REAL AF with Andy Frisella - 288. American Revival Part 3 Ft. Eric Greitens

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

In today's episode, Andy & DJ are joined in the studio by former Missouri Governor and Senatorial Candidate Eric Greitens. They talk about Eric’s story of how he got started with humanitarian public service, why individual accountability & personal excellence are the stepping stones for a prosperous America, and how to think critically to take better decisions for the future of your community and for the future of America.

What is up guys, it's Andy Frisella and this is the show for the real, let's say goodbye to the lies, the fakeness and delusions of modern society and welcome to motherfucking reality. Guys, today we have not CTI. Now, I thought you probably thought we were going to do really cool intro like we always do and you're going to laugh and think about how awesome we are, but not today. Today, we were going to do CTI, but one of my good buddies stopped in and I figured it's a good time to have a conversation.

So we're going to do that. But before I introduce our special guest, DJ, tell them about what we got going on here. Guys, this is our full length episode. Yeah. It's been a minute too, by the way. Yeah, it has. It has been a minute. But this is our full length where we bring on fucking cool people and we talk about winning.

We talk about fucking life. We talk about the world and about fucking life we talk about the world and just get an interesting perspective and i think you'll definitely get that today so and then there's a fee there's a fee there's a fee so if you did take something away from this episode all that we ask is you share the show we don't run ads we don't uh blog your mind up with ads and advertisements so uh if you learned something from the show if you got better if you laughed share the show that's the feast that better, if you laughed, share the show. That's the feast. That's it. Or you could cash happy.

Yeah. Cash happy. See how that works. All right. So welcome to the show. My good buddy, Eric Greitens. What's happening? What's going on, man?

How are you? It's good to be here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, you're welcome. You're swinging through the neighborhood today. And I figured it'd be a good time to bring them in. You know, last time we

were in, we got to talk about some issues, but we didn't really talk too much about, you know, your story and where you come from and why you want to do what you're going to do. So I figured that'd be a good thing to talk about. But I mean, what's going on with the campaign trail, man? Everything good? Things are really strong, really, really strong right now. I mean, what's going on with the campaign trail, man? Everything good? Things are really strong. Really, really strong right now. I mean, the 30-second update is that we continue to dominate the polls. We've got all the grassroots with us. People have seen through all of their lies and their nonsense, which was all disproven again. And if anything, people have said, hey, Eric has all the right friends.

He's got all the grassroots, true patriots, and we got all the right enemies. Yeah. George Soros hates us. We got Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell coming after us. We got the mainstream media attack, I guess. So, you know, patriots in Missouri are looking at this, and they're like, yeah, Eric's the guy. Yeah. He's the threat.

For those of you guys that are unfamiliar, Eric's a good buddy of mine. He's been a good buddy of mine for a long time. I can read his, we'll get into his story here in a second but he's the former governor of missouri he's currently running for uh united states senate um as a patriot you know uh i think one of the things that's important to remember uh here in america is you know we may not all agree on every single issue that there is, you know what I'm saying? But we need to be voting the best people in that are going to take on this corrupt government. And, and I think everybody at least from my observation over the

last couple of years, it seems like people are starting to wake up to what the actual issue is. They're not seeing it as just Democrat and Republican anymore. A hundred percent, man. Is that true? 100%. No, when we go out, we just did two rallies just the other day, okay, at both of them. This is people's assessment. The left, nuts. Okay, crazy. Critical race theory, open borders, defunding the police.

They see the nuts. Systematically dismantling our entire country. Dismantling, attacking, and trying to destroy the country. Then they look at the Republicans and they see corruption and cowardice. They see corruption and cowardice through the Republican Party. So we are at a transformative moment in the United States of America where people are coming up to me at events. Obviously, I'm a Republican, but they come up and they say, man, I don't know if I'm

really a Republican. I'm a patriot. I believe in freedom. I want to fight for this country. But they look at what the Uniparty has done. They look at what the establishment has done to this country, and they are disgusted by it. And the good news though is it like people of real courage real compassion and a lot of clarity people are seeing the truth now and they're not fooled anymore and they're stepping up and they're they're they're we're gonna take the country back i i think so too do you do you go ahead dj i was gonna say i mean i think it goes back to to just like and you talk about all the time just being authentic you know i'm saying so eric i met you in 2015 yeah is when we first met he came to the police academy and uh and like you

know at that time i've never really had like what side i was on and ever right like i was still under that old school mentality dude you're trying to figure it out you're a young man i was super young you know i'm saying and so but i remember when eric came in and there was just this this aura of just authentic genuine human yeah you know i'm saying like and you could sense that immediately and then and then i learned this he's pretty fucking fit guys i know you guys if you can't see him he's pretty fucking fit because he took us through a workout and shit um he's fucking fit yeah you know but but um you know but but i met this man and here's a guy you know you gotta think about it 2015 this is post mike brown right like we got the the the police environment was was wild

you know and so he comes in and talks to our class and you know to hear somebody tell us like hey i'm gonna have your back that was a big deal for us like it was a big deal for me you know so i didn't care if it was you know r or d i didn't care i i'm like damn we got support this man's running for governor great and then we actually i came to your inauguration too with care if it was, you know, R or D. I didn't care. I'm like, damn, we got support. This man's running for governor? Great. And then we actually, I came to your inauguration, too, with my class. It was pretty cool. You know, but like, I mean, I think that's really the important thing.

And I think that's what a lot of people are realizing, that that authentic, genuine, good human, that's who people are going to vote for. Do you feel like, do you feel like you're seeing that? Like in your family and friends and stuff? It's the same thing. The D and the R, it means nothing anymore. It really doesn't because there's so many gray lines and this gray mush that kind of like you said, you see it on both sides. So I think people, at least the ones that I talk to on a daily basis, they're done with that.

They're done with that two-party thing. They just want real humans. They want real people, authentic people that are genuine and that that act like you and you know that like you you can fake it people try to fake it all the time yeah right but we know what they sound like we know they look like people want real humans yeah i think like i mean eric you're you're a great representative of that well thanks brother yeah you know people can literally smell the fake yeah right and and you come in and you people see these career politicians. You literally look like mummies.

Yeah. They're masked. There's no compassion. There's no heart. There's no soul. Their heart is closed. Right. And normal, like regular people, they have an open heart.

They have curiosity. They're still willing to learn about the world. They care about people. They're still willing to learn about the world. They care about people. They want to connect to people. And what I have always found, and we can talk more about my story later, but in any endeavor, if you have an open heart and you're curious, and if you really care about people, you'll find ways to work with other people. You can find ways to solve things. What people are disgusted by in Washington, DC is that it's very clear. All of those people are up there to serve themselves. It's all about serving themselves. And so, yes, you've got the left's craziness and then you've got the Republican

party's corruption and cowardice and people are disgusted by it. They want authentic, real people. I mean, are you hearing that like face to face? 100%. Yeah. 100%. I think so too, man. You know, I think one of the best things that's happened, this is going to sound sort of counterintuitive, but sometimes for things to be appreciated, you got to lose them. And I think one of the best things that happened to our country, because I'm starting to see what's starting to form is that trump lost that election because dude shit has gotten really fucked up and and there's a lot of people who who before that happened um i was not even able to really have a conversation

because of my beliefs and their beliefs right people may be in my family right you know um and and dude i find myself having real conversations with people that i generally have disagreed with who have now come to the the understanding of holy shit our votes really matter and we have to like really discern who we put in there um regardless if we agree with every issue that they stand for or not. 100%. So you were with me when DJ was too, and we were shooting with Donald Trump Jr.

He said the same thing. He said, maybe this is what it took. Maybe this is what it took. Seeing Joe Biden and the Biden administration and this amazingly swift destruction of so many things that so many people in America- Intentional destruction. What was that? Intentional destruction. Intentional, intentional destruction, intentional attack to destroy our country

from our own government, from Joe Biden, and people have woken up now. And you know, and what, what's interesting is that everywhere you go, people are engaged. Yeah. And, and look, even kids who are 16, 17, 18 years old, they had to live through all of this Corona virus nonsense. They had to live through all the COVID tyranny where they couldn't play football games. And all of that nonsense has made everybody say you know what man we got it we got a gang game yeah i think it's like a near-death experience almost yeah you know i'm saying like like you you know exactly what the fuck that is like people that go through near-death experiences if you talk to them listen to how much more they appreciate life

hundred percent and so it turns the volume down on the shit that doesn't matter right like you were able to like one of the things that happened to me from from both those situations that i've talked about on the show um was it gave me an ability to turn the volume down and rank the the level of importance of shit that i actually cared about very quickly yes um And there's no shame in that. I think, and it's frustrating, like right now it's Roe v. Wade in the news everywhere, right? And everybody's talking about it and everybody's failing to understand that these are all narratives that they're pushing to the forefront to get us to argue. And we have to be able to discern, is this really the most important issue to what's

going on because in my opinion the most nobody really cares about rovery v way when they can't afford to fucking eat right you know what i'm saying or you have mass unrest or all of these things and so you know when when when you come close to like checking out bro you develop an ability to say, okay, these are my priorities. And I do care about this, but it's, it's here and it's not number one. And what I, what I see happening in America, man, which is really puzzling to me is that a lot of people, like whatever issue they're served up on the day becomes the number one issue like immediately today. And it's weird because like, I think-

It's like, let me change my hat real quick. Yeah, right. It would be like if I was in my office over there and every single issue that was brought to my attention was now number one priority. You can't operate like that. Well, and I think that's the key point is it goes to leadership, right? When you have a strong sense of leadership, where are we taking the country? What are the threats? What are the opportunities? Where are we going? Are we going to try and become energy independent again? What's our relationship like with our allies? What does it mean to be strong overseas? What does it mean to build a strong functioning economy? What does it mean to have

true freedom here at home? When you have strong leadership, then all of these other issues that come up, they can kind of fit into a larger framework. What's missing fundamentally right now is people don't see any leadership at all from Biden. And so anything that comes to the forefront, people start, oh, they're focused on this. They're focused on the Ukraine. They're focused on, and you kind of jump from headline to headline. And then of course you have the media,

which actually also wants to focus on skipping people's attention from this to this, to this, to this, to all the, get the new clicks instead of having, and that's why people listen to your podcast. It's why podcasts are taken off. People want intelligent conversation. They want to be able to call it intelligence. But, but people do, they want to be able to have a real conversation.

And obviously, the media is served by skipping from issue to issue. I mean, most journalists don't even read. They literally don't even read. And so the fact that people are going and searching for places where they can have conversation because they recognize this is a tough time. And if you're going to meet a tough time, you have to have depth. You have to have strength. You have to have wisdom, right? Not just knowledge, right? You actually have to have wisdom that's informed by experience. And clearly

we're bereft of that at the moment. So dude, let's get into, you know, why you want to do this, because like, this is you, I want you guys to understand like doing these jobs, like, like, and I'm not serving, I'm not, I'm not getting elected and going to work in public service. This shit is not fun. Like I would much rather come on here and talk about making money and cars and cool shit than come in here and, and, and try to discern the truth from people who are completely lying to us. And Eric, I'm sure, you know, there's plenty of other things that you enjoy to do. Right. So I would like to dig into, you know, like, dude, your background and what,

what got you to this point, you know, let's tell us it all started when you were six. That's what we want to hear. Yeah. Yeah. When I was six and first grade, but yeah, look, man, I mean, I, I, I grew up here in Missouri, right? My mom was a preschool teacher. She, she was an early childhood special education teacher. Um, and that I think helped me in terms of my love for, for kids and the work that I ended up doing in grad school, which I'll come to in a moment. Um, my dad was an accountant. He worked for the Department of Agriculture, but really like my dad's job was that he was a dad and he was a great dad. So both of my paternal grandparents fought in World War II.

My dad's dad died when my dad was six. And so my dad would tell you like, you know, he always wanted to have a dad and he did a great job. You know, he went, he went to work every single day and he came and he went, got up very early and he'd catch the bus or the carpool or whatever. He'd go to go to work and he'd come home and he was home early enough that we got home and he'd coach our teams. And he was just a fantastic dad. That was really his true job. And I was also fortunate. I got a fantastic education at Parkway North High School, at a public school, really, really good teachers. And I had great teachers from kindergarten all the way through high school. I had a great first boss, a guy named Roger Richardson hired

me when I was in third grade. What did he have you doing? So he was just having me do work around his lawn. So I actually remember, so Mrs. Richardson was my kindergarten teacher. And so then they lived actually around the block. So the very first day that I finished work, Mr. Richardson had said to me, hey, Eric, I'm leaving. When you're done, go get your check from Mrs. Richardson. And I thought, okay, cool. Like this is exciting.

I'm going to get a check. I'm going to get money, right? So, and I'd been hired at $3.25 an hour. So I walked up to Mrs. Richardson and I rang the doorbell and I told her I was all done and that Mr. Richardson said to come up and get the check. And she wrote me a check and I'd worked for two hours and she wrote me a check for $7. I said, Mrs. Richardson, I said, I only worked for two hours and Mr. Richardson told me he was going to pay me $3.25 an hour. So I should only be getting $6.50. And she says, Eric, I was your kindergarten teacher. I just gave you your first raise. Which is cool. But you know, like I was very, very

fortunate, right? I had Mr. Richardson as a boss. I had fantastic coaches. I had some really, really good teachers. And when I was graduating from high school, I was looking at a lot of different options. Now, Eric will not brag, okay? Eric's a Rhodes Scholar. Toot, toot. We'll toot them off our own.

I'll toot all the horns, okay? He's one of the smartest people I've ever met in my entire life. So when he's talking about his options, he had them a plethora of options. Well, thanks brother. So, so, but I was very fortunate. I got, I got a scholarship to Duke university. So I ended up going there and again, got a great education in the classroom, but perhaps the most important parts of my education actually happened outside of the classroom. First, I started boxing when I was at Duke. Now, my maternal grandfather had grown up in Chicago in the Depression. So he always talked about boxing and baseball.

People forget like 100 years ago, those are the two sports. There was boxing and baseball. That was it. And so he was always talking about boxing. I'd always been interested in boxing. So I ended up having this experience where I was studying philosophy, public policy studies, religion. And so I'd be studying Aristotle and I'd leave the classroom, get in my car, drive down into

the city of Durham, North Carolina, roll into this boxing gym. And I trained there every night. I trained there every night. I was the only white guy, only college student in the gym. And I had a fantastic training partner, a guy named Derek Humphrey, who was a pro fighter and a construction worker and Earl Blair. Earl Blair has passed on now, but he was so impactful in my life. I mean, I spent more time with Earl and Derek than I did with anybody else kind of growing up in college down there in that boxing gym. And it was really good, man. It was really good. I'd also, I'd never been outside of the country before. And Duke had this cool program where if you were a freshman and you'd never been out of the country before, you could apply for a grant to go study somewhere the summer after your freshman year. And I had an uncle who'd been to China. And I

literally like, I'm looking at the globe. I've never been, I've never been to Canada. I've never been to Mexico. I've I literally like, I'm looking at the globe. I've never been to Canada. I've never been to Mexico. I've never been anywhere. I'm looking at the globe. I'm figuring, well, if I'm going to go somewhere, I want to go as far as I can. And China's literally on the other side of the world. I had an uncle who'd been there. So I put in an application to study in China. And the summer after my freshman year, I ended up going to China. And now what I was studying at the time, this was 1993. So people forget this is the Cold War was just been won, just over. Tiananmen Square had happened.

The giant massacre had happened in Tiananmen Square just four years before. And so I show up, long story short, I ended up losing or kind of had all of my money stolen from me. And again, this is back in the day. You got to remind people, there's no cell phones, right? There's no ATMs. Like I was traveling with traveler's checks, right? Okay.

And so I have no money and I come to Beijing and one of my uncle's friends' friends picks me up at the train station and they said, how are you doing? What do you want to do? And I said, well, I mean, I hate to say it, like I'm here, I have no money. So they got me a job at a Chinese company helping them to take documents that a Chinese person had translated into English, but still had errors. And they were having me kind

of go through and do that. And then they said to me, they said, would you be willing to teach an English class? I said, cool. So in return, they gave me a spot in the worker's dormitory and they gave me food. And then I was going to teach an English class. And again, I'm 19. So this was a cool, cool adventure. I'm a baller again. Yeah. I got food and a place to stay. So the first day, what happens is, and I have no idea how to teach English, by the way. I've got no clue. And all these people are walking into the class the first afternoon, and some of them have fantastic English abilities. They're asking me the difference between like British and American pronunciations on stuff. Other people can barely say hello. So I figure, well, let's just have a free conversation and we'll see what happens. So I opened the class up for conversation and

questions. And the first question that people asked me was about freedom of speech. And then somebody asked me about the constitution and they asked me about freedom of speech. And then somebody asked me about the constitution and they asked me about freedom of assembly. Well, it turned out almost all of these young people, they were older than me at the time, but they were like somewhere between 23 and 27 years old. They had been at Tiananmen Square. And I was the first foreigner who they had talked with about their experience where they'd seen their friends shot, killed, murdered. They were probably wondering what the story was about it. What did people think?

Yeah. Yeah. And they'd heard about the Constitution and freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. So they started asking all these questions. And I thought this was great. This is cool. Everybody's engaged. So we're talking.

I'm answering these questions, talking about the constitution. And this goes on for about three days. And then it's the first Friday night. And we're at the workers' dormitory. It's like, I don't know, nine o'clock at night. And we're playing darts in the workers' dormitory. And then two Chinese police officers knock on the door. And so my friends open the door and they come in and they tell my

friends who then translate to me, they're like, you need to go to the police station to fill out some paperwork. And I said, listen, please tell the officers I appreciate the fact that they're here. I said, but it's Friday night. It's nine o'clock. I'm not going to go anywhere with them. If they'd like for me to, I'll come in the morning or I can come on Monday morning, but there's no need for me to go anywhere on Friday night at nine o'clock to a police station. So they translate this around and then it gets translated back. Game of telephone. Right, right, right. And my, and my friends look at me and they said, Mr. Erica, you are going to the police station now.

So I get in the police car and one of the friends who'd gotten me the job also gets in the police car and they take both of us to the police station and we're waiting there for about an hour. And then it's about 10 o'clock at night. They split us up and take us into an interrogation room. And I'm 19 years old. I'm walking in and I knew, I was like, all right, I'm 19. I'm an American citizen. Like I'm not worth it to them. They're not going to do anything to me. I wasn't really worried about myself, but I was very worried for my friends. Like what's going to happen? What's going to happen to them? And I sit down, there's one officer in uniform.

There's one officer in plain clothes. They've literally got a light bulb there and a cigarette laid out for me. I didn't smoke just like, and there's a cigarette laid out for me. I didn't smoke. So I'm, I'm, but I sit down and they start asking me these questions. Who got me the job? Who was asking about freedom of speech? Who was asking about the constitution, right? how come you were talking about the constitution who and they asked me all of

these questions and i was look i don't know i can't remember who was asking i was just doing my best etc you're trying to make sure nobody gets in trouble yeah i don't want i don't want anybody to get in trouble i don't want any of my friends that's why they brought you down there was probably because of the classroom stuff i had no idea yeah i had no idea when that's it yeah uh we're getting close to that here we are we are we are well this is the look what i what i used to tell people was like it gave me a tremendous appreciation for our freedoms that we have here in the united states of amer, that people couldn't be arbitrarily arrested and pulled in for saying what they think. But now here we are in the United

States of America, you say the wrong thing, you get canceled from social media, you say the wrong thing. A freaking domestic terrorist list. A domestic terrorist list. When we had a million people a month coming across the border. It's absolute insanity. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no worries. But yeah. So, so, so long story short, they, they, uh, uh, it gets to be about midnight and I say to the guys, look, I've answered all of your questions for two hours. Everything you've asked me, I've answered. I said, but there's really nothing else I can tell you. So it's midnight. If you want me to talk to you anymore, you need to call the American embassy because I'm not going to talk with you anymore.

And this guy says to me, he says, well, you see, we will only call the American embassy if to hit the Americans. And I didn't know what he was saying, like to hit the Americans. Like, is he threatening me that they're going to hit me? Like, what does he mean to hit the Americans? So I kept asking him some more questions and eventually it became clear that he was telling me, we'll only call the embassy if an American's been injured. Otherwise you're here, you're in China, you're in our country under our laws. You're going to stay here as long.

The last thing you want is for us to call the embassy. Right. Right. The, the, the, the, the, you're going to stay here. Does that mean something bad happened to you. Exactly. So they ended up, they took my passport. They sent me back. I obviously lost my job. And I came back the next Monday or Tuesday, and I had to pay a fine. At the time, foreigners used what they called foreign exchange certificates. You weren't allowed to use the normal Chinese money. So I paid a fine of, I think it was 50 FEC, which at the time was like nine bucks or something. But I also had to sign these papers written in Chinese that I was guilty of whatever they had said that I was guilty of. And then that was it.

So no more China? No more China. I hung out with a couple of friends and that was it. Off I went. But that was the first foreign country I ever went to. Yeah. And then I was very fortunate. When I was at school, the next summer, I actually went, you guys remember, there was all the ethnic cleansing that happened in Bosnia. I went the summer after my sophomore year to live and work in refugee camps with Bosnian refugees.

That's where he's from. Really? Where we're at? Okay. All right. Yeah. So I went over there. There were two refugee camps. One was near Pula, Croatia, and the other was near Osijek, Croatia. And those are two refugee camps with Bosnian refugees. And as people may know, we have the largest Bosnian community in the world outside of Bosnia is here in Missouri and specifically in St. Louis. And that was an incredible experience. I obviously had read all of this stuff on the news about what was happening with ethnic cleansing. And part of what motivated me to go was that I'm Jewish. I'd grown up hearing about the Holocaust, right? And we'd had all these Holocaust survivors

who had always come in. And one of the things that they always said was, you can't ever let this happen again. You can't let ethnic cleansing happen in Europe. And then all of a sudden, there I am in college and we're seeing ethnic cleansing happening in Europe. So I wanted to go, I was young, I was, you know, I thought compassionate, thoughtful, I wanted to lend a hand. So I went over and I did this work in these two refugee camps. And that was some of the most eye-opening work that I've ever done in my life. And the lessons from it, like stay with me till today, right? Helped me a lot when I helped wounded veterans later in my life. But like, you know, one of the things that I saw that was interesting,

when you think about what it's like being in a refugee camp, a lot of these folks had all lost their homes. Some of them have been separated from other family members. They're here in a place where the future is completely uncertain. There's no prospect of going back to your home in the next couple of weeks or months. You're hoping maybe years later, but then what's life going to be like? There's tremendous uncertainty. And one of the things that I observed was that it was really, really hard on everyone. But the people who are doing the best in the refugee camps were parents and grandparents who are in charge of really young kids because

they woke up every single day and they had a purpose. What was hurting everybody was the sense of purposelessness, right? Human beings can endure a tremendous amount of pain. They can endure a tremendous amount of hardship. They can endure a tremendous amount of chaos and uncertainty if you have a purpose, right? And so people of chaos and uncertainty if you have a purpose. And so people have said, if you have the right why, you can make it through anyhow. And one of the things that I observed in this situation was that the people who had that sense of purpose, it's just, we're going to keep our kids alive. We're going to take care of them. They were doing really well. Everybody else was an incredibly, incredibly difficult situation.

Man. That's crazy, dude difficult situation. Man. Yeah. That's crazy, dude. Yeah. It was wild. Most people here can't even imagine those kind of things. That's really part of the problem. Yeah. There's no real world experience.

Yeah. There wasn't 20-year-olds going over to- It's been so good here for so long that it's an embarrassment of riches. Yeah. It's made people completely take for granted what we have in most times yes that's the thing though that i mean that that's the magic of near-death experiences you know i'm saying like i don't believe we've lost our freedoms we're close we're extremely close right um and i won't say we we've lost our freedoms until they rip up the fucking constitution

you know but i think that like i've said it many times that what we're going through right now as a country is necessary i believe that it's necessary you know i'm saying like because that's the only way we're going to ever be able to get back on track to being grateful for the privileges that we all fucking have no matter how much money you got in your bank account we're all fucking privileged right yeah and i think this bullshit that we're going through it's it's fucking necessary. It's needed. I think it's overdue. What's true for human beings, I believe, when I'm reading of history, is also true of nations. And that is that pain presents a choice.

And pain can either make you weak and make you crumble, or pain is an opportunity. A wound is an opening. And if you walk through it, on the other side of that pain, you can get wiser. On the other side of suffering, you can get stronger. You deal with a tremendous amount of fear and you deal with it in the right way. On the other side of that, you build courage. And right now, we have an opportunity, every citizen in the country does. And America does either. We're going to succumb to leftist tyranny because look, some people in the face of pain, they curl up, right? Some people in the face of pain, they surrender.

Some people in the face of hardship and difficulty, they just kind of want it to stop. And they think that somehow if they close in on themselves, it's going to end. Other people say, you know what? How can I learn from this? How can I get stronger? How can I get better? And the fact is either we collapse or there's going to be a tremendous revival, a tremendous revival of spirit because they're working through fear. Okay. This is what they're doing right now. They work through fear. And I'll talk in a minute. The following summer, I worked in Rwanda, right? And you see in all of these situations with ethnic cleansing, with genocide, it's a small minority of people who work through fear. And because of the fear that they try to infuse by telling people like, we're going to take away your social media, we're going to take away your job. People think that if they just hunker down somehow, they're going to be safe. But the fact is, the more people hide, the more other people hide. Because cowardice is contagious and courage is contagious. So given the tremendous fear that the left has pushed,

we have a tremendous opportunity to build a more courageous, more wiser, a stronger, and also a more compassionate country. That opportunity is also in front of us if we have people who are willing to lead that way. So what happened after Bosnia? So the next summer I went to work in Rwanda. Um, so you guys will remember it was ethnic cleansing, um, in Rwanda and genocide between 800,000 to a million people.

People don't understand how fucking brutal that was, bro. There was like the main guy, you probably know who the main, the, the criminal guy, the guy who masterminded the genocide. Yeah.

Um, dude, he was buying like machetes by the ton and dropping the genocide. Yeah. Dude, he was buying like machetes by the ton and dropping them off. Yeah. It was, it was most of the kids. So 800,000 to a million people were killed. Most of the killing was done with machetes and most of it was done hand to hand. You know, when I, when I was there, uh, it isn't a very short amount of time that it's happened. Super short. It was like eight weeks, right? Yeah. Eight, eight, 10, 10 weeks. So many people were killed that the, the blood in the rivers actually was red. Yes. The water was red. Yeah. And, and you could still,

when I was there, you could go and you could see in the churches, piles of skeletons, piles of skeletons in the churches. I, I worked, so I did some work in Rwanda. I also worked in what was then Zaire and Goma Zaire and one of the refugee camps there. And I remember seeing kids, right, who'd been hacked, who had machete scars on their heads. Some of them, you know, had machete scars, others who'd lost limbs because they'd had a limb hacked off with the machete, but they had survived. And one of the big lessons that I learned in Rwanda also was how important it is to not just care and not just act, but also to be really wise and thoughtful about what you're doing. Because what I saw in Rwanda, unfortunately,

was a lot of very compassionate, well-intentioned people were actually hurting other people by the way they had responded. And the story is in Goma Zaire at the time, there were literally hundreds of thousands of refugees had poured over the border into Goma Zaire. And it's an incredibly chaotic situation. Goma Zaire is this kind of big volcanic plain, and they've got these makeshift refugee camps are set up. And there were all of these stories about unaccompanied children, children who'd been orphaned, children who'd been separated from their parents. So the international aid community came in, and what they did was they set up centers for unaccompanied kids. So they set up these kind of like miniature orphanages where

kids could get food, they could get clothing, they could get shelter, all this stuff. Well, you think about this, families are over there. They're desperate. They're trying to feed themselves. They're trying to feed their kids. Maybe they have a nephew, they've got a cousin, they've got their neighbor's kids. They're all trying to take care of each other. Well, in this situation where the unaccompanied children's centers were very well-resourced, everybody starts sending their kids there. Okay. Now, historically, when you look at the research from almost every emergency and war, truly

unaccompanied kids, truly orphaned children are extraordinarily rare. Because I know that if something happened to me, like my parents would take care of my boys or my friends would take care of my boys, it's very rare for kids to truly end up on their own. But the UNICEF was putting out statistics saying that there were between 300,000 and 400,000 unaccompanied children in Goma Zaire. Because what had happened was they set up these situations where desperate people sent their kids. And instead of providing aid to the families themselves, they set up these orphanages

and then everyone starts sending their kids to the orphanages. Because they thought it would be better. Better than what they could provide. It was. It was better than what they could provide. But rather than actually supporting the families themselves, they set this up. And then you've got this really negative cycle where the media comes and they want to take

pictures of orphaned children because it pulls on the heartstrings. So they take pictures of this and then more money comes and it works for the aid organizations. You've got volunteers who are coming, the media comes and you get this cycle. Well, what actually happened was because of that response, you had hundreds of thousands of kids who were then pulled away from their parents. And in those situations, you have some incredibly compassionate people who are working there. You also get pedophiles. You also get people who take advantage of kids you also get people who sell kids and then so because these kids sort of track like anything even here and this is a point i want to make because it's important because it's a big deal right now

but these predators they seek out these areas where there's a a large amount of children yes so you should always be careful. Like when you look at teachers or when you look at coaches or when you look at where kids gather, because that's where the predators gather too. And that's what was, and that was what was happening in Goma Zaire. So you ended up having this situation where the aid response, which was well-intentioned, ended up creating a situation because they weren't really paying attention to the dynamics on the ground where a lot of kids were abused, taken advantage of, separated from their parents permanently because of the aid response instead of providing aid directly to the families who

were over there. And that was one of the things that I did when I was there was help the folks who were doing this. All the credit goes to them, but it was just to understand the actual dynamics on the ground there. And man, it was, again, at that point, I'm 21 doing that work in Rwanda. And after doing the work in Bosnia, doing the work in Rwanda, I knew that I wanted to find a way

to focus on kids in war zones. So I ended up, you know, I later, I worked with children of the street in Bolivia. I worked in an orphanage in Albania and did some work in one of Mother Teresa's homes for destitute and dying with kids in Varanasi, India. And in all of those situations, my focus was on trying to understand how the international aid community can do better work. And that's what I ended up writing my dissertation on, was how I looked at the history of international humanitarian efforts and trying to figure out what really worked if you wanted to help kids in some of the world's most difficult circumstances. That's crazy. That is a lot of life experience for someone who's 21.

21 years old. Yeah. I was very, very fortunate because it exposed me very early also, we were talking about this earlier, to what matters. Yeah. Real problems. Real problems. And it also gave me a very real sense. I worked with kids in Cambodia who'd lost limbs to landmines, right? And you're in Albania in an orphanage. And it sounds simplistic or simple, but the sense of gratitude. Very, very hard to get upset with your life. You spend a lot of time working with kids who've lost limbs to landmines in Cambodia, right? And you come back and it just gives you a very, very solid perspective. And all of that ultimately was tremendously valuable to me when I later wanted to help my fellow veterans who were dealing with alcoholism, suicide, who'd lost limbs, et cetera, in that same situation of despair.

But what you realize is that all of these human situations, though they have different manifestations, it's ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, genocide in Rwanda, orphans in Albania, et cetera. The, what human beings need fundamentally is almost all the same in any of these situations. And if you can find ways to help people live with a sense of purpose and you can do it with some real thoughtful, wise compassion, then you can make a real difference. Well, it's needed, man. I think if more people had real experiences like that, we'd probably have a pretty different landscape here at home. We'd have a totally different landscape and we'd have to even think about knowledge differently. One of the things that's interesting is the Greeks had this word called phronesis.

And phronesis basically means our closest translation is practical wisdom, right? And where do you get practical wisdom from? You don't get it from a book. You can read and that can inform things, but there is certain wisdom that only comes from having had experience. And the Greeks also talked about how you need to have the hardest experiences teach you the most, right? And that's true in anything, right? If you want to be a great athlete, like you got to have some, you got to have some intense experiences. You want to be a

great entrepreneur, like you got to take some knocks. Like the intense experiences are actually a tremendous gift. And so, yeah, I was very fortunate because in all of these situations, I was working with and learning from people who are in some of the world's most difficult circumstances. Dude, I would be okay with tax money going. Like, I mean, listen, this might be a little socialism coming out of DJ. I don't know. Right. But I would be okay with tax dollars going into these public colleges and universities that did the same exact thing like okay hey you're you're a freshman you've

never been outside the country here like i would personally be okay funding that you know i'm saying like that is so fucking well dj i mean the truth of the matter is as we covered last time when eric was on is that if these people would spend our tax money properly and not steal it we would be able to do those things very effectively. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And you think about the experiences that come for young people who joined the Peace Corps or who joined the US military, right? What's happening in both of those situations? They're getting a tough experience. They're getting something hard, right? And, or, right? Somebody who goes even here inside the United States of America and confronts a tough problem, like trying to, trying to help a homeless veteran get out of homeless.

That's a really tough problem. Trying to help a third grader who can't read, learn how to read. That's a really tough problem. And one of the things that you find, one of the reasons why politicians so often fail is that they don't understand what it takes to change one life. So if you want to change thousands of lives, if you want to change tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of lives, prove to us that you can change one. Yeah. Because if you can really change one life, you actually understand how complex it is. You understand how complicated it is. You also understand that it's very possible if you put the right, the right structure in place.

But we have so few people in public life who've ever done anything like that. Dude, they don't even put themselves through hard shit. Look at them. They look like shit, right? Okay. They're unhealthy. They don't train. They don't know what it's like to exercise.

They don't look. They've never had to be selfless. Look, Eric's figured out clearly what he's telling us is that at a very young age, he figured out that it's a good thing to put yourself through hard circumstances because it produces skills. Okay. And we have an entire government of people who live the easy life. I mean, we can, you can look, I don't care what anybody says, you can literally look at them and tell that they're doing the easiest possible path for themselves. Okay. So that's that, that tells you anything about how they, how they're able to

actually navigate life, you know, and people disagree and they say, Oh, well, that's, that's against fat Dubrov. I used to be that guy. I was the 350 pound guy. Like I know what it's like. I know what it's like to be a wealthy 350 pound guy. It's very unfulfilling, you know, and to be completely honest, um, this guy now who I am now could run circles around that guy. And, and dude, it just matters to understand what you're talking about yeah and you have to this is the other thing people take their cues from these people man yes society takes their cue they idolize these people bro when you look back on some of the greatest presidents of our uh the most loved presidents that we've ever had they demanded more of the individual. They asked for more from the

individual. One of the most famous quotes of all time is from John F. Kennedy. Ask not what the country can do for you, but what you could do for your country. And that starts at home. It starts with your personal discipline. It starts with the way you live your life. That's what he's talking about. He's talking about the ripple effect of greatness in one's own life. And we used to have politicians that were basically motivational speakers. They would get up there and they would explain to people, hey, America's only as great as you are individually. And that's the truth. And they had done it. Yeah, they had done it. They had done it. And that's a big, big difference. It's the number one rule of leadership. I'm not going to ask you to do anything that I'm not willing to do.

And I often, you know, I point out to people, you know, and I'll say, do you know where the foremost hated men in America are? St. Louis. Well, maybe right here. Right here. Maybe right here. Maybe right here. But the foremost hated men in America are on Mount Rushmore.

Yeah. That's where they're at. That's where they're at. And if you really think about it, and this is why good biographies are so, so valuable. You really read about George Washington, okay? And we have this story, the kid who chopped down the cherry tree, et cetera. He was an officer in the British military. And then he leads a rebellion and a revolution that was not popular here in the United States of America among vast numbers of the population. He's got a price on his head from the largest military superpower in the history of the world. He was one of the most hated figures in the history of the United States of America, and he was George Washington. Now, he was second, of course, to Abraham Lincoln, right? But you think about the

fact is they were willing to risk, they were willing to sacrifice, they were willing to endure, right? Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was also, people forget, you know, this is a kid who grew up, who, you know, was short-sighted, decided to box, decided to test himself, had some tragedy early in his life when his mom and his young wife both died. And then he goes out West, right? And he hardens himself. He hardens himself out West. And then he comes back and he

takes on the political establishment. They took on Tammany Hall. He took on all of the corruption. They hated him so much in New York that they kicked him out of Albany and sent him up to be vice president, right? That's how much they hated him. And obviously the whole country changed, right? When he became president. But my is is that they were willing to ask other people to do hard things and they never stopped doing those hard things themselves that's right they never stopped it's real leadership yeah it's real leadership can i ask you this so so you've served other people you've been around the world right you served our country right abroad right when did the when did the idea come like hey i i there's some issues that i see in our government structure i want to go make these changes here now it's time to serve this when did like what

did that conversation look like for you like the shift into like public elected yeah so so the short story there is you know so after so i I finished at Oxford, I finished my PhD and then I went to- How'd you end up at Oxford? I was like, you can't just blow past that. So that's where, so I went as a Rhodes Scholar. So I did Duke and then when I graduated from there, I went to Oxford and I spent four years there. Great years. I was on the boxing team, had a ton of fun there and continued to do this, this international humanitarian work, wrote my dissertation.

And then when I finished, I was 26 and then I joined the Navy. So I was an old man when I joined the Navy. Can I ask you something? So it sounds like you had that realization of challenging yourself pretty early, like 20, 21, 22 from these world experiences. Is that, is that why you pursued the Oxford and the Navy SEAL thing? I think, I mean, look, part of the Navy SEAL thing was that I was 26 years old. And part of the philosophy was, I also realized in all of these situations in Bosnia and Rwanda, you look at the Holocaust, right? If you really wanted to save people, it wasn't enough to have compassion, right? What put an end to ethnic cleansing and

genocide in the Holocaust was people with guns. People who were willing to put it to an end. That's what actually put it to an end. So that was philosophically part of what moved me to military service, but also like I'd watched Top Gun and I'd watched Rambo and I was 26 and I wanted to blow stuff up. Right. And my, and my grandfather had served in the Navy. And so it, and you know, what the attraction of the SEAL teams was, was it, you know, buds hell week was the hardest military training in the world. And I figured, all right, if I'm going to do it, like I'm going to go and do the hardest thing. And so I left, uh, I was, you know, 26 and you show up and after officer candidate school, I show up out at Bud's and like at 26, you're with lots of like 18 and 19 year olds, right? You're like an old dude, right? Compared, compared to a lot of these guys. There was one guy, there was one guy who was, who'd been a Marine and he came over, he was trying to be a SEAL. He was 30 years old. Okay. And he seemed ancient and everybody called him old man, Johnston. That's crazy. Right. Cause he was, he was 30 years old. I look at 30. I'm like, these kids are young. Right. Yeah. Right.

Okay. So he was old man, Johnston, who was 30 years old, but that was, you know, that was, that was an incredible transition, you know, so I came back and, you know, in some ways, so I had spent four years at Oxford and I'd done all this international humanitarian work. When I came back into the military, it was also like a reintroduction to America. And it was at the time, the best possible reintroduction to America, right? And I challenge anyone still to this day, you go to the deck of an aircraft carrier, you go to Marine Corps boot camp and you see 18, 19, 20 year olds from all over the country, from every conceivable background, all coming together, all willing to die for our country, all willing to put

the flag on and go out and serve. And it is, and was an incredibly inspiring thing. That's awesome. And, and it was, it was, it was a ton of fun, man. So yeah, we went through Hell Week. We went through all the training. We, you know, one story I often share with people was I learned a lot about mental strength as well

going through the training. So I'd seen, you know, physical strength, like I'd been a boxer, I'd done a lot of that stuff. You obviously saw a lot of emotional and spiritual strength in a lot of these places in refugee camps. I didn't realize going in how much mental strength went into getting through Hell Week, right? And went in through the training. So, you know, in our class, for example, we started with over 220 people in the original class. By the time we graduated, we're down to 21. Yeah. And everybody's a stud. They're all

still, yeah. Everybody who shows up is a stud. Everybody who shows up is a, is a, is a stud. And I remember, uh, people, a lot of people know if you're going to quit during the training, you go and you ring a bell. Okay. And I remember the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world is buds. Right. And I remember the hardest moment of the hardest week and the hardest moment of the hardest week came during the second night. So what happens is like, they come in and they wake you up at the beginning of the first night and they've got, you know, smoke grenades going off and artillery simulators and they're firing in the air and you're doing a bunch of pushups and sit-ups and they got hoses in your face and it's kind of a party, right? Like you're having a good time.

It's cool. You're a couple hours in. You're like, man, here we are. Like we're in hell week. You got your boat crew together and everybody's tough, right? So you're a couple hours, like couple hours in and then you go all the way through the first night. Man, that was tough, but we made it. We made it through the first night. Okay, good to go. And then it's the first morning, the sun comes up. All right, cool.

This is our next first day. It's our full day. And you go all the way through the full day, but now you're exhausted, right? Now you've been crushing it for over 24 hours. And what they did at the beginning of the second night is that they lined us up all on the sand berm to watch as the sun is going down. And it's the beginning of the second night. And

so the end of hell week isn't close. Right. You're exhausted. You've been up for 24 hours and you're not just up. Like you're doing four mile timed runs in soft sand. You're running the obstacle course everywhere you go. You're running around with a boat on your head. You're doing four mile timed runs in soft sand. You're running the obstacle course. Everywhere you go, you're running around with a boat on your head. You're doing physical training with logs. You are completely spent and you haven't even started. So then they lined everybody up on the beach to watch as the sun is going down. And the instructors came out and they knew exactly what they're doing. They've got their bullhorns out. They said, say goodnight to the sun, gentlemen. And we're watching the sun go down. I'm like, tonight is going to be a very, very, very long night.

And we're watching the sun go down. And they're like, you are only at the very beginning of Hell Week. And people are watching the sun go down and the stuff is getting in their head and thinking, man, this is tough. And keep in mind, up to this point, they've done crazy stuff to us. They've tied our feet together and our hands behind our back. They've thrown us in the pool. You have to go down 50 feet, tie a knot and come back up. All these guys who were there, they've already accomplished incredible things to be at this second night. And we're watching the sun go down and then they just

keep on it. And they're like, hey, if you guys want to quit right now, the bell is right here. This is the only the beginning of the second night. So everybody's watching this go down. And then you hear like one ding, somebody quits. And then somebody else runs and they quit. And then another person runs and they quit. It's contagious. More people quit our class at that moment than quit at any other time in all of the SEAL team training. Now, here's what was amazing about that.

You know, they'd have you to do all these incredible things, right? Two mile ocean swims every week, four mile runs in soft sand, obstacle course, tie your hands behind your back, your feet behind you, all this. Who would have thought that the hardest moment of the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world would come when all they had actually asked us to do was to stand on the beach and watch the sunset. But that's all we had to do at that moment. All we had to do was stand on the beach and watch the sunset. But it was people's minds that got to them. And what you saw and learned was that a lot of times, certainly to make it through the

training, and a lot of times to make it through life, like all you got to do is just stay in the game. You just put one foot in front of the other. And when it looks so bleak, when it looks so hard, you just got to stay in the game. And, you know, later I would, I would work with a lot of returning veterans, some of whom were contemplating suicide or had dealt with folks who, who, who thought, thought about suicide. And they're at places of incredible, scratching, deep, awful pain in their lives. And it won't stop. And they wake up every day and it's hard and it's harsh and there's no prospects in front of them. And there's no

hope. They're not seeing any light. And it's been that way, not for just days or weeks, but for months, some of them for years. And they're trying to think about like, how do I get out of this? How do I end this? And what I would often say, we would all say is like, you just got to stay in the game. Just got to stay in the game. You just got to put one foot in front of the other.

And it doesn't have to be pretty, right? You can be limping. You can be cut. It can be difficult. It can be hard, but you got to stay in the game. And that was one of the big lessons from the SEAL team training was, yeah, you need to have your emotional strength and your spiritual strength. You need to have your physical strength, but also really learning how to control and use the mind in very difficult circumstances was, was probably even more pronounced than any physical thing that we learned. Dude. I, I think that that's the

ultimate secret to life. Like in general, like duty, it's hard. Yes. Like people think, you know, it's weird, man. People think it's just a story we tell ourselves when we're down, right? Like we tell ourselves, we're down right like we tell ourselves oh man they got it so much easier bro every single person that you that you talk to on a daily basis from the the clerk at the gas station to the people at your job to the to the ceo of your company to your wife or your husband or any bro everybody's got it hard everybody has a heart you just don't understand their perspective because you're living in a different set of shoes and it's one of the reasons why you should always

when you can lead with compassion yeah everybody's struggling everybody is struggling and one of again you know for me when i was doing this work with veterans or I was talking with other audiences about like pain and hardship and difficulty, you know, I'd finish speeches and everybody comes up and they've got a son who's addicted to drugs or they just found out that one of their kids was diagnosed with an illness or they just lost their husband. Like everybody struggles. Everybody, it is hard. And part of, you know, the great failure of not only the political class, but also of the kind

of consumer culture is the idea that you can sell somebody an easy life. That if you just go and buy a few things, that somehow everything's going to be right. And it just doesn't work that way. Life is going to be hard. And especially, especially if you try to live a meaningful life, especially if you try to live a purposeful life, especially if you try to achieve things, it's going to bring hardship. And it's actually in, it's in that pursuit that you find joy. Absolutely. Absolutely. I, I have a,

I have a thing that I talk about on the show, uh, discipline plus gratitude equals happiness. You know what I'm saying? You know, if you're exercising your, your, if you're putting yourself through hard things and making the right choices, you're investing in the confidence and the belief, um, in, in everything that we think about ourselves. And then also taking a moment and saying, man, I am, I'm blessed to be able to go through this because it's still way, way, way easier than what a lot of people have. And if you can always think about those two things together, um, and then you tie it with purpose. Yes. Okay. And you tie discipline and gratitude and purpose together. now you have fulfillment and happiness and it's weird because

people tie laziness and and basically inactivity and easy with being happy you know and we're we're we have that that image of happiness marketed to us 100 percent think of a corona commercial man like oh i'm hanging on the beach with Snoop Dogg. Like, this is happy. Yeah, that's cool for a day. It might be cool for a week. But what about that next week? And definitely that third or fourth week, you're going to be really hating life, you know?

And I think it's such an important thing for people to grasp because what Eric just did was laid out that entire formula through his life story. You know, he's talking about discipline. He's talking about pushing himself to do hard things. He's talking about gratitude, you know, observing through his own eyes, uh, the world's most horrific scenes. Um, and then having a purpose, which is what you're working on now, which is cool, man. For sure. And one of the things that's really interesting about American life is that we have a real poverty of language, even around purpose, right? So the Greeks had a word called eudaimonia, right? Which basically the closest English equivalent is flourishing.

And what it really meant was that that's the life you wanted to live. We have this word happiness, which as you said, people often associate with like watching the game on Sunday. Like that can be fun, but like, would you want to do that? Every single day, like is a firework show cool? Yeah, it's cool for 30 minutes, like once a year, but like that's not life. And there's this great book called The Greek Way. It's written by Edith Hamilton. And she really gets at the Greek understanding of the tragic nature of life.

And we can talk about what that means, the tragic nature of life. But she talks about how the Greeks understood that flourishing was the exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope, right? And what that meant, what that meant was it like, all right, I'm exercising my vital powers. I'm doing things that feel to me like I am growing, right? Because again, like happiness is growth. When people are growing and they're learning, they feel happy. They feel engaged. And then along lines of excellence, like you're not just doing stuff, you're doing it well. Yeah. You're getting better at things. You're acquiring skills. You're becoming more masterful. And whether you are, you know, writing poetry, building a business, working as an architect, learning how to teach, like you're doing things better. And then she talks about how in a life affording them scope mean that like you have the space to do these things.

And what the Greeks also understood was that there are certain material conditions which are essential to be able to exercise those vital powers. It's hard for somebody to exercise vital powers along lines of excellence when they're starving. So they also understood that part of the idea of having a public community was that you made sure that everyone could contribute. And that meant that you had to have a life that afforded them scope. But the big picture point is that like, they had a very, a concept of flourishing that we don't even have. Like we don't even have the language around this, right? So that, so that we, we come up with our formulation, formulations like gratitude and discipline and, and, and, and, but, but, but it's, it, what's striking is that as a culture, America, Americans don't have that kind of common understanding.

Dude, my opinion of that, you know, and you and I have talked about this up and down and sideways for years, but my opinion of that is they push that kind of anti-fulfillment lifestyle anti-happiness lifestyle to quell the resistance that they may face to whatever they decide they want to do right if you have a less fit unhealthy um sick poor uh struggling to survive and struggling to be happy because let's be real, dude, we have a mental health epidemic. It's not made up. It's definitely glorified and pushed through victim culture. I think there's a lot of people that think that they have mental illness when in reality, they're just not living their life in any structured sort of way with any purpose. But look, man, we're not meant to live like that. We're meant to achieve. We're

meant to build. We're meant to go through experiences and develop skill sets and look back and say, fuck, dude, I'm proud of myself for going through that. And like, dude, we live in this culture where like, even for me with the Live Hard program and 75 Hard, which has a billion hashtags on TikTok, over a billion. I get criticized because I'm trying to make people better. So why is the mainstream media criticizing me for giving out a free program to help people get better in the exact things we're talking about? What does that tell you guys? You should be able to draw that conclusion. They want you to be weak as possible. And there's always been, I think we talked about last time, like Teddy Roosevelt, right? It's not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled

or how the doer of deeds might've done them better. We have in the United States, and it's most embodied in the culture of journalism, right? You have people who are constant critics, right? And who lives their life? Can you imagine waking up every day thinking, my job today is to write something nasty about somebody else? But that's who they are. And that's what they've done. Yeah, but dude, that's the thing though. It's a culture. And what we're talking about, what America really needs, and we need it it now is a cultural revival and reform.

Yes. People think that they're going to elect a politician. And look, dude, there's a lot of great people running. Eric's my favorite by a lot. And Ian Smith, those two guys, I'm behind. Okay. You know, but the point is, there's a lot of people out there that are, that are good leaders, but even they cannot come and put their hands on you and fix your

whole entire existence. And we, and I think we have this thing going on in the side of the, yes, in the country where a lot of people think that their happiness and their success and their, their ultimate fulfillment in life is going to be dictated by some person that they do or do not vote for. Listen, America's only great if we're great. Yes. America's only great if the individual is great. And the problem that America has right now is that we don't have enough individuals chasing to be great. That's my opinion. 100%. And that's why this culture, which is dominated by the critics, it's dominated by the leftists. One of the things that's obvious about all critics is that they don't love themselves, so they can't love things in other

people. And so that's why you see all these folks like they hate the country. They also, most of them don't like themselves. Okay. Very, very, very unhappy people. We should be led by people who have found a way to joy, right? And what does that mean? That doesn't mean ease. It doesn't mean that things are handed to you. It means that you find ways to do hard and good and purposeful things. And man, it works. I'm telling you, we work with so many veterans in so many tough situations, okay? And these are folks who'd proudly served the country, right? And they come back. Maybe they've lost a limb.

They're dealing with PTSD. They've lost some of their hearing, some of their eyesight. And some of them end up in places where they'd pass a month without talking to another human being. They end up homeless, dealing with drug issues, all this stuff. Usually that comes from their own, they don't want to be a burden. They don't want to be a burden. But here's what also happens is the culture says to them, okay, now you're a charity case. Yeah.

So think about this. So it almost self-perpetuates the cycle. And you're getting all this feedback. So we can talk about what happens to veterans, and I'll use that as a segue into the larger point about what we have to do culturally. Because here's what happens to veterans. But the truth is, this is a human story. It happens to a lot of people. Some hard happen. All right. So dude's a E5, United States Marine. Okay. He's over there. He's in Afghanistan. He's leading, he's hard charging. He's got, got the flag on his shoulder. He's a, he's a Marine.

He's a leader of Marines. And then all of a sudden he's injured he comes back home and what happens is that other people come to him and they say hey do you want a free gift basket do you want a blanket do you want a free fishing trip do you want this they start treating him like a charity case his whole life he's a badass he's been pushing he's been driving he was serving other people and now other people are looking at him like he's a charity case. And he starts to think, well, I'm not a charity case. And then, so that's happening culturally. Then you get a government system where the government says, hey, here's a VA disability check. I was a United States Marine.

I wasn't making a lot of money. And I might have been using it on some things that I shouldn't have used it on. But I was living. I was living. I was living a real life, right? And then what happens is they think to themselves, okay, well, you know what? There's still a hard charger. All I'm going to do, I'm going to take this disability check for a while while I get my stuff together, right? And then they're on disability. And then a buddy comes up to him

and says, hey man, you know, you can also get food stamps while you're doing this. And they think food stamps, like I'm not going to be on food stamps, but welfare case. Yeah. Right. But they think, okay, but maybe, maybe for a little while, no harm in it while I dig out. And especially if they have kids or they got somebody else who's depending on them. Okay. Well, I'll take this. And then somebody comes and says, well, you know, like you can also get some welfare payment and you can also get some like some housing vouchers, et cetera. So then all of a sudden they're in this situation where they add up their disability pay and they add up the food stamps and you add up the housing vouchers and they're looking at

them, I'm making 50, 60 grand a year and they're not working. Yeah. And it's more than what they were making before. And so then what happens, and they're still not mentally, they're still not thinking to themselves. I'm, I'm a welfare recipient. They're still not thinking to themselves. Like I'm, I'm, they're still thinking I'm going to get out, but then they get offered a job and they do the math and like, you know what? Like if I take this job and I lose all these other benefits, I'm only going to make a couple thousand more and I got to work full time and I don't love the prospect of the job. So I'm going

to wait. And then they've waited two or three years and then it becomes even harder to hire somebody. And so what ends up happening in life is that once in the US government kind of system is that all of these things, again, well-intentioned, some of them, right? Well-intentioned actually trap people in a situation where they're no longer having to achieve. They're no longer having to drive. And for us, we'd work with some of these men and women. And you know what the best thing is for them mentally, emotionally for, and I'll tell you this to anybody right now who is feeling depressed, exercise.

Yeah. Exercise. Right now. Right now. Like go out for 60 minutes. Hit pause. Hit pause. Go out right now and crush it.

And go do a 60-minute brisk walk, dude. Sweat. You don't even have to run or anything. And then come back and listen to the show. And I bet you any amount of money, you feel better. 100%. And there's all of this scientific evidence that the long-term effects of exercise stay with people in terms of their improvements in mental health as compared to medicine, which can have a short-term effect, but doesn't actually help people in the long-term. So you go out and you

exercise. And what we did at The Mission Continues know, the short story there is I came back after my team was hit by a suicide truck bomb. All right. I was very fortunate. My wounds were minor, a bunch of other dudes hurt far worse than I was. And what I saw of this at Bethesda, not Naval hospital, all these capable people who are suddenly being offered charity. And I, and based on what I'd seen in Bosnia and Rwanda and Cambodia and Albania, this is not going to work. So what we did at The Mission Continues was I put in my combat pay, two friends put in money from their disability checks, and we used that to start an organization where we gave fellowships to returning wounded veterans so that they could serve again.

We put them to work at Habitat for Humanity, at Big Brothers Big Sisters, at a Boys and Girls Club. And you know what? They start exercising and then they show up and they thought they didn't have a purpose. And then the next day, they've got a bunch of seventh and eighth graders who are waiting on coach to show up. They need to get out of bed.

They need to be there on time. They've got volunteers coming into Habitat for Humanity because they're going to build a home for a homeless veteran and they're working overtime and they're making it happen. It's awesome. Then what happens is that as you build that sense of purpose, right? And again, for anybody who's struggling right now, I just say to you, just take one step. Yeah. Just got to show up.

Don't quit today, man. Volunteer. Go help somebody else. There's somebody else who's in a tougher situation than you are right now. So you go out and you help them. And then what happens is that as they would help other people, they'd rebuild their own sense of purpose. And they think, you know what? I need to start my own business. I always had that dream. But now I know what I want to go back to school for. I'm going to go back to school. And is the act of actually serving other people help them to rekindle that sense, that sense of purpose? And, you know, this is part of, you know, what we need to do to get to your

point. Culturally, all of that was a challenge. The original kind of tagline at The Mission Continues was, it's not a charity, it's a challenge. We're not offering you charity. We're offering you a challenge because what you'll find is if people don't care about you, they will offer you an excuse. If people love you, they will offer you a challenge. That's right, dude. Kindness, kindness is true. You know, people talk about kindness.

You talk about kindness a lot and everybody's talking and by the way eric's one of the most kind individuals one of the things i like about you the best bro and i've never told you this before but it's the truth is i've seen eric with literally hundreds of strangers uh over the course of my knowing him uh maybe thousands okay and every single person that he comes up with that that talks to him he's present it's real it's not it's what you said it's what you said at the beginning of the show it's one of the things i appreciate the most about you bro because you've lived an incredible life so far and it's very evident that you care that other people do as well in their own way yes and i

think that's i mean dude we have to have that in our leadership. Yes. You know, we have to have people that are encouraging people to fulfill their own potential. Yes. Because dude, in America, man, you know, what's made America great guys for so long and everybody can agree, right? We have our black eyes. We have our things that we've had to overcome, right? Where we started from and where we are is incredible. When you think about the time that we've been here. Yeah. Okay. It's amazing.

We're, you know, you talk, people talk about progressive. We're the only society that's ever existed in the history of humanity where different cultures come adopt a new culture that everybody is tolerant of everybody else and works together to win that. That does not happen in other it's never happened it is a miracle yeah it is a miracle and it has to be preserved yes it's weird man i think if people had a little more perspective of of history you know and they don't let us know history anymore they're not teaching these kids the right history they're teaching them their

history dude whatever they want yeah whatever they know and then they'll sell it to you but we could get on that on we go down that rabbit hole all day but i mean but you know again it's true it's a it's a it's an important point though because in the same way it's important the story that you tell yourself so the human mind is narrative okay we think in terms of stories right if we If we right now, you know, if I said to you or DJ, you guys said to me like three or four facts, I might forget them by tomorrow. Right. But DJ tells me a cool story, right? I'm going to remember that for 30 years. Okay. The human mind's narrative are our stories guide us. And one of the things that's important, what we did

with veterans, what we have to do as a country, you got to think about your own story, okay? So is the story, I was hit by an RPG, I lost my arm and after that, I'm a charity case and I'm worthless or I was hit by an RPG, I lost my arm. It was tragic. I mourned, I suffered, I went through hell and you know what?

On the other side of that, I found these tremendous gifts that other people were suffering also. And when they saw me and they saw me working, they said to themselves, like, oh man, like I have a lot to be grateful for. When they saw what I had done, when I decided after my PTSD, whatever, I'm going to own my own, build my own business. I inspired other people. And this thing that looked so painful actually turned into a great gift. Not only the great gift, it becomes the greatest gift of your life. The greatest gift of your life. Dude, I know this, okay? Like you guys, a lot of you guys don't listen to the show regularly. 2003, I was stabbed in the face.

I almost died, okay? For two years after that, I was in massive, like everyday suicidal depression. Like every day day not only did i think about killing myself i thought about how i would do it and how i could do it to where it would be the least burdeness on everybody else for fucking two years bro so i know what that's like all right and then as you guys know uh i met this woman in the grocery store uh who had been burned beyond belief okay uh she was missing a leg she had been in a belief. Okay. She was missing a leg. She had been in a small airplane crash. Her whole family is killed.

And when you have a facial disfigurement, one of two things is what happens. Okay. Either people look at you and it used to be a lot worse. It's 20 years ago. You know, my face on this, on the left side of my face was swollen up the side of a grapefruit for about 18 months, a year to 18 months.

And so I was very disfigured for a whilefruit for about 18 months, a year to 18 months. And so I was very disfigured for a while. And people will do one of two things. They either look at you and they say, fuck, dude, what happened to your face? Or they don't look at you at all. They look at the ground or they look over here to the left or to the right or over your head. They just will not look at you because they don't want to feel like they're staring. But what it does is it dehumanizes you. Because you're like, fuck, dude.

Nobody will even look at me. And so when I met this lady in the grocery store, we were going down the aisle. And I bumped carts with her. And I looked over at her. And I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. And it was a woman. And she goes, dude, what the fuck happened to your face yeah right but her face is gone dude like her face was gone and uh and we both laughed we had this big laugh and like

dude it was 15 minutes like i still part of me thinks that was god and that was like not even a real thing because it totally changed my life that one one conversation, I walked out of that store with a completely different perspective. And now, you know, when I, when I left that store and I started looking at, okay, what are the good things that have happened to me because of this? And what, what had been happening, but I hadn't noticed it was that in my business life, people were starting to remember us. All right. We didn't, we weren't successful. Nobody knew who we were. We didn't have money. We weren't special, but people remember this as silly as it sounds. The one thing I could be grateful for in that moment was that in business, people remembered me. Right. So I thought about, I'm like, okay,

well, that's a huge advantage. And I started thinking about all these different advantages I had because of what happened. All right. And those advantages carry to this day. And now 20 years, whatever it is, it was 2003. So almost 20 years later, I look back at it. And not only do I say, man, I'm glad that actually happened. I say it's the best fucking thing that ever happened to me in my life. And I could have very easily went down the other path.

You know what I mean? I was very, very lucky. Like I don't talk about luck very often, but I was very, very fortunate and lucky to run into that woman on that day. Yes, yes. And that's also, you know, a couple of different threads here, right?

The core of resilience, right? So when people think about resilience, they often have, I think, an improper concept of resilience. We think of resilience as elasticity. It's like a physics definition. You think of a ball and you squeeze it, and the measure of resilience is how quickly it returns to its prior state. Human resilience doesn't work that way because you're always changing in time. When you get hit by hardship, it hits a moving object.

Like you're moving and hardship hits you and you are never the 23 year old Marine who got hit by an RPG is never going to be the same kid as he was the day before he was hit by an RPG. That is gone. And this is the truth. We're never going to be the people we were yesterday no matter what happens today you cannot be the person who you were yesterday and as a country bro we talk about this all the time we're not going back 2019 it's not gonna happen it's like a lot of people are waiting they're waiting and waiting and waiting and they think and this goes back to your analogy of the country as a human yes and human as a country guys we ain't going back no correct when they said new normal they meant that shit yeah so if we want the way i see it and the way you and i've talked about it you know we

have the opportunity to recreate 100 a better a better place we are and that's the thing is like people see this as like man i want 2019 that was 2019 that fucking, to be completely honest, it was great compared to what we have, but we had a lot of problems. We had a lot of division. We had a lot of apathy. We have a lot of laziness. We have a lot of entitlement. We have a lot of issues in the country that need to be actually addressed.

And we have the opportunity because of the destruction and the crimes against humanity that have been put down upon our society and, to be honest, the entire world over the last couple of years to actually remove these people who created this from our leadership and build an entirely new, actually free society. Yes, yes. And we're not going back because it can't happen. Yeah. It's just part of, it's part of the, and again, this is the kind of Greek, the tragic nature of human life. Like you're moving forward and you're going to be hit by hardship. So you have to decide which direction you're going to go.

And I agree. I think that there's so, this has made people come alive. It's made people wake up and realize not just what we lost, but also what we are facing. And everybody recognizes we need to step forward if we're going to make it through. All right? But here's the key, whether it's a human being or an Asian, we have a choice. We have a choice about how we're going to deal with this. And I'm here for the revival, right? Not just at a personal level, but as a country. And that's why everybody's listening to this. And your point, I think, is the essential one, is that, yes, I'll win this race and I'll be elected.

But here's the key, me as one US Senator or anybody, even as the President of the United States, you can't revive a culture on your own. Leadership is essential. But everyone who's listening right now has a role to play. That's right. You want to make the country stronger, make yourself strong. That's right. You want to make the country stronger, make your business stronger. You want to make the country stronger, make your community stronger, right? That we all have a role to play. And that's part of the tremendous revival that's possible. And what we did also at

the Mission Continues was you got a lot of veterans who'd been through hardship together and they'd all do their individual fellowships, but then we'd bring hundreds of people out, veterans and people who weren't veterans. And we do places where we'd go to a park, for example, and build baseball fields, or we'd go into a school and everybody, hundreds of people would work in one day to transform the school. And what you got then was that individual people who are all on their own journey of revival, like then they start to see there are all of these people who are doing positive things together. And that is the incredible magic, right? When you take what's happening in one person's life and you add it to two people and then three people, and then all of a sudden there's a community. It's like throwing a stone in a pond.

Yes. You know what I mean? The ripple, no matter how little the stone is of improvement that you're making, people see it. And dude, this nation, how we become great isn't just telling people, hey, you need to be better. No, it's like what Vince Lombardi says. It's leading by example. It's not, it's not the best way to lead. It's

the only way to lead. So if you're, if you're living like DJ in your neighborhood, I can tell you this from a fact. All right. Because when I was 350 pounds, I had neighbors and I had to get my fat ass out on the street and do the cardio and do all the work. And guess what happened? That's what started happening. I started seeing neighbors on the street. I started seeing people. What happens around here in our office park? What do we see?

Now we got other companies. Everybody here is doing outside cardio. And when it's 10 degrees outside and what do we see? Oh, the neighbors across over here who don't have anything to do with fitness or health or anything are inspired to go out and do things that are difficult to better themselves. Yes. And so you guys cannot underestimate the media,

the political power machine, the Hollywood, all of these things collude to make us feel like that. We are little characters in a play that doesn't really concern us. We're here to observe and we're not. We're the fucking main actors of this play. 100. Yeah.

And unless we're getting out there and doing our work and living our lives, other people are not getting out there doing the same thing, which is what creates the complacency and the apathy that we have. A good thing is I believe that it is changing. It is. It is. I believe people have like that narrative that I'm talking about of suppressing the human spirit. I think people are starting to really understand how hard that's been pressed upon us. We are very oppressed people here in America. Like people do not understand. Suppressed. Yeah. Suppressed. Not we are free. Yes. Qu quote unquote free but there we we are we are

marketed to on a daily basis by by trillions of dollars of power and outlets to be less than what we were meant to be for a reason and and they benefit from that that's right i mean and look think about this pay him to do it right. I mean, and look, think about this. You pay them to do it. Right? A lot of times, yeah. Right? I mean, think about this. You go back, think about that it almost feels because people are free of it now, the masks.

Think about that. Putting masks that don't work on kids who aren't susceptible to a virus. Think about this, the government suppression. like the government was going to order people to stay in their houses. The government ordered people. You can't go to church. Government ordered people. Like this is a disgusting level of tyranny.

And the fact is with all of that, we either decide again, do we accept that? Or does everybody say never again? Never again. Never, never, ever again yeah dude the the whole the whole concept like here's what really boils me dude this is what boils me up when i when i because like dude i run a company we have we have a lot of employees we have uh close to 400 in-house and thousands and thousands remote um so i understand how the back door conversations affect the front facing operation right right like very well yes and like and most people don't because they don't run a company of that size right right so here's what fucking burns my ass bro what are the conversations happening in private about us?

Dude, if you guys could backtrack and really understand how that flow of communication works to get the front-facing result, I promise you they are talking about us as if we are insignificant little peasants that they rule over every single day. That is exactly what they think. They think that they are smarter than we are. They think that they are better than we are. And they think that they have the right to rule over us. That is exactly what's happening. And they can't help themselves. It seeps out of every pore, their disdain for us.

And it's all rooted, this is part of the leftist ideology, right? And it's important to like, you go back to think about like, what are the core beliefs that undergird this terrible, tyrannical worldview? And one of them is that they believe that there are perfect solutions, right? One of the things that people who live real lives know is that like life is again, it's tragic in the sense that there aren't perfect decisions. Sometimes in most of life, if you make this decision, it's good, but it also has bad consequences. Like there's, life isn't perfect. There's give and take in life. Sometimes life is so beautiful that you cry, right? That's the

nature of a real life. What leftists believe is that they can perfectly dictate life's decisions to other people. And they think that because they believe they're smarter than us, they should be able to dictate to us. And that's where the entire leftist ideology comes from. That's why they believe in censorship because they truly believe that there's a perfect answer, right? If you believe as our founding fathers did, if you believe that life is fundamentally, you know, there's the whole idea of like Adam and Eve, right? It started with the mistake, right? And then the whole process begins. So if you have that worldview, then, and you understand that life isn't perfect, then what

it means is that you need to have practical wisdom. It means that you need to have compassion. It means that you need to have courage. It means that you have to work in a world where there aren't perfect choices leftists believe that they can tell you perfectly what to do you know which is why they want to censor you and it's interesting to me too because none of them have ever done a fucking thing nothing shit nothing nothing like dude at some point you look around your life and you think man i do i really have it figured out or do i not know that much you know i'm saying of course like that would be a reasonable thought

but they seem to miss that point it's actually it's a really experts on everything yeah but epidemiology yeah from the fucking military strategy yeah from the basement of their middle-aged mom like i need another hot pocket look dude here's the thing you know we we have to get to a point um where people understand what to do because i think one of the biggest things that's going on at this point uh from my point of view pretty wide range audience here you know i've got a lot of people that really agree with everything i say i have a lot of people that don't but still listen because they they're they want to hear it bring in something yeah yeah and uh what i observe at this point in time is that everybody understands there's

some really bad problems yeah um but they're not sure exactly what to do we cover the main thing that they need to do which is your own personal responsibility inside your own home if you're not taking care of yourself, start there. Okay. And that will ripple out. But the second thing that I wanted to touch on while you're here, brother, is because a lot of people don't know who to vote for. Yeah. A lot of people are like, shit, man, I've always went in and I've just checked the R's or I've checked the D's and I vote to be honest with you. That's how I've always voted. I've always been someone who's voted on the side with my thinking being.

All right. Well, I don't agree with what they say, and I don't necessarily agree with what these guys say are full, but I feel like this is the better option. But the problem is we can no longer vote like that because both sides are compromised. So, like, how do I know? Because I get this question a lot. Andy, how do I know who to vote for? i feel like everybody is lying yeah so how do we how what could people do listening you know maybe they're in maybe they're in uh connecticut or maybe they're in nevada or wherever but how do we what should we be looking for well first first of all i mean i think just

again always be honest and realistic with people. Like you may be in a situation where there aren't good choices, right? And if you believe that most of the politicians are lying to you, you're probably right. Okay. I would tell people trust their instincts. Okay. Trust your instincts.

When you listen to most politicians who are talking, you can tell they either don't know what they're talking about, they don't really care about it, they haven't done any real research on it, and they're not fully invested. Now, of course, this isn't everyone, but I think that what I would say to people is think of yourself as more than a voter. If you think of your civic engagement as only voting, if you think of politics as only voting, then we're playing into their game. So you go back, so politics, Aristotle talked about politics. It's the art and science of creating and sustaining human communities. It comes from the polis, the Greek city state, right? So how do you sustain your community?

Well, politics is making sure that the kids in your local school can read, right? Politics is making sure that you're taking care of your lawn, right? Politics is making sure that you are an engaged citizen on your school board. And so if you think about politics just as voting, it will be and often can be very disenchanting because you look up and you're like, hey,

these aren't great choices. But I'll tell you this, you get involved and figure out some way to get deeply involved. I'd say it's far, far better for the cultural revival of this country if people who are listening right now decide, you know what? I am going to figure out who the best candidate for my school board is. And then not only am I going to try to figure out who the 20 people are, who I need to vote for, I'm going to go all in for that candidate. I'm going to try to teach people about this candidate. I'm going to try to teach people about this candidate. I'm going to learn how politics works. I'm going to learn what it takes to order yard signs. I'm going to try to teach people about this candidate. I'm going to spread the word. I'm going to learn how politics works. I'm going to learn what it takes to order yard signs. I'm

going to learn what it means to knock on doors. And then, wow, then you're a threat because then you found out what it means to actually learn and get behind one person. And you know what? If you can do that with one person, then you can do it in the next cycle with two. And then you can teach other people. Then you are a real threat to the uniparty. Then you're a real threat to the establishment. So what I would say is, because oftentimes people think, all right, well, you know, I got to vote in these 20 different elections, right? Okay. And yes, you do. And you should do your research and talk to people and come up, you know, vote for the most authentic people you can, right? But really, if you're going to get involved, if you decide I want to get involved, find one place and then go deeper, right? And it can be a candidate for a statewide office.

It can be a candidate for anything. And it doesn't also just have to be in elected politics. You could decide there's a specific policy that I want to have changed. Figure out how do you make your intersection safer? Now, this is a very small thing, but if you actually figure out, you know what, I don't feel like this intersection is safe enough for my kids. And then you go down and you figure out how the budget actually works and what it actually takes to get the street department to come out and to put up an extra stop sign or to change a stop sign to a red light, then you're really engaged. And once you figured out how to do one thing like that, it's going to be much easier to do two and to do three. And that, if you're listening right now, and you want to become a real threat to the political establishment, figure out what it

actually takes to help somebody make a transition from homelessness. Figure out what it actually takes to help somebody um make a transition from homelessness figure out what it actually takes to help third graders who don't know how to read learn how to read figure out what it actually takes to make an intersection see what you're doing here dude is eric's uncovering the massive secret about politics is that if you know shit and how to do it you'll find out real quick who doesn't know yeah i was gonna say this man like when it comes to like figuring out who's real uh and again this goes back to 2015 man it started with a fucking handshake right you know right like you're on the campaign trail right now right yes you're in a different city every fucking day right right we were just just in kansas city the two rallies right yeah just moving around so i and i

think the the overarching message here is guys if you're listening whether you're moving around. And I think the overarching message here is, guys, if you're listening, whether you're in Missouri, whether you're wherever, you got to take some initiative. Yes. Right? You got to go to those rallies. Yes. Go to those little town halls. Yes. Go to those Q&A sessions.

Yes. Right? Go shake that candidate's hand. Yes. I've always been a firm believer that you can tell a whole lot about a person with a handshake. 100%. Does that candidate look you in your eye? Yes. Right? like yes are they just moving and grooving are they just trying to get some photo ops right like go you got to take some initiative because that's really where

it starts at right now can you do some research at home yeah that that's not enough at this point where we are as a kid that's not enough i 100 agree with you go there go go to those sound halls man take initiative i've been to two of yours so far and and i would like i mean we this is like a fucking eric you know we're just tooting all of his horns right now um i'm loving it i'm digging it go on it's real stuff though man like it's real it's intentional and you can tell that you know you you genuinely care and i know i know and i mean i just know i know because we know, I know because we live in Missouri, but guys, you can find these candidates everywhere. There are real people more and more every single day that are stepping up to these plates that say, okay, hey, if not me, then who? I'll go fight this battle.

I'll go lead this war, right? You got to go. You got to take some initiative, right? Go get involved in that. You know, it's super important. I was actually going to say this earlier earlier too man because uh it made me think about with the roe v wade stuff and justice alito you know one of his his comments was that you know it's time to heed the constitution and return it back to the people's elected

representatives back at the state level and so there's this mass growth of of of responsibility i guess or obligation that people are starting to become aware of. And I mean, what's your stand? I mean, what's your- I think to your point, I think it's a really important one. Go out and meet a candidate. You got to. And it can be a candidate for mayor. It can be a candidate for city hall, but go out and meet one. And you know what? You may very well be disappointed. Okay. Be disappointed. Go meet a second one. And you know what? You come away, you're disappointed. Okay. You're disappointed.

Meet a third one. You're disappointed. And you know what? A lot of people go and they meet three people and they say, you know what? I can't believe these guys. Like they're all politicians. They don't know anything about the issues. I know more about this stuff than they do. And then people see, Hey, you can run. Right. right. All right? Right. But really, but if you're listening to this right now, the country's going to be far, far better off with you as an engaged citizen. So absolutely, go out, shake their hands, listen to what they have to say. It's an obligation. Then go listen to their opponent.

Yeah. Listen to what they have to say. And then you can figure out not just who you're going to vote for, because voting is like the ante to the game of citizenship. Like, yes, of course you have to vote, right? But the uniparty and the establishment wants you to think that's all you have to do. Maybe you vote, maybe you don't. If you're really engaged, if we have truly engaged citizens who know how stuff works and are willing to get it done, that is how you really revive the country. I'll tell you this, you know, it used to be, oh, well, I don't like nobody, so I'm just

not going to vote. I'll tell you this right now. A no vote, that's a vote for whoever. I'm telling you, you're going to be voting. Have to, have to. I'm saying like, whether you think you're voting or not, you're voting. So you might as well vote to be, you know what I'm saying like whether you think you're voting or not yes you're voting so right yes you know i'm saying um i'll say this i mean another easy way i mean we talk about this all the time look at who their enemies are yeah like that's a very very easy who are they scared of you know i'm saying who are who are they making up stories about all right i only know two what was that guy's name yeah one of them was named donald trump uh the other one here is sitting across from us yeah uh that's a very easy telltale sign yeah that's an easy telltale sign you want to look for who's real look at who everybody hates what's that been like bro

like what's that been like to be a target where people are literally because it's proven now that both of these scenarios that have you've been attacked for are false completely false and and like completely manufactured completely it's no different than what hillary did with coming up yes with the russia collusion on trump no first of all that's tre, but we can talk about that another time. I've talked a lot about that, but what's that like, dude? Like, you know, so, so it's, it's, it's interesting. It's different now than it was then because I I've changed. Right. So when it first, when it first happened, when those George Soros attack came like, and yes, it's been disproven, there's charged with seven felonies for perjury and evidence tampering. We've uncovered now like why they attacked me

because, you know, we supported our police officers. We defeated Black Lives Matter and Antifa, all that stuff. Like that's all been out there, even though the George Soros funded prosecutor admitted to wrongdoing. But in the beginning, the truth is I was scared. It was scary. Like you had a George Soros funded prosecutor come after you saying the vilest, nasty things about you.

And they print them all over the world. But what's that like? Like knowing that it's false, right? And seeing everybody go run with it. it doesn't there need to be some reform to some sort for sure for sure well there is so so a side note yes there needs to be massive reform okay yeah the the the journalists can no longer lie and that's all they do they literally lie about people and get away with it because they're, quote, public figures. They're allowed to say anything that they want about a supposed public figure. They can just lie. 100% that has to be changed and they need to be held accountable for it. the beginning, it was scary in part because again, I always look, if there's ever a challenge, I always look at myself first. I think like, what can I do better? What did I need to learn more

of? And one of the things, one of the places where I failed is that I believed that the truth was going to matter to people. And I believe that the newspaper could write a headline, Soros-funded prosecutor charges Eric Reigns with no evidence. That would have been an accurate headline, right? But they didn't care. They literally don't care. I just had a conversation with a media outlet about this latest nonsense. And I said to them, and I'm on the phone with somebody who had, who, and I was on the phone with them for 45 minutes. They had broadcast lies literally around the world. And I said to them, will you write a true story? Like, well, we wanted to talk with you about the politics of it. And I said, I said, will you

write a true story? Not what I think is true, but will you believe what you believe is true? I said, I will give you all of the evidence. Like we already blew away all of this, this nonsense, right? 100% people have read, right? We've got, got everything that blew it away, but they wouldn't write a true story. They literally refused to write a true story. Well, I mean, that's above my pay grade. I don't know. No, it's not, dude. That's your responsibility. It should have been. So one of the mistakes that I made early on was I thought that that mattered.

And again, I went back and I read, I find a lot of comfort reading history. So I went back and I look at Winston Churchill, who went through a very similar thing when he was about my age, he was falsely blamed for Gallipoli. He was falsely blamed for tens of thousands of people losing their lives. It was not his fault. And all those lies actually haunted him all the way up until the beginning of World War II. People would yell, what about Gallipoli? What about Gallipoli? And yes, there was a later a commission that did a full look into Gallipoli, completely exonerated Churchill for it. But he was lied about. He was falsely blamed for it. He had to resign his position from government.

He actually went back to the trenches of World War I. And so for me, part of what I had to recognize was that these lies that they, they put out lies against people who are threats and this is what they do and they're going to do it forever. So now I actually said to somebody, I find it somewhat comforting because it means that I'm doing great work. I said, I hope that every single week until the week that I pass from this earth, they write some nasty lie about me because that means that I'm still making a difference. If they start ignoring me and they're not lying about me, it means that I'm not making, I'm not making. I think people understand this. I think the media has to be completely rebuilt i mean 100 look i've been lied about too i've had hit pieces done on me and fucking good morning america okay like dude you know what happened when that happened my shit went up my sales went up right podcast went up right everything went up so like that should tell you that people are realizing like if you haven't caught on yet i'm just telling you like whatever they say oh that guy bad that's the good guy like that's the guy

almost guaranteed across any issue it is any issue whatever they're peddling is probably 70 wrong if not a hundred percent yes the question is who are they not talking you know when it comes to i mean because again when it comes to you know how do we know who's 70% wrong, if not 100% right. Yeah. The question is, who are they not talking about? You know what I'm saying? When it comes to, I mean, because again, when it comes to, you know, how do we know who's real? Who are they not talking about? Well, when you look at politics, right?

Being a rhino, right? Being somebody who's just up at Capitol Hill or at a state Capitol, it's a nice life. They have lobbyists buying them steak dinners. They get floated around. They get all these people who come and ask for their opinion. They give a speech here and there. They don't actually work that hard, right? And the mainstream media is always writing nice stuff about them.

Right. Yeah. But it's the people who are a real threat they go after. And the bigger threat you are are the more viciously they will attack because there are no rules on this side yeah bring it on i like it i like it now like dude the first time it happened to me yeah like for two days i'm like holy shit life's over companies are all broke and i'm like i'm i'm i'm calling the guys i'm like hey how are sales today and they're like they were great and i'm like how was customer service today they're like it was awesome

everybody was happy right i'm like all right well maybe tomorrow yeah right so the next day i'm like all right what what happened today they're like nothing dude what the fuck's wrong with you and i'm like i'm like nothing man because i didn't want to make it like like i was like okay i would try to keep it small right and and they're like dude we're getting these emails in from people saying they saw you on good morning america it's fucking awesome bro that's how it works now yes that's how it works so like dude the more they attack the the it's weird too because then you have these other politicians who are like piling on the attacks and it's like oh really right oh okay well now i know who you are and what you're about like yes yes yeah just wait because there's a lot of

trojan horses you're gonna have some politicians like hey look guys i did something bad too for real come help me out ride Write a best. No shit. So dude, uh, we're closing in on two hours, man. And that's like the max listener time. Cool. Cool. Um, I love that you stopped by brother and, and, and like, I would like you to come by again soon and let's, let's pick this back up and talk about from here. How do we do this?

Yes. You know what I mean? Cause like, I think today, you know, I felt like when we had you first on the show, it was great. We had a good conversation, but people didn't realize where your desire and want to solve these problems comes from. And I wanted them to hear that. I wanted them to understand this isn't some person who is tied in with all these people who's going to go there and go, go along with the status quo. This is a fighter. This is a man who is going to stand up for what he believes is right

and wrong, regardless of who comes after him. And this is you guys that like Trump. This is a guy that has that grit that has that ability to stand up and say, Hey, you know what? This is how it is. This is who I am. You know, one of the things that I thought was, I'll tell this story. I don't know if it's appropriate or not, but I don't really give a shit. Um, you're a show man. Yeah. Well, I got a sign on my, in my garage says Mary Jane. All right. Cause guess what? I'm in the cannabis business and guess what people in the cannabis business do? They fucking smoke cannabis. All all right and so we're having this big event at my house for for eric and i'm like hey man like i don't want any of your people to get like

rubbed the wrong way you want me to take that sign down you know what his response was no man we are who we are and if they don't like it tough shit yeah we're not going to hide from anybody we're going to fight for whatever it is we are and and and our differences matter so we should collaborate with people who are different thinkers and if we are and and and our differences matter so we should collaborate with people who are different thinkers and if we go and censor ourselves from who we are people don't realize that we have differences and that's a problem and dude that was when i knew like for sure i'm like this is my fucking guy right here yeah you know that and do you remember that i do of course of course yeah yeah because i was like man you know like there's a lot of important people coming and i just hung the sign oh my god but but uh but yeah guys it's you know i just i'm excited i feel hope

for america way more than i have the last couple years um because people are starting to understand like i'm having conversations with people who typically i wouldn't who are like man you know i don't like dude i'm talking about extremely liberal people yeah who understand like oh shit this has gone too far it's way out of line you know i had i've been comfortable for too long i had one of my most liberal uh one of the most liberal people i know a female um who you know we we don't talk that much because we clearly knew it was funny because a couple years ago she dm'd me and this she's in my family and she dm'd me and i just dm'd her back i'm like why do you dm me it's like i'm not in the mood to argue like i know what you're doing and she's like actually um i don't want to argue i've actually

changed a lot and and and i just was curious as your perspective. And from that conversation, now we've developed a whole entire new relationship based upon respecting each other's perspectives. And we may not agree with every single thing or every single issue, but I respect the fact that she understands where she stands and is willing to go get involved in those causes, even if they're not the causes that I'm about. And she respects the same about me. And like, dude, what's more American than that? That's the beauty of it. It's fantastic. And I think what's really important here is that if we are going to take the country back, one of the things that we have to do, okay, the leftists are hate-filled.

They write nasty lies. They write people off. They already have all of their judgments about all of us. We have to keep an open heart. We have to recognize that people are capable of change. We have to recognize that if you have a tough, cool life experience, you might come out the other side and think differently. We have to recognize,

we have to stay curious ourselves so that we continue to learn and we continue to grow. And we also have to keep our hearts open. That's the way that the country is going to grow, is that we have to recognize, yeah, there might be some people who we disagreed with last week. And you know what? They might teach us something and we might be able to find ways to work together. The establishment works if everybody's

frozen. If we're frozen and just fighting each other, there's no way out. Well, a lot of people don't realize, bro, that that's what they did with COVID. They brought that division down to inside the household. That was intentional. Sorry to interrupt. No, no. Look, it's what they're doing with critical race theory in the US military. Are you kidding me? The US military is the most well-integrated institution in the history of planet earth. What do they do? They're trying to sow discord. So one of the things that we have to do, the leftists, again, they hate the country. A lot of them hate themselves. We have to lead with compassion, right? At the end of the day, right?

When you talk about courage, not just political courage, moral courage, emotional courage, what is courage really? Courage is love and action, right? That's what courage really is. It's because you love something, you're willing to face fear. Because you love something, you're willing to take on odds. And we have to have the courage to keep our hearts open, even though after all of the nastiness and the attacks, it might be easy to close that down.

You got to keep your heart open to the possibility that life's going to teach you things and that other people who you may have just disagreed with or actually been at odds with can actually be forgiven. Absolutely. And we got to have some grace on an individual level. Everybody needs grace. We need accountability for the people who masterminded this stuff. You and I have talked about this a lot.

Like, look, I will not die from this planet without that happening. Yeah. Unless they kill me. Because, like, dude, to me, that's the number one issue. The crimes against humanity, the lies, the unnecessary deaths, like, the bent deaths, like the bent statistics, the flat out made up shit that killed people.

Have to be held accountable. And divided families. It costs jobs. And this, listen, I know a lot of young people listening to the show. You guys think that this was just like a hard time. This was unprecedented treason that happened. Okay. I don't know if you feel that strongly. i do okay i do and people and i've said yeah people need to be held accountable yes

put on trial but on a family level trial on a family level and by the way that's why i'm donating seven figures to your shit thanks brother because i need i want motherfuckers that are going to go in and hold these people accountable but dude we and we, and by the way, um, just so you got, cause I know a lot of people listen to the show. Um, you guys who are asking what you could donate on Eric's site. Uh, yeah, you can go, go to ericgritens.com, sign up to volunteer, sign up to donate, be, be honored to have caps there that you can get. Yeah. There's, there's, there's, there's caps. So you can, you can give a max of twenty nine hundred dollars per individual to the primary campaign and there are other organizations who i know yeah yeah well i was going to mention the one i'm given to please

please yeah so i did some research and there's a lot of different like a lot of you guys that don't understand how this works you could only donate a certain amount to the candidate directly but then what you do is you find a political action committee that is willing to donate. And I found one that is only for Eric Greitens. It's run by a guy in Kansas City. It's called Missouri First Action. That's the pack I'm going to give my money to. So if you're wondering how do you donate, Missouri First Action is the pack. It's run out of Kansas City. And that's how you can give above the limit but that's what i'm doing uh because this is the shit's important

okay and i can't just step away from my company and go run and i can't do that yet i'm not to a point so you're my guy dude thanks brother yeah thank you thank you thank you let's wreck these motherfuckers let's do it let's get it done. But, uh, but guys, I, I would ask, you know, like support this man as if you were supporting me. Like if I was running and you were running to give me some shit, give it to this guy.

Okay. Give it to Ian Smith. These guys who are real people who, who I know very, very well. And I trust that they are going to go in and kick ass for us. Um, and bro,

I'm, I'm just, this last couple of years has been so fucking hard for everybody. And I'm just glad that you decided to come back and give this a run after all the shit they put you through. Thanks, man. Because we can't fucking quit, dude. No, we can't.

You know what I'm saying? We cannot quit on these people. You guys who are out there struggling and you're miserable and things are tough, dude no we can't you know what i'm saying like we cannot quit on these people like you you guys who are out there struggling and you're miserable and things are tough understand that these people have made it intentionally hard for you this is not what america should be this is not how we should be treating each other and to my point of grace while we do need to hold the people who did this accountable we need to have grace with our family members yes we need to have grace with our people in our community.

The people who maybe on Facebook or Instagram said some shit like, you know, like Andy for seller belongs in a fucking camp because he won't get it. Look, I'm, I understand this is a huge psychological operation. It was put down and I hold no ill will towards those people, but you guys have to wake up and we got to have

grace on that level of where we're going to be united. A hundred percent. But look, we all need it. And we have to, we have to, as leaders, we have to, as community members, like we got to embody it. We want to have a country where this, this is, this was a country founded on people who were fleeing their old lives, came to this country to build a new life. It's been a country where everybody got not just a chance, but second and third chances, right? That's part of the promise of America is that you can rebuild yourself. You can go through some really hard times and you can come out and you can build a new life. It's the only place in the world where that's possible. And so what does

that mean? That means that we have to have grace. And yes, we're going to hold them all accountable. And at the community level with our neighbors, for ourselves, we have to be able to forgive. We've got to have grace. That's right. Because dude, if we held everybody accountable, there'd be problems. We'd all be in camps. But like, dude, this is the thing, dude. This is the thing that I try to say on the show. Cause like, dude,

we do have some aggressive minded people on the show, which I appreciate them too. But you guys have to understand that these people who have been out championing these causes for these people at the top, they are taking, they're being taken advantage of. They're being lied to. They are being threatened and fear. They're being lied to.

They are being threatened and fear-mongered into believing certain things that just happen to be not true. And if you want to really talk about what they are, they're victims of a trillion dollar fucking propaganda machine. And we cannot expect that our neighbor Steve to understand that what the news is saying is a complete lie. Like we,

I'm not, look, I'm not going to get into, I've talked for two years about this. Y'all know where I stand, but I just want to get this shit back on track. Well, the key,

the key distinction that offers, there's some real evil people who did evil and they need to be held accountable. And when I use that word evil, I use it intentionally, not metaphorically. Like this is real evil. Letting murderers loose onto the streets, right? That's what these Soros funded prosecutors done. That is evil, right? Making kids who have disabilities, forcing them to stay out of school when this thing posed no threat to them at all. That is evil. And they knew it. Closing the entire middle-class business landscape.

Shutting it all down. And sending them to the big box retailers and their buddies. Yes. That's insane. It was absolutely insane. And they have to be held accountable. And let's also recognize, they own almost all of Hollywood. They own almost all of the media. They own almost all of, of higher education. Right. So there are a lot of good people who got misled by their lies. Right. And you know what? Like they got misled by their lies. We need to have some grace for all of

them because it was, it's an extraordinarily powerful force. Yeah. Right. That they bring when they, when they, they tell these lies. I think it's important to guys, like a lot of people here on the show that listen, you know, we have millions of listeners on this show, guys, you cannot expect people to join your cause when you ridicule them constantly and keep attacking them. At some point, you're going to have to say, Hey, I forgive you, bro. Like I get it. Like that was fucked up for you. And it was fucked up for me. And we're still family. Yeah. And, and you have to, you have to make sure that your purpose is larger than being right. That's it. That, that your purpose is larger than also some slight. A lot of people say to me like, well, what about, you know, the people who attack, attack, attack me? Obviously,

God's going to do justice to them and I want and need them to be held accountable. But my purpose, this is also how they win. My purpose is much larger than getting back at people who falsely attacked me. We're going to create a prosperous, free, best America that's ever existed. Ever existed. So that people can look back. We never had the opportunity to clean it out like we have this time. This is a tremendous opportunity so that people can look back 100 years from now and say,

wow, this was a generation. It was handed a tremendous amount of hardship and look how they responded. Well, bro, I know you got to run. Thanks, brother. Thank you so much for stopping by. Good to be on with you, man. Thanks. Maybe a couple of weeks, we'll hit it again. For sure. How to finish this next plan. Killer. All right. All right, guys. Thank you for the, uh, for the show. Uh, there's a fee. If you didn't get value out of that show, it's the best we got. So you might as well just unsubscribe. So, uh, on behalf of DJ and Eric and the team here, love you guys. Appreciate you guysubscribe so uh on behalf of dj and eric and the team here love you guys appreciate you guys and uh see you next time

we're from sleeping on the floor now my jewelry box froze fuck a bowl fuck a stove counted millions in the cold bad bitch booted swole got her own bankroll can't fold just a note headshot case