The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Pete A Turner, Combat Spy, Podcast Host of Break It Down Show

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Pete A Turner, Combat Spy, Podcast Host of Break It Down Show https://www.youtube.com/peteaturner About Pete A Turner Meet a former military force turned master of captivating narratives, who has transformed the airwaves with a live talk show that delves into the pulse-pounding realms of excitement. Pete Turner is the executive producer and host of the Break It Down Show (BIDS) podcast. Pete's show portfolio includes remarkable individuals, from Nobel Prize Winners to Gold Medalists, offering an array of unique insights. Notably, Pete is keen to discuss his work on the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, drawing out shadowed experts to share their experiences. His collection of perspectives presents compelling evidence outside the typical media landscapes that can’t be found anywhere else. Pete's rich experiences extend beyond geopolitics. His expertise shines in tactical espionage, U.S. travels, and engaging discussions on politics and life. With over 70 months of military service and 1000 combat patrols, Pete's journey evolved from counterintelligence roles in Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Egypt, Germany, and Iraq, which eventually led to creating the Break It Down Show. Approaching its 10th anniversary with over 1500 episodes, the podcast stands out for its rotating co-hosts. Pete's eagerness to connect makes him a blend of Charles Kuralt, PJ O'Rourke and Larry King. This approach fosters in-depth conversations transcending traditional platforms. Confident in Pete's captivating knowledge and storytelling, I'm excited to coordinate a potential collaboration. Let me share your details with Pete and arrange a potential collaboration. Pete works hard on charity. He dedicates his time to Save the Brave. While battling his own fight with PTSD, he lost is brother Eric to suicide. Since 2020, Pete has participated in the Ride for the Brave an annual fundraiser that takes him and a group of veterans across the country fundraising, gathering and healing. In addition to his work with STB, Pete is actively working with Phil Green. Phil is a primary member in the battle against ALS. Pete is often found on the road, working in the service of others.

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Today we have a spy on the show. We're talking spy craft. There might be some secrets on the show i don't know something like that whatever and uh we'll have to be careful we ask him because if he says anything uh i don't know the whole audience might have to get like you know moved to a gulag in in uh poland or something with black helicopters uh we have pete a turner who joins us on the show today he's gonna be talking to us about what he does and how he does it. He's a former combat spy turned talk show host.

He was deployed for over 70 months in conflict zones. He's been on over 1,000 combat patrols. His efforts to establish networks both internally and externally may be a valued advisor for u.s interests today he hosts and produces the break it down show uh he recently oh i'm sorry the show recently passed its 10-year anniversary and has published over 1500 episodes congratulations man that's so much work but uh it's a labor of love but you know most most podcasts like 98 of them don't make past episode 25 uh pete is the co-chairman for the iinps a non-profit think tank designed to reduce the harm and waste the u.s causes with its foreign policy what you mean we did bad things

our foreign policy uh welcome to Welcome to the show, Pete. How are you? Hey, man, I'm great. It's always an honor to be on someone else's show, and I dig it. I dig everything you're doing, and I just think the world of you. Thanks, man. I certainly appreciate it. We think the world of you, too, Pete.

Thanks for your tour of duty and protecting us, being the person between us and the bad guys in the world. So, Pete, give us a.com. Where should people find you on the interwebs? You know, the best place to go is my YouTube channel. Just type in Pete A. Turner and it should come up. That's probably the best place to reach me or Pete A. Turner on any of the big social media platforms.

I primarily hang around on Twitter and Facebook. Those are probably the best places to catch me. Otherwise, I'm sort of, you know, look, I only have so much time for these things, right? And so I'm intermittent on all of the other stuff. So, but those are the spots. There you go. So let's get into it. Tell us about what you guys do there at your company, your nonprofit, and what you're up to. You know, when I came back from Afghanistan the last time, I was trying to be done with war and conflict, but I knew I wanted to tell the stories.

And so my buddy John was doing a little community radio thing, and we started vibing, and you know how these things go. It grew, and they kicked us out. They said, hey, you can't be part of the community radio thing anymore. You got to go do something bigger. Go re-dream it. And that became the podcast. And between his network and my network and the network that I built and the

break it down show, I can't, I was interviewing rich little last week, last Friday. This time I was in rich little's house. There you go. How's he doing? He's doing great.

He's doing great. He still has a show on the strip. He, his theater is at the Tropicana and I just over and over again, I've had two, he's one of them, but I've had two people that have hosted the tonight show on my strip. His theater is at the Tropicana. Over and over again, I've had two... He's one of them, but I've had two people that have hosted the Tonight Show on my show. It's amazing. You know how this changes your life when you have a

successful show and you go out. One of the things that I do that makes me different is I go, if possible, I go to the person on location. The other thing I do is... Today's episode was incredible. I had an author who wrote about all of the saboteurs that the UK trained during World War II. And then I brought in another award-winning historian named Halit Kochansky, and she wrote

about the resistance. And these two books, these two scholars, their work goes together, and they had never met, even though they're part of the same clubs. And so I create these dynamics that otherwise aren't possible. And it's, man, it's just, I know you recognize this. Everybody I know is, I know because of my show, my network has exploded because of the breakdown show and the opportunities. And I look around sometimes and I'm like, how did I get there? it looks like i'm going to make a movie i never had a design to do this this is just what happens when you meet all these incredible people and you create value in their lives there you go i remember rich little growing up watching uh the carol burnett show yeah yeah yeah if i remember we're talking today about my little my head's a little funky today um the uh uh yeah uh it's

i think you should have you done the book yet on your stories of uh book is coming yeah the book is coming you know book you look you know this you talk to authors i've had some of the authors on the show and this is very hard to justify the time that goes into a book because you know chances are it's like a podcast chances are you write it and it's like i spent you know 2 000 hours writing this thing and five thousand dollars getting it published and and uh here's what i have now i have to buy a bunch of my own books it's like i i uh i haven't been super thrilled about doing that but it is it is coming it's plugging along i've got a zillion stories so it'll be exciting when it comes out do i mean just from the military alone we've had so many military folks on the show uh books great books about leadership because the

military is so great at preparing leaders and uh everything else and of course your adventures in the podcast world and all that good stuff and what goes into it so let's get into uh you know what's going on and and and i think your non think your nonprofit helps us deal with foreign policy. Why don't you give us your journey, your hero's journey through life? How did you grow up? How did you get in the military? What motivated you to do that and get down some of the roads you went down? And how did it become a spy for that matter?

It all makes sense in the rearview mirror, but it was everybody's design. So I just sort of do the next thing. So graduated from high school. I wasn't a bad student, but I was kind of a nonchalant with my work. And so I didn't have a great GPA, went to community college. I went to, I think it was 10 different colleges and I got a degree and then I got a master's degree. Before I got the master's though, I'd graduated. I looked around and I couldn't find a job anywhere, right? Because the job market was crap. And so I took my degree and I went to the army and I became a counterintelligence agent. And that was super simple. My recruiter's like, you tested off the charts, you can have any job you want. And what kind of job do you want? And I'm like, I don't know, you're the recruiter, you tell me. And I

kind of just, I did the, you know, I did the, um, you know, I did the thing like, uh, uh, you know, lane from, uh, say anything's like, I don't want to work outside. I don't want to work inside. I don't want to kill people, but I'm willing to, you know, and you're like, you do all these things and he's like, you should be in intelligence. And so he's like the higher, the higher the number, the better the job 97 Bravo. I've never put anybody into that job. It must be awesome. And so that's how I became a counterintelligence agent. Wow. Yeah. I deployed a bunch and it turned out I was pretty good at it because the way I approach the job and I have a very specific skillset with this. So I'm a combat spy, right? So I'm good to go out and tactically collect

pure person to person information. So it's part like news reporter. It's part, uh, happy. I call myself good time. Johnny, I show up somewhere. People want to see me having a good time. And so they talk to me. So I've built trust, even if it's with the enemy, cause that's my job is to find the enemy, build trust with them, turn them into an asset for us. And so that's, that's the long and the short of it is, is, uh, I just kept going, man. I just kept doing interesting things. And like, how can I do the next thing? And, and you wind up deploying for years and years of your life because who else is going to, and here's the thing is at my job, counterintelligence on the ground, tactical, there's nobody in the military that's done this more than me. And so I got, I got to the black belt level. And then I got to the multiple echelons of the black belt level where I'm doing things that aren't even in the book, but they're hyper successful.

And I know, I know better than almost anybody you'll ever encounter how to collect tactically for a big military unit. Damn, damn. So you, you did the spy thing. Is there any stories that you're legally, you know, non-classified allowed to tell? Yeah. Yeah. Are there stories that you're legally, you know, non-classified allowed to tell? Yeah, yeah. Well, so because I would go off the camp all the time and I'm developing trust, I'm trying to find the people that no one else, no other American is going to meet. And you become influential when this happens. So at one point, I'm off in this remote district, nowhere near Rhodes, just Stone Age, really, where it's at. And the governor that I'm talking to, he's an Afghan governor. He says, hey, Pete, I want you to come to this meeting at Dave's house,

just a couple houses away. And so I'm like, yeah, of course, anything you want. So I go to this meeting. There's all these farmers around. And I don't know anything is different. They ask me some questions. I ask them some questions. I just do the normal standard meeting that I would do. And then I went home. Well, a couple of days later, the governor calls me back and is off. And he's like, hey, I got to let you know something. The Taliban told me to set up a meeting with you. And that's what we did over at Dave's house. The guy's name's not Dave, obviously.

Yeah, yeah. But so they vetted you and they've decided that you're a good dude and you're authorized to work in the Valley. Wow. Yeah, you get, and that's because I don't, I don't lie about who I am. I don't lie about what my name is. I'm honest. And I tell them I'm here to help. I'm here to provide you a voice. I'm here to make us better at working with you. I'm here to make you better at working with us. And I just approach the job completely differently. And that's what you have to do when you go to a place where people don't have enough things. You can't act like, know everything. You have to be humble. It's never

about my ego. And it's all about sitting and listening and understanding where they're at and then communicating to the military, State Department, whoever you're working with, to get them to calm down, slow down and get better. There you go. Is there any James Bond- a tight, uh, dangerous situations you were in that you could talk about people? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, meeting with the Taliban, not exactly safe, but we'll, you know, we'll, we'll put that one on the board. Um, there's a guy named Johnny Walker. Maybe you've heard of him.

He is. I'd usually drink it. Yeah. Well, this guy did too. He's an interpreter who worked in Iraq and he was my interpreter for a while. He, he belonged to the SEALs. And just because of happenstance, he ended up belonging to us. I happen to know a guy who was in the Navy and he had attended a course that I taught at.

It was a spy school. Anyhow, so he's like, hey, we're going to give you Johnny Walker. Johnny's incredible. And Johnny is. Johnny has written a book. It's called Codename Johnny Walker. Here's how influential Johnny Walker is. He is Iraqi. never been to buds,

never been in the Navy, but the seals all say he can wear a Trident on his chest because he's that much part of their brotherhood. Oh, wow. So yeah, it's pretty incredible. So he was, he was part of my little team that I was on and we were given a, an assignment to go north into Kurdistan and look into some assets to see if they would be useful for the American interests. And so we drove. And at one point on the way back, there was a checkpoint. Now, this time in northern Iraq, the checkpoint situation was pretty dicey. You didn't know what was real, what was not. You didn't know.

Even if they were legitimately Iraqi forces or police, they still might decide on that day to give you a bad day. So they pulled us off the road. And Johnny, who's got a world-class mouthpiece, gets out and he starts talking to these guys. And he is right in front of me. So I'm sitting in our car. I'm in the passenger seat. And right in front of me, Johnny is talking. And if you've ever seen Iraqi males talk, it looks like there's about to be a fight in an instant.

And so it's very tense i've got my i've got my uh my gun is off it's off safe my fingers on the trigger and behind me is my partner and he and i are both going to start sending rounds through the windshield if things get dicey and i'm going to do a dead driver drill and i'm going to get us the hell out of there you guys are on it man you're prepared're prepared. Finger on the trigger. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. And pulled the slack out. So I was ready to let go. But Johnny talked his way out of it because we weren't doing the wrong things. And they finally believed it.

And so nobody got hurt. Nothing bad happened. But I'll tell you what, man. That's as close to like this is about to go down. And holy, you know, this is it right here. And it worked out. And I don't know that we would have gotten out of there alive. Thankfully, uh, thankfully Johnny talked them down and you know, it's, it's just an amazing thing.

I've also been hit on an American camp in an American vehicle. I got hit in the head on accident with a tank. And so you talked about danger. It's dangerous on the camp as well as off. Is this someone driving a tank in your general direction or did you walk into it? No, we were driving down a road just like they were and they hit our vehicle and the vehicle behind us. And we were all Americans. We were on our way to the airport and they were just driving down the road.

They were just going home. So it's just one big group of cluster of camps. And they hit us and tore the hell out of our car. And my buddy who was behind us in a Humvee, he tore the hell out of our car and my buddy who was behind us in a humvee he got ejected out of the humvee it's how hard they hit him they ejected him out of the humvee seat belted into the seat the seat went with him how fast was that fucking thing going i don't know but it never stopped it just kept right on going right on going wow i'm going well yeah good insurance. Yeah, VA insurance, right?

I think, yeah. Isn't Geico, wasn't it originally government insurance? Probably, yeah. I think so, yeah. That's the story there. So lots of adventures that have gone into your life. You have so many stories. You have to do a book, man.

I'm serious. It's coming. I'm telling you if you can just like hire somebody to do the translations and just do the audio like give them the audio and stuff and feed it in um you know and if you got too many stories just make it two or three books you know just pick pick and space them out that's the best way to do um so uh what do you what do do you think of what's going on in our world today? Do you want to comment on anything that's going on? There's a couple of wars going

on. I don't know if you've heard the news. Yeah, there are a couple of wars going on. What do you want to talk about? Let's talk about this, because this is always fascinating. My first book that I read was 1,000 Days. It wasn't my first book I read, but my first big book that I read was Schlesinger's 1,000 Days.

And it really opened my mind to what I started to see with how we as a country stick our little fingers in everything because we're trying to support democracy. Meanwhile, we overthrew, you know know democratic people and um and and the muck ups that we do you know in the 80s uh with with you know reagan and and uh what was the it wasn't ecuador it was uh iran contra the weather's the iran contra there's there's so much shit we've done in south america the muck around south america between overthrowing leaders you know, Cuba, our muck ups with Cuba. And so 1000 days kind of opened to me the first eyes of the CIA mucking stuff about, you know, see assassinations. You know, we created Islam or some of bin Laden and you know,

look how that turned out. You know, so many different instances where we've tried to do something, putting our thumb on the scale of, well, we're trying to get democracy around the world. And, you know, I mean, I imagine there's rare times where we, we get it right. It seems like we get it wrong a lot and we

cause our own problems. I don't know. Maybe you want to comment on some of that, you know, uh, that's contributed a little bit probably to the ukraine russia thing yeah maybe to the middle east who knows it it has and you know there's a lot of evidence for this you talked about osama bin laden ho chi minh we tend to pick the wrong people and the imps that you mentioned that's that's my non-profit thinking and part of what we're trying

to do is like from top to the bottom like if our our foreign policy is askew, and if it's not in touch with reality, then by the time you get down to the ground, none of it makes any sense. And so how do you link the foreign policy, the theory, the academics to the practitioners on the ground, and then try to figure out how to make practitioners capable, right? So I don't want to get too too theoretic but the problem we face is we make a decision boom we lay down that weight on the line and then we will try to impact other other countries we did this with afghanistan other countries elections boy if you do that to us we get mad oh yeah we get all that loser shit yeah but but we are we see that we have license to do that with everybody. Look, intention and quality doesn't matter because we're supposed to be better than that,

and we have this belief. So I'll give you an example. We have this belief in the Bush Doctrine that freedom is a universal value and everybody wants it. So I'm talking to this Iraqi dude, and he's like, yeah, no, I love freedom. I love that you guys are here. It's great.

I finally don't have all these people on my back, and I can just kind of manage my own family and do things and i said that's great he's like yeah it's the best thing ever we really love america and then the next topic we get into he talks about how his daughter was on the roof of their house hanging laundry and she was dawdling up there and taking too much time and because of that he had to go up there and beat her and i was like dude that's not how we that's not how we do freedom right now. We don't beat our women. Or in.

Or trying to. Right. And what I understood later was that because she was up there, the perception that he's soft on his daughter, that they are not good Muslims, it would draw attention to his family. So he has to do this performative denial of freedom to protect his family ultimately and teach this lesson to his family so he has to do this performative denial of freedom to to protect his family ultimately and teach this lesson to his kids and so when you go into the world you can't even understand that you think this guy's some kind of monster but where he lives that's how he survived yeah and you guys are trying to do that through your non-profit where you're trying to help us foreign policy be do a better job you know i remember we had we've had a few people

from the council of foreign relations on but we had richard haas on and i believe it was him who talked about it one of our problems that we have with our the the way our country works is you know every four years roughly i mean unless we get somebody gets re-elected you know we bring in a whole new administration that's right and they And they have all these, they have all these great ideas. They think they've won, they're so high on life because they won the lottery. And so they think they have this mandate or, you know, we're here to change the world. Those last guys were fuck-ups, but we're here to make all the difference. Yeah.

And the discussion has been that it's it's what's created the problems of the middle east and it's what's created the problems in other worlds because um you know somebody comes in they change everything and then it and then you know and it like the tal i believe the taliban and afghanistan and i'm sure china i believe has the same sort of attitude they're just like we can't take these idiots for serious because every four years, some guy has got, they're going Y and they're going Z. You just never know. And if somebody

who really seems to know what they're doing comes into the place, you just need to wait a couple more years and they'll be gone. And so I think that's one of the things according to them that contribute to our failed foreign policy in some areas of the world. Well, our priorities are messed up.'m going to use um the ground level i'm going to use mr beast as an example he recently drilled a bunch of of wells in africa and so you do that

and we feel good about ourselves like oh mr beast is the man i'm not saying mr beast is not a great guy i'm just saying you don't get to go in and start changing people's worlds without spending a lot of time knowing those people understanding the culture and so when you when to go in and start changing people's worlds without spending a lot of time knowing those people understanding the culture and so when you when you come in and say hey we're going to go drink drill these wells even if someone's asked you to do it you don't know how you're impacting that community you don't know what's happening one community over did you just get a bunch of people killed because you went in somewhere and and you gave them fresh water and by the way as soon as you have fresh water and it's great to do that what do you do

with the waste water all this water that's been used that's been whatever it's it has to go somewhere because you don't want to create a bunch of disease and give a government that doesn't have the capacity to deal with that a bigger problem he gave them water he didn't give him toilets right exactly and toilets or food or any anywhere where water goes, if it picks up any kind of pathogen or any kind of chemical compound, if it's in the dirt resting because the water is never wet enough and now it comes out, there's so many problems with these things. And so like, well, that's the next problem. Like you don't get to do that. You don't get to go out and just change someone's world and say you didn't do any harm because, okay, that's fine. Send me and I'll go out there right now and we'll find out what kind of harm is there because there's always harm. The US always destabilize. That's our norm is that we destabilize. And the IIMPS is built to try to gather all of the experts and look at what the actual foreign policy should be because we'll

pick a foreign policy and we'll use Ukraine as an example. You have all these businessmen who are doing incredible industrial things and providing stability throughout Europe, and then you come in and say, these guys are oligarchs. All right, why are they oligarchs? Well, they have a lot of influence. Okay. And they're tied to Russia. Well, Russia is right next door, and these guys were all former Soviets. So yeah, that's true, but we don't like them. Well, why? And so you have all these problems that come from that. One of the things that happens in Ukraine is as they try to get rid of these, I'm doing quoted fingers, oligarchs, they'll seize a factory and they'll say, hey, this factory that makes aggregate for concrete, you are an oligarch, we're going to seize it. And so they'll seize it and take all the money out of the bank and throw

everybody who works there in jail. And then a couple months later, they'll come back to that businessman and they'll say, Hey, we're going to ask you to take over this aggregate plant. We actually don't know how to run it and it's going terrible for us. So we'll give it back to you. And you're like, yeah, I need my guys out of jail. Yeah. And I need my money back. Like, no, no, no money's gone. Sorry. And so that's part of this corruption wheel and the people like, yeah, I need my guys out of jail. Yeah, and I need my money back. They're like, no, no, no, money's gone. Sorry. And so that's part of this corruption wheel.

And the people that we pick, even in Ukraine, we look at like Timoshenko, the female president. I don't know if you know all these characters, but this is an actual criminal. This is actually someone that went to Russia and went crawfish on a deal that benefited Ukraine. And we're like, yeah, because pretty, speaks English, um a woman and boy like that that checks all these boxes so our priorities get messed up and

we're afraid to go let people who are good at what they do we did this in iraq a lot we're afraid to let people who do the leading do the leading if they're from the wrong party or the wrong ideology or the wrong whatever and these folks have no idea they're from the wrong party or the wrong ideology or the wrong whatever and these folks have no idea they're on the wrong side of anything but they just know that the person and look i'll give you an example from iraq i mean i'm in this village and they're like everything here is messed up it's the common theme everything here is messed up tell me why well first off our mayor he was the cobbler and you you're like, okay, so what? They're like, he wasn't even the best cobbler. He's terrible.

And he does only things for his own. And look, maybe none of this is true, but that's where you start. It's like, they have a problem with their cobbler and he's now a mayor. So you go talk to the mayor and you find out what his problems are. And then you slowly work your way through this problem.

And you find out that we are the main problem because we bring in corruption. We bring in too much power. And whenever we come somewhere, we warp reality to our own need. And I'm telling you right now, it doesn't work. And that's why we lose all these wars because we don't, our foreign policy is out of alignment with reality. And the people who work on the ground, they'll say things like, Chris, this is what they say. They'll say, it's an army guy talking, right? He's like, hey, I don't care what the mayor wants. My boss wants this. And you're like, dude, your boss is not the mayor. And so one of the biggest lessons I learned,

and I'm going to shut up after this, I had a governor and he looks at me and says, Pete, you really want to help? There's only room for one sword in the scabbard. And I'm like, you're right. Who's the sword? He's like, you got to tell me. And I'm like, all right, it needs to be you. So I got to go convince the army boss. This is an infantry commander. I got to go convince him and say, hey, only room for one sword in the scabbard. Who's it going to be? And he's got to say, well, it's that guy. And how many commanders will accept that lesson? Most of them won't. It takes a long time to get them to see that we have to get behind the Afghan or the Iraqi plan. And we just, we don't like it.

It's uncomfortable. It's hard. It's dangerous. It's deliberate. The progress doesn't fit a timeline. And like you said, you got elections, you got one year combat tours and there's budget cycles. And none of these things relate to what I have to do on the ground. Yeah. Is, is it true that these things are driven by our oligarchs that own Halliburton and other things? Is this really, is there truth behind, do you think, um, the fact that basically our war machines, our companies, um, are, are the real driving force between the stupid shit that we're always doing with our little band of Zionism?

At my cynical worst, sure. You know, like these guys want this. The reality is, is the people that get hired to work in the D.C. world and then who work for the contractors, these are all the same people. And so they have all of the same ideas. So when this Russia thing kicked off, you have to count how many people in D.C. have Ph.D.s on there's a war in Russia. Here's what's going to happen. And these people, look, I don't want to be unfair, but they are rabid about this. They're desperate for it to happen because this is their chance to get into the lab and prove their point and be smart. And these are all smart people.

But if you create the conflict conflict it doesn't make you smart like there's nothing good about a war but once the war dragon gets out it consumes everything it never starves it feasts it eats people it destroys lives destroys fortunes it never stops you can't get it back into the box it just continues to kill people and no one can control it i'm great at war. I'm great at it. If the war dragon chose me, there wouldn't be a damn thing I could do about it. A damn deer did choose me.

I mean, I nearly took my own life at one point. I was so obsolete, right? So we have to make better decisions. And these folks in D.C., all the folks fomenting this thing about China's going to invade Taiwan, knock it off. No, they're not. Let's not focus on that. Why would they go across 100 miles of open ocean to go to an enemy that's ready for them? Come on. Let's not create that.

Let's get better. Look, if I had my way, I would take people out. We'd be international people. We would go learn how to work culturally so that I can have these people blended any culture in the world and not influence, but listen and work within their system to figure out what is the, I used to always say, what is the smallest problem we can solve today? And they would say X. And I'm like, go to the government and let's start working on it. So they would go to the government. That's a great result. Now they went to their government to solve problem X. And then we would see, and the problems were small but that's where

you start you can't just say hey go build a mall over here and hire a bunch of people because we want to improve the economy that never works yeah it's it like i say it was it was interesting to me read 1000 days and uh the first cuba crisis and how the cia misled F. Kennedy and the subsequent things. The things in the 80s that the Reagan policy did that basically turned South America into a killing field. And what's interesting about Americans and American society is we don't connect any of these dots. We don't connect that all the mucking around and fucking around that we did in South America, uh, going back in the eighties and seventies, uh, you know, even the mucking around Cuba.

Um, you know, Fidel Castro would have flipped to us. We just, we just were like, no, we already got a guy to fill a position. Fuck off. He adored the United States. He, he, he sent money. He sent it. He sent a thing to get a dollar bill from us when he was a kid. And he would have easily flipped to us.

But we're just like, no, we got a guy. You're fine. You're rebels, whatever. And all these things, all these events are tied together. And, like, you know, right now everyone complains about, oh, we don't, you know, we got to fix the border and blah, blah, blah. And yet we have employment shortages we actually need people um and but they're like you know we have all these people you know coming from south america so bad yeah because we fucked it up we we put our fingers on the scale and mucked up the whole continent for 40 years that's on us when it comes down to it

my rule on on instability operations is that down to it. My rule on instability operations is that wherever we show up, we create more instability. And the second rule is that we refuse to accept that. And so as soon as the State Department shows up, but I'm going to be hard on these guys because guess what? They can take it and they've made a lot of mistakes and when they do, people

die. So that's part of the IIMPS charter is like, hey, knock it off. Stop picking people, slow down. You're not the smartest person in the room. And you have to respect the fact that they have a way of doing things. And if you're uncomfortable accomplishing your goal along their cultural path, then you're in the wrong business, man. That's how it has to be. We love to tell the countries what to do. And then about face it, walk away from them. Hey, all you women in Afghanistan, you can have a future. I'm a peer-reviewed published author

on female engagement in foreign countries, Afghanistan focused. We'll say, hey, you can be an astronaut. You can go to college. You can have rights. And they're like, hey, by the way, see you later. And we disappear. And all of these women, they get killed. And you can't show up in someone's village and say, I'm here to talk to the women. The biggest training aspect of this is, I've been in the rooms. Someone will say, hey, we got to get on the female engagement thing. What are we going to do? And someone will say, have Miller do it.

She's a female. And that's the end of the qualifications. Are you a female? You can go engage. And it's reckless. It a female. And that's the end of the qualifications. Are you a female? You can go engage and it's reckless, it's dangerous and it's inappropriate. And it's normal that we do that. What's the old line? The most scariest thing to hear in the world is, I'm here with the US government

and I'm here to help you. That's Reagan, yeah. It's true. When the State Department shows up, I know that the speech is being made. I've watched... I was referencing earlier in the show the El Zomote massacre in El Salvador. We were literally creating killing squads, funding killing squads in South America. You look at the British failures in Afghanistan, the Russian failures in Afghanistan,

and somehow we just go in there like, freedom will fix everything! Yes! You look at Iraq and how we went and destabilized basically the whole fucking region, empowered Iran, shut down. Technically, the war between Iranaq was actually good for everyone uh this unleashing this uh sunni uh shiite sort of thing you know no one saw that coming that oh wait if we if we you know it turns out turns out maybe some areas of the world need a brutal dictator i don't know maybe that's counter counter state department sort of thing but

maybe we shouldn't you know maybe not everyone needs freedom basically yeah it's you know we don't we all don't need fucking big macs maybe they do maybe they crave freedom but we're not we don't have license to go in we don't have the technicians the uh practitioners this is the bottom part of what the imps does is how do you get someone licensed? So first off, to someone who have foreign policy, are they any good at this? I mean, if we look at the crews that have been in charge the last 25 years, the generals, the foreign policy people, they all are losers. They haven't done it. They haven't accomplished what they want to accomplish. And then you send a bunch of kids out who have no capacity for foreign language. They

have no capacity for religion. One no capacity for religion one of the things i love to talk about people who think they know anything about this kind of work is how do you factor religion into this like religion and they brush it aside like well almost everywhere else in the world you have to work within the confines of the religion because if you ignore that then you are ignoring a base part of their culture so There's a lot of Muslims in the world. You can't just run with American Judeo-Christians everywhere. Right. What does the Iraq flag have on it? It says Allah Akbar on it.

You don't think religion is important there? Well, that's what that means on the flag. I had no idea. And it means it not like in a terrorist way. It means it's like in a God is, you know. So then the government for afghanistan when we were there and that's not this anymore the word islamic is the second so it's the islamic republic of government of the islamic republic of afghanistan and so the word islamic is in it

and we don't even like that i'm not even allowed to i've been to mosque i'm not even allowed by by policy to go into a mosque well if someone offers someone offers me a shot on Ramadan and they're Islamic, I'm drinking it. I don't care. If they say come into our mosque, that's my job. I'm licensed to do that because I've earned the stripes. And so I can go into a mosque and I can understand that when Afghans make a decision, a real no shit community decision,

there's a holy man in that room. And if not, it's performance. And we cannot, we hate that as americans and that's the stuff that we have to learn is that religion matters you can't just start with fixing female problems here here's a here's a rubric for how this works so there's there's two different rubrics one is is it and we'll use afghanistan is it afghan inspired is it their idea is it afghan led and is is it Afghan provisioned? Are we augmenting then? Okay, let's do that. Now we can do whatever we want and make an exception by design, but

that's the standard. And the other one is, so I was talking to this governor and one of the, I've mentioned it before. And he was saying to me, my number one priority is to get these girls educated and to improve their condition. And we're way off the main route, right? And I'm like, okay, cool. How's that work? He's like, well, first thing is, remember, first priority is women. First thing is, is boys have to get educated because if they're not educated, then everything falls apart. And I'm like, okay, so the girls are behind the boys. No, no, girls are first, but boys have to be educated first to create stability and long-term education. Okay. Before that can happen, say now, okay, there has to be security. And so I'm like, how does that work?

And it works three ways, and I'll boil this down real fast. It was, can the man leave the house and go to work and not be accosted, killed, threatened, and everything else? If he can do that, right, can his compound be safe while he's gone from it? That's a second facet of security.

And then and only then can you project your kids safely out to school because he's safe, the house is safe, now the kids are safe to go out. If you don't have those three elements in this one valley, you can't advance the ball. Jesus Christ. I don't know.

It seems like we just have this attitude of like, we're going to show up and we're going to bring McDonald's and Taco Bell and malls and everything's going to be fine. We'll just. I say it like this. Yahoo. Here we are. We're Americans.

That's how I say it. It's all that stuff in one, right? Yeah. We're going to, we're going to have us a barbecue. The asshole American. That's how we got the term. Yeah. Somewhere along.

I got to say this though. This is important. Everybody wants to do great. Everybody's educated. Everybody the term somewhere along. I got to say this, though. This is important. Everybody wants to do great. Everybody's educated. Everybody's trying their best. But it doesn't work. Slow down, right? So everybody has the right intention.

We all want to help. We're desperate to do it. Americans are great about that. And we spend our hard-earned tax money on this stuff. But let's stop effing up as much. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Sometimes as much yeah i mean i don't know sometimes as much you know and i and i suppose

you know we we always like there's there's always the joke memes about how how uh anything that happens in the world we're just like yeah that's we don't care is there oil there no no okay we don't give a fuck yeah um you know it seems to be it seems to be like like the government is an oligarchy, a policeman, enforcer. We're an enforcer for oligarchs, anything these days. And I'm quoting a few different people who call us an oligarchy at this point, including President Carter. And I think we're very close to that at this point in time, especially when you see

citizens united and different scotus rulings that have made it so you can you just buy a scotus judge now uh if you're a billionaire he's the only one it's pretty cool you can put them on your mantle and shit you know give them a little rv to keep them happy and shit you know you're you're in business so how does we've talked about foreign policy and how the ways we muck it up. How does your think tank, the IINPS, how do you guys, you know, talk to these people at the State Department or foreign policy advisors and go, hey dudes, let's try something different? Well, we invite them in. You know, we have to have these folks be part of the process. So part of who we are is we have ambassadors. These are people that have been in D.C. forever. They know how be part of the process so part of who we are is we are we have ambassadors these are people that have been in dc forever they know how that part of the machine

works they can call into the white house they can get counsel because you have to have the entire stack of of talent right and so we're we're working with the preeminent cultural intelligence expert in the world because we talk about emotional intelligence man if you don't got cultural intelligence if you don't got cq you don't understand you're obsolete yeah like it doesn't matter how someone feels or how you think they feel if you can't what here's this will amaze you there is no sophisticated professional uh training for working with an interpreter it's all ad hoc it's all basically made up and it's all based on a lack of trust because they use a vietnam model where these people would come in and they would lie. So instead of saying, you are a better version of me

because you're going to communicate for me with this other person and teaching this person what you want and how you do it and treating them like an asset, we treat interpreters like they're second-class citizens. Even if these people have been in America longer than us, or even if they're local kids, you have to say, I'm an American. We're going to work on this together. And you have to empower these guys. Look, you have to do your work and you have to check them and everything. But that's simple.

That's straightforward. We don't do that. So no one's even trained. There was not a specific book. Matter of fact, I'll tell you exactly now. In the intelligence, in the counterintelligence manuals, there is a part where it talks about work the interpreter there are more words on the basic how to deploy a mine fast fact sheet than there are in that book on how to work an interpreter which do you think is more complicated work an interpreter well you know the guys sitting there

just going uh the city of america told me. He's full of shit. So just whatever. Just pretend. Just nod your head. Yeah. So these are the things that we try to fix. And so that's why we grab these ambassadors. We grab people from the State Department. One of the guys we're going to be talking to soon is he was the senior

enlisted advisor for all of the military. So he is the senior enlisted soldier, airman. He represents everybody. And he's like man i'm desperate to help with what you guys are doing because i get it you know and it's it's not just the folks on the ground it's everywhere all the way up the stack of people operationally you know procedurally all these folks have to understand that what we are doing our recipe right now it ain't working it ain't working yeah and and you mentioned earlier in the show um you know

these these guys who have a heart on to you know uh you know the books they've written and the things they've talked about they're they're in they're they're interested in going to war i mean if you could sit down with john bolton and maybe calm his ass down that would be great yeah you know i mean that guy wants to go to war with Iraq so much. Or not Iraq, Iran so much. I'm surprised he just swam over there with a gun already. Started firing. I don't know

John Bolton. I've never worked for him. I don't know anybody who's worked for him. I know a lot of people, but I have no connection to him. But I don't take him seriously. And here's why. He started the Iraq war. Yeah, well, so, okay, here's where the IMPS model works, right? So he has this wrong idea,

right? Now we go on the ground and you go to Afghanistan and every unit shows up, we're going to push south and we're going to ensnare the Taliban and what? Make them stack arms, give you their flag and have a ceremony and they quit? And so I'd be out with these, these are hard soldiers. These are infantry people that want to go. They're spoiling for a fight. And guess who never shows up to that fight.

I said this on one of Glenn Beck shows one time I was on it. He's like, why don't we just blow them up? Like, dude, they don't stand in a field and wait to get blown up. Yeah. They're not like, Hey, Over here. This would be a great place. Yeah. Cause the second we leave, they can walk right back into that village and have way more influence than us. And you can tell this to any commander like, well,

then we'll push harder. You can't just go harder or all the time. You have to understand that making the Taliban die and go away is just not going to work. We tried and tried. The Marines tried to kill every Taliban guy they could. right and i love the marines yeah but you you cannot get these guys to surrender because they will not forget the idea thing that we can't even get them to hurt bad enough to quit yeah and and you saw how well that worked out after 20 plus years and i've

just overnight the country is like no we're going back the way we've always been for 10 billion years, tribal and medieval. And we like this sort of shit. We're not into Taco Bell. They all had their deals in place. The number one line on every battle commander's mission statement is close

with and destroy the enemy, or some form of that. And when you aren't doing that every day, if you're not destroying the enemy every day, what else can you do? And there are things you can do. You can stabilize the government. You can make people believe in the government. You can get all these other aspects that allow you to leave the country. When we leave an area as a military, we just poof, disappear. We don't tell anybody. We're so bad at partnering. We don't say, hey, in about six months, we're going to leave. No fooling.

We're going to leave. What do we got to do? Just the time we have left, what do we want to do? I would be one of those guys. I would go talk to the governors and the mayors, and I would say, no fooling. In about three weeks, we're leaving. And they would look at me and just go pale. They're like, if you leave, I'm going to die.

And it's true. I'm thinking of right now. I do got killed about six weeks after we left. Holy shit. And so that is what we do. We promise all this stuff and then we keep it a secret for OPSEC. We don't allow the people who are going to have to lead this government, we don't allow them in the room when we tell them,

when we tell each other what we think the government's capable of. And so we hide all this stuff. This is simple. Invite the people who hold the reins of the government to the meeting where we talk about the government so we can learn what they need not what we can help them fix it that's what we fail yeah yeah it's crazy right to think that you can show up go okay it's fixed self-assess your own work and then leave and be like how come it didn't work yeah it doesn't work like that it's it's pretty i't know, it's weird.

I'm here with the U.S. government. I'm here to help you. I mean, I love our country. I love America. I love the vision of what we're technically trying to achieve, but there's some places that, I don't know, maybe they're just fine without freedom.

And if they want freedom, well, just fucking fight for it for yourself. You can tune into our Western culture and all that shit, and you can see we don't need to be over here. Do your thing, man. We did it. No one helped us when we fucking overthrew Britain and shit. No one was like, hey, you need some help with that democracy over

there we're just like no i'm just let's fucking do this um we got this um you know i'm not saying that we can't do that and we did get help the french and the dutch these people financed and everything the thing is is that we can't just go over there without developing professional capacity to accomplish the mission and be tough enough to withstand the fact that, hey, we're screwing it up. And if your policy is bad over and over again, like say Susan Rice, right? I'm picking her not because of party, I'm picking her because of talent. And she ran out of town a long time ago. And so we put in these terrible positions where someone else has made a decision that's not based in any kind of reality. I can do it all day with all of these folks who are in this policy world because they get it wrong and there's no penalty.

There's never like, hey, you know what happens? They get hired to go somewhere else and spread more nonsense that just doesn't work. Yeah. And every four years you got somebody new coming in, a bunch of new college recruits. I remember reading about John F. Kennedy and they had all the college boys who were the first time trying to run a war you know and they're trying to run a war of accounting where they're like hey if you kill somebody we need proof you got to bring a dead body back from you know 20 miles into the fucking jungle you're like what how many torsos what the fuck do you want where it's hard enough to kill a man um and uh but they're like oh they don't

they don't count you're like are we running a business here we're on a and you know all the shit that we've done over the years um and and you know every like like i think we have people talk about on the show every 48 years there's almost a new i mean technically even every four years because usually white houses will overturn their staff um and uh you know so you got these new college kids in going i'm gonna save the world and solve middle league's problems and you're like you i mean what makes you special i just graduated i've been with i was with mckinsey group for four years. Oh, well, that's fucking great. How'd you earn that thing again?

I graduated college. Oh, that's nice. So not to bash the McKinsey Group too much, but it has kind of become a kind of meme. Final, as we go out, let's wrap the show. Tell people maybe, can they get involved with your non-profit is it to donate thing how can uh maybe they get involved with it yeah i mean we're gonna up our production of products so that people can start to learn and gather these things that's the first thing and

so uh probably this week or next we're gonna relaunch a youtube channel based on it we're gonna start putting out products and that's when we'll really be ready to start to do this we're going to relaunch a YouTube channel based on it. We're going to start putting out products. That's when we'll really be ready to start to do this. We're going to have our first summit in January in DC at the Army Navy Club. So the 15th and 16th of January, you can come out to the Army Navy Club and get to see real people, real practitioners who know shit and understand what this is, and then talk to foreign policy people so that we can go slow down. Let's get this right. Let's improve our accuracy because people die when we don't. We waste trillions of dollars getting stuff wrong.

And we have to stop doing that. So the best way to get involved is, hey, you can email me, pete at breakitdownshow.com. And then if that's what you want to do, I'll find a way to put you to work. And we're going to partner with other think tanks too, right? We don't have all the answers, but we're going to grab the experts that do and create efficiency and create some elegance to our work. Because like you said, you can't have a bunch of Ivy League people who want to work for the State Department getting things wrong nonstop. I mean, it has to, it has to, has to, has to improve. And I'm not saying that we'll get it right. I'm not saying that we can accomplish all these goals, but we cannot accomplish these

goals if we are incompetent. And if we are acting inappropriately as a norm, if we are creating instability, then maybe your premise is right. Maybe we shouldn't even be there at all. I think we can create stability, but we have to get way better at being bad at this so that we can go, wow, this is where we got to improve. And, and we don't like to be bad.

You know, I, I was hearing, uh, I think it was, you know, I'm not being partisan here by naming names. Don't freak out people and,

and flip out. But, you know, Mitch McConnell, I think said it best. And I believe Biden has said it as well. Um, the,

you know, the Ukraine effort is interesting. It's, it's really flushed um the you know the ukraine effort is interesting it's it's really fleshed out you know but what was once thought of as the second greatest military in the world to being the second greatest military in ukraine um i just sold that joke from some of the state department um the uh um and and and they they're burning down the you, what shitty sort of military the Russian had. And they're really exposing, like, all the cracks. It wasn't for nuclear weapons, Jesus Christ.

And we're not even sure those work at this point. It's kind of like, what was that show with Sean Connery? The Rock? No, it wasn't. Yeah, there's that. But it was called The Russia House. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was a great movie where they find out

and this is probably you know what we found out during the first iraq war and i believe that's why russia fell ussr fells because they're like holy shit they got cameras on their missiles we got shit we just could just quit already um but they it's it's a great uh it's kind of an interesting story about how they find out the russians you know couldn't launch a missile on a good day um and that it's just a paper tiger really and so we kind of found that out seeing what's going on at the rack war but mitch mcconnell and i believe joe biden have said it in in tandem that basically we're using the russia war to kind of just get rid of all this old ordinance that we've had laying around so that we can make new ordinance

and refill our, our coffers. It's kind of interesting money sort of inventory process. Like I've never known a business to say, Hey, we should start a war with the, I don't know. We should go fight Amazon so that they,

they unload all of our inventory. So we can have fresh inventory and you're just like that's kind of interesting way of thinking about it um and who's making money off this again oh i can see how this works um you know yeah by the way war is terrible where war is terrible for the environment you know what it costs to have a cubic yard of concrete go 50 feet in the air and be part of a building like this? It's enormous. Oh, my gosh.

It's enormously expensive in terms of petrochemicals and everything. But I don't want to get distracted by that. What I want to say about Ukraine is, look, Russia is not able to defeat Ukraine. Ukraine is not able to defeat Russia. This is exactly what the U.S. wants. We want to stalemate. The problem is that Russia is going to own all the eastern real estate,

most likely, and that's where all the industrial capacity is. Plus the grain we need. Right. Ukraine can grow food, but what they need to be able to do and what they want to do is be a better option for us than China. They want to build industrial capacity in the West,

get away from Russia and not rely on them. This is an enormous opportunity for us, but we have to allow these oligarchs to do good business and allow them to be great at that. And we don't like that. And so we're going to have some worse version instead of having Ukraine saying, hey, let us manufacture things for you. We're going to have some, I don't know, we're going to take a place that's got so much energy in its dirt, and we're going to turn it into a solar farm or something. You know, it'd be some dumb... I promise you this

is going to happen. When we go as part of the reconstruction, we're going to teach Ukrainian farmers how to grow food. I promise you that's going to happen because that's in the playbook. Like we did in Afghanistan where we forced them all to give up poppy fields? Yeah. Oh, I can tell you about poppy fields. You all to give up poppy fields. Yeah. Oh, I can tell you about poppy fields.

You want to hear about poppy fields? I'll tell you about poppy fields. It was all nonsense. All of it. All of these programs that people dream up. Yeah. There's literally a guy in every state of Afghanistan, right? It's a province, but every state has a guy who's American,

and his job is to bring the Taliban in from the cold. Like, hey, we have a program. We'll get you all educated. We'll teach you Microsoft Word, you know? And that guy can deploy for a year and do zero, never, ever, ever bring a Taliban guy in. And they would be like, that's cool. Bring the next guy in.

And they would fail, and they would fail, and they would fail. Because it's not real. It's nonsense. So why have that dude there, right? That goes back to to your thing don't even have that guy send him off like uh hey you guys should give up poppy fields and and uh grow corn you know and stuff like that um yeah yeah it's it's interesting me like i didn't even know how important ukraine was to the world like when the war first broke out, I'm like, why are we fighting? I mean, I,

I understood that he was probably, and I believe they found that there were plans to basically start a NATO thing, um, and take over the, the, uh, a few of the small countries next to,

um, uh, Ukraine and, and probably, you know, push, uh, the boundaries of,

of what NATO would do. But, uh, I didn't know they were, the number one sunflower seed exporter to the world, and there's a lot of shit that depends on that. Fertilizer, I believe they're the number one fertilizer, and the number two or three for grain providing. Like, there are parts of the world that are starving because they can't get the grain from Ukraine, and you're just like, holy shit,

this is a hell of a fight over resources on top of everything else. Yeah, and there's also a legal problem there because of the corruption and the government's desire to snatch up companies. These things go to court and then they have to exit the Ukrainian court because the Ukrainian court is too corrupt.

And look back a month ago and you find out why. But you have to exit into the greater European courts to get your finding. That doesn't mean it's enforceable in Ukraine, but it's like, hey, they owe me $500. Then you go back to Ukraine. Well, when the greater business community sees that and they're like, what do you mean they seized your assets, stole $500 million, didn't agree to the court decision? I'm not going to invest in that. And so that binds up everything because we can't get our hands wrapped around the corruption, partly because we are the corruptor. Have you seen the shit that we're doing on the ground?

I believe 60 Minutes covered this. We're doing way more than military shit on the ground. We've got people in there trying to teach stuff. And I can't remember what it is. Just road work, tunnels. We're involved in a lot of shit. It's almost society rebuilding. Yeah.

And they want to have a more perfect society, but they can't even fix the problems in their own towns. Right. We all, we all have problems. And instead of listening to the Ukrainian leaders and allowing these guys to lead Ukraine forward and away from Russia, which is what we all want. We, we want to come in and give them the problems that we have. Look, there's, there's a time and a place to get to these other problems, right? Okay. We want to give them the problems we have.

Yeah. Like things are working out really well. We got Senator's fist fighting. Uh, we got, uh, elbowing. We, we got basically fascist pre-fascist violence going on in america yeah um yeah we spent so much uh you know what eight ten twelve trillion and fucking the afghan iraq war where we didn't fund schools and everyone's dumb as fuck and they think that fucking fascism authoritarianism might be really a cool change i heard a senator the other day on

face the nation talking about how maybe this time we try populism like you fucking serious like what we're having these conversations people don't realize the conversation that's going on right now if you study fascism authoritarianism we are fucking on the fast rails um and and when you're seeing violence break out with political leaders we're here man this is mussolini nazi shit when you got some guy who's the head of a party's using terms of hitler and vermin on fucking purpose we are on we're on the rails and that's what makes me laugh so hard when you're like yeah we're over in ukraine trying to help them have the same problems we do. Holy shit, man.

Maybe we should just all fix us first. There's two axioms that I love to use. One, and look, I am for everybody. I believe in everybody, right? So don't get me wrong on this, but diversity and unity are opposite. They're antonyms. And it's not easy to sit in the middle between those two as a society. So there are going to be sacrifices and some of it's going to suck.

So antonyms, diversity and unity. So you can't go to somewhere and just blow that country up because you're trying to bring diversity in. Like, leave them alone. Let's work on where they're at and where they want to be. And then the other big thing is, this is just for our political leaders um picking the lesser of two evils is picking evil we've got to we've got to get better people man you and i should be running head to head i'm like hey i'm going to bring us what you know rather than like we can't pick from the lowest common denominator because someone's electable you know that's not that's not a recipe for success let's not export that anywhere else

yeah and the kim kardashianism of our politics has really gotten stupid like i yell at people all the time now um like i don't i quit being quit being um cow toad led around by the nose by whatever the hottest stupid shit is that they're talking about you know what whatever the performative politicians are out there um doing i don't think a lot of people realize this somebody gave me this i might have been on morning joe or face the nation but somebody made this comment that one of the problems we have in our politics is the small donor issue and originally the small donor issue was something where like people like hey we're getting away from the fucking oligarchs who you know with citizens united who can buy

you know their politicians and we're getting into these small donor things well evidently the small donor things is just batshit motherfucking backwood backwards americans who will fund these social media performative people and send them every dime that they fucking have like some you know those crazy reverends and so these politicians that are performative that don't do any legislation really um have learned that if they just do political stunts when the mic's on, that they can, you know, put out a thing and they'll get all these batshit individual donations from, you know, these specialty groups and, you know, a bunch of people who, you know, they're sitting at home with, I don't know, whatever, I'm not going to profile, but you

know what I mean? And I didn't even realize that. I was like, hey, you know, those, those those homegrown turns out they're not turns out they're actually the staple for these for these performative guys and it's like i don't want to hear your batshit thing about i don't know we're arguing over bathrooms how about if you fix the infrastructure in this country we got like shit falling apart we got like bridges falling down we got you know uh what's the old joke about how if if if the air force had to hold a bake sale like teachers do um you know and i i love people that always tell me about what's in the constitution those are my favorite people because

i i carry a constitution you see around and most most most people in the press do and you you ask somebody where is that in here again yeah like anybody who quotes the constitution pretty much almost nine times out of ten has no idea where the fuck that is and it's not in the constitution just making shit up that's unconstitutional it's like you know show me where that is in the thing and uh they just make up whatever they want but a great fun discussion on foreign policy and as always um hopefully you guys can help make the world better give us your final pitch out pete for the podcast and uh what you're doing there at the non-profit as we go out so to break it down show my niches anytime any company any country,

anything, anywhere, I'll just, I'll go talk to people. So I've talked to all kinds of people. And if that's your bag, if that's the thing you like, then great. Then you'll never know what you're going to get. It's always going to be awesome. I'm a trained spy. I know how to ask questions and I, I get incredible guests because we, we have incredible conversations. So if that's your thing, I'd love to have you over to break it down. So just go to the YouTube channel, type in P.A. Turner. It'll come up. There's 1500 shows there. That's the biggest thing. And then if you're in D.C. this January 2024, between the 15th and 16th, come on out to the Army Navy Club and you can come shake my hand and we'll all try to fix this whole foreign policy net together. That's that's where my main focus of my work is. And man,

I appreciate you for doing this and giving me your platform for a little bit. I thank you for that. There you go. Maybe you can grab John Bolton as a joke with Richard Haas from the Senate Council for Relations. I'm like, can we hold him down and shave that ugly ass beard

off? Or his mustache. It's that nasty mustache. I'd rather just replace him with somebody who's more calm, you know, do something else. I think he's like Hercules. If you take the mustache off, maybe he'll be less hard on about Iran.

I asked Richard Haas. I was like, I was like, do you think that gets him more dates on Tinder? And, uh, Richard wouldn't answer. It's like,

I'm not going there with you. Uh, so there you go. Thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate it, Pete. Thank you very much. And to my audience, thank you for tuning in. We certainly couldn't do it without you folks.

Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss, the big LinkedIn group. Subscribe to that damn newsletter. It grows like a weed. It's really weird. I'm just like, I didn't know there was this many people on LinkedIn that were active. Go to the big 130 000 linkedin group chris fos one on tiktok and uh i don't know chris fos facebook.com that'll get you to the thing where you can talk on the show thanks

uh yes here for uh giving us the little plug there we certainly appreciate it uh thanks for tuning in be good to each other stay safe and we'll see you guys next time