The Megyn Kelly Show - Military Heroes John McPhee and Jason Redman - Megyn Kelly's "Double Feature" of Fascinating Interviews

Episode Date: July 5, 2026

Megyn Kelly brings you two of the most fascinating interviews from the Megyn Kelly Show archives in this Sunday "Double Feature" episode, featuring military heroes on this July 4th America 250 weekend - with John McPhee and Jason Redman.     Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKelly Twitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShow Instagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShow Facebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at:https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East. Hey, everyone, I'm Megan Kelly. Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show in today's double feature episode. To celebrate July 4th, two of our interviews on the show from the archives with American heroes. First, my conversation with John McPhee, the Sheriff of Baghdad. He is a true patriot badass. This guy is amazing. And then my lengthy sit down with the inspirational. Oh, Jason Redmond, my God. If you're not inspired by Jason Redmond, I can't help you. If he doesn't inspire you to be a better, tougher, greater person, no one will. Enjoy. Have a great rest of your weekend. God bless you and God bless America. And we'll see you tomorrow.

We are bringing you the story of a remarkable veteran. And what a story this vet has. Joining me today is retired U.S. Army Special Operations Sergeant Major John McPherson. John McPherson. a.k.a. the sheriff of Baghdad. John served our country for over 20 years, specializing in various special mission units and combat experience across multiple theaters, including Afghanistan and Iraq, where he hunted both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. John, great to have you. Thank you. How you doing? Pretty good, pretty good. Quite a lead up there. Well, my God, I mean, you've done a lot. I've tried. I've tried. When I say that, when you hear that intro read,

given all the time that you spent, you know, serving the country, what's the one that, like, you focus on. Like, that's the one thing that really kind of defined the surface in my mind. Man, kind of none of that, I guess. You know what I mean? Like, later in the war, as leadership, like that was a challenge. You know what I mean? Those, like the Battle of Toribora, I was a new guy. Like, let's go kill everybody. You know what I mean? And then the war rages on. You learn. You're more experienced. You just learn as, it goes on, you're going to learn different lessons. Everybody's going to do this.

And I think the lessons I learned as a young guy weren't the lessons I needed. Really? Yeah, everybody learns, right? Everyone makes mistakes. When I read your bio, I thought the opposite, because you had a very rough childhood. And I thought it made him one tough SOB.

Maybe, yeah. And, you know, capable of doing what needed to be done in like the darkest days of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yeah. And so I'm a regular, I tell, I tell everyone this, uh, I'm a regular guy. I do everything everyone else does. Uh, I join the army. And I think when, when 9-11 happened, I was too far in to like, choose a different life. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Let's start back at the young John, south side of Chicago. Yeah. Only white kid in the class. Yeah. For a long.

time. How'd that happen? I don't know. You get in fights. You go to ding dong. They call it ding dong school. That's where kids that fight all the time. And you end up there. How did your parents settle in a neighborhood where you would wind up being the only white kid class? That's where we lived. It's South Chicago. It's where we lived. You know what I mean? I would say the South Chicago or the 70s, 80s was like a different place. Mm-hmm. So I know that you were very badly bullied on the bus every day. I heard you telling our pal, Sean Ryan, about that. I mean, it was every day they beat you up. Daily. Well, no, until they got me a cab. I mean, it must have been bad for the south side of Chicago school system to get you a cab every day to school. I think, yeah, yeah, it costs, well, it cost them a lot of money because the police would have to come to the bus on the side of the road. They'd have to break up the fight. And then the seats were broke, a window was broke.

And then the school's got to pay for all of that. And then by the time we get to school, school it would be over. How old were you? I don't know. Sophomore, freshman, maybe. Sophomore. I'm so sad. I have a freshman.

And the thought of that happening to him every day is upsetting. I mean, it's heartbreaking. Your parents never intervened. Did they know? Oh, they knew, yeah. Does they do anything? What are they going to do? Get you out of there.

That would have been a good idea. Mm-hmm. They probably never thought of that. That's a good idea. So what was the story? Were they just young? Substance abuse? No, I think my parents were young.

I think my mom was, I don't know, maybe always kind of maybe just bitter as a lady. You know what I mean? She was like the mean divorced lady most of the time. And like I just think that's how people thought their lives should be. I don't know. She has siblings? Yeah, but brother. Is he older or younger?

Older. So did he go through this too? Yeah, but he's just a little older than me, yeah. But I just can't imagine like a mother allowing this to just keep happening to her child. Yeah. Well, here I am. You know what are you going to do? Did you like maintain, I know you wound up living in a brothel, which is another interesting story.

But did you keep contact with your mom? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is she still around? No, she died, I don't know, a while ago. So were you close? I mean, yeah, as close as you could kind of be with someone that you know is always like mean, bitter. Wow. You know what I mean?

What happened in her life that left her there? I don't know. I don't got the energy to like hang on to that much shit. You know what I mean? Yeah, good. Yeah. So. No, we always joke my husband's brother, they're Presbyterian.

And he always jokes when you're thinking about something like that. Push it down. Push it down. Yeah. He's not wrong. I mean, on some things. You got to let it go. Yeah.

Like letting it go is the better way. You know what I mean? But the beatings, that would be tough to let go. I mean, I just feel like, did that create any resentment in you? I don't know. Yes. I mean, of course it did. It did.

It didn't. I mean, look, I look at it this way. I turned out the way I turned out. And I think anybody in the situations I was in would come out the same way. the same way. And then you have to realize, like, you got to want to choose good. You know, it's easy for people to be bad. And I say this all the time. No one has bad intent, but shit gets fucked up. Oh, can I say that? Yeah, you can. Yeah. I wouldn't have had you on if you couldn't say that word. That's your favorite word. Yeah, I know, right. I'm trying to be nice. But shit gets fucked up.

So, you know, I don't think my parents have bad intent. I don't think there were bad people. I think they were young. I think they drank. You know, anytime you drink like, you know, I used to drink a ton. But anytime you drink, like, you know, of course there's going to be drama. It takes your filters away. You know what I mean? Like it's probably a better way to deal with than telling someone you know. So I think it's just like a product of being young. I don't think anyone had a bad intent. I just think it is what it is. And I tell you, it's probably, it's generational. I'm not the only one, you know what I mean? But I would say it's generational.

And I'd say there's kids in the same neighborhoods living about the same life. And their parents were probably in school with me. You know what I mean? And I think that's just how it works. It's like a cycle. Does it create like a resentment toward black people? No, I don't resent anybody. Schoolmates beating you up every day?

No. I didn't get past that. I could see how that would cause some. I was the easy target. Like, you know, later in school I didn't get beat up every day because I realized I learned to fight. I could protect myself. And like a lot of the actual gang leaders in that, like they respected that.

And so I didn't really have, I had to earn my way in, I guess. But once I earned my way in, it was fairly easy for me. I mean, and I look at it this way as like, you know, look, you could be the victim. Okay, great. And what's next? What's that going to do you? How long are you going to do that for? You know what I'm saying?

I'm guessing that given the way you described the school system there, you were not on the college track and you knew that? Yeah, pretty much. Did you know you're going to wind up in the armed forces, though? Was that a whole? You know, I knew I wanted to join. I kind of joined late. I was almost 21, but I wanted to join, but I didn't know like when. You know what I mean?

And then one day I was just like, fuck it, let's go. Okay. We'll get to that, but I've got to spend a minute on the brothel since I mentioned it. How did two guys, two kids wind up living in a problem? Well, I don't know. You know, they say hookers have a heart of gold. You know what I mean? Is that what happened?

A hooker took you in? Yeah. Yeah. And we weren't the only kids, you know what I mean? But yeah. You weren't? No. Who else was in there?

How many kids do they have? She had kids. And like, so me and my brother helped raise other kids, stuff like that. Well, what happened to your parents? Me and my brother decided we would be better on our own. How old were you here? I don't know, 12, 13, maybe pre-high school. So you went back with your parents by 15 when the bus situation was happening? No, I went to school myself. Okay, walk me through it. So you're growing up, you're with your parents until around 12 and then you

wind up living at a brothel. Me and my brother, yeah. How did you get connected with this woman running the brothel? Well, I was living with my, I guess my stepmom. Anyway, it's a mess, you know, but I was living with my stepmom and then me and my brother just moved over there and they were nicer to me than anyone else I knew. You know what I mean? And was that you were there for the duration until you hit 18? No, I was only there for a little bit. Let's see, what else happened? I don't know. I didn't live there that long. Like just, I don't know. High school, most of my high school years, but that was it. Okay. Yeah. So now you got to find a direction once you hit 18, right? You got to do something. Well, I always worked. I've been working since I was a little kid. I was a welder. I worked on trucks. So that's another thing I did is I always showed up to work on time, put myself to work, like earned money. You had a couple of skills that are completely foreign to me, like being good with an engine and being a good navigator. I think you're born with that or you're not born with that. Am I wrong?

I don't know. Maybe. Did you always have that ability, that sense of navigation? Because you really needed it. It would become very important. to you in your military service. I am very good at navigation. I don't know. I guess you're born with it because I would have never thought I've never not been good at it. Have you, do you get lost a lot? Never.

I've always lost. You don't understand when you don't have this gift. It's so frustrating. I'm at the point when I drive, whatever my instinct is, I know to do the opposite, like a George Costanza situation. I just know, do not. Whatever my instincts are telling me, it's wrong

when it comes to directions. I'm missing this chip. You could get a GPS. Well, I do. thankfully, I live in 225. Yeah, nowadays, like, I could get lost nowadays. I'd say that only because, like, I just listen to the lady on my phone. Turn left, okay. Yes. So, but no, I have a pretty good sense of direction. Maybe it's natural. I don't know. So what, during these formative years, before we go off and join the military, are you, do you dating? Is there a special woman in your life? No, not really. Nobody. No, like you hadn't been in love yet. Um, yeah, no. I pretty much avoid. avoided people most of my childhood. You know what I mean? Did anything happen in the brothel that would deflower you or?

No comment. Just saying, it seems like an obvious thing to do. Okay, so you originally wanted to join the Air Force. Why? Well, I was a mechanic, right? Very mechanically inclined. I was a welder as well. I fixed a lot of semi-trucks, broke,

frames, dump trucks, whole wall collapse stuff. And it'd take me like weeks to rebuild these trucks, but it's kind of what I did. And then, um, and then yeah, uh, I figured I could do this for the Air Force. You know what I mean? And then, uh, the biggest thing was like my hands were like always black, like cracked fingers. Like you're always welding. It's always dirty, uh, greasy, dirty stuff working on these trucks, right? And like, honestly, my thought was, no girl is ever going to let me put my hand in her pants if she sees my hand.

You know what I mean? It's not happening. Does that stuff not come off with the right soap? I don't care how much soap you got. Like, when you work like that, like your hands are black. So, yeah, so I figured I got to do something else. You know what I mean? Like, I just can't do this forever, you know,

only because I was always dirty every day. and you couldn't, you couldn't, like, not be dirty. Like, even your days off, you couldn't wash and you weren't clean, you know what I mean? So I figured, well, maybe now's the time to join the Army. And so what happened at the Air Force? They said I didn't have high enough skills to be a mechanic, which I was. They told me I could be admin. And I'm like, okay, what's that?

Maybe I'll do this. What's the admin? And he was like, well, you type memo. maybe process awards. And I was like, my mom's a secretary. Like, that's what that sounds like. I'm out, you know. Yeah. Talk about misjudging a man.

Yeah. And they're like, son, have you talked to the Marines of the Army yet? And I'm like, no, I didn't even think of it, you know. So I went to the Army. Why the Army? Well, a buddy of mine was an airborne ranger and said how great it was. So I just went down there and told them I wanted to be an airborne ranger. Did they give you a hard time?

Oh, yeah. They did too? Oh, yeah. You always giving you a hard time. Oh, yeah. Why? Well, I had like a, so first off, I had a mullet. Like, but who didn't have a mullet?

You know what I mean? What year are we in now? We've got to be like, uh, 90s. 80, no, 90, 89 is when I was talking. Yeah, you're my age, I think. Yeah, yeah. So I had a mullet and they're like, you know, guys like, yo, Bob, hey, this guy wants to be a ranger and they come out and they like laughed at me.

I mean, don't they shave your head anyway? What do they care what your hair looks like? I don't know. But, yeah, I was just like this. skinny mullethead kid, you know, and they didn't believe in me, but I didn't care, you know. Right. You might have been used to that feeling. Yeah. Yeah. I figured, I figured, well, Bob was a fat, bald guy anyway. So like, you know, Bob, you're not impressive. And the guy I was talking to seemed like a dullard. So it's not like these guys impressed me. I just knew there was

more to the Army. You know what I mean? So this is all before 9-11. You know, you're signing up, but you don't know exactly what you're signing up for, I assume. It's just I want to be part of the military. Yeah, I had no idea. I didn't know if I was doing like in my day. It was like, you sign up for the college money. You know what I mean? Like people did. I didn't know why I signed up and I definitely didn't think I needed college money whatsoever. You know what I mean? But yeah, I joined all my family. You know, it turned out it's like a family business. My grandpa was both my grandpas, my great grandpa, World War II. Like so it turned out a lot of people of my family were in the service and like no one really talked about it.

You know what I mean? That's pretty cool. Yeah. So you escalated up the ranks, it seems to me, pretty quickly. Like you got moved from thing to thing, challenge to challenge, some of which were a surprise to you. But it didn't sound like you had a lot of failures as you were making your name. Tons. You did?

Daily. Daily failure. Oh, yeah. Lay, fail quick. Let's get it over with. Maybe we'll get it right by the end of the day. How did you do in like the military? setting because I would think with your background you weren't exactly big on rules.

I don't like rules. Yeah. So how'd you, I mean, that's got to be a problem in basic training. Not really. I mean, it's a game. You know what I mean? And their trash talk was great, man, basic training. You enjoyed that.

Oh, God. They would like yell at people and like I'd just be, I'd be like not even getting yelled at and I'd start laughing and they'd just be like, my drill sergeant called me Maffy. And he'd be like, Maffy, do push-ups. and I just start doing push-ups because he'd hear me laughing. Like, oh, man, the trash talk was great. Like, loved it. You were born for that.

Little did they know. Maybe. Impossible to upset you. Yeah. Well, they couldn't upset me anything. You know what I mean? Yeah. I feel like at this point in life, is it hard to upset you?

You've been through so much military-wise and childhood-wise. I mean, you know, like, you got to look, if you want stuff, you got to do it yourself. It's called responsibility. It doesn't matter your age. I call it adulting. I hate it. but I've been doing it for a long time. So if you want something, you've got to put into work.

Does anybody irritate you? Like, do you get irritated? Oh, yeah. You do? Okay. So you're not beyond that. I don't like everybody. You know what I mean?

Like, do you like everybody? No, no. It's such a long list of people I just like. See, there you go. But I cover politics for a living. So it's, oh, yes. Your list is longer than mine. Very long.

Okay, so let's go back. So then you enter over to the army. They take you. You're going through basic training. People are getting yelled at, and you're enjoying that. Yeah. And what's the plan?

just like see what they do with you uh well yeah well i had a ranger contract so i go through basic training airborne school and then i go to rip explain what ranger is uh the ranger regiment is uh it's its own unit in the army their infantry basically um and um nowadays they're tier one unit back in my day they were just like uh specialized infantry or whatever they called them right But yeah, the Ranger Regiment is a way of life. And then back in my day was Rip is what they called it. And like basic training was a joke. We jog in the morning and sing songs.

It's like summer camp, you know, in Rip, like some random looking dude just takes off faster than you've ever seen another human being running. You're just like, holy shit. Like these guys do this. Let's go. Yeah, real talk, you know. And then like the whole time, like, I mean, I didn't know if I was going to make it or not. I was just doing my best.

How long is the training? It was three weeks back then. Okay, but it's intense. Yeah, back then it was. Yeah. And back then it was more about creating guys that won't quit than it was like training you at your actual job. Now, from there, you joined special forces. How long did that take?

I did five years in Ranger Battalion. And then like the summer major at the time was like sending people to like Korea or some random army shit that I wanted nothing to do with. What did you want? Not that. Not that. You know what I mean? They never wanted to go to Korea. I heard it's cold and like, anyway, never wanted to go there.

Sorry, no offense. Where were you in the States here? I was in Savannah, Georgia. Okay, yeah. See what I'm saying? Yeah, I hear you. Yeah. Especially when you grow up in Chicago.

Right? Yeah. Yeah. For once. Yes. Yeah. So love Savannah, right? And I didn't want to go anywhere.

So I figured I'd hit special forces selection. At least it would like give me a path where I might control my ending. Can you talk about that? Because as a civilian, you hear special forces and you think, oh, it's cool. Something cool has happened. Like he knows shit. Like he's done stuff.

Yeah. What did it mean to you? Oh, I don't know. I mean, like, it's okay. I like special forces. Why do it? Like when you were back, a range of consider. Oh, yeah.

Like, I don't know. Like the John Wayne shit. when I was a kid, right? It's badass. Yeah, like Rambo, right? Like, that's what I thought. Kind of in the middle 90s, not really what was happening, but later on it got better. More towards a G-Wod, everything got better.

What do you mean you thought it would put you in charge of your own death? Well, if I went to Special Forces selection, I know I would go there next versus like coming down on orders for Korea one day. You know what I mean? Just like, hey, guess what came? Some paperwork for you. Korea, holy shit, no fucking way, right? Yeah. So I wanted to like avoid that.

So how do you get into special forces? You got to go to selection. They got a selection. Like it's like a tryout? Yeah, try out. What does selection mean? It's not a lot of stupid shit, you know what I mean? Like it's one day you show up?

Oh, no, it's like a run. No, okay, special forces selection kind of works like this. It's based off a team and you got to work in a team, right? And it's 12 guys in a in a team, a special forces A team, right? And then so you're kind of grouped in 12 guys. And then like you do like random stuff. Like you got to build these. They'll give you like one wheel, some pipe and a 500 pound barrel.

And it's like it's got to take it 20 miles that way. Go. It's very MacGyvery. Very McGivory, right? You have the right background for this too, though. Yeah, but I, you're not in charge every day. And then if someone bads in charge and they talk about, they do stupid shit, you're stuck doing their stupid shit all day long.

As on the worst team ever, I think, in selection. Oh, no. Some of those guys might be listening to this right now. I don't care. They were pussies, you know what I mean? Like, I do not give a shit. You know what I mean? It's probably why they are where they are now, you know what I mean?

They were bringing you down. Trying to hold me back. So you made it, though. You got selected. So you get selected to then train into special forces. Yep. And then they call it the Q course. And what's that like?

The qualification course. A lot of, I was an engineer, so that's the explosives. But we do a lot of other stuff, like building stuff. Like basically you're a general contractor for like houses. They teach you that stuff. Oh. And then. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Super useful, right? And then explosives and a lot of explosive stuff. What's Delta Force? And when did you try out for that? Oh, so yeah. the mid-90s special forces, you know, the Bill Clinton army kind of sucked. No ammo, no training, no money, right? So a buddy of mine, I was at his house, I don't know, I was on leave. We were drinking, smoking cigars, and he just gave me a yellow sticky with a time and place. So I was like, what's this? And it was like this field on post. So he's like, yeah, you're going to be there.

six in the morning. It's like, it's like midnight, man. No way. I ain't going nowhere at six in the morning, right? I went. And he talked me in a go and he was a Mogadishu guy. And I went and that's it. I passed. Yeah. So that was you in special forces trying to make it under Delta Force, which is yet another sort of next elite level. But in my day, you didn't know what Delta Force was. Like if someone went there is a black hole, you just never seen him again. You didn't even know they were alive, you know what I mean? So why'd you do it? Why'd you show up at 6 a.m.?

What else was I going to do? Sometimes I do my best work hungover. What's up? How hard was the tryout or the... Oh, so first off, it ain't easy. I'm going to say that. But at the same time, it was fucking great, man. They leave you alone.

You walk through the mountains. Like, yeah, yeah, I'm here. You got to go, like, I don't know. Like, you have maps. You ever see, like, the big forest. I'm already sweating. That's making me. I know. It's probably the worst thing you want to hear.

I would never make it. But like you'd have maps and they're like this big. And like the guy would give you a point and you'd be like, wait, wait. And you're like, you got like five of these. And you're like, I got to go like three of these maps today, man. You know what I mean? And then. Yeah.

And then you just go. And then this, I mean, maybe they knew even before bin Laden knew where you were going to wind up. But that was perfect training for what ultimately would be asked of you. Yeah, 100% and I was ready. Were you in Delta Force when 9-11 happened? Yeah. Okay. So you're doing your training, what, still down in Savannah?

Uh-uh, I was at Brack, Fort Bragg. Okay. And then, well, 9-11, I was trying to skydive to go to a free fall jump master school. Teach people to skydive. Of course you were. That's what I do. So what happened on 9-11, were you, what was your reaction to that day? Well, the first plane, I was like, like, it looked like a little plane crashed in.

You know, like some drunken idiot in his, in his little plane crashed in, right? And then the second was like, oh, shit. And then we were grounded and that was it, you know. Then you knew it was like something bad serious, you know. You knew, but unlike the rest of us, you actually were going to have to answer the call. I mean, does that, is that exciting? Is it nerve-wracking? Is it everything?

It's a lot of things, but I would say this is, I was too far in not to go. You know what I mean? I was excited. I was nervous, you know, like the whole, I say this all the time. People are going to have thousands of emotions today, right? Like it's just how people work. You'll have a thousand emotions. Don't let it stop on the bad ones, you know what I mean?

I know what you mean, but it's harder to do than actually, you know, it sounds. Maybe, I don't know. You know, people get stuck. They get stuck in sort of obsessive thinking, especially if their life might be on the line. Yeah, people get stuck. So how do you rejigger that? If that's you and you get stuck on something. smack them in the back of the head.

Sometimes you need that. You know what I mean? Sometimes I need that, you know what I mean? Snap them out of it. So what was the first word you had that you were getting deployed and to where? Well, there's a lot of things happening between 9-11 and before we deployed. I think the original plan is we were supposed to save some hostages in Kabul. And then we ended up doing the Toribora thing.

So what we trained for and what happened were complied. different animals, you know what I mean? Do you know why? As a way to cookie crumbles, you know what I mean? Just follow what they tell you. Let's go, you know what I mean? You're not in charge. Someone else is making the calls.

You just got to do your best when the time comes. Was Torabora then the first place you went? Yeah, Torabora. Wow. Yeah. All right, can tell us about that. Tell us what was that, how did that, just describe it because I've heard you talk about it in Sean Ryan.

It sounds, I mean, like you were looking for bin Laden. Yeah, so, yeah. We were looking for bin Laden. The Torabora was like a stronghold for bin Laden, al-Qaeda, whatever they would call themselves, right? And the Russians could never get in there, right? And I think somebody, I don't know who said it, but it was, it took ten of us ten days. To do what? To get everybody out of those mountains.

Either kill them or have them come out and surrender. But it took ten of us ten days. The Russians never took it. They had 10,000 soldiers, you know. So how do we do that? We bombed the shit out of those guys. You know what I mean? Thanks to all your explosives training?

No, there was more like Air Force stuff. You know what I mean? Unfortunately, not my, I mean, if I had to blow them up one at a time, like that would be awesome. But we bombed them. So it was more of an Air Force thing. We had a call on the radio for bomb. Was that deployment, that moment when you showed up in Torabor,

the first time you ever killed a man? Yeah, yeah, war. Like, let's go. We killed hundreds of people on the first day. Like, I can't tell you how many people died or, you know what I mean? There's just everywhere, side of the mountains. And then sometimes guys get blowed up. There's only pieces, you know what I mean?

And they'd just be on the side of the mountain. Like, what do you do? Well, how does that, does that affect you at all as a, you know, as a man? Or is it just, no, I'm a soldier? I mean, you know, you come, I'll tell you this. You want to come to a gunfight and you end up dead. It's your fault. You know what I mean?

They started it. Well, and it's the Delta Force. You're going to die. It's not going to be a good look for you. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I just felt like all those guys needed to die. Like, they're evil. You know what I mean?

Like, it's evil to just like, you know, Afghanistan in generals, it's like biblical times with trucks and cell phones. Like they do fucked up shit, you know what I mean? So I don't, there's no doubt in my mind that these guys needed to die. You know? Were they connected to bin Laden? Yeah, all his like inner guys, you know what I mean?

Yeah. So in 10 days you managed to route out this mountain area that nobody else had gotten to, the Russians included. and then what? Well, bin Laden wrote a death letter. He wrote a death letter. It's on the internet. But he wrote a letter.

He thought he was going to die. Is this the one where he was, is this is a different letter from the one that the morons were circulating on TikTok about a year and a half ago saying, this is amazing. He's so smart. He's got such good reasons for attacking us.

I don't know. That happened. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. You should stay off the internet and you should not get to know Gen Z. I don't think you'll be happy.

I don't do any social media. Well, so what happened? Because you didn't find bin Laden there, but you found all of his henchmen. Yeah. He killed him. Yeah. And then are you like done?

Because bin Laden's still out there. A fucking ceasefire. A fucking ceasefire. Someone called a ceasefire. And I would also say there's a couple helicopters flew over to battlefield, which I still to this day don't know who they were. Oh, you think he was escaping?

I look at it this way. Um, if, if the first 10 days of the war, 10 guys kill bin Laden, where's the war on terror at? Oh, this is interesting. The checkbook would have never got open. Oh, that's really interesting. That's what I think. So you're pretty cynical about our military industrial complex. I wouldn't say cynical.

Like, I mean, I enjoyed my time. I love grenades. You know what I mean? But I do think like the rug was pulled out from under us. Well, I mean, it definitely was at the end. But are you talking about right here right now when you're trying to find Palladne? You don't think that the military brass wanted you to find him. They wanted it to go on and on.

No. I think someone else intervened and put him in hiding. Someone who owned helicopters. Regular people own helicopters. Who owns helicopters? You know what I mean? And then how come I've never heard about this anywhere else? I don't know.

No one wants to talk about this. I know, right? See what I'm saying? But, I mean, are you talking about, like I say, the military industrial complex, like one of these big contractors? Are you talking about us, us, us? I don't know. I mean, you can make your own guesses. You know what I'm saying?

But I would say this is like, okay, where is the story between where he lived in Pakistan and Torabora? Where's that story, by the way? I want to know that story. Do we know? I have no idea. Yeah? You ever heard anything? No.

We need this like these JFK files. Let's go. You know what I mean? You actually have a shot at it right now with this administration. Well, there you go. You know these guys. I got a friend over at the Pentagon. There you go.

I mean, we can get to the bottom of that. There you go. Well, that's, I mean, unfortunately and totally understandably, so many of our veterans are asking these questions now, including Sean, you know, I've talked to him at length about his questions about who are the good guys. And oh, we're not. I don't think we are at all.

I don't think we're good friends. Why? I think we deal on a short timeline, a four-year timeline. And I think everyone else has like been in charge for 50 years. You know what I mean? And they've seen us flip-flop back and forth and we pull, we push, we tug a war with the rope. It never ends out good. We're not good friends.

And then as soon as you don't do what we want, we're going to chuck you. you went into the bus and move the fuck on. You know what I mean? Like, give me an example. I don't know. Tons of stuff. You know what I mean? I'm giving you an example right now.

Where are these helicopters at? Where's the story of bin Laden until from Abadabad? That's where the officers are trained in Pakistan. Interesting, right? And how did he get out of Afghanistan? He's on dialysis. You mean this guy walked over 14,000 foot. mountains in the snow with his little woolen blanket and his dialysis machine but left all his

people behind you know what I'm saying yeah like um but I think there's uh I think George Bush said that are alive and I think the Pentagon was risk adverse and and I think that's where the disconnect was at that time but I think someone else stepped in and took bin Laden into hiding and when we found him in 2010, in my exact time. It was 20, I think 11. I was on maternity leave with my daughter. It was an election year. So you think that was by design? Yeah. Yeah. He was more useful. He was more useful dead. Obama needed to get reelected. It's time. And so allowed, surprise. Allowed him to be killed. Yeah. So is that just your gut having been in the army for 20 years? Or, hell yeah. Hell yeah. I mean, that's like, that's the worst possible, like, take on our commander in chief and what they might do, like in danger, continue a war where guys are getting killed, their limbs blown off, what, to improve your, until you can get the election under your belt. It's just so. It's the way it works.

Oh, my gosh, just so horrible to even consider. I mean, it's the way it works. Well, if I had been over there and seeing my guys blown up, I think I'd be very angry if I believe this. I'd be very fucking pissed off. Are you angry? I mean, believing this? I mean, being angry wouldn't get me a cup of coffee. You know what I'm saying? I know, but either you feel it or you don't. If you, you know. I look at it this way. I had a great time. I did everything I could. I did as much as I could every time I could. And I always try to do the right thing. At the same time, like, I can't control everything. You know what I mean? And then does it make me mad? Sure. Do I hate that, like, you know, the politicians disagree on something,

and it costs your son his life, right? Like, ridiculous, right? But at the same time, like, I was having the time of my life, so I wasn't questioning shit, you know. Anytime you drink from the bottle of hindsight, everything gets clearer, you know what I mean? But at the time, like, I didn't question it. I just wanted, I was on to the next.

Like, war was my life, you know, and I was good at it. And I saved lives. I saved a ton of lives in war. All those things combined kept me back, coming back to it, whether it's right, wrong, indifferent. Like, these are things that I can't control, so why even dwell on it? You know what I mean? And it's almost, it's, and then you'll get stuck in there. It's muddy water.

You'll get stuck in it. Like, why this? Why that? Like, why ask why? You haven't been through therapy. This is just your own thinking. I don't go to therapy. No, I assume.

You know a therapist? I do. I actually know a really good one, but I don't think you need him. I don't think so. You get your head on your shoulders. I try. That's life therapy right there. I don't know.

It's somehow you managed to get like a really clear view on all of this, but so many guys I've talked to them come back. Yeah. Traumatized. Well, I call it the last chapter. They're stuck in the last chapter. You know what I mean? Like, they can't get out of that chapter.

And whether, but what really happens is, like, the story's not over. You know what I mean? I mean, I was under the age of 40 doing all that stuff. Well, I've got a lot more years. Like, so your life never gets better. You're never going to enjoy anything again. Like, get out of that chapter, right? And write a new chapter.

Is it the, in part, like the adrenaline rush that you miss? Like, it's tough to recreate that in civilian life. Yeah. It's more than the adrenaline rush. You know what I mean? It's so much more. I mean, when you're really good at something, it's all you want to do. And when you know guys are really good at something,

you could save lives by sending guys that are really good. really, really good at this. You know what I mean? So I think it's just one of those things where it's a calling and it's not really your choice. You know what I mean? But at the same time, it's a choice you got to make. When were you in Torabura? I don't know, December of 90, or no, oh, one. And then you went back, right? Yeah, I went back to Torabora. Yeah. When'd you go back? Just a few months later in 2002, I went back. And was that your like solo? How did you wind up solo in Torabora?

Pretty easy. I needed Pop-Tarts. Okay, I heard that you mentioned this on Shown, Ryan. I was getting Pop-Tarts. So I need to clarify this. You wanted the Pop-Tarts and there was something else. What was the other thing? Beef jerky.

Beef jerky. Okay. You needed this. So you convinced them to send you on some mission back to like, the chow hall to get this stuff? I just told my boss like, hey, we're doing anything tonight? I'll schedule the helicopter and I'll go to the chow hall. I'll have our guy fill our truck.

Okay. Then I got lost. What happened? Like you never went back with the pop tarts and the beef jerky. I did. Weeks later. But it seemed like you got sucked into this unit that had the good food. Yeah.

And then you were off to the races. Well, it was where everyone was. It was where all the guys were. You know, I mean, okay, first off. The default, when they, when they deployed, like, they have beef jerky. They have... The Difa?

The Difa. What's that? Delta Force. Delta Wars, the Dio. Diva. I'm like, who was he? But anyway, like, you're the highest army unit. You have beef turkey.

You have pop tarts. You have, you know what I mean? Like stuff Army guys, like, might see once a month. We should be getting every day. Yeah, like, they're serving cappuccinos. Yeah. And then, like, the food is really good because we have our own cooks. And they're,

They care about what you eat. You know what I mean? So it's good. It's the Army system, but it's within the Army system, which makes it a little better, right? So I was just going to go get some Pop-Tarts. And really, it's just a resupply run. So I drive my Toyota truck on a helicopter. They fly me to Bogram.

And then one of the commanders, the guy that wrote Kilbin Laden, was like, hey, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm stealing Pop-Tarts. Right. I'm here for food. Yeah. And? He was like, you want to go on? mission and I was like yeah I was like well you got to call my boss and he's like okay I'll call him

and he did and then I was like what is it you know what I mean they're like we want you to go out alone and I'm like this sounds risky okay just happened like you were just there getting the pop drives and they were like you know you're you'd be good for this yeah wow and you this is what kind of you wanted to be on your own make your own decisions oh I didn't know if I wanted to like never thought about it before then but it it turns out so yeah something I do well so what was the Why did you have to go out by yourself? Why couldn't you have others? Well, this goes back to the politics of it, is the general at the time wouldn't let us to do it, to hit a target in Afghanistan, we needed U.S. eyes on. Makes sense? So how do you get U.S. eyes on? You have to send out reconnaissance guys, and that's what I did, right?

And then, but you can't, no one can leave the wire. What's the wire? The perimeter, the base. You can't. So the general's like, no one can leave the base, but you got to launch reconnaissance to get U.S. Is on. Someone's going to have to leave the base. Someone's going to have to leave the base.

And that was you. Was there another guy or is it just you? Well, the only reason they sent me is they kept me in, because I was coming from one base to another and outstation to a major base. Yeah. I was in transit. So they just kept me in transit for weeks. Yeah, you're like, who knows? We have no idea where John is.

Basically, they had a lie about what I was doing to make the first mission. Right? You're not giving up. No. The guys back in the original place were probably like, where the hell are the Pop-Tarts? They were in my truck. So, okay. They'd get them later.

So then how long is this solo mission back through Toroborah? Probably took me 10 days-ish. Why are you going back there when we already blew up the people? Well, the last guy to supposedly help bin Laden out of the valley. just came back from Pakistan with him and his sons. With bin Laden and his sons or with his own? No, his own sons. Like supposedly during the Battle of Toroborah,

because he lived near there, there was, he was the facilitator of getting people in and out of there. Okay. So we wanted to kill him or we wanted to capture him? We wanted to capture him because we thought maybe he brought bin Laden out of there. Mm-hmm.

Okay. So the last lead for bin Laden was this. guy because we have everybody else all his people is bodyguard his cook is everybody so do they tell you where you're going and then it's just up to you to get yourself there yeah like did they show you that spot on the map and you're like i gotta figure this out yeah yeah all right so they're like we believe we know where he is yeah now good luck to you yeah go find him and it how pretty simple like he's it's only one valley like and there's only you know what I mean there's only I had already been there that's one of things. So I kind of knew the area. I knew the terrain, right? And it's like,

are there bad guys trying to kill you everywhere? Everywhere, yeah. So how do you get past them? Bad guys? Like in checkpoints? Yeah. You act like a retard. Like an American though, right? They knew you were an American? No. They thought you were one of them? Yeah. What? Yeah. How's that possible? You're just pasty as I am. I have a big, because of Russians raped people. People look like me in Afghanistan, lots of them. Oh, wow. I didn't Think of that. Yeah. So you would act like a local and like a nutcase.

Mm-hmm. And they'd let you walk right by? Mm-hmm. All the time. What would acting like a knuck case look like? Well, so like this guy, the first time happened, I mean, this guy like jams his AK in my chest and it's like, la la la la la la, like I'm supposed to say something. And I just figured if I speak American right now, I'm dead. That's it.

You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So I figured, well, I'll act like. like a retard. And I figured, okay, how would a retarded guy sound? First off, it'd be volume 11, right? So loud, you don't even want to listen. And then it'd be mongloid stuff.

So I was just kind of like, and the guy's like, uh, I get it, move along. Yeah, I got the move. Did you have your AK? Yeah. Did he know that? Yeah. Oh, so he knew, like, it's not unusual to be armed there,

even if you're not at everybody. Everybody's arm. Okay. Yeah, everyone's. That's incredible. Yeah. So you find the destination, and did you get eyes on the guy? Yeah, videotaped too.

And that was the mission. Don't take him out. Don't try to kidnap him. Just tell us if he, in fact, is there. So now you got the evidence. Was that a moment? Like when you saw him, you're like, holy shit. Did you know it was him, first of all?

Or could be some rando? Well, when I was in a truck, I said with a bunch of people, no one knows American. And as we drove by, I put my video camera under my arm, and I video cameraed the house. And like, dude was on the front porch, luckily. So you got a good shot of him. All of it. Yeah, all of it.

Got everything I needed. Are you sure? Because I would imagine in the moment, I've been sort of, not in this circumstance, but I've, not long ago did this undercover video of somebody. And I was like, I hope I got the shot. You don't know until you can go check it later. But this is a very important shot to get. Dude was on the porch. It was perfect.

You knew you had it. Yeah. Did you recognize him? No, I didn't know. Okay. I didn't know. You found out later that you did, in fact, get the guy. Yeah, correct.

So then did we get him? Yeah. Okay. And do you think it was instrumental in getting us to bin Laden? No. It wasn't. It was not. Madam CIA analyst, whose name we still don't know,

was not using that particular information and figuring out where bin Laden was? I don't know what any of that means. but it did not help. He had no idea. Okay. All right. So what does that mean for you? Anything? Does that make you feel disappointed about it? Well, I always thought, well, I thought at the time, like, A, they were going to find out he was, like, dead in a cave later. You know what I mean? I just figured we blew him the smithereens. It might be hard to find the parts.

You know what I mean? So, and then I figured one day the truth will come out. I kind of always knew that. Well, when you heard about the raid and you saw Barack Obama on television that night, what was your reaction? I thought it was great. You did? Yeah, I thought it was great. I mean, for whatever reason Obama had, I thought it was great. And then I can tell you this if I was a commander in chief, the minute I heard that,

I'd be like, go smoke that fool now. You know what I mean? Yep. End a discussion. Rob O'Neill was our first Memorial Day in-depth interview back in when we launched the show. We didn't even have a video yet. It would have been Memorial Day of 2021 right after the show launched. And that story was just unbelievable just to hear it told firsthand.

He's controversial now. Some people don't think he should have said. It was him. Blah, blah, blah. What do you think? Seals. You know what I mean? It's always fucking drama with those guys.

You know what I'm saying? I adore him. I really admire him so deep. I'm not buying into any of that drama. All right. So now it wasn't done. Like you're not done. The war's still going on.

And then you wind up going to Iraq. Yeah. And I think that was like the, you know, they were gearing up. You know what I mean? We're trying to do this. They were gearing up for Iraq. I mean, that's a nightmare. Like when you look back on that one, what do you think?

Iraq? Yeah. I love Iraq. What? No one says that. Why? I don't know. They're out of their mind.

You have an interesting take on it, and I love to hear your take on Saddam Hussein, because you were making some good points I hadn't considered. Saddam, man, like, we should have left him. We should have killed his bastard sons and told him, play along or you're next. Uday and Cusay. Yeah, them dudes needed to go. But he was kind of a fan of the Christians. He was.

He was. His inner circle was all Christians. The people that touched his food, washed his butt, like, all Christian, all inner circle. and it's because of the martyr thing. If you're a Muslim, you kill yourself, you're a martyr, you go to heaven. You know what I mean? As a Christian, you kill yourself, you go to hell. So he surrounded himself and put up with the Christians.

That's why Iraq was actually pretty Western even back then because he allowed Christians to have their own areas, do their own things, right? And then ISIS allows none of that, you know what I mean? Yep, and then we had to mess with it. So did you, you did go on a mission where you tried to get him. Tell me again what it was. It was like a woman, his affair partner's husband. Yeah.

Yeah. We rolled up everybody that met Saddam. You know what I mean? And then we used to say, look, we're in the army. Like, you know, in the, you know, our intelligence agencies, they give polygraphs and they determine their rating as sources. And like, they'd be like, this is an. unreliable source, you know what I'm saying?

And we'd be like, I'm in the Army, I'm pulling every thread. Let's go, I don't care. And we go check it out anyway. Most of the time they were wrong. Yeah. What a shock. Go figure. But, yeah, Saddam had like a favorite sex lady.

I never even heard of this. I heard you say, and Sean Ranj because she was not hot. Yeah. Like, I don't know what they got going, but like. Who knows what she was doing behind closed doors? Yeah, there's no. talent. She must have been a real pro. You know what I mean? That's all I could think. She probably had some moves. She had to know something about something. But like you would think like, I don't know,

like, you would just assume she would be attractive. I don't know. I didn't know what to assume. Everyone pictures the affair partner as somebody who's very hot. The wife could, maybe or maybe not. None of that happening here. Maybe had some hot ones. I didn't see them. He had different taste. Maybe she had a routine. We have no idea. She obviously had something. Okay. So, but it wasn't her. were looking for. It was her husband. She was married? We were, we couldn't get to her because it's hard to get to women in Iraq. So we had to get to the husband. See what I'm saying? And what, what information could we get from the husband? I don't know. Maybe Saddam kind of, you know,

was honeypotted a little bit. He told his favorite honeypot, I don't know, something, you know. And as a, as an army guy, not an intel guy, I'm like, let's go. Let's look into this. I'll do it. Yeah, I don't care. We get him? Yeah, we got them. Did he know anything? Yeah, they didn't know shit. You know what I mean? Like, they didn't know shit.

But we did get them. And yeah, it was, okay, this is kind of legendary. But I was across the street in a minivan and I was kind of watching this shop. I had two Iraqi guys that I would use. And then I had the assault force kind of park on the corner. close to the shop. And then enough time went by. We were just waiting and waiting.

I told my guys to start fighting in front of the store if too much time went by. So they start a fist fight in front of the store. And then people come out, like, what's going on out front of the store? And the dude came out and literally put his back to, like, the van door, the assault force. And I'm like, yo, open the door. It's that dude right there. And they grabbed them. and then it was over,

and people were like looking for him. No one even knew he was going. Everyone had been watching the fight. Wow. And then later my boss was like, man, we're so lucky that dude started the fight. I was like, that was our guys. What is it?

I was trying to speed this up a little bit. Smart. I mean, yeah, it's hot in the back of the van. So you don't have to do the interrogation or you do? I've done a lot of them. Okay. They don't always send in like the dark arts guys from the CIA to do that crap.

Like that's us too. Those guys are chump change. You know what I mean? They're a Gitmo only. Yeah. Okay. So how do you make a guy like that talk? And by the way,

easy. How do you communicate with one another? You have a translator there? Yeah, you got to have a turp. People speak the language. But yeah. What do you mean easy? How is it easy?

Everybody talks. They do? Oh, are you kidding me? Do you torture them? What do you don't kind of do shit? It's easy. What? Yeah.

Fear and common sense is a powerful tool. You know what I mean? Most of the time, Like what, okay, think about this. Okay, this is every human being. This is me, this is you. Look, there's stuff that you're going to die with that you ain't telling no one about. Everybody does that.

Right? Does that make sense to you? I don't know. I'm kind of an open book, but okay, yes, I accept it's generally true. There's secrets people keep to their grave, right? That's basically what I'm saying, right? And then there's other shit like, what's your cousin's car look like that you just ain't holding? It ain't worth like getting beat over.

It ain't worth fighting over. It's a little white car. This is a small point of order. But did he know that the wife was having an affair with Saddam Hussein? The entire time. He did. What do you do? Was he okay with it?

I'm just kind of curious with the sex dynamic. I would imagine he felt lucky to be alive every day. Right. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. He'd be a very easy guy to get rid of. And then you could have the side piece whenever you wanted it. But I guess he could anyway.

So what's the point of killing the husband? I don't know. So he gave up whatever info. And did we find Saddam Hussein after that? Shortly after that. Yeah, we were, look, we had to run all the, look, man hunting is like a sweater. When, like, you have a yarn on a sweater, you pull it, right? One of those threads is going to, the arm's going to come off.

One of those threads, you pull it out forever, it doesn't do nothing. You know what I mean? So we're going to pull every thread. This is the process. Yeah. So when you, was that the biggest thing that you did while you were in Iraq, would you say? Like the most serious thing? No.

No. What else did you do? Zarqawi was serious days. Oh my God. That was dark. That was the dark stuff. You were over there with all the beheadings and all that? Mm-hmm.

Oh, my God. I mean, does that scare you? You're only a man. You're a man. I mean, I don't know. I wasn't really scared, but I did get a sword off a Zarqawi truck that was like a Roman short sword. And I'm like, there's pictures. I got my shirt off.

I'm like, I don't know if you ever seen those, but I wanted a, I would have cut one of their heads off, you know what I mean? Like, but, um, no,

it didn't scare me, you know, uh, Zarqawi was a bully and he liked to pick on the week. He didn't want to pick on us. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. And then, you know, um, yeah, the Zarkawi days were great. Foreign fighters was great. I mean,

I don't know, I loved it all, but, uh, like the foreign fighters, like, you just show up in front of the house. I'd have my guy get on the bullhorn.

They'd start shooting. We'd level the house. You know, like, those days were great. I mean, I think those days were great because that's when the military finally let us take the gloves off and be like, okay, you guys do this your way. What year is this now? 06, 7? Yeah, it was Archive, 6. You know what I mean?

But they'd finally start to let the gloves come off, you know? I think. Like, I think we were, we were throttled a lot through a lot of stuff. But I feel like through the Zarqawi days, no one gave a shit how we were getting it done. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? So how long were you over there? Or how many deployments do you have?

I think I got 10 and then, like, I got a bunch of, like, the surge and the stay late and shit like that. You went back and back? Yeah. Ten deployments? Yeah. And then as a SAR major, I spent a lot of time there, but it didn't really count as a deployment. I was back and forth. Oh, wow. So then what? Like, how does it end? For you?

I don't know. They just send you back home before the fight it's done? Or did you fight all the way the end of the? No, I was a SAR major. I retired in 11. You're getting older. Yeah. They don't let you serve forever, really, right? Oh, man, you're only young, so long, you know? But I'll tell you what, with stem cells and shit, I could have stayed another 10 years if modern science was hitting. It's so interesting to talk to you and hear you talk about how fun it was because it seems like the hell of war and the trauma that guys have, the PTSD. But there's something about like, what is it? Is it working with your comrades in arms?

Is it like doing the thing that you've been told to do and you're really good at it? You love that. Is it all? Like, what is that? What is fun? I mean, why be ashamed of trying your best no matter what that is, I think, right? And I think that's really what it boils down to. I mean, yeah, I could be ashamed.

Did a lot of people die? Yeah, a lot of people died. Why would you be ashamed? Some of the wrong people die? Sure, you know what I mean? Did innocent people die? Sure. But like, this is war.

And essentially war is you kill the bad guy and break his shit. So we can't use that shit against you. If I was told to go do that, why am I the bad guy in this? I'm not. You know what I mean? I'm just doing my best on a daily basis, you know? And then at the end of the day, I always seen it. as I'm in the army, I take orders, let's go.

And a lot of times I like those orders, you know what I mean? What was the brotherhood dynamic? Oh, man, you would think, it's kind of interesting. You would think the brotherhood would have been strong, but like the war, like, builds bonds. You can't get anywhere else, I guess. You know what I mean? Like, you'd think, like, there's always a brotherhood. right well we talk about the brotherhood but we just joked about seal drama you know what i'm saying

so having said that uh i think there's like guys that i'm like i was in combat with that we have a bond um i think there's certain people i have bonds with over different stuff but i think that bond the brotherhood is is just you know the experiencing uh the best and worst of humanity at the same time And when your life is on the line, it just adds, I don't know, so much more to it. I would think, like you're risking it all together. And any one of you might not be there the next night. Yeah. I mean, I always say, like I always say, well, I said this to my guys too, but we all gave Uncle Sam a blank check.

Get ready. Don't be mad if it gets cash. But don't be mad for somebody when their check is cash because they died doing what they loved. can't be mad at that either. Were there any women in your unit? Maybe. You're not allowed to tell me? I don't know.

Can women be rangers? I don't know. That's a good question. I think so these days. I don't know. I don't know how it works. Did you ever have to deal with that dynamic out in the field? Like men and women are together?

Yeah. It just seems so weird to me. I don't know. I know nothing. I think women have a very niche, roles and can have very niche roles. I've worked with women. I've had women partners. They were great. But I think there's a role for them and they're not like the one you send, you know,

get Zarqawi, right? There's other stuff they do. So, yes, we have women, always have women. And I mean, I think there's more women on the planet than men. I don't know why this shot. Well, I'm just, I'm curious about, I'm back to your dating life now. Like, can you meet a woman somehow? Or you're like, how do you fall in love? How do you like... Man, I'll tell you this, is I started out, married at 9-11. I've been divorced several times.

It's a hard life, you know. I don't think... I think it's a hard life because no one understands, like, your level of commitment. And I say that in a way, like, you're choosing something that might cause your death over and over. people don't see that as rational. But they don't understand. You know what I mean?

So I would say, I always say this is like being married, was like being in prison. You could call home. You ain't going there anytime soon. You know what I mean? That's just how it works. What do you mean?

I don't think I get it. That's how marriage works in the army. Like when you deployed a war, you could call home. You get your one phone call. Yeah, call home like once a week or something. Not going to be together a whole lot. Yeah, but you ain't come.

you ain't going on them. Yeah. You know what I mean? And that's tough on anybody. I would say this. Only guys that had perfect relationships, their marriages survive the war. Wow. You know what I mean?

And I'd say the bulk of guys end up divorced. Do you have kids? I do. How old are they? I stopped keeping track when they turned over 21. Okay. How many kids do you have? I have two.

Okay. Yeah. Are they good? Yeah, they're good. They're good. They're good people. Are they going in the middle of the middle of? into the military at all? My son was in the army and works for the army now.

Okay. So when it all winds, when it ends, you know, Iraq eventually ends, Afghanistan ended disastrously and recently. Yeah. Is that a moment for reflection on what it meant, what role you played, whether it was worth it, like, or no, is it just, I'm a soldier, I did my job next chapter? Well, it wasn't worth it. I mean, everyone can see that, right? It's not just me. I don't think it was worth it at all. I had a great time. I would say none of it was really worth it in a strategic sense, in a tactical sense. You know what I mean?

Like honestly, but the reality is, is like, man, I had the time of my life. And I would want anyone to know, like people like to thank me for my service. And it's like, I did whatever the fuck I wanted. I don't actually need anything. You know what I mean? Like a kid who was like a cook getting mortared in fucking wherever in Iraq. nightly that kid needs to be thanked like i was just i was just doing what i do well how do you reconcile it with stories like you know marcus lettrell and what happened to him and he's definitely

got some lasting PTSD from that it's been a rough riding back home uh yeah i don't even get that eyes out alone all the time like eyes out alone in afghanistan i don't get how being the lone survivor. I just don't understand that story only because I was out alone all the time. It didn't happen to me. You know what I mean? Because the decisions I make on the ground. Well, you're not blaming him. I'm not blaming him. I'm just saying it's so, that's so foreign to me. I don't even understand it. Because I can tell you this, the Taliban could come after me. There'd be a whole lot of dead bodies for sure. And I'm just one person. I believe that. Imagine if there was two or three of me. Bring them.

I mean, that's one of the worst stories of the war and what he went through is stoffal. And it's not just him. You know, I was it last year? No, it was two years ago. We talked to Dakota Meyer. He's doing great now. But, you know, he came back.

He won them, was awarded the Medal of Honor and wanted to kill himself. Like he, there are tough, tough guys. These are not weak men who they don't process it the way you do. I think if you could somehow, teach this, it would be extremely valuable, right? I could teach anybody this. I feel like anybody could use this, people who have different traumas. It would start by me locking you a room and beating you first. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly. I might sign up for that.

I think people would. Don't touch the moneymaker. No, of course, of course. No, no bruises, no marks. I'm a pro. Like, I've done a bunch of interrogators. No, but I got this. I mean, like, is there some sort of toughen you up, John Camp? Oh, no. There isn't. I mean, the shirt, what does it read? Team SOB. Yeah.

I called you tough SOB. Same thing. Thank you. So this is not something I can sign up for or I can go learn. I don't have any classes like this. Oh, that's too bad. Maybe I should. You're missing an opportunity.

Leadership, right? Leadership. Can it be taught? I think so. I think so. Like, most of my guys, if my guys killed somebody, I brought them all in a room, I made everyone to have a drink. I made sure I told them they did.

exactly right. You know, this was expected of them, right? Like, this is your job. Like, someone should thank you. And I think if all that happens on the spot, you're less likely to carry the guilt with you later. So I believe a lot of this is framed up poorly a long time ago. Yeah. And then I believe guys ride the hall pass for a long time. And I call the hall pass booze. But some people do drugs. Some people do, I don't know what people will do. For me, my hall pass was booze. You know what I mean? You still drink or no?

No more. Well, I'm training for Worlds right now. So I am currently not drinking. Worlds in what? Jiu Jitsu. Oh, wow. All you ex-military guys do Jiu-Jitsu. Why is that?

I don't know. Jiu-Jitsu, it's an hour of my day where I don't have to look at the phone. It's sometimes there's minutes where someone's actually like choking the livin shit out of me. So I hear. the stubborn side of me is like, I'm not giving it to them. You know what I mean?

Isn't it involuntary? No. What? No. When they choke you out? No. Yeah. No.

It's not involuntary? Uh-uh. Okay. I got to learn those moves. If you make me give it to you, I'll give it to you. Otherwise, you could choke the shit out of me and I'll just ride it. You know what I love. But when I'm in real survival mode, someone puts me in trouble.

I got to think about what's next. My leverage, my everything, control my breathing, my heart rate. I call that real survival mode. Like that's, I'm, I'm so thankful for that. It's a clarity of some time. You know what I mean? Envious of it. Yes, I knew you.

So it's like, you know how like people talk about runners high. Like, you know, I do cardio. It doesn't make me high ever. I've always hated it. But like, Jiu-Jitsu is, I don't know, sometimes when I'm in real survival, I don't got to think about my phone. I don't got to think about my life.

Are you always going against somebody who knows what they're doing? Is it usually an instructor? or another like participant in the class or whatever? Because I travel. I think 28, 30 different dojoes a year. I just walk in and. Why do you worry about like outmatching somebody

to the point where you're going to hurt them and you get sued or cause permanent damage? No. I'm a recovering lawyer. This is how I think about these things. Oh. No, no, it's Jiu-Jitsu. Like, look, this is unarmed.

There's no hurting somebody. There's hurting somebody. I'm not going to arm. Well, yeah, but as you get. Is it like. Yeah, as you get better at it, right? Like, this is the point of submission. If you thought I was going to hurt you, you could tap.

Okay. So that's your escape button. That's like the safe gesture. Don't hurt me anymore, please. I've had enough. Yeah, you just tap. So what are you doing now? I'm training for worlds, cutting weight right now.

Oh, I teach people to shoot. Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah, because you were a sniper. I was, yeah. We didn't even go over that. No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. How many guns do you own? Seriously? I couldn't count.

More or less than J.D. Vance's mamma had in her house when she... I don't even know how many of that is. I think it was 19. Oh, yeah. I don't want to admit to anything. You know what I mean? Where are you living? I live in Raleigh, North Carolina. No, where specifically? Give us the street at. No, I'm only kidding. I'm only kidding. So you settled in the warmth. Well, I live near Fort Bragg still. Okay.

You know what I mean? And you work with them and do you do anything? Mm-mm. I don't do anything in Fort Bragg. Try not to. What do you do for fun? Like, how do you let your hair down? I do Jiu-Jitsu.

I off-road with my buddies. I got one of them side-by-side off-road vehicles. Yeah, I do that. Does this guy who goes in the side one, put on a little white scarf and a little leather helmet? He'll get it muddy. You know what I mean? I wouldn't bring white on these trips.

But yeah, we normally off-road in the air. Arizona Mountains yearly. Yeah, we go to this place, Crown King, oldest bar. There's no dirt. It's all dirt roads, no pavement. Stay up there in cabins. And it's kind of like, I don't know. We off road, we drive. I eat cheeseburgers and I drink whiskey. And then. Sounds right on brand. I do that all weekend. I don't shower either. I don't even care. Ever? Let's go. We're four-wheeling. Okay. So you shower just not on this particular trip. Yeah, but I four-wheel, man, I, you know, and then I just, I love teaching people to shoot. It's kind of like the thing I'm really good at.

Wow. Yeah. What do you think, I know you're not, you don't really watch the news. Do you follow politics at all? Like, what do you think of Trump? What do you think of Pete Hetzeth is the top guy at Pentagon? Yeah, well, first off, talk to Pete. I need one of these Pentagon jobs.

Tell me, I shouldn't be the deputy of special operations. Is that what you would like? Hell, yeah. let's go. I'll make a call. Oh, man. But look, I like Trump. I like Vance. I like Pete. I like what they're doing. And like, what can I say? Like, I think they make good inherent decisions, like, for long term, which we're not really used to here. You know what I mean? But I think they're all good. I don't watch the news or nothing, but I think they're good so far. I think I thought Trump made great. policies last time you know what i mean what have you seen enough of pete to know what you like about him oh man i got a ton of buddies that know pete like everybody loves pete you know what i mean like that's all i needed to hear and you know like the look the pentagon uh we ain't won a war lately and you know

these generals will be like oh well he was just lower enlisted saying that but like yo i watched you guys every day make bucked up decisions. I'd try to tell you and you'd be mad at me. You know what I mean? Not that I was always right, but like sometimes you're wrong also. And it's the, I think it's the hubris of the Pentagon

that needs to be taken down a few notches. You know what I mean? Yeah. And like, anyway, yeah. So I would happily serve this country and make everything better. You know what I mean? That's awesome.

We need guys like you raising your hands. Thanks. Well, I love that you came in to tell us their story. Thank you. You're such an interesting man. I love everything about you. What a character you are. Thank you. I hope we can find a way to get you back serving. Let's go. Let's call Pete. Pete, where are you at? Let's call it. Let's call him. DJT. And see, you've got something. Call him right now. Get him on the line. I'm in. Whether you want to hear or not, thank you for your service. You're welcome. It's a pleasure to meet you.

Oh, thank you. Yeah. All the best to you. Oh, didn't I tell you? He's unbelievable. What a guy. John McPhee, thank you once again. You know, it's just incredible, the stuff that our troops go through and the different mindsets that they develop along the way, right? It's our honor to talk to him. It's our honor to talk to all of our troops who have served in battle. And if you're into what you heard today,

you should go back and listen to the earlier Memorial Day shows that we've done since we launched. The first one was in 2021, and that was Rob O'Neill. We've done Marcus LaTrell. We've done Dakota Meyer, recipient of the Medal of Honor. It's just these guys are, they're living life around us. They're kind of back to normal and to the extent one can be with having these incredible backgrounds. So it's well worth our time to take a moment to learn from them and remember what they and our other troops have done for us while we've been

sitting at home in our air conditioning, right? So that's what today is all about, especially honoring the fallen. We do that here. Thank them and their families for their service. We want to bring you the story of a remarkable veteran who stared death in the face and lived to share his incredible lessons on leadership, bravery, and how to overcome any obstacle, no matter how devastating it may feel in the moment. Lieutenant Jason C. Redmond joins us now. Jay, welcome to the show. Megan, honor to be on. Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Oh, gosh, to you two. It's so, great to talk to you and to see you again. Do you remember when we met? Absolutely. Navy Seal Foundation dinner in New York many years ago when you were still working with Bill Hammer.

Exactly right. And I never forgot you. I've talked about you to basically every Navy Sail who's come on this show and talked about you with Laif Babin and his wife, Jenna Lee, and all these people. And just have been thinking about you because your story was so incredible. And back then, it was still pretty close in time to when you first were injured. You know, that was, what, like 2010? I'm trying to think of the year. 2007. So I think I was still active duty.

I think I still was trying to get back operational when I went to that dinner because I didn't retire until 2013. Yeah, I remember that. And it was like just your whole story was so incredible. And of course, I've met so many people over the years. And I've met a lot of vets, too, veterans in active duty. And honestly, I can count on one hand the number of people who really stand out to me where I'm like, you've got to hear this story. And you're one of them. So I'm truly honored to have you on here and to be having this discussion with you today. Great to see you. Likewise. Thank you. Ah, okay. So you grow up, you from a very early age, I think it's fair to say. I mean, like, well before you actually signed up for the Navy at age 17 had your eye. Was it on the Navy in particular or just the military?

It was both. The Navy kind of came about a little bit later. I mean, still young, I think it was about 15. I mean, from a very young age, I mean, my parents tell me when I was about three years old, I always just talked about service-based and what I like to call in American society protectors. And I was always interested in, you know, that protector mindset. When I was three years old, I wanted to be a firefighter. That as I got a little bit older, my grandfather was a decorated. B-24 pilot. You know, I had learned about him, my great-uncle, along with my grandfather on both sides, served in World War II. My dad had been an Army veteran serving during the Vietnam War and had been a paratrooper and jumpmaster and rigor, and that's where he had encountered seals for the first time, and started learning more about special operations, started learning more. You know, I was kind of the G.I. Joe era. So G.I. Joe was cool to me and definitely the special operations guys within the G.I. Joe universe. And it was about the time when I was maybe 14 that my dad said, hey, you should look into the Navy SEALs.

Having spent some time in the Virgin Islands, I was pretty strong in the water. And he said, hey, these guys are tough. They're some of the best. He said, you know how to swim? He said, you're a little crazy. You should check them out. They'd be perfect for you. And he was right. I don't know what it was. And I'm not the, I'm not probably the likely candidate that most people would think of. You know, I think when people think of Navy SEALs, you know, they, they see a picture of Jocko and Jocko looks like he's chiseled out of granite, you know, and he is the Hollywood version of a steel. And I like to joke that I'm not. I was like five foot, nothing, especially at that age. I was probably, I don't even think I had hit five foot back then. I was probably 95 pounds when I decided that's what I want to do.

And everybody was like, there's no way you'll ever make it. And I don't know. That just created fuel to my fire. And I just said, this is what I'm going to do. And step my sights on it and started training. And the rest, obviously, leading up to joining the Navy when I was 17 on, amazingly enough, coincidentally, September 11, 1992 is the day I joined the Navy when I was still a senior in high school. you are the guy who says say I can't say I can't like there's no better fuel for your fire than those

than those than that message it's a fact and you know and that's a good thing I've come to learn as I get older there's a balance there you know you've got to balance reality with where we're at because when I was younger man that was the catalyst I mean I would do just about anything if you told me hey you can't do that I mean I just had to prove and I think some of that who knows had to do Maybe I had a, that was a smaller guy, so I felt like I had to prove that I was big enough or whatever to do it. But I tell you, back then, it was definitely a fuel that enabled me to make it through training and to overcome a lot of the impossible odds.

As a matter of fact, I was told right from the very beginning when I went to the recruiting station in Lumberton, North Carolina, where I was living at the time, and I walked in that door probably the first time I might have been 15, probably, probably, probably. probably 15 and a half, basically. And I walked in that door and I said, hey, I want to join the Navy and I want to be a seal. And boy, they took one look at me, this five foot, nothing, you know, run. And they were like, you'll never make it as a seal. And they basically, the recruiter chased me out of the office.

And of course, that didn't deter me. I came back and he would chase me out again. And multiple times that happened. And a funny story, I almost went and joined the Army because I got frustrated that they wouldn't let me, you know, that this guy wouldn't even give me the time of day. So I almost joined the Army to become a ranger. And I ended up failing the airborne physical because they said, oh, you can't equalize because I had ruptured my eardrum when I was a kid. And when I, you know, thankfully my dad had been in the military, he said, well, why don't we go send you to a specialist and they can, Because I knew I could equalize.

I had dove. I had done all these things. And sure enough, I went to a specialist. By the time that it all transpired, I tried and explain to everybody. You know, everything happens for a reason. And by the time this had transpired, there was a new recruiter in the recruiting office in Lumberton, North Carolina, Henry Horn, who I got to link up with last year after all this time and thank him in person. But Henry Horn was the new recruiter. And he said, hey, you want to be a seal?

come on, man. And he helped me get into the Navy. He put me on the path to become a seal. And I got to give a lot of credit to Henry for that. He must be so proud of being that guy in your life and the life of the service industry in our country. Can I ask you how, so when you actually did sign up, because I understand you officially were allowed to join when you were 17. So what was your physical stature then? Because it's interesting to me. You always do think of these guys being bigger and you do picture like a jaco going in there and then being like right this way, sir, yes, duh, of course, we belong together. So I probably hit somewhat of a growth spurt in, you know, my junior senior year, but I was definitely not that big. I mean, even today, you know, I'm 5'8 and about 170 pounds.

So I'm on the, the average seal. A lot of people don't know, though. The average seal is only about 510 and 180 pounds. This Hollywood version of the Arnold Schwarzenegger type just is not necessarily the case. I mean, seals typically are lean, muscled, and usually they'll have a larger upper body because they have strong muscular endurance strength from the gear we have to carry in our ability to have to do a lot of activities with our body weight and gear. So your ability to pull yourself up a ladder, your ability to pull yourself up onto a rooftop, any of these different things are marked by what we have to do, especially when you're going through training. So, yeah, when I went to training, I think I was probably 5.7. I might have grown one more inch. And I started training at 18.

So I was 18 years old. I was 5.7. And I think I checked into Buds at about 135. So I was one of the lightest guys in the class. That's inspirational, though. There are probably a lot of guys out there thinking, oh, my gosh, maybe I, too, could be a seal. Yeah. Oh, 100%.

And I'm not one of the smallest. I mean, believe it or not, like I said, I'm on the smaller end of the spectrum. but we've had seals. I think the smallest I ever heard was about 5-2. And obviously we've got a great big, huge guys. It's not normal. The big guys really have a hard time making it through training. The amount of pounding on their joints ends up breaking them for the hundreds and hundreds

of miles that you run and the amount of body weight strength and endurance you have to have to be able to do 20-30 pull-ups, to be able to do 50 dips, to be able to do hundreds and hundreds of push-ups, it's really hard on big guys' joints. My little guy, my little guy, my nine-year-old was listening to me, prepare for you, and we were talking all about the seals and training, and he wanted to know if they make you do one-handed push-ups. Do they make you do any of those?

Yes, and I actually, when I broke my arm in training, and I had to do a lot of one-arm push-ups, because just because I had broken my arm did not mean that I, that I wasn't still getting yelled at and dropped to do push-ups and do things. Wow. Wow. That's so good you know, but I think you tell me, but it seems like whatever the height,

whatever the statuary, the number one thing, the reason you made it as a seal was that attitude. It's that attitude. Like that just never say die. I will not quit. There's something different in the guys who make it through as seals versus everybody else because they have that thing. It will not let them quit.

That's right. I think there are two things that enable individuals into special operations. Number one, that we like to call it the no-quit gene. I mean, the Navy has spent millions and millions of dollars trying to figure out how do they increase the number of graduates from SEAL training. And all these things they've done going all the way back to World War II when they started training, really the attrition rate has stayed roughly the same. It has been around 75%.

So 75% of the people that start training do not graduate. You know, we often talk about it's the no-quit gene. Everybody gets pushed to the point. Everyone has a breaking point. And in seal training, they push you to that point. And they teach you how to grind through it and keep going. Your brain will tell you you have to stop. Your brain will tell you, if I don't keep going, I'm going to die.

But the reality is your body can keep going almost 10 times further beyond that. And so it's the ability. to endure, that gets you through training. But the other thing that I think special operations guys, they have the ability to process massive amounts of information in a very chaotic environment and make rapid decisions. And there's a lot of people that can't do that. I mean, when we send guys into, you know, imagine a hostage rescue scenario where they're now having to make entry into a room where there are bad guys in the room that are shooting at shoe, you very quickly have to assess that situation, identify who's bad, who's good, who do I need to shoot, who do I need to shoot,

who do I need to protect, and all of that's happening in a millisecond. And there are definitely guys that make it through training. Unfortunately, they don't have the ability to process that information at that rate. And sometimes they end up going away just because of that. So it's those two things that I think truly make excellent special operations, you know, people. They make great seals. You know, it kind of reminds me of, I was talking one time to the coach, the head coach, and the Minnesota Vikings. And he was saying when he recruits quarterbacks, he does need, you know, an agile, you know, a guy who can actually complete the plays and knows how to throw the football

and has sort of a physics, a basic knowledge of Felix, physics and instinctual knowledge of physics. But he was saying, some of the guys can't remember the playbook. They don't remember everything that's in there and when to call which play, depending on how the guys line up in the field. Far less dangerous, obviously, than what you do. But it was kind of a similar thing where it's not enough to have the physical capabilities. There has to be this mental thing that you either have or you don't have. And if you don't have it, it's as much of a deal breaker as not having the physical strength. Absolutely.

And sometimes it will become the deal breaker. I mean, you know, there are a lot of guys out there that are strong. I mean, a lot of individuals who will say to me, oh, you know, they're anywhere from professional athletes to, believe it or not, I meet a lot of high-level business individuals in the financial market that will say to me, I definitely could have been a seal. And, you know, I laugh at, A, the arrogance of that statement. And maybe they do have a little bit of the financial, I mean, the physical ability, but do you have the ability to process information and continue to execute when you're in the

middle of a firefighter after you've, you know, flown in, taking fire? Maybe you've jumped in and now you're patrolling long ways. Maybe you've been in a firefighting fuel. You even get to the target building. Now you're in the target. You know, you're in a firefight. You have people that are wounded. Now you're trying to move people out.

You know, now you've got civilians you're trying to take care of along with your wounded. While things are still blowing up around you and you still got to process all this. I mean, that was all stuff that I experienced in my career. And there are some people that can do that. And unfortunately, there's a lot more that. can't. They just high pressure environments, they shut down. Professional sports is the same. You put people, they often talk about the, you know, the high level games, you know, like the Super Bowl or the NCAA championship games and how some of the players just can't manage that stress and that

overwhelming pressure. Yeah, you can see it when people choke. I mean, in sports, we have an opportunity to see it in a way we don't in military, where you can see who's a choker and who's not, who performs at that high level in the most stressful of circumstances and who doesn't. Now, wait, this is a stupid question, but I have to ask it. So are you telling me that even in my own exercise life, which I will grant you is more limited than it ought to be, when I am doing the jumping jacks, and I am so burned and my legs are on fire, and I'm like, I've got to take the next eight out. And I've just got to like bend down for the next eight. I'll come back after an eight beat pause. Are you telling me I can just keep going? Are you telling me that like if I would just get mentally

I can do it straight through. Just keep freaking pushing. Absolutely. Believe it or not, most people could, if you had the fortitude and the ability to endure the pain and the discomfort, you could probably push yourself right to death. You could jump and jack yourself to death. It would take a long time. There'd be all kinds of alarm bells going off in your brain. probably days before you got there. But it is amazing in the resiliency of this amazing machine we walk around in.

And unfortunately, in this day and age, we are not building that much in our people. We are not, we're getting softer as a generation. And every Monday I put out a leadership and resilience video. I call it Monday, Muster. And this last Monday it was exactly about that. I just finished reading this book called Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides. And it is about the trek to the North Pole in, I believe, 1779. And absolutely amazing.

I read that story and the level of heroism and the level of pain and discomfort and frozen temperatures all the time that those guys had to deal with. I consider myself fairly tough guy. And I remember reading it thinking, man, how would I have fared in this? So fast forward to today, we don't have to do a lot of things that really push us. People have to do hard things in order to build grit and resilient. So I really encourage those of you that may be watching, you've got to push your kids to do hard things. You have to do hard things. You have to encourage your family to do hard things.

Otherwise, we just get it softer and softer. And we'll just, you know, it's human nature. We want to be comfortable, everybody, including me. I mean, we all want to be comfortable. but Gritten, I like to tell people the overcome mindset is not something you can just flip a switch and say, oh, I have to be tough right now. So let me throw my little switch and now I'll be tough. It's built you and hard things.

And if you don't do hard things, you will never be able to throw that switch when you really need to. It reminds me your story about your book reminds me of one time I was skiing at this very posh ski resort with my husband and my brother-in-law, some others. and just like a downpour of snow came right on top of us, just this huge snowstorm dumped on us. And it came fast. And so before we knew it, the snow was up above our knees, you could barely see in front of you. And I said to my brother-in-law, Ken,

I feel like Shackleton. And he said, except with no hardship. Yeah. That's exactly right. Where they've got the ski butlers who are going to take off this, the boots when you get back to the resort? Oh, for me. And they warm your boots. I mean, I love the resorts like that. We love the ski. So anything like that I'm all about. But yeah,

I hate the cold now. And that expedition, I mean, you are, you are in seal training, it is the one common thing. You are wet, cold covered in sand. So I despise the cold. And I just think about these guys, these guys were literally caught in frostbite. out of their feet. I mean, that's how insane the conditions were and how hard. And then continuing to go. I mean, there are other people that'd be like, oh, I'm, I'm now an invalid. There's no way I can afford.

But literally, it wasn't until like bones were exposed where they weren't able to walk at all. I was just fascinated with this story and the level of grit and resilience. And society, we may never get back to that. I mean, thankfully, or hopefully, we live in a day and a day and a. We are. We are things to people like you. This is what our children need to be watching and listening to. Guys like you with that same messaging, you know, I'd like to say it's still the military writ large, notwithstanding Millie and some of these other guys in the messaging from them.

But that's what I have my kids listen to. I don't want them listening to your weak. Lean into your weaknesses. Everyone's sick. Everyone's depressed. Everyone's near suicidal. You know, here's another poll to confirm all that. Here, go back on social media to make yourself feel better slash worse.

They need to be watching your Insta, Joccos, all these guys who have been through about just grit and mental toughness. Because it is a skill, like you were saying, it's a skill and you have to practice it. Yeah, absolutely. And that's what a lot of people don't, I love the fact when people read my book and they don't really know my story. What's out there is, hey, this guy got all shot up and he wrote that sign on the door and he's this tough seal. What they don't realize is there's a huge part of the story that most people don't know until they read my book. And that said, I failed as a young leader. And I'll be honest, it was that journey building myself back up against really hard odds that really built the overcome mindset and all the leadership things that I talk about today.

And, you know, Megan, you nailed it. Right now in this country, you know, I joke with people about, you know, we're still in the midst of a pandemic. And people who go, COVID? And I'm like, no, the pandemic is the victim mindset. There is a large sloth of society that is being convinced you are a victim. You know, there are, you know, political leaders that want to convince you, regardless of your race, creed, color, demographic, gender, gender persuasion, religion, religious affiliation.

I don't care what it is. They want to convince you you're a victim. And that there's no way you can save yourself, only someone else have to save you, or oftentimes it's only the government can save you, which is scary and a dangerous thought in itself. Everything I teach on is on self-leadership. You have the power to drive forward and create change in your life. And it is the exact opposite of this victim mindset, but it is pervasive. It is pervasive across social media.

It is pervasive oftentimes in the media. And we've got to break this. I mean, America was built on these foundations of resilience and grit and self-leadership. You know, these individuals that came across here to this country and said, hey, we're going to figure out how to overcome and we're going to figure out how to make our way. And right now we're not there. Everything, even in the military right now, there's this idea about individualism. And I believe in self-leadership, but you have to be part of something bigger. You know, a military unit is working together.

It's a whole bunch of leaders who create this unified organism, if you will, that does incredible things. So fascinating to watch and a little sad. I hope that we can wake up. You know, there is, you know, I learned the hard way about individualism because when I was, when I got myself in trouble as a leader, it was about me. I was selfish and I was focused on me and I wasn't focused outward. And I think there's a lot of that going on in our country right now. You got to take care of yourself.

But how does that impact? How do you set the example for your staff, your employees, your children, your spouse, your family, your community? You know, we need more leadership and we need more grit. How do we even still have a military, given this mindset amongst the Gen Ziers? Do you think today's guys are coming into the military? military with this victim mentality and then it gets sort of beaten out of them? Or do you think it just naturally attracts the minority amongst that generation that doesn't have the victim mentality? And that's what they're doing there. I think there's still a lot of individuals that are coming

in the military who have that grit and resiliency and want to be part of specific units and certain things. I think the problem is there are parts of the military. They're becoming a little bit of a social experiment like, hey, you know, I'm I'm conservative, but I probably have a little more liberal views when it comes to social norms. Like, I don't care if you're gay. But in the military, there's no room for individualism. You're in the military. We all have to fight together. Race, creed, color, Democrat, gender, gender, persuade. None of that matters in the military. If you want to do that in your off time, that's fine. You can embrace that. But as a military, we are a unit that must work together. And there is not time or all of that's going to distract.

If we're so focused on a certain segment or demographic of society that we need to, I don't know, highlight or promote, everybody in the military when I was in, we all wore the same uniform. We didn't highlight anyone. And it was amazing to me. just, you know, the guys across the different platoons that I worked, they were different race, creeds, some were religious, some were Christians, some were atheists, you know, few other religions that were out there, but it didn't matter. What mattered was our ability to execute the mission and you could depend on that person. And I think the military deeply needs to get back to understanding that and understand that the purpose of the military is to protect our country.

to protect and defend the United States of America, but which should be the same mission for any country that's out there. And it's not on highlighting whatever is going on in society out there. Those are political aims. The military should always be apolitical with a singularity of focus, which is to protect and defend our nation against all enemies. You know, this is, you correct me if I'm wrong, but this is why the focus by Millie on having you guys learn about white rage or Austin defending, handing out candy to the troops is so problematic.

It's not just a distraction from what you need to be focusing on, which I believe it is. It's divisive. It's kind of sending exactly the opposite of the message you need to ingrain in order to be an effective soldier, right? Or frog. Like you, frog man, you, all the messaging is forget that stuff. That stuff is not relevant to us here. No, 1,000 percent. And I mean, it's the same thing in the military as it's happening in our country. I've talked about this.

A lot of political leaders are doing things that are just dividing us as a nation. And they want to focus on, you know, specific segments of time. Slavery happened. It was a terrible thing. But there is no country in the past, you know, 250 years that has made more advances in trying to create equality. I mean, it has been a slow process, obviously, but there have been leaders who saw this is wrong. We need to fix this. And this idea suddenly that, you know, these different initiatives that are out there, you know, that focus on America was built on racism.

I don't think this is true. We're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And there's a lot of incredible things that have occurred. And when we start to talk about the level of success of the American dream, it has been all race, creed in colors. There are more millionaires in the world that have come out in the United States of America than any other nation on Earth. And they're all race, green color, and genders. You know, and there are some people that would try and say, well, white males are the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. majority. Well, maybe that's true right now, but instead of trying to create division,

why are we not looking for ways, you know, two wrongs don't make a right. To continue to create division, especially in the military, you're creating individuals now, you're creating separation, you're creating a line of distrust, you're creating potentially even a level of hatred, which is not going to further that unit. It's all about culture. It's all about trust. It's all about respect for each other, that we are equal warriors that are trying to get out there and make something happen. It should be the same in this country. So it's disheartening to me and it's crazy to me because I think back to Martin Luther King's speech when he said, you know, I had a dream that one day men will be judged by the content of their character, not by the

caliber of their skin. Yet our political messaging right now is we want to judge individuals by the color of their skin. That's terrible, man. We're all human. We need that we are, in my opinion, moving backwards. We're moving backwards both in the military and both as a nation. And that's That's sad to me because I have worked with everyone, you know, everyone. When I lived in the Virgin Islands, I was the only white kid in my class. But I didn't notice that. I didn't care. They were all my friends.

And we're becoming the society that wants to focus so much on race. I hate the fact that every single form I fill out today is like, well, what race are you? We should eradicate that. and it should just say, are you an American? If you're an American, if you're an American citizen, that's what you are. I think the only things that maybe they still have that on is potentially medical documents because there is some linkage, of course, to race and nationality. And hopefully they can help prevent that. Anything else that should go away because it's just used as a method to divide us. And that should not be the case. Man, our leadership should be looking at how to

unite us. And right now, all I see is political leadership who's continuing to divide us. And it's happening in the military, too, which is super, super dangerous. All right, let's talk about your experience and sort of get the audience through what it was like for you. So you, as I understand it, September 11th, 1992, joined the Navy. Is that right? September 11th, 92. That's right. Little, little did you know. I mean, you know, what, nine years later, what was going to be happening? in this country for guys in the military in particular. So you go to boot camp, you do buds training. That was January of 1995.

I know that this is like small ball for SEALs guys to talk about buds training, but everybody else loves hearing about it. So can you just give us a couple of examples? I was, you know, just listening to these guys talk about, like your friend Laif and Jocko, they were on a podcast talking about how like, it's bullshit to talk about buds. Like, talk about combat. The only people want to talk about buds are people who never actually went to combat

after Buds and that's the highlight of their Navy career. But give me a minute on it because I think my sons will enjoy it and I think a lot of people love hearing about just what we put you guys through in order to call yourself a seal. Yeah, training is hard. I mean, there's no doubt about it. But at the flip side of that point, I kind of knew what I was getting myself into. I had researched. I actually served with one of the East Coast SEAL units before I went out to Buds. I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into. And it is, and it was. It is unequivocally hard. Training's broken into three different parts.

First phase is designed to weed people out. It is designed to be as hard as possible, physically hard as possible. And so it's massive amounts of physical exercises and evolutions that are pushing you out of your comfort zone into that zone of discomfort and pain and forcing you to come to grips with your brain is telling you you have to say. stop, but your body can keep going. That culminates with Hell Week, and Hell Week is probably considered to be one of the toughest blocks of training in the U.S. military. Some say in a lot of our even global military units, and Hell Week is exactly that. It's a week long. It goes from

Sunday to Friday, and during that week you will get maybe on average two to three hours asleep. You are constantly wet, coated in sand. You're carrying the boat around on top of your head everywhere you go. It's not uncommon for guys to shave holes inside their legs or inside their armpits or to rub the hair off their head. It's not uncommon for your toenails and fingernails to fall off during Hell Week. It's also not uncommon to hallucinate during Hell Week. I remember when I went through Hell Week, a couple of things that stand out. I remember, one, I was in the, I was, boat crews go by height. So the tallest boat crews are in boat crew won.

Those are the studs. And in our class, I remember boat crew won, won everything leading up to Hell Week. They were the beasts. And we got into Hell Week, and on Tuesday night, I was in the shortest boat crew, by the way, which is called the Smurf Crew. So for those of you that enjoy that, complete with a little smurf on the front of your boat. So, and I remember, like, the boat crew one were like gods. You know, we were like, those guys went everything.

You know, they just dominated. And on Tuesday night at Hell Week, which is one of the hardest evolutions that culminates on Tuesday night, everybody on Boat Crew One quit that night except one guy. And it made me realize they're human too. Every single person out there that is like, oh, that guy's got it all figured out. Like, they never have any doubts. That's BS. Everyone has doubts.

Everyone has their hangups and issues. The difference between successful people is they continue to drive forward besides those doubts. And man, when those guys quit, I was like, I got this. Wow. Kept driving forward. Why did they quit? It's hard. It's miserable.

It's you have to dig deep. within yourself and the evolution we were doing is something called steel piers. And what they do is, you know, they have like a fire hose that they're misting you. It's at night in San Diego Bay, I went through how we could march. So the temperature was probably in low 50s. The water temp, I would imagine, was probably in maybe high 50s. And it was a large floating steel pier. and you were forced to remove all your clothing and fold it up. You were just wearing a small pair of shorts. That was it.

And you were with your swim buddy in these little metal, I don't know, they were probably like three by three foot squares. And the whole class is spread out with their swim buddy. And you would have to fold your clothes up. And the instructors would say, place your pants folded up in the northwest corner. And none of us had a compass. And you've already been awake for like 48 hours. So you're like, it's night.

times. Like, which way is Northwest. So everybody would try and figure out which way was Northwest, and the class would come to a conclusion, this is Northwest. And, you know, you'd mess it up. And then you'd get yelled at, and they'd force you to lay down on the cold steel, and they'd spray you with water until you were shaking enough. And at some point, they'd scream at you to get up and jump in the water.

And I remember, we'd all run over to the edge. And it was like, your body was telling you to go, but your brain would, like, slam on the breaks and it was so funny you'd watch everybody i remember this in my mind everybody would get up to the edge of the pier and like come to this stop and be like and then you just have to force yourself into the water and the instructors would like throw your clothes and your boots into the water which you know you're in the you're in the bay so now you're having to dive down in the darkness and find your stuff and and this went on for hours probably four or five hours um and and um i remember when guys quit they they the steel pier was down below the concrete pier which was up above where the vans

were parked up there and and there's all there's a method to the madness I mean a lot of what seal training special operations training is it's psychological you know seal training is not you don't accomplish shield training through this it's accomplished through this and through this your ability to find it within your heart and to think through the problems So when guys would quit, they would be given a blanket and a hot cup of coffee or cocoa. And they would go sit in the van that had the heater on. And you would see them up there sitting in that van drinking with their blanket on all warm, looking down on you while you're getting your butt kicked.

And it was so easy to say, man, all I have to do is say, I quit and I can go sit in that warmth. And that's, man, that's like life. How often do we find these moments like, man, all I have to do. have to do is get a little further and I try to explain to people keep pushing you never know it's always darkest before the dawn and so anyways that's what happened to boat crew won all of them i think got caught up in it and uh and they quit during that evolution so wow I remember on Thursday or on Wednesday night I was hallucinating we were doing an evolution called around the world where you rode your boats around uh Coronado island and um we'll see

So now you've been awake for what, 96 hours at least. And it's very common for guys start hallucinating. And I was seeing fences, chain link fences out in the middle of the ocean. And I'd tell the guys, we got to turn. We're going to hit this fence. I was seeing concrete walls that I was trying to steer around. I was hearing voices out in the middle. My buddy, he was telling me he saw a witch standing out in the water.

And like he told himself like, okay. Okay, that's not there. So I'm just going to look away. And when I look back, it's going to be gone. When he looked back, she was still there. So he was like, guys, we've got to row faster. The switch is going to get us. Is it just from lack of sleep?

Is that what's causing the hallucinations? Yeah. Yeah, lack of sleep. Man, it is amazing. People really underestimate sleep and how good sleep is for you and how bad it is for you when you don't sleep. how bad your brain starts to break down and your decision making becomes poor. And yeah, even in the point you're starting to hallucinate.

I was just talking to a doctor about this. And we were talking about how, you know, some people, they get up at the crack of dawn, pre-crack of dawn to work out. And that's fine as long as you've built in enough sleep prior to that point that you've gotten a good night. You know, did you get your seven hours or did you get four hours so that you could get up at 4 a.m.? And he was saying they're completely missing the point because sleep is as important as exercise and nutrition to your overall wellness, your mental wellness, your brain function, your heart function, all of it. And so unless you can get the seven hours before you get out before,

it doesn't make much sense to do that just so you can work out. You need both. You need sleep. A thousand percent. This is something that I really had to come to grips with. I mean, I teach something called the Pentagon of Peak Performance and the base level is physical leadership. And sleep is a big component of that. My whole life, I've gotten up early. but I wasn't getting the I need. I know my body, I need a minimum six hours, seven is ideal for me to optimize. And I wasn't getting that. I was running, you know, I got to go up at 5.30 every single morning. And in the last year, my cortisol levels were high. I was having, you know, some of these health issues. And I said, okay, I'm going to force myself to get more sleep. And it has reset a lot of

people just underestimate the power of sleep, especially, I mean, people in the business world are guys who think they're really tough, and they'll say to me, hey, I get by on four hours sleep at night. And I'm like, awesome, man. Congratulations. You are chronically fatigued and nowhere near the optimal self you could be. And you'll be dead soon. I mean, really, it shortens lifespan. So it's really, you can't sacrifice sleep, but work out and eat healthy. That's just dumb, dumb strategy. All right. So you, you're in the Navy. Nine-11 happens. You are deployed in Afghanistan, right? In Afghanistan as an officer in 2004. Is that correct? I commissioned in 2004. We went to Afghanistan in 2005.

Okay. And this is where you, I think it's fair to say, would face this major leadership challenge that you referenced earlier in which you feel you fell down on the job. So tell us what happened. There's a little bit of a perfect storm. So I came into the Navy in 1992 into a peacetime military. And there's a, you know, there's a big difference in a peacetime military and a wartime military. I try to, you know, you nailed it when you said when you signed up on 9-11, you had no clue what was coming. And that is a fact. And I try and explain that to younger guys and gals in the military. you never know when something's going to happen.

None of us saw 9-11 happening. We went from total peace time to total wartime. Within, I think, two or three years, all of the SEAL teams were 100% combat experienced, and that was one of the goals, obviously. So I actually started school in the summer of 2001, and 9-11 happened, obviously, in September. myself and a couple of my teammates that were at school together tried to get out of the program like hey

we know we're going to war get us out you know let us go back to a platoon and one of our most respected leaders who had helped me get commissioned i remember prophetically said red this war is going to go on for decades he's like go back to school you will get your chance um so while i was at school the community obviously was going off to war in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And one of the things that occurred was typically the military bases, tactics and strategies off the last sustained combat. And the SEAL team base, a lot of our tactics off Vietnam. That was the last time we had seen years of combat. Well, when we got over to Iraq and Afghanistan, we quickly realized a lot of those old tactics used in the jungles and the Mekong Delta and the swamps of Vietnam didn't necessarily

apply quite as well in the mountains and the urban and desert environments other than actually not only technology advanced for vehicles so the bottom line our tactics changed uh pretty drastically so here I was this ex-enlisted guy who thought I was like uh God's gift to leadership the ego and arrogance kind of got the best of me and I came back when I got commissioned in 2004 thinking, man, I'm the man. I know everything. I'm going to step back. I'm going to be like patent reincarnated or something. And that really wasn't the case.

I stepped back in and technically I was probably one of the more inexperienced guys because I didn't have combat experience and probably 60% of our platoon at that point definitely did. And instead of humbling myself and not only that, all our tactics had changed. So instead of humbling myself and saying to the guy, guys, younger guys who might have been more experienced, hey man, I don't know how to do this. I made the mistake as a young leader saying, oh, I'm a leader. Like, it's a sign of weakness. If I say I don't know how to do this, which is a fallacy. It's wrong. But in doing that,

I started to damage my credibility as a leader. Well, that was hurting me. So when I recognized it was hurting me, so then what was the next thing I did? Well, I recognized. I recognized. that I was damaging my credibility. I was stepping on my toes, not keeping up like I should be. And I started drinking away my stress. So then I became known as a drunk on top of everything else. Fast forward deployed Afghanistan in 2005. And the very first mission, we were getting ready to transition over. So Operation Red Wings was our troop. Lieutenant Commander Eric Christensen was my boss. A lot of the guys that you will read about that were shot down on the helicopter.

And that Red Wings is the lone survivor story for those that may be familiar with that. If you've seen that movie or watched or read Marcus's book. We had him on the show last August with his brother. It was just an incredibly compelling episode so they know the story. Okay. So I was a part of the troop. Our sister platoon was a platoon that was on the helicopter for Red Wing that was shot down. We were getting ready to fly to Afghanistan to turn over with those guys that following week. I think we were set to fly right after the 4th of July. And of course, on June 28, the helicopter was shot down. So this was our first introduction to combat. That's when I first, I met Marcus at the hospital on Lans. Germany. We stood watch on Mike Murphy and Danny Deeds' bodies. They had not recovered Matt Axelston yet flew to Afghanistan and the recovery was underway. And that's how our

deployment started. So here I was this knucklehead young officer who was stepping on his toes, who now, you know, got to combat. And I wanted to prove myself, you know, hey, red wings happen. You know, we want payback, which is okay. That's fine. But there is a balance as a leader. We have to, you know, it should be the mission, then the men or the team that you're working with and you're last on the equation. Unfortunately, I inverted that. And, you know, how do I make myself look like, you know, a great leader and a great hero?

And I mean, I continue to make mistakes culminating with a bad call on a mission in September of that deployment. that call really did damage to my reputation. I am very fortunate that no one was injured or killed because of that call, but what it did kill was my professional reputation. By the time I got back out of that valley, the guys were like, get rid of that guy. They were calling me Rambo Red, which that is not a compliment. You know, for those who think Rambo is really cool,

it's a cool movie. It doesn't apply in the military. It's kind of what we talked about before. There's no room for individualism, especially a leader who is made a sentence based on his glory. And I wanted to get in the fight and I saw an opportunity and I took it. And I am very fortunate that that no one was killed because of my decision making. So that started a whole new journey because there were guys who said, kicked that guy out. And it was a lowest, point I've ever hit in my life. I went and had to stand in front of my commanding officer and explain my actions. And I'll never forget, there were guys in that room that were like, get rid of this guy. He's going to get people killed. And my commanding officer told me to go

back to my room and he would let me know the next morning what his decision was. And I went back to my room and I almost killed myself. I put a gun in my mouth. and I started to pull the trigger. But fortunately, I think God intervening, I looked, I just, about the time I did, it looked across at the desk and there was a picture of my wife and kids. And, you know, just this voice was like, what are you doing? You know, what are you doing? What impact are you going to leave behind on them?

And I remember I put my gun away. I went and sought out special operations chaplain and talked to him. We talked a lot and he said no matter what happens, you know, if they take your trident or if they kick you out, then, you know, you've got to figure out what the path forward is. But never forget, for every the end moment in your life, there becomes a new beginning. It's up to you what you do with that new beginning. This is a big part of what I talk on. It's a part of my TED talk on. It's a part of what I speak on. And he was absolutely right. And thankfully, you know, credit to my commanding officer who did not kick me out, even though he absolutely could have. As a matter of fact, I'm actually surprised he didn't. I mean, here's a guy who's grieving from the loss of 11 teammates only a couple months earlier. He didn't get to go home. He didn't get to go to the memorial ceremony. We had to stay and continue the mission.

So, and now he's got this knucklehead ensign who's making bad calls. And I think it would have been super easy for him to say, I don't have time to deal with this, nor do I have the emotional capacity to deal with this. But he didn't. He said, you know what, Red, you've done some good. things. I believe in you. I'm going to give you a second chance. And he he did. I mean, there was some, there was some punishment that came along with it. Any awards I was supposed to get, they were attracted. I had to sign an unofficial letter of reprimand that was held in the commanding

officer safe. And if I had, if I had messed up again, that letter would have gone into my permanent officer record, which would end my career. And I got sent to U.S. Army Ranger School, which is probably one of the best things that could have happened to me. I mean, it's pretty cool. I mean, to learn how to be a Ranger and develop all those skills too, but you emerged out of that with a whole new set of leadership skills. I did. Ranger School, I'd love to tell people that when I walked out of the office in Afghanistan, after getting that second chance, I was immediately like, yes, I'm going to, you know, recreate myself. But, you know, sometimes in this life, our new beginnings take time. And, uh, and, you know, I talk about this victim mindset. I,

I, I had a little bit of the victim mindset. I, I, I was seeing myself as a victim that the guys threw me under the bus. And I hadn't come to grips yet with, you know, the only person that put himself there was me, my poor decision making and, and really selfishly viewing, looking more at myself and not outward at the, that the team and the mission and the impacts of that. And thankfully, it was at Ranger's school that I really started to figure that out, um, you know, kind of an interesting side note in ranger school um i screwed up i failed to land that test and seals are a little bit of anomaly we don't go through ranger school that often and you know there's that great professional rivalry between the army and the navy and um and a lot of the rangers i don't

think liked me very much so they they let me know it and gave me a lot of grief about being there and when i failed the land of course man they laid into me they I'm sorry, land navigation. This is orienting with a compass to figure out where you're going in the woods, in the dark, and all that. And the Ranger's School of Land Nav course is pretty long.

You started in the middle of the night, and I had taught Land Navs, once again, ego and arrogance. I thought, I'll crush this course, and I didn't. I failed it. I missed a point. And the instructors were totally heckling me,

and in the moment I allowed my emotions to get the best of me, and I basically told those instructors what I thought of them. And they said, are you quitting? And I said, yeah, I'm out of here. It's the only thing I've ever quit in my life. And so I had to go meet with the Ranger Colonel.

And the Ranger Colonel listened. And he said, I think you should talk to one of your CL teammates. And I'll be honest, I was utterly ashamed and embarrassed. And I was like, I don't want to talk to anyone. You know, I just want to crawl under a rock. And like, I guess this is the end of my military career. and he said, hey, I'm friends with a, the guy's name is Colonel, he was Colonel KK. K.K. Chin Back then, he retired a two-star general, and I had become friends with him because he really,

amazing guy, amazing leader, he saved my career. And he ended up calling one of our most respected SEAL leaders who happened to be a mentor of mine who had helped me get commissioned. And he put me on the phone with him. And I remember telling him this whole story how, you know, I ended up there. And he said, Red, I know all about what happened. with you. Did you ever think that you're seeing this as punishment? He said, did you ever think you might learn something from this? And I said, no. And then I told him, I said, but sir, no one's ever going to follow me again. I've made too many mistakes. I don't think I can recover from this. And he gave me the foundational level of everything that I teach in leadership now. He said,

Red, people will follow you if you give them a reason to. That's it. That's all leadership is. He said, I don't care how bad you've messed up. It's human nature. that if someone is on the winning team, if someone is leading a team, a community, a company to success, and they're a pretty good person, you know, despite any mistakes they made in their past, it's human nature we're going to follow them. We all want to be on the winning team. He said, so go back to Ranger School, crush it,

come back and give the guys a reason to follow you. And I was like, Roger that. I hung up the phone and I looked at the Ranger Colonel and I said, well, you put me back in my class and he said, no, you quit. You get to go sit in Ranger School jail for a lot. a month and you'll class up with the next class. So for a month, I walked around Fort Benning, picking up trash. And it was probably the best thing that ever going to happen to me because it finally humbled me and it gave me a lot of time to think about I was the problem. I was the

problem. And it was my lack of my own self-leadership, selfish leadership that put me there. And it really changed everything. I created a new, you know, my three rules of leadership that I now teach. And that enabled me to drive forward, graduate ranger school, and slowly over the next couple of years build back my credibility as a leader. This is what is so extraordinary about our military and some of the leaders who are in it. They somehow know when it's time to temper that extreme discipline and harsh, unforgiving training with mercy and inspiration and encouragement. The best leaders do. I mean, that's just a gift when you have a guy like that above you who knows you and knows what you need in the moment, whether it's a kick in the pants or a lift.

I love that story. And I love knowing that there are guys like that out there training the next generation of warriors and that you're out there using these same skills to help civilians to try to get through just life with some of these lessons. They apply. And our military. I mean, I frequently speak to the military. I've been fortunate enough to speak almost all the service academies. West Point, all you have to is call me. I will come speak for you guys anytime.

Yes, and it's amazing. It's so beautiful there. You should go. I know, I know, I want to. You know, I mean, I speak Army. I wear the Ranger Tab. I speak Army. Yeah, exactly right.

Well, thank you for sharing that with me. That's like with all of us. That's a very moving story. That could be the most moving story of the exchange we have. I feel like I learned so much already. And we haven't even gotten to the, you know, apex of everything that you've gone through. I do before we get to your injury and what happened.

Can we just spend a minute on Erica? Because she's a huge part of your story. And we kind of glanced by on my wife and my kids. By the way, when you told me about that moment when you were feeling like you might take your own life and, you know, God stepped in and stopped you. I completely believe that was an angel. That was an angel was sent to you to stop you in the same way. I talked to Dakota Meyer last, last Memorial Day. And he talked about the same thing.

It was back when he got stateside again now. for him. And he actually tried, he pulled the trigger. He had the gun, pulled the trigger, and an angel had taken the bullets out of the, out of the gun. He thought it was loaded. Which is, I feel like so many of you guys go through these massive travails and emotional traumas, whether it's while you're serving or the buildup to the serving or just you're so hard on yourself and you're so used to being able to do everything at a high level, right? And then when you have a failure, that's when you really get tested. And I just think every once in a while you need an angel, to come help you. And I agree with you that God plays a role. So I'm glad you had,

I'm glad you had your faith to get you through. All right. So Erica, just to rewind now, because we're in 2005, I think, when you did Army Ranger School and you had all that happen to you. But five years earlier, you'd been out on the town. What town were you in this back state side, right? Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville, Kentucky. And you guys were out a bunch of you when you decided that night for whatever reason, you're going to pretend that you were all. there as boxers that you were there for some big boxing match. And you see this stunning blonde with a thousand-w-watt smile from across the room. And, I mean, man, did you woo her? Your lines. I mean, they will live in infamy. But I just. So tell us how you managed to woo this amazing

woman into having a drink with you. Well, she ditched to me at first. So once again, you know, tell me I can't do something. And I hung out with the guys a little more. And it was a great big place for any of you that are familiar with Louisville, Kentucky. It was the Phoenix Hill Tavern, which is a, you know, it's a huge warehouse type bar. I had like, I don't know, three levels, six or seven bars in it. And I'd gone upstairs at some point. I looked across the, uh, the upstairs bar area. And she was kind of across the room standing on top of this, I don't know, elevated structure. And there was a guy talking to her and she just looked miserable like I wish this guy would leave and I was like yes here's my chance so I uh I went up and I kind of jumped up on the platform with her and uh she seemed

rather shocked and the guy seemed rather perturbed but I just kind of ignored him and finally he got the message and left and I don't know we just hit it off there was kind of a natural chemistry that we talked from that point forward through the rest of the night and ended up linking up with her the next day for a barbecue, which is kind of a funny story because she didn't mention that she had a young son. He was four months old, or six months old at that time. And literally we opened the door and she like handsome to me. Here, hold awesome. and and then she's like, hey, by the way, we have a new grill. So can you put the grill together? So, yeah, that was kind of our first date.

I put this grill together for a barbecue. Get him trained early. I like this girl. Like, this is how it's going to be. You're going to help me with my son. You're going to put my grill together. And I'm going to do things for you too. So, yeah, I remember I read from your book.

Your opening line was, hi, I'm Jay. how you doing? Can I buy you a drink? I cringed at my lack of wit and charm and the weakest pickup line ever. What the hell? That's the best I've got. But you know what? That's really all it takes. Any like faux attempt to be overly clever is usually seen right through. So I think, you know, you did the right thing, obviously, because it all worked out. So you wound up getting married. You married Erica. And you had two additional children, two daughters. So those are the three kids and the wife and the family that you referenced. when the times were tough. And she's still with us. I mean, she's still with you, and we'll get to all of that. But I love the story of Erica. So now we're post-ranger school, and you got to go back out there. And is this, it was what, it was May of 2007 that you were deployed to Fallujah, Iraq.

And oh, my God, can I tell you, Jay, whenever I even hear Fallujah, I brace myself. It's just like all the stories are awful. They're just all awful. They're terrible. Just so many bad things happened there. And it just seems like it went so poorly. And it was so incredibly violent and dark. And our guys were just overwhelmed time after time and kept fighting and the sacrificing. So it's already a trigger, I think, for a lot of people who covered the news, you know, as I was doing at that time, never mind the guys who actually lived it. So you knew going over there at that point, high levels of danger here. yes? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we, the, um, Jocko's deployment was, uh, 2006 prior to us operating out of Ramadi and a lot of the guys who were operating prior to us. All Fallujah, Ramadi, and Haban here are the big cities in the Ambar province.

And, um, a lot of the fighting had intensified in 06 and 07, um, really heavily, um, because, The second big battle, you know, a large battle occurred in Palluzon, 06. The Ambar awakening had occurred, so a lot of the local tribal shakes had finally, I think, had enough. And whereas before, they weren't really cooperating much with the coalition forces, the American government and the American military machine. I think finally they said, if we don't cooperate with them, we're never going to be able to get our country back. So what started to happen was in 06 and 07, And they started feeding us real intelligence, which enabled us to really start going after al-Qaeda and insurgent leadership.

So I will say as SEALs, even though we knew it was a high level of danger, it also was everything we had ever trained to. you know, at the pinnacle of special operations is direct action missions to take out, you know, mid-level and high-level enemy leaders and then probably hostage rescue type operations. And, you know, we got exposed to a lot of direct action going to those leaders, but also even at one point trying to rescue an army, an army soldier and a Marine. And I just, those moments stood out in my mind, like how amazing it was. That was part of a unit that had trained to the level that these were the things that we could do. So we had a lot of close calls on that deployment. But it also, I was with one of the best troops I've ever been a part of.

It gave me an opportunity to grow as a leader and learn and really put a lot of the new leadership things that I had incorporated in my life, starting a ranger school alumness, very intense combat deployment. you were second in command yes okay and you'd been over there for quite a few months when i think it was september rolled around and you were out on such a mission as you just described trying to take down this relatively high level leader um and you've been given some intel about where you could find him and you guys moved in to do exactly that and what happened uh to make a long story short, we walked into a very well-executed ambush. The initial building we took down, they were not there, but we found a lot of signs that someone had recently been there while we were collecting intelligence and we had found IED-making components and we were going to blow all that

stuff up. Our snipers saw a bunch of activity on another building about 150 yards away. So my boss had me take about nine members of my team, myself and eight other members, seven seals and our interpreter, and move on this other building where we had seen individuals come out of the front door and run across street into this vegetation. What we didn't know was our number one al-Qaeda leader for the Anbar province. He had been in our original building we were in, and he had moved to that building. And he had about a 15-man security detail that they had set up an ambush line in the vegetation across the street. And those individuals we saw go out the door were the last part of his security detail that were part of that ambush line. And my team and I walked, unfortunately, right into that ambush. I mean, we were, we, we knew that there was enemy.

We had air assets overhead. We had the Air Force AC130 gunship that we were talking to. And hey, can you see weapons? They couldn't see anything. So, you know, and we had seen this before. We weren't just walking blindly. I mean, we had, we had seen cases where the enemy would hide, not recognizing, you know, the, you know, technology and things like that. So unfortunately, yeah, we walked into a very well-executed ambush.

My medic was initially hit, taking a round directly below the knee. And then one of our other guys, Maddie ran forward, grabbed our medic, started to drag him back. Maddie was shot up the right side, two rounds in his leg, one in his arms, still managed, strong enough to pull himself and loop back to the tire behind us. There was like a large tractor tire, nothing but thousands of yards of empty Iraqi desert. And there was kind of a large John Deere style tractor tire. And then there was a tree, maybe, I don't know, 10 yards away from that tractor tire. And DJ fell back to the tree. Everybody else was behind the tractor.

I was still out front at this point. I was trying to lay down fire when both machine guns turned on me. And I was stitched across the body armor. I took two rounds in the left elbow, which I thought shot my arm off in the moment. I took rounds off my gun, rounds off my helmet. I had my left night vision tube shot off. I took rounds off my right side plate. Turned to try and move back to the guys.

And it was at this point that I caught around in the face. It hit me right in front of the ear, traveled through my face, exited the right side of my nose, took off most of my nose, blew out my right cheekbone. What was left in the cheek broke and kicked out to the right. The bullet traveled right under my eye, vaporized my orbital floor, it broke all the bones above my eye. I fell in this newfound hole in my face. It broke the head of my jaw and shattered my jaw to my chin, and it knocked me out. The guys saw me fall and initially thought I was dead.

Thankfully, a tribute to the SEAL teams and how we train, we don't leave anybody behind. And they could have easily said, Red's dead. let's continue to try and fall back or whatever we can do. But I was pinned down probably 15 yards in front of them while this literal gunfight was happening correctly over me. When I came to, I realized I was still in this gunfight, I realized that I was totally unable to do anything. And thankfully, my team lead, Jay, who combat experience, seal, what we call it JTAC.

He is trained to coordinate airstrikes from aircraft to the ground. And Jay coordinated and said, hey, to the AC-130, we need an immediate fire mission. And unfortunately, we were so close. I was only 45 feet from the machine gun that had me pinned down. And that's well, well, well within danger close parameters. And the gunship said, no way we can bring this. We're going to kill you guys if we do. And so they said, hey, you need to figure out a way to fall back.

So gunfight went on for another five minutes or so. The entire gunfight lasted about 35 to 40 minutes. Jay called for another one. They said no. On the third attempt, probably after 15 minutes, he basically said, hey, look, you know, if you don't bring in this fire mission, there's not going to be anybody left. You know, I got people critically wounded.

We're running out of ammo. Like, you have to bring in this fire mission. mission. It was at that point, they basically put the onus on him. They made him give his J-TAC designator number, meaning the training that our joint-tack-collarer controllers go through that basically say they have the ability to do this job. They understand all the ordinance. They understand all the danger close parameters. And they made him read off his J-TAC number or give his J-TAC number that basically said, you're acknowledging that we may potentially kill you if we bring this strike in. And Jay did an amazing job coordinating that.

I remember him calling out to me incoming, and the aircraft flies at a pretty high altitude. You can hear the gun go off. And then there's a delay, probably five or six seconds before the rounds hit the ground. And I remember hearing the, you know, wump, boom, wump of the gun up overhead. And the enemy was still firing. So machine guns churning away. And all of a sudden, you know, explosions incurred in front of us and blew. up over us and all of a sudden that that gun went cold that machine gun in front of me that

had me pinned down went cold and i heard the enemy like crying out um to allah allah ala akbar and i remember thinking to myself stand by man like here he comes and sure enough next rounds came in uh which took him out took other enemy out um jay came forward at this point grabbed me got me back to the tire got a tourniquet on me. I owe my life to him. And we ended up calling in, I think, eight or nine more fire missions before we were able to bring in the medaback, you know, to get us out of there. Oh, my God. What's Jay's full name? I think it's okay for it to be out there. So Jay Ali Austin. I was with him this weekend, and this was a conversation we had. So this is kind of the first time, but he told me he's

okay with being out there more before I had not we had not talked about it or I had not given his name but I mean what it what I I owe my life to him I love that man uh and all my teammates I own my life to my teammates and that gunship I mean you know people want to say oh you're so tough you know maybe but I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those guys I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that gunship up overhead and that's what frustrates me with the military right now with focus on individualism, like it is the team effort. It is all different, you know, it's all of us together from different backgrounds and different demographics and different race and creeds and all these different things that come together for a very unified mission.

In this case, that mission was to make sure that we all came home alive. Or at a minimum, you know, if I had died, they would have brought, you know, hopefully my body home to Erica and the kids. But thankfully, you know, I was able to hang on and they did a great job fighting in that gunship. So rightfully so, the gunship was decorated. I don't feel like our guys were decorated enough. I am going to come back around. It's something I've been talking about with them about resubmitting them for award reviews. But I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those guys. We took some hits, obviously, but we didn't lose a single guy, and the other guys did. There was no one, the enemy leader got away. He got away long before this gunfight ever

occurred. They came out in the ambush. He managed to sneak out the back of the house, but everybody that engaged us, there was no one left to go home and talk about it. He got away, but not for long. Not for long. Another team ended up about four months later finishing the job. Good. We got him. We got him eventually. So you, what next thing you know, you wake up where? They take you to the hospital. And it's an incredible story. You sort of coming back to consciousness and starting to process what's happened to you. Yeah. So they initially, normally head injuries go to Balad, but I was so critical, they flew me directly to Baghdad. Got to Baghdad, and I'll be honest, I don't think I thought I was going to make it. But thankfully, you know, and this is a shout

out to the amazing military medical teams and the trauma surgeons. A lot of people don't know that the greatest advances in trauma medicine are made in war, and it's incredible. There are a lot of civilian trauma doctors and orthopedic surgeons and all kinds of anesthesiologists that volunteer to over to the war zone in these dangerous places and literally some of the best and the brightest doctors in the world end up coming and helping to save are wounded. And they're so good. I knew that if you made it to the hospital with a pulse, you had a 90% chance of making it at home alive. And I hung on to that fact like a lifeline as I flew that Metaback helicopter and drifted in and out of consciousness. So I got there. They saved me. I remember waking up and I was so elated

to know that I was still alive. I also was fascinated because I thought my arm had been shot off. And I remember learning that I still had an arm. I gravely damaged. Later, they would talk about amputating it and they would keep it. But in the beginning, I was happy for that. And I remember my commanding officer and my command of Ash Chief were there in the hospital as I woke up. And I remember going to talk and I couldn't talk. And the nurse said, hey, you know, Lieutenant, you're you're traked. You know, you're messed up. Your wires shut and you're traked. You're not going to be able to talk. So I said, okay, give me a piece of paper. And I wrote down three questions. I said, I said, are my guys okay? And they told me that that Luke and Matt were out of

surgery and that they were going to be okay. And I said, okay, has my wife been notified? And that's a funny story or kind of a crazy story in itself. But at this point, she had been notified, although my commanding officer did not know my mental state. Now it was a real concern of theirs with this head injury. They didn't know the angle of the bullet. They only knew I had been shot in the face. So they didn't know if I did survive what level of mental did I have a major treatment. had a brain injury or anything like that. So he would later call her after this and let her know I was doing okay. So that was the second question.

And the third question, I don't know why I asked this. I said, do I still look pretty? And they told me no. They told me know that getting shot in the face would probably be an improvement. And it actually was. I used to have like a big old Tom Cruise nose. So two facts, Jay and I were actually joking about this, that I had a big old Tom Cruise nose that I had broken.

and I had a deviated septum that right before that deployment, I had gone to see about surgery to fix it. And they told me I would be down for like two months. I was like, I'll wait until after deployment. And then obviously they shot my nose off. So I got a brand new nose. Thanks to you. So if you've ever wondered about where your tax dollars go,

this one made a difference. I have to tell you, I've been looking at you, and I've been looking at your before pictures. and you actually are better looking now. Your nose is obviously a little crooked, but you just look like a little bit more grizzly. I don't like the long hair and the beard and like the eyebrows. Something's working about it.

You looked a little bit more clean cut before, and this look is a little bit better for like the Navy SEAL who served the... I'm digging it. So I think... I'm sure Erica backs me up on this, but I think you look amazing. She likes the longer hair and the beard. Thank you, Megan Kelly. I appreciate that.

Yeah, it's working for you. It's working for you. I mean, there were easier ways of getting there, but you managed to find your way through. So can we talk about the time you talk, the first thing you said to Erica when you talked to her, because it's sort of to it evidences your mental state. And while some people thought it was a little surprising, it's a great story about how you telegraphed to her. You were fine. Yeah. So, so I went from Baghdad where they stabilized and saved my life to Balad. And then they moved me to Germany. It was in Germany, I had some more stability. surgeries and one of my teammates flew with me and I obviously I could not talk so Erica had not and I had not talked at all she was trying to get everything taken care of with the

kids and she knew they had told her approximately when I would get to Bethesda so she was trying to get ready for that and so my my teammate who was there with me was like do you want to call Erica and I said yes let's do this I said you know you talk to her, I'll write down what to stay to her. And so I don't remember the first couple of things. It might have been, hey, babe, I got, I'm sure you've heard, I got all banged up. And the second thing I said, but my wang's okay. And, you know, and military members will fully understand this because, you know, as service members, unfortunately with IEDs and everything else, I mean, that is a fear, you know, obviously. And, uh, it was a very. And, uh, it was a very important.

It was kind of a running joke. So when I told her that, it let her know immediately that he's okay. His sense of humor is still intact. So. As is the wang. So good news on multiple fronts. Absolutely. I love this too.

This is from your book when you were talking to Gil, who was the one who was answering the questions for you. Your wife has been notified. I spoke to her myself. I try to not. I want to thank him. But the trache of my wired job. preclude that. Gil then adds in response to your third question, and the guys

wanted me to tell you, you never look pretty. It's great. It feels good to be insulted at certain low points in your life. It's actually a pick-me-up. It's one of the things I miss the most now that I'm out of the military, especially this day and age where, like, we've created once again the victim mindset.

You know, oh my God, if you say this about me, I must be insulted. Even though half the time people say things that are ingest. Oh my God, how dare you joke about, I don't know, anything today. And in the SEAL teams, there's nothing off limits. I mean, we would poke fun at anything and everything, including when I was injured, I got, I mean, one of the guys showed up in the hospital, I'm wired shut with my face blown out, and he showed up with beef jerky. So, I mean, that's the type of humor. And I mean, you know, this life is too short to take yourself that seriously. And that's, I miss that the most. Yeah. Yeah, I can see why. So you, I mean,

we're not going to go through it all, but you did. You, what, 39 surgeries? Yeah, 40 when it's all said and done, although Erica, also known as Long-Haired Admiral, tells me that the last two don't count because they were kidney stone surgeries. But I'm like, I've had 40 surgeries since I was wounded. I mean, was that, not to ask like another dumb question, but like, was that traumatic? Like, a surgery of any kind, I would just have C-sections, but I mean, it's traumatic. And just that alone, never mind, after a massive injury and a battlefield and, you know, the emotional trauma of all that. Like, how did you handle that many times in and under the knife? So it's interesting. I mean, you know, I tell people, once again,

a lot of people assume that my battlefield injuries were like the worst thing that ever happened to me. But that failure as a leader, you know, God works in mysterious ways. It prepared me to deal with all this adversity, that journey back, having to take small incremental steps to build back my credibility and reputation, the leadership lessons that I had built in myself. And when I was in the hospital, I told myself, hey, man, this is no different from that journey. Now it's a medical journey. I said, this medical buds. which buds is the acronym for seal training basic underwater demolition seal training i said this is medical buds you know you don't have to like it but you have to do it and we have to go and i wanted

to be operational again so i knew i had to go through all these surgeries if i even remotely had a chance at doing that um so every surgery the doctors used to laugh because literally i would be in the post-op and one of my very first questions after they would tell me how the surgery went would be, I'd write out, when can we schedule the next one? Let's get it on the schedule now. Because I wanted to just, you know, churn and burn. I wanted to try and recover as quickly as I could, which ended up to, you know, battlefield injuries are really dirty. I had a lot of infection problems. There were a lot of setbacks. I mean, it ended up taking almost four years to put me back together. Well, I've gotten ahead of myself because immediately post,

the massive injury before the 39-40 surgeries. I'm kind of with Erica. I don't think we can call the, I don't think we can count the stones. You posted the infamous sign, the famous sign, not infamous, that connotes something bad. And that's how you came to be so memorable in my own life. Hearing that story after meeting you, when your face was still pretty banged up, was just incredible. I mean, it was a true inspiration to me as a human, and it's inspired. countless of numbers of others since then. So just set the stage for, we're going to read it, but just set the stage for where you were and what made you realize you needed a post a sign like the one we're going to discuss. So I'd probably only been in the hospital about a week.

I would say seven days, give or take. And I will admit, I struggled a little bit in the beginning. I think there's this big spike of elation like I survived. And then there's, reality kind of set in that I am really messed up. Doctors were telling me it was going to be months to put at a minimum, or let me rephrase that, doctors were telling me it was going to be years to put me back together, whereas I thought it'd only take a few months. The prognosis was not good. My elbow was totally destroyed. I had no use in my left hand. There was massive nerve damage, obviously the massive amount of damage to my face. And I just, I was kind of struggling.

I felt like a monster. You know, I was really scared. Before I saw Erica the first time, I was really scared. She is a rock star. That's how she earned her name, the long hair at Admiral. I mean, she didn't bat an eye. So I had her, but I was kind of struggling with where do I go from here? How do I overcome this?

you know, pain and I'm disfigured. I felt like I'd be a monster for the rest of my life. And I had some individuals that came into the room, and we had a short conversation, and then I guess I maybe was drifting off, and they were talking amongst themselves. And if any of you have been in that, you know, that in between awake and you're not quite asleep, you can still hear the sounds, the TVs, yeah. And I caught big. bits and pieces of their conversation. And I don't fault them. There are some people that are like, how rude, how could they have that conversation in your room? Military hospital is a really hard place to be during a time of war. There are young men and women that are blown apart,

missing limbs, traumatic brain injuries. It is very overwhelming to see this many young people. And they were there and I think they were caught up in this. And they started having a conversation about what a shame, what a pity. We send these young men and women out to war, and they come home broken and battered, and they'll never be the same. And then they left. And Erica had gone down to get a cup of coffee or something.

So I was in my room by myself, just thinking about this. It kind of woke me up, and I was both angry and, like, is that going to be me? Am I going to be this broken veteran, you know, that is never successful,

again, am I going to be like Lieutenant Dan from the movie Forrest Gump? You know, to get into the movie, Hookers and Boofs, Lieutenant Dan, not you've got new legs, Lieutenant Dan. And I just, I wrestled with it for a few minutes and then I went back to everything that I had been through. And when I try to explain to people is that the victim mindset focuses on all the negativity. It focuses on it's unfair, you know, I'm never going to be better. we focus on the immediate here and now, not recognizing that the greatest gift you have in this life is you have a choice. No one forces you to lay there and feel sorry for yourself. I don't care what situation you're in.

As long as your brain is still working, you have free will. And you have the ability to decide how you're going to handle this situation, no matter how bad and uncomfortable and unpleasant it may be. And it was in that moment when Erica walked back into the room, I said, never again. That is never going to happen again. From this point forward, I will never feel sorry for myself again, and I will not allow anybody else to come in this room and feel sorry for me. And I asked her for my pen and paper, and I wrote out this sign. And it said, attention to all who enter here, if you're coming in this room with sadness or sorrow, go elsewhere. The wounds I received, I got in a job that I love, doing it for people that I love, defending the freedom of a country. I deeply love. I will make a full recovery. What is full? That's the absolute utmost, physically. I have the ability to recover. And I'm going to push that about 20% further through sheer mental tenacity.

This room you're about to enter is a room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid regroup. If you are not prepared for that. And we signed at the management. And the original sign was put on a regular piece of paper that I've been writing on. But later, Erica went and bought that large orange-red piece of poster paper. And we transcribed it word for word, put it on the door, a teammate tacked. has tried and into it. And a New York firefighter wrote a blog about it and that went viral. It went all over the place. It was all over the news. To date, you know, it has been written about it in multiple books.

Secretary Robert Gates wrote about it. First Lady Michelle Obama wrote about it twice in her book, Becoming Michelle, sent me a handwritten note on how much it moved her. And it is now an invitation of the White House to be President Bush who signed it. and we had it framed and dedicated. I didn't feel like it was mine. I felt like it belonged to the hospital and the other wounded warriors. And it now hangs in Walter Reed in the middle of the wounded ward and continues to motivate and inspire other wounded warriors.

And now it's been amazing. I mean, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of people who have written me and said, hey, I put your sign on the door. I have cancer. I've been injured or my kid has been injured or my kid has cancer. You know, thank you. So you just never know the power of positive. and choosing to drive forward despite the hardship and adversity we face. And that's what that sign is.

People will follow if you give them something to follow. Who knew that maybe your most important role in these conflicts would be helping severely wounded guys coming back with no hope, understand that there was a way out. And it began with attitude and the decisions about how you'd handle what happened to you. and who would have access to you in this your most vulnerable time, right? I mean, I'm sure we have no idea the number of people you've helped. Even outside the military, as you point out, people in cancer awards who read that message and remind themselves, I have a choice here.

And the choice I make really could be the difference between life and death. It really could. Well, and to lift up those around you, that was one of my big goals. Like, I wanted to set the example for my kids. I wanted to set the example for Erica. I wanted to set the example for other wounded warriors around me. And I think that's such a powerful thing because you can't, we may not be able to change the situation we're in.

You know, we've got to navigate through that. We've got to navigate through the pain and the misery and all the things that were. But we definitely can change. We can be what I like to say. It's one of the shirts we created. Be the light in the darkness. Be the light. You know, in those dark times,

so many people are waiting for someone else to come save them or someone else to help them. Well, you do it. You do it. You be the light, man. And it'll help it. It helps with your mindset. You know, you start pouring some positivity into yourself. It's amazing how much it makes an impact. You may not, I try to explain to people that's part of the overcome mindset. And you may not be able to get back what you've lost. I meet so many people who that's what their focus is. Like, I want back my health or I want back my relationship or I want back my business or whatever it is I've lost. And that may not be the case. But a willingness to drive forward, you're going to take that the end moment and create a new beginning. I read in your book about how it was when you saw Erica for the first time post injury. And it was actually kind of shocking because you

were writing about how, unfortunately, there are a lot of cases where the wife or the girlfriend comes in and sees the severely injured soldier and pieces right out of there. I mean, that's horrifying. So there was, you know, in the back of your head some concern, you know, given how badly injured you were in the face and so on. And obviously what was going to be ahead of you guys? Is she going to stick with me? And Erica was solid. The long-haired admiral came through. She came through huge.

It wasn't a thing. Huge. But I know you were worried about it. You said, don't bring the kids right away. Like I don't want them to see me like this. So how was it? Because obviously when you first saw your kids, you didn't look like you look now. You definitely looked closer to.

two right after the injuries. So how did they handle that? Good. And a lot of that I got to, you know, Eric and I were really locked on. I mean, I think that's one of the, as a couple, your ability to be unified in your decision making. And, you know, her and I discussed, how would we handle this? You know, it's been something that's been a common theme throughout our marriage. So much. So 99% of, first off, seals have almost a 90% divorce rate. Special operations are pretty close. Wow. Guys who are wounded have almost a 99%. It's just very hard on families to sustain these type of injuries.

And Eric and I talked, okay, well, how are we going to manage this? One of the things we said, and we were fortunate enough to have family to help, we weren't going to change the kids' schedules. The kids scheduled were going to stay the same. We had family that came in. If they had dance and soccer and school, they were going to be there. So they would be home. Erica stayed up at the hospital when the weekends family would bring. Not in the beginning.

I didn't see the kids for probably three weeks. And there were several things that I told. I said I wanted. One, I was really, some of the original pictures are not out there. I think if you dig deep and out there, some surgical. journals that have pictures of me in it. But my head swelled almost to like the size of a basketball. I looked pretty grotesque. You know, stitches just stretched on my face. And I told Erica, I didn't want the kids to see me until they had done some more surgeries and some of the

swelling had gone down. And I was in, you know, ICU at the beginning. I also did not want them to come into the room. I wanted to walk into the room. I wanted to walk into the room. where the kids were. I wanted it to be like a family room and I wanted to walk in. So that was my goal to get well enough and strong enough that I could get up and walk into the room. So that took about three weeks. And then the other thing, Erica was super smart. She knew the kids wanted different toys that they had talked about. I mean, it's now September. So she went and, you know, normally they would have had to wait until Christmas, but she went and bought my son. wanted a

Nintendo DS. One of the girls wanted a baby doll. I can't remember what the other, what Sierra wanted. But Erica went and bought those things for them and that had me give them to them in the room that I walked into with them. And I tell you what, that

I learned over the next couple of years. People often talk about unconditional love. And I think you can build unconditional love with your spouse, but you learn what unconditional love is through your children. Your children have unconditional love for their parents, especially when they're young. You are their world. And even though I looked messed up, my kids love me. And there was a lot of healing that occurred over those couple of years, especially with my youngest daughter, because my middle daughter and my son, they went back to school. by the time I got home, but my youngest, she was only three.

So she was home with me and she became, and I had not been around her whole life. And she became my little buddy. She would climb into bed with me as I recovered and we'd watch cartoons and man, I think that was very healing for me. I needed that because I was so worried about would my kids be afraid of me and the way I look.

And you know, they just, I'll never forget. I went to pick my kids up at school one day my daughter was like five, she was in kindergarten. Somebody was like, what happened to your dad? And my daughter, matter of fact, was like, he got shot off. He got all shot off. He's fine, though. You know, I mean, just the candor of a five-year-old, yeah.

You know, especially when they're young, they have that healing power, and there is something almost angelic about them in moments. And I really believe it's like, someone once said it to me this way, and it made sense. They're closer to the other side. we are. They're still closer to the other side. And I think they still have that sort of halo effect around them and on us. There is something sort of magical about really young kids when you're down, you're blue, you're struggling. And I'm so glad that was, you're so lucky to have your three-year-old with you during those moments. I'm sure she was a healing bomb. The rock star Erica, too.

Those are all great stories about her. And I'm so glad. Thank God, this doesn't end. with and she just left. You're still together. You're still, right? The family's still intact. Yeah. I mean, I got to, I mean, and such a credit to her, you know, she became my best nurse. Even though I had nurse, in-home nurses in between surgeries, you know, for the first eight or nine months, I was a mess. I'm in a wheelchair. I've got metal hardware coming out of my arm, what's called an external fixator. I was traped for seven months and two days that were feeding me through a stomach tube. Erica was doing those things. She was helping to clean my trick. She's grinding up meds and grinding up food so that I could eat. And I recognized the burden. I mean,

I became like a fourth child to her to take care of me. And I'm just so thankful how strong she was because never once did she ever say, why did you do this to us? Why did you pick this job that me, you know, that this happened? Because that would have been devastating. And if she, thought it, she never said it. So man, she is a leader in herself and we're an amazing team. Really excited right now. We are working on, we're almost done with a relationship book called Invincible Marriage because it's a question some people have. How did you do it? You guys made it through a special operations career. You made it through wounding. We've run a business together. We've had business failures together. We have three amazing kids. You know, so yeah, I'm really

excited to get that book out there and hopefully help others, you know, build a strong and invincible marriage also. Oh, my gosh, you both are welcome on the show when it hits. I would love to help you promote that. I feel like everybody will buy that. That's such a great. I mean, think of how we tell ourselves, we outside of your marriage, tell ourselves, oh, this is really hard. Oh, he didn't empty the dishwasher. Oh, it's annoying. You know, he didn't show me enough emotional availability. This is what, you know, you hear. My God, you don't even understand what the challenges are. I had no idea about the divorce rate. amongst the wounded. I want to ask you in the time we have left, I would be remiss if I skipped

the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan because everyone who served there like yourself had some thoughts on it and some had some real trauma when it happened and just sort of the abandonment of it, of the translators. You mentioned that was one of the guys with you in Iraq when you got hurt. How did you process that whole thing? Well, I got involved as much as I could. I think I think that's going to be viewed, and in my opinion, probably one of the greatest failures. I think the way we withdrew from Iraq was poorly done, which, in my opinion, directly led to the creation of ISIS and Iraq.

And then we repeated the exact same thing, except at a exponential scale in Afghanistan. And in Afghanistan, I think we had done so much of a better job, you know, helping the people, there were so many people that had embraced this newfound freedom apart from the rule of the Taliban. I mean, there were women in leadership position. There were women in political positions. There were women leaders in the military. Commerce was starting to grow and thrive in Afghanistan again. And we had basically convinced these people like, hey, a free democratic Afghanistan is a real thing. and yeah, when we pulled out of there in the way that we did, I mean, just, I don't understand. I mean, you can't tell me that there weren't senior political leaders who are saying this is not going to end well.

Why we didn't maintain forces in Bogram? We knew Bogram. Bogram was protected. How did we ever agree to allow the Taliban to provide? some level of security. How did we ever, you know, who in their right mind allowed this to occur with, you know, American citizens that were left behind. I mean, trying to get people in the Karzai Airport. That's how I got involved. Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann had created a group to try and help. He wanted to get his interpreter out. And there were a lot of special operations guys.

Chad Robichaw, Tim Kennedy, a lot of these guys did amazing things. I ended up working with Scott. and we were trying to get people out of Afghanistan, and we saw firsthand the chaos and the disorganization and the mass confusion by the U.S. government, you know, the focus began and became, we're just going to get the military out and ignoring all these U.S. citizens. And most importantly, the individuals who had been processed, Afghans who would sacrifice their lives to protect us and work with us. who had lost family members and risked their lives who had been told you're going to get a special immigrant visa and you're going to be able to come to the United States when all of this

was transpiring that the Taliban was going to take back over, which I had issues within the first place. Why did we turn the country back over to the exact same terrorist group that we were fighting against for 20 years? I mean, it's mind-blowing. It's infuriating. And I think it will impact our national security selection abilities for decades to come. Because who in their right mind is going to want to work with America and risk their lives to help us collect intelligence when they're going to go, I'm not going to work with you guys. If anything goes wrong, you're just going to sell me out to dry and I'm going to be killed. We sent such a negative message across the world. I think it was such a poor display of leadership.

I think it was just straight up anti-American. It was traumatic for so many guys who served. What was I there for? What did my friends die for? What did I? I mean, you were in Iraq, but the same similar question. Like, what did I get blown up for? What, you know, what?

We just tucked tail and ran at the end. I don't know. I still think the way I process it from over here, you guys kept us safe for 20 years. You know, remember how afraid we were after 9-11. We were going to get attacked again. kept us safe for 20 years and we're still safe. We're still safe because of what you did over there.

It was not all for not. So it was terribly, terribly handled. And even before the withdrawal, there was a lot of criticism to be leveled. But the withdrawal was just a stain. It was just a stain on our leadership, not on our guys. No, and I would say, I mean, I never once have ever thought, oh, my God, what a waste. I mean, you know, the mission that we did was, you know, we helped a lot of people. we definitely got rid a lot of very bad people who, given the opportunity, would gladly do bad things here in our own country and even in other countries abroad.

So, yeah, I definitely tell fellow veterans, don't ever think that what we did absolutely made a difference. It's unfortunate the way it ended. But, you know, I'm proud of the time that I had to serve over there and hopefully make a small difference in Afghanistan, Iraq. And beyond, beyond. So now, how old are you? I turn 48 next week. Oh, you're still a spring chicken. You're a young guy.

Yeah. You got Erica. You got your three kids. Yeah. And your career is as a motivational speaker, as an author, how's that going? Are you paying the bills with that? You feel like things are going well? They are.

I mean, the demand is high. I mean, you know, I think the message I deliver is very, needed and I think companies recognize it. I mean a combination of coming out of the COVID era and also into just society as a whole. My message is on self-leadership. How do we lead ourselves to be successful? How do we build better teams? How do we build more positive culture within companies? And then how do we find balance in this crazy world that we're living in? And then all about the resilience and grid. I teach something called getting off the X. It's one of the foundational principles in my overcome book. I'm now teaching the appointment for life program,

which is a structured process of building long-term goals, setting, understanding based on your values, what your mission or purpose is in this life with kind of a special operations twist. And then, of course, we have the relationship book coming. And then something I've started working on, we just concluded our most recent overcome and survive workshop. A lot of my teammates, have a lot of experience and they are training law enforcement and national organization, military organizations and tactical abilities. But I keep meeting average everyday Americans who are like, I'm scared for the future. Like I wish I knew how to better defend myself in this dangerous world where every time we turn around, there's a mass shooting or God forbid something happened to

my family. How do I, how do I save them? How do I know basic first aid? Or, you know, God forbid society, you know, collapsed or at least we lost power. If I take this course, you're not going to throw me in the ocean and hose me down with a hose and tell me to find Northwest. Are you? No, no, there's not. As a matter of fact, it was funny. People signing up for the course. I had to put it right on the website, Overcome and Survive.com. We do not yell at you're not. We want to take the average everyday American and make them better. That's it.

And to give them a basic level of reparations so that they can overcome and survive if something bad happens. And I've really enjoyed that. I've met people from all across this country. I've come to these courses, and I'm doing it with some of my former teammates with Jay and some of the guys that were in the gunfight with me. And it's pretty neat to be able to say,

you know, out of this, we're able to teach you this so that hopefully you can protect your family should work. It keeps the brotherhood connected. That's so important for you guys. I know there's such a unique bond. And if you don't nurture it, maybe you lose it and it just becomes a memory, which is not okay. I want to tell our audience that the book that talks about Jay's experience is called The Trident. And then you heard him reference

the second book, which is called Overcome, Crush Adversity with Leadership Techniques of America's Toughest Warriors. And we will look forward to the third book, which is the relationship one. And we'll have you back on for that. The tenant, Jason Redmond, I'm moved, I'm inspired, I'm excited for what comes next in your life and to read your next writing. And I just wish all my best to you and your family. I know my audience is joining me right now in thanking you, thanking you, thank you, so much for your service, your sacrifice that of your family as well. They do the same in their own ways. And we appreciate you. God bless you. My honor. Thank you. Oh, such an inspiring guest. He's amazing, isn't he? Go to Jason Redmond, R-M-A-N-com to find out my

much, much more about Jason, about his books, about his courses, everything, everything Jason Redmond, well worth your time. Today I join you in remembering all of the men and women who have served our country and also thinking of and thanking our current military members serving today.