Julian Dorey Podcast - #412 - “Mercy!” - JSOC Tier 1 Operator: Taking a Life, Shadow Gov & Bin Laden Debate | Chad Robichaux

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

SPONSORS: 1) MIZZEN & MAIN: Get 20% off your first purchase at https://mizzenandmain.com with promo code JULIAN20. 2) AMENTARA: Visit https://amentara.com/go/JULIAN and use code JD22 for 22% off your first order. 3) PROTECT MY DATA: Go to https://protectmydata.com and use code JULIAN for 30% off all annual plans. JOIN PATREON FOR EARLY UNCENSORED EPISODE RELEASES: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey CLIPPERS DISCORD: https://discord.gg/8QmWEKJ3BT (***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Chad Robichaux is a former Force Recon Marine and Department of Defense (DoD) contractor with eight deployments to Afghanistan as part of a Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Task Force. CHAD's LINKS: IG: https://www.instagram.com/resilientshow/ YT: https://www.youtube.com/@UCW73J_l3IHmtyNqJvPQujag BOOD: https://www.tyndale.com/p/riptide/9781496488756 WEBSITE: https://chadrobichaux.com/ FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY IG: https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/ X: https://x.com/juliandorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP ****TIMESTAMPS**** 00:00 - Patriotism, 9/11 Doubts, War Profits, Ukraine, Aid Politics 10:14 - Afghanistan Collapse, China, Lithium, Bagram, Kabul Chaos 20:23 - Taliban Funding, Executions, US Aid, Media Silence 30:15 - DC Corruption, Term Limits, Military Complex, Lobbying 40:43 - System Corruption, Insider Trading, Political Wealth 50:19 - Veteran Disillusionment, War Ethics, Regime Change 01:01:17 - Iran Debate, Tribalism, DC Money, Outsiders 01:10:28 - Epstein Theory, Espionage, Moral Gray Zone 01:19:31 - War Atrocities, Mass Graves, Corruption 01:30:46 - Upbringing, Marines, 9/11, Recon Path 01:42:02 - Family, Faith, Recon Marines 01:51:09 - Undercover Police, Shooting, Trauma 02:03:28 - Shooting Aftermath, PTSD, Emotional Fallout 02:12:04 - Contractor Path, Taliban, Moral Questions 02:22:45 - War Futility, Tier One Ops 02:31:25 - Bin Laden, Motives, Interrogation 02:41:44 - Capture, PTSD, Identity Loss 02:50:55 - Suicide Attempt, PTSD, Family Impact 03:00:29 - Faith, Redemption, Veteran Mission 03:08:58 - Chad's work CREDITS: - Host, Editor & Producer: Julian Dorey - COO, Producer & Editor: Alessi Allaman - https://www.youtube.com/@UCyLKzv5fKxGmVQg3cMJJzyQ - In-Studio Producer: Joey Deef - https://www.instagram.com/joeydeef/ Julian Dorey Podcast Episode 412 - Chad Robichaux Music by Artlist.io Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You know, you and I were just talking off camera. We've been having a nice conversation today. Thank you so much for having me on your show, by the way. That was pretty cool. Yes. I don't know if I've done where we both do each other's shows the same day at the same time. Really? This might be a first, which is pretty cool.

That's pretty cool. Thank you for doing it, by the way. I mean, you know, definitely in your footsteps, trying to get to build our audience up to where we reach so many people as you're reaching. Well, you're doing a great job. And obviously, like, the show took off pretty quickly as well when you started a couple. years ago. I've been seeing you for a long time. So just keep doing what you're doing. But, you know, we're going to get into your story today, which I think is obviously really important for people to hear. But because of your background, working so many years in the military,

going to some of the most dangerous places and being like a true blue American patriot, as I would certainly refer to you, you know, we were just talking off air. Do you ever wonder nowadays or did you even wonder back in the day if it's like, are we the good guys or are we the bad guys? No, man. I, uh, I mean, I, I, I come from a long history military in my family. Like, uh, I'm from very southern Louisiana, super, you know, I wouldn't even say blue collar is not the right word, like white rubber boots, like fishermen, shepherds, like, I grew up hunting fishing and in the swamps of Louisiana and, and, but my family has always served, not career military people, but went and served their, their time. World War I, World War II, Korea, my father's

first Marine, our family served to Vietnam. Uh, I, I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a, I was a Marine, both my sons of Marines. So like just always had this real sense of patriotism. So when I joined the military at 17 years old in 1993, like, like, man, I believe that was signing up for something special. And by the way, I do believe it is still something, something special. But I'd never understood geopolitics in the intricate web of like corruption and influence and in things that are done for what alternate agendas that we, that I've come to learn.

And it's, it's weird disturbing to me. It makes me really, I mean, when I went to Afghanistan, you know, I was a force recovery and that I ended up on a contract. It was a contractor on a J-Soc task force. And I went to Afghanistan eight times. Emma Sun went to Afghanistan after me in the same war. But when I first went to Afghanistan, I believed that when those powers fell and President George Bush made a vow to make that right, that wrong to America right, man, I was all in. Like completely all in. I never thought for a minute during my eight times in Afghanistan that I would ever question the intent of while we went there.

And if you had told me just two years ago, when I seen this stuff about the Twin Towers and the conspiracies and these guys are freaking crazy. Like we were attacked on our own soil and that's what I spent my life. I lost friends for this. I would have never thought in a million years that I would question that. And here we are sitting here today, you know, not far away from when the Twin Towers fell. Right. And do I believe that jihadist terrorists were on those. planes? Yeah. Do I believe that there is no way possible that there was complicity in our

government or that we knew things that we that we couldn't have prevented it? I can't say that anymore. And I never thought in a million years that I would sit here, especially on a podcast and admit that I wouldn't admit that if I didn't, if I wouldn't deeply deserve by it. What does that feel like to come to at least a realization that, you know what, it's not what they told us it was when you dedicated so many years of your life to fighting in the very theaters that we got sent to after that and your own sons did yeah as well hey guys three quick things number one if you haven't subscribed please subscribe to huge huge help number two if you'd like to join my patreon for early uncensored releases of the full episodes you can join via the link of my description

or in the pin comment below and number three if you'd like to join my clipping community for a chance to make content from the show and make money you can join via the discord link in my description below It's a deep sense of betrayal. I don't feel like I don't. What I don't feel is like the American dream is lost, that it was all a lie, that I have, my patriotism was fake and that I don't believe that. I still believe in America. I still am an extremely proud patriot.

I don't. I'm still very proud of my service and I'm proud of my son's service. I'm proud of all my friends of service. Proud of the service of every man and woman that's done the uniforms since 1775 and fought bled and died for this country. and are doing it right now while we sit here over in Iran. Regardless of what politician either made the right choice and made the wrong choice for alternative reasons,

regardless of that, our men and women in uniform have and always will, I believe, do the right thing for the defense of freedom for America and defend people around the world and can't defend themselves. So I've never let them take away that from me or from our troops. But it stings to know that we are, we are used at times at pawns of bigger things, of political power of, of,

and of just sheer greed and profit. I mean, when you think about things like, by the way, you might hear me sometimes bashed in military industrial complex, but I am proud of our military industrial complex because I want America to have the biggest,

baddest weapons on the planet. That way anybody stamps up to us, we have the ability to destroy them. So the military industrial complex is good, but it also creates opportunity for misuse and abuse. And that military industrial complex has been misused and wars have been stored it over profiteering. And Ukraine is the latest example.

You know, Putin put 100,000 troops into order. He flexed. And President Biden made the decision to remove our U.S. consulate, our embassy and our troops out of Ukraine, which allowed for the Article 50 violation not to be there. The rest of the Western world followed suit. And Putin came across the border. And now hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on this war. billions. Yeah, hundreds of billions of dollars. And millions of innocent civilians, not politicians, not service members, innocent civilians have been killed. I would say well over a million civilians

have been killed. I don't know the exact number now. I can look it up, but I don't think you're far off. It probably wouldn't be, it probably wouldn't even be reported correctly. But I've been to the front line of Ukraine 10 times as a humanitarian and rescue. I've seen the bodies. I've seen mass graves, or I leaked mass graves to. Wait, you've been to Ukraine 10 times? 10 times. Yeah, I was there the week after the invasion. Whoa. What were you doing there a week after? To pull Americans out after our White House abandoned Americans there. And I mean, that's what did that look like, man? Hold on. I didn't know. Everything I've seen in my life, the worst thing that I've ever seen has been the atrocities of Ukraine. That's why I'm so passionate about this because I looking at it from that side, from and most of my time I spent on the other side of the Russian, like in Russian occupied territory, seeing the war, seeing the frontline troops and seeing the atrocities there.

So I could say from that side and in this side being in D.C., that billions of dollars that we've spent those, probably close to $300 billion, only 80% of it. I mean, 80% of it stayed back here. 20% of it went to Ukraine. And so we talk about supporting Ukraine, 80% of it stays here for weapons manufacturing. The people in D.C. that have the power and influence to end that war, and when I say D.C. Zewinsky, Biden. And now even this administration, right, and I know President Trump has really pushed for this, they get credit to President Trump at J.D. Vance for. really pushing for peace on this. But the people that pull those levers, those same ones making the profits and staying at office because of those who are making profits, because of the lobbying. And so war is a business. And that business costs lives. And I've gotten a lot of heat, by the way, because I run a Christian ministry and the conservative and Christians are like, what are you doing? Like asking me, what are you doing in Ukraine? Like, we have, you know, we have a border and we have all this stuff there. And by the, like, I never went to Ukraine because, You know, they like, Swinsky's corrupt.

And I'm like, yeah, Zawinsky's corrupt. Surprise, the politician's corrupt, right? Like I read a history book, right? And so as people in Washington, D.C., but I would never go do something like that because Zawinsky or Biden or anybody else. I go to do these things for people, people that can't help themselves. And as a conservative or as a Christian like me, like, if you ever let your politics get in the way, your compassion for people, you should probably change your politics. Like we went there to help people.

And we've, you know, my team, and I can say right now, like my buddy Dennis Price, force of economy, runs heroes of humanity, like my buddy C-spray, all these guys are still out there all the time like rescuing people and stuff like that. In Ukraine. In Ukraine, all over the world.

And they don't ever do it for, none of them care about the, all these guys that I know that are in this space, humanitarian rescue, they could care less about the politics of it. They just care about humans. And, and, yeah, I'll probably care more about the politics

than any of the guys I work with because I'm just kind of tapped into both worlds. But those guys can care less. Like, my buddy C-spray, I don't even think you vote. I mean, he probably should, but I don't think he votes. He just always cares about his people. And these guys risk their lives every day for people.

And Ukraine, man, it was just horrific. Because you're not looking at, in Ukraine, you went looking at, I think all of us that had served had been used to third world, Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa. We've seen like thorough atrocities. But when you roll across that border in Ukraine, it's like here. I mean, Kiev's not much different to where right now. It's a first world country, pizza parlors, ice cream shops, movie theaters, plays, daycares.

It's people like us. War. Kinetic first world uniformed military, firing ballistic missiles as a size of telephone poles in apartment buildings. That's what you see. I've stayed overnight in the shelters with families that have lost everything. Family members, their house, everything. And they're just, it's, I wrote a book about it called Mission Without Borders.

And it's because the book's kind of about me and my son doing it together because my son. Oh, he came with you. He came with me. So to take your son into a war like that was a pretty crazy thing. Wow. But. And you were there a week in. So you're seeing it when.

Yeah. We were there right. Because we knew it was going to happen. I mean, we were watching it. My buddy C-spray was on top of it the most. He was there before. He actually went there a few weeks before. Kind of staged.

And we were watching. Staged up. What does that look like? Well, we just like, okay, like the White House is starting to, you know, close them. embassy and and uh and they're moving troops out and you just have to know how that's works right i mean russia's not going to come across and attack ukraine while they have the western you know you and the united nations there uh i mean not the united nations the nato there yeah because because of article article uh by violation and uh you know they're not going to indiscriminately hit a u s troops so

when you move out start moving out the western world you give him putt in green light and uh and that and that's we knew what was happening, but we were watching them do that, just like we watched the Biden administration do several times. They did it in Sudan. They did it in Afghanistan. Obviously, the Afghanistan evacuation, which I was heavily involved in. Ukraine, they moved people out. They moved the government people out, but they don't move the civilians out first. And so now you leave an Americans behind, and you know that border is going to be just like gridlock to get out. I never heard someone put it that way, though. And I don't, you know, you're just putting the visual on it. But yeah, the context and deeper meaning of what you just,

said is pretty wild giving Putin the green light and it makes sense yeah because if you're pulling out all your people you're pulling out other allied government people who would be involved in protecting ukraine you are essentially creating the inevitable instead of say leaving them there and saying i dare you to attack while these people are here our presence is always a deterrent around the world and so you you remove the consequences you remove the consequences from him like you take away the consequences that he's going to have and you give him the green light And I think that was very deliberate, by the way. I, that's what I'm getting at.

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That's Mizan spelled M-I-Z-Z-E-N and Maine, M-A-I-N dot com, promo code Julian 20 for 20% off your order. Mizanamane.com promo code Julian 20, link in description below. And if you'd rather shop in person, you can find Mizan's stores in select states. But better yet, use that link in the description below so you can support the show. Oh, that feels, wow. See, I'm looking at the world a whole different way these days, if you know what I mean. Well, I mean, that feels like... That's one example, but you can go around the world and look at scenarios like that.

Exactly, exactly. And we know there's been corruption done in these, and in countries that people decide not to care about. That's a really, that's another, you know... Afghanistan's the same thing. Yeah, it's an important thing you said. Afghanistan, you know, the White House is in the mainstream media has given this big narrative in 2020, 2021. Our troops have been there 20 years.

Endless war. By the way, President Trump made a mistake. He should have declared the war was over in a victory in 2018 because he did. He just didn't declare it. He should have. I mean, we shifted in 2018

to support an advisory role and we didn't lose any more troops. We were supporting and advising. We was down at little as 2,000 troops. But then President Trump didn't take that win. He should have. Biden comes in and he's going to take the win. But what he says is,

we've had this endless war. American sons and daughters are dying there. We have 2,000 troops. Bro, I can name 10 places around the world that we have 2,000 troops. We still have 80,000 troops in Japan since World War II. We have 40,000 troops in Germany since World War II. We have 30,000 troops in South Korea. Those numbers might not be exactly right since the Korean War.

Like our presence doesn't start wars. It prevents wars, right? So taking our troops out of the most strategic place in the globe, Bogam Air Force Base between Iraq or Iran, Russia and China, had no personal interest for us because there was only two ISIS training camps there at a time. Now there's probably about 60. And you got Pakistan having a war this week started there because because of the terrorist training camps going on there and the jihad that's going to launch out of there around the world to include the West. And why? So why would the U.S.

do that? Well, why would be China? China wanted to build and move sanctioned oil from Iran across Afghanistan to China. How could they do that with the U.S. military? They can't. So need the U.S. military leave. China wanted access. to the mineral rights in the Hindu Kush Mountains. The lithium mineral rights is worth, they say hundreds of trillions of dollars, but probably infinite amount of money. And I got called the conspiracies when I said it on Fox News like a week before the withdrawal. But we left in August 31st and by the first week of September, China had the mineral rights.

You think we were given that the conspiracy is that the bad forces, evil forces in the U.S. government were trying to give that to China. I think they were. I think, I think, I think, I think the, well, I think it goes back. I mean, I think if my personal, very speculative, by the way, I don't have any proof of this. I think, I think we owed, we owe China a debt to the Biden family for personal business and for the election. I think they're involved in a hundred trillion dollars worth of lithium for a 10 million dollar debt maybe. They gave that's what it was. Yeah, or the, you know, the election, right, they helped, they probably helped with that election interference in, and in, in 2020. The lithium, the lithium. The lithium, that's a. big jump. The lithium alone. The lithium's a big you I mean we've seen people do less for having you know, you know, pictures and videos of them fucking kids with the Epstein files. You know what I mean? It could have been business deals that they're keeping quiet, right? And between the Biden family, i.e. Hunter and, and the big guy. And you have a and then you have the oil from Iran to China.

You had the, you had the lithium, but you can't discount the military positioning of Bagam Air Force base, who took overbogam air force base when we left not the taliban the chinese did and we left we left you know upwards of the number is very contested but up to 80 billion dollars in u.s equipment and technology behind it's insane so i mean the whole thing was just a complete mess but again we left we took our we took out our military close our bases before we moved out our u.s citizens which was the afghanistan withdrawal was from my civilian ass looking in the worst execution And not the military's fault, by the way, the worst administratively executed thing I think I've ever seen as it pertains to the United States military, definitely in my lifetime, but probably ever. I was very involved in it because, you know, I led the evacuation of, I got my, my old interpreter out.

And then we, my team stayed and we ended up getting 17,000 people out. 17,000. Yeah. So how'd you do that? It was, it was very coordinated, logistical operation between multiple, you know, a number of NGOs and, uh, in efforts. I mean, honestly, I can't take credit for it. I think it was a modern day miracle by the grace of God to be like to be complete frank because I'm not smart enough or capable enough to pull off what happened. But, uh, but originally I went to get my interpreter, you know, Aziz was,

I wrote a book called Saving Aziz. It's actually being made into a film right now. One. Um, but, uh, but I mean, Aziz was my, I did eight deployments to Afghanistan with him. He was my, because I worked in like this kind of undercover capacity as a singleton operator, as he was my, not only my interpreter, but he was my teammate and my friend. And I lived with them. I was there. I held his kids when they were born. He saved my life multiple times.

And so when the evacuation, the withdrawal was happening, I made a decision to go back and get my friend and his wife and his six kids. And so. How did you get into the country? Well, we had to get permission from the Joint Chiefs, which I'm not a big fan of General Millie, but we got permission from General Millie's office. So I've got to give them credit for giving us permission to go there with only NGO they had allowed to go to Bogum. Air Force Base. And then, but then getting there was one thing. Now I had to now I had to get, I had to get the, the base to allow us to move people onto the on the base from outside the wire, which I'll take a step back. The Neo operation, it's called the non-combatant evacuation

operation. That's typically run by the Department of Defense. So now the Department of War, right? That's, that's the non-combatten evacuation operation. Anytime something bad happens in a country, and we have to evacuate civilians. That is a duty of the Department of Defense. The White House took it from the DoD and gave it to Secretary of Blankin and the State Department. So essentially, H. Kaya, H. Kaya, H.C.I.K. I mean, Cars at International Airport, was treated like an embassy. If you think how a State Department treats embassy, they use the military, the Marines, the Marines, they use them as security. And so that pretty much is how they ran that facility, which, I mean, Cars at International Airport,

which we had already shut down Boggham Air Force base, which would have been the best place to do evacuation from because there was a military base. We gave up that and shifted to a civilian airport run by the Afghans, which is crazy to me, mind-blowing. So we moved there, and then the State Department coordinates with the Taliban, our enemy of 20 years, and gives them the outer perimeter of Kabul airport. So now you have civilians trying to get,

do you have our allies, innocent women and children, You have American civilians expats there trying to get to the base. In the White House saying, if you want to leave, all you got to do is get to hit me cars at an international airport. Well, the military wasn't allowed to go out and get them. They formed this inner circle security. They gave the outer security to the Taliban. Now, the Taliban are literally executing people in the street.

That's not rumor, by the way. They were executing people on the street. So some 20-year-old girl that came from here in New Jersey didn't want to go there and teach English or working at a medical aid center or an orphanage or Christian. Yeah, she's supposed. to go there and show her blue passport to the Taliban who she told that she need to be safe from all these times that she was there and the U.S. military and international security assistance forces were protecting it from now she's supposed to show her blue passport with them

while they're executing people in the street. It was atrocious that the White House was given that advice. Why? So our mutual friend Sean Ryan has done a lot of work on the funding that goes from America to the Taliban that's been going on for a while. still does. Yeah. And I remember when he was first looking at this, my reaction, even with Sean, who's plugged in was like, no fucking way. No way. And then he proved it 40 million ways to Sunday that it's true. It's had, it's been brought up by some brave people in Congress who have actually tried to help out now. But like, I interviewed Burchette last week. It's not out yet. But that's one of the questions asked him where we're at with that. Still. Because he's working on it. Yeah. So he's one

name I've heard working on it but it's like I try to look at like the 60 chest and I know the world's a weird place but what the fuck why or why because it's been it's been all kinds of administrations by the way left and right why are what possible reason could they have for having any business ties whatsoever in any way for anything to the Taliban. So during the evacuation, I had to move people across checkpoints and stuff like that, right? We had to move people, Americans, allies, innocent people. If I were to pay 500 U.S. dollars to the Taliban to get them through a checkpoint, right? I would have been, I would be in prison right now. The U.S., the Department of Justice would prosecute me for paying to a terrorist

organization. I'm not allowed to do that, even as humanitarian, but what? We could send them. I couldn't do that to evacuate Americans, but we could send them $80 million a week and have been doing it for three years now, more than that. So I'm going to really, if you don't know this, it's going to really piss you off. That money, by the way, is 40 million of it is for humanitarian aid.

So they send $40 million a week to the Taliban. And that money is supposed to be for them to distribute to NGOs. But just like in Africa, anytime, someone's in a dictator position, they use that money in food and resources and medical aid as power. How can you keep doing that when they're not even complete? A woman can't even see a doctor because a woman can't be a doctor, but a woman can't see a male doctor.

So there's no women's health care, right, for anyone over the age of like nine years old, but you're still giving them money. How about put some rules on it if you could give it, which, by the way, I don't believe you should give it. But people are still starving to death. People are still freezing to death. But we're going to continue to give 40 million. In any business world you're in, if you don't deliver.

deliver, you don't keep getting the funds. The other 40 million is for, forget this, the other 40 million is in cash and it's for counterterrorism. That cash is delivered to four locations. In all four locations, the people that that run those four locations are all on the FBI's top 10 most wanted lists. One of them has housed American prisoners that whole time. And one of them is, is bin Laden's son. That's where that cash is going. Forty million dollars in cash a week. When we first left, where we had two terrorist camps, now we have 60 terrorist training camps, but we're giving them $40 million a week in cash. These guys are in the FBI most one. This is, this is not, this is criminal activity. I'm not saying, I'm not saying, it's like legitimately by the law, the criminal activity for us to be giving this money to them. But it's,

but it's happening every week. So Sean and I broke this a while back. We put, we did a, had a signature campaign to get this exposed and done because there was hiding it. And Congressman Burchett is one of the guys still pushing it. But he's fighting against people in Congress. He's fighting against people in the Senate that I still want to keep this funded. And so here's here's the part of that's how you to tick you off because it, because as me, it really takes me off. And the American people should know this to know how bad it is. Inside that money, there's a Taliban mortar fund. Mortar fund. So if any, every Taliban member that was killed by a U.S. service member during the war and terror is given, is given a house

property in a $1,000 of U.S. tax, U.S. tax payer dollars a month as a mortar fund because we killed their Taliban family member during the war and terror. There's no gold star families in the United States that gets that. I mean, name a gold star family in the United States that gets a house property and a thousand dollars a month. If they are outside of the United States, the United States, outside of Afghanistan, that mortar fund is a system to move back and get a house property and $1,000 a month. That's our U.S. taxpayer dollar, by the way. That's a slap in the face to every service member, every gold store family that lost someone in combat.

And that is not something that has happened. It's something that's still happening today. Where, Chad, where does that, how does something like that start? who has that idea who sits in the room and says you know what it's a good idea we're gonna not only are we gonna fuck up the whole 20 year war and ruin all the work that people gave their lives for by pulling out and leaving all our tech behind and letting china take over all the lithium and shit like that but on top of that yo you know all those gold star families that we like send a letter to say thanks for your fucking service and never pay attention to again while their kids can't fucking

pay for college, we're going to keep doing that to them. And the guys who did that to their family so that they're dead and can't enjoy their husband, father, brother, or anything anymore, we're going to pay them what we would pay them. Yeah. Where to make sense, right? Make it make sense. No, no, no. It's not even make sense. That's evil. That is the definition of evil. Where does that conversation start? And how can a head roll? so that conversations like that don't happen. Well, to me, it's what we're doing right now is the only solution because mainstream media is not going to expose it. Yeah, of course they won't.

Because I've shared this story specifically with details to many mainstream media outlets and they haven't. All sides, by the way. But we have to inform the public because the only reason these people sit in power, they have the power to do that is because the constituencies allowed them to stay there. Yeah. Vote them there and allow them to stay there. Yeah, we have to get these people out. We have to continue to get these people out. And we the people.

But there's a lot of people, by the way, that aren't voted who are running those conversations. I agree with that. People don't see, right? I agree with that. How do you get rid of that without burning the whole house down at once, which would have catastrophic consequences, in my opinion? As fun as that is, and as much as I want to do that. Yeah. I have to be like, what's the best thing for America while we can root out evil to and allow the system, not the system as we have.

it, but like the system of us having a fucking functioning country on a day to day, which somehow we still do slightly, how do we keep that running while getting rid of all the bad gears in the wheel? I think one way is guys like me and you and I've been a little bit more, tried to be a little more intentional about this. We always bring the problems and not solutions and not solutions. And we don't, we don't cheer on the guys that are doing well because we're so frustrated with the House and our congressional representatives and our senators and our politicians.

We're so frustrated. It's so easy to just focus on the frustrations. And that's why I made sure I say Burtip by name because guys like him are going against the grain. They know they're going to probably get pushed out by their peers for doing the right thing. But they're doing it anyway. So when they do a good job like this, when they put their career in a line, and I say hate to see a career political positions or not careers, it should be a place to serve. But they put all of it on the line to do the right thing, then we should put our energy behind champion them too. We've got to

get behind them and say, hey, this is what we want. Instead of just saying this is what we don't want with this guy, we have to say, when the guy does the right thing, this is what we want. We want a guy like him that's going to push the envelope and fight against this stuff. You remember John Runyon? No. He was a great football player. He was the

left tackle on well, first the Titans, but then the Eagles for many years in the 2000s. and great guy when he finished his career a few years after his career he's like a he's living in south jersey i guess he was bored and he's like a moderate republican i'd say i'm gonna run for the house so he runs for congress he goes to congress i want to say i don't have it in front of me he was there for either just a two-year term or like he started the second term or whatever as they run every two years and then he said fuck this i'm going home and i'll drive some uber

in my spare time. And the reason I had a lot of respect for it is because when people asked him why, he said he got there. He ran on like whatever his platforms were. And he's like, all right, this seems cool. Got funding from the GOP or whatever. It was just a House race. It wasn't a Senate race or something like that. It's like, all right, maybe I can go there and make a difference. Goes down to D.C. And within a few days, he was like, oh, oh, we can't do shit. Oh, all right. So everything that I actually want to do I know no they're telling me I have to do oh this is bullshit and then he was like fuck this I'm leaving and I actually thought it was an amazing example for people not to be like you'll take your ball and go home but to be someone who also was a known name before he went in

there did not have to do this job at all it's worth tens of millions of dollars and then at least come out of it and say hey by the way people you know how you think this whole thing's rigged it is it is yeah according to a recent RAND support Amina Muscaria was the third most consumed psychoactive substance in the United States in 2025. That's more than LSD, more than DMT, more than most people realize. But there's a catch. The majority of the Omnita marketplace is unfortunately littered with counterfeit products. You've probably seen this mushroom before, Amnita Muscaria. It's weirdly embedded in art and culture. Like, it's literally the same one you see in Mario. It's not psilocybin. It's not a traditional psychedelic. For me, it's very grounding. At lower

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Link of my description below code JD22 at checkout. And, you know, I love that because he's probably uncorruptible because he didn't need the money. Right. Right. And or the notoriety in fame. He's not power. He's not seeking a name or reputation because he already has it.

Right. I was just, I just sat down to interview to Eli Crane, Navy Seel sniper. He's in there right now. He's in there right now. Yeah. And we talked about this on the podcast episode I did with him on my show. And he gave a real good perspective. I was particularly asking him about, does he think it's a good idea for veterans take off the uniform and then go serve again in Congress?

And he brought up a really good point and it makes sense. And I don't think there's just a plush of veterans, a lot of folks that go up there and serve is you go in, you kind of fall into the rank and file. And so there's the organizational hierarchy of the GOP and the house where we fall in and you come in as a freshman. And so now you, especially military guys, per most show, you feel like, okay, I'm the new guy. And whenever you're going to a new unit, you're the new guy. you got to re-earn your reputation. Right. You have to follow orders.

You have to. And so you go in that environment, you get injected in an environment and you just kind of forget, like it just clicks off that you don't work for them. You work for your constituency back in whatever state and district you come from. That's who you work for. But you spend all your time in D.C. That's how they set the system. And I think people need to go up there and realize before they go and recognize,

I don't work for these people. I don't care if they even like me. I'm going to, my constituency from my district voted me, They're going to go represent them. That's why it's called the representative. I'm a citizen, not a career politician. I'm a citizen representative of my district. And I'm coming here to represent my district.

And I'm going to vote the way my district wants me to vote. Maybe not even all my opinion. Sometimes, I mean, if you really connect it to your district, you may say, I don't completely agree with this, but this is what my district wants and I'm representing them. I'm going to vote the way my constituents. That has been lost. And our founding fathers when they set up that system, which we have a great system, by the way. It's not a system that's broken. It's the system that's been misused. That system was set up

where we were representatives that way. We came from, there was no career politicians in mind at all. We came from being doctors and lawyers and school teachers and construction workers to where our group appears from our community selected us and say, go to Washington, D.C. and represent us. And then come back and then we'll send somebody else. That's the way it's supposed to be. But now it's like, you go there, you make friends, you are a beaubos, you become this elitist career politician, career politician. It was never meant to be that way. That's right.

And one of the greatest things that this country could do to fix 90, I believe it fixed 90% of the problems that we have, not just in our communities, in our country, but globally, the America has would be term limits on the national members. It was so over a thing. The problem is the only people that can make that happen are the people that's there. So Andy Bustamante, I'll never, this is one of those. stories you never forget when I had him on episode 107 the second time we talked. He told me about when he left CIA, big air quotes there, and went to graduate school during part of that, they had a guest lecture where the local congresswoman came in to speak to them.

And at the end of the lecture, she said, you know, well, all you guys are my constituents, so might as well just put it out to you now. what types of things would you like to see me take to Congress and present his bills? I need some ideas. Fucking Andy Ray. I'm sure he has to have sure and he goes yeah. I would like you to take up a bill that says you should restrict congressmen and and women and senators to term limits. And then he defined whatever the term limits he wanted were. And she was like, I'm not going to do that. And he's like, but you just said, I'm your constituent. And this is what I want. How does everyone else feel about that and everyone went, yeah, sounds good to me. And she just like changed the subject

because she wanted to be a fucking career politician. She wanted the pension. She wanted the connections on K Street. She wanted the things that come with that, the corruption and all that. And when the system is incentivized so the people within it are not incentivized to vote against their own interests, which would include things like term limits, it never gets done. So I agree, I agree with you, Chad. By partisan across the board, if you asked Americans, I believe you'd be like a probably 90 percent of vote that would be for term limits. Yes. So. So how do we fix that when, you know, the five, including senators and congressmen, the 500 and some people in there are not incentivized to get any kind of majority on that? Our system isn't set up for us to have a voice to do that.

Unfortunately, I mean, the answer is there is, there is no how to. There's no answer to it because a system set up for them that, them that basically vote themselves out of a job. And is how do you undo that? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know the answer to how to undo that. I think about this a lot. And like, this has been a great start to this conversation, by the way, because you keep introducing as someone who's lived in these worlds too, which makes it even more special. But like you keep introducing without trying to all of these extreme slippery slopes that exist.

And there's one thing that's kind of been thematically tied to a lot of the things, examples you've been bringing up, which is something you said early on about the military industrial complex. And I think you and I share an opinion on this. you said, and I'm on paraphrase here, correct me from mom, but you said, I love the idea of the military industrial complex in the sense that we get the biggest, baddest, best shit, and we get to have the most powerful military in the world because that's important for deterrence. And any time we have to call on it. Agree. And then you said, I hate the aspect of the military industrial complex that is incentivized, therefore, to declare war and go to war as a business all the time and do the world's bidding and bring other armies in and get civilian casualties in the middle of it by the millions, which by the way, you were correct. on the Ukraine thing, the casualties are up at 1.8 million and the deaths are somewhere. I was seeing different research. It was like between 500,000 and a million. So you're like right there. You know, and by the way, how do we fix that by the way, chat?

Like how do we fix? Because I agree. I want to have an extremely powerful military that's not underfunded so they can do all those great things. And I don't mind putting my taxpayer dollars to that. But then how do I make sure that the companies that are given the money to create that military don't incentivize our government and therefore our military at their beck and called to go create wars around the world all the time kill lobbying kill lobbying that's it that's the answer

that's because the money makes his way back to campaigns and politicians the politicians that vote on it now how do we do that i mean again go back to congress having to vote on that vote themselves out of money and power and in campaigns that keep them in power campaigns cost a lot of money. Yes, they do. Campaigns and I mean, you could you can buy elections in America. You have enough money. You have enough money to put behind a campaign. You have enough friends

and companies and, you know, and so the military industrial complex in the, in the petrol industry or in a form of pseudo-inistry, these are all the biggest funders of campaigns. And so, by the way,

I want to throw this number out there. It's crazy. America's been, we're selling, celebrating out 250th year right now. You know, can you take a guess how many years? I won't say how many years we've been in war in 250 years? Actually, how many years have we been out of war? Have not been in war. 16.

Are you right? You're right. Where the fuck did that come from? I think the action number 17. Somebody had fact jacked us on it both, but we're close. I mean, most people have no idea. So we can talk about war being profitable. This is not just a new thing with Raytheon and Latehian and Lockheedon and So that.

War's always been profitable. That's right. And politicians in D.C. Who have the ability to flip the levers to say we're in or out of war, unfortunately, their campaigns are paid for by the people who profit off a war. All right. So two things. One point I don't want to lose because it was on what you were saying. I just want to make sure I throw this one out to you.

You talk about getting lobbying out of politics and then you unfortunately correctly say, but they're not incentivized to do that. I almost feel like this is not the way I want to. people just putting a visual on it. I almost feel like the only way that could ever possibly happen is if you got all 535 of them in a room with some spec ops guy like you with a gun saying, listen, buddy, y'all are going to go in there and vote on this shit right now before any of your donors can talk about this about taking money out of politics. And therefore, that means all of you would have to lose the next election and you won't because now they can't pay for you to lose. Right. Like that feels like the only possible. And I'm not advocating for it. But, you know, maybe.

I'm not. But I'm just saying like that is not plausible. It's not that the system's not set up to be. And you know, where you have, and then if a president comes in and uses executive authority to do it, he's a dictator. He's a,

right? We've had a lot of those. I mean, I mean, we are a, we're not a democracy, right? I know either of us. We're,

we're constitutional, we're public. So I always disagree with everyone on this. We're both. We're both. Okay. We're both. Can you,

can you break that down? So we're a democracy in the sense that the people do vote for their elected representatives and also that separates, and I'm looking at this 30,000 feet in the air right now, people this really would require a full podcast to give the proper details and evidence. But we are able to have some separation of powers between state and federal and that is where it ties into like being a republic, right? Right. So you have elected representatives who act on your own interest.

but we are also a democracy in the sense that people can put forth measures that then get elected, that then get selected directly. And I would say another republic aspect to it, and this one I'm talking out of my ass on, so correct me on the comments. But when you look at the federal government and you have the executive, the legislative, and the judicial, and ideally they're all separate, that's more republic related because you are electing the people. to two of them and then the judicial is selected based on the people that you elect, which would be a more republic idea. Yeah. Yeah. So really, yeah, I mean, because all of all, all three of them are voted into two separations of power. Right. Yeah. Right. I'm sure I'm going to get lit up for. No, you're right.

But you're right. But you're actually right. Yeah. So I would agree with everything you just said. So either way, though, if you have all these, if you have all the last. lobbying money in Congress and in Senate. And let's say you can't get rid of that. And you're still going to have pharma. You're still going to have bankers. You're still going to have all this shit. What can you do with the system set up as it is corrupt as it may be to at least get 20% of what we want fixed?

Yeah. Man. It's a hard question. I'm sorry. No, it's, I mean, hard questions are good. I just, I don't know. I spent my, I asked you on my episode with you, what keeps you up at night. And this is what keeps me up at night.

I love this country so much, man. I really do. I've been all over the world. I've been the 60 countries. I've been to 60 countries. Wow. And what we have here is exceptional. And as bad as it is, it's still, as bad as it is, is still the greatest country in the planet.

I agree. And I believe in it. And I believe in the way our government is set up. It's special. I believe in the way our government is set up. But there are flaws in it that I don't think that I found any fall that this level of corruption would have come from within. And so when I ask you like what keeps you up at night, what keeps me up as night is how do we, how do we turn it around save something that's been hijacked?

Hijacked. Because it has been hijacked. and who hijacked it or is it more incentives hijacked it? I think incentive hijacked and it goes with that question. Another question I ask you, who are the day, right? And I think America is so great has become so powerful around the world

that people want to use it and for a good. I mean, they want to use our military, which I think is what we're seeing right now in Iran. They want to use our military. They want to use our economy. And all those benefits other country get off of of hijacking the day, right? Whether it's globalist or different countries

that have their claws in America, all the incentives they get from us, they have to do it through corrupting, through establishing relationships to corruptible people that are in D.C. And every administration, by the way, has been part of this in every party.

When I say every party, both the Democrats or Republican are guilty of this. I mean, it has corrupted people on both sides to aisle in every position that's been, that, you know, from the White House, from the White House down the local legislators. And so there's a lot of things that need to be exposed. And I think, you know, I think the exposure of some of these things are probably the only way to start exposing it in California. I mean, when you look at the insider trading.

I tell you, I was real happy at the state of union another day. President Trump called out the insider trade. One of the only things that Democrats stood up for, which I couldn't believe it, was insider trading. and then Trump took a Trump took a pretty good shot so that all the Democrats stand up against him Chite trade even even Elizabeth Warren

and Pocahontas was there like hey she's like that was good that was good clapping and then while she while he won Elizabeth Warren over Desi Pocahontas is standing yeah he did but then he said

where's Nancy Pelosi I bet she wouldn't be standing he had to take he had to take a shot I'm like he had his moment to where he had everybody together and he couldn't do it he couldn't do it he could be Nancy Pelosi

I bet she wouldn't be standing in cheering Yeah, now you see stuff like that. It's a little disheartening, right? Yeah. I mean, look, you can't go into, you can't legitimize going into a position, a job, maybe have $50,000 in the bank, right? Which is a lot of people. And then you go in and the job pays $190,000 a year and you're not allowed to make more than $25,000.

You can write a book. You could farm and you could do. If you're a doctor, you can do that and decide. That's it. That's the three things you could do while you're in Congress. Yeah, that's the only other ways you can make money. And by the way, I've written books. Books are very hard to make money.

Yes. So, and now you go in, you're worth like $50, $200,000, maybe you have a bank account. But in four years, you're worth millions. I think, I think, Ilan Omar right now is what, is it $30 million that she is? Yeah. And I can't stand Ilhan Omar, but I'm pretty sure she married into it. Her husband's worth a lot. But it's under investigation right now, right?

It's under investigation. Is it she married into it? But there's others that are... Is it her brother that she married into it? I'm just scared. No, I saw some joke about that, but I think she's married to a white guy. Oh, she did remarry, right? Yeah, I didn't really get that one.

But there's other ones that are just prime examples where it's like, wait a minute, they were worth like a million and now they're worth fucking 50 million two years later and they didn't marry into it. Come on. Yeah, yeah. It's a... I mean, I, I mean, Ilhan is like, I know that's current investigation. So, I mean, honestly, like, while I don't like her, I would be happy to know that she America that that was legit.

It would make you happen to know. Yeah, yeah. I'm never, that's the thing. I'm never rooting for the worst outcome. No, no. I don't know what I mean? Like, I want to believe that something's not as bad as it looks or something like that, but investigate it.

And if it is, get them the fuck out. Yep. Yep. You know? Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, it's, I mean, right now you, okay, I mean, Crenshaw, like he's, he's under the, like, so it's, I'm using him to say it's both sides out. What do you make of all that?

Because that's like, you're in the military community. a whole you know. Yeah, I mean, look up, I've had Eddie Gallagher. I can't,

I can't stand. I'm friends with Eddie. Real good friends with Eddie. And Eddie, by the way, is one of the most incredible human beings, I know.

I love Eddie. Yeah. Great dude. So, and in full transparency, I'm really close friends with Eddie. And I'm in the guy who's running against Crenshaw,

Steve Tooth, led me to Christ and has discipleed me and helped me start Mighty Oaks. So when I say that, So I say that to say, there's bias there. That's bias there. But as a veteran, I was so happy. Everyone cheered Crenshaw along to go into Congress because we wanted someone to represent

that come in, the insider to represent the things that we want in the veteran community. And he just hasn't done that. It take away the accusations of inside trading and all that stuff, the stuff with him and Sean. I don't know. And so I can't make those accusations against someone. I wouldn't unless I really knew. But I can't say he hasn't delivered on the things. And his voting record hasn't reflected what we, you know, we the veteran community got behind him for.

So a lot of you before, if I'm understanding this correctly, because I'm not familiar. I'm not in the veteran community. But guys that knew him or knew of him from the veteran community before he got into office liked him. Well, it was just, I don't know if they liked him personally. It was just like, hey, we have a Navy SEAL who's a combat veteran who's wounded. you gave his eye for our country is going to is going to represent us. I mean, right away off, it's just on the surface, like the cover value, you're like, I want to get behind that guy.

And so I think the veteran community got behind him. And then, you know, I mean, he's carried himself in a way that, you know, it's not very a good representation of the veteran community. I'm just, I guess I'm trying to be careful right now because one thing I can't stand because this happened to me is the hate-on-hate veteran thing. It's so toxic and so terrible. I'll get it. You'll get some comments.

it's in a section of people that hate me. I almost stay right out of here. But it's not my battle. Yeah, it's terrible. And so I don't want to jump into that. But I will say, you know, he hasn't, I think Crenshaw just hasn't represented a veteran community well with the way he cares himself. He kind of lived the rock star lifestyle.

And, you know, he's interacted with the constituency in a pretty arrogant way that the constituents hadn't been happy with. And then, you know, there's some things that I could say that I won't because I don't want to use the platform to bash him when I don't know things for sure. But I will. say the way he treated my friend Eddie was totally wrong. And Eddie and his wife are just amazing human beings. And he hadn't voted. I mean, to me, like all that aside, I'm going to, I'm going to vote for you based on your voting record of how you represent. I'm in his district. I'm in

Crenshaw's district. So I'm his constituents. That's a hell of a district, man. You guys, you guys drew that one pretty interesting. They drew that thing up. That was, that was a blind monkey drawing that thing. I didn't sure there's some deliberateness in how they do. I think so. Yeah. That wasn't a straight line. I thought Nick Cage was trying to find the Declaration and Independence watching that fucking thing. But you know, as

a constituents, I'm going to vote for you of how you represent me on your vote and, you know, and so, yeah, I had some discremus there. Remember when I had Mike Yeagley in here for episodes 343 and 351? And remember what he said he used to do and allegedly does not still do these days when it comes to collecting your data

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From Binge All Episodes exclusively on Paramount Plus. Yeah, I won't. I had a chance to talk with Eddie off camera about that one. So I assume all that's off record. So I will go into that. What I will say is just, He wasn't, Eddie was really nice about it too. He really is.

He wasn't a dick about it at all. Like, and I wouldn't have blamed him to be. But it just seemed like, bad guy, you know? Like, just like, just like, basic indecency as a person is how I describe it. Yep. I mean, like I said, I could say some things that just,

it doesn't do anybody any good to say. I'll just keep it to vote a record. But I could say like, again, Eddie's like one of the greatest. And Eddie could be, because of the way Eddie was treated, he could be out there like throwing dirt and bashing him and calling him a you know an MFer and so he does do that he just kind of sells what happened and he's just very very straight up about it and his wife too oh yeah these are some these are some amazing people man they went through a lot man they went through a lot

yeah i really you know having him in here i did episode 256 with him and you know we talked for like four hours and i had been pretty clear on his story at that point before he came in here but i remember just passively reading eddie's story and emphasis on passively obviously in like maybe 2017 2018 when it was all going down and being like wow what a scumbag something like that and then sean had him on early on and i saw that podcast later and then had a chance to talk to sean about it as well and i was like wow i think i need to look at that more i think i've misjudged this guy and i knew before i came in here i had but then i had a chance to to literally really see it for myself up close for four hours.

And at the end, I was like, listen, man, I got to, you didn't know me, but I got to apologize. I, I jumped to conclusions on that and that's not fair because especially, especially like for the guys that are like the tip of the spear and really give it all, you know, you want to get, it's not to when people actually do things bad, you don't excuse that, but like you want to give people, you should give people the benefit of the doubt. And it's not proven guilty, if you will. And he definitely didn't get that. I didn't get it from me either.

And I think, righteously so, he's been incredibly vindicated. And people need to hear that because they need to hear what happens sometimes when they make political footballs out of our guys that are just following the orders to do their job at the highest level. I have a real problem with that. Yeah. And, I mean, look, the front line of combat, like kinetic warfare like Eddie was, you know, I, you know, I was a portrait guy and a transition. over go contract and I did cladest logistics you know at the top level highest level and I've seen a lot of horrible things but being you know I was never in a kinetic role like Eddie was on a very front line like like doing that kind of fighting every day like I mean like infantry

Marines do and man they were getting that Eddie and them were getting after it and and for like lawyers and and journalists to insert themselves after the fact in those environments it's just unfair. And, you know, never in history, by the way, have we ever seen that? War is ugly. And I'm not saying, like we said in the beginning, we always got to remember we're the good guys, right? And we always take the high ground, ethical high ground, even in an intense moments of combat. But war is ugly. And for for people to come in after the fact and dissect it with lawyers and journalists and stuff like that, it's just very unfair. Yeah, I agree. But let's actually go back to that. I'm glad you brought it up, like the good guys' conversation because we got off that. I, so just out front, I wake up every day and I'm very grateful that I live here. I think it's the best country in the world. I think we've got a lot of problems for sure. But like, I want to help fix those problems. I don't want to sit here and be like, you'll fork this place. Like, it's, it is an incredible 250-year experiment we have pulled off to this point. That said, when I say, like, are we? the good guy. I'm not referring to the whole country itself or something like that. I'm asking that

question about some of the people who take power, not by elections, by the way, and including also people by elections in some cases, who just in the smallest corners are able to kind of slip through the cracks and ruin it for everyone else. So when I ask you that question, if I could pose it to you again, are we the good guys or quote unquote, are we the bad guys? If I asked you through the lens of like, hey, have we let too many of those rats just on the ship a little bit too much to the point that maybe sometimes we are doing things around the world or within our own country where it is a bad guy thing? Would you agree with that on like that micro level?

I do. I do. Sadly, I do. We're supposed to be the good guys. I believe that too early. I believe that God sovereignly gave us this opportunity 250 years ago to do something great in this world with. And I think the blessings that America has has been misused more and more throughout the 250 years to the point to where now there are things that we do that are ethically

questionable around the world. As a as a entity, as a nation, we do things than questionably the right thing to do around the world. Are there some that come to mind besides Afghanistan and the pull out there and the money we're paying the Taliban? Yeah. I mean, I mean, we Like we needed the Clintons in Haiti. Like, uh, uh, and we have a, I think, I think, uh, Gaddafi was, was a big one. You know, we, we, we had a U.S. a sitting U.S. secretary of state. I, I believe, called for the assassination of Gaddafi, had him killed, bragged about having him killed. And, uh, and, and sent that country in a turmoil.

Hillary. And, uh, and, and, and then we had, you know, our ambassador and U.S. service members killed there in Benghazi. And, you know, I think we're, I think America was the bad guys. And that, and maybe not the troops on the ground. Right. Of course. But, but I mean, you know, America as a state department as a White House, I think, I think we made the wrong decisions. And we overreached into somebody else's as it comes into regime change.

We'll try to change, change leaders of governments for whatever political reasons, the powers, whatever reason they're doing it, whether it be economic or for selfish reasons or whatever, whatever's happening behind the curtain, we overreach and do things like that. So that's probably one of the ones that sticks out to me. As you and I sit here talking today, though, they're beginning to wage a war in Iran. And I think it's a different situation than Libya in a lot of ways. But if we just looked at it at the top of the spear, there's comments we could agree on here. Gaddafi was a bad guy.

He was a dictator. Heard his own people. I described him as a sociopath. Kameenie and members of the IRGC, same thing. And yet we can look back on Libya and regime change and be like, well, that was a fucking mistake to say nothing of our own guys that died with that. And now we're looking at a war with a country of 92 million people that sits on a lot of oil and is allied with countries like China and Russia, at least to some degree.

And it's like, is it the same thing or not? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so right now I've been spending the last few days of kind of avoid it going on Fox because, man, I get asked to go on Fox a lot. And I go, I go when I can, but I'm always careful to, I think guys like you and I get asked to do things. And we're expected to know everything all at once. I mean, I don't. And I'm not any different to anyone else. I'm not a foreign policy expert.

But if I'm going to go on and talk about something, I want to know at least what I'm talking about. I don't want to speak out of my butt because it's dangerous. reckless and too many people do that. I don't need the clicks. I don't care about it. I'm trying to gather the motivation of why we just did what we did in Iran because motivation to me, intent to me matters. There's a lot of reasons we could have done that in Iran. And I know you and I may not agree on this, but Iran has been the number, number one funder of terrorism around the world. I agree with you on that. But I also agree with you in the fact that I think we have a pretty good handle on that.

I think we had a pretty good handle on that and having to do a complete regime change over it. Maybe it wasn't the answer. I don't know that that was the motive. I don't think that was probably the motivation that we went and I did it. Do I think we did it to help the revolution that people take over revolt against the regime? I don't think that's why we did it either. So if we didn't do it for those two things, then what do we do it for? Did we did it because Israel wanted us to?

Because Israel was was threatened because I don't think we were threatened. I agree. Directly. I don't think, I mean, they don't have ICBMs that can reach any of our assets and resources. They can reach our military bases in the region. But that's just part of, that's just part of geographically position yourself. And they're a place like that. That's kind of part of the game.

Yes. I, and I have to question all the other things that would all the other things that, What are all the most motivations it could be? Because as I assess this and try to put my head around it, is it oil? Because if it is oil, I'm not okay with that. I'm not okay with that. Even if it's strategically better for America, I'm still not okay with it. Our guy's going to die for oil.

Yeah, for oil. I'm not okay with that. I never have been okay with that. And by the way, President Trump wasn't okay with that when you talked about Iraq, the Iraq war. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So right now I'm still trying to answer your question. I'm not copying out. I'm just, I'm still, I'm still trying to, I'm trying to grasp what the

motivation is. Because right now I don't see, I don't see the, where the incentive is to be the best thing for America. Yeah, you, you say a lot there that also under underscores another important point, which is that you have the ability to hold multiple thoughts at the same time. And you talk about, you know, this idea that if you go on Fox or on mainstream media, they need three minutes and they want you to know every fucking thing and they want you to have a clear place to stand. Yeah. These are complex things. Very complex. And society has incentivized a 280 character tweet or less. And people listen to you and I. So when you when you and I say something, I have a responsibility in what I say. Not because I want it because it's just a nature of having

built the platform. Yeah. And I don't want to mislead people because my opinion is image is is is premature. Sure. Yeah. And people got to let things play out for sure. But like, We're not, we don't live in a world where the things that go viral are things that say, well, I see this, but I also see this. Well, I see this, but I also see that. We live in a world where it says, this is what I see. Fuck you die if you disagree. And that means that if you have one opinion on like a major thing, there is therefore 100 other opinions that must orbit that that you completely agree with or all the opposite. And that's just not how the world works.

No, A team or B team. I pick a team. I'm like, I can't always do that. Yeah. And that was the thing that was fun about whether, regardless of the politics, when Trump was running in 2015 through up until he became the nominee officially and it got real, right? Right. Right. So we're talking all the way through like April, May, 2016 for goddamn near a year there. It was fun watching a self-funded billionaire who had been inside these clubs. Yep. Hopefully not some of the ones were thinking of. But it had been inside these clubs to quote Dave Chappelle, walk outside and say, yo, I've been in there. It's exactly what you think. So I'm a member of it. I'm going to invite everyone up here to take a look with me. And people were like, yes. Because he would sit there on stage and be like, Marco, he's funded by $20 million from Sheldon Adelson. I fund my own. And it was like, oh my God, he's funding himself. And then he got to such a big point that it was. was impossible to fund himself because of how much money goes into a presidential election. Right. And it's almost like looking back on it. He got castrated in some ways when that happened because

now you can't just do absolutely whatever you want, even when it appears that's what he's doing. Yeah. I mean, I was moved by it, right? A businessman from New York to go into Prescott, Arizona, like small town America and backcountry America and sell out a stadium. Unreal. I mean, it's unreal. He has a finger and the pulse of what the American people want. But I believe somewhere along the way, other people were able to cast their voice into his world because he needs it. He needs it to be in the White House. And it's and one of the terrible things, and I actually sympathize to President Trump and everybody goes to D.C. over this is they at some point, they get to, they go there with all the right intentions and they have to come to this conclusion that, okay, the greater good. And as soon as when you start trying to balance the greater good, compromise comes with the greater good.

and that compromise is what takes people off the greater good i think also is where they subconsciously perhaps i could i could believe that not everyone's evil right no no subconsciously they tell themselves the greater good for something but below that the greater good part of the calculation of getting them to the point where they have to say the greater good to make a compromise involves money coming from somewhere else that says they can't vote on this even they want to, even though they want to, but they can vote on this because the money's not coming from there. Therefore, that's the greater good. And that greater good goes to those bills, right? Those multi-layered bills that are, that are thousands of pages thick. Yep. And they're like,

well, I don't believe in this, but this is just the greater good. And it's just these guys, that's what I said, I sympathize for them. And I sympathize for President Trump and everybody, everyone that goes up there because they're going to, they all get faced with that. Yes. I came here to do this. But I have to make the same. decision to have to make this compromise for the greater good. And I think most of the time, they, a lot of, at least in the beginning, think they're doing the right thing. Yep. I have that. But that's my side that I think I share with you. I try to get people the benefit of the doubt that I think dear. For sure. Yeah. For sure. I don't. And it's fun and easy, I should say,

to just assume all of them are evil. And I will admit, I tend to lean that way with politicians. But I could see some of them actually being good and being fucked by the system. You know, but who am I to guess which or which? That's what makes. it hard. So I just kind of treat it with all the same energy. But yeah, I can tell you guys that are that are disruptors that probably won't stay it along. You know, Derek Van Arden, Littrell, Corey Mills, like Eli Crane, Burlose and Berlis and Bersenberghett, like these guys probably won't stay there alone because they're not compromisers.

Right. At least for what I've seen there, they're not, they're not compromising. For sure. I talk to all these guys regularly. And you think they're? Yeah, for the most part, those guys have a, they voted, they voted unpopular. to the GOP a number of times. And Massey's, Massey's another one. Yeah.

I mean, they're like, I'll go down on my shield to do the right thing. And that's what they're sending there. That's why we send them there. Right. We send them there to do the right thing and represent us well. And so what if they can't stay? Like, let's send another soldier right behind him that's going to do the right thing. Right.

You know, you talk about all, we're going through all the different ways. The money comes in and all that. And one of the things that I just. I don't know if I never wanted to believe it, which if that's just what it was, then shame on me. Or if I just really didn't think the evidence was there enough and it was just too easy of a one-size-fits-all explanation was the idea that like when we look at violence and conflict around the world, they're all just bankers wars. And I can remember all the way back in, you know, early 2021 in April talking with my friend Matt Kemenash in episode 43, who I would describe as like an extremely intelligent, cultured, conspiracy-minded individual, which now to me is like grade A of people in society because he actually brought receipts on things and didn't just believe everything that he wanted to believe. He would have, he would throw in thoughts like that about. And that I would kind of be like, like, like, okay, yeah, whatever. And now I look at it and you read these Epstein files and everything and you see the people who are funding the people who take care of the people from a fixing perspective,

like the rich Jeffrey Epstein's of the world who actually run the world. And you're like, oh my God, maybe it is all banking and technocratic wars. Yeah. Do you think that's real? I think it's real. I think it's real. By the way, I know you're interviewing me, but I'm curious because you, because you introduce this idea of this second tier. Is there any other ones out there you know that like Epstein and still out there floating around today. Oh, that's a great question. I've been thinking about that a lot. I'm still working on that.

I want to see if I can find, and what we're referring to, because we had a conversation earlier on your show, which will come out before mine, is when we were talking about that supra government idea of Tucker Carlson, where it's like leaders of state, leaders of industry right here,

a fixer class that works for the class that actually run society, the bankers and the technocrats and stuff like that. So you're talking about other. people on the fixer class land who are all generally very wealthy powerful individuals i'm still working on that but to answer your question broadly there's a lot more than just geoffrey upstein and it's not i mean i hope it's not just every time they're running petto rings and sex trafficking but they're doing they're always doing always is a strong word they are generally doing something i'm sure

that's objectively evil to get their means of helping the people above them run society And I do think we need to do more work as a society to figure out who those people are as best we can. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. You were talking about, though, working with like intelligence-related stuff about the use that intelligence gets out of fixers and stuff like that, meaning people, you were referring to it in the context of like people who don't exactly do good things, but are useful because of the access they get. And I understand the world's not perfect, and I understand that sometimes there's a calculation that goes into that and there's things you're willing to live with. But did you ever encounter a situation where you were like,

that's crossing the line for me. This guy is beyond repute or whatever you want to say. Yeah. So, I mean, my job in Afghanistan was doing clandestine logistics, so advanced force operations. So essentially, like, if you imagine a Tier 1 special forces unit that's captured, that's their task is to go capture kill, whoever's the worst bad guys in the battlefield or mainly those people are not in conventional areas. They're going to be like in Afghanistan, for example, they were in a father of the federal

the ministered tribal area where conventional military is not or across the border into into pakistan and so because conventional military doesn't have that reach to provide access and placement uh the advanced force operations like guys the a foes we go ahead of those units and create a reason to be there in an undercover type capacity create businesses whatever create a reason to be there exists there in that environment live in that environment with a local national for me it was disease and then build all the clandescent logistical infrastructure to get those assaulters on target to capture kill those bad guys and safely off with all the contingencies and everything in place. So that's, that's so in order to do that to work in that world,

you separate yourself from the US government and the military, you're just totally kind of off doing your own thing there. You have to interact with the local populace. And in those Taliban villages, the people that we interact with would be the Taliban. And so many tribal leaders, Taliban leaders that I'm doing things with to make those logistical, put those logistical infrastructures in place and can't quite say how, you know, kind of cover capacity I would have, but I had a reason to be there. I created a very good reason to be there. If it allowed me to be there, if me allow me to stay alive, there, I'm worth more alive

to them than I'm dead. And so that's my safety network, not just a gun, right? My street smart and training ability, tradecraft and ability to build to function in an environment. So now I have a relationship with these people. These are aren't good people. These are people that are killing U.S. service members. And if you've been around, if you know much about the Taliban culture, sexual molestation of children, stuff like that.

So I had to add to kind of observe and watch this and know that a guy I'm sitting across the table with having tea with probably is just responsible for killing U.S. service members and is a pedophile. Either you're sleeping with little boys or a little, you know, raping, you know, nine-year-old girls. and this is the person that has to do with. And so, yeah, that was definitely an ethical dilemma there for me. But my job wasn't to choose whether this guy was a good guy or a bad guy. And if I wanted to be his friend or not, my job was to choose to say, hey, we have a mission.

And that mission is to build the infrastructure for to get my assault force on target or capture, kill this bad guy. That was my job. And my opinion in that, in my moral dilemma with working with this guy and not, reaching across the table and ripping his throat of his neck like uh i had to put that aside and that was very hard for me because i'm a person of like a lot of principle and conviction that was that was very hard for me but i had to do it and uh and and honestly some of the things that bothered me most about my time there is is is having to you know bite my tongue and be in those environments but i appreciate you sharing that and it's a it's a hard spot to be in so now here's a difficult

question because that one you're there you know the stakes you know all the variables you know who you're dealing with which you don't like but you know what's on the other side of it with like the epstein situation you're like me you're looking at it from the outside yeah weren't there you don't know who dealt with them let's look at it from like cia's complicity in it obviously like that's in our government as opposed to massad and their complicity what's the difference between what you did there in afghanistan with a guy who's who's probably a pedophile and killing a American service members, but you're working with him for a greater good. What's the difference between that and someone at CIA sitting across from Jeffrey Epstein,

who's a pedophile and killing people as well and working for someone else, probably against you in that way, definitely against you in that way and deciding to work with him for a greater good. Yeah. I mean, it's a great, it's a pretty, it's a pretty great area. And look, I mean, I think it always comes out to what's at stake. What's the mission they're doing? And, but if they're knowing that Jeffrey Epstein's job, so like the Taliban's job was to fight a war that they believe, they believe on their end, by the way, it was a just war.

So their jobs as warfighters and they're fighting a war. Agree with them or not, they're evil or not, that they're warfighters. That's their job. Jeffrey Epstein's job, I believe, was to extort politicians and people of influence. and he was in he was in and uh that's i believe his job was and uh what if he was doing that on the battlefield of espionage primarily for another country to do it against our own and i believe he was yeah and i believe he was i believe he was even if the CIA was working him as asset his primary asset would have been was for another country i believe israel i agree and uh and and and

and so if he if he worked with us he was definitely working against us at the same time and so i believe, you know, a CIA agent working, working him as an asset. It's probably sitting down just like I was across the Taliban guy, sick to his stomach, trying to make a decision where whatever the mission was, whatever they're using him for, is it worth to do whatever deal they were going to do with this guy? And I can imagine that the disgust. If they knew what we know now, I couldn't imagine to disgust. they had to do that. But it doesn't surprise me to, from what I've been exposed to, it doesn't surprise me that I'm not shocked that our government would have,

would engage in that. Particularly if he was like not one of ours. And that didn't work for our government, but I get someone out there already doing it and we just like, hey, we're just going to capitalize on us. We're going to take advantage of this. They have, they're extorting, you know, the prince of, you know, Saudi Arabia.

Arabia or who's the guy? MBS. Yeah. And so now we have something on him. Right. Like it wouldn't surprise me. And I, man, I empathize for that agent that would have sat there and had to, I mean, if there were any kind of decent human being, they would have just had a disgust in their

stomach like I had. I know what that feels like. And it sucks. But they would probably try to make the decision if it's right or wrong. And there is a line. And I think that lines, you know, that line is just really blurred. It's really gray. And only individual can make it in that moment.

And for me, I think back sometimes. I think, man, I can't believe. Like, I had that moment. I could have, like, this guy's probably still love right now and probably still raping children. I could have, like, freaking just stuck my freaking spider cool on the side of this guy's head. Like, I could have did that. Did you ever tell them guys like that how you felt? No.

Nope. That's hard to hold. That's hard. Bro, I'm a very principal person, like, especially when it comes to children. Mm-hmm. And that was, I never talk about that stuff. So I'm glad you bring it up. Like, I never talk about that stuff.

Everybody talks about like, you know, everybody, everyone wants to about a gunfight and stuff like that. I've been in two gun fights in my life. Like, everybody thinks, oh, you've been to Afghanistan, you've been, probably been like, you know, times, I've been two gun fights in my life. I've never been. I wasn't a kinetic guy. That was my job. I trained for that before, but then when I went to. Yeah, like you said, it's just getting it.

Yeah, it was my job. So everybody expects that. But those are the things that I have the hardest time with, like children, for some reason, children, you know, is what bothered me most of the consequential, the consequence of loss of life of children in the battlefields. I always had the, no, just me. Yeah, and it's just always been kind of the, kind of the thorn inside of me that just really bugged me.

Because when you go out there in Afghanistan or now, you know, now Ukraine, you know, me and my buddy Seesbury went out, we identified these mass graves in Ukraine and seen these, all women, all children, 1400, you know, mass graves. Mass grave like 1,400 bodies. That you found personally. Yeah, yeah. Jesus.

Christ, how big were they? Well, we were told 1400. And just from my observation, it would have probably been a good estimate. When did you find a mass grave in Ukraine? It was about year in. So if you want an exact date, I couldn't tell you exactly. I have it written down. I just don't know it off hand.

In my book, Mission Without Borders, I have the date stamp because that was the day Zoom was liberated. And so if you don't know the CIA, when the CIA has what's called a solo special, operations liaison officer. That was kind of our liaison with the CIA at the time. And the White House is not allowing the U.S. military or the CIA to go into Ukraine. And so I was working with a solo in Poland, in Krakow, Poland quite a bit as a surrogate. So he'd say, hey, we can't go do this. But while you were there in this area, will you check this out for us? And as a patriot. You would do it. Yeah. And so. So where, how did you come across it? Well, we were going to this area. Cispray and I had heard of this Marine guy as a Marine who got

a shot in the gut and was captured by the Russians. And so we thought we had the ability to move him. And so we were going to actually try to extract that guy. So we had another team going to a place called Bachmute to bring some supplies to some troops on the front lines in Bachmute. And C-Spride and I went off to Zoom to try to recover this Marine. And while we were there, the guys, we were keeping tabs with the solo special operations, liaison officer. And he said, hey, we just got word that as the Ukrainians retook a Zoom, they found a mass grave. And you got to think, you got to understand, like, they were, the, our government was worried that false reports coming out to get more money, right?

Every time this is false report, you can get more aid? So, so like, hey, can you just confirm this is real? Because this is coming from Ukrainians. We want to make sure it's real. Why are you there? We just go get eyes on. That's all we were asked to do. And so we were like, yeah, absolutely.

And so we went in, we went into Zoom while it was, like, while it's being liberated. and got to see these mass graves and reported back. And then we leaked at the Fox News. And what I mean you come? Where was it? Like what's the take me to the place around it? Like where was it? Well, it zooms like, by the way, Ukraine's beautiful.

It zooms. So there's a lot of national forest. And it was in like this national forest, these pine forests. And the Russians had dug in. So they went, there were Russians. They put a tank brigade there. And so they dug in in these pine trees. It was really brilliantly done.

It was kind of neat to see because it was like trench warfare. Yeah. They had trenches dug in for fighting out of. They had tanks that went down. And you just looked at this natural pine forest. And you would never know until you walked in there that it was like freaking trenches everywhere, tanks dug in. There was tons of whole Russian brigade there. It was just outside the outskirts of a zoom, east of a zoom.

And Russians had occupied that area for six months. And so all the guys that were recapturing it were troops, from that area and their wives and children had been captured there. And so when the Russians left there, they tried to cover up the evidence and they pushed. They had these graves that they had just killed, executed all those people and mainly women and children. They were bound.

And they pushed them in his hole. They tried to pile up, pile them up and burn them. But the bodies are actually hard to burn without some kind of really accelerant. So a lot of the bodies would just partially burned. And, yeah, so they took us in and showed us the grave. the sea spray and I, the grave. 1,400.

And, yeah, they said 1400. And like I said, from what we've seen, it was, it was probably a good estimate. I couldn't validate exactly 1400. I don't care how many battlefields you've seen or how hard a motherfucker you are. And there's no doubt you are. And you've seen a lot of shit. But you come upon a grave of 1,400 people, mostly women and children. It smelled. It smelled too, real.

Like, it was, I've been, you know, around a lot of decaying bodies before. And it was, you recognize it right away. Like, it smelled. And on the way there, we had seen, like, tons of, because they killed. they the Ukrainians freaking slayed some bodies man they were like Russian by like I I stopped counting after I counted I don't know why I was counting at first and I counted 80 and I stopped counting after 80 but like Russian like and they were all freshly killed like I'm still bleeding out and some of them some of credit to the Ukrainians because that these were these were Russians

that had again killed their family members and occupied their family members they were rendering aid I observed that they were rendering aid they had one guys who may have executed a bunch of women and children. Yeah, one of the guys, one of Russian kids, his arm blown off and Ukrainian troops ever get riddening aid. And, uh, how do you, you can't undownload the hard drive of forget the smell. That's one thing. Yeah. But like seeing that. How does that? I never, I never seen anything like that. I know, I know plenty of our troops seen stuff like that. And I never seen anything like that in Afghanistan or anything. It was the most horrible. I mean, just the amount of bodies. 1400. Uh, I mean, and not even there, like, just going on their amount of like troops in uniform.

I never seen like troops in uniform like like just laid on the roadside of them just laid all over the place like BMPs like T-54s like tanks ZSUs like just hit with javelins burnt to the ground with people still in them like it was it was horrific man it's Ukraine the front line of Ukraine is insane like and so yeah so we we by the way we never got to that Marine we lost comms where that marine went but but we did we did leak that information back to back to uh fox news for because we were asked to do that so yeah it's so many guys i've talked to who have been over there just talk about what a stalemate war the ukraine russia war is they're like they'll fight they'll fight for two weeks over 14 yards yeah i mean it with in the ukrainians recapture territory here meanwhile 10 miles north the russians recapture territory there it's like trade they're trading and they're in uh all at a cost of i mean very young yeah very young uh men out there in the battlefield on both sides and most of them have either don't want to be there to conscripted or or drafted or taken and both sides from their homes and put out there yeah

duensky's doing it putin's doing it you're taking young boys and putting them forced them out there to bite and pawns on the board if you will yeah That's just. And you know, it's crazy. We like forget about that war now because all the other shit going on arms still happening. And yet it's happening. While we're sitting here. Single day.

Yeah. How do you end that war? What does it take to end that? Well, I mean, I think credit to, you know, to Trump in Vance, you know, they really, I think they really have tried to corner. You have to cut the funding. You have to cut the funding completely. And I know, I know. But why they pick it back up?

it and then they picked it back up yeah that I think there's too much pressure in DC from the from the lobbying because I mean to me like at it why would why would Zewinsky who has the power to end the war I love that you call him Zawensky by that's fucking awesome he I'm not a fan yeah obviously but I don't even think he's we put him in power in 2014 yeah I mean I mean why Why would he end it? He's become one of the wealthiest people in the world at the cost of lives his own people.

Why would he end it when we continue to keep the money coming? He's going around in Role, begging for money. We're writing him checks. Why would he end it? He's saying he don't want to give up territory. That territory is far-foot to the people there don't even claim to be Ukrainian.

You're fighting for territory that people don't even want to... You're talking about like the Donbos? Yeah. In the east. Yeah, like, I mean, those people don't care. care. I don't want it. They just want the war to stop. Trump said it perfectly in the campaign. I just want people to stop dying. Yeah. And I, look, I get like as a world leader, you don't want to give up land,

but there has to be a compromise somewhere. Like, uh, that's the word people don't want. I don't want to hear it. Yeah. And, uh, I mean, you can lose your whole country because Putin's not going to stop. No. I'm not going to stop. Like, and, uh, but as long as we keep funding it. He's going to Zedinsky's going to keep taking the money and keep getting rich off of his people. And he doesn't have to have an election.

Right? He has to get to stay in power. He didn't have to go back to being a drag queen theater belly dancer. Yeah, yeah. The whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, I remember when they did like the Vogue cover a few weeks or a few months into the war, that was

where I was like, oh, wait a minute. He's an actor, man. whole green, like, you know, attire, like, warrior, war leader. He's a five foot one. Yeah. He's a five foot one actor. And he talks like this. There's no way.

It's like the, he's like the Elizabeth home of fucking dudes. He's an actor. Like there's no way. He doesn't look at his wife and say, hello, I had a great day at work. He goes, hey, I ain't doing. I'm sure. Yeah. But like he gets there and he starts talking like, shut the fuck up.

And it's just, you know, like you said, hundreds of billions of dollars from. us going there. And this is where, again, people are like systems rigged because you see like Black Rock already gets the contract early on to rebuild Ukraine when it's over. And to say nothing of Ukraine was also like the no man's land of corruption for Western nations as well. It's where there was all kinds of shit going on so much so that the New York Times used to report on it all the time. They used to. They conveniently stopped when the war started. They could do no wrong. But it's like, you know, human trafficking has happened there.

There's been resources that have been exploited there. I mean, the fucking Burisma scandal was there. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Like what? There's always another reason for it when they do it beyond just the simple military industrial complex.

Like we need population control or something like that. There's always some other reasons to. Yeah. Yeah. That makes me cynical. But how did you, so you're from Louisiana? For Louisiana. And you come from a family that sounds like every generation has been serving.

Yeah, pretty much, pretty much every generation has served. And like I said, we have no career military in our family. Just guys who, you know, I think our family is just real Southern patriotic. That's cool. And everybody's, you know, raise their hand to go do their, you know, two or four years. I think that's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome.

So did you always want to do that as a kid? Yeah, I kind of wanted to do it honestly out of a, I grew up in a very broken dysfunctional home because my father was marine infantry vietnam veteran a lot of physical abuse in my home just said not a very happy household and uh so it's kind of like hey man what's your way out a small town i say a small town like backwoods back swamp louisiana and joined a military as my brother and i were uh you grew up together anybody grows up in a dysfunctional home like that you know siblings get really close and we'd always be talking me to play military out in the woods and talking about joining the military and and 14 years old and we saw that old Navy SEAL video called Be Someone Special.

And his Navy SEALs like, you know, coming out of the water with his face panicked green, 2080 scooped tanks on his back and a M4 right. Oh, not an M4, M16 rifle back then and seaweed hanging off him and like, I want to do that. That's the job I want to do it. But I don't want to be in the Navy. Like, I want to be in the Marine Corps because because my dad, as dysfunctional as he was, there was something made always that made my dad proud of the fact that he's a United States Marine. And I'm like, if you make that miserable guy happy, like, I want to peace.

of that and so did you have i want to ask this because you had an understanding that your dad had seen a lot of shit and done a lot of shit in the worst kind of environment did you have some empathy for obviously the serious flaws he had or never until until i had it myself yeah i mean in fact like you know after member than i made the decision we start running and swimming at that young age and And we trained for about a year. My brother was shot and killed. So it was like pretty devastating blow to our family. My dad actually left.

My stepmom couldn't handle a loss of a son. So she went back to her parents. My dad didn't, he couldn't handle grieving wife. He moved away. So at 15, I was living on my own with my sister was in college. And, um, wait. So hold on the minute. You're, he was your stepbrother?

He was a stepbrother. Okay. And he was shot? From like, from like, uh, six and seven years old. Okay. from a kid. And he got shot and killed in war when he listened? No, just a, a feud between another stepbrother on the other side of the family. His kid was only 11 years old and they were fighting and arguing over something and he picked up a shotgun and shot him in a chest. And 11 year old.

Yeah. Yeah. So both of their lives were destroyed. You know, over that. And a kid never recovered and ended up in and out of, in and out of drug rehabs in jail and everything else. Yeah. Were you there for that? I wasn't there. I was with him. few hours before that and then uh and you know got and you know found out right when it happened and uh it was used and growing up the way we grew up he was the closest person to me in my life at that time we were like really really close we and uh you know we were always the riding dirt bikes out in the woods and hunting and fishing together we're kind of connected at the hip so and you two had always talked about being in the military yeah we're good we're i mean we made a commitment

together we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna you know try to be recon marines together And so that was a, that was kind of my life goal. And that actually put a flame under it. Right. I was going to say, did that really push you to want to see that through? Yeah, I was like, want to see it through. It was something to start it with him. And, but when I was 17, I wasn't going to graduate high school.

I'm living in my own, trying to work going to high school. And so I went to this Marine Corps recruiter. I'm like, his name is Ronald Brown. Stafford of Ronald Brown. I remember his name. I always joke that people remember their recruiter's name because they hate them. Mine was the opposite. I remember because I was so thankful for this guy.

I just went in his office and told my, told my story. This is where I'm at. This is what I always wanted to do. Here's a situation I'm in. I'm living on my own. I'm working like trying to make it. I'm not going to graduate high school and he'll be getting to Marine Corps without even a high school diploma. He definitely said, stay right there. Walked out goes got one. Got one. Yeah. Infantry contract. Sign up. That's exactly. He helped to make that quota. That's right. Wow. Yeah. That's really like. I see why you call it the resilient podcast. Let's a, it's a, you know, it's a, it's a, I went in the Marine Corps.

I got my GED after infantry school all these years later. I got MBA. I'm about one semester from New York Tech. I'm working on my second masters right now. I've been about two years now, one class away from my second master at Harvard. So, uh, that's awesome. I always, I keep saying that I'm not going to finish that class class because I don't want to, don't know if I want to degree from Harvard or not.

Yeah. Yeah, but it's, it's my first master's from New York, Texas, MBA, and this one's a master's of nonprofit management. And, yeah, I'm just thankful the Marine Corps gave me an opportunity and everything I wanted to do being a Recon Marine. I took a long route to be a Recom Marine. I went through a BRC and this recently came up that I've just brought this up recently, but I'm going to BRC, whole dream. I make it there. I go through the course. I'm passing everything.

and I get caught talking on the land nav course and got a no-go on land-nav, which is something I was really good at. So it was like super shameful. I had to go back to my unit without graduating, passing everything, but without graduating. Would you say you got caught what? Talking on land-nav.

Like we had a little sidebar class. Yeah. So it was a land-nav course, and students aren't supposed to talk to each other. And I fell for it, right? Everyone does it, right? I'm hoping each other, but the captain was like, hey, like devil dog, like kind of pulled me in, right?

integrity is the home walk of all marines you're out like you were talking and yeah so now I got to get to stay I just couldn't couldn't graduate and uh and so I had to but my unit kept me and I had to go back and do it over again and so I'd take the long route you know and so my resilience like I had to put my head down and take take take it

on the chin and uh because it's really because something I'm really good at and so I was really proud of being good at it but uh you got my MLS became a recon Marine uh man I got to go to all the schools and one of the things I love most about being a recan marine being a military free fall parachutist. I loved, you know, doing, going to hail, you know, glad someone liked it.

Yeah. It's not for me. Yeah, I got like 600 free fall jumps. And, uh, but, you know, I trained all that time and doing all that job. And, and then I went from active duty to the reserves, went to a unit called third force recon and ran the training program there. And then, uh, and then it looked like, when 9-11 happened, man, I was like, I mean, when there's planes for the world chase center buildings, because it'd be, it'd be in the reserves at a, at that type unit, a special operations unit, like in my life just changed like we're going to war but what with the military don't realize is that

not everybody goes like a small segment goes not every even not every special operation unit right there's a certain people units ain't like the old days yeah yeah i mean yeah i mean it's not a you know you got to keep contingents in different places and you got to have people on standby and so so we didn't go and uh and so man i really want to go end up going to the federal air marshals actually to the what to the federal air marshals the federal air marshals like up in the airplane civilian planes So you were doing that. Yeah. And I'll tell you why, it's pretty brilliant plan.

At the time, there was only like, I think the number is like, I can't remember if it was 20 or 40. It's just my right now. Air marshals at the time. And they were all like former special operations guys. And so now they have to ramp up to like over 2,000 air marshals. Right after 9-11. How do you do that, right? How do you get topsy clearance of the federal hiring process for special agents like a year just to.

So they were brilliant. They said, let's go there to reserve special operations units. They already have top secret clearances. They already could shoot because the shooting standard was really high. They recruit. And that's what they did. So they came to my unit and a couple of us went to the, I was the second class of the federal marshals. So you're going undercover on plane shortly after 9-11.

Are you just like sensory overload? Like, oh, that guy's going to try to take that. Oh, yeah. The idea was so cool. But then it ended up being, I mean, when you think of the idea of being a federal air marshal on a plane to prevent a hijacking and shoot the terrorists. but it doesn't happen that often ever so it became the most boring job ever and uh and and then iraq war kicks off and now i've got buddies that are going to afghanistan and iraq invasion's happening like i want to go all right slow down slow down yeah you just went through about 15 years in about

three minutes i was letting you go for a while but now you got to stop okay got you so because it's interesting like how you got there and everything but you mentioned when your brother was tragically shot and killed your stepbrother. Your dad and your stepmom broke up. Yeah. Was your real mom in your life at all? She's been on and off of my life, you know, kind of at a distance the whole time. Yeah.

Even even this day. To this day. Yeah. So was some of that because of the abuse she endured or? I think so. I think so, you know, my mom, I definitely think my mom like has a huge heart and loves me and loves my kids and stuff like that. But she's always just kept a good, like, safe distance.

from all of us through her life. And I think maybe she's, you know, she's been through a lot, a lot of abuse. And so she just kind of always, always had kind of her thing. What about your dad today? My dad passed. He passed. He passed several years back. And it was a lot of, a lot of hardship and resentment towards him.

But at the end of his life, like, people have showed me a lot of grace. And it was a moment that people had showed me a tremendous amount of grace that he popped back up in my life because the hospital I called with him having a stroke and heart attack simultaneously. And I was actually kind of mad. I was like, why would they call me? Like, he hadn't talked to me in 10 years. Like, why would they call me?

Like, he called somebody else. But then I had recognized like, man, I was in a moment of life where people had just showed me a tremendous amount of grace. And that was a redemptive process that it just took a pace of my life, both from God and from people. And I was like, you know what? Like, I have to, I'm the only person in his life at that time. He burned every bridge. So I went, flew in and went over to the science of paperwork for him to get the care he needed and, and then restarted a relationship with him.

And the last few years of his life, he was in a pretty bad spot medically. And then he disappeared again. Some woman that he was with ended up taking him into a pretty bad area and put him in a, he was like literally parked in a, I found him when he looked for him because somebody called me and said, hey, he's, he's being like used for a social security check. Oh, geez. So they parked him in the back corner of his rum with, you know, he didn't have underwear. He didn't own anything. And he had an open feeding tube in his body. And they just was like collecting.

So I walked in this house. I found where he was out of, you know, flew in to Oklahoma, rented a car. Found him. And when I got into his house, like, I think they thought it was the cops because everybody scattered when I walked in the house. And I kind of like got frantic because he had like long fingernails and feces under his nails and stuff. So I started cleaning up a call 911. And, uh, and yeah, they were, they were using him for social security check and got him into a, uh, a home.

And, uh, got to, I got to introduce him my relationship of God and, and, uh, and his. And, and, uh, so that was pretty cool at the end of his life. And we had this moment of like forgiveness and any, uh, he passed. And so I was going to ask you, did you forgive him for? Absolutely. That, that's when to answer your first question, did I have compassion for him? I never did before because I didn't know. But from me and the things that I dealt with.

post-Afghanistan and the things that see my friends deal with now i knew what he had went through and i knew why his life was the way he was and so i was able to because of my own experience i was able to have compassion for him and because of the grace people showed me i was able to pay that grace forward to my father and had that closure with him at the end of his life and uh you know at the very end of his life he had never told me he loved me or anything like that but at the very end of his life i had to keep him low calama because the way the medicare thing set up i couldn't bring him the where it was and so i got him you know everything you needed a tv and a fun and I prepay his phone card and he would call me and he was starting to get dementia

because of his condition at the end and he would uh he would call me and just say hey chad this is your dad I love you and you would never say I love you and then um and then I'd say okay okay and then he'd hang up and like five minutes later he'd call me again hey chat this you daddy I love you and uh and then I got a call from I didn't get a call from the hospital the convalescent home actually got from a funeral home they called me first trying to do funeral arrangements and so it was kind of weird way I found out. But yeah, he passed and man, he had burned so many bridges his life. I didn't, I never even had, I couldn't have a funeral for him. Not a brother, a sister, a friend. No one. But that's pretty special that like you got to rekindle your own relationship with them.

Yeah, I'm very thankful for that. At the end and have some grace with that too. Yeah. And I believe that I got to lead him to a relationship with Christ, which is something that have been profound for me. And so while we may not have had a good life in this life together, I believe we'll have one later on. That's great, man. Yeah. And it's also, because like you strike me as a big family guy,

talking about your kids. And also you're someone who clearly cares a lot about taking care of other people. You go and risk your life as a private citizen now to war zones to help people. So like you got a big heart and all that. And it's always interesting to me when I see people, because like I came from. a great home like my parents have a great marriage and everything everyone's got their fault i never you know i got i had it really good and so when i see people like you who come from just every

possible challenge thrown your way from death of a sibling that you're who's your best friend to your mom not really being in your life to your dad having all these problems and leaving your life and then you're able to i guess take that pain and those scars and the environmental troubles that you went through. And instead of giving into that, if you will, harness it into changing your own future reality for yourself and the people that you love and the people that will come after you, that's a really hard thing to do. And I think that's amazing that you've been able to do that. I think we all have that choice, the matter where we came from, if we had a good or bad or, you know, if our dad was rich or poor over black, white, you know, who lived in a trailer of. park or the projects are a mansion like you know as we move into adulthood and we all have that

choice to make and what we do with our lives and we could let our past destroy us or give us a platform to do good with hell yeah man and uh it's kind of i think life's a lot better if we choose the latter do something and also what's really cool and comes through there is that it's clear to me you don't you didn't hold grudges you may have been really angry at people may have lasted a while too you may been like, what the fuck? Yeah. It's hard for me because, like I said earlier, I'm a kind of principal person. Yeah.

And I'm like a super loyal person. So when I lose loyalty towards me, which has happened a lot in my life, I have a very difficult time understanding it. But I usually come around to be the bigger person. Yeah. Yeah. That comes through. So, man, that's really, really impressive, man.

I can't. The best I can do to process something like that is when I hear a story like yours and someone's sitting there or anywhere else, not necessarily. just a podcast studio can tell me about their experience and I can try to conceive it. But, you know, in some ways I'm glad I can't all the way. It's good. I'm thankful for, thankful for people that hadn't had to endure. Yeah.

Unfortunately, too many people have to endure stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, but good on you. So you end up in the military, like you said, you go through the Marines. By the way, just, we've done this before because I've had on a recon marine before. But for people, when they hear the term recon Marine, what specifically does that mean for people who don't know that? Yeah, so Recon Marine is a, it's special operations unit.

But it's very, the Marine Corps is very unique in the fact that prior to, I'd say, 2000, I know the date's not exactly right. This guy's going to eat me up on that. But just general, prior to 2000, the Marine Corps, no participation in SOCOM, special operations command, or J-Soc. And Marine Corps still doesn't have any participation in J-Soc joint special operations command. But SOCOM, Special Operations Command continued to push to Marine Corps for a participation. And, but the Marine Corps didn't want to get rid of, get one to get rid of recon. So he started a unit called, uh, a debt one, which is detachment to send us Socom to basically participate and show the Marine Corps capabilities.

And so those were all recon Marines who did that amazing guys, uh, uh, who just represented the Marine Corps really well at that level. And, uh, and, you know, kind of, uh, terrible. Yeah. When you do a good job of something, you kind of put in a heavy demand for yourself. Socom came back and said a Marine Corps has to participate. And so instead of Marine Corps giving up recon, they created a new unit called Marsa, Marine Special Operations Command. And so Marine Corps' special operations contribution to SOCOM is Marine Special Operations Command, which gets funded by SOCOM.

They do a pretty similar job to the Army Special Forces, but the Marine Corps kept recon for itself. And so recon and force recon is internal the Marine Corps and provides all the four reconnaissance on the battlefield. at a from a division of a division asset level to the Marine Corps. So all the reconnaissance on the battlefield where they're going forward and doing like route reps or or do it set going ahead of the like the infantry battalion set up helicopter landing zones or gathering intelligence or doing sign permissions. All these different things that would be going forward of the Marine Corps division or or in the battlefield space for the Marine Corps.

That's what that's what recon does. and they do kind of the eyes and ears of the Marine Corps. You're laying the foundation. Yeah, very small, you know, small teams, six-man teams. They could work as a platoon size element as well, but six-man teams. And over the years, you know, I'm an older guy, so it's really progressed a lot since I've been out. I mean, like a lot of times you hear guys that are like, oh, back in my day, well, back in my day, it was nothing compared to now. Like these guys now, they go through a year-long pipeline.

They leave their, when they show up at the unit, they're like jump, die, free fall, sears school. like everything's they show up ready to operate near like basically like like professional level athletes with all these skills so really high high caliber training they'd have today with a lot of capabilities and units are very funded well it's it's pretty amazing so the marine corps has a very kind of two two tiers of special operations one at socom one internal the marine corps so recon and every every recon battalion as a force recon company which would be the the more senior guy that have been around longer and selected to be that force recon element inside there so that's it basically belongs internal to the Marine Corps and uh and it's it's amazing and then don't get a lot of uh

credit they they they stay pretty low profile and uh and and and i think they're very proud of that i've caught a lot of hate from my by my public profile being out there and and uh guys that you know the recon community doesn't like guys going out and writing books and so but but it's it's amazing guys and then recon community is just an amazing group of group of human beings And it's very special, very special humans. And so that's what I did. So you, just to review the timeline you had been going through there before I pulled you back, you end up in the Marines and then you end up in the reserves. And while you're in the reserves, are you doing any civilian jobs too?

Are you full time? Yeah. So I did my four years active. And then I went to the reserves, went to third fourth three con company in Mobile, Alabama, moved to Louisiana. And I was my job. My idea was I'm going to go to college because no wars going on. It's 97. When I got a, when I got a fact you, it was 1997.

Those war, no wars going on. It's kind of hard to think that we had a time in our country like that. And I'm going to go to college and go back in as an officer. Didn't know what I was going to do for a job. Well, I was going to college, but I already started a family. So I had to have a job. So I was a police officer in New Orleans. Oh, cool.

And then I'd also, didn't pay much money to be a police officer in Orleans. So I was doing about 10 days a month at the reserve unit. So I was doing about 10 days. the Marine Corps Reservists, about 20 days at the police department and working my butt off, trying to, you know, not making any money on either side, trying to go to college and get my family in a better position. So I did that for like four years until 9-11. When you, by the way, when you suddenly start a family and everything, because I haven't done

that yet, I really look forward to it. But especially like when you're young and you're in the workforce and you got to bring home the money, did that just totally flip a switch in you? like, oh, shit, nothing else matters. I got to figure out how there's a roof over the head all the time. Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know because I got married while I was, you know, freshly in the Marine Corps. And, you know, one of great things about being in a service when you get married,

like you don't have to worry about anything. I mean, now your pay goes up. Like, you get married. I got, you know, base housing and you get money for food and groceries and you get for being married. So you make more money. And you have a place to stay. And so there's a lot of security in the military.

But transitioning out, right? Like transitioning out to the reserves, like you lose all that. And, you know, it's just like now you have to figure it out. And that plan is to go to college. But I didn't do like a MESEP programming like that. I just got out and I'm going to go to college. And so I had to figure out what to do. And my initial thought was, I'm going to go commercial diving because I love diving.

So I got a job at a commercial diving company and I realized really quick. I'm not going to both do this and go to college. what's a job that I can do a while going to college so that the police police department is where I went yeah the sheriff's office is where I went How was it being a police officer in New Orleans? It's pretty wild

Right? A lot of shit going on on. Pre-cell phones No, by video on you So You're watching the beepers go off Like it's the wire? Yep.

It was wild because I went to the police academy And because I was Because I came out of You know, I was a recon Marine Young In shape So I did really good in Academy And so they put me

right undercover straight out of the academy. Whoa. So I went straight to like in New Orleans. Yeah. So I went straight undercover narcotics, straight at an academy before I ever put on a uniform. And so what was that like? That was a really cool experience. It was kind of funny.

You guys, uh, your audience by laugh. I did like 21 Jump Street thing. So I went into, I went into high school. So I went from back after four years of being in the Marine Corps, you know, I was a, you know, corporal in the Marine Corps. And now, you know, as in charge of a recon team as a team leader. And now I'm a now I'm having a teacher tell me to spit out my gum. So, yeah, so when in, you were literally in high school.

And then my job wasn't to bust high school kids, though. My job was to catch people selling drugs, adult selling drugs to high school kids. So they did a couple of weeks, a couple of weeks actually in the school as a student. And then the idea was to build some relationships and drop out, had an apartment in town. While my pregnant wife is, poor pregnant wife's having to deal with me being around a bunch of, you know, high school kids living in the next town over. Yeah, it was pretty. And so it was, it was wild man, because it was a, it was a rough area. It was a really rough area at town and, uh, end up getting in a shooting while undercover,

working high school kids. And then, uh, what happened there? Well, I mean, uh, it was, I was at a, let's see, was at this high school party. Oh my God. Yeah. So you had to do the whole damn. Oh, yeah. I hope you didn't have any close calls. Nope. No, none of those. But yeah, uh, yeah, that's, yeah, it's, this high school party, it's a big bonfire party. And, uh,

and this is, this guy's girlfriend was, I guess, like wanting to talk to me. It's a high school girl, right? And, uh, and, he got jealous and came trying to fight me.

And we're there trying to do police work. And I'm older, this high school drama, this guy's, so this guy takes a swing at me, uh, through the car window. We're trying to leave.

And these are bad guys. These aren't kids, by the way. These are adults. Like, And I pushed a door. And when I pushed a door, he missed me, hit her. And I grabbed the hole to him.

And when I did, someone shot up the back of our car. And my partner shouldn't, shouldn't do this by the police, by the way. Came out the sunroof. He's from another, another sheriff's part. He came out of the sunroof roof and fired up with his Glock, fire like a base of fire over the, over all these kids. Like I was. Yeah, firing his gun over and everybody got down and we drove out of there. and so the next day

these the next day these guys came found me and I was at the parking a lot of the high school picking someone up and they attacked me I went I went for my actually they came there like there was a bunch of guys and so I rushed to my truck

open my truck because my gun was under my seat I grabbed my gun and we started fighting over my gun I ended up getting my gun away pushed them back and held them all that gunpoint never said it was a cop or anything and then drove all off. And when I drove off, they went and picked up a long rifle. AK-47 was looking for me. And then, um, and that can, and then my, my, uh, supervisor called me and said, hey.

We got to get into, I would have been like, yo, fuck this. I'm leaving high school. I'm going back to this. It is over. Yeah. So, uh, so that ended up, and then ended the end up operation because it escalated so bad in these guys. Yeah, I'll say. So, uh, yeah. So, so after that, we ended up doing the roundup, which is where you go arrest everybody. That was, So we had like 45 felony warrants from my time there, from people I bought from and stuff. And these, and not only the drug buys, but these guys for aggravated assault. Oh, my God. And so I actually got in uniform and to go to the rest.

Surprise, bitch. I'm not in high school. That's fun. I've never heard of that. That was the first time I ever wore a police uniform besides the graduation. You must have had a baby face. Oh, yeah. Super baby face.

Yeah. Oh, my God. I couldn't see that now. You know, it's funny, though, as a, I, I was like, wish they would have had a wrestling team because the next the next parish over because in louisandana at parishes the next parish over there was a guy doing the same thing i was it was it was a statewide effort it was state task force so there was several of us doing it he was like this guy had played like uh this guy had played like division one baseball and everything he goes in and puts on this sob

story that his dad died or whatever the baseball team takes him on they buy they get together buy him a glove he's out there like knocking the skin off of balls at the high school games. Like, what do you say at the end? Grown man. To the fucking athletic director. Hey, listen, it was for a good cause. Yeah.

Oh, my God. Who was the kid in the Little League World Series like 20 years ago who was just mowing down motherfuckers and then turned out he was like 18? That's you guys. There was a movie like there. Like the guy had his ID. It was like the guy from Puerto Rico. Oh, my God.

I know what you're talking about. I'm 16. It's like written a crayon. I'm 16. Yeah, he's fucking 27. Three kids. Oh, that's, dude, I've never heard of that before. Yeah.

I didn't think that was like a real thing. Yeah, it was a 21 Jump Street, man. Oh my God. And you were what, like 22, 23? Hours 21 years old. It was 21 years old. All right. So you're close enough you could kind of pass.

But that's fucking crazy, man. It was, it was, it was crazy. Then I'll go straight from there to be in a patrol officer in that same area. And you're like, hey, guys. Yeah. Remember me? Yeah. And then, that's funny.

So I get in a, getting a shooting my first year. Another one. As a patrol officer. Yeah. And, uh, what happened there? Uh, so my partner, I was working this one beat, uh, the beach, uh, wait, your two shootings you've been in where as a cop. Well, yeah. When I say, when I say two shootings, I was in one shooting in Afghanistan.

When I say my two shootings, I mean, I, I personally shot back. Okay. So this is the first one. I didn't count the first one because I didn't even have a gun on me. Got it. But this one's the first one as a cop. This is the first one. So what happens?

Yeah. I mean, if you ever fly in New Orleans, you're, you don't land in your Orleans. You land in St. Rose. Okay. You land in the Jefferson Parish. And that's, so you have Jefferson Parish, St. Charles Parish. So right by the New Orleans Airport is a town called St. Rose in the St. Charles cop area. That's, that's a beat 204.

I was in 204. I was in 203 at the time. And so I heard the, I heard the guy on 204 come across. He's a Marine named Steve. He was one of a feel. training officer so it got really respected and you know just kind of listening over the background because a single single single uh single like deputy patrol cars and heard his voice over the radio like something was wrong and he called for for backup and uh and then the radio went completely silent

we had a we had a brand new radio system a good one but it was like a glitch in it so the radio system went silent so this guy had never heard his voice before like in the kind of distress So I was panicking to get there, man. And like lights and sirens, like getting there to get Steve. And when I got to where he was, he said, he was elevated kind of a modular home. And there was about 30 people outside, you know, to kind of see what's going on.

And Steve was on the front porch arguing with this lady. And the lady was the spouse. Her husband was inside. It was domestic violence thing. And her kids, you know, juvenile kids were all in the crowd. People were holding her kids back. And when I get there, I'm asking Steve what's going on. He's like, get this lady off the porch.

Her husband's in the back. He's got a gun. And so she's arguing with me. I argue with her for a second. Then I like grabbed her by the back of her shirt and her pants and pushed over the rail. And a couple of guys actually grabbed her and help take her over. Whoa. Over the rail.

And so I... How fast does this happen by the way? Or just time kind of slow down? Time kind of slows down. But it's, you know, it's pretty bad. And by the way, I had been to this house before. The guy's name was Russell Stevens. He had been a lot of trouble.

He's always problems with the priest. He's a place. He was drunk. drinking all the time. There's always domestic violence calls there. So I'd been to the house before. And then so I stand in the doorway and Steve goes to the back window where the guy barricaded himself because we didn't want to shoot out the window to this crowd. So Steve goes to that window and I'm standing there's doorway. And when I'm standing in the doorway, I'm looking across living room, kind of cat a corner across from me is the hallway. And I'm looking at man,

there's family pictures. There's toys. There's like the, food's dinner still on the table. Like, this isn't a combat environment. This is like somebody's home. And he, he, Russell stands in the hallway. And I can see,

man, it's a mirror. And he's like, he like takes his rifle when I could see him like, messing with the chamber, like press checking it to see if it's loaded. Like, and I'm like,

and I'm just, you know, like a police officer. Like, hey, put down the gun, come out, talk to us.

And then, and then he's like, I'm not coming out. Say my wife in here. I want to talk to my wife. I guess you guys need to leave. And I'm like, we're not leaving. Your wife's not coming in.

Like put down the gun. We can talk. And then he comes around the corner, man. And when he comes around the corner, he didn't have the gun in his shoulder like a, like you shoulder a gun. He had it over his shoulder, which is almost like him trying to pretend he still had control. Like, hey, like hand up. He's got the gun over shoulders pointing his, his fingers on like the receiver, but his, but his thumbs kind of like by the trigger. And so I felt like, by the way, lethal force, he's pointing a gun at me. I could have shot him right there. Yeah. Like totally could have. Could have. shot him. And if you had asked me that day, if I had shot somebody that would have did that,

I'd be like, heck yeah. Like, but then, like, see this guy's home. I mean, this guy's home. Like, his kids are right there watching me. His wife's right there screaming. There's the toys and of like, are you clocking that in the moment? Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I just felt like I still had control. So I stopped yelling. I'm like a police officer. I'm like, I'm going to fucking kill you. That's, I remember telling him that, like, I'm going to have and kill you because I just wanted him to know like, like the distance in the game. And, uh, and for some reason in that moment, I just, I felt like, I'm at the time, I'm like, I'm, I'm a small guy. And by the time, I was, at that time, I was probably like 120, 130 pounds. I was a little guy. And he's six foot three,

two hundred sixty three pounds. I know his weight because of the autopsy report. And, and I felt like I could handle it. So I stepped in and closed the distance to him. And I took the barrel and grabbed this barrel of his rifle and pushed it away from me. And I kicked. And I kicked. him in the nuts, like not like a, like a football kick, but like a push kick to pull the rifle out of his hands. I kicked him the second time, the first time, nothing. To get them the second time trying to pull. And not only did nothing, like, he grabbed my wrist with my gun in it.

And this guy's a monster guy. So now we're fighting with two guns. And I'm like, man, he's not going to give it. Like, he's not ever going to stop. Like, and so I knew that moment, like, I had to, you know, I had to shoot. So I broke my grip, like, of his wrist and I shot once, like, pop, right? And then I shot five more times, like shot six rounds. I didn't even know Steve was behind me at the time.

Steve shot six rounds over my shoulder. I could hear like, I could literally hear his gun functioning, like the mechanics of his gun functioning. I never heard a bang. I could hear like pops. I could hear his gun like functioning. And I seen Russell kind of like step back. And then he fell back to his knees and he literally looked over his shoulders

and made eye contact with me. He said, you killed me. And I just pushed him down. And when I pushed him down to like reach under him and pulled the rifle out from underneath him. And then I handcuffed him. And I could hear him in that moment, like breathe, like his last, like his last breath, heard him breathe out.

Where are the kids and wife at this point? They're right outside the door looking in. Are they screaming? His wife screaming and his kids look back. I look, because I know because I look back. His wife were screaming and his kids look like, we're just like in shock. Like they were just looking at. I look right at them through the doorway.

Like, I'm in the liver room on the ground. Look back. I could see through doorway. And it's like, I don't know if it was like I could just see like a tunnel like. like right to them. And I wanted to go out to her. I don't know something inside of me went to go out to her

because I felt like I was there protecting her, but obviously she was. Right, right. Fierous at me. And I, as I handcuffed him, I had short sleeves on and somehow, because one of his hands went in front of his body.

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Habaniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. And so there wasn't much blood it came from his body. It's weird. The human body's weird. Sometimes it bleeds, sometimes it doesn't. But even though all, we shot him,

we hit him 11 out of 12 times. And it was all center mass. And there was no blood coming out of his body. But when I grabbed his wrist, it was like mush because I think one of the rounds went through. And I think one of the rounds went through his wrist. And so like I literally had like blood like all way up to both the elbows just from fighting with his hand because his hand was so limp trying to handcuff it. When you obviously as you laid out in the story, your life was in danger. He's got a gun on you.

He's twice your size. He's resisting. It's an unfortunate situation. You have to take the action right there regardless of where you. are you tried everything you could to not get to that point nonetheless once it's done you did your job but you turn around and these young kids are right there and you did just have to kill their father like when you when you looked at them and you just see them in shock like what goes through your head but not even just then even now I wonder what they think of me you know you know I mean to this

day I haven't shared the story a ton I've shared a few times but I'm always kind of hesitant to share the story because I can I think about what they might think you know and uh you know I can still see them. I will for the rest of my life that, you know, the wife and hearing her scream and and see those kids and I, you know, I wonder where their life's like. I don't know. I don't know what her life's like. I don't know what their life's like.

I don't know where they ended up. That's everything. Yeah, that was the end of that. Yeah, I was, I was super angry at him for putting me in that situation. Right. I mean, look, I gave, I did everything I could to, way beyond I even should have from my own safety and for my partner safety to give him the chance. to live and uh and he forced me to do that he i mean he was he was he was wasn't coming after me

i was in the way he was going for her and she was in a in his kids they were in a crowd of 30 people he had a rifle and by the way that rifle not did it matter or not it had around then chambers off safety he was ready he was ready to he was ready to so you may have even saved them yeah i mean we certainly did i mean i don't know i mean he wasn't he wasn't going out there after her with a loaded gun off safety that's right to talk to her i mean uh God, I was, I was in the way and he wanted to be out of the way. That's such a strange spot to be in because then you do in every way the right thing. But then you're also still wondering how, because he was somebody when he wasn't crazy,

he was somebody to those people. Oh yeah. She sued, you know, obviously got thrown out. She sued. And then I had, you know, I went through the, you get polygraphed, you know, right? That night you get your gun taken away from you get polygraphed. You go home. Next morning, wake up.

The chief calls me and chief's like, hey, don't read the paper. Of course, we get a paper. Front page of the paper says, big headline, cold-blooded murder. Very small print. Police say justified. And that started the process of a grand jury investigation. The district attorney didn't make a determination on it, left it to a grand jury. So I had to go before a grand jury on the, before indictment of first, a secondary murder,

which is, it was election year. The district attorney is not going to make a position. public make a decision. And so when you go before a grand jury, people don't know what that means. The grand jury of your peers finds you guilty, you leave in handcuffs. And so that was very stressful. That's scary. It's time scary. Yeah, because you got witnesses saying, I didn't understand why witnesses will say this. You got witnesses were saying like, hey, we saw them. He was on his knees and they executed him. Not a forensic show different. The forensics showed the bullets came from the front and everything,

corroborated everything we said. His balls were like the size of a bowling ball from when he kicked. him in nuts like trying to disarm him like so forensics are all on outside but you have eyewitnesses saying that hey i looked in he was now and now i know being older now and seeing you people who are gunshots and then they look inside and then they see him on his knees turned away right right so people's brain can't process the timeline of that kind of stuff did it ever fuck with your head where you were where you start when you heard other people's accounts as you're leading up to the grand jury where you're like wait did it go how i thought it went or did it go like that no i was just like why why would people lie. I was thinking why would people lie? Like what, like, like, and now I know people

probably wouldn't lying. Uh, I think they were just. Right. I understand. Yeah. Yeah. So. Wow. What a thing to go through. Yeah. And then, you know, and then, you know, once it's all over, right? Now you cleared. Now we, we get, we get, we get a cop again. It's like, we get the middle of valor. We get the, the governor's office. Oh, you did. This is the government of valor. both of us get to bella valor and uh and then but but that by that point you're just like so jaded you're like yeah guys how convenient you give it to us after the grand jury like did you uh did you did you but i i i think so now i i think i don't think i ever healed from that till like probably like year like when i say years later after afghanistan i think i just like pushed that i was

so angry about that they had to do that and i was angry at my wife why were you angry at your wife? Well, because I came home and, uh, I mean, she's so naive to like, Afghanistan and what she was like, she thinks that's, she probably, my wife's like so naive, which makes her good, made her a good wife for that kind of job. Like, she probably thinks cops go every night and just, you know, get shootouts and stuff like that. I was came home and told it what happened and she's like, rolled over and went back to sleep. Like, no big deal. Oh, sounds like good day at work. And, uh, and I'm like, I'm like wide awake, obviously. Just shot someone and, uh, and, and so she's, you know, she was young and had no idea how to

handle that and and uh or or comprehend that and it's probably why you know she's endured all that all that she endured and when we were married uh it's probably why she endured all that you know because she she was naive to that kind of stuff so i was i was like mad at her and then i was like i just stayed mad at the guy and uh and honestly like it's probably of all the stuff that i've seen in ukraine and afghanistan and it is probably personally the most traumatic thing that i imagine every experience it's just the proximity of it was so personal right there yeah he you know him looking back he killed me him bleeding on me uh him him his kids wife screaming his kid right there it's the most personal thing everybody through i still

like even talking right now i just get it shakes me up to talk about it i can see yeah yeah yeah i don't talk about it much yeah well thank you for sharing it yeah i appreciate that real quick chat i got to run to the bathroom i'm right there with you and then we'll we'll come back and but by the way i i said it to you but to your audience. Brilliant. Julian has the best coffee. It's so good. Yeah.

He's got me jittery, man. It's a good costume. Yeah, that one was a strong batch today. It's a strong batch this one, but I'm glad to hear that. We'll be right back, everybody. All right. We're back. So where you were, you spent four years as a police officer during that time while you were

in reserves? Yeah. Where were you on 9-11? Man, I was, uh, so I went after that shooting and went to the detective bureau. It worked to violent crimes and then I went back to narcotics. as a senior detective over special investigations division. And so I was on a, on that, you know, midnight 9-11, I was, I was out on a,

surveillance. So I spent all night sitting in my truck on a surveillance for waiting for this arm robber to hit this place. And nothing happens, you know, go home. I, you know, about to go to bed. I'm sitting on, I can't remember what time, what time the towers were hit. 846 and 902 or 903. Yeah, I knew it was early.

But yeah, so I'm at home and deliver him. I see the first plane hit on the television. And I think the same thing. Everyone else thinks what kind of moron drops of airplane in a building, right? Second plane hits and immediately, I'm like, you know, my life just changed. Do you know who it was or did you have an inkling who it was? No. But you knew.

No idea. I mean, I knew it was an attack. and, you know, even being in the reserves, being a, you know, you know, like third force reconnaissance company. I'm like, you know, if you're at the mindset of being in a special operations unit, you're like, I'm going to go to war, like right away, and kind of thought that I would. And, but like I said earlier, it's just not how it works, you know, not everybody goes. Right. And so as bad as I went. I resigned from that week.

I resigned from the sheriff's department. And I went to an active reserves to my unit and was pushing to deploy. And we didn't deploy. And I was bummed, man, I went to go. So when did you end it? Because you ended up doing eight tours in Afghanistan, some of it as a contractor to J-Soc. Is that the way to put it? So when did you first deploy when you were still in the military?

I didn't. I didn't. It was all as the contractor. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I went to the air marshals. I go to air marshals. And then I go to and then my unit is going to deploy to Iraq.

So I'm going to deploy as a Marine with third force, many second force regon to Iraq. And so I started working up on the deployment. And during the deployment, I had a friend reach out to me and say, hey, you should try out for this, this J-Soc task force is having a contract there. So leave the military and come to the private contract side? Yep. Yeah.

So what did that look like? I can't say all of it. Obviously, the unit, but at, you know, at J-Socq, you have your premier, you know, you have like task force orange, you have Delta Force, team six, you know, all the, all the different units at J-Soc. And so, and so I went over there to support one of the units as to doing clandestine logistics. And so I didn't quite know which unit I was going to be with and I didn't really understand the job. But essentially, I told you earlier about the job of doing clandestine logistics, doing advanced force operations. That's what I went there to do.

And so there was a lot of training to learn how to do that job and go and go forward to do that job. Now, what's different about going into it as a contractor from the outside versus like being in the military? Are there a lot more gloves off type procedures you can do? I don't know. I mean, you're still working for the military. So all the legalities and parameters are the same. I think there's a sense of like a little bit further distancing to be non-attributable. So you're your contractor.

The U.S. government's not completely attributable to your thing. Although when I first started, I was contracting through another company. there was a little bit of layering, but towards the end, I was contracting directly with my command. And so the attribution was pretty tight. And, you know, I reported directly to the XO and CEO of my unit. So it wasn't much different. I mean, you're not wearing a uniform. You don't get paid the same. You get paid a little bit more. Mm-hmm. But I think everyone that was contracting at that unit doing that job was doing it for a sense of service and patriotism outside of a job. So this is 03 to 07? These eight departments were? End of 2003 to 2007, April, April of 2007 is when it happened. How long would each deployment be? Three months kind of deal?

Yeah, three, anywhere from three to six months. Okay. For me. So obviously there's some classified stuff you can't say like you said. Yeah, I mean, my book, uh, if my book saving disease, like it went to the Pentagon for full Pentagon review. So kind of, kind of the liberty I have is actually know what's, what they redacted. Right.

And so I kind of know what I can and can't say. All right. So we'll get into the stuff you know. And when there's stuff we run into the. you can't no problem just say that but you'd be going there for three months at a time you're doing the recon stuff where you're going ahead kind of setting the stage for then some of these special forces teams to come in and you're serving in six-man teams no no it's pretty much either i'm usually with one other teammate or by myself with disease wow okay so you're all right so

yeah it would call it kind of singleton would be like the terminology you know what's it like like obviously you're an american you come in in these places there's a lot of americans all over the the country because of what's going on. So that alone is not enough. I think a lot of people, a lot of people think that's like surprising. How would people think you, man, their NGOs all over any war zone in the world? But you're in plain clothes so you could technically blend in and they wouldn't necessarily know, oh, he's working with Delta or any one of these teams or something like that. Right. Okay. Now, 03 to 07 is interesting because you're going there right when Iraq kicks off. Yes. And when I look back at the history of Afghanistan, it's like,

We can argue about all the logistics around 9-11. That's certainly a conversation. We do know that at least like the guys who flew the actual planes were associated with al-Qaeda. And al-Qaeda was being harbored in Afghanistan by the Taliban. So the U.S. goes to Afghanistan. All right, that makes sense. Iraq was a whole different thing. So when they go to Afghanistan, they pull off minus getting bin Laden.

and they didn't do that, but they pulled off one of the more impressive paramilitary operations ever done in world history at the time. And I would, even looking back on it now, the first year or two in Afghanistan, looks like some really good things happened from a military perspective. Now, you go there in 03 when they're now going into Iraq in March 03. And looking back on it, it does feel like the old quote that like kind of took your eye off the ball, resources go to go to Iraq, and then Afghanistan slowly sinks down into a fucking hellhole over the next 18 years at that point. When did you start to notice in your four-year period there? Or did you notice at any point that, hey, it seems like some of these guys we took out are starting to quietly build up again.

Yeah, I think as far as the military effort goes, because of where I was and who was with, I didn't notice there was a lack of attention put. because I'm with the, I'm with a tier one unit who gets all the resource and funding needs. So their mission was very well supported. I think the conventional military's mission would have been, you become a little less and less over time. But that tier one units,

their mission was very supported. They're heavily funded. Everything they needed was done. And they actually, I think the progression of what they did and what they're capable of doing from 2001 to probably 2012 would continue to be amplified. all the way till, you know, they got bin Laden.

And so I think I was in a kind of a niche area to where I just seen a tremendous amount of resources and support going to an operation that we were doing. And so, but I do think you're correct in the military. And we were spread thin between two major wars. And it was a lot of the conventional effort shifted to Iraq. Yeah. And you also brought this up earlier and we should go back to it because every single guy. I talked to who served significant time in Afghanistan. I'm talking Navy SEAL guys from multiple teams, including Team 6, Delta guys, Army Ranger guys.

I'm definitely missing a couple in there. Every one of them talks about, you know, the thing that people didn't talk about at dinner parties with the culture over there, which I'll just use the direct quote. Many of them have independently given me that seems to be common in Afghanistan where they say women are for kids and boys are for fun and it is a rampant under current culture i don't care where the fuck it is i'm going to call that out it's crazy like at what point did you realize that was as widespread as it was a right away right away i mean because just because of the fact that i mean you got thinking that in eight deployments there i spent like two weeks on a base so i lived out in the

community and and so learned right away that you know women are for babies and boys are for for for fun you know and and these little boys, especially like in, within the Taliban, these little boys are generationally like, like raped, like as, as boys and then they turn around to do it to the next generation. So it's rampant.

And it's, you know, I always, like, struggle with like, they're going to fight a jihad war and be so spiritually driven that they will end up, you know, put them. a suicide vest or fight to the death over the spiritual idea the spiritual belief in ideology

of war but yet they're going to be engaged in pedophilia and never it's such a contract contradiction of morality that i just never really understood it and it's just i mean and when it with these little girls man when these little girls get married off most of them are just they're still think their kids they're getting you know drug through the heels dug in drug through away from their parents wanting to just play and they're getting drug off at nine years old 10 years old 11 years old to go be married off to some 50 60 year old monster that's going to rape them the redidated rest of your life it's like it's horrific and uh i mean especially right now like after post afghanistan post afghanistan we got 20 million women and little girls in afghanistan

right now and they already you know married them off as young as nine years old and and and even the ones they aren't marrying off they're like the ones that were our former allies their daughters are being you know, sexually raped to death. And there's, where's the Me Too movement? Where's the, uh, human rights people for them? You know, it's, it's an atrocity that, that people are quiet about it. Well, I want to Hollywood and stand up, stand up for, for these little girls, you know, why not these little girls? Uh, but they don't, man. It's, uh, so yeah, my heart's always been with these, these children. So early on, to answer your question, early on, I was, it was very, it was, it was very, you know, disturbing to me. It really, it really drove a

hatred inside of me to who the Taliban was on top of 9-11, right? And top of like, why we were there in the first place. And like, this is who the bad guy is? We're really easy to hate them. Did you guys, I mean, I imagine you did what, when, when you were talking with your guys about this when you weren't just with his ease or something like that. How do you even talk about something like that while you're in their mission driven oh yeah it's it's easy i mean we just talk about i just how vile these guys were and just like like but also the people that you're trying to use to like build the new military the non-taliban they're engaged in the same shit they're engaged in the same stuff too i i i know the taliban's worse though i i go say that culturally the taliban's worse

because they're because of the because they take them they take these boys from their families at a young age to go to madrasas and be in taliban so they they they they take you and they take them and now they don't have parental protection. And so they start raping them in a young age and they do that to the next generation. The Taliban is much worse. It happens to systemically across the culture, but it's,

it's 10 times worse than the Taliban. You know, but in the Afghan community, while it's systemic, child pedophilia is systemic there, there are good families that don't engage in that. Like Aziz's example, like, I mean,

Aziz's family's family's. Aziz's wife just babysat my daughter. like two days ago. That was my next question. Did you talk with him about this? All the time. And what did he say about it? Oh man.

They think it's disgusting. Like he thinks it's disgusting. And they, you know, they were careful like where their kids were around, you know, like because they know how rampant it is. So it's systemic, but it's not everyone. Yeah, it's important. And yeah. And yeah, I think it is because, because, you know, I put everyone in one category.

But where it is, like, seems like 100% systemic is the Taliban, like that culture. Yeah, you know, I was telling you earlier, there's moments that stand out in here. And there was one when I was talking with Andy Boostamante in episode 299, I was asking about the worst places he had ever been. And one of the ones he mentioned was meeting with a warlord in Africa and the country that he didn't name. And when he was there, he saw the child soldiers around him. They're all 9, 10, at most of 11. 11 years old. And he said they would put all these kids on, you know, cocaine like drugs and shit and they would rape them. And then those kids would grow up and turn into the, if they lived,

turn into the general sitting in front of them and the guys who worked with him. Yeah. And do the same thing to the next generation. And I said to him, I said, how do you, how do you stop that cycle? How do you get rid of that? And he leaned. back and Andy's a blunt guy, but you could tell even he was uncomfortable with the answer. And you know him, but like he was uncomfortable with the answer. He was going to give you lean back. And he paused and he said, this is going to sound so bad. And I'm like, just go ahead. And he goes, you got to kill them all. I'm like, kill them all. All of them. You got to put them all down and you got to start over.

And you know, as much as that sounds like a. an awful solution and something that morally I would never like get behind just genocide right yeah I'm like I'm looking at it and I'm saying to myself because it's he's not advocating like genocide or something like that he's talking about just specifically like the soldiers there which will include some child soldiers and stuff and and all I could think about is I was like all right Julian you don't want to do that because that sounds awful do you have a better solution though like internally I was thinking in my head and And I was like, at this moment, I don't have a better solution than that.

What, what, I, you know, morally, what does that say? Yeah, I mean, I agree. Like, I mean, do you look at the Taliban culture? Like, how do you undo someone that's been exposed to that? Yeah. I don't know the answer to that. I mean, the ideology in a way that, the thinking that is, is impressed into who they are. Yes.

Yeah, it's a, man, there's redemption available for everyone, but man, I don't know how you turn that kind of thinking around. At the time when you were operating in Afghanistan, you know, especially when you get to the end of the four years and the eight deployments before we get to why you decided to leaving all that, did you feel like you were really getting somewhere and accomplishing things? I don't believe, I don't believe I felt that Afghanistan as a whole. I felt like it was an endless like a, like, like bailing out. out of bailing out a boat full of holes, you know. Just like, I don't believe Afghanistan as a whole. But for our mission, I felt like we were getting somewhere. I feel like we're because it was very tangible. When you're at the unit I was at, they had a target list.

And basically whoever's in the top 10, that's who they're going after. And we were knocking them down. The command was knocking them down. I was with these guys. These guys at these, these assaulters at these premier tier one units. They're freaking, they're amazing human beings. and they do such a great job. And they were, and not just, not just,

you got to shooters like the, the whole system, like the Intel, like, they, they were doing a phenomenal job. And they were taking targets out. And, you know, every time you take one out, one rises up. Right.

But they were taking them out. And so I felt, there was tangible wins for us because of the job we did. But I was observing the Afghanistan as a whole. And I'm like, man, it's just like, like I said, we're bailing out a boat with holes in it. And that's kind of what it felt like.

Now, working, you're not allowed to say which tier one unit you were working with, but people can guess there's a lot of really fucking amazing ones either way. They're all top, tip of the spear, if you will. Did you feel like those guys, because sometimes this goes either way, they talk about these teens being really insular or like really cool. Did you feel like those guys viewed you on the level? Or there was a little bit of a, hey, you just kind of. do your shit for us and we're here.

Yeah. There's a terminology in all the special operations called enabler. And so you go from being an operator like to enabler. And, uh, but I really believe in a job. Like the job's not less when you're doing the kind of work we're doing, the job's not less important. It's like, you know, it's. And so at first I kind of felt like, oh, okay, I'm here to support those guys. Those guys are going to go through a door. They can breach a door and they go in there and to either capture a kill a bad guy. And my job is to support those guys. That's my role right now.

I'm going to do the very best job I can. When I got there, I realized that. oh my gosh like the guys who are here are way more qualified than me and I either could intimidate you into kind of kind of cowering down or challenge you to do the best job you can and for me like being a recon marine being there and realizing like how lucky it was to be there

I felt like I had to I want to represent my community really well and so worked really hard and that earned me to at the very end I got picked to be on the kind of premier job and what do you mean by premier job? I mean there was an effort at the very end a project that was going to be in a neighboring country. I won't say which one because the Pentagon redacted in my books pretty easy to figure out.

I was going to be in a neighboring country by myself. Neighboring country to Afghanistan. Yeah. Yeah, by myself to go and help, you know, help get those guys on target for some of the top, top few guys on there, you know, from number one down. So, so I'm going to get, and everybody wanted that job and I got picked to do it. And, you know, I was, it was pretty proud of that. I was very proud of that.

Were you ever in those four years tasks with something related to tangentially or directly with trying to hunt been lauded? Of course. Yeah. So whoever was that? I mean, the whole command was that for that. Yeah. And so.

Well, some guys when I ask that question are like, now we're doing other shit. A lot of guys actually. That's why I asked. But yeah. That's what a lot of them was. He was the target. I mean, he was the target until 2011 until we got him. From September 11th, 2021, I mean, September 11th, 2001, until, to, to, uh, um, um,

2011 he was the he was the target now I think the capturing or killing of him several times a bit intervened by our government for whatever reasons let let him live uh I've just heard that wait wait you're saying that they knew where he was sometimes and decided not to kill him I just heard that I don't know if it's true or not yeah I mean I mean uh I know a lot of people get the guy Shrek McPhee a hard time um but but you know he he talks about a personal incident to where they they had it had had a chance to get him and was called off what year approximately i don't know what year or i think that was early i think that was early on john john mcfey is his name yeah yeah yeah he talks about that on the sean ryan why would they

and joe rogan he talks about him why would they not want to get him i don't know uh i mean i mean you know was he you know his last level complacency with with the attacks and what he may or may not know made him maybe they wanted him when I'm captured I wanted to make sure that when we did get him he'd be dead I don't know I don't know I just thought it was always strange I've heard that two or three times from different people dead men can't talk that uh yeah I heard heard two or three times from different people that we could have got him and we didn't um and then uh does that piss you off it did at the time I didn't understand it when I heard it, but now it makes a little more sense to me. I mean, I'm thankful.

And I do believe, by the way, I do believe we did get him in 2000. I know people, there's a lot of people like, oh, we didn't see his body. Why did they throw away at sea? And this is what president Obama. I believe it got him. You know, they got the whole drama going on between, you know, Rob O'Neill and all other guys that were there and stuff like that. I believe those guys got him. Yeah. Do you think like, do you think it's possible? I add again, I was talking. I was talking, you off camera. I really try to stay out of the military drama. I'm gonna let them figure that out. Obviously, this one's talked about in the public domain a lot. I don't have an opinion or whatever. Do you think it's possible that in particularly like Rob O'Neill and Matt Bessonet because it's a

dark night vision mission, fast, chaotic in an enclosed house going after one target, a bunch of them enclosing on it on the same time? Do you think they may both actually really believe their memory of what it was? they both think they're telling the truth. Yeah. And, uh, and it's a shame. It's a shame that they would be in,

in odds against it. It's even more a shame that the veteran community, attacks either one of those guys. And here's why, because both those guys are incredible patriots. And they not only raise the hand to serve, but they served at, not only as Navy SEALs,

but at the premier tier one unit in the world, you know, so Team 6. And they volunteer for that mission. knowing that they that mission was a high chance they weren't coming back right and they both went through that door uh and another side door was so i'm bin ladd what happened to other side that door personally i don't really care i think a lot of i think a lot of people put bullets so i'm bin laden if i have the guess because they were just like i you know i want a piece of

this too i don't know what there's like hitler at the end of inglorious bastard yeah i don't know what in there but i think there's probably semantics and perspectives and and different recollections and, you know, people don't look at any, any crime, right? You interview 10 people that witnessed a crime and you can get 10 different stories. That's right. I don't know. I wasn't there. And everybody else commenting on it wasn't there either.

Bissonnet was there and O'Neill was there. They were there and let them sort that out. And everybody went through the door, like you said. Like they all did it. The whole team did it. Those guys are heroes, man. They're American heroes. It's unbelievable what they pulled off.

Like the fact that and the Black Hawk goes down and they got. They got to lose it on. They were so prepared that they didn't skip a beat with that and they didn't lose any guys. It's one of the most impressive missions ever in anything. Well, there's so many people that you could attack right now over, over legitimate things that the fact that veterans are attacking, but I get it to. Like, I mean, I got a text just now before you know, I get it too. Like people, people are always like, you know, picking apart your servers and you're in what you did

and what you didn't do and there's semantics behind it and just, by the way, you put any human being under a microscope and you'll find something right so it's it's like why do you like you know do you start do you start looking at someone because of something or you do look start looking at someone because you ambiguous of a position they're in you know and usually it's the opposite they start looking at someone because they like that guy's doing that guy's you know getting this attention or doing this thing that I want to be doing so now I'm going to look into him and I'm going to find a way to pick his life apart that's just not great and it's not great to do It's not good for the veteran community.

You know, it's just, it's just not a good thing. I agree. Like I said, I deal with it. And I think it's part of a territory of choosing to go in a public platform, unfortunately. But yeah. So I try not to engage in the bashing of the veterans. But I'm not just saying that to, I don't care. Like personally, I don't care of Rob O'Neill or Bisonette's right.

I don't know. Both of them, to me, are amazing humans who did an amazing thing for our country. Yeah. I like to let it lie at that. Yeah. What, I appreciate that perspective. What did it,

when we did get them, you know, you were out at that point. Yeah. From the military and from serving with, with the guys as a contractor in Afghanistan,

but that was a 10-year odyssey effectively. And then we get them. You know, how'd you feel? Like, did it feel like something shifted in the world? I did. Me and several of my friends

spent years of our lives investing you know blood sweat tears time away from family risking a lot for that operation so it felt like a little personal win for me I'm not claiming that

like anything that it didn't do it just but for me I invested a lot so it felt like a personal win and then I had a friend who called me and he said some things that we did and he's like hey just so you know

like some of this stuff that we did like it tied to that operation like it was like It felt so good to be part of the winning team, you know, in that. Like, I think personally part of the winning team on that. And because like I said, we worked so hard for so long. I was so invested in that. And it was really redemptive because I left, I left, I left kind of my heels, man.

I left with my head between my legs. And when I left the program that I was in, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't on the best to terms for me personally. What happened? Well, I mean, we had a compromise on our operation. We had some, you know, several of our teammates that were, they were killed. and we'd have, you know, um, wait, so you had a leak. Yeah, we had one of our Afghans flipped over to the Taliban.

Oh, no. Compromised us. And so we had, we lost several team members and our operations compromised. But even our operations compromised, we choose us keep operating. Now I'm working on a cross-border operation. And I get, I get rolled up by a foreign intelligence agency. And I can't say, again, I can't say which one. And I can't say what the conversation was about, but I get rolled up by foreign intelligence agency. Taking prisoner. I would say take a prisoner, but pulled off, pulled from my house to a remote site to be heavily interrogated. Tied up.

Yeah. So, uh, not able to leave. Like they, you know, they, they forced me into a car, uh, forced me into a car, drove me out. Armed guys drove me out to a remote location on the side of a mountain to interrogate me. Now, what's going through your head in that car ride? I thought I was going to be killed. I mean, like, no doubt in my mind. Like, they're going to, they're going to, I thought, you know, when the guns come out to kill me,

I'm going to try to fight, but more likely. How long was that driving? I was terrified. Probably about 30 minute drive of no solid. They wouldn't respond to me, nothing. Were you speaking their language at all? No, they're all-spoken English. Okay.

I spoke English. These are, yeah. Highly educated guys. These aren't thugs. What led to them rolling you up? Some information that they collected from our house. We knew that they had collected some information from my house tied to the compromise on the on the Afghan side of the border I think I know what government this is go

yeah yeah and so it was you know it was a it was a scary moment man it was it was it was terrifying I like to be a tough guy and say like oh that was it was terrifying and then you know I said enough to for them to probably not believe me but enough for them to say okay we gave more more rope to hang himself and let me let me go drove me they let you go I thought they were driving me back to my house but they actually drove me in the way back to my house and then let me off at a curb kick me out of the curb how long were you there in where they took you uh oh a couple hours we were that you meant the whole like in the country right so they questioned you were you in the country overall for about a year were you tied down when you were you in question or you're in a room i wasn't

no not in the room outside the road on them on the side of a mountain they're just on the side of a mountain they're just and drove back they're going to fucking kick you over the edge well not like a mountain like not like not like a not like game of thrones were they going to kick you to the sky door the train station on on Yellowstone. You've seen Yellowstone. It went like that. It was like a hill, you know. Yeah, I got it.

I'd roll down if they pushed me off. But yeah, I was more thinking I was get shot and in. Because it was not, you know, kind of the middle of nowhere. Without going into specifics that are classified, what kinds of things, I guess, from a high level were they asking you? They were more asking about one of the guys that I worked with. There was a guy I worked with that they, I think they were more suspicious of than me. For what reason?

I really can't say what reason. There was a reason, but there was a very legitimate reason. And I knew it, which helped me, which helped me. Because then I'm thinking, oh, wow, you guys are more interested in him than me. So that was kind of a glimmer of hope that maybe they're not completely on to me. And so I felt like I could talk my way out of it. At least let them give me enough. And man, I probably should have left at that time.

But I didn't. I chose to stay and keep operating. Because I just believed in what we were doing so much. And, but I started having panic attacks. and and I got to the point to where like I realized I was making decisions I was putting not only me in danger but put some other people in danger as well. How do you stay when when you get rolled up like that you get forced into a car by a foreign I guess like intelligence service, whoever they were, you know it's a problem. You know they're taking you somewhere. They're not responding to you.

You are thinking as you said that like, oh my God, wherever I'm going, they're going to kill me. Yeah. How do you keep your wits about you to even be able to like process a question. that you get asked and give a coherent answer when you're dealing with that, you know, guillotine over your head. Yeah. Well, I'm, I mean, I'm thinking, you know, one, you go to Sear school and then high risk sear, which is like, you know, and I went to this corporate cover training.

And I mean, unfortunately, you know, the military does a good job of training you in situations, like that you can be in whether you're a, you know, a bulk fuel guy or a special operations guy. you get trained for every scenario you're going to be in. So thankfully, the training is really good. And one of the things I thought about right way is, okay, how I'm supposed to be here doing this, right? I'm supposed to be here as a, in this, I'm in this, I'm in this corporate cover capacity. So I'm supposed to be doing this. How would this person I'm supposed to be react? Right. How, how am I supposed to react?

You know, uh, playing a role. So yeah. So in those moments, you got to react the way. And they had already been an incident with the same guy that had, that came in my house to get me. they had already been another incident with the same guy, where another, uh, another, uh, another coworker of his exposed who they were.

And I had already had to behave like, like the person I was pretending to be. And, uh, and so I'd already, had already been going back and forth to these guys. They were kind of showing who they were and they were starting to discover who I was. And so there was already kind of this back and forth dialogue of me having to behave a certain

way. So I was already in that mindset. Okay, how would I, how, how, how, how, how, how, am I supposed to react. Yeah. I'm supposed to be scared, which I conveniently am scared right now, right, but how am I supposed to react? Like, I'm supposed to, I'm, I'm actually supposed to throw a fit. Like, I came here to do business. I'm spending money in this country. I'm just trying to do a good thing. And now I'm getting, you know, I'm getting treated like this. Like, I'm scared. I want to go home. That's how, that's how you react, right? So I'm doing exactly what I was trying to do. And, you know, thankfully, again, they thankfully, they, they, they, they, I don't think they believe me, but I think it was enough for them to say, okay, we're going to let him go and watch him and get more. Yeah. And get and get let him hang himself more. Was there, did they, when they were done questioning you, did they say, all right, let's get in the car? Like, yeah, they're just like free to go. They just like kind of like. They just like, I remember vividly, nothing was said. Nothing was said. It was kind of like this moment of like silence and I could tell they were trying to decide what to do. I mean, I've been a police officer. I've been done interrogations before.

Like I could tell they were trying to decide what to do and then just open a door and motion for me to get in the car. Whoa. And I didn't know am I going to a jail now? I didn't know where I was going. And they went and talked again. And then we got towards town. I could tell we're going towards my house and they stopped and let me out on the curb and drove off. You weren't worried they were going to shoot you.

When they let me out. When they let me out in a busy area. It was a pretty busy area. Yeah. I knew I was good at that point, but I was just like, but they didn't say anything. So now I'm like, I'm like, oh, the police. like the police coming like a uniform police coming now like I don't know and so I had to go back and went back to I went to Dubai that's in my team told them it bears me basically I was given a choice

to continue working or not I don't know why I chose to but I did was this like 05 oh 6 or it's 07 okay so you didn't work for that much longer after that no no no you got back to Dubai where we're now you're leaving another country the whole way that you're getting onto I assume a plane to get to Dubai, are you worried you're about to get rolled up? Yeah. So that, for that reason, for whatever reason that time, I'm like, it didn't really hit me. I got flew to Dubai right away.

I'm like, man, they probably, I think they could have rolled me up like right there. But then I came back and I started working and there was some things that happened that like led me to believe that it was closing in on me again. Probably a lot of bit paranoid. Went back into that country. Went back in. And then, and then I had this, I made some decisions that, I made some decisions from a lack of real clear thinking.

that I think didn't only put myself in danger, putting other people in danger. And that was when I recognized like, man, I'm not in the good shape right now. And that's when I left. And when I left that time, I was, I called and I left executed like a protocol

that says I'm in trouble, which means me saying like, hey, I'm coming to Dubai. I'm going to go to Dubai to see a doctor. I'm not feeling well. And that's kind of like a code word for X-fil- And so I bought a round-trip ticket, only packed a backpack overnight.

I left a lot of money in my safe. When I say a lot of money, like, you know, seven figure, seven figure monies in my safe and in the, in the bank. And I got on a plane and flew. And for that, for that moment, like literally, I was going through customs like, oh, my gosh, they're going to not let me out of here. There's more police here than normal. Like, I'm looking at everything. Like, I'm, I was panicking. My flight was delayed.

I'm like, they're stopping the flight to, you know, get people here to get me. And I was like, I was a mess. I was a mess. Whoa. Now, the seven, that was it for me. That was the seven figures that you left behind, was that like a part of your earnings from what you had gotten? It was just operational money. It was just operational money. So it wasn't your money. It wasn't my money. No, no. Okay.

Okay. I was going to say. Yeah, not my money. But, but all of it was, from what I understand, all of it was recovered by command. So you knew at that point, like I'm having some hyperinflated panic attacks. Oh, yeah. And I can't do my job effectively. Yeah, I was a bad thing. You know, you've been going at it for so long, hard and dude, been through multiple careers, by the way, at that point where you had to do some hard shit. It's a hard thing to at the heat of the battle in the middle of it,

be able to remove yourself and be like, hey, I'm not right. Right. But it's an important thing to be able to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, get to Dubai and, you know, spend a few days there. They didn't, they probably had to, you know,

I don't know this. I don't know. I assume they had a, you know, probably a counterintel team watching me to make sure no one was following me. And I had to go to a local pharmacy to get some volume. I never took volume before when local pharmacy got some volume to calm myself down. And then finally get home. I get put before, did a polygraph, some post interview stuff. And then a post-trip interview stuff, they were making sure, you know, some things, which they should have.

You know, at the time, I was very offended. Yeah. But it was some things that probably should have did. And then because I was diagnosed with PTSD by clinical psychologist, I was right out of my programming, that I lost, didn't lose my clearance, but lost access to the program I was in. And no longer could do that job. Whoa. And which was now I'm dealing with the ability in panic attacks, feeling like I'm going to die,

extreme anxiety. And also I'm completely embarrassed and ashamed for having failed that what I thought to be was the most important job on a planet, you know. Were you still married it this time? Yeah. Yeah. So you go home to America. Now you've been on and off going to Afghanistan back and forth. But that's a constant.

And this is something I talk about with all you guys who have done this at like high level. You have a constant source of adrenaline, right? And it keeps you boom moving. And then all of a sudden it's like you take that volume on the speaker. You've been and you just go down to zero. And now you've got to be a regular person again at home, like out of nowhere. And your mind's not right because of what you just went through. What's that?

How did you deal with that? I tried to get a regular job. I just finished my MBA. And so I tried to get a regular job at a, at a, I went in and just totally use my trade craft to talk my way through interview. And I've been in Afghanistan and doing construction work and building projects. And, uh, and talked my way into getting a job at a high-rise construction company as a project manager. Wow. And so successfully used my skill set to earn a job.

And, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't, I couldn't, literally I was going in the bathroom, fighting north panic attacks and it lasted for about two weeks. And I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do. Like I'm, and I've been doing jihitsu my whole life, you know, judo, traditional jihitsu, grappling. I was already professional. I'm a May fighter and aside.

And I was undefeated. So I was pretty good at it. Wow. I went getting to mats and I rolled, uh, I was really worried about grappling because I thought, man, get my heart rate up. I'm maybe give myself a heart attack or something. But doctor's like,

totally fine. Like that's how you did. That's how you dealt with it to let it loose. You got on those mats, man. And when I got on those mats, I felt like I found a cure because you can't, you can't think about Afghanistan or,

you know, the other stuff I'm doing while you're grappling. You got to be mentally present. That's right. That's what's one of good things about that sport or any kind of engaged sport where you have to be, you have to be mentally present.

That's one of one of things I love about skydiving. Like you have to be mentally present skydiving. You can't think about something else you're going to die. like you have to be in the moment. And so I love things like that, but jihitsu is something you could do for, not for a moment of skydiving.

You could do like for hours, you know, like, and just go and grapple on. And that healed you? No, it didn't, it didn't heal me, but it gave me a place to recover. So how did you? When I say it didn't heal me, it was a great, I think it's a great thing.

I think people have shirts like, Jitsu saves lives and stuff like that. I think it's a good thing. But I think there's a balance. On my show, the resiliency show, we talk about like mind, body, social spirit. You have to have all four of those. You got to be mental.

healthy, you got to be physically healthy, you got to socially be around right people. You have to have a strong spiritual foundation, like all those. So jihitsu for me gave me the mental, the physical, the social, but it was, you know, I was still missing that spiritual piece. But in that moment, like, I found a place to heal. I found a place to have community. And I trained as much as I could. And so I won a world title, I'm a MA.

I want, you know, as a black belt, I've won American nationals and bronze in the pans. And I won, I was ranked number six in the world as a, as a flyweight in MMA and number 23. I think it's a band-a-y-y-y-hirt. I had made it up there pretty good. 18-2 as a pro fighter, fought in all the big shows and stuff. And, uh,

but on the surface, it looked like I was healed. Thousand students, my jihad of school had like a thousand students. But about three years into that, really false facetic success, something was still missing. I was still broken.

End up, uh, you know, separating from my family, had an affair, like, uh, and just separated from my family and,

uh, had a suicide attempt. And, uh, in, you know, 2010. What led to that? What happened? I had this big fight on Showtime.

I fought in Strike Force and Strike Force was on, but the UFC at the time. And, you know, so the whole time I was separated. I was trained for this fight. And then the fight was over. And I mean, I remember my hand being raised in the front of 10,000 people in their to Otis Center. And I was like, man, like, I just fought so hard for this win. And like, I just like gave up on everything, you know, the most important to me.

I remember thinking, like, of all these people here in this crowd cheering. Now, one of them was my wife, Kathy, who had been in. you know, been around before and I just went home like so depressed. And I thought like all these people, I blame my whole life for everything, like the common denominator was me. And I thought maybe my family would be sad without me, but they'd be better off, you know. And I think that's the same hopeless thought that finds a home in the hearts of over 20-something veterans every day.

Like maybe my family, maybe my loved ones will be sad without me, but they'll be better off. And they don't think a lot of people that commit suicide to take your life because they want to escape their pain. I think we really believe that we're going to unburden the people around this and not realizing that that's one of the worst burdens. you could put on people as you know you take your pain and you transfer it to everyone that loves you when you do that so yeah so i sat i would sit my closet i had a glock 22 pistol a 40 caliber pistol and but i literally put my family pictures on the floor around me like that's almost like i say

goodbye but every time i put that gun to my head i would have this vision of who's going to find me because someone's going to find you right so somebody's geared a gunshot you're an apartment or you you not going to show up somewhere morbidly somebody's to smell you like somebody's going to find you and so every time i do that i thought my son hunter's the only i'm when that has a key to my apartment. It was enough to pump the brakes in that moment, but I was still there. And it was one morning I was with that pistol in my hand and I heard a knock at my door. And I wasn't going to answer it.

But when I heard Kathy's voice and out yourself, I panic. When I say I panicked, like, she would never came in my apartment, especially in my closet, but I hid the gun under a blanket like if it was ashamed of what I was doing. And it sounds stupid, but I ran to the door like so mad that she interrupted me killing myself. Like I was so like, I was just libit. And I'm like, what are you doing here? Like, I didn't ask you to come here. You can't just show up here and yelling at her,

trying to get her to leave. And in the middle of the argument, she asked me a question that, you know, radically changed my life. I probably saved my life in the moment. She's like, how could you do everything that you've done? We met when we were 17 and 18.

She saw me become a recon Marine and go to schools and training and cut weight for fights and all this stuff she saw me do that that requires so much discipline. She said, how could you do all of that? And when it comes to your family, you'll quit. And, uh. Oh, so she knew. Yeah. So she knew, well, she meant I was quitting on, on our family.

know and everything myself and and so she just really challenged me and uh and uh in that in that moment i made a decision to get back in the fight and i knew i couldn't do it alone i knew it couldn't do it with the people i surrounded myself by i talked about that earlier i can't remember on what show but you have to have you know regardless you out in life i think all people especially men have to have accountability right and i had surrounded myself by everybody i told me what i wanted to hear not what i needed to hear i needed to hear some hard things and i knew this circle of people that around me were like people that were fans i mean had a lot of friends but had people People that were like, when you're successful as an athlete, a lot of people cheered you on.

Yes. And no fault to those people because I probably systematically and pushed accountability out of my life. But I asked my wife, is there someone at this church you're going to because she was going to this church. I didn't care about God or her church or anything. I was just like, if someone had this church you're going to, some man could help build me accountable to pulling things back together. Were you guys separated this time too?

We're separated, yeah. Did you still love her? At that time, I didn't even love myself. And so I felt like I didn't love her, but I did. I mean, we're, we're, unfortunately, we're, we're, you know, not together now, but, um, but I'll always love it and care for her. She's, we met when we were 17, 18 years old together for 30 years. So she's an amazing woman.

What made you, you know, you mentioned like you were pretty broken, didn't feel a lot of meaning inside. You couldn't get rid of some of the stuff that you were dragging with you, understandably so from your previous career. and then in there, you know, you love your wife. Maybe you go through times where you don't because as you said, you don't love yourself. But what made you like have an affair or get to that point? I was, I didn't feel anything.

I had no empathy at all. Like, I think something turned off in Afghanistan. It's very weird. Like, I remember when Foster Harrington was killed, like we had been friends for, we went through training together. He served him a wedding. We've been friends for 10 years and when he was killed in 2004,

like that was the first, like hardest and first experience I had. That night I had to go out and operate. So like back home, if you have a family or a friend that dies, as bad as it is, there's a grieving period you have. When you're overseas and you're operating, you have to be able to continue to work. And so something inside your brain, like, allows that to happen. That's right.

So you could function and survive. and be there for everyone else. And so you turn something off. And I don't think our military does a good job of teaching guys that I turn it back on. And so or else you wouldn't build to function in that environment. And I remember me and maybe some of that money they give to the Taliban could be used for that, right? And martyred families they could use for that, right?

Well, that's why we do what we do at Mighty Oaks. You know, that's why a foundation exists because in the in the void of government programs that just don't do that. And I just didn't know how to feel. And so I didn't feel anything towards her. I didn't feel emotion towards her. I didn't feel love for torture. I didn't feel affection towards her.

I didn't feel mad when or I didn't even feel angry towards her at times. I didn't like her at times. But I'd make her cry and I didn't even feel sad about it. I'm like, what's wrong with me? I mustn't love her. She's crying. I don't even feel bad. And I just wanted to feel again.

So I don't think I had an affair because I was pursuing sex. I had an affair because I just want. I was looking to feel. And I think that's what led me to making those bad decisions. And you felt bad about it afterwards, obviously? I didn't. But not right away, not right away. Yeah.

Eventually, yeah. Yeah. Because when I got caught, I didn't even have an emotional response to it. I'm like, okay, well, I guess we're getting divorced. You know, like, I was just like I had no empathy. And that's not me, by the way. I'm like a very, like a highly compassionate person. I'm a very kind person.

Yeah. Like none of those character traits are me. But for like three years, I was in that state. Yeah. No, it's interesting to hear you say. that because then it's simple like your wife obviously still cared enough about you to tell you the thing that was the most important thing that was true that no one wanted to tell you and it starts the journey of you getting back on the path and i understand obviously she's pissed at you

yeah for doing what you did no problem with that whatsoever but like now you're like you're like you'll always love her and everything like that but because of that time period where you're going through this and make some poor decisions for sure you know you lose your you lose your marriage and it's like it's a strange thing for me to think about because I haven't been married but like how you can do everything that's mostly right or you know have everything right and then go through a time where something happens and it just kills it and then even if you want to undead it on the other side and even if both of you want to do it you don't because there's still this thing yeah yeah because we tried for years uh and and we started some great

we started my oaks foundation together we started some great things together we'll i mean but And she tried for years and I always give her credit for trying. And she, once she saved my life, she rescued me. She helped me build Mighty Oaks. And she really revealed a lot of things to me. She tried for years. But for her, she just could never get past some of these things.

And, you know. You understand that. I understand that. Yeah. I mean, look, there's, you know, sin has consequences. And just because you confess those sins and make them right, doesn't mean the consequences aren't still there. I was, I think I told you really I'm good friends with Phil,

was good friends with Phil Robertson and Robertson family. Doug Dynasty. Doug Dynasty, yeah. Sat down across the table just like this, actually with table just like this and shared my story with me. He had heard my story many times, but he's not a very quiet guy. He always likes to interact,

but he was Jason after was Tell of Jason's son. A good friend of mine was saying, Jason, Jay, were saying, Phil's never that quiet. He just listened to me the whole time because his movie was coming out and he was having to face his past in the movie The Blind. And later that day, he pulled me aside and told me, he goes, I appreciate what you did with your life.

But he's like, you could always leave sin, but the consequences of sin and never leave you. I didn't really understand that at time. I think he was talking about himself like, and me, the consequences of sin. And I didn't get that until I went through this with my wife at the end, at the end of our relationship,

was that the consequences are still there. You could change your behaviors. You can have redemption. You can have forgiveness even. The consequences are still there. And it's a important lesson for me and for everyone that I have a ability to speak to, especially work it would do at Mighty Oaks. Like you can make things right, but the consequences there's sometimes still there.

And I'm having to do with that now. And, uh, but, you know, are you happy now? You feel like your life's in a good place? I feel like my life's in a good place. I mean, um, I'm hurt. I mean, I have an amazing family that, that I lost, you know, through this. Uh, I have, you know, I have a, you know, I was married for 30 years and, and my, I have four kids, have three adult kids, 29, 28, 25.

and I have a three-year-old that my wife and I chose to, I hate to use the word of dot, but she was a family member that we came in at birth. Wait, Kathy and you? Yeah. So when you were still married? Yeah, yeah, it was our kind of last thing we did together. And we brought Summer in and she's three years old now. And she's, I was naive enough to think we're blessing her.

And it was the other way around. She's been the biggest blessing to me. And I have six grandkids. What was she to you again? She was a niece. She was a niece. Yeah. So you had to, okay.

adopted our niece at birth and uh yeah and i have six grandkids that's awesome so yeah so it's man yeah it's it sucks to to lose that you know and we did so many great things together you know one of the things that i quickly passed over was in their redemption process was this guy steve tot who's running against crinshaw by the way and uh he was i sat down across from steve and he was an elder and called to the church when i asked cathay help help me and he showed up met me at a starbucks coffee shop and i had this perfect plan of how's to fix my life and i wanted him to show it to Kathy and I was like super impressed with it as like a military operational order and and I slid it over to him and he read it and he slid it back over to me and told me he tapped

in a paper and he said if if this plan does everything you do what God I'm not going to last you waste my time I'm not glad you waste mine and had you ever been a religious guy at all I grew up so I grew up uh to like fourth grade Catholic and my dad left I ended up my mom was never went to church or anything like that and then when my brother died this family took me to church to their church. It was like some kind of, I think it was an assembly guy church. And I went to this altar call

and I was like really moved by it and felt like the guy was just talking to me. And so that kind of really inspired me, but I never had any follow up. And then when Kathy and I got married, we were like, hey, we should probably go to a church together and raise our kids that way.

And I always went to church with Kathy. And I would have said I was a Christian, but I never lived it, lived it out and really understood it. And when I went to Afghanistan, I became very like either mad at, like, because of the, things I was exposed to. I was either like agnostic or mad at God. I mean, I didn't know which one.

But you believe. But yeah, if I was agnostic, yeah. But one of those you believe something's there, right? And even if you hate God, you still believe. I mean, by the way, demons and a devil believe, believe God, more than us, more than we do. And so, but I still believe something was there. But when Steve told me that, right, if this plan doesn't mean the need to do relationship, God, I'm not going to help you and not get help waste your time. I'm not going to waste mine. And what I had recognized in my life at that point is that everything had tried before didn't work. I had been through medication, counseling, had professional success in rebounding. Financial success was making good money.

All those things. Some of those things are good and some of those things are bad, but none of those things changed my situation. So it was kind of one of those moments like, what do I have to lose? And so I surrender my life to Christ through a leadership by him. But I'm a very, I'm a skeptic. You're a skeptic. I'm a skeptic of everything. What do you mean?

I don't just trust things on face value. day so you're a skeptic of what you surrounded yourself to? I'm a skeptic of everything that I make. If I'm exposed to something, I'm going to make a life decision. I want to know why I made the decision. I want to understand this decision. There's a lot of value in it, but I really want to understand why like I made this decision. I want to understand what it is. So I was really started, went into the study of apologetics. And that investigation of that really solidified my faith beyond a decision to a true belief and a true faith. And by really just, studying the gospel and the history of the of the gospel and really understanding it.

And so my faith became very strong. You saw the evidence of it. I saw the evidence of it. And I wanted to, I wanted to for myself. I'm going to look, if I'm going to commit my life to this, it's a pretty big decision, by the way, to commit your life to faith because it's not just what you live out. It's not like 24-7, everything is every decision you make should be. If you're a person of faith, every decision you make should be through the filter of that lens and that purview and that belief.

And so that's a big decision. And so you should, to me, if anybody's going to, and I challenge people with that because I know where you can land, right? If you pursue truth, you always going to land that Jesus because Jesus is truth. And so I just challenge people like, man, if you, if you're skeptic, then dig in. That's what I did. But what I discovered at the end of that first year of Steve, like, not just leading me in a decision, but disciplining me and mentoring me for a year.

It was pretty profound for me. Is it all these things that happened to me, as bad as those things were, my childhood, Afghanistan. I didn't end up in that situation with a pistol to my head because of those things. that happened to me. I ended up there because the choices that I made in response to those things. And I had never lost ability to make good choices. I was just making bad ones because they didn't have a blueprint ever in my life. No one had ever given me a blueprint to make good choices. And people say life doesn't come in our handbook. I disagree now. I think it does. We just don't read

it. It's the Bible. And what I discovered from that was like every problem I had it had in my life and every problem I will have in my life, the Bible had an answer to. And so what I learned to do was pause in my problems and pause in my hardships and my emotional responses and seek the response that I should live out. And it became very intentional and deliberate about that as a process of my life. And through that, I found restoration. I found hope. And ultimately, I found purpose. And that purpose for me, like really ended up in a deep burden of my heart to pay it forward to others. And that's why, like today, that's why I started my Eaukes Foundation and have the podcast and do all the things I do. Because I just really feel God burdened my heart to pay those

lessons that I learned through my life that resilient kind of lesson forward. And man, like, I don't know you follow. Like, I know you're just kind of getting introduced in Maddie Oaks Foundation. We've, we've, we've served over half a million warriors through residency programs. We have that 7,000 core graduates. We do like eight million dollars a year in free programming. And then all the humanitarian efforts in the last 10 years, we've raised like, I've raised like 100 million dollars in like both veterans care and humanitarian efforts. All because I, you know, Kathy's challenge like, you know, you're willing to quit or are you going to get back up?

get off your butt and get in a fight again, you know. That's so cool, man. So I'll always be great. Take a low moment and turn it into something beautiful like that. Yeah, yeah. It's a, I think we all could do that though, right? That's all, all of us could do that. We could choose to, you know, stay there and literally stay there and die or get up and move forward.

Damn right. And, uh, and, and, you know, not just for ourselves, but for the world around us. And that's what we're called to do. And so, yeah, so my faith has been. So you talk about those, that resiliency, like those pillars of mind, body, social spirit. Like at the one, put the jitsu did the first three in redemption, but I was missing that one piece that faith and my you know by my my surrendering to relationship with jesus and an understanding whether it was it how to live that out that brought all together to me and that's what

that's where i'm kind of at right now and and uh man i couldn't i couldn't be more blessed in my life like like i said it's it's you know unfortunate what's happened with my family but i couldn't be more blessed in my life to get to do the work i do and impact the people that i get to the work with the people i work with it's it's a pretty incredible life that's awesome man and chad i i have a lot more questions. Yeah. We can talk about this forever, but I already kept you 15 minutes past what I was supposed to. I know you got an event to go to in New York. So I do my book. I do want to get you out of here. But this was awesome, man. I really appreciate you having me on your show earlier. I really enjoyed that. And your story's great. And I think I think you picked the right word.

You're a very resilient guy, man. Yeah, it's the resilient show. And, you know, but yeah, tonight I'm going my book shadow, uh, Silent Horizons is a book one of a three book series with Tendale Publishing. It's a fiction, fiction book. My books had talked about earlier was saving Aziz, the Afghan Evax, Mission Without Borders, Ukraine, those are phenomenal. But if you like fiction, Solid Horizons, book one, and book two is coming out as a pre-sale right now. And we have a book three next year. Wow. But a book machine. Book, well, I love, I actually love writing. Book one, though, is a, it got nominated for the audio awards and as a finalist. And Ray Porter reads it, he reads a terminalist as well. Oh, very cool. And so tonight we're going to go. And hopefully

We'll get, we're here in New York, get, get, uh, get the audio award for. I hope you do, man. I hope you do, but I appreciate you fitting me in as well. Oh, yeah. And doing it. I want to come back when we do. So we're going to, we talked about it earlier, but shadow figures is the show I have coming out.

I can't say what network, but in a major network. I'd love to come, come back and talk about that. You're going to, you're going to, I'm going to see some clips of it. You'll totally dig it, man. I heard the concept. So I know I'm going to like it. But, Chad, thank you so much. Thank you, brother.

This is a pleasure. Everyone else, you know what it is. Give it a thought. Get back to me. Peace. What's up, guys? Thanks so much for watching the video. If you have not subscribed, please hit that subscribe button before you leave, as well as leaving the like on the video. It's a huge huge help. You can join my Patreon via the link in the description. And you can also join my clipping community via the Discord link down below. See you for the next episode.