The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Raid's 1/6 Connection, and Building Mental Toughness, with Andy Frisella and Charles C.W. Cooke | Ep. 374

Episode Date: August 16, 2022

Megyn Kelly is joined by Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review senior writer, to talk about the status of the Trump FBI raid, whether it's disproportionate and pretextual, what's really behind the raid and whether it relates to January 6, trying to turn a records infraction into a criminal case, the difference between impeachment and prosecution, Democrats new rhetoric on law enforcement, Dr. Fauci's delusional comments about "The Fauci Effect," and more. Then Andy Frisella, "Real AF" podcast host and creator of "75 Hard," joins the show to talk about the value of hard work, how to build mental toughness, growing up and overcoming bullying, how Frisella overcame obstacles to achieve enormous success, his struggles with suicidal thoughts, wallowing in victimhood, division in our society today, the cultural weapon of wokeness, the need for a little swagger, the important inconvenience of the "75 Hard" program, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have got so much to get into today, including a conversation with the man known as the MF CEO, the force behind 75 Hard, Andy Priscilla. I'm so excited to talk to him. This guy's going to get you pumped up and ready to change your life for the better. Just reading up on him. I'm like, yes, I'm ready to go.

But we're going to begin today with the very latest on the FBI's raid of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home. Secrets, lies and half-truths dominating the headlines. The latest head scratcher having to do with the former president's passports. Apparently he has more and more than one, as is often the case for somebody who held the office of president. He said that they were taken in that FBI raid. The mainstream media immediately dismissed his claim, several calling him a liar. CBS News' Nora O'Donnell, this is the gal now sitting in Dan Rather's old seat, even cited an FBI official saying the feds were not in possession of the

passports, a report that was immediately amplified by some of Trump's harshest critics. We'll get to exactly who in a minute. But it turns out Trump was 100% right. The passports were taken. As for Nora O'Donnell's tweet, it's still up. That's right. She's been caught red handed in misinformation and she hasn't taken it down nor apologized for misdirecting people. She's offered no explanation. She'd offered she offered no retraction. She's not sorry. She didn't say she's sorry because she's not. If it's bad for Trump, you can run with it with impunity as a mainstream news anchor or one of their supporters. MSNBC put on Peter Strzok to comment on this.

The disgraced FBI fired agent. He's commenting on it and we'll play that for you in a second. This, of course, is just one small story in the ongoing saga pitting former President Trump and his followers against the Washington establishment. But it amplifies the distrust so many Americans have for our elite institutions. Meanwhile, Trump is now calling for the immediate unredacted release of the affidavit that was submitted by the FBI in support of that raid on Mar-a-Lago. In other words, they couldn't get the warrant without submitting a supporting affidavit. And we've seen the warrant, but we haven't seen the affidavit. But the Justice Department is fighting this, saying you shouldn't see the affidavit.

It says it needs to, quote, protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security. Charles C.W. Cook is a senior writer at National Review. Charles, welcome back to the show. This whole thing is really making my blood boil because I don't care what you think of former President Trump, whether you want him in office, whether you think he won, you know, you can go hardcore MAGA or hardcore resistance. And to me, the truth is evident. This is a targeted persecution of the guy. They want him in handcuffs. They'll do it however they can. And Merrick Garland is risking the integrity and trust of the Department of Justice in order to do it. He has taken us all down a very dark path. That's my take. I've said it before. I say it again, even having seen now the judge's order,

the warrant that they got. What's your take? That it seems to be either disproportionate or pretextual. There's nothing wrong per se with a former president, or even a president for that matter, being investigated or prosecuted. We live in a country in which we're all equal under the law. That's important. But that runs both ways. If the argument is that Joe down the street would be investigated and prosecuted for alleged crime X, then so should a former president. But what if Joe down the street wouldn't be investigated or prosecuted or in this case searched? And that's the part that worries me. We, of course, don't see many

Joe down the street cases related to the Presidential Records Act. But we have seen a lot of cases in recent years to do with classified information and to do with people having documents that they shouldn't, most famously with Hillary Clinton. She wasn't searched. She also wasn't prosecuted. And I think if this case turns out to be related to the Presidential Records Act or anything of that nature, the search will look disproportionate. And that matters a great deal, because the other value in play here, alongside equality under the law, is our perception of our government as even-handed and unwilling to use or abuse its power to go after its political rivals. And it does look to me in this case, either that the Department of Justice has elevated what is a relatively minor infraction beyond its status,

or as my colleague Andy McCarthy has argued, used the alleged violation of the Presidential Records Act as a prerequisite, as an excuse to go in and look for other information, perhaps related to January 6th, that it can use against Trump in the future. That's exactly what I've been saying as well. I've been reading Andy and agree with him wholeheartedly. The night that the news broke, I was watching my television saying, if you believe this is about presidential records, you're crazy. This is about January 6th and getting him however they can. They need the evidence of intent. If they're going to charge him with conspiracy to defraud the American public or government officials or obstructing Congress, they need an element of intent. They have to get into Trump's head

and prove he knew what he was saying about the election was nonsense and they haven't been able to do it. There's no evidence of that. In fact, to the contrary, even if you disbelieve his election claims, as I know you do and I do, I will be quick to say I believe Trump believed them. I believe Trump. I don't think they're going to find evidence that he was actively lying because I don't think Trump thinks he's ever lost anything. So they're on a witch hunt. Andy had a piece, I think, in which he said something like they may be looking for a needle in the haystack, but they have the whole haystack. Now, they went in there. They got the entire haystack from Mar-a-Lago and they're pouring through passports and everything else. And if you look at the warrant, it's very telling because it's not narrowly tailored to get classified documents. It really has very little to do with classified documents. And that's no surprise, since as president, he could have declassified everything. And by the way, Hillary Clinton kept 30,000 emails that she shouldn't have,

2,000 of which were classified. And then she destroyed the documents and the hard drive with a hammer. OK, so nobody raided her. So this isn't about classified documents. This is about something else. And so if you look at the warrant, it has cast the widest net humanly possible. They can get everything, every document in there, as long as it related to the Trump administration.

It doesn't have to be limited to classified things or nuclear secrets, as the DOJ tried to leak late last week in an attempt to cover itself. It's as wide as it can possibly go. It's boxes of documents and anything near them, which I suppose is why they were in Melania's closet. This is an attempt to get him, get him in handcuffs

and get him out of the 2024 race. Well, there's the two-step, you see, because if the investigation was really about the Presidential Records Act, then it would make sense to have a wide net. And if you're actually looking for documents that should be within the federal government's possession instead of former President Trump's possession, then sure, you would say all four years of his presidency in the warrant. But because it seems pretty obvious that that doesn't or shouldn't rise to the level, because we would not see a search warrant on that basis for anyone else.

Because Hillary Clinton, albeit with a slightly different law, in some cases, not in others, the Espionage Act is invoked here too, was not searched. Then the government knows that they have to sex it up a bit. And so they started talking about nuclear secrets and so on. And, you know, it reminded me of a lot of the games we've seen over the last five years, where people within the intelligence services or the Department of Justice will make the most extraordinary sounding case that they can, even if it's tangential. I mean, maybe there is a document there that refers to nuclear weapons, or suddenly that's nuclear secrets. It also reminds me, I must say,

of some of the games that were played with weapons of mass destruction, where when you looked at the real information, you weren't too impressed. But if you looked at the way that it was being reported in the newspapers or sold to the UN, it sounded absolutely terrifying. So, yeah,

that irritated me. But it also showed the way that they're doing one thing with the warrant and another thing when they're leaking to The Washington Post. Andy had a piece talking about how the Presidential Records Act is not a criminal statute, but they're basically trying to use the criminal law to enforce the Presidential Records Act. They went and got a grand they opened a grand jury. The little guy at the National Archives who is clearly anti-Trump. I mean, he's made public statements about how January 6th was the worst day of his life and how he intentionally resigned under President Biden because he wanted to be replaced by this administration.

That guy found out when he got the return of the 15 boxes that Trump had taken with him when he left office, that there was stuff in there that was arguably classified. And and by the way, like the notion that Trump sat around, you know, like with his girlfriends braiding each other's hair, packing up the boxes on his last day in office. It wasn't Trump who packed any of this stuff, right? It was clearly some aide who shipped up boxes and sent them to Mar-a-Lago. All right. So this guy, this guy, the National Archives gets the 15 boxes back. OK, good. So far, good. And says, oh, my God, I think there's classified stuff in here. Doesn't ask whether Trump declassified them as his power as president, but simply goes to DOJ, goes to DOJ.

Didn't go to DOJ over Hillary Clinton. There he went back to the State Department and said, hey, yo, she's got a private server. But with President Trump, it's right over to the Department of Justice run by Merrick Garland. And what does Merrick Garland do? He opens up a grand jury. He gets a grand jury proceeding going to look into this, which I mean, the die was cast. Right. And so the grand jury says, oh look into this, which I mean, the die was cast. Right. And so the grand jury says, oh, it looks bad. Yes. OK. Next thing we know, we're in search warrant territory and we're going down the lane. And Charles, it very much looks like they are going to indict

the former president of the United States. What exactly on? I don't know. Could be related to January 6th that they get their evidence of intent. Could be based on the Presidential Records Act, which again is not a criminal statute, but they're using the criminal law to enforce it. I don't know exactly. It could be the Espionage Act if there's something in those boxes that they think relates to national security, despite the fact, again, that he was president and could have declassified anything. And all hell is going to break loose in this country if they do that. Yeah, and I think it should. I'll put this in context for those of your listeners who don't know me. I think Trump should have been impeached by Congress. I don't think, though, that Trump has committed a crime. Those are separate questions.

I think Congress would have been entirely within its rights to say that the executive branch led by Trump had behaved in a way that was unacceptable just swap one out for another, that impeachment and prosecution are synonyms, is wrong. In this country, and indeed in any free country, we should operate on the presumption that we investigate crimes and not people we don't start with the suspicion uh or intuition that someone is a bad egg and then spend our time trying to work out which crimes they've they've committed i, we did that with almost anyone. We would be able to find something. I'm a pretty law-abiding guy. I'm an immigrant, so I'm probably more scared of the federal government than some. But I'm sure if you decided as an attorney general to come into my house and look around, you could find something that I've done wrong. I'm sure the state of Florida could find something that I've done wrong. And this seems to

me what we are now seeing with Trump. We start with the premise, this is a bad guy. And we go all the way down the line until we are searching in desperation for something that we can bring against it. Merrick Garland's under a lot of pressure, especially from the progressive left, to do something. But that should worry everyone. I mean, it should have worried everyone when the New York Attorney General was doing it. It should have worried everyone under Mueller. And it should worry everyone under Merrick Garland, because that's just not how free countries are supposed to operate. Yes. And now it looks like they're getting closer to potentially going after Rudy Giuliani down in

Georgia criminally for his role in representing Donald Trump, which also, I have to say, as a lawyer, makes me feel very uncomfortable. You know, bad legal theories are not crimes. They're there to be mocked and they're to be rejected by judges, but they're not to be prosecuted. But one by one, we're seeing Trump's closest advisers fall within the realm of these criminal justice authorities, whether it's the federal DOJ or the Georgia state authorities or congressional subpoenas trying to get at what may be attorney client privilege communications. I mean, the whole thing is making me very uncomfortable. And, you know, separately at the same time, Charles, you've got, yes, the rhetoric on FBI agents has reached a dangerous level. Obviously, some guy tried to attack the Cincinnati field

office of the FBI. And that's wrong. And just like the rank and file FBI agents are not to blame for this nonsense. It's Merrick Garland who's pursuing this. It's him. I'm not calling for violence on Merrick Garland, but I'm just saying if we're talking about who's responsible, it's not some guy who tried to serve his country honorably by protecting us from, you know, true domestic extremists or terrorists. It's the law enforcement officials making these calls. So no, no attacks on FBI agents or field offices, actual attacks, never mind just words, are acceptable. However, listen to this. Kamala Harris is asked about it over the weekend, that attack on the FBI field office and the growing rhetoric about the FBI coming out of

Donald Trump and his allies was the question. And this is what she said. Any attacks on law enforcement are completely unacceptable. And any so-called leader who engages in rhetoric that in any way suggests that law enforcement should be exposed to that kind of danger is irresponsible, can result in dangerous activities. I think it's just highly irresponsible of anyone who calls themselves a leader and certainly anyone who represents the United States of America to engage in rhetoric for the sake of some political objective that can result in harm to law enforcement officers and agents. This is from the same person who, when Jacob Blake was stabbed by or was shot by

police officers after pulling a knife on them in Wisconsin, called him a hero, went to visit him and gave us a lecture at the time. I pulled it up because I remembered it about how. The life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully human and will only achieve that when we finally come together to pass meaningful police reform and criminal justice reform. And yes, acknowledge systemic racism. OK, so black people are not treated as humans and police are to blame as she calls the guy who tried to kill a police officer a hero. So I don't really want her lectures on rhetoric that might endanger law enforcement. Well, the Democratic Party seems to be talking itself into a position of defund the police

and give the money to the IRS and the FBI. It's really strange. I think it's especially strange for anyone who has been alive for more than about eight minutes. And if you go back to the 1970s and early 80s, and you watch pretty much any movie you pick off the shelf at random, the FBI are the bad guys. The CIA are the bad guys. The federal government is widely mistrusted.

And they're broadly seen as these sort of tools of conservatism and of the Republican Party. And now we have a Republican Party that can be irresponsible in its description of the FBI, and a Democratic Party and a progressive movement more broadly that wants us to implicitly trust that FBI. I have a slightly unusual view of the FBI, which is that although I don't think that the rank and file officers are particularly worthy of criticism, I think that we have a problem in America in that the FBI doesn't sit especially neatly within our constitutional order. And in fact, one could say the same thing about the Department of Justice. The federal government is not, or at least was not originally envisioned to have police powers of any sort. And in fact, the federal government was supposed to have very limited powers,

and the president was supposed to be in charge of the limited number of agencies and offices that executed those powers. to the president, but that is treated by that president and also by the public at large as some sort of free-floating fourth branch of government. And so you have President Biden last week saying, well, I didn't know that this raid was going to happen. You have President Biden saying last week, well, I didn't know Merrick Garland was going to stage a press conference. But of course, the Department of Justice and the FBI sit within the executive branch. Under Trump, we had a really weird situation in which Mueller technically worked for Trump. So Trump was supposed to oversee the department that was investigating him while not interfering at all. It's a very odd setup that we have,

in part because we underuse Congress. And I think what's happened here is that Kamala Harris is looking at the FBI and the Department of Justice, and she's thinking, well, this is within my executive branch. She's the vice president, so I have to defend it. Whereas, say, the police department in Minneapolis or Atlanta or what you will is not. But it is extremely

jarring, I agree. I mean, it's absurd. I don't remember her getting upset when Chuck Schumer said it outside the Supreme Court, you've released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you. You go forward with these awful decisions. This is March of 2020 before she became president. But I don't remember her getting very upset about the

threats to law enforcement, law enforcement. And and by the way, the FBI, the same FBI, you know, of which now she's so defensive. This group openly said it was too busy to investigate threats against Supreme Court justices as these protesters marched outside of their homes a couple months ago. And as one of them had a guy show up at his home ready to assassinate him, they were too busy to investigate. Then now we know what they were too busy with getting ready to go down and raid the home of a former president who was cooperating with law enforcement and who had already been participating in a process for the return of the documents, that it wasn't necessarily going perfectly or exactly how Merrick Garland went, did not justify these extreme measures. Let's talk for a minute about the media,

which I mentioned the Nora O'Donnell tweet, which has not been corrected or pulled down or revised in any way, even though in response to it, Trump's team put out the actual email they received from the feds saying, indeed, the FBI had seized his apparently three passports, two of which were expired, one of which is the current. I'm not exactly sure how it works. I read something about sitting presidents getting special passport, but I have no idea whether it's true. In any event, there were three. And so they they did seize them. And and she doesn't correct the tweet. Meantime, before they put out the proof that indeed they had seized them. You've got Peter Strzok, Peter Strzok, disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, who said we will stop. We will stop Trump from becoming president, invited on MSNBC. I mean, it's like, oh, my God, you can't make it up, Charles. It's like something that somebody at National Review or Fox or Daily Wire would just

be like a dream of how it would go down. He takes to the airwaves and says the following. Joe, absolutely, the American public should trust what the FBI is doing. You know, what's funny is I think back the year and a half that I spent with the team looking at Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. There was no concern. There was no outrage on behalf of any Republican as we used search warrants, as we went out and did a very invasive investigation to try and get to the bottom of what she did or didn't do. So it's not that the FBI is targeting any one side or the other. What you see is the FBI going out on a day-in, day-out basis, objectively investigating allegations of law. It just so happens that the only thing that tends to come up in the right-wing ecosphere,

whether in the media or on the Hill or from President Trump, are those things where they take a personal affront because it directly impacts them. There's absolute silence when the FBI is investigating former Secretary Clinton. There's absolute silence when the FBI is doing things that isn't targeting them. OK, and his tweets, by the way, said Trump or Trump was a liar that the FBI did not seize the passports. And of course, he was forced to delete those because he's got Trump derangement syndrome like nobody. I mean, he's one of the worst and wants to go out there now and tell us that the FBI is completely objectively investigating this just the same as it did with Hillary Clinton.

Well, I think you have to pick one. I mean, I wrote a great deal about the Hillary Clinton allegations, and I came to the view that there was a colorable case that she'd violated the law, but she wasn't prosecuted. She also wasn't searched. And he played a game there where he said, oh, the FBI using search warrants, fine. But the FBI did not execute a search of Hillary Clinton's house. So the implication there is a little muddy um but the the conclusion was and we all watched the press conference the conclusion was that

hillary clinton would not be indicted uh she would not be prosecuted because uh a normal person would not that that the law in question was not routinely used in the way that it would have been against Hillary Clinton. Now, that's fine. I mean, I don't think I raised a peep. I'm a bit of a squish on criminal justice, in fact. And that's fine. But if that's the standard, then that's going to have to be the standard for Donald Trump as well. We can't have a different set of rules. So, you know, if he's going to do the what about, well, yeah, what about

Hillary Clinton, who wasn't searched and who wasn't indicted? Shouldn't we expect the same behavior from the FBI and the DOJ in that case? Simply saying, well, Republicans didn't say this or that when she was being investigated. Republicans haven't said very much about Donald Trump being investigated under the Presidential Records Act case. What they objected to was when that investigation led to behavior that is not normal in that circumstance. All right, shifting gears now, because I've got to get to this sound, but I wasn't live on the air on Friday and I saw this.

I just, I couldn't, I couldn't believe my eyes and ears, but I mean, I don't know why. I don't know why I couldn't. Dr. Fauci is out there on the news again,

talking about himself and his effect on others. I'll let the sound bite speak for itself and then get your reaction. Listen to this. It's let the soundbite speak for itself and then get your reaction. Listen to this. It's called the Fauci effect, which is sort of like, you know, trust me, I don't get excited about that. I mean, it's nice, but I mean, people go to medical school now,

people are interested in science, not because of me, because people, most people don't know me, who I am. My friends know me. My wife knows me, but people don't know me. It's what I symbolize. the normalization of untruths and lies and all the things you're seeing going on in society from January 6th to everything else that goes on, people are craving for consistency, for integrity, for truth, and for people caring about people. Oh my God. It's delusional. It's absolutely delusionalional and i think the kids call that a humble brag

he wasn't too good at the humble bit he did pretend that he wasn't excited by this development or theoretical development i'm not convinced it's real but he's clearly thrilled by it which in and of itself is untoward but does he not realize how he's seen by most people that's not how he's seen by most people he probably more than anyone is responsible for a collapse in trust in science and in the establishment and in public health authorities. That is just, that is two Americas right there. Unfortunately, the one he lives in has about 5% of the people in it. It's delusional. It's so delusional.

That's not the Fauci effect. The Fauci effect is, as soon as you hear something from a public health official, close your ears and run, because it's likely to be a lie meant to control you. It's not about, oh, Fauci's synonymous with truth and consistency and integrity and caring about people. He's admitted to some of his multiple lies. He's already on record. How is he the face of truth? And he's still in his position, Charles. I mean, I realize that the CDC, which is not his organization, they all work in tandem, which is not his organization,

they all work in tandem, has now finally come out and wants to be patted on the back for getting to the place that we've all been for a long time, which is recognizing something about natural immunity and saying don't treat people differently versus if they've been vaccinated versus not vaccinated. And the social distancing doesn't need to go on, and we should stop testing asymptomatic people. Finally, finally, the CDC comes out and says that. But Fauci's done absolutely no accounting for his misleading and terrible policies that have hurt so many people.

And honestly, you could make a strong case, led to the deaths of many people as well. Yeah, I think that the worst part on reflection, I hadn't actually heard the full clip until you just played it to me, is the part at the end where he talks about caring about people. Because this really was the biggest problem that we faced over the last two years is that people like Fauci and his acolytes genuinely believed that the dispute in the United States on policy grounds was between people who cared and people who didn't. People who wanted to save lives and people who didn't. People who thought that human beings were more important than profits

and people who didn't. But of course, that's not the case. The debate was how best to navigate a whole host of competing interests. And we're now seeing the other side of the ledger day in, day out with children who are behind in school, children whose social development has been stunted, business owners who lost their life's work during the lockdowns and haven't got it back and possibly will never get it back. Increased suicide rates, drug addiction rates, alcohol addiction rates. I don't know what the answers are. I'm one guy. I have my own priors. I have my own preferences. I have my own way of thinking. But even I was aware that the whole question was one of trade-offs. And it's remarkable to me that two years later, when put in a position from which he can reflect,

Anthony Fauci still thinks that this was about truth and lies, that this was about caring and not caring. This was about caring and not caring. This was about science and rubishness and that is just false. His hubris knows no bounds. Alright, you mentioned your priors and you

said that you could get arrested if the feds ever came through your house. So we'll leave it on that intriguing tease for the next time. The criminality of Charles C.W. Cook. We look forward to learning more. Thanks for coming on, Charles. Thanks for having me. Coming up, the creator of 75 Hard,

and that's a reference to 75 days of hardcore accountability. We'll get into what it means and how it can jumpstart the rest of your life. Andy Frisella is here for the rest of hardcore accountability. We'll get into what it means and how it can jumpstart the rest of your life. Andy Frisella is here for the rest of the show. If you are looking for a little motivation in your life, like when we get to September and the summer ends, it's a good time, right?

It's sort of a good, I realize all the leaves die on the trees and it's sort of things are going away and then they're coming back in the spring. But it feels like a new beginning anyway, every year, doesn't it? That's how I see September. And it's a great time to sort of restart for yourself. I've always seen September as a bigger restart than January 1st. And so if you're like me, you're looking for a little motivation in your life, get off the couch, lose a few pounds, go after the business chutzpah and savvy that you've been looking for,

then our next guest is someone you don't wanna miss. Andy Fursella is an entrepreneur and how, best-selling author and host of The Real AF podcast. Love that. He has an incredible story, one of hardship and challenges, which of course led directly to his success, and he'll get Love that. He has an incredible story, one of hardship and challenges, which of course led directly to his success. And he'll get into that, but he will share how those obstacles can lead not only to his success, but to yours, why you should welcome obstacles and challenges as

he has. He's the creator of the 75 hard program focused on mental toughness that many claim changed their lives. We're so excited to have him here today for the rest of the show. Andy, welcome. Hi, Megan. Thanks for having me. I'm so pumped up. I mean, reading so much of what you've written and listening to you, I share so much of your mentality about mental toughness, about grit, about saying thank you when life throws you tough challenges, because that's the opportunity to develop your superhero muscles about not being a victim but quitting your whining like i love all of it and then there's another piece of you that i need to get to myself but it's about how to sort of silence the self-loathing from within that can actually be destructive because

if you're not a if you're not a perpetual, if you're like a personal responsibility person, it can veer over into the, you're actually too hard on yourself and that can be self-defeating. So there's a lot to go over. Let's start with some of your personal background because it's an amazing story. It did not come from money.

It did come from a kick-ass dad who sort of started placing positive messages in your head when you were a kid, which is probably totally critical to the success that would come into your life later. But tell us about your dad and how you grew up. Yeah. I mean, look, I grew up here right outside St. Louis, Missouri. We're still, my business is located here. I grew up on a little gravel road called Mooney Lane. My dad was a businessman. He owned an electrical company. It was a small company that he grew into a midsize company. And growing up, you know,

I was around business. I was around the struggle of entrepreneurship my whole life. but I mean, my my upbringing was was like pretty much any other middle class, lower middle class type person. I mean, we grew up playing baseball. We grew up running around up and down the gravel road, you know, just trying to figure out what what we were going to do with our lives. And, you know, I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I always had the want to do more. I never did good in school. I wasn't interested in it. And I was the kid that was, you know, selling lemonade and going door to door. I did things like having baseball card shops and things like that out of my dad's garage and just all kinds of little things, little hustles that I always tried to make happen when I was a kid. And it naturally lent itself to entrepreneurship

growing up. I sort of always knew that that was something that I was going to get into. And I think he kind of knew that too, because he pushed my brother and I both to be very competitive. We were both sports guys. We grew up playing baseball and football and wrestling and basically everything all year round, which kept us out of trouble. And he pushed us really hard in a way that now is almost villainized, where people say, oh, your parents pushed you too hard. Well, you know, apparently that works okay, because we're doing all right now. And we don't ever hear about those things. We don't ever hear about the successes created from parents actually pushing their kids to be high achieving individuals.

And I was very, very blessed to grow up with parents that actually, you know, followed up with the idea of you can be anything you want. Like we're all told when we're small and that gets bred out of us as we grow up through the school system. So I was lucky to have resistance to the indoctrination at home. You know, I would go to school and I would say, hey, dad, you know, the teacher said I should probably just do this. And my dad would say, well, don't listen to your teacher. Listen, listen to your heart. Listen to what you want to be. And it didn't occur to me how valuable that was until later in life. When I was, you know, probably in my 30s. So I'm very thankful for what I had growing up.

I'm very thankful for the hardships I had. My dad never gave us anything. He made us earn everything. And it was something that, you know, I'm very thankful for because I feel like that mentality is lost nowadays and it's villainized, to be honest. And that's why I try to give it back through my shows, through the podcast and through really anything that I do is geared towards getting people to understand the reality of what it takes to be competitive and win in real life. Your comment about how they never really tell you how it works out when you have a parent who is loving but has high expectations. I mean, abuse is a different category, but loving with high expectations can work out really well. And I was thinking about my friend, Amy Chua, so-called tiger mom. She teaches at Yale Law and she wrote

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother and talked about how sort of Western parenting versus Chinese parenting. And people gave her such a hard time. The left was like, oh my God, you're cruel. You're a child abuser. And I mean, I know her and they have two, these two daughters who she was so tough on have grown up to be absolutely beautiful, well-adjusted, hugely successful young women. And they went to Harvard. They went to Yale. They clerked for the Supreme Court. They're they're just got married. They're loving. They love her. They're fun. Like it's like, you know what? Where's the media going to tell you how that worked out? Because it worked out really well. I do want to ask you about not going door to door because I just my little Thatcher, my nine year old had a lemonade stand just this past weekend with his

buddy and they were doing OK, but then they wanted to take it door to door. I'm like, that's too much. Don't don't bother the neighbors. Was I wrong? No, I don't know, man. In today's world, it's a lot different. You know, we're talking about back in the 80s where everybody was cool. And, you know, I think there's no harm in doing that. You know, I think it's a good practice. You know, you're going to get told no. I was like, it's too annoying. If they want your lemonade, they'll come out. If you knock on their door, they're going to feel obligated to take it. But maybe I was teaching a bad lesson. I don't have to think. All right. Now you talk about how you were, you were into sports and all the sports you just named,

but you also say you were a legitimately fat kid. That's how you describe it. So how is that possible? You could have been doing all those sports and the fat kid. Well, I like to eat. I love food. You know, I grew up in an Italian family. We always, everything revolved around food. And I honestly, I think I coped with a lot of the, you know, I was bullied growing up. I wasn't, I wasn't a cool,

I wasn't the cool, one of the cool kids at school. I was picked on, I was bullied. You know, people think growing up in an entrepreneurial family means you grow up rich. That's not the case. The case is you usually grow up a year behind everybody else in the fashion department. You know, I was wearing the stuff that was cool, uh, two years ago when it was on clearance at, at, at TJ Maxx, you know, and that's how we grew up. So I got picked on a lot. Um, I got made fun of a lot. I was always chubby. Uh, and you know, I grew up genetically, just one of those people who puts on weight real easy. And if it wasn't for sports, it probably would have been a lot worse.

But it got to a point when I was an adult where I got up to 350 pounds. And that was kind of the breaking point for me where I looked at it. I was 30, I don't know, 32 years old, 33 years old, and I was 350 pounds. And I'm like, man, something's got to change. And that was a battle I fought my whole life. And honestly, I'm super thankful that I had that battle the whole life because it's made me realize what it's like to live that way. You know, I've lived a lot of my life as a very overweight person. And so it allows me to understand the thinking that goes into having to change that. And I think that's been a very integral part of me being able to connect and

communicate with people who are willing and wanting to make changes, but just don't know how to make the change. There's a lot of people out there that have been taken advantage of through marketing or through the, you know, the, the mainstream narratives that they're a victim and they have to accept what they are and they have to be who they are and being who they are. Well, I've always been fat,

so I'm just going to stay this way and, you know, I can't do anything about it. So I'm going to celebrate it. And to be honest, you know, that's, that's no way to live, man, because I've been that guy, I've been that person and I understand, you know, what it's like to not go to the pool, what it's like to pass on vacations, what it's like to not have clothes that fit. I know what it's like to look in the

mirror and instead of saying, man, I really am pleased with what I see here. I'm really proud of that person to say, oh, you know, I stand this certain way. You know, I won't look as fat. I won't look as big. And, you know, I know what it's like to have pictures taken of me and just hate the pictures that were taken of me. I mean, all of these things, they stick with you when you've lived that life. And as painful as they have been, I'm very thankful for the perspective because without it, if I had been someone who was a naturally fit person, I wouldn't be who I am today

because I wouldn't be able to connect with the people that I'm able to connect with that are looking to make those changes. So there it is because you're tough and you don't allow victimhood or self-pity, but you're also full of empathy.

It's not like you have no empathy for people who are struggling. You get it. You just see a very clear also full of empathy. It's not like you have no empathy for people who are struggling. You get it. You just see a very clear course out of it that doesn't allow too much wallowing. It's not that you don't acknowledge reality. That's one of the things I like about your messaging. So you, you know, sports and the dad and, you know, the, the, the weight problems to you're like 19, you're kicking around and you decide to start what is now a nine-figure business. Crazy, crazy-ass success in the supplements field to the point where like, I mean, it's crazy,

like the amount of money and the amount of success that you've achieved. But when you were 19, you didn't know that. It was like, you said something like you wanted to start a self-tanning salon, like a tanning bed salon. But the tanning beds cost 30 grand. You only had 12 to start the business with.

So you decided to do supplements because you knew a guy who did that and did OK with it. Little little did you know, right? Like flash forward 30 years where things would be. But so talk about those beginning years because it was not too fruitful at first. Yeah, no, it was, you know, like I said, I grew up always with an entrepreneurial spirit and I kind of always knew I would be an entrepreneur. I just didn't know if I would be a good one. And I thought about success a lot differently back then.

I thought about success as something that you were chosen by some higher force to have. You know, I call it the success fairy. I think people generally feel like, you know, maybe if they're lucky or if they're fortunate, you know, they'll be selected to be one of these successful people. And the truth of the matter is, I felt that way as well. And so I thought, you know, I can't really work for anyone because I'm not good at following directions and I'm not good with authority. So we started a business and we didn't have any money. We didn't have any experience. We wanted to start a tanning salon was our first choice. But we only had 12 grand and one tanning bed was 30. So it didn't work. So like you said, we knew a guy who was

successful in like what's called now mom and pop retail in terms of sports nutrition. And we kind of just copied his idea and we decided to start a business. And we started a business called Supplement Superstores, which still exists. We started in Springfield, Missouri. We're from St. Louis. Springfield is where we went to school. And we started with 12 grand. And with that $12,000, we had to pay our first year's rent up front because we didn't have any credit and nobody would rent to us. So we found this guy who had a empty bridal store and he agreed to rent it to, to Chris and I, my business partner for a thousand dollars a month.

And, but he wanted all the rent up front and it was all the cash that we had, but we didn't have a choice because we couldn't get another retail spot. And this spot is located directly one block over from the original bass pro shop in springfield what year is this that we're talking 1999 okay and exactly my age all right so you're 51 now 43 oh shit my math is i was never like yeah so you were 19 so 19 oh yeah yeah that does work out yeah that's my math good keep going yeah so. So we started the store with 12 grand and we didn't have shelving. We didn't have a product. like three to $500 limits and we just got a whole bunch of those credit cards by filling out the applications. And then we bought all of our

inventory, which was $10,000 worth on those, those pre-approved credit cards. And we opened our business and Chris and I spent the first three years on and off sleeping in the back of that retail store. Our first day in sales, we sold $7. The second day of sales, we sold zero. The third day we sold $23. It took us eight months to have a day over $200. It took us six years to get our second store open. And this is before, you know, social media was a real thing. The internet was just kind of coming into its own, just becoming, you know, this was the dot-com bubble time. And there was no real use for small business in terms of like, you know, being able to leverage it or get attention or build a brand from social media like you can do today in a very short amount of time. So what we had to do was we

had to go door to door. We went, we couldn't afford advertising. We couldn't afford radio. We couldn't afford TV. So we, we went door to door. We went all over Springfield, Missouri, knocking on. The main thing that we did was we went to police stations and fire stations and met the men and women at the police and fire stations.

And because we figured, Hey, you know, these guys got to be in shape. And we would walk in and we would knock on the door and be like, Hey, I'm, I'm Andy. Uh, I own the store down the street. If you guys ever need anything, uh, feel free to come by. And that's literally what we did to, to make it work. And, um, again, as hard as that was, as difficult as that was, it was, it taught me a skill that not a lot of entrepreneurs have anymore because it's not necessary anymore. So that's kind of how we got it going. I know you've written about this, but is learning that in order to be a successful business person, you have to care about more than yourself.

You have to care about your customers. You have to care about your staff and they have to know it. Those guys felt that when Andy knocked on their door and lo and behold, the business would grow. But something deeply disturbing would happen to Andy not long into his business entrepreneurship that would change literally his face. And we'll pick it up there right after this quick break. So Andy, things are rolling along.

You're building your business. You're figuring it out. You're making something of yourself. And then a horrible incident happened to you in, I think it was June of 2004 in Springfield, Missouri. What happened? Well, part of owning a business is usually you have to have other jobs. And one of the jobs I had was I worked at a bar and, um, where I worked was, uh, a lot

of block away from where I lived. And I was walking home from work one night with some friends and, uh, we got into a, I wouldn't say we got into, but we were harassed by this, this guy driving, uh, driving by and he, uh, I was walking with, with my friends and, uh, the girl that I was with, uh, she's, uh, she was Mexican and she was very tan. It was middle of summer. And, uh, he yelled out some racial slurs and then ended up parking his car right in the path of where we were walking. And then we had a verbal altercation. I ended up getting stabbed in the face three times.

And then once in the back, I had one hundred and sixty stitches in my face when all was said and done, the last thing I remember riding to the hospital was, before I passed out, was the nurse or the EMT in the ambulance basically getting hysterical, saying that she couldn't stop the bleeding. I thought for sure I was going to die. And obviously, I didn't die. I woke up a few hours later. I was in the ER. They obviously I didn't die. Uh, I woke up a few hours later, I was in the ER, they had stitched up my face. Um, and, uh, yeah, it was, it was a, it was a violent, violent, violent stabbing. And, um, I'm, I'm lucky to be alive. I got stabbed, uh, right here, uh, right here, went through all the way through my face. Uh, and then it's hard to see because my beard,

but on, on my jawline on this side, and then once in my back and, um, my face was swollen up, uh, the size of a grapefruit for the better part of a year. Um, I have zero feeling in this side of my face, even to this day, all the nerves are gone. Uh, how I smile. But I've come to terms with it. And it was a very difficult time in my life as a 22, 23 year old man trying to run a business and a retail business. Because when your face, it gets disfigured. People do one of two things. They either look you right in the face and they say, man, what happened to your face? I'm not sure if I'm allowed to curse on this show or not. You are, yeah. Okay. Well, they look at you and they say, man, what the fuck happened to your face?

Or they look at the ground and they act like you're not even there. And that part of it was very difficult for me. Being a young man, I wasn't married. I didn't really have a girlfriend. You know, I thought my life was over in that regard. I went through serious oppression because multiple times a day I'm having people walk into my business and say those things to me, you know, either stare right at me or look away. I can remember one particular instance when I was at a store and I couldn't even get the person's attention because they refused to look at my face. And it taught me was that when you guys see someone who's different when you guys see someone who might be disabled or disfigured or handicapped you know don't look away address them like a normal human because that that feeling of people not seeing you or not ignoring you was what probably the most hurtful thing of the whole situation um so i'm just going to put that out

there for any of you guys who struggle with that. You know, people would much rather you, uh, come up to them and treat them like a normal human than pretend like they're not there. So that was a very difficult thing for me to deal with. Um, uh, you know, I was a different person then than I am now. Um, I struggle with suicidal thoughts tremendously. I got heavily into drinking, uh, you know, every, I was drinking every single day at that point. Um, and for a year or so, you know, it was, it was really like, it wasn't a matter of if I was going to do and how I was going to disappear and make it the least, the least painful on everybody else. And it was just very, very, very dark time. And one of the days that I woke up, you know, I went to, this is like 1030 in the morning. I went to the grocery store because I didn't have any alcohol and I was going to go get some beer. And I went to the store to get alcohol and I was walking, pushing my cart down the aisle with my head down. And I came to the end of the

aisle, you know, and and you know how sometimes people will be coming at a perpendicular way. And I bumped carts with this person at the end of a woman. But I couldn't tell because her face was completely burnt off. And I mean, like, gone. You know, where your nose is, there was, you know, two little holes. And I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. The only reason I could tell it was a woman was because of her voice when she spoke. And so I hit her card, I looked at her and I was like, kind of shocked. And she looked at me like real serious. And she goes, dude, what the fuck happened to your face? And dude, we both started dying laughing. And in that instance, in that instant, we had like a 10 or 15 minute conversation and we talked about how she had gotten to be where she was.

And what had happened to her was she had been in a small plane crash and she had lost her leg and she had lost her whole family. She was her own lone survivor of this crash. And she had been third degree burned her entire body. And we had a, a 10, a real 10 minute conversation that was probably the most profound conversation I ever had in my entire life on this planet. I still question, you know, if that was like an angel or if that was like what that was, because I walked out of that store with a new perspective.

And the perspective was that one, things could be a lot worse. Two, they aren't that bad. And three, what's the good things that happened to me from this? And, you know, what I realized in business, you know, we had had a hard time. This is the first thing that I noticed that was good. OK, so, you know, when you're a small business person, you know, you have a hard time being remembered because you're you're lumped in with the group and everybody sees you as a nobody. And one of the things that happened after I got stabbed in my face was disfigured. Was that people started remembering. So, you know, instead of us going to a trade show and saying, hey, do you know Andy and Chris from Supplement Superstore? It was and they would say, oh, no, we don't know them. And they could follow it up now. And they would because people would tell me, no, you know, Andy, you know, the guy with the he got stabbed, you know, with the face. And so I started seeing that as a positive thing.

I started seeing that as an advantage that we had that no one else had. And I chose to go that perspective. And my life changed after that. It really did. I went from being completely depressed, completely frustrated, completely demoralized, no motivation, you know, the poor me attitude to someone who, you know, didn't tolerate that for myself anymore. And while it wasn't an instant, permanent transition, it showed me enough of the light that I was able to pursue that and grow in that way from that point forward. You know, I still had struggles. I still had dark times. I've still gone through very difficult times. But that was a time that showed me that no matter how bad that it gets,

there's always a good side to it. And so, you know, I chose to see the proper perspective there, and I think it served me pretty well. But that was a very difficult time. And I would say, honestly, looking back, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. It was literally the best thing that ever happened to me because I was able to work through something that was extremely difficult. I learned a lot of lessons about people. I learned a lot of lessons about myself. But the most important thing I learned was the power of perspective. And perspective is a choice. We can choose to see the bad things or we can choose to see the benefits of any situation. And it's hard pressed to find a situation that doesn't benefit us in some way or at the very least benefit other people around us in some way. And so that's what happened. This is a quote from you. Your hardships, your challenges, your situation will either be the reason you don't make it

or it will be the story you tell when you do. I love that. It's exactly right. And it got me thinking. We did a show on dads and boys last Thursday. And we took calls when our expert was here. And a couple of the callers who we didn't get to, because the phone lines just lit up, wanted to ask about their sons whose dads had

died. You know, moms worried about dads not being in the picture because they died. And what does that mean for the sons? And I closed out the show with just a couple seconds to go by saying, as somebody who lost her dad at age 15 to a sudden heart attack when he was 45, it's sort of a weird statement, but that there are silver linings. You know, it's not to say I wouldn't want it the other way, you know, but I did learn a lot from losing my dad at such a young age. And it did. It changed everything about the way I would live my life for the better. I mean, like, I think my dad would be relieved to know that that tragedy wound up making my life situation, not staying in a job that, you know, just doesn't fire you up and doesn't seem to be leading anywhere other than to a fat

wallet. That was my first, you know, locker. All that stuff is linked. So it's not to say you wouldn't rather have had a life with your dad there. And for the moms out there who are hurting and boys, I know that, but it's to say that there are lessons that come even maybe especially with these big tragedies that if you pay attention, if you're willing to learn as opposed to just do nothing other than wallow, you can take something really profound away from it. Yeah, and it's really difficult to do in the moment. You know, this was not an easy thing. It just happened that I was literally faced with something right in front of my face that showed me like, holy shit, like, dude, you're, you're not handling this how you should be handling it. And I think, you know, I've talked to a lot of people and they

come to me with when I say these things. And they're like, but I had this and I had this and I had this. And Megan, you know, when you talk about losing your dad, I mean, how many other people has that helped cope with their losses? You know, and sometimes our benefits from these experiences that happen are not benefits directly to us, but benefits of how we can serve other people to help them with their experiences. You know, I've talked to a lot of people over the years, especially veterans who have had disfiguring injuries or lost limbs, and they have trouble coping. And, you know, I've talked to them about how they can contribute to the community or how they can contribute or how they can become a better example of what it looks like to be resilient. And, you know, once people accept the path that they're on and understand that, you know, it's not just about your own personal gain all the time. It's about what you can do for everybody else around you or what lessons can you teach or what value can you offer from these tragedies that happen? And by the way,

these bad things happen to all of us. Every single person listening right now can look back through the Rolodex of memories and think, man, this was really bad, or that was really bad, or this was really bad. And we can all draw on those stories, but how we choose to think about them is up to us and how we choose to move forward from those situations is up to us. if for no other reason than to help other people be prepared and work through the hard things they're going to me, to me, I think that's a noble way to look at things. You know, I think that, that, you know, we've lost this in America where we all look out for each other and we've tended to look at our own game. Like, yeah, dude, it sucks to get stabbed in the face. Like, it's not cool. I would like to have a normal smile. I wish I didn't have people asking me all the time or thinking low of me, you know, because, you know, people think things about someone that got stabbed in the face. They don't think like, hey, this is a

good dude. They naturally think, well, hey, you know, I don't know about this guy. Those things, you know, they suck. But the truth of the matter is, is that if I look back on my life and I look back at all of the things that have happened to me, good and bad, the most good that's happened to me in my life has, has come from that incident. It's just the truth. So I, you know, I think if we all looked at our hardships and instead of competing for who has the saddest story, we started competing for who overcomes the saddest story the best, you know, our country would look a lot different. That's exactly it. So get to, you know, the next chapter is what you're saying. What we've done lately in our country is just

encourage what Brett Hume used to call it, destitution derby. You know, he said it with respect to when we were at like the RNC or the DNC convention one year. And, you know, of course, all these politicians get up there like I was born and I walked barefoot to school and, you know, they're giving you their sob story. And he used to laugh and call it Destitution Derby, right? Like who had it roughest and

is running for president. But the truth is the whole society does that now and they get stuck when somebody's running for president. They're probably a governor. They're probably a senator. They're probably accomplished now. And so it's sort of built in. OK, we get it. You overcame all that. What we're doing now is just gets just gets get stuck in your worst moment. And then we'll all celebrate you for being a victim and in your worst moment. And the more you can publicize how hard it is and how victimized you are and how much struggle you're having, the better.

And you never need to get to're having, the better. And you never need to get to the spike, the ball in the end zone moment. Just the suffering is enough. That's right. It's a it's a we live in an attention economy. OK, everything that people do right now is geared towards like shares comments. What gets the attention on the internet. And, you know, unfortunately, you know, being vulnerable has become a, and by the way, it's great to be vulnerable. It's great to share your insecurities if you plan on overcoming them. But to create an identity or to create a brand around all the bad things that have happened to you and continuously talk about them and post about them. People don't realize what that does is that makes that creates a jail that you live in because it's now become your identity. It's now become your brand and you can't escape from it.

So once people start telling this story about how hard they have it and how bad things really are and they get attention, they continue to tell some version of that or another version of some sort of victim story over and over and over again because that's what got them the attention. That's what they're competing for. So now we have the Victim Olympics going on in society instead of what we should be having is the overcoming of victimhood Olympics. You know, we should be celebrating the people who have had these things happen to them and have, you know, pushed through and persevered through and become resilient. And then talk about the lesson like, hey, I used to be like this and I changed and here's how I changed. And this is what I did. But instead,

you know, the American way we used to we used to celebrate achievement. We used to celebrate the nobility of overcoming. And we've, you know, we've gotten away from that. It's something that needs to change if we want to fix the country. And now it's now it's it's like if you haven't had a lot of tragedy or bad things happen in your own life, the next move is to just glom on to historical tragedy that may affect your racial group, your gender. You know, you could go down the list, right? I'm thinking of the woman at Evergreen College in that now infamous tape that came out

after Brett Weinstein got so unceremoniously tortured there by the faculty and the students where she, the one girl was like, I come from slaves and you don't know what I've been through. It's like, okay, so that was 150 years ago. You may or may not, I don't know what your family history is, but you didn't go through that. That's not America today. Or me coming out there and saying like, well, you know, Eleanor Roosevelt was the subject of a lot of sexism and I'm a woman too. Well,, but, you know, her experience is not my experience. But they glom on to like historical wrongs so that they can be part of the victim group. Right.

And if you're a victim and that's your brand, then you don't have to do any work. You don't have to overcome. You're already there. So it's an easy it's an easy out. You know, the best part of it is blaming the white male for every all the problems dude my ancestors didn't come here until like 1920 so like what what do i have to do with this you know and they were irish which we were also targeted yeah we were sicilian it's the same thing man like we uh you know it's ridiculous

it's it's bullshit is what it is. Um, well, I like one of the, this is one of the things you, you talk about, which I a hundred percent can relate to and do it all the time, but you really, you don't like woke ism and you don't like the push for woke ism in our schools. Why? Well, it's not real. It's not reality. It's not the real, it's not real life. Look at the end of the day, natural order is always going to prevail. All right. And this has always been the case. This has always been the case through human history. The most undeniably skilled, great people are going to rise to the top. That's the reality. And if you want to get to the top, if you want to get to the middle ground, you're going to have to be pretty good.

And so instead of teaching people in school that, you know, they can be victims or that they are victims or that they are the oppressor or that, you know, everything is fair or that everybody gets a trophy for showing up. All of these things reduce our human potential. It all suppresses our natural potential to achieve. And if we look at the way success is villainized in society, it makes perfect sense. Why would they not want to villainize success? If they want people to be controlled, which is clearly what they want, from my perspective, they want people who are apathetic, who are docile, who are dependent, who are not strong, who will go along with any narrative that's put in front of their face. any motivation or desire to create or overcome. And we've been dealing with this for the last, you know, I would say 20 years at least, where they're teaching people that are, they're teaching people that successful people are greedy or are materialistic or are bad people

because they're successful. Look, man, I didn't come from anything. And we've got thousands of people that earn a living from our company, literally tens of thousands of people. OK, so I don't understand how that's a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. And, you know, we deal with this this idea that I think it's just a denial of reality. You know, I think we would be much better off telling people the way it is. Like I was taught when I was growing up.

Hey, if you want to win, you've got to practice. If you want to be good, you've got to put in the work. If you don't put in the work, you're going to lose. These are things that were taught regularly in school. Like when I was growing up. So it wasn't just my parents. But as I got older and got through high school, like when I was growing up. So it wasn't just my parents. But as I got older and got through high school, it definitely, it definitely got more suppressed in terms of how much they were willing to encourage you to be great. But I think that's just natural. Now,

you know, they're telling little black kids that it's impossible for you to succeed because the entire world is racist. If that's not the most racist stuff I've ever heard, I don't know what is. OK, they're telling white kids that, you know, they should feel guilty for being white because they're a bad person for something that happened 200 years ago. OK, that's not right. Um, they're indoctrinating our children to to to decide what gender they want to be when they're literally four or five, six years old. This is insane shit. We're dealing with insane shit. And none of it. And, you know, people can disagree all they want. I don't care.

But none of it is conducive to creating a populace that is equipped to achieve, that is equipped to win, that is equipped to contribute, that is equipped to help the real victims of society. You know, to help the real victims of society, we have to have people who are winning so that they can reach a hand down and pull people up. And what they're trying to do is create a situation where the government is the only people that can do that. And as you know, that doesn't work out well in history. So I see the entire woke movement as a weapon. I see it as a weapon, a cultural weapon that is designed to suppress the potential of our great American people from being what we've always been, which is high level, high achieving people who figure out a way to make shit happen. I once interviewed Charles Koch, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world.

And he talked about the glorious feeling of accomplishment and how important that is, whether you're the greatest burger flipper that ever worked at McDonald's or you're Charles Koch. Right. And this this movement, whatever we're calling it, denies that on both sides. So it takes, you know, black kids or Hispanic kids, you know, maybe trans kids and says, we want you to advance, advance based on your skin color. We will make it easier for you. We're going to create quotas or we're going to create mandatory numbers of some sort to get you to the next step. And then I'll tell you, I have a friend who works at an investment bank in New York City who's pretty high up. And this person just told me that they got to get rid of two

people. And this person was told it has to be two white guys. And this person said, well, there's some other people of different characteristics who are non-performers. And I've got only a small selection of white guys who are really working out well. And they said, we don't care. If you're going to fire two people, it's got to be two white guys. So now what does that tell the people who escaped the hatchet? Right. They got to stay. They know they're not the best. They know, you know, you know, when you're the best, you know, when you're not. What if what if they had gone to them and said, you're fired? And then those folks had to hustle to get the next job and then worked harder to maintain it and then had the glorious feeling of accomplishment.

And I mean, exactly the opposite message to the two white guys are going to get fired, who they know they tried their hardest, but they're getting booted because of their skin color and their gender, which are not their fault. There's nothing inherently wrong with them. And they're denied the fruits of their labor and told they're less than for things. It's like the whole thing is so pernicious and damaging. It's bass backwards. It's bullshit. OK, let's be real. I saw you. I saw what you said about the FBI raid. I'm going to use your language. All right, I loved it.

Look, it's interesting that the group that is accused of being the domestic terror, white, male, extremist, racist group, that's me, by the way, is the only demographic that is legally able to be fired because of their skin color. Okay. So let's, let's be real about what racism really is. Okay. You can argue it all you want, but you can't go into a company and say, Hey, you know, we're going to fire, we got to fire two people and, you know, they have to be Asian or they

have to be black or they have to be this. You can only say that about white, white man. So is that fair? Is that right? I don't think it is. And I don't think it's American. And I think most people agree with this. No matter what race that they are, no matter what color they are, no matter where they come from, they understand that it's gotten out of control. And at the end of the day, if we want the country to be great, if we want the people to be great, we have to allow them to swim or sink based on their own merit. This is a skill-based, merit-based country. This is always how it's been. And I understand the idea that we needed, you know, back when affirmative action and all these, these, the, the idea of this was, was put into play. I understand the need for it, but I think the greater need over the longterm is raising the

skillset of every human and allowing people to compete on a level playing field for who's the best. That's what always produces. And when I grew up, that was the case. That was the case in America. That was what it was about. And now we're in a situation where things like that are happening. And to me, it's very frustrating to sit back and be called all these names when you're the part of the group that can legally be discriminated against. There was, you know, I moved to Connecticut about a year ago with my family and there was there's a school in Connecticut, not. And they just made the news because they had their welcome back cider and donuts outing.

But only if you identify as black or Hispanic or indigenous. All the white people can stay at home. There'll be no welcome back for cider and donuts. And the school seems rather unapologetic about it. Whatever. And then just today, Chris Ruffo, who does such good reporting on these issues, tweeted out the Minneapolis Teachers Union has negotiated a contract in which the district will fire white teachers first. They're going to say they've agreed. And he posts it. He posts it. You can read it for yourself in Chris Gruppo's

feed where you got to go like if they they need to fire somebody. If you're white, get ready. You're going for like this is insane. And I think illegal. And I think these things will play out in the courts more and more because it is unlawful in the government setting or in which your school is getting any government money in particular to fire somebody on the basis of their skin color. So this is where it goes. All right, listen, there's so much more to get to with Andy. I want to talk about the 75 hard because that's the like the restart. I think a lot of people are looking for. And I love his philosophy. Like, it's not just about your body. It's about your mind, too.

I've never done this, but I'm kind of toying with it. I'm I'm going to tell you he's going to go through the five things that you would do if you wanted to take on this challenge of the 75 hard 75 days right after this very quick break. Don't go away. Now, the other thing I wanted to mention that you talk about, we're talking about sort of what these crazy policies do to the minority person, whether black, whatever, Hispanic, and what they do to the white person and to the white person and the black person, frankly, it gets rid of something you think is one of the keys to success, which is a little swagger. It's okay to have a little swagger. And actually, it could be very beneficial. How the hell are you supposed to have swagger if you know you're getting advanced based on an immutable characteristic over which you have no control? Or if you know you're getting

fired over one of those things, no matter how hard you try. Can you just spend a minute on swagger? Look, I'm a person. I don't know if I give it to you in a minute, but here's what I think. You know, I think that these people that are running the narrative generally want to remove anything of value from the human experience. And I think that's designed so that they can control as much of our existence as they possibly can. And so if they can remove our self-confidence by setting us up to believe that we can only get ahead if we're a victim or we can only get ahead, you know, these things that they create for us. They never allow us to develop the confidence that we are supposed to develop through our human experience.

And, you know, unfortunately, you know, when you talk about the swagger that you get, that only comes from from experience and growing and overcoming things and being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, you know what, dude, you're a bad motherfucker. I'm proud. I'm proud of you. And that's where that swagger comes from. And we have so many people that, you know, talk about things like confidence or they talk about things like believing in themselves and they act as if it's some sort of magical thing. But, you know, and we're taught for it to be magical. We are taught that things like confidence, fortitude, grit, mental toughness, the things that allow us to look in the mirror and be proud of ourselves, we are taught that those are traits that people are either born with, and if you're not born with them, you're screwed. Or, you know, that the universe has blessed certain people with these things and we can no longer we can't have them if we weren't born with them. And it's not true. And I believe that we're not taught these things because they don't want us to be great. They don't want us to be successful. They don't want us to be independent because they need us to be dependent so that they can get what they want. And I know that sounds a little bit conspiracy.

Well, no, not really. Sounds like China. Yeah, you're not wrong. There are whole regimes who pursue exactly this lack of individualism, the snuffing out of ambition, grit, go along with the sort of masters of the universe who are those in government who know better. It's scary because more and more it's creeping into our own government. And I know I've I've read this is from your book, Chapter 10. The number one key to cultivating mental toughness is to intentionally put yourself in places that are uncomfortable. Yes, that means the opposite of safe spaces. Safe spaces is a complete misnomer. Those spaces make you less safe. They take away your mental

toughness. You won't be able to handle anything. That's exactly what you don't need if you want to succeed in life. I couldn't agree more. I gave a speech, remarks recently at Stanford saying, if you want to be tough, you want to be confident, run toward the danger. I'm not talking about somebody shooting a machine gun at you. I'm talking about get rid of safe spaces, put yourself in situations in which your worldview will be challenged and which you will be challenged and which you feel uncomfortable. And you merge out the other side like Andy Vercela. Well, look, I'm trying like everybody else. I'm trying to get better every

single day. But at the end of the day, you know, we have to understand that all of these things that we look at and see in other people, we also have. OK, when you look at someone and you say, man, because because I used to be this person, as we talked about earlier on the show, you know, I used to be 350 pounds. I used to be the person that couldn't about earlier on the show you know i used to be uh 350 pounds i used to be the person that couldn't stick to a diet for more than five or six days in a row i used to be the person who would tell myself throughout the year all right after after new year's it's on i'm getting after it uh you know and that would last for four or five days and then it would be okay after valentine's day because we're going to go out on valentine's day i'm

going to get serious about this. You know what? After that wedding, after that trip, after Memorial Day, after July 4th. And I would tell myself this for years and not be able to follow through. So I understand what it's like to be that way. I used to look at people who had this, the ability to follow through on things or that were mentally tough or that did amazing things as they were magical and they had such amazing gifts. But what I learned and what I found out because I became a student, I became a student of mental toughness because I didn't have it. Okay. I wanted it so bad. I wanted to be one of these people so bad that I would study literally anybody who had done anything hard and try to figure out what it was that they had that I did it. And, and, you know, after literally decades of studying, I could never find out. I, it was like this magical thing that I couldn't identify. Um, and then one day I met this guy, James Lawrence, who some people know as the Iron

Cowboy. I had him on my podcast and he did at that time, he had done 50 full length Ironman races in 50 days consecutively in 50 states. And that was amazing to me. And I sat down with this man. He's still a good friend of mine. And he said what that quote that you just read, he said something to fuck, ready to take on anything that's going on in the world. They just don't. You come out as a blank slate and you are the result of the stimuli that you are, you realize is that if you lack mental toughness, if you lack the ability to stick to things, if you lack perseverance, if you lack fortitude, if you lack grit, if you lack what other people call heart or confidence, the reason that you lack that is because you likely believe that these are traits that you cannot change about yourself. And that is the furthest thing from the truth. So the first thing we have to understand is, is that these things that we wish that we had, that we admire in other people, that sometimes we even hate that other people have that we don't have are actually things that we do have. We just haven't invested in those parts of ourselves to make them strong, just like you would make your muscles strong,

just like you would go out today and maybe run a mile. And then maybe next week you're running two. And then maybe next week you're running 12. You know, these, your mental capacity and your mental toughness is no different than training your muscle. And once you can understand that, now you're in a place to really develop those skill sets. And that's the purpose of the 75 Hard Live Hard program is to get people to put themselves through something that is the equivalent of a mental boot camp that can help them develop some of these things that they feel like they're missing. Because you asked about swagger. Well, the reason that most people never develop their own swagger is because they don't even have any confidence. And the reason they don't have any confidence is, you know, is because they've never done things that they're proud of. They can't even follow through on their own word. So we have to change ourselves mentally before we can change ourselves physically. You know, the idea of,

of, you know, 75 hard and this program being a body transformation, it really has nothing to do with that. It really has to do with about developing your mental toughness. Your body will change throughout the program, but it's entirely, entirely intended for you to develop the mindset necessary for you to win these battles that are going on inside your own brain, inside your own heart, and that have been going on for a long period of time. You know, the changes that people make off of this program, the reason it's so impactful is because most people never, ever, ever have even considered that maybe they too have greatness inside of them that they've just never invested in.

Once they've put in 75 days, a very tiny amount of your life, once you get a taste of it for 75 days, it opens up a whole new world for people. And that's what I love about the program more than anything. Just to give people, I said five before the break, six rules of the 75 hard program, just to give you the top, the top six here. If you skip a day, you must start over, pick a diet to follow. He's not recommending, you know, anyone you figured out, pick a diet to follow with no alcohol or cheat meals, drink a gallon of water daily, complete two 45 minute daily workouts, read 10 pages per day of a nonfiction or entrepreneurial book, take progress photos every day. So this is that is for sure a challenge. 75 days. That's not short, right? Two and a half months. There I have my math straight. No cheat meals,

not a sip of alcohol, two daily workouts. I can barely get myself to do one. How am I going to do two 45 workouts a day? What, why do I do this? Cause it's going to create mental toughness, but what's the regime, what's the regimen about? Well, it's about inconvenience. Okay. Um, there's a reason for every single one of those items, a very specific reason. Uh, And if you read the book, it'll go into depth of what each one is. But essentially, the whole point of the program is to put yourself in the most inconvenient, non-compromising situation that you possibly can. Meaning, there is no room for substitutions here. There is no room for, oh, you know what?

I don't feel like it. I'm going to give myself a break or I'm going to give myself a mental day or all this shit that people are doing now about letting themselves off the hook. Because letting yourself off the hook is the reason that you are where you are in this state of unhappiness, in this state of unfulfillment. And so what we're looking to do over the next 75 days is to correct that behavior and give you a new perspective on what it takes to actually build resiliency, toughness, grit, fortitude. And I can promise you, we've had people from all, and by the way, the program's free. You can listen to the program on my podcast for free.

You don't have to buy the book. If you want to buy the book, that's great. It'll give you a more in-depth description, but this is not something that you must do. And I like to make that really clear because this is not some sort of like money-making thing for me. This is something that I want you to do so that you improve, so that our culture improves, so that we can get our fucking country back. OK, but the point of what I'm getting at in terms of actually I got off track. No, no, no. This is actually where I want to go with it, because, OK, you've got the 75 hard. You've got these six rules. Again, the book is called 75 hard, a tactical guide to winning the war with yourself.

And you've got to instill discipline. It's got to be hardcore discipline. And, you know, you've got to do it faithfully. One of the things I know that you've written about is you may be holding yourself back with negative self-talk, but your friends may be holding you back as well. And you write about how you may actually have to say to your best bud, I'm not going out Thursday or Friday or Saturday or next Thursday. Like it's very, especially for young people who's like social

life revolves around drinking and eating at the big restaurants and all that. It's not going to be easy. No, it's not. It's very inconvenient. It's very hard. And it's not for everyone. Okay. If you're happy living your life and you're happy with yourself and you're happy with like, this is not, if you are happy, just ignore what I'm saying. Okay. But, but make sure you're genuinely happy. Not this bullshit.

I'm faking that I'm happy because that's the problem that we're trying to address. We have an epidemic of fake happiness. We have an epidemic of depression. We have an epidemic of unfulfillment. We have an epidemic of people who want to be more, who are actually ashamed to even admit that they want to be more because of the cultural stipulations that society has put on wanting to be more. And if you are serious about wanting to

be more, then this is a program that you should look at. However, you know, one of the things you're going to have to do and what I think is the magical part about the program is you do have to learn to live with the program. You're not going to stay at home for 75 days. You're going to have to go to dinners and make positive choices. You're going to have to learn how to eat out and make the right choices. You're going to have to learn how to be social. I encourage people to not abandon their regular life, but instead to still participate in it within the guidelines of the program. Because what you're going to learn is, is that it's really not that hard. It's really not that hard to go out and drink a water while everybody else is drinking beer. It's really not that hard to order, you know, I was the person who would go to a restaurant and if they had something I really wanted, I couldn't say no to that. I would justify it in my head. I would come up with a story of how it was okay, how I earned

it, how, you know, whatever, whatever, you know, we, we, we learn how to justify things so perfectly in our own brain. And I was the best at it, you know, I could make sense of any situation. And that's also what we're trying to fix with this program is to be able to identify when you're actually justifying things that are not good for you, things that you aren't supposed to be doing. And what this program does is it really creates a higher level of awareness so that you're able to call yourself out on your own shit from here on out in life. And because the is lack of awareness, they don't identify when it is that they are talking themselves into a decision that isn't going to serve them and their ultimate goals or their ultimate dreams or whatever they're trying to build. So they don't even identify the

internal dialogue that's happening. They just think, I can't do it. And the truth is, we all have two voices in our head. I talk about it in the book. We have a boss voice, and then we have a bitch voice. And we have the voice that tells us we're great. And we have the voice that justifies all the demeaning, all the negative, all the soft behaviors, the bad habits, the things that have gotten us to this place of unsatisfaction and disappointment and frustration with ourselves. And we tend to listen to that voice much more than we listen to the voice that tells us that we can do great things like, hey, man, you shouldn't be stuffing that piece of pizza in your face or you shouldn't be drinking four nights a week. We don't listen to that voice we listen to the voice that's easier because it's louder because we've conditioned ourselves to listen to it and so what this program really does is it raises your awareness to be able to identify when it is that you are becoming your own worst enemy and teaches

you how to become your own best friend in terms of what is really great for you, uh, you know, in your life, because the reality is, man, those drinks and that food and that dinner, there's going to be a million more of those things. Um, you know, figure out the foundational principles of your life on how to operate, and you're going to be able to figure out just about anything. Well, I love the challenge to exercise more self-discipline. It's hard. You know, you think about, oh, it's a little much easier to sit on the couch than to work out.

It's so much easier to have that glass of wine. That's why it's called hard. The hard stuff. That's why, right? Like he's not promising that it's going to be easy. He's promising a better you at the end of it, whatever that means for you. But self-discipline is definitely something you have to practice. And 75 days, not that long. It's not like guaranteeing you're going to do it for a year. And Andy's living proof that it works.

What a pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much for coming on. Well, thank you so much for having me. You know, I'm just out here trying to to get people to understand that you guys are capable of so much more than what you've been told. You're capable of so much more than what society has allowed you to believe you're capable of. And if you would just take a minute and step back and really consider what it is you're meant to do and make an investment into these things that I'm talking about, you're going to come out the other end with a whole new perspective. And that's my whole goal. Because once you realize what you're capable of, once you realize that you're not just some plebe floating through the universe consuming, and that you can actually build great things with your life, it changes everything. So I appreciate you giving me the platform to come

on and share this message. And I'm a big fan of everything that you're doing. And I'm very honored to be on your show. Oh, thank you. Well, hopefully it's the first of many appearances. I'd love to have you back. I know you mean what you tell the audience that you've lived it firsthand. And if you want to check out Andy in forums other than his book,

check out The Real AF Podcast. Abby and I have been laughing about this because my assistant, Abigail Feinan, believes that she is the real AF. So she's a big fan of all your merch, of course. All the best, Andy. Take care. See you soon, I hope.

And we'll be right back with what's coming up tomorrow. Tomorrow, you're not going to want to miss us because we've got former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. She worked for Trump and she's going to have some things to say about this madness in the schools just in time for the restart of this year. I wonder if she thinks Dr. Fauci is a truth teller and synonymous with integrity.

We'll get into all of it. Download the show in the meantime so you don't miss it. And also go to YouTube.com slash Megyn Kelly. Subscribe if you would. We're trying to make it up to our goal of half a million. We'll do it soon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.

Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.