The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – They Called Us “Lucky”: The Life and Afterlife of the Iraq War’s Hardest Hit Unit by Ruben Gallego, Jim DeFelice

Episode Date: November 13, 2021

They Called Us "Lucky": The Life and Afterlife of the Iraq War's Hardest Hit Unit by Ruben Gallego, Jim DeFelice From the Arizona Congressman, a 21st-century Band of Brothers chronicling the eternal bonds forged between the Marines of Lima Company, the hardest-hit unit of the Iraq War At first, they were “Lucky Lima.” Infantryman Ruben Gallego and his brothers in Lima Company—3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, young men drawn from blue-collar towns, immigrant households, Navajo reservations—returned unscathed on patrol after patrol through the increasingly violent al Anbar region of Iraq, looking for weapons caches and insurgents trying to destabilize the nascent Iraqi government. After two months in Iraq, Lima didn't have a casualty, not a single Purple Heart, no injury worse than a blister. Lucky Lima. Then, in May 2005, Lima’s fortunes flipped. Unknown to Ruben and his fellow grunts, al Anbar had recently become a haven for al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The bin Laden-sponsored group had recruited radicals from all over the world for jihad against the Americans. On one fateful day, they were lured into a death house; the ambush cost the lives of two men, including a platoon sergeant. Two days later, Ruben’s best friend, Jonathon Grant, died in an IED attack, along with several others. Events worsened from there. A disastrous operation in Haditha in August claimed the lives of thirteen Marines when an IED destroyed their amphibious vehicle. It was the worst single-day loss for the Marines since the 1983 Beirut bombings. By the time 3/25 went home in November, it had lost more men than any other single unit in the war. Forty-six Marines and two Navy Corpsmen serving with the battalion in Iraq were killed in action during their roughly nine-month activation. They Called Us “Lucky” details Ruben Gallego’s journey and includes harrowing accounts of some of the war’s most costly battles. It details the struggles and the successes of Ruben—now a member of Congress—and the rest of Lima Company following Iraq, examining the complicated matter of PTSD. And it serves as a tribute to Ruben’s fallen comrades, who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.

Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. Thanks for being here. To see the video version of this, go to youtube.com, for it says Chris Voss, hit the bell notification button, and also go to goodreads.com, for it says Chris Voss. See everything we're reading and

reviewing over there. Actually, two of my books now are going up on the Goodreads giveaway, so you can check those out as well, and get in the free giveaway they're doing over there. Also, go see all of our groups, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram. I've lost track of how many there are. It's just wherever all those cool kids are playing to check that out. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and

Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can pre-order the book right now wherever fine books are sold.

But the best thing to do on getting a pre-order deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out, or order the book wherever fine books are sold. Today, we're honored to have not only a veteran of the Iraq War, but a congressman on the show with us today.

He's the author of the newest book that came out November 9th, 2021. The book is called They Called Us Lucky, The Life and Afterlife of the Iraq War's Hardest Hit Unit. Ruben Gallego is on the show with us today, and he's going to be talking to us about his amazing book and some of the writing that went into it. He represents the 7th District of Arizona in the U.S. House of Representatives. He's a son of Hispanic immigrants. He was the first in his family to attend college, graduated from Harvard University with a degree in international relations. While an undergrad, he enlisted as an infantryman in the Marine Corps Reserve. He was deployed

first with Bravo 125 in Okinawa, Japan, then to Iraq in 2005, where he and the other members of Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war. He was elected to Congress in 2014 as a Democrat, and he's a member of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs and House Armed Services Committee, where he serves as the chairman of the Intelligence and Special Operations Committee. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife and son. Welcome to the show, Re reuben how are you good

good thank you chris for having me good good and it's an honor to have you on the show sir especially since yesterday was veterans day and there was a lot of memorials of people that have worn the uniform and thanking them of course for their service it's uh every veterans day memorial day it's always uh it's a hard reminder of what a lot of us did, but we were glad that people recognize the work and service a lot of us did. Yeah, and probably a great time for your book to come out at Veterans Day to remind people of the war and some of the costs of it and some of the damage. And you talk a lot about that in the book.

Give me your plugs so that people can find you on the interwebs. For the book, it's called They Called It. And for my Twitter following, you could go to at Ruben Gallego, R-U-B-E-N-G-A-L-E-G-O. Facebook is just Ruben. And we also have an Instagram that's also very basic, Ruben Gallego. And the book is by Harper Collins. It's really a book not even about me. It's about the men that I serve with, men from all across the world. It really is your modern-day version of Band of

Brothers. There you go. And you co-wrote it with a very famous co-author. I'm not sure I know the pronunciation of his last name, so I'll leave it to you to introduce him. Jim DeFelice also wrote American Sniper, a great co-author. I probably could not have done it without him. This is a very difficult

story to write, especially just with the emotional aspects of it, but having his expertise was definitely give us an arcing overview of the book and what's inside, if you would, please. So essentially what the book is about is it starts with the story of me, but me working and what occurred that day. And that day I get a phone call from my former sergeant in the Marine Corps, who I was very close with, who sounded very distraught because he had tried to go to the VA and the VA told him that he had never seen combat. And which is not an uncommon thing back in the day, if you didn't have proper paperwork and therefore they didn't give him any service at the VA. And he was at the edge at that point.

It sounded like he was going to do something really stupid. So I dropped whatever I was doing at work, and I got in my car, and I drove from Phoenix to Albuquerque. And the whole way I'm talking to him about our experiences in Iraq, mostly just to convince him that, yes, you're not insane, McKenzie. You actually were in combat, and let me tell you all the crazy things we did together. But at the same time, I'm also telling myself. And so that's the premise of the book. That's how we lay out the book. It's me talking to McKenzie about our experiences. And we go into different aspects of the war. And the crux of this is that this war ends up being a very hard war, right? The title is called, they call this Lucky because our initial nickname was Lucky Lima. And largely we named that because we were in combat a lot, but had seen no casualties whatsoever after two months of hard sustained combat.

And then it suddenly turned around and we started dropping like flies. I lost my best friend. I lost other good friends, to the point towards the end of the war, or our war, I should say, that one out of three of the Marines that served in Lima Company was either killed or wounded. Wow. Which is a number that has not been seen since the Beirut bombing and then beyond that probably since the Vietnam War. And I talk about the experiences of war, and I'm very, it's unvarnished. I show you the good, the bad, the ugly. I'll show you the good, the bad, the ugly. And then I also show the good, the bad, the ugly when you return from war. And I'm very, it's unvarnished. I show you the good, the bad, the ugly. I'll show you the

good, the bad, the ugly. And then I also show the good, the bad, the ugly when you return from war. Because one of the things I want to communicate is that you can't just look at war from a perspective of the general or the politician. I give you the perspective from the young man, largely in the early 20s, that are out there grinding it out and trying to figure out how to survive every day in a very, very hostile environment. Yeah. The stories that you're telling are sobering. They're scary. There's one story where you guys were doing a teddy bear giveaway. You patrol through an area. I don't know if you want to touch on that and tell that story. Yeah. We got a massive amount of teddy bears that were donated to us,

and we decided to start turning and give them out. And so we went on patrol. We usually always go on patrol through neighborhoods to make sure no one's sending up ambushes. And as we're patrolling, we were giving out a lot of teddy bears. And we ended up being followed by these children throughout our whole patrol. And one of the things you do while you're patrolling is you can do a double back to make sure nobody's following you. As we doubled back, we ran into these guys from eod explosive explosive ordinance disposal they're the guys that blow up things and like we asked them like what are you guys doing here you guys

just walk by an ied field like why didn't it go off then on us because you had all those children with you those are the kind of things that would happen this book and we explore that we explore the idea of luck or no luck. We explore the idea of God in war or no God in war and just how random it all is and how scary it is. Yeah, it's horrifying. It's touching. It's moving. At one point in the war, you were supposed to be, I think, in a vehicle that ended up losing a lot of battalion members. Yeah, that happens a lot in this book. Part of the book, I tell about the 11 times I'm supposed to die. And that's why 11 is my favorite number. And I know it's more than

11, but this 11 says six. But at one point, I am in a vehicle that rolls over a mine. And that mine doesn't go off on me, but it goes off on my friend behind me, which is something that will haunt me forever. And when you're going through minefields or anything that's not clear, you're supposed to follow directly behind the other person with the idea of, if the first person makes it through, then the second person will make it through. Unfortunately, something random happened that day. The explosion did not go off on me, but did go off on my friend and friends, and we lost that. And there was just other random things like that.

I was doing vehicle operations, and an IED goes off that should have hit me, if not for the fact that a sandstorm just happened to come right through at that point and probably blocked the vision of the detonator. Snipers missing me by inches, just things of that nature. One of the things I like to explain to people is that's the nature of war. It is terrifying in the sense that you may be a very skilled person, but you can get killed. And one of the main characters, Staff Sergeant Goodwin, is a fierce warrior, probably one of the best

Marines you'll ever meet, and he gets taken out just randomly. Somebody happens to get a good luck shot. You just can't see it coming. What do you hope people get from reading your book? I imagine it's an honor to your fallen comrades and stuff for them and putting their memory in writing.

But what do you hope overall people get from the book? Number one, I wrote this book for my comrades. I didn't want to write this book. It took me forever just to even think about writing this book because of PTSD. And writing this book brought up so many bad memories and feelings that I had repressed. There's one portion I talk about where I had to guard over the body parts of my buddies, and there's all these dogs that are coming in to try to take their body parts. And I'm shooting at the dogs so that way they wouldn't take the body parts. But I feel bad even about shooting

about the dogs. I totally had repressed for 15 years. And I know a lot of my Marines also did the same thing. We repressed a lot of things. We stopped talking to people about it. And we did some amazing work. We were in an area the size of West Virginia dealing with some of the hardest core insurgents. And we were in constant combat every day. And I wanted people to hear our story of that. I wanted to hear the story of the men that died. I want to also learn what real war is, not this glorification shit that happens on all these Navy SEAL books and everyone's a badass. Well, you know what?

In war, not everyone's a badass. In war, most people are just going to do the best basic job they could and not above that because that's really all you can do. And then I want people to take lessons from it. Whenever we send these kids out, and they are kids, to war, you should know that you are sending a kid. Right now, when we look at military movies, it's always these old, grizzled men that are in war. But in reality, it's the 18-, 19-year-old kids that are in the infantry, led by 22-year-olds. And they're very scared, and it's a very scary experience.

And that's a real, that's a real position. That's what's actually really happening in war. And you talk about in the book as you're living every day, just trying to get through the day and get to the next patrol and come home. And you're always questioning today, the day. And at that age, you're still just trying to figure out life. You're still just trying to figure out life you're still just trying to figure out everything and do you think one of the problems we have in our societies we're a little too antiseptic towards our thoughts on war we're like oh it's over there there's on the tv news and it doesn't seem quite as foolish as it really is in the ground do you think it's important that we start really understanding better what that means i mean

i think if we actually start understanding better what that means? I mean, I think if we actually start understanding better what that means, I think we'd be less likely to engage in it. And it is anti-sectarian in two ways. Number one, only 1% of the population will ever serve in the military. And of that 1%, very few actually actually ever serve in combat. And so you have a whole lot of people within the military that also remove from war. And the American public is also shielded from war because it's so far away. It doesn't really involve society. It involves 1% of 1% of the population really gets involved in war or war making. And so there is no shared sacrifice.

There is no idea of imminent danger. Even if we are now sending people to war for things that aren't really existential threats to this country. And so it's a very weird system, especially for democracies like us that we do this type of war making. And then it also trickles down to other areas, like the way that we even dramatize war in movies. And what happens is you see this amazing sequences of events where maybe somebody dies. We're always the alphas that can win the fight as Americans. And everyone ends up going home and they form this great bond and everyone lives happy ever after. Well, some of that happens, but also a lot of it happens where

a lot of us end up being homeless. A lot of us end up being alcoholics or on drugs or to self-medicate ourselves or become extremely mad. Some of us end up, like me, with PTSD and not having a drug or alcohol problem, but having other emotional problems that stop me from really being fully who I am. But nobody wants to see that on TV. Nobody wants to see that in a movie. And nobody wants to see 18, 19-year-old boys fighting for their lives because how could you fight for your life if you barely have lived? Yeah. I think one of the saddest parts about this country is it doesn't seem that we support our veterans enough, and especially when they circle back. And I had a lot of friends that I remember one friend that was going back for his fourth tour of duty in Iraq. And I was like, why do you want to go back?

And he was so lost here without the brotherhood. And a lot of my friends that I play with, the brotherhood element and knowing somebody has your back. And then they come here and you're lost and you're trying to find how that works. And so you talk about in your book about going to the PTSD and some of the rest of the battalion that survived and coming home and trying to do that. It seems like there's so much more that we need to do to support veterans and everything else. What more could we be doing? And I don't talk about this in the book because I actually don't talk much about politics or policy in the book because one of the things I want to communicate in the book is how helpless you are as a young infantryman. And so talking about policy, it's like going to like the Ferrari sales room. You can look at the cars, but you ain't going to

pass anything, especially when you're an 18, 19 year old Marine. But what we can do is actually look at, my thing is that we need to look at veterans holistically. It's great that we get a mental health care, but mental health care is something that needs to happen holistically with other, one of the hardest reasons why, and you just said about your friend, Chris, that the reason he wanted to go back, it's not just because he had the sense of brotherhood, because he had a sense of purpose, right? And every day waking up with a sense of purpose actually makes you motivated to do more. A lot of times we come back to the civilian world, and this is certainly something that I saw.

I felt very lost for a while because every day I woke up with a purpose, was to keep myself alive, keep my men alive, and to not lose my dignity in the process. And then when you come back to this world where you're just a peon, I had a really good friend who was an amazing warrior in the war. He was leading a group of 40 men into combat every day and keeping them alive. And he came back and found himself as a janitor. So what does it mean that it's a problem with him being a janitor?

No, what it means is that we need to find a way to make these men feel whole, make sure they're in organizations that make them feel whole, like American Legion or other nonprofits. And we have to help them find fulfilling careers. There's nothing more, I'd say, dehumanizing and that will quickly, I think, demasculinate. Demasculinate. Is that even a word? Probably.

It is now. Yeah, it is now, right? Poetic license. Especially for Marines and young Marines, and they come back and they can't even make a living to pay for their family. Yeah. And so all those things add up other problems, right? If you can't do that,

then you feel even less of a worth. You start drinking, start using drugs, increase your PTSD. So what I'm trying to say is we need to take care of these guys holistically. Let's get them mental health care, but let's get them good paying career jobs so they actually can provide for the families and feel comfortable about in the society. Let's make them part of our society and make them feel like they have a purpose every day. Yeah. I think I, do you like that? Is it Blackstone, the company that recently announced they, they took on a bunch of people, the veterans, they, I think they announced it on Veterans Day. Was it Blackstone or Black? It could be. And I'll tell you, things

have changed dramatically since when I first got out of, I graduated from Warren, I still had a Harvard degree and nobody would hire me because they couldn't make sense of my military background. And so I even went to a big bank who had a management consulting training program and they wouldn't accept me because they told me I had no leadership experience. Like I just led men in combat. How hard is it to lead men in combat? A million dollar machines. Yeah, exactly.

You don't think I can handle 18, like you don't get to handle a couple of tellers. Actually a billiondollar machines. Yeah, exactly. You don't think I can handle a couple tellers? Actually, billion-dollar machines. Exactly. But it's that same bank that I'll leave the name out of it that rejected me now has an amazing veterans training program that has veterans right out of boot camp. I'm sorry, not out of boot camp, but right off active duty. And no matter what their military occupation, we'll train them in getting them into the banking system and start moving them up into the corporate management leadership program.

That's what we need to be doing. Yes. I think so, too. I was writing my book this year on leadership, and my friends that I game with are in the Army. Sorry, you guys don't get along. They need to be around, too. They have their space. with are in the army sorry you guys don't get along but they need to be around too and we were talking about them and they turned me on to the be no do sort of thing in the military and the the techniques that the military teaches there's really core solid leadership this is why

you guys make great leaders and not tapping into that resource as for business and everything else it's just insane i started really studying the stuff that you guys are taught, and it's extraordinary. And remember, you're teaching young men this. A lot of them don't even have any sophisticated college education, but they quickly become leaders. And one of the things in the book is that once we start dying, we get a lot of new replacements. As all these guys start dying, a lot of us that are still there, the few survivors, we keep moving up, and we're basically replacing the people that died.

And it's one of the great lessons of being a good leader is that you need to be training your replacement all the time. And in the Marine Corps, that happens. The guy below me knew my job, and the guy above me knew that I knew his job, to the point where when shit hit the fan, we could take care of it. And no matter what, if I have to give any advice in terms of leadership development out there is make sure that you train someone to be you, right? It's okay for you to be replaceable. You're a good leader if you actually have people that can take your spot.

Yeah. One of my army friends who actually served in iraq i think in in the same time you did he was asking what more can just the american public do to support our troops do we need to reach out more do we need to everyone says thank you for your service i've seen members that are angry about that so i always feel like maybe it's a little cliche i'm like i don't get mad about it i mean it's like it is what it is it's't, look, don't send us to stupid wars. That's step number one. And if we end up at a stupid war, don't keep us in that stupid war for 20 years. I don't even think Afghanistan was a stupid war.

I think actually that was a justified war. But we were in Iraq for far too long. We were in Afghanistan for far too long. But do that, right? Because I get fed, maybe we could get, maybe the lower grades of men and women could get paid a little more. Maybe we could have a little lower grades of men and women could get paid a little more maybe we could have a little more benefits free college some most of us go to free college and stuff but the va could be a little better but the most important thing that would be helpful

to military people is don't send us to stupid wars and if we end up in a stupid war don't keep us there for longer than we should because it's deteriorating it's cheering to the military deteriorating to the older veterans because now you have new veterans coming out of this war, you know, into this, putting stress on the VAs. Pay attention. Here, the Democrats or Republicans talking about, well, this is a just war and we're just going to send men over there. Or the Democrats or Republicans saying, well, this isn't really a war. This is like us sending a thousand troops over there and for a different reason. No, no, no. If a man is shooting at another man to kill, that's war. It doesn't matter how big or small it is.

And if that's the case, government should be kept in check by the people. And we should ask, is this worth our time? Is this worth the blood of our sons and daughters as treasure? Most of the time, I would tell you it's probably not. And we probably have to start looking, like you talk about, the long-term cost of this, what the damage is. I remember one of my friends years ago had PTSD really bad, and someone kept flying just a little drone, private drones, around his house.

And it was triggering him so bad. Oh, God, I can't imagine, yeah. Yeah, he was having the worst time with it. And so it's a real thing, and we need to provide as much help and services as we can. What are some other maybe things you want to touch on the book to get people to go out and pick it up? Definitely, if you pick up this book, you'll learn about these men. And they're the best men I've ever met. They're true Americans.

They love their country. They were young men. They just wanted to serve. And some of them died horrific deaths for this country. Some of them survived and are still struggling. And I want you to know how brave they are. I want you to know how amazing they are and how we're going to make it through. This book will give you the closest understanding of what modern warfare is. And a modern in the sense that it's not a glorified account of war. It's not, it's not, it's not, it's neither,

it doesn't also go out of its way to tell you how bad war is. It just tells you what it is. And you'll understand like the trauma that comes with it, the excitement. You also hear about all the crazy shit we used to do just to keep ourselves sane. Like we started our own, create our own prison hooch that didn't go so well. Then we started smuggling, you our own prison hooch that didn't go so well. Then we started smuggling. You know what I'm talking about? Then we started smuggling our own booze in, playing pranks on each other.

That is what happens at war. Yeah, you got to blow off some steam and stuff. Your Lima company was a pretty diverse unit. And in the age of division, do we need to come together as Americans and realize that we're fighting common enemies, especially Russia, China, different things. Talk a little bit about that, if you would. Yeah. Lima Company is based out of Columbus, Ohio.

It's largely white men. And then you have the group that I came out of, which is Fourth Reconnaissance, out of Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is a big majority is Latino and Native American. And different varieties of Latinos, ones that just got here a couple of years ago, others that their family had been in New Mexico for 400 years. So we meet up with the Ohio boys as we call them and we start training with them and they merge us all together. And so it's a great experience for everybody.

We teach them how to eat green chili, how to make meals actually taste well because being us guys from New Mexico, we bring little packets of hatch green chili. I don't know if you ever had hatch green chili. Oh, yeah, dude. I'm a fan. So we'd have that stuff mailed to us and we'd grab it and we'd get some canned chicken and we'd make some great meals for these guys and plus add some tortillas.

So we ended up really coming together from all walks of life and even politically. Most of my, I'd say 60% of the guys I serve with are probably hardcore Trump supporters. The other 20 percent is probably just indifferent. The other 20 percent are like me, Democrats. But we get along great. We don't hate each other. We don't beat up each other. We encourage each other.

We understand at the core base that we're all Americans. We want to see the best of america come out and i wish that was more the case all the time i can joke with them they can joke with me and it's not the end of the world and a lot of that is missing right now in politics and in society and i mean or just not even like the conversations but even people just not having friends like people are now choosing their friends based just purely on political ideology so these things you should have an open wide net and and not just be liberals staying with liberals and conservatives staying with conservatives yeah it's definitely we i think social media is

really just really wrecking this sort of thing it's really dividing us and and separating us you speak of albuquerque i had a friend who lived in albuquerque and he brought me down there and just driving around where they roast the chilies on the side oh yeah in the bags like that during christmas time oh oh and he taught me how to take the anaheim chilies and run a mozzarella stick up them and then you know cook them and oh my god wow i'm getting hungry just talking you also you have a lot of diversity in your life and different things that you've done and experienced when you were uh young i guess a lot of immigration experience going between us

and mexico and growing up what do you see there to me i we need to be a nation of a melting pot we've got to compete with china which is growing and, and we need new people. It's funny. I saw a meme somebody posted the other day. I think it was from one of the news commentators on MSNBC, and she said, how do we have an immigration problem when we can't even fill in the jobs here in America? Yeah, I mean, like, my parents were both immigrants. I was born in the United States. I moved back to Mexico after being born here for two years, or I think it was four years, actually, after four years here, we moved back to Mexico to take over a ranch that my grandma, after dying, had given to my dad.

And so I worked the fields in Mexico. The one thing that's interesting that I still remember to this day, like in Mexico, I wasn't considered Mexican enough because I was born in the United States. In the United States, growing up, especially among my classmates, I wasn't considered American enough because my parents were immigrants. And so it's a very interesting experience for me always living in both worlds where I think I'm 100% American and have zero doubt about that. But I grew up in a world where work was a part of life every day. And sometimes I had to go to work

with them, wake up at 4am, go to the work sites and start hammering and screwing in drywall. And then I was there moving around lumber for money. And it was an entirely different experience. I think that a lot of people get because like, it's just the idea of your merit as a man was all based around can you bring money home? And it's actually now it is more apparent that we do have a big problem in terms of skill set talents as well as just pure labor and i don't understand why we don't um and i know why we i actually understand because it sounds stupid as me being my congressman i understand but why but i don't understand why some of my colleagues don't create a system where we can just bring in the people they want to work.

Even tax them a little more. We want to tax them a little more than you tax everybody else. I think that's absolutely fine. And our birth rate keeps dropping. If we have a birth rate that keeps dropping below replacement rate, then you're going to have an economy that's not going to grow. And if we don't grow as a population, there is no way we could continue to live off all the nice stuff we get to do now by being able to borrow money and be able to live these

middle class lifestyles. So I think there's ways to do this that are just simple, but we just get caught up in the politics too much versus instead of giving people background checks, making them pay $10,000 to come to this country legally, and then moving on from there. Right now, when a person wants to enter this country illegally, will probably pay a coyote somewhere between $40,000 and $50,000. Holy crap.

Yeah. So imagine what we could be doing for only $10,000. You could just cut that trade right out. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Get out the middleman. It's like the drug trade. By making drugs legal, you just cut it out.

It's interesting to me, too. I think the meme was, how can you claim immigrants are stealing your jobs if everyone's leaving the jobs and there's 10 million jobs that are out there? You talked about how your training was really important to you in January 6th and you were in session during that time. Do you want to touch on a little bit of that? Yeah. I didn't have a weapon on me, but what it really helped me train was to keep focused, keep laser focused, keep my cool, and then start thinking about the order of operations when it needed to happen. As soon as I knew that we were surrounded, I knew that there was at some point going

to either be two things. Number one, it's going to be evacuation, or there's going to be, someone's going to break in and we're going to have to fight. In order for you to be ready to fight, and that's, you know, I needed everyone to be calm, collected, and moving in the same direction. So once he told us to put on a gas mask, that particular gas mask I didn't know. But I knew in general how gas masks worked because of the time in the military. And so I did it, and then I realized that people didn't even know how to open up these things.

So I started going around giving instructions, much like I got taught in the Marine Corps about how to give instructions. I got on a desk. People could hear me. I went step by step on how to do it. And then I started giving a very, I'd say eventually I started organizing some of the men on the floor, the younger men, in case we had to fight our way out and talk to them about what we'd have to do if someone approaches us and we don't have a weapon. The best thing we'd do is we'd have to stab them. And I told them places where to stab them, stab them in the eye, stab them in the neck and keep doing it until you get their weapon.

You know, giving that kind of direction sounds scary, but there's nothing scarier than when you're in a fight, having people around you that aren especially when the replacements came, the guys that replaced the guys that died, first time we hit combat, your natural state as a human when combat hits for your first time is to be in denial. And then after that, it's to hide. The last thing is actually to fight, right? So it's actually really important to have somebody there that snaps you into that place. And there's one in the book. I'll talk about a guy who ended up going on and getting a bronze star later on. But I basically have to grab him and move him up and down

because he's freezing, right? Drop him to the ground of the AV, pull him back up, tank round goes out, drop him off, and then we kick open the door and I, you know, take him and drag him through a house.

And I had to do that because he was not taking, he was still frozen. He wasn't in the moment of, and so the most important thing I was trying to do is get people in the mentality that this is going to happen. If you don't get some of the mentality that, you know what, it's about to go down, by the time the aggressor comes, it's too late. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

That's extraordinary that you had to have that discussion and that it was necessary, but I didn't, not a lot of members have talked too much about what was going on inside that building i i was sitting and watching it and i started just having chest and my heart was just seizing from anxiety and anger and i finally had to go lay down but i wasn't in a million years if you would have asked me if that body would have ever been under attack like that in any way, shape or form, I never would have imagined it in my wildest dreams. You would have thought that that was being the safest place on the planet earth. And it was quite extraordinary. I remember we had, we had Peter struck on and about a week before on YouTube, somebody had put on a comment on the video that said, we're, this is BS and we're coming for you guys on January 6th. And it was pretty chilling. And to look back on now, and then we had Tom Hartman,

the radio host, come on the show, I think about a week or two after January 6th. And he goes, you know what they call January 6th? And I go, I don't know what. And he goes, rehearsal, warm up. And so if you studied fascism and authoritarianism over the years, and, of course, we see this increase in violence. It's quite scary and quite – it's getting pretty out of hand where people want to go into violence. How do you guys see – I'm not even sure what I'm asking here. Do you guys worry about fascism and authoritarianism rise? I mean, more and more it comes out with the January 6th commission that we really came close.

We're not immune to fascism. We're not immune to authoritarianism. We just haven't had it or we haven't had it in a long time in a manner that we understand. There could be some arguments about when we didn't allow women and African-Americans to vote, whether that was a certain level of fascism, though it was through a democratic means or somewhat democratic means. But we are, we're not immune to it. We came pretty close on January 6th. I don't know how long lasting it would have been. It would have, I think, caused a lot of trauma to this country.

I don't think Trump would have won the day. But it doesn't mean that it can't happen in the future. And it doesn't mean we don't have the vein that can be tapped at some point in the future. And for someone that's smarter or more organized, it could probably do it. The best, in my opinion, just reading historically, the best fights against, the best way to fight against authoritarianism and fascism or any type of that, that type of, I would say, exertion of power by strong men or strong women, is to make sure that you have very strong democratic institutions that could withstand those blows. And number two, that if you want to push back on it, the only way you could push back on populism is by stopping

what is creating the anger and the fire in the populism. And look, there's a lot of people that are pissed off that they have been poor. They've been poor for a while. And I think that lends itself to this type of work. And there's a certain proportion of the population that it's all about race. I don't think you're going to be able to deal with that factor. So maybe talking to them a lot and communicating to them that this, yes, is still your country. Yes, we're a diverse country, but you are still part of this country.

But for a lot of people, it's a lost cause. We do think about this. In my opinion, it's a very dangerous situation where we allow so many people to be in poverty, and without any ways out, they're going to look for excuses, and sometimes they find the excuse in violence. Yeah, and violence, the rise of violence. It's just scary where we're at in this country and where you see things going. I think one of the most important lessons we can learn from your book is we need to come together as Americans and support each other and work together and realize that we have very common enemies who seek to destroy us and are just having fun with what's been going on the last five years.

And I think between China and Russia, they sit and have drinks and go, look at what's going on over there. We did that. So they have very inexpensive weapons to get at us, and that's just turning ourselves on each other. Yeah, yeah. It's been wonderful to have you on the show, Ruben. Anything you want to touch on before we go out? Again, they called us lucky. You can find that on Amazon.

You can find it on your local bookstores, indie bookstores, Barnes & Nobles, everywhere. I really appreciate you guys looking at it. I hope you'll learn something about these men, these wonderful men that gave so much to this country and how reflective they are of this country. Thank you. Thank you for coming on the show and spending some time with us today. Hey, Chris. Have a good one. There you go.

And thanks to my audience for tuning in. Go to YouTube.com, 4chesschrisvoss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss. Hit the bell notification button. Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss, and see everything we're reading and reviewing over there. And go to Facebook, LinkedIn, all the different groups that we have there. Be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time. Adios. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out.

It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. So you can preorder the book right now wherever fine books are sold.

But the best thing to do on getting a preorder deal is to go to beaconsofleadership.com. That's beaconsofleadership.com. On there, you can find several packages you can take advantage of in ordering the book. And for the same price of what you can get it from someplace else like Amazon, you can get all sorts of extra goodies that we've taken and given away. Different collectors, limited edition, custom-made numbered book plates that are going to be autographed by me. There's all sorts of other goodies that you can get when you buy the book from beaconsofleadership.com. So be sure to go there, check it out or order the book wherever fine books are sold.