Unsubscribe Podcast - 183 - Navy SEAL To US Congress ft. Eli Crane | Unsubscribe Podcast BONUS Ep 183

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

U.S. congressional representative Eli Crane joins us for a special bonus episode and talks going from the military to business owner to congressman. ONLY A FEW LIVE SHOW TICKETS LEFT: https://unsubcrew.com/liveshows Watch this episode ad-free and uncensored on Pepperbox! https://www.pepperbox.tv/ WATCH THE AFTERSHOW & BTS ON PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/UnsubscribePodcast Eli's Links: https://eliforarizona.com/ https://www.instagram.com/rep.elicrane https://x.com/elicrane_ceo https://x.com/repelicrane ------------------------------ THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS! FUM For a limited time, use code UNSUB to get a free gift with your Journey Pack! Head to https://tryfum.com and use code UNSUB MANSCAPED Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code UNSUB at https://manscaped.com ------------------------------ UNSUB MERCH: https://www.bunkerbranding.com/pages/unsubscribe-podcast BUY US A DRINK! https://paypal.me/UnsubscribePodcast FREE TO USE MEDIA (Please tag Unsubscribe Podcast) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uppmQHMGf8uI2OuOatp932e3S2VGy0PE?usp=sharing ------------------------------ FOLLOW THE HOSTS: Eli_Doubletap https://www.instagram.com/eli_doubletap/ https://www.twitch.tv/Eli_Doubletap https://x.com/Eli_Doubletap https://www.youtube.com/c/EliDoubletap Brandon Herrera https://www.youtube.com/@BrandonHerrera https://x.com/TheAKGuy https://www.instagram.com/realbrandonherrera Donut Operator https://www.youtube.com/@DonutOperator https://x.com/DonutOperator https://www.instagram.com/donutoperator The Fat Electrician https://www.youtube.com/@the_fat_electrician https://thefatelectrician.com/ https://www.instagram.com/the_fat_electrician https://www.tiktok.com/@the_fat_electrician ------------------------------ unsubscribe pod podcast episode ep unsub funny comedy military army comedian texas podcasts #podcast #comedy #funnypodcast Chapters: 0:00 Welcome To Unsub! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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terms apply. Instacart. Groceries that over-deliver. He walked in here, he's like, oh, these guys are a bunch of fucking nerds. Hey guys, Ellie here, former Navy SEAL. All I did was use the wrong pronoun. Jesus Christ. I'm gonna bully politicians and reporters again. His thumbs are starting to atrophy.

You know, the guest on this podcast is the guy who's got both of the jobs we wanted. Trust me, dude. You didn't want it that bad, dude. No. Trust me. We got it. We're all dialed in. We're all dialed in. Do we do the saying first or this first, right? Three, two, one.

Oh, yeah. We starting it off? I think we're starting it all right hi everyone welcome to the unscribed podcast i'm joined today by eli double tap congressman eli crane almost congressman brandon herrera and myself donut operator thank you for joining us here i hate it here there's too many elis already i'm like fuck that's right that wasn't confusing confusing yeah that's rare how many people do you run into with that name not a lot fucking where there do you no god no that's why brandon accidentally texted me are you are you uh eli or in elijah eli i'm in elijah but everybody calls me eli yeah and it's my middle name it's my white name because my dad's fucking very hispanic he's Hanaro.

Hanaro. Yeah, I have a super Mexican name. So I was like, we'll just call you Eli. We'll make it easy on the white folk around you. I lived in a nice little town. And they're like, they fuck up everything other than Eli. So I'm just going to do that. There you go. You're welcome to the show.

Did he warn you at all what goes on? No. I saw some clips online but um yeah no warnings dude so we're just we're just gonna do it live going in dry let's do it raw dog this shit i fucking love it you are give us a brief like explanation of yourself because you're a congressman navy former navy seal yeah business owner dad, been married for almost 19 years now. Dang. Yeah.

Did you get married in the military? I did, yeah. My wife was with me the whole time I was in the teams, which is pretty rare. That's pretty rare. It's like a 95% divorce rate, so she's a pretty awesome lady. That's awesome, man. 5% is crazy. Dude, your story, like reading everything you've accomplished, divorce rate so she's she's a pretty awesome lady so that's awesome man five percent it's crazy dude your story like reading everything you've accomplished and more importantly you just keep

growing and kicking ass you're like okay i've done this thing became an action guy and now i'm then business guy and then to congress but i want to rewind to yeah and cody's a fellow uh navy man over here yeah yeah what'd you do in the name i tried to be a seal that didn't work that didn't work out very well show him the fog tattoo hey cody many of us have tried to be become seals dude i didn't make it on my first try oh yeah no what year did you go through uh so the the first year I went through was in 2002. Okay. So, you know, Buzz Class 242 and then didn't make it through, made it through Hell Week, got performance dropped after Hell Week, which was pretty brutal. And then went out to the ship for about two and a half years, the USS Gettysburg.

Was a gunner's mate on board there and got an opportunity to come back and make it. Oh, cool. Bro, after Hell Week, I would have been so bad dude i was i was but you know what dude like honestly i deserved it and i'm glad that they keep the standard high dude i didn't feel that way at the time you know i was young and immature and i was like resentful about it but you know as i you know started looking at i'm like damn you got what you deserve man come back be better you look at those younger especially at that age about 18 19 when you went through initially actually i was uh 22 when i went through so a lot of the young kids that make it through man my hat's off to them because you got to not only be a you know stud but you got to be

mature and i i was i wasn't oh god no i what age did you get at 25 then 20 20 yeah i ended up getting in about 25 that makes more sense because you're actually developed god like they started introducing i mean it never happens but for 18 x-ray it's like i remember people going in i'd be like none no one's gonna make it out of basic training but you're a green beret now guy right like these guys are fucking stupid like the dumbest privates it's like automatically send them to 18 like special forces school you're just like now you're gonna have a dropout like immediately right seals what was the hardest part of like explain hell week to everyone that doesn't know it's disneyland pretty much right yeah so it's uh it's basically like five and a half days.

You only sleep about three, three hours complete the entire time. You start on usually Sunday night, Sunday afternoon, they call it breakout. And then you go to about Wednesday before you get an hour and a half nap. And then you go till Thursday until you get your final hour and a half nap. And then you secure on Friday after lunch, but the entire time they're just beating the snot out of you they're using logs they're using uh running with boats on your head they're using the pacific ocean a lot to make you warm very chilly and keep you right up to the brink of hypothermia but it's cool because when you look at you know the strategy behind it they can't try and kill you so they want to put you in as much stress as possible to see if like once the bullets actually start flying if you'll bolt or you'll fold or you'll hang in there and you'll you'll work as a team with your

boat crew and your buddies the perseverance and it develops a close bond with your with with the guys to your left and right because you're like fuck this sucks they know it sucks they know it sucks yeah just don't ring the bell that's right and i like one thing i like about it too is that they have the officers go through with us and so it creates like a camaraderie that i'd noticed i didn't see in the rest of the military at least in the conventional military that i was exposed to where officers and enlisted guys have actually a pretty, pretty good relationship. And many times, you know, depending on who you're around, it's a first name basis, which is pretty cool too. Yeah. Yeah. Dude, chase, pull up, uh, the Navy seals falling asleep during hell week. It's like, Brandon, they are falling asleep,

standing up in the tent. They're're like so there's this evolution called around the world and it's on uh it's on the the the morning the night and the morning of the last day it's like an 18 hour evolution and they start you in imperial beach and you paddle your boats all the way around the bay and then around to the bud side it takes about 18 hours to do it and guys are like falling asleep in the boat falling into the water it's hilarious but you know and guys are hallucinating as well but it's uh it's pretty it's pretty wild sleep deprivation and psychosis yeah how far did you make it fucking hard i didn't even get out of end doc yeah elder scroll skyrim came out and i was more psyched about that.

I made the mistake of taking my family out to Bud's with me. So I got the chance to go home every day to a warm bed and see my newborn son and shit. That's tough. It mind-fucked me. That's tough. Yeah, I want to be home. But you also had a bit of an excuse, too. You fell off the climb tower, I think.

Yeah, I got crushed during surf passage, and then the same day I fell off the rope tower on the beach from the very top of it oh no i wasn't feeling very good but they went slide for life yeah oh and then i was just like i'm gonna go home now this video game came out yeah that sounds way more comfortable than cold water yeah it happens but at least you went man it was a good learning experience i think it's a great learning experience even even the time even after i failed out the first time looking back on it knowing that i may never actually accomplish it i was like you know what i wouldn't change that for anything man because i i mean it's like the way i look at it is you know you have a baseline before that of what you think is tough and then once you go through it you're like your baseline gets completely reset and it actually makes it kind of hard for you to like i think

sometimes integrate or relate to other people because you're like are you seriously complaining about this like this is like this is this is cake and sometimes i notice when i'd go home to my wife and you know she'd be complaining she says she doesn't complain she says she communicates and i'd be like i wouldn't be i wouldn't be the most empathetic here let's just say i've gotten better i've gotten better learning um over over the years but yeah it's it's hard as when you're when you're trying not to you hear what people's trials and tribulations are and you're like yeah the you you're losing a sleep over that my guy yeah that is baseline that is what all i did was use the wrong pronoun jesus christ

reset what the fuck is yeah especially as as our culture becomes more insane it's just like oh my god but it's uh but as you're saying it's a good it's learning that everyone has different trials and tribulations walks in lives and you're like okay i might not view it's a good, it's learning that everyone has different trials and tribulations, walks and lives. And you're like, okay, I might not view it as a big problem. Yeah. They're communicating with the wife, spouse, friends, family. Like, but you know what? I'll, I'll step in their shoes.

Yeah. I'll be empathetic to what is going on. And then I'll lend, you're probably a very good rock to have in your family where they're like, Hey, lean on you for anything. It's like, fuck what's going on. Yeah, absolutely. And I have two little girls, a 17 year old and a 13 year old. So, definitely try to be that rock.

But at the same time, living with three women and even my dog is female, but- It's a lot of aspects in that house. It's definitely made me more empathetic and it's dialed me down quite a bit so that's been good for me i think yeah i could have went two ways hey guys ellie here former navy seal i switched his name this is crazy so we went too far went too far all right over correction yeah exactly so when you're doing um after buds you you got on a team and you did

five deployments so i so um i actually did two deployments on a ship after i'd failed out of seal training okay um two on the uss gettysburg as a gunner's mate and then uh then i got to come back and then i did three deployments with seal team three all three to iraq we're in iraq so the first one uh in 06 was to habania the second one was all over iraq we were just like nomads traveling everywhere and then uh the last one in 2010 was to fallujah that was a big 20 like my buddies went back in 2010 for just conventional army. And they said it was such a huge shift. It was everything.

It was man. Like we were handing the country back over and we were trying to train up our partner forces. So they were ready to take, take on the brunt of it once we left. And I noticed how, uh, just the, the tone had changed and like that you started to see the locals become really disrespectful and when there was when they knew we were going to be there for a while they were you know a lot more um a lot less aggressive towards us but i started to note like we almost got in gunfights at checkpoints with people like guys would you know all these iraqi army guys would run out of the barracks and i thought we were gonna have shootouts sometimes

at checkpoints because they were so aggressive towards us as we were getting out like it was it was pretty wild that's fucking crazy so you'd pull up in checkpoints how big were your like your convoys when you roll out uh depended on the op that we were on or the whatever mission we were doing sometimes i mean you know a lot of times it'd be three four or five trucks but uh usually about that size depending on the op well the good news is at the end of the day the transition went very well they did really good after we left yeah yeah they did and uh you know i don't i don't know if we've learned our lesson. I doubt we have based on what I see every day. But it looks like there's a good chance that we might repeat that cycle pretty soon.

Oh, Eli, we'll never learn. Eli, I think you might be right, dude. Just remember, it gets worse before it gets worse. Just remember, there's a lot of money in not learning that lesson. There is a lot of money in not learning that lesson. That's the sad thing, man. Yeah, dude. So much fucking money.

My guys went back and they were like, bro, we're driving with our headlights on at night. I'm like, huh? Why? Yeah. We got in one gunfight. We had to write down. They had to write down how many rounds like the target everything from one fight and that was going from the search to that so it's this

completely different ballpark were they forced to run white lights yeah oh yeah night they would just be forced to write they were just doing like hey yeah we have to drive with white lights at night we can't we have to like i mean you had to follow their laws and started integrating that. You remember back in the heyday where it was like you just blare the horn, get everyone the fuck out of your way. Throw crashes. Yeah. Yeah. And then that was just a complete switch in 2010.

I was like, that fucking sucks, guys. Holy shit. Did you have, like, for for your roe what was the biggest shift you've seen on that side um i didn't really see much on the roe side one of the things that i did see though was um one of the my goals was to become a sniper and it took me unfortunately a while i failed out of sniper school the first time. I love to talk about my failures. There's a ton of them. I get it.

We'll get to you, Brandon. So obviously, before I became a sniper, the snipers got to do a lot of work. And once I finally became a sniper, I got my guns in 2009. And then on my 2010 deployment, we weren't even allowed to take them on ops anymore because they were trying to de-escalate the situation. And snipers typically don't do that. They usually pour gasoline on it. And so that was one of the big things that I noticed as we were drawing things down.

I just figured this is a ton of fuck shit up take you can't bring that yeah why right i trained so hard for this job yeah right so you're like no what where's sniper school for so for so for us it's in uh indiana no shit yeah camp atterbury you know camp atterbury it's on west i i don't know the geographical location i'm not a very i'm not a very good seal honestly pay attention but it was in camp atterbury no shit yeah and a couple some of the some of the portions of our sniper school because it's three it's it's uh three segments it's uh starts out with pick which i believe is two weeks just teaching you how to use cameras and photograph and send it back to base and then scout is a month it's a month long and just teaching you how to stock and whatnot and then sniper school itself is about uh six weeks up in atterbury camp atterbury that's a complete shift from like

the army sniper school then yeah i don't know much about it but it was kind of cool because when i went through sniper school we had a recon sniper there we had an sf sniper there so they brought in that's one thing i loved about our you know a lot of our training we'd bring we'd bring army dudes in we'd bring marine dudes in and be like hey you know we wanted to share gouge and learn from other people i thought that was pretty cool that's like smart that's actually really smart because then you're picking the brains of these guys that are already snipers and they're i mean under the army under their umbrella and then you're all together learning from each other yeah and it'd be funny because you ask them you'd like i'd like talking to them and hey what's the difference what's the difference between our school and your school?

And just hearing them talk about the differences was pretty cool. The whole camera thing. I'm like, what the fuck? Did you guys not do? They didn't have, there's no, yeah, no camera show. This is the first time I'm hearing about this. I'm actually intrigued right now. I'm like, well, you have three cycles.

What the fuck? That's crazy. Yeah. This talking, I think, is rolled into, it's all rolled into a month, I believe. I have to double check that one. But, yeah, camera ops, that's, I mean, it makes sense, especially for that train up of, hey, let's establish, let's identify, send Intel back. Right. None of that.

Interesting. No shit. Yeah. Yeah. What was the hardest part of that entire for me i was a horrible stalker like you know i'm walking around that pretty much looked like me on the stalking field but you know i i just it's it's pretty cool when you look at like i love the people are fascinated when you start talking about it

because like imagine this you've got like uh you've got like you know a thousand you'll start on a thousand yard field and they'll be like okay you have you have four hours to complete this stock and so um what what you'll do is is though that you start on this end and on this end over here they'll have a bunch of instructors with like picnic tables and spotting scopes and they'll just sit there and from the moment the whistle blows all these all these snipers will start trying to make their way a thousand yards up to usually like within 300 yards of these picnic tables and if you get if they see you they'll blow a whistle and they'll say everybody freeze and a lot of guys

don't try and freeze they try and like getting like get down real quick but they want you to freeze and then what happens is they'll be like okay um and one of the other groups of instructors they're called like walkers they'll be in the field and they'll send a walker up and they'll be like they'll be looking at in the area they saw brandon they'll be like all right walk 20 20 paces forward okay walk five more paces forward okay you're you're close to him now you know take five paces to your right yep he's in that location take two two paces forward and they'll and then they'll be sniper at your feet and with it if you're within a couple feet of them that's one hit right there. Okay. So you can only get three hits or you, or you fail. And so if you get a hit before you even get up to,

you know, the 300 yard where you make your final firing position, you're in, you're in a tight way because it gets a lot harder there. So, you know, if you get up to within 300 yards, then you have to build a final firing position and you have to be within, you know, you have to be within whatever, whatever range they give you. They might say you have to be within 250 yards, 300, whatever they give you for the stock. If you get to within 300 yards and start building your final firing position and you're moving around, you're trying to build up, veg up your ghillie suit, take whatever bush that you're hiding in, you know, laying on your back, cutting little pieces of twig and then like putting it in your hat and in your ghillie suit so that when you step up to finally take your final, and then you build a little loophole or you cut some, you know, you cut a hole through the vegetation and the tree or the bush that you're working out of, then, um, you'll, you'll call an instructor and you'd be like, okay, I'm ready to take my shot.

And, uh, you're so far away, you're 300 yards. So they can't really hear you. You'd be like, even if you said, said to her, she's a Walker, Hey, I'm ready to take my shot. And I'll be like, okay. So he'll come over like 10 yards from you take my shot and i'll be like okay so he'll come over like 10 yards from you and and he'll say over the radio he's like i got a shooter ready to take take their shot and so they'll start burning the area looking like because they know that that instructor is 10 yards from you and so they'll start burning the area if they don't see you they'll they'll say okay get five yards from him and then the instructor will walk five yards from you now they'll start really burning in on the five yards they they walk that

guy one more step they'll say okay get you know within you know three yards of them and so the the walker will actually be three yards from you and they'll burn that area and if they see anything that's a hit that's another hit right. And then it gets even crazier because once you take your shot, not only do you have to hit the target and hope that you've cut like a good enough loophole in. But if they're watching and they see like your muzzle flash or any trees or any bushes move or any grass move, that's another hit. And so like it's pretty legit, dude. And the other thing that you have to do, I felt a stock because you actually, they don't let you use range finders. So you have to actually use the mill dots within your scope to range. And if you're within, if you're 10% off of the actual distance that you are, that's a hit as well. And I,

I failed, uh, I failed to stock that way because my distance was off, but so it's, it's actually pretty legit. The, the stocking portion you're off by how much? 10 yards, 10%, 10%,

10% of the distance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're still like all that. And that's, what's crazy. That's 30 yards off.

That's yeah. And then it's fucking crazy as they are standing there you have a guy standing there yeah and then you're taking the shot yeah and then they just can't find you and they know the general vicinity and you're like and these guys when they're trained up you probably did it's the writing out like look out there they see like pins they'll add pins or random objects they have to point out yeah we call those observation drills are you talking about yeah observation drill yes yeah so they'll take like a football field and then you have to find you you'll have an hour to find

like 10 items and like they'll have a couple big obvious ones like they'll have an ak-47 like out there on the football field and this football field keep in mind it's not a football field it's like grass and like actual forest normal terrain right but then they'll have something as small as like a like a little piece of 10 like a 10 inch piece of 550 cord that you have to find too and so what you do is like you try and break the football field down into quadrants and you start with with with your scope your spotting scope you start burning the area see if you can find it, and you have to find all 10 of them. Just little things like that that they do. You have to find all 10?

I think you get like an 80% or something. I can't remember what. I think it's 80. I can't remember exactly, but I got dad brain, dude. I can't remember. That's what we call it. We call it TBI. There you go.

Yeah, there's that too. Spicy nostalgia. dad brain dude you know that's what we call it we call it TBI spicy nostalgia spicy nostalgia yeah we say the other day was adult shaken baby syndrome all those portions this is crazy you like tip your hat to the dudes that go through that cuz it is fucking insane you hear that shit and you're like yeah i found a pen at 300 yards or 100 yards i can't find a pen in my fucking house half the time i know i know it was funny man like i we were all just uh making our ghillie suits for the first time you never done it before and like i had this like i had like this big like thing of twine hanging off my hat and i walk in and my buddy's like what are you twisted sister or something but yeah there's some good you know some funny memories from sniper school for sure

what are some of your like favorite memories from like either basic and or during your your time in yeah there was this there was this real funny story when we were going through hell week, my second hell week, we were doing that evolution called Around the World that takes usually like 18 hours. And I was in boat crew one, so all the tallest guys, which is good because usually in that,

at least in hell week, like the little guys crush everybody on like a PT and stuff, you know? And, uh, but we usually won most of the races in hell week, which means we didn't get as wet as you, we didn't have to get wet and punished as much as everybody else, but it was kind of cool. We were doing one of the last legs of, uh, around the world. And, uh, our boat crew leader was in,

and he was a Lieutenant JG named Chris. And it was funny because everybody was just exhausted. You know, we're barely even paddling at that point and people are just trying to keep moving and stay awake. And I remember we were out by, uh, we were in Coronado and we were paddling down to the demo pits which is one of the last evolutions we do and uh chris the the officer in charge of our boat crew is like hey guys i gotta i gotta i gotta take a shit real quick and so we're like he's like i'm just gonna jump over the side and do it and so so he jumps over the side he pulls his pants down he starts doing his business and it's hilarious because we see it we see this turd float up to the top of the water and it was so funny because

of the currents and how slow we're going the turd starts getting closer and closer to him and he starts freaking out and so he's like guys paddle paddle and so we're laughing hysterically and trying to trying to paddle you know so because he's hanging onto the bow line while he's doing it and uh you know he doesn't want to get hit by his own turd and uh it was just it was just that was one of my favorite memories but that's looking crazy that's funny that's literally that's what's crazy is like i'm gonna take a shit real quick hop over just holding it's like that that kid stare that baby stare yeah no one's looking but everyone's looking yeah i don't oh man i just uh i was thinking about it a second ago when you said you said oh we'll get to you. I was like, wait a fucking minute.

As we're telling all these stories, I'm like, you know, the guest on this podcast is the guy who's got both of the jobs we wanted. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I didn't think about that until just now. I'm like, damn it. Eli, what's one job that you wanted? You didn't want it that bad.

No. Trust me. And I know you didn't. I know you didn't want that job. That was the interesting part about it is because I wanted the job to be done right more than I wanted to have the job, which was, I think, the big thing. And we were talking about that a little bit before. Not to talk a ton of politics, but I think that's one of the reasons a lot of us got behind you because we were like, dude, this guy, he's real. He doesn't want this job.

But this is what we need right now more than ever. We don't need career politicians. We need people that have actually done stuff that are willing to go up there, try and change this place, and don't want to be there forever. And I appreciate it because you were one of the few guys who jumped in and actually endorsed me during the race, which is like people don't understand. That's a risky fucking move. No, it is. And a lot of people don't understand it. But the way I put it to people is like how many of you work at a job somewhere where you're actively trying to get one of your coworkers fired?

It's not comfortable. You have to see these people on a daily basis. It's not even something that I don't like to do it myself, but I'm just like, hey, man, if we don't get enough people up there like I'm talking about, this country is done, dude. It's just a matter of time. Endorsing against an incumbent, especially on your own team, is very rare. No, it is. It almost never happens. It is. It is.

And I think it's one of the reasons my own party put a hit out on me this cycle. But, you know, I mean, they got Bob. Yeah. Yeah. Bob, good. It is what it is, man. You just got to be able to you got to roll the dice and be like, hey, man, I'm not I'm not here to be a part of the team, you know? Yeah. And even like putting aside the partisan, you know, Republican, Democrat, whatever, it's like I feel like no matter what, we need more people that are I said we need less politicians and more statesmen like return to statesmen where it's just people that are it. You should view politics as community service instead of a job. Oh, I aspire to be in D.C. I want to be in the mix and all that stuff. Like, I just think it would be so cool to be doing X, Y,

and Z. Like anytime I hear that sort of verbiage, I'm like, man, you're the worst person for this job. So disconnected from the trials and tribulations of life. Cause usually it's like this way to lawyer or Harvard. And then I'm going to do this.

Cause again, that is your career path. I've always wanted to be a, you're the worst person. You're the worst possible person. I wanted to be president one day and so I made that happen what that was your fuck why what the fuck that's why I think some of the best people who have been in the job let's say of president or congressman things

like that are just people who have succeeded in other things yeah especially like business they they understand how the world works they put a couple of major accomplishments under their belt and then they're like all right well this is my way of giving back to my country yeah i feel like that's that's the that's the people you want they're talking about that the other day was like teddy teddy roosevelt oh yeah it's just like a homeboy's just like they're just to it's like fucking fighting he's on the front lines he's leading charges and then they're like hey you have a you're going to be vice president that then assassination happens now he's president and then he's just kicking ass taking names you're like

that that guy has the americans interest at that point we don't have that as much much better than the other roosevelt yes yeah no the other one's not my favorite that um i actually had that question for so you had i don't know which way to frame it your business and i just learned this did you sell your business because you were going into congress and trying to do it like that no it was kind of interesting man um um as we were running the business jen and i real quick can we just say what the business is yeah for those who don't know we're going to go back to this yeah no it's called it's called bottle breacher you guys have something similar right here on the desk um the somebody you know these came to the states before i ever started the company um but we kind of made it more commercial

more mainstream and and so basically we we making.50 caliber bottle openers. And then we went on the show The Shark Tank. And I could go through like the genesis and how it all happened. But we just basically started taking military grade equipment and making men's gifts for men out of them. And largely they could be personalized with laser engraving and so it was cool man it it really gave me something i could sink my teeth into after the service because i i did notice a lot of my buddies that got out struggled and they struggled to find something they struggled to find something with mission which is i think so key for a lot of us

we don't even realize how important it is to us. And a lot of us are like, okay, I've done my time. I'm going to go isolate myself now. And I think that's when a lot of us get into trouble. But if you find something, if you can find something that actually has mission involved, like for me, you know, we hired a bunch of veterans, we made our products in the USA, and we work with a lot of veteran nonprofits. So I can't compare it to the mission of, you know, you know, being in the service, you know, being in the military itself, but it gave me enough mission to actually like want to get up every day and try and make the company as successful as possible. For goal oriented people. I feel like that's just a necessity just to have that objective.

100%. So it was a blessing for me, man, as a way to, you know, provide for my family too, when I got out of the service. And then, you know, we were running the company. And my wife and I, Jen, we both felt like, you know, God was calling us out of entrepreneurship. And so we, we actually, you know, I thought I was going to go into men's ministry of all things. And I was putting in my resume with men's ministries. I was getting the Heisman wasn't working out. And I was like, all right. Um, and then, uh, a political consultant actually reached out to me and asked me to run in that, in that specific district. Um, she thought for some reason I could win it. And, uh, so we took some time. Yeah. We took a couple of weeks. Think about it. We prayed about it. And then we decided to give it a shot. That's awesome. That's something too. I've talked about it a little bit on the podcast too, that I didn't know before, but most candidates are chosen to a degree. Like most people are, people come to you like, have you ever considered doing this? And we have people that would support you. I didn't know it was either, it's either that

or some absurdly rich guy who self-finances his whole campaign and just throws his hat in the ring. Or you're just watching Yellowstone one night. Or you're just watching Yellowstone one night. You're like, I feel like I could do that. I like that, yeah. My congressman could use a change. No, you think they're joking.

That's literally what happened. I don't know if you watch yellowstone yeah i love it yeah it's good show the where uh john dutton runs for governor yeah and just like we were i was hammered on his couch about a year and a half ago yeah we were we were watching it and i'm like man because i i'd given it a little bit of thought passingly because i'd always been involved in the politics thing yeah and then we were we were watching that i'm like man i feel like we could actually do that Because I'd given it a little bit of thought passingly because I'd always been involved in the politics thing. Yeah. And then we were watching that. I'm like, man, I feel like we could actually do that. I feel like we could make a good go of it. And I didn't realize at the time, like I said, it's either you have millions and millions of dollars to spare and you just throw a bunch of money at it or political consultants come to you and say you're a great candidate.

Because I promise you, they would have never come to me and said you're a great candidate. Because don't fit the profile exactly. No, I was surprised. And I actually asked the lady who asked me to consider running. I was like, is this normally how this works with us? And she actually said, no, it's not normally how it works. But, you know, and the way it actually happened was, it was kind of a luck thing nine months before that, that transpired. Um, a guy who was a state rep

actually called me and said, Hey, Eli, we were supposed to shoot a commercial with a politician, a Senator, uh, down in your neck of the woods at a business and the business owner backed out. And so we were scrambling to find a business to shoot a commercial at. And I was like, okay, well, you know, who's it for? And it was Senator Martha McSally at the time. And I was like, let me do a little homework. And so anyway, you know, I said, yeah, you guys can come shoot a commercial here. And so they interviewed me at first. They were like, hey, we're going to give you a script. You're going to read it. And I'm like, no, I'm not reading a script.

And I was like, how about I write a script? And they're like, okay, write it. So I wrote it. And they're like, no, we're not using that either. Why didn't you want to use your script? I'm curious. I don't know. It's probably too hardcore or something.

It's probably the profanity amongst other things. So they were like, how about this? How about this? How about we'll interview you for like 45 minutes and if you say it, you know, we'll clip up what you say and then we'll use that. And I was like, okay, deal. And so that's what we did.

Nice. That's funny. Yeah. And that's kind of what got you in that universe? That's the, yeah, that's the whole reason. Huh. Weird how things work out like that. It is, it is.

Going from, what made you start, as you're saying, your journey into the business world, you're like, hey, I need a mission. Because you talked about it multiple times. When you leave the military, everyone, a lot of people are lost, especially people that were in war. That was their structure, and now you're thrown into the world, and then you're surrounded by people that you have nothing to relate to a lot of the time. You're like, ah, let me hear your trials and tribulations.

Oh, shut the fuck up. Holy moly, you have no idea what trials and tribulations are. And they're like, Eli, I'm going to need those TPS reports. That'd be great. Mark cutting me lighting the building on fire. So, yeah, for me, it was kind of cool because just starting this business, my little brother was in the service, too. He was a Cobra pilot in the Marine Corps. And he went to the Philippines, and he brought me back a generic 50-cal bottle opener, and I thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever received.

And so I put it in our junk drawer at home, and then any time the guys would come over to watch a UFC fight or whatever, I'd break break it out and they'd freak out. They were like, Oh my God, is that a real 50 Cal round? I'm like, yeah, it's a dummy round, but that's, that's the real thing. And they're like, that opens your beer. And I'm like, yeah. And they're like, where can I get one? I'm like, I don't know, man, unless you go to the Philippines. And so I was like, I started thinking about it. I'm like, you know, that's pretty cool, but I bet I could make it better. And so we did. When you're scaling, how was that? Like initial, initially start a small mom and pop shop. And then you, you actually got to a pretty big fucking size. Yeah. It was pretty crazy, man. Because, um, like I, I'm not a handy guy really at all. Um, and, uh experience in manufacturing but i i went out to my garage and i had like a you know workbench and i put you know i put like some 50 cal brass in my uh in my

vise and i started practicing cutting it with a dremel tool to see if i could match something or get something that would open a beer and uh as i started doing it um um no i don't think so old southern brass it might be some a competitor there were there's a lot of people that do it now but yeah back in the day um you were probably one of the first american companies yeah there was another group there was another group called lucky shot that was doing it. There was two other Navy guys that were doing it, um, called bullets to bandages, um, for, for a little bit too. But, uh, anyway, so when I started, I was cutting them with Dremel tools and, uh, I was spray painting them and they, they look like crap, but, and I was taking, I was buying stickers online and I was putting the stickers on it like an infidel sticker, an American flag sticker or, you know, whatever.

I'd find little stickers of military units and I'd put it on there. And then I asked my wife, I was like, because she had some success with some small online boutiques. And I was like, she was running them out of her house. And I was like, Hey, do you think you could help me sell these? And she's like, Yeah, I think I could let me do some research. And so she comes back and she's like, Hey, I think I know where we're gonna put them. She's like, we're gonna put them on Etsy. And I was like, Etsy,

I'd never heard of it. And but I know I listened to her. And that's where we started selling them. And so I use the same methodology we use in the service, kind of like that crawl, walk, run mentality. And I'd buy 10 of them at a time. I'd make them and then we'd sell them. And then I was like, okay, we sold those 10. I'm going to buy 50, get my price point down a little lower. And then I'd make them, we'd sell them. And then,

you know, as the thing started taking off. So at this point, you're still just in your garage with a Dremel. I made like the first 500 of them with a Dremel tool. And it was kind of cool because the first fixture I ever made was I found out that my broom handle that I'd sweep, sweep the porch with actually fit perfectly over a 50 cal round. And so I made my first fixture out of a Dremel tool. So instead of taking like a tape measuring cloth and actually drawing out with a Sharpie the cut, I could just put that cut in the fixture, draw it real quick, Dremel it up, sand it down,

and then it was ready for paint. And so. That's one out of every five of the first batch had uh little blood stains from when you fucked up the dremel tool or cut yourself with the brass no i'll still see them every some of my buddies have the originals and i'll look at them and and they're uh and and you can tell they've been dremeled because the cut isn't like really good yeah but uh they were selling you know and so um and so I've got just one fucking tool you bring down. It makes the entire machine.

At the end of it, I bought a CNC machine with live tooling. And, you know, we had we'd put in like 30 at a time. It would go, you know, 15 minutes later, you come back and they were all perfectly cut. And then, you know, I started growing it and, you know, figuring out, you know, what, what a powder cutter was, what a chrome plater was. And I'd start going around to these businesses and, you know, testing them out, seeing if they were good, seeing if they could deliver on time. And then, uh, one of the best decisions I ever made though, was, uh, I had a chopper and in San Diego, a motorcycle, and it was like my therapy. Um, but I was like, you know what, I'm going to sell that thing. And I'm going to buy a laser engraver. And so I did that. And when right before I did that, our month, our sales

were still pretty minuscule, but we we'd already got to like $7,500 a month, which is I never thought we'd even get close to that. I thought we were going to do maybe a couple hundred dollars a month, and I could save it for a date night or a gun or something something i wanted to just say sock away some money and then after i bought the laser engraver sales went from like 7500 a month a month and a half later 22 000 a month and then before i went on shark tank we were doing 80 000 a month selling that product out of the garage. Jesus. That's what I want. So again, $88,000 a month. And then a question.

What is that next bump up from being on Shark Tank and then seeing that jump? Yeah, it was cool, man. Because it was cool because if you start doing research, and a lot of entrepreneurs do this before going on the show, you read about Shark Tank effect.

And most businesses grow by like, you know, 700% like the next year. And so. Even if they don't get bought. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so just because of the exposure of the show is like a $5 million commercial, you know. Yeah. because of the the exposure of the shows like a $5 million commercial, you know, and we

were on national TV for like eight or nine minutes, even though Jen and I were actually in the tank for like an hour and a half. And so they cut a lot of it down. One of the things that actually happened in the show that actually didn't happen is they show Lori Greiner going out of our deal and she never did. But before you go on the show, you have to sign a bunch of legalese saying that, hey, we can basically make this show look any way we want it to, which is kind of scary, but we were like, dude, we'll do it. And so the, I remember we had a watch party when our show aired and it was airing on the East coast first. And after minutes of the show being on TV, the website crashed hard, Even after load testing it.

And I think we were getting like 13,000 hits a second or something. And thankfully, though, just going back to the military, how important redundancy plans are. So we planned for it. We had our Etsy shop still up and running. And so we just diverted all the traffic to etsy and uh the next morning we woke up because before that we had to make about 130 units on a good day and then after we woke up the next day 60 000 units we had to make 60 000 at first i was like i was watching the money roll in i was like yes this is awesome and then i was like i it. And I'm like, and then you're like. Get the wood broom.

Pretty much go buy a bunch of brooms at Home Depot. I need a bunch of brooms. And while you're at Home Depot, I need a bunch of Mexicans. Let's get our people. Oh, my God, dude. Podcasts are great because they help us make the most out of our routine. We learn about the fall of the Ottoman Empire while we drive. Keep up with news while we take the dog for a walk,

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Conditions apply to all benefits. Visit PCFinancial.ca for details. But yeah, so it took us about three months to get out of that back order. And the worst part was that people would find, because we partnered up with Mark Cuban and Kevin O'Leary, and people would find their emails somehow. And they would email them like, I've been waiting on my bottle breacher for, you know, two weeks, still haven't got it. What the hell? Why did you invest with these losers? And, you know, if you get an email like that from Mark Cuban, you're like, Oh, God, dude, it just it would ruin your night, you know, so Mark Cuban was

he was over to you to you yeah he would be like wtf get this get this stuff squirt away and uh so yeah so that was added pressure but we got it figured out and then uh you know you still talk to mark not really no i kind of figured i do talk i do talk to kevin o'leary though really and he actually came up uh to capitol hill a couple weeks ago in the small not a couple months ago and uh he testified before the small business committee so i got to ask him questions this time that's kind of cool that's kind of cool i love it man kevin's awesome dude he's like super down to earth all the people i know that had companies that he worked with they

loved him like he would come down to tucson and uh take the entire you know team out to you know dinner he'd say you know make reservations at the nicest steakhouse in town and then he'd be like he'd tell the owner if when he walked in hey i want you to bring out your 10 finest bottles of wine and you know he'd be like every bottle of wine he'd like he'd like all right guys let me tell you where this wine came from and the history of it. Like he's just a really – He's a big wine guy. Yeah, he's a big wine guy. And he just treated everybody with respect, you know, regardless of what position they had.

And that's just how I see him treat people. And that's why I like him. That's amazing, dude. That's wild, that growth. Because that is that exponential growth where you're like ah happy not scrambling to catch up how long did it take to like actually get caught up you're like because you had to expand for like machines every part yeah and that's the thing that i mean it's interesting the dichotomy of shark tank because a lot of people want to go on the show and get blow their business up but what

a lot of us don't realize is that a lot of businesses actually fail under the weight of it all because you're not growing organically. It's like it's this and most of us aren't ready for it. We're not prepared for it. And most of us are entrepreneurs that are kind of figuring it out as we go. With great marketing comes great responsibility. Yes. Yes. Yes, absolutely. And then marketing comes great responsibility. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Absolutely. And then you just scramble time. This sucks. So when you, um, God, that's, you're basically a hundred X in your business overnight.

That's insane. Yeah. When the, when you, that's actually a good question is once you hit like 60,000, what did the, it falls off and then you hit a average medium, probably I'm guessing like 20,000 was, or 10,000. What did it falls off and then you hit a average medium probably i'm guessing like

20,000 was or 10,000 what did it become was the norm i'm trying to remember i think it was probably after after the big after the big spike it probably went from like 150 a day before shark tank to probably like you know probably something like a thousand a day something like that yeah jesus christ that's still a shitload yeah it is and like um you know we we were able to buy enough machine enough engravers enough you know machines like the cnc that i talked about to kind of and then figure out programs to you know kind of keep up with it along with the staff but you know it was just cool because we came out with a bunch of other products. We came out with something called the Freedom Frag, which was a grenade that opened your beer or your bottle, whatever.

We came out with a wine opener. We came out with just so many products. And that was my favorite part of it was innovating and creating the products. You know what I mean? See if you could come up with the next thing. And there were a lot of misses in there, but I just like product development and I think it's fun. So if I can ask, what was the thing that kind of tipped you in that you decided that you and your wife decided that you just didn't want to be a part of entrepreneurship anymore? What was the thing? You know, there were a lot of things.

Anybody that's, you know, started a business like that understands how much work and dedication it takes. There's no nights, weekends. There's no nine to five. You know, even taking a vacation a lot of the time is a big stress on your family, the company. And so, you know. Everyone at the table is like, bro. Yeah. Bro. Your vacations, everyone was like, bro, yeah. Vacations are stressful. Right, right. You're sitting there at the pool, like, this is fun. Right, right. So that, you know, that that was a big part of it, you know, just wanting to spend

more time with their kids, which is awesome. Yeah, that's a really good question. and then it ties them with the stress a lot of people don't understand it's like working for yourself is this fantastic idea you're like man that is the dream right until you own one business two business three business and you start that is when stress that's like true stress in my opinion you're like other people's livelihood depend on you now. Yeah, absolutely. And I think for the majority of the time we owned it,

we probably had about 30 employees, 25, 30 employees. And then around Christmas time, we'd bump up to about 60 with seasonals. But to your point, you know that the decisions that you make you know affect these people and especially if you're like especially if you're hiring vets and like you you feel extra committed to try and making sure that these guys are taken care of um you know it's it's a lot it's a lot like if i if i don't do my job properly and I fuck up or I get complacent, four of my employees' kids aren't going to have a Christmas. 100%. That's a crazy thought to just go to bed with every night. It is.

And you don't know how to scale it. That's one of the hardest parts is scaling. We're big on very extremely slow hiring process here. Even for Unsub, whatever we're doing, Pepperbox, extremely slow hiring process because I've watched the other end of multiple businesses. It's like, we can hire everyone. And then year goes in, it's like, we have to lay off so many people. Well, and to that point, before Shark Tank, we had six employees.

The two weeks after, we had to bump up to 30. And so you're just hiring anybody with a pulse, you know, because you need people so fast. And it's clearly not the best way to do it. But when you're in damage control mode and you're trying to plug holes in the ship, I mean, you kind of got to do what you got to do. But to your point, it is wise to take your time when hiring people.

Yeah. And that's what's scary is that growth. Where you're like're just yes he's addicted to meth but he works really fast he's jumping around he doesn't sleep it was funny hiring autistic people yeah exactly one of the one of the one of the ladies i hired um you know i was uh we had this little uh we had this little like uh circle k next door where people would go get drinks or snacks or whatever. And one of our employees was walking over to get a coffee or something. And they saw her. She'd clocked in, and then she'd gone and taken a nap on a dirt lot and told me, hey, you might want to go check on so-and-so.

I think she's passed out over there and i think she came in drunk and then you know went just passed out in the dirt lot so at least she clocked in first right so you would see stuff like that she's responsible you'd see stuff like that and be like oh my god yeah that's and then and then and then you try not to revert back to military what would have been the reaction in the military you know you have to remind yourself we're not in the military anymore do fucking push-ups you don't what is he talking about never mmm here I ride do you get two more of those can legally fire you pretty much theresa we talked about this no passing out in the circle

k parking lot oh my god that dude it's everyone at the table. It's like that entrepreneur mindset. And for everyone out there, it is the amount of work it takes to get to your position. Everyone's position is a metric shit ton. It is awesome, but you do have to buckle up. And just, like, your fun times go away. That's what I always say. It's like I I don't, I work till nine,

10 at night, wake up, Jim, do everything else. Also, if you ever, if I ever hear the excuse, I don't have to time to Jim,

you were in Iraq, Jimming, right? You would lift it. Yeah. Fuck off. Like, like truly fuck off.

Everyone has time to Jim, make that part of your mental clarity and treat your body like a temple but you ever use the house gym i do yeah yeah i do i do a lot i didn't know there was a check it out i did i didn't know that that was a thing but there's actually a gym in the house of representatives oh yeah it's cool uh that makes way more not a lot of guys a lot of the guys in there are older yeah but uh not a lot of guys use it. But there's a couple trainers down there. And one of the trainers is a dude named Chris. And I'll take – I've got boxing gloves down there.

And he'll hold the pads for me. And we'll just – it's one of the best workouts. You need to hit something some of the time around there. Yeah. You ever thought of that or your coworkers? You ever fought a pro boxer? We can do it right after this podcast. Brandon's a pro boxer? I'm good it right after this podcast. Brandon's a pro boxer?

I'm good, actually. I did a pro fight. It was technically a pro fight, but it was one of those YouTube projects. It was a pro fight. Not technically. Well, yeah. 10-ounce gloves televised the whole time. Yeah, that's a pro fight, right?

Yeah, last year. Don't doubt me. Nice. Which was crazy because I knew two weeks after that I was announcing my candidacy. So I'm like, man, I better win this. This is going to look really bad. You had a black eye and you still look good. Oh, yeah.

I forgot. I was training for my fight when I took some of the photos that we knew we were going to use for promotion for the campaign. In one of them, there's a very poorly photoshopped or poorly airbrushed black eye in one of them. I see it in like big projections when i'm doing events and shit and i was like man yeah no that was i was getting punched by eli fucking two weeks before that this is far far far far far yeah fight yeah it's fun that's that's awesome dude no but it's crazy stuff because like a lot of people don't know how much like i so i got to um and i had a couple of meetings obviously in DC

and whatnot when things got really serious but we were in with Gates team and a bunch of people and we got a lot of tours of the areas of the house that or the Capitol building you wouldn't really think are there right like the secret tunnels that go under yep well not really secret but right just the tunnel system that goes under the capitol is kind of crazy yeah it's pretty cool man um you know all the tunnels that run under there i get i still get lost all the time but yeah it's cool you know it looks like a dmv if the weather's if the weather's bad or if there's you know a bunch of protests going on which are is always the case up there you know it's kind of cool to just be able to you know

stay out of the what's your favorite part of the capital nobody knows about just a little hidden gem if you take people tour in it like what what's the thing you point out you know i think statutory hall is pretty cool but it's not really a hidden gem and i'm honestly not one of these like uh um i'm not one of these uh architecture history buffs to be honest with you i kind of just go over there do my thing and then then come back but a lot of the people that we take over there you know we can usually take them on the house floor if nobody's on there they like to see that i hear the senate chambers you know popping if uh yeah if two guys want to use that after hours that's available yeah well that's hours, that's available. Yeah.

Well, that's what I've heard. But it's kind of cool. That's what I can't burn out of my eyes. It's kind of cool because if you bring your little kids, we can take them on the house floor during voting. So that's kind of cool. So it's kind of cool. Most of the kids don't know who they're meeting, but you'll be like, hey meet my friend matt gates or you know whoever and they don't know who they're meeting right but it's cool because all the members if little kids are on the floor all the all the members will come up and they'll be like hey will you vote for me and and they'll

give them their voting card and the kids get to vote you know on the house floor so it's pretty cool that's really neat yeah oh that's illegal no i'm joking they're not 18 what the shit is that just hear a little jimmy voter vote often that's right that's right i just really the that was one thing i was really not looking forward to is having to spend so much time in dc because it's it's basically like from from what i was told from several members is you basically have to live there yeah for a lot of the year yeah so it's like uh it's three weeks a month usually and usually when you're there it's four days a week so if we fly in on monday we usually fly out on thursday if we fly in on tuesday we fly out on friday so

i always try and come back on the weekends to spend time with my family and then you know travel around the district um but it is a lot of time in dc and that that that kind of sucks it's one of my most hated cities in the country yeah there is a lot of time in DC and that, that, that kind of sucks. It's one of my most hated cities in the country. There's a lot of great history there and it's really, it's cool in that regard, but I just, I couldn't imagine spending as much time. God bless you for it. Yeah. I couldn't do it. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't, I don't love it, but it's just like a lot of things, man. I didn't love living in a trailer in Iraq either, but it was part of the gig, so we're just going to do it. Sucking it up. Suck it up.

That's crazy. So when you're that entire lifestyle, because I got to watch you talking about even the assassination attempt, because you're the best person for that, which is when you have problems with a scenario, you're like, the fuck yeah did this even happen like well we said it was a problem yeah well we would have called so many hits on that guy while he was talking pretty much pretty much guys walking up with like a ladder

he's an air softer no camouflage roof is you know completely white our buddy's shirt was his camouflage demo literally yes oh yeah it's our body sure like oh my god we don't I guess you guys can decide if we wouldn't even mention that yeah we work through a company called a bunker branding and it's owned by one of the biggest gun toers demolition ranch of this right up here in Bernie and yeah the is the assassin possible assassin was wearing one of his demolition ranch shirts um when he shot it when he shot at trump wow yeah so that was that was a

big kerfuffle there for a couple days shirt okay but it was green right it was uh gray was it gray oh yeah see there you go okay but not good for because then poor demo demo didn't know until like it went all over news and it's like and his name's the demolition right he doesn't have a militia but god bless that news he militia group leader mad character what the fuck i'm sure i sold t-shirts literally that's it so i'm gonna put out a statement everything was like oh this is the news owed him an apology which i mean that's a recurring theme usually but right yeah that was heinous oh god that and but going from that like you're now you're their suit tie was that normal for you or were you like i do not like this at all not at all you have to cover your sleeve i'm

i barely even had you know suits, suits, to be honest. This is how I typically dress. You don't say. I have a feeling. So, yeah, I definitely didn't like that at all. But, again, man, comes with the territory, and it's just – I see it as just a season, you know. And I'm hoping that I'm not in this season very long to be honest with you so that how long do you want like the longest you would do this for yeah you know in my mind right now

is behind the camera like no no no i know they they already they already all know it dude but i i president yeah right right when's your son about it president of the waffle house dude you get voted in you're like no and there's no way that that would ever happen dude but uh you know i'd love i'd like to do this for two to three terms for us four to six years and then and then you know come back to you know being a civilian again you know but is this a stress level same or like what do you feel now is that switch in stress levels you know honestly you know as i walk in you know you guys might identify with it you you might not but is i where i see the country going i see it going more towards uh it definitely has a more totalitarian event where

the federal government continues to overreach and when you start seeing the federal government weaponize it's you know um you know it's departments against Patriots when you're up there and you're fighting against them and you're calling them out and you're trying to hold them accountable you you know that you're putting a target on your back, right? And so it's like there's a little bit of that, but being away from your family all the time, traveling all the time, getting your tail kicked all the time,

trying to change the country around, but watching that you're in a body of people in a city in the United States that is, you know, its sole goal is to protect the apparatus, the establishment, and feeling like you're not really moving the needle really effectively. All of that, not only is it frustrating, but it's stressful at the same time, man. Because I don't know, you guys probably feel the same way, man. I feel blessed that I got to grow up here in this country, dude, and have the freedoms and opportunities that we do. And being a dad and believing that my kids aren't going to have that, that weighs on me too.

And so there's a lot. And I don't want to sound like I'm complaining because I do feel grateful and blessed to be able to do it. But, uh, yeah, it is, it's a, it's just a different level of stress. I mean, you're not getting shot at anymore. I'm not as away. I'm not away from my family for as long a periods of interrupted time as I, you know, as I used to be more of like a stress on the soul. Yeah. That's a great way to do not only your pro boxer, do you like a philosopher over here? Not at all.

I'm an internet retard now. I've gone back down to that. Play-Doh over here. Play-Doh. Yeah, Play-Doh. A-Y-D-O. Somebody get this dude a corncob pipe yeah my my great philosophical opinion of yes congress sucks the image is like a sunset you sitting looking at it i mean that's super new brandon that's also

the crazy part too is uh just like the the amount of people that just have a negative opinion of congress in general yeah like the approval rating of congress is almost a meme at this point but the incumbency rate is like 97 of the incumbents who run that win their elections yeah it's insane yeah no one know what you just said brandon go on incumbents for those who don't know in the unsubscribe audience are the people that are already in office so if you run for re-election you are the incumbent yeah so the amount of times that the incumbent wins their election should they seek it it's like 97 and what happens is if you if you go up there and you become part of the team and you fall in line and basically do what you're told and you you stay within the

right and left lateral limits that are kind of proposed to you and and told this is what you'll do this is what you won't do then the apparatus or the establishment will come and get your back and protect you yep when somebody tries to challenge that right because they i was on the receiving end i know i know you do and so that's what, but that's why, that's why incumbency, it's one of the biggest reasons incumbency is so strong. Yep. That's crazy. The devil that you know kind of thing. Yeah. There are very few things that you can be certain of in life, but you can always be sure the sun will rise each morning. You can bet your bottom dollar that you'll always need air to breathe

and water to drink. And of course you can rest assured that with public mobile's 5g subscription phone plans you'll pay the same thing every month with all of the mysteries that life has to offer a few certainties can really go a long way subscribe today for the peace of mind you've been searching for public mobile different is calling that's it's one of those things it's like the like wars i guarantee you're not like let's not fund wars that's it's one of those things it's like the like wars i guarantee you're not like let's not fund wars that's it you experienced it so you're you're on that opposite end yeah i'm assuming yeah and that's and then you hear people voting for it and you're like raise your hand you've actually experienced it right no one raises their hand that That must be, like, what is that feeling? Because that's fucking wild to me.

No, it is wild, man. And sadly, and everybody's got their own perspective. Like, I know I don't have the, you know, I know I don't, I won't say I'm not going to act like I have all the answers or have some pristine perspective or anything like that. But the way I look at it, you know, and there are plenty of military guys up there that, you know, we call them war hawks or neocons or whatever it is. But many of them, I think, just have this mentality that the United States is supposed to be some global police force. Right. And, and, and, and, and they think that when the United States is involved in like protecting other countries and like selectively

protecting other countries, that the world is a safer place. And, um, you know, I, I used, I would even say, you know, years and years ago, I would have even found myself closer to being in that camp. But as I've gone to war, experienced it, seen a lot of my buddies not come back home. I know a lot of gold star families. And then I look at the financial, economical situation this country's in. I look at the fact that we don't have a southern border. We don't take care of our own people. But yet we'll send hundreds of hundreds of billions of dollars overseas to

often to people that hate our guts it just doesn't make a ton of sense man it's the uh the the joke i was hearing or the meme from earlier it's like oh no there's an asteroid headed straight to the earth that's about to destroy us all not to worry i'm sending 200 billion to israel and ukraine it's like is that right my tax dollars somehow also my tax dollars and then i love that they added under it somehow not my tax dollars the hurricane and you're like yeah that's another good that's another great example of you know us not taking care of our own citizens and when you look at like you know fema uh alejandro mayorkas dhs and you know, FEMA, Alejandro Mayorkas, DHS, and, you know, taking, you know, you know, millions and millions of taxpayer dollars and using them to, you know, resettle illegal immigrants here as opposed to having money ready for disaster relief. It's just.

And that's coming out of the same budget is the problem. Yeah, it is. That's the crazy part. Now they say, oh, well, it's two different pots, but they can move money around all the time and they do. And so it's just – I think it's dishonest and I think it's pathetic. That's the priority. That's probably the hardest part of everything is not being – you can voice it as much as you want, but – and you're in a position where you're like, I can make a change now. I've heard officers that went from green to gold and they're like i thought i would make a change if

i did this switch right not a damn thing actually shifted with that right and you know um i i could i could make some arguments that i i you know just minusc you know, small changes that I think that I've seen even, you know, since I've been there. But big picture, no. Big picture, no. You know, and who knows, man. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know how this whole thing plays out. But it's definitely, it's frustrating and it's concerning.

Crazy. Now, please don't talk about that on Twitter. You see what happens there jesus christ man so somebody light you up on twitter no cody lights every thousand people cody is a homelander on twitter he just lands like this is a laser being cut and we won't have like cody and he's like can i have on so twitter account we're like no for a while there was the 11th most influential person on Twitter. Oh, dang.

Yeah, Elon put out a list, like, top 20, and his name's on it. Dang, bro. I'm just like, but all I do is go around lighting fires. I'm like a kid with gasoline laughing at everyone on there. Cody is the best backup you could ever ask for on Twitter. I'll give you that. Oh, yeah. All right.

Good to know. I see the things that people don't normally say or can't say. There you go. So if you ever want to just nudge me a little bit, I'm going to put it in your tweets. Just tag him. Good to know. Just tag him.

Cody. GRF. Yeah. Put the spotlight up in the air. Right, right. You're like, oh, no. During the campaign, he was my air support. Just like lays lays that area

there you go j damn coming in there you go what was your um like do you okay so video game movies switch topics a little what is uh guns actually guns we can talk about some fire are you still are you big a lot of military guys surprise a lot of military guys aren't super into guns when they get out like i took me years to get back into shooting because i shot yeah so many fucking rounds in the military i was like i don't want a gun i don't care enough right what was your like no i i uh i definitely would classify classify myself as somebody who stayed interested in firearms, even after getting out. Yeah, absolutely. You still long range, short range?

What was your jam? I like a little bit of everything, man. I still love to get out and shoot long range. I think it's, you know, logistically, it's more difficult to do. It takes more time more setup um so if i don't have a lot of time which i don't anymore it's just easier to go set up a couple targets and do maybe some hand guns and some carbine but uh you know if i if i get some time man i love to break out the uh the old bolt action are you right right right now my favorite uh is a sig Cross and 6.5 Creedmoor.

It's actually, side note, a great rifle for the price point. Dude, you cannot beat that. You can't beat it. It's like $1,500, I think, retail. It's got a detachable box magazine. It's got a foldable adjustable buttstock. I mean, it's a damn good gun for the price point it's the one sig that's actually cheap for what it is yeah it's i i dig them it's a monster what kind of long range guns are you guys shooting cross i have the sr uh sr the cover srs i don't know that one

that's like the world's smallest covert is the brand um desertvert SRS. So it's the world's shortest sniper rifle. What's it chambered in? Surprisingly, in 20 seconds, you use barrel swap and it holds zero. So I have.338 Lapua and.308 is the two rounds I run. And then it's just 20 seconds. You just click, click, pull. What's the barrel length on this? 18 for the.308, 20 for the for the 338 and it's good out to

a thousand two thousand like it's a 0.25 it's quarter minimum angle rifle how how much does that thing weigh dude it is this big so you should bullpup so shooting three three three eight is it just like massive recoil and i think that has a really good break but again it's it is bullpup it's a bullpup so it's and most bullpups you probably know trigger sponge crap this has a perfect trigger so you're just like 338 you usually want a little bit more weight on it though yeah yeah it's a little spicy if you got a great break yeah they do they build a fucking fantastic rifle with that thing i love it that's my and then i have you know your m700s yeah so i run around with those two just all gucci out but nice man what is that what is that bullpup retail for i think like eight thousand holy Six or eight. They're not cheap.

Desert Tech makes good stuff. Yeah. I'll have to look that up, dude. Yeah, if you had more time, we would take a shoot. Brandon has like two guns. You just bought your third one. I'm new in the firearm space. The one that I'm really enjoying now for long range is probably's probably it's the nicest bolt gun I've ever bought.

It was the Accuracy International 300 Win Mag. Yeah. And I did it to recreate the Secret Service shot from the Trump assassination video. Because we did that video and that kind of blew up basically just showing like, hey, we did a slow-mo of the ballistics of what shooting an ear on a ballistic dummy would look like at a 5.56. And we did it like 100,000 frames a second on the slow-mo just to show people who... That was irritating. How many shots did it take you to get the ear? So I did it from very close.

So I cheated a little bit on that. I didn't do it from 100 because what I was trying to prove is... That'd be hard to get the top of the ear even at 100. I think it'd be impossible. Out of the setup he was using you're talking about like a 3moa ar-15 and then he had a red dot on it yeah yeah yeah i know i couldn't make that shot no i couldn't either i mean the the equipment's not capable of that i mean without risking a headshot which is one of the reasons why i get pissed when people are like

well well trump obviously he he staged it uh like good good lord from uh from 120 yards with a no magnification 3moa ar-15 there's a bigger than it is a greater chance he gets a round through the head than the ear oh much more any day of the week well there's people too that are like even if a bullet came that close to his head it would have blown half of his head off. An AR-15 giant bullet. The dangerous AR-15 would have scrambled his brain from the impact wave. It's like, come on. It went through a millimeter

of cartilage. Science. You guys just don't understand. Should have touched it and his head exploded like a pumpkin. Those are the people that, you know, you have the bullets out on the table, like.30-06 all the way down to.556. They're like, which one do you think an AR-15 fires? Right.

So you're talking about that AI-300. So in the teams, that was my favorite sniper rifle. But it wasn't like a standard AI rifle. So what they'd do is they'd take like like a and i don't know why they did this but they took like a a remington 700 they put an ai chassis on it and uh and then they they built them out at crane indiana but probably shot very similar to your ai so i found out that's exactly what love that gun love that gun though man that was my favorite secret service does that exact same thing because it's way cheaper to build it i didn't know that

until after i bought this fifteen thousand dollar gun is it fifteen thousand fifteen grand oh my god that whole setup and i realized afterward i'm like oh i could have just gotten this for like 7k it's a quarter minute angle holy cow dude quarter minute angle this is the tiniest fucking little pat that is crazy dude i would love to see the recoil on 338 spicy yeah have you shot the 338 yeah i got a suppressor for that's i have that primal that bolts on too i'm gonna shoot it and i'd be like okay that was great that's Dude, that $8 a round is why I don't shoot it much. I'm like, okay, we'll just get a zero for $8 a round.

I really want that Sword International 338. Have you ever seen those? No. It's an AR platform semi-auto 338 Lapua. Oh my goodness. They call it the Mjolnir. The Mjolnir? Yeah. I want one of those but they're like $10,000. Holy cow. I've got that 338 they are

or is it 301 mag is it 301 oh yeah nemo yes the nemo yeah yeah that's a home defense gun everyone loses with your um fuck did you ever did you have a 50 cal uh barrett and that you never brought we didn't have you guys had better 50 cows than us we had well i mean it probably depends on what you wanted but we actually had a mcmillan 50 oh really and uh 50 it was i think so and it was uh it was bolt action but uh the only rounds they gave us for it was a rafis round which was like christ for moa like accuracy wise but they've got we missed shoot again the good news is got explosive in the tip so it's you know it packs

a little bit of a punch but it was so damn heavy that nobody would, nobody would carry it. Yeah. It's literally what happens is like you take it to one mission and then no one brings a 50 cal ever again to a mission. Like that thing fucking sucked and did nothing more than I could have done. The thing you were saying with initiating an ambush with an AT4. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I've told the story before.

It's like we're going out on missions. Like, remember the AT4 is lighter when you shoot it. So we initiate ambush the one thing you're not supposed to yeah yeah very big no no and then you don't have to carry the extra weight back on yeah yeah think smarter not harder thank god no one knew about that at the time you're like missed okay shoot everything else makes our war makes the exfil a lot easier so much so much fucking easier now are you a big movie guy yeah like series uh yeah i like uh i like movies i like series as well what kind what what what you're jam um well you guys were talking about uh yellowstone i really like that one um actually on the way here i flew a southwest flight and you know they had a new western that

kevin costner was in that uh i watched like half of it it was really good whatever that the new uh the great american story or something that might have been it i can't remember but it was it was good um yeah like the thing that he apparently quit yellowstone to make yeah like the uh it's it's supposed to be like a like is it a series it's a three it was three hours and so i only got halfway through it but just stuff like that what about you guys what do you like 18 well i never watched yellowstone i watched 18 was 1873 1878 yeah the prequel they came out with after i like that one too dude that one chef's kiss that i like sci-fi i like dude i'm anime movies series whatever i'm

huge and i know what you're thinking yeah a lot of this stuff on the wall yeah that's all you like he walked in here he's like oh these guys are a bunch of fucking nerds. No, I didn't think that. He's like, hey, is it too late to cancel? Hey, I got a thing come up. I just don't want to be here. Got some Congress shit to do right now. Yeah, yeah. A lot of stuff.

A lot of stuff. It is hard. Like, tell us. Anime is definitely, I know a majority of people are not into that i'm like i was a nerd growing up i'll keep that military i still watch it people be like really really you watch anime i didn't know you were gay exactly i'm like sorry but anything else i do not picture you as a gamer. No. Sometimes, you know, it was funny.

I love playing Call of Duty, but I never play it. But we played it overseas all the time. And it was hilarious because we would connect, like, you know, 15 or 16 Xboxes together. And, like, if we weren't operating, we'd play Xbox and we'd play Call of Duty. And the funny thing is we'd play kids back in the States, and they would be beating our – whooping us and talking crap to us. And we're thinking, what if these kids know that they're beating a SEAL platoon right now? Come back stateside and fuck your mom. They had no idea.

But it was fun. I love playing Call of Duty. It's kind of funny. If you're playing online, there's always some dude that's like, yeah, well, I'm a Navy SEAL. And it's like, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, sure. Like they're really playing like 16 of you guys at one time. Right, right, really.

I'm so serious. So on Call of Duty, that was actually something that happened to us recently. You know that AK-50 we were talking about earlier? Yeah. The.50 Cal AK that Gates was talking about? Yeah. Call of Duty stole that and put it in the game recently. Are you serious?

In the last three months, yeah. Oh my goodness. That's awesome. They straight up ripped the gun. I was like, wait a fucking minute. They did a new announcement for Season 5 of Warzone. How do they do it now? And it is one-to-one.

It's my gun. Like, aw, you son of a bitch that's pretty cool dude it's got is it how does it perform maybe have you used it i used so i'm i never got bad at call of duty because i i don't play games like that anymore like it takes a lot to get me to play a game right um as i had those skills from Brandon last night playing cause you got me into fucking Red Dead 2 no spoilers he's like I got it I was like oh I'm sorry bro but I you know it's like riding a bike where it's like

I just want to be good enough that whenever my kids get into Call of Duty like get into that age cause it'll be on Call of Duty fucking 24 by then that I can still beat their ass they can't you exactly i want to how old are your kids i don't have kids yet so working on it currently okay cool i just i want to make sure i keep that skill sharp enough that's awesome but let them check then that's why i beat all my riding and my other kid laid a smack down.

I'm like, bro, you're never beating me in this. I will let you know that. But the gun was pretty good. It was meta for a quick minute. So I'm like, all right, well, at least they made it good. If they made it shit, I would be very upset. Yeah. You guys, were you guys, how old are you guys?

I'm 37. 37? 28. 28? 39. Took you a second there. Do you guys remember that game Tecmo Bowl? Fucking do.

Joe Mont, who was the dude that was broken? Who was what? There was a character that was broken in that. You could just fucking. Oh, Bo Jackson. Bo Jackson. That was huge. That team Bo Jackson.

That was funny because you're talking. Yeah, that was NES. Yeah, that's you just... That team project. It was funny because you're talking... Yeah, that was NES. Yeah, that's old school Nintendo. I was asking you guys how old you were, but I remember being a kid and my dad would play that game with us. And I remember the day I beat him and he got super pissed off.

That's going to be you, dude, with your kids in Call of Duty. Fucker. Heck no, Bo. Don't quote the dark magic to me, which I was there when it was written. Did your kiddos play? Like your daughters, are they into sports or any video game stuff?

Yeah, they, I don't know. I try and keep, I try and remember the titles of them. Roadblocks or something. I don't know. Roadblocks. Wait, it's Roadblocks. Roadblocks, yeah. Yeah, I know about that.

Yeah. Stuff like that. I don't really, I don't really yeah. I know about that. Yeah. Stuff like that. I don't really know. Quick, quick story on that. You know Roblox, right? Watch what would you reaction if your daughters did this. Cody, go. It's truck month at GMC.

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this truck month. Truck month is on now. Ask your GMC dealer for details. He's 15 now. back when he was around seven eight uh you can buy currency in the game called robux okay blocks yeah and i bought some for him one time bought him like 20 for a birthday or something so here you go go crazy i didn't wipe my credit card information off of it so over the course of a year my son siphoned five thousand dollars out of my paypal account yeah oh my god did you at least

go check out what he had to show for it was like it's something like the epic castle that's what we were joking about yeah this dude probably has an aircraft carrier with like 10 hoes on it four jets it's just bling all over him dude gold chains i just like the story when you called your oh yeah he was so it was the summertime and he was saying with my mom out at her lake house and i called and i was like put john on the phone she's like okay he's like hey dad what's up i say roblox and he goes he drops the phone and my mom said he ran into his room and closed the door he knew the call was coming at something yeah he knew because i didn't notice it because like my paypal account is where all my live stream donations go into so i really just keep the

money in there for rainy day yeah and he was taking out a dollar a dollar a dollar five dollars ten dollars and then i noticed it when there was like two hundred dollars three hundred dollars i was like all right there's a lot of money coming out on my paypal account and i traced it back to roblox i spent five grand on that game hilarious how many kids do you have just him just a 15 year old boy yeah my best how's that going 15 year old boy is he out of control or is he good man i've got him in like jujitsu and that's awesome like you know a lot of stuff to keep him straight i wish when i was growing up like that was popular and like a thing it really it really wasn't like it i felt like right as i was getting out of like high school you know brazilian jiu-jitsu was coming online but makes me wish it was a thing back then

great sport dude that is i you probably watch pride and everything go you're big oh yeah ufc pride dude dude that's we would. Dude, my entire high school was me and my friends beating the shit. I did martial arts and boxing since I was young. So it was my garage that we had pads

and we beat the shit out of each other. Right. All the time you come spar, box, everything. And we just watched Pride learn how to do moves. We're like,

oh, what the fuck are they doing? Because again, who knows? That wasn't a thing at that time. You're like, MMA didn't exist watch pride learn how to do moves like oh what the fuck are they doing because again right knows that wasn't a thing that time you're like right mma didn't exist or it was just becoming a thing and then people will come over like i know how to fight and you beat the shit out of other kids that knew how to fight right and then have a blast are you big into martial there's no weight classes in the garage by no no way yeah no i love weight classes. No, I love watching it, man. I don't compete or anything like that, but I did do jiu-jitsu for a long time,

and then I started getting some pretty good back injuries in the service. As I was getting out, I still did it a little bit, but I started seeing some docs who were like, hey, maybe you should look at getting a fusion or something like that. And I was like, or you could kind of like, you know, adjust, you know, some of your, your lifestyle and some of the physical things you're doing. And so I decided to, you know, chill out a little bit, but, you know, I miss it though. Who was that? It was either, was a congressman or a senator. I can't remember.

It was I think it was last year, but he was in a hearing with like a union boss. I know who you're talking about. Yeah. Basically threatened to beat his ass. And the guy was just like, let's fucking do it right here. And I looked into his background. Yep. And the guy, he was from like Missouri or something.

I know. I know his name. I can't place it. I'm blanking on it. Mullen. I think he's from Oklahoma. He'd won three BJJ championships or something like that. The guy could fucking fight.

Yeah. This scrapper. Senator from Oklahoma. John Wayne Mullen. That's his name. You got names. What a name, by the way. John Wayne Mullen. Mullen told Teamsters President Sean O'Brien to stand your butt up. mullen that's his name yeah oh you got a name what a name by the way yeah john wayne mullen

yeah mullen told teamsters president sean o'brien to stand your butt up yeah let's fucking throw down bro i think when you watch the video the teamster wasn't wasn't worried about it at all i think it was bernie sanders was like gentlemen gentlemen chill out i'm like no no no no bernie get the fuck out. Because I was in D.C. when it happened. I was like across the street when it happened. I'm like, dude, I could have had front row seats to that. I would have been egging it on. I would have loved to see that.

Do you watch active? Are you still big in the UFC and fighting? Yeah, I love it, dude. Love watching it. It's one of the only sports I watch anymore, dude. I used to love watching football, and then once everybody started kneeling, I'm like, I'm out. But it actually ended up being a good thing.

It saved me a lot of time because I watched way too much football. Now, do you watch boxing or just MMA? I watch boxing, too. I like boxing, and I like MMA. Dude, last week's fight was Bvel and better be who won that because i better be fucking one are you serious bro and that's what we watched it and now dependent bevel had the better hits cleaner more hits everything but the one thing he did not do is like the last rounds he wasn't fighting he wasn't engaging as much and better beave

there's a hundred percent knockout ratio but this is the first time he's never knocked somebody out well he was chasing him down aggression is probably what won him the fight because he was just like i'd seen the previews and i'd been watching like highlights of bevel and then uh fucking but i didn't know that that fight had taken place and uh I'm surprised Beeble lost. Same. Same. And we watched it. Yeah.

Even at the very end, it was like he was winning by points. And then suddenly he wasn't. They went to a judge. What's that little Ukrainian dude that's just like a little magician? Yurik. Yurik? Yurik. The world. I'm talking about the little one.

The smaller one. Oh, you're talking about Zelensky he magically transports billions of dollars from our coffers to his he's a magician already he's also Paddington I can't think of his name he had 300 amateur fights

lost one of 300, and then went pro, lost one of his pro fights. Dude, but he was so good. Several people he fought in a row just quit in the corner. They were just like, that's it, man. I'm done. Dude, because he could fight with his hands down, and they would not hit him.

Kachanko? Lomachenko. Lomachenko. Lomachenko,omachenko yeah there you go vasily uh lomachenko yeah he could fight with his hands down if you want to watch some of the most like master craft boxing he'll go like this and then move and then he goes like he looks at where they're punching to disgrace the other fighter go watch some of the documentaries on lom chango you'll be like dude it's it's unbelievable he's one of my fat dude they call them ultra instincts that's like the dragon ball anime uh and they refer to that because it is a dude that doesn't have to put his hands up and he can just fight and how athletic and his movement and watching being able to read

your opponent to know where they're going to punch and why and then step around it and then just taunt them afterwards like yeah disgraceful yeah like shit dude we had um uh demetrius johnson we had oh mighty mouse yeah we had mighty mouse on really like uh what four or five months ago? Yeah, a couple months ago. That's cool, man. Really awesome guy. Was he cool? Oh, yeah, he's cool as hell. Super down to earth.

Took him and his father-in-law out to the range. Nice. Yeah. They had a blast. Yeah, they had a really good time. Dude, Alan was an OG. His father-in-law was just there for it. Was he?

Yeah, wanted to shoot everything out at the range. He was awesome. You, like, had to drag him off the range? Pretty much, yeah. He brought out some of the World War II stuff, like the Thompson, the grease gun, stuff like that, and he was about it. That's awesome, man. And then we had him and Nick, fat electrician, had Mighty Mouse teaching him some moves in the program. He's like, what are we doing this? Demetrius was like, oh like oh okay so we do this that's

cool didn't he go to pride after ufc or something or what what tournament did he go to after ufc uh he went to was it one maybe it was one i think it was one yeah he did pretty well didn't he once he left ufc i'll be honest i have no idea he dude yeah he dominated You want to hear the most crazy part of his fucking career? Yeah. Homeboy was in the UFC fighting world champions. Yeah. While being a server at goddamn... Red Lobster.

Red Lobster. No kidding. He didn't have a trainer. He still had a day job. What? That's when his trainer was like, hey, you ready to take the serious champ? You're on the UFC world stage and you lost if you actually didn't work at Red Lobster and had a full-time trainer. I remember he was the guy counting the shrimp on the train before they went out to tables. That is crazy.

I watched a documentary on him and it never said that. I'm surprised. Dude, he was talking about it all here. And we were like, I was like, oh, wait, you were a waiter and you didn't have a full-time trainer? He's like, no. It never looked like that when you watched him fight, dude. No, he's insane. It looked like that's all he does, man. And then after he became world champ, he'd still go home, put up his fence, had to get painted.

I think he won his first. He's like, what's the next thing you're going to do? He's like, everyone says Disneyland. I had a fence to put up. He's like, I had to paint a fence. Where does he live at? Washington. Really? Yeah, him and his family.

Him and his wife have been together since they were young. At Red Lobster. Yeah, literally met him at Red Lobster. That's awesome. And I was, kids are fighting. Uh, dude,

his story is crazy. Cause you know, the athletic level you have to be to do that. And to find out you had no trick. Like that's crazy. He was driving. He would just do gym workouts. Wow.

And then have his, uh, not a coach at the time, but just go to like classes. And he got to that caliber when he had a coach. That is when he just became this, everyone knows, an unstoppable monster that was just dominating the UFC and whatever. What was his weight class?

Was it like 125 or something? Yeah, 125. He was flyweight. Yeah, flyweight, right? I don't know. I know he's really small. He was on feather? Yeah, feather or fly.

I always forget. Yeah, it was feather because then fly is under that that's like 115 in boxing it's cool i was watching something that said that ufc almost like got rid of that weight class or something for a while but uh i love watching those guys they're like little hummingbirds dude like just the speed of them is like unbelievable man it It's crazy. So Pacquiao started. It's almost like they don't ever gas either. Right. No, Pacquiao started fly and then went eight. Eight weight divisions and conquered all of them.

That's insane, man. Yeah. You're like, okay, this dude's a monster to do all that. They never gas. It's kind of like the guy with the same build that's outside the local seven 11. It's crazy. Different reason though. Never gets tired.

Scratch marks. Dude, he's been standing there for at least a day and a half. Wow. What are you going to do after you get, um, after, after Congress,

after all of that, what's your next steps? Yeah, I'd love to, uh, I'd love to maybe get back into business a little bit, but, uh, spend some more time with my kids. Um, and then, uh, I'd love to, you know, actually travel a little bit with my wife and maybe

do a little ministry too. That's awesome. Yeah, man. How long you been doing that or been dabbling in? Um, I don't know, man, probably, probably about eight, nine years. Close to that. What got you into it? Um, well, I, yeah, the book's a nice, the book's a good start, but you're like, well,

I watched it on TV one time. Right, right. No, um, I was raised, I was raised, uh, in, you know, in the faith, but as I got older, you know, especially as I got out of the military, man, um, you know, I was, uh, I was raised in the faith, but as I got older, especially as I got out of the military, man, I was on the struggle bus a little bit. I had some pretty serious anger, rage issues. And I went to a Christian men's retreat, which a friend invited me to. He invited me for like two years.

I didn't want to go because I thought it sounded pretty silly. Thought we'd be doing trust falls and stuff. Talk about synergy. And it ended up being amazing, man. So I was like, when you get something good like that, you're not willing to share it with other people. I think it's pretty selfish. So I wanted to get into men's ministry and just help other guys that you know were going through some of the same things i was and what like you

can like i am very all of us are very big on like opening up about like hey therapy yep getting better especially when you have anger issues ptsd whatever your trials and tribulations are everyone's going to have a different way of depression, anxiety, everything that dudes go through that you can't talk about. Yeah. Public perception and it's making it more normalizing it. And then it, my method is not going to work for some people. Your method's not going to work, but it is still having those tools at your disposal for sure, because, and then it's like that that's what helps you.

What part of it did you gravitate towards that was different than regular therapy? For sure. faith. I think, you know, if you, if you read, if you read the story, the book, as you guys are referring to it, to me, for me, it just makes life make a lot more sense. You know, it really goes into, it dives into the theme of good and evil, which I think I've seen so much of that, you know, if you don't, if you don't have a context to really a backdrop to understand that i think it makes life really confusing and so um you know just you know i i think that's what really that the being able to understand the good and evil context of of life um is really what kind of turned me on to it was the first thing that i actually um like that where it clicked like for you were like at the men's retreat were you like oh shit i'm connecting

with this yeah no it's it was pretty cool man it was called uh it was called wild at heart back in the day it was called ransom heart but the guy that started the ministry he wrote a book called wild at heart his name is john eldridge but it was really cool because here we are sitting here talking about movies. They actually used movies, some of the movies, some of the most epic movies to kind of teach. And like, you know, they'd show clips of Braveheart. They'd show clips of Fury. They'd show clips of Last of the Mohicans. And then they would tie it into the kind of the

biblical narrative and it was just you know i felt like that was really appealing that's awesome yeah that's how you're like okay this is for me how long was the retreat for i think it was like a three-day retreat came back and your wife was like yo i like this yeah there was there was no trust falls we didn't break out No rattlesnakes or anything. Have you guys seen the movie The Campaign where he breaks out the rattlesnakes? Yeah. I watched that during the campaign. I do every year during the campaign.

Yeah, it's always fun. But yeah, man, it was cool because, you know, speaking of my wife, that was one cool thing that, you know, getting to come back and kind of take ownership of some of my failures as a husband and just be able to apologize to her and be like, hey, I know I've let you down in a couple areas, and I want to be better. And up until that point, I felt like instead of fighting for my wife, I spent all my time fighting with my wife. And so it kind of flipped the script a little bit and reset me a little bit and so it was really cool it's opening up those level of comms you're not used to and that's I think a lot of people show if you guys like fucking business friendships relate any kind of relationship you want to succeed learn how to communicate smaller

big that's what yeah I mean staff's thing is like small or big. Bring it up. Talk about it. In a healthy way. Don't just yell. Yeah. Like communicate. Right, right.

It's talking to me. Talk with me. Like don't talk at me. Talk to me. You can do that. Like these strides you can make in any relationship. And be open and honest. I swear swear to god so many people struggle with like the hard conversations if it's like awkward or anything right most people are like i'm gonna

just avoid this thing they'll they'll get i'll just give signs right they'll they'll read my mind you're like motherfucker what are you doing stop winking at me like move forward with it and then if they're not listening just yell because then they'll hear you right yeah I feel like I'm not being heard better raise my voice you're dumb oh she's listening it's like that never works and yeah I guarantee she was super thankful and then your kids learn from a positive relationship no absolutely so it. So it was an awesome experience. But, yeah, that was kind of a turning point for me. Tighter relationship, too, I bet.

Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the shit I love. I'm like, it makes me so happy. No, me too, man. Especially when there's kids involved you know because so much of you know what they see and experience ends up you know you know following them through life and really forming who they end up being so yeah yeah like that

was it nature versus nurture you do have some nurture but like nature is also part of it so yeah i'm curious when you uh when you came to your family originally and said, you know, I'm thinking about running for Congress. Yeah. How was that conversation? Well, it was kind of cool, man, because, um, in the same faith-based theme, you know, and I told you guys, I was putting in my resume with ministries and that's what I thought I was going to get into. Um, um. We took about two weeks and we prayed about it. And we talked to some mentors about it. Hey, what do you guys think? Is this the dumbest thing you've ever heard or what?

And after about two weeks, my wife, who's the brakes in our relationship, and I'm the gas, she actually kind of works out that way. But she said, hey, i'm surprised you haven't jumped at this opportunity normally you jump at opportunities like this or try and kick the door down and i'm like a little cautious i was and i was like well babe i thought god was calling me in the ministry this is politics this feels like 180 degrees and she said something really cool to me she said she's like eli do you not think god could use you in washington dc and i was like roger that. She's a good woman.

She is. She is a good woman. And, you know, so she kind of, you know, she's been supportive of it the whole time. And that really helped with the kids. But I think my oldest was a little bit, at first, you know, concerned with how much I'd be gone. And I definitely don't blame her, but, but yeah. So, you know, we told them and tried to explain to them why we thought it was important. And, you know, they, they've, they've gotten on board. I actually asked them, I was driving them

to school the other day and I said, Hey, I'm getting ready to run again. Are you guys cool with it? Or do you want me to, you know, quit doing this? And both of them were like, no, dad, you're good. We're good. You know, like you, you, you're not that big of a deal. We don't, we don't miss you that bad. And they gave me a hard time. Cause I give them the, I give them a hard time all the time, but the household shit talk. No. Yeah. And I, and I told him, I was like, cause I want you guys to understand you guys are way more important to me

than, you know, even this is really important to me, but you guys are even way more important to me. So if you guys want me to stop, like, I'm willing to do that, you know, so just having that open line of communication, I think is important. Do they ever come see you in D.C.? They do. Yeah. Yeah. Do they enjoy it? They do.

My little one more than my older daughter, but I think part of it is when they come you usually they end up you know friends will come out as well and my wife will end up giving him tours and so my kids end up going on the same tours over and over and over again so they're kind of like all right this is getting a little old but they like it that's cool yeah it's kind of a neat environment it's the uh what is it you know, bring a parent workday kind of thing. You come in like, well, my dad's a firefighter. Well, my dad works in the Capitol. Yeah, no, it is. It is cool. They like coming on the house floor. They like talking to people. You know, it's a cool experience. And I don't even know as a kid that you can fully appreciate it but you know i'm glad that i think my kids were on the floor with me during the

speaker fight last january and they were just they were just sitting chilling with me on the floor and you know a couple times when i'd stand up and cast my vote you know my daughters would stand up with me and you know it's i don't think they realize the magnitude of that but you know it's going to be cool to be a part of their story you know a lot of this i mean everyone's who cody us it's the kids because it's the normalcy they have no clue it's when they get of adult age like oh shit dad actually did some cool ass stuff i think john's finally at the age where he's starting to figure that out yeah Yeah, my son. He's spoiled ass. I'm like, hey, man, Chuck Liddell. I'm having lunch with Chuck Liddell today.

You want to go? No, I've met Chuck. Okay. I'm like, Demetrius Johnson's going to be in town. Want to go to dinner with us? No, I'm fine. The.50 cal on the top of the Humvee or whatever over at Ox. He's like, hey, John, you want to come up and shoot this full auto m250 cal

no i did that last time i just want to read anime it's like dude kids are like they just want to do tap edit the weirdest experience hopefully they probably would have killed a child with my hands at his age to be able to have the opportunity to do that yeah right it's like nah we take with the range you know brandon's got one of the rarest machine gun collections ever. He's shooting. Like you say, he's shooting the mod dudes. He's shooting all these super rare machine guns and stuff. In his mind, this is probably normal. He's going to get out there

and nobody's going to take him to the indoor shooting range. What is this? You want to come out, drive 45 minutes to shoot a 9mm handgun indoors for an hour? No. Dad, that sounds lame. I got anime to read.

Eric, what the hell? And that's the thing where it's kind of interesting where you're raising kids in a very irregular environment. It's like we were talking about with John, his book. Oh, yeah. My subbed Retarded Uncles. Because his uncles growing up are, you know, me, Eli, Matt Best, just all sorts of just different. Right.

Yeah. It's a non-regular environment because, you know, he's raising me. Did you write a book? No, I'm saying my son's going to write a tell-all book, my Subbed Retarded Uncles, and he's going to be growing up around us. Yeah. Idiots and degenerates. Yeah, DJing. He'll be a bestseller.

Yeah. Can't wait to read it. Can't wait to read it. Eli, you're on your fifth book about your services in ABC. That's where we go, yeah. What's the sixth book? Yeah, I mean, well, you know, I've got a lot of good stories.

No, I haven't written a book. I'm actually working on a faith-based book right now, but it's not your typical SEAL book. But I'm hoping it's good for people. So we'll see. Do you have a name yet? Yeah, but I'm not allowed to say it. Dang it. Yeah.

We'll bleep it out. People, when's it releasing? I don't know. So I've actually tried to write the book a couple times and uh have been unsuccessful so like a lot of my career a lot of a lot of failure i don't even want to i don't even want to fucking hear it i know look i'm such a failure says man that you need to be like you combine you get you well yeah so you guys do the little dance and he pops out right no so yeah i've tried to write it a couple times haven't been successful but we're gonna give it another go man i'm excited about it so hopefully it hopefully it's uh

hopefully it helps some people out where do we we find your social medias and everything, brother? Yeah. Rep Eli Crane is my official one. Eli Crane, CEO, is the unofficial. So people can find me there. And you are a representative for Arizona District 2. Yep. Yeah, okay, perfect.

You want to tell the people to go vote? No, don't go vote, apparently. Do not do it no no absolutely man i mean it's i mean it's like the most basic the most basic requirement of being a citizen is to go vote dude and like i was looking at our primary numbers and talking to other members and looking at how many people voted in their primary i think only like 35 percent of people voted in our primary and so it so it's interesting because you hear people bitch and complain

about the state of the country, yet they can't get off the couch and go vote, right? And so it's like, if you can't participate, you're going to get exactly what you deserve, right? And so get out, go vote. I personally think this is a really, really important election. So I hope that all the people that watch this show feel the same way and get out there and actually do it.

And your vote really does matter. I mean, my race was 400 votes away. That's insane. 400 vote difference. And that's what really kind of chaps my ass when I'll go somewhere and people are like, Hey, Brandon, oh my God, it's so cool to run into you in person in San Antonio. Like, I didn't know you lived here, man. Like, well, I take it you didn't vote.

$399 more. What was the money? What was the money comparison between what was spent against you and what you were able to do? Against an incumbent, it was about 10 to 1. Yeah. spent against you and what you were able to against it against an incumbent it was about 10 to 1 yeah so i think roughly when the dust settles it was anywhere between 10 to 12 million spent against me well which is crazy because i think he was originally intending to spend three to win that race yeah but youtube yeah i don't think twitter but you quite prepared and homelander yeah twitter i helped the chaotic my part i felt so bad for

that dude on twitter i was like dear god i didn't feel bad but not bad enough to stop my morning routine was waking up and bullying tony gonzalez every morning that's so that was your job yeah yeah because it was free and it was it was a it was a it was a tough race it was a it was a really it got pretty brutal there at the end but i feel like a good message was sent so i don't feel like it was a waste of time by any would you ever do it again oh it would probably cost me a lot personally right um not financially personally i think well even just financially i think i put in about, 150 grand of my own money, not including opportunity cost, just cash infusion of the campaign. Plus, you know,

all the ads I missed out on all the work I missed out on. Um, but even just personally, it like kind of took a bit of a toll, but I don't know. I wouldn't rule anything out. Yeah. Um, and I think even just the, the idea that I could do it again, because now i started the race with four percent name recognition in the district now i have 97 percent well amongst voters so it's like all right if i ran again i've got way less legwork to do and if i came within one percent last time who knows we'll see but i i think just even the idea i could do it again is enough to keep certain parties in line he's he's excited oh yeah i want to see you do it dude you know

i'm bullying people stop his thumbs are starting to atrophy well if i feel like ruining my life for a second time, hopefully I see you on the House floor. Yes, sir. You will. You will. And it would be good to see you up there, man. Yeah.

We need more people that are willing to fight the good fight. Absolutely. Absolutely. Go vote. Cody, close us out, you beautiful son of a bitch. Bye, everyone. Thank you for joining the Unsubscribe podcast. I was joined today by Eli Doubletap, Congressman Eli Crane, not Congressman Brandon Herrera,

and myself, Donald Operator. Thanks for joining. We love you. We love you.