The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 244 | From Reality TV To Deadly Rescue Missions | Diesel Brothers | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

When the State or National Guard can’t complete a rescue mission, it’s time to call the Diesel Brothers. “Heavy D” and “Diesel Dave” rose to fame thanks, in part, to a prank that landed them on Jay Leno and then Discovery Channel. But now they've found a much more meaningful passion. The Diesel Brothers have since carried out multiple rescue missions to recover crashed airplanes and missing persons, making use of their most impressive vehicles. These include Heavy D’s Black Hawk helicopter, which they say leaves the FAA asking, “Who are these guys and how do we know they aren’t going to kill themselves?” In a conversation about trucks, fame, and “rolling coal,” the two men outline their ongoing legal battles with an environmental group in Utah and give their take on the rise of electric vehicles. Heavy D, who has met the President himself, tells Glenn that “Trump has an authentic admiration of Glenn” because he is “legit,” and the three men applaud Trump for not taking on a “God complex” after the assassination attempt. In the end, the pair puts Glenn in the hot seat, asking him to name the one person—alive or dead—that he would most want to have dinner with.     GLENN’S SPONSORS   Jase Medical  Care for yourself and loved ones when the unexpected happens. Go to https://jasemedical.com/ and use code “BECK10” at checkout for a discount.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

American energy is about to be unleashed. The Biden administration tried to push electric vehicles down all of our throats when honestly we don't even have the infrastructure to go fully electric, at least not yet. And I don't think most Americans want that. I know at least two men who are probably pretty happy with drill baby drill because their career runs on oil. Diesel, in fact.

Here's one of them jumping a monster truck over in... over an airplane. I mean, what a job. You don't do that with an EV. They're here to talk to me today about trucks, Trump, the unbelievable rescue work, what it means to be an entrepreneur, what it means to be an American.

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Enter the promo code Beck 10 at checkout. Get a discount on your order. That's jasee.com promo code Beck 10. Glad you guys are here. We're happy to be here. It's pretty cool to have you here. I want to get into because all of your rescue stuff lately. I mean, you guys are really burning it up and doing,

I don't know, there's a change, I think, that's happening with a lot of people. And I want to get into that. But for anybody who doesn't know you, how would you describe what you? You do? Man, that is such a hard question. My kids have the same problem at school when their friends ask them what it's got.

Because it's an evolution, like you said. It's, you know, we started as the truck guys. And then we've evolved into, essentially, we do what we love. And that kind of encompasses all sorts of different things with an emphasis on being able to solve problems. It's kind of like our main core kind of ethos. Yeah. is we like to be able to solve problems. We'd like to be able to do things that other people can't do.

And that started in the world of building custom crazy trucks that were over the top and crazy. And we had our TV show and Discovery Channel. And it's evolved into, you know, life-saving missions and recovery missions. And, you know, basically going places and doing things that other people can't or won't do. So Diesel Brothers, you're not actually brothers. How did you guys meet? You know, this is the best part about our story. We actually met at a singles ward for young LDS people.

Really? Yeah. So in Utah, as you know, LDS culture is huge, and they've got these singles wards all over the place. And you go to a singles ward after your mission or, you know, age. Wait, weren't you guys supposed to meet a girl so that they're not each other? He actually succeeded. Yeah. I picked him up first in 2008. In 2009, I met my wife in the same ward, so I got kind of a two-for-one there. But we met at church, and we kind of came from two different communities nearby, right? high schools actually. And so we didn't know each other in high school. And our high schools were always fighting against each other. There's always just this rivalry. And so when I first kind of got introduced to his group of friends, he was a little skeptical of who's this Dave guy. I'm the Dave guy. And, you know, we're both Dave. And, you know, there was a little bit of like, who is this guy? And then as soon as we met and spent time together, it was like, where have you been my whole life? Like, we're brothers. And that's why they call us brothers.

Right. And you, I mean, there's a lot of people who are in the media and do what kind of what you guys do. And they don't last long sometimes. They just don't last long. To last as long as you guys have with fame and success is really unique. It's hard to be sustainable. Yeah. How do you do it?

Just put friendship first, you know. Don't let the other stuff get in the way. at the end of the day, it's we were bros before this started, we were gonna be bros, but it's over. Yeah, that's kind of how the TV show, when we went into it, we were very skeptical. You know, we understand the world of reality TV.

We'd seen the good, bad, and ugly. Especially, you know, late 2000s, early 2010's, reality TV was just getting to the point where it wasn't about people's lives anymore. It was about how nasty could you make a situation on TV and get away with it. And so we knew that that was going to potentially be the case and they would, you know, try to stir up trauma.

So we had this kind of, at first, unspoken agreement when we started the TV show that we all kind of said, hey, the day this becomes not fun or the day that this becomes something that kind of tears us apart, we're done. Everybody agree? Good. We're all on the same page. That day came and we all just politely stepped out. How did you know?

What was it that you all went? Okay. They were done. About five years into filming. I'd say year two, I was pretty burnt out because I don't like to be kept in a box. As you can see, our evolution is not standard. And it just felt like we were doing the same thing over and over and over again. So this is where Dave really helps me.

He picks up the slack because he's able to go in and put on a real authentic smile in those moments when on TV you have to do the pickups and retakes and retake and retake. And I don't do that very well. I like to be in the moment. So I learned a lot from him that way. So he kind of filled in the gaps on creating the production value of what the TV show needed. And I was kind of more the spearheading what was next. And it just got to the point. where they wouldn't let us do anything new.

It was just the same old thing. Truck after truck after truck after truck. And then COVID hit and, you know, blessing in disguise for us because that shut down production completely. In Utah, we were still business as usual. Yeah. Nothing really changed. I know.

Like Texas. Nothing changed. Exactly. But we have all these producers from New York and California all over the place. And for them, it was a big deal. They were freaking out. So that was a good opportunity for us to say, hey, you know what?

We're good. Like, this is a good kind of area to kind of part ways. And we wanted to leave on good terms with Discovery. We didn't want to be some big. ugly, you know, nasty blow-up reality TV show where we part ways and one guy has his own show and he's talking about about this guy. Yeah. We all just determine that we like what we do and we like doing it together. So let's just figure out a way to do that together without the requirement of staying in this box that Discovery Channel creates.

It's really hard once you get to be known as someone, because I'm like you, I'm all over the place and yet people have to describe you. They have to be able to. I'm the political guy. Right. When that's only just a little sliver of who I am. Right. You know what I mean?

But man, you get with these giant corporations and they just, no, that's all you are. I don't want any more than that. I just want that. So you know the frustration. Oh, it's bone crushing. Being kept in a box and not being able to exercise that creative, you know, I got a lot of creativity inside of me, and so does Dave. And to not be able to exercise it and not be able to like put it in front of the world in a way it was meaningful and instead have to say, how can you build a truck or a vehicle different? But the same. It's like we just can't like maybe we could and to be honest with you we would have if we would have stuck with it

Discovery Channel probably would have kept our show on the air for another 10 years until I got to the point where nobody was watching like they like to do they just like to run shows You know squeeze every last ounce of juice out of them they can we don't want to go that route and so it was it was a it was a really cool move when we were able to step away and my whole team because this is only part of us you know there was two other main guys on the show with us red beard and the muscle and again we started as just friends and we are still friends. We were all together last weekend and continue to keep this friendship alive and you don't see that very often. No. So it's how you know it's a real friendship. Yeah. Right. It's based off of like core values and principles. And again, a lot of the stuff has just kind of been unspoken. We haven't had to have a ton of meetings where it's like, hey, are we still on the same page? Are we still, you know, is this who we are? Is this what we're doing? And these are what our next steps are? It's just we had true friendships before the show started and we wanted to ride that,

you know. That is so rare. Yeah, it's so rare. I'm convinced fame and fortune, battery acid to the soul. Yeah. Just, I mean, that you could not introduce

two things that are worse than that. Yeah. To break people up and to break a soul up. It's the most empty, hollow, depressing world for me. You know, going to these premieres and different things and you've seen it.

You go to these political events or whatever it is. Yeah. And the way I like to explain it is nobody's looking down. Nobody's looking backwards. at who's potentially below them. They're all looking for who's that next contact that's gonna take them to the next level.

And so for me, all the relationships are very inauthentic. They're not real. They're empty, they're hollow. All the contacts that you make are just like, what can you do for me? We're the exact opposite. It's what can we do for you and how can we work together? So I think that is part of the success

because I hate transactional relationships. I hate it. I mean, I don't connect with people, you know, we've met before, but I'm not calling you and everything. and so I kind of, I'm on this little island by myself, and it bothers me when you meet these transactional people that you know they're only calling because they can help you and, or they can, they need help, and then they expect you to eventually say, well, I'm going to, I hate that.

Right. I mean, if somebody's in trouble or somebody needs something, I'm there. I'm there, but I don't, don't, let's just, you can tell those people, stop it, a mile of way too. The most like just the worst example of it that I ever saw was we went to movie premiere of The Sound of Freedom at Bedminster with Trump and last year we were out there I think it's year at 2023 and we went to the this country club and you know the who's who of everybody was out there and watching the way that grown people I'm talking like a mom and dad from the Hamptons these 50 60 year old people would wait to see

where President Trump, you know, not president at the time, was at, and they would kind of follow him around as this entourage, and he would leave a room, and they would all pile in the room, almost as if they were in there to, like, absorb his aura and his musk. And they were just, like, trailing him around. I thought, this is so bizarre. I don't like this. I don't ever want to be this. And, you know, I had seen a lot going into that.

But that was the point where I thought, I don't ever want to be in this world in a way that I'm doing anything like that. That is so fascinating because I don't know if I've ever noticed that. We've been in the room with President Trump a couple of different occasions. Right. Would you know, how am I? What did you do? Do you notice any of that about me or? You?

No, no, no. The thing about you, and this is why I actually was so excited to come to the show is President Trump has an authentic, like, admiration of you. The way that he talks to you, the way that he treats you. It's like, like you said, he almost has you on an island. He treats you a little bit differently than he treated every. everybody else because I think he understands that you're legit and I think people know that you're legit because you're not the one that's following him around looking for the clout looking for

the acknowledgement looking for the hey Trump's my buddy you're not out there raising that flag and and using that to open doors and to have relationships so there's very few people that I've seen that have that relationship with the president and you can tell I mean he's he can spot authenticity a mile away and he treated you as such which was really cool to watch it shows you've you've earned his respect in a big way he he he's he he he's he he can't he he's he's he he's he he's I think he's an amazing. He's not the guy he was in 2016. Isn't that wild?

It's crazy. He's actually, what's the word I'm looking for? Become humbled. Yeah. I think shooting, getting shot in the head might help. Yeah, but it wouldn't do that. It wouldn't have that same effect on everybody. Some people would potentially even have more of a God complex.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm un-touchable. And you would think that Trump, of all people, would probably go that direction. Yeah. And he didn't. No. He was, yeah, it's been wild to watch the evolution.

It's notifies you on, I mean, have you guys ever had real death threats? We've had, we've been in all sorts of different situations. As far as death threats for being who we are, on a small scale. Yeah. So I've been in a situation where, you know, guns are pulled and it's terrifying. Yeah. And it clarifies who you are. You walk away going, I'm not, I'm willing to die for some things.

Right. but not stupid stuff, you know what I mean? And so, and I think that might be what happened to him was, because his whole language changed, his whole approach really has changed. He's not the bomb thrower that he was. And I think, I think that's maybe what happened. I think so too. Yeah.

Watching him, I mean, this second presidency is a whole different ballgame. Oh my gosh. I mean, from the way they dress, even Melania at the inauguration, they are just stone cold, ready to get business done. They're not there for the pleasantry, They're not there to win this person to that person. It's meaningless to them. Exactly.

They know exactly what they want. They spent the last four years getting just absolutely destroyed by everything and everyone. And now it's their chance to actually get in and do what they've wanted to do. And they're actually doing it. So far. So far. So far, it's amazing. Incredible.

You guys have to be thrilled with EPA crap. It's really nice to see the whole thing. I mean, the EPA has been such an interesting story for us because when the TV show launched, you know, they showed footage of us building trucks and modifying trucks. But the problem is they also showed a bunch of footage of other trucks that we never had anything to do with just other rednecks out having fun with their trucks in the kind of the B-roll packages of our TV show. And so you would see other trucks doing crazy stuff and people would just automatically assume that it was all us. Well, it wasn't. I would say 10% of that footage was us. So the EPA contacted us after the first season aired pretty quickly and said, hey, what are you guys doing?

What's going on here? You know, kind of went through what we were doing. They realized like, oh, these guys are not doing what it looks like they're doing. However, there was a group in Utah of private doctors called the UPHE, acronym that kind of sounds like the EPA, sounds like an official, you know, state organization. The UPSE. United Physicians for the Healthy Environment. Yeah, okay. It's the hardest.

I have a hard time not just absolutely wanting to gut these people because what they've done to us has been absolutely atrocious. Here's the thing. They didn't come after us to stop pollution. They came after us because we're a great headline. And every time they would release a press release, it would get picked up all over the country. And it was like we complied with all of their requests like day one.

And we were done doing like. We had already kind of outgrown that phase of our business anyways. Those were like our early YouTube days. Hang on. Explain. Roll coal. So roll coal is essentially something when you take a diesel truck

and you basically cut the muffler or the DPF, the filter off the exhaust and the truck blows smoke. Diesel trucks blow smoke. Right. Up until 2007, trucks didn't have these big DPF filters on them. In 2007, everything changed.

EPA came out with rules where basically all diesel engines had to have these massive filters on them and, you know, it filters the exhaust, which in theory is a good idea. We want clean air. I actually never been like a, I've never been a fan

have a truck blowing a lot of smoke. Yeah. It's kind of embarrassing for me. Don't like it. So, but we did use that in the early days where trucks would blow smoke for maybe, it's actually how we got our TV show, to be honest with you. We did a prank on YouTube where we took a truck to blew a bunch of smoke, hooked a hose to the exhaust pipe and ran it into a bathroom where a friend was at,

at a building kind of two doors down from ours, gave the truck gas. Sounds stupid. It sounds like a very stupid idea. But it was funny and it was like this prank and it was it was a funny moment. It was on private property, whatever. Anyways, the video went viral. Jay Leno saw it and he thought it was the funniest thing in the world. So he had us down on his TV show and on a segment called Prank You Very Much.

And he just thought it was a greatest thing in the world. So Dave went on the show and we showed the clip and it was great discovery. Saw that and they said these guys are great personalities. Let's pick them up. So that one little moment kind of turned into obviously the TV show. But Rolling Cole is something that uneducated truck owners like to do. it's the equivalent of taking your classic car back in the day and revving the engine really loud and doing burnouts type of stuff. Diesel trucks have this unique feature where they blow smoke and people kind of put that crown on us.

Like we're the kings of rolling coal even though that was like maybe a one year to 18 month little stint when we first got into the business. We were trying to figure out what to do with this. All of a sudden all the trucks that we were building, we were a truck dealership. That's where we were just custom trucks buying, selling, building. and then we became a media company. So what do you do when you're a media company and your media is all trucks? When you do the craziest thing you can with the trucks.

And so Rolling Cole was a small part of that. We stopped that before the show ever aired, before the lawsuit ever came. But then the lawsuit came knocking, and they just took that and ran with it like you wouldn't believe, and we're still dealing with it. It's insane.

How are you still dealing? So we, here's the crazy part about it. UPSE loves their press releases that they get against us, right? Every time they file a new motion or whatever, they put a press release out. We found out about our lawsuit from a press release that they put out. It was the most ass-backwards thing

I've ever seen in my entire life. So they love the recognition and the press that they get from suing the Diesel Brothers. We begin, you know, the lawsuit with them, which does in 16, immediately tried to start settling, figuring out, hey, how do we, you know, we're done, we're not going to touch trucks,

we're not going to modify them, we're not going to tamper them, and they were out for blood at that point. And so they continue to find, motion after motion after motion. And we finally ended up, we had a judge in Salt Lake City. He's more of a liberal-leaning judge. Don't think he liked us very much. And he pretty much just ruled in their favor on everything.

Didn't really give us a chance to defend ourselves very well. And again, we were still trying to film the TV show. We were literally Tiger by the Tails, full speed ahead while trying to defend ourselves in this horrible lawsuit. So long story short, we get a ruling against us in like 2019, basically a judgment says, hey, we're guilty for all these things. It could have been, if you followed a statutory requirement, it would have been like $300 million in fines. Oh my gosh.

Which was obviously absurd. Yeah. But the fines we got hit with were still pretty excessive. But the problem with that was we had been, the judgment included a bunch of stuff that we never did. So we filed an appeal. The appeal went through and we won 95% of the appeal, which meant to say that out of the 350, 400 violations that they accused us of, only 20 of them took place in the state of Utah where this UPHE has the right to, you know, to take private action.

So 95% of the claims were tossed out. And the claims were buying a truck at the auction and selling it to somebody without even touching it. But if the truck didn't have a, you know, the proper emission system on it, we were found guilty just because we purchased it. Oh, my gosh. Well, this is what every dealership in the country does. They buy vehicles and they turn around and sell them, whether the emissions work or don't work, it doesn't matter.

So every dealership in the country was doing this, we were just kind of the poster child for take advantage of these guys. So the crazy part was on the appeal, the judge didn't really do anything for us. He didn't like the fact that we appealed it, and he'd barely adjusted our judgment at all. And so we've been fighting with them continuously for the last almost 10 years now, trying to get them to become more reasonable on what they're going after. we haven't touched a deleted truck in eight, nine years. We haven't touched a performance part in eight or nine years. Like we are so done with that world, but there's a group of doctors,

they love the press and they're going to continue to ride it out as long as possible. We've been trying to settle this thing for so long. And here's the worst part. We've offered as part of settlement agreements to basically create a fund for the state of Utah where anybody who has a vehicle that won't pass emissions, single mom, check engine light comes on. and she can't pass emissions, she can't get her car registration renewed.

We offered to create a fund that would fix anybody's vehicle. Any problems with smog or emissions equipment, it would fix it. They said no to that, and instead they just demanded that $800,000 be sent to the treasury. That money left Utah, right? Not staying in Utah to help anybody or do anything for the healthy environment that they're trying to fix. And no amount of the judgment, nothing ever went to Utah. Nothing ever went to fix the environment that they were claiming they were defending. It all just was going to go to the Treasury and then a ridiculous amount of attorney's fees.

It's the most bizarre thing I've ever seen. It is, I mean, we are living at a time. And it is an amazing time to live, both positive and negative. Right. The garbage that goes on now is just ridiculous. And one of the things I like about you guys is, and I, when we were pulling out of Afghanistan, I just felt this was an embarrassment and all these people were trapped

and so I thought well if they're not going to do anything we'll do it and I'm standing you know over in the Middle East and we're flying planes out we rescued I don't even know like 20,000 people out of Afghanistan

and I thought I'm an alcoholic DJ right why am I doing this why am I doing this but it is it is one of the coolest things to be able to have a position, have some money, have some, you know, listeners, viewers for you guys, and you just go do it. I mean, it's really taking back the essence,

I think, of who Americans have always been. I agree. We just do it. Yeah. Right. That's honestly our that's the way we approach everything. We have become the last call that people make when nobody else can solve a problem. They started, I would say that our humanitarian efforts, they've been ongoing, you know, forever, ever since we've started business together in 2011, but they really ran up. Was that a pact or just something that you both are?

It's just, I mean, we grew up LDS. When you're LDS, you go mow the neighbor's lawn, you go to the service projects. That's just what you do. In Utah, you're very focused on making sure that your neighbor's taken care of. And so it just, our capabilities kept on growing. Yeah.

So 2017, Hurricane Harvey hits Texas, and we saw the case. and everything on the news. Dave and I were in New York for a press tour for our TV show at the time. I put up a video when we were in New York and said, hey, we see that, you know, things are really bad in Texas. We're coming. We don't care what we're going to do or how we're going to get there or what's going to happen. But if you want to help support this mission, come to our shop, drop off whatever supplies you want.

And in a couple of days, we're going to be on the road to Texas. And I'll take my helicopter down and we'll perform rescue missions. So we get back from New York. our shop, there's a line of vehicles sitting outside, pulling in, dropping off cases and cases. Next thing you know, we've got eight semi-loads worth of stuff,

high water rescue vehicles to water supplies, everything like that. So we send the guys down the road in the trucks, we jump in my helicopter, we fly down there. Keep in mind at this time, I'm still a student pilot. A student pilot with a black hawk. At the time, I didn't have the black hawk. I had a pretty advanced helicopter. It was a twin engine. You've ever seen the

Red Bull helicopter that does flits and stuff. It's a B-O-105. But I didn't, I had been flying for about two years. I just hadn't taken my test yet. So I took another pilot with me just to be safe and kosher and make sure we were good. We fly down there. Next thing you know, I'm doing airy vac missions of dead people. It's crazy. Old man, pick him up on the side of the road. Nobody could get in there. Nobody could help him. We threw him in the back of my helicopter. We thought he was dead. He comes to life on the way back to the hospital. We land on the pad. They get him out, and he's alive. and probably saved the dude's life.

And meanwhile, all my guys were back at a church. We use an LDS church as basically a hub for all of our equipment and everything. And we had probably the best five days of our lives sleeping on church pews and just running nonstop, rescuing people, delivering food, and just performing like essential lifesaving missions. And that was the moment where we were like,

we want to double down on this. Like anytime something happens, we want to get involved. And so the, moment was when you parked next to the sheriff's helicopter and you said, this is it. This is when I go to jail and he came over and just ripped off his sheriff patch and stuck it on your arm. It was pretty cool. We landed at Beaumont, Texas, and the only aircraft that were allowed in there were Blackhawks, Chinooks, all the military guys and all the Texas Department of Public Safety. And then there's these guys in a fiery red, custom-painted helicopter and we're just kind of

just a bunch of young guys hanging around and we see this guy storming over to us. And I'm like, oh, no, no. Actually, one cop came up to us and said, hey, you, you're just a lot of, you. have to stay here. My boss wants to talk to you. And he was the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the head honcho. Just about fired up and took off right there. I really did. We were like, we were like, should we go. Should we go?

I'm like, no, it's just hang tight. And he storms over, pulls his patch off and says, this is for you, thank you. And that's when we were like, well, there could be a collaboration here between us and authorities. Because at this time, remember, we're the guys that were in the news for being the roll coal idiots and, you know, destroying the environment. So on one hand, people were terrified to touch us. On the other hand, they saw like, well, these guys are not afraid of anything. They'll go into literally, whether they're stupid or really brave, they'll go into situations that other people won't do and they'll try to solve problems. And so that evolution of us working with federal, state, local agencies to provide these life-saving missions has evolved into like what we just got home from doing yesterday in Nevada, which was one of our coolest missions yet.

What did you do? January 2nd, a guy named Michael Martin leaves Las Vegas in his little plane. He and he and his wife had like a little dispute the night before nothing crazy They believe he left to maybe go blow off some steam well He didn't tell the family where he was going He didn't tell him that he was going or even for a flight They didn't know until the fourth or fifth of January when they found the plane missing From then they started tracking the flight and the transponder and his iPad and his watch and everything

And his last known location was around Mount Jefferson which is basically central Nevada Just a little bit north of Tonapah very rugged very desolate terrain The mountain about 12 12,000 foot elevation, big crazy mountain. And so they thought, well, he's got to be around here. So they... Snow, I imagine. Lots of blowing snow, crazy weather.

So this became like a national phenomenon. Every news outlet in the country picked it up. And anytime somebody goes missing or something happens, our phone starts ringing. Our even inbox just gets full. Hey, you got to help. You got to get involved. Well, we were off-grid filming some other winter content series for the last couple weeks, so we didn't have the ability to jump into the search.

Around January 18th, a fishing game, that was determined. Awesome kid. Awesome kid. He was bound to determine to figure out what happened to this plane. He hikes four hours

into the most treacherous back country you can see and doesn't make it all the way to the top, but he's able to get to the base of a cliff and with binoculars, glasses the whole hillside and he finds the plane crash.

So at that point, there's no way he could have gotten to the wreck site. It was another 3,000 foot elevation through four feet of drifted snow. It was impossible to access. So goes back, calls the authorities, every state agency that had a helicopter or an aircraft got in the air.

They started searching, and it got to the point where they just said, we cannot access this crash site. It's not safe. We don't know what to do. Meanwhile, the family thinks that there's a chance that dad, husband, maybe still is alive. The footage or the pictures they got of the wreckage were pretty rough, so it didn't look survivable. So there's a lot of drama between local law enforcement, state authorities, the family,

because the family's like, hey, go rescue our dad, and the state's saying, we can't. We don't have the capabilities. We don't have the aircraft. We don't have the manpower. Nobody is willing or capable to do this job because our resources are limited. They called the National Guard.

National Guard said, nope, we can't do it. Can't touch it. It's out of our wheelhouse. The terrain is just too nasty. So finally, that's when, you know, our emails, we probably received a thousand emails at that point. So we got home from filming. I called the family and said,

hey, understand what you're up against. Will you accept our help? We'd like to, you know, go get your dad. And, you know, just broke down tears. Said your answer to our prayers. You know, nobody could help us. No, nothing, nobody was going to be able to solve this problem for us. Had you seen the terrain?

You knew what you were flying into? A little bit. So after that, I asked for the contact information for whoever was in charge of the case. Chief Scott Lewis of Nye County Emergency Management out in Nevada. Called him up, said who I was. what I wanted to do and he's like, don't call me again. Like this is, this is way out of your, you know, range. We don't need your help.

We got all the resources. Everything's covered. And I thought, there's a chance this guy doesn't quite understand who we are and what we do. And he said, look, if anything changes, I'll give you a call back, but as of right now, stand down. Okay, fine. Waited about 12 hours. Next morning, my phone starts blowing up. Chief Scott Lewis, hey, things have changed.

They did a little bit of research on who we are. Saw some of the other recover. very similar aircraft recoveries that we've done. He said, if you guys want it, come and get it. At that time, he sent me pictures of the wreckage. The problem that I have is I've got an extreme amount of confidence in myself and my crew, sometimes too much. But it's been a good thing thus far.

Regardless of what the terrain was, I didn't care what people were saying. I knew that we could figure out a way to do it, whether it was via air or whether we had horses up there tugging that airplane off the mountain. Didn't matter. We were going to do it. Get the pictures, look at it, thought, and... It's pretty rough. It's rugged. It's hard.

We'll do it. So we get our crew together, which we have one of the most incredible crews in the entire world. I honestly feel like if I told my guys that I wanted to build a rocket ship to the moon, they could figure it out. It's amazing. A lot of confidence. A lot of confidence in my guys. Very, very grateful to have them. So we put together this mission, flew out there.

I do have a Black Hawk now. I purchased a Black Hawk in 2021. I'd like to talk to you about that in a minute. It's one of the most incredible aircraft in the entire world. I bet it is. Now, we understand why the military loves them so much because we're. we've had an opportunity to really use that thing. All of my flying experience is in high mountains, rugged terrain.

It's the type of flying that not a lot of pilots get. And I get a fly with a lot of experienced pilots, too, a lot of special forces guys. So I've kind of been trained by some really great pilots, and I've gotten to a point where I'm very capable pilot. So I was pilot in command of the mission, jumped in the Black Hawk, had my second command, Ryan, who was a Chinook pilot in the Army, but he's actually not rated in the Black Hawk yet. I'm the only one that's actually licensed by the FAA to fly it.

The Black Hawk that we own is kind of a thorn on the side to the FAA because they don't know what to do with us. We're like the only privately owned Black Hawk who's out there using it for fun and for videos but also for life-saving missions. So it falls in this weird category of who are these guys and how do we know they're not going to kill themselves? So we're starting to build more and more confidence with them. That's really. You're an American. That's your responsibility.

100%. Yeah. It is. actually my relationship with the FAA started off very tumultuous. It's improved every single day since Hurricane Harvey, essentially. So we head out to Nevada with our group, and the only way to access the crash site was basically to repel in to, because it's on the side of this cliff. We have a we have some footage. We can show you here.

You can put it in the podcast if you want, but it shows kind of just how gnarly this terrain was. The plane essentially just piled drive into the side of a cliff and just tumbled down the cliff in parts and pieces. this pilot's body is somewhere in that mess. And so to be able to access the crash site, we thought based off the pictures and the terrain maps and everything we saw that we would have to repel in, we got into the crash site, had our rappelling crew ready to go,

essentially just jumping out the door of the Black Hawk, right? And just repelling down a road to access the site. I've been in helicopters with people that do that, and I think you're out of your mind. What are you doing? Now try it at 11,300 feet with wind swirling all over the place and pure white out because rotor wash from the blades. It's a mess.

Luckily, when we got to the crash site, we realized that we could land right above the crash and drop our ground crew and have them hike down. Anytime you can minimize your risk, right, you're going to do it. So there was no sense in taking the risk of holding a hover while I sat there for 10 minutes and let guys pile out of the helicopter, plus all of our rescue equipment, which was probably 500 pounds worth of tools and rigging and all kinds of stuff. So we put the crew on the ground. They hiked down to the crash site. We took all of our equipment and hooked it to the belly of the Black Hawk. I picked up, hovered over the cliff, dropped the gear. right by them, which I was super proud.

Hanging a line from the bottom of a Black Hawk or any helicopter and putting it in a precise spot is very difficult. Especially like on a flat field at sea level is hard. He got it within 20 yards of us. Yeah, I got it pretty close. I was pretty proud of that. Drop the load, ground crew got to work.

First priority was the body. We had to make sure that we got the body and when plane hits a mountain that hard, bodies don't fare well. Fortunately, the freezing temperatures had preserved whatever remains. So with the body bag, we gathered the body parts, set them aside. And then the guy started to rig up the aircraft and basically tie everything together with different hooks and lines and everything so that it was one big bundle of a package.

And then once we got the call, they said, come in and grab it. So we came in, we hooked the body bag, the highest point on the hook where it was essentially separate from the wreckage and safe. And then the wreckage all below that. And I held a hover there above that cliff for... three or four minutes while they hooked up the hook. And then once they gave us the green light, we picked up. And you could see just parts and pieces of this aircraft being pulled off this mountain until they finally just kind of came together in one lump mass.

And then we flew down 10 miles west of there to a little air strip called Hadley, where all the emergency management was sitting there waiting, law enforcement, coroner, everybody. And when we flew in with that load, you would have thought that, I mean, to them, it looked like the second coming. It was the most unexpected thing. Because at first, again, a lot of these guys don't know who we are or didn't know our capabilities or thought that we maybe bit off more than we could chew. And so when we pull in with this aircraft records that not even the National Guard would touch, it was such a gratifying moment for all of us because, you know, the chief who originally told me like stand down came up and gave me a full hug, like a very emotional hug.

And it was a cool moment because we actually had the family there at a separate site, you know, half a mile away because we don't want them to be there exposed to any of the, sensitive stuff. And for us, seeing the family's reaction and seeing how we brought closure to something that, I mean, when something bad happens, you always think that law enforcement can handle it. You always think that somebody somewhere is going to be able to solve this problem for you, especially when it comes to the loss of a loved one. So when you get told no and you get told we're out of options, we cannot do this, it's a very desperate feeling. And the family was feeling that very like desperation. And so being able to take the family from not knowing the status of Michael, the pilot,

thinking maybe he was alive, maybe he wasn't, to finally getting answers all the way down to finding his watch and his wallet and all the stuff that had scattered all over the mountainside. And you go from eight o'clock that morning having no answers and the family just distraught to two o'clock that afternoon closure. It's all there. Yeah, everything's settled and everything. I mean, it's still a tragic situation, but not knowing is significantly more tragic than being able to see what happened, understand it, and start to process the fact that, you know, he's not on that mountain anymore.

And that's not the first time we've actually had to almost the exact same situation that happened to us a few different times where a pilot will crash into a remote site. Nobody can get to it. Either the family doesn't have the funds to contract a private company or the state won't allow a private company to come in. and the email I got from the state emergency manager yesterday was probably the best part about all this because he was the most skeptical, the most reluctant because you got a bunch of YouTubers with a Black Hawk helicopter saying we're going to come and do what you guys can't.

That's a tough pill to swallow for some of these guys. And so he was very skeptical, very reluctant. The email basically said, hey, like, obviously hats off to you guys. But even more so, he said, Would you be willing to come train all the Nevada search and rescue pilots on what you did and how you did it and what your techniques and procedures were? Man, it's just a good feeling. It's not about for us the acknowledgement of, you did a good job. That's a bonus.

Feels great. But for us, it's being able to take the family from the worst day of their life to... Doing good. Yeah, you're doing good. And that's honestly what fuels all of our missions. And we just keep on taking on bigger and crazier stuff. and now, like I said, it's gotten to the point where we do stuff that nobody else can do. I think that is the difference, though, and we were losing this, and we still might.

I mean, you know, we've got two weeks under our belt, but we were, that's who Americans are. They were just the people who, I mean, just crossing the ocean was insane. Right. You know what I mean? Crossing, I have to tell you, I think I, if I were a pioneer, I would have stopped, I think, at the Missouri River. I would have been like, oh. That's far enough. Yeah, it's far enough.

You know, I definitely would have stopped in Denver. For sure. And then if I would have gone on, I would have killed the scout about halfway over those mountains. You know, you get over and then you're like, what? This is where we're going? It's the desert. Are you nuts? You're originally from Washington, right?

Washington State, yeah. And then where'd you go from there? Washington, D.C. You want straight from Washington State to D.C.? Washington State to Salt Lake City for about six months to, Washington, D.C. And was that whole time you were on in radio? Yeah.

You started at 13? Yeah. How do you start on radio when you're 13? You go to a really bad station. But the radio career took you from, were you on KSL News Radio in Salt Lake? No, I was on K-96. Really? Yeah, yeah, a little station.

And I was on a big station in Seattle, went and did nights in Salt Lake for about six months. And then the company transferred me to Washington, D.C., which was, I mean, I had never. It was a big step. It was a huge step. Living out by my own from a family that didn't have anything. I mean, I couldn't afford to call my parents. My dad couldn't afford to call me. How old were you when you went out?

18. So at 18, you're in D.C. You were in D.C. Yeah. Doing talk radio? No, music radio. Music radio. As a DJ.

Yeah. So you got your start as a DJ. Yeah. And then, you know, this isn't about me. This is about you. I'm curious about this, though, because it's been Utah is, Utah loves you, as you know. Yeah. You came into Tucker show in Utah.

And that was actually a really cool moment seeing like, you've got Utah by the, from the 90-year-olds all the way down to like the younger demographic. It's crazy. And I've been trying to wrap my head around like, how does a talk radio guy evolve in this environment? Like, you've learned how to take your, your DJ, then talk radio. career and evolve it into the podcasts and all the actual like digital environment. It's fascinating, Glenn. Well, it's, it's, uh, you're the same way. You guys are the same way.

It's just you have to be a risk taker. Yeah. You know, know, know, win or lose before you put the money on the table, but roll the dice, man. Sometimes you just got to go like this when you see the odds and you don't like them. Yeah. That's what we just go. You know what? I just feel it everything in me.

This is what we got to do. Yeah. And you just do it. And it's sometimes, it's scary, you know, you walked away from discovery. Right. There are times when you are walking away from things that people would give their right arm for. Right. And you're like, it's not right.

It's true. I've got to move. It's hard to do. It takes courage. It also takes an extreme amount of confidence in your capabilities. But that's what, you know, one of the things I love about you guys is you're entrepreneurs. Yeah. You're just entrepreneurs.

And you'll figure it out. Good entrepreneurs, just figure it out. Yeah. I'll figure it out. You know? failure. What was your biggest failure? Man, we've had a handful. A very

obvious one is such a sore subject for me. 2016, we're rocking and rolling in the truck world, TV shows killing it. We got this huge media empire on social media of all these trucks. And I thought, I'm tired of buying tires. I hate buying tires. It's something we buy a lot

of. It's expensive. I hate buying other people's tires. I want to make my own tire. So we set out on this ambitious journey to make... Patriot tires. specialty tires for diesel pickups that lasted longer than, you know, what we were buying. It was kind of like a need that we had, right? We want to fix this problem we have, and we want to obviously make some money while we're doing it. So we built this tire brand, and the whole goal was to always have this American-made tire company. Well, you can't just start making tires in

America. They want it. It's really hard. Nope. I tried clothing. Oh, yeah. Exactly that goes. It was really, really difficult to make anything in America, especially something that has such a strong industry overseas. So I literally just started calling companies, hey, well, you make tires for us. Hey, we make tires for us. Finally, federal tire in Taiwan responded and said, yeah, we'll do it. And I thought this is awesome. They're not Chinese. This is the best thing in the world. It's one step above starting in China, which is where most people have to start. Had a killer relationship with these guys. They were so awesome. They were so good to us. And our brand was Patriot Tires. Well, keep in mind, we're young entrepreneurs that are trying

to juggle a TV show, a lawsuit, all of our kids being blind at the same time. We've got like newborn children all over the place. It was chaos, but it took off. We were able to kind of show the evolution of Patriot tires on the Discovery Show Diesel Brothers. We even had the chairman of the federal tire, this old Chinese guy. Actually, there was a bunch of old Chinese guys that didn't speak much English, but they were so stoked to come beyond the show. And they came and jumped in one of our monster trucks with us. And there's an episode of them screaming in the backseat of the truck as we're driving them through the rocks in the mud, having the best time ever.

And that launched our tire company, and it just took off to the moon. It was absolutely crushing it like we were so pumped selling tires like crazy couldn't keep on the shelf We were trying a different tire model where we tried to start by not going to distribution We wanted to go direct to consumers because we figured hey if somebody wants set of tires Those buy from us will just ship it to their house on a pallet and they can take him to the tire store That's how we ordered tires and it was working and we were killing it and we were having the best time and about It was probably like a month before or after we got served the loss for the clean air stuff, we received a seasoned assist from some company in Singapore that owned the

trademark for Patriot tires. Well, we thought we had done some research, but I didn't. I just told somebody like, hey, well, you look this up, make sure this name's available. I was running a gun and trying to get this tire deal going. We thought we had the trademark we didn't. This company Omni Tire had it, and they basically said, not so fast, stop what you're doing. and because they saw us on TV, right? On Discovery Channel.

And they said, we own that trademark if you're done. And so we said, well, there's a got to be something we can do, work it out. You know, let's do a partnership. We tried to form a partnership with them. It didn't work. Essentially, they just took Patriot tires from us. And it's still a very successful tire brand. And we got left with nothing.

Nothing. It was a great memory. It would have been probably today. It probably would have been a $100 million business. And we tried to get it again. Once we learned our lesson the hard way, we tried to launch it again. We, in fact, were able to make tires in the U.S. Cooper Tire saw our success with Patriot Tires and said, we'll make your tires.

So we started a new company, but the problem was I didn't love the brand from day one. It wasn't Patriot Tires. It wasn't my Tire Company. It was something different. We had to come up with a different name. It is. I know. The passion just basically fizzled out, and that company didn't last a year.

That is the secret. Anybody who's doing podcast, YouTube, whatever, that is the secret. but so many people perform. And if it's not genuine, if you're not passionate about it, at least with me and I think with you guys too, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. I mean, we've had really good ideas that I'm like,

okay, well, let's try that. Never works. But if it's something, even if it's a bad idea, but it's something that I'm passionate about, it works. I mean, people are just, they like you because you're you. My, you know, our whole business group ecosystem, employees, everybody knows that I'm not super passionate about it. The Dave's not super passionate about it. Nobody should even put too much effort into it.

No. And, you know, that's proved itself over and over and over again throughout what we do. But on the flip side of that, they seem excited about something. They've learned to double down. Because whatever it is, because it's going to work. Because if I'm excited, everybody gets excited. I'm the guy that's really good at going out and like saying, hey, here's a fruit tree. It's got a lot of really good fruit on it.

Pick the first piece. Show everybody. Taste it. It's really good. But then I'm like, where's the next tree? Yeah. I want to go find that next tree, right? But I got to leave people there to harvest this one and run it and manage it.

So it's, but dude, when you're young, you don't know how to learn that about yourself. Nobody's going to teach you that. Especially when you come from a background like us, neither one of us came from real business savvy families. Neither one of us came from money. My dad died when I was 21 and I was left with my mom to figure out how to take care of, right? Like I, no inheritance, no nothing. In fact, I got my first business funding. This is such a funny story.

Back in 2008-2009, I was trying to get started. Well, you remember 2008-2009. Nobody was giving loans, let alone like small business loans to people with no history. So I found this group called Wonder Financial. He likes it already. It's already a good story. We will get you business funding.

And I said, all right, well, let's figure it out. So, okay, you got to go to all these different banks on the same day and apply for a car loan. And then we'll get you approved for your car loans. And then what you do is you'll go to the auction or go to a dealership and you'll talk them way down on a car, but you'll be able to borrow the full amount because, you know, books out of that. And then the excess, you'll be able to just keep and use this business funding. And so we did. I went out and got like eight car loans.

And my credit was like $7.50. And then all of a sudden all those things hit on the same day. but luckily the loans had already closed and it went down to like 400. But somehow I ended up with like $19,000 in equity that I had way over borrowed on all these cars and that's what I took and used and started the business.

But then I had a bunch of cars that I had to figure out what to do with. So I was like, I'll lease them out. I'll just lease these cars or other people and they'll make my payments for me and they'll basically pay for all my business, you know, capital. Do you ever try to lease or rent cars to people that have to lease or rent a car

from a private party? Right. It usually means they've come from a rough background. We were repoing cars. We were chasing people down. We were putting trackers on things. It was an absolute nightmare. But without it, I wouldn't have been able to get my start.

Because in 2008, nobody had any money to do anything. And I would have probably had to wait three or four years. It jumped started our business. It was a risky move. FBI called me in 2011 and said, hey, tell us what you know about Wonder Financial. Work for me. I haven't waited for this phone call. I don't wait for this phone call

and they dug into them and obviously it was, I didn't do anything wrong. Turns out the way they were doing business wasn't necessarily Wonder financial? Yeah, they didn't, they're not around anymore.

It's surprising. Yeah. But it was, you know, it's always been about figuring it out. It's always been about, man, it goes back to the way too much confidence of myself. I literally, I can't fail.

You know, it is really, it's a gam, I think, as long as it doesn't get out of control, the belief that you can do it, that's why I just think everything that's happened in the last 20 years is so evil because it's telling everybody, you can't do it.

You need me, you need this, you can't do it. You're never going to succeed. That's so evil. Because when you actually believe, no, I'll figure that out. Well, don't you think it's when confidence turns into ego? I think that's the tipping point because confidence, it's bad.

Exactly. Yes. When confidence turns out. turns into ego, and I think that happened to our country. Yes. In many different ways. Yeah. Because, you know, the World War II generation, those guys were confident. They just knew that the American spirit could do it and we could figure it out, which is why it was such an incredible generation. Well, once you get really good at something for so long and

you keep doing it, you get to the point where you just assume you're good at everything. And then you haven't been challenged? 100%. And guess what we've been, like the last, when do you think things got really bad in the U.S.? I mean, they've been getting bad, but it kind of like, that seed kind of sprouted in 2000? I think it was probably yeah, maybe around 2000. I think our height of our

the arrogance of the 90s and the dot com and all of that stuff. But I think in, I don't know when our arrogance stopped. I was going to say maybe it was right before the financial crash. But I think we went right back to being arrogant after 9-11, after 9-11,

After 2008, I think we just started to get it. I agree. I hope we don't go back to, well, it's all fixed now. I don't have to pay attention. I don't, you know. But how cool has that been to see this transition of, I mean, dude, the whole country just swung complete opposite direction from where we work. It was scary as hell, though, in my business was.

Oh, yeah. Scary as hell. A conservative talk show radio host. Gosh. You were demonized for the last several years. Oh, I've been demonized since 2008. I was voted the third most admired man in the world. I tied the Pope and Nelson Mandela.

That's how desperate they were, Americans. That's in 2008 when I was at CNN. When I moved to Fox within a year, I was hated. I did the same show. It has the same things. It was just... Have you always said you spoke in your mind the same way on each show you've been on?

After I got baptized because I really needed, I really needed forgiveness. Right. And I made a pact with God. I'll do it your way. I'll do whatever you tell me to do. Right. And I take my covenant with him seriously. You were a convert to the church in the 90s?

99, 2000. Oh, wow. I thought it was early 90s. Okay. So late 90s. And a wild alcoholic and everything else. And I screwed my whole life up. And then when I was redeemed and I have a fresh start and it's real, I was for probably first five years, I was just afraid to do anything wrong because I didn't want all that stuff to come back.

Right. And then you grow in it and you're like, oh, oh, I don't want to do anything bad. I want to do good. But if you actually make a covenant and say, I will be honest in my business dealings, I will not. not tell a lie. I will not take a shortcut. You know what my my proudest moment was when I left Fox after all the cover of Time magazine, all the success, everything else, you know what I was most proud of? What? I never compromised once on what I believe to be true. And the compromise, the, the, the, the push to compromise on what you actually believe was intense. And I had something that was on my desk at Fox,

the entire run, and one of the guys said, we're just going to throw this away. You should take it. And I picked it up in my hands. I'm walking out on my studio the last time. I take it in my hands, and I take about three steps, and I said, actually, you'll have to throw it away. That's not mine.

And you don't really have the, it's not yours. You can't give it to me. Yeah. So thank you. And I walked out, and I closed, the door close behind me, and I'm like, that's the, first thing in my life I've ever completed with my honor absolutely intact. That's awesome. So I believe that's where true peace and power comes from. It is. Being able to just trust yourself.

And when you are in line with God, everything becomes so easy. You don't have to work. What did I say to him? What did I do? What was that? And when somebody accuses you of doing something wrong, you're like, yeah, you know, accuse all you want. Right. Didn't happen. You don't care. Didn't have it. You don't care. And people, because. become terrified of you. Yep. Because they're all hiding stuff. Right.

And when you walk into a room, they know, A, they think, I think these people can see I'm a fraud. Right. You know what I mean? I'm hiding stuff. And they know you're not bluffing. They, you know, I was taught really young. When you negotiate, don't ever bluff.

Don't threaten. Just make a promise. Right. You do this. I'll do that. You don't do that. I won't do this. Yeah.

And so when you look at people and they're negotiating and you're like, no, really, the number is this. And I'm not negotiating with you. I mean, I just, I'm a straight ahead guy. This is what it's going to take. They don't know what to do. That's true because they're not used to it. They're not used to it. They're not used to people.

They think you are negotiating. I mean, it's crazy. You know, it's interesting. I've always wondered why people love you so much. I like you. You're great. You put out good information. But as we've gotten to know you a little bit better, this side of it is starting to show.

And that's one thing that I came into this show feeling and knowing is your guy who does what he says he's going to do. But you know that deep down inside. You're not bluffing that. And that's why you look very comfortable in your own skin. And people pick up on that and they want that. It's so easy though. It's so easy.

You just have to get past, you have to believe that. that you're a decent human being. So you have to live that. You know what I mean? And then you have to believe, you know, I have something unique. I mean, honestly, it's intimidating sitting with you guys because you're like man's man.

I'm not. I have no skills whatsoever. I am food. The apocalypse happens. I'm dinner. Come find us. Okay? Yeah.

I am dinner. The only skill I have, I could tell a good story. You know what I can, we can sit around the fire. I'll tell you stories. But eventually, I'm going to be eaten. Okay, we've already heard that story. Let's eat it. Don't run out of stories.

Don't run out of stories. Yeah, I know that. Problem is you're too honest, you can't make them up either. Well, if you're going to eat me, I might. I might. But, you know, one of the things that, you know, you just have to know who you are, what you're capable of, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing I like about you guys is the idea. of just figuring it out.

You can do it. You don't need a fancy, you know, degree from... Or a title or anything. It's garbage. That's all garbage and meaningless. And that you guys can fix things. You can create things with your hands. I can create things here, but I can't create anything.

Well, I can with art, but anything... You're a good artist, yeah? Yeah. But I mean, actually, fix. I love. I love cars. Love them. I have a car collection. I couldn't tell you the first thing about them other than I like this one because of this and that. You know what I mean? I can't fix an engine. We're actually supposed to look at one of your cars down here. It's got a wobble at around 50 miles an hour or something. It's a 1934 race car. And it's, I can't find anybody to fix the spokes.

Yeah. You know, it's all the, which we're going to get a handle for you. Okay. Yeah. You can't. And the thing is driving all over the place. All over the place. And you can't drive it because I'm just afraid it just tires come off. Yeah. But it's great.

You know, going back to the, you don't need a title. It goes back to the email that I got yesterday from the state emergency manager. Going from thinking like these guys are not fit for the job, who are these guys? Again, a bunch of YouTubers with a helicopter or the Blackhawk. To then he closed out the email by saying, I just want to let you know that you've changed a lot of minds here on the local and state level on how. on how we plan to approach working with private groups like this in the future. Because they've always just said no. Team America.

Because you don't have a title, right? It's Team America. It is. And you know what's really cool about the type of content that we're doing? If you go watch our channel, most of it is, well, I won't say most of it, but a good chunk of it is feel good stories where we're going out to solve problems for people. We don't charge people. Like, we didn't charge the family for this recovery. Can I ask?

What did that cost? I mean, if you factor in flight time and everything, about 70 grand. best 70 grand we've ever spent absolutely I mean we didn't even think twice and we don't about any of these things

anytime we can jump in and help I don't I don't think about the failure option I don't think about what it costs I don't think about anything other than this is a problem

that I really want to solve you have to really want to solve problems see this is so I'm so all I'm thinking is I'm so frustrated because I can be the guy I come to people like you

and go hey can we work on some I can't actually it would be great to be able to go. But that's a crucial part of the team. Yeah. Huh? The guy who has the idea is a crucial part of the team.

You can find a team that can do it. But the guy that comes and says the problem. And you can do. We've got the team that makes it happen for us. Without our team, I mean, we would be, you know how hard it is to build a good team, by the way? Oh, yeah. I'm sure you've got a massive operation here.

And to be able to get people that actually understand your vision, first of all, right? Because we're not always good at explaining our vision to everybody. We just have it and we want it to happen. And then finding people that confirm. get it and then execute it, and then the hardest part is staying consistent. Having somebody to continue to do what they're supposed to do. That's why I think Facebook fame, Twitter fame, all of this bogus fame is so fleeting. It is easy to become famous.

Oh, look at TikTok. Yeah. It's easy, especially today. Yeah. It is impossible to hold that for a decade or two. It's, it's, the odds of that success become almost zero in the world of fame and fortune. I found the power came in not wanting to hold the fame and not caring about that. Yep.

That was just a byproduct. Isn't it the weirdest thing? When you realize all the bogus things in life have zero value, how it's so easy to have those things? Right. You know what I mean? Yes. Because you look at it like, well, of course, it's a byproduct. Money is a byproduct.

Most people go out to make money. No, no, no. Go out to change people's lives and the money will just be there. Well, what you don't, what people don't realize is this is a common theme throughout life. In high school, you see a girl, you want that girl. You try so freaking hard. She wants nothing to do with you. Yeah.

The day that you just don't care anymore is the day where all of a sudden girls are just all over you. And it applies to everything. When you are so focused. I'm going to say, apply that to other things because that's never happened to me. I cannot care about girls and they're never all over me. It's when you release attachment from the outcome and focus on the process and get really good at the process and enjoy the process. And wow, things just come together. I know.

And dude, it happens on every level, all the way from girls in high school, all the way up to pulling bodies off the mountains and in a helicopter that I have no business owning. I mean, if you look at where I came from and who I am and what I've done, I've no business doing. the things that I'm doing. Dave has no business doing the things that he's doing with us, but it's because... I don't know about you, Dave. I mean, I think you probably have. You're welcome. He's the ultimate, he's the ultimate, like, golden retriever friend. I mean, you are just, I mean, first of all, pipe down a little bit.

Give this guy a chance to say a word, you know what I mean? Can you just feel his energy, though? Yeah, I can. Literally just a glowing ball of energy. It's funny. Dave has this just way up with people. People love him. We took a flight from Salt Lake City to Cedar City once.

And anytime we get on put on a flight and Dave gets put next to somebody, he knows our whole life story pretty quickly. This time was exceptionally aggressive. Before we even landed in Cedar, he had this middle-aged woman sobbing on his shoulder. Just, I'm talking full-blown, like, letting it all out, full therapy session. And David Bassett next to her for 30 minutes. She got into her divorce. She got into her life problems because he's just this warm, safe place for people to just feel it. to feel like somebody actually cares because he actually cares.

The difference between him and somebody else is Dave actually genuinely still thinks about that lady. He still wonders about her and her problems and you can tell. It's authenticity, right? So there's a good yin and a yang here because I care, but I also have a really wild ADD. And so I can only care until I see the next squirrel. Yeah. And then it's like on to the next, on to the next.

So like I said, I go find the fruit tree. Dave, make sure that it's not. I talk too much. and becoming famous, right, in the world of TV, we go to these events and stuff like that, and I'm like, my social battery gets drained really quick, really quickly. I don't do well with small talking, so I'm like, hello, thank you, see you later, goodbye. I look back and we're always like, Dave, come on, dude, come on, like you're holding up the line, let's go, let's go,

because he's back there getting to know everybody's life story. So it's cool. It's different, though, because I hate small talk. I hate small talking. Yeah. But when you get into a crowd that know you and you get the first opportunity to get to know them, because they have you at a disadvantage. They know everything about you.

You know nothing about them. And so they'll open up and tell you real things that small talk never happened. But when they start telling you real things, I'm the same way. You put me in a party. I was up at the inauguration. Oh, I bet that's it. I hated it. Yeah, that's just...

I hated every second of it. Couldn't get out fast enough. But you put me in a room with people, my listeners or, you know... And you get to learn their story? I'm just listening to them the whole time. Just, I'm fascinated by it. Is that what you feel? I love it.

I love hearing people's story where they came from, how they got there. And then what we can do for them sometimes. This is pretty cool. But I think it's because they know you, they'll get past all that small talk fast. Right. You ever noticed when you're having a conversation with somebody who's starstruck and you're talking to them and you feel like it's just going straight through them. Yeah.

Their eyes are glazed over. Yeah. You ask them a question or say something to them and they just go on to tell you something they love about what you did in the past or I was a big fan of this, a big fan of that. That really jaded me for a long time. And it's taken me, I'm still working on getting through that. I feel bad for those people though. I always feel bad for people who just want the selfie because everybody wants a selfie,

you know, it's just that thing. Because I'm like, we could have spent that time. connecting. Yeah. And I feel bad for the people who are star-struck because I can guarantee you they walk away going, oh, it's so stupid.

Yeah, I'd say that. You know what I mean? And it's just a natural thing sometimes to get that. I love to just grab those people and be like, just breathe. Yeah, breathe. We're just normal people. Yeah, he could break them down in seconds

where I can't, I can't get through to those people. Hug them. Yeah. Hug them. But he'll hug them both physically and emotionally. Like, they just feel safe with him. And it's a gift, man. I kind of want to hug now.

I mean, he's the guy you want to be with at the end of the world. Can I change the subject dramatically here? I am a, I collect watches, I collect cars and I collect, I collect them, I collect mechanical things. Yeah. I like things that have been made by hand and are mechanical. I noticed that out there. You got a lot of cool stuff out of hand. Yeah.

Yeah. And because it says something about the human spirit, it says something about somebody who is just taking two years to make that. Yep. You know what I mean? Right. Where do you guys stand on the whole, I know you own an electric truck company. Where do you stand on the whole EV thing? I don't think those are cars. So, interesting question. And I'm currently going through my EV. conversion slash baptism by fire, I guess, because obviously the Diesel Brothers got no business playing with EVs, right? And then all of a sudden I'm promoting an EV company

who legally, I can't say the name of. We had a good separation agreement. It's good. It's better now. But I own a bunch of EV assets, including a truck called the Badger and an electric wave runner program and an electric power source program.

And the reason why is because I truly believed in the founder of this company. You know, he used to advertise He used to advertise U Pillar, Trevor Milton. Oh, yeah. So Trevor's a good friend of mine. Just great, great, like one of the best people I know. By the way, have you looked into his story?

He got absolutely railroaded by the Southern District of New York. One of the worst. Southern District of New York. If you're, just don't go to New York. He never went to New York. He never went to New York. He was running this big company, took it public in 2020, and they came after him with the Hindenberg Research Group,

the short-selling firm. came after him with these wild claims, many of which weren't true. And literally, I watched as the government and these private organizations that saw billions of dollars be had, just completely destroyed his life. But now, I can't speak too soon, but there's some vindication coming. Good. And it's going to be glorious. Good, good, good.

But yeah, Trevor actually wanted me to say hello, because back in his U-Pillar days of when he used to advertise with you, had that great relationship. but I got into EV through him because I believed in him. I've never really been too fascinated by EV in general. But once I got into, I started learning about it and understanding there's a lot of cool things about an EV. I would own a Tesla, but because I believe in Elon Musk. Exactly. Same concept. Same reason I got into the world of EVV.

So I bought a cyber truck. We kind of put our electric business on this just kind of back burner for now just because the economy changed. EV started a tank. There was no reason for us to, dude, when we launched this electric truck, the Badger. We sold $450 million worth of trucks in our pre-sale in like two months based off of a rendering. So I was like,

okay, we're on to something. This is a good business. And so I wanted to like experience an EV, try it out, see what it was all about. CyberTruck came out. I thought it was a joke. I literally thought Elon was trolling us for about a year. Yeah. It's a great, great truck. Eventually he's going to come out with the actual design. We're going to see what it is. Well, then he released the actual truck.

And so I was like, I'm going to buy one of those and beat the crap out of it and create content. It's going to be funny. And, you know, everyone's going to see So I bought it, went and picked it up. I'm in love with it. Drove it home and I was like, I kind of like this thing. This is really nice because I go from a world of driving big trucks all the time. You get in the Tesla cyber truck and it's silent.

Everything works. Everything's seamless. Everything's comfortable. The acceleration is insane. It's like a party favor. I know. When you take it and you get people in it for the first time, my kids still love riding on this truck.

It's probably the longest I've owned a truck. And I bought it in April. So I'm coming up on a year here. And I planned on owning it for about a month. I was going to destroy it. Well, I fell in love with driving it because it's just easy. Just easy. But, you know, I thought I'll keep this truck forever.

My kids love it. Everybody loves it. It's fun. It's like it was designed by a kid in Minecraft. It's like that. We all drew when we were little kids. And then it became an actual vehicle. But all the function and features are insane.

It's an incredibly capable truck. It's a lot of fun to drive. But I actually caught myself a couple months ago driving home just kind of annoyed. And I didn't know why I was because I'd had a great day. Everything was fine. I just wasn't thrilled. I wasn't feeling like exhilarated. I don't think of a man, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I realized that the truck I was driving sounded like a vacuum cleaner. Just, just, just, and I really had, at that moment, thought, I need some horse power. I need, I need, I need a mechanical thing in front of me that I can kind of tweak and modulate and have fun with. Is that when you came home with the 12 valve the next day?

Yeah, literally, literally I took it at home and I parked it and I thought, I need to, I need to get back in a truck. Can I, we own 300 vehicles all the way from heavy rescue equipment to bulldozers to all kinds of different trucks, classic cars, you name it. We got one of everything. And I just realized that day and I was like, I don't want a daily drive this anymore because I need, I don't want easy all the time. I want real and raw. And so I went out and bought a 1995 Dodge Cummins old farm truck and started daily driving it. And instantly I caught myself driving home the next day, just like smiling.

And the windows barely worked and the dash. was cracked and I was shifting gears and I was having real time of my life man so my daughter she's 13 she's my oldest and uh I'm I'm really big on making sure that my kids know how to do everything by the time it's time for them to do stuff so I started uh teaching my daughter how to drive and I thought you know what better vehicle to teach her how to drive to drive because most people don't know how to drive stick shift anymore you drive stick I'm assuming you've got a good car collection how many people you know that don't drive a stick right so I put my daughter in this five speed 12 valve cummins and I've always tried to teach people that when you drive a standard,

it's like a teeter-totter. You release the clutch, push the gash at the same time. Nobody ever really gets it. I'm telling my daughter how to drive. And I don't give her that example yet. And she goes, oh, dad, it's kind of like this, right? And I was like, and then she lets the clutch out first try. Beautiful.

Start shifting gears. I'm like, let's go to a hill. Stop on a hill. Start on the hill. She just nailed it. My dad taught me on the hills of Seattle. Wow. And so he said, take a right here.

And I'm taking a right. And we're driving up. And he's like, okay, you're going to have to hold this thing in compression. Now, there's cars behind me. And I'm like, Dad, I just got into the car. You learned that really quickly. You learn that quickly. That's funny.

I learned how to drive a semi truck on the hills of San Francisco. My friend's super cross race team was stuck there. The semi was there. Driver wasn't available. And he's like, hey, we got to get this truck out of here. I was like, I can do it. Well, I'd never driven a semi, but I told them that I had. So I get in this semi full big rig with a race trailer like the biggest truck you can get.

And there I go. Up and down the hills of San Francisco. Just fake it till you make it. Figured it out. And I got it done. But man, sometimes it's best to just get thrown like way in the deep end. As long as you can do it in a way that like, you know, you can manage it. Some people don't survive that.

But if you have the mentality that I do, which is failure, maybe failure is an option, but I don't care about it. Yeah. I don't look about it. I don't think about it. I don't do anything with the failure. I just learn from it. Learn from it and then move on. I don't give it more than a couple of seconds

of acknowledgement. And that's honestly kind of how we've approached everything. Just failure may happen, but I'm not going to think about it. And if it does happen, just, you know, it is what it is. But here's what I really want. I'm going to do whatever it takes to get to this solution.

So it's a long way of saying EVs are cool, but I don't think they've got a place. If they want to go to San Francisco, I think people are going to get really pissed off in the years to come when because you can't fix it. You can't fix it. That's going to be the biggest issue.

When that thing comes down and you can't fix it, nobody can fix it. And when you don't have, when you have to replace the batteries, people are going to be, I think, they're going to be, yes.

Look at your old iPhones. Your old phone, I got a cabinet full of old iPhones. I don't know what to do with. I'm not going to go put a new battery and I don't know how to work on them. They're just throwaways. Is that one of the EB is going to be?

They're essentially the same thing. It's a big sealed unit that you can't really touch. So and where do they go? I mean, it's just so bad. Yeah. It's so bad. I don't know what's going to happen with that world. I'm glad that the hype settled.

Yeah. And the bubble that was building kind of had to pop eventually. But man, at the end of the day, there's no replacement for displacement, which is the bigger the engine. So great. The more you have available and the more you just feel it. Yeah. And I mean, that's kind of how we do everything. Bigger is better for the most part, usually.

We're always looking for the bigger, better thing. in a sustainable way. You can't always be chasing, chasing, chasing because then you find yourself not gratified. That's one thing I've learned, I think from my mid-30s, I had a moment where I was like, I should start enjoying things a little bit more.

Good for you. It took me until my 50s. Yeah. Isn't it a great moment, though? It is. When you start to actually just slow down and there's a lot of moments where we have really cool things that we do together

and we stop and we're like, dude, this is pretty cool. This is really cool. We drove monster trucks for a living for three or four years and like going to stadium shows. And I set a world record on live TV jumping over a flying airplane.

I know. The problem is people get in that mode where there's like more, more, more, more, more, more. If you don't stop and smell the roses, which sounds so cliche, but man, there's really power to that. I think people could find a lot of happiness and just stopping and enjoying the moment.

I had a good friend, John Huntsman, senior. Right. And we were walking on his mountain. And he said to me, you know, He was on the richest people in the world list forever. Right. And he said, let me ask you a question. How much is enough?

And I said, what do you mean? And he said, what's the number that you'll go? That's enough. I've made it. You might have made more over it, but what's that number? And I said, I don't know. And he said, it, or you will never be satisfied.

100%. I couldn't agree with that anymore. And I have found that I can do way more and be way happier and feel way more fulfilled, doing a lot more with less than trying to constantly be in that pursuit of more, more, more, more, more. Because if you, like you said, if you don't have that number. Fame and fortune. Fame and fortune is the worst. It is. There's literally nothing. It's the most disgusting cancer that people want to catch. People think that when

if you're rich, your problems go away. No, they're just more expensive. They're way bigger. They're just bigger problems. Yeah. 100%. And that's that's more money, more problems, right? I mean, that's when I heard that one was a little... I mean, nobody feels bad for you, but it's true. And that's the worst part. Yeah, I know. It's because nobody feels that...

Nobody has any sympathy on you because he's just a dumb rich guy that you figure it out. It's like, no, like... But I wasn't really that. dumb. Exactly. Yeah, man, it's a... Yeah, I know.

You learn a lot, and if you actually take a second to internalize those lessons and look back where you came from, there's a lot of power in that. There's a lot of... And to realize, in some ways, you also win the lottery. For sure. You know, there's a lot of... There's a lot of skill, a lot of things you have to do, but also right time, right place. Oh, I think we're like 90% luck.

Just right time, right place. And the rest is just the line and work at that. I believe I'm about 90% luck, too. Yeah. Yeah. But I feel like luck is made by those who are pursuing something. Pursuing something and too dumb. Here's the thing.

I've always told people that I'm too dumb to calculate risk. I don't think I'm dumb. But I like to tell myself that I'm too dumb to calculate risk because then that puts me in a world where I don't ever look at failure as, like I was going back to the failure concept. For me, it's always been, my worst case scenario is never that bad. No. It's never that bad. I've been rich. I've been poor.

Right. I've been rich again. I'll probably be poor again at some point. Oh, well, you'll figure it out. You'll figure it out. If you're the type of person that can figure it out and not hang your hat on the final achievement, like there is no number for you. There is no amount of money that that is going to click and you're going to say,

I'm happy. It's going to become about fulfillment, experiences. For me, it's become a lot about experiences. It will become only about your children. The older you get. It will really become. How many kids do you have? I have four.

And every day, you know, I had a, they thought I had a blood clot about three weeks ago. And so when that happens, and you're trying to be cool for everybody else, who's like, he's got a blood clot, he might, you know, stroke out. And you're like, ah, it's nothing. But then when you're there in the hospital by yourself, you realize I could, I could stroke out in the next minute. and it clarifies an awful lot of stuff and just really I had a really hard time for for a while after it I'm still going through it but it's it's so true nobody ever says I wish I would have done more work more this had more even experiences in different places all you want and all you want and All you regret are the time that you had or didn't make for your kids and family. That's it.

That's it. And I'm at a place in my life to where I'm, I just, I don't have to do it anymore. And I don't, I don't necessarily think it's necessary to do anymore. I just don't know. But I know that I cannot waste another second with my kids. Right. You can't waste another second with your kids, but you also can't waste another second using your platform and what you have to help other people. I mean, Mercury, Mercury One, right? The service side of what you do. You know, we were talking with you guys during the hurricane and understanding kind of your reach and what you guys are doing. You've taken it to such a large scale and you guys are doing like such incredible missions. How much of your fulfillment comes from that? How much of that drives you? Oh, between when I meet listeners and I hear the impact on real things, not like, hey, I understand what's happening with Donald Trump, but the real things that have impacted their life when I know, because I'm not, all I'm doing is saying, hey, we should do this. And the listeners do it. It's incredible. You know, we have raised and given away over a quarter of a billion dollars in the last 10. 10 years. Nobody even knows that, and there were no corporate checks. It's mostly in 50 and $100

bills, okay? Quarter of a billion dollars. That's a lot of people. That's a lot of people. And to see that and to see what comes of that, that's probably the most important and least known part of my work. That's probably the most, it is the most satisfying and the most important part. And you guys, I'm sure, feel that way about what you guys do. We're lucky because the genre of doing good for people has finally become a content genre that people like and embrace and want more of. And so the more good we do, the more traction we get. So it's like this, I almost feel selfish sometimes. Oh, I know.

Because you're out helping so many people and it's like, man, it just keeps on coming back tenfold. Every time I do something for somebody. Isn't it weird? Because, you know, in our faith, you know, you're supposed to care about everybody. and blah, blah, blah, and I've got to go check my neighbors. Right. You know, all that. I'm not built that way.

No. Okay. I'm not built to where I want to go over and, you know, see how everybody's doing. They're not the model visiting teacher? No. I try. But no. I'm not the, I just, but every time I do it, every time I serve, every time, I always drive places going.

So much. And I drive home going, why don't. I do that all the time. It's so weird how humans are built. We are built to serve. Right. But for some reason, we have this weird thing in us. We're like, got other things to do.

That's the ego. Yeah. The ego is constantly, I mean, once you understand what your ego is and how to manage it, life becomes much easier. Yeah. Because you realize that it makes a lot of decisions for you, just on autopilot. Your subconscious is constantly worrying about you, you, you, you, you. But the more you worry about them, them, them, then.

all of a sudden, like we're going back to what we said earlier, just life becomes more of a flow state. You're less forced and more just abundance everywhere you look. Yeah. And that's kind of the way that we approach everything is we do the right thing. We help the right people. We worry about other people other than ourselves. We don't have to look way down the road of what this is going to bring to us. We just know that it's going to work out.

And sometimes that's the best. I think that's the real definition of faith. Because even when you're in the struggles, you're asking, what am I supposed to learn from this? Where is this? I don't need to know where exactly, but where I know this is going to become very valuable to me

someplace down the road. So even when you're struggling, you have that faith of there is no bad. It's all going to be used. for good. Yep. And, you know, I did this and it didn't work out. I helped this person.

They didn't, you know, whatever. It doesn't matter. It all will be used for good. It's, God is the greatest carpenter. Yeah. There's not a single cut that he cannot use. There's, you know, I go in and I'm cutting everything wrong, and I have to throw that away. He takes the sod.

There's not. a bit of waste with him. It's amazing. Great chess player too. Because the moves that he's making that you're experiencing right now, you don't understand how that's going to benefit you a year, two, five down the road.

And then all of a sudden you look back and it's like, man, that blood clot opened my eyes and look at the time I spent with my kids. I know, boom, all these different experiences. Like, I just feel like you can find good and everything. You can. 100%. Even the worst of the worst.

You can find good in it. It's just where you're looking and what you're focusing on. Guys, I have to cut this off. because you are exhausting me. All the, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been great to have you here. I hope you're coming here.

I'll go. Yeah. You could have dinner with one person living or alive. Living or dead? Who would it be? I mean, except for the obvious of Christ? I mean, take Christ out of the equation. I don't know.

I mean, it might be, it might be somebody like Billy Graham. who I had dinner with. Really? But such a spiritual giant. And I got to know him probably the last eight years of his life where he was preparing to go to the other side. And so he's just this font of wisdom

and absolutely no fear. and had knew what he was responsible for and knew what God was responsible for. I think I'd like to have dinner with him again. That's really cool. That's awesome. Because he was one of the people

who actually was who he claimed to be or appeared to be. Oh, he was. Yeah. He was. He was the... Turns out that's rare, huh? Crazy, isn't it?

Turns out. Only because of fear. People just are afraid to be themselves. Yeah. That's cool. All right. Thank you for having us. Thank you.