Speaker 1: M beautiful. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Software up Radio, Special operations, military news
Speaker 1: and straight talk with the guys in the community. Hollong
Speaker 1: and everyone, Welcome back to Software Radio, Software Radio one
Speaker 1: time on Target. I am your host today. Steve Balistrari
Speaker 1: joining us is Sean's Foods SOFTWAREPS editor in chief, which
Speaker 1: Sean and I usually have to talk on the telephone,
Speaker 1: so today I can see him while we're talking. But
Speaker 1: we have a very special guest with us today. Jay
Speaker 1: Collins is running for Congress in the state of Florida.
Speaker 1: He's a Special Forces veteran. His story is one that
Speaker 1: our listeners will really resonate with. I mean, you talk
Speaker 1: about some guy's careers and his is worth listening to.
Speaker 1: He has a lot of interesting stuff to tell, and
Speaker 1: Sean and I were gonna talk to him about as
Speaker 1: much as we can squeeze in on his a lot
Speaker 1: of time. So Jay, welcome to Software Radio. Thanks for
Speaker 1: taking the time to join us today. Yes, Steve, Sean,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me on here. I appreciate the opportunity
Speaker 1: and I'm looking forward to the conversation and seeing where
Speaker 1: this thing goes. It's gonna be a good time. Yes,
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna hit you with the toughest question right
Speaker 1: off the bat, and that is what's harder being an
Speaker 1: SF medic on an A team or raising two young sons. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is a great question. I'm gonna tell you that
Speaker 1: the skills needed for both is very very similar. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know, it's a lot like when your Bravo and
Speaker 1: Charlie are getting in a fight over something very simplistic.
Speaker 1: I same thing happens in the Collins household with my
Speaker 1: six and nine year old and ut little refereeing, some
Speaker 1: band aids and uh and things like that here as well,
Speaker 1: a little ice taking the face out and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's the same skill. So I'm gonna actually, uh split
Speaker 1: the difference in here and say it's really no different.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, it's just a continuation of what I've
Speaker 1: been doing. I like how you say that six and
Speaker 1: a nine year old is having. It's like having the
Speaker 1: A team Bravo and eighteen Charlie fighting in the team room. Uh.
Speaker 1: That brings back some pleasant memories there. Um, I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to you, Oh, go right ahead, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, and and that's how it is right, we
Speaker 1: that you deal with things kinetically in the team room.
Speaker 1: You get angry, you get frustrated, and then your best
Speaker 1: friends when you're done and you sit down and life
Speaker 1: goes on, it's kumbai ya. That's a beauty of the
Speaker 1: team and that's beauty of brothers. Right. It was like
Speaker 1: a happy meal where it's the same as a bottle
Speaker 1: of bourbon between you know, out of the happy meal stage.
Speaker 1: No more of those chotsky toys all over you. You
Speaker 1: grew up in a farm up in Montana, is that correct?
Speaker 1: That's right, in northeastern Montana, a little town called Scobee,
Speaker 1: a couple of miles from Canada, on a farm. We
Speaker 1: grew wheat barley oates. Uh. It was. It was a manner,
Speaker 1: the great place to grow up. A community just founded
Speaker 1: on American principles. The community came together and really gave
Speaker 1: me the building blocks that have led me to my
Speaker 1: career in the military, working in the nonprofit sector and
Speaker 1: really will serve me well. I believe in this this
Speaker 1: new adventure and running for political office and serving the
Speaker 1: people of District fourteen. Cold. Yeah, yeah, it's for real
Speaker 1: cold up there in the winter, you know. Minus forty
Speaker 1: with winds. It's a special kind of chili. But there
Speaker 1: are the God's people up there. They're hearty, fun loving people,
Speaker 1: and I can't think of a better place to grow up.
Speaker 1: I've always said one of the great things about Americas
Speaker 1: that we can get people to live in our version
Speaker 1: of Siberia voluntarily. I don't know the far far from
Speaker 1: it if the eastern side of the state's pretty flat
Speaker 1: and desolate, but there's some strong, strong people there. So
Speaker 1: what what What was the driving force and getting you
Speaker 1: to join the military. So I'll tell you. You You know,
Speaker 1: there's a couple of things. Some of it was circumstantial
Speaker 1: and some of it was how you're raised. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: my grandparents adopted me. My dad and my grandfather was
Speaker 1: a World War Two veteran, and I heard him speak,
Speaker 1: you know, philosophically and structurally and intelligently about his time
Speaker 1: in the military, how it formed him in the person
Speaker 1: he was, his work, ethic of always giving back, serving
Speaker 1: the people, the greater good, we the people, all these
Speaker 1: common threads that I was like, yeah, Dad, and I
Speaker 1: got it, I understand, right, But I didn't realize how
Speaker 1: many great foundational tools he was giving me how many
Speaker 1: rocks at the time when I was a young kid,
Speaker 1: not using my two years and I really focused on
Speaker 1: my one mouth, perhaps more than I should have been,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, it was it was just interesting
Speaker 1: looking back all the things he gave me that really
Speaker 1: turned me into who I was. And I'm I'm forever
Speaker 1: grateful for my dad and my mom and our community
Speaker 1: at large in turning me there. And then, you know,
Speaker 1: I went to college for a couple of years, and uh,
Speaker 1: I probably wasn't quite ready for that role in life,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, just it didn't fit. It didn't
Speaker 1: feel comfortable. So I joined the military. I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: my dad told me it was a great thing. Maybe
Speaker 1: it'll help bring out the best in me. I told myself,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give it a try for four years and
Speaker 1: if I love it, I'll stick in. And I never
Speaker 1: looked back. You know. It brought out the best parts
Speaker 1: in my life. It led me to my wife. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have my children every more. From the military, I've
Speaker 1: traveled around the world. I have friends from corner to
Speaker 1: corner on this globe, and people that I can pick
Speaker 1: up the phone having not spoken to for ten years,
Speaker 1: and we can pick up a conversation like we just
Speaker 1: talked yesterday. You know, I can't think of a better
Speaker 1: life than the one I've lived, and I'm grateful for
Speaker 1: every moment of it. Now, you were in jump school
Speaker 1: when they, you know, all of this that got us
Speaker 1: into Afghanistan all started. Uh, tell tell us our our listeners,
Speaker 1: you know about what the mindset was at that point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you know nine eleven, my wife and I had
Speaker 1: just gotten married, and uh, the Army they have the
Speaker 1: joint Married Couples Program. Right, I was living in the
Speaker 1: UK at the time, lalos in d C. And uh,
Speaker 1: if you watch movies, you've seen Pirates of the Caribbean,
Speaker 1: they have a pirate's code and everything is kind of
Speaker 1: a ish. Well, that's the Armies joined married Couple's program.
Speaker 1: Rather than movements both together, they decided, you know what
Speaker 1: we'll do, let's double down and moving bowl someplace new.
Speaker 1: So four Bragg was home, right, we kind of ordered
Speaker 1: his head to pot Bragg. We're like, all right, we'll
Speaker 1: see where it goes, right, rob on four Brad go
Speaker 1: off to four Bending Georgia. Uh, you know, on September ten,
Speaker 1: I've done my first jump. I officially tested the theory
Speaker 1: of gravity with a parachute smashing the dirt got up
Speaker 1: and I was getting ready to do it again. We're
Speaker 1: flying around and you know, we get the no jump
Speaker 1: and we just keep flying and flying and flying. Hooked
Speaker 1: up and then they had to sit down and you're like,
Speaker 1: all right, something's weird, right, And pretty soon they're like
Speaker 1: unhooked everything. You know, there's a scrub and the ordinance land.
Speaker 1: So we flew and flew and flew. We ended up
Speaker 1: landing the plane. Sat on the plane for you know,
Speaker 1: what seemed like an eternity because it's Georgia in the summer,
Speaker 1: it's hot, um and they brought us out on the
Speaker 1: on the tarmac and we sat there and we had
Speaker 1: no idea what's going on. We started to hear rumored
Speaker 1: a little bit and we're like, that can't be. It
Speaker 1: doesn't sound right right, and then uh, you know, they
Speaker 1: bust us back and I remember them wheeling out this
Speaker 1: TV and this little tiny TV. They recorded it to
Speaker 1: tell us what was going on. And you know, back then,
Speaker 1: connectivity wasn't the same. Cell phones weren't what we have now.
Speaker 1: My life wife was living in DC at the time,
Speaker 1: so we hear about the twin towers, we hear about
Speaker 1: the pentagone. I'm like, oh my gosh, you know, I
Speaker 1: can't believe this happened. One to my wife, is there?
Speaker 1: Is she okay? Eventually, you know, I got a hold
Speaker 1: of her and you know, everything was all right. And
Speaker 1: you know, at that moment, we knew that everything was changing.
Speaker 1: We had gone from a nation of peace and we're
Speaker 1: becoming a nation at war very quickly. You know, we
Speaker 1: were young. We thought this is gonna be over, just
Speaker 1: like the last war in a few months, maybe the year.
Speaker 1: You know, we've got to get out that we've got
Speaker 1: to be president. We've gotta be a part of this
Speaker 1: and do our part. You know, I don't think any
Speaker 1: of us at the time had any inkling that twenty
Speaker 1: years later we would be wrapping this thing up. You know. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the way to buy the administration let us to close Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: But it uh it defined an entire generation of military
Speaker 1: guys who have enlisted on day one and retired an
Speaker 1: entire career at war. It's pretty profound. And parents who
Speaker 1: came into Afghanistan early on and have their children go
Speaker 1: fight in the same places that they had fought in
Speaker 1: both Afghanistan and in Iraq. It's it's it's it's crazy
Speaker 1: to think. Yeah, it's it is. I mean you you know,
Speaker 1: you you see so many stories now of guys who
Speaker 1: served in the early year or two of Afghanistan and
Speaker 1: now their sons and daughters are over there and doing
Speaker 1: multiple tours. It's like that twenty years is a very
Speaker 1: very long time. And a lot of the guys that
Speaker 1: in in girls I should say that, you know, enlisted
Speaker 1: right after nine eleven. They're coming up on their retirement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's crazy to think about. I mean, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: we don't normally deal in war was like that. It's
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's very an American like as you guess
Speaker 1: I could say. But back to your career. Then you
Speaker 1: went to SF. You I'm sure you had quite the
Speaker 1: experience in selection and then you became a SF medic
Speaker 1: Um tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: selection was was interesting, right, It's it's a good time.
Speaker 1: We would jokingly called in the School for Advanced Suffering
Speaker 1: back then, but force his assessment and selection and uh
Speaker 1: I went in the infamous ice storm class November of
Speaker 1: two thousand two. Uh, trees were freezing and actually shut
Speaker 1: down your school for a couple of days. Uh. It
Speaker 1: was it was a mess, right, Like trees were freezing
Speaker 1: and falling over. We were out doing land now, practicing
Speaker 1: for the star, and they were like, stop, it's too cold.
Speaker 1: I remember crossing, Uh, you know, bodies of water and
Speaker 1: coming out in your uniform and freeze on you instantly,
Speaker 1: Like it's crunchy, hard, and you're trying to walk land
Speaker 1: nab at night with frozen uniform, boots are frozen solid.
Speaker 1: You're just miserable. Uh, But in the end, you know
Speaker 1: you have a goal. You're focused on selection and getting
Speaker 1: through this. I don't remember the number we started with,
Speaker 1: but seventies some got selected the frozen chosen as we
Speaker 1: called ourselves. And Uh, there's a couple of stories from there.
Speaker 1: I remember the day that they shut us down and
Speaker 1: pulled us in. Uh. A guy was sitting in the
Speaker 1: back of a truck and a tree frozen broke and
Speaker 1: hit this guy sitting in the back of the truck,
Speaker 1: ended up breaking his back. I mean, what are the chances? Right?
Speaker 1: The kid persevered, went through selection again, became a soft
Speaker 1: and s f guy. It made it through, but had
Speaker 1: you know, long term injuries. They just kind of dogged
Speaker 1: him throughout his career. And then in that same time frame,
Speaker 1: I remember walking through doing the Star. You know, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm focused on from the puppy palace to the headquarters
Speaker 1: to my point, all across the zone. Right. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm like, what in the world is that? You know,
Speaker 1: you've got a mark around the rocks so it sticks
Speaker 1: out of a little bit, right, it's bright orange or
Speaker 1: whatever the rope guard best color is. And I'm like
Speaker 1: a little rucksack laying on the ground by itself, so,
Speaker 1: you know, like get him out over there and get
Speaker 1: him on the rucksack. I'm like, wow, self, there's a
Speaker 1: rucksack and no person attached. Bad right, And then I
Speaker 1: find a rubber duck and then I walk and I'm
Speaker 1: seeing footprints in the snow. And there's this guy who's,
Speaker 1: you know, like balancing like a pinball off of trees.
Speaker 1: He had opened up his shirt, his uniforms frozen. He's
Speaker 1: just he's in the early stages of hypothermia, right. His
Speaker 1: lips are turned in blue. He's out of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I end up having to pick him up put
Speaker 1: him in my my sleeping bag and dragged him all
Speaker 1: the way back to the talk. I dropped him off
Speaker 1: and the like candidate, go to your next point, run
Speaker 1: for that, and got moving, And uh, you know a little,
Speaker 1: did I know that those moments, in those obstacles and
Speaker 1: that perseverance and focusing on just your brother on your
Speaker 1: left and right at that foundational selection level, we're we're
Speaker 1: so key to what was going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: the rest of my career as an eighteen Delta and
Speaker 1: eighteen Zulu and then later on as you you get
Speaker 1: old and put in staff jobs. You know, I remember
Speaker 1: the very first lesson I learned was this crotchety old
Speaker 1: guy and I swear to god, he looked like he
Speaker 1: was sixty five. He was probably thirty. Right, Um, He's like, look,
Speaker 1: if you don't learn anything else in selection, remember this.
Speaker 1: You've got to leave things better than you've got it.
Speaker 1: That one moment in time has been seared into my
Speaker 1: brain because ultimately that's what it's about. Right, Everything we
Speaker 1: do should be focused on making things better for those
Speaker 1: around us, for us, for future generations. And if you're
Speaker 1: not doing that, what are you doing? Right? And as
Speaker 1: a medic you know, we had a little joke earlier
Speaker 1: about the kids and the Bravo and Charlie being doc.
Speaker 1: Being the medic is an interesting thing, right You're your part,
Speaker 1: you know, boo boo fix or if you will, band
Speaker 1: aids and motion and uh, you're the smart guy quote unquote,
Speaker 1: so you're expected to think through things and reason, but
Speaker 1: in reality you just want to break things and be
Speaker 1: like the Charlie and you know, blow things up and
Speaker 1: build buildings. And man, I didn't want to be a medic.
Speaker 1: I you know, I got selected and I was like, guys,
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a medic. Look, you're test
Speaker 1: were great. Do you want to be an s F guy? Well,
Speaker 1: of course it went through selection. Well then you're gonna
Speaker 1: be a medic. This isn't a choice thing. You've been
Speaker 1: selected to be a medic, got it? Uh? You know.
Speaker 1: I pushed back really hard, but in the end, I
Speaker 1: can't think of of a role in Special Forces that
Speaker 1: would have fit me better. And I'm so thankful that
Speaker 1: in the in the SF community and the cadre knew
Speaker 1: enough about me as a candidate to push me where
Speaker 1: I needed to be, even though I wasn't ready to
Speaker 1: accept that that's where I needed to be. You know,
Speaker 1: it gotted me down career paths and choices that that
Speaker 1: changed my career and uh turned me into a better person.
Speaker 1: J If I could just uh go up in here
Speaker 1: for a second, did you say, did you say you
Speaker 1: found that guy on the hill with his uniform open
Speaker 1: and stuff? When you reached him, he was so he
Speaker 1: was unbuttoned his uniforms. I'm assuming could gotten. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think you understood what you actually did that. I think
Speaker 1: you saved that guy's life. I mean that the at
Speaker 1: the end of hypothermia, you can't tell the difference between
Speaker 1: cold and heat, and they find a lot of hypothermics
Speaker 1: naked because they take all their clothes off thinking they're
Speaker 1: burning up. You may have gotten that guy within forty
Speaker 1: five minutes of him having cardiac arrest and dropping dead.
Speaker 1: I think you saved that guy's life, you know. Possibly
Speaker 1: Uh in the end, I would like to think that
Speaker 1: if it had been me that happened to he was
Speaker 1: in the same thing for me. Right. That's where our
Speaker 1: community is about, for our brotherhood about I said, a
Speaker 1: lot of people's lives been in positions to do that,
Speaker 1: you know, but in the end, it's not about me,
Speaker 1: And this is something I talked about as a candidate.
Speaker 1: It's not about me, It's about we. And that guy
Speaker 1: was my brother. He was out there, you know, bleeding
Speaker 1: in the same spots I was, and I knew that
Speaker 1: what was best for him was to get him in
Speaker 1: my you know, in my sleeping bag, put him on
Speaker 1: my back, and walked a couple of miles back to
Speaker 1: the talk. We did that, and uh, you know, he
Speaker 1: ended up being fine. And you know, it was a
Speaker 1: good story. I'm just saying that fate, God, whatever, how
Speaker 1: every one of you would put me in that position,
Speaker 1: because it could have been a lot worse outcome. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: it really was. I was, like I said, you've ever
Speaker 1: sold the story guy's life? I think it was thirty
Speaker 1: forty minutes of dropping dead. Great job, good job, funny
Speaker 1: story about selection. I started working there when they first
Speaker 1: started selection, so I'm dating myself here. Um, but you know,
Speaker 1: when we went through the only difference was the SF guys,
Speaker 1: because if you're gonna work at selection, you had to
Speaker 1: go through it as a candidate, even though you were
Speaker 1: already as of qualified, which wasn't a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not a lot of fun for the candidates.
Speaker 1: It's even less fun for the for the cadurary members
Speaker 1: at that time who had to go through it already
Speaker 1: tapped out. But the only difference was we didn't have
Speaker 1: to wear the little white tags that they make the
Speaker 1: candidates where and we didn't have to remove everything from
Speaker 1: our uniform. So that I remember going out to the
Speaker 1: Puppy Palace, you know, they're driving us out there in
Speaker 1: the truck and there was three s F guys in
Speaker 1: a truck full of you know, candidates going through. And
Speaker 1: finally one guy goes, how come you guys already tapped
Speaker 1: out and you're doing all of this and uh, my
Speaker 1: friend Brian, look he has passed away now. But Brian
Speaker 1: looked at him and said, we're not supposed to tell
Speaker 1: you guys this, but they're gonna send up an SF
Speaker 1: guy in the next Space Shuttle mission, and so we
Speaker 1: we have we have to go through this and then
Speaker 1: whoever does the best in selection, they're gonna get to
Speaker 1: go through NASA training and then they'll decide who goes
Speaker 1: up in the shuttle. And the truck when completely silent,
Speaker 1: and this guy from had a thick New York accident
Speaker 1: all the way in the front of the truck goes
Speaker 1: get the fact outta here, yeah, you know, and it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing surprises and anything you see in selection,
Speaker 1: but you know, uh, that's something that sucks when you're
Speaker 1: going through it. But after it's all over, these experiences
Speaker 1: you'll never forget. So absolutely absolutely makes me. It makes
Speaker 1: me left to think an innocuous question like that turns
Speaker 1: into an elaborate scale story. Right, was one of those
Speaker 1: quick wits, you know, because like I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to answer it. I didn't want to tell him we're
Speaker 1: gonna be instructors, you know, as soon as your classes over.
Speaker 1: So I was just at a loss and Brian jumped
Speaker 1: right in, you know, and he told this guy that
Speaker 1: and I cracked up laughing after the fact. You know,
Speaker 1: just like we talked about earlier. Right, you gotta have
Speaker 1: that funny guy in the group, right, a quick pop
Speaker 1: pop pop yep. And you know in our SF class
Speaker 1: we had that, we had that guy. You know, he
Speaker 1: kept us all. In fact, he even cracked up the
Speaker 1: instructors at Camp McCall, which doesn't normally happen very often.
Speaker 1: So good one anyway back back to your career. Then
Speaker 1: you went to seven Special Forces Group, which is never
Speaker 1: dear to my heart. So you can see the I
Speaker 1: love me wall behind me. Yeah, so I tell you
Speaker 1: a little bit about you know what was They were
Speaker 1: already an egglin when you joined, weren't they? No, No,
Speaker 1: I was a four brag. You were right there on
Speaker 1: four brack, you know, in the old home and the
Speaker 1: old Rick's and uh in the old the old buildings
Speaker 1: there and uh, yeah, I got selected and uh, I
Speaker 1: went through the Q course, became an eighteen delta, was
Speaker 1: so just stoked right ready to get out there and
Speaker 1: do what needed to be done. I showed up when
Speaker 1: a step and Special Forces Group was down range and uh, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: my very first job after in processing was to bury
Speaker 1: one of my friends in the Q course. One of
Speaker 1: my very very close friends have been killed in a
Speaker 1: in a roadside bomb essentially in Afghanistan, and uh, you
Speaker 1: know it was just heartbreaking. But that moment in time again,
Speaker 1: you have these moments that just sear into you know
Speaker 1: you're you're being you know, you can never walk away from,
Speaker 1: you know, knowing that a guy that I had just
Speaker 1: gone through selection with and we've done s ut and
Speaker 1: you know all these other things, and it was just
Speaker 1: a good person, an amazing human being, and someone that
Speaker 1: that I hope to have a long friendship with. And
Speaker 1: to this day I admire him. I think the world
Speaker 1: of who he was and the man he was at
Speaker 1: the time, and I'm grateful to people like him existed.
Speaker 1: And you know, that moment just drove home the reality
Speaker 1: of what our life was like in Special Forces, Especially
Speaker 1: as a medic, you stand between your friend, your brother,
Speaker 1: someone's husband, a father, a son living or dying, and
Speaker 1: your ability to save a life can be the only
Speaker 1: thing that brings that back. So there is no I've tried.
Speaker 1: You can't do just your best. Nothing but your best
Speaker 1: is acceptable, and you can't save everybody, and that's just
Speaker 1: a fad, a sad fact of of medicine. But you
Speaker 1: cannot be found wanting. Your skills can't wane. You have
Speaker 1: to be there, you have to know how to do it,
Speaker 1: and you have to do it with the dexterity and
Speaker 1: the capability expected of a Special Forces medic. And I
Speaker 1: knew right there that no matter what I did, I
Speaker 1: would not be found wanting. As a medic, I would
Speaker 1: not let my brother die, and I would do all
Speaker 1: I could to make sure that I never had to
Speaker 1: live that moment again. Unfortunately that's not the case. There
Speaker 1: were many many more that died, some that I couldn't save,
Speaker 1: and some that I wish I had been there because
Speaker 1: they were dear friends. And again, that's just one of
Speaker 1: those moments you know, you step in, you just realize
Speaker 1: it's real, this is what it's about. So you and
Speaker 1: on the verification of the family and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Uh so I was. I wasn't the notification team, but
Speaker 1: I was up in Arlington. I was part of the
Speaker 1: detail because I knew him, and uh yeah, I had
Speaker 1: to uh very very first detail I ever did, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, life altering. But in the end, you see
Speaker 1: the resiliency of the team, the community. People were sad,
Speaker 1: broken hearted. You saw the family, but you saw the fire,
Speaker 1: the drive, the determination to continue on to take care
Speaker 1: of the mission in hand, and you knew that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to work really, really hard to maintain my
Speaker 1: place in this tribe, to be a part of this community.
Speaker 1: And something I say all the time is I never
Speaker 1: had to work so hard to be average. Right. There
Speaker 1: were amazing people to your left and right. You know,
Speaker 1: steel sharpened steel, right. Ah, there were people that were
Speaker 1: driving you, whether they knew it or not, to be
Speaker 1: beyond your best. You know, everyone thinks they've identified how
Speaker 1: good they can be, but the truth is you're steeling
Speaker 1: is so much higher and you get driven there because
Speaker 1: of the people around you. It's easy to be a
Speaker 1: hard charger and be resilient when you're with people who
Speaker 1: are like minded. And being in a group of professionals
Speaker 1: in Special Forces again, it redefined the art if possible.
Speaker 1: It is the best way I could say it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great, a great way of saying it. Because
Speaker 1: somebody asked me a couple of years ago. I was
Speaker 1: somewhere and you know, some guy, um, he had been
Speaker 1: in the regular military, and he asked me what it
Speaker 1: was like being in Special Forces and I told him that,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm sure it's the same through all
Speaker 1: the different errors. And it was like, you take the
Speaker 1: best guys out of every unit, you throw them together
Speaker 1: in a caldron and it it just raises your game.
Speaker 1: I said, it's like being a guy on the twenty
Speaker 1: seven Yankees, because you know, the lineup is full of superstars.
Speaker 1: You know, Um, it's just a yeah. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the selection process, as we used to say, it never
Speaker 1: stops because the higher up you get, the more you know,
Speaker 1: we would expect out of everybody. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's just you know, it's a tough environment. You have
Speaker 1: to you have to have a a good mindset to
Speaker 1: be able to handle that day after day because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure on all of us. Oh really,
Speaker 1: you never really done becoming. You know, you think you're
Speaker 1: you think you've gotten somewhere professionally in your in your
Speaker 1: military skills, and then you see somebody really good and
Speaker 1: you go, oh shit, it's really get you get you
Speaker 1: can't have an a team. And then you look at
Speaker 1: you look at your team, sergeant, and go, wow, I
Speaker 1: have a long way to go. You're a little older
Speaker 1: and more defined in my capability and you know my experience.
Speaker 1: Uh you would hear young guys or people come out
Speaker 1: of the que corpse. Yeah, I'm tad and a Green Beret.
Speaker 1: I made it as I look, guys, that's a piece
Speaker 1: of cloth on a uniform. You are a Green Beret
Speaker 1: and it's not what you did. You earn your place
Speaker 1: in this tribe every single day by your actions, by
Speaker 1: your choices. Don't embarrass the regiment. Remember the people that
Speaker 1: came before you. It's in the Special Forces CREED, right,
Speaker 1: we have a history that comes before us. Don't embarrass them,
Speaker 1: don't embarrass the team, and don't embarrass those you have
Speaker 1: to come. Uh, this matters. It's bigger than you, and
Speaker 1: take care of it. Push this forward, make it better,
Speaker 1: make it greater than itself, make it better than than
Speaker 1: what you got it. And uh, you know that really
Speaker 1: resonated and people grasped that pretty quickly. I think, well,
Speaker 1: you know, and I wanted to ask you about this
Speaker 1: because you know we had talked before offline, and you know,
Speaker 1: you were wounded in Afghanistan and you actually did surgery
Speaker 1: on your own arm, which is like when I heard that,
Speaker 1: I was like, whoa, that is better. Yeah, I was like,
Speaker 1: for a guy who didn't want to be a medic,
Speaker 1: that's that's a feather. And you would you would you
Speaker 1: fill in our listeners a little bit about that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one, I'm gonna put it this way, loved me
Speaker 1: some doctors. Right, I'm gonna tell a little joke here, right,
Speaker 1: you know I got hurt a couple of times. I'm
Speaker 1: missing one leg. I've got two arms. I did the
Speaker 1: surgery in my arms. It was a better surgeon, right.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just saying, no, man, I I just
Speaker 1: you never know what you're capable of until you absolutely
Speaker 1: have to do it, right, is it? Is it something
Speaker 1: that I woke up, you know, before the mission saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, maybe I'll get shot in the arm
Speaker 1: today at ricochet whatever. It's gonna go on my arm
Speaker 1: and it's gonna swell up and circulation is gonna be bad,
Speaker 1: and you know we're gonna have to, you know, drop
Speaker 1: a scalpel in my arm while I'm the lake. That
Speaker 1: sounds like a great time, right, Let's let's do that, right, perfect? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Now that that's not exactly how it went, right. You
Speaker 1: get hit, you know. I remember being on the on
Speaker 1: the back deck when that, when that happened, I had
Speaker 1: no idea had been hit. My heart rate was up,
Speaker 1: the adrenaline's pump, and remember slipping in the blood on
Speaker 1: the back of the truck thinking, oh my god, man,
Speaker 1: did they hit my rippets? If they hit the oil? Like,
Speaker 1: what's going on here? Right? You know? I the a battle,
Speaker 1: you know, a gunfight doesn't just go and go and
Speaker 1: go and stop right at ebbs and flows. There's crescendos
Speaker 1: and de crescendos. And it slowed down and stopped. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, man, you know, pop the tray,
Speaker 1: changed the gun. You know, check and make sure everything's good,
Speaker 1: put more rounds in all, you know, the priorities of
Speaker 1: work that you have to do. And then I checked, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm good, I thought, right, I looked down, like the
Speaker 1: hell is this on the ground right, Like what am
Speaker 1: I stepping in? And I was like, all right, I
Speaker 1: don't see anything. And then I realized that as blood
Speaker 1: there were donaldbby that was mine, right. I look back.
Speaker 1: I hit our you know, our turret gunner. I looked
Speaker 1: at the cab and they're all looking at me like
Speaker 1: it was that moment when I realized, guess it's me, right.
Speaker 1: I looked down and I lost probably a leader of blood.
Speaker 1: In the back of the truck. I had a huge
Speaker 1: uh you know, my arm was you know, it was dan.
Speaker 1: There there was blood everywhere. It was about the turniquet
Speaker 1: on and uh uh you know, tighten it up and pop,
Speaker 1: you know, it started again. So you you rack, you load,
Speaker 1: and you go to work. Right. Ultimately, the tourniquer doesn't matter, right.
Speaker 1: I took my my dead arm, so to speak, got
Speaker 1: on the tray and we just went to town. Eventually
Speaker 1: everything kind of slowed down. We dismounted, and my junior
Speaker 1: medic came. He went ahead and changed from a tourniquet
Speaker 1: to a pressure dressing, and we cleared through there. And
Speaker 1: eventually I stopped being a hard headed guy and allowed
Speaker 1: them to pull me off once I knew everything was secure.
Speaker 1: But I wasn't about to say I have the gunfight.
Speaker 1: When I knew my boys, my team, my brothers needed
Speaker 1: every gun they could because that could be a moment.
Speaker 1: They needed somebody, and uh, we went back there and
Speaker 1: we had a few other guys dinged up. You know,
Speaker 1: some of our Afghans were pretty pretty rough. We don't
Speaker 1: really didn't think much of it. You know, it was
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't a standard gun shot. We haven't
Speaker 1: in and out. It was an entry wound. There was blood,
Speaker 1: U turn. It could have been on for a couple
Speaker 1: of hours, which ultimately probably caused some of the issues
Speaker 1: along with the pressure dressing. I mean, gun fights happened, right,
Speaker 1: You don't choose the duration. So ultimately we started having
Speaker 1: some issues with circulation, and uh, you know, I knew
Speaker 1: that we were gonna have to take care of this
Speaker 1: and there was no way in or out. We weren't
Speaker 1: getting evacuated in the timeframe. And we knew that this
Speaker 1: was the right thing to do. Ultimately, it was the
Speaker 1: way to make sure that I maintained the health of
Speaker 1: my arm. And I remember looking at the War Surgery handbook, right,
Speaker 1: this is a green book. Did you get the War
Speaker 1: Wound Handbook? Like turning the page and trained just how
Speaker 1: to do some of this stuff. And we got to
Speaker 1: the fasciotomy and it was like this kindergarten drawing arm
Speaker 1: with a dotted line cut here. Well, that that's so
Speaker 1: much better. Thank you. I'm just so relieved. Picture. Okay,
Speaker 1: So we got past that. We are all right. I
Speaker 1: know the anatomy, I know the physiology. I see now
Speaker 1: where the outline is supposed to go. We'll figure it
Speaker 1: out from there, right. Uh you know, we numbered at
Speaker 1: the elbow and the shoulder, and uh, we went ahead
Speaker 1: and do what we had to do. My junior medic,
Speaker 1: myself and a couple of members of the team, prept
Speaker 1: my arm for being surgerized, if you will, and prep
Speaker 1: the other arm to help out as necessary. And uh,
Speaker 1: I remember as we're doing this, I couldn't get my
Speaker 1: hand to stop shaking because it's a little freaky to
Speaker 1: sit there and be at this moment in time you're
Speaker 1: gonna do a surgery and know that you're going to
Speaker 1: help assist and do this surgery on your arm, and
Speaker 1: uh we we had do a little bit of valium,
Speaker 1: pop it down, slow the heart rate, call the nerves,
Speaker 1: and we did. We ended up doing a new breedman
Speaker 1: on my arm in the fire base while awake. UM
Speaker 1: did a partial two out of three compartment fasciotomy, which,
Speaker 1: as we learned, was not the optimal way. We should
Speaker 1: have opened up the third compartment as well, but uh
Speaker 1: we had about hit our limit for you know, capability.
Speaker 1: Blood flow was good, the tone and color of the
Speaker 1: hand look better. So we closed it up partially, put
Speaker 1: in you know, a wick system to help pull them
Speaker 1: back to your out, wrapped it up, and we waited
Speaker 1: for a time to get back out. Did you have
Speaker 1: a piece of it inside you still? Yeah, I've still
Speaker 1: got a part of it right, you took a ricochet
Speaker 1: off your gun. Yeah, so I hit the swing arm
Speaker 1: is what it what it was actually, and I popped
Speaker 1: up in my arm. You know generally when you get
Speaker 1: on the back deck, I'm on the gun. It's in
Speaker 1: my shoulder and you go like this. I had had
Speaker 1: a bad habit. Sometimes I put my hand up there,
Speaker 1: you know, on top of it, and that's actually what
Speaker 1: kept that ricochet from going in my head. My arm
Speaker 1: is on the way. If my arm is not there,
Speaker 1: it pops me in my left eye. Probably you're doing
Speaker 1: okay now with that with your left arm. Yeah, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's I've got some reduction in function, like a little
Speaker 1: bit of numbness, a little bit of weakness. But in
Speaker 1: the end it works, you know it. Oh, it's great
Speaker 1: for for ad hoc surgery done, you know, bunker. It's
Speaker 1: that's pretty good. That's a successful Uh, that's a successful operation.
Speaker 1: I saw the picture of it. Were you drinking or
Speaker 1: rip it? Well, this was going on. It was a packastan.
Speaker 1: We got a coke actually, yeah, maybe that when a
Speaker 1: handshake came from us all a caffeine you know. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, Catherine, if we'll keep you moving over there. Right,
Speaker 1: that's absolutely right. That's a great picture of you, Like
Speaker 1: get your arm opened up. It looks like a four
Speaker 1: to six inch opening in your forearm and you're looking
Speaker 1: forward when you're drinking like a cana. Sol was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's fun. The spectator of your own surgery. Year we
Speaker 1: got clamped. Just hold on to the exported. I can
Speaker 1: just see him say, hey, hold this arready for me
Speaker 1: while I figished this up. By that point, I was
Speaker 1: out of the part where I need to be a
Speaker 1: real active participant, right, So we had stripped it down.
Speaker 1: I needed to drink. It was more just honestly, I
Speaker 1: needed it to help keep your nerves down. It was normal, see,
Speaker 1: and it probably wasn't the best thought process, you know,
Speaker 1: in retrospect. But again, we were doing surgery in Afghanistan
Speaker 1: all myself. There was a lot of things that weren't normal.
Speaker 1: So right, there's what it is. And you still had
Speaker 1: the local. You still had to look forward to the
Speaker 1: local and aesthetic wearing off. You still have to look
Speaker 1: forward to that experience. A little known fact, right, the
Speaker 1: local and aesthetic doesn't always work when there's compromised blood flow.
Speaker 1: So as the blood flow started to work better, something
Speaker 1: started hurting more, something started going numb. But there were
Speaker 1: a couple of spots when we're digging in there that
Speaker 1: they were live right, Like yeah, sticking s you know,
Speaker 1: cutting tissue out of your arm when it's not numb.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other thing, man. It was all right,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. Before we get over to the political side
Speaker 1: of things, I wanted to ask you one more question
Speaker 1: about your military career. After you lost you like you
Speaker 1: in that earlier you went back, you stayed on active
Speaker 1: duty and went back to Afghanistan. You know, fill in
Speaker 1: our listeners a little bit about this, because this pretty
Speaker 1: amazing stuff here. Yeah, so I wish I got to
Speaker 1: go back to Afghanistan. I got I was fully deployable.
Speaker 1: I didn't get a chance to go because I was old.
Speaker 1: Essentially I missed my time. I got put in a
Speaker 1: staff job, and I beg to deploy to Afghanistan. Just
Speaker 1: you know, a little little clarity. Um. Yeah, So one
Speaker 1: I will tell you this. Uh, there's fantastic doctors of
Speaker 1: Walter Reed and uh, you never really know how things
Speaker 1: are gonna turn out. I remember laying there in the
Speaker 1: hospital thinking, all right, you know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: stay in. I want to be a Green Beret, but
Speaker 1: you don't know how it's gonna be. My wife was retiring, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, after twenty years in the military as well,
Speaker 1: and getting up her career because again, you know, I
Speaker 1: had a little boy. We were trying to get pregnant
Speaker 1: with her fecking son, and she just didn't know how
Speaker 1: it was going to turn out. And as it turns out,
Speaker 1: the lot of people are lifted, my family up, made
Speaker 1: a difference for us, and the amazing docks at Walter
Speaker 1: Read put the tools in plates for me to rehab.
Speaker 1: And then when I got back to Fort Bragg, you know,
Speaker 1: I pushed and pushed saying, look, give me the opportunity
Speaker 1: to remain in and if I can be found fit
Speaker 1: for duty, because I was an eighteen and a half
Speaker 1: years when this happened, let me stay in. Let me
Speaker 1: do this on my terms. You know, I got told
Speaker 1: by many people, why just medical retire, You've done enough.
Speaker 1: But the real answer, and the simple answer is this,
Speaker 1: It's not about me. It's always about we. If we
Speaker 1: don't take the opportunity to show what can be done,
Speaker 1: that you can be a Green Beret with one leg
Speaker 1: that next person who wants to do this has to
Speaker 1: fight that fight right, win the ground while you can
Speaker 1: and make it easier for the next generation. And uh
Speaker 1: we did that. I was able to serve another five
Speaker 1: and a half years. There's green berets right now deployed
Speaker 1: around the world missing bodied parts, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm blessed to have been a small part of that.
Speaker 1: And then turn the position of success the leadership above
Speaker 1: me and by the doctors and Walter Reid and you
Speaker 1: know my family who dedicated a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of love and a lot of tears to get me
Speaker 1: to that point. Uh. It takes a tribe to raise
Speaker 1: a child, but it takes a tried to get someone
Speaker 1: through that kind of hurl as well. And I'll always
Speaker 1: be grateful. How would you say, how would you characterize
Speaker 1: the way the army um treated you in that in
Speaker 1: that situation, we were saying, look, I want to go
Speaker 1: back on active Were they supportive of it? Or were they? Did?
Speaker 1: You have to fight them all the way to sort
Speaker 1: of get back to that. There's a lot of fighting
Speaker 1: the big Army, Like the Big Army guys, I showed
Speaker 1: up in this medical brief, right and they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: I want to show of hands. Who is trying to
Speaker 1: get medically retired. I remember there was people in the room.
Speaker 1: Forty four hands went up. They're trying to a retire.
Speaker 1: They're like, sir, you're you're you're an amputee. Aren't you retired?
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, I want to stand active duty.
Speaker 1: And they asked the question, how many people want to
Speaker 1: stay an active there's one hand. It's me. I'm looking
Speaker 1: around like are you are you serious? Weird? Odd right,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you're eighteen years, eighteen and a half years.
Speaker 1: This is never gonna work. They're gonna medically retire. To you,
Speaker 1: there's not enough time to prove that you can do this.
Speaker 1: And you know, I just you've gotta try. You can
Speaker 1: never lose faith, you can never lose hope. You have
Speaker 1: to persevere. You have to drive on and uh, you
Speaker 1: know we did. You know, we got a lot of pushback,
Speaker 1: a lot of frustrating moments, but in the end, our
Speaker 1: command supported me, my family supported me. And you have
Speaker 1: to have the audacity to stand the storm and push
Speaker 1: back against them. You know that that drive determination that
Speaker 1: I grew up with the Northeastern Montana that I took
Speaker 1: with me through a selection through my my military career
Speaker 1: really paid off at that moment in time because it
Speaker 1: was pushing back upwards a little bit. But there were
Speaker 1: so many great people that came to the rescue, that
Speaker 1: did what they could and made this possible. And you know,
Speaker 1: I was blessed to serve five and a half more
Speaker 1: years after I lost my leg, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful for all those people that support it. In well,
Speaker 1: it's that's really great. That's really great. Even though they
Speaker 1: had a system in place, they followed it in I'm
Speaker 1: sure your motivation. I had an awful granting requests. This
Speaker 1: is a guy sean. They did have a system in place,
Speaker 1: but the MTB process at the time was being used
Speaker 1: to remove people from the military as opposed to evaluating
Speaker 1: those who could stay right. It was being used the
Speaker 1: wrong way, and I wasn't having any other I was
Speaker 1: not what you would say your model patient of compliancy.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, it is designed by regulation to
Speaker 1: maintain the people who can do that. If I have
Speaker 1: to requalifying every single thing I've ever done physically, you know,
Speaker 1: keep my place in the tribe. Then that's what I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do. And that's what we did. Right, Whether it's
Speaker 1: jumping rucks, you know, PT tests, whatever, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I have to prove that I can do this because
Speaker 1: the last thing you want to be in a team
Speaker 1: is the weak link, right, I can't racing the tribe.
Speaker 1: Yeah I don't told you? Then told you then when
Speaker 1: that happened, Oh gosh, uh wow, I have to do
Speaker 1: all those things like a reclose at thirty eight missing
Speaker 1: a leg that's amazing. Well, it was really easier because
Speaker 1: only one leg got tired. Then you know the other
Speaker 1: one fiber Well, but you know you weren't doing a
Speaker 1: push up in the hospital bed. You had a period
Speaker 1: where you're laid up. You really can't do much, you know,
Speaker 1: So getting back into that physical conditioning must have been
Speaker 1: funny challenge in itself, you know it was. But how
Speaker 1: do you eat an elephant right? One bite at a time.
Speaker 1: I remember at I was pushing hard. I was like,
Speaker 1: you don't understand, I'm staying on. I'm gonna do this. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were like okay, you know, they let me run early.
Speaker 1: I did a triathle on three months after amputation, which
Speaker 1: they were like you're there's something wrong with your head
Speaker 1: American A marathon six months after and a year after
Speaker 1: I did my first marathon is an amputee, just because
Speaker 1: someone told me I shouldn't run, essentially like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: can do this. We got it and ended up doing
Speaker 1: five or six a year through a group called Achilles
Speaker 1: International and their Freedom Team that uh really challenged me
Speaker 1: to do more. Wow, that's that's incredible. You're pretty much
Speaker 1: putting yourself in fun charge of you will recover and say, look,
Speaker 1: you know what, No, I'm never I'm gonna run. That
Speaker 1: must have been a challenge all in itself. Yeah, I can.
Speaker 1: You can imagine what you felt after that was done.
Speaker 1: A much you were written hurt one for an hour
Speaker 1: specifically about the first marathon, the lessons I learned. You know,
Speaker 1: there's been many. You know, I think I told you
Speaker 1: guys a story about my first free fall jump as
Speaker 1: an amputee and my leg popping off in free fall
Speaker 1: and under under canopy. Uh, it's a whole other story.
Speaker 1: There's a million and one stories of just never would
Speaker 1: have thought of that. Most guys worried about losing their
Speaker 1: weapon and with up you have to wait about this
Speaker 1: little leg. Yeah, you know, but it's the same solution.
Speaker 1: I used a fifty chord tie down on my ankle,
Speaker 1: rounded up my pant leg, and tied it to my
Speaker 1: rigor belt so if I lost suction, my leg wouldn't
Speaker 1: fall off. It was landard on your leg. That's a
Speaker 1: great dummy chord for my leg. It was perfect. That's
Speaker 1: a great idea. Steed back to you. Yeah, I wanted
Speaker 1: to jump right in now. You know you're retired, Uh,
Speaker 1: you're running for Congress now, and this is uh, this
Speaker 1: is a difficult time in our our nation right now.
Speaker 1: We have we're pretty much split, it seems just as
Speaker 1: much as we have been in the last hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty years. And you know, uh, what was it that
Speaker 1: made you decide to run for her office? Because that's
Speaker 1: a thankless job. Or is it just because you feel
Speaker 1: like you still this country? You know you're indebted to
Speaker 1: deserve you know that that's actually part of it, right.
Speaker 1: I believe in service something bigger than myself. It's where
Speaker 1: my roots came from, when my dad taught me. It's
Speaker 1: what the army instilled in me. It's what special forces
Speaker 1: seared into me. But in the end. Look, Um, I've
Speaker 1: traveled around the world. I faced our nation's worst enemies firsthand.
Speaker 1: I've been in some places that are probably on the
Speaker 1: camde Nast list and a few that maybe our tourist destinations, right,
Speaker 1: And the one thing I know, behind a shadow with doubt,
Speaker 1: is how blessed we are as a nation. There is
Speaker 1: no place I would rather have my children grow up
Speaker 1: than in this great nation. People may forget that, and
Speaker 1: they may lose sight of that, but the truth and
Speaker 1: the reality is we are a blessed nation unlike any other.
Speaker 1: I want my children to have the same freedoms that
Speaker 1: we had growing up. Right. There's six and nine right now,
Speaker 1: and they deserve, at the bare minimum those same freedoms.
Speaker 1: But in reality, as a dad, I want so much more,
Speaker 1: you know, I want them to have all the things
Speaker 1: we dreamed of from a freedom and rights and just opportunity.
Speaker 1: That's fundamental to our nation and our history. You know,
Speaker 1: at our core, our government is designed, our republic is
Speaker 1: designed to be of the people, by the people, and
Speaker 1: for the people. We were never built or designed to
Speaker 1: have dynastic families in charge or career politicians hold positions
Speaker 1: for decade after decade after decade that that's that's just
Speaker 1: not how we were built. I remember something about seventeen
Speaker 1: seventy six and representation, right. Uh, words have meaning. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna be a politician. I'm my father's son,
Speaker 1: I'm a husband, I'm a dad, I'm a retired Green Beret,
Speaker 1: I'm a nonprofit leader and the end, you know, those
Speaker 1: are the things that drive me. I lived by a
Speaker 1: real simple ethos and it's something that that I learned
Speaker 1: early on. It's deeds, not words. We don't need more
Speaker 1: politicians who want to pontificate and list how we're going
Speaker 1: to do things. If you're gonna represent people, you're going
Speaker 1: to have to sit down, use both your ears, listen
Speaker 1: to what they think, how they feel, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to come together and find solutions that are good
Speaker 1: for the Americans in general. Yeah. When I looked at
Speaker 1: the landscape of people serving in these roles or the
Speaker 1: folks that were available, I didn't see anyone that really
Speaker 1: espoused the values I was raised with. And you know,
Speaker 1: I go back to the first lesson in Special Forces,
Speaker 1: you gotta leave things better than you've got it. I've
Speaker 1: identified a problem I don't see a solution, and it's
Speaker 1: wrong morally and and functionally if you see a problem
Speaker 1: not to try to solve it. So I put my
Speaker 1: money where my mouth was. I live by an athos
Speaker 1: of deeds not words. I'm a person of action, just
Speaker 1: like the rest of the people in our regiment, in
Speaker 1: our brotherhood, and I'm gonna do something about it. So
Speaker 1: after talking with the family, thoughts and prayers and working
Speaker 1: through this, we entered into this and our becus is
Speaker 1: just the same as it always has been in this
Speaker 1: to do it the right way, to win and to
Speaker 1: represent we the people, not me the politicians. Will never
Speaker 1: be a politician. Jee, you're living in a district outside Tampa,
Speaker 1: or incorporating in Tampa to a large and military population
Speaker 1: with some common being based there at mcdillo, a force
Speaker 1: base of are you. Are you finding a good reception
Speaker 1: from the military community in general to your canvasy in
Speaker 1: that area. Yeah, so the reception has been fantastic so far. Right,
Speaker 1: all in all, it's been a blessing. We are in Tampa,
Speaker 1: so District fourteen is essentially Hillsborough County. Right just to
Speaker 1: you know, use General Weatherman hands on this. It's Tampa
Speaker 1: that incorporates McDill. The outpouring of support has been amazing.
Speaker 1: We've raised over six figures. And I don't bring that
Speaker 1: up because I love the fact that politics are about money.
Speaker 1: I bring it up because that's the reality of how
Speaker 1: the process works. If you're going to be a part
Speaker 1: of the game, you've got to raise money. And that's
Speaker 1: not about me. We've raised money off our network are
Speaker 1: Mike micro Neverca friends and Green Berets and people we
Speaker 1: know the into the sixth figure market, not in a
Speaker 1: three month quarter, but in sixty days, So in two
Speaker 1: yairds of a quarter, we've raised six figures off of
Speaker 1: Americans who believe that our government should be about week
Speaker 1: the people in order to put a more perfect Union's
Speaker 1: six figures going to be enough for a rason like that?
Speaker 1: Or that's just the start we're gonna raise. Our goal
Speaker 1: is between one point five and two for the life
Speaker 1: of this campaign. Uh that that's how it's gonna go.
Speaker 1: And in the end, this is just the start, right.
Speaker 1: We have great support locally. We're getting support from local
Speaker 1: business leaders as well. Now as we step into this
Speaker 1: throughout the state of Florida, we're raising funds across the country.
Speaker 1: I believe the number is twenty or twenty two states.
Speaker 1: We're getting donations from support from UH. It's it's shocking
Speaker 1: as someone who didn't know a lot about politics in
Speaker 1: the process behind it, I know about our constitution or
Speaker 1: government and how we're supposed to be. It's been enlightening
Speaker 1: and it's it's inspiring to hear the commonality and the
Speaker 1: Americans who believe like we do. The truth is, there
Speaker 1: are more people like us across this country than folks
Speaker 1: who don't want freedom across our nation. We really have
Speaker 1: more in common. I believe that nine of Americans have
Speaker 1: ninety percent of the things in common. And one of
Speaker 1: those key tools and lessons I learned an SF because
Speaker 1: we have to insulate, not isolate. We can draw people together.
Speaker 1: And you know, that's how you bring this nation back
Speaker 1: from the precipice we're on. You remind folks that were
Speaker 1: blessed to be American citizens we are unlike anything in
Speaker 1: the hands of history, and remind them of how great
Speaker 1: our nation is. Let's not focus on what divides us.
Speaker 1: Let's draw together and solve problems the American way. That's
Speaker 1: what we're founded on. Because your military experience translated well
Speaker 1: to the experience of all running for offers, is conducting
Speaker 1: of military operation anything like running a political campaign. Any
Speaker 1: similarities there, Well, I think there's a lot of structure
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of drive and the termination that
Speaker 1: goes into this. And uh, you know, the one thing
Speaker 1: that's true, and we've talked about kind of on the
Speaker 1: periphery throughout this, like as a people industry, right, if
Speaker 1: you insulate people, you don't isolate them, You treat people
Speaker 1: with respect, you work hard, and do the right things.
Speaker 1: Those all all are all things and make you successful
Speaker 1: in life, in business, in the military, and the nonprofit sector.
Speaker 1: Why would it be different in politics? That's what the
Speaker 1: American people expect from politicians, is that they're going to
Speaker 1: show up when they're elected, do the right thing by
Speaker 1: the people in their their district, and serve the will
Speaker 1: of the people. That's the expectation. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: simple things save lives, right seven dass shape is something
Speaker 1: we leaned on when I was in the military, Right,
Speaker 1: you know, your basic military tactics and uh, while it
Speaker 1: didn't quite work for politics, simple things make a difference. Listen,
Speaker 1: you know, make decisions that are good for your people,
Speaker 1: serve the United States, not yourself. Well, it seems like
Speaker 1: fire maneuver with certain an Orican politics, you know, fix
Speaker 1: the targeting and moving on the flags. UH. Each constituency
Speaker 1: and different congressional districts have different sort of legislative interests.
Speaker 1: I would assume that people in Montana have a different
Speaker 1: set of from government than the people do in Tampa.
Speaker 1: If you've been able to identify the things that mean
Speaker 1: the most of the voters in your district, what would
Speaker 1: you say the three things are it are most important
Speaker 1: to them? And in a congressional candidate, what do they
Speaker 1: want you to work on? So right now that there
Speaker 1: are several things that are kind of overarching for our nation.
Speaker 1: They are really really important, and we've been talking on
Speaker 1: the periphery of it. The first thing is the division
Speaker 1: in our country. You know, Steve, you mentioned it. We're
Speaker 1: more divided now than we have them. But with the
Speaker 1: reality is we have more in common than that which
Speaker 1: separates us. We're being divided into groups because it makes
Speaker 1: us weaker as a group. Right we're fighting amongst ourselves,
Speaker 1: coming together, discussing and solving problems. We have to overcome
Speaker 1: this division. We have to find a way to understand
Speaker 1: that it's okay to love our nation, It's okay to
Speaker 1: be proud to be an American, because the truth is
Speaker 1: there is no place like it on God's green earth.
Speaker 1: You have to change that tone, Met Tanner and let
Speaker 1: people know that we are it is okay, don't be
Speaker 1: ashamed to be American. Our nation stands for something unlike
Speaker 1: anything else in the world. When people from Venezuela, Cuba, Iran,
Speaker 1: we're upsha theoria, push and beg for peace. There is
Speaker 1: one symbol that they that they wave, one symbol that
Speaker 1: comes out every single time, and it's the American flag.
Speaker 1: Our nation stands for that. And then come on each
Speaker 1: of us to remember that. You know, freedom is never
Speaker 1: more than one generation removed from loss right, you know,
Speaker 1: while Reagan's paraphrasing him and we have to fight and
Speaker 1: we have to maintain that. But we've got to overcome
Speaker 1: this division, and the only way to do it is
Speaker 1: to communicate, drop people together and have hard conversations. You've
Speaker 1: got to be willing to be told something you might
Speaker 1: not want to hear, and people have to be willing
Speaker 1: to get over the fact that we don't have to
Speaker 1: agree on everything. But that's what this great debate, what
Speaker 1: our nation has founded on. We have to draw people
Speaker 1: back to this. It's not about the red or the blue.
Speaker 1: It is only about the red, white and blue. That's
Speaker 1: so the first one, obviously is to try and bring
Speaker 1: people together into common costs. Uh. I think I would
Speaker 1: atte to do that. The government, total government, the way
Speaker 1: it set up is designed by intend to make it
Speaker 1: hard to get things done. Unless you have a broad
Speaker 1: consensus among the population to getting done, then it's very easy.
Speaker 1: So obviously I think, yeah, what what would be the
Speaker 1: other two that you say or the other one? You've
Speaker 1: gotta look at defense. Right across the board, we're in
Speaker 1: pretty unparallel times. Right. Our southern border is a train wreck.
Speaker 1: It's it's unacceptable. We are a nation of immigrants, but
Speaker 1: were nation of laws. We have to have a wall
Speaker 1: and you have to have gates and immigration reform. That's
Speaker 1: good for these citizens in the United of States. That
Speaker 1: makes sense, right. My family immigrated, my wife's family immigrated
Speaker 1: at one point. We all got here somehow. But you
Speaker 1: can't just let people roll in unequivocally, right, That's not
Speaker 1: how things work. There's no nation on Earth that that
Speaker 1: happens on Uh, it's putting people in the southern border
Speaker 1: at risk. It's wrong from a a management of funds
Speaker 1: perspective because we're dumping millions and billions and trillions of
Speaker 1: dollars into that. And then uh, ultimately how that feels
Speaker 1: the people who went through the immigration process the right way.
Speaker 1: You're watering down all that they went through, the sacrifices
Speaker 1: they made to be a part of our American dream.
Speaker 1: People believing that you go to Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, where
Speaker 1: my wife's family is from, a Lebanon all over South
Speaker 1: America when people talk about the American dream, our press
Speaker 1: and our media may not want to talk about it,
Speaker 1: but people around the world, people in America surely do.
Speaker 1: And uh, that's the other thing. You also have to
Speaker 1: look at the complete mass we made of Afghanistan. That's
Speaker 1: also a defense side. Right. We failed, And you know,
Speaker 1: we talked a little bit earlier about Millie and the
Speaker 1: statement made the Afghanistan was a strategic failure, but a
Speaker 1: logistic success. Look, our government failed, period point blank. Uh.
Speaker 1: Million is a hundred percent wrong on that it was
Speaker 1: a strategic failure. And that's an understatement. It was a
Speaker 1: freaking nightmare. What they did was a percent wrong. We
Speaker 1: emboldened Iran, Russia, you know, Syria, all the people around
Speaker 1: the globe. They really want to do harm to our nation.
Speaker 1: We've been emboldened and we've shown them that we'll negotiate
Speaker 1: with terrorists, and we put America on its heels. We've
Speaker 1: changed how we're reviewed by our allies internationally. Right, how
Speaker 1: many of our allies have come out and said, look,
Speaker 1: when America stepped back, we had no choice, and they're
Speaker 1: now stepping back from that. It's the wrong approach. And
Speaker 1: then let's look at the tactical side of that. Do
Speaker 1: we make soft operators or military guys in third world
Speaker 1: kind trey serving others at the you know, the tip
Speaker 1: of the spear or so to speak? In these countries?
Speaker 1: We make their jobs easier by walking away from a
Speaker 1: twenty year war and abandoning our allies in their time
Speaker 1: of needing. We've made every service member, every soft guy,
Speaker 1: every regular army guy, Navy, Marine Corps job more dangerous
Speaker 1: and put their lives at risk. Because of the optics
Speaker 1: of this and the fact that we didn't think through this.
Speaker 1: Those nations aren't going to trust us the same way
Speaker 1: they did before because they saw us bail on our
Speaker 1: Afghani allies. The truth is this, in these nations, you
Speaker 1: have to lead with strength and honor and you you
Speaker 1: don't have to have an iron fist, but you can't
Speaker 1: negotiate a position of weakness. Period. They respect power, they
Speaker 1: respect strength, and we didn't do that the right way.
Speaker 1: You know, I could go on for another hour straight
Speaker 1: about the failures in Afghanistan. So that's number two. And
Speaker 1: the third one, I'm gonna do one here locally, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do one that is again a national issue.
Speaker 1: We've got a reigning, out of control spending right while
Speaker 1: Afghanistan is burning down and American lives are being lost
Speaker 1: and people are being shipped off to Walter Reid because
Speaker 1: of the injuries there. What is that? You know, what
Speaker 1: is our government doing? They're patting themselves on the back
Speaker 1: for passing trillions of dollars of packages and infrastructure that
Speaker 1: nobody really understands or wants. Right, it doesn't solve a
Speaker 1: problem for the American people. We're adding trillions of dollars
Speaker 1: a debt onto my children's children's children, generations yet to come.
Speaker 1: It's unacceptable. You know, those are the things that draw
Speaker 1: people together. We make our family bounds our budget, We
Speaker 1: make our family lock our doors shut the doors, keep
Speaker 1: our home secure, our family safe. Right, why should it
Speaker 1: be different for our government? And in the end, I
Speaker 1: tell my son, both of my boys giving cold, that
Speaker 1: you have each other's back. We always have each other's back.
Speaker 1: So if we come together and realize that we have
Speaker 1: more in common, we have each other's back. We keep
Speaker 1: our nation to secure on the borders and internationally and
Speaker 1: the control out of control spending. How much better are
Speaker 1: we going to be on just those three things that
Speaker 1: are common to everyone across this country. The majority of
Speaker 1: people believe those same things, and they're ready to hear
Speaker 1: politicians who want to do something, you know, who live
Speaker 1: by deeds not words. You know, here locally, we've got
Speaker 1: to solve some of these issues on our on our
Speaker 1: gulf with red time and some of the water issues.
Speaker 1: You know, Florida is a state built on outdoor living.
Speaker 1: You know. Uh, we were at the beach when red
Speaker 1: tide was was at his at its peak, and you're
Speaker 1: watching these big groupers and fish wash up on there,
Speaker 1: and uh, in the end, man we moved to Florida
Speaker 1: for many reasons. It's spoke to us. This is where
Speaker 1: we chose to call all the places in God's green earth.
Speaker 1: This is what spoke to us. This is our homes,
Speaker 1: where our kids are gonna grow up and we're gonna
Speaker 1: grow old. But we're a water family. Right we go
Speaker 1: to the beach. I want my kids to serve. I
Speaker 1: want them on boats and I want them to enjoy
Speaker 1: the ocean and live that life. And if we don't
Speaker 1: find a way to keep the water healthy, how are
Speaker 1: they going to do that? Right? You know, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say we can't maintain business and analys but
Speaker 1: we've gotta be smart to look at this in the short,
Speaker 1: mid and long term and develop a strategy that's good
Speaker 1: for the economics and also good for the water. It
Speaker 1: can be done. You just can't be lazy. You gotta
Speaker 1: do the hard work. And for those who are listening
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with what red tide is, it's a red algae
Speaker 1: that balloons in coastal waters or Florida and causes die
Speaker 1: offs of fish. It's attributable to fresh water runoff coming
Speaker 1: out of places like Lake with Kachobe and our rivers.
Speaker 1: Florida's got something like a million miles of water runoff
Speaker 1: canals and irrigation things like that because we get so
Speaker 1: much rain. So it's it's about how we control that
Speaker 1: runoff and how we move that water around the state
Speaker 1: as Florida basically as a spun sitting in a puddle
Speaker 1: if you if you look at it geographically. Um, going
Speaker 1: back to Afghanistan for a minute, you worked with Afghan
Speaker 1: troops very close close way you were. You were there
Speaker 1: during the siege at Camp and Conduct, which which the
Speaker 1: Afghan Army was involved in. And Steve and I've talked
Speaker 1: about this all the writers have. We actually wrote some
Speaker 1: stuff on this during the evacuation about why it was
Speaker 1: happening the way it was. We're marking the contrast between
Speaker 1: the resistance in the Panchyr Valle, which is um, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's Tad Jeeks and and some others done some
Speaker 1: of the some of the passions versus the way the
Speaker 1: Afghan army pretty much, you know, collapsed on itself around
Speaker 1: the different districts and stuff like us. What your thoughts
Speaker 1: are on the different fighting qualities of Afghan troops and
Speaker 1: you've worked with them what was your experience with Afghans?
Speaker 1: So you know, there's a couple of things before you
Speaker 1: can step into how the Afghans fight. Right, the Afghan
Speaker 1: Army is not like the U. S Army. When we
Speaker 1: say we've got a half million, I means we got
Speaker 1: a half million trained in put it in in ready people. Right.
Speaker 1: That three d or three and thirty thousand number, that's
Speaker 1: not real soldiers, right, that's inflated. That's conscripts. That's people
Speaker 1: who have never actually been a part of them and
Speaker 1: are added to their roles just to look right. When
Speaker 1: we look at the you know, the real people who
Speaker 1: do hard work, it's ten eleven thousands offt SF soldiers
Speaker 1: in the Afghan Army who are trained by with him,
Speaker 1: through our green berets, through our tiered assets. They're the
Speaker 1: real deal. They know what they're doing. They fought with
Speaker 1: honor and dignity and had our backs. Uh, you know
Speaker 1: throughout this process they're good soldiers, they're good fighters. There
Speaker 1: are good people in the regular Afghan Army, people who
Speaker 1: get it. And Uh, in the end, I think when
Speaker 1: you look at this, let's just peel this back a
Speaker 1: little bit and look at how this thing came together.
Speaker 1: You know, mid April we announced we're gonna have zero
Speaker 1: troops by May June, we're starting to roll back. Afghanis
Speaker 1: are here in this, that this is coming up in
Speaker 1: the summer, and by September events we're gonna have no
Speaker 1: troops in Afghanistan. Imagine how they felt, right, our allies
Speaker 1: after twenty years, They're like, what, you're you're what? And
Speaker 1: you know General Miller, Scott Miller was on the ground
Speaker 1: for that, right, He's he's a he's a great man,
Speaker 1: a good leader who knows Afghanistan, spent a lot of
Speaker 1: his adult life there, and he's someone universally trusted by
Speaker 1: them and by Americans. He's he's exceptional. Um as this
Speaker 1: was going out and we're being told to shrink this
Speaker 1: country down, we weren't listening to the tactical people on
Speaker 1: the ground. We weren't hearing their words. You know, this
Speaker 1: was being run by the Pentagon in the States. When
Speaker 1: you had someone dynamic, gifted and intelligent and capable in
Speaker 1: General Miller, on the ground, they should have listened to
Speaker 1: him more because he's again, he's the real deal. So
Speaker 1: let's look at how we pulled this back rather than
Speaker 1: communicating to our Afghan allies. Al Right, guys, we're gonna
Speaker 1: start peeling down these bases and telling them a thought
Speaker 1: out structure and a plan. We just disappeared in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night, shut the lights off, rolled out,
Speaker 1: they woke up, and boom, the Americans are gone. Right.
Speaker 1: Imagine how that felt for our allies. Imagine how to
Speaker 1: folt across the country. Word travels fast in that nation,
Speaker 1: so they're already on their heels. This happens, and we're
Speaker 1: peeling back, right, and we come back into big places
Speaker 1: like Bogram and Cobble, and you know, in places like that,
Speaker 1: um as we're squeezing is in. And then word comes
Speaker 1: out that they're not going to maintain between five people
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan, right, that they're going to drop that. That
Speaker 1: number is pretty significant because that's what it takes to
Speaker 1: ruin Bogram, to have the airframe managed, to have the
Speaker 1: infrastructure to make that work. That's a U. S. Army
Speaker 1: Air Force base, right, That's not Cobble. That's a real defendable,
Speaker 1: hardline military air force base. We trained the Afghanis uh
Speaker 1: to fight like us, right, to shoot, move and communicate
Speaker 1: like us. But what that means they had to have intelligence,
Speaker 1: targeting packages and close air support. So now imagine how
Speaker 1: they felt when we were told we told them not
Speaker 1: no, no no, we're gonna close bog You're you're wait what
Speaker 1: you're You're not gonna give us air support? How do
Speaker 1: how we fight? You taught us to fight like this
Speaker 1: without air support. So again there's another gut punch to
Speaker 1: the Afghans, right, our allies of people on the ground,
Speaker 1: and because we left, all the other allies started peeling
Speaker 1: back and leaving as well. Right, so now we're rolling
Speaker 1: back there, we give up bog Room, which is a
Speaker 1: huge tactical operational strategic error, right, and we focus on Cobble.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about the history of things, right, what
Speaker 1: is one of the things ever gone well, We've been
Speaker 1: backed into a corner. Right, Let's look at Thermopoli, Let's
Speaker 1: look at the little big Horn, Let's look at the Alamo.
Speaker 1: It never goes well. And then we wanted to focus
Speaker 1: on the optics of it, right, rather than haven't looked
Speaker 1: like a military exercise or a military mission. They're like, no,
Speaker 1: no, no no, no, this is we're just getting We're getting
Speaker 1: people out. We didn't have much of a plan obviously
Speaker 1: with blanket in those folks, but uh, you know, we
Speaker 1: don't want to look to military, so we put more
Speaker 1: people at risk by not having the security parameters up
Speaker 1: because of optics, and we back, We went into a
Speaker 1: corner where everyone knew where we were in a built
Speaker 1: up area. We did everything wrong tactically, operationally, and strategically.
Speaker 1: And you wonder why the Afghans didn't fight. We did
Speaker 1: nothing to get them to fight. You know, you could
Speaker 1: go on for hours and hours about specific nuance to
Speaker 1: things that we failed at, but in the end it
Speaker 1: comes down to this. We didn't leave live by our ethos.
Speaker 1: Uh definitely not mine of these not words, nor do
Speaker 1: we live by the ethos of we don't leave people behind,
Speaker 1: right that's the basic fundamental concept, you know, to call
Speaker 1: this a logistic success for a general officer to do that,
Speaker 1: when we left Americans behind, when per the State Department's number,
Speaker 1: there's a hundred Americans left in the nation right now,
Speaker 1: it's it's embarrassing. It's a black guy on our nation.
Speaker 1: It doesn't define who we are, but we have to
Speaker 1: own it. Unfortunately, because of the decisions they made and
Speaker 1: the only way to solve that is to come together
Speaker 1: as we the people and let the government know that
Speaker 1: y'all don't work and make the decisions. You work for us.
Speaker 1: It is we the people that are empowered by our constitution.
Speaker 1: You may not like it, but we have a voice.
Speaker 1: You work for us, and this is not acceptable. We
Speaker 1: deserve better they could be. To be clear, would you
Speaker 1: have been an advocate for staying and keeping some sort
Speaker 1: of footprint in Afghanistan? So? Yeah, so honestly I would
Speaker 1: have right and not forever. Nobody wanted to be in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan longer than we had to write. Twenty years was
Speaker 1: a long time. You know. We talked earlier about generate
Speaker 1: a whole generation of military from day one to retirement
Speaker 1: built around the Afghan War. But how do you do
Speaker 1: this right? I'm gonna use an analogy. I'm a dad, right,
Speaker 1: six and a nine year old. I've got two boys.
Speaker 1: You ride bicycles because I taught them how to ride
Speaker 1: a bike. I'm gonna use two schools that theory. I
Speaker 1: could take them the highest hill or mountain in this area.
Speaker 1: And I live in Florida. There's nothing super high, right,
Speaker 1: but we'll make one up right, and I could put
Speaker 1: them on the bike and push them down and in
Speaker 1: theory they may be able to ride their bike right,
Speaker 1: But more than like, they're gonna crash, flip and not
Speaker 1: want to ride their bike. They're gonna be broken and
Speaker 1: bloodied and they're gonna hurt, and I don't have to
Speaker 1: work hard to get them back up right. That's what
Speaker 1: we did, is a nation to the Afghans. Rather than
Speaker 1: giving them training, wheels and security and you know, standing
Speaker 1: by their side while they're getting wobbly and up on
Speaker 1: their own, we just walked away and let them crash
Speaker 1: down the mountain side. That's what we did. We also
Speaker 1: did this in the summer, right, Afghanistan, you don't fight
Speaker 1: year round. It's the summer months when you fight. The
Speaker 1: summer offensive is what they call it. In the you know,
Speaker 1: the late fall and winter, nothing goes on there because
Speaker 1: everyone goes back to Pakistan or Iran or wherever they
Speaker 1: came from and they get their shore on, right. It's
Speaker 1: it's just the reality of it. Why would we leave
Speaker 1: in the middle of the summer offensive without communicating doing
Speaker 1: all the things we just talked about. How do we
Speaker 1: left a small package of air support and soft operators
Speaker 1: in the nation. None of this happens because the fact is,
Speaker 1: the Taliban, isis al Qaeda know exactly what those are guys.
Speaker 1: Those guys are about, the bearded ones, so to speak.
Speaker 1: They know it's a very real mission, and those guys
Speaker 1: are there to do what has to be done because
Speaker 1: they do live by ethos of leaving the one behind
Speaker 1: of deeds. Words that would have given our our Afghan
Speaker 1: allies the support they needed to continue on this. And
Speaker 1: then yes, eventually you have to leave. We don't want
Speaker 1: to be there for an eternity, but you've got to
Speaker 1: do this in a way that promotes stability, not instability.
Speaker 1: We didn't just destabilize Afghanistan. We destabilize the Middle East,
Speaker 1: and we've made Americans less secure at home because Afghanistan
Speaker 1: is already a terror of safe haven. There are two
Speaker 1: thousand isis k roaming around Afghanistan right now. It's not
Speaker 1: a matter of if. It's when people try to do
Speaker 1: something against America because we are a target because of
Speaker 1: what we talked about. Our flag stands for freedom, Our
Speaker 1: nation stands for the freedom that we we all espouse
Speaker 1: and believe in. It's a it's I've always kind of
Speaker 1: smile when people said, oh, you know, staying in this
Speaker 1: country for twenty years, for twenty years, it's on us,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you've been to Germany, Japan, Italy. We've
Speaker 1: had bases there since World War Two. So it's not
Speaker 1: as if we don't stay in these countries once we've
Speaker 1: either liberated them or or pulled them out. We're there
Speaker 1: for stability, and you know, we have an Agreement of
Speaker 1: Forces arrangement with countries around the world, including Germany, Japan,
Speaker 1: and South Korea. I think where they have like thirty
Speaker 1: or forty thousand U S troops in South Korea that
Speaker 1: have been there since the fifties. It is not unprecedented
Speaker 1: for us to remain if it makes sense obviously, if
Speaker 1: it makes sense um, But it seems like the way
Speaker 1: the mission turned into mush and nobody was really clear
Speaker 1: on what the goal was or why we were there,
Speaker 1: undermines the the idea of remaining. I think everybody knows
Speaker 1: why we keep forty thousand people in Korea. I think
Speaker 1: everybody knows why we have an aircraft carrier permanently stationed
Speaker 1: in Japan. I think people know how we maintained troops
Speaker 1: in Germany and why we had naval facilities in our
Speaker 1: air forces is and a Biano and at Naples, and
Speaker 1: in Sicily and of Spain. You know, we we have
Speaker 1: facilities there that are that are cooperative with the countries
Speaker 1: that are whether station order to shore their security. And
Speaker 1: they understand that they would need us in a wider conflict,
Speaker 1: that our goals are align with their goals in terms
Speaker 1: of national security. I think we lost the threat in
Speaker 1: Afghanistan about why it mattered in fighting the war on terror,
Speaker 1: and I think important people, yeah, weren't told that. Right.
Speaker 1: We wanted to focus on the stuff they divided us, right, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, whether it was by race, by religion, by creed,
Speaker 1: by politics, whatever. Right, we wanted to focus on all
Speaker 1: those things and tell people how horrible we are as
Speaker 1: a nation, right, how much we're different, how much this
Speaker 1: group doesn't get that group. The truth is, Look, I've
Speaker 1: served with every nationality, gay people, straight people, everything in between. Right,
Speaker 1: it didn't matter. We all bled green, right, we all bled,
Speaker 1: and we all did the mission the same way. I
Speaker 1: didn't care. Nobody cared. That's the reality of this. If
Speaker 1: we just remember that we are Americans, it's okay to
Speaker 1: love our nation it's okay to be patriotch and know
Speaker 1: that we have that common thread. Let's unite on that
Speaker 1: and solve problems. And this would have been much more
Speaker 1: readily apparent because we would have seen there are bad
Speaker 1: people in the world. There are folks, to quote a movie, right,
Speaker 1: they just want to watch the world burn. And uh,
Speaker 1: when we keep our nation united and strong, there is
Speaker 1: nothing in the world that can stop the American people.
Speaker 1: We've shown that historically, right, It's true. We've just got
Speaker 1: to remind people of that. There's quite a view. There's
Speaker 1: quite a few other veterans running for office, including quite
Speaker 1: a few from Special Operations Forces. Uh, very Gray would
Speaker 1: be one that comes to mind. Remember the name of
Speaker 1: the other Gentlemans that was a special forces that's roining
Speaker 1: for Congress. That are you in touch with any of
Speaker 1: those people? Are you? Is there a veteran's caucus in
Speaker 1: the military that there are several groups drop of together,
Speaker 1: And yeah, I'm in touch with a few of them,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's great to see. You know. One of
Speaker 1: my big talking points is this, you know, our generation
Speaker 1: of military and is should repeats itself. And you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I'm asked is Are you worried
Speaker 1: that your children are gonna have to grow up in
Speaker 1: this world? Right? I'm not because in the end, I'm
Speaker 1: raising dragon slayers, Right, I'm raising children who are strong
Speaker 1: enough to push back and get through this. I'll never
Speaker 1: apologize for that. Do I want them to have a
Speaker 1: great life, Yes, But I'm also want them to be
Speaker 1: able to work and understand that freedom is something worth
Speaker 1: fighting for. Um. You know, we have to look at
Speaker 1: the World War two generation. Wasn't what they did in
Speaker 1: work that made them the greatest generation. That's what they
Speaker 1: did after raising America up by his bootstraps, drawing us together,
Speaker 1: turning this into the nation that we were, because we
Speaker 1: all focused on one thing, right, what's good for the country.
Speaker 1: We all blood the same different walks of life, united
Speaker 1: under the common banner of our American dream of a
Speaker 1: government the people, by the people, and for the people.
Speaker 1: That moment, that idea, that concept, story is true. We
Speaker 1: just have to remind people of it. And I think
Speaker 1: you're seeing that there are many veterans. You know, a
Speaker 1: few of us are here on kind of the front
Speaker 1: end of this. You're gonna see more and more as
Speaker 1: time goes on, because we know what life is about.
Speaker 1: We know how blessed we are as a nation, and
Speaker 1: this fight, no matter how hard it is, is absolutely
Speaker 1: the right fight. But if no one else is going
Speaker 1: to do the work, it's incumbent on us to solve it.
Speaker 1: We can all make a difference, and we all have
Speaker 1: to serve our community, whether it's a stepard on your neighbors,
Speaker 1: doing something good for your church, doing something good for
Speaker 1: your community, or running for Congress. The more good we
Speaker 1: do united to draw people together, the sooner we draw
Speaker 1: people together, and all these other things break down from there.
Speaker 1: If you know as priorities of work, it's step by
Speaker 1: step by step. It's not exciting, it's not fun, it's simple,
Speaker 1: but that's how things are done. That's how you win.
Speaker 1: We agree from an editorial standpoint, softwarep uh wants to
Speaker 1: come for veterans stilling at the political office um, and
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of public interests. The number of
Speaker 1: veterans that served in Congress and declining steadily, but where
Speaker 1: it's probably the lowest level what's ever been some of
Speaker 1: that obviously from post World War Two we had atstanding
Speaker 1: military like thirteen and a half million people, so was
Speaker 1: a huge part of our population. Plus you know, the
Speaker 1: military draft that ran into the Knicks administration and like
Speaker 1: the late sixties meant that you know, I made a
Speaker 1: much larger army that I think we were still at
Speaker 1: three and a half almost four million for almost all
Speaker 1: of the cold Ward's building to the late eighty nineties.
Speaker 1: So there's just fewer people who served in the military,
Speaker 1: which means fewer veterans to went for office. So we're
Speaker 1: very happy to to give a candidate and I'm veteran
Speaker 1: like you, the opportunity to speak to the people about
Speaker 1: what it is that you want to do in your
Speaker 1: canadacy and and hopefully as a as a complished thank you,
Speaker 1: we wish we wish you all the luck in that
Speaker 1: since surely we hope you'll come back and talk to
Speaker 1: us again soon. Um, Steve, I'll try to back over
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, hey, Jay uh, I know we we
Speaker 1: only ask for about forty five minutes. We've taken up
Speaker 1: a good chunk of your day here. But yeah, we
Speaker 1: want to thank you for joining us today and to
Speaker 1: reiterate with Sean just said thanks again and the door
Speaker 1: is always open for your around here. Um, we'd like
Speaker 1: to keep in touch with you and UH wish you
Speaker 1: all the best. Steve Shawn guys, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I I deeply appreciate the opportunity, and uh, I'm thankful
Speaker 1: for you empowering and giving veterans a voice because ultimately,
Speaker 1: if not me, then who? If not now, then win? Right?
Speaker 1: This is the time, This is a fight in Our
Speaker 1: nation needs people who believe unequivocally and selfless service. Thank
Speaker 1: you for empowering and making this as possible, and I
Speaker 1: would uh, I'd be honored and grateful to do more
Speaker 1: with you guys, and uh come back on whenever the
Speaker 1: opportunity presents itself. Thank you for that. Leanna would be ours. Jay,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us. Thank you take care alright,
Speaker 1: and for all of us here at Software up Radio,
Speaker 1: we want to thank all of our listeners for always
Speaker 1: tuning in. Thanks to Sean who joined us today. It's
Speaker 1: fun to be able to do the podcast with him,
Speaker 1: and obviously thanks to our guest today Jake Collins. We'll
Speaker 1: be back with another podcast real soon, so don't turn
Speaker 1: that down shot the Software Repradio excuse me on time
Speaker 1: on target, We'll be back. They're listening to Self Repadio
Speaker 1: MHM