Julian Dorey Podcast - #238 - Navy SEAL turned Prisoner & French Commando Breaks Silence | Taylor Cavanaugh

Starting point is 00:00:00 And I'm thinking, mountain regiment, dude, okay, well, mountains, okay. I had thought maybe I wanted to go to the jungle and pick the jungle. It wasn't even possible. It was closed. I was like, probably not going to get to go to the jungle. Sure enough, we get there in 11 months. I have just checked in. I'm a new guy.

Starting point is 00:00:14 And they go, hey, your combat company is going to the jungle. A lot of people don't know. France is territory in South America. They do? Yep. Guillaume Francais? Guillaume Francais. It's right next to Suriname.

Starting point is 00:00:26 Now, what was the mission to go there? Interdiction of illegal gold mining and drugs. Presence patrols. And also some protection of illegal gold mining. I'll tip these out. So we're going to blow the fuck out of all these gold mines, man. So we went down there and... Hey, guys.

Starting point is 00:00:41 If you're not following me on Spotify, please take a second to hit that button and leave a five-star review. It is a huge, huge help to the show. And you can also follow me on Instagram and on X by using the links in my description. Thank you. Dude, you are a ball of energy. I love it. You walk through the door and I'm like, let's go. Yeah, that's how we got to be, man. That's it. That's it. And life is is absolutely absurd my my friend reed morin had you on his podcast and called me up he's like julian you have to talk to this guy he's insane he's a young talent dude he does such a good job but he was so he was so amazed

Starting point is 00:01:17 that all the ups and downs you've been through and and all the all the different times that you've also like caught yourself yeah and taking control of your own shit. And maybe it took like 10 times. But like there's certainly lessons to be learned there. And obviously you were a goddamn American hero fighting for the Navy SEALs. So there's a lot on the bone today and I want to get to as much of it as we can.

Starting point is 00:01:42 But thank you so much for coming out here from California. Dude, I appreciate you having me, bro. You got a good thing going on here, bro. Your execution's impressive. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. But from the beginning, where'd you grow up? Grew up in San Diego, California. So born in Boston, family's like East Coast. Parents met at an athletic club in Maryland, one night date, and here I am. And then my dad was in the Marine Corps, brought us out there in Orange County. We had Tustin, it's an old Chinook base. And so I grew up on a Marine base for a little bit of my life. And then my dad got out,

Starting point is 00:02:14 six in and out. And we stayed in San Diego, man. My dad was all about, you know, no shirt and, you know, getting a tan and working out. So we kept us out there. Love that. And what's the, did you have other siblings too? Yeah. I have a younger sister, Isla. What's up Isla? And she's in a rock climbing. She's a physical therapist and stuff, lives up in Bishop. But yeah, so we were, grew up in San Diego, California, Sarah Mesa to be specific. It's right in the middle of San Diego. And man, at that time, early nineties in San Diego is awesome, man. You know, it wasn't too crowded, still had a little edge, but I mean, we were at the beach building forts and canyons and you

Starting point is 00:02:50 know watching Mighty Ducks and playing you know go getting pumped up and go and play roller hockey in the street you know so it was you're outside we were outside and sports were were pushed you know if my both my parents athletes my dad's really good football player was a you know avid bodybuilder back in the day competed in mr east coast and all that stuff and so i was raised around you just i would be little kid going to the gym with them you know in daycare and it was just part of the deal you worked out and you you were mindful not you know super anal about everything but you lived your life but you go to the gym, you work out, you go outside, play sports. I loved it, man.

Starting point is 00:03:28 Yeah. You know what I noticed when I go to places like a Miami, I haven't been to San Diego, but it's kind of the same deal. What I'm getting at is that you see so many people who are in amazing shape and you don't see a lot of people who are like obese or anything like that. Yeah. What is that? Just because like, you think you're at the beach all the time. You're forced to be outside because it's fucking beautiful all the time. Dude, you're wearing less clothes.

Starting point is 00:03:54 I think it's as simple as that. People in cold environments, man, you can cover up all those fat rolls with jackets. It's that simple. I think, you know, and that's why I think a lot of girls are like, I like the fall and the winter. I'm like, no, just because you're lazy and you want to wear more clothes. You can't get away with it. So it's like the room for error, man, is razor thin. And Miami's an impressive city energy-wise, a lot of stuff down there.

Starting point is 00:04:23 And San Diego's very similar, I'd say, in that capacity. It's a fitness-minded place. Bad know badass gyms everywhere people are into it man i it's definitely speaks to me that that whole world yeah what what sports did you get great at growing up so i growing up i was in soccer like most kids which my mom was super smart we actually had a conversation i love my mom she's a super strong woman. But she said something interesting yesterday about, you know, put your kids in soccer, not immediately baseball and stuff, because that foot coordination, foot-eye coordination is, man, it's the root of all sports.

Starting point is 00:04:57 What do they say? In golf or anything you're doing. From commutes that become learning sessions to dishwashing filled with laughs, podcasts can help you make the most out of your everyday and when it comes to everyday spending you can count on the pc insiders world elite mastercard to help you earn the most pc optimum points everywhere you shop the pc insiders world elite mastercard the card for living unlimited conditions apply to all benefits visit pcfinancial.ca for details doing wrestling man your foot placement man your

Starting point is 00:05:23 feet look at all these europeans in the nba now yeah their foot wrestling, man, your foot placement, man, your feet. Look at all these Europeans in the NBA now. Yeah, yeah. With their footwork, 100%, man. It's footwork, boxing, anything you're doing. So it started with soccer, then swimming. Hated swimming because it's boring as shit, but worked out well for me in the long run. I didn't like the bathing suits and stuff, but baseball. And then going into, my dad calls it, hey hey put your doink a bathing suit on dude

Starting point is 00:05:45 i'm like man it's so it's so i'm like shit man i gotta put this fuck i used to wear board shorts up the thing and take them off and then dive in bro i hated it but quit quit that in like you know 12 years old and then going into high school was just football and lacrosse just focus on football and lacrosse i went to a high Poway High School, which is like a wrestling school. One of the best in the States, one of the best in the country. So it was like I thought about wrestling. They were calling me to wrestle, but they were like, if you wrestle, you're not doing anything else.

Starting point is 00:06:14 And I wanted to play football. That was my heart. What was your position? I played strong side, outside linebacker and like a strong safety. Man, I laid the hat, bro. I was going to say, I could see why. I laid the hat. I know how to hit. safety man i lay the hat i was gonna say you're one i could see bro i lay the hat i know how to hit bro i lay the hat even since a little kid i could i could hit man we had some pretty significant contacts like i would leave oh yeah with some crazy

Starting point is 00:06:34 headaches man but back in the day they would teach you man you teach with the you hit with the crown of your head it's not like today bro dude they'd line us up like 20 yards and i went to an all black i played at an all black, pretty much all black middle school where I went to where I played. And so I was like the only white kid on the field. And so there were some people with some wheels, bro. Oh, yeah. And a lot of speed. So I had to hit, bro.

Starting point is 00:06:56 So I had to run through people. And, man, some significant contact. But it was good going into high school because I knew how to hit. And lacrosse, I played crease defenseman, man. It was the same thing. I was just all about the contact. Oh, i knew how to hit and lacrosse i played crease defenseman man was the same thing i was just all about the cause you were really good at lacrosse too yeah that was actually where i got more accolades and more looks it was actually in lacrosse no shit yeah what what years is this are you in high school so i graduated in 03 all right yeah so lacrosse was like really starting to become a thing like late 90s early 2000s that's exactly right yeah that's good information it was the first year that actually was cif the you know it was actually

Starting point is 00:07:28 scholastic not club and yeah it was exploding at the time on the west coast it's always been big on the east coast right philly and virginia and maryland that is you know it's the that's the core but lacrosse has picked up big time and some of the biggest hits I ever had was in lacrosse, bro. Like significant. If you're within three meters of the ball, bro, you're fair game, bro. You know what I'm like? And I took full advantage, bro. Can you imagine this, dude?

Starting point is 00:07:57 Dude, I was like tatted up in high school and shit too, bro. I was 16. I had fucking my back done, my arms, bro. It's just like, and I ended up getting kicked out bro that's what that's what actually got kicked out that's what that's what sent the trajectory bro uh my life was uh i got i got arrested at school i had brought some heat on myself for a couple little fights and things but the they brought drug dogs on campus and i had weed in my car. And so just for weed. Yeah, it was just for weed. And so I didn't even have weed. Here's the thing, man. I would have been

Starting point is 00:08:28 fine with it if I had a bunch of weed, but it was like, they swept shake off off the ground, bro. My like truck and roaches, not even roaches, bro. Like it was like, I had a nug like underneath my CD player. And then, and then it was like the flakes from it. They threw it out in the juvenile court. Cause I was a juvenile, but because of that of that dude i lost i had to change high schools i got kicked out they arrested me at school and i left i never went back to that school that was midway through senior year so i lost all my lacrosse scholarship looks couldn't play lacrosse senior year it at that time man it's i had such i lacked self-awareness on a really massive scale. So I didn't understand the gravity of what that actually meant.

Starting point is 00:09:12 Because I had Notre Dame looking at me, Tar Heels, coaches calling me. And I was like, yeah, yeah, just totally. And then I'm like, oh, yeah, but I got kicked out. And they're like, dude, we don't. And then I never got any calls back. What do you mean? I'm like, what are you talking about, bro? We're good, right? They're like dude we don't and then i never got any calls what do you mean i'm like what are you talking about bro like we're good right they're like no we're not good dude like and i'm like shit so i fucking you know and then i uh and that was what kind of started

Starting point is 00:09:36 turning the turning the tracks you know and i ended up going to some different schools and stuff after that wait so you did still end up at college yeah so i went to i went to chapman university it was a d3 the only place that would really take me and i for tattoo sport to play football and lacrosse oh you did both so well that was the plan but dude i was i was rocking and rolling man like not in a good way we were coming back from the river and and we crashed in the fucking on the freeway going like 90 in a lifted tundra and i got ejected out of the car like boom that's why i got a big ass scar down my arm i've ejected out of one of the windows on the freeway and i woke up like on the side of the road holy like shit dude i woke up and i go i look i look at like the road and I just see like we had a golf cart.

Starting point is 00:10:28 I see like two of the dudes I was with sitting on like the subwoofers. They're all fucked up like way down the fucking road. And I'm like, what? And I remember seeing, I remember I had just had like a Carl's Jr. fucking like sourdough jack in my hand. I was biting when we fucking crashed. And I remember going, my fucking sourdough. And I hand i was biting when we fucking crashed and i remember going my fucking sourdough like and then it was and i see my shoes bro my shoes and i was like i got blown out of my fucking shoes and i had that moment and then i go oh fucking then everything fucking started hurting

Starting point is 00:10:59 and i was like oh i had dislocated my hip broke my god broke my fucking ribs dude i think because but dude i think because but dude i walked out of the hospital like two days later they popped it back in and the doctor's like i don't know what the fuck how you're i was the only one that got ejected and i was the most fine i had a they didn't even stitch this they popped my thing back in i walked out with the in two days later with like a couple scratches bro i was born with dislocated hips and they were carrying me around like a suitcase for like the first eight weeks of my life. Were you, dude?

Starting point is 00:11:26 Yeah. It's no joke because they were worried about avascular necrosis, and they were worried about like some of the stuff. And I was like, so it was significant, but I didn't play freshman year, right? Was anyone drunk when that happened? Man, we had been partying. He was driving, and I was sitting in passenger. But it was mostly just wind, I think. And he just overcorrected.

Starting point is 00:11:46 Maybe a little tired. Maybe like dozed off. I never even really asked the kid what happened. So they kicked you off the teams? No, it wasn't kicked off the teams. I just was – there was like an insurance thing. But I also was like not in full capacity to be playing football. Right.

Starting point is 00:11:58 I was still banged up. So I wasn't cleared. So that was the first year, since i was four that i had never played a sport you know so so i had no idea what to do with myself and and i part dude we were down in tijuana mexico shooting steroids and shit like bro as like 15 years old bro like we were doing down so i had been living that life bro you were doing that at 15 bro dude we were down in mexico shooting steroids we'd be back for fucking high school football practice drunk after the strip club and dead serious bro i told you this was gonna be a good one man and i thought it was normal bro but all the kids i went to high school with all

Starting point is 00:12:39 everybody except one and he's having some troubles are all dead or in prison every single one bro nobody's like i'll be thinking back of cars I've been in. I'm like, bro, out of like seven people, everybody's dead except me. Everybody. Right? I'm just living that life, bro. What do you think it was that made you want to go after that shit? You're talking like 15 going down to Tijuana to shoot steroids in your ass and party at strip clubs.

Starting point is 00:13:04 What is it? Like you obviously, as we said at the outset, you're a very energetic guy. You attack things at 1,000 miles an hour in your life. It's very clear. But like what is it that drives you for that like adrenaline junkiness? Yeah, it was less adrenaline and more, man, it was more fun. It was just – and also I didn't have a lot of discipline that my dad was kind of out of the picture at the time he was he was always been around but

Starting point is 00:13:31 he wasn't living with us you know and my parents were you know my mom's single mom teacher i was just selling weed and fucking making my own money in high school yeah so i i there was nobody like who had control over me my mom would tell me a good time to come home come home, but I'm like, what's she really going to do? I'm paying for everything myself for the most part. Did you ever have a relationship with your dad? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he was in, and he's been there for me at difficult times, and we'll talk about that.

Starting point is 00:13:57 But he's had his struggles with drugs and alcohol and kind of in and out. And so it was just – it's hard for a single, a mom to raise a man, you know, and tell you like, but I got really good grades. So there was that piece. I was really good at sports still. I was all academic, all American, even with doing all that shit. And so there wasn't really like a lot of leverage to, you know, I'm getting shit done working, you know, doing stuff. And so it was just kind of this side thing. And that's what people were doing around me. So I just saw it as kind of normal. I didn't, that was, that was the other piece is, is boys definitely are like aggressive. Well, you need, it's kind of like

Starting point is 00:14:35 a pit bull. You got to be kind of tough on it to actually make it act right. And so that was actually the flow. And, and also I also I just didn't have bigger purpose. I knew I was going to go in the military since I was seven. And so the actual catalyst for that is that you've talked to a lot of special operators and special force guys, and a lot of them, which I'm pretty sure you would agree with, say, hey, man, since I was a young kid, I had this. A lot of them, yeah. Yeah, and that was the case for me i i had seen some guys training when i was young and then i had that seed got planted you know and so i

Starting point is 00:15:11 learned about navy seals and green berets and i was like at a young age at seven seven 1992 was october i remember exactly when it was and and i was fascinated with vietnam and the jungle and that wartime thing not in a romantic way. It was a very, like, I understood the grittiness of it. Like, and I, once I found out you could actually be a commando, I was like, Oh, fucking that's me. So I was, so it was just kind of like everything else was just burning time until I was going to do that. That's exactly what it was. I was going to go to school.

Starting point is 00:15:41 I'm just going to go through the motions and then I'm going to the military. It was not even a fucking question did you think about the the concept also of like fighting for your country and and and having like an appreciation for the fact that you live here and get to enjoy these types of things was that any part of the calculation even in a young age so so i i'm like i bleed red white and blue you know what i'm saying i i i'm very like american but dude that was not my if i could be quite honest it was not my push like i it wasn't like some some altruistic like support my country man i wanted to fucking mix it up man right i wanted to go and like be a special operator and fuck i didn't care who it was for really you know

Starting point is 00:16:24 not you know what i'm saying i'm not not not not a you know not a traitor not gonna go fight for russia but we'll get into all that stuff what's crazy but it was uh man i just knew that was the job and i wanted to be around those type of dudes right that it was not some personal rambo thing that's uh you know i half joking about the other stuff but it was man i knew those are the guys I wanted to be around, guys that wanted to be elite, guys that wanted to be anything but average, you know? But you wanted to do this after college. That was always your thought. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:16:53 So now you're in college. You're not playing sports as a freshman. Yeah. And you start partying. Yeah. And so my, I come from, my mom was a Navy brat. My dad, my grandpa graduated from the Naval Academy. He was a captain. So my mom was like, you go to college Navy brat. My grandpa graduated from the Naval Academy. He was a captain.

Starting point is 00:17:06 So my mom was like, you go to college. My mom went to college. My dad didn't. But it was just extension of regular school. So I was like, well, you go to college. So I'm doing that. Failed out. Kind of come back, reset.

Starting point is 00:17:19 All right, I'll go to junior college and play at a really good JC, play football. Dealing drugs, doing drugs, ecstasy, man. And then I'm not working, not going to school, fail out of that, fail out of another junior college. So three. And that was the moment where I had a moment of clarity where I was like, I got to fucking change everything. Right. How many years was that? This is a year and a half. So three semesters in a row. You made quick work of it. Yeah, man. I was powering through. So I had like two credits in a year and a half, and I went, oh, fuck. And so I moved back to Boston, man. I moved into the basement of my aunt and uncle's house and just reset.

Starting point is 00:17:53 I just sold all my shit, gave my dad all my money. I was like, just take everything, and I fucking just left. You gave your dad everything? I was like, I called my dad because I knew he could be reason. I was like, I'm in a bad spot. It wasn't like, I just felt the walls closing in. And it was actually interesting because after I left, a bunch of dudes went to prison and some bad shit happened.

Starting point is 00:18:12 I just had a moment where I was like, man, I got to leave. This is like, I was empty. My soul was like screaming, bro. It was, and I said this before. I actually said it with Reed, you know, and it was this homeless guy had said, you know what rain means? Change. And I was like, that's fucking weird. And I woke up that morning and it was raining.

Starting point is 00:18:36 And that fucking homeless guy's voice was like booming in my head. And I was like, it was raining in San Diego, which is somewhat odd. I was like, I need to fucking change some shit up. And I did that day. And I moved like, it was raining in San Diego, which is somewhat odd. I was like, I need to fucking change some shit up. And I did that day. And I moved, man. And I reset, started training at Boston Muay Thai Academy. Was working at a fish market and landscaping and all the East Coast shit. And got my AA in a year and a half.

Starting point is 00:18:58 Straight fucking A's, dude. I was powered through and caught back up. Wait, so you went to school? Yeah, I was going to junior college. So I got all my credits caught up going over full-time and transferred to university california santa cruz where he came back yeah so because i had in-state tuition okay i was still out of state that the coach at umass amherst was trying to get me to play lacrosse there and stuff but it didn't work out so i'm like i'm going back to california that's my producer who's murph is nice enough to fill in for us today by the way so shout out murph and shout out chas savino and the guys over at leap we're making it possible but

Starting point is 00:19:33 my producer alessi who's not here right now he he went to uc santa cruz oh yeah yeah he's from santa damn bro banana slugs every time we have a s Santa Cruz person in here, he's not here. So I feel bad. But anyway, so you go. No fucking way. That's interesting. You go out there. You get your degree. Now are you back in the mindset of like, oh, fuck, let me go to the military? So I was still in military mode.

Starting point is 00:19:54 But I was like, I'm going to just finish college. I was like, you just finished college. That was in what you do. So I fucking was like, I'm getting through this fucking thing. So I get my degree at University of Californiaia santa cruz in politics international relations and beautiful campus by the way if people haven't been there it's fucking incredible so i go okay well i'm time to go in the military so i go down but during that time man during that that college time i had been because i lost a lot of my discipline when I went back on campus.

Starting point is 00:20:25 I'm like with the girls, with the partying, and then working at a bar and all this shit. It wasn't me doing like bad shit. It was just me being a knucklehead. Dude, I probably got arrested like eight or nine times. Eight or nine times. So with drunken publics, DUI, driving on a suspended, fucking all the shit. And they didn't kick you out of school? Well, it wasn't school.

Starting point is 00:20:44 It was all civilian fucking shit out in town man so it wasn't enough the school didn't know about it they probably would have you know they almost kicked me off campus for the first than the first semester but so i look i i i go but this is this is what i was talking about julian it's i fucking was so immature i said bro there's people with old souls I'm a very young soul I had like I had no fucking idea what the fuck was going on I'm just like working out and going to school I'm like okay yeah I got another court date

Starting point is 00:21:14 I'll finish that and you know stressing you know stressing don't get me wrong I was stressing handling shit riding my fucking mountain bike around because I had a fucking no license man just like living and did you have a lawyer like talking in your ear like oh yeah oh yeah i've had lots of lawyers man i've had lots of lawyers and when i had got back from boston i had got arrested from

Starting point is 00:21:35 an old warrant and all this shit dude oh my god so i had some stuff and when i get out i go to the marine recruiter and he's like bro you're fucking on probation and he's like dude this is not gonna work and i'm like oh man i was like oh you took people like we're good right just like before we're not good so i go okay well what do i got to do i talked to a lawyer and talked to the judge and this and that i had paid everything up done everything i needed to do gone to all the classes and it wasn't like i was slacking bro they made me go to fucking like 70 classes and this and i'm riding my bike in the rain i did it all but the judge looked at it and i had violated my probation so many times like i'm going to the military i need to get off i have three and a half more years of informal probation he said dude we're not gonna stand comm it like you can go to jail for six months and i was like

Starting point is 00:22:25 okay i was like let's do it i thought that was a win and the fucking judge the lawyer was like whoa he's like six months on a misdemeanor because i had no felonies mind you i had not a felon and i never had any felonies been charged a handful but i but i have no felonies. And so the judge goes, no, all right, well, we'll do four then. So I did four months in Santa Cruz County, which is a lockdown facility, which is, you know, I didn't see the sun for four fucking months, dude. And it was all lockdown, 23 and one, no yard time, no any of that. So I was locked in with everybody's felons. Everybody's holding up, waiting to go to federal prison, waiting to do this and that.

Starting point is 00:23:08 It was a mixed bag, not to mention all the weird shit you're seeing in there. Like what? Dude, they would have me. So I volunteered to work for the jail because you could get extra hamburgers, bro. So I fucking. You need them gains, boy. I need those gains, bro. I was working out, man.

Starting point is 00:23:23 And this was 08 mind you just to kind of get you in the time this was fall 08 are you working out like in your cell like i won the dip competition in the in the jail pod bro i won the dip competition dude i can do dips for days and so i'm doing all that shit eating my tuna packets and buying my commissary and i volunteered to work for the jail i did jail laundry seven days a week swing shift but because i did that i had access to a lot of the the jail and i also had to clean the observation pod and the observation pod is where they bring the crazies and the crazies to a lot of them have fucking horrible crimes like dude i can't evil exists if anybody doesn't

Starting point is 00:24:07 question it man you can feel it on some of these people i don't know if not saying they're evil i'm saying they're they're in there's evil spirits in them because there's like a woman came in and we would have the newspaper and so you'd know when people got arrested and we're gonna be coming in and stuff and this woman came in who had drowned all four of her kids bro like and she's walking by and it's like this fucking you know it's it's like uh yeah i think i remember that it was dude and she comes her name i don't remember but dude it was like that type of stuff woman drowns four kids california yeah 2004 she could have been it could have been her but whatever happened um you know because they're not going to hold her there they're going to send her somewhere

Starting point is 00:24:49 else so i don't know what what the deal was but anyway that type of stuff not to mention people poop painting and stuff bro poop painting poop painting ain't gangster bro of case anybody's asking i didn't think it was it's not because there's been some – and your life really comes to a point where you really question what decisions you've made when you're cleaning, power washing a fucking shit smiley face off a fucking wall, bro. This woman, Andrea Yates? Possibly, bro. That was the one I was thinking of, but – I don't know if it's her because that's an earlier case but yeah it is yeah it's an earlier case but dude just it's sad

Starting point is 00:25:31 that there's multiple because that's the type of people and also you just see that there's what methamphetamine does bro like all most of those guys in there for meth are they are they getting any drugs in there i didn't see a lot of drugs because they're all i didn't see they're off it but they're just you know dude's coming in with no teeth i saw a dude in there who i was who was actually my cellmate bro i saw his picture his id and he was like like and i go bro he goes dude it's so embarrassing to see that fucking picture i go dude how much fucking weight have you put back on? He said, a hundred pounds. Oh, my God.

Starting point is 00:26:06 A hundred pounds in like nine months. The guy, that's how sucked up he was. And he was, it's just like absolute sucks the life out of you. So, it was that. But I was actually in a good mood because I was clearing my shit up. And I walked out of jail. I'm going to the military, baby. I was like, dude.

Starting point is 00:26:21 I told the guards, like, what are you going to do? I'm like, I'm going to go be a Navy SEAL, man. And he fucking laughed. And I said bro like watch me bitch and that and honestly that was a fair response yeah that's how delusional confidence i had which i fucking has helped me in my life at some point has helped you it's helped me because i i didn't see the road the the roadblocks and i didn't know i was ignorant to the administrative hurdles i was gonna have to go through well i think another part of it is like it's pretty clear you're like a very nice guy too yeah so like yeah you're this rough and tumble like let's get in a fucking bar fight and drive

Starting point is 00:26:55 out of here with a bac of 24 but at the same time you get out there be like i'm sorry officer i'm fucked up you're right yeah take me to prison yeah And they're like, all right. It's fair. It's got me out of some things too because I am. I wear my heart on my sleeve, man. I really do. And so I started the process. I got out. I was too big. I was like 230 coming out of jail.

Starting point is 00:27:16 I was just – How tall are you? Six feet. So I was just 230, like all rugby weight, like football weight. I needed to tone up. But I didn't – I had never been in the running world doing that type of stuff. I just, dude, I've been football and like I ran a little bit in lacrosse, but I fucking hate running, bro.

Starting point is 00:27:34 It's for the enemy. You know, I hate it, bro. Wait, you said it's for the enemy? Yeah, run. Run for me. Run, it's for the enemy, bro. You know, I don't like it at all, man. But it's necessary evil. and you do got to be able

Starting point is 00:27:47 to move so i went to the marine officer recruiter coming out of jail and he's like they took a picture of my tattoos and i got fucking denied for my tattoos not even my background they hadn't even checked the background yet they were just they didn't even deny me for just tats they denied me not even for officer, for every Marine. I couldn't be a Marine. They fucking said, get out of here, bro. Every Marine I know, except like one, has tats all over them. It was 09 at the time.

Starting point is 00:28:12 They were a little strict. And I didn't even have my arms or hands or neck, dude. I had my back done. They said too much of a percentage of my body was done. So there you go, man. It shut the door, which is funny. All the Marines. They said, you are done.

Starting point is 00:28:25 Did they say go to the Army? Well, that was the process that was about to happen. Because I thought I wanted a gun and I wanted to deploy. That was what I wanted to do. And I was scared to fucking try for SEALs. Even though that's what in my heart I wanted to do forever. You were scared. I was scared, man.

Starting point is 00:28:41 Because I grew up in San Diego. I knew a lot of all-American wrestlers, water polo players, people that had tried. Nobody ever made it. Everybody ended up scraping barnacles in the Navy. So undesignated. And I was like, dude, I did not want to be on a ship. That was my fucking biggest fear to end up. It's not what I wanted to do.

Starting point is 00:29:02 Also, I had a lot of student loans that my mom had co-signed on i couldn't fucking be in the regular military and make enough money how old are you at this point 22 23 okay because and you're done wow you went through a lot to get that college degree too yeah so it was five years i graduated 17 i 22 and then so i'm 23 i can't believe it was only five years that was only five years like six schools yeah i powered through in those last those last couple years man and so it took me five years. That was only five years, man. You went to like six schools. Yeah, I powered through in those last couple years, man. And so it took me five years to get a four-year degree. So I really was, okay, Army. My Army.

Starting point is 00:29:35 All right, fine. I'll be a Green Beret. I'll go to Ranger School. I'll get a contract. And they ran my background. They said, no fucking way. In the Army. Yeah, and that's when I got real fear.

Starting point is 00:29:44 That's when the depression set in or the the like mr scary set in and i went oh dude i fucked myself i it's a real privilege to be able to travel and to see different places taking yourself out comfortable positions and challenging yourself. No one builds a legacy by standing still. Start your journey atgm.com for terms and conditions 19 plus to wager ontario only please gamble responsibly if you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you please contact connex ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming ontario all that dumb shit i did like i said your decisions matter this is when i started to fucking level up a little bit.

Starting point is 00:30:47 And a man levels up when he starts to understand the consequences of his actions. That's the way to put it. Yeah, that's when I would start to hit these wickets. And this was the moment where I really started to understand that, okay, I might have totally fucked this up for myself. So I went home, home dude i rode my bike back to my mom's house i'm at my mom's house right in my high school hometown fucking can't have no job nothing i'm i'm a loser what did your mom think of all this because like it's like a it's a series of wins and losses like okay you got it right you ended up graduating college but then

Starting point is 00:31:24 my son had to go to jail for four months after that now he wanted to try out for the marines proud of you they said no the army said fuck off now he's home on my couch like this is a yeah this is a mixed bag yeah how she how's she talking to you so my poor mom well i wasn't saying anything to her yet about the army saying no i was she just saw i was like a little bit down and she's like the fuck something's up so i was just like oh man and i had a moment i call it the authentic voice of god man it comes in it was like hey you need to stand the fuck up and write down your charges on a piece of paper dead serious it was that clear right on your what your charges and the dispositions on a piece of paper just write them down and so i got up with the pen and i wrote down the

Starting point is 00:32:05 disposition and the charges not all the arrests but just the charges because it would have looked like a fucking ancient you would have needed another scroll yeah like you know like one of the lord of the rings shit dude would have if going to the recruiter i couldn't do that so i wrote down the stuff that had serious paperwork and everything was cleared paid off it didn't look bad. It was all misdemeanor. So it was really not atrocious when I went in there. I want,

Starting point is 00:32:29 I'm going in the Navy recruiter. Okay. So I ride my little bike, my little Huffy or whatever the fuck I was riding dude. And I screw, you know, up to the front and I give him it. And he said,

Starting point is 00:32:39 do we can work with this? And I went, okay. All right. And that was a moment where I was just so grateful that at least he gave me that one tactical pause to look at it and said, all right, we'll do this. What changed, though? Because they said no for your tattoos shortly before. Well, it was the Navy.

Starting point is 00:32:56 It was the Navy. It was the Marine Corps. So the Navy was a little more lax, bro. And this was a time when they were trying to get some seals in. They wanted to plus up, but they just couldn get they need so they started widening the burt they're like looking at this so like they're like felony bar fights fuck yeah sign them up let's go boy well they said they said i could but i couldn't you know what's funny is i couldn't even do other jobs i couldn't be a corpsman i couldn't be anything else they i think it goes dude you can

Starting point is 00:33:22 pretty much wrangle shit or be a seal you you you can't you have drug charges and stuff if you can pass all the seal screening stuff you can do it but you the other job for you is like fucking nothing you know that now that's to an outsider like me that sounds crazy because like we think of that end of the military you're talking seal teams yeah i mean that's it yeah they just they were okay with opening it up with some little edgier dudes. And they're like, okay, if you can actually. Yeah, and that's what I think it was. And I was grateful.

Starting point is 00:33:54 I was like, I'm fine. So I signed up with like aviation technician. You got to sign up for another job and then did delayed entrance processing. But you still got to earn your SEAL card. Delayed entrance processing. It's called DEP. People that don't know, it's called delayed entrance processing where you sign up for the navy but you don't ship yet so you have like you know nine months until you get your boot camp ship date so you're technically not in but you've signed up

Starting point is 00:34:13 does that make sense and so okay so they can call you in for physical screening tests and stuff like that you're chilling for nine months but you're you're working a civilian job i was working at home depot stacking boxes at night i love dirt yeah i was at well that's where i was working at night stacking boxes and training during the day because i was trying to get a seal contract you don't they don't just give it to you and i had i needed tattoo waivers conduct waivers all these waivers yeah i needed i needed waivers i still needed waivers to get these things approved so i found uh the natan the seal motivator is called commander fuller what's up and he he's the guy that kind of puts in the good word right we'll write you a letter of recognition he's the guy that pushes the contracts and you called him a

Starting point is 00:34:55 motivator yeah it was a con it's their job they hold regions of the united states they were called a seal motivator at the time and they run physical screening tests trainings the guys that actually want to be seals and so that's what i did i sought them out and i would be the only one showing up at some of these workouts and with an active duty seal also who i just connected back with it was beauty of social media man he was like dude i dig what you're doing so that was cool but he him and the other guy were were the only reason i got a SEAL contract because they saw me. I was puking every fucking day for like nine months, dude. Because I run in and just puke in. I lost 40 pounds in like six weeks. Wow.

Starting point is 00:35:33 Just half-mile sprints, training, two-hour, three-hour training sessions every fucking day. And then doing physical training tests, I did like 40 in a row or something like that. 40 in a row. I did the seal screener every monday down at the naval amphibious space so you have this thing it's so clear where even then like oh like i talked about the beginning all these back and forths where

Starting point is 00:35:54 you could turn on that discipline if you will and when you it was turbocharged when you turn yeah i was locked on man because i didn't have anything to celebrate. I had shifted gears. I was like, bro, I can get single track focused really, really well. And this is all I had. And I was loving it. I felt good. It made me feel good being on that positive path again. I was training.

Starting point is 00:36:22 Everybody knows, man, when you get a good workout and you go back home and you're like, fuck yeah, dude. That is what I had to learn back later in life. But that was what i was experiencing man i had no money i had no i had a 500 fucking purple jeep dude stick shift that i was driving around bro but i loved it man it was everything i needed i didn't need anything else and it really stripped down it was one of those moments in my life where you're all the noise is stripped down quite literally you don't have money to go out and fucking get distractions and nobody's calling you on the phone and i was off the grid just focused and happy with it and really grateful any of your friends because you're back where you were when you were growing up any of your friends that you left behind when you went out to gloucester yeah to live are they hitting are

Starting point is 00:37:02 they hitting you up i had a couple yeah i had a a couple. Every once in a while I'd mink up, but I was just separated from it. I just didn't really get engaged with it. I stayed busy and I had like one or two times I went out during that whole space with some guys. And man, what do you know? One day I got my seal contract. August 26, 2009 they gave it to me and I signed it and I shipped in February and that I started that pipeline So when you say you shipped is this like immediately going to buds? No, that was special for like a special warfare Section of boot camp at the time

Starting point is 00:37:40 So it was all seal candidates hundred seal candidates and already you got only nine made it out of that hundred just just to kind of give you a numbers from that original boot camp it was at the same place in great lakes illinois and it was uh and we had a solid boot camp dude like five of those guys are operating at the tip of the spear still today today right now like tip tip out of those nine like my some of my best friends in the world bro so you're still really close yeah so and talk you know daily almost on text and stuff so that i knew we had a good crew and it just proves you know we actually really did have a good crew and you know what then we went into buds prep that whole selection but basically on our demolition prep which is just training three days a week running running, swimming, lifting.

Starting point is 00:38:26 Well, wait, take me back for one second. When you first ship out and it's the hundred of you, you said only nine ended up making it all the way through to seals and you go out to Illinois. How long is this process? And are there people getting, is there attrition before buds too? Yeah. So people quit, they'll get hit for medical.

Starting point is 00:38:44 They'll get hit for medical they'll get hit for so people will be getting chipped away slowly they decide it's not for them they don't want to be training like that and whatever and so it's whittling away whittling away so i think probably we're probably at maybe 70 or something like that 60 by the time we finished boot camp who actually still went to buds prep how long was that boot camp? Eight weeks. Eight weeks. And you're just all seven days a week, all day, just crazy physical. Yeah, Navy stuff too. Well, we're training in the morning early, which is different than the regular Navy's doing.

Starting point is 00:39:13 So we're like in the pool or training at like four. And no goggles and like all chlorinated pool. Dude, just like, oh. So it's raw. It's the beginning, right? You're not training with fins and stuff. It's pretty raw. Then you go to buds prep and that that is 8 to 16 weeks depending upon where you fall in the class like time of the year and stuff and they take three sections they'll take alpha

Starting point is 00:39:36 bravo charlie which is their better guys are in alpha to bravo and you're running and they had civilian contractors who were specialists in swimming or running or lifting or whatever mixed in with some seals who were instructors and that was cool because now you're just training it's a little bit more lax it was you know you're not in buds you're not like getting screamed at but you're training and it was hard but it was very useful just to build back up because you lose a little bit in boot camp just you know no sunlight and just to build back up the health a little bit. And then they take the top 75%. It's like a four-mile run, 1,000-meter swim, pull-ups, dead hangs, all that stuff. They take the top 75%, and then they flew us out to Bud's.

Starting point is 00:40:16 In Coronado. In Coronado. So we flew out with like 400 guys, like three, almost 400. Wait, how did it get up to 400? Well, there's all these boot camps. Oh, there's all different. All the boot camps coagulate in, and it's like spread out over four months, five months, 400 guys went to try out. And what, what buds class was that? And this was buds class two, eight, four now 400 flew out, but a bunch of guys got out there and they're

Starting point is 00:40:40 like, finally, I'm back in San Diego. I want a better job, but I don't want to be a seal. Cause they don't want to run and swim and all that and so a bunch quit before we even started training so how many people started so approximately yeah so we about 100 guys were like hey i want a different job so it was like down to 300 within like the first week when they're just doing the administrative starting then we do the pst and a bunch more guys get chopped so we started with yeah the physical screening test before you start BUDS. So we started indoctrination, BUDS class 284 with 285 guys. After that indoctrination, we started first phase with the green helmets.

Starting point is 00:41:16 We were at 185. So 100 more guys got chopped in that indoctrination three weeks. Oh, it's three weeks. Yeah. So we're at 185 guys class it up day one with the green helmets with 185 guys you know i i don't know that i've ever asked this to any of the seals i've had in and i definitely never googled this but do they have an exact do they have a minimum number in mind that they want to make it and a maximum number that they could cut kind of deal? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:48 So, dude, there's been Bud's classes where nobody finished back in the day. Right. So no one makes it. There's been Bud's classes where one guy graduates. Yeah. In the old days, right? There's just more people now. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:42:00 So I don't think that there's a quota. Who knows? Maybe way high up. They have some type of thing. Hey, we need at least this many guys through but of that 185 after hell week which is three weeks later we were at 50 so we were at 50 and then a bunch of those guys got rolled for injuries after hell week could you imagine making it through that well they well they get rolled they get if you make it through hell week through wednesday you get rolled forward so you don't have to do Hell Week again.

Starting point is 00:42:26 You just are on a medical hold and you get a brown shirt and you fucking are in a different level of turd. You're not shark shit on the bottom of the ocean. You're still shark shit, though. And so actually, out of that 185, man, really 400, 15 guys, 13 to 15, I don't remember the exact number actually finished all the way through me being one of them what's that what's after how weak so it's more of first phase you still have more kind of getting kicked in the dick then the blue helmets which is dive phase combat diving and pool competency tests that's another hardcore wicket that dudes get chopped 20 minute tests underwater where they're pulling on your hoses you're fighting with an instructor and you can't surface but you're having to go through

Starting point is 00:43:08 that's a pretty wild test and if you surface you're cut yeah if you they call it bolting or you dudes get because you're pretty much like doing your prop and you're like and then they'll hit you again and you're fighting you know and it's kind of to simulate surf but it's 20 minutes long and then they'll have to and there's a prop procedures you have to go through during this that was you know tough that's the next tough wicket so even even if you come up like in that situation and then you're like fuck it put me back down there you're like no you're failed you're done they'd rather see you pass out right they'd rather see you go black out they'll pull you back up but you cannot and then you still have to go back down there and try it again you'll later later that day a little bit later yeah you

Starting point is 00:43:48 can only get three you get four tests i finished on the first one i was one of the i was i think the first guy to actually pass that test in our class wow so i had i'm really i'm good procedurally in in pressure situations and i also practice a lot in my room so i would i practiced a lot like of the procedures picture vision i'm a visualization monster, bro. That's what I preach to guys on my programs and stuff. But you set goals, you see yourself there. You're like, man, you see what the set's gonna look. The power of visualization, man, is massively important.

Starting point is 00:44:17 The football player that sees himself catching and then when it comes, he catches it, right? It's walking through it. So I'm a huge, huge proponent of visualization. It's a's a simulation it's a simulate why not simulate if you have the ability so i was doing that then but i didn't really know what i was doing so past it past then you go into red helmets which is kind of a cool part still hard which is out on san clemente island demolition close quarters combat small unit tactics and all that and you're still doing all the obstacle courses in those in the ocean swims and boogeyman swims and shit like that where they chum the water all that stuff so we graduated december 2010 with 48 guys some of those guys

Starting point is 00:44:57 had got rolled in from other other classes so it was 13 to 15 of you yeah so there was like 30 to 40 guys who'd got rolled into the class from – who were all solid dudes. Do you think that there is – because – and I ask this type of question to almost every SEAL I have and some of the special forces guys who do insane shit on the ranger side and berets. But like you'll hear the stories all the time about the dude who shows up to Bud's and he's like the tri triathlete the stud and he's the fucking first guy to get cut everyone thinks he's the guy that's gonna make it all the way through like lead everyone and then he gets cut and you're like oh my god like do you think there's really any one trait or something of that sort that is injected into all these different people who actually these warriors who make it for seals that that you can tangibly say yeah that's that's the thing right there that's the thing that says

Starting point is 00:45:50 yep frogman grit oh if i could if you can bottle up grit then you fucking have a special operator special warfare guy you and that could be the guy from iowa who's kind of we call them steel marshmallows there's guys that just look like nothing spectacular who will crush me on a swim on a run you know you still gotta have the physical component but that like man i don't give a fuck like let's get it just grimy bro like that grimy gritty whatever that is those guys are gonna make it right the the triathlete man it's a different game when you're rested and warm and like fucking have train you know training in the sun it's a totally different ball of wax yeah than when you haven't slept and you have sand in your crotch and

Starting point is 00:46:37 dick chafe like i had dick chafe like a motherfucker in hell week dude my dick was chafed so bad bro well that's something people don't talk about is how bad the sand and the salt starts rubbing so it dude dudes have to get skin grafts after hell week sometimes bro oh i don't doubt there's a lot of medical things on the outsides of the hips from the the pants and the insides grit man so you know it but there are those guys that look like the machine of war coming in and they are yeah there's those guys too like that's what a lot of people don't talk about one of my best friends who shall name nameless because he's still rocking and rolling he he walked the walk and talked the talk dude he was up training i was his roommate going in he would be doing

Starting point is 00:47:21 fucking ab core exercises before buds what a set that guy and that guy and took cold showers right he's he's dialed it back because he's achieved a lot now but he just was just walk the walk he became a leader you know immediately and you know the instructors pushed him up and he was very you know low rank just right out of college all-american football player and shit like that and but could run and was tough though tough and cared like here's the thing man i remember watching him he would always eat last shit like that by leader like leader like true bro to the core like even when food would be gone he would still fucking wait right till everybody ate if dudes were still cleaning and stuff he'd wait that's That's the type of shit, man. If you're in a position, guys listening,

Starting point is 00:48:06 if you're in a position of leadership, man, are you really that dude? Are you that dude, man, that you would want to work for? There's an interesting thing in the teams that they say. An instructor said when we were in Bud's, which is fucking unbelievable. It still resonates with me to this day. He goes, imagine you're jumping into a DZ,

Starting point is 00:48:27 an unknown drop zone behind enemy lines. You're going on an op. It's night. You jump out. You know, something kind of goes bad on the way down. You fucked up. Now you're okay. Now you get separated.

Starting point is 00:48:40 You land. You're by yourself. He goes, you realize you got nothing got nothing some of your gears strewn about and you're now you're by yourself behind enemy lines he goes then you see a silhouette come over the hill and it's and you can't really tell who it is but then you see it's one of your guys he goes then you see who it is he goes and you have one or two reactions. Oh, fuck. It's that dude. He goes, or you have the reaction, fuck yes.

Starting point is 00:49:09 Yes. It's that dude. I'm going to be all right. He goes, be that second dude coming over the hill. Yes. Whatever you got to do, fucking to be that guy. Love that. Be that fucking guy.

Starting point is 00:49:20 And I was like, damn. Like, I can't forget that, bro. Like, be that fucking dude that people are like thank god he's on my team it doesn't matter you don't gotta be in combat bro thank god we're working with him like thank you everything that do that dude touches is gold right that that is that can that resonates everywhere in a business world here so there was just those moments those poignant moments in seal training and i'm sure it's like that in the q course in the green beret pipeline where it's just like magical man Q course in the Green Beret pipeline

Starting point is 00:49:45 where it's just like magical, man. Like really powerful lessons. Guys who are coming back from Iraq, shot, hurt, silver stars. Those guys were all my instructors, bro. Yeah, who were your instructors? Dude, my first phase, and people say, oh, our first phase was tough. Bro, my first phase instructor, one of them was Eddie Gallagher. Oh, shit.

Starting point is 00:50:04 And the other one was Capone, right? Capone. Those were my two first phase instructor, one of them was Eddie Gallagher. Oh, shit. And the other one was Capone, right? Capone. Those were my two first phase instructors, bro. And I ended up being on SEAL Team 7 with Gallagher, man. Awesome fucking operator. Yeah. And so it was – and Capone's just an epic dude, right? Solid cat to head to toe.

Starting point is 00:50:23 And so I really felt like I was taught lessons, hard lessons, right? Solid cat to head to toe. And so I really felt like I was taught lessons, hard lessons, right? Powerful lessons by tough dudes, you know, coming in. And I was grateful for it. I knew I was at a magical time and it ended up being that. Yeah. And for, for people out there, Eddie Gallagher was a guy, he hasn't been on this show, but he was a guy I discussed a lot with Sean when I had Sean on episode 148 because sean is friends with eddie had had him on his show and he went through this whole thing where they tried to bring some case against him yeah from iraq or whatever that he ended up i think like trump stepped in and yeah he beat it yeah got rid of that but you know he is known as like he's a legend as far as like

Starting point is 00:51:03 not even on the warrior side although he's known for that too but like on you hear about on the training side like people are like yo i had eddie gallagher bro he's tough as fuck bro that guy bro they call him fast eddie that guy can run that guy is a physical monster bro too like walks the walk up early training hard motherfucker. Right. Are they wearing you down mentally as much as they can to like on purpose? Dude, it was, it was a, it was powerful,

Starting point is 00:51:32 man. And I had like a problem with my feet at the beginning where my boots were too small and I got Murs on my feet. Oh shit. And dude, I was, my feet look like, bro,

Starting point is 00:51:39 I was the doctor. Look at it. He's like, dude, you're gonna get a fucking roll. There's no way. And I was hurting so bad. I couldn't even fit my foot, my feet and fit my feet in the boots. And my buddy was telling me about that tough dude. He's like, dude, you're going to get fucking rolled. There's no way. And I was hurting so bad. I couldn't even fit my foot,

Starting point is 00:51:45 my feet and fit my feet in the boots. And my buddy was telling me about that tough dude. He's like, dude, you got to go to the medical. And I was like, dude, that's where all the dudes who quit go.

Starting point is 00:51:52 I can't fucking go, but I couldn't even get my fucking feet in. I was like, and so I went, he said, look, we're going to have you soak your feet in this shit. But it was Friday.

Starting point is 00:52:01 Thank God. He goes, take this stuff, soak your feet. He goes, you're gonna have to come back money. You're going to get rolled. I,

Starting point is 00:52:06 it was like a fucking miracle, dude. I soaked my feet in this shit all weekend and I never went back. I got bigger boots. I went to a military surplus. Dude, it went away, bro.

Starting point is 00:52:15 In like two days, it was unbelievable. I don't know, man. It was something unbelievable, but I got bigger boots, put sock liners on. It wasn't all the way gone.

Starting point is 00:52:22 I still got scars on my feet from it, but dude, it was, I never went back and I never had a problem. I never got hurt in buds. I never got hurt in anything ever for all of, uh, I got super lucky. I've never been hurt ever in the military, not ever, bro. And, uh, I never missed a day of nothing. And so of, uh, I was super fortunate in that capacity through my whole career. 13 years, dude. I've never had an injury. That's amazing. Yeah, dude.

Starting point is 00:52:46 And I'm still feeling pretty good. So that whole time was powerful. When we go into SQT, that was an unbelievable experience. I felt like I was rocking and rolling, right? We're still focused. You tell people when SQT is. Seal qualification training. And that's just for the cells so people understand the flow.

Starting point is 00:53:04 It was winter time we immediately go up to alaska kodiak for cold weather mountain warfare for a month doing doing over the beach attacks swimming in hypothermia they call it rewarming drills which is a really nice way of fucking making you hypothermic and then getting teaching you how to but cool right now your autonomy is growing back and the beautiful thing about the SEAL teams is probably they give you autonomy early dude we were not even a year in the navy enlisted guys driving around and like you know rented trucks and flying and like stocking you know they push ownership and responsibility very early in the SEAL teams probably in all the special force

Starting point is 00:53:42 community special operations community in general. And so that's all I knew about the military. So what's the juxtaposition was to be the late foreign legion later, which I have the crazy dichotomy juxtaposition, which made it hard. So we're doing all that. Come back. Then we do combat diving. What does that consist of? That's all the rebreathers, the no bubbles, we're doing all that come back then we do combat diving you know another what is that consistent

Starting point is 00:54:05 that's you know all the rebreathers the no bubbles and the navigating underwater planting mines on ships and doing all that tough freezing cold four hours underwater dude navigating in the dark at night you know it's cold as you're jackhammering it's tough and the guys at sdv more power to them holy we got a guy that would kind of get you talking to, too, talking about SDV. It's powerful stuff, man. What they're doing underwater is insane. So we move into close quarters combat where our instructors, bro, we're all from, you know, at that tip of the spear. You know, dudes from, you know, development group and teaching us serious tactics, bro.

Starting point is 00:54:46 Practical tactics that actually were, have just been, you know, brought back and taught to us from, from the front. Can you describe some of them? Yeah. So, you know, to not get into, but just how you're entering the room, right? How you're doing it safely. How, and the most important, you know, tenant is man, you'll always going to be right. If you're protecting your buddy, if you're thinking in that capacity, bro, are you, is he entering the room and you're not entering bro? You don't have plates on his back, right? Plate to plate. You know, if you're moving in angles and being

Starting point is 00:55:18 geometrically aware, being structurally aware of the building, right? All these things, these concepts that I was like, bro, I love what I'm doing, right? It's being structurally aware of the building, right? All these things, these concepts that I was like, bro, I love what I'm doing, right? It's being structurally aware of the building. How's the house flow? Where are the veins of the house? Where's the hallways? Where's the stairs? Where's the angles of the shots? All these things are matter, bro. You know, where's never flagging anybody. There's so many things you got to think about. How's your safety? Where's your finger on it? When you're putting your finger on a trigger, you're not doing it how you're scanning in a dark room on night vision while dudes are moving around so that was what we're what we know we're pushing through which

Starting point is 00:55:53 is a tough test that's another tough crucible where it's stressful that's another eight weeks i think i believe that all the cells are eight weeks then we're going into land warfare which is powerful bro probably one of the toughest cells physically out of all the training so at this point you're not a seal yet no still no we're still in training right at the tail end we're like those tail end guys have been in it you know for it'll be 18 months almost by the time we finish solid from boot camp to if you do it fast all the way which i had done but you're not losing guys at this point the guys guys still failing oh it's ones and twos though it's like onesie twosies failing close quarters combat failing this the shooting tests

Starting point is 00:56:35 failing skydiving which we'll get into next right they just can't stabilize and you things like that that are unsafe it's usually safety stuff at that point where they're like dude you just gotta can't get this so when you finish the buds part you had 13 to 15 guys yeah we finished buds we had 48 right what they rolled in so we had 48 or 50 ish and then only 13 to 15 made it all the way through from four buds but then by the time we go into sqt from we had started buds that then we had like they call them originals 15 originals who had finished all the way but our class was 48 because guys had got rolled in from okay previous classes i'm just trying to follow then going into then going into sqt we had about

Starting point is 00:57:15 48 the guys who had graduated buds we probably finished with like that's right you know 45 or 50 because dudes still get rolled in at those point that's right you had said because other guys come in from other – Yeah, and even in SQT, you'll have guys rolling in from who fail close quarters combat or whatever. But you only get one failure in the whole pipeline now. So one technical failure. You get a medical roll and a technical roll. So you can't just keep getting rolled back.

Starting point is 00:57:39 Yeah, yeah. So that – I'm sorry to cut you off. No, you're good. I just want – I keep bottling in this question because I want to know this. Like the guys that you were in 284 with that you're going through this stuff with, are you guys extremely tight? Oh, yeah. At this point, you know everything about each other?

Starting point is 00:57:56 Yeah, we're tight. You know what the guy looks like at dark at night from behind. Yeah, we're tight man and the guys who got rolled in the class became some of my best friends too you know even later down in the pipeline who i'm still friends with who have been in their weddings and stuff like that so now we're in land warfare osama bin laden gets taken down while we're in so that's 2011 so that's right and dude we're in there with guys older brothers who are on the op right things are tight close it's becoming real what's happening you know and then extortion 1017 goes down three months later right with with a lot of people that are still you know tight in the community and brothers and men can you tell people

Starting point is 00:58:35 what happened there yeah so extortion 17 was when chinooks got shot it was extremely extremely um sad man you know a lot of really solid operators, fathers go down in that. And, um, you know, that was, you know, it's fucking brutal, man. You know, that's a big hit to the special warfare community. That was really bad. So that was, we were in language school at the time, but this was, you know, three months before Simon Laden gets taken down, things are picking up a lot of a lot of attentions coming to the seal community we're just going into the little secret squirrel stuff low visibility operations training now then seer dude seer yeah so seer was

Starting point is 00:59:16 nice because they're actually dude locked naked in a box dude throwing beating the shit out of us for like a week dude just you know but you're about to graduate seal training bro so you're like fuck it dude doesn't matter were you being a smart ass though no i wasn't like that i'm not i'm not like one of those guys but they'd have guys they're like man put your dick away you know so you'd hear them down the down the stop jerking off yeah stop jerking off in the box you know you motherfuckers you know and i was like you know just they they're just making fun of they're like oh you dude you got a small. They're yelling at dudes down the thing. I'm like, bro, these dudes are brutal.

Starting point is 00:59:46 But they're playing babies crying and stuff. And it's just, it is what it is, bro. But I was so happy to be almost done, man. And then we finished and dude, there we are, right? And then I go into language school, three months, which was- What'd you have to do? Arabic. Arabic.

Starting point is 01:00:00 So I did Arabic for three months. And then we- Was that your choice or did they choose that for you? They picked us kind of by our SEAL team and it was kind of designated to us. Oh, so you were already assigned what team you were going to. Yeah, so I got SEAL Team 7. So you could pick your West Coast or East Coast or SDV. I picked SEAL Team 7.

Starting point is 01:00:18 And this is back – this is now after the teams used to be based on the region in the world they fight in, right? That was no longer a thing. It was kind of because there were still, you know, some of the East Coast teams are going out in South America, so they're giving some guys Spanish, I think, and, you know, some shit like that. But for me, your geographic region was going to be the Middle East, so, you know, that Team 7. It's not super specific, but there's still dudes who can pay comm and stuff like that.

Starting point is 01:00:44 So, yeah, man. And then I'm at Team 7, and that was a feeling where I just – when I walked up to my cage the first time in the locker room and I was like, see my name. And it was like – I kind of get the chills when I think about it because it was so much time of people being like, dude, you're not going to get a fucking – fucking dude you're coming out of jail and i'm thinking back at jail and like starting my pst just thinking about all the moments going through maps how fucking scary that was for me with the strategic answering i was having to do and and fbi interviews man i was still getting military entrance processing with all the background stuff i had it was always a scary thing. I had this dark cloud over me, man, because I still had secret clearances.

Starting point is 01:01:29 Top secret clearances were coming up. So I always had to keep reliving and answer strategically and be fucking, you know, because I couldn't just be 100% honest. It would have been ridiculous. They're like, you know, fucking probably 20 arrests or something. It was out of control so i i had to be smart about how i answered stuff and there was a lot of fbi interviews i had to do even in the seal teams when they're you know coming on my top secret clearance coming on you

Starting point is 01:01:54 know doing refreshers and this and that it just just goes to show you man you know be smart man be strategic about what you're doing all the shit matters bro it doesn't go away what what did you learn because like i'm amazed at how you just threw yourself into this. And sorry, someone's fucking dying out there. This thing is so, we have this so noise-proof, but the one thing that gets through is the firetruck. But I'm so amazed at how quick the turnaround is. Like, obviously, you moved out to Boston to get your shit in order.

Starting point is 01:02:24 You start going to school, doing right things. You move back to California. You go to college. You're doing a lot of the right things. But you're still fucking around and getting arrested and doing – some of it's kind of funny. But like stupid shit that's getting you in trouble. You end up going to jail. You walk out of jail.

Starting point is 01:02:43 You have the grit, to use your word, to figure out like how the fuck I'm going to get you walk out of jail you have the grit to use your word to figure out like how the fuck i'm gonna get somewhere in the military you pick the highest end rung of it yeah they they help you get in there obviously like they took a liking to you and now you jump right into it i don't even know how long this whole period is but whatever it is 12 18 24 months you do this insane training yeah and now you walk up to your locker. It says your name on it. You have your trident. You're on Team 7. Are you like, holy shit, wait a minute. I'm built from something here?

Starting point is 01:03:11 Or was it like, no, I can do this. This is exactly what it is. It was a mix of both. It was – I don't like the word humble, having a low opinion of myself, but it was like a very somber – like, oh, man, dude you know wow powerful you know i'm really grateful it was grateful powerful i felt exactly where i was supposed to be it was like i fucking was so happy man it was like incredible feeling being like and it was three months to the day pretty much where i was was showing up in my locker from when i walked out of jail almost a day three years oh three years did i say three months okay i was like wait a minute three years to the

Starting point is 01:03:56 day three years to the day and when i walked out of jail to when i when i walked into my locker right that's how long it took of just rocking and rolling, man. There was no time. That's some biblical shit. Yeah, so it was three years to the day. And that was powerful. And right when I got there, man, I volunteered. So they were like, who wants to go to comm school, which is not a sexy school.

Starting point is 01:04:14 And they were going to give vacations to guys. I volunteered. Comm school? Communications. Naval Special Warfare Communications. I was like, I'll go. Right, man? I was just fucking happy to be there, bro.

Starting point is 01:04:23 I didn't want to go on vacation. I was fucking right where I wanted to be. I wanted to be to be there, bro. I didn't want to go on vacation. I was fucking right where I wanted to be. I wanted to be right fucking there, dude. And so I went to comm school. That set me up. That one decision set me up like a fucking wave, a divine wave. Because I did that, I came back, and a bunch of – Team 7 was just coming back from an 11-month deployment in Afghanistan.

Starting point is 01:04:41 So the dudes were primed. It was a heavy energy. It was real, man. Dudes were primed there was a heavy and it was a heavy energy it was real man like dudes were hopping there was serious shit dudes are you know going through stuff and and dudes wanted to go on vacation they wanted a little break and jtac school was coming up joint terminal attack controller which is coordination of bombs being dropped from jets is or close air support or just air support in general with special operators on the ground. You're talking to pilots and shit with radios.

Starting point is 01:05:08 And I go, they go, we need a guy who went to comm school to go to JTAC school. And it's up near the, where Top Gun is, Fallon, Nevada. They do all the training with those guys and whatever. And I said, they said, do you want to, I said, I'll go. Right. And because none of that, there was some older guys who there was a gap because you had to leave on January 1st. And they had just got back.

Starting point is 01:05:27 I left. So I go past that school, which was challenging. And I came back, man. And they said, hey, we want a comms JTAC guy to go to sniper school. Sign me up, bitch. I said, okay, but I got to shoot off. So that created some friction points. You got to what?

Starting point is 01:05:42 You got to shoot off. You got to shoot, test got to shoot test with older guys right and so everybody wants to go to sniper school most guys and i was testing with guys who were like this fucking new guys testing with this so i'm like stepping in front of people and so i was like yeah well this is going down i shot well enough beat beat some guys and i get a slot for sniper school bro so i went to went to sniper school and that was an unbelievable experience was being able to go to that. So I was a comms JTAC sniper as a new guy, man.

Starting point is 01:06:11 You got every year loading up. At like seven, eight, nine months I'd been at the team, I had already been done pretty well for myself. But before that, we went to Cabo to do the close protection for, not close protection, but his maritime extraction force for Obama. Well, they're down there for the G20 summit down in Cabo to do the close protection for – not close protection, but his maritime extraction force for Obama. Well, they're down there for the G20 summit down in Cabo, Mexico. They were worried about the cartels during his moments of transition.

Starting point is 01:06:34 They did a G20 in Cabo? They did a G20 in Cabo during – oh, in 2012, man, which was like rock and roll with the cartel. And so they – dude, so that's what they did and team seven drew the short straw we were in the maritime force and i think it was team eight or somebody was doing the on land stuff bro i almost died there that was the closest i've ever been to dying was out during that fucking thing in the summer and this is before this was before this was before i went to sniper school right before so i fucking like a storm came in and we were on this like the lc use you know the stuff that would land on d-day one of those like yeah things and bro storm came in we're jumping

Starting point is 01:07:12 i'm jumping onto one of the boats i'm in full kit dude heavy mags body armor helmet night vision it's two o'clock in the morning like you know eight foot nine foot swells in between these boats and i'm jumping and i hit the side of the rib and go in the drink and treading water my my m4s wired into my kick because i didn't want to be a new guy and lose my fucking weapon so i was not getting rid of this thing i had a one water wing which i i was just this was a this was a moment where i i realized man it's up to you to keep yourself alive bro this. This is big boy rules. And I had been, you know, I was being got a little too lax with, oh, dude, I'll be all right. Just jump in. And, bro, I was treading water.

Starting point is 01:07:52 I almost sank, dude, because I was so heavy and was just putting out, trying to stay up. I'm just wondering, though, you're going down there to protect Obama at a G20 meeting. What are you doing jumping off a boat at 2 a.m. in the middle of the water? Well, it was so – anytime he transited, we were in full kit, on ribs, waiting. Like anytime he transited, on radios, and then when he would stop, we'd get up, right? So covering the water. But it was such a bad storm that we needed to take cover in port. It was like smashing the boats up against the side.

Starting point is 01:08:25 So it was actually like they had to route it up. God knows what, because we're coming into a port with all automatic weapons. So you guys, if I'm understanding this correctly, you guys are setting a perimeter from the sea. Yeah. Well, we were going to be extracting him from his mansion. He was renting, right? Ext renting right extracting him if he needed it

Starting point is 01:08:46 okay all right yeah yeah okay now we're off the beach yeah off the beach and so what was wherever he's gonna be so that was kind of what the mission set was coordinating air and stuff too and so it was cool until it wasn't you know and then we slept in port, hide all the weapons, slept like under a fucking bridge, dude, like soaking wet. I almost just died, man. And it was a powerful moment where I go, I'm glad it happened there because it locked me on. I went, whoa, dude, that was close, right? There's no more bumpers on the railings. There's no fucking – dude, you have got to be careful.

Starting point is 01:09:21 It's – you don't get ready. You stay ready. That was the moment where I went, dude, I got to stay fucking ready, man. Because it's always when you don't see it coming. I did not see that coming, bro. And it was, you know, it was an eye-opening experience, but I'm glad I went through it. And the guys you were with are all these guys who were off the 11-month tour in Afghanistan. Some of those guys.

Starting point is 01:09:41 Yeah, some of those guys, some of those guys were. Did any of your buddies you graduated buds with join you on team seven? Yeah. Five. Okay. So those guys are with you too? Not at this little op. I was one of the only new guys. There was one other new guy picked for this particular thing just because of our qualifications. And, um, cause we get disseminated out like most, you know, one, two guys. Yeah. So we're kind of split, spread out. And this was just our particular troop. A couple guys got picked. And so you finish this job.

Starting point is 01:10:07 You live, thank God. Yeah. And you go back and you do sniper school. Where is that again? Atterbury, Indiana is where it was. What's that like? What are you doing? Bro, that was fucking awesome.

Starting point is 01:10:16 I was actually thinking about it today before we got on here is how cool of an experience that was. Not even just for the shooting and stuff, the stalking and all that stuff, which really I love, but man, you know, going to party in with the bar at the bars with the dudes and the strip clubs and like, you know, but training hard and partying hard,

Starting point is 01:10:35 it was an unbelievable experience. Cause I, it was good about sniper school. The strip clubs were amazing, but it was, but it was cool, man. Cause looking back,

Starting point is 01:10:42 there's just those moments, those periods of life where you just can't recreate. I'm a new guy, so I'm having to fucking fight guys sometimes, bro, because I'm driving sober on a couple nights and fucking animals in the backseat, bro, doing van fights. And I'm trying to keep this van on the road, bro. And then I had another new guy partner, and he was just kind of a little bit more, not fragile, but he couldn't stay up all night, you know, sober and perform. So I was like, bro, I'll take your shift. It was just because I needed him to be on point because he was calling wind. Oh, and you're doing the shift.

Starting point is 01:11:20 Yeah, and I could actually do some stuff, like, you know, a little tired, but he was like, get a little bit more frazzled. But, bro, it was powerful. Had you grown up shooting at all? No. Like on ranges and stuff? No, no. Like, you know, I'm a San Diego man.

Starting point is 01:11:33 I shot a little bit, but nothing. I'm not like a country boy at all. So this was a brand new type thing for you. Yeah, which was actually probably good. I didn't have bad habits. Yeah. I didn't have any bad habits, and so I just kind of listened to him, trigger squeeze, and there's better shots. You know, not i'm not there's shootings of talent bro oh yeah like there's guys who are just better shots they can hold tighter groups i'm like a

Starting point is 01:11:55 85 percent guy like i'm a b plus guy there's guys who are like a shooters i'm like a b who just checks out for pretty much how i am probably pretty damn good i'm okay man but it was cool because you also have guys coming from you know some of those tier one units that were coming and watching us and and watching our tests and and overviewing the course and in involved and would also you know talk to us about the seriousness of what we're learning guys that they had you know die because they didn't set up sniper hides correctly and didn't black out rooms correctly and you know you know having their glass not is reflecting and they're not paying attention to these small things and dude

Starting point is 01:12:36 dudes in tears bro telling us stories bro like that's what's uh going through these reflecting back on some of those moments are powerful yeah growing men you know crying telling you a story about well the importance of what the fuck you're learning dude is really there's very few things that you go through in life where you recreate those moments so i'm i was really grateful to have gone through that experience and you know come back it wasn't really my my bread and butter in the teams because my i was more in the jtac world but i had that qualification so if you got called in you could do it yeah so it was cool to have and that's something but that's a skill you gotta constantly you know you gotta water the flower yeah you do yeah you do you you lose it for sure it's you use it or you lose it yeah we I just had Danny

Starting point is 01:13:21 Hall in here who was like a legendary I mean he he was a lot of things, but he was a legendary sniper among other things with the Green Berets and the Special Forces in general for a lot of years. And it's crazy. When this motherfucker would start like sitting right in your seat right there, start explaining the process of this during different missions throughout the whole – we did two episodes. It was like six hours but like when he would start to do it and he would like turn towards this camera and do the do the gun movement i could see right here that he had left the room while he's explaining this and he's there he's feeling the metal he's seeing the shot describing the wind and i'm like you know my ocd mind's thinking of all the details that go into this and i'm like thank god i'm not the one doing this because there is so much that can especially the farther away

Starting point is 01:14:09 you get the number of things that can go wrong it it's insane it's a mix of science and art oh my god it's a mix of science and art and you really start to understand you know bullet trajectory but also wind man like how how powerful wind is on an actual bullet the trajectory it's dude you you'll have you'll be shooting at a mover moving left to right and the wind will be such where you actually have to shoot behind the direction of the movement it's odd to think about right you're thinking shoot in front of where the target's moving no you got to shoot in the back of it right because how the wind is it's it It's very – and then watching the bullet trace, you know, lead in from behind. Crazy.

Starting point is 01:14:51 It's very odd. But once it starts, you know, sinking in, it's pretty cool. Yeah. So you finished that. How long was that again, sniper school? That's two months. Okay, two months. A little bit over two months.

Starting point is 01:15:01 So, again, like kind of the eight-week thing. So you come back to coronado after that you're with team seven like you've already done an op with them and in mexico anyone but like i guess usually you can't say like how many guys were on the team or everything but like how was the integration with the guys who have been there done that on team seven or were you you know you know you're still a new guy bro you know you're still a new guy you're still cleaning up but do you keep your mouth shut and you work it's not that big a deal i was locked on to man i was i was there i was getting there four in the morning and working out i was so fucking happy you know laying my clothes out before i could not have been more just happy

Starting point is 01:15:39 to be there dude like i i knew i was writing my purpose that felt good. So we were starting into the workup. But, you know, you're still a new guy. There's still those moments, and there's guys with, you know, four combat deployments and gone through a lot. You haven't done shit yet. And that's the truth. So I understood that, though, you know. But I was all about just taking on responsibility,

Starting point is 01:16:00 learning as much as I could, staying hard, man, staying physically fit and looking and acting the part, bro. You know? So you're not out there partying, getting in trouble or any of that. No, not yet, but no, I wasn't getting in trouble, but I was, you know, we'd go out and have fun, but I wasn't getting in trouble and stuff like that. I was still, you know, pushing the pace a little bit, but not really during training and stuff. I was cells. I was not like out fucking around and I was probably pretty locked on i had one little one little thing i got picked up drunk in public in like newport on like new year's on

Starting point is 01:16:31 christmas eve day and they fucking they were like it wasn't like me being a the cops was like hey man i'm leaving the bar he's like hey but come up here so that was and that was scary because i'm like oh fuck you know you can't get alcohol related incidents but it wasn't a crime and they didn't i called my leadership and they're like dude fucking whatever you know they're like you did did you do anything i'm like no the cop they like you didn't even run paperwork it was you know yeah you know so i said okay so we do the full workup we get ready then we go to yemen right that's so that's so that's where we get picked up for that low visibility operation in y because they only allowed nine of us in country. What year is this?

Starting point is 01:17:07 This was 2013. Okay. So they let nine Team 7 guys in country. Yeah. So it was cool, man. They give you the credit card, buy all your Arcteric shit and start growing your beard out. So we were growing beards out and getting ready to go. And it was me and one other new guy that got picked for it.

Starting point is 01:17:30 And everybody else was older guys and we went man and it was pretty much a gray it's not pretty much exactly a gray insert we weren't coming through a port of entry you know i'm saying so we were how does that work we were just pretty much riding atvs off the back of a land in a you know c-130 and you know c-17 excuse me and then on a old russian desertedbase and fucking riding ATVs off the back for the most part. No passports. Just rolling in. Not stamped. Yeah, just rolling in. A gray insert, you know, technically.

Starting point is 01:17:54 And we were the – but, you know, it's not a combat deployment, right, because it's Yemen. It's not really that yet. It's just there's – Well, what's going on at this time with the hooties and everything so the whole mission set at the time was to train the counterterrorism unit for a couple ops couple potential interdiction of courier ops for you know but it's aqap al-qaeda arabian peninsula is the issue there so it's a it's it's developing intelligence there's there's some oh you know some gb guys there's stuff going on there and but it's all very gray ish so we're doing ctu counterterrorism unit training and also you kind of building up

Starting point is 01:18:34 this small outpost base which ended up getting taken over by the hoothies two years later oh shit yeah so i mean putting a lot of money into this place building out you know a helicopter landing zone for ospreys and building this thing out with our hands, man. Like, there ain't nobody out there doing it. We're putting up HESCO walls and stringing razor wire by hand, bro. Living in tents, doing this shit for, you know, the team before us had been there seven months. We were there second, which was we were there another seven. Are you deniable?

Starting point is 01:19:02 Like, is this a little bit from a navy seal perspective is this like you know you're there but you guys aren't really there if you get caught you're on your own no it's not that bad but it's like well at least they didn't tell me that you know but it's but your closest air support's six seven hours away oh that's not right so we had so you know so there's things like that not to mention there's just you know you're showering outdoors there's death walker scorpions and other shit like that that if you get fucked up you're you're kind of hanging your nuts out there looking back you're you're a little bit hanging your nuts out there for multitude of reasons but man i was so happy bro just because i would take sniper watch in the sniper tower in three to six in the morning

Starting point is 01:19:45 and i would just sit there dude and the and the you know the morning prayer would kick off and i'd be like smoking my cigarette drinking my coffee like fuck yeah bro i'm like finally you know dude i'm like damn has been a long path give me a fucking reason i just was so happy to be there i just felt right you know so you know i didn't care what i was doing as long as i was like training working and you know being away from the flagpole is nice because we're on our own man you know there was you know where we brought 5 000 cash each there's no galleys or you know you're eating off the local population with cash so we would send our interpreter interpreters in to buy fucking chickens.

Starting point is 01:20:28 And we'd eat a half chicken a day. And I'd go eat with the counterterrorism unit. You got to kill the chicken? No, pretty much, bro. But everything's – you're not eating vegetables because it's covered in bugs and stuff. So you're just eating. But I would go over to the counterterrorism unit and sit surrounded by 100 cats and flies and eat boiled goat off the ground, bro. I was like, free lunch, bro.

Starting point is 01:20:50 It's all good, dude. I was the only one that would go over there, bro, because I was trying to keep those gains coming in. I was like, I'll leave with the counterterrorism unit, bro. I was all about it. Oh, my God. So it's nine of you and you're training all these guys. Yeah. So we did some – we would go up to the capital and do security for the ambassador.

Starting point is 01:21:09 What's the capital again there? Sana'a. Sana'a. Yeah. So we'd go over to the capital and do some – Can we pull up Sana'a on a map? S-A-N-A-A. Sana'a, Yemen.

Starting point is 01:21:19 Yeah. I just want people to see that. But go ahead. We were actually kind of in Aden when we were doing that little operation stuff. but the capital sanaa and man you know the hooties were there there's still a lot of issues with you know we're gonna chop the president's head off and yeah there's a lot of uh should be yeah you see sanaa right there kind of up in the middle and then and we were down in aiden during this time we were down in aiden okay where is aiden see down at the bottom on the port yeah near the water yeah which is dude it's a trip down there for anybody that doesn't know about yemen is dude

Starting point is 01:21:53 you're first of all the water's like turquoise blue you're like wow yeah and it's filled with trash oh that's just filled with plastic bags bro bro. Because they all chew cot. People that I don't know about that area of the world. It's like that root. It's like an amphetamine. It's a slight amphetamine and they put it in their cheek and it's prolific, bro. Even all the men have had their cheeks expanded permanently because of how much they chew. They'll spend like, these guys make like $15 a month and they'll spend like these guys make like 15 a month and they'll spend five on you know five to ten on cot on cot dude and there's that's what those plastic bags are and they come in different colored bags for the quality and they're it's everywhere

Starting point is 01:22:37 everybody chews it every fucking day i've we've all tried it it's not that strong it's a little bit but you know they just love it so much And so that's all the trash bags you see there, but also the ruins, man. Right. Cause the English were there for years, bro. Dude, there are the ruins up in the, the Mount of war. It's been going on there for years. And it's like, you know, you see the old, you know, Ottoman stuff or whatever sent out there, dude, it's crazy how much history is there. it's it's powerful bro that that whole area how much did you guys get like before you went there read in on i would imagine a lot but like read in on the intelligence of what's happening on the ground and what maybe

Starting point is 01:23:17 the outside of like what you're actually doing training these guys what the long-term objectives yeah you have some we got strategic briefs right we have some strategic briefs from the intel departments and then we'd up we we were working with cia guys they're also they're there with you yeah they'd come in the camp with us and we'd be doing nice little bags of cash and everything ripping dudes phones and shit dude yeah we you know they're coming in and talking to those guys is you know pretty interesting some of their stories you know just you know what they're doing in the capitals and some of those you know, pretty interesting. Some of their stories, you know, just, you know, what they're doing in the capitals and some of those, you know, drinking and this and that, and they have parties and it's deals and people come in with their little

Starting point is 01:23:50 thing and then take it off and, you know, it on the, in their designer clothes. It's a, it's an interesting world. And yeah, man. And so that was the whole process there was building it up. Not to mention we have, you know, you have some of the tier one units coming in and they're doing their stuff and scoping it out because it's they're using it as a lily pad you know lily pad yeah kind of like a you know to leapfrog to you know oh understood a little lily pad because they're coming from Djibouti right so a lot of those they just fly right across the little channel there in a helicopter and see what's up. And so that was that situation.

Starting point is 01:24:26 And coming back from there, you know, felt good, man. So right downtown and now we're kind of kicking back off, going into another workup. And, you know, I had a couple little friction points with getting arrested once, you know, coming back. How long were you in Yemen? Seven months, about. Okay.

Starting point is 01:24:42 Six and some change. So you come back and now you're getting into trouble. Yeah, once but then you know right the ship you know a little little kind of like incident downtown and then right the ship and then locked on as fuck then this year going into this i was like peaking peaking as far as my professionally i was and this is what i say when you're peaking bro be careful because that's when you have to lock it on even more and that's what i learned that's what i fucking preach and bang the drum on you're starting to think your shit doesn't stink yeah and you just lose perspective of what got you there right what got you to the peak you start to get a little those speed wobbles and i was the momentum was picking up looking back i was was so focused on, and I was getting accolades and attaboys

Starting point is 01:25:26 and early promotions. Now I was like the earliest promoted out of my group. I was already, you know, in E6, pretty much in less than four years. And I was, now I'm up for like an LPO position. What happened? I'm like, bro. And two weeks after my promotion,

Starting point is 01:25:40 dude, I get arrested for that shit in the bar. What happened there? So I hit a guy in a bar. One time one time man that's all it takes right one time one one decision like that why'd you hit him may said something smart you know on the way out dude and it had been building all night come to find out i didn't know why the situation was i was in town by myself in idaho on a jtac trip and i was there on a date with a, a chick who he didn't like the fact I was there with her. Yeah. And so that's, that was the backstory. And so I didn't really understand that kind of, but like I said, no victim, I read the situation was tense.

Starting point is 01:26:20 I didn't give a fuck. Didn't leave. Right. I could have, there was multiple times where I could have not put myself in a bad situation. Right. And then walking out, he like kind of, you know, gave a little,

Starting point is 01:26:29 you know, kind of one of those things. And, uh, dude, I just one look, no look to hit him once. And,

Starting point is 01:26:35 um, and he went down like a sack of potatoes. I, but I broke his orbital eye socket. So it was a great bodily injury. He went down. I had to pay for his surgery. He almost lost his eye, man. Like it was like a whole thing he went down i had to pay for his surgery he almost lost his eye

Starting point is 01:26:45 man like it was like a whole thing he's fine you got he's fucking fine you know he's fine and uh but but dude i went to jail you know now i got aggravated assault now i have them sending so they arrest you there yeah so it was toast for me the card on file i knew i was toast and and do you get kicked like this is what blows my mind apparently this you didn't get kicked out of the navy seals well there was a well i was fighting the case so technically i'm not convicted of anything yet right so that was i i was like dude i can't take a felony which was the actually the leverage because bro i was like i was willing to risk 15 years in prison which is what the fucking maximum was for for not a felony that's how serious i took my seal career because if i took a felony i was done i was toast so i was

Starting point is 01:27:31 like well they're gonna paint me in the corner i have to take to the fucking box i gotta take it to trial what was seal leadership saying about all this they were like because they saw it on video dude i had you know it was on video they put me i had to go to boards and everyone's like oh man they're like damn well they're like at least your seal skills aren't in question bro because it was a brutal but it was like one of those times where you like you know you hit a baseball it feels like nothing that's when it was i was like oh no i didn't have a scratch my hand was fine it was one of those clean shot it was like too clean so i got demoted right i took a demotion now i'm like pulled out of the platoon for a little bit but then they're starting to see i went to the little anger

Starting point is 01:28:09 management classes and stuff and they see dude you went to anger management yeah i was like hey can i go to anger i was i was trying to show i was trying man for the courts is this but is that that's not navy seal anger management that's right well no i was i was in i went and talked to the psychologist for naval special warfare i was doing all that shit and um get down to the roots man why i'm so angry apparently god so many feelings so many feelings man and but they saw that okay it was kind of dragging along and they said i was the plea deal was six plus three six years in prison plus three was my plea deal so that's what they offered yeah and they offered and i said well i can't do that plus i'm getting sued by the guy

Starting point is 01:28:49 for like a half million dollars at the time so i got stressed for days bro i'm like man you know i'm stressing but they allow me to keep training but i mean while i'm still flying back to idaho for these court dates and they keep kicking the can down the road and this is like the divine intervention of stuff the judge retires so that they they keep kicking the can down the road. And this is like the divine intervention of stuff. The judge retires. So they have to kick the can down the road a little more. Then another judge picks it up. Now the lawyer who really wanted my ass, he quit, he quits and goes somewhere else. There's like all these things happening in my favor, which I didn't understand at the time. I have a really expensive attorney in Idaho. Who's like a bad-ass John Cox. I love you love you bro and he was like you know plugged in

Starting point is 01:29:25 through you know through some contacts even in seals you know who are connected but I paid a lot of money I was hemorrhaging a lot of money but it was worth it so I get to the point where I'm about to go to Iraq oh shit so they're getting you on a workup during all this oh dude I'm during a workup man and so I'm it was the last like day of our workup where that happened, one of the last times. So I'm going to Iraq, bro, and it's like coming down two, three weeks. We're leaving. And I go to court and I go, here's the deal. Team 7 had written a letter.

Starting point is 01:29:55 They're like, hey, we need this guy's quals in Iraq. So the courts go, we'll let him go to Iraq. He can deal with it. God bless America. Yeah, they go. And so, hey, man, I love Idaho, man. That was some good old boy shit because they let me go on bail. I'm still technically on bail, bro. And so I went to Iraq on bail.

Starting point is 01:30:10 To another country. On a felony charge, bro, to Iraq. And that was, but that was, dude, I have, during that whole appointment, bro, and we'll get into the appointment a little bit. Yeah, let's do that. Dude, I was stressing, bro. Dude, because all these dudes are looking forward to getting back. Dude, I volunteered to stay three more months.

Starting point is 01:30:28 I did, dude. I did. I volunteered to stay. No, you don't understand. I can't go home. Because the first month back, I had to go to court, a trial, jury trial, facing six years in prison. And I was, like, fucking stressed.

Starting point is 01:30:42 I thought about joining the Curtis Peshmerga and just staying out there, bro. I thought of everything, bro. I was sitting out there on a roof, bro. So they flew us in. The whole thing was we were supposed to meet with the Sunni tribal fighters who had been displaced from ISIS. Wait a minute. This is like 2015? This is prepping for the Missoula offensive.

Starting point is 01:31:00 Oh, so this is when ISIS is like. Yeah, so we were inserted with like very minimal information we were in a green beret like in technically cursing at the living in tents about ready to leapfrog up to towards the flot the forward line of troops and start linking with the sunni tribal fighter shakes three different tribes who had been displaced all their towns by isis and to go use them link with them figure it out and then go start taking back over these fucking villages who their women and shit were still there right it was like crazy bro so but we're technically not an assist technically but right so it's this weird gray area legally

Starting point is 01:31:44 because it's Obama. And so they're like, well, you can't really like be there technically. It was a very weird, I don't even know how legally it was all supposed to go down. But we're there. And so that's the Pentagon side. Who the fuck knows, right? Because all I know for sure is we're getting shot at taking rockets. I don't know what they fucking called not assisting but so is we let we

Starting point is 01:32:06 we started found this old isis like storage facility that was had ordinance in it they're just like old old mortars and shit so we just cleaned it all out with you know eod and stuff and then turned it into our fucking base man it was you know maybe two kilometers you know away from the forward line of troops the first trenches and stuff and we've started building out this base cleaned it out really turned it into something kind of cool i put in a landing area for some some drones and built the walls out and the heskos mind you were doing all this like fucking slave work bro it was we got no heavy equipment we had no heavy equipment.

Starting point is 01:32:45 We had no vehicles at the time. They gave us up armored G wagons that were from Afghanistan. They were all fucked up. So we were rolling around in Merced. It was just not the deal. So finally we start getting, you know, the Nissans in and the Tacomas and start up armored stuff. And we started building out the vehicles and building out all the, all the armor and the walls. And that's really what we did, man.

Starting point is 01:33:06 We worked our ass off. Still, every once in a while, we'd take a Katushka rocket. You know, it's right, you know, didn't hit our bait, you know, not far. But they knew we were there. They knew shit was going on. It was kind of sketchy in that the security was minimal at the

Starting point is 01:33:22 time. It was just us. It was a handful of dudes. It was eight dudes at first. Just eight? It was eight, but SEALs. And then we had probably three or four support staff guys, support CBs and mechanic. You just dropped in the middle. And so we're just building it up slowly,

Starting point is 01:33:39 and we're going to end up probably handing it off to a Marine unit or something after, and then they would leapfrog forward for some more stuff. Soon we got the rest of the platoon out, and then we were plussed up. It was after maybe three or four months. Then we had the full 16, so then we probably had 20 guys, and then as we built the rooms out, they had some drone guys come in, and we built out the talk, and then it started to turn into

Starting point is 01:34:01 like a full-on operation by the time we left. It's amazing that you're doing all this. I mean, this was a crazy time. There's all kinds of intricate things going on. You guys are very autonomous on the ground, have to make this happen for the people coming after you set it up. And you're like thinking about a fucking nine-year prison stay. Bro, it was hard to stay present. And that was a dark time for me, man.

Starting point is 01:34:25 There were some moments I wasn't at my best. But I was a tribal lead because I'm an Advent-laden specialist. English? So kind of that low visibility, vetting spies, kind of that stuff. I went through the whole pipeline for that specialty training of how you teach guys how to draw maps and where to hide them and that shit. So I, that was one of my specialties is cause I can talk to people, right? Cause I'm, so I'm good at that, that whole world. And so I was a tribal lead.

Starting point is 01:34:56 So I would meet with him, you know, all the time. And then I started getting him to show me maps. Where's he from? How are we going to, where are your guys? Okay. Where are your best guys? And then I would train them them i would go train these guys multiple times a week and i got they had like 300 guys i honed it down to about 50 that were like good that were safe yeah and then we started kind of getting these ops together meanwhile we're also building target packages for

Starting point is 01:35:22 close air support we're dropping a ton of ordinance man i mean we think they with the ordinance and stuff not small arms we killed about probably predicted about like 2 000 3 000 guys of with all the stuff with all the seal troops not just in our area but with the with seal team seven it was there at that time right that's that's the number i heard who knows if that's exactly accurate i don't't know. But we were dropping a lot of shit, building target packages and doing all that from the talk, from also out on the – where it's like trench warfare. It was like trenched in, man. It was like in the dead space in between. And so going across that was all mined.

Starting point is 01:36:00 Oh, my God. So one night – I mean one night we come across. We're walking across. We're telling these guys, like, look, man, this is the is the path to go man and they thought we were kind of fucking lying dude next thing you know dude's fucking torsos flying by and just step on a you know it was our tribal fighter guys so that was a whole fucking thing and you know it you know the trust factor here they're like what the fuck these guys and you know things get lost in translation and so it was hectic man it's it was hectic but they want air support they know we're there for that they want guns they want air support

Starting point is 01:36:37 that's all they really fucking care about where where was this base again this was at kind of outside of mock more if people are familiar we're trying to pull that up mokmor so it's like maq m-a-k-m-u-r i think it's how you m-a-k-m-u-r iraq let's try that i just want to see where that'll be like the the western tip of kurdistan and because kurdistan is not technically a country so it's but it's – That's why I'm asking. Yeah, you see it's kind of right in the middle there. Yeah, let's zoom out on that. That's perfect.

Starting point is 01:37:09 Just so people can see where this is. Just zoom out. Beautiful. Keep going. Keep going. Okay, so Mosul is up there. Yeah. Just northwest.

Starting point is 01:37:18 Yep. And then, yeah, this is why I wanted to see it because I wanted to ask you about that because you mentioned the Peshmerga and everything. A lot of people that I'll talk to don't understand that there's like millions of Kurds who don't have a country, but they operate in their like autonomous regions around southern Syria, northern Iraq. And they have this badass army called the Phmerga and everything who works with the united states all they love us and they still don't have a country and everything dude the kurds were fucking awesome to us they were they take pride in keeping americans safe they're very westernized erbil man we'd go to the mall and then be at the ford line of troops you know mixing it up a little bit in the same day hey you know it's a trip man

Starting point is 01:38:06 and that kurds we had kurdish interpreters and they had ak's bro that who knows how many guys the that those some of those guns have taken out this would be like their grandpas you know what i'm saying bro i'm being serious like and they would keep the guns as like as like yeah the soul of it yeah tough too organized very solid you know very cool very hospitable with us you know eating with them and whatever so kurdistan is it's not an autonomous country but it's definitely protects its own borders yeah it's great and that's also that's also the strategic difficulty with kurdish because they're they only have vested interest in their kurdish border we don't.

Starting point is 01:38:45 So we would be like, hey, we're going to keep pushing out. They're like, nah, we're good. And I get it. They're like, Wyatt, we don't need to fucking keep going. So there was that piece too is kind of getting them. So that's why we had the Sunni tribal fighters. But that's also why we're working with the Kurdish Peshmerga. Sometimes I need to go shoot with these guys and I got to do it in Curtis.

Starting point is 01:39:06 They don't want the SUNY tribal fighters there. So I would have to be dude driving a truck with like 60 tribal fires, not in one truck, but like, you know, I'd have 30 guys in one truck behind me in a steak truck that I'm borrowed from the Peshmerga going through checkpoints, bro. Like, Oh my God. They're like, what's the bad? I'm just like, don't worry about it. You know, it's all good. You know, it's not like i was hiding but i was definitely you know we're not rolling through you know telling them exactly what we're doing so it was interesting times looking back

Starting point is 01:39:34 difficult times frustrating times you have you know you want your we're kind of you feel like you're kind of dogs on the chain you have all all these ROIs. You're not getting approvals for drops, rules of engagement. Oh, right. And, you know, it's – you're out there doing a job, but you don't feel like you got all the support. You don't feel like you're being totally let. But still – Why was that?

Starting point is 01:40:00 Man, because you knew we could have killed a lot more people. But you felt like because it wasn't approved a war yeah yeah they're like your technique they don't want they don't want you know guys and fucking solomons no no no uniforms getting fucking killed like what the fuck these guys doing out there we we came back one time me and a guy an officer i was going to sit with the general on one of these operations i'm a jtech so i was going to sit with the general on one of these operations i'm a jtech so i was going to go to erbil where there's the military big presence of the united states military there next to the international airport we drove by ourselves as me and another

Starting point is 01:40:36 dude an officer and we're you know big ass mustaches you know civilian clothes whatever come just driving with our m4s through checkpoints. It's a couple hours from the little fob we were at back to this, you know, Tactile Operations Center. And I come to the gate, this fucking dude at the gate. He goes, where are you? Who are you? Where are you guys coming from? We're like, we're SEALs out in the fucking thing.

Starting point is 01:40:59 He goes, we got guys out there? I was like, bro, it's like some, you know, E2 at the fucking gate. I'm like, bro, these guys are getting briefed getting briefed up dude like we got fucking guys hopping out here it was you know it but cool but good because you know i was i was i like to be away from the flag pole a little bit but man away from the flag yeah just kind of away from the main base i had never been on a deployment next really with the main base the legion kind of changed a little bit but that was it man and i was looking for everyone's getting ready to come back bro and i'm fucking going back to a felony trial bro you're having like hookah with a peshmerga general around the

Starting point is 01:41:34 fire going so can i stay i thought about it man i'd be sitting there going it's bad bro but you but this is all ahead so the mosul offensive against isis that did happen in 2015 right that did uh was that 2015 2016 it was 2016 so this is all right before that you go back right at the end of 2015 it was like then in 10 months later or day eight next year and seals took part in that oh yeah yeah yeah we had was Was that Team 7? Yeah, we had guys. We had people go down and shit that next year in that area. Yeah, that shit was crazy. You ever seen the drone shots in the year after that of Mosul? Pretty wild, bro.

Starting point is 01:42:16 Oh, my God. Dude, that Mosul, just around that whole city, dude, there was entrenched, cemented in fed machine gun positions yeah actually murph can we pull up there's a video on youtube type in vice mosul drone i i've shown this on a few podcasts i use it in the intro on ryan tate number 117 as well but mosul drone rubble vice yeah as long as we those keywords, I'll be able to tell you yeah first one right there Yeah, hit that and let's let's get that on. Let's get that on the screen you Can turn the volume down on on that that's fine But they're like when you see this I

Starting point is 01:43:00 Think this is the right one Yeah, yeah, you can turn it down all the way down? Yeah. You can turn it down. All the way down. Cool. And then let's just let this play. But you can see just there's nothing. It looks like Dresden. Great.

Starting point is 01:43:13 Here it is. This is the shot I used. Yeah, this is it. Like this is the whole city. Yeah, bro. It's just from, I mean, obviously there was hand-to-hand combat going on and soldiers on the ground, but then you just have airstrikes coming in left and right.

Starting point is 01:43:28 You're essentially trying to flush out these ISIS fighters, terrorists, like cockroaches pretty much. Yep. Just so much pressure. You just squirt them out. Yeah. That's great, dude. Everyone go check out that video. It's nuts. Some of the crazy things that predators can do, bro, are like, dude, we'd be targeting a guy and we'd have him on feed and they'd be running and they'd fucking, you know, kind of here.

Starting point is 01:43:58 You know, they even the way I up there be like, or they maybe get the hair standing up on the back of them, and they'd run underneath balconies, bro, and these hellfires, bro, just underneath into their fucking – Oh, my God. Into their house, bro. Underneath the balcony where there's – it's crazy, man. Just such a nuts time, too. Like, I remember that summer, 2014, with the Daniel Pearl stuff and – what was it? Jihadi John, the the guy was cutting off everyone's heads yeah and you just see like you literally it was so crazy that you had like al-qaeda over there

Starting point is 01:44:34 like the guys took down the towers like yo listen those motherfuckers be crazy we're not that all right i just we're gonna chill over here they're like those guys nah nah that's like that is so fucking wild to me because you read these accounts and stuff like i read this book i think it was called the last girl by nadia maraj she's a she's a yazidi okay so i mean you were over there you know the deal there's a million and a half of yazidis they were the women were sold into sex slavery if they weren't killed. The men were rounded up and genocided by ISIS and whatever. And when I read her story, it's heartbreaking. She ended up winning a Nobel Peace Prize for bringing this all forward and whatever and surviving.

Starting point is 01:45:16 But like these – it was one of the first times I read something where I really thought to myself these guys actually aren't human yeah like they literally like like even when you read like of the awful Nazi stuff like you have those thoughts this almost felt worse because they these guys were also like so fucking stupid that was the other thing like they were just so dumb they were they were they were not on it not on a level with with anyone i've ever talked with and they they had these beliefs that then blinds me even more yeah it it just blew my mind and you're out there and seeing this up close yeah every day like like was there a thought like all right i was ready for war but this is insane wendy's most important deal of the day has a fresh lineup pick any two breakfast items for four dollars new four-piece french toast

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Starting point is 01:46:50 Benjamin Moore paint is only sold at locally owned stores. Benjamin Moore, see the love. Well, I think that you really just can't even identify with them right so it just makes what you're doing so simple where you're at you're like dude these are just people i don't identify with i didn't really see him like that you know so i just get you disconnect like man these people yeah you know i mean them so it's just like absolutely no issues what we were trying to do there and what the whole overall strategy was there. And with the Peshmerga, I'd imagine they had a pretty similar attitude. Man, they'll chop those motherfuckers' heads off and put them on the back of their body.

Starting point is 01:47:38 They do. And they got no problem with it. Those guys are tough, man. Tough dudes, and they got no issues of what they're doing there. Yeah, and they – we talked about it a little bit, but it's literally like they just don't have lines on a map. Yeah. But they have their part of the map. It's so bizarre to me because I think about it like imagine if Florida and like Louisiana was just like, yeah, we're not going to pay taxes to DC anymore.

Starting point is 01:48:02 We're just right down here. But there's still Florida and Louisiana. Yeah. Like it would make no sense. Yeah. taxes to DC anymore. We're just right down here. Yeah. But there's still Florida and Louisiana. Like it would make no sense. Yeah. But that's what they're doing with Iraq and Syria. Yeah. No, we're good that we have our own military, which is effectively, that's like their government. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:48:14 Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. There's also support from the United States, obviously. Yeah. We have a military base in their capital, right? A massive international airport right and with with huge military presence massive right and so we're obviously supporting it in some way but we're like we're not gonna we're not gonna really institute the lines because you know

Starting point is 01:48:37 that's gonna just create more friction in that area than it already needs to be that's so they don't really give a fuck about the lines though they just want their autonomy and if they're kind of left in there and whatever those guys were fighting hussein saddam for fucking years they call some of those guys you know you know there was one guy lion of erbil man these guys are fine never be yeah he did he's just like a commander out there bro kurdish commander who's just been fucking getting after it since saddam and now just new people right he's just and we'd be in his house just tough man that's awesome yeah no very that's that's a cool cultural experience you got like yeah i'm really grateful for him yeah going in there and just eating with him and kind of sitting

Starting point is 01:49:16 there feeling the the vibe i have a real real love for the kurds man they were great to us but now you go home and you're facing 6 plus 3. Yeah, man. You land back in the U.S. I volunteered to stay in Iraq. So that actually helped because it kicked the can down the road. So you stayed longer. I was going to stay longer. Then they canceled it.

Starting point is 01:49:39 But because the court date already got kicked, I had a little buffer. So I had like a 3-4 month buffer. But then, you know, I'm'm still training i'm rocking and rolling and dip and still now the trial comes so i'm like all right i guess i go up there so i'm up there i go in my dress blues i i feel like i'm walking the plank i go out of the strip club night before i'm fucking you know i'm like walking like i'm drunk still dude in my dress blues i'm like getting ready for trial that's i dead serious i was like fuck this dude i'm just let's let's do this thing what's your lawyer saying to you bro he calls me well he calls me and he goes hey there

Starting point is 01:50:15 he is he goes where are you and i'm like taking a shit yeah it was and i was in my dress blues and i'm sitting there and he's like you're coming down here? I'm like, yeah. I had like fucking be down there in like 15 minutes and he's like, well, we got good news and I said, what is it? And he said,

Starting point is 01:50:31 we got misdemeanors. I said, all right, I'll sign it because I was like, any misdemeanor I'll take. He goes, but they're maxed out.

Starting point is 01:50:40 So they gave me two misdemeanors, maxed out, formal probation, which is four years of like all these stipulations. And you got to pay this guy all the restitution and a check like fucking hell. How much is that? It was like my whole IRAC check pretty much.

Starting point is 01:50:52 Oh, my God. It was just restitution. He was still suing me, by the way, civilly. Oh, so that's – oh, my God. That's still going on. This is criminal. So, yeah. So I was like – he goes, or it's going to be a felony.

Starting point is 01:51:02 I said, fine. So I sold my truck, all my IRAC check, and just wrote this guy a check. They gave me four years. I had to still serve some time, mind you. How much time? Just a few weeks. So I did a few weeks in Idaho with all the felons again. As an active duty SEAL, I took vacation to go fucking to jail.

Starting point is 01:51:21 What is the command saying about it? I just kind of dipped out, dipped out i was handling it so smooth and with an attorneys and i had my letters i will organize i'm like hey i just got to go away a couple weeks and they're like oh but it was between a cell it was between a cell it wasn't it was like things were falling so perfectly because it wasn't like i was missing work there was we had like a two-week break and we just fell right in that area and i'm like okay and then i took a little bit of extension so it was really like seamless and i fucking get out i had my top secret security clearance pulled i have some good you know some good letters saying hey here's what situation i get it back i got it back so i got a top secret security clearance back get out of jail top

Starting point is 01:51:59 security three weeks in jail i'm on three weeks in jail locked down again and three weeks is a lot better in four months yeah yeah so three weeks is okay and well there you know now i'm back in the training cycle now i'm i'm fucking like i can't believe this you're right back like holy shit i'm alive i can't believe this bro and what when i'm sorry when when you go to jail you're now it's not like you're a 22 year old little bit of a fuck up now now you're like a badass navy seal with 30 year old 30 year old seal like what are the cops saying like they're like hey what's up man and i you know i get along with people and i get right on program i start working out i start doing my thing and uh man i just you know i can i can assimilate

Starting point is 01:52:41 real easily into an institution super well. But it was good. They're like, hey, well, cool. And they didn't even – here's the thing. They didn't even put me in handcuffs. They said, we're not going to put them in handcuffs because I came in my dress blues. They were super cool with me. They didn't put me in handcuffs.

Starting point is 01:52:56 And it was a little bit different the second time around. Oh, my God. So I went in. So they were super respectful with me, and that was not a bad process at all. Got out, and now I'm back in it. And was fucking amazing and i'm locked on as fuck i can't i'm not allowed to drink not allowed to do drugs obviously i'm in the military anyway but i had a formal probation officer they could test me at any time for anything i technically couldn't leave san diego without permission which was weird i couldn't own a weapon which is weird so but you can use a weapon yeah so

Starting point is 01:53:25 there was a lot of weird gray stuff but it was so gray and weird and everybody knew it was that it was like i'm on an interstate compact transfer because technically i wasn't supposed to leave idaho so that had to get approved oh shit so there's like a lot of moving parts and it but they were like so i was actually kind of just left my own devices and I was locked on as fuck for like a month that's like a month and that's the thing and it wasn't like yeah it's 2016 and it wasn't like I was just like fucking off like I was like bro I gotta like keep it locked on I wasn't it's like I I hadn't built my self-worth yet in my disciplines like I had I hadn't understood the bigger picture. I wasn't operating out. I was still selfish, man.

Starting point is 01:54:08 I wasn't thinking about the team. I wasn't thinking about what some of these fuck-ups were causing work-wise for other people. I just was too immature in that capacity. I needed to learn more, apparently, and I did. And so three months later later the momentum started picking up again i started going out with chicks again fucking i was like isolated for like a month and then it kind of started getting loose and then then uh i'm on a i'm at a concert

Starting point is 01:54:32 and i get in a golf cart get i'm drunk getting a golf cart that's like the counties county fair and fucking and i'm like driving around the parking lot i'm like fucking dude the cops stopped my fucking golf cart here's how fucking stupid this shit is i'm in no shirt i'm all tatted up blasted like all jacked and i go oh shit dude they're gonna run my name i'm on fucking formal probation i'm drunk right i need it and so they're like hey man what the fuck i'm like hey yeah just gonna and i fucking bolt oh you bolt Yeah, I bolted. And they fucking tried to tackle me. But I was like jacked at the time, dude. I fucking got up, shed him off.

Starting point is 01:55:09 They sick the dog on me. Oh, they put the dog. They sick the dog on me. So I got a dog attached to my ass. I still got a scar on my ass. Attached to my ass. I'm fighting this dog off. I get the fucking dog off me.

Starting point is 01:55:19 I fight him off. And I fucking. Oh, Mike would not be happy about that. Yeah, Mike, yeah. And so he was he was just poor training dogs not bred well mike love you man and hopped it now they hit me with a bunch of tasers they hit me with the you know that i was waiting for it so they started hitting me with the tasers takes about three to get me down i yanked the first two they get me with the third

Starting point is 01:55:38 one yeah yeah dude and i'm like i'm this is going down with like 100 people watching at a fucking jimmy buffett concert you can't make this is going down with like 100 people watching at a fucking Jimmy Buffett concert. You can't make this shit up, dude, with that shit playing in the background. The juxtaposition. And so they come down. Boom. I'm getting all the love. I'm getting blasted in the face.

Starting point is 01:55:55 And I'm covered in dirt and blood. And I go, okay. And they put me in the back of the car. And I knew I was fucked. I was like, fuck. Damn, that came fast. I did not see that coming. And like I said, it always comes when you don't see... Not even in the golf cart.

Starting point is 01:56:07 I was like, dude, it was just such a chill day, and then it was not. And I'm like, fuck. And that's what I say, man. You think you can control all these things, but if you're not living right and doing right, you're stacking karmic debt, you're going to fucking get smashed. But now you think you're coming out of the seals.

Starting point is 01:56:23 Yeah, well, I know. I'm fucked. I knew it was like... I was in the back back i didn't even try i said call seal team seven let's rock and roll let's just tell them what's up because i'm fucked right i was normally would try to kind of keep it like and deal no no i i went right full tilt i had the cops call the fucking seal and that's what i did and it caused the avalanche of shit because now I'm fighting a fucking felony probation violation on a violent crime on technically a police officer. Wait, why is it a felony if it was a misdemeanor? So it was a violent crime still because it was a battery, right? Now it's a one of aggravated assault charge.

Starting point is 01:57:02 They charged me aggravated assault, which it wasn't. But it wasn't but it wasn't like i hit anybody it just they that in me getting up they were like they called it kind of a thing it ended up all getting dropped though but here's the thing that divine intervention man again so it all so because i didn't really i didn't really do anything other than just try to get away right but i didn't really committed a crime i didn't do anything and i didn't hit anybody or nothing so it was and i worked some contacts and some people and and i go to the court and early they threw it out gave me a misdemeanor like fucking disturbing the peace or something you know you just like won't die and i got a good attorney again i pay away i want hemorrhage

Starting point is 01:57:39 money on attorneys bro that's one thing i don't short stroke bro you got saul goodman out there yeah i go dude and so now i'm hemorrhaging cash i got now i'm but now i'm that still violates the probation in idaho so i have federal marshals in a van trying to extradite me from california and act duty seal illegally because they said i had a warrant which i took care of so there's all the i have two lawyers talking my girlfriend at the time was an attorney so they're talking to all these people bro i got i got attorneys calling the bro it was an absolute connecting with the governor california and all this because they're trying to do legal shit it's like a trail of emails and people have been done done fucked up things and so they were trying to protect their ass and oh my so i go to talk to i and i

Starting point is 01:58:21 get we get it all figured out right i i get it all figured out then i pitch to my attorney i go dude can i just get off probation in there and serve more time i already know i'm fucked and he goes they pitched it they accepted it so i go back up to idaho serve more time same place a year later to the day i'm back in that same pod in that same jail fucking but now i'm on the way out right now. I know I'm on the way. I do another three weeks. So three weeks to get rid of four years probation.

Starting point is 01:58:50 Boom. I'll take that. I took it in a minute because the judge was like, my, my attorney goes, can we just have them serve some time and get this guy off our books? Judge. And the judge is like,

Starting point is 01:59:00 yeah, fuck it. So it actually, surprisingly enough, I walked out of jail. Now I signed my DD-214. I'm out. I took a general discharge, right?

Starting point is 01:59:08 Because I didn't actually get kicked out for that. Because I still didn't commit a bad enough crime to get kicked out. What kicked me out was I failed a steroid test. In the middle of all this. So Navy JAG saw this and they they saw him getting out of this again. They're like this fucking guy. They're like, fuck this guy.

Starting point is 01:59:28 NCIS and Navy Jag. They teamed up and they're like, dude, we're fucking going to grill this dude. So they threw the book at me, hit me with every drug test in the book past. Then they're, then they go,

Starting point is 01:59:38 we're going to fucking steroid test them, which is kind of unheard of at the time. No one had even getting steroid tested at that time. They said, but you can't just test for steroids. They sent it and paid thousands of dollars to send it to the naval the ucla olympic testing center till they fucking spent all this money and i failed lit that motherfucker up how often in how long you've been taking steroids probably like man a couple years i really wasn't so it wasn't like going through all the selections. Never took anything. Never. Because you can't be big, man.

Starting point is 02:00:05 I was like – but after – so maybe like a year. Maybe like a year. You know what's crazy though? Like it is a drug and like you're supposed to get this whole system and everything. But at the same time, this isn't fucking baseball, right? Yeah, you're not hitting the ball with a stick. You're not hitting the ball with a stick. You're not hitting the ball with a stick.

Starting point is 02:00:22 You're not hitting the ball with a stick. You're not hitting the ball with a stick. You're not hitting the ball with a stick. You're not hitting the ball with a stick. You're not hitting the ball with a stick. You're not hitting the ball with a stick. You guys are warriors where you have to go out and kill people. Like if my Navy SEALs are taking taking steroids i'm not upset about that you know it was what i knew it

Starting point is 02:00:29 was but i knew it was and this is what they asked me in the board and i'm always pretty good in boards because i'm like i'll take it i'll fucking own it like i don't try to get away i'll go yep they go they go what would you say i said well if you're willing to fucking risk everything then fucking do it right i was risking i was for me it was important everything, then fucking do it. Right. I was risking. I was, for me, it was important enough. I I'll do it. I probably would have done it again. Right.

Starting point is 02:00:48 That's the truth, man. But the, all the dumb extra shit I was doing, that wasn't smart. And I brought all the heat on myself. I'm no victim. I fucking,

Starting point is 02:00:56 I had that. And I had that moment where I had a fake dick in my locker, a fake dick. Yeah. I had a fake dick to like take a piss. And I was like, Oh, uh uh you know you're like you're like where's this going man you're like where's this going bro what did they

Starting point is 02:01:15 had a name for that the wizinator wizinator i had a wizinator bro and a fucking uh and i looked at it and i had this moment where dude and i was in was in the dumps, bro, at this time. It wasn't a black one, was it? No, no. I church it up a little bit. Footlong black dick. They're like, what the fuck? They're like, this guy don't give a fuck.

Starting point is 02:01:33 I'm biracial. This guy don't give a fuck. I'm black from the waist down, man. And you know what? I put it away and I went, fuck it. Let's do it. Let's rock and roll. And I just had this, like, let's charge the machine machine gun nest moment where i was like dude i've

Starting point is 02:01:49 earned this let's rock and roll and i did man and failed failed that motherfucker hard and you know what that was it and so i got another attorney so now i have three attorneys while i'm still fighting this case so i'm fighting the idaho, civil and criminal. I'm fighting San Diego and I have a military attorney. So I'm just fucking poking holes in the bucket. So do you fail this before you do that three weeks? Yeah, yeah. This was at the very beginning.

Starting point is 02:02:13 This was like in the first three weeks. So all this was kind of happening. Now I start prepping a job on the outside. I know I'm getting out. So I prepped a pretty good fucking situation. Started doing, had prepped residential real estate development supervisor position with the largest private residential developer in the United States on the largest project in the United States.

Starting point is 02:02:31 So I had fucking like used my contacts. Well, I've always been very good about maintaining relationships and, um, and you know what? So I felt okay about, I went to jail and I was getting out happy, man. Cause I was going DD two 14. I was done with the military. I mean, I had going DD-214. I was done with the military. I mean, I had no reserve time, nothing. I was done. Is it dishonorable discharge?

Starting point is 02:02:49 General. I took a general. That was the deal because I had a good attorney. And they said, hey, if you just admit to the steroid thing, we're going to give you, because they tried to give me an OTH. Actually, they're going to give me an OTH. But the commanding officer of SEAL Team 7 said, this guy doesn't deserve an OTH, man. He fucking, he's got the power to cap it up one. That was a bro move.

Starting point is 02:03:10 I fucking love that dude for that. It really helped me. You had a lot of people look out for you. Yeah, man. I have. And I didn't help anybody out by some of my decisions. And this is what I feel like I owe people now is like to live – to fucking be an example now because of all that time. Of all that time, I really just kind of pissed away,

Starting point is 02:03:26 got people standing up for me. So, and, well, let me tell you, I had some garbage debt to burn and I earned it later on because I got out. Now I'm out of the military. So now I just started doing Adderall, Xanax, smoking weed while working and being very successful. What year is this?

Starting point is 02:03:44 This was 2017. So you run right to like all these substances that you weren't doing at all. No. Well, no, not at all. Because I'm like, I just started doing Adderall. And then, cause I'm like, oh, did I get a lot of shit done with this? And I had done it when I had done it when I was in high school and shit. You know, I had done, I had been, you know, had that one in high school and shit.

Starting point is 02:04:01 So I knew it, but I was like, okay, I was rocking and rolling. Just super, you, just super efficient. But then you're fucking a little bit wired. So now I'm drinking at night. Then I'm doing Xanax at night. So it's like that imbalance. So then I'm like, oh, fucking – so then I'm just off balance and – but still working, still being successful. Do you think you were – like I understand, okay, I get more done on Adderall, so that's how it starts, and then it starts to spick it, and it throws your system off, so you start trying to balance it out and everything. But do you think part of it was all this shit happens so fast, and you're like, yes, I'll take that deal.

Starting point is 02:04:39 I'll get the general discharge, whatever. We're good. All right. Oh my god. I'm alive. I'm not in prison. We're good all right oh my god i'm alive i'm not in prison we're good but then you're like your body's just like whoa now i got there's there's no there's no clear core charge like what are you gonna go do fucking real estate yeah after being in yemen and iraq and stuff and

Starting point is 02:04:56 fighting court kate like you were constant adrenaline and now it's just zero yeah it was it was it was part of it was it just made me care fucking more, right? Get more fired up for it and care more. And I thought I was living a happy life. I thought I was happy. But looking back, I just wasn't. I had lost my disciplines too. I was late to stuff. I was fucking not locked on.

Starting point is 02:05:16 And I hadn't really established that self-worth through the daily work and the daily steps, which that's the part that I had to learn that was missing. So I was just kind of like doing what I thought and just not being smart. Now my relationship, you know, is getting tense because I'm not good. You know, the fish stinks from the head. You're the leader of the relationship and you're fucking not good. Like it's just not, it's setting an unhealthy environment and big fights. And I was getting violent people in my life, dude. I was fucking like uh uh liability bro and and then now this time is when i start linking up with some of those

Starting point is 02:05:50 some of the cats i showed you that picture right we oh yeah so so so the guy in that picture we launched a marijuana distribution company right the first year it was legal in california so then i'm doing that i leave that other job it was a risk so then we're doing this now now all it was chaotic building it whatever everybody gets fired and the big venture capitalist boss sees what i had done and he goes you're fucking staying now i'm gonna pay you you fucking crushed it so now i'm in high rise pitching decks for millions of dollars, raising millions of dollars, running, building, start building out facilities, meeting with congressmen, fucking doing all this shit. Ripping Adderall and Xanax.

Starting point is 02:06:30 All that shit. And then I stacked fentanyl at night. What? For a year straight. How did you? Snorting fentanyl every fucking night. How'd you get into that? I went tits up like three fucking times, bro.

Starting point is 02:06:42 The only thing that probably kept me alive is that I was on Adderall every fucking day. Is I was snorting fentanyl every fucking night for a year. Didn't miss a day. Wait, what got you into fentanyl? I just liked it. Like, no fucking, I just liked how it made me feel. You just woke up one day and said, I think I'll try this. So here's the thing.

Starting point is 02:06:58 I wasn't partying. So I would, here's my, people are like, oh, what are you doing? Dude, I would work all day. I'd get up at like four in the morning, take Adderall, get kicking off fucking cranking because I was CEO of a fucking marijuana distribution company, man. I had to fucking make some shit. This is what we do. I was working my ass off, dude, right? And not – it wasn't even that.

Starting point is 02:07:16 No, it was – I had a lot of money involved, responsibility. Fucking I was the only one making shit happen and there was a lot of hectic side stuff too in the business and the metro capitalist boss and there was integration with like my relationship there and there was like a lot of stuff going on around me and i was also driving all over fucking california trying to make this shit happen so it was stressful so but it wasn't the stress it was just i liked how it made me feel so i was doing all that all day then at night i would go home and do emails and fucking reach out snort fentanyl until like fucking midnight then get up if i could four and keep going every day for a fucking year and you cannot maintain that for yeah no shit it and it came crashing down quite literally i fucking went down fucking head smashed on like a i got a big ass scar across my forehead

Starting point is 02:07:59 and it was the straddle book crumbles back like the venture capitalist boss had fucking heard about it. My girlfriend's fucking yelling. She finds me bleeding, bro. He had heard you were doing fentanyl. Well, everybody thinks nobody knows, but people know. And so he sat me down and he goes, look, man, he goes, you were an asset, now you're a liability.

Starting point is 02:08:18 That's what he said to me. But he was right. What year are we in now? 2019. So 2019, May, this is happening. And year are we in now? 2019. Okay. So 2019, May, this is happening. And I'm sitting in this high rise and I go, okay, man, I got the fuck out of here. So I cleaned out my stuff.

Starting point is 02:08:31 I said, all right. And I pretty much, I was pretty much just sent away to a big Island of Hawaii. I went to big Island of Hawaii where I had, we had some business ventures, like pretty much stay out there. Let's get this shit straight. And there was business stuff we had to coordinate. And I, before it comes crashing out. So I decided to, I there let's get this shit straight and there was business stuff we had to coordinate and like before it comes crashing out so i decided i'm gonna get off this shit right i'm gonna fucking like try to get square and bro getting off that was bro i don't and guys getting off withdrawals many of you's been dealing with this i know it's

Starting point is 02:08:58 like a big thing bro just power through i was i was hurting bro it was i didn't sleep for a week i didn't sleep a wink and i had to go to rehab no i i just fucking was like you just did this yourself yeah i was just like i'm just gonna hammer through well i was just i'm gonna hammer through this and it wasn't smooth because i was still doing adderall and like drinking and stuff but i'm like i need to get off the fentanyl bro right and so i had to get off and it was just fentanyl it was opioids and shit but if i could get fentanyl i prefer that right because it's just i just thought it hit me fucking harder so you know and and that was the truth man i was just fucking soulless at this point like hurting bro no purpose now now my world's like now i have no with nowhere to point and lie about

Starting point is 02:09:42 right the girl's gone the job's gone the money's gone. The job's gone. The money's gone. The fucking title's gone. You're alone in Hawaii. I'm alone. Now the money's gone. Now I'm fucking homeless in my truck. Fucking in the jungle, bro. How many months?

Starting point is 02:09:55 It's like three months. I thought a job was going to come and it was kind of put out there, but I was pretty much just left out on an island. I kind of told some shit and it just wasn't gonna come it wasn't gonna i don't think anybody i think was ever gonna come but it took a week to only a week for you to kick it though yeah but yeah like about you know a week and some change but throwing up like crazy uh it wasn't the throwing up for me i just couldn't sleep man and i was starting to swell up you know through hell week you know what sleep deprivation does i started hallucinating and i went to your urgent care i'm like look man i'm a former navy seal i know it's

Starting point is 02:10:29 like i'm i'm like maxed out like i'm at five days here and i'm like do anything for me they gave me some ambien i just nothing narcotic it was fine though that was all i wanted they hit me with benadryl didn't touch me i had to go back the next day i'm like i need something else the ambien at least helped it got me at like a couple hours of sleep that's all i needed and i fucking felt so much better and then from that point i didn't really have a problem with it again that was that i cut it away also change your location it's very hard to get healthy in a place that made you sick right you also just have all contacts so just separating like that was so powerful because i just you don't have the people around you to fucking get the shit but that that willpower to do that on your own,

Starting point is 02:11:06 that's where you're built from something different. That's incredible. I think anybody could do it, especially if you set up your scenario. Now, it's not always possible. They're like, well, if you don't have the money to fucking, well, go out in the fucking woods in a tent, dude. Go fucking far away. Separate yourself.

Starting point is 02:11:20 You don't have to have money to do it. But there's also people who can die trying to do that. Maybe. Because it's that strong. So I'm not a doctor. I'm not to have money to do it right there's also people who can die trying to do that maybe right strong right so i'm not a doctor i'm not telling you what to do but but i'm saying maybe you could i i don't know about that i i think there's other things you could probably die more i think with that stuff i don't think i don't know though for me i know that it was important i was gonna die anyway right if i was to keep doing it and my boy jimmy watson love you love you jimmy who who you actually should talk to oh that guy yeah yeah awesome he goes he goes look man because he found his brother died of a you know overdose sometime he goes bro you're

Starting point is 02:11:54 right on that path bro he's like you know and that was a heavy thing for you because he's hardcore dude too before you went to hawaii yeah right before and he goes you're you gotta get you're on that path and i'm like dude i am on that that path. So long story short is I get off that. Then the money's gone. Now I fucking – I had always had the – now, going back. Now I always had the Foreign Legion as like a look red, grab red because – The French Foreign Legion. Yeah, because I knew about it as a kid.

Starting point is 02:12:21 I don't know how. Maybe just in my military studies and stuff I knew about it as a kid. I don't know how. Maybe just in my military studies and stuff, I knew about it. Then when I was getting out of college and I fucking was – all the military branches were telling me no. I was like, maybe I'll have to go in the Army. You're going to go in the Army? Yeah. We used to stop. And so I go, okay.

Starting point is 02:12:38 Well, maybe I'll do that. But the truth was that was the last resort. Now, I had no more resorts left. So I was sitting in my truck i had a shot off sawed off shotgun on my lap i was gonna blast myself dead serious you were thinking about i was gonna fucking do it man but you're clean off drugs now yeah well yeah but it was just lack of purpose no money no woman no military yeah nothing so i had i was sitting there and had a sawed off shotgun on my fucking lap and on the passenger seat and i was sitting in the jungle

Starting point is 02:13:04 for three straight days and now i had nothing right and i'm sitting there i would go little walks on the jungle and it wasn't a question i wasn't sad and i wasn't me sitting and crying it was way i was like dead i was just dead right and so that's when i knew it was dangerous so i sat there bro and i call it that authentic voice of god again was like listen you bitch pussy ass motherfucker and i was like damn because when i when i was like fuck you're right because he's like listen think about your mom think about your your sister think about what who you leaving man you selfish motherfucker i it was what kept repeating to me was play back your inner dialogue right now you sound like a pussy

Starting point is 02:13:45 it's like me me me why me i i i and it was exactly that i was sitting in my own depression's a luxury really is if you fucking just sit and fucking think about yourself man you're not trying to chug water on your head and like fucking you know it's a luxury to sit there and fucking dwell on yourself like that yeah so i had a moment i went fuck this i'm going to the french foreign legion we're doing this thing sitting in the car with a shotgun yeah like i'm going to i'm putting this thing down i'm gonna fucking if i'm gonna die i'm gonna do it with my boots on that's why so i was like let's fucking rock and roll now i took out a couple fast cash loans and then fucking i was in france eight days later holy that was that's that's as fucking hard

Starting point is 02:14:23 as i made it but the minute i made that decision bro i felt better it was like a weight was lifted off me so you needed a thing yeah i needed also to think like people people will say stuff like don't isolate sometimes you need to isolate to clear out the noise like i needed to get the fuck away from people and sit there in my little pity party for a few days and then to get clear on what the fuck i need to do but then move right then take action the ambiance of that is is is pretty wild though like you're thinking about the worst thing you're thinking about potentially killing yourself but you're in your truck that you live in in hawaii which is a beautiful place in the middle of the jungle listening to nature getting in touch with

Starting point is 02:15:01 yourself you're off drugs now yeah so that's a good thing yeah and you're like holy all these like you're the guy that had you know somehow you're running through the trail of ieds and somehow your foot misses every ied and you're finally like halfway stepped on one so you're in medical but you're still not dead yeah yeah and now you're like it's almost like you're saying to yourself i got one more shot here yeah and i'm gonna go to the french farm i'm gonna take it because here's also a piece man i was like man i gotta do epic man i was like i want to write yeah i want to live a powerful story i want to write pick up the pen and write a powerful story it had been a while since i had been had the story, right. By, by just my circumstance and not living right.

Starting point is 02:15:46 Right. Going to the seals, I was picking up that pen and then kind of like losing and trying to do shit, but it wasn't like speaking to my soul. I'm like, all right, let's make another power move. Right. The universe only respects drastic action, man. Drastic action only whole ass, no half ass shit. That's what gets results.

Starting point is 02:16:04 So I said, okay, let's rock and roll. And that's what I did, man. And I still had the Adderall to clear out of my system and stuff and weed, you know? So I knew they were going to drug test me, right? So I go, okay, I'm going to fly to France. I'm going to give myself a week. I know exactly how I can flush.

Starting point is 02:16:19 I'm going to just pound water, run, brush up on my French, fucking go, bro. Did you speak any french no so you fly to france like how how soon shotgun on the on the eight days eight days later yeah eight days eight days dropped my truck off dropped my shit off and said you know i'll be back do you tell your parents like so i told my mom i told my dad i told nobody else not of soul okay what'd they say at this point my mom was like okay she knows how i rock and roll but she also knew in her heart it was probably the smart decision right did she know about all the drugs

Starting point is 02:16:54 stuff well yeah because she didn't know all of it but i told my mom when i called my mom on that third day i said mom i'm at rock bottom but i'm okay that's what I said to her verbatim I said I'm at rock bottom I'm okay I'm parked in my truck in the jungle I got a plan she's like what you know but my mom knows like that it's great now because things are just amazing but she's like she's like that was scary but I knew she's like I knew you were in a bad spot but I love to hear you like okay I have a fucking trajectory here I have a goal post so i said it man and i fucking showed up and that was uh man i felt touching down in france from hawaii bro it's pouring rain october 2019 what you're flying to paris because i was going there's two places to

Starting point is 02:17:35 check in now french foreign legion people don't know is a is a almost 200 year old institution of comprised of almost all foreigners and they fought in almost every war since algeria to that fucking iraq and afghanistan so fascinating and and they're comprised of just foreigners it's it's modeled after the old roman legions in that you serve your time and then you can earn citizenship of the country that's the whole carrot all right let's let's pause there real fast we're gonna get deep into this yeah i gotta take a piss cool i know i'm over here struggling yeah let's do it so we'll be right back perfect real quick before we get deep in this french legion french foreign legion we were talking about just off camera something else one of your buddies

Starting point is 02:18:23 or something you said you knew john mcafee yeah how'd you know john the billionaire john mcafee so i won't get into that himself yeah so i went so it happened i did he's got a nephew who's a team guy and so i did i did multiple platoons with him yeah and so that but by chance i'm in in the Vegas Centurion Lounge with a couple chicks. And who walks up to me is John McAfee. Of course. And he goes, hey, hey, what are you doing? And just by himself, he goes, I don't want you to walk around with my security.

Starting point is 02:18:58 He goes, my nephew's a team guy. I go, hey. Well, I go, just by chance, I'm in his platoon, right? And so i fucking long story short i i get out that guy calls me and goes hey my uncle so i i had met john mcafee we exchanged information or whatever a year later i'm getting i'm kicked out of the teams and a year and some change later and so that guy knows and he goes hey my uncle's looking for somebody and he already knows me by name and he goes he's looking for somebody to be his personal security detail oh my god so he goes

Starting point is 02:19:28 he goes so he goes my green so then then uh he's he's having a problem with his security this and that so i go okay we'll tell him to call me i got a call from john mcafee and he goes hello dude you know who this is and i said yeah john what's going on man he goes look my green berets are compromised you know he's fucking insane dude and he and they go yeah what's going on, man? He goes, look, my green berets are compromised. He's fucking insane, dude. And I go, yeah, what's up? He goes, I need you here in a week. And I go, dude, I can't do it.

Starting point is 02:19:53 I had already won in the job. I have a girlfriend and this and that. So I go, dude, I can't do it. I go, but my buddy, who I just talked to you about, had just got kicked out the same time I did. Oh, he got kicked out too? Well, he got forced medically retired. He fought it until the very bitter end you know 17 and a half years and he puts you sent him there so i go i go john i go hey i got a guy probably the most qualified fucking dude ever

Starting point is 02:20:15 and he's a great human being i said yeah i got a guy for you so he called him john mcafee calls me back this and that they do play phone tag i hit john back up to hit him up and next thing you know my buddy goes out there with him comes to find out john loves this dude so much he ends up making him head of security then he ends up making him ceo of team mcafee so then they got all involved in the crypto stuff so my buddy's ceo of the fucking crypto company with john for a year and a hat and some change making tons of money doing all this stuff and so that's why he ended up going getting wrapped up in that is this when john's on the run trying to put it together they they split ways right when he goes on the boat and goes on the run so he was traveling around with

Starting point is 02:20:53 john for all over bro he was they just he in the documentary with him chasing my buddies in that documentary yeah i've seen that yeah he's in it yeah he's the one with the beard and holding the gun and whatever that's him and so he's uh – that whole time, and they had a breaking up, and it was tumultuous, right? And he'll go into that story, but it's a wild story, bro. All right, yeah, we got it. That's a great suggestion. We will definitely talk. You have some good suggestions off camera with guys, so we'll definitely talk to him.

Starting point is 02:21:19 But anyway, back to you then. So you land in France after eight days after shotgun in the jungle. Yeah. And you said you went for runs and stuff for like a week or something to get your system clean and get everything checked out. And now how do you join the French Foreign Legion? Man, I was running up to the Sacré-Cœur and the Sacré-Cœur. Man, I just looked up at the gargoyles, man, and I said a prayer, bro. I was like, look out for me man we're doing this

Starting point is 02:21:46 and I was just kind of in that state where I was smoking cigarettes standing on the corner in this parish I had no money left I was staying in a hostel like fucking sharing a bunk with this rugby player who was there and I just was still sipping on vodka the night before I went in just to take

Starting point is 02:22:02 the edge off bro cause I was hurting emotionally and I didn't even know what I had built up such habit this is what you I was just like oh you kind of just do that you know and I just floating rudderless but I knew where I was heading finally at least I had a direction but I was still like fuck man I fucked my life up that feeling I was still like damn, I'm just burning in here. But I sent a nice letter to my mom and dad. I said, hey, I organized my administrative affairs and like financial stuff and all that. And I said, okay, here, I'm going in.

Starting point is 02:22:35 And I said, man, I'm afraid to make it. I'm afraid to get kicked out, you know, not get taken. But I'm also afraid to make it. Like what my life's going to look like either direction. What about your criminal record with them? Were you thinking about that being a problem well i didn't know right but i know they take it was kind of built for the french foreign legions kind of built for that they taken their that's what they're kind of taking guys with checkered backgrounds and all that stuff that was what kind of their bread and butter was their reputation for a lot of years, you know,

Starting point is 02:23:05 they used to take murders and criminals and guys. And so that was like their thing. Well, that was the aura of them, you know? And still now to get into it, I mean, dude, guys, you get faces blasted with tattoos, dudes getting checked in, right? For coming out of gulags from fucking some dark hole in Russia. Hardcore motherfuckers, dude.

Starting point is 02:23:22 So, but I didn't know what I was walking into because I had read some books. I had done some research some research man there's like a hardcore reputation of hazing dude's dying in djibouti getting buried up to the fucking sand and dying so i didn't i was i had some fear just in the the unknown but i had i had painted myself in a proverbial corner i'm like this is all i got this is the epic story i've never heard of a navy seal being a legionnaire let's fucking get let's rock and roll. You said you were saying a prayer at one point. Are you like a – were you a religious guy?

Starting point is 02:23:51 I'm not religious, but I have a very solid connection with the higher power, with God if you want to call it, man. I always have felt like there's this guiding force. I always felt like there's this guiding force, this orchestrating force, and I know it when I'm on a line path, and I know I stack karmic debt and get reprimanded heavily when I'm off of it. So I just started – and everybody's got that authentic voice, right? Call it whatever you want, universal, whatever. You know a good decision when you make it. You don't have to negotiate a beautiful decision. That's what I always say.

Starting point is 02:24:23 You know getting up working out thinking right acting right shit's right then you know when you need to oh maybe I'll just fucking do this weird shit it's like everybody knows a hundred percent but it's also crazy how like you and I can relate this to my own life I'm sure people listening can relate this to theirs like you can get away from that voice yeah and it's not because it's not there it's because you just consciously ignore it yeah and then suddenly fuck there it's like it's you want to call it the universe you want to call it your gut a common i say it's a combination of both it's like what are you doing motherfucker yeah you're like damn it you were

Starting point is 02:24:59 saying that the whole time i still did all this shit but now let's get it right you really start tapping into a different energy and things start the universe starts working for you when you listen to that voice 100 it's that's what changed my life when you go full tilt on just doing the right shit so that voice was telling me to go fucking bang on this door bang on the door so there's only one way to do this shit it's some old testament shit bro you go with their bag one bag and your fucking passport and you go knock on a big ass iron gate dude like fucking wizard of oz can we pull up the french foreign legion this is the one in paris yeah fort nogent fort nogent gate fort

Starting point is 02:25:37 nogent gate let's see what this looks like so you just go up with your shit yeah bro you got drugs out of your system now yeah and i uh just civilian clothes and you just go knock on it and a guy with a green beret legionnaire with a gun will open the fucking door like wizard of oz bro like what are you doing here and you go je suis ici pour la legion fucking boom and that's it and they take your passport and they tell you to get up on the fucking pull up bar your passport and i didn't see that passport again for three years wait wait so they all right yeah we'll get it back so how yeah how do you spell the gate fort n-o-g-e-n-t n-o-g-e-n-t all right i want to see this real quick before we go i want to visualize so it's an old medieval you'll see old medieval castle dude it's just in like this residential area it's on the eastern eastern outskirts of paris

Starting point is 02:26:21 there it is that's it yeah that's it bro on the money mark legion entranger all right let's click one of them to make it bigger maybe the second one right there yeah that's it fort no legion entranger so wait there's there's it's like a oh it's an actual so there's grass up top oh yeah that's a big ass bunker it's a big ass military it's a military base is there a roof out there is it it's a center courtyard it's like an old castle yeah so that separates it's a small little like guardhouse then there's a huge courtyard in the middle and then in the back is all the barracks rooms understood okay so you knock on this she will play uh and i googled it right before i went there so i have my dd214 they were going to know i was a

Starting point is 02:27:03 seal right i was going to let them know who i was a seal and do you have the teeth not yet so i i knock on the knock on the gate okay he takes my passport and he tells me to sit down and the process then you start your process and so this process is interesting because you there's no application you're coming in from fucking all over the world guys from all over the earth they need to figure out who the fuck you are right The known evil is better than the unknown evil. So you go in, they give you an IQ test. First, it's pull-up bar. So that was the first fucking thing.

Starting point is 02:27:33 I came in on a Sunday night, Hunter's full moon, 2019, October. Sunday night, it was raining, and I like making my shit poetic as fuck. You're good at that. Yeah, I like to make my shit powerful. So I go in, get up on the pole bar, and I fucking cranked him out. He goes, get down, right? And he had a Russian axe. He's a Ukrainian dude.

Starting point is 02:27:53 A lot of Eastern Bloc guys. In their legion. Yeah, a lot, a lot. So when Ukraine kicked off, shit was interesting for us. So then the IQ test, preliminary IQ testq test very basic fucking math and five questions you know and then it was wait so now you're in this waiting game with guys from all over the world in this small ass barracks room probably 20 30 guys in this one room then 20 30 guys in another room that was it and and so we start the next morning i'm up getting my shit the whistles

Starting point is 02:28:24 going off and i'm rolling my sheet back up. And that was the moment where I went, fuck, dude. I'm like back in this shark shit on the bottom of the ocean, former Navy SEAL doing halos. And now I'm fucking rolling my sheets back up. You're at a zero. 34 years old. Oh, my god. 34, bro.

Starting point is 02:28:41 How old is the average person coming in there? So they take anybody 17 and a half to 39 and a half but like what's so who usually comes in 30s but they have young you have the whole spread you really have the whole fucking spread

Starting point is 02:28:54 meaning you're not the only 34 year old there no there was guys older than me too but I was just I was fucking done with the bullshit the fuck fuck games but you gotta do what you gotta do so I'm rolling up my sheet, doing my fucking thing. There's in that room specifically two South Africans, one Mongolian, one guy from Thailand,

Starting point is 02:29:12 two from Ukraine, one from Belarus, one from Lithuania, one from Chad, Ghana, and Nepal. How many of them spoke English? Probably like, you know, therican and the nepali guy and then lithuanian that was it oh my god so you it's an interesting room to be in and that's how the foreign legion is 150 nations represented in the foreign legion wow there's only two countries you can't join from it's north korea and cuba i think still can we actually pull up just the basic wikipedia page of the french foreign nation i'm just so fast very interesting it's dude there's it's unique as the history though and what it's based off of is so cool yeah it is yeah let's pull that out and so it's a real

Starting point is 02:29:54 geopolitical petri dish hit wikipedia yeah love it all right french french foreign legion let's just read this to people is is an elite, French Foreign Legion is an elite corps of the French army that consists of several specialties, infantry, cavalry, engineers, and airborne troops. It was created in 1831 to allow foreign nationals into the French army. It formed, so that's right after Napoleon, I think, right? Yeah. It formed part of the Armée d'Afrique, the French army's units associated with France's colonial project in North Africa until the end of the Algerian War in 1962.

Starting point is 02:30:29 Legionnaires are highly trained soldiers, and the Legion is unique in that it is open to foreign recruits willing to serve in the French armed forces. The Legion is known today as a unit whose training focuses on traditional military skills and on its strong spirit de corps, as its men come from different countries with different cultures consequently training is often described as not only physically challenging but also very stressful psychologically legionnaires may apply for french citizenship after three years of service or immediately after being wounded during a battle for france under a provision known as francaise per se la verse how many 9 000 soldiers is the size that's what i wanted to know yeah so okay so you're in there in this room with- Spread all over the world. So they're in Africa.

Starting point is 02:31:10 A lot of people don't know, 26 countries in Africa speak French. French are strong in Africa, right? So they're deployed in like five, six countries in Africa now. Tahiti, New Caledonia, South America. How many bases do they have? I'm all over, man. South America, which I was doing jungle ops with them down there and um and we'll get there yeah and so that was they're all over bro and now they're in

Starting point is 02:31:32 ukraine they're in romania and so i was just i was in estonia with them the bases do they have other soldiers there too that aren't just summer french summer french army okay so you'll mix it you'll mix them with french army yeah but the real bases are all in southern France. You got on the island of Corsica, where Napoleon's from, actually. That's beautiful. So, island of Corsica. Nice. Not Nice, but along Montpellier.

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Starting point is 02:32:23 Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. And in South France, where I was at was actually in the mountain regiment, so it's a little bit more north. Very cool. So you're in this room with all these guys from all these different countries. You're starting at day one. Yeah. And so here was kind of my thing.

Starting point is 02:32:39 I saw a lot of young guys that didn't know what the fuck they were getting themselves into. There was that. Then there was some of the hard-nosed, right? like i was in there with the lithuanian who i actually still faith i mean belarusian who actually still facetime with who's fighting in ukraine now and he was an officer in the belarusian special force unit but a lot of so why these guys are there are three guys three types it's important to know who is joining it's the romantic who's long lost love and fucking that guy gets crushed

Starting point is 02:33:06 fucking quick oh and he gets wet out pretty fast you have the machine of war machine to care the guys who are fucking in it to fucking get after it and in their home countries they don't deploy right so you have or their armies pay nothing right like the special force guy i knew who was in belarus he was an officer in their top elite unit he made 900 bucks a month right so he would just going in regular legion was already tripling his pay yeah it's incredible so he was like fuck and then they're the conversion rate like for the brazilians and shit dude they're making it rain back home right for us it's not the same it's like i'm taking a huge pay cut so they're doing there's the financial guy too and the guy that does it for passport, right?

Starting point is 02:33:45 So that guy is pretty much the same guy. What about the people who are like running away from trouble in their homeland? Kind of like you. Yeah, I would say that that's kind of the – I guess there's kind of a fourth kind of category. And that's kind of like just resetting, which I kind of say that that's kind of the machine of war guy kind of seeking into the – but I see that's just trying to hit that hard reset you know but i had military experience and so that i figured that was the best place to go go kind of get a take a big boy time out as i like to say and i dude i wanted to get my tattoos fucking finished and i

Starting point is 02:34:15 didn't want to be fucked with and i couldn't get a regular job dude doing it so i needed time bro oh you didn't have all these tats then i didn't know i had most of my body a lot of my body but i needed to finish everything i'm tatted head to toe bro like it's up your ass everything bro up to the balls bro all the way on your ass oh yeah ass the end of the ass cheek pretty much bro like everywhere so i i uh the way you do anything is the way you do everything i do shit thorough so it took a long time but i had a vision for my body i knew i was broken down psychologically and it was kind of a a symptom of how my life was i knew i wanted this you know to build myself back up mentally also like i needed time to think man i needed time to study figure out what the

Starting point is 02:34:56 fuck i was doing wrong it just kept breaking my life to pieces i was like what i'm doing is not working i need to fucking unlearn some shit and learn doing is not working i need to unlearn some and learn some new yeah i had to like separate man and get a tactical pause and be like okay what and and while doing it i wanted to do something respectable right yeah and interesting and so i was like maybe they'll give me a gun and i can deploy and start kind of while i'm doing this and that's exactly what i got man i knew it was going to be hard i knew it was going to be stripped down and so the process is they do the medical screenings they're really hard on the teeth they're really hard on what do you mean they're

Starting point is 02:35:34 like if you got really up teeth they don't the french don't want it because they don't want guys coming in getting their teeth fixed and then leaving that was a problem so they don't want that they don't want flat feet if you have weird shaped head or fucking you're underweight or overweight you're fucking out so they do hard hardcore on bmis the physical stuff is obviously then the psychological evaluations are interesting their fucking interviews are crazy bro they call the gestapo interviews they call them the gestapo so there's a the unit in the front during this process. After you pass preselection, they give you a fake name. So I got a fake name.

Starting point is 02:36:08 Mine was Trent Clayson from New York City that you have a fucking new name, new identity. Why do they do that? Fucking mandatory, bro. They just take your name, bro. Trent Clayson. They take your passport. You get a new name, a new fucking European social security number, fucking everything, fake identity with a military ID.

Starting point is 02:36:26 You can keep that name. Dudes can keep that name and get a French passport on that name if they want. What? It's a whole thing, bro. That is sketchy as fuck. If you wanted to reset your whole life, you can't. You're going to earn it, though.

Starting point is 02:36:37 You're going to need at least seven years to do that, to get nationalized French. Wow. Or get shot. One of the two. Or get shot. Yeah, or get shot. But you can keep that name man and

Starting point is 02:36:45 then you are a new person but you didn't keep trent clayson i know you gotta route additional paperwork to get your passport back after a couple years and then get your real name back and they give it all back so in the legion but the first two years i was trent clayson you call you were called trent but nobody knew my first name nobody knows your real name they called you trent they call me trent that's nuts clayson yeah i have fucking your name tabs Nobody knows your real name. They called you Trent. They called me Trent. That's nuts. Clayson, yeah, I have fucking your name tabs, all your IDs, everything. Did you get that tattooed on your body too?

Starting point is 02:37:15 No, I have a French passport picture with Trent Clayson from New York City. Guess what? Because here's just by chance, I took this as a sign. They take your birthday and then your new birth date is your birthday plus a month and a day mine happened to be new york city september 11th oh my because i was born on august 10th and so i looked at it i was like these fuckers fucking with me but then i realized that there it was just part of this computer system i took it as a sign man but it was it was uh that then i got pre-selected so now i'm pre-selected what do you mean so you go through pre-selected. So now I'm pre-selected. What do you mean? So you go through pre-selection, then they send you down to the headquarter regiment

Starting point is 02:37:48 down in Marseille, just out in Au Bon, where they go in-depth, harder on your IQ, on your physical, and then on the background. And that's called selection. Is that the Gestapo? And that's the Gestapo. And so that's a whole new process and after that, you're going to get a contract and then get to attempt boot camp selection.

Starting point is 02:38:04 Right. So during the process of when they're going through selection and when they're like who are you why are the is a navy seal here yeah they probably how often did they get a navy seal never they've maybe gotten one nobody's ever made it or done it so you're the only one yeah so i'm the one ever so they fucking they go who they don't want guys who are wanted for war crimes they don't want problems with the united states government that there's like a whole that whole piece so they're trying to maneuver that and you got a hell of a call yeah and then they have then i have like the they're less worried about the criminal shit that was like whatever they're like oh you hit a guy in a bar who fucking

Starting point is 02:38:41 cares right they're like fuck it but saw it, but they pulled it all up and they were asking me about it. But I said, look, man, they said, why are you here? I said,

Starting point is 02:38:48 I ruined my fucking life. I need a second chance. And they said, all right, that checks out. So I fucking told them what the deal was. I got kicked out

Starting point is 02:38:57 and I fucking fucked up and I need help. Take me to this room. What is this? So this is a special unit that is, these are all high-ranking high-caliber individuals they all speak like five languages they're all highly intelligent all members of the legion all foreign legionnaires from every country and you can

Starting point is 02:39:15 imagine and guys who had ranked up quick right they're relatively young for how high how high their rank is so they're sharp and they're it's in a secured building they have the records from every legionnaire from legionnaire one one of the it's crazy bro downstairs it's the files from the 1800s wow yeah bro wild and uh one of the first legionnaires was actually from the united states and from colorado some dude took a boat over there wow yeah it's kind of some cool shit that an old corporal shell an old like east you know senior enlisted guy showed me when i was there cleaning sweeping what doing whatever so they it's a secure building with bars and they brand it for

Starting point is 02:39:56 me it's usually the interviews are like four hours for mine it was fucking four days eight hours dude they fucking grilled me how long like 12 hours at me bro eight so screaming at me six to eight what the fuck are you doing here man you're full of shit we're gonna they did it on thursday friday then i waited the weekend then they're they came back to me and then the last day they're like all right look we're gonna offer you a contract but here's you're gonna this is gonna be hard for you because you're gonna be getting told by some fucking corporal who has never done shit. He's going to be telling you how to fucking shoot. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:40:28 You're going to have to bite your tongue here hard, and they're going to treat you like fucking shit. Yeah. Because you're going to get a lot of extra love. You're at the bottom. And you're going to get extra love just to fucking who you are if they find out, right? Because I wasn't telling people. What kinds of – four days and eight hours, so basically five days of your family why'd you get arrested what's this we found that you didn't tell us about what's all that shit but that like there's so much filler

Starting point is 02:40:52 time in there where they got to be asking you like well they would leave the room and fucking let me sit in there for a fucking hour and a half and come back and you know pull up pictures and they have the whole teams working up so they pull up pictures i have no fucking idea where they got them from so they're fine in all kinds like yeah they were digging hard yeah it's a whole and they have the whole team's working up so they pull up pictures i have no fucking idea where they got them from so they're fine in all kinds like yeah they were digging hard yeah it's a whole and they have a whole intel department going up looking up stuff and so that was the whole thing they're like you said you've never done drugs this is hilarious oh you told them that of course i did you got to tell because if you sell your drugs it's a problem but i have no drug convictions i have drug charges but they fucking they went which is what i told the united states military too i told my ad and any drugs ever charged and they're like

Starting point is 02:41:29 they're like they're like you have four drug charges i go wrong place wrong time four times you're like brushing the ad you know they can't they can't prove anything so i said the same thing to them they go well what's this what's this? Dead serious, bro. There's a picture. I don't know what, it wasn't posted. I didn't have social media or nothing. They pulled a picture up of me in a room with like bags of weed from the marijuana days. Never seen that picture in my life.

Starting point is 02:42:00 They go, who's this? I go, is that you? I go, never seen that guy they're like i did not have sex with that woman just stone face they're like okay whatever dude they're like you know i'm like never never touched the stuff never smoked it oh my god so it was just fucking those times so there was those moments but they were like look man you're gonna have to eat some humble pie here and that and i had to fucking they shoved that whole humble pie down my throat because i'm going to selection it felt so good though bro because it's actually pretty epic how you sign the contract and shit you want they bring you down to the museum you're in your fucking

Starting point is 02:42:37 you're there you're marching it's early in fucking the morning you're the lights are silhouetting onto the you know your shadows your shadows up on the wall. And then you're in there with every Legionnaire that's ever died in this fucking museum on a plaque, dude, it's like 30,000 fucking guys, or maybe more. And you're just like, whoa, bro, there's just the officers, right? So I'm going, and then you sign your contract, bro. And you're, you're, you're off to bootcamp and that was bootcamp, but nothing nothing crazy but it's a little bit more rustic they send you to a place called out on the spanish pyrenees or the french pyrenees on the spanish border what's it called it's uh well it's technically quatrium ray what's their fourth

Starting point is 02:43:18 regiment let's try it yeah so so you can say the farm it's called the farm the farm french legion yeah the farm french leg. They'll show you. And it's fucking, we froze our nuts off, bro. It was, I've fucking been cold before, you know, in lots of trips. But did you think this was going to be easy compared to Navy SEALs? No, I didn't think it was going to be easy. No, no. No, I didn't.

Starting point is 02:43:35 I thought it, I didn't know what I was walking into. It was a different kind of pain, though, because it wasn't like you couldn't escape it. There wasn't like going back to your room later. There wasn't like you knew't escape it. There wasn't like going back to your room later. There wasn't like you knew it was going to be over. I knew this was going to last forever, you know, for like years, man. Interesting. We're just pulling up the images here.

Starting point is 02:43:55 Oh, they got one of my YouTubes up there. Which one should we click? Any of those, bro. That top one, is that like outside? Yeah, I mean, it's like that. Like that's what it kind of looks like you're out at the farm it's tough to see there because there's it's literally just a farm out out in the out in the fucking that's them graduating with their white keppies where's the like the farmhouse you stay in is it up on the hill well there's four of them that's probably one down there it's just like a regular farmhouse bro and but you're you're sleeping on

Starting point is 02:44:25 cots and that's you're just we were there in the winter so i was like dealing with that emotional psychological piece of like fucking where am i well i'm like i lost my life man i'm here doing shoot and move drills with dudes who've never been in the military before in french i'm fucking learning a famas you know famasAS is fine, but finally I had a weapon in my hand again. I felt fucking good. I'm like, I don't care what I'm doing as long as I'm doing this piece. How many guys are there with you? 50.

Starting point is 02:44:54 50 guys. Some of the stories, bro, get this story. I'll give you an example of fucking just amazing individuals making their way to the Legion, dude dude this kid from kenya kid from kenya and i don't know if people know but trying to get a passport or a visa coming out of an african country is fucking almost impossible um that doesn't surprise right so

Starting point is 02:45:16 they're trying he's trying to get in the foreign legion how do you get into the foreign legion well you gotta you need a visa we don't need it we just fly in and fucking go right you just need a passport they need a visa they need to get their it. We just fly in and fucking go. You just need a passport. They need a visa. They need to get their passport or whatever. So he goes, well, they're not going to give him a visa. The only way to get a visa is if he became a super high-ranking marathon runner. So he trained for two years to get into a race. He trained for two years to get in the race.

Starting point is 02:45:40 He became one of the better runners in Kenya, or at least good enough to where he could get a visa and go change. He goes, finds the race that's in Europe in France Good gets to that race gets their lands doesn't go to the race and just goes the focus of the Legion Just give me an example. I heard a guy walked from Romania walked walked from fucking Romania to France No, that's like nor no passport. He didn't have a passport So they fucking showed up at the foreign legion gates no passport and they're like what the fuck you doing here without a passport he goes hey i walked from fucking romania what do you do like walk through the alps or some shit dude he just

Starting point is 02:46:12 walked and probably hitchhiked and fucking did whatever he had to do and so though they go the guy's smart enough to make it through they let him in made it through a border they made it through the legionnaires so you have so a. So you have a handful of Mongolians. I'll give you kind of the rundown. Handful of Mongolians. They're solid dudes. Handful of Mongolians. A couple Thai guys.

Starting point is 02:46:33 A lot of Nepalese. A lot of Brazilians. A lot of fucking handful of guys from Africa. You have like one or two French guys, and they have to kind of give away, and their new identity is canadian just to give you an example of like they because you come you can't be french really enjoying and keep your french citizenship fake it so they well they don't fake it the legion fakes right that's

Starting point is 02:46:55 what i'm saying yeah so that's the piece that is that and a lot of ukrainians a lot of uh romanians that's the flow some maldovians some fucking so it really opened up why is that you think that economic opportunity economic opportunity and they want the passport right so when ukraine kicked off we had a whole like 10 of the legion fucking left you know it was like a whole thing yeah so whole thing. A lot of the boys are still there. So it was boot camp, running a fuck ton. I mean, the Legion runs. They're renowned for running. And I was getting my fucking dick smashed in, bro, because they're yelling at me.

Starting point is 02:47:36 Oh, fucking Navy SEAL. They'd find out. And they'd be like, bro, I was so beat up and just getting yelled at for miles and miles and miles and miles in these fucking thing in the cold. And I'm fuck it dude whatever i earned it i'm like i earned it bro every i just knew i was in the right place i was getting all the extra love all the toilets that need cleaning i had to clean all the shit dude i fucking they're like hey tell the navy seal come clean this fucking toilet bro and that's what i did bro for years they probably like silently

Starting point is 02:48:03 respected the fuck out of it, though, that you just did this shit. You volunteered to do this whole thing. You're in there literally cleaning the toilets and saying, all right, whatever. There has to be, like, you know, they're giving you shit because of who you are, but at the same time, they're like,

Starting point is 02:48:18 damn, this motherfucker's a Navy SEAL. He's here doing this? Like, respect. Yeah, and they knew, okay, they're running, but then once they pulled out a gun, bro, and was shooting down, they were like, God damn, bro. You can't fake thousands and thousands

Starting point is 02:48:29 and tens of thousands of rounds being flown down, right? So they knew when I could shoot, dude, and I could run and communicate, I can get down on the tactical movements. It was, I said this, it was a baptism in humility, bro. It was the fucking baptism in humility. It took me years to kind of build back up my fucking just flow to really just shed some of that old identity, shed some of that old ego, get clear. And, but I was in, get through selection, make it through all the bullshit.

Starting point is 02:49:00 We're learning French, all this stuff. I get picked. I picked the mountain regiment because I was kind of directed to come there's two commando units there's a group commando parachutist parachute commando group and group commando mountain mountain commando group how long was the boot camp by the way four months four months so four months and that and i was directed to gcm i was like okay gcm let's try try this try out for the commander you gotta be invited so it was going to take a couple years do you have any contact with the outside world during this so they family you're cut they take your cell phone they they take your fucking sim cards all

Starting point is 02:49:34 your shit so but you have to fully reset when you get there they'll give you your phone back when you when you finish and your bags back and stuff but you have to get a new sim card and stuff so after the four months you get your phone back and you can start kind of coming back to it was uh the mountain regiment was fucking isolated it's the most isolated regiment but it was also the most deployed so that's why i picked it and that's why i was directed there the ambiance is a little better the atmosphere command climate's a little more chill so that's why that legion um leadership when i was actually in the headquarter regiment there they they said hey this is where you probably should pick so that's where i went

Starting point is 02:50:11 man and i'm thinking mountain regiment dude okay well mountains okay i had thought maybe i wanted to go to the jungle and pick the jungle shit but but i was like it wasn't even possible it was closed i was like fuck i'm probably not gonna get to go to the jungle. Sure enough, we get there. Fucking 11 months. I have just checked in. I'm a new guy. And they go, hey, your combat company is going to fucking jungle deployment. To South America.

Starting point is 02:50:32 To South America. Where in South America? French Guillaume. Guillaume Francais. A lot of people don't know. France is territory in South America. They do? Yep.

Starting point is 02:50:41 Guillaume Francais. Guillaume Francais. It's right next to Suriname. Suriname is the Dutch. Suriname is owned by Holland. Yeah, Suriname. Let's have a look here. So look up French.

Starting point is 02:50:56 Guillaume. G-U-I-N-A. South America. All right, hit match. I probably even spelled that wrong but you'll see it alright yeah let's get that it's just next to Brazil and Suriname see there it is alright let's zoom out on that how big is that

Starting point is 02:51:16 it's like one of the small ones but it's not teeny yeah that looks like a nice chunk of land dude that's all the oil going off there now how much gold down there is like the fucking Wild West, bro? Oh, no. So wait, this is the still top tip of the Amazon. Dude, they speak French. They speak fucking, they use the Euro.

Starting point is 02:51:34 Wow. Yeah, bro. I didn't know that either before going down there. So this is the Amazon jungle. Bro, we were fucking out there, bro. It is Amazon jungle, bro. I was just out there, bro. It is Amazon jungle, bro. I was just down there with my buddy,

Starting point is 02:51:46 Paul Rosal. That's why I was amazed to hear that when you were down there, it is people who don't know that the Amazon jungle is no joke. It's no joke. It is real deal. Holy field. And now what was the mission to go there? Interdiction of illegal gold mining and drugs presence patrols,

Starting point is 02:52:03 and also some protection of the illegal gold mining activities down there. So there's a French government there? French government is there. It's France, bro. It's fucking France. It's the furthest part away from Europe. It's Europe, bro. In 2024, these things,

Starting point is 02:52:20 it blows my mind. People don't even know. There's a lot of American money going down there now because they just discovered oil off the coast so it's billions of dollars yeah they just billions are starting to flood down there and i'll get some of my washington contacts are hitting me up about it so they're like hey you know we got tons of this going on i go oh it's so yeah so there's they're building bridges they're building a lot of infrastructure because it's um it was it was interesting because we went down there and covid was kicking off it was covid was kicking off funny i never fucking saw a mask down there not one time and everybody was fine it's a trip dude so we would

Starting point is 02:52:57 you know covid what the fuck it's the last thing you're worried about bro all right go ahead i'm sorry so we would um we would we went flew into the capital yeah cayenne cayenne and flew into the capital then took a little with our combat company like like 80 legionnaires and why we got sent down there because technically our guys are demolition specialists the photo like technically it's like a engineer technically it's an engineering thing but we're mountain specialty but we're do know how to do demolition so we're gonna blow the fuck out all these gold mines man and so we went down there and linked up with the marine unit down there is a twasium rima third rima it's like the marine third marine regiment down there and we took a bus to a smaller base and then took that from that smaller base took an eight hour

Starting point is 02:53:56 fucking little boat ride to into the jungle doing on an outpost and we know what that's like so yeah so you know how it is pushing the things and all of you know you're going over the rocks and all the bullshit and that was where we stayed man for months and doing so we would chill there do and kind of watch the traffic of the boats 24-hour security all the time handful of dudes one section so we had 12 or 13 guys 13 uh legionnaires and then we do mini ops two days some 14 day jungle patrols sleeping in the jungle sleeping in hammocks now we're like with tents and water no just hammocks just ham ham humping hammocks that's savage yeah humping hammocks i got some crazy picture we would do that you know you'd have to you put some well the hammock is is is enclosed with the mosquito netting

Starting point is 02:54:43 attached to it okay all right so you have but i mean just we're just drinking out of river water with chlorine tablets because you can't carry enough water yeah so we're just 14 days i was packing cans of tuna bro so i didn't lose those gains bro i was carrying so much extra these they're like this american motherfucker they're like they're like dude did you hump protein powder in here i did dude fucking straight up i don't give a fuck bro i was jumping protein powder and they would give me the extra love so i was humping a chainsaw i'm humping a pharma i'm humping it you're humping a chainsaw yeah dude so because we you know bring chainsaws all this other machetes baptism of fire on the amazon oh no everyone's got a machete but dude when we're taking over these gold mines we got we're cutting down logs

Starting point is 02:55:22 also yeah also there's shit that's blocking. We had to bring demolition. Had to bring sledgehammers. All that shit. So we're humping that shit too. And people also don't think about this. But like people think about like forests in America and shit. There's nice little trails to walk on and stuff. Malaka, you are cutting through the jungle.

Starting point is 02:55:42 Hacking. In a lot of this shit just to, get two feet in front of you. And it is bush, man. It is thick. It is life if you've ever seen it. And then, yeah, some people carve some trails. But, like, where you're going, you know, these are ops, man. Like, you're trying to take down some dangerous motherfuckers.

Starting point is 02:56:00 You're going through dangerous parts of the jungle just to get to them. Where people don't want you. The French call it l'infervers. L'infervers? Green to get to them where people don't want the french call it lin fervor lin fervor green hell oh yeah that's what the french call it because you know at night they had all the and so we do we're hacking and we would do 14 day ops and hit a fucking gold mine spot every day that's how many and fucking that's how many we'd have murph can you pull, type in Amazon gold mine drone shot? I want people to see this. Understand the capacity.

Starting point is 02:56:28 Because not just even the capacity, but like the destruction. Just rips it apart. And they're using, bro, Mercury Lakes. They were having to dive in. Hey, Navy SEAL, come get the engines out of the Mercury Lake. Dead serious. I was swimming at the bottom of these lakes, bro. Dragging up pipes. Yeah. Fuck it it i glow in the dark now dude hit that one right there the fourth one

Starting point is 02:56:51 the fourth one right there yeah i want people to see this real quick so oh that's a video all right well you can kind of see it it's got the stamp on it but look at this is all supposed to be canopy this is supposed to be 125 150 foot canopy and it's just dredged out and paul rosalie defer i've had him in here three times well twice but the second time was two episodes was like six hours but episode 124 the first time he was in in here he laid out all the mercury stuff it's crazy what it does to the environment around it it is i think that was like 27 minutes in or something like that it was fucking crazy so people go listen to that but you were down hunting these guys and you're going in there to basically like set the bomb so they can't get back in the mine itself well we'd first we'd we'd surprise them run up on them and they're fucking scattering a lot of them have they'll their what their their wives and kids and shit to mix in we'd come across whore houses karaoke fucking bars and shit

Starting point is 02:57:50 they're building into these fucking places bro i'm like what the fuck is going on out here grandmas and we would come in they'd run off all right we but dude you can't arrest these people what the fuck where you're gonna take them you know march march with them for 14 days right are you in uniform yeah so i'm in jungle uniform right okay i was gonna say you're not in like the big hat no no i mean no i'm in jungle we're in soaking wet too dude like jungle uniform and they run off then we just fucking burn everything bro just like old school fucking scorched earth we'd come in and just burn all their fucking houses down and shit eat all their food burn all their fucking shit down you like the first part no dude

Starting point is 02:58:25 we just crushed their like oh he's got doritos bro they'd hump but dude ingenious what they would do we would burn everything down and then just fucking put it in a pile burn it blow up things we do take the sledgehammers break all their fucking diesel engines up hey navy seal go in the mercury lake and pull out the diesel engines i'd fucking dive into that shit dude dead serious pulling it out fucking tubes all the shit break all that shit and then move on the next one whoa how long were you doing this three months so we did that part for three months we were down there for four how many i mean ballpark how much mileage you think you guys covered so in that 14 days we did 100 kilometers that's a lot yeah so Yeah, so about 50 in, 50 out-ish, 110.

Starting point is 02:59:08 Now, this whole industry, like a lot of this is funded from China and foreign countries, and then they're wrecking this shit, and then the USA is buying this stuff. Yeah. So it's like – and now – and it's a circle of life, but also this is a French territory. Yeah. Right? Like they actually have diplomatic ties unlike unfortunately some of these other countries that are like left with their dick in their hands but like this is still happening on their soil yeah and dude we went to some legal operations and how they get the machines

Starting point is 02:59:35 in there is incredible so just to give people an idea some numbers here i asked them what the fuck number what they're doing money wise like i'm curious well i want to get down to the brass tacks here what's the black and what's the black and red so this little like 10 guy operation they're running with they had some larger equipment and stuff like that and mind you these guys they would get the golden stuff and then one guy on a fucking motorcycle with his guy in the back with a shotgun with a backpack with the gold dude, fucking right now. Cause we're getting shot at.

Starting point is 03:00:09 We let's go. They're like, who's pulling the short straw this week to take the gold back. So that was going up. So I was like, Hey, what's, what's going on numbers wise after they got it up and running that 10 guy

Starting point is 03:00:20 operation, just in that week, every week they'd do like 700,000 Euro. Right. That'll, that'll do a week 10 guy operation right now that's legal so not bad not bad i don't know what their costs are whatever but that's what they're doing like gross as far as gold is concerned money wise i don't know how true is that or what the fuck in that what it was that's the number he told me so you get any souvenirs all right so man stupid we so we went and blew up one on the islands There's like a pack of islands. I didn't even know this was internal but inside there's like this big watered area

Starting point is 03:00:53 And there's thousands of little teeny islands and there's gold mine illegal gold mining happening on a lot of these we went down there What's my first stop down there? We blew the fuck out of this. Thousands of kilos of demolition. It was like this whole mountain. And to give you a thing, I had in the sand, just on the sand, dude, I would dig in, just gold in your fucking hand, dude. Everywhere. You put some in your pocket? Well, it was a, you know, I'm not enough to like think, but dude, it was like, oh, this shit's just like laying on the ground.

Starting point is 03:01:22 Yeah. It was so, I go, oh, now I know why France is is fucking sending us down here it was a good experience very powerful very but even the foreign legion down there bro you're still in the foreign legion strict as shit they would have us marching in the fucking jungle if we fucked up you're still singing and doing all the bullshit they're oh you're singing oh, super if you don't. They're very strict. The Foreign Legion is like the Marines times whatever as far as like. And I understand.

Starting point is 03:01:53 They got to put guys down under the thumb. You got all these guys, checkered backgrounds coming in. They got to fucking. If you walk across the grass wrong in the Foreign Legion, they're going to put you in jail. The Foreign Legion has their own little jail on every regiment. Oh, they do? Yeah. Nice.

Starting point is 03:02:06 Yeah. Are you speaking French pretty good at this point? Everything's in French. Yeah. So all military orders, it's everything. If they hear you speak in English, it's a fucking problem, right? So you're pretty fluent now at this point. Wait.

Starting point is 03:02:19 Well, no. My accent's dog shit. But yeah, I could always flow. My French is still not great. It's still not good. But I can understand it, and I can speak, and I can get by. But yeah, I could always flow. My French is still not great, still not good, but I can understand it and I can speak and I can get by. I do whatever I got to do. So yeah, so yeah, that we did that and came back and then we're back kind of in the flow training. Where were you when you came back? I was back in Paris, back in South France.

Starting point is 03:02:41 And then immediately we got kind of tuned up. Then the next op was next mission was they call them missions down there was a two month internal anti-terrorism domestic mission in France. And I didn't know that they use the Legion and some French units to patrol internal of France for anti-terrorism purposes, presence patrols. How does that work? So I was on Nice bro on the beach in the Riviera with the fucking HK. Good spot. And not bad, bro. Not bad. You know, chicks were like, Hey, what does that work? So I was on Nice, bro, on the beach in the Riviera with a fucking HK. Good spot.

Starting point is 03:03:06 And not bad, bro. Not bad. You know, chicks are like, hey, what's going on? It was because they had some people die there, you know, in 2016 with a terrorism attack. And the French love it. They're like, hey, you're just walking on the beach. Imagine that here. It'd be weird.

Starting point is 03:03:22 They're just walking, patrolling. Like, hey, merci. You got your uniform on. Oh, yeah. Full beret. Everything very formal. the beach imagine that here it'd be weird they're just walking patrolling like hey merci you got your uniform on oh yeah full beret everything very formal and that's called vigi parat vigi you know vigi parat missions what's it called in french they probably feel pretty safe when they see you walk yeah they're like hey what's up yeah they're like hey what's going on oh i feel bad for any terrorists yeah they're like we got some tough looking guys too right you got some tough guys in the legion and you know pro fighters and pro fighters and MMA fighters and guys, pro boxers from their country, Olympians in some capacity.

Starting point is 03:03:51 And so you have some tough guys that, and you build some interesting bonds. It opens your eyes to that. America, we're kind of closed off. Geographically, we're isolated. You can learn. I've always been interested in the world, but I didn't have the experience with being around people from different cultures like that. So it opened my eyes to also what people go through, like real poverty, like dudes who are growing up real poor, bro, like true poverty. Not like I'm poor, but I have a fucking iPhone.

Starting point is 03:04:18 Like for three months, I ate mice. It's a different type of fucking hardcore bro you know because they got the alcoholic mom and dad and you know all this shit dude i was raised by dogs you know i'm half joking but dude it was cool because you're all the fucking same doesn't matter i was an ab seal nobody gave a fuck to be quite honest right they no it was like that wasn't anything you're all on the same level same rank same fucking shark shit you're cleaning the same toilets you're this on the same level, same rank, same fucking shark shit. You're cleaning the same toilets. You're this, that was what was probably the best part for me because I could just kind of shed everything and focus on the self-development. And that's kind of when I started that.

Starting point is 03:04:55 I built the confidence back up, came and I started really my morning process and that piece of like really paying attention to diet again in the jungle, actually started like intermittent fasting in the jungle and tracking my macros and shit there like and that's when i really started to really hone this back in and realized that i was when i came back from that and i was in that foreign legion barracks room i was like dude i'm still not happy that was the piece i was like fuck and i was there's nowhere else to go there's no other unit where i can fix my identity or there's nothing i looked you know i'm now i'm looking at ukraine maybe i'll go there and then i realized i'm just running from myself yes you took the words out of my mouth it feels

Starting point is 03:05:36 like you're constantly like running like what am i running to dude where does it end and then i was dude i want to have a life bro i want to like fucking have a wife and a fucking life and make money and do my thing and it's like dude it's like well i'm just i'm like what the fuck am i doing out here doing this so that's when i realized i had to start looking internally so i started to read stoic philosophy started diving into marcus surrealists you know seneca nero you know even some crazy guys i get it but people got some ancient wisdom musashi right any philosopher that had anything to say i I was curious why these guys. And all these same principles, right?

Starting point is 03:06:09 Get up, have your discipline, maintain emotional discipline, maintain your morality, all these fucking things. I'm like, dude, I either believe this shit, this universal laws, or I don't. You can't, oh, yeah, and then fucking do weird shit over here. It doesn't work, right? You have to fucking be locked on closed doors open doors all the time and i was like i just gotta fucking commit to that so then i did they said wake up at five i was getting up at three working out in the bathroom i was fucking getting my mind right not like crazy but just started disciplining and tightening all these

Starting point is 03:06:39 pieces down i was as i was doing this we got prepped for the next deployment which was to be stony on the Russian border oh shit what year so with NATO this was 2022 holy shit so 2022 and I have a fucking crazy picture of uh we're rolling out 86 t-82 tanks bro 86 in a row is this before February or after the after so the wars kicked off yeah this like, we're flexing on the border, right? And so this is what it is, right? We're blowing some shit up along the border training, but I'm with the English, the Estonians,

Starting point is 03:07:12 the... We were with... Fuck, were the Dutch there? With four guys. So the French contingent with NATO. Really. We're kind of giving you the you the enhanced forward presence battle group. And you had said we had tabled this, but I forget,

Starting point is 03:07:30 what was it, like 10% or something is Ukrainian in the Legion? So you had said a bunch of these guys left to fight in Ukraine. How did that work? A lot deserted. A lot just fucking left just to go fight. And some, the French were like, hey, you can go get your families. And so the French were cool. They let some guys get their families and bring them back yeah yeah so some just left and they'd fucking have been there since right and they're still fighting yeah do you talk

Starting point is 03:07:52 with any of them yeah fighting yeah what's it like hardcore dude some of their brothers died and fucking it's hardcore it's real deal you know oh yeah shelling and it's just a fucked up war because you're just waiting for more you know from artillery to come in yeah i i had mark turner in here who's been going back and forth to ukraine since it kicked off and he ended up training battalions for their army and everything but he's like it's a scottish guy u.s marine scott guy's like it's fucking insane out there, man. You know, they're fighting over two blocks, 14 days. Motherfuckers are dying. It's a war that doesn't move.

Starting point is 03:08:32 Yeah. And basically, like, he's saying that the trench urban warfare that it is makes it this constant stalemate. Yeah. But people are dying in the hundreds of thousands because they'll fight over 10 meters foremate. Yeah. But people are dying in the hundreds of thousands because they'll fight over 10 meters for two weeks. Yeah. It's crazy to me. Yeah.

Starting point is 03:08:51 So I had a couple of American buddies, former Marines that are over there that were in the Legion, deserted to go fight. And it's, you know, just is what it is. And so that was a cool experience to actually be there it was nice to be able to speak english because now everybody's like hey man oh shit you mind fucking translating for us and now please speak so i'll be out in the in the forest don't mind if i do i'd be out in the forest

Starting point is 03:09:17 and some english guy would come across he'd see the french flag he's like oh we i go hey dude it's all good he's like what the fuck are you doing out here, bro? I still get hit up by those guys. Cause you know, my Instagram and YouTube kind of popped and they're like, bro, you're that American dude. He's going with us, man.

Starting point is 03:09:35 It was awesome. Yeah. It was fucking cool, man. But you're on the border while this war is breaking out. Yeah. Basically, like you said,

Starting point is 03:09:42 flexing. Yeah. So, oh, the Danish, that's where we're out there. That was the other group, the Daneses bro right i'm six feet tall i never felt like such a fucking midget those motherfuckers tall bro the danes are like got like just stacked bro i was like what the

Starting point is 03:09:55 fuck is going on sick too dude cry precision their their unit had one of the best ambiances of environments i've ever seen dude their like cohesion was unbelievable very good leadership really pleasure to work with the danes bro so just but so that's why it was cool a lot of these experiences in the estonia estonia is beautiful i didn't know anything about estonia that was the women beautiful women dude beautiful women great hair good genes right beautiful country interesting some of the history there i didn't realize dude they love germany like the the all that whole germany and there i didn't realize dude they love germany like the the all that whole germany and not i didn't realize because germany during world war ii freed them from the red army oh shit i go oh it's like that whole different angle because like it

Starting point is 03:10:37 was the red army that was crushing them and stalin and all that dude and then so they like the nazis love them like you know they were all about it it's such a crazy like history because i saw like some flat i'm like what the hell's going on over here and they're like oh they you know the history of this and i go oh so weird to see that international perspective of that's how things can be different from different angles yeah oh shit dude i mean that was like being stuck between a shit and a fart you were fucked either way they were crushed man because we'd go running through the forest and we'd see gulags out there bro and it was what old prisons and running through beautiful country though wow how long were you there four months so the foreign legions their deployments usually four

Starting point is 03:11:18 months ish is kind of how france does it did you see there was you didn't have to take any action no it wasn't it wasn't anything super hot like that it was just more tense you know the political side out there but it's weird being you know you're on the furthest north russian border and so a lot of those guys are russian descendants you know because in the in those towns wait wait nasar nasar it's like i think nasal forget exactly what the town's name is it's uh you know they're a lot of russian heritage absolutely at this point like you've been in this now for two and a half years something like that like three and three three years at that point three okay and a half do you ever feel like you know because you're fighting for the french army effectively is there any sort of

Starting point is 03:12:06 like allegiance there that sprouts up like oh this is my second country so there i get you know i'll get people that blast me you know traitor you know how they're fucking i'm like dude it's an allied nation yeah it's like dude fucking chill out right take it take a couple plays off dude it's you know it's an allied nation they're red white and blue for a reason right their flag you know just like england like i never thought about that so is england right right there's a reason for that right the allied forces the trifecta like that so i never had any issues right my allegiance has always been the united states right if there was ever fucking a question i know exactly who had fucking that there was just that's just what it is so so i

Starting point is 03:12:44 was really grateful for france man you know i was fucking i was helpful to be there it was nice to experience but the legion's interesting you don't swear allegiance to the french french military it's the only unit like this you only swear allegiance to the legion really so the legion had the legion had a really interesting thing in 1962 the legion was almost disbanded because they broke they broke down out of algeria which is kind of like how the afghanistan breakdown oh yeah and a fucking legionnaire sniper from the parachute regiment tried to kill the french president and it was actually like formalized like it was getting pushed by the call

Starting point is 03:13:19 it might have been might have been yeah that Yeah. That Algeria, that history. So people got to look into that. So Algeria and France and that whole thing, there's some crazy books on it too. Guys there in the Legion. It was, that was hardcore shit, but that was,

Starting point is 03:13:34 but so they took the parachute regiment and banished them to Corsica. They said, we're not going to break it down. They put them on an Island. They said, you're not gonna be on mainland France anymore. And so it's still like that today. But the,

Starting point is 03:13:43 so the Legion's always had this weird redheaded, you're not going to be on mainland France anymore. And so it's still like that today. So the legions always had this weird redhead. It's that whole stepchild thing. But it's getting more and more integrated into the French military. So it's getting a little less pirate, a little less dangerous. They're just because they've had a lot of legal problems and people dying and all that stuff. So now we're coming back out of it and that now i'm just kind of ranking up going through the going through the process of i'm about to screen for the commando group which i fucking failed by the way well i failed i failed the run test which it was just too fast i couldn't

Starting point is 03:14:18 fucking pace past the fucking time dude it was way too fast at altitude navy seal can't run yeah well they all knew they were like fuck dude it was i mean i was 37 at the time right so i'm 37 i'm pushing the fucking bounds of the human body at this point 37 and i and i got dude that test is just too fucking fast dude it's like five miles at altitude in like full military fucking how long they have they want it done in like 37 minutes or something like that five miles i'm moving right it's just it's just that would have been pushing it for me even back in the day right yeah how much weight is your get up man it's just it's just normal like boots and pants and then but you know full no ruck yet you know but it's just fast at altitude with hills it's just too fast and

Starting point is 03:15:01 i couldn't pass the time and they're like dude, they invited me to come back, but it just wasn't going to happen. So that's when I go, I'm getting out. Right. Do you have, were you in long enough to have French citizenship? No, you can request it after your five years, but it's usually take seven. They said three there, but it's really not, that's not the case. So now I'm in the point where I'm like, bro, I'm, my habits are now, I'm like a fucking machine.

Starting point is 03:15:24 I'm fully self-actualized as far as like my habits, my, my mindset. I'm positive. I don't have bad days anymore, bro. I can't remember last time I had a bad fucking day. Dead serious.

Starting point is 03:15:35 I was awesome, dude. I just learned how to self-soothe and just build my self-worth on my own daily habits. And I felt great, man, about getting out about people were kind of asking me what I was doing, this and that. And I felt great, man, about getting out, about people were kind of asking me what I was doing, this and that.

Starting point is 03:15:48 And I'm going, man. And I didn't say I had an injury. I would say I said I had never been hurt. I tore my medial calf muscle. You tore your calf muscle? In legion selection. Never stopped. Never stopped running, bro.

Starting point is 03:16:02 That sounds horrible. It was. I felt like, like bro something's bad it's all deformed now but i fucking was like dude man my leg hurts bro and i just kept running but i was like i wouldn't stop so three years later it's still all deformed and shit i'm like i should probably get this looked at it's just to see if they can connect it back or something i can run and jump i don't have like any issues with it but it hurt while it happened and now it's deformed a little bit on the just the medial muscles totally gone so that i took the there was no deployment

Starting point is 03:16:30 stacked or nothing i took the time to request to go to the hospital so i'd never really have been out of the game for an injury but i got this looked at so i'm in the hospital they're like taking a look at it they're like what the fuck's going on why how are you what happened what and so they still can't they never figured out what happened or what the fuck or how to do what to do or what happened but i'm in there for a while while they're trying to figure this out so i go i'm gonna upload some pictures on instagram that's when i started i got fucking some time i'm like off the grid i'm just working out in my fucking hospital room so i started posting some pictures started kind of sharing some stories started kind of doing some

Starting point is 03:17:04 things just was like all right i think i might want to go into this coaching thing man like i think i could teach people how to do this right how to like live right i learned how to not do and how to do some right and i learned how about daily habits so i started building just a general daily format that i do every day still right simple right just exactly daily habits what supplements to take what time to get up exactly all the same what are your daily habits so i get up every day like 3 34. that's right about where i stop doesn't matter what time i go to bed that's the time take some time to self-reflect quick drink some coffee take some time to raise the vibration up i do some mike tyson push-ups or or whatever. Then I'll do some visualization, right?

Starting point is 03:17:45 It might be no music, might be some. 30 minutes, 30, 45 minutes. Then I'll roll into my work, whatever, kind of getting ready for the day. But I don't look at my fucking phone immediately. I don't look at my emails. I don't get sucked into the matrix. That's like, wake up deliberately.

Starting point is 03:18:00 Wake up with the fucking not floating, right? Wake up with a plan, with a fucking system. I call it psychological and emotional grooming. People fucking brush their teeth and fucking hair and they don't brush their brain. Get clear, bro. Get centered. Where are you at? Where were you?

Starting point is 03:18:17 What do you regret from the day before? Fucking don't do that again. And then where are you trying to go? Visualize that shit. Boom. Now move on. We don't need some fucking two-hour biohacking bullshit. Right?

Starting point is 03:18:27 Because guess what? I want it simple. I want it repeatable. All I need is a coffee and a floor, right, to get my shit. I could do it in an Airbnb, hotel room. But it's just something I touch the base on every day. Then I'll go into work or whatever and try to work out if I can in the morning, if I have to later. But that's usually the general flow. And that's what i started to build there and i started fucking feeling

Starting point is 03:18:49 better man just i started getting clear and my inner peace was coming back and i was feeling fuck dude well because i'd always done it and i thought back man when have i ever been most happy well it's been when i'm locked on waking up early doing shit is this when you're still in the yeah so i'm still in the legion so i started doing this shit every day i started really hardcore in estonia i was waking up getting fucking yelled at they were threatening to put me in jail because i was getting up early and going to work out because i would be like you know kind of like getting up and maybe like french officers were mad that i woke them up or some shit it didn't fucking matter dude i was like i gotta do this shit i was out in the fucking cold in

Starting point is 03:19:22 estonia like doing push-ups outside and shit i had to and i'm so glad i did because i felt good again and i and i did i felt like i was didn't need some external validation to feel good about myself and that that was a win so i was like bro this was a positive this was a win so i said i was like dude i'm gonna fucking share some of this on fucking youtube so i started kind of going up and then the Legion fucking wasn't happy with that. Right. So they came down. When is this? This was last.

Starting point is 03:19:51 This was November. Oh, 2023. I just got out of the Legion in December. I got back to the United States December 17th. Holy shit. Yeah. I just got back, bro. So I fucking, I, you know, put it out there and I just told my story.

Starting point is 03:20:05 I just told my story, man, about drugs. I fucking, oh, I just sent it. Fentanyl, drugs, getting kicked out of the military, where I was at, what helped me, man, what the path was, right? Taking ownership, just, man, empowerment, man. You can be suicidal, man, and then fucking come out of it, right? Don't have to, don't throw in the towel, right? If not for you you then for everybody else in your life right what kind of damage are you leaving don't do that so that was kind of my

Starting point is 03:20:29 message i was speaking positive about the legion never have said a bad fucking word and but they just were like they were fine with it at first but then it blew up then they were like oh shit this thing has a million views and fucking and they didn't like that they were like oh shit he's getting we don't know what he might say that's they were fine when it was small right but then they were like well what if he fucking goes off and says some negative shit yeah but i was i was great recruiting for him dude i had marines coming in they were like talking to me i was like hey man if you're in a rough spot it can be very powerful right positive so i was actually just reasonable like yeah man you think it'd be good for you i'll tell guys that if they asked me how'd you leave it and so dude they were like i got a lawyer because i was like

Starting point is 03:21:09 dude they're like take it all down we're gonna put you in jail on back to back to back to back months and months and months until on food discipline until until you we kick you out force you out if you don't take it down and i was like i'm not taking down and they were like all right so i was like well i'm gonna get a shit down. And they were like, all right. So I was like, well, I'm going to fucking get a fucking, because I'm all about, I understood the iron was hot. The fucking shit was going. There was no way I'm going to fucking lose the momentum on this. And I was like prepping my out. You've known a lot of lawyers too.

Starting point is 03:21:33 So I was like, this is just another thing. So I separate, I was luckily it wasn't there or they could have wrapped me up there. But they, they were like playing hardball. I played hardball with them. And I played with the lawyer. And the lawyer goes, dude, you're in like legally really gray area here, which is also another point that people don't think. Man, people are like, oh, you didn't honor your oath. Or I go, bro, that's coming from the same people that have divorces. I'm like, bro, I didn't honor your oath.

Starting point is 03:21:58 I'm like, bro, it's a fucking foreign military organization. I'm a foreigner. They're going to put me in jail. But look, man, my loyalty is the United States. yeah fucking i go i go i would i tried to stay i fought to stay they i said can i keep these up i'll fucking do whatever i was like all clean trucks or whatever they were like no because i was denying order from the general so that's fucking let me imagine how that's generated hey the general yeah so i said oh the lawyer's like dude you gotta fucking just leave man he's like you gotta just leave because they're gonna fucking you just walked off the base no i wasn't on the base

Starting point is 03:22:33 thank god because i was separated because i was still fucking hurt from the fucking calf thing so they were like that was my only thing or i would have been fucked because i had my passport and my shit or they because they went in the next I said no, locked up all my shit in my room, fucking ripped everything apart, locked everything up, so I couldn't even get my shit if I wanted. Where were you staying during the CAF thing? So I had a girlfriend at the time. I was staying at her apartment.

Starting point is 03:22:55 In Paris? In Marseille. In Marseille. Yeah, so that's where I was at. Nice French girlfriend. Yeah, she's actually Bulgarian, but shit. Yeah, so that was what how many countries have you hit over the years i'm just curious dude yeah so it so that was it bro i was fighting it you

Starting point is 03:23:14 know trying to fight it on the up and up but you know like i said man dude even stories of redemption aren't a fucking fairy tales bro like this is life bro things happen you have lived a life yeah things happen man and it's like dude sometimes the winds of change are speaking to you man i had a higher calling man and it was it was a man i was getting hundreds of messages going dude i was gonna kill myself i saw your video fucking thank you so i was like i'm not taking this shit down bro like i'm not i was getting you know a lot and i still do i knew it was right, the right path and I kept making them right. And I haven't missed a day. Every Monday and Thursday, I upload a fucking new one stream of consciousness. I haven't missed a day since the day I started. We'll put the link, you know,

Starting point is 03:23:53 because it's, it's, it's, Hey man, let's take inventory where we're at. Let's identify a new goalpost. Let's fucking start moving let's do it right you fucking deserve to feel better if you're not stoked on life i know you dude you're a man that fucking bro you take some risk take some action start moving right now look what you're doing right you and stoked to get up i see your energy bro it's fucking salt when we first see so it's up dude yeah it can be like that for everybody right you don't have to be living in this drudgery that's right and it's always just a little bit of fucking action to get momentum and then you can start seeing that veil starts dropping you start getting that clarity it's all it takes that's why that fucking object in motion you know stays in motion you got to get moving change some

Starting point is 03:24:42 shit up get some new energy into the system get the the mojo back, as I like to say, because that's I lost my mojo fucking hard, bro, for like two years when I was just like, fuck, dude, just trying to move and feeling like I'm walking through quicksand when when I was like, OK, not then committing to just simple daily practices, then felt the clarity come and then the momentum came after it. And you've only so you've only been out of this thing for like nine months, something like that. simple daily practices, then felt the clarity come and then the momentum came after it. And you've only, so you've only been out of this thing for like nine months, something like that. And obviously you're doing great. And, and it's like, you see a lot of people who go to coach people and it's like, okay, what have you done? Look at your resume, what you've done in your life where, you know, you put yourself in bad situations a bunch too, but you always took control yourself. You never had some – I can't think of a situation where you ever had someone hold your hand through something. You got through these things, and they almost got progressively harder and harder and worse to the point where you're even ripping fentanyl lines every night. And you get yourself clean, and you go back and prove yourself from square zero

Starting point is 03:25:45 in the military so i gotta think when people are coming to you to be a life coach or something like that you know they're looking at where you've been and what you've done and and they're like okay this guy's legit like he really did it himself yeah so maybe i can too and they can and and i'm and my whole thing is man we got to be honest with each other right we'll be honest about where we're at if you're honest if you're know where you're at you can actually take a bearing and fucking go right if you're lost in the woods you don't know where you're at it's gonna be fucking hard to to kind of find your way out so i got to be authentic with people if they can be authentic with me and you know it's also understanding self so that you can

Starting point is 03:26:23 manage people business business scenarios, man, manage, manage your family, start setting the example first, set the fucking example, self-actualize, then you can transcend self. Then you can start helping other people, right? But you can't do shit for anyone. Your business is going to be fucking dog shit if you're a dog shit. Yep. Your life, your family, your relationships. So I go go quiet all that

Starting point is 03:26:45 fix yourself you can do it fast people can fucking write the shit pretty fucking quick i've seen some amazing transformations with guys former military some some not just make the decision start changing their small habits and bro they're fucking like boom it's amazing people shock me and it's it fucking makes warms my heart heart when I see people actually grab this shit by the balls and really do it. Proud of motherfuckers because I know it's hard, you know, and it's hard to get honest with yourself when you go, man, oh, all this shit's my fault. Oh, yeah. Once you get there, it's fucking easy. Yeah, taking blame.

Starting point is 03:27:21 Yeah. Putting it on you. Are you proud of yourself and where you're at considering everything you've gone through dude i love my life now bro i fucking i'm so happy because i'm proud of of being able to say no to myself being able to fucking i realized how often before i was just like oh i want to do this i'm going to do it i want to do this when i do it i'm talking the pleasure driven shit oh yeah now i derive a lot of pleasure from the purpose driven shit. Like I really derive pleasure from getting up early. I drive pleasure from eating correctly. I don't drive pleasure from eating cake. I'm not saying I don't ever fucking

Starting point is 03:27:53 have, you know, I'm not like that, but I'm saying I drive more pleasure from sticking to a basic plan, you know, Ben, but don't break right. Straight, not straightened. You know, you're not perfect. You got to be able to adapt a little bit and adjust to fucking not be rigid weird fuck and live your life a little bit because it's you know it's not a that's not cool either it's just being so stringent that you can't live but it's man you got to have this basic framework that you're you can kind of operating around that you contour off of that that's always like okay it's nice to get back onto the program you know if you've been to a you're out in the jungle doing shit it's kind of nice you know i kind of want to get back flowing in the gym right there's that feeling but it's getting people that baseline to where

Starting point is 03:28:32 their new baseline is structured structured and that actually makes them positive and feel good well dude your your your story is incredible i mean this and you're extremely entertaining thank you and how you tell it as well. But, you know, I think there's so many lessons in there for people. And I do think, you know, even looking at all the different mistakes that happen along the way, coming back to self-discipline and finding a way to do that. Like you have that grit you talked about inside of you that gets those Navy SEALs through buds and makes them the best warriors in the world. And you've been able to use that at extremely hard points where you shot yourself in the foot

Starting point is 03:29:09 and found a way to heal the bullet wound. And that's an amazing thing. So listen, we're going to put your link to your YouTube down in the description. I'm going to put the link to your personal website down in the description as well. So if people want to work with you, they can contact you through your website or through Instagram DM both man i everything goes to me too i don't outsource anything there's no ai every email goes to my personal email every dm i answer i don't fucking outsource fuck all love it well there it is for you people check out the links in the description you can work with this guy joe joe and i appreciate you bros thank you so much seriously bro it's fucking awesome so we will have to do this again at some point because there's a lot of different, I mean, you're a Navy SEAL.

Starting point is 03:29:48 You've done this shit. You've been out there. You know stuff that's happening around the world. Like there's a lot of different things to talk about. And also I think like a lot of people out there are struggling too during this current era. And they could use a voice like you to help them with some of that motivation to take control of their shit. We all need it at times, man. I have.

Starting point is 03:30:06 Fuck yeah. All right, dude. Thank you again. Appreciate it, bro. We'll do it again. Everyone else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me.

Starting point is 03:30:13 Peace. Thank you guys for watching the episode. Before you leave, please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video. It's a huge help. And also, if you're over on Instagram, be sure to follow the show at Julian Dory Podcast, or also on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. Finally, if you'd like to catch up on our latest episodes, use the Julian Dory Podcast playlist link in the description below. Thank you.

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Julian Dorey Podcast - #238 - Navy SEAL turned Prisoner & French Commando Breaks Silence | Taylor Cavanaugh

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