The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 393: Pete Hegseth—The War on Warriors

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

In honor of Independence Day, TWIHI welcomes Army veteran and NYT bestselling author Pete Hegseth, who talks about why civic rituals like parades are so important to convey what we value as a society, how to acknowledge America's faults while still appreciating her greatness, and how our armed forces are destroying themselves from the inside. Pete's book is The War on Warriors.

Where does the time go, friends? It is another Independence Day, or very nearly there. Coming up, Chuck. What's today? Today's the 2nd of July? That's correct. That means the 4th of July is, well, I'm right. It's right around the corner.

And by right around the corner, you mean two days away. Well, who knows when people are going to be listening to this? Folks, if I sound a little bit draggled, it's because I have been a wash in patriotism for the last couple of weeks. I've been living with this movie called Something to Stand for, which I hope you saw. I think it's going to be in theaters for another couple days. And so with Independence Day staring me in the face in this movie, almost in the rearview mirror, I wanted to talk to somebody else about patriotism for a while. I wanted somebody else to be saying some of the things I've been saying.

And I said, Chuck, who could we get? And Chuck, you said, well, I mean, isn't it obvious? And I said, look, in my current bedraggled state, no. Perhaps you should just point it out to me. And then you said, what do you think about Pete Hegeseth? And I said, you're damn right. I honestly don't know anybody who loves this country more than Pete Hexeth. If his name is familiar, it's probably because you've seen him over on Fox and Friends at Fox News.

He does the morning show over there on the weekends. But he does a bunch of other stuff too. His resume, it's something else, man. This guy has been, he's been everywhere. Combat infantryman's badge, a couple of bronze stars, Iraq, Afghanistan. Guantanamo Bay. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And his family is awesome. And his past is weird. And he's got chickens. And he's got kids. And he's a proud American. I remember Chuck, I think the first time I met him, I was at the Patriot Awards a couple of years ago. Ah, that's right.

And he emceeded. and he walked out on stage. And I mean, everybody there just, it's hard not to love this guy. I mean, he's such a genuine article. He was dressed very tastefully in a tailored blue suit. And he opened the shirt jacket and inside was a flag, just stars and stripes on both sides. That's Pete. I've gotten to know him over the years, gotten to know his wife, too, who's just terrific.

we just had a conversation that I think you'll enjoy because he's written a book. In fact, it's the title of this episode called The War on Warriors. And this is the kind of patriotism I can really get behind. And it's a topic that really has informed a lot of what I've been doing for the last couple of weeks because I find myself, Chuck, constantly in this position of saying, look, I'm defending my movie. And I'm doing it by saying, it's possible to really love this country and really see some serious flaws that need to be corrected.

These two things can exist at the same time. And boy, oh boy, this book is proof of that. Pete Hegzith proves it. Yeah, it's called The War on Warriors and the subtitle is Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free. So here's a guy who loves America, okay? He loves this country. He also loves the military. but he sees a big, big problem with it, right?

He's written basically a protest book on the military about this organization, which he loves. And it's not like sour grapes. It's not like, hey, there's something going on here you guys should know about. It's, hey, we're in trouble. We're in real, profound trouble because the forces that have eroded the standards in public education and in our universities, the acronyms with which we've all become too familiar, DEI, ESG, CRT, CRT, all of these things have impacted the military to a shocking degree.

And as Pete writes in his book, the result has been a cataclysmic erosion of meritocracy. And what we're left with, the hollowing out of standards that we're left with, ought to be of great concern to anybody who loves this country. So I wanted to have him on. I wanted to talk about his book. But I also wanted you guys to get to know the family man and the chicken rancher and the problem with roosters.

And the problem with roosters. Oh, boy, do we have problems with roosters? It's a wide-ranging conversation that comes back to the place where you would expect it to come. A love of country and a concern for what's going on right now in the military on which we all depend. Episode 393 is the War on Warriors with the one and only Pete Hexeth. And it all begins right after this. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird.

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You got one. And a bottle of whiskey. I have another one around here somewhere. Happy Independence Day, my friend. Likewise, Mike, thanks so much for having me. Great to see you. Oh, I didn't even see the flag on your head. I guess I got to count that one too. Come on, hand on my arm. So, you know, keep counting. That's an arm? I thought somebody attached a leg to your shoulder.

Oh, I'll take it. I'll take it. Did you work out this morning? Be honest. I did not. The plan is to work out in about two hours with my two oldest boys and my wife, Jen, down in our gym. I did do a dirty job. Cleaned out the chicken coop this morning with the kids, get their hands dirty. That's a dirty one. Dude, you know what? One of the best days of my life was when we finally got permission from a guy who ran a hatchery in Wickenburg, Arizona, to bring the dirty jobs team into a full-on chicken hatching operation.

Because, as you can imagine, you show up with a team of cameras at a chicken farm. And, you know, you're going to be greeted with shotguns. It was the greatest expression of trust. I'll never forget that. How many chickens do you own? And for what purpose exactly? We only have six chickens and nine growing chicks that will soon grow. So we'll have, what is that, 15 soon.

But right now we only six laying hens. And a rooster, who we have to beat up because he attacks the kids. And you only have the one rooster, typically. Only the one rooster. We did have three. That was my big mistake, Mike, when I first got. We didn't know we had roosters. We had three of them.

The ratio was way off. They were very angry. They'd not enough hens for the roosters. And so they took their aggression out on the kids. And that's when I had to deal with it. Yeah. People don't really understand. Well, you know, you could make a list of the various ways in which people are disconnected

from their food. But in a related dirty jobs episode, I went to the Murray McMurray hatchery in Iowa somewhere where we separated the pullets from the cockerels. And you'll appreciate this. it's the pullets that are shipped in the millions through the mail to people all over the country. The cockerels are also shipped through the mail, but at a far smaller ratio and of passing interest to the casual listener might be the fact that every day, tens of thousands of little baby roosters are poured into a giant whisper chopper and turned into mulch, fertilizer, and chicken

food. Something for you to share with the kids during your workout. Yeah. I will let them know that. I now understand why of minimal utility in our life, although we do let them range around the land all they want and the rooster protects the other ones. That's his job. That's what he does. Do you think, I mean, knowing the size of the enormous brain you were blessed with, you could draw some sort of parallel between the plight of the modern day rooster slash cockerel

with that of the average man trying to make sense of the environment in which he finds himself? Well, absolutely no doubt. I mean, I think we have inverted the relationship, the male, female dynamic in a lot of ways that has left men completely lost. You're familiar with not just in employment and in the economy and in their roles, but even within their own families, it with on the dynamics of their own relationships. And as a result, they're clinging to vapid, quasi-masculine bravado as a replacement for the actual protection, the actual leadership, the companionship they're supposed to provide. Don't get me wrong.

This rooster, my rooster's a bit toxic at time, so that's why you have to deal with them. I'm the real rooster on the farm, okay? I get it. But ultimately, yes, like it's, if the hen mentality is all that exists, you may have, for a time, quite a peaceful moment, but overall, you're lacking the duality that nature intends. That's it. That's the thing I want to talk to you about, the duality, not just, of family and female and male and all of the confusion that seems to be surrounding that,

but the duality of patriotism and what it means to you. You've written this amazing book, and I promise we'll take a deep dive into it. But it is the, I almost said the 4th of July, which would be accurate from a Gregorian calendar perspective. But of course, it's Independence Day. You know, Chuck and I talked about, we're lucky with this podcast. People now pay attention and we could get pretty much anybody we want, but we wanted to talk to you. And personally, Chuck, you can chime in if you had another agenda, but I've just spent a week just promoting the bejesus out of a movie called Something to Stand for. And I keep coming back to trying to answer the same basic question, which A is what happened for. from 1998 when America described herself as 70% of America anyway, as intensely or extremely patriotic, to 39% today.

I'm super interested to get your thoughts on that. But I also want to try and understand the duality, as you put it, between loving this country, unabashedly and unapologetically, but also being able to criticize it with the same level of, passion that you do in the war on warriors. That, my friend, is a neat trick. That was the trick of the book. It is my love for the military, my love for my time in uniform that brings me to this place where I have to be intensely critical of the institution that I love. But I come only from a place of reverence and appreciation of that. I think it's the same. When you look at our country, what's your default? Is your default appreciation, gratitude, historical perspective grounded in the truth of what happened, an appreciation for God-given rights and the recognition of the sacrifices of previous generations?

Is that your default when you start to grapple with the sins of our past, our flaws of our moment? Or is your default, we were, you know, sinful from the start, that it was a failed experiment from the beginning. It was built only on the backs of slaves and on stolen indigenous land. and that's only the perspective that we're going to take. And that's a burn it down, tear it down mentality. And we had moments, Mike, you know, in the 60s and 70s when it was as tumultuous, if not more than today, anarchists, assassinations, race riots. It was terrible. But you still had underneath it, I think, the default assumption, even amongst opponents, that America was a good, great, and special place, worthy of perfection, of a more perfect union. You saw that certainly in MLK and his rhetoric in those speeches. That brought us through those tumultuous times.

Now we're at a place, and my book before this one was Battle for the American Mind. It's about the K through 12 takeover or the takeover by the far left of K through 12 education. We're in uncharted waters in this century trying to keep a country while simultaneously training up the young minds of that country to at best be skeptical and at worst loathe the country they're growing up in. No country in human history that I can recall has done that or attempted to say, we are great, here's who we are, but we want to teach our young kids that were not so great and then somehow maintain a trajectory that leads you to believe that those pushing that agenda don't want to maintain American greatness or American leadership or American freedom.

They have a different agenda. And when you dig underneath it, that's the scary part is you start to see the real seams pulled apart because the differences are greater than they were in the 60s and 70s. They're more foundational. They're more fundamental. And that makes it, it makes it scarier. It's easier, I think, to, you use the word agenda, to identify a clear and present and conscious agenda.

And then you can say, okay, I think that's good or I think that's bad. That's one thing. The thing that worries me as much or maybe more is the lack of nuance that I think a lot of citizens are experiencing right now. Maybe it's the cognitive dissonance or the binary choice that we're always confronted with, but it just seems like we're unable to celebrate the progress we've made or express real gratitude or pride for the sacrifices that have been made on our behalf without. immediately having to qualify that by saying, obviously, we have a long way to go. Obviously, things aren't perfect. Yes, yes, we were formed by imperfect men who want to blah, blah, blah, blah. So on Independence Day of all days, how do you think about it on this day and how do you

qualify your own love of country? Again, especially in light of the fact that you're willing to say so many hard things about it, does that confuse? the people in your world, your readers, your viewers, your enormous family, and your chickens, most especially the rooster. The rooster lives in a perpetual state of confusion and rightfully so. That's how I keep control over him. Anything that approaches him could attack him at any time, including me. And the kids know that. By the way, Pete, I'm sorry. I got to do a quick you turn. People, I want people to understand, before you answer that question, I want them to

understand your family. I want them to understand who you are as a dad and how you're living on a day-to-day basis. You just casually mentioned a couple of your sons. How many are there now altogether? Well, there are five sons, two daughters, and I took my two oldest sons and my youngest daughter were the ones that volunteered to go clean out the chicken coop with me. It's really because they felt if we got it done, then there is a trip to the baseball card store, which is what they really want to do, right? So I understand incentives for young people. Yeah, my wife, Jenny and I, have a blended family of seven, three and three and one together, and there are five boys and two girls, and they love each other. And oldest is 14, the youngest is six. They've all been together

since they can remember. And we just tried to be really intentional about certain things, like family time is family time. Christ is at the center and America is a beautiful country. And we will learn about all the failings and failures and qualifiers later on. But first, we're going to pour into the foundation of how grateful we are as children of God and as citizens of this Republic to be where we are. And our charge is to go forth and do good things for God and country. So that's what we're trying to build out here is that ethos is like learn about our history, learn your Bible, learn the kids are going to Constitution camp for a day yesterday, tomorrow, put on by Carol Swain. Carol Swain, one of the most wonderful people on the planet. It's so smart. She texted

us the other day, said, I'm doing this constitutional. I said, we're going. My kids are going. whatever it is, we're trying to give them perspective in a world awash and a miss where most 14-year-olds, and I'm not patting ourselves on the back, we don't have it figured out, but we're allowing the world to infiltrate their minds through a device that is full of qualifiers and lies and deception and propaganda. And we're just choosing to try to be as intentional as we can up front on these big questions, knowing though they'll encounter all sides in due time. I had a chance to meet your wife. Actually, before I had a chance to really meet. meet you. I was over promoting something or other. And full disclosure, Jenny's way up the food chain

over there at Fox Nation. And we were out at some restaurant with some crowd of people and enjoying a couple of gin and tonics. And you were somewhere out there doing whatever one of your eight or nine jobs. And she was saying, he'll make it. He'll make it. He'll make it. And when he gets here, don't feel bad about the G&Ts. He'll catch up with you. It's all going to be great. And you did. You showed up. You caught up. And we had a great conversation about all of this.

But I'm not trying to get needlessly personal, but I just think it's important for people to understand the complexity of your family today, the blendedness of it. The fact that you kind of hit the reset button, Pete. And also, you know, I look at your curriculum, Verite. People should know that this God and country soldier who loves his country without apology somehow matriculated through both Princeton and Harvard and wound up working at Bear Stearns. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. So now you got chickens and seven kids and all of this. So, you know, we don't have to make a meal out of it.

But I do want people to understand that the road to wherever we are, today is not a straight one. Amen. Yes and amen. And I'll say that, you know, I think we have to have enough humility to know that we don't have it all figured out at any particular point in time. And I certainly haven't had that. And it's been my failures and misgivings that have taught me the most and humbled me and refocused me on what's what my most important job is. At this moment, it is as a father and as a husband. And with all the things that matter, are the most in a world full of shiny objects. So yeah, we don't know if we're doing it, right. In fact, Mike, I was going to write a book. One of the books I thought I would write is Pete's

politically incorrect guide to parenting. Yeah, but no publisher's going to put out a 2,000-page book. They're just not going to do it. That's the point. I said, what am I doing here? I'm going to put out a book on parenting. I don't even know how my kids have turned out yet. And so far, I'm, yeah, you know, so maybe someday I've done something, then I'll wait on that. But the whole parenting things, a humbling experience. And yeah, it's been a journey. Maybe I'll write it all down someday. Well, you should because I think what people really need to hear more of is the complexity of the modern man. And like the same lack of nuance that prevents us from being both patriotic and critical of our country at the same time, it confuses people, for instance, to learn that I

used to sing in the opera before dirty jobs. It hurts their brain and it makes them suspicious of things that I say. We just have it in our head that everything's supposed to line up. You're an anchor on a news network that a lot of people would either categorize or maybe dismiss as right wing. You've got this very complicated curriculum viette. And I'm just making the point again, because I think all of that must surely impact the primary question, which is, how does all of that conspire to make you so doggone patriotic? Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time?

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Because I've seen the blessings of a nation that can afford you any opportunity, but is also filled with grace and good people inside a social experiment in Western Christian civilization, which we've lived in a tiny little fraction of it most of human history have not. And I think a big part of it, Mike, was spending time overseas. You go to Iraq, you go to Afghanistan. you see the way in which other people live dramatically different lives. And in some ways with a lot of things to learn from. Like I left Iraq and Afghanistan deeply appreciative of the family-centric way in which they live, the generational commitment they had to family under a household and a commitment to honor inside that family in a way that is almost totally gone. It feels like in our own country.

Yet I looked at things like racism or sectarianism. And I said, now that's real racism, okay, what I'm seeing in Iraq or I'm seeing in Afghanistan and this tribalism. You come back here and they're accusing us of being systemically racist and you can step back and say, no, I've seen systemic racism. Sometimes just seeing other systems doing a little bit of your own homework goes a long way in having a healthy dose of appreciation and gratitude for what we have. I give that back to my parents. I give it back to the military. I give it back to a lot of mentors who've mentored me throughout the years. And that's why I want to write these books, too, is to inspire my kids and other generations, just like you, to love the country first, and then we can debate about

how we make it better. But my goodness, in the course of human history, we are in the 0.001% when you look at quality of life and freedom and opportunity, it's not even close between this experiment and anything else. You're talking about perspective and context and being able to fairly compare the United States with any other form of government out there today, but also being able to look back 250 years and think about those founders and that generation in their time. It's back to the duality you mentioned and the lack of nuance that I mentioned. I'm just so increasingly curious about how we're going to be judged by your kids, great, great grandkids, right? When they look back today, you know, which statues are going to be defiled and defaced, which are going to be

removed from the public square? How are we going to feel about meat eaters? How are we going to feel about capital punishment or whatever hot button you want to put in there? Are your great, great, great, great, great grandkids going to be able to look at what we did in 2024 in this time? Or will they do what we're doing now when we look backwards and cherry pick and apply today's standards generations before? I hope not, but it's kind of what we do, isn't it? It's almost an impossible question, Mike. And the only way I go to answering it is to the extent to which we repent and there is a willingness to honor God in who we are, both in our private and our public institutions. And I do believe that nations have received blessings. And I think we have, especially from the

beginning. And we've worked really hard to turn our back, but many are not. And if we are faithful to our founding principles and to where our rights come from, I think we could do it about face and be glorifying God. But maybe not. He will give on to us what ourselves. When we abandon him, he says, have on to your own devices. And that's what leads to some pretty crazy conclusions. One of the examples of something I hope we look back on and say, you know, you think about what would be the thing, to me it would be transitioning kids, you know, chemically or physically transitioning kids. Like, I hope we look back on that 30 years ago. And that seems like the most cruel and inhumane thing I could only imagine I would never do that. And yet that was some kind of a mainstream

conversation these days. We find our own crazy ways to distort truth in every generation because we refuse to look truth in the eye. And I know that in my life, it had a lot to do with the winding roads that I took for a very long time is you don't want to look truth in the eye. And when you do, it tells you a lot about yourself. And that's what I'm trying to do about. You talked about generational inertia, or at least kind of implied it before. And I wanted to ask you about that because so many people who serve come from families who serve. But in your book, I was surprised to learn that you, that's not you. You didn't know the difference between the Army and the Marines when you enlisted. What happened to you? You know what it was, Mike?

It was back to your subject. It's back to what you're talking about with something to stand for. It was just naked patriotism. It really was. My parents were small town, hardworking people, salt to the earth, blue collar, conservative, but not political at all, conservative by nature, and patriotic. And we went to church on Sunday, and, you know, Wednesday night. And then every Fourth of July and Memorial Day weekend, we would go to my parents small town in southern Minnesota. It was a farming town.

the Memorial Day parade, and it was a blink and you miss it kind of moment. The fire truck, the one sheriff's car, the high school band, and, you know, the dozen vets from the county walking down the street. And that was the parade. But just watching the town stand up and given a standing ovation and the reverence that they had. And then watching this, of course, this Memorial Day, so you go down to Memorial Day Park and you reflect on the men that are not there because they gave their life. Not Veterans Day. Not Veterans Day. This is Memorial Day is the one that. that really sticks with me. And you start to add up. And I wasn't adding it up then, but it's for the visual now. You add up every one in Mingo, Minnesota together. And you start to get a sense of the

depth of the service and the sacrifice that required protecting the freedom that we have. But for my small 10, 11, 12, 13 year old mind, I just thought, man, these guys did something special. Like, what did they do? That seems important. And maybe when I'm older, I could do that. I think I should. You know, you do that and then throw in, you know, I can't even name what it was, throw in a military movie or two. And pretty soon it's like, yeah, I want to do that. I got into West Point and Princeton. You know why I chose Princeton?

Because they had a better basketball team, and that's all I cared about. And I wanted to play basketball in college. How'd that work out, Pete? I sat the bench for four years, but it was great. But the nice part is I knew that Princeton had an ROTC program. And I didn't know if it was Army or Navy or whatever, but I just said, hey, if I want to serve, I can. That's why I'm a big believer in civic ritual. I'm a big believer in parades and events and ceremonies and we try to take our kids.

We did it this year. We'll do it every year. What we celebrate, what we honor is a reflection of what we value. What do we spend our time cheering for, clapping about, recognized talking about that tells our kids what we care about. And my parents just doing that simple duty year after year is what kind of stacked in my brain, hey, you should do this than I did and kind of the rest is history. But our country for years had been pretty good at doing that, taking young Pete's who don't have any of that background and saying,

hey, be all that you can be. Or, you know, what's the Marine Corps slogan? That'd be the few and the proud. Yeah, the few of the proud. Like, you know, that's what I want to be. And they did it. And we're kind of, we're losing that. And that's some of the recruiting challenges we have.

Oh, okay. That's a great pivot. But before we go to recruitment, back to parades. Because there are going to be parades today all over the place. And they're also going to be protests today all over the place. I'm well acquainted with the power of language and words and the impact they can have when they're grouped together just right. But metaphors are even more powerful. Visualizations in our minds, right?

And these things, these civic expressions that you mentioned, talk more about that. And what happens if we forget why we stand, if we forget why we sing along with the national anthem, when we forget why we put our hand over our heart or why we salute, or why we stand when a woman enters the room or any of the other little social lubricants that kind of keep us from tearing each other's throats out. Why is it important? You said it so, I mean, the way you said it, you said it beautifully. it's important because if we don't do it, we lose it. I think of even the old farmhouse on my property just about five acres from here, which was the center of Main Street a hundred years ago, or it was along Main Street, and it was, you can still see the tulips. There's rows of yellow tulips that outlined the property. So every year when the tulips are ripe, you can see the footprint of where the old house was. But of course, there's no house there at all. It's deep in the woods. You have to go kind of walk in to find it. it and Jen goes and picks some flowers and everything. Well, that used to be the center of action a hundred years ago. Now we can barely find it and we have no idea where it was. That's just a hundred years. That's two and a half generations. And that's an example of land, but the same goes with

our own civic traditions and our own institutions and our own beliefs and our own patriotism. It has to be, I mean, Reagan said it. It's the mind we all know, but freedom is never one generation away from extinction. You don't pass it to the next generation in the bloodstream. has to be fought for and passed along. That is exactly right. Like, what we did is we gave away in exchange for leisure, in exchange for convenience, in exchange for technology, in exchange for paying more for,

we gave away the basics. We gave away strong core families, fathers and mothers, men and women. We gave away standing when women entered the room, we're saluting the flag, standing for the anthem, teaching kids about our founding generation, the brilliance of what a republic is, instead of casually saying we're a democracy, which, of course, we're not. We're a constitutional republic. What does that mean? What are those differences? Why do they matter? Why did the founders care? Why did the founders know so much about their Bible? Why did they know all the stories from the Old and New Testament?

And what did that tell them about human nature? That human nature is not perfectable. And as a result, we need all these checks and balances and ways to check pride and power inside government institutions. Because, of course, they're fleeing governments where they crushed people of a particular religious faith. all of these things have nuances to them and can be easily manipulated and shaded by new language that sounds a little bit like the original, but really isn't with people with very different intentions. And so you start by waving the flag and saying, we live in a great country. And from those moments, from those opportunities with your kid, you explain further. You unpack it further. You go deeper.

And we've counted on our government schools or public schools to do that. They used to do that, kind of. Now we're lucky if our school says the Pledge of Allegiance. You're in a good school if your school says the Pledge of Allegiance. And if the kids actually stand, then you're really in a good school. Think about how far we've come in 100 years where that was something kids did with reverence, with a slap of a ruler if they didn't. Now, of course, our critics would say, well, what was life like 100 years ago?

Well, we know life wasn't perfect 100 years ago for subsets of Americans. We recognize that. We do. And we can hold both beliefs in our mind at the same time in what America has achieved in making a more perfect union and more equal for more people. So I just think we need more moments to hone in on the special nature of the country and then have those conversations at the micro level. And that's where my light bulbs have gone off. Like Pete, yeah, you work in news and you do this. But the only seven souls that matter that you're charged with are your seven.

train them up so that they will not depart from it when they are old, you know, all the things that you believe in. Because if you've gained all the fame of people knowing your name on Fox News, but your seven kids are socialists now who, you know, dump the flag, then what are we doing here? What are we doing? Then I was a net negative to the contribution to the country. And I think for fathers, for men, for women,

that's a wake-up call in our society right now, because you can't count on the residual of other institutions to reinforce these things. You have to do it. and then hopefully in return, we reinvigorate the institutions that we've lost. Yeah, I think you're referring maybe to the thousand points of light that Bush talked about and got a lot of guff for. That's what it is. Churches, Boy Scout groups, civic groups, all those things that were there that have sort of faded into vanilla and don't stand for anything anymore.

Well, Dave, I mean, what I want to ask you about is the advantage or disadvantage of being on the right or the wrong side of cool. What is cool for your kids? How do you make patriotism cool? How do you, I mean, I looking back, Chuck has heard me talk about this all the time because he had a front row seat for it. You know, the Boy Scouts were not cool when I was in the Boy Scouts, but they were also transformative. That was the first time an adult made me raise my right hand and take an oath, a pledge. You know, I mean, obviously there were, and there's so many, at least there used to be,

so much military tie into the Boy Scouts. In fact, my scoutmaster was a retired lieutenant colonel. The troop was exactly that. It was a series of patrols and so forth and all the nomenclature. And, you know, people made fun of me in high school. But I felt like I was a part of something kind of cool, even though I knew I was on the outside of cool. It was the same thing with barbershop harmony. It was the same thing with doing plays, you know, finding that core group. of people and making connections. So I think you're absolutely right. I think the grout in the wall, in the brick wall, it's the grout that's starting to erode. And of course, the wall can't stand without the grout. And so how are you going to keep your kids engaged? How are you going to

make it feel cool to be patriotic? It's a good question. I think being patriotic will soon be is already in some ways countercultural, which is always a little cool with the kids. You know, this is where the anti-American sort of woke side of things, secular side of things, has overplayed their hand and they really have nothing to show for it except angst and standing up and saying, no, no, no, I'm proud of our country. You've seen it. You've seen it with some young people in a rebound of support of patriotism, not overall, but especially amongst young men. And I don't want to get political because the point is not to make it about Trump or Biden, but it's sort of this instinct of I'm not the bad guy just because I'm a white guy or I'm not a bad guy just kind of

in my male or I'm not a bad guy. You don't want it to go to the bad extent of some sort of a racial identity, but a healthy extent is I'm not a bad guy for being an American. I'm an American and I'm proud of it. And that's a damn good thing. And I stand with my forefathers who fought for my freedom. That in some ways is and has become cultural. It's not good because we're on our heels. I also think to your point, Mike, I don't know that you need to try to make it that cool. A lot of the basics just aren't that. I mean, but at the same time, when it's done right, when it's done well, it can be cool. Take Maverick. Take the latest top gun movie, which, you know, we watch with the kids and they're- Hire that gang and put them in

charge of recruitment. Exactly. 100%. Absolutely. Whoever did that, put them in charge. Or, you know, on the religious front, like a series like The Chosen, which is so well done. Our family's watching and trying to imperfectly. But we're doing it. a good job watching an episode of that a day as we read the book of Luke. And as they start to kind of see it and read it and see it and read it, like none of that's cool for a kid who's 14. But when that's what your family does, you don't really have an option. And oh, by the way, you soak it in and you take it in and you start to understand it in more meaningful ways. I think sometimes when we try to make things too cool, we end up making them a little bit look too much like the world that they're not supposed to

look like. And the whole point is that's not what we do. And I think parents should, be less afraid of looking uncool and more afraid of saying, well, maybe if that's cool, then I don't want to be a part of it because that's not how we operate. I know that's not easy because I got kids that can sing pop music and I'm like, what are you singing? You know, I mean, there's right. The osmosis of things is real. But trying to fortify them to say, you don't get your cool score from what the world tells you or what pop culture tells you. here's the core of who you are and you're cool just being you. And I know that sounds sort of like, it sounds sort of lame.

I don't try to present anything other than just what's good and right and true. And hopefully in the end, they see that as being pretty cool. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page. read the comments. They're hysterical. In this commercial, you'll not only see Peggy Roe gently criticizing her oldest son for his longstanding and well-established commitment issues. You'll learn about the latest offer from Pure Talk, which includes unlimited talk, text, and data for just $3499 a month with no contracts and no commitments of any kind.

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Get yourself unlimited high-speed data for just 3499 a month. At puretalk.com slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure Talk. And history plays a part, though. That's why I think this book is really important that you've written. But that's also why when I saw people kneel for the flag, four years ago. I wasn't angry at them so much as I was baffled. It's like, you guys must not know

that the national anthem is a protest song. It's like the original protest song. Do you not know that it was a drinking song before that to an Akrian in heaven? This is not the thing that you want to sit or kneel for. And I don't think you would if you actually understood some history behind it. So I agree with everything you're saying. I would just put this umbrella of curiosity over top of it. It's important to be curious about the past, because if you're not, then I think you're going to be indifferent about the future. And then it's really easy to be deceived about the past as well. And so, yes, whatever content we could find to feed our kids that gives them a fortification in history is truly important because history is being rewritten on a daily basis from with

people with very different agendas about how they want to represent the country. You're exactly right, Mike. So that was your last book. This book is scary, honestly. It's excellent. But at its heart, you're basically saying that the erosion of a meritocracy has infected the armed forces. To the same kind of degree, it's infected higher education. When I think, for instance, that the average graduate from Harvard finished with a GPA of 2.56 back in 1955, as opposed to 3.99 today, right? I mean... Well, the kids are just so much smarter today. Yes, obviously. So if the kids are not exponentially smarter than our standards have exponentially changed. And it felt to me reading your book that

that's the heart of your critique. The meritocracy that defined the military has abdicated. That is the heart of the critique. If there's one institution that we as citizens ought demand, be completely based, other than the airline industry with pilots, be completely based in or any number of highly specialized skills be completely based on merit, it's the United States military. And for our sons and daughters joining, we ought to have full confidence that the institution they're joining, which could send them to war and ask them to die, is doing so in a manner that fully protects that life and gives them every advantage to win no matter what. And that was the ethos for the most part of the military that I joined. It wasn't perfect. I also joined a lot of mixed

multi-ethnic units because I was in the New Jersey Guard and different units. And racial animus was not an issue. It was not, I mean, would guys, jazz, sure, like anything. But this was a team devoted to a mission that loved the country and wanted to serve. And our best performers were elevated into leadership positions and our poorer performers were relegated or pushed out altogether. And that's what it's supposed to look like in a fighting force. And just over time, you start, started to see political prerogatives being pushed from the top that weren't focused on standards or accountability or meritocracy or lethality, but on sort of social, just, politically correct priorities that wanted to make the military look a lot more like civilian society.

And as the book lays out, Mike, you know, there was a role the military has played in, say, racial integration. And it did it better than anybody else earlier than anybody else. And once black men were serving alongside white men, those white men realized there was no basis for their racism because they were equals with the black men they were serving with across the board. And so it served that healthy function. But really in this story, it started with women in combat. I mean, it started before that. But more or less, it was this idea that politicians and political ideologues at the end of the Obama administration wanted to solidify women in all combat roles.

And that's when with very little fight in the Army and the Air Force, with some fight in the Marine Corps, and I have immense respect for the Marine Corps, there was pushback to say, well, let's test this and see if women joining combat units make them more effective. And of course, the study showed, I mean, bone density and lung capacity and muscle difference. It's all that the all-male units performed much, much better. Talk about that study, Pete, because it was extensive and it was incontrovertible. And yet somehow or another, it was roundly ignored. It was mandated. It was extensive. It was incontrovertible. The evidence was overwhelming. The amount of injuries that females had. This was a unit of 400 men doing extensive field exercises versus a unit of 300 men and 100 women

integrated in those field exercises. And women were injured at much higher rates. Their ability to maneuver on the battlefield was much lower than men. That unit was much less ready and capable. And yet, even when those results were presented, the Marine Corps, the Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabas and others, did everything they could to contort the language to make it sound like there really wasn't that much of a difference. They went so far as saying maybe these 100 Marines aren't representative of all women. So it's sort of dismissing the whole idea that you could have

a sample size, you know, or a control group. And ultimately, Obama wanted women in all units, and they wanted to be able to put that statement out and they did. And what's happened is, first of all, what hasn't happened is men and women haven't changed, right? So we're the same. But what has happened is instead of keeping standards high and allowing women to compete for them, standards have been forced down formally or informally by commanders and admirals and others who are under political pressure to say, well, why don't you have 15% of women in this military MOS or this military job? That question is not a question. It's a suggestion, which leads to, they don't say the standards are changing. They say the standards are evolving, which of course

means they're just lowering. Wait, wait, wait. When your commanding officer asks a question or makes a suggestion, that's just fancy talk for an order. Correct. Correct. So the whole thing, nothing's written down, nothing's told, but the whole thing is, well, I just, I think, you know, are we doing enough to make sure that we have enough women in the Arranger Battalions? Just think about that. That's a signal. That's an order. Things change. And, you know, we didn't even include all the stories. The reason I knew this book would get a big response from vets and those serving is because I spent a whole six months talking to dozens and dozens and dozens of them across all the service actively serving anonymously willing to talk to me.

Just one guy putting me in touch with another all over the different units, different ranks. And they all sang the same tune. They said commanders are walking on eggshells because standards are lowering. There are new classes of who's in and who's out, who's up and who's down, what the army wants, what the army doesn't want. And then, of course, you had the COVID vaccine mandates. And then you had what happened on January or in the summer of 2020. And then on January 6th.

And then you had the political view. my own story comes in there. But it just, it all sort of mushes together to create an unhealthy environment, which is distracted from its core purpose, which used to be, we find the best dudes put them together, go kill bad guys. And now it's all these other boxes we need to check, which creates animosity or skepticism or reticence, or hey, was that person promoted for the right reasons or not the right reasons, which means that person is impugned either way. And it's may be fair to them or unfair to them. All things you can tolerate in a Harvard faculty lounge,

not things you can tolerate in the 101st airborne, when their job is to get dropped behind enemy lines. And yet, you're saying that that's precisely what's happened. I know for a fact that what's happening and is what is actively ongoing and happening. The difference, of course, being if things get completely bananas at Harvard, and it would have to get even worse than it is now,

If people truly look at Harvard and see the $52 billion endowment, see the plagiarism, see the real attitude and philosophy among the faculty, see the credentialed inflation. If they add all that together, right? I mean, eventually the donations will stop and companies will stop hiring Harvard grads and that degree will lose its prestige and become little more than a receipt. and parents will eventually get the memo and the ship will have to turn around. And that's a hell of a consequence for the leading educational institution on the planet. But the stakes are so different here. They're so different. And in a top-down organization like the military, I mean, how do you turn this ship around?

What needs to happen to get the rot out? That's a big benefit, Mike, is that it is a top-down-run organization. So in my last book, Battle for the American Minds, about the K-3.3, through 12 education system, which is nationwide and oftentimes run state and locally, even though it's a ton of federal pressure at this point. The military analogy I use for my readers was it's time for a tactical retreat. You need to get out of those government schools, save your kids, find an alternative where you can fortify them, vote with your dollars, vote with your feet, change. You can't do that with this. There's only one Pentagon. There's only one Secretary of Defense.

So my argument in this book was, no, this needs to be a frontal assault right back at what's been done to this military from the top and to the bottom. So at the top, it starts with you need a new commander in chief. You need a new commander in chief who won't tolerate woke nonsense in the military, who will hire a secretary defense, who will pursue the basics of what the military is supposed to do. You hire a chairman of the joint chiefs and other chairman who, none of which have been invested in this sort of, whether it's the gender stuff or the D-E-I-C-R-T stuff or the environmental green tanks nonsense, you know, any of that. The electric. tanks I read about. Electric tanks that, you know, by the way, I had a friend who, I have a friend who's

making an electric vehicle for the military, but he's doing it on the side because the military won't contract with them because the military only wants 100% electric. And his thing is, well, I want to give them a hybrid that can go diesel for 95% of the time, but then for special operators can go electric when you're within 500 feet of your objective and you want to be silent. That sounds good to me. That's a good evidence. There's a tactical advantage and not a virtuous advantage. Yes, exactly. You find all the people that were most invested and you fire them. You say, you're done.

You say, if you want to do this, you're out. You push them out. You'd age whatever it is. And you reorient the priorities in a top-down organization. You say, we're getting rid of DEI, getting rid of CRT. We're going back to the standards, whatever they were in 1998 for the infantry and across other combat arms rules. And we're going to hire the guys that made Maverick and they're going to do our ads for us. And then at the end of this book, I wrote a letter to my sons, which is how I wanted to close it.

And I'll tell you, Mike, I waited until the book was written to write that. So I didn't write that until the end because I really didn't know. There were some parts in the intro, which were I alluded to it. But I didn't really didn't know what I was going to say, whether I would actually recommend that my kids go into the business of the profession of arms. And ultimately, I came out with the conclusion that I would like them to serve because if you want to rebuild this military, you need patriots coming from the bottom up to. And if not the Heggseth boys, then who's it going to be? Here's the paragraph that got me. Folks, there's so much in this book that is, like, truly important, like critical.

This is a guy who's been there and done it who's ringing the alarm bell. And I just think that it's super important. But this is my favorite part. You're basically writing a letter to your boys 10, 15 years down the road, right? Correct. If my boys are going to raise their right hand and, put the American flag on their shoulders. I want them where it matters, where real decisions are made, and where meritocracy, for the most part, still reigns. Service to country, with God in your

hearts, will take you places and teach you things you will never learn anywhere else. You will be forged, you will be warriors, and you will never regret it. You will join another brotherhood, an elite brotherhood. This is all following up your advice to join the seal. the Rangers, the Green Berets, the Marine Raiders, they're still fundamentally a meritocracy. But you're saying the rest of it is fundamentally not. I am. That comes from my experience and my interview with a lot of guys.

Now, hey, these special operators, a lot of them tell me they're coming for us, too. They don't want any aspects of the military not conforming to the social justice sort of woke aspect. But for now, those are the places where because of the high intensity, And the risk of which they undertake, the missions they undertake, they strip a lot of the nonsense out. And so that was kind of my compromise when you say, hey, yes, I want you to join. But if you do it, go all the way because I want you where I know you'll be surrounded by people who are there for the right reasons and because of the right reasons and not because of political prerogatives for the most part. Because conventional units, that's where it's easier to push this stuff. And they have.

That's where they started. How are we to feel patriotic, though? Just the, I mean, 1% of the country wears a uniform, if that, right? I mean, it's a very small cohort. And we look at what happened in Afghanistan. We look at the withdrawal. Yep. And we hear, you know, these forever wars, which I'm not really sure as a fair characterization.

But I get it. It just feels like the lawyers are fighting the wars. And you guys were never really properly unleashed. And so what happened to Sherman's observation that war is all hell? And the faster that's made clear, the sooner the war is over. And it just feels like we've tiptoed into so many quagmires. And is that tiptoeing and that pussy footing? Is that a part of this same thing that you're warning us about in the book?

Oh, big time, because I experienced it. I mean, we fought a 20-year war one year at a time, 20 times over, which is certainly a different ethos than they had in World War II. And it was fight to the end, fight to the end, for example, right now what Israel is facing. I mean, they're going to end up having to fight Hamas for years and years and years longer because they weren't able and willing for whatever reasons, whether it was political pressure internally or externally to just finish the job on them from the beginning. And that's one of the, I can't remember what chapter it is, but I basically take on international rules of engagement and international law. And in addition to sort of the micro aspects of what I saw and said, why are we fighting wars based on what like Europeans in the 1920s thought we should do in mahogany rooms about what the laws that were when they never conceived of what we're up against now, which is where all of our enemies use our laws against us on purpose to perpetuate wars endlessly and then try to make us look like the bad guys. Well, they put civilians up in front of them to try to get them killed as for propaganda value. Either we brutally demolish our enemies and crush their spirits and their willingness to win,

or we will continue to fight those enemies time and time and time again. I mean, that goes all the way back to Joshua. You know, I mean, these are things we've always known, yet we've gotten two smarty pants for our own good and that the lawyers started to decide what's good or not good. And that's why I worked so hard with President Trump on pardons of a number of these guys who I thought were unfairly impugned for things they did on the battlefield. It's pretty easy to second guess from an air-conditioned office in Washington. It's a whole other thing to be the guy in the middle of the night in a foreign country facing down bad guys. Shameless plug.

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Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done, we'll take a drink and go. Who specifically are you talking about, Pete? How many of those pardons were issued? I didn't include much of this in the book, but Matt Goldstein was an Army Green Beret. Clinton Lawrence was a first lieutenant in the Army, and then Eddie Gallagher was a Navy Seal. And then there were four contractors called Raven 23, who were Blackwater contractors, all of which had different dynamics and situations, but ultimately killed bad guys in a manner in which somebody politically didn't like. But it was all very mischaracterized. And I brought each of their packets over time to Trump over the course of his presidency, and he ended up

pardoning all of them, his own decision at the time. And I wrote extensively about why I have the back of warfighters, even if it's done imperfectly. And I think we expect this clinically sanitized, you know, no civilian casualties, everything's going to be perfect, no one's going to get hurt, everything. It's just not how war operates. And that's unfortunate. If we try to do it with kid gloves or with surgical gloves, we're never really going to get rid of actually exterminate the enemies that we need to defeat to create a peace on the other side. And so you get this idea of, quote, endless war, which I do think is unfair too, Mike. I don't think it's a fair term, but I can understand why people come to that. And we're so disconnected from the military itself.

Big time. We don't have any skin in the game. And I'm not saying, oh, boy, World War II, that must have been great, you know, when gas was rationed and sugar was impossible to find and rubber and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at least everybody knew there was a home front and it was a united effort. Now, it just seems so strategic, almost like a chess piece. And I wonder if that is also contributing to the overall worry that informs your book. For sure, for sure. I mean, and politicians don't have any stake in it. So, you know, up or down doesn't affect their lives one way or another, other than how politically popular the war is. I blame Republicans for that, too. I mean, George Bush said, let's win the war and go shopping.

You know, the best thing you do is go shopping. I understand that mindset, but we never really galvanized people in a way that connected them to the conflicts in a meaningful way. And there will be another conflict. And that's kind of the scary part of the next level of the conversation of playing and forward is. Okay, Mike, we did 9-11 on the backs of, you know, even if our public schools weren't perfect, they were still mostly patriotic. And so we had this immediate response to, hey, let's do something. And then we can have the conversation about if what we did was right and everything. What happens in 2024 if there's a, you know, the borders wide open and some sleeper cell from Iran or wherever else commits some terrible October 7 type attack inside our own country?

Are we immediately divided? Is there a large portion? of our country that says, well, we kind of deserved it. That's a scary thought if you play that forward as to how you conduct a long-scale war. It depends on who's in office. I would think, you know, I mean, look, I imagine the extent of the disaster you're alluding to would be more galvanizing if the disaster were more, you know, comprehensive. But you're right. I mean, if something goes awry now as a result of an illegal immigrant or a cell coming together, I suspect a lot of people on the right side of the aisle are going to say, look what you did. You let him in.

That is true. Even if it wasn't, in whatever avenue it came from, there's always going to be politics played about, well, why that happened or who let him in or what. But it's almost the, it was a universal, who's this bin Laden guy? Let's go kill him after 9-11. It was that sense. And I don't know that we muster, regardless of what the blame is, who's this guy? Let's deal with this. Let's address this.

And not that everything we did after 9-11 was right, right? Maybe we'd have to restrain that impulse and not get pulled into something bigger that we spend billions and trillions on. That's a whole other conversation. But I just, back to patriotism, patriotism is pretty important when you're asking young men to wear a uniform and go die for a country. And we're missing recruiting goals because the military basically pulled a bud light. and decided to sort of try to cater to non-traditional constituencies. And in the meantime, they offended all the boys from Oklahoma and Kansas and Texas who normally joined the military. And they're like, well, I don't want to do that. If I want to do that, I could go to the local university. And so

it can be turned around inside the military. And it has to be because you can't move away from this problem. You can't move to a different school or a different tax rate. This is our only deal. If the Hegseth family says we're not going to serve, and then we're a pretty good barometer of the type of family, which has been pumping some patriotism for a long time. And if they're a hard pass, then forget about meeting recruiting goals. And then you get into scary end of empire stuff where you're saying, well, okay, we need to insource troops because or outsource that activity. All the Hessians. Because our people won't sign up. All that's script.

Yep. Yeah. Draft. And then you got a whole different conversation. Oi. Well, then. As we start to land the plane, what can the average citizen do and how can the average citizen think and engage in a clear-eyed way with the reality of the challenges that we're facing?

And with this understanding that, look, patriotism, not to conflate it with PR, but you've mentioned recruiting a couple of times. And I do think it's an important thing to riff on for a moment because it is PR. It is a message. And there's a difference between the army saying be all you can be. Or, oh, what did they? An army of one. That's when it went off the rails for me.

Yes. What do you mean an army of? It doesn't even make any sense. What is it? Where's unit cohesion? Right? Where's the, I mean, isn't the whole thing baked into, look, you're going to take a lot of your qualities and a lot of the things that make you, you, and we're going to put them

in a box. We're just going to put them over here for a while. while because that doesn't matter. Okay? Here are the things that matter. And now you've got something in common with everybody who's around you. So I think the Army of One was nuts. I think Be All You Can Be was a bit inward looking.

I think the Marines had it right for the longest. You know, it's probably not for you. The few. The proud. You know, right? That was aspirational. I don't know. What's the Navy saying?

Let's go on an adventure. Let's take a sail. It's probably not better. What can we? Navy's usually far behind. So I guess if I have a question and all that, it's like we can't just hire the Maverick guys to do it. We have to articulate some great truth that makes people feel good about responding that challenges them, not entices them, right? People need to be challenged.

For sure. I mean, especially when you're talking about young men or the types of, and women, but mostly men. who are motivated to do these types of things. They want to be challenged. They almost want to be confronted to say, can you do it or can you not do it? Can you cut it or can you not cut it? And images like we saw in Afghanistan

or images like we saw from other things make them say, well, I don't want to be a part of a organization like that that's involved in that. But to bring it all full circle, I think all of us get frustrated while as we watch Fox News, we want to throw things at the TV and feel like, you know, the end is nigh,

or what are we doing here? And my message for people, whether it's education or the military or patriotism, is always find out what more you can do inside your home with your kids and your grandkids or your neighbors or your community or your friends or your church. What are you doing with that group of people to pour into them, to remind them to be aspirational, to do something more, to appreciate the country, to love God? It ultimately comes right back at you. We have to look at ourselves before we think there's some sort of a big government solution to it. Hopefully we're able to train up that one or two percent that's willing to serve. That's always what it's been, Mike, it's never been the majority. It's always been two, three, four percent of Americans that stand up at critical moments and say,

I will raise my hand and I will fight and I will serve and I will chart the course and I will lead. And I still think we have those men and women out there. You just have to tap into them. You just have to remind them. You meet those people all the time. I get a chance to talk to them all the time. They're not in Washington, D.C. They're not in television, but they're out there, and they're tough and they're strong, and they don't take BS, and they love the country, and they know their place with God. And if someone would just motivate them or lead them in a way where they felt compelled to be a part of it, they can be galvanized again. It's not as if we're at a moment where all is lost and every man is wearing skinny jeans. Like, we're, we got them out there. They're still

out there. I've met them. You met them. We have to earn their respect and their trust to want to invest in institutions they feel betrayed by and their parents feel betrayed by. That's going to become a leadership question. And if that leadership can change that ethos, then I think we've got a fighting chance. And in the meantime, just for Joe Blow from Idaho and the average citizen, I think you're right. It's a macro problem, but it's a micro solution. And the things you can do, go to the parade, you know, sing loud. It doesn't matter if you can sing or not. They're playing the anthem. Sing along, Chuck. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do know you're saying, I think it's about storytelling is what you're talking about.

You know, Dennis Prager talks about this on the Fourth of July. He says, we all should be having Fourth of July satyrs, you know, like Jews at Passover tell the story. And he suggests that at July 4th, that's what we should do, is we should tell each other the history of our country, why these men were great. That's why your movie is so good, Mike. Well, and that's why this book matters because in the end, look, gratitude is a choice. It's not skin color. It's not your star sign. It's not your blood type or any of the other things you can't control. Anybody can choose to be grateful for the guy you just described Texas and Oklahoma and who's willing, who's still willing to go all in. This has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with acknowledging the existence of that

biped and what he's willing to do and how we benefit from it. So that's the baseline for me. Everything else you've said and everything else that's in this book, it's a call to arms to all of us, but to hold our elected officials accountable and to not wait. We can wait for things to go splat at Harvard. We can wait even in our public education system, which is that critically important. Couldn't agree more. But we can't wait on the military. It has to be a meritocracy, vicious, unapologetic, full-throated, a joyful meritocracy. How do we do that? We have to. I don't know how. And completely nonpartisan, apolitical, just fidelity to the Constitution, that's it. That's all we want. We love the country. We're willing to fight for and die for it for anybody of

any political persuasion. And Mike, I want to thank you for reading the book. I can tell when someone does an interview and they've actually read it. So I appreciate it. You're welcome. I recommend it to all of you, the war on warriors. Full disclosure, it's going to piss you off. It's going to make you angry. It's going to frighten you a little bit. But there are times that we need to be frightened because that precipitous decline in patriotism that we talked about early on. I can't prove it, but I think it's linked to the decline of the meritocracy and our armed forces. I think we know in our bones that we need them on that wall. And we don't care what color they are.

There's a long list of things the average American does not care about. But the things we do care about, we care deeply. And if this book is a wake-up call and a reminder to all those things, is it already number one, Pete? I don't even know. I should have asked you at the outset. Thankfully, yes, it was number one for two weeks straight. It's number two right now.

Well, take it from a guy who knows a thing or two about number two. This should be number one. The great Pete, Heggseth, people can see you now. How many shows are you hosting? Are you still doing the weekend thing? Like, just Fox and Friends weekend. Come join us any time, Saturday, Sunday morning. Well, you're welcome.

It's early, though. I know it's early, especially on this coast. I know. You guys call me all the time. Like, hey, can you join us? Sure, what time? 4.30. Killing me.

Just give us once every six months or something. Mike, we'll take it. Deal. Good luck with the chickens. The rooster in particular. Say hey to Jenny. And I will. I'll see you in Sodom or Gomorrah.

I'll see you again soon, brother. You got it. All right. Adios. If you dig the podcast that we do, won't you leave a quick five-star I really hate to ask much more of you, but please subscribe. Oh, please subscribe.

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