the history of the United States? And obviously, it would point to all of her fancy titles. But the reason why I made that decision to endorse Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton and take advantage of that platform was because I talked about her record that proved my conclusion, which was how dangerous it would be as an American for me, as a soldier, as a veteran, for us as the American people to allow her to be in this position.

And so you look at, you know, for me, you look at that decision there, and you look at where we stand today. I'll fast forward to 2020, where my going on the presidential debate stage in that Democratic primary and simply saying, I love my country, was a controversial statement to make. Like, that's a radical right-wing conservative thing. Why are you doing that? And if you remember back then, there was actual news stories about like, oh, look at Trump. He has like 20 American flags on his stage.

What's wrong with him? And, you know, the Democrats had two. You know, it's just like it's such a. bizarre world to live in, and it's only gotten worse, here we are in 2024, it's only gotten worse now where, you know, saluting the flag. The Kansas City Chiefs, what's his name, Bucker, the speech that he just gave it at a Catholic university recently. Like his expression of his Catholic faith, speaking at a Catholic university's graduation ceremony, led to this huge uproar and people trying to cancel him. And then you look at who's the other guy,

the guy who took a, I can't remember his name right now, but who kneeled. Capernick. Capernick. And it's just, it's just, you know, obviously in how he was celebrated by the Democrat elite and look at his bravery and look at his courage. And this kind of leads to the point where when we live in a country and why I left the Democratic Party, we live in a country where having an American flag displayed at your home is seen as a conservative action or right-wing Republican action, that's saying you love your country, that's celebrating and saluting when the Star-Spangled Banner is played, standing up for free speech, whether you like the speech or not. All of these things are considered very, you know,

Maga or Trumpian in this environment that we are in. And then those, those who are standing against that, the Democrat elite are claiming to defend free speech and save democracy while their actions prove that they are doing the exact opposite of that. So yes, the country, the Democrat Party leadership has radically, radically changed, certainly from the Democratic Party I joined over 20 years ago, but even over these last several years, the brazen abuse of power. And they're, you know, when I look at my years in Congress and look at the Democrats in Congress today, it's shocking to me how long-time leaders who were unafraid to step

outside the party line, even while I was there, it's now total compliance, total conformity. If you dare to stand against your president, Joe Biden, then you will face the kinds of consequences that I faced when I stood up against Barack Obama as a Democrat in Congress. And that's just what makes me sad is that how many people are elected into these positions of great power and leadership and public service are more concerned about what the party bosses think of them and will do to them than they are concerned about the American people. Are they complying just because that's how they get money and that's how they get reelected and that's how they keep themselves in power?

For some of them, for some of them, it's that is certain. a part of it, especially people who have, you know, tough districts that are, you know, that they've got to spend a lot of money to try to win and they're hard-fought districts. There's a few of them here in California like that. And the party has, both political parties, quite frankly, have an inordinate amount of power and leverage because of their money, where you can only, if you want to give money to a candidate or a member of Congress, the max, I think this year is $3,300. but you can write a million dollar check to a political party.

And that is then used as leverage on the House floor when you've got somebody saying like, yeah, I'm not going to go along on this one. I'm going to vote my conscience or vote my district. That's where those threats come into place. Like, hey, we know you got a tough fight ahead of you. We had $10 million set aside for your race. If you don't do what we want you to do, then buy.

But I think for, again, when I'm thinking of a lot of my former colleagues, many have served there for 10 years, 20 years. We've been there for a long time who aren't at risk of losing in their elections. They are conforming because of fear. You know, their friends and their peers, their colleagues, they are concerned about being kicked out of the club. Do you see the same type of... I'm sorry, the last piece of that.

This just came up the other day. the last piece of that is like, okay, so for those even who've been entrenched in Washington for a very long time, the threat that is often used is if you don't side with us on this, if you go against Joe Biden, if you say, nope, I disagree with President Biden on this issue, then you will be helping get Donald Trump elected. And that's like the ultimate, it doesn't even matter. substance of what it is or how much it might make sense or how insane the policy they're opposing might be, that is the threat that's used. Do you want to be responsible for getting Donald Trump elected? And that's where we've seen over these last years, and especially as we head

into this election, that threat is working for too many, for all of them. Do you see the same level of flexing of power on the Republican side and the same level of compliance? No. The flexing and the threats, that's there. That's there. That's certainly there. But it's interesting that the Republican Party has become what the Democratic Party used to be. There's been like this flip-flop in roles where, you know, it's become quite lively. And a lot of different personalities and a lot of people exerting their position. And I get asked, sometimes from Republican operatives, like, tell us the secret of how the Democrats, like, what's their tactic that makes it? So everybody just falls in line. Like, they're asking me

because they want to try to use it on their side. But to me, it's a democracy is supposed to be messy and lively and robust with debate and disagreement and not just, and especially not just in a partisan sense. And that's what our founders warned again. that that hyper-partisanship would be the demise and destruction of a true representative democracy, which we've seen a lot of. But I think it's encouraging to see that the Republican Party, especially as we see in Congress, is becoming more and more of that big open-tent party that you have people who have very strong disagreements on issues of great importance and actively have those debates, both in their, in their,

Republican conference meetings behind closed doors, but they get carried out in public as well. And I think it's more representative of the country and how people have different ideas and different views on things. And taking that Washington establishment position and that it's really kind of pitted against the populist position in many cases of the views of the people. Yeah, it's interesting. As I was reading your book, one of the people that you quote more than, I think it might be the most courted person is John F. Kennedy. Yes. Which, again, to me, here you are saying like,

hey, here's a great speech from this person who had the ideals that I think are good for America. And it's a Democrat. It's just a Democrat from whatever, 60-something years ago. Yeah. Yeah. And I brought him up and quoted him and quoting Reverend Martin Luther King during those 2020 presidential debates. And the party. bosses and kind of that inner core of the Democratic Party base, they wouldn't have it.

They wouldn't have it. These are two of the most celebrated Democrat icons in history. But when you actually say, okay, let's listen to what they were saying and understand how their words very, very much apply to the challenges we face as a country today. And we would all, as Americans, be better off taking heed to the, their calls to action, not interested. Not interested. Just shut down?

A wholesale rejection. It's even worse than just not paying attention. It's a wholesale rejection. And yes, shut down. In one of the debates, I think it may have been the last debate that I participated in. Kamala Harris is, you know, it was me at the podium, making a pitch to really change the Democratic Party and bring it back to being the party that fought for the little guy. the party that celebrated free speech. And the comeback that Kamala Harris came with was,

don't listen to her. She goes on Fox News. And the whole crowd started clapping. And then she's like, don't listen to her. She criticized Barack Obama. And of course, like, there's no, oh, why did she criticize his position? Oh, really? It was because he wanted to go start another stupid counterproductive war in the Middle East

that I thought would be a really bad idea. none of that it's she's not a member of the team she's not a blind follower she had the audacity to challenge president and the head of our own party my former party and uh she wants the party to go and actually represent the people and and that that was it was such an eye-opening experience on so many levels but it was it was very revealing about their mindset their priorities and the there i'm talking about is the Democrat elite, which is distinct and different from Democrats who I hear from all the time across the country, people who still call themselves Democrats, but who hate what the party, the national party, is doing in the direction they're headed.

As you're out there talking to, are people coming to that conclusions, the Democrats that you talk to are a lot of them come to the conclusion? Like, that's not what we signed up for. Yeah, more and more. And it's not just people who are, you know, retirees or people who've been, like, I've been a Democrat for, you know, 40 years, 50 years. There was a woman I met in D.C. a few days ago. She's probably in her mid-20s and came from a family of Democrats. It's just the way, you know, these were the values that they were brought up with. But even she was just like, she's like, it's not a popular thing to do, especially in Washington, D.C.,

to be like, man, the Democrats are freaking. They are destroying our country and are doing their best to undermine those. fundamental principles, but she's like, I read your book and page after page, I'm like, that's how I feel. That's how I feel. And so, you know, she's trying to share that with people in her friend's circle and her family. Some are open to it. Some aren't. But there are a lot of people out there who feel the same way that I do and in their own way have been going through this similar journey, but are still too afraid to talk about it. I spoke in Boston maybe a weekend or two ago at a big thousand people, big event to raise money to support Gold Star families and to support

veterans and to honor our fallen brothers and sisters. Wonderful, wonderful, special event, amazing organization. What was really, you know, the crux of my speech at this event was about how we honor those who have paid the ultimate price, not just on Memorial Day, but in the choices that we make in our everyday lives. And while we hear the phrase, freedom is not free, what are we doing? Whether you've served in uniform or you haven't served in uniform, what are we as Americans doing to defend our freedom, because that's how we honor those who paid the ultimate price by living up to and upholding those principles and those values. And so my speech was, it was not, I didn't use the word Democrat or Republican once.

It was not a partisan or political speech at all. It was a speech about, here are some examples about how our freedom is being undermined right here at home by people in power today who are abusing their power. And with many of those examples, it was dead silence in the room. A couple of people would clap. And a guy came up to me after, older, older Vietnam veteran, and such a sweet, sweet person, he came up and he whispered into my ear and he said, I was moved to tears by the message that you shared. It really hit home.

I was too afraid to clap at what you were saying because of, like, I don't know how that would be received by other people in this room. It really, it made me so sad to see a person like him who has seen the ugliness of war and lived through it and lost so much in so many ways. to get to this point where he is today and to feel that fear that has been created in our society that is leading to self-censorship and people being afraid just to celebrate freedom and understand what's really going on. That's why I'm, you know, it's why I'm doing what I'm doing. Because if I can, if I can in my own small way be that voice that, can help emboldened and inspire other people to know, number one, you're not alone. You're not alone.

And number two, we can't afford to cower in the corner in fear because of that warning that Abraham Lincoln gave, you know, so long ago, if we do that, we will allow this suicide of our country and our principles and our values to take place, and we will wake up in a world that the country that we love will be unrecognizable and the freedoms that we cherish will be lost. I was, another big theme in your book is power, right? Power, power, power, power. And I was, for a while when I was in the Navy,

I was the Admiral's aide. So the Admiral that was in charge of all the seals, I would go around with them and set up the meetings and whatever, do what the Admiral's Aid does, right? And we used to go to the Pentagon all the time. You know, probably twice a month. the Pentagon and he'd have meetings with, you know, the power players at the Pentagon, the sect F, the secretary of the Navy, and then politicians as well sometimes.

But I remember, you know, we were working with one individual and he was a very high-ranking SES, right? And, you know, this guy's, we'd see him all the time and he's working from very early in the morning until very late at night. And I don't know how much a senior SES makes, financial. financially, my guess would probably be something like $250,000 a year or something like that. They make the most that any civilian can make in the government. So what would you say the top end of that is maybe $300,000 a year?

Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I believe they are on par, not by salary, but by quote unquote rank with like a two star. Okay. I believe. So I'm looking at this guy. Yeah. And he's working all the time.

And clearly, I mean, he's in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars and a lot of people inside of an organization. And I remember thinking myself, you know, he's doing all this for $300,000 a year. And I knew at the time that if you're out running a civilian business of equivalent size, it would be, you know, he'd be making probably tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Anyway, so I'm talking to the admiral that I work for. He's been on this podcast, by the way, Admiral McGuire. But, you know, it's kind of talking to him. And I said, why is, like when someone's in that position and, look, why are they doing it? Yeah.

Because at a certain point, okay, you've been here for 19 years. Like, at what point is, I'm like, are they doing it because they just want to serve the country? And he just looks at me and says, power. And I was like, okay. And well said. Yeah, I thought to myself, oh, that's very interesting coming from the Admiral's like, oh, this guy's doing this for power. And it's weird how that and maybe it's something, you know, we all, we all have an ego. We all want to, you know, want to do well.

We all want to work hard. We want to see, you know, be rewarded for our actions and all that stuff. But also it's like, bro, I just kind of want to go surfing and do jihitsu. You know, like there's a whole big part of me that just wants to go surfing and do jihitsu. And I'm totally good with like whatever power is available. If I can go surfing into jihitsu, I'm kind of more stoked to do that. And certainly if I was some guy working as an SES 14 hour days every day, I would probably say, oh, this isn't worth it. I'm going to go and get a job somewhere else and have more time and hang out.

But if someone has that bend in their brain of seeking power, man, it really drives a lot of their actions. And then when you get this sort of collective drive. for power when you have a whole group of people that are all trying to cling to power and get as much power and feed off of you know if you've got power and I can come and get some of your power from you I'm gonna go do that if I can do that by supporting you cool if I can do that by cutting you down either way I'm good I just want more power it's very very disturbing and I think it is a little bit hard for some people to understand what a driving force that is you know I I work with so many different companies all over the country at my consulting firm and we work with you know construction companies energy companies and we work with the CEOs but we also work with the frontline troops and the frontline troops they're out there they're doing a good job they're working hard they want to do quality work they want to take care of the customer like that's what they're focused on and so that's a lot of normal people i think there's a little bit of a gap in understanding how intoxicating and addictive power can be for people and and that's why it's such a

huge thread in your book, this quest for power. And I think a lot of people might shrug that off. Like, I'll sort of, you know, what does that mean? But I'm telling you, it is a, it is an intrinsic drive. What do they call it dogs, certain good working dogs, they have a prey drive. They call it prey drive. And it's, if you have a good working dog, it has a very high prey drive. Like, it wants to attack. That's a good working dog. It's not a good family dog. But it's a good working dog, they call it pray drive. And sometimes they have food drive or they'll, yeah, it's like those kind of things, but pray drive. It's instinct and they can't turn it off. Like they're going to be that way. And that's when I was reading your book, I was thinking about

power in terms of prey drive. There's some people where the way that they're getting their gratification in life is through getting power. Yeah. It's it usurps everything. It usurps their want to be happy. there want to be to make money. Unless money is conjoined with power, which sometimes it is. But yeah, this... In politics, it's not. I mean, normally. Right, it shouldn't be.

It shouldn't be. But people can flex that. They get the same amount of flex. You might be the CEO of a big company, but I'm in this position of power and I can do these things. So I think it's important. As I read your book, I started thinking about the prey drive, but the power drive of some humans and the fact that some people don't really, they're not really focused on that.

Echo Charles, how often are you thinking about like, how can I get a little bit more power in this situation? Here we go. You might be asking the wrong guy, but that's what I'm saying. Pretty much never. Yeah. I would say you're maybe a little bit below par for seeking power. That's a compliment, Echo.

Okay. All right. We'll take you. You know, you know, I've, I mean, you and I have been through, we have businesses and we've definitely been in situations where there were where a a power dynamic developed between you know with us working with someone else or whatever just like and your your position the power dynamic has always been kind of like okay you know I'm all right with it like I said you know like that's that's awesome but that's where I think most people are and that's why I think it it can be a little

bit tricky for someone to read this book if they don't relate to the fact or don't understand the fact that there's people that are addicted and driven by power. Yeah. And that's how they operate. And if you don't, if you can't understand that, you're going to have a hard time understanding. It doesn't make any sense to, oh, wait, why would someone vote this way? Yeah. Wait, why? If it's not going to help the, the country, that doesn't even make sense. There's some people that would think naively that if I'm not going to do something that's going to help the country, well, I'm not going to do it. And you have example after example after example after example in this book of people making decisions solely not

based at all on the good of the country, not based at all in the good of their constituents, just based on how is this going to impact my ability to garner and gain power? Sickening. Yes. Good. I'm glad. So let's talk about this. Identity.

This is what a lot of this power is attached to. And I've seen this. People ask like, why would somebody like Nancy Pelosi want to be in that place? you know, she's like into her 80s, I believe, at this point. She's been there since she was 40 years old. She's got kids. She's got grandkids and maybe great grandkids at this point in time. Like, why would someone want to do that?

You know, again, the salary I think now is around 160, 170 grand a year. We could have a whole conversation about the insider trading that goes on and the profiteering that's happening, which is wrong, something I tried to stop when I was in Congress. But again, there are Democrats and Republicans who are, make and bank. But if you just look at it, like, why is that? Why? Where does that drive come from? And I've seen this in people that I served with who you go to Washington and you start to be treated differently. People in that town treat you differently. And so with that comes like,

oh, maybe I am special. Look at all these people. They like let me jump to the front of the line. they open the door for me and they, you know, call me the honorable or, you know, the titles that go along with that. You know, you can get guys at the air, you can get security at the airport to rush you through TSA if you're late for your flight. Like, you know, there are these things that go along with in that town how you are treated the moment you are elected. And then what happens the moment you leave? Nobody cares. Who are you then? You're back at home, you know, in your neighborhood, and people aren't calling you anymore,

or they're not asking you for, you know, I want to meet with you about this and that. It's a rude awakening. And after I left Congress, I didn't run for re-election in 2020, and I heard from some of my colleagues who also left, and you said, wow, Tulsi, you've cracked the code. it's the assumption that when you leave Congress, you become irrelevant. And yet you are still, you know, people are still interested in what you have to say. I was like, well, I have something to say.

Maybe there's something there's something of importance, something of meaning, something of value. And I was surprised to hear that because this person, my former colleague, was obviously feeling that like, wow, nobody cares about me anymore. My phone's not ringing anymore. I'm not getting offers to come to this fancy thing or that fancy thing. And this is such a dangerous and troubling mindset where their identity becomes attached to the title that's on the door. And so when they leave, the idea of leaving is a cause for fear and anxiety. Well, maybe people won't love me anymore. Maybe people won't care about what I have to say anymore.

Maybe I won't be, you know, the person who gets front row seats at whatever the event is. And then you look at that fear and anxiety and how that leads to people who are in these positions doing anything and everything to stay there. And being willing to compromise basic principles and integrity and values because they are driven by fear of loss of that identity. rather than being driven by that hunger for actually making a positive impact of being of service, actually fulfilling the responsibility that your voters sent you there to fulfill. And so that's where, you know, power, what is power? That can be a profound question. But really, when you look at these people in Washington, it's kind of a facade of power where they believe they're powerful.

But when you look at, we talked a little bit about the parties' leverage and money over them. Well, we talked earlier before we started recording about also the power and leverage that industries like Big Pharma have over our elected officials. I know someone personally who has gotten a lot of support from Big Pharma, and they were running a tough reelection campaign, and they made an ad saying, you know, I will, I want, you know, I have legislation to reduce the cost of prescription drugs for seniors. They ran the ad before they bought time. They ran the ad by the big pharma lobbyists and they said, nope, if you run that ad, we're pulling the $5 million we had set aside to help you in your campaign. And so they pulled the ad.

They didn't run it. And so this facade of power is real. They get to sit there and they're on TV or they're sitting there at the desk. but who is actually controlling them because of all of these different leverage points and these pressure points? Well, if you do this and we don't like it, we're going to, we are going to take away the thing that has become most valuable to you, which is your position and your title. And that's where we head to that, that dangerous road of what we're seeing right now, what we're seeing in the administration. Arrogance. Arrogance.

Yeah, you would think that, I mean, this is, it's embarrassing. to even have to say this, you would think that the driving force between someone that ran for a political position would be that I'm going to do positive things for my constituents and for the country. Like, that should be the driving force. And it's so clear. And again, you've got so many examples in the book of things that are just no one is on board with that.

Or very few people are on board with, oh, this seems like a really good move that's going to help the country. And oh, the other party's on board with it too. Let's support it and move forward. No. No. It's going to make the other party look good, so we're going to tank it. Yeah. And this is the thing that goes along with like the special treatment that you get when you're first elected to Congress or the longer you've been there and you gain seniority and all this other stuff. I've seen with people who I was elected with how their mindset changes to, well, obviously we know better for what's good for you than you do for yourself.

because you don't actually know the inner workings of Washington, Jocko, and it's too complicated for you to understand. So just trust me when I tell you, like, this is the right thing to do. And when you're like, yeah, no, it doesn't make sense. It literally doesn't make sense. And it, like, we have examples throughout history about how things like that end up turning out very badly, but that arrogance of people, you know, in particular, again, what we're seeing play out under this administration, they really, really believe,

that they are on the side of democracy and freedom. They really believe that. And that they must be the ones to save us, the American people, for making a horrible mistake, in this case, in this election, of electing Donald Trump over Joe Biden. And so to protect us from ourselves and making that quote unquote wrong choice,

you know, over 32 states tried to remove Donald Trump from their ballot. They're trying to make it so that Trump gets locked up behind bars so that the American people don't even have that option or have that choice. They want to protect us from being harmed, quote unquote, harmed by information that may be offensive or that, you know, maybe quote unquote misinformation, disinformation. They're trying to so-called protect us from all of these things, but really ultimately what's driving it. Well, they are the only ones who can save us. And the only way they save us is by staying in power. And you look at that dangerous mindset and you look like, oh, wow, there's like a lot of

dictators around the world who have done very evil things in the world believing that they are doing what is right and what is just and what is best, that they and only they can be the savior of the people. All right. I'm going to read some of your book. The prologue, sounding the alarm. I love our country. I've committed my life to defending the safety, security, and freedom of the American people. Our country is in the midst of an existential crisis. I have friends who are Democrats, Republicans,

independents, and libertarians. I have nothing but respect for all of them. Some work in the field of politics, but most do not. This book is not being written out of spite or animosity toward anyone because of their political affiliation. My message to you is an urgent warning. Those in control of today's Democrat Party and permanent Washington are leading us down a very dangerous path that threatens our freedom, democracy, and ability to thrive in a peaceful, prosperous country. That's the opening. Coming out of the gate swinging. Are you paying attention? You came out of the gate. I will say when I read that, I was like, okay, I can, this is going to be a very straightforward assessment of what's going on. And, you know, you specifically,

say the Democrat Party and permanent Washington. Permanent Washington, that's, there's permanent Washington, that's Republican, there's permanent Washington that are conservative, there's permanent Washington that are liberal, there's permanent Washington that are Democrats, but you call it the Democrat Party. Is that because that's what you were in and that's what you saw, or do you see a difference, and we kind of already touched on this, but do you see an actual difference between the Democrat establishment and the Republican establishment? Two things. First, I got some notes when I put out the book cover before the book actually came out.

And I got some notes from some supporters of mine who were being very helpful saying, hey, you got a typo on the book on your book cover. It's supposed to be Democratic Party. But you forgot those last couple of letters there. I was very intentional in using that term because unfortunately this party that I used to belong to is not democratic in practice, in execution, in reality at all. And I think that's an important point to make. In many ways, there are similarities and overlap there between,

the permanent Washington establishment, which includes not only those who are elected officials from both parties, but it is that administrative state. It is the big propaganda media that essentially do the bidding of the Democrat elite. It is those who are working, unfortunately, within the national security state in some ways to weaponize those. institutions to execute the agenda of the Democrat elite. It is the big tech monopolies who are acting as the arm of the Democrat elite to circumvent the Constitution and censor everyday Americans. So it's a it is the shortest term that that creates that umbrella of those who ultimately don't have the Constitution or our best interests at heart.

Sometimes, you know, when you look at some of the Republicans who are part of that permanent Washington establishment, in some areas there may be a divergence or a disagreement with the Democrat elite on different issues, but fundamentally on the issues of war and peace, of civil liberties, and of freedom, there is far too much that they stand together on that really does speak to that hunger for power

as being the most important thing above all else. And when you look at, okay, Nikki Haley, for example, is an example of a prominent Republican who is very much a part of and embodies what is that Republican role in the permanent Washington establishment. and why I'm lumping them together with the Democrat elite and the threat that they pose. She talks about, you know,

towards the end of her campaign for president in the primary this year, she talked about how, you know, she would bring back, and Mike Pence did the same. They talked about the norms. We have to protect the norms. And they use this argument as to, as their fuel as to why their path for the Republican Party

is superior to the path that Donald Trump has taken and the kind of leadership that he brings. We have to protect the norms, we have to protect the institutions. But the thing is, and whether they're just so out of touch or what, you know, what exactly is driving them? I don't know, but they are out of touch. Because for me, and I think for most Americans, you're like, well, we look at how in debt our country is.

we look at how, you know, under this administration and others in the past, how the quote-unquote norms in foreign policy have gotten us into a worse place from a national security standpoint has made us less safe and secure. You look at our economy, you look at inflation, you look at, you know, big government overreach in so many parts of our lives, a violation of civil liberties. If those are the norms you're talking about, and they are, the norms they're talking about like, no, we should not protect those norms. Those norms go against the interests in every respect of the American people. And that's something that if you're paying

attention and if you're actually out in the country and you're listening, you're truly listening and understanding why the American people feel the way that they do, then you'll see how that separation between that permanent Washington and the Democrat elite is, you're is wildly out of touch with reality and how what they are attached to, which is rooted in that desire to hold on to that, that stranglehold of power, how that directly undermines the foundational principles of who we are as a country. Fast forward a little bit. What's at stake here is far greater than Donald Trump and Joe Biden?

Our democracy is being destroyed by the permanent Washington elite in both political parties who truly believe they and not the American people have the right in due to. to determine who we want to serve and lead our country. They readily dismiss the U.S. Constitution, the rule of law, the voices of American people, anointing themselves as the ones who have the power and justification to decide who will become president. Give me an example of a human that's part of the Washington elite that you're talking about. Just a random example of one of these people that's been there for 17 years and what their little daily thing. and what they're controlling and touching?

I mean, you know, you look at the Nikki Haley's, you look at the Mitch McConnell's, you look at the Nancy Pelosi's, you look at the Chuck Schumers, and there are many, many more, you look at the Rachel Maddows, you look at the wonderful ladies of the view. There are a lot of different examples of people who are part of that group.

you know, Megan McCain told me when she was on the view one day. We didn't know each other very well at that time, but she called me one day when I was... Is this when she was on there every day? Yeah, this is when she was part of the cast of that show. And I had either just been on, oh, I had just been on there, on their show. And she called me later and she's like, the weirdest thing happened. She said, you know, as we were prepping the morning, that morning of the show, usually the producers will go around into the makeup rooms as they're getting ready and to kind of

brief them, okay, here are the guests of the day, here's kind of the major talking points and this, or the major areas that we want to focus on. And she said it was the first time that they had gone and done the show. And every other person who was sitting as a co-host on that show, they were all saying the same thing, using the exact same words when it came to me. they were not kind for those who don't know. They were, they were, but Megan was, was singled out and left out. She didn't get the brief.

She didn't get the memo. But she said that was the first time that she had seen anything like that for the years that she had done the show where they, it was as though. Someone provided them with exact talking points. Like, hey, she's coming on your show. Here are the things that we want you to say. And so when we talk about this, you know, Washington elite, the tentacles spread out very far.

And, you know, you can, once you actually start paying attention, and I think a lot more people are in the country now, maybe than they have been over the last several years, you start to see that common thread and that connection. Like, wait, how come all these people are saying the same thing? How come nobody's questioning what they're actually saying? You ever seen those videos where they have like a newscaster talking somewhere in Nebraska and then they put another one and it's everyone saying the same thing? And I get some of that because they're all getting sort of fed, you know, the story from AP or something like this.

But then when it's these weird sort of opinion pieces and they're all saying the exact same thing. And you think yourself, okay, this is being forced fed down our throat. That's what's happening. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's, so the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the fingers and their tentacles out there in the media. That's what we're hearing. That's what we're getting programmed with. Yeah. Yeah. And I, again, I, I think it's, it's, it's, it's, it's

important, it's important to actually understand why and to have the, the, the proof points of, of, of the, the, the very strong statements I'm making. And it's a contrast away from, you know, I use the Hillary Clinton example, most qualified person I've been to run for president, but nobody could say why. And you have the same thing happening around a lot of different issues. You know, the thing about, you know,

the trans ideology that is being inculcated into kids in schools these days. and every time you bring up, you know, well, there are actual real biological differences between boys and girls and men and women. And you bring that up to these people in Washington. They don't counter with, well, actually, no, you're wrong, and here's why you're wrong, and here's the data that backs it up. Like, their argument, their counter argument is like, you know, there's only a couple of people who are being impacted by this. and it's not worth our time to pay attention to. The more important thing is inclusivity and yada, yada, yada, but not actually acknowledging, like, well, you are people who claim to care about women and equal and fair rights and treatment

and a level playing field. Don't you see how this is, you know, you're advocating for boys to compete against girls in schools and sports is actually undermining that? Oh, no, it's just a couple of people. know, we got to stay focused on what's most important. There's no actual substance behind a lot of the positions that they are putting forward, whether it comes to that issue or democracy or freedom and why they're advocating for censorship and how quickly the tables can turn.

Like, you may want to censor me today, but tomorrow the tables can turn. And they always do very quickly. So what happens then when you're the one being censored? What are you going to do about that? None of that is there. And instead of countering with any kind of substance, it's just like, oh, well, you're a transphobe. You're an Islamophobe. You're a traitor.

You love Russia. You know, you're a Putin puppet. Like all of these, like, you're a racist, sexist, misogynist, all of the names that they toss out to people. And I've literally been called all of them. All of them. And it just, it exposes their weakness because they don't have, they, they, they, they, they, They don't have, I think deep down inside, they know that their position is weak and that if they really were to engage in a substantive dialogue of one person's views versus another's that goes beyond the sound bite, then they would be exposed in that weak position and they know that they lose. So they resort to the fearmongering of like, well, you can't trust that person because, you know, X, Y or Z or this name.

or that name it. And the sad part is that I've experienced how effective it is. It's why they do it. How long did it take you to not get angry when you'd see? I mean, I still will see in a comment of something of yours like, oh, she's a Russian asset. I mean, I'll see that right now. Yep. So these people just lie about you. And well, like, what was that experience like at first were you, were you did you think this can't be happening this is ridiculous

and then did you like what was your phases of acceptance of these like complete lies being told about you the whole Russian asset thing my literal first response

because I read about it while I was on a plane I laughed because it's so bizarre it's just like okay this has got to be a joke I laughed But then between the time that I was on the plane and the plane landed, I started to see what the responses were.

And that this was a statement made by Hillary Clinton that when I landed, I was running for president. And I was going straight from the airport to an event. And I got word like all these like ABC, NBC, CBS. Like they want to ask you about like, are you kidding me? You serious? Like so they are taking this. very seriously. And once again, like with so many other things, nobody, she did this in a podcast with David Pluff.

Nobody, he didn't ask and no one asked after that. Like, what's the basis of this? What evidence do you have? Because I can show you like, you know, she, she's got a top secret clearance through the military. She serves on the Armed Services Committee in Congress. They're not blocking her access to go to classified briefings on some of the biggest security threats that we face. And like, okay, that's on, that's in one column. So show me yours. What's your proof? What's your evidence? What's your backing? And nobody ever even asked for it. Mitt Romney, just, just while I'm thinking of it, more recently, he, after Russia invaded Ukraine and that whole war kicked off, one of the statements that I made was that in the wake of this COVID,

outbreak. We should acknowledge the fact that there are many DOD funded bio labs in Ukraine. We should make sure that those are either shut down or, you know, protected, secured because, you know, it's an active war zone. And the last thing that anyone should want is another kind of global outbreak to occur. And this, this, you know, my source of information for this was DoD.gov, which I cited. Toria Newland from the State Department said in an open U.S. Senate hearing, many of the same things. Like, yes, we are concerned about these biolabs and we are starting to look at, taking steps,

yada, yada, yada. Mitt Romney put out a tweet, former U.S. Or he is still in the U.S. Senate. He's leaving, but he put out a tweet saying Tulsi Gabbard's a treasonous liar for saying this. And she's just a asset of whatever it was. of the full thing. I talked to my lawyers, and I sent him a cease and desist letter and said, if this is what you truly believe, you are in a position of great power and influence, and you should

follow this through with actions, because what you're accusing me of in the uniform code of military justice, we can execute. You should, yeah, exactly. So back it up. you throw this statement out, back it up. And obviously, crickets heard nothing back from him privately or publicly. But it just, it again, you know, I mean, it just, it reveals. And so you say, okay, well, who are the figures of the permanent Washington establishment?

Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney are kind of at the leading edge, at the leading edge of that. But the thing, you know, the phases of my own, as a human, as a person, response to this was, what was that? It was just like, this has got to be a joke to then recognizing, well, this is a very, very serious thing because people are taking them seriously. And that no one was questioning it. and therefore it was having the desired effect, which was planting that seed of doubt and suspicion in people's minds that, oh, well, you know, I really like Tulsi Gabbard, but can we really trust her? And that was what was very hurtful to me,

was seeing and experiencing the effect that it was having on people. And also knowing that the reason why they did this, was to make it so that others who were considering or who dared to speak up and challenge their position would be, at a minimum, think twice about it. But in reality, would likely take a step back and be like, you know what, it's not worth it. It's not worth it. Whether it's in the political realm or maybe in their jobs or in their friends or their families, They saw how I was treated and how far they were willing to go to try to undermine my credibility and smear my character that people are thinking like, it's not worth it to me to go through that.

That was really the biggest thing that made me most sad about this. Yeah, and there's really no countermeasures that you could take. You can't put it back in the bottle type scenario. No, and like you said, we're years down the road from this. And it's still, I think, in probably every single post that I have on social media, there's at least one. And, you know, on the positive side of this, we've seen how they use the Russia, Russia, Russia counter to just about everything that they don't want to respond to. whether it has to do with foreign policy or domestic policy or like it almost doesn't even matters like oh well you know this is Putin's fault or it's Russia's fault like why people are

questioning you know decisions being made by the Department of Education in our country well this is just Russian propaganda like no this is you guys like not doing your job and people are seeing it so I think that that's if there's a positive that could come from this is they have become so prolific in using these smear tactics and using the same ones over and over that more and more people are waking up to it and being like, are you guys full of shit? Yeah, I think that's probably the way that it eventually dies down is people are like, oh yeah, that's just freaking gossip from the other side and that's what's happening. Yeah, and I think to, you know, that whole Russia, Russia, Russia, and I may, I might not be right about this,

but that may work amongst a certain generation that lived through the old Cold War. And you look at, you know, kind of a younger generation of Americans that don't have that same, I don't know, memory or attachment to what that experience was like. And there's like, wait, what? Russia got to do with like our economy?

Like, I don't get it. Check. You got a section in here, which I thought it's called, is today, the day, I thought that might have been an alternative, you know, title for the book is today the day, because it's a powerful piece. You say, as we unloaded the aircraft on that January morning in 2005, the air was brisk and cold. We moved through a brief administrative processing and found the tents we would be staying in. I was assigned to an Army GP medium tent with 18 other

women, each of us quickly finding a spot to drop our bags and set up our cots. It was late and I was tired. I curled up in my sleeping bag, rifle by my side, body armor within arm's reach. Within a few hours, we heard sirens sounding warnings of an incoming mortar attack. We threw on our gear, grabbed our rifles, and ran out to the cement bunker. I don't know how much protection it gave us, but this would end up being an almost daily occurrence for the 12 months we were there. The next morning I went for a walk around camp. I would be, that would be home for the next year. When I came to the North Gate, one of my busiest, one of the busiest for our security patrols, I saw a sign that stopped me in my tracks. It read in big, bold letters.

is today the day. I would see that sign almost every day I was there. It borne to my consciousness. It was a reminder to all of us that any day could be our last. There was also a question that I reflected on often. Life is short. My time could come at any moment.

Am I making the most of every day to give my life in service to God and working for the well-being of his children? And then you go on a little bit later to say, today is the day. We have no time to waste We live in troubled times Our nation is bitterly divided

Our future as a republic as a union appears bleak The news the noise the insanity the darkness Is something many of us want to shut out A lot going on Yeah Aloha I left the Democratic Party to become an independent For the sake of our country

Peace freedom And our hope for a prosperous future future, I urge you to do the same. You urge people to become independence? Urging Democrats to leave the Democratic Party. And urging people to have independent minds. That's the most important thing. There are a lot of different labels, especially in politics, whether it's Democrat,

Republican, left, right, conservative, progressive, you know, I mean, you go through all these different labels. They mean different things to different people. One of the things that always bothered me throughout the time that I was involved with national Democrat politics was the mantra they repeated, which was vote blue no matter who.

Vote blue no matter who. So they literally say that? Like it was like, vote blue no matter who in the crowd. Like, yeah, start cheering. It should bother everybody. We should not be encouraging blind followership of any group or any personality.

We should be independent-minded people. We should be critical thinkers. We should always recognize our responsibility to hold leaders accountable. I'm grateful to my parents for instilling this in us as kids. I'm the fourth of five kids. We were homeschooled,

and my parents encouraged us to, if asked a question, like well maybe I'm thinking about doing this like okay walk us through what's your thought process if you choose this path or if you choose this path ultimately it's your decision you got to make it and you have to consider what the consequences will be or could be and so that's what I'm that's what I'm encouraging people to do to take on the responsibility to own that responsibility that comes with being an American and and understand that we have the opportunity to drive the kind of change that we want

see in our country. And if we do nothing, then before we know it, we will lose all that we cherish. And what is special and great about being an American about this country. And that's really where, you know, the is today the day, first of all, it's just such a profound reflection in life. You know, politics aside, just in life. It's easy to, and I mean, look, you talk about this all the time. It's easy to fall into complacency. It's easy to just get caught up in the busyness of everyday life. And then you wake up and like, oh, I am at the end of my life.

And what have I done with it? If you're fortunate, you get to that point of reflection. But really understanding that, you know, obviously being in a war zone, you know, as we have just spent time reflecting on with Memorial Day, That end could come at a time when you least expected, as a service member in war, or as you're walking down the street, or you're driving your car. Who knows?

We don't know. And so I am grateful to have had that opportunity to be confronted with that reality in a lot of different ways and choose to confront myself with that same reflection, that same question. and as I'm making different decisions about how I can make the most of every day. That's what we all should do, just as a matter of living a life of purpose and fulfillment and true happiness, not by chasing power or money or titles,

but the opportunity that we have uniquely in this country to be able to do that is the most special thing. And connecting that with this existential threat. that I talk about, this existential crisis that we face, it's something that transcends partisan politics and all of these different labels. It's fundamental to who we are as Americans. And what are we doing about it? Everything's kind of like a seal platoon in the world, right? So one thing in a seal platoon, if you have a good seal platoon, one of the things that makes up a good seal is you've got some some personalities in the leadership positions that balance

each other out so you've got some hyper aggressive guy but then you've got someone that's a little bit more cautious you've got someone that's real laissez-faire about things you got someone else that's very detailed oriented and when they get together because they work together and they have a common mission they balance each other out they make good decisions so like when I hear you say blue no matter who right man we that should be a really bad sign because if we have a platoon where the platoon chief is super aggressive and the platoon commander is super aggressive and the assistant platoon commander super aggressive

and the leading petty officer they're all hyper aggressive what you end up with is like someone that's a platoon that's doing things that they shouldn't be doing because they're overly aggressive same thing in the other direction you have a risk diverse officer with a risk diverse chief etc etc. Those people aren't going to do anything. They're not going to do any missions because they're scared and they don't want to get in trouble or they don't want to get hurt or whatever. Exactly.

So you have a bad. So what you want and what you get in a good seal platoon is you get diversity. Yes. Very rarely is it diversity of like race and all that stuff because no one really cares about that. That's not part of the selection. What you end up with is a platoon where it's like, oh, you've got diverse thought where this guy's aggressive and this guy's more conservative and this guy's a detail or aren't.

So that's what we want. It's very sad to think that you could look at someone and figure out their whole political belief system just by knowing who they voted for in this particular election. It shouldn't be like that. And it's actually crazy to think that, you know, Echo and I would agree on every single subject down the line. That's a crazy thought. Yeah. It doesn't make sense. It would scare me if you and I were completely unified on each and every issue that's out there.

That would be very strange, especially because you have a perspective, I have a perspective, Echo has a perspective, okay, well, let's see this subject from as many different perspectives as we can and then come to a conclusion that actually makes sense. Rather than, hey, we're all just going to be thinking the exact same thing and whatever Tulsi says, all right, I'm good. Or whatever Jocco says, all right, I'm good. Yeah. That's very disturbing.

It is. It is. And, you know, I mean, I'm still in the Army Reserve. and I made, I just left one battalion command, I'm about to take another one that I'm grateful for, but that was something that I made clear to both the command team, you know, my, my sergeant major and the staff that's around me, but also to my company commanders and the first sergeants,

is, you know, I want you to come and tell me like, hey, here's where I see problems in the plan that you're putting forward, or here's where I see opportunities to do something better and creating that environment. Again, preach into the choir here, this is literally what you teach through your leadership and mentorship programs and in your books

and knowing like, yeah, I got no problem. If you tell me like, hey, Tulsi, here's where you're wrong and here's why. And you have helped me, and I'm grateful for you to tell me that. I don't feel like, oh, why are you attacking me, Jock? You know what I mean?

Or it's just like, okay, got it, I hear you, and I understand where you're coming from, but here's why I believe that, you know, your position is flawed in these ways. And this is what, I mean, this is what makes a healthy democracy and a healthy society is when we can have these conversations. I had a conversation with a woman exactly like this last night where, you know, she, she, she, she's not buying what I'm selling in my message in this book. And my point to her was like, it's cool. We can disagree and we can have this conversation.

The reality that we're facing now, though, is that the current administration, the leaders of the Democrat elite, of the National Democratic Party, they are taking us to a place where we can't have this conversation in public or even in a private setting without being concerned about what the consequences of that may. be. And that's really what's at the heart of my, you look at everything that's been happening over these last three and a half years, just undeniable, egregious abuses of power, undermining of free speech fundamentally. If they're allowed to stay in power, we're going to see everything that's already happened, amp up on steroids, because they will go around the country and say, look, the American people have given us a mandate. You have said what we are doing, is right and you want more of it.

And so we think it's bad now. If they're allowed to continue, it's going to get to a place again, and I sound like a broken record, but because it's true, we're going to get to a place where any semblance of freedom of speech will be gone.

It'll be gone. And so when we look at, you know, the opportunity again, I think it's important for us to maintain hope. The opportunity that we have is to encourage people and to ourselves. Have those conversations with people who may not be in your natural circle or you may not feel totally comfortable that you're automatically going to get a pat on the back. I've had so many of these conversations over all the years that I've been involved with politics, both with people in Hawaii, as well as people across the country as I was campaigning for president.

people who came at me, like at me, ready for, like, hungering for a fight. Like, let's go. I know that I'm going to defeat you on this issue or that issue or whatever. And I can't think of a single one, a single engagement that I've had like that, where we both didn't walk away feeling, first of all, with a hug and a sense of appreciation for each other. Not because all of a sudden we disagreed, we agreed, but walking away with. a sense of appreciation for that exchange. And it's a beautiful thing.

But unfortunately, we're living at a time where people are afraid to do that. And just at an everyday level. But at the highest levels, it's just not allowed. In the Democrat elite, again, we talked about the Republican Party. They got a lot of that going on, which is, I think, is a good thing. But even then, you know, there's so much of the, the name calling and the smears that go on against people that you disagree with.

And it's just, it's counterproductive. Yeah, if you can't put your ego in check when you're having a conversation about anything, and be like, oh, Tulsi has her perspective on this. Maybe I should just listen to what she has to say and try and see where she's seeing it from or what her perspective is. The other thing that makes me a little bit nervous,

and I'm way more optimistic than you are. I'm sorry to tell you. I'm like Mr. Glass half full over here. I'm always thinking we're gonna win because we're America. But one thing that does make me a little nervous is you talk about this free speech thing and how these, you know, free speech starts getting more and more narrow and more and more controlled. And man, I think about COVID and the reaction, I would have thought the reaction of America would have been different than it was. Yeah. Right.

It, there was a lot of compliance. And I got it. And you in the beginning, it's like, okay, you know, there's some, we don't really know what's happening. And people, people, I think by and large, the American people are kind and compassionate people. And so when someone tells you like, hey, we have this global pandemic and we got to try to make sure we take care of each other. And, you know, we're trying to help people. And that was, I mean, that was what I saw was people like, okay, well, if I've got to sacrifice a little bit in order to help protect my neighbor or my coworker. Yeah, but that lasted for a really, really long.

time went a little wild. Yeah, and it resulted in that kind and compassionate heart being exploited for power. Yeah, and it was very, is a very bizarre social experiment that happened to see the way everybody reacted and how hostile people got towards each other for not complying to things. It was kind of, it was kind of wild. I know, yeah, that was funny because I was like, to the last podcast that we did in Kazako and I had COVID. That's right.

And you swung by to see us and we didn't know we had COVID because we were kind of. I remember that text you sent me right. Yeah, I was, that was a bummer to have to send to that text. Because you were still in DC at the time. There's all kinds of rules that they had to comply with. Like because you had been exposed to us, you had to do all kinds of things. I'm sorry. No, don't be.

but you know here we were kind of living normal yeah and the rest of the world like was and you know we got COVID yeah that was early 2021 yeah echo couldn't smell and I had like a couple week workouts that were not that great you know but other than that it was kind of just another day yeah it was another day so yeah that but that that that makes me nervous how people will comply when and part of it was I think the the social pressure right like part of it was the social pressure and I know some parts of California it was like if you not in San Diego but in some parts of California if you went outside without a mask on and stuff people were yelling at you wow and I never really experienced that I have one guy I had one guy that I was running I was running he was walking down he he ran away

from me you know and I was like bro we're outside and and kind of you know said something under breath away. And I was like, hey, bro, you know, it's all good. But, um, and this was not, you know, this was like deep into it where clearly this wasn't that big of a deal anymore. Um, but anyways, we have to be careful of that. We have to be careful of that compliance. We have to pay attention to the way to Americans react to things because it might not be what, what I think, which is, man, we're Americans. Yeah. And you, we're going to, we should be a little bit hard to control shouldn't be just getting in line with everything that gets said. And I think that the COVID thing definitely cost the government a huge amount of trust. I mean, I know people that lost

a lot of trust for the government. I know people that didn't trust the government very much to start with and now it's just completely gone. And I know that people that trusted the government a lot and now it's trusting it a lot less. And yeah, and yeah, the post-mortem on this whole thing has not been good for the government either. No. And it seems to be getting worse all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

There's been no, you know, yeah, sure, there's been no accountability. But there's also been no like, hey, guys, we were wrong. Yeah. We were wrong. Yeah. I talked about that quite a bit of when COVID was happening, like during the pandemic, instead of saying, hey, we were wrong about this, stop doing it. or we were wrong about this, don't do this,

or hey, we've moved in the wrong direction. No one ever said that one time. No one ever said that one time. And they doubled down. I remember as some of that started to be exposed, rather than just saying that, like, yeah, you know, this is new. We were navigating our way through.

We made some wrong decisions. We're going to course correct. It was almost like that the reaction was defensive. We're going to double down and make it even worse. Yeah. Yeah, that's one thing I tell leaders is very self, Well, you don't want to pay yourself into a corner, right? You don't want to say like, this is what we're doing and I know it's 100% going to work.

No, even in combat, you want to be like, hey, this is the strategy we're going to take. Here's the moves we're going to make. This is what I think the outcome is going to be, but I could be wrong. Right. And if I'm right, cool. Keep going. If I'm wrong, we'll move in a different direction. But man, the ego that we have where it's like, this is what we're doing and it's going to work.

You shouldn't put yourself in that position because then it makes you even harder to say, I was actually wrong about that. What is if you say, hey, this is what I see right now. this is what I think we should do. If there's the direction we're going to move, we'll do an assessment in two weeks and see where we're at. But there was none of that. There was no ownership at all of what was happening.

This is prevalent, too prevalent in our political, many political leaders who, you know, I remember within the first few months of being in Congress, me and one of my Republican colleagues, we started working on, Obamacare had just passed. I was elected in 2012. It was passed in 2010. and we started saying, okay, well, we've heard from small business owners, for example,

of how damaging Obamacare has been to their ability just to stay in business, what to speak of actually care for their employees. There were some very easy fixes that could have helped to improve that program and legislation. And so we're like, all right, like, who can be opposed to this? Like, we're actually doing something that's constructive. It'll solve problems. It'll help small businesses. And so we put it forward.

and separately to both Democrat and Republican leadership, there was no interest in pursuing this legislation. And on the Democrat side, it was, you know, and this is not verbatim, but this was kind of the read between the lines. There was no interest in pursuing that legislation because then they would have to admit that Obamacare maybe wasn't as great as they sold it to be. And on the Republican side, it was no interest in pursuing it

because the worse Obamacare is, the bigger, the more ammunition they will have to campaign against Democrats and raise money and win elections. And this is part of the problem. And this kind of goes to the heart of what I hope people take away from my book, which is that when people put their own self-interest or the interests of their party, ahead of the interests of the country and ahead of the interests of the American people,

we end up in the position that we are in, which is why, again, I bring it back to this election because it is such a critical one, which is why you have the Hillary Clinton's and Mitt Romney's of the world so terrified of Donald Trump because say whatever you want about him, he is not an establishment guy, and he has no fear of going in and saying, the thing that a lot of people in Washington are too afraid to say, but that is reflective of what a lot of the American people think about, that is reflective of this distrust in these institutions in Washington that have so completely lost their way of being institutions that serve the public interest, instead serving political interest.

Yeah, and I would say you address that here. We're getting to chapter one. I know it's been almost an hour and a half, or almost a chapter one. Okay, so we might not. I'm not doing a great job with driving this. Chapter 1 is called the end of our democracy, question mark. And this is where you start talking about the, this is the birth of the big hoax. And this, you talk about the, for months, for months before the 2016 election, many of my former Democratic colleagues had been breathlessly claiming that Donald Trump was the most racist, unqualified, vile person who ever sought office of the presidency to create suspicion in the mind.

of the American people about him. They invented a conspiracy theory that he was colluding. And you did put that number, that word in quotes, which is kind of funny because that word colluding got just so much traction. Yeah. Right? With the Russians to win the election.

Hillary Clinton used a similar tactic against me. When I ran for president, you already talked about that. I forgot that they said that she said you were groomed by the Russians. Leading Democrats asserted with great confidence that this theory about Trump was true and that it was only a matter of time before evidence was revealed. The fact that there was no evidence didn't stop every mainstream media organization in the country from referring to Russia collusion, as if it were a matter of settled fact. On October 31st, 2016, for instance, the website Slate posted a story claiming

that Donald Trump had improper ties to Alpha Bank, one of the most powerful financial institutions in Russia. The problem, none of it was. true. As the world learned in May 2022, the story was nothing more than a piece of opposition research planted by the Hillary Clinton campaign. According to sworn testimony provided by Robbie Mook, who managed the Clinton campaign, Hillary Clinton had overseen a plan to take this fake story, alert the FBI about it, and plan it with a friendly journalist to sow confusion and suspicion about Donald Trump's relationships with Russia. The Wall Street Journal summarized the revelations saying that quote the Clinton campaign created the Trump alpha

allegation fed it to a credulous press that failed to confirm the allegations but ran with them anyways then promoted the story as if it were legitimate news the campaign also delivered the claims to the FBI giving journalists another excuse to portray the accusations as serious and perhaps true end quote this process of creating fake news planning it with the deep state and handing it over to the media to repeat and amplify has played itself out over and over again. The whole point is to mislead the American people and discourage them from voting for Trump. This is what happened with the infamous Steele dossier, a packet of opposition research put together

by British spy for hire Christopher Steele, which contained lurid accusations about Russian prostitutes urinating on a bed while Donald Trump watched, among other disgusting things. For years, these absurd lies were treated with the utmost seriousness and not being. just by the Clinton campaign and other top Democrats. It was used to obtain a FISA warrant to illegally surveil Carter Page and American citizen, even though the FBI knew full well that it was a shoddy piece of political opposition research. It was revealed publicly that this dossier was nothing more than gossip and rumor from a former associate of steals, and yet no one involved in creating the dossier or spreading it was held to account.

No apologies or corrections were made by politicians or their friends in the propaganda media Who repeated the lie? The unfortunate reality is that these dirty tactics used by Hillary Clinton, Biden, and the DNC working hand and glove with their cabal of powerful partners Mainstream media, big tech, and the national security state are very effective these tactics actually work Which is why they keep using them to this day most Democrats still believe that Donald Trump and his campaign colluded with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election, even though we know for a fact that this was Clinton campaign disinformation. So wild.

There's a video that I've seen circulate around social media a few times now with Nancy Pelosi, standing at a podium speaking to the media about the wraparound lie tactic, which is exactly what I'm explaining here. Explain the wrap around lie tactic. So it is where you, and I don't, I haven't seen like what the context was that caused her to make this statement. But she's very clearly explaining from start to finish this tactic that works where you say, you say something about a person that is not true or about an issue that is not true. You know it's not true. You create some form of evidence to back that up.

Then you feed it to the media. the media repeats it enough times to where the viewer actually starts to believe that it's actually true and that this is a tactic that is used in our politics. And those are just a few examples of that. I find it amazing that she was standing there with a straight face saying like, well, yeah, there's a name for this. Yeah. And we do it.

So disturbing. And yet this is, I mean, that's crazy. It is. If you think about that whole thing that I just read, and I kind of chuckled when I was done, that's like insane that that's what happened. Yeah. And again, this isn't conjecture. This isn't my opinion or your opinion. This is what happened.

Yeah. Another section here. The Democratic leader are executing a well-thought-out calculated strategy. They know that once they name and define any enemy, the word goes out that a certain group of people is a target, anything is permissible. Anyone can criticize and spell lies about Trump, the so-called MAGA Republicans or the deplorables, and no one in the mainstream media will push back or challenge the assertion. To the contrary, they will promote and amplify your voice. But if you dare to challenge the mainstream establishment narrative or, God forbid, speak up in support of Donald Trump.

They will do all they can to smear and silence you enlisting the help of their friends in the media and big tech. The Democrat elite don't believe in free speech. They don't believe in the full exercise of the freedoms guaranteed. every one of us under the Bill of Rights. They and they alone get to determine which rights we are allowed to have and which rights they will curtail to serve their interests. In curtailing those rights, they do not hesitate to use all levers of power under their control to force compliance.

Our founding fathers envisioned that our nation would be a country of laws, not men, and that our government agencies, institutions, and law enforcement would be nonpartisan and unbiased unbiased rising above party politics. The Democrat elites politicizing of agencies like the FBI, DOJ, DHS, IRS, and even the DOE to harass and intimidate their political opponents, is completely undermining the rule of law and therefore our democracy. This is draining any trust the American people may have had that our government exists to serve the interests of the people, not of those in power. The Democrat elite don't care. The only thing they care about is power. I don't know if you saw James Comey, former director of the FBI, recently in an interview,

said very strongly and forcefully that the American people, even if you don't like Joe Biden, you have to vote for Joe Biden because if Donald Trump is elected president, he will, who knows what he will do to the Department of Justice and the FBI. There are so many problems with this statement coming from this person, James Comey, himself, and, you know, if you don't know about his past and his history, I won't, you know, go and go and do a little digging. But this kind of goes back to what we talked about with the quote-unquote norms. Why should we blindly have trust or faith in any of these so-called institutions,

especially given what we all know now, for anybody who's paying attention in our country, about how they have been either abusive power or weaponized or used by a political interest, to say that there are that there are any government institutions that are too sacred to be held accountable, to be held accountable, goes against the very foundation of our country where we have checks, we have checks and balances for a reason. We have three co-equal branches of government for a reason. We have a representative democracy for a reason to hold these, hold, leaders accountable to ensure that we don't go in the direction of an increasingly tyrannical government that's more representative of a dictatorship than a representative democracy.

And so for somebody like him, this is the problem with that mindset is reflective of, well, these Department of Justice, the FBI or the CIA or any of these other agencies, they are above reproach and above being in a position where you have human beings who work in and run these agencies who are susceptible to abusive power or who may actually be abusing their power. And there's a lot of evidence across these government agencies of individuals who have done exactly that.

The whole Hunter Biden laptop thing, that was done by facilitating with the help of someone who is actively working in the CIA to corral statements from former senior intelligence officials to give Joe Biden a piece of evidence that he could use in the debate to shut Donald Trump up when he was saying, hey, you and your family are corrupt and you're using your position for personal profit and gain. And it worked. They did exactly that. They created this piece of evidence out of nowhere, casting doubt on Hunter Biden's laptop,

has all the signs of a Russian disinformation effort baseless. Was there evidence? No. It was just a statement that was literally created because the Biden campaign, it was Tony Blinken who led this, who said, hey, we need help. Biden needs a piece of evidence to use

in the debate that's happening in like a week. And so they came up with the letter within 48 hours. They got it into the media. The media reported on it. And immediately what happened? The contents of that laptop, just a few weeks before the laptop, election were suppressed. So voters didn't get to know or hear or see because Russian disinformation,

and it worked as intended in that debate. And then Biden's campaign said, hey, thanks, guys. Appreciate the help. So, you know, and I don't know if we talked about this last time, but Chuck Schumer's statement again about Trump, I think it was back in 2016. Like he said in the news something along the lines of, Trump is so stupid to be criticizing these intelligence agencies, doesn't he know how powerful they are and what they can do to him? Yeah, that's, did you listen when I had RFK on here? Yes. RFC Jr.? Yeah.

And JFK and it was really good for me and for people. I mean, I know. I mean, I was in the military for a long time. Yeah. And so I understand at least more than a normal person does. But to understand the things that you were just talking about, like, oh, there's people in these different intel agencies, they have agendas, they have egos, they want power. And that statement that JFK made, if I could, I would take the CIA and smash it into a thousand pieces.

That's which, again, people think that these government institutions are run by some sort of benevolent AI that has no personality and just is out there doing the right thing. It's not like that. Unfortunately, it's not like that. No. And then you had, you know, the FBI, there was, Jay Edgar Hoover kind of lost his in because RFK came in as the attorney general. And so what did Jay Edgar Hoover do? He started gathering intel on JFK. And that's where the information about his affairs came from.

Like, that's what happened. Yeah. It's maybe we're, how dumb are we? How dumb are we? Number two, does the Republican Party just suck at this kind of thing? Like, why isn't the Republican Party? Why do they suck at this? Or do they just have a different level of what they believe is the right thing to do and they won't cross the line? I'm going to say no because the Republican Party is not a monolithic entity. And there are some people in the Republican Party who would do this or who would certainly advocate. for this approach or who are already a part of this.

And we've seen that through, I saw it through different pieces of legislation that we tried to pass through Congress that would protect, for example, Americans from being surveilled without a warrant just because some person, whether it's a person behind the desk or the President of the United States says,

I'm going to go after this person, or we need to watch this person, without any warrant, without any due process, without any recourse at all. And so, yeah, there are certain Republicans in high positions of power who believe in this kind of thing. I think the difference is

that's not the prevailing view, and I think there are more Republicans who appreciate and respect and value the Constitution and the limits that it places on government power. But if we, and this, this again, this is the message I deliver throughout the book is, is if we allow this kind of abuse of power that we've seen in this administration, which is far worse, far more brazen and happening in broad daylight than anything I've seen or experienced in my lifetime, if we allow this to stand, it will be the norm.

And there would be no, you know, when the Republican Party takes power, if they were to do the same thing, They're like, what, you guys, you guys said it was okay. This is now the practice. This is the way things are done in our country. And we can't allow that to happen. How much of this is because of people's just overwhelming hatred of Donald Trump? Or is that overwhelming hatred of Donald Trump because of the people that are scared of Donald Trump being in power? So they make all these, you know, put all these things about Donald Trump.

That is what it is. And that that is where that hatred comes from. It's because they recognize that he poses a very direct threat to what they call the norms, which is the norms that have allowed them to be in this position to abuse their power. And, you know, I mean, he's a guy. He's already famous. He's already made a ton of money in his life. There's not anything that they can say, well, if you do this,

we're going to take that away from you. And again, like him or not, he says what's on his mind. And you don't have to wonder where he stands on an issue, which can't be said for so many of our politicians who will say one thing, we want to save democracy. Donald Trump is going to be the end of democracy. He heard Robert De Niro the other day saying this in front of the courthouse. And yet they are actually undermining our democracy,

as we speak. And so this is why they're so afraid of him because he is unlike anyone else that we've seen in our lifetimes in politics in that he is unafraid to challenge not only the norms here in our country but even from a geopolitical sense to ask the kind of questions

that in Washington are the sacred cows that nobody is willing to touch you got another good example this is after George Floyd died and there's all these you know that there's obviously a huge amount of focus on on law enforcement and then I guess

you and Tim Scott got together and this is one of those things we were talking about explain how that went down yeah you know I mean there there was quite a unified call to action in the wake of what happened there with George Floyd's death saying, hey, there are some necessary and real reforms that we should make in this country

and try to protect people from those few in law enforcement who would abuse their power. And to me, also alongside that, is actually equip our law enforcement with the kind of support, the kind of training, the kind of access to services for people who are confronted with the worst parts and elements of our society to be able to do their job, to do the job that they signed up to do. And so Tim Scott and I and others worked together across party lines to come up with and support this legislation that would bring about some very real, not in totality going to solve every single problem in the world, but would actually bring about some meaningful change in this area. And it was opposed by Democrats.

Number one, because they didn't want to allow a Republican to be the lead on reform in the law enforcement space, an African American Republican for that matter, which really I talk in the book about a call that I was on with the House Democratic Caucus and how their goal was not to change, bring about positive change or improvement. their goal was to send a message to their donors and their supporters that they are doing something about this problem with their own legislation, even though they knew it had zero chance of becoming enacted into law. None. And so they went with what they would call virtue signal rather than saying, all right, well, let's get together and support this legislation led by Tim Scott

because it'll get us 70% there. Yep, about power and not about actually helping the country. Exactly. Ridiculous. I'm fast forwarding here. And by the way, get the book. I haven't said that yet. There's so many good examples.

You're going to understand the government and the politics so much better when you get done. So get the book. Fast forward a little bit. James Madison often called the father of the constitution referred to these natural rights as the great rights of mankind, intrinsic to every one of us as human beings because he understood that they are in doubt to us by God. No person, institution, or government entity can take away these natural, in unalienable rights. Contrary to what many believe the Bill of Rights was not written to bestow upon us

certain rights and freedom, it was written specifically to protect our unalienable rights from those in government who may abuse their power to seek and seek to undermine such rights. It's crazy that the founding fathers like had all this stuff pegged. Seriously. It's quite incredible. Yeah. And we take it for granted. I know, I, you know, you hear these words and you hear these quotes.

and you read the Constitution, you read the Bill of Rights, but to actually go back and re-look at them, especially in the time that we're living in, go back and read some of the thoughts that they put down in the Federalist papers and to get more insight, because you really wonder, like, how is it possible that so long ago they could see the fragility of this Democratic Republic,

that they could see, like, all right, here's these potential pitfalls. Let's pass the Second Amendment after the first amendment, Man, man. Recognize the flaws of human nature and where this thing will end up. Like, hey, we need to put these things in place right here. Like, you're allowed to say whatever you want. That's one. That's rule one.

Yep. Rule two, you can arm yourself. So if someone tries to stop you from saying what you want to say, you'll be able to fight. Yeah. That's rule two. Yeah. That's rule one and two. They understood human nature so well.

And these guys, most of them were in their 20s, by the way. Most people don't realize this. These guys were, you know, I mean, life was obviously a lot different. back then and but it is quite incredible dude I was having trouble in coloring books when I was Liberty versus security this is another James Madison issued a pressing a warning of all the evils to public liberty war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops every other so war causes all kinds of problems yeah and he knew that they knew that you talk about the Patriot Act in here, expanding all kinds of powers.

And you, this is when you first get elected to Congress again, I'm fast forward, I'm reading some of the highlights, but you get a news headline that says NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily. And it turns out it was all cell phone carriers. Yeah. And your question the book is, how is this legal? Yeah. I wondered.

It wasn't really. when Edward Snowden leaked information to the public revealing the NSA's mass surveillance of Americans, President Obama did not take action to end this illegal warrantless search program. His first reaction was to defend the NSA programs and go after Snowden. Yeah. It's the opposite of what his reaction probably should have been. And what he as a senator promised it would be. I think that was the big thing.

Again, politicians who, you know, and again, maybe he was sincere when he made those speeches as a U.S. Senator about how we must protect the American people from illegal warrantless surveillance for him to so quickly flip-flop and not only not do what he said he would do, but actively take the opposite position. You know, the naysayers, the counter argument to this as well, when he became president, he actually saw the reality of the threats that we face and the necessess. And this is the argument that is made by people who continue to argue for these programs and strengthening these programs today as well. If you only knew what the threats are to our security, then you would also support strengthening the authorities that exist for the NSA and other intelligence agencies. I challenge, because I've been in those briefings, I challenge that premise wholeheartedly because, again, it goes against the very foundation and warnings that we heard from our founding fathers, that when you have people in positions of power who tell you, you must choose to be free or you must choose to be safe, which one is it going to be?

Like, we need new leaders if you're telling us that this is the choice that we have to make, because it's a false choice. Why don't you do your job, protect our liberties, and ensure our security? It's not a choice that any of us should have to make. And if they're telling us, as they are, again, this is a bipartisan problem, for them to say you have to choose security over liberty, go look at some other countries in the world who claim, well, we need to take away your freedom to ensure your safety and your security,

whether it be a physical safety or security, or the security of you being protected from seeing information that might infect your mind with ideas that you shouldn't have. It's such a dangerous proposition, and yet they get, again, we just saw this in the last few months in Congress, where they took those very authorities and strengthened them. They didn't just reauthorize them. They actually strengthened them and gave more access points to big brother, big government, to be able to dip into and gain access to our everyday actions

or the things that we're doing or what we're looking up online. If people say, well, if you got nothing to hide, don't worry about it. Like, no, I got nothing to hide, but that's not the point here. You really want to have big brother, big government, you know, dipping into your Wi-Fi connection and seeing everything that you do. It's not a matter of, well, okay, well, what are you actually looking at? The point is it's none of their fucking business. Liberty and privacy is guaranteed to every American in the Constitution.

And so these very acts, again, without due process, without a warrant, without cause, this is happening. And you may say, well, I got nothing to hide. Well, what happens when you right now? Well, exactly, exactly right now. So what happens when you're the person standing up and saying, hey, men should not be competing against women on the the freaking world surf league on the surf tour biological men should not be convenient you know on the swim teams in in the NCAA and basketball or baseball or whatever it may be well guess what under a certain government very much like the one that we have today there's no reason why given these

authorities that can they they can't say well you know what what you are saying and what you're putting out in your blog on substack is actually undermining peace and people's ability to live, you know, free of that hate speech in our country. So we are surveilling what you're doing and we are going to put a target on your back. And this isn't conjecture. We've seen in the UK and in other countries how they are now treating certain quote unquote hate speech as a punishable and prosecutable crime. So where does this end? That's the point. You're like, okay, well, I'm good today, but this, again, going back to how truly wise and visionary our founders were, is they recognize people will find any excuse under the sun to justify their abuse of power.

And this is why we're putting these guardrails into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to protect a free people's ability to live in a free society. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. this is during your campaign you get in touch or Daniel Ellsberg reaches out to you he's one of the most historic whistleblowers

and the reason of bringing this up because we had RFK Jr. on and then we did, we just did McNamara's book so this is kind of pertinent to what we've been talking about on the podcast here. The Pentagon Papers

after he was embedded with U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1966 he realized how hopeless the war really was. Privately, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara shared that view but McNamara continued to justify.

the war publicly angered by this hypocrisy and the blatant lies to the American people Ellsberg who worked for a think tank called the Rand Corporation released highly classified documents that revealed the government's lies by exposing the truth about what was really going on in Vietnam President Nixon was furious according to the Nixon Oval Office tapes H.R. Haldeman explained the consequences of what Ellsberg had done quote to the ordinary guy all this is a bunch of gobbledy gook but out of the government Probably gook comes a very clear thing. You can't trust the government.

You can't believe what they say, and you can't rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of the presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this because it shows that people do things the president wants to do, even though it's wrong. And the president can be wrong. End quote. Come on. It's, yeah, the, the fact that all that happened, who knows how different it would have been, would have been if there was all the social media and everything right now. Although right now, I think a lot of social media, there's so much social media that it's like how much, I think social media is, I don't know if I'm going to say this. It seems like, what's the, there's a word that my, my kids use for when something's no longer as popular as it was.

Falling out, falling back. Fell off. Fell off. I think social media is starting to fall off a little bit. Would you, you think? In what way? Bro, how much? No, just all of it.

Like, how much can you look at the gram or Twitter? You know what I mean? How much? I think people are like, okay, I get it, dude. Like, there's a lot of stuff. And I think you reach a certain point. And you're like, okay, dude, I can't really look at this more. I don't think.

You think, okay. I think because you're more mature, I think, than a lot of people. In some ways. It's a stretch. Always, by the way. But I think that was probably causing that thought. I think it's, no, I think it's more. Okay.

Well, in this time period, how much different, would this have been any different? You know, how come that statement right there that I just read, which came out in 1966 or 1967, why didn't it have a bigger impact on people understanding that what you said earlier, which is the government is humans. It's a bunch of humans. It's fallible. And it's fallible and they make mistakes and they want power and some of them are benevolent

and some of them aren't. And you can't trust everything that they're saying because they've got an agenda and they want to get reelected. All these things. Lies. Yeah. A government controlled currency.

I think on just to close out, Daniel Ellsberg, and why, you know, why things didn't have a bigger impact then. Again, you look at how these tactics of making an example of someone and how he faced, I think it was like 114 years in prison because of the charges levied against him of violating the Espionage Act. And fast forward to, you know, and it was thrown out because of illegal surveillance that was conducted by the government against him, so they couldn't admit that evidence in a court of law. But then you look under, and a lot of

people don't know this, but that espionage act has historically been used as a political weapon by the executive branch, by the White House, against their political opposition, which was obviously the case with Daniel Ellsberg. But the president that has used the espionage act, more than any other, all other presidents combined in history is Barack Obama. People don't realize that the espionage act is very unique in our justice system, in that the way it was crafted is if you were charged with violating the espionage act, which by the way, Donald Trump is facing multiple felony charges of violating the espionage act, you are not allowed to defend yourself by speaking to your motive.

So they're charging you with a crime of obviously sharing or leaking or misplacing or misusing classified documents. The law itself says that innocent until proven guilty doesn't apply because you are not allowed to say, well, here's why I did what I did. Very simply in a court law, you are not allowed to say here is why I did what I did. to defend yourself. Why is that? Is it because you might somehow incriminate this America somehow by saying, well, I was

doing this because of this and then that becomes, gets more classified information out there? I'm just trying to figure out why would you do that? The Espionage Act was initiated and put into place as a political tool. So for, again,

in Daniel Ellsberg's case, and there have been other cases since, he couldn't make the argument of, I release this information about the truth that was happening in the Vietnam War to serve the public interest. That public interest argument is not allowed to be made in a court of law. This law is still on the books. When I met with Daniel Ellsberg, we talked about this, and I was shocked, as you are, that this exists and you can't defend yourself. You cannot defend yourself. And so I introduced a very simple piece of legislation that took that piece away.

So if you're accused of violating the Espionage Act, you can defend yourself in a court of law, just like you can if you're accused of any other crime. There was no interest in passing it. So your legislation didn't get through? In Congress. No. No. The committee wouldn't even take it up.

That's crazy. And look at Daniel Ellsberg. And now it's being used again today. Like it's over and over and over again. Who is Barack? Obama using it against? He's used it against journalists.

He has used it against a number of different people. I'm trying to remember the name Chelsea. I don't remember the last name. Manning? Yes. Yes. There are a few high-profile names, but there's a lot of names

of people. And I talk about some of those examples about how he used the Espionage Act literally. to force journalists from mainstream news outlets to turn over all of their notebooks, all of their documentation, all of their hard drives in a way that was actually absolutely 100% illegal. It's pretty mind-blowing when you actually start to dig into all of those cases. And then it leads to the next question.

It's like, well, how come more people don't know about this? Because you can't defend yourself? The Washington establishment. they're in on it. And, you know, it's like, hey, you got the White House calling you and you're the New York Times or you're some other outlet. And they're like, you know, if you guys publish these stories, then those access points that you have where we're feeding you information that will allow you to be the breaking news source

that, you know, that tap will be turned off. And in some cases, I would imagine that those outlets are also idealized. Aligned with yes you're painting a very ugly picture today I still see got a section in here about government controlled currency ultimately a central bank digital currency will give them the power to control how we spend our money Here's the truth and a warning once we give up our economic autonomy we give up our freedom once someone else controls our wallet They control our freedom once that freedom is lost it's nearly impossible to get it back Is what happened in Canada with those truckers remember that exactly exactly They froze their bank accounts?

Yeah. That's what I mean. I mean, these things seem so wildly, like, out of the realm of the possible. In the United States, you think, like, oh, in Iran, maybe, like, this is probably happening. But, you know, again, you look at exactly what happened there in Canada with those truckers. They were deemed these things were done against them under their terrorism, counterterrorism laws. their own Canadian citizens were being treated

as domestic terrorists for protesting their COVID mandates and their COVID laws and standing there at the podium again government officials saying here's what we're doing and here's the authority that we're using and we're going to see how we can

not only freeze their bank accounts we're going to take the money that was put in for them in GoFundMe we're going to and they all also wanted to see how they could block the crypto, you know, people who are like, all right, cool, we'll send you some Bitcoin then and try to bypass your government's laws, being willing to stop at nothing to get what they wanted. It is a bleak picture.

It's a bleak picture. But the reason we have to know, we have to know the truth and understand the serious ramifications of what's going on in our country. And I'll go back. And it's why I'm glad that you open with that quote from Abraham Lincoln. Because if we don't educate ourselves and be informed about the truth of what they are doing, because they won't tell us, they'll tell us the opposite of what they're doing. If we don't take action now, then we will find ourselves in that place.

I was on like a military panel the other day, or it was actually a couple months ago now, but they were asking about China and what would you do? What do you think? Are they going to take Taiwan? When will they do it? We got Ukraine going on. We got Israel going to look. What do you think China's going to do?

And I basically said, hey, if I was China, I would just sit back and watch America destroy itself. And then we'll just roll into Taiwan whenever we feel like it, you know, once America's in shambles. Because if you're watching America and you read this book, you'll think they, they'll think they, they've, better get their act together. A lot of it stems from this chapter three, no free speech. One of the things that drew me to the Democratic Party to join the Democratic Party when I was 21 years old was the fact that they seemed to be the most reliable and passionate defenders of free speech. In Hawaii, I saw a political party that represented the big tent, welcoming people of diverse backgrounds and ideas and encouraging robust discussion and debate.

Normally, the Democrats seem to be willing to take courageous stance for free speech and civil liberties, even for speech that might not be popular. sadly that's not the case anymore in their obsessive pursuit of power today's Democrat elite are only interested in protecting speech they approve of while actively trying to silence speech they don't like

sad but true the American another part fast forward a little bit the American Civil Liberties Union the ACLU was for a long time lauded as the stalwart defenders of free speech unfortunately that legacy ended that legacy and reputation

ended abruptly in 2017 when the ACLU completely reversed their position and issued new guidelines stating that ACLU lawyers would now decide which free speech cases to take based on whether that speech contains, quote, values that are contrary to our values and whether that might cause, quote, offense to marginalized groups, end quote. The ACLU. In 1977, the ACLU defended the Nazi Party of America and their rights. to free speech and assembly, which to me was always kind of a, it was one of those things, you know, the statement of, hey, what's the, what's the statement of, I will defend your right to speak. I don't agree with what you're saying, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.

Right. That's like the kind of the ultimate free speech thing. And that's kind of what the ACLU is like, hey, look, you're freaking Nazis, but you have a right to talk and you have a right to assemble. So we'll defend you, even though the ACLU clearly wasn't on board those values, never has been, but they put free speech at the top of the pyramid of what's important. And what was interesting at that time is some of those leaders who made that decision to defend free speech in that example happened to be Jewish attorneys. And the level of

vitriol and anger that they received, a lot of their donors stopped funding them. a lot of Jewish Americans were protesting. They faced a lot of adversity, but they stuck to their guns and making that decision because of their commitment in an absolutist kind of way to defending free speech.

It's certainly not like that right now. No. Fast forward on March. I think, sorry, you compare that to where we are today and you go beyond. you look at what's happening in the college campuses right now. And, you know, I just think it's such an important point to highlight

where there's a difference, you know, there's a difference between, like, you know, we should call out and recognize and reject the rise of anti-Semitism in America and in the world. No question about that. what we're seeing on these college campuses is, and I've been critical of a lot of the protesters who are making it so that it's unsafe for Jewish students to go to school, that a lot of these universities are shutting down their classes and saying,

hey, you're just gonna have to go do virtual learning in your classroom at Columbia or NYU or these other places that Jewish faculty are not made safe. So obviously, when you have a situation where you are creating an unsafe environment and threatening people's literal physical safety, that's where the line is. Peaceful protests on college campuses

have been a hallmark of our country forever. And so even though I didn't like much of the speech that was taking place with these college students, they have the right to say those things. They have the right to express that speech as hate-filled and anti-Semitic as it is. The best way to counter, hate speech or speech that you don't like is with better speech and more speech. And that to me is

what is we have to be careful in how we are approaching these situations. And that's what we need, I think, as a country to appreciate more, especially now where people are so quick to call for the silencing of a person's speech just because they don't like it. March 9, 2023, members of Congress gathered on the floor of the House of Representatives to cast their vote on the protecting speech from government interference act. This bill was introduced largely because of the information revealed in the Twitter files and the ongoing attempts by the Biden-Harris administration to undermine free speech by directing big tech to censor and silence people. Of all the members of Congress voting that day, every Republican voted for the bill to protect

free speech and every Democrat voted against it. The reason the Democrat elite believe that the government, obviously referring to themselves, has not only the right, but the responsibility to, quote, protect the American people from, quote, disinformation. This raises the question, who gets to say what is disinformation or information? What objective government entity is the arbiter of truth versus fiction? That to me, like one of the reasons I highlighted that, because I, I, I, I'm, when I was a kid, it was like the Democrats were the big free speech, free speech people.

And Republicans were, you know, trying to shut everything down. And I should have recognized because it was Tipper Gore. I don't know if you remember Tipper Gore, but she had the, she was real into censorship of music. Interesting. This was Al Gore. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She led the charge. That's why records have labels on him now that says offensive lyrics.

But that was her leading the charge. I should have been a little bit more heads up. But yeah, I was thought, you know, the Democrat. the liberals are free speech people. And here you have literally every Republican voting to protect free speech and every Democrat voting against it. Yeah. This is why the world has changed and Tulsi's kind of stayed the same.

Yeah, exactly. And how short-sighted their position is. You know, they're saying, well, we have to be the ones to protect the American people from speech that will be, quote, unquote, harmful to them. And, of course, they're the only ones who get to decide this, that the whole disinformation governance board that Biden tried to put in place. Again, the tables will turn, my friend. And what happens when you're on the receiving end of that?

What happens when you're the one who's accused of spreading misinformation and disinformation? Yeah. Again, COVID's a good example of, I mean, how much of that stuff that Rogan was saying? Exactly. And he had doctors on to say stuff and he would get shut down and he would get like, It was just terrible. And then, oh, it turns out it's right.

Yeah. It was just right. That's crazy, right? And they're just quiet about it. Totally quiet about it. The bottom line. You do this throughout the book. You kind of give a bottom line thing.

I've only been reading a couple of them. So you capture all your points really well. This one, the idea that we must blindly accept and follow what those in power tell us is true goes against the very essence of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which were created as a resounding rejection of the reigns of kings. churches and authorities. Instead of honoring and upholding the vision that our nation's founders had for us as Americans to live in a free society, the Democrat elite seek to destroy any who dare to challenge them. Thomas Jefferson talked about the cowardly, power hungry leaders like these when he said they, quote, prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.

There you go. Again, jam, a total gem. So prescient. Chapter 4 is they see God as the enemy. Tulsi's not playing around. Freedom of religion is often called the first of our freedoms. The opening line of the First Amendment to the Constitution reads, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

Our nation has deep roots in the foundation of religious liberty. and our founding documents reflect the great care our founders took to protect the rights of people to worship as they see fit or not to worship at all and defend that freedom of expression for every American from persecution or oppression by the state. You'd think that you wouldn't have to even do a chapter about this. I agree. I agree. Fast forward, our founders knew that freedom of religion did not mean freedom from religion. Official meetings often began with prayers and lawmakers often reference God when introducing and debating legislation for most of American history.

Presidential candidates of both parties made frequent reference to God during both during their campaign speeches. And once they were elected to office, the U.S. Constitution prevents the establishment of a national religion, but does not abolish our right to worship as we choose. The First Amendment guarantees not just freedom of religion, but the free exercise of religion. So what does that, what does an attack on that look like? You know, if you're thinking that right now, here's, here's what it looks like and you've got it in the book. In a memo, fast forward, in a memo dated 23 January, 2023, an intelligence analysis or analyst in the FBI's Richmond office authored a memo entitled, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists in radical traditionalist Catholic ideology almost certainly presents new mitigated. opportunities, end quote.

When I read this, I wondered, what are the characteristics of a, quote, radical traditional traditionalist Catholic, end quote. My dad is a Catholic and a lector at St. Jude's in Hawaii. Was he now going to be targeted for going to Mass? Among other things, the analyst, the analyst notes, quote, radical traditionalist Catholics, quote, prefer to attend traditional Latin Mass. One of the recommended courses of actions proposed in this memo to mitigate the purported threat is for the FBI to develop sources within the church who can surveil fellow parishioners in their place of worship. The FBI disavowed this memorandum once it was leaked publicly, saying it does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI.

Hardly a full-throated rejection of the dangerous religious bigotry and unconstitutional abuse of power within the agency. The real threat that this incident exposes does not come from the devout Catholics. It is a threat coming from the Biden administration and agencies like the FBI who have created a culture in which it seems credible that devout people of faith of any religion or spiritual practice pose a threat to our country and should be targeted. Freaking kind of crazy, right? It really is. And again, like with every one of these examples, this is coming. from people who feel completely justified in pursuing this, that it's totally within the realm of not only what's normal,

but what they find to be acceptable in fulfilling their responsibilities, in this case as an FBI analyst. And there are other examples of how, under the Biden administration, they have found certain buzzwords within, the IRS like search algorithms like hey this this red flag should pop up when you see these certain terms being attached to people applying for nonprofit status for example we saw the same thing under Obama and under Obama it was you know it was patriot it was make America great again type of things and and things that we were more targeting of you know what people would consider conservative or

right-wing Republican politics. And under the Biden administration, there are a number of these buzzwords or trigger words that had to do with radical traditionalist Catholics and Christians and other groups with literally citing excerpts from the Bible as a reason for the IRS to like, okay, red flag, stop, hold on,

you need to really take a look at this one. That's insane. It is. You talk about John F. Kennedy in here, discriminated against because of his Catholic, faith you say I've experienced it too when I was running for Congress in 2012 and 2014 my Republican opponent stated publicly that a Hindu should not be allowed to serve in the US Congress and that Hinduism was is quote not compatible with the US Constitution

during my 2016 reelection campaign my Republican opponent stated that because of my religion quote a vote for Tulsi Gabbard is a vote for the devil and quote So Republicans, you know, kind of in the game too. And it costs to be in freaking. This is where I kind of started, again, going to this power theme, this threat of power throughout the book. You say, nothing is more dangerous to our freedom than leaders of a political party who want to be more powerful than God. Yeah. They are envious of God and see him as their primary competitor in their desire to become the supreme controller themselves.

In this sick state of mind, they find joy in being the master who lords over others gaining pleasure from forcing people to do their will. They want us to see them as God, worshiping, loving, and obeying them. This is why they have a vested interest in trying to erase any mention of God in our public life. They need to try and sideline God because they want to be God. They want us to listen to them and them alone. In their quest for control and power, they cannot have people guided by their own consciences, which comes from God.

Whether they admit it or not, they are threatened by God because God is love and there is nothing more powerful than love. Those who choose to have relationship with God draw happiness, inner strength, and confidence from his love. those who have a relationship with God and recognize that real happiness is found in loving God are not tempted by these shiny trinkins dangled before them nor bullied by the sticks they beat us with.

To be antagonistic toward God, spirituality, and people of faith is to be antagonistic toward the foundation of the freedoms enshrined in our Constitution. Anyone, any party that embodies such hostility cannot be trusted to protect our inalienable, God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution and should not be in power. Top ropes have been come off. When you take a step back and they are powerful words with powerful consequence, you know, you will not hear very many of these people that I am speaking of say this out loud. I believe George Soros actually did say that he sees himself as God.

And that's what drives him in doing a lot of the things that he's doing. He's trying to create his own, the world of his own, that he sees in his mind that he wants to exist. But when you actually look at the mindset and actions of so many of these leaders, when you see, for example, a rejection of, and I get into this in the book, a wholesale rejection of objective truth, of things that we know to be true. And I keep going back to this example because it is the most obvious of men are men and women are women. And there are real biological differences. To see how quickly that rejection has taken root within the Democrat elite as

fact as indisputable. And if you dispute it and so actually no, that's not true, then you are excoriated and de-platformed or whatever version of the consequences or the retaliation that that takes. You can see how that this is the mindset that drives that. They want to be able to tell us what we should believe and what's true and what's not. And that's really the danger here. It takes away all of the guardrails of our society that are rooted in objective truth. And instead, they have taken that into their own hands to say, well, no, we will let you know what these new guardrails are and what we believe to be acceptable or not in our society. It gets even better.

Chapter 5, the elitist cabal of warmongers. I'm not known for beating around the bush. You are not beating around the bush. You are not using the indirect approach. And that's an interesting topic. You know, I'm a big proponent of the indirect approach. And when you're writing something like this and you're obviously going very hard in the paint, what amount of people are you losing because they're like, oh, she's just a totally

hostile towards my position over here as a Democrat, as opposed to if you were a little more indirect with your approach, would that, could that be a better way of going about this? Perhaps. It's possible. We don't have the luxury of time right now. This election is the most important in my lifetime for all of the reasons. that I lay out in this book. And I would say the indirect approach has been taken by some people for a very long time. And in my view, we don't have that luxury when it comes to the direct and clear threats to our fundamental rights and freedoms and principles that are under assault in our country.

I think one of the things that makes this a little bit of an indirect approach is where you came from. So in other words, if you had grown up, you know, as a conservative your whole life and you were in the, you know, you had ran as a Republican or whatever and you were Republican in Congress. If all that was happening, if that's what your past was made up of, for you to be saying this stuff, it'd be like, okay, she's just. I agree. But since you came from your background, I think that's why it kind of lands somewhat indirect, because you have an entire history that's predicated upon you being a member of the Democratic Party and serving in the Democratic Party. And so I think that's why it allows for more, for you to be more direct because you're coming from a place where you...

Of experience. Yeah, from experience. And you were a leader. Yeah. You were the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. Like that's where you came from. So I think that's maybe why this works. Because someone, because again, when you talk about the indirect approach, it's like, how can I relate to you?

How am I going to be able to relate to you? So I understand you and you understand me. And now we can talk about whatever, how we're going to execute this mission or how we're going to go forward on this operation or whatever. well here you're you clearly just from your your history you're coming from a place where it's like oh well wait you were like me you know I'm a Democrat right now and you were one wait a second so there's kind of a connection there that that's that's probably why this that's probably why this works better than if you are coming from some from some big conservative background and people would be like oh yeah she's just saying what she's been saying the whole time but

yeah I you know I was asked a similar question by a reporter recently in talking about the book. And he was just like, man, you are very, very harsh in your criticism of the Democratic Party of the Democrat elite. Don't you think you went maybe a little bit too far? And he said, it seems like it's coming from a very visceral place. And I said, no, I'm not going too far. I am speaking from experience.

and, you know, people talk about authenticity and all this other stuff. For me, if I had done anything short of speaking the truth that is rooted in my experience and in many of these other examples that I've shared, then that would be a lie. That would be me putting forward a face and a feeling that is not reflective

of what I know to be true, in my heart. And this is coming from my sincere concern for our country. Everything that I've written in this book is there's no facade, there's no false face being put forward. There's no, well, hey, I know that this talking point is going to really work, so I'm going to throw this in the book. This is a reflection of what is in my heart and, you know, the book is called for love of country. That is where this alarm that I am sounding is coming from. And so, you know, some people will accept it in the way that I am offering it and putting forward.

And others, as you said, they may reject it completely. But, you know, the reason I'm not home in Hawaii surfing and we were talking about, man like yeah it would be it would be really cool to be in a place where it's like yeah you know what I'm just going to like I don't hold public office I'm not running for office I'm going to go hang out in Hawaii and just kind of surf and see how this whole thing shakes out I can't do that and I won't do I of course I could do it I choose not to do it because of you know this is real this is as real as it gets. And what kind of hypocrite would I be if I am the person who stood on that debate stage in 2020 running for president, calling for the kind of change we need to see in our country,

and then seeing this egregious abuse of power by people who I used to work with and I used to associate with in the Democratic Party and then sit back and be like, oh man, our country's going to hell in a handbasket. Shucks. Too bad. I'm not in office. I don't have to do it. Like, I'm I'm not, you know, like, no. I feel a sense of duty and responsibility because of my experience. I'm not saying, well, gosh, I don't know if that's true, or I don't know if that's really happening. Like, no, I've lived through and been through so much of this and seen it and experienced it firsthand. I need to do everything I possibly can to share that with people.

And you may find it painful to read or to listen to. come to your own conclusions, but you can't say that you weren't warned. It's interesting. So B.H. Delhart, who's the guy that wrote a lot about the indirect approach after he was in World War I and the direct approach in World War I was not effective. And so he wrote a lot about the indirect approach. But he doesn't just talk about war. But one of the things he talks about is the first person with a new idea is a martyr and they're going to get stoned.

He's like, that's what happens to martyrs. So when you come up with a new idea, you come up with a, and he gives up all kinds of examples, but one of them is he talks about the progression of naval vessels. And like going from wind to steam, like the first people that supported that would be like, you're an idiot. You'll run out of, you know, fuel for the engines and you'll die at sea, you know, sail. You can always get somewhere. And so the first people that bring, present ideas, they get stone.

They get murdered. That's what happens. And you can see it all the time. But what's interesting is you kind of went through that phase. You got martyred. You know, you got removed from the vice chair position. You know, when you, even when you ran for president, it was like, you got shredded, you know, called a Russian asset, all these things. So you spoke these new ideas as, and that's the fate of the martyr.

The thing that's kind of cool is the person that he talks about that comes next is what he calls the leader and the leader goes Okay, here's I get the idea the idea was right and now I'm going to present this idea in a way where people Understand it and the example one of the examples he uses for that is when people started to want to use tanks There was a whole portion of the military. It's like you're an idiot we used horses we use horses because you know we can run them forever they can eat grass like how are you gonna read? fuel a tank in the middle of battlefield. So what eventually the first couple people that presented these ideas got marred, but eventually someone said, oh, tanks are the new cavalry. And he kind of presented this new opportunity for people that were into cavalry to go, okay, we can get on board of these tanks. And the transition worked. So it'll be interesting.

You are, you perhaps can make this transition from being a martyr, which you were and you got marred for expressing the way you felt picking Bernie Sanders, standing up against Obama. Like you did those things. And you were punished for them. You spoke out against Hillary Clinton. You were punished for that. So you've done your martyr share. And now it's like maybe you're the person that can actually take these ideas and move them

into leadership where people start going, oh yeah, she was right. Maybe you're hanging on long enough that you can go, okay. and you can transition to this point where you become the leader that brings these new ideas to the world. That'd be kind of a pleasant thing to see. You know what's interesting about that is and why throughout the book I point to our founding fathers is that these new ideas are actually the original ideas. And we are now in a place where what they have warned against is actually happening. And so what a cool and amazing opportunity for us as Americans to go back to that foundation and realize like, oh, wow, this is exactly what they were trying to protect us from.

And this becomes the decision point about what, all right, it's here. What are you going to do about it? And it is our test, really, as Americans, when we're, we are faced. this challenge. And so, I can't take credit for this, but to be in a position where we have the opportunity to say, let's, you know, our founding fathers disagreed on a lot of things, but they came together around the most important things that are in our Constitution Bill of Rights. This is that moment where we can have strong disagreements on different issues, but to be able to come together and uphold those principles that are in those founding documents, is

is that's why I'm optimistic and that's why I'm hopeful because I think more and more people are waking up to that reality and that necessity and how visionary they were to say, okay, you know, our government only exists with the consent of the governed. What are you going to do about it? Look in the mirror. If you don't like what's going on, ask yourself like, all right, what am I going to do to save our country? What am I going to do to defend freedom today? And that's, That's actually a very awesome thing. And so going through all of these things that may be harsh truths for people to recognize if they don't already know about it, they haven't already come to that point of understanding about the reality we're facing, it's tough. But I have been really grateful, as I've heard from people who've read the book, who've gone to the end of it. And they said, gosh, I feel really hopeful for the first time in a long time.

It's like, yes. Mission accomplished. That sounds positive, but we're just talking about war mongers. I'm going to jump into that real quick. Without diplomacy, there can be no peace. Without peace, we can not be truly free or prosperous. Ensuring that our military is strong, capable, and ready is essential to defending the security and freedom of our country. As a soldier for 20 years and a member of the House Armed Services Committee for nearly eight years, I know firsthand how critical this is.

The Great Seal of the United States designed in 1782 reminds us of the importance of peace through strength. In its left town, the Bald Eagle holds a bundle of 13 arrows, symbolizing our military strength, and in the right towel in an olive branch, symbolizes our nation's commitment to seeking peace by exhausting all diplomatic efforts before using military force. The State Department describes this commitment, saying, quote, The Eagle always casts its gaze toward the olive branch, signifying that our nation desires to pursue peace but stands ready to defend itself. End quote.

Unfortunately, the warmongering Democrat elite and neocons deride those who seek peace as traitors and agents of the enemy when in fact it is they who have rejected the values of our founding fathers and true patriots. This is another just a wild flip of the script. Yeah. is that, you know, when I was a kid, the Republicans were the warmongers and the hawks, and it's flipped now. It's more likely that a Democrat is going to be pro-war, as crazy as that sounds,

pro-war versus a Republican who's more than likely going to be pro-leaning isolationists, pro-anti-war. That's a very bizarre thing, right? Yeah. Yeah, it is a total flip of the script. And again, the sad thing that I see is there are still Democrats in Congress who I served with who I have a hard time believing that all of a sudden in their heart they believe that all of these wars are the right thing to do. I really, because their record and their history doesn't show that. And so what could have possibly changed other than the fact that they have been so bullied and threatened,

either directly or indirectly, that they have chosen silence and compliance to go along with the big party bosses who are choosing war over peace. And these are simplistic terms. I'm not a pacifist. I'm not an isolationist. I'm a realist. I see the world for what it is and understand that as we make these different foreign policy decisions,

that we should do so with what's in the best interest of the safety, security, and freedom of the American people first. These things that they are doing, they are not conducting the most basic level of analysis that we should require

of our leaders as they are making these decisions. Too often they are emotional decisions of like, well, we got to go punish this bad guy or get rid of that bad, bad dictator, but not actually thinking, they're like, what are the second, third, fourth order consequence is going to be? What could possibly occur after we go and do this thing? Is it going to help improve our security? Is it going to help strengthen our economy? Or is it actually going to hurt the American people and make things worse here at home? So what is the actual objective here? Are you just trying to look strong? Are you just trying to go and say, hey, like, look what I did to this horrible dictator?

Has it actually even helped the people in that country who you claim to be trying to save and protect? No, has it further? You say you're doing this. And Biden's whole foreign policy is around democracy, defeating autocracy. Well, are you really even strengthening democracy? And what about what you're doing to democracy here at home in our own country? And so this is, you know, again, the frustration that I have. with people in my former party who know these things and they have a record of standing up for these things and who have chosen silence and and not even a silent opposition but silence and conformity to once again vote blue no matter who no matter what no matter the costs no matter the consequences no matter who may be harmed by the positions that you're taking and and that that is what it is

It really makes me so angry because they're not the ones who pay the price. They're not the ones who pay the price. We, the American people, are the ones who pay the price, both from an economic standpoint. You look at our national debt. You look at all of the spending, the unquestioned spending that they are doing. And then you look at the thousands of people in West Maui who are still homeless because of the tragic fire that took place almost a year ago there now.

You look at the families in East Palestine, Ohio, who are still dealing with toxic chemical contamination to their water. And you've got, okay, well, the EPA, you know, by the EPA is there, the EPA is helping out, the EPA says your water's clean. I went there, and there's a lot of farmers. There's a lot of people who are saying, well, all of these toxic chemicals have settled in the groundwater or in the bottom of these riverwomenes. and streams, but, you know, they've got farm animals and cows that are being poisoned now

because they've got feed that's now being poisoned with the farms that are growing food for these animals to eat. The ramifications of this and the fact that instead of actually going to the heart of the problem and the government and saying, hey, let's figure out, number one, how we hold those responsible accountable and make them pay for this real true cleanup, but understand the long-term ramifications. It's been over a year now for them. Two of many different examples of like, okay, well, if you really, if you really care about the American people, what are you doing to dedicate our limited resources to being able to provide that support and help to people who need it most? That's what's maddening about this, is they require

unquestioned bending of the knee to say, well, we're going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars here in this other country, that other country, but not even allow the debate. or conversation, say, well, how is this money being spent? Are we actually, like, you know, Rand Paul introduced legislation to say, if you're going to send money to Ukraine, we should appoint an inspector general, a special inspector general, specifically assigned to make sure that we know where this money is going. We already know Ukraine has a long history of being a corrupt government, people on the take. We come out of over 20 years of Afghanistan, where that special inspector general pointed out the waste, the unaccounted for trillions of

dollars, where that money was actually spent. And instead of saying, well, yeah, gosh, accountability, transparency of how we're spending American taxpayer dollars, sure, makes sense. Unanimous vote of support. They wouldn't even allow his amendment to come for a vote on the Senate floor, number one. And number two, what was he called? You're a puppet of Putin. Why are you doing Russia's bidding?

Why are you siding with Russia in this war against Ukraine? It's madness. And when you look at the hardship that Americans are facing in this country, to merely ask for accountability is seen as a quote unquote traitorous act points to everything that I'm identifying in this chapter about those war mongers in Washington. Section here, the war uniparty. Washington is consumed with hyperpartisanship and divisiveness, but there's one issue that consistently brings many Republicans and Democrats together.

War. neocons and neolibs coming together to make up the Washington War Uniparty. In his presidential farewell address, January 17, 1961, President Eisenhower, retired five-star army general warned the American people about the consequences of a cozy relationship between Congress, the executive branch, and the military industrial complex, quote, in the councils of government, we must stand guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought by the military industrial complex, the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

And a quote, he was right. In the 60 years since President Eisenhower delivered this warning, the influence of the military industrial complex and national security state has grown to dangerous and costly levels. A recent study reported that defense contractors pocketed nearly half of the 14 trillion spent by the Department of Defense since 9-11. Without any regard for the cost in human lives or taxpayer dollars, Democrat and Republican leaders have stood together raging one war one regime changing war after another for decades.

That's what we got. It is. The amount of money that gets made by those, by the defense contractors, I mean, can you imagine when that, when Ukraine kicks off, how much, they just got to be looking at going just ching, Ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching, ching. It's just cash, cash, cash. And does that, you know, you wrap that with a little bit, hey, you know, Ukraine got attacked. That's terrible.

Oh, we should help them. Yes, absolutely. Okay. So you can take and be moving in one direction for a benevolent, good reason. But then you can just keep going and going. And, you know, what I'm afraid of in that whole situation is we're, you know, we're, we're standing outside of the bar during a bar fight telling the little guy that's getting kicked in the teeth. Like, keep going. I'll be in in a second. Keep going. Keep going. Don't, don't, don't give up. Don't, don't just, you know, buy that guy a beer. And it's going to be a, you know, it's a disaster. Could end up being a complete disaster. And again, the Ukrainian people got attacked. That's their home. Like, they can't, they have to fight. Yes. But have we removed the idea of some level of compromise from their mind?

And it's going to cost them all of their men and women, by the way. That's where it's so critical that we have leaders who live in the real world and understand the reality of these. very hard or even horrific situations, that it's not some fantasy world that you wish existed. We live in the real world. And this is what I find to be so unacceptable, doesn't even feel like a strong enough word to know that,

you know, it's almost two years into this war now. And not only did our own country's leadership, but President Biden failed to recognize, like, No, this is not a fair fight. There's no way that Ukraine has the military capability or the personnel, the bodies, the actual human lives, to be able to go head to head with Russia. Not going to happen. And so there's only two, you know, kind of ways forward here is the United States and all of these European countries going in and flooding Ukraine with, weapon systems, well, that's happened.

Ukraine is running out of people now to fight this war. And meanwhile, in this parallel battle, Russia has completely reconstituted every one of its weapons systems that has been destroyed to bring them to a point where they're even stronger now than they were when they started this war. and they have many, many, many more people that they are conscripting or enlisting to go in and fight this war. So where does this lead? Where does this lead? You've got France and some of these other NATO countries saying that they want to send in, you know, they want to send in their own troops into Ukraine, of course, as quote unquote advisors.

Well, what happens then when one of them gets killed? Then you have, well, hey, Article 5. in NATO's treaty has been invoked. All right, big U.S. military. Bring in the boys and girls. Send in your troops. So then we look at where does this escalate into, you escalate into where Biden has led us

to the precipice of World War III against a country that has more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world and that has already very openly said that they're willing to use them, whether they're tactical nukes or strategic. and have created the authority in their own laws to say that the use of those nuclear weapons is authorized if Russia faces an existential threat, not a nuclear threat, not in reaction

to a nuclear attack, but if they face an existential threat, how is that defined? You could define that in many, many different ways. And so we are headed in a direction that could very easily, intentionally or unintentionally end in nuclear Armageddon for the world. And I go into this in the book because people talk about nuclear war these days, as though it's just another weapon system in the arsenal that we can use in order to fight and win. But, you know, Ronald Reagan was so correct then as his words are now that a nuclear war cannot

be won and should never be fought. And so this goes back to like, okay, well, well, what do we do then in recognizing the reality of the circumstances? And we've seen, you know, General Millie and many other military leaders say the only way this thing ends is in some kind of a negotiated treaty. Not only did President Biden fail to take the lead in trying to bring about that negotiated end and facilitate it, he and his administration openly blocked other countries who were, who recognized the this very, very early on and who tried to bring about an early end to this war and said, no, don't do it, don't do it. Well, and they said, oh, we got to put Ukraine in a stronger position of negotiating. Well, where are they now?

They are not in that stronger position. There is still no definition of what a win looks like. It's just having people who are subservient to the military industrial complex and making these foreign policy decisions without having the interest of peace or the interest of our country and our security at heart is how we end up in situations like this, where we are less safe and less secure and more in debt, just from an American standpoint, inward looking, what to speak of outward looking at how many Ukrainian lives could have been saved had they taken the lead on this and brought the parties to a table and understand, hey, no one's going to walk away happy. No one's going to walk away

happy but this is the only way this thing ends. I often talk about bar fights and how dumb they are. And look, are there times where you got to do it? Yeah, there are. But if there's a bar fight going on, you should not get involved in it. And you should do everything you can to stop it from happening. And there's almost like you're saying, no good outcome. Like what's the good outcome? You're getting sued. You're getting arrested. You're going to jail. You killed whatever. the case may be. And for some reason, that's a real simplistic way of looking at things, but war is the exact same way. Like there's no going into a war saying, oh, this is what's going to happen and this is the position we'll gain. There's no, there's absolutely no way to predict what's

going to happen in war. And if we haven't figured that out by now, we're idiots. Now, look, if you say, hey, it's, it's World War II and we get attacked and we're going to go and we're going to exert every effort possible to defeat these two enemies, three enemies, turned into two enemies. We're going to do everything we can to defeat them. Okay, we know what the outcome is going to be. It's going to be long, and we're going to keep going until we get there. But when you don't even have a defined outcome going into these things, it's a mystery, what you're going to do.

And then you think you're going to understand all these human components and the weapon systems and the will of the people on both sides. Like there's all these things you think you're going to figure out. You're not. You're not going to figure them out. So it shouldn't even be addressed as an option until all other options are completely freaking exhausted. Exactly. And yet here we are looking at these wars happening and basically saying, yeah, that sounds like, well, how can we help encourage this war instead of saying, hey, how do we stop this thing?

Because the outcome's going to be bad. Yeah. You go to John F. Kennedy here. He's got a speech, 1963 commencement address at American University. First, he's talking about peace. First, let's examine our attitude towards peace itself. Towards peace itself. Too many of us think it's impossible.

Too many think it's unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are man-made. Therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants.

No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again. World peace like community peace does not require that each man love his neighbor. It requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that amenities between nations as between individuals do not last forever. However, fixed our likes and dislikes may seem the tide of time and of very. will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors. So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable and war need not be inevitable by

defining our goal more clearly by making it seem more manageable and less remote. We can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it and to move irresistibly toward it. But I'll be damned if we don't look at instead of looking at peace as the goal. It's like war the goal. Yeah. In a lot of these cases. You have, I'm kind of highlighting some of the political things that you have in this clearly. There's a lot of personal anecdotes and stories that you tell in here. One of them, you write about, you know, you write about the war that you saw, and you right about the troops and the men and women that are wounded and killed and what impact that had on you, what you saw, what that experience was like the final roll calls, very heart-wrenching

to read. But you end up writing this. Every single one of us who raises our right hand and enlists in our armed services knows that in doing so we are volunteering to put our lives on the line to ensure the safety, security, and freedom of our country and the American people. That's a choice we make willingly. If and when that call comes, we stand ready to fulfill our commitment. What we are not volunteering for is to serve as cannon fodder to fuel the profits of the military industrial complex.

We are not volunteering to be used by insecure politicians who feel the need to start wars and put us in harm's way just to make themselves feel strong or look tough. We are not volunteering to be used as expendable pawns feeding the insatiable hunger for power and global domination of American politicians who don't care about our Constitution, our country, or the American people. These very same politicians have the audacity to go and visit the troops, using taxpayer-funded jets to fly to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, or now Poland and Ukraine, staying for just long enough to shake a few hands, gripping and grinning, using our troops for a flighted, photo op they can put in their next campaign advertisement. When they get back to Washington, they go on the news and talk soberly about how they've just, quote, been to war. Give me a break. When they came to our camp in Iraq, I refused to shake their hands and be a part of their

charade. They discussed me and anger me. They don't care about our troops. They don't care about our families. It's all lip service. Their actions tell the real story. Yeah. It's real for us.

it's not real for them. It's words. It's fiery speeches on the floor of the House or the Senate. So many of them, not all, but so many of them have not experienced either directly or indirectly the reality of the consequences of their fiery speeches or the votes that they take. that they'll go and deliver a speech and, you know, cast a vote that has very real consequences on our brothers and sisters. And then they'll go out for drinks with their lobbyist friends from the multi-trillion dollar defense contracting industry. Another good day. And somebody asked me the other night, I was in Washington, D.C., and I spoke at, um,

an event hosted by the Quincy Institute, which is a think tank that talks about how they are more rooted in a foreign policy that is rooted in realism and restraint. And one of the questions that was asked was, you know, a lot of what we talked about. They said how, you know, you've been called a Russian asset, you've been called all of these different really, really hurtful and harmful things. a lot of things that make other people in Washington afraid to speak up. What gives you the strength to not waver in that? And I just shared with them the kinds of attacks, real attacks, that people who you and I know personally have endured or have resulted in them making that ultimate sacrifice?

What's a smear from Hillary Clinton in comparison to that? And who am I, who am I as a person, as an American, as a soldier? If I shrink back from the criticism or the smear attacks coming from the smear attacks coming from a comfortable politician in Washington. And, you know, I paid no attention to, quote, unquote, foreign policy until that first deployment to Iraq. And it changed my life completely. And that has been the driving force, that experience and the many that came after that, that

caused me to do what I'm doing. And I, you know, I, we never forget. We never forget. And it, it, again, it's what drives these experiences that I've shared in this book and elsewhere to come from a very personal place. And it's what has allowed me to maintain clarity in the midst of the swanourer. swamp of Washington, where too many people fall to the allure of what we're talking about, of power or status or fame or attention or adoration and all this other stuff and losing sight of what's most important.

Again, a bunch of, that chapter has obviously hit me very hard reading it. Really good information in there that really puts a lot of things, it brings a lot of things the next chapter is called fomenting racism and I'm going to read a section of this it says on March 7th 1965 the day began with a rally for voting rights one of many that was held in Alabama during the first months of that year in the days leading up to the rally Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at a funeral of a fellow civil rights activist Jimmy Lee Jackson who had been beaten shot and killed at a peaceful protest by a state trooper in Marion, Alabama.

Martin Luther King, Jr., encouraged the crowd, mourning and angered by the murder of their friend, saying Jimmy Lee Jackson's death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly to make the American dream a reality. His death must prove that unmerited suffering does not go unredeemed. We must not be bitter, and we must not harbor ideas

retaliating with violence we must not lose faith in our white brothers a few days later about 600 people most of them black lined up on one side of the Edmund Pettus bridge named after the last Confederate general to serve in the US Senate who is also the leader of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan their plan was to march more than 50 miles to the Alabama state cap cap capitol in Montgomery and demand that governor George Wallace protect black Alabama's right to vote Wallace had gotten wind of this plan ahead of time, however, and declared that, quote, a march cannot and will not be tolerated, adding that it was his duty to ensure the, quote, protection of lives and property of our citizens and those traveling through our state. Standing in Selma and staring across the bridge to the other side, John Lewis and his fellow marchers saw, quote, a sea of blue-helmeted, blue-uniformed Alabama state troopers line after line of them, dozens of battle-ready.

lawmen stretched from one side of the U.S. Highway 80 to the other. The marchers stopped about 50 feet away from the state troopers. One of the troopers, Major John Cloud, shouted into a bullhorn, quote, it would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march. This is an unlawful assembly. You have to disperse. You are ordered to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not continue. Sensing the danger that awaited them if they kept marching, John Lewis and Josea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference attempted to reason with the officer. Williams said, Mr. Major, I would like to have a word.

Can we have a word? Cloud responded, I've got nothing further to say to you and gave the protesters two minutes to clear the bridge. John Lewis knelt on the ground and prayed. Hundreds of other marchers did the same. writing in walking with the wind. He remembers, quote, the clunk of troopers, heavy boots,

the whoops of rebel yells from the white onlookers, the clip-clop of horses' hooves, hitting the hard asphalt on the highway. Most people would have turned and run, not John Lewis. Grounded in his faith in God. He remained kneeling, as did nearly everyone who would come to the march with him that day.

And then he writes, they were upon us. The first of the troopers came over. me a large husky man without a word he swung his club against the left side of my head I didn't feel any pain just the thud of the blow and my legs giving way I raised an arm a reflex motion as I curled up in the prayer for protection position and then the same trooper hit me again everything started to spin I heard something that sounded like gunshots and then a cloud of smoke rose all around us tear gas I'd never experienced tear gas

before this I would learn later was a particularly toxic form called C4 made to induce nausea I began choking coughing I couldn't get air into my lungs I felt as if I was taking my last breath if there was ever a time in my life for me to panic it should have been then but I didn't I remember how strangely calm I felt as I thought this is it people are going to die here I'm going to die here end quote John suffered a skull fracture, retreating on wobbly legs to Brown Chapel. That night, the nation was horrified to see the footage of what had happened on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The brutality used against the freedom riders by law enforcement at the order of the governor shook Americans across the country out of their complacency.

The awakening that occurred that day, which became known as Bloody Sunday, made it possible for Lyndon Johnson. President Lyndon Johnson to win the support necessary to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965. On March 25th, 1965, less than three weeks after Bloody Sunday, Martin Luther King, Jr., speaking from the steps of the state capital in Montgomery, Alabama, declared that segregation was on its deathbed. And so I plead with you this afternoon as we go ahead, remain committed to nonviolence. Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man,

but to win his friendship and understanding. We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience. And that day will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man. I know you are asking today, how long will it take? How long? Not long because no lie can live forever. How long? Not long because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

In this chapter, you use the term we're walking backward. So you highlight some of these events that clearly show we're moving forward towards a place, you know, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., where we judge people on the content of the character, not by the color of their skin. And today you talk about the fact that we're walking backwards, back towards a worse time. What's causing that? What's this fomenting of racism that you speak of in here? When we stand united as Americans, we pose a threat to those who benefit and gain power

from the weakness that comes from divisiveness. and division. And the reason why, you know, I'm citing at length the words of these great iconic leaders from our past is because as bad as things may appear to be today, you look at the adversity that these civil rights leaders faced, not just threats of physical harm, but actual physical harm and not just one incident, but over and over and over again. And instead of resorting to kind of, well, instead of resorting to violence, they had the courage to know that they were pursuing a path that was righteous towards justice, towards equality,

towards making that dream that Martin Luther King had a reality. And in doing so, they didn't trash our country. They didn't say America is a bad place, that you should hate this country. They remained rooted in and focused on those ideals and principles, the words that are in our Declaration of Independence, that point to our potential to bring about, to make Martin Luther King's dream a reality.

And the reason why I included these is because sometimes, you know, we forget where we have come from as a country and how we have gotten to this place. And so when we look to those examples, especially with, you know, college students and people who are just coming into their own in adulthood and trying to figure out both who they're, are and what this country is about.

And someone told me a statistic yesterday that over 30% of the Gen Z generation, they don't consider themselves patriots, that they don't appreciate and they don't like America as a country. They're not proud to be Americans. And I think these reminders are important for us because we can look to how those who have come before us, have chosen to react to times of great darkness as a country and great adversity. And as we look to, which is why history is so important for us and to be taught in our schools and for us as Americans to remember is at times of great ugliness and racism and hatred

and adversity in the harshest possible way, how do the leaders who inspire us respond? because it's a teachable moment to how, again, when we look in the mirror and ask ourselves, what am I doing about what's wrong in our country today? We can draw that inspiration in remembering what our potential is as a country and how it's not someone else who's going to come in and snap their fingers and make this happen. This will only happen. True progress will only happen for us as a country. if we take it upon ourselves to make it happen and be inspired by these great leaders of our past

who have walked a more harsh, more difficult, more challenging and threatening path than we could even imagine today. You know, speaking of dividing us, there's another division out there that you talk about in chapter seven, and that is what's true? Yeah. Like the truth. And you mentioned this earlier. You know, you mentioned some of the male, female, what is a woman type stuff.

You got a section in here where you say when Congressman Mark Takano, a Democrat from California, was asked in a congressional hearing, if Mike Tyson declared today that he is now a woman, should he be allowed to compete against women boxers? Tecano replied, without hesitation, yes. I'll speech this for a moment when I saw the video of this exchange. Did he say yes because he really believes Mike Tyson would become a woman simply by declaring that to be the reality? Or did he say yes because he was too afraid to say the truth? There's no logic that can explain this insanity. What is crystal clear is that Democrats like Congressman Takano do not care about women at all, or in this case the physical harm that would befall female boxers if they were forced to compete against male boxers like Tyson.

It's wildness, right? But that's those are claims that are being made. Like just like that without hesitation, without any common sense, without any qualms about making that statement in the United States Congress. And I think about that was I see like, you know, the Tyson-Paul fight is coming up. And so, you know, you see all these videos of Mike Tyson training and just, man, like even, I think he's like 57 years old now and his agility and his power and strength still, still. You put a 57 year old Mike Tyson against a 25 year old female boxer at the top of her game. No.

Yeah. No. It's the anti-woman vibe that you mentioned in the book. You know, that's people forget about that. Like, what about the women? You know, I have three daughters and one son. And, you know, my daughters compete in jiu-jitsu and compete in wrestling. And there's a big difference.

Interesting, hey, there are some females out there that win high school wrestling, like state championships, which is awesome. I respect it. Outstanding. But a vast majority, it's not fair. It's not, it's, it's, it's just not fair, you know, for that to be taking place. I can tell you my daughters compared to young male wrestlers and my son wrestled too. There's no, it's not fair.

It's just not fair, period. And to say that's, to do this is actually anti-girl. Yes. In the high school situation, anti-woman and the professional thing seems like a pretty fair assessment to me. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and it's based on fact.

and reality. And it's not a sexist statement to make to say that there are biological differences between men and women. It is literal fact. And there are differences for a reason. And it's not to say one is greater than or less than. It's just to say, you know, we are different as human beings. It's, it, it, the thing that, that, uh, kind of drives this home is how for my entire life, the Democrat party has claimed to be the sole party that stands for women. The sole party that, uh, is for lifting up women and the Republican party, and they still make this argument, uh, hypocritically enough that, that the Republican party is against women. And yet the Democrat party is the, um, the Democrat party is the,

one that is is not only propagating this insane idea that there are no differences between a man and woman and they can't even define what a woman is anymore. You know, they are trying to erase the word woman from our language. And they're doing so by beginning to make these changes in language in the congressional house rules, in government regulations, to say, you know, know, to take away the word woman, to take away the word mother, to take away the word daughter, things that are specifically created to identify someone of the female sex. They're trying to erase now and replace with, you know, ambiguous words like birthing person or person who experiences

menstruation or a chest feeder. It's, you know, it is the height of hatred and hostility. towards women by those who are doing this. And so not only should we as women stand up and call this out for what it is, but men who love and appreciate women should have the courage to do the same. And that's what's so bizarre about this is that there is not a single Democrat in Congress,

in the House or the Senate, that has done this, male or female. Not a single one. Not a single parent of young daughters, Democrat in Congress, who at some point, if your daughter goes and wants to compete in some sport in school, whether at a young age or in high school or in college,

if this goes on unchecked, it's going to get worse. It's going to get far worse. And then what? Your silence and you're going along with this, or worse yet even you're advocating for this. You're going to live with the consequences of this. Well, speaking of children and families, chapter eight here, families under fire. You say this, the elitist ridicule and fight against the freedom of parents to choose where their child goes to school.

They indoctrinate our children from a very young age with their narrative about systemic racism, what pronouns to use, sexual orientation, and transgender ideology. They are playing the long game, inculcating their so-called progressive agenda. into our children when they're very young and discouraging any real challenge question or critical thought. They encourage children to pursue irreversible hormone treatment and surgeries in the name of gender of quote gender affirming care often without the knowledge of the child's parents. When parents object to any of this at a minimum, they are ridiculed on social media rebuked by the schools and teachers unions threatened that their child may be forcibly removed from their care

and sometimes even targeted as domestic terrorists by the Biden administration. It's weird that you have to write this kind of stuff, in my opinion. Like bizarre a world. Yeah. Yeah. President Biden stood up a whole new domestic terror unit within the Department of Homeland Security, specifically as a response to parents going to Board of Education meetings and opposing exactly what I laid out in there.

This is the United States of America, and this is happening. Parents versus the government, one of the most troubling elements of the Democrat elites agenda is the sexualization of young children at the hands of so-called progressive teachers, administrators, and politicians. At a time when our kids are supposed to be able to enjoy their innocence and childhood, running outside, playing pretend, and arguing over whether Godzilla, or King Kong would win in a fight, they are instead being asked questions

about their gender identities and forced to decide what their sexualities are. They are doing this through children's TV shows and books written specifically for young kids. And you talk about a book in here that you said is just some of the most disgusting pictures that you've seen in your life. It's a kid's book.

Yes. Yes. It's a book called Gender Queer. I had heard about it, and I've heard people talk about how horrible it is. And I just thought, okay, well, you know, how bad could it really be? Maybe you're making a big deal out of something that probably isn't that serious until I met with some of these parents who are actually courageously standing up and making these points. And they brought a stack of books to the meeting. And so as we were talking, I just started grabbing some of the books and thumbing through it.

And I was shocked. I was shocked by many of these books, but specifically the one I'm talking about is, is called genderqueer and what do they call it? It's a graphic novel and targeted towards middle schoolers. And the kinds of sexual acts that were depicted in these drawings was the worst thing that I've seen. It was disgusting beyond belief in any general sense, but especially within the context of the intended target audience.

for that book. And these are books that are in schools? These are books that are in schools. These are books that are on reading lists for kids in middle school. These are books where parents who've tried to get, it is trying to get these schools removed from school libraries have been targeted as being anti-free speech. So, you know, you can't, as a parent, want to make sure that your children are being you know, exposed to age-appropriate books as they're going through public schools,

they are the ones who, under this administration, and this leadership, are being told, no, you're wrong, and you're against free speech, and you're for burning, you know, the quote-unquote burning books. Luckily, my kids are a little older because it just sounds like it's just crazy time in there. Weird thing is, both my parents were teachers, but they were school teachers. My mom taught English. My dad taught history. Like, these are words that you used to speak,

and this is the history of, you know, the country and the world. That's what they taught. Yeah. And this is the thing, you know, and parents, you know, you are responsible for raising your children. And, you know, you may have a certain value set in, and how you want to raise your children that I may disagree with. Hey, they're your kids.

They're your responsibility. raise them and instill the values that you believe in, whether they be so-called, quote-unquote, progressive values or conservative values, that's your job. It's not the job of the education system to decide what values that they want and they believe is right to instill into your children. And this kind of goes back to, you know, the challenge of what is the role of government in our society? Yes.

Okay, let's talk about reading and, you know, writing and, you know, writing. math and science and history and the Constitution and civics. These are our foundational things that make up an education for a child. But this is the problem of where our federally driven education system has gotten in promoting a very specific agenda and not only promoting that value set in that agenda that is it is their quote unquote progressive agenda. But they are saying, well, parents, we're taking over this. You don't even get to have a say in what we are teaching your child and school.

And oh, by the way, we're not even going to give you the choice to go and choose a charter school or a private school or a religious school, even though we're using your taxpayer dollars to quote unquote educate. your children. Craziness. You say this as well. Our country's elite see the well-being of people and families as an afterthought to the well-being of the economy. Their measure of success is whether or not someone has a college degree, the fancier,

more expensive school, the better. They don't even care what the degree is in. They just assume that because you have a piece of paper with diploma written across the top, You're a more intelligent, you're a more intelligent, successful person. This has resulted in an entire generation of Americans buried in lifelong student loan debt. Unable to get a job in their chosen field, holding a piece of paper that has become increasingly meaningless. Every month, the health care, the health of our country is measured by those in the government and the media through unemployment numbers and gross domestic product. A good year means unemployment is down and GDP is up, but they are not measuring how many people in this country are actually happy.

Many people who have good paying jobs, fancy college degrees, and lots of money are unhappy and divorced with children who won't talk to them. They're not measuring the deep sadness and longing of a new mother who wants nothing more than to raise her child at home. Instead, the politicians say she should be grateful because they're giving her taxpayer dollar to hand over her child to a stranger at daycare. They're not measuring the ever-increasing number of Americans on antidepressants because of the anxiety caused by their job or family life being in shambles. To the elite, we are all worker

bees whose purpose in life is to fuel the machine of the nation's economy and the corporate industrial complex. The harder we work, the more taxes we pay, the more revenue the government is able to raise, which feeds into the establishment's ability to grow and build more power. They don't care about the people. They've forgotten that the purpose of government is to be limited and defend our right to live free in the way that we choose. And I'm going to close out my little reading of this book here with this section. The solution is simple. We need leaders, Democrats, independents, and Republicans to uphold the Constitution and put the well-being and interests of the people first.

Our founders place the power in the hands of the Republicans. American people to decide who we want to serve in our government our government when election day comes around cast your vote carefully those who don't care about the people do not deserve the honor of serving the people in our government it's on us it's on us it's on us how do we have the biggest impact so what can What can the person that's listening to this right now do to have the biggest impact in the coming election, in their communities in America? The bare minimum, be informed and defend your freedom by using it and cast your vote. That's the very, very, very basic bare minimum.

We shouldn't settle for the bare minimum. Don't underestimate your influence. And this is a message I share with small groups, big groups, whether you're a stay-at-home parent or you're the CEO of a massive corporation. Don't underestimate your power and your influence. And I tell people, look in your phone. How many phone numbers do you have in your phone? Most people have quite a few. let's say you only have 10.

Well, those are 10 people who you know and who trust you will listen to you. And if you share what's on your heart, what your concerns are, and why you are spurred to take action to save our country, call those 10 people and have a conversation. Call those 50 people. Call those people who maybe you haven't talked to in a long time or the people who you know may not already be informed or may not see the truth and the reality of the seriousness of the three. that we face to our fundamental principles and values as a country. Too many people believe that their voice and their vote won't make a difference. That's nonsense. It is literally the only thing, the only thing that will make a difference in our effort

to save our country. There are so many, you know, we can have conversations about, you know, how we tackle immigration reform and how we tackle health care and all of the massive problems with health care in our country and education. These are debates and conversations we need to have as a country. But unless we take this first step of defending the fundamental principles and values that allow us to have those debates and those dialogues and to disagree privately and publicly and come to better and stronger solutions to solve these problems, unless we do that,

then we won't even have the opportunity. We won't have the opportunity to exercise those freedoms. Don't underestimate your power, your influence, and singularly your ability to take action and save our country. When you say be informed, what's the best way to be informed in a balanced way? Is it to listen to with big ears to lots of different inputs and suss out what you think somewhere makes sense somewhere? I mean, let's face it, the media has all kinds of agendas that they're trying to push and get through. And social media has all kinds of agenda.

What do you recommend for a good way to stay informed? Yeah. Listen and read to different views, different perspectives, understand that they're, you know, especially amongst the mainstream media, there is a bias. But once you kind of, you know, for me, like I'll, I listen to a bunch of different podcasts, usually while I'm working out. And, you know, there are some that I listen to that have views that I agree with, but then I also go and listen to others who I already know from the outset.

Very likely they're coming from a different value standpoint. But I want to know and better understand what is their argument? What's the narrative that they're pushing? And I always learn a lot. across the board. Being informed doesn't mean just going to the echo chamber where you feel comfortable. It's actually putting yourself in a place

where you might not feel comfortable where, where, you know, and we talked about this a little bit earlier, where something that you know maybe, or you believe to be right is challenged, a view on a particular issue. And that, you know, I've experienced, allows me at the opportunity to be like, oh, wow, okay, I never, I never thought.

about this from that angle before, let me go and do some more work and do some more research and better understand that view or that perspective or something that is maybe a whole in my own argument and that either allows us the opportunity to strengthen our position by becoming better informed or it's like, oh gosh, that's actually a really valid point that's worth considering and maybe I need to rethink this. We end up better as individuals, more informed and holding stronger positions. But more importantly, it allows us to be able to take that knowledge and actually use it to help guide others and to be able to make sure that we are getting to a place

of real solutions and a stronger place as a country. Yeah, something I picked up on the military. If you and I are disagreeing about a plan, for instance, my goal, I look and think to myself, how are you right and I'm wrong? My goal is that you're right and I'm wrong. That's my goal. And if you have that attitude, it's going to help you get to a better, more solid base of hopefully truth or at least closer to it than if you just get in your own head and put up walls around

defending your own position. Exactly. That's bad. Exactly. What is your political future look like right now? Do you have any idea? Did RFK? Did RFK talk to you about RFK Jr.

talked to you about being? I thought you might get a VP nod from RFK. We have had many conversations. I've gotten to know him over the past. I think it's been over the past year, year and a half or so. And we've become friends as a result of that. I respect and appreciate him.

And he asked me to be his running mate. Oh, really? Yeah. I took. Does anyone know that? How did I miss that? A couple of people know that. Does like millions of people know that right now?

Or is they just finding out right now? No. It broke news for like a couple of days. And then it kind of, you know, the news cycle moved on. I really carefully thought this through and considered it seriously and took the time in doing so. Ultimately, I respectfully declined. Do you think you'll get asked by Trump? I don't know.

I don't know. Word on the street is, you know, I'm one of the names that's being considered. who knows? For me, my mission in what I'm trying to do, and this book is a part of that greater mission in our country to help wake people up who aren't already aware of the truth about what's happening and to spur that action by every American, to want to save our country. That doesn't change. no matter what. I have some friends that absolutely hate Donald Trump and love you. It would throw them into a real discombobulated scenario.

Discombobulated. I think that's the, I think, I think to that point, though, and this is what I'm encouraging people to do who are, I have friends who fall into that category as well, and people who I meet along the way is, it's important for us to set our emotions aside right now and understand really truly what's at stake. And while you may not be happy with the options that are on the table,

this is where that pragmatism comes in to play and make the decision at a minimum to remove those from office who are so brazenly abusing their power and undermining our freedom and our democracy. That is the essential task that we have. Speaking of tasks, you're always task focused.

What's like your day-to-day gig right now? Like, what are you doing every day? I know you've been on the road a ton. Has it been book promotion stuff? It's, you know, the book is really a vehicle to be able to get in front of people and talk to them, whether it be in a speech, in a podcast or different media forms. That is what I'm doing with my time. And I, you know, I left Hawaii.

I did my Army Reserve annual training, ended it in Hawaii on April 14th. And you're a lieutenant colonel? Yes. Get some, ma'am. Yes. I had dinner with my parents before I took off, and my mom was just like, all right, when am we going to see again? I was like, honestly, I will likely not be home until after November 5th. Wow.

These aren't just words to me. I really believe, I really believe in. the seriousness of this moment for our country. And I am dedicated to doing everything that I possibly can in my own small way to try to spur that action so that we can save our country. I don't, I don't want to be on the other end of this on November 6th and have any regret in thinking like, man, you know, if only I had done more, if only I had reached out more. And this is the thing is this is a unique position that I have found myself in, is as someone, as you point out, as someone who's left the Democrat Party

and who has lived through and seen these experiences that a lot of people just don't have access to or exposure to because not a lot of politicians are willing to step up and speak the truth about what's really going on. I'm able to uniquely connect with people like friends of yours and mine and connect with independence, connect with libertarians, connect with people who feel politically homeless,

listen, aren't quite sure what to do in this election. And if I can connect with them and help encourage them to like, hey, now is the moment we've got to focus on the most important thing and then get after the tough work that comes after that to get our country back on track and encourage other servant leaders to step up, to run for office so that, you know, we have great choices of leaders to choose from. if I can make that impact in a way that will help influence the outcome of this election, I got to do my very best. Well, you got your work cut out for you.

That's for sure. It's going to be a wild ride for the next few months as we roll into this election. Yes. Probably a good place to wrap up. I know you're available on the interwebs. You're on, you're at TulsiGabbard.com. You're on Twitter. Twitter X.

I patented that name. Twitter X. Twitter X, Instagram, Facebook. YouTube and Rumble. You're all at Tulsi Gabbard. Echo Charles, any questions? Yeah. Is math racist?

Depends who you ask. I'm asking you. Did you say is math? Is math racist? Yeah. It is not. It is not. Math is not racist.

However, if you ask certain people who are of the identity politics, ilk, that math is racist. I couldn't even begin to understand the argument behind it. What's the, I thought I heard something, but I don't know. It didn't make sense. So do you know that what they're saying? Like, well, how is math racist in their view? I honestly don't. I really don't. And I haven't dug into the theory, the theory behind it. I think, and that's what I got to say. This is a big, I think, so I don't misquote nobody. But I think it's because certain like social,

socioeconomic groups haven't learned as much math as maybe other socioeconomic groups. So therefore, math is the racist one. Well, wouldn't it be socioeconomically-ist? Bro, that's just what I heard. I mean, maybe, maybe not. I don't know. I didn't come up with this stuff, bro, I'm just asking. I'll say what, my suspicions, like, when I took chemistry in high school,

that didn't seem to like white people. It was real hard on me. Brutal, man. It was brutal. The chemistry. All right. So, yeah. So yeah, it doesn't seem racist, but all right, cool.

Thanks for that answer. That was your question. Waterwoman. Wait, do you go by Water Women still ever or no? Proudly. Proudly. Proudly. For people who don't know what we're talking about, you got to go listen to the five-hour

podcast. Waterwoman. Waterwoman was in the house. Yes, proudly. Any final thoughts, Tulsi? Thank you. We've talked about a lot of serious things today. And they warrant every moment of seriousness.

and reflection. So if nothing else for people who are watching and for people who are listening, if you're not convinced, if you're not sold, I just encourage you to dig deeper. Be a critical thinker. Draw your own conclusions, but we can't afford to be ignorant in this moment. Well, I can't agree with that more. So thank you for coming back. Thank you for Great to see you guys. For joining us once again. We don't have to give you COVID this time, which is nice. It's so good to hear your perspective.

And thanks for your service, you know, both in the government, you know, as a politician and then in the military. And thank you for doing what you're doing right now to try and help people have a clearer vision of what's going on so that we can make good decisions. Yes. And we can go out there and live and lead. with a little bit more Aloha. There you go. So thanks for coming back.

Thank you. And with that, Tulsi Gabbard has left the building. And Echo Charles. Would you get out of that? Well, you know, it's a, it's a very sobering view. You know, certain things.

And so I do enjoy my, not be the right word, but I do feel like I benefit and appreciate these kinds of like real direct views on things. Because I don't think about all this stuff every day, you know. And I'm in a very specific situation where some of this stuff doesn't apply to me directly. I know indirectly it totally does. So, yeah, I think it's kind of, I think it's important to understand a lot of this stuff. Even like Joe Kent when he was here.

And he only spoke briefly, briefly about the border. I was like, ooh, right? because I don't think about that. So even though I probably should. And that's actually even a reminder that I probably should think a little bit more about that kind of stuff, you know? So yeah.

Yeah, well, one of her pleas at the end there was to be informed. Yeah, right? And think through this stuff. And yeah, certainly there's there's history happening right now, right? There's developments. There's the evolution of the country.

It's happening right now. Yeah. Like the evolution of the country. Yeah. Just like a business or a sports team. You know sports teams have dynasties and they last for a while

and then they lose some people and then someone gets fired and this guy gets injured and then they're down and they got to rebuild hopefully maybe not, maybe they go bankrupt. So we're part of that right now in the country, obviously.

So to not pay attention to it at all. Well, yeah, we get, I don't know if there's a good thing, bad thing or kind of both, I guess, where I'm like in a bubble in a way where, you know, my kids go to charter school. They don't get affected by anything.

And, bro, my kids tell me everything. And they're telling this and that. So I'm pretty well informed. And they're young yet. You know, oldest one is 11. Aside from my nephew who just graduated, which he's doing fine. He's going to freak out of college for architecture.

He's doing fine, is what I'm saying. Awesome. So no one's coming home with these crazy questions or these crazy books or whatever. My younger kids go to charter school and they don't play that stuff, or they don't do that kind of stuff. stop. It's like they're real. And my kids talk to me. They don't talk about anything. They're

asking me the questions about this. And aside from that, but I don't think about this. Kind of, you know, who do I hang out with you? And freaking, you know, these guys who are into the same stuff as me. So I don't see all these like issues that are going on. I don't see it yet. So kind of the alarming part of it is all you got to do is play it out in your mind if, you know, let's say, slippery slope, we'll say that all of a sudden it'll be upon me. And, And by that time, it could be too late. See what I'm saying? That's what you want to be watching out for.

You want to be informed. It's an interesting thing. Look, there's people, which is a bummer, that just hate Tulsi, which is a weird thing. Because when you meet her and she's super nice and she's obviously super articulate and smart and cares about people and all that stuff. But there's, despite any of that, what I just said, all these positive attributes, there's people that hate her. Yeah. And there's people that as soon as she denounced Hillary or went with Bernie Sanders, like she became a hated person.

When she went against Obama on Syria, she became a hated person. Now certainly that she's left the Democratic Party, hated person. Now look, there's other people that actually think it's awesome and think that she's an open-minded person that looked around and said, hey, wait, this is one I was on board for. so I hope that people can listen to what she says in an open-minded way and take it on board as opposed to just saying, oh, she's not a, she doesn't like the Democrat Party, so I hate her, the Democrat Party. Maybe someone will come on here that's from the Democrat Party that has a better review that they could inform us of their assessment. Yeah, it seems like, and yeah, sure, she doesn't like the Democratic Party.

That was clear, but it's not just for no reason. It's like she's like very clearly just against the abuse of power and that whole part of it. That's really what it is. It can be, it doesn't matter what party it is, if that was the prevalent thing that she interpreted from this group, from the inside, by the way, that she would probably dislike that other group as well. So I look at it as some people, a lot of politicians, especially if they're trying to do good. And it's, it's hard to like argue with these things individually, you know, where it's like, hey, we're against abuse of power.

We're against this for these reasons. It's kind of hard to be like, well, you know, I'm for that. You know, it's like it is. So she's in a position where I sure. But you know what makes that possible is having like the right media, the right propaganda machine around what you're saying. because when you say, look, this is going to destroy the country. People are like, oh, well, I don't want to destroy the country. So I guess we need to be invasive in our assessment and digital tracking of people.

Like, this is going to destroy the country if we don't do this. You're like, oh, I don't want to destroy the country. Okay, go ahead and track everything. Or, you know, this is, we need these kind of books. Otherwise, kids are going to go, you know, okay. This is freedom of speech. Oh, I support freedom of speech. Okay, then these kids can read these books.

You see what I'm saying? If there's the right spin on things, the right propaganda around things, you can definitely, look, people are human beings are so influential. Or sorry, influenceable and their minds are so malleable. Yeah, impressionable. What is, gullible? The whole deal. The whole jam. It's all out there.

And if you're not paying attention to it, next thing you know, you look up and you're doing crazy things. Yeah. And here's the thing, bro, I'm not above it, by the way. like there's stuff I can't think of anything up top of my head because I haven't been thinking about it for a while but where someone will mention something and I'll be like yeah I'm not really down for that and then I'm thinking like why and I'm like oh I heard it it's true it's true like but at this way there are certain things that bro I don't think about it that deep bro it just sounds good or bad or whatever you know there's certain things like that 100% but then there's other things where it's like hey if someone says something it's kind of like, okay, why do they think that?

Okay, you know, these, you know, these people competing in female sports who are male. Like, okay, why is that bad? And, you know, and you think, if you go down the line, think, why is it bad? Or why do I agree or disagree with it? If you go down the line and you come to, like, a conclusion, but you've got to be informed, then, okay, it's going to make sense, but probably not everything's like that. You got to admit. So the point is, it makes sense to a degree that some, at the very least, some people are like that.

Super impressionable. They hear something cool that sounds good from someone they like the vibe. They like the sound of this person. And freaking hell, yeah, I'm on board with that. You know, in the underground podcast, we covered all those biases. Like, we've gone through all different kinds of biases. But one thing when it comes to, for me, like this idea of being informed, what's that, give me that definition you gave of meta the other day.

Meta. Oh, yeah, like the fundamental quality that gives rise to the, you know, more identifiable quality. Yeah. Or skill or whatever. Yeah. So that's not it. But basically, basically, when I look at any piece of news, right, I don't believe it. I basically don't believe it.

I take it as a data point that I'm going to put into this huge calculus. Calculus. I don't want to use it because it's bigger than calculus though. It's bigger than calculus. Calculus is like one problem. It gets put into this whole kind of underlying vibe that's happening in the world. Oh, yeah. I understand. So it's all part of the, it's all part of the calculus that's going in,

but it's bigger than just one piece of calculus. It's a whole, it's a whole underlying sort of theme of what's happening in a certain area. Yeah. And you only can just add a little bit to it, take a little bit away from it, but you can't change. I don't see one story about something and go, oh, well, that's my opinion now. Yeah. Especially because you got to watch out for your own bias,

because when you see something that supports what you kind of think anyways, you 100% buy into that story. And when you see something that doesn't support what you already believe, then you're like, that's bullshit. That's the trap that everyone falls into. So for me, I'd just be like, yeah, that's probably not true or parts of that are true, true and false, and parts of this are true and false.

And I'm going to take a real, I'm going to take a real slow and not judgmental way, of looking at the world. Yeah. Like very, very non-judgmental and non, like, I don't know the answer. I don't know what's happening on the ground in this country or that country.

I don't know what's happening. I'm not there. And so I'm not, when I see a piece of news about it, I go, oh, well, there's going to be some truth into that piece of news. Yeah. Into that video, into that social media clip that's going viral or whatever.

Like there's going to be some truth in there. There's also going to be some agenda in there. And guess what? The counter to that is going to give you the same thing. Some level of truth, some level of not truth, some level of spin and agenda. So being in the military of being, you know, you've heard me say it a thousand times before, the first report is always wrong. Like the first report is always wrong. Why?

Because it's wrapped up in emotions. It's wrapped up because it's only one person's perspective. There's panic in those things. There's misinformation that's not on purpose, but it's like, we didn't see what happened. So I've carried that idea into not just the first report, but basically into kind of all reports. That all reports are one person's perspective of a thing that are going to help you hopefully paint a larger, more accurate picture over an extended period of time and space. Because the further you get away from things, they look different in both time and space. So when I get right down on the ground, this is what happened.

That's terrible. You back up a little bit or you let some time go. I go, oh, I see why that happened. Or you get down the ground. You're like, oh, that's great. And you back away a little bit and you're going, wait a second. That wasn't that great. And actually, that's bad.

So time and space, just like the theory of relativity, time and space is malleable. It also changes your perception and the reality of things that occur. whether it was a day ago a year ago a month ago ten years ago and those those things change when you start putting all the other lenses that have now been been placed on your eyes given all the other information that you've taken on board so be informed yeah but be informed with an open mind yeah pay attention everything that's coming in to all these different data points that you're you're getting but don't wait them too heavy

heavily. Or at least make sure you wait them one way or the other. Know that if you get something from Fox News, it's got to have this spin. If you've got something from MSNBC, it's going to have a different spin. Know that instead of just thinking, well, MSNBC is right or Fox News is right. You can't be thinking that way. You've got to think, here's what, here's the input that I'm getting. Here's the biases around the input that I'm getting.

Here's the biases from the source. of the input that I'm getting. But a lot of people freak out a lot of little things, a lot of little changes. It's very difficult. It's not a great idea to live like that. So be careful. Be careful out there.

One thing that we can be sure about. Yes. Is that we're lifting. You did squats today? Squats today this morning. Yeah, morning squats. And I know you're different. But squats in the morning versus in the afternoon is like,

it hits different. Like I'm way more stiff. I personally am way more stiff. In the morning? Oh, for sure. So I had to add a warm-up set. I'm like doing some stuff. But we got through it.

We did it successfully too, by the way. But, you know, sitting down for four hours afterwards straight. Not the best move. Yeah, you know, it makes a little bit more challenging. Did you get some protein? We got some protein. I got two mulks. Two mocks.

So we're doing good. 60 grams of protein right there. Outstanding, I just have one. I'm to have drinking one right now. A little banana activity on the mulk. So, jocofuel, doctor. If you need fuel for your system, go to joccofuel.com. You can get protein.

You can get energy. You can get hydrate now. Hydrates are just so good. So good. Yeah. And I know we say that about everything, which quite frankly warrants it because the face, like, for real, even the mulk. Like, okay, so I'll be honest with you. Protein ready to drink.

I'm like, whatever. If I'm starving and I'm risking catabolic breakdown, all this stuff or whatever, and I'm on the road or something like that. And I'm like, all right, bro, I'll go buy a protein from the, the gas station or whatever and then you know we'll do it we'll handle it and we'll keep moving but I'm not into him I was never like into them you know because brother they don't taste that good all the time whatever but these like taste good so these are like part like for real taste good yeah it's a dessert scenario they're part of that daily daily routine and same

thing about the hydrate the hydrates off the hook yeah and this is and look I know I can be biased I thought but my kids they'll just roll they'll like my son he'll just be rolling around with one all day he got one going all day I'm like, freaking do it. That's freaking outstanding. Yeah. It's so good.

Yeah. So good. Well, Memorial Day. Yeah. We did like Murph in the morning. And then it went and did a bunch of rounds. And rounds were stupid. It was like just killers.

Everyone was a killer. And did a bunch of rounds. It came home right into the sauna for the 30 minute reset. But anyways. And this is like Rana was doing this with me. And so, we were both just just there was by the time so my wife was my wife did mirth sauna and there was just hydrate bottles all over my house because everyone just so so I had to put a like a cease and desist

on all the freaking people drinking it. I'm like yeah just calm down with this stuff so that's what we got we got we got we just had cookies and cream come out milk oh yeah and it's got it's where we're Dunant League with the Travis Manian Foundation. Very cool. But they put little chunks of cookies in there. Yeah. Bro, it's next level. It is.

Inclusions, as it were. Yeah, that's the technical term. So anyways, joccofuel.com. Go check it out. Get yourself some good fuel for your body. What did? Tulsi was talking about it. And she was kind of getting fired up.

But it was before we hit record. We should hit record. Got Tulsi on the go statements. Yep. Yeah, that's one of those things where, you know, when you, if you're someone who's health conscious, whatever, like, but you care about the ingredients, you care, you know, because let's face it, back in the day, when it was like time for some Red Bull, whatever. Right, you don't care about that kind stuff. Like the, you know, the big chemical names and the, right, you don't care about that and stuff. Sugar, I don't care. Don't care. Don't care. But some of us do care, especially nowadays when we get, you know, a little bit older, whatever, more conscious, more informed. Nothing to do with old, man. It's just more educated. More informed, told me.

Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so that the goes will have an effect on, on us in that regard. Yep. Yep. All right,

joccofield.com, you can get it at Wawa. You can get the protein at Wawaawe. Also, you can get everything at vitamin shop, G&C, military commissiers, Hanford,

Afees, dash stores in Maryland, Wakefern, Shoprite, H.EB. H.E.B. Crushing. Meyer, crushing.

Harris Teeter. Crushing. Wengman's crushing. lifetime fitness shields. Basically, you can get it a lot of different places. We're getting into even more right now. Small gyms everywhere. If you want your jiu-jitsu gym or your CrossFit gym or whatever,

to have Jocko Fuel, have them email J.F Sales at joccofuel. We can get it hooked up. Also, origin USA. We're making stuff in America that you can lift in. You can go to the gym in. You can go to do jih Tijitsu in. You can go to the market in. you can go to work in.

What else do you need to do? Pretty much nothing else. So we got you covered. OriginUSA.com. That's what we're doing. We're bringing jobs back to America. We're bringing manufacturing back to America. We're making the best gear that you can get.

The jih Tjitsu geese, the rash cars, everything. It's just outstanding. So check that out, origin, USA.com. Also, we have a jiu jitsu camp. Look, we have a normal jih Tijuana. It's sold out, but we also have a law enforcement, first responders, military, Jiu-Jitsu training, it's August 27th through the 31st, up in Maine. If you can get up there, it's going to be awesome training.

Come and check it out. We'll be there standing by to instruct some jih Tzu. Also, J-P. is going to do some leadership stuff, Eschalon Frontstyle. So it's an awesome little gig we'll be doing up there. Once again, that's August 27th through the 31st. Go to origin, USA.com, to sign up for that. Get some. We'll see you there.

Also, Jocco, the store, called Jocco, if you want to represent, Discipline, equals freedom, which we all kind of do. including our kids, by the way, more on that later. But anyway, go to jocco store.com. You can get your shirts and hoodies and hats and shorts on there. What else? What is it? Summer.

Right? Summer time. We got a new Fourth of July shirt. Independence Day shirt coming out. I didn't see it yet. Let me see it before it comes out. Too late, isn't it? Is it too late?

It's not too late. Well, let me check. Let me check the design right when we're done. It's more or less too late. But yeah, I'll let you check it. If you have objections, we can probably change it. I just want to make sure you haven't done anything that's maybe like not. smart I got you I got you hey you make I'm not saying it's gonna happen no let's face it

there's a chance hey look you make a good point by the way I think I think you're gonna get some beef over me talking about your power drive your power drive for power yeah well hey man that's real actually there's the power thing I did you ever watch a gladiator yes remember gladi okay so that's the thing too proud because before before today I was wondering too like why like why what's this power hungry like what does that mean like bro you're I get kind of but I didn't really get it but after while you can you know how you can make analogies and be like oh wait I do get it that's the same thing just on a bigger scale which kind of makes it make way more sense so okay we went to UFC right 300 yeah so we got the hookup

right so I'm like freaking we're not standing in general admission we got the hookup run away ins we got our special seats our names of the whole deal right that's like almost like a small teeny tiny fraction of the equivalent of like power where you don't you don't stand in lines anymore you can ask like hey you need a drink just tell that person right there to go grab you a drink or whatever you don't have to go to that weird bar with that long ass line and then pay for it like that's different you don't have to do that stuff anymore it's like that's like a small version of it so you know the the movie gladiator right okay so remember the time where um yes right the emperor um walking phoenix phoenix whatever he's

watching the gladiator you know russell Crow defeat everyone and he's maybe a couple of fights he saw already and he's like, I like this gladiator. Oh, it was the time where he was supposed to lose but he won. He's like, oh, I like surprises. You remember that? It was like a historical. I don't really remember it, but okay.

It was like a historical fight where this group was supposed to win, but the gladiator, Russell Crow was on the other side and he just forced the win and freaking and communist was like oh, I kind of like surprises. Like that was interesting. And he's like, who's this gladiator? One of the guys told him and he's like, I think I'll meet him.

just like, well, just meet the guy. You know, it's kind of like that. This whole power thing where you can just go meet whoever you want. You can ask them for whatever you want. It's like you can just roll around and get big, massive things, like whenever you want at a whim, you know? And then like to hold on to that makes sense because one day you're just not going to get it. Brother, that doesn't make, you know. So you can kind of imagine people in that position.

And then she mentioned the identity thing. Now that's kind of who you are. It's like, bro, imagine losing all your abilities now, losing them. And then it's on that level. It's like, oh, okay, I get it now. You're going to be a white belt again. Yeah, or whatever, yeah, or whatever, exactly right. It'd be kind of fun to, like, relearn everything, though.

Yeah, but you're different. I'm just losing all your powers. Put it this way. It makes sense. Anyway, back to Jocco store. I think you need to make a power drive t-shirt and, like, have, like, a meter on it. Can be low, medium high?

I'll take it from your advisement. Anyway, yeah, Jocco Store represent the same equals freedom. The short locker subscription scenario, new design every month. People seem to like it. Go on there, check it out. If you think it's cool, hey, get that too.

They're all available. Like I said, joccal store.com. Also, you need some steak. Go to primalbeef.com or Colorado Craftbeef.com to get the best steak. I just had, that's another thing. Like once you go hard, you need steak. Yes.

You know? So check it out. Colorado Craftbeef.com or primalbeef.com. Awesome companies, awesome people, and awesome steak. Check them out. Also, subscribe to the podcast. Also, jocco underground.com. Also, we have YouTube channels.

Also, psychological warfare. Also, flipside canvas, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Books, obviously, The Love of Country by Tulsi Gabbard. Check it out. Pick it up. So many. You're going to have, look. Look, even if you don't agree with anything that she says in there, you should at least be informed.

You should at least hear what her perspective is because she's been inside of the government apparatus. And you want to know what that looks like in there. You want to know how they're making that sausage. It ain't pretty. I'm here to tell you right now. So check that out. Also, I've written a bunch of books. You guys know what they are.

If you need some of those, you can get them. Also, I've written a bunch of kids books. Kids books are getting turned into. to a movie, which is I'm super stoked for, super stoked for. Check it out. The movie's not coming out for like a year. So what are you doing for the next year? How far forward can your kid be if they start reading the books right now?

And spoiler alert. Spoiler alert, the movie's a little bit different than the books. It's obviously the principles are the same and the themes are the same. but it's a little bit of a different story. Yeah, yeah. And to be honest with you, it's a better story for a movie, right? Yeah. But you're going to be stoked.

I know. But your kids, if they read the book 10 times and they memorize every line in every book, when they see the movie, they'll still be surprised, excited, they'll laugh, they'll cry, the whole nine yards. And you will too, by the way. Okay. So that's what we're doing. Way of Warrior Kid, books.

I told you that I almost cried in the book But let's fair I'm only too hard for that So I didn't cry But I almost did And you know the part of

Way the part one The first one When he Woke up and saw Uncle Jake's bags packed I hurt you Very well done Yeah man Because you know

The whole build up And the whole You have the experience together And then yeah It's coming to And who That's good Kind of got you

Held it together though So check those out and then Eschlonfront we have a leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership go to eschlonfront.com for details on that next event we have is the muster in Dallas actually we have the council I think it might be sold out up in Washington state anyways you want to come to one of our events or you want to get help inside your organization with leadership that's what we do so go to echelonfront.com check that out also we have an online training academy if you want to learn how to lead people, including yourself and how to get through your life.

Go to Extreme Leadership.com. Check that out. And if you want to help service members active and retired, do you want to help their families? Do you want to help Gold Star families? Check out. Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. It's outstanding.

If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mightywriters. That money that you send will help veterans get medical treatment that they normally. that the VA doesn't pay for, that the government doesn't pay for. She does a bunch of other things too, but I've seen that program personally impact people in an extremely positive way. So America's Mighty Warriors.org, also heroes and horses.org. Micah Fink taking vets up into the wilderness to get wild so they can get found. Heroes and Horses.org.

And then Jimmy Mays, organization beyond thebrotherhood.org, helping military people transition in the civilian sector. If you want to connect with Tulsi Gabbard, she's on the interwebs, Tulsi Gabbard.com. She is on social media platforms, Twitter X, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Rumble. She's there.

All those platforms, she's at Tulsi Gabbard. And as far as me, I'm at jocco.com. I'm also on social media at Jocco Willink. Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because there's an algorithm. I thought that social media was falling back? What is it? Copping out? What is it? Falling off.

Felling off. I thought social media was falling off. But apparently Echo Starvel says it's not falling off. Which shows you that he might be getting a little bit. Algorithms might be getting the other upper hand. It's a monster. Don't let it get you. Thanks once again to Tulsi Gabbard for joining us. And thank you, Tulsi, for everything that you have done and continue to do for our great nation. Thanks to all of our military men and women around the world.

world with a specific thanks today to the soldiers and sailors, airmen, and Marines, and the National Guard and Reserve units. I served with many of you overseas, and you're always on call when you're needed, standing by. So thank you for stepping up to protect us and our way of life. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all other first responders, you're also always on call. so thank you for what you do to keep us safe here on the home front and to everyone else out there listen there's a lot of chaos and mayhem in the world right now and our media and social media and news sources and our tribal nature that we all have and our egos it all just seems to exacerbate the hostility and division so be careful of that try to see through that try listening

try understanding other people's perspectives try to ask earnest questions not only of others but ask earnest questions of yourself and try to go through life with a little less anger and a little more aloha and that's all we've got for tonight and until next time this is echo and jaco