The Team House - Talking Vet Bro Industrial Complex Drama | Nate Cornacchia (Valhalla VFT) | Ep. 320

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

Nate is a former Green beret in 1st SF group and also has the YouTube channel Valhalla VFThttps://www.youtube.com/@ValhallaVFT/videosOrder Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/Support the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnPodcast/featured—————————————————————-Today's Sponsors:GhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 50% OFF!!!Mando ⬇️https://shopmando.comPromo code "TEAMHOUSE" for 40% off your starter pack.____________________________________Pre-order Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" today! ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————To help support the show and for all bonus content including:https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]0:00 startBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey guys, it's Jack. I just wanted to talk to you today about a way that you can help support the podcast if you're not already. To support the channel is to become a Patreon member. So we have Patreon memberships that start at just $5 a month. And when you sign up, you get access to all of our episodes ad free. That's the big bonus for that. I mean, we also do some Patreon bonus episodes for our subscribers. But this is the biggest and best way that you can support the Team House. channel and podcast if you'd like to and we really appreciate that so go it and check us out at patreon.com slash the team house special operations covert ops espionage the team house with your host jack murphy and david park hey guys this is episode 320 of the team house i'm jack here with dave and Joining the show for the second time is Nate. I missed the first time he came on here because I was in Iceland. We're really glad to have him back. And we were talking earlier about some of his recent videos.

So he has a YouTube channel. And we should mention Nate is a retired Green Beret. His YouTube channel is Valhalla VFT. Hope you guys will go and check it out. There's some really good stuff on there. And there's a link down in the description. Before we jump into the interview, though, I'm going to kick it over to do.

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I'm a big fan of your channel. Also, I am a little disappointed that you're not wearing your beaters. You and Jay, both on your channels, are always wearing your beaters. I was going to, but I was like, I'm going to be on their show. You're not going to show the guns? I need to look a little bit more professional. If I'm ever going to be on one of your podcasts, I'm definitely wearing the beaters and the camo hat.

if it's with Jay. That's the aesthetic for sure. I'm just messing with you, man. I love it. So I missed the first interview, but I mean, you are something of a special forces thought fluencer now, whether you like that title or not. I know. You found yourself in that position, but I bet you didn't like initially set out.

I mean, Valhalla firearms training, you must have started somewhere else. And I'd be interested to ask you how you came from transitioning out of the middle to that to being a YouTube guy. That's, well, that's great. So, I mean, I was on, I think, I think over a year ago now. And again, I think I was on your guy's show initially when I was maybe two months retired. So I had just retired, just started the social media channels.

I had maybe like four or five thousand subscribers, I think, on YouTube. So that interview is going to be very different in this one. And that was like, you know, we told stories. He talked about my career, crazy war missions, which was awesome, great episode. fast forward like maybe 12, like 13 months later and you know almost 100,000 subscribers within, you know, a year. Amazing. And I've, you know, again, yeah, I guess I am a influencer now. I think it's so dumb.

And I think I might have told Dave that when I first did the episode, I begrudgingly started the social media channels because of my firearms business. So my in-person business is a firearms instructor business, run all sorts of different classes. classes, teach law enforcement departments. So we got a good business going out here in Pacific Northwest. But everybody was like, dude, with your resume, you have to market yourself. If you're going to do this field, firearms training, your retired Green Beret, Valor Awards, like all the shiny shit, you have to market yourself on social media. So I begrudgingly started, you know, the YouTube channel and just doing firearms content, just doing that. And I did one video, maybe in the first month that was the harsh reaction.

of becoming a Green Beret. And it was maybe eight minutes. And I just told, like, you know, all the shitty backstory to it, like, going through the Q course, you're probably going to get divorced, right? Like, you're not going to see your fucking kids for six months out of the year. And that video, when I had brand new channel got five, six, seven hundred thousand views. And that sort of, like, started that trajectory on the YouTube channel where I switched from firearms, trauma medicine.

I still do some here and there. But like two, I started doing special forces related content talking about, you know, things in group, things and just backstory stuff or like realities of what if SF life is like and that all that content blew up. And so I again was just like, I guess this is what I'm doing now. Yeah. Fast forward a year later with the success of the channel, now it's like, yeah, this is what I'm doing now. Yeah. That's how I got here. Nate, real quick, for anybody who has not seen.

seen Nate's episode. It's episode 227. Check it out is fantastic. You'll see him when he was a baby, a little baby YouTuber, fresh from the egg, hanging out in the nest. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, you know, that's a really good episode. So for my fans, they know I don't talk about war stories. I don't talk about any of that type of stuff. So if you want all the best war stories and the Valor Ward stories, like they're encompassed on your guys's.

It's a phenomenal episode. That's awesome. Nobody else has them because, again, it's just not like, it's not for me, but I do, I like to talk about it with guys like you guys, like us that have done the job. But I'm not like going to make videos by myself

talking about my war stories. Like, it just doesn't feel right. And also, like, how many different pods do you want to go on and tell the same stories over and over again, right? And every interviewer is going to approach it differently and maybe pull different things out. But, like, I've been, on, I think, one interview where I told my story, and that's enough for me.

I'll go on pods to talk about other shit, but I don't want to talk about me. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't think I've told any of those stories since. Yeah. Because, again, they're awesome stories. Like, awesome stories. But you're right. You know, like, I lived them and, like, talking about them.

One, I also don't, and I don't want to knock, like, the guys that go on the podcast tour, and that's all they do is tell their war stories. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But for me, it's like in my war stories, my team, teammates got blown up and fucked up. And, you know, I've got teammates that have killed themselves since. So talking about that doesn't, one, doesn't feel great for me.

And also, like, I'm always so hyper concerned that I'm going to get something wrong and not respect my teammates for their families. That it's just like, I would rather just not really talk about. Nate, this is going to be a little dark and a little bit of insider humor. But I'm assuming you remember their names. I wish I wasn't, I wish I wasn't drinking right there. I do. Not only do I remember all my teammates' names,

I also remember like all of the guys in First Special Forces Group in the last 10 years that have been killed in their names. So, yeah, I'm sure we'll get into that subject. Before we dive into the Vetbro Cinematic Universe, I did want to ask you about... I love that. That's what it is at this point. Yeah, yeah. One of the more recent videos you made that really,

I resonated with me, and I think probably other people too, you made a video about why special operations guys are not necessarily role models. And I thought you laid it out very good about, you know, like, yeah, these guys are amazing. They can do incredible things. And they're really nice guys. But they're also human beings. And there's a dark side to the job that they do.

And there's a reason why they ended up doing that job. Yeah. Again, I was telling like I was talking to you guys a little bit before we started. But, I mean, I'll just bring it back up since for the viewers. but the reason why I initially made that video, and I didn't think it was going to be as popular as it did. I just wanted to sort of talk about it. I mean, it's like a half a million views in two weeks, I think.

But like I said, it's definitely resonating with people based off the feedback is when we started to do the exposure of Tim Kennedy, the initial videos, the backlash from the civilians that are fans of him was insane. They lost their minds at the idea. how could we possibly attack this war hero and all this stuff? So like this cognitive dissonance of like finding out that one of these famous soft influencers potentially isn't who he claims to be, I think it just shocked so many people because, you know, I mean, that old guard of the soft influence, there's nothing against them, your joccos, your Tim Gendys, all these guys have been sort of telling these stories and doing this type of thing

and building up this sort of like mystique of like the soft operator being this god that's like untouchable and can do no wrong. And for those of us that done it, have known like, we're just regular dudes that did, you know, a really high functioning job. We're not any better necessarily morally than anybody else. And so that's why I initially wanted to make the video is to explain to everyone like, here's the backside, here's the truth. Here's like the psychology of how a green beret is literally selected. for at SFAS. Like I'm not making those things up. Like there was a back channel of actual, I think was SFAS, Cadre,

talking about one of the Sykes was like, yeah, that's exactly what we're looking for. You're right? We're looking for high functioning young men that have been through a lot of, but not necessarily trauma, built up resistance. They have the ability to cope with insane things, still get the job done, still come back, reintegrate into society. It's a very specific type of person. but as we've just seen with the things like Matt Livensburger, right,

that also can lead to some insane psychosis. And when you're in that realm of sociopathic behavior and that scales too far off the spectrum, we can see what happens there too. So that was the intent of the video. It wasn't necessarily like to, I didn't want to make people feel like uncomfortable. Right. I just wanted people to understand, like how these brains actually work. I have, you know, I'm as much a violator as any civilian fanboy in a sense,

because those old school guys are my heroes that I look up to. My dad. My dad's a Vietnam Air GV. All his friends are MacB Sog Legends, right? Like, I grew up with my dad's best friend, Riley Lott, who was just inducted to the Special Forces Hall of Fame because he was Mike Forces NCIC for six years. Like, that's the guys I was raised around. And I do it myself to them. You know what I mean? So 100% I understand it. They're still my heroes, you know, but I do know them well enough now that I understand they're human beings. And there are even cases where I've heard stories about people who I really admired and

you found out they did some things that were not just accidents, but it's like, that's like a character failing, you know, that I thought you were better than that. But, you know, also they're human beings. I put them up on the pedestal. They didn't put themselves up there. and then I find out that they're a human being and maybe I shouldn't be so disappointed because I'm a human being, right?

Yeah, and we are. We are human beings, right? But we're human beings that are called to do a horrific job at the same time, man. And it's not just me as a soft operator. You talk about any better. Let's talk about the Marines and Fallujah, right? Called on to just do absolute horrific,

and not necessarily that they're wrong or we're in the wrong as Americans. I'm not saying that. But, I mean, going through a city and slaughtering, you know, 100,000 people, that is not necessarily the best thing ever, too, was kind of my point, you know. Yeah.

Well, and the brushes with death, the, you know, for the people that you lose. And, you know, it's like you say, like, we're all normal people. But also, we also have these sociopathic traits that allow us to compartmentalize and do things that maybe the average guy on the street, you know won't um and then on top of that you pile on years of trauma that we shove aside so we can we ignore completely so we can keep doing the job and then one day it just all bubbles back up and now

you know now we're talking about blast injuries and CTEs and how they play with post-traumatic stress like it's just it's this stew of just stuff my Dave my my my therapist because yeah I've been through a lot of behavioral health like I'm honest about that right and it's just it's just a It's been great for me, right? I don't say that to, you know, sound soppy or PTSD or oh me. Like I did it for myself, my family, my wife, because I had temper issues, whatever. But my therapist, really good therapist, explained it as think about your brain as a filing cabinet. What you've been doing is stuffing that trauma, just stuffing papers into the bottom of that filing cabinet, and then just shoving papers on top of it over and over and over again.

And at some point, you think about that filing cabinet is just an absolute. shit show. Yeah. And what you have to do is take it all out, re-compartmentalize it, put it all back in order. So it's exactly what it is, right? And like you said, now you

add in CTE and blast injuries on top of it. And I think, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about the whole Tesla cyber truck thing on this episode, but I think that was my theory right out the gate, man. It was like, this is a 19-year-old, a 19-year SF dude, Bronze Star Metals with Valor, tons of combat

deployments, probably been fucked up. Yeah. Add on top of depression, PTSD, a little bit of psychosis. Yeah. And, yeah. Here we are. And the problem is, you know, the problem is, is it's all so insidious that a person, like, it normally takes somebody outside of us to go, you might have a problem right now.

That's my wife for me, yeah. Like, I remember we had, we had Mike Edwards on the show. like maybe two or three years ago the first time he was on. And, you know, RRD guy or RRC and talking about pulling somebody out of their car because they, you know, cut them off. And, you know, they were like trying to, you know, break, check him or whatever. And he's like, and, you know, my wife is like, pulling somebody out of their car is not normal behavior. And at that moment, I go, oh, shit, it's not.

Because I thought it was. that was that was my dad growing up yeah Vietnam era green beret obvious PTSD completely untreated because none of those got to get treated in multiple times seven eight years old yeah same thing pulling people out of car beating the shit out of the people in the middle of the street get back in the car and driving off like that was normal yeah to me until until I did the job and I went through the things I did and I started to understand like oh that that that wasn't normal and it's not normal for me to be doing stuff like that either and you know it's interesting because Because your channel kind of started for what you do, like reviewing the life and the lifestyle of special operations, you started it at the perfect time because it used to just be seals we talked about.

Yeah. You know, that because they were the most public facing, I think. Right. And now we're seeing, you know, we have plenty to talk about, you know, whether it's with Tim Kennedy or people like him. We have too much to talk about in the Greenberry Service. And then we have Matt. And Matt's situation, as soon as I started, I didn't dive into it for the first couple of days because I was like, there's so much like smoke out there. I don't, I didn't want to get involved.

Nobody knows anything and everybody's a speculative. For sure. But then as soon as I read sort of what was going on, it reminded me of an article that Jack had written five years ago about Michael Frody, who was an SMU guy, a sap guy, who started. having delusions and you know ended up taking his own life yeah and the problem is is it you only know you're saying if you're asking yourself if you're crazy right like when you know everything is fact there there's no breaks yep well and we're the top we're the type of guys that performed at such a high level that we we always think we're right yeah you know not that we are but like we always think were sort of the most intelligent guy in the room.

Like, I could be guilty of it, too. And I'm not that smart. I'm really not. I'll get around, like, really smart people and then, like, get drawn, like, my Air Force PJ buddies and then, like, get drawn back real quick. And, like, oh, no, you're not, you're not smart. I think when I express a political opinion that I'm so certain about, and then somebody breaks it down, like, they have a background on economics.

And they're like, well, you're wrong. And I'm like, shit. Yeah, yeah. That's why I stay out of the political arena. I'm just like, I'm going to say some shit that, like, somebody is going to do that exact same being you mean i'm like i'm going to look like an idiot i'm going to talk about strictly things i'm a subject matter expert in yeah and that's what i do and also i i'm the same way with my content where i do current events content if it's related to sf stuff but i don't i'm always

24 to 48 hours late of everybody else's content if you go back and watch my content i'm always sort of the last one to weigh in and i do it for that reason i'm like i it's like always the first story's always almost wrong. And it's like almost always like the Mike Glover situation. I covered that. I was the last person into that. And I was the first one to say, hey, let's pump the brakes, right? Maybe this isn't what it looks like. But had I just been the same way as everybody that was like, oh, here's a plurie support. This guy's a domestic abuser. Let me do a video. Right. I would have got egg on my face too. So that's what that's what I try to do is just I'm always trying to take a tactical pause and sort of let things unfold a little bit before I put myself out there. Self-preservation is a lot of it.

Speaking of that, there's like to sort of like preface a bit of this conversation, there's a question that I'd like to throw to you, Nate, and Dave also. Based on, you know, I, with all this stuff going on in the, in the Vet Bros. Cinematic Universe right now, you know, we've all been getting a lot of text messages from friends, like what's going on? Oh, they're out of control, yeah. And I had a phone call with an old Ranger buddy guy I go way back with, you know, 20-some-odd years ago at this point. and um you know he was asking me about some of this stuff and i was like listen all that's bullshit don't worry about it it's not true you know and he was a little bit relieved you know i think to hear that

but he was also like jack do you ever feel like responsible to use your platform to like correct the record and tell people what you know that it's bullshit and i was like oh damn dude you had to put me on the spot like that because i also i'm very allergic to the melodrama i like i think it's really silly and I've been out of the Army 15 years at this point. It's like that's like that chapter of my life has kind of closed. Right. Yeah, I'm 12 months out. So for me, it's like I'm like all my buddies are still team service. Right. Yeah. I'm like I'm kind of like still in it a little bit. Yeah, yeah. I know. But so the question I want to ask to you two guys and we to discuss is like, do you think that our responsibility as special ops veterans is to stay out of the melodrama, not get involved,

stay above it, or is there a responsibility at a certain point on certain topics to come forward and say, I know this isn't true? No, that's, I mean, that's a great question. And I don't know, Dave, if you want me to go first. Yeah, go ahead, brother. So here's the deal. It's one of those things of like, I didn't get involved in any of this until the Mike Glover drama. And then it looked bad to me and he was a green beret.

and I didn't agree with the way it looked. And I wanted to help a dude that I thought was a good dude and I didn't believe the story. Turns out I was right. I've been right about almost everything. Not going to toot my horn on all these stories. But it turns out I was right. So I felt good about that. But at the same time, I have used my platform mainly to defend people.

Right? When Eric Deming came out and did his stuff with Jocko, I did an episode following that. I actually gave you guys credit for being the only ones that like questions. some of the shit he was saying because everybody else just was like hey man tell us tell us this all this shit so i was the first one to sort of like hey let's let's let's diagnose this and i defended jaco i defunded i just defended and he stump the other day so people are like you always attacking navy seals no i'm not like i'm always defending other veterans but the whole tim kennedy situation has flipped that on its head for me and i think one he's a green beret two it was the valor war

The lying about the Valor Awards is what did it for me. That's because I wasn't going to get involved. Here's the thing. You know what? I haven't told anybody this in the entire Tim Kennedy drama, but I like Aaron stuff on your guys' channel that I've never said, right? Here's some backstory to the viewers. Okay.

I was in business negotiations with sheepdog response to become their Pacific Northwest, firearms instructor, partner our companies together when this shit happened. Dikes. When Tim Kennedy was exposed. by the anti-hero podcast. Everybody who said to me, you're just in this for the money for the $400 a YouTube video.

Right. No, I gave up a massive, massive financial situation out of integrity from a Green Beret who obviously to me had been committing shit tons of stolen valor that I didn't want to get involved with anymore. All right. So that's to me, I guess, was like the break point to where I was like, I have,

I feel like a moral responsibility because like Jack said, because we have these platforms and none of my buddies, none of my Green Berets have these platforms. If they're pissed off about Tim Kennedy committing stolen valor, they can't. Them saying anything is not going to do anything, right? But because we have these platforms, do I have a responsibility to the regiment to my fellow Green Berets to all the veterans who came before me who earned Valor Awards and died in the process getting their Purple Hearts? I decided in this case, I do have a moral responsibility to use my platform in a way I thought was appropriate to uphold the integrity of the Special Forces Regiment.

So what I don't want to do going forward is be the guy that's like inserting in myself into all the fucking drama in the vet bro circle, right? It's easy to do, but yeah, yeah, so that's my answer, Jack, is like, this was a very like, you drew the line there. Sensitive personal one to me.

And that's why I got involved. But again, I did it out of integrity, man. I tell people, I'm like, you know what have been the smart thing for me to do?

The smart thing to me to do financially would be to come out and defend Tim Kennedy and gut the anti-hero podcast's credibility and use my platform as the integrity guy to back him and then find myself into that Tim Kennedy vet bro monetary circle. But I didn't do that,

right? Because, again, to me, you cannot lie about having Valor Awards and Purple Hearts because all of the people that we served with that came before us that died earning them. It's just a slap in the face to them that I just, I wasn't willing to do it. And I said from the very start, even the anti-hero podcast, I really didn't care about their episode. I didn't care about the book. I didn't care about the war stories. It was the trigger for me was Tim Kennedy's Facebook post that said, I have received Valor awards for every combat deployment.

I've been up. When I saw that and I knew he didn't, that's when I said, now I'm involved in this situation. Sorry, that's long-winded. Before I give my answer, why don't you go ahead and do the copy check? And then I'll... Sure. Thank you for bearing with us, folks. I got a shout out for another one of our sponsors. So I want to talk to you about Mando. They are a whole body deodorant, that is, safety use anywhere on your body. They're created by a doctor who saw firsthand how normal B-O was being mistreated and misdiagnosed. It's clinically proven to block all odor for up to 72 hours. There are different options. There's the solid stick deodorant, the spray deodorant. These are aluminum-free, by the way. All products are baking soda-free and paraben-free

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Because Mando... Mando makes me think of the way like an S-F guy would talk about... If they were like embedded with Mandalorians, like training them, like, doing fit for Mandeolans. They'd be, hey, the Mando's... They got some questions for us. And also Mando Calrician. Like, Lando's like brother who had an excellent smelling grundle. But, yeah, so to piggyback off what you said,

I don't like the drama. Like I didn't say, I watched some of the stuff going on with the Mike Glovers and tried to stay up on what the latest reporting was. But I don't like the vet drama. I don't like vets tearing down other vets. I also, though, do not think that pointing out, veterans lies about their service, even if it's not about valor awards, but pointing out their lies, I don't think that's tearing down other vets.

I think that's keeping vets in check because if we don't do it, we who have insider knowledge and know when somebody says they pack a rucksack with 50 grenades, that's not a thing. You know, that you civilians aren't going to know. and so for me it's not so much about who did what to whom or you know stuff that's going on in their personal lives or anything like that because I want to see vets succeed you know 100% whether it's with a coffee company a podcast a t-shirt company I don't care you hit to like go negative right and it also seems very catty you know yeah very catty and I very catty and and I want to see veterans succeed but I also want to I want them to tell I want people

tell the truth yeah and and for us you know when it comes stuff like this for people in the television community when it comes to people like Wayne Simmons you know we're the only people who actually know and if we try to play the whole decorum thing and go well I know he's full of shit but I'm not going to say anything then what you're doing is you're allowing these people to go out there and make a bad dame in our name. You know, a bad name for us. To caveat off that, so I weighed in on the Sean Ryan episode and everybody's, you're attacking Sean.

I didn't attack Sean. I ended an episode about why I thought that email was stupid and why I thought that the dude was suffering from psychosis. Right. They were freaking out about this being like some China new war thing. So my point was in the reason why I felt like I'm going to interject on this is why, like you just said, because I know. better. How do I know better? Because this is a special active duty special forces 18 Zulu.

I intimately know what access to information. Right. E8 18 Zulu on an ODA has. And it's not Bob Lizar, element 115 anti-gravitational propulsion systems. Right. Sorry. You know that? Yeah, Jack knows that. Well, actually, Nate, my team sergeant knew everything. So I don't really know what you're talking. Right, right, right. But you know my point. Like the actual access, well, oh, well, he had a TS-S-CI. So does fucking everybody. Everybody does. So like you get those in the 18-acal course. Like, doesn't give you anything. And then also, he goes into the second section where he talks about the strike targeting war crimes. Right. I'm like, I was in Afghanistan in 2018. I did a lot of strike targeting in our missions.

I know how, I think I told the story on our podcast about how we had to do an mission back-to-back nights because the two-star was a sleep and wouldn't sign off on blowing up one building that was full of what 16,000 pounds of HME. I know how hard it is to strike one building. And you're going to tell me there was some two star in the Siege of Sodiv jock with 50 people watching that's like blow up, blow it all up. Right. Kill everybody.

So that was my point of like I read that and go, I know better. Civilians don't know better. Right. Nobody knows better. They just think this is crazy. but guys like us are like, we read that and they're like, this is fucking dumb. So we do have a responsibility to be like,

this is dumb, here's the reason why. And I think that's like I think that's totally fair. The idea to take somebody's, because like I said, there are two articles out there that if you guys want to understand how bad this gets, read Jack's article was in Yahoo News on Michael Frody and, you know, what he went through. And then there's another article in the New York Times

about the Marine Artillery Unit that was in Syria and launched more artillery than I think anybody has since World War II, maybe even before then. And these guys were coming back and seeing apparitions, seeing demons, that the blast injuries to them, it had serious effects.

And so for me, like looking at somebody who is a really tragic story. and then and then sort of like building conspiracy off of his own delusions it's just

it's not right I love I love that you brought that up I was just having a conversation with James and Travels right before I came on this podcast about how that's the story a 19 year

GWAT veteran who's been fucked up in combat who's got PTSD who suffers a psychotic break and doesn't have any fucking support and doesn't have the mental health support that he needs. That's the story. Not that fucking Chinese drones and alien tech.

Right. So it's it's it's it's discrediting the guys you're talking about who have had these issues. Yeah. Right. And the real the real story here is how fucked up all these GWAT veterans are. And how the military. That should be the story in the news. Exactly.

Not on Sean Ryan's podcast about aliens and shit like that. Yeah. And, you know, and it's still a serious problem because I just talked to a buddy whose daughter is dating an active duty guy. And he's conventional, but he's been in a lot of combat. And he's having some serious issues with post-traumatic stress. And he will not go seek help because the military is still punishing people for it. The military is still, you know, they are still like booting people out for it. I just, do you guys know who Ben Pappas is?

No. One of the commanders that stood up Marsok. He's on a podcast with me on the war room sometimes. Awesome, dude. But we were talking about the other day. The question got asked, like, if you are suffering PTSD, should you seek help, will you be punished? And then he said, like, you'll never be punished, yada, yada.

And I had to stop him as an NCO and say, well, wait. Yeah. As long as you report this through the precise, correct channels and do it in the appropriate way, not through, don't go to your company commander and say, I'm suffering from PTSD or drug use. No, you can't do that. Like, the military has these very strict linear paths of doing this to where you can't be punished. But if you slip up and do this the wrong way and tell the wrong person, you are 100% right. The military, I've watched dudes that have self-reported in my unit that I am friends with get fried.

Yeah. Fried for self-reporting. Yeah. So, I mean, you're right. There's a huge stigma because that's the truth. Like, that can still happen to dudes if they don't do it the right way. Yeah. It's fucked up if you think about it.

Sorry, I don't know if I'm just curse on it. I know. No, no, no, you're fine. The other thing I think that, you know, like people who don't know, like the whole, when he mentioned his first car. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, and then some people said just some good oh, cent, and they said, oh, well, like, it wasn't his first car.

Like, this is his, like, registration. It's like, understand how an isop rep work. Sure, when you're a boot and, you know, don't know anything and you go in and you do your isop prep, you answer all the questions, honestly. Like you're calling your parents saying, hey, what was the first street we lived on, right? Right. Because you don't remember. But the thing is, is that you don't remember.

So you can't call your parents. If I would have been a P-O-W in 2018, Dave, and somebody would have showed up and asked me for my ISO prep or my keywords, I would have had no fucking clue what they were. Yeah, exactly. Because you're right. You fill them out and then like three, four, five years go by. Yeah. And you're like, you don't know what you put in there. But yeah, that's a great point.

And so the thing is, when you do them enough, you're like, what's the thing that stands out? So it's like, who is your first girlfriend? Well, it's Wonder Woman. Like, that's the first girl I had a question. I don't remember it was Becky in the third grade. Can you guys explain what the isopper? Okay, so the isoprop. Oh, yeah, we probably should do that.

The isopreprep is a form that you fill out that, you know, has your fingerprints, has your photo, probably now has DNA, I don't know. But it also has a number of questions that if you are ever captured or if you are, you are. are like looking for recovery in order to validate who you are or in order to validate that it's actually you asking for the pickup from the recovery people, they will use these very detailed questions on your isop rep to verify that it's you that when they're talking to or two when they go on target and bring out all these people that they'll have you know, they'll have you you know, people's isop questions there or whatever.

So it's used in recovery. It's for like POWW recovery. It was the idea behind it. Exactly. You can kind of think of it like security questions for your bank if you're, if you like forget your password. Exactly.

Like your mom's name. And you're going to answer your five, six security questions. That's kind of like that. And the other problem is, is that in today's, you know, information environment, the Chinese, the Russian, they know every, like,

any question that's on that isopepep they can figure out, the same way people on Twitter or X figured out what his vehicles were. So a lot of times, like, for my first car, I used to put Kit from Knight Rider because that's something that nobody else would know, but it's something that would always stick with me, right? Right. It doesn't have to be a true answer. It has to be the answer you know you can do it.

That you can remember when you need to. It doesn't matter what it is. Like, you could ask, you know, what's your favorite car? And the answer could be banana, right? as long as you know the answer. And they're, because for the audience to reference, like, let's say Delta is coming to hostage rescue you. Like, they have your isopet. Yeah.

Like, and they're going to, as they be like, here is a hostage who might be six, 10 months later, beer disheveled, they're going to ask you those questions to figure out who you are. And even, and, you know, it can happen in other types of recovery situations where, like, you know, you get separated from a unit or, you know, you're out there or doing whatever. And you wander into a town and call them from a. phone and you're saying, hey, this is so-and-so, I need a recovery in this location. And, you know, and they're like, well, how do we know this is in some elaborate ambush that we're sending people into? So they'll pull out your isop and then ask your questions to verify that this is really you on the phone. Or whatever. Yeah. So, you know, so there were things in that email that, like you say, we know, and we know why they, you know, we know the deal. But if you want

if you want to lead people down a conspiracy road, you can because they don't know better. That's the problem I have with it. Oh, sorry, Jack. Go ahead. I was just going to say that, you know, I was talking to Dave earlier about this. And I think you nailed it, too, in some of the videos you made, Nate, that that manifesto really only has one use. And that is to give a little bit of insight into that person's mental state at that time. Right. And I think it clearly shows, as we all know, he was having a mental health crisis. 100%. That manifesto should not be used as a valid source of information about aerospace technology,

Chinese drones, war crimes in Afghanistan. No, that is not how we use, and I pardon the non-clinical term, the ravings of a madman. Yeah. You know, that's not, you do not go to a manifesto for that type of information. Right. And I don't know if you guys saw, but the police department right before. we came on, just came out and released a little bit more information. Apparently he had like a 10-page manifesto in his phone with more insane rantings. And obviously all talking about how he's being

followed by the FBI and the FBI. Like he was going on and on and on and on and how he was, they were tracking him and he could see them and he was tracking their vehicles and all that. And now, and I don't necessarily trust the intelligence agencies, but like the FBI and everybody's come out and been like, look, this guy wasn't on any watch list. Like nobody was. targeting this dude. He was your typical, like no criminal record, active duty, special forces team sergeant. Like, nobody, none of us know who this guy is. So like, which I kind of believe, right? Like, and based off his career, like, you don't make it to be an active duty team sergeant if you're out doing crazy shit and getting arrested and doing all stuff like that. But that just

kind of shows of like this huge manifesto of like, like, like, again, psychosis and think you're being tracked and think you're being monitored and insane paranoia that just wasn't happening. And what really, and that really pissed me off was the Sean Ryan Live. Not, I don't know if you guys listened to it. Not the, not the episode, but he had, they had like that Twitter live that they did that came out after like the episodes of me and Jameson Travels and everybody that was like, this is fucking dumb. What are we doing here?

And they brought on a bunch of former FBI agents, bunch of Green Berets, Navy Seals, and everybody just talked about how this is obviously all true, and this is a huge conspiracy, and he's still alive, and they're tracking him, and he's trying to make it to Mexico. And it's like, what are you guys fucking doing? None of you know any of this. Wait, first of all, even if this conspiracy was true, nobody knows what's going on. But, like, this is a lot of credible voices to tell the American public, like, hey, don't trust what's going on.

you need to listen to this crazy shit. That was super disappointing for me. So there was another one then because I listened to one, was it last night or the night before? I can't remember where there were a bunch of guys who came on who had been kind of opposing what Sean had said. No, this wasn't that. And they're like...

This was like a big circle jerk session of like why... Yeah, I didn't hear that one. And Nate, that goes back to my earlier comment about like responsibility. and, you know, where does it lie? So I've never spoken about this publicly for some of the reasons I mentioned previously, but there are certain people I have not booked on this podcast and would not because I think there are credibility issues. And one of them, to tell you the truth, is Tim Kennedy.

I had an advanced copy of his book. I could not make it past the back cover synopsis. Good on you. You were the only person that ever read it until now. Well, I didn't make it. It was just the back cover. Yeah, I didn't make it through the back cover. We read it and we were like, that was enough for me.

I was like, this is a no for us. Right. And when a well-known military podcast has a bunch of people like Tim Kennedy, this guy with the conspiracy theories about the cyber trucks, and a bunch of other dubious military tales and other weird stuff. Well, I mean, let's call a spade of spade. like I'll call it for you. We're talking about Sean Ryan, right?

And let's be clear. And I said this before. I like Sean Ryan. I like his show. But I watch it for entertainment. I understand the dude has on a bunch of wazoo fucking UFO, alien, like reptiles in Antarctica interviews. And he doesn't push back at all.

And he lets him spew all their crazy shit. Tim Kennedy. That's fine. It's entertainment. The problem is, is when Sean Ryan decides that he's the bastion of truth for the information that's coming out about a serious domestic terrorist attack, that's when you have to stop and say, okay, no, that's not what your show is, okay? No, no knock on your show. Again, I like it. But the guy you had on, right, like came on and peddled a bunch of crazy

bullshit. And I also think that, and I told people this, this is why I don't beat Sean up for it, because it's like you have these type of people on your show all the time. And that's fine. But like, don't pretend to be something that you're not. Yeah. I don't know the guy, I don't have any problem with him personally. No, I think, again, I like him. I tell people, like, I'm not beating him up. I like his show. I'm glad he's, it's entertainment.

Yeah, I'm glad he's as successful as he is, you know. 100%. I love to see veterans succeed, but you're right. But it's weird because he has this fine line. You know, he has Trump on. He does have people on who have very real things to say. Yeah, yeah. It goes back and forth.

Right. There's some, like, really great, credible sources. on there and some great interviews. And then again, you'll have the guy who said he was a janitor in Antarctica where there was reptile alien people, right? Right. So like, you never know what you're going to get there. My favorite was the guy who didn't know if he was in the special activities directorate

or special activities division. I was like, that's like saying like you're in the Ranger Regiment, but you don't know if it's a regiment or a brigade. Like, I'm not sure if I was in Ranger, Bat or RRC. I was in one of the two, but I'm not sure which one it was. As you put it, Nate, I mean, what are we doing here? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

What do we do? Yeah. Again, I want a caveat for the viewers before they freak out. I like Sean Ryan's show. I'm not beating him up. I'm just saying, come on. Well, they can, there's a pile-on effect, and there are a lot of people out there who really enjoy all the melodrama,

and, you know, picking aside and fighting. And the reason why I think it's rather silly when you zoom back from all of it is that, like, end of the day, like, none of these people arguing on the internet, they don't give a shit about your life or, you know, your family. They don't care about me or, you know, what I have going on. So you have to like take the comment section should be taken with a grain of salt. That was a learning experience for me over the last 12 months, Jack.

Yeah. I started. Because I did, you know, I was an actual silent professional. I didn't have any social media. I did my job. Like, I started these social media channels when I retired. And the first couple months, I was in the comment section, maybe, like, like, arguing. You know what I mean?

And over time, I had one of my creator buddies that sort of mentored me. I was talking to him about it. And he gave me this quote that's changed my whole perspective ever since. He said, every time you see a comment that pisses you off, I want you to remember, 50% of Americans read at below an eighth grade comprehension level. And I went, that's the people in the comment section. There's no point. What am I? I'll still like, I say slights back and forth.

You know, somebody like tries to say some super insulting stuff. I'll do some witty comebacks. But like, the comment section, you're right. It is a deranged, deranged place. We've had people from the same show in comments, in our comment sections, both calling us Russian, like, agents and, like, Ukrainian, like, trolls. Like, like, because we try to be. Because we try to present, like, a nuanced view of a situation. Or you'll have, like, one interview we do where they're calling us left-wing lunatics and another

where they're calling us right-wing propaganda. Yeah, mega-propaganda. It's like kind of, we can be whatever you want us to be, you know, whatever your agenda is. Yeah. Well, you know, I was just going to ask you, like, what kind of feedback did you get from your review of the Eric Deming claims? Oh, that's interesting. I don't know if I should, I'll get into this.

That didn't stop at that video. I've talked to Eric personally for a couple hours, one-on-one. I'll get into that in a second if you guys want to. We'd love to, yeah. But initially, it was really kind of a 50-50, man. Like a lot of people wanted Jocko to be a war criminal, which was kind of shocking to me, because he isn't like a Tim Kennedy personality where it's like, look at me, look at me. He seems like a very, I like his content, like a very leadership, like build up, self-accountability type of guy.

So it was kind of surprising to me when I came out and defended him how many people were angry with me for not calling him a war criminal. Right. Which was weird. But it was a real 50-50 split just for my initial coverage of that. And again, I did a full hour long video. I used your guys as episode. Yeah, I remember that. I went through the whole thing.

And I just called balls and strikes, right? I said, these are things that sound really credible. From my experience of doing this, these are things that don't sound credible. Since then, I talked to Eric one-on-one. And I don't think Eric's a bad guy, right? And I pressed him very hard on the exact same things I pressed him on. Like, one of the things where he says he was getting guys killed. in Ramadi and I said over and over again Eric tell me how he was getting guys killed in Ramadi they're

doing daytime rates yeah so was I and VSO man right tell me how he was getting people killed oh well the martial arts gym right and it was like so and we did this loop back to back to back and we kind of did it and I was like maybe he's right maybe he's not after that I had two of the guys from the team in Ramadi reach out to me unhonestly they didn't want anything to do with it and but I'll tell you from the emails, it's very credible. Like, you know when you are talking to someone credible in an email where they, they've got names, unit names, all that. And they talked about Mike Lee's funeral, right?

They were like, we were at Mike Lee's funeral. No one at that funeral said anything about Jocko getting people killed. Nobody at that at that funeral said anything about Jock being a coward. They were objective. They were like, look, there was some dumb shit Jock was doing. This was this, this, and this. So it was a pretty fair back and forth. But the, and I didn't want to do it.

I'm like, and again, I also told Eric. I said, Eric, if you can bring me eyewitnesses, they don't have to come on the show, they just have to reach out to me and I just have to find them credible to anything, anything firsthand, any of the claims you've made, a single eyewitness, I will platform you. I haven't heard back from him in two and a half months. So I will just say, maybe he doesn't want to get involved, but he came out of doing a lot of accusations. and when I gave him the opportunity to bring receipts,

he went silent. So again, that was long-winded, but yeah, I think now that it's kind of died out, people are back to, you know, sort of being like, Jocko seems like a normal dude. And I'm not excusing and saying Jocco is like some prince.

I've heard, like, the shit in Ramadi sounds pretty sketchy. Yeah. He was probably doing some dumb fucking shit. I'll say that. But is he this war criminal that was telling Chris Kyle to go kill civilians? I don't know, man. Yeah. That's a tough sell for me.

You're right that when, you know, accusations of murder or negligence that's killing soldiers are made, that does require evidence. Yes. You know, extraordinary evidence in some cases. So I get where you're coming from. Well, and the thing is, like, in this community, we've all been divorced. So we all know, like, what it's like to love somebody and what it's like to not love them. And then, like, see, like, see how our truth is very, very. much informed our truth about them is very much informed by our feelings about them and how those

change over time and like for me I felt that Eric had probably a legitimate gripe with the whole CQC thing yes it did sound as though there were some shenanigans that went on with that and and from what and from what I've heard credibility wise like Jocko was banned from any contracts going forward with the maybe like those I agree I called balls and strikes right and that's what I said it's sound incredible right but to me that's where the problem then became exactly of like oh he seems like he's so emotionally invested in the slights against him exactly maybe it's maybe it's that's what I thought too and that's why when he was on the show and started saying some of these things it's like okay like we need like did you hear this firsthand yeah uh some of these accusations

because like we don't our show is about giving people a platform and a lot of times we don't push back we don't question a lot of what we don't have murder accusations every day either yeah well but you guys did push back on that I remember they've pushed back on that like whoa whoa whoa whoa hey you need to tell us did you see this firsthand or did you hear it and and and because that's important right like if you're gonna if you're gonna say these things in public you there's got to be some context to it right and that's what it felt like to me is that he had he had a legitimate thing about the CQC stuff

and then that was like then he took that and not smeared it because I don't think that Eric is dishonest or like or whatever but I do feel like he has a bit of an axe to grind and maybe kind of gets a little target fixated in the sense of and I think he's a lovely guy.

I think he's a great guy again. Yeah for talking to him one-on-one he seemed like it he seemed like an awesome dude. Yeah. Super fucking nice dude. I just personally when I tried to press him beyond the third-hand stories. Like, tell me how you know this beyond, like, rumor mill of the SEAL teams.

Right. I could never get anything beyond of, like, it's known in the community. Right. It's like, yeah, man, but, like, there's a lot of things that are rumors in the community. And that's the thing is you will believe, like, you'll believe things about people that you don't like based on past information, that you wouldn't believe about your best friend, right? So really a lot of times when you're hearing these rumors about people The context is really important in terms of like

What do you think? What do you already think about this person? Well, Ann, I also try to tell people, and I'm sure Jack, I don't know, I bet it's the way in Ranger Bad as well, but I'm like, dude, you guys got to understand like the soft team rooms Are fucking like mean girls in high school. It's the most drama, rumor mill bullshit You will ever see like the level of rumors and gossip

that goes on in like the company hallway would blow your fucking mind, right? So it's like, rumor is like this type of shit's not like, oh, so and so was like taking fucking ketamine while he was fucking on target and yada, yada, yada, yada. Like there's so much of that like you've got to take that with a grain of salt. If it's the community knows this is true. Nate, on that note, I'd like to ask you this thing about the community because I feel like a lot of the things that we've been talking about, a lot of the things you've been talking about,

Jay, Brent Tucker, all those guys, they are things that are actually pretty well known in the special operations community. Oh, yeah. But I found that 10 years ago, 12 years ago, 15 years ago, when I would talk to people about, hey, man, Marcus Lattrell's story doesn't check out. Like, there's some things wrong there.

Or, you know, Chris Kyle lied about some things. Right. People looked at me back then, like, I was crazy. And caveat that. Yeah. Because that's a perfect one. Marcus Latrell, lone survivor.

In the 18 Echo course, I can't say, I have to be careful about this, right, because of where this information comes. Anyway, let's just say in the 18 Echo course, before the movie came out, one of our biggest lessons learned in the 18 Echo course about checking your radios and having crypto in your radios came from that ambition. and the failures of that and the backside of that, and because there's someone potentially over there that was involved in that, that knows that that's what happened. That was before the movie. That was before the book. It was just known.

It was part of the course. We taught it as a learning lesson about how dumb this was and how this whole story was bullshit, right? So like to your point, that was just common knowledge. Right. That was 15 years ago. Right. That that was common, or yeah, 12 years ago now, that was common, common knowledge.

So to your point, like, yeah, and Chris Kyle, right? Like, all of these things, Rob O'Neill is a great one as well. I don't want to knock the dude, but it was like, when that came out, like, I had Delta Force buddies who were like, yeah, fucking that didn't happen. And that was like immediately, right? Like, no, he didn't kill him. Yeah, nobody was surprised. Yeah. Oh, okay.

Right. But, yeah. And then you just move on with your life because you're active duty and you don't give a shit. And nobody, and you're not talking about it. But to Jack's point, yes, the vast majority of these. things are just like, they're just common knowledge. Yeah. Why do you think that it's sort of all, it's not, not only is it all coming out. I mean, journalists and other people wrote about this stuff 10 years ago, but why do you

think it's hitting so hard right now? And it seems like people are, are ready. And I got an answer. Yeah, that they're, they're ready to hear it. I mean, is it because the wars are over? I mean, what do you think? It's, no, I think it's societal. I think 2024, 2025 is where we are in a moment of truth-telling and authenticity in everything in society. You look across the board, no matter what it's been over the last years, it's like the Epstein shit, the ditty shit. It's like all lies are being, Kat Williams came out and said it a year ago. All lies will be exposed in 2024.

Everybody thought he was crazy. And Kat Williams was exposed as hadn't ever having been a Marine. Right? So, but my point is, I just think we are in an era of extreme authenticity that. that people for whatever reason, and Tim Kennedy, like the list goes on of just people being exposed out of nowhere. I don't think it's specifically a G.

I think the war ending does have a big part of it because people are bored, right? It's like you don't have anything to do, so let's talk about drama because there's no war to talk about. I do think there is a portion of that. On top of just the overarching society being like thirsty for, truth because we've kind of been living in a disinformation, whether I'm not saying like right wing, left wing, but just in general, so many people like kind of being like, we're just

been lied to for so long about everything that people are, I don't want to say waking up, but it feels like we're kind of in like waking up cycle. Yeah, that's the zeitgeist of our time, right? Yeah, it just kind of feels like that. And I think that that's just part of the way it's going right now is like people are looking for truth. and they're analyzing things a lot closer than we used to. I guess.

No, that's a great answer. Yeah. I hadn't even thought of it that way. So I, because people send me this stuff, I did watch, well, I watched your video this afternoon. But I also, I think last night I watched Brent Tucker and his anti-hero podcast. We've had Brent on the show before. The new one with all Tim's teammates?

Yeah, with Tim's teammates in it. And I have to say that, you know, my take on the whole thing is like, okay, if he's making up all these stories, that's bad for a whole series of moral reasons, historical, factual veracity. I mean, there's all sorts of reasons why that's wrong. But at the end of the day, like, I kind of just feel sorry for that person that they're so insecure. They're making that stuff up.

But you know what kind of asked me up watching Brent's interview? with those guys was the way Tim raked his boys over the coals in his book unnecessarily and unjustly. All the time. And that's a really low thing to do, you know, especially over something that's not true. Yeah. I mean, even if it were true, it's kind of, it's kind of shitty. But it wasn't true. And so where does that come?

Where does that need to not only prop oneself up with lies? Well, I can tell you where it came from. Do we want to call fucking call a spade of space? Sure. Be real. I'll call spade a spade. Be real. Tim Kennedy did what, two years on an ODA? He's got two deployments. I know. I've got his official military records. I know. I've had him the entire time. That's how I put all this content out. He's got two deployments. He became a Green Beret, went to Iraq in 2006 as part of a SIF team that he wasn't so far to qualified for, which means he wouldn't have been allowed to go on any of the fucking missions to begin with. So he didn't do jack shit in that deployment. And then his next deployment, he's a new E6, right? He goes to Afghanistan, and he's an L&O for the Chexoff, which I can tell you this, where do you put your biggest piece of shit in the company, the L&O at Baff? Yeah.

That's where you send him because nobody fucking wants him on a team. Like, again, I'm just calling a spade of spade, right? So he was an L&O for the Checks off, working at Baff, nobody wanted him. And he gets to go out finally on this one mission, right? Which apparently he did a fine job. Like he was just a young, new dude on a first, kind of like a first time out in Afghanistan. No big deal. That's actually, I'm not criticizing that.

He obviously then writes an entire book about how he's like the hero of the entire story. That's complete bullshit. But that's like his one mission. So he in combat, like he talks about all these people he killed. If I had to put like gun to my kid's head, has Tim Kennedy ever killed a human being before? I would say no. I would say absolutely fucking not. He's never, he hasn't killed him.

That would be my guess. So what I mean by that is he's a dude that did two years on the teams. he had two non-eventful combat deployments where he barely did anything and then he went National Guard and got out. Then he decided he needed to be a war hero. And so he then decides he's so insecure about not having done much. He builds this giant war hero persona where he writes all these books and makes up all these valor awards.

That's, I think, the true story of Tim Kennedy's military service. I haven't wanted to beat him up, but I think that's reality. because why else would you do this? You aren't that guy, bro. Like, you just weren't that guy. So you think that him throwing his boys under the bus like that is basically him putting up a smoke screen. Like, look at all these pieces of shit. I'm the real hero.

I think it's an insecurity thing, like you said. I think he looked around. Like, because I'm not saying I'm not insecure. I'm secure with my service. I had a great career. But I look at some of my teammates that got, I have ODA teammates that have silver stars. And I look at them. And in my own head, I'm like, and I have.

have Valor Awards and Combat Awards a lot more than most people, but I still look at those guys and I'm like, fuck, I didn't do, I didn't do shit. Right. Right. And I think what he did is he really didn't do shit and that he's also an insane level egomaniac narcissist, right? I don't think he gives a fuck about his teammates. I don't think he cares about anybody but himself. So yes, I think he decided I'm going to put every, because this is what a lot of people do, right? To feel better about myself, I put others down. That's not a rare thing in society. That's a very normal human behavior. And I think that's what he decided to do. In an era of 2008 to 2009, 2010, social media wasn't a big thing, right? People were putting things on the internet, not thinking about them being forever. There weren't a lot of soft guys on social media

at that time at all. That's my point. So I think he just, he figured he could say the shit because there was no soft guys on social media and he could just get away with it. And here's the thing. He did. He got away with it for a long fucking time. And I think once you start lying like that, you don't get caught in 2008. You don't get caught in 2009. You're going on Joe Rogan. You're going like 10 years later, you haven't been caught and no one's called you out. At that point, like you believe your own fucking store.

But yeah, that would be my guess, Jack. I think it's utter insecure, which I know people are like so crazy. Like how is a fucking green bray UFC fighter this insanely insecure? But that doesn't matter for men, right? as men, again, you can look at your teammates who are all these grizzled fucking combat veterans that did all this fucking badass stuff. And you didn't. And that internalizes as I have to get out and make myself feel like I was that guy. And I think that's what it is for him. Especially for the types of guys that go into special operations, they are very, I think a lot of

us are very sort of achievement driven, right? We always want to conquer that next challenge, whatever it is. And for people who've done, this is the thought process. And I'll say this as a peacetime ranger, right? This is the thought process that probably everybody goes through. Man, I really want to go to combat. I really want to go. I really want to be a ranger. Okay. All right, I really want to go to combat. And then, like, during my time, it didn't happen. But then it goes, then you finally go to combat. And you're like, well, I really want to get a firefighter. You know, if you did a combat tour, if you went to Afghanistan, you get a firefight, and then you get in a firefight, you're like, I don't think I kill somebody.

Like, I really want to kill somebody. And then you kill somebody, it's like, well, it's just one. Like, maybe that was lucky. And then it's like, oh, I really would like to get, you know, an ARCOM with a V device or a bronze star with a V device. It's like, oh, I got a bronze star with a V device. Well, you know, I don't have a solar star. I don't have a purple heart. Like, there's always something more to look at.

That, Dave, you just called me out. because that was me. That was me then chasing, like moving my family to Japan to try to get on the next rotation because my buddy, former 18 Delta was the team sergeant going to the next Afghanistan rotation to skip Swick, like uphauling my entire like family to do that just to like, oh, I got to get that next one. I get to get that next one. So I dealt with that myself like internally.

So 100%. And there is. I got to the point where I was just the main element leader literally running combat. operations, but you're still like, well, I need to get a little bit higher than this. Right. Like, you're right. Like, I need to get an even bigger near ambush. Yeah.

Like, well, my, my, my buddy next to me has got a silver star and I only have an Rcon B, so now I need a BSMB, right? So that's a really, very, very real thing. And the thing is there's no real top. Unless you were like in Delta and got a medal of honor with like eight people hearts. Like, that's the one thing because, like, I have friends who won Valor Award. or got purple hearts and they were conventional. And every time we talk about something tactically,

they'll say, well, you know I was never in soft. And I'm like, yes, like, we've known each other for years. I know you were never in soft, but you did real shit. Please stop practicing everything with I was never in soft. I know it. And I still admire like everything you did, you know. Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure.

So, yeah. Yeah, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, and, man, you want to talk. Let me do an aside of the real quick, because I always love to shout out regular infantry and Marines because I don't think they get enough credit for the crazy shit they went through in GWAT. One of my buddies, who is a Delta Force legend,

he was just inducted into the Oregon Military Hall of Fame on every high-profile mission that there was in the first 15 years of the war. He told the story at his induction ceremony because he was also part of the Delta Force group that went in to save the Marines in Fallujah that were getting basically overrun out of that building where they had to bring the tanks in.

If you've heard Cody Alford's story, he was one of the Delta, he was the Delta Force medic in that story that Cody Alford actually talks about. Didn't Hollenbaugh get a DSC for that? I believe so, yeah. But anyway, he told that story at his induction, Hall of Fame induction.

That was the war story he decided to tell as the craziest combat that he had ever seen and ever been in in his entire career with regular Fallujah Marines. Right. That was the craziest thing. One of the most decorated Delta Force operators had ever been in. So you hear that.

And you're like, dude, these fucking 18, 19 year old kids. And this was in 2003 and 2006 when like we didn't know shit about CQB. Right. We didn't know shit about urban combat. Like that we learned everything that we know now from that shit. And these just 18 and 19 year old kids like went in and did that. it blows anything I did in combat so far out of the water that I always look at those guys in admiration.

So when I hear guys be like, oh, I was just a 3-11 Marine. And you're like, that's in delusion. Yeah, right. That's not just a, bro. That's like shit well beyond I ever did when you were 19. Yeah, it's to say, like even like the nasty guard, right? Like, you know, before the GWAT was the nasty guard. And then you see these kids, these, you know, Arkansas kids.

out in Sauter City, like going Winchester in their, you know, strikers or their Bradley's or whatever in Sauter City and getting their ACog shot off their rifles. It's like, yeah, there's no separation anymore. Yeah, and I tell people I'm like, hey, man, like, and that blowout near ambush I was in where my entire team got Valor Awards from Silver Star Down. Yeah.

I got fucking, I got like breakfast at the Chow Hall that morning when I got off the plane at Kath. Right. Right. Like that's a whole different war to be working in than that early phase of the war. Like I'm not, I don't tell any lies about that. Yeah. I mean, it's just different. Yeah.

I always say that the soft mission, it was tough. It was dangerous, but it was also pretty Gucci for the most part. Oh, yeah. Especially in the 2000, once we got out of VSO and we went back to the FOBs and just operated just doing like haves and gabs out of the fobs. Like that's a very different, very different war than the Fobbs. first half. It's not Restrepo. Yeah, no, no. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what do you think? Because when it comes, you know, like we see, so I'm going to talk about stolen valor, but not with the capital S, capital V, like the federal law of stolen valor, but actually just the idea of stolen valor about

lying about service. Yeah. And there is, there is a difference, right? Like if, if you want to tell the audience, like what real stolen valor means, so they understand compared to what you're going with. So, And a crime in most states, I think, too. But for the federal statute, in fact, they had to change it. They had to narrow it down because it did impede on First Amendment rights. But what it is down to now is, I think it was 2013, is if you lie about Purple Hearts or Valor Awards or combat action. CIBs as well. C-I-B, C-A-B and what's the other one?

C-A-B. C-A-B. C-M-B. So if you lie about those very narrow things, Valor Awards, Purple Hearts, or Combat Awards, is a federal crime. Well, but there's even a bigger caveat. Four specific monetary game. For monetary game.

Four monetary game. Correct. So somebody walking around saying that they were Delta Force and you know did all these that's not that's not stolen valor as it's labeled as a crime we might say it's stolen valor but we have to say that it's like a small s small v stolen valor it's not actually

like Tim's entire book that's a small s small v right like he he made up a bunch of war stories but if he's lying about valor awards I call it stolen valor but I mean well he didn't lie about valor words in the book right that was on his Facebook page and all over the place but in the like you're I'm giving your audience context, like a bunch of made-up war stories, like Dave saying, that's not

like official stolen valor. Right. So a lot of times when we say stolen valor, and I've changed my language a lot, and I rarely say stolen valor now. Like Tim Waltz, Steve Slayton out of Arizona, the Republican candidate who got torpedoed for lying about being on these secret ops, Tim Waltz about his time in combat. Troy Nels, the, Republican who was wearing a C-I-B when all he was authorized was a C-A-V, you know, things like this. And again, like, this isn't political. We should call it out wherever we see it. Especially with public officials.

Especially with public officials. Yes, sir. But the thing is, is it, so talking about Stormdollar, like, we have the guys in the mall wearing uniforms that they bought at the Army Navy trying to get, you know, a Starbucks. The homeless guy in an Army Army D-T shirt. Right. But what's really weird to me is when we see it inside the service. And we see it two different ways, I think.

We see it with people who, you know, were a fuel depot operator and saying that, you know, they were an 0-311 or that they were at SF or that they were this or that. And then we see it in our own, right? We see it with like Tim Kennedy and Chris Kyle. there may be another personality out there making the rounds talking about acting his way through Afghan checkpoints which we all know is not something that one is... Yeah, there's somebody on my radar too, I'm not going to say, but yeah, there's a few more that there's some potential too.

And so, you know, I'm curious what you think, and both of you really, where do you... Are these people just habitual liars? And at any point along the way, if they hadn't been in the military, would they lie and say they're a military? Or are they people who are unimpressed by what they did, even if they did great things and always want it to be a little bit more?

Oh, I mean, yeah, I guess I'll take that. I think, for one, I want to say what, let me say what's worse, okay, because I think I want people going to know this. What's worse? Is a Green Beret lying about having Ballard's worse than a homeless guy on the street wearing an Army P.T shirt? Kind of. Yeah.

million thousand times percent. Tim Kennedy's stolen valor to me is 10,000 times worse than the Marine cook who said that he was an infantryman. Why? Well, because the expectations are a thousand times higher on you for your character. Right. Okay. So that's where I want to come from from there.

Why they do it? Oh my God. That is we're getting it. We need to get a psychiatrist on for that because again, like, especially in the off ranks, right? And let me just talk about Rob O'Neill, okay? As a example. I don't beat Rob O'Neill up

because Rob O'Neill is a fucking war hero. The dude has silver stars not from that fucking operation. He is well known as a badass motherfucking warfighter. However, comma, we also have this other fucking side of the coin where he very

obviously didn't kill Osama bin Laden and has written books and made millions of dollars off of those fake stories. How do we get that psychologically? I have no idea because I can't transplant myself into the brain of that because I am so hyper careful myself about when I talk about these things to make sure that I don't delineate from the truth at all that I can't comprehend about how these dudes can just blatantly lie to not only like the American people's faces, but like other soft veterans faces.

That's like we know it's not true. And you're telling us to our faces we're fucking dumb. So maybe Jack's got a better take that out on me psychologically. But for me, I don't understand it. I wish I had a better answer for that, but I just, I don't know. Yeah. No, I don't think I have necessarily. a good answer or a satisfying answer. I think, yeah, you're right. These people are driven by

massive insecurities. And we've touched upon it a little bit. I mean, there are a lot of insecurities in special operations. I mean, we're always testing each other, testing ourselves, am I good enough? You know, the self-talk that you mentioned, you know, would I live up to these guys? Am I as good as that guy over there? There's a lot of that. But most of us have that inner dialogue of like, you know, this is what is real and this is what is not. Right. And some folks, yeah, are just so insecure that they feel the need to do that. It's sad. For me, I think it's sad. And I actually don't like the term, I'm nitpicking stupid stuff. I don't like stolen valor as a term because nobody can steal whatever you did, Nate. Like those are your experiences, whatever Dave did.

the guy walking around the mall pretending he was a colonel in Delta Force is not taking anything away from the service of any real soldier. I understand there are real concerns. Some of these people are like defrauding women. It's terrible stuff. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't, like on a personal level, I don't get jazzed up about that so much. But you are right. When it comes to guys within the ranks, the expectation of someone who is a ranger or a seal or a green beret is higher. And we expect that you're at least going to make an effort to tell an honest perspective if you decide to.

I do think, let's be honest, though, we got to talk about monetary gain. Yes. It has been massively lucrative. Millions and millions and millions of dollars that have been made off of guys like Latrell and Kennedy and Rob O'Neill. So, and Jocko, not saying, I'm not lumping Jock in with them, but I'm saying, there is millions and millions of dollars to be made in this arena. And I do think that we can't discredit that completely as well as a huge portion for some of these guys. And the reason why I say that, the Tim, the Tim Kennedy debacle, I think is the best case of that.

Because what he decided was when he got caught by the veteran community, right? When we all, we saw the anti-hero podcast, I put out all the times he's lied about the Ballard Woods. he got caught. The veteran community, the soft community, we all said, okay, he's exposed. He decided to come up with the crazy rebuttals and like try to fight it, do the Lance Armstrong thing, so that he basically said, I don't give a shit about the veteran community. I don't care about the soft community. I'm going to placate to the civilians who don't know better and try to hold on for dear life to that monetary section of my demographic. So I do think millions of dollars in fame, I think, is enticing, right?

So I think that does have a big part. I agree. And, you know, we were kind of talking about this before the show. But when we see people, and I'm going to talk about like Wayne Simmons, who was on Fox for a long time during the GW. As a CIA, you know, former CIA who is never in the CIA. You know, we talk about Malcolm Nance and a lot of like the lies, you know, the things that he said that has given him the positions. And, you know, Tim, that somehow these people who are willing to go out there and say things that can be that can be disproven. But by the time they catch that momentum, we're just like the people who can disprove it are just like little reedy voices.

You know, like they're up there already. Go to Tim Kennedy's Instagram post where he admitted last night that he doesn't have Valor Awards and Purple Hearts. And look at the comment section and look at the 20,000 likes that are on that video. Yeah. Like we talk about me and the anti-hero podcast. My videos have done half a million views on Tim Kennedy. Yeah. I think that's baby numbers to compare to the average person that sees him on Fox News that has no fucking clue.

Right. No clue. And they're not going to. Right. And they can, like you said, these are just tiny little voices that like the community knows, the veteran community knows, but like from large scale. He was just on Fox News three days ago. Yeah.

Talking about the Livensburger thing, right? So it obviously, it's not reaching like what you're talking about. Right. Even with that. And this is the biggest, most exposed case of a soft dude being a fraud that we've ever seen. And again, he's doing fine. Like I said, once they catch that wave, what do you, what can you do? Like the media complex, you know, and right, left, it doesn't matter.

They're not going to turn their back on the people that they invested in. No, and neither. And here's big, let's call it more spades of spade. And neither is the Department of Defense or Special Forces Committee. Right. Why? Because this dude's been an amazing fucking recruiting tool for the last 15 years. UFC fighter, Jason, born, Tim Kennedy, Green Beret.

Right. Yeah, they're not about to interject themselves into this shit. And now, again, I think he's a liability now. And I think they might realize that. I think we're going to find some things coming out of US SOC here pretty soon. But to your guys' point, like they, the news media, the apparatus, the DOD, like, they don't give a shit about our quarrels and exposing stuff. This is another thing that I wanted to bring up during this show when talking about responsibility, do we have a responsibility to speak out? Do you think the commands have a responsibility to speak out at a certain point?

Like, does it reach a level of, let's call it, stolen, very? valor that there is a real responsibility for the command to come forward and say, you know, just factually, this is what happened, this is what happened, this is what happened. Do you think it gets to that point? Or do you think it gets there? And when does it get there? Do they have a responsibility to? Yes.

Will they? No. Why? Because look at Marcus LaTrell's story. He just came out on a podcast the other day talking about how the Navy wrote that book for him, set him on a book to our. gave him all his lawyers and then sent him on his way so that he could be the great recruiting tool for the U.S. Navy for the next 15 years. The Navy did that. Marcus said that. I'm not saying that.

I showed that in an episode on podcast he did. I'm not knocking Marcus for that. I'm saying the Navy did that. So do I have any expectations that command is going to come out and do the right thing? No, could they? The Sergeant Major of the Army was just on the Jedberg podcast. You're telling me you couldn't have the first Special Forces Command commander come on and talk about how we're going to look into the biggest fraud of a Green Beret that's ever existed. Of course they could. Will they? No, I don't think they're going to touch it with the 10-foot pole. I think they're going to let him, I think it's, it might be getting to the point now. I will say this, Tim Kennedy did not come out and admit to all this stuff last night for no reason. Okay, he didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart.

Let's leave it at that. We'll see how that plays out over the next couple weeks. He's not a great, It's not because he just decided and had this moral epiphany that like, oh, I should probably be honest now. There's some reasons. So I do think at some point when it becomes a massive liability to the Special Forces Regiment or the DOD, you got to do something. Right. Right. But will they? I don't have a whole lot of confidence.

I just don't. I've never, and maybe this is biased as an NCO, but I have just never had any faith in the general officer. to do the right thing. I look at guys like General Millie. I look at guys like General Austin. And I just don't, man. Like you haven't produced anything to tell me that you're going to do the right thing. Okay?

So that's where I come from on that. Yeah. The other thing that was interesting, or that is interesting to me, and Jack and I were talking about this too, is that these people, like the people we've talked about, who will go out there and blatantly lie in a world where people know the truth. Yes. In a world, like you're not telling some girl on a bar

where she has no way of fact-checking you. You're not like behind the scenes telling producers the secret things that you can't say. You're out there, you know people are going to see through it. Did you see my video this morning? Tim Kennedy, the International Sports Hall of Fame induction was introduced as having a Bronze Star Medal with valor in front of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

So like you just said, that is as in your face as it gets lies. And in 2019, this wasn't even 2009. You can always say, well, I don't know why they said that. It's like, no, you gave them your bio to read. That's your script. That's your script. Yeah. You know?

Yeah, of course. And I will say this, because the more I've unpacked this with the Valor Award statements, what Tim has done, other than when he said it on his own Facebook page and he fucked up and he put it on his own website, right? He has specifically done it on his own channels. But what he's been really good about, because I showed 30 different times this has happened, in interviews,

he'll get the interviewer to introduce him as someone with a bronze star medal with valor, and he won't refute it. He won't acknowledge it. And I've picked it apart, and I've been very careful to see how he does it. He doesn't refute it, but he also won't, like, he doesn't acknowledge it,

but he also doesn't say, hey, stop. You know what I mean? So he's very, he's not dumb. He's clever, right? But like, it's caught up at this time. Yeah, Malcolm Nance, he does the same thing where when he's shown on like a newscast or whatever, it'll say like naval intelligence officer or counterterrorism intelligence officer. He's never an intelligent officer.

He was a, he was a singhant guy in the Navy, right? And the thing is, like, if he's not saying it, is it his fault? Well, I say yes, because like, here's the thing. If I came on your guys' podcast and Jack introduced me. as Silver Star recipient Nate Kornakia, and I just sat silently and let the fucking episode go on. Right. No, that is me acknowledging that I have a fucking Silver Star, period.

Like, it is my duty. And I would, I would panic. I would like, oh my God, Jack, please. No, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's back this up. I do not. Right. But no, when you're, when you, that video I say where he's, he's sitting there, like his face getting talked to when it's like Tim Kennedy, Valor Award or like Bronzer Metal with B device

for valor under fire and then he stands up and walks to the podium and gives his speech. No. Sorry. That's a no-go. So to kind of cap off, like, one of the things I think about these people who, like, make these things up and then get so much acclaim for it, because they're out there, like a lot of them. Some of them are running charitable foundations, right?

But these people, I think that there's an element, I don't want to call them narcissist because I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but there has to be an element of narcissism there. Are you there, Nate? Yeah, I'm here. Can you guys hear me? No, we can hear you. We just can't see you. I might have lost my camera. I'll stand by one second. I might have to switch to the shitty camera for the end of this. But yeah, so they, these people, I think where we see the narcissism on display is they are far more. Sorry, guys, we lost the good camera. It's okay. We got you. They are far more successful in the public sphere than people who actually do. did the jobs they said they were doing.

100%, which just goes to show that... It speaks to a sort of corruption of the institutions as a whole. Right. This media complex and the special forces, or I should just say, military commands, the CIA in some instances, that they're all sort of either turning a blind eye or not doing the right thing or blatantly doing the wrong thing that leads to these sorts of, some of the worst, grossest voices, rising to the top. Right. Yeah. Yes. No. And I've called, I've called it kind of like the old guard purge.

It's kind of like a purge of the old soft guard. A lot of these guys that they've been the face of the soft community for 10, 15 years and they're being exposed. So the question is, is like, what happens next? I think it's good, right? Because I just had, I would say three hours ago, a group of dudes from the Q course who were in language school who reached out to me they were like I love your show like hey keep doing what you're doing we love that you're exposing shithead green berets we all look up to you yada yada yada what that tells me is like we have like we have the young generation still coming up still coming through and they're still looking up to guys right and the guys that they're looking up to if there are all these like shithead grifters

like that are that are writing books about carrying rucksacks full of 50 fucking grenades and, like, throwing grenades at women and children. That's the example that we're setting for that next generation. No, I don't think we can do that. And I think, again, when you talk about having a responsibility to call these things out, I think that's where the responsibility also falls. I'm not like Jay over at Greenberry Chronicles or Jake's Weg that are like hyper-focused on developing the next generation.

I don't have the time for it. But I still try to do mentorship here and there. but I mean like I'm also still trying to be a good representation for those dudes. And again, I know I did a whole video about how not to look up to me. I'm not your role model, yada, yada, yada. But as a whole, like the guys that are trying to go into the military, into soft, combat arms, infantry, whatever you're doing, I remember I looked up to those guys too, man, and it's just natural.

So having good rep, I've said this from the start of my channel, having good representations of what it means to be a soft soldier. I think is hyper important in the social media space. Because everybody, I get this comment all the time. You should be a silent professional, yada, yada, yada. It's 2025. Right. Social media, chat GPT, there is no more, like, while you're active duty,

right. Yes, 100%. You should not be like, but to tell me as a veteran that in 2025, I can't talk about these things. Right. Like pound sand, man. Right. But again, that's kind of my take is like, we do kind of.

to have a responsibility to shore up our own, make sure our shitbags, because I think about it in the company or in the team room. If I get a shitbag on the team or in the company, we take care of that. Right. We take care of that dude. He does not, he gets kicked off the team. He gets sent to the arms room, right? So why should it be any different when we get out in the veteran community? Why should we stop policing our own? That's kind of my take on it, I guess. Yeah. We're in your mind's eye, if we're to like skip forward a little bit, where do you see this going for Tim Kennedy? Like I think Brent is going to keep making podcasts of every chapter of Tim's book for the next five years. He's only two chapters into like a 20 chapter book.

I mean, where do you see it going, you know, over the long haul for Tim? So I said for me, I said in this video, he admitted he doesn't have Bauer in Combat Awards. For me, it's done. I've said in every single video, that's all I care about. he admitted I was right. His whole Instagram post, he acknowledges the things I put out in my video. He didn't say anything about,

he wasn't talking about the anti-hero podcast. He was talking about the dude that exposed him for lying about Valor Awards and Purple Hearts. That was my stuff. I hate the way he did it because I promise you guys, I was still holding out hope for Tim. Had he come out and said, the truth, I do not have these Valor Awards.

I am sorry. I should not have misled people, right? And just took full ownership. I had a video already recorded that was going to say, I forgive Tim Kennedy and you should too. And I was going to tell the American people, look, I empath, what he did isn't okay,

but we can empathize with it. He's this 23-year-old kid, Green Beret, UFC fighter. He's getting paraded around in front of SIF companies by generals. He's going on Joe Rogan. He's making millions of dollars, Black Rifle Coffee Company, 5-11. The fame is intoxicating.

He's on Fox News. Everybody loves him. He gets intro. introduced as having a valor award. He lets it slide once, right? Like, as men, we could understand as a 23-year-old man how that could have. I was prepared to give him that benefit of the doubt. And his admitting to not having those Valor and Combat Awards was,

I never said I had that. And it was just like, bro, I did a whole episode of the 25 times that you had. Everybody's seen it. So for me, it's over. but to get into where it goes forward. Yeah, I don't think, I don't think, I think Brent's a dog with a book. I think until Tim Kennedy comes on that podcast,

on the anti-hero podcast, and admits to all these things, I don't think he lets it go. And that's his right. You know what I mean? He uncovered this. He can take it as far as he wants to go. I never really cared about the war stories. But what I think is his reputation is forever destroyed in the SF soft veterans.

are in community. His comment section, no matter what he posts, is destroyed. I do know that he's taking massive hits from sponsors and companies that have already cut him off. But I do think that, again, like we talked about, he has enough of a blind civilian boomer Fox News base that he will be, he will be fine to keep peddling bullshit teaching courses to that specific demographic. I don't, Unless the Department of Defense comes out, UCMJ's him, pulls his tab and beret in front of everyone. Right. I think he's going to keep on keeping on,

doing Tim Kennedy things. That's the way I see. And that was the advantage. If you were coming out of the GWAT before 2010, right, when everybody else was still, you were first to market. Yeah. You were first to market. And you got that ground.

That's a big part of it. Yeah. You got that groundswell. And now it's sort of like, I mean, you know, any heroes, a good size podcast gets a lot of views. Your good size podcast get a lot of views. But is that going to sway things when Fox has them on? Probably not. No, of course not.

Like my video I do with 500 views on Tim Kennedy, again, it's it also is just placating to the same people who already know. Right. Right. So it's the same group of veterans, soldiers. and also civilians who are, you know, into this type of thing, they know already. Nothing I could put out about the dude is going to shock anybody at this point. And the people who blindly support him are going to, or they've got no clue. They haven't even seen my channel.

They didn't even heard of the anti-hero podcast, right? They see him on Fox News and whatever. You know, at this point, like, I don't, I hate to say that, like, I want to see the dude lose everything. Because that's not true also. I just wanted, like, and here's the crazy thing. I've told this before. Like, I've got pictures of me and Tim Kennedy together on my Instagram. I actually liked, I was one of the very few, and I'm sure you guys know the back channels.

Tim Kennedy has been a joke in the SF Regiment for a decade and a half from within. Like, if you talk to any Green Beret, like in the company, what a douche, right? I was one of the very, very few guys that wanted to give this guy the benefit of the doubt. But, you know, it was like, yeah, you know, he kind of. he's, you know, over the top, but, you know, he's good at recruiting. Like, I would always sort of defend him a little bit. Right. And so I wasn't a Tim Ken hate, Tim Kennedy hater to start.

And there's a lot of them in the SF Regiment. I can promise you that well before this whole thing happened. And I just wanted to see him have some integrity and apologize, man. That was it. I said that from the very first episode. Had he come out and just said, I'm sorry. Like, the day after the anti-hero podcast came out, just came out and said, look, I'm sorry, I was young.

I embellished some things. I definitely shouldn't have that book. I embellished it to make it more enjoyable for the reader, and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that, guys. Boom. Clay's closed. I never do a video. Anti-hero podcast probably never does a follow-up.

Tim Kennedy is doing just fine. Right. But it was the narcissistic where he put a middle finger up to everybody else and said, fuck you guys. You're the liars, not me. It was the Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong did that same thing, right? He got caught.

What did he do? Well, he didn't go down quietly. He told everybody else their liars. He called everybody else cheaters. He attacked, you know, like other teammates, family members. The difference is Lance Armstrong finally came out and came clean. Right. And even then, after all of that crazy shit with Lance Armstrong, people forgave him.

Right. They forgave him. And he was just five. So my thing has always been like, who? is this dude's PR team. Yeah. Because they are the worst PR team I have ever seen in my entire life. Because it was so easy to fix this from the start.

Yeah. And the thing is, like you say, if you meet a culprit, like, you know, we see it with politicians, whether it was Walz or, uh, what was Ronnie, uh, who's the, who was the admiral who has busted down, uh, to, uh, captain, but still calls himself. Ronnie Jackson, Republican, I think out of Florida, whatever. Like, he still calls himself.

Like, these people, or Tim Kennedy, or they're always going to have a fan base, right? So even if they were, even if they were say, yeah, it was a mistake. I'm sorry. People aren't going to leave them. Right. Yeah, and I think I'm fine with that for Tim. If Tim wants to have his niche fan base, he's got his social media following with a million followers, and that's it. Cool.

because he's not going on any more podcasts and peddling his stories. Right. Right. Like he can't now. So we're taking that part of it away to where he's not going to be the face of soft. He's not going to be the face of Green Berets anymore. And again, I don't, like, he's, he's, I don't think he's a terrible dude. I just think he, he's so, he's such an egomaniac, he couldn't apologize.

I don't want him to, like, lose his livelihood. Sure. Like, good. Have your circle. Go do it away from everybody else. influence the next fucking generation, right? Good on you. No problems with that. That's kind of where I'm at with the whole thing. Yeah. Nate, what is next for Valhalla VFT? What's coming up in your future? Oh, God. Man, I take this one day at a time, man. I've had no planning. I've had no like path forward

the whole way, which people think is crazy of like, you know, for content. I just kind of like, I put out the content I want. I think that's what people like about me is like, I'm not, I think that I'm just willing to talk about things that people won't talk about. And I think that's why people like my channel. I, you know, and I've had a lot of my buddies that are like,

don't change, man. Like, don't take those big brand deals and then decide like you can't do, like you can't talk about sensitive topics anymore, right? You can't talk about person X or person Y because now you're in the fold, which I don't think I will. I don't really give a shit of, as you guys can tell.

like I'm not worried about what people think. I just do what I like. I surround myself with the people I like. I like you guys. I like the other guys I do content with. So for me, I'm just going to keep doing that type of content. I'm going to try to get away from,

of course, I'm going to cover current events if a green beret goes out and blows himself in a Tesla cyber truck in front of Trump hotel. Might be hard to avoid that. Yeah. Right? Like, that's going to happen on my channel.

But I've got a couple ideas going forward. What I want to do is start, I want to start giving like plastic to sort of young and up-and-coming soft or even regular infantry military guys that I like, that maybe wouldn't have gotten the platform otherwise, much like you guys did with me when I was a brand new channel. I had a few people do that. And then I want to start, I know this is going to sound corny,

I want to start the real war heroes podcast where I have on, guys, I know personally that are legit, badass warfighters with real stories, right whether they are Fallujah Marines or whether their Delta Force operators does not matter to me to let the American people hear the stories I know this is kind of petty right

but to let the American people hear the stories the real stories of the dudes who did this for real instead of a lot of the stories that we've been hearing over the last 10, 15 years that's what we try to do on the team house I mean most of these episodes we're trying to find guys

who are a good representation from their unit. You know, when someone pitches someone to me and they have a bunch of war crimes charges hanging over their head, I'm sort of like, maybe not that guy right now. Like maybe we find someone else from that unit who will, you know, represent, you know, what we hope young people would aspire to be somewhere down the line. And I think we usually succeed in this mission.

Sometimes we might fall short. But I was just going to say like I like your idea too especially if it's not really an inner because there's something fun about sitting around with bros telling dumb ass war stories that well I think that's that's the idea I don't want it to be like a real podcast interview but more like like you guys like a team room like you sit here and shoot the shit with guys that I know are legit yeah yeah yeah I mean it's just I don't know there there's a lot of of funny moments or a lot of harrowing moments, like the most ridiculous moments that come up. But, you know, even when you're carrying a backpack full of 50 grenades that have slightly straightened pins and no safeties, you know, what gets me, what gets me is you can tell war stories and you can tell war stories that would pass muster with us, where we like, where if I wasn't there, I wouldn't know you were lying, right? Right.

But then you decided to tell us, then you decide to tell a story. You must not have seen what I did. And one of the first episodes I did about Tim, where I explained how easy it is to lie about war stories, I told this big, elaborate war story about our time in Musa Clay and Helmand and how we were working with the Morsak team and we started taking all this fire. And we had an Australian peel and like our CCT got shot in the calf and all this shit, right? And then at the end of the story, I just say, by the way, that was my best friend in 18 Zulu's story. I was never there. He was an 18-year-old working with Marsoc in 2009.

Right. Why? Because I've heard him tell that story and it's an awesome story. And that's how easy it is for guys like us to tell a story that passes the sniff test. Right. But it's bullshit. You know what I mean? But when you say, I think, I don't know, I think I'm going to talk about in the last podcast. In 2018, in Erugan, we were in a grenade-heavy area.

teammates that got fucked up, got fucked up in a grenade battle from over the top of compound balls. We started carrying way more grenades than most people ever would on a mission. And I tell people, way more grenades than everybody carries was like five frags, an incendiary and a thermobaric. Right. Not a rucksack full of 50 grenades. Also, I tell people I'm like, do you know what it's like to throw, to like pull pins,

prep grenades and throw them while you're being shot? that. This is not like a, who a process. You're like, oh, shit the pin. I didn't get this right. The fucking tape. Right? Like, it's sort of throw 50, like, in his book, he throws 25 grenades into a building as they're running up to it.

You know, it's like, yeah. It's like an auto, he's like an auto launcher. But the, but the thing is, like, can you imagine, can you imagine at night under Nod's having 50 loose grenades with their, with their pins all tangled, you know, the spoons like Oh my In a bag

In a backpack Rattling around in a backpack You pull out one And the entire bag goes off In a truck Yeah It's rattling around In a Humvee like this

Yeah Oh my God Yeah That's the insanity Did you guys used to You guys Like I mean Everybody did

You like you straighten the pins Just a little bit To make them easier to pull Right We would We would cut one of the pins At the base And then fold the other one off

So all you'd have to do Is basically Unfold one pin and pull Because, yeah, two pins rolled down like that, the bullets start flying. Yeah. You got gloves on? Yeah. Forget about it.

You're not pulling it out with your teeth? Yeah. Yeah, no, no, no. So, yeah, some guys, some guys would do the straighten. Yeah. But we, yeah, that's the way we would do. We cut one of the pins completely and then just fold the other. So all you got to do is just pull one up and then pull it out.

So for people who don't know what we're talking about, on a fried grenade, on, you know, thermobarics and everything. But they have pins, which is, so you have your spoon, which leads into the fused. And then the pin is what keeps that spoon in place. So you have to pull that pin out. Well, the pins, when they come from the factory. Keep talking. I'm just going to pick something real quick. I'm with you.

When they come from the factory, the pins are like two-pronged. Like, you know, or it's like a pronged pin, like a ring. And then they're folded back up against the spoon. So it, it's very, you know, it's very, very tough. It's almost impossible, really, to just pull the pin without straightening the ends first. So you always kind of pre-straighten them or do something to make them easier to pull under duress. But who do we have Friday? Coming up Friday, we have a career CIA officer, someone who actually Rick Prado introduced me to.

Nice. So excited to have him on the show. I'm back with the real camera. Nate, you know, any final thoughts? I encourage everyone to go check out Val. Halah VFT. I love this channel too. Go subscribe to Nate's channel. Any final thoughts? Anything else you want to talk about before we get going tonight? I did have something. There was something I was going to talk about that I wanted to talk about and I'm trying to think about it. But I can't remember. Maybe not. Did we talk about it before the show?

I think it had to do. I think it had to do with. Livensburger, maybe not. The cyber truck. Oh, yes. The thing I did want to talk about, Matt Livensburger. Okay. And I want to get your guys' take on this because it is fucking pissing me off the more I see it. What I'm seeing, because he was a green beret, when Tim Kennedy comes out on Fox News talking about it, Sean Ryan and Sandm Shoemaker and all these guys, everybody keeps talking about how, what a great guy this is, and that like the way he did this, he set this up so that nobody would get injured and like,

and all these things about how he was a good person and yada, yada, yada. I'm not giving this fucking dude a pass. You know why? Because he put, he basically built a shoddy ass V bed, rolled it up in front of a fucking front of a hotel, which could have had a three-year-old child and their mom walk out that door the second that V-bed went off and killed, like six, seven people were still seriously injured in that blast. This dude is a domestic terrorist. I don't care that he's a green beret.

I actually am more ashamed that he's a green beret and that he decided to take his own life by potentially killing American citizens. So I don't know what your guys' take is, but this is all I've heard about like what a, now again, mental health, I get it, right? I don't want to knock on the family, but like, we shouldn't be glorifying this dude as like some mastermind to an exposure plan where he's exposing, you know, like CIA secrets and all this crazy shit. Like, that's not what he was, man. He was a mentally ill dude that potentially almost killed six American citizens. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I mean, I might,

the one thing I might take exception to is like the actual legal definition of a domestic terrorist. He might not fit into that. But I understand what you're saying that. He's He was terrorizing the American public in a sense by blowing up this truck in public. Right. And you're right. Of course, we don't want any veteran or soldier to take their own life. That's terrible. But hey, man, if you're going to do it, you don't need to take down, you know, a bunch of civilians with you.

Come on. Yeah. I would also push back on the domestic terrorism thing. Just because I don't think that was really, it wasn't. First off, I'm just, I'm waiting. I feel bad that he about his mental illness. And it wasn't even like depression. Like I don't think, I believe that he was at a stage where he could not separate fact from fiction.

Yeah. And, yeah, no, I agree. I think domestic terrorists was the wrong choice of words. That's not what I was trying to say. What I was really trying to say of like, he wasn't this like whistleblowing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. up a v-bed just in the perfect way to not injure people to send a message. He was a mentally ill person. Yeah, he was just sick. That's the takeaway. I just feel sad for him that, you know, like we talk about, we talk about mental health

and we talk about, you know, like realizing that's not okay to pull people out of their vehicles. But then when you start talking about the Marines, you know, out of Syria, seeing demons and and seeing ghosts of the people they killed and things like that, that's not something. These people are not questioning their sanity. These people are not... They're not in a place where they're seeking mental health, right?

Mental health health. They're living in a whole different world. So I would say that, you know, that he probably could have built a more efficient V-Bid with the intention to kill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. my initial criticism was of like this is an 18 Zulu and this was the best that was the very first video I did before Sean Ryan before anybody just covering that and that was my biggest question was like

how does a 10 plus year Green Beret not know how to tamp explosives and do action damage so I don't think I don't think he was necessarily trying to do as much damage as possible right I'm just getting tired of the narrative that he's this like whistleblower and hero right it's exposing shit like I'm I'm sorry, I don't believe that. Because that carries on the whole conspiracy and fails to acknowledge the very real mental health issue, which I think, honestly, I think the Army is happy to let that happen because the Army does not want to talk about the mental health issues. They would rather, you know, they would rather talk about him being an extremist or him. I mean, I don't think the Army wants to talk about anything.

They don't want to talk about TBI. and what that means for our soldiers. I want to retract that, though, because I don't think the Army wants to talk about him being an extremist either, because I don't think the Army wants the publicity of an SF guy going out there and becoming an extremist. I think the Army just wants it to go away because no matter how it's framed, it's bad for them. Right.

But they definitely don't want to. And when both terrorist attacks back to back were from active duty army soldiers. Right. That's bad. That's not great optics. I mean, I already saw, I don't know if you guys saw the clip on MSNBC. I think it was today where they literally ran a whole episode. I forget his name, one of the old guys over there.

I don't really, obviously don't watch the show about how. And he literally says it. I'll send you guys the clip after. It's so gross where he talks about veterans. Veterans are the biggest threat to America. And that veterans are responsible for more terrorism in this country than anyone else. MSNBC just aired that. This has been going on for a while, though, because the FBI went and was it,

2016, 2018, when the FBI said, you know, that veterans are more likely to be, you know, homegrown terrorists, like, like, veterans have enough issues. But there was also some internal stuff going on where they wanted to look at extremism in the ranks and it got shut down because of political sensitivity. Yeah. It's. Well, General Millie was talking about that. Yes.

With the white rage and figuring out where this, all this, you know, potential nationalism is coming from. I'm not long ago. So, you know, I'm glad you brought up, because we didn't mention that, I'm glad you brought up the Nola guy, because this is the thing to me that is, that's very bothering about Matt's story is that it's a bigger story than the actual terrorist. Oh, yeah. In Nola. Like, a guy suffered.

That got wiped out of the news cycle immediately. Yeah, a guy suffering from mental health issues who did something, who killed himself. you know and and and didn't hurt anybody else could have but didn't um a guy and that was the thing is you know when you talk about his letter and his manifesto the thing that immediately made me think of frote was when he said that the fbi was following him because once people start getting those paranoid delusions yeah that they're that's when they're sort of they're off the rails um yeah you know and uh and you know that's really really where you see that that mental thing But so what bothers me is that one, we're ignoring his mental health issues.

And two, we're making him a bigger story than a guy, a radicalized guy by ISIS who actually killed people. A lot of people. And that's gone. That's out of the story. But we're all still talking about this mentally unwell SF guy. Yeah. And it's, it brings into question. of the way news is sort of manipulated and pushed forward of,

I don't think that's by accident. I don't think the fact that the right, the radicalized ISIS dude that killed 15 people or more, that story disappeared immediately in, in favor of the active duty Green Beret, who then, you know, potentially does a terrorist attack. I don't think that's, I don't think that's, just coincidence that all of media,

immediately diverted and got that off of. Why? Because what they don't want is they don't. And MSNBC literally talked about this in that clip that it's not the southern border. It is not the southern border that is causing any of this. It's domestic veterans. It's all homegrown. That's nuts.

And I think they want to get the conversation off any potential of like, yes, this was an active duty soldier that was radicalized by ISIS. But how was he radicalized by ISIS, by ISIS, potentially. getting into our country somehow. So I think they want to get the conversation away from that as fast as possible and put it on like, hey, white nationalist, whatever the MAGA or because they're saying that too, right? Like MAGA, MAGA this, whatever the buzzword is for the day, I think that's what they, they want the optics to be on stuff like that instead.

I don't think it's by mistake. The hypocrisy is just, it's so frustrated because. You know, they want to come out when it's when it's an Islamic extremist to say not on Muslims. And we've all worked with Muslims. We know it's not on Muslims. Yeah, of course not. We know there are a lot of like stand-up, you know, incredible, like courageous and, you know, Muslims who love America, you know, whatever. I'm Green Beret.

I mean, the vast majority of dudes I fought in combat were Muslims, not Americans. That's who I fought with in combat for my career. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. So I don't, you know, I don't take offense to when it's an Islamic extremist. I don't take offense to them going, hey, it's not all Muslims. But they have no problem saying veterans are an issue. Yep. Where's the not all veterans statement?

MSNBC verbatim said that the veterans are the biggest threat to America today. Fuck those guys. They said that. That's crazy. Like mainstream, their main guy, the older guy with the gray hair. I forget his name. I don't know anybody. He literally said that in a clip today.

It's like, okay, man. like we're way off the reservation Jesus Christ But yeah that's that was the last The only thing that I had That I wanted to bring up All right guys so go check out Valhalla VFT And Nate you know you're welcome on the show anytime

Hit us up let us know And we will join all of you Yeah next time you know As there are some sequels in the veteran cinematic universe We'll have you back to unpack those You know I say I'm getting out of it, but we're on January 7th.

You go to my content since January 1st. I think about, I think like January 1st was the initial terrorist attack. And what we've covered in six days in 25. Nate, we're early phase one in this cinematic universe. Yeah, I think we are. We're like, we're in Iron Man 2 right now. Exactly. Exactly.

We're still getting a feel for it. Sometimes the cast. Are you guys going to Shot Show by chance? I did shot like maybe seven years in a row. Yeah, yeah. It's the same thing every year. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's cool to see some old army buddies, but oh, man, that starts to wear on you.

Yeah. But thank you, thank you, Nate. And we will see you guys on Friday, a retired CIA officer on the show. Thank you, everyone for joining us. And we'll see you guys next time.