010 Andy Stumpf

[Music] welcome to mic drop the podcast your relevancy is irrelevant and we don't give a [ __ ] about your feelings ladies and gentlemen as always it's an honor and a pleasure to have the guest sitting across from desks for me this evening what we have here is a former US Navy SEAL assigned to SEAL Team 5 and SEAL team 6 as an enlisted guy and then spent some time at SEAL team 3 as an officer he was a seal instructor he's got hundreds of combat operations and was medically retired in June of 2013 after 17 years of service and received five Bronze Stars four of which were with valor a Purple Heart a joint service commendation medal Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with valor three Navy achievement medals two combat action ribbons and a Presidential Unit Citation he holds two World Records one for a 36500 foot jump and another for an 18-mile wingsuit jump he's a licensed commercial pilot god [ __ ] help us Eritrea start starting a hit TV show the hunted on CBS History Channel series Navy SEALs America's secret warriors he's got a detonate dedicated segment on Red Bull TV as well as the ultimate rush series called human dart I can think of a few offshoots on that one he's also been a part of a global commercial campaign for tempur-pedic which he and I are gonna break in later after the episode because that's what I sleep on he's currently provides consulting for a host of clientele and travels to provide content for his sponsors he's got sparkly eyes and some of the gentlest hands of any warrior I've ever had the [ __ ] pleasure of meeting please welcome the purveyor of lessons learned the hard way Andy stump single best intro skipping the beginning part that end was the single best intro I've ever had in my entire life a little [ __ ] a just end it right now then we all [ __ ] good I appreciate you coming down here I know you know for me doing them in person as with the podcast that you have that's done so well makes a huge [ __ ] difference and thus far I've been fortunate enough to do that so I appreciate the hell out of you coming down for it yeah we've been I'm sorry it took so long for one but yeah it's hard is held to do them remotely if you don't know the person there's so much lost and just end up with know how this nothing mmm that's a great okay so moving on yeah I mean I I know you've been on a bunch I've been on a bunch and that I mean to me that's why I'm so adamant about there's been a number of guests that have rogered up to do it that I'm just like you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna have somebody on if it's via Skype which the internet connection here sucks so for me I'm bad that it's not worth doing but yeah just the quality of the content is so [ __ ] terrible it's hard too hard to get past it but so I appreciate you making time out of your busy busy schedule to come my pleasure Mountain great yeah I'm glad we could finally put it together yeah so just a quick kind of lightning around to get the brain juices flowing I know we've we've already shot the [ __ ] a little bit but I always like to ask everybody you know what their morning routine is on an on an average day yeah I am NOT a fan of waking up early god bless you it's [ __ ] finally finally somebody that's is anti Jacko in terms of scheduling as I am however comma I wake up early because I have three kids and in my house um I on the days that I do sleep in I hear my son's alarm going off my oldest son is almost 15 and that's the beginning of the day and if you have kids you know you're nothing in your house is quiet yeah it's nothing or sacred or peaceful while they're there so for me my most productive time unfortunately or fortunately however you look at it is in the morning so I actually am usually up about 4 or 4:30 Jesus for a week I actually speaking of Jocko I woke up and I would take a picture of my watch and I would post it on Twitter like hash tag up before Jocko yeah and his fans or followers lost their [ __ ] no [ __ ] I don't know if they realized that we knew each other because it was before I had actually done his podcast oh [ __ ] personal that they did he of course like I could text him we'd be like hey man this is what I'm gonna do was not that big of a deal but I get up early because I can be productive so I get up I mean it's probably not healthy but the first thing I do is I brew an awesome cup of coffee or a pot of coffee after you piss excellence of course yeah generally at my old age yeah the prostates getting after you so it's coffee and then you know most of what I do a lot of it is tied at the digital world so I can hire my computer and I'll sit there and have a cup of coffee and I try to get through as much of my work as humanly possible because when I hear the alarm go off upstairs from my sons I just want to be able to I do the best I can I fail often at shutting it completely off but I just try to be there for them and get them ready for school get them off to school and then I can dive back into that that's my normal morning so what I'm curious of cuz I recently heard you know in the last year or so kind of stopped eating breakfast is that something that you don't do really either I just do you when I'm hungry I've you know so I worked for CrossFit for almost ten years and it's uh I was around so much high quality information from people who you know they break your food up into a protein carbohydrate and fat that you know the macronutrient the zone type stuff and then I was around guys like Rob Wolfe who are more paleo centric you know meats and vegetables nuts and seeds and I intermittent fasting guys and all of that stuff and to be honest with you probably my weakest point is adherence to any structured yeah diets so I try to eat clean and I just kind of value when I'm hungry and I also keep in mind also my activity level yeah I do try to eat eat less when I'm not active but if I'm hungry for breakfast I'll eat breakfast if I'm not hungry I skip it so in terms of adhering to a specific meal set is it how would you classify that in terms of like a visit a hybrid of paleo keto or is it just like you just try to eat clean source whatever the [ __ ] you're hungry for and that's it I try to eat clean yeah um sometimes I tell myself to Rito's or clean you know sometimes I wash them I'm not I'm telling you I'm not the best example I can force myself to go get into the gym everyday and sweat like that's one thing I try to do every day is sweat for my mental sanity because I lose my [ __ ] if I don't but my week time of the day is like 7 to 8 o'clock at night that's when the ice cream Crossley yeah it's like well it's dairy right mostly milk ha ha ha ha ha there's protein how about a bowl of sir yeah and it well you know that was tough was working for CrossFit is always being around really high-caliber athletes and their their their discipline rivals Jaco in a way that he talks about discipline and it was tough because I can't say bike I want that ice cream have it I'm a [ __ ] yeah so it was actually nice to kind of let the reins off of myself a little bit so I eat as clean as possible I eat one of the reasons I got into bowhunting is I didn't wanna buy meat anymore mm-hmm and I have not bought meat at a store since August when I started last year so I have a ton of very I mean the wild game is insane really high protein content so pretty much knows [ __ ] ya in the morning I'll go to the freezer and kind of look at it and I'll pull that out and then I let that defrost all day long and I pair it with the side so it's it's mostly meats and vegetables and again like I said Fritos yeah we're made from potatoes which is a vegetable sometimes [ __ ] ruffles or potatoes Fritos or corn so [ __ ] it occasionally yeah right there with you that's good [ __ ] it sounds like it's relatively in line with was kind of how I've I've come full circle because I've tried just about [ __ ] everything keto paleo [ __ ] zone you know it's tough over the long term yeah I mean to me like that that's what that's what breaks people is the the attention to detail yep you know day in day out it's like it gets the point where it's a [ __ ] part-time job to eat and it's like Jesus Christ I got better [ __ ] to do you know so I agree I mean I think that's a good way to handle [ __ ] business but um favorite place on earth whoo yeah that's a good question I think you and I have we would probably been to more places on earth the most mmm my absolute place on earth is probably anywhere that I call home yeah it used to be San Diego for a long time but we just moved up into northwestern Montana and I think probably the my favorite flights home are the ones that are you know the my favorite flights are the ones that bring me home the Flathead Valley that we live in is just beautiful both in the winter time and the summer so that's definitely my favorite spot but if I'm gonna go somewhere that would be my favorite would probably be the lauterbrunnen valley and Switzerland I'm sure I've always wanted to go I've spent actually very little time in Europe outside of Holland and Germany just because that's where all the dogs or a happen that I go test and select but yeah I've always wanted to go to [ __ ] Switzerland I know there's a [ __ ] ton of places what is it about that place that is magic before what I like to do you know a lot of people see mountains and they appreciate them for the landscape I see mountains and I appreciate them for the distance that I can travel from them my fabric wingsuit in the lauterbrunnen valley the geography it's I mean it looks like somebody drew a drug and acts just a pointy end of an axe to this valley and that there's sheer cliffs on each side it's if you were a diabetic it would be like standing at the candy aisle at the grocery store and both sides are delicious consumable things that you want to just stuff your face into well I mean I so I mean there's a number of references that you know you could go dirty in the candy store I'm teeing it up for you I'm gonna see how far you're gonna go I mean I'll take it the whole [ __ ] yeah it was gonna be a long episode but the the thing that I find fascinating about that is you know I was never free fall qualified right What's in and it's funny when I read the you know the biggest reason why you got into parachuting was out of jealousy hundred percent because I was the same way like I was in that same just it was a shitty deal of being at Team 3 being where I was at my lot in the platoon lottery was you're still a [ __ ] new guy because I did an arc alpha platoon so it was a look you know a two-year workup basically and so even even after that I was still competing with guys that had two three platoons to get a freefall sniper comms I got hazmat and load planner which was you know junior first Platoon yeah hole in between my first and second you're lucky yeah so I think I got nothing yeah and I first would say let's go sweep the beach paint lines in the [ __ ] sidewalk but yeah I mean so because of that yeah I was always at a place wherever I was at where I was either a junior man or you're enough to where I never I never ended up getting freefall but my point is is that seeing some of the [ __ ] wings who stuff that you've done and and some other guys have done like even me with as many as the dumb harebrained [ __ ] things that I've done like I still find my palms [ __ ] sweating watching it you know I'm just like what the [ __ ] like I mean it really it's it's fascinating [ __ ] I mean it looks like it's it's got to be a huge rush and it's gnarly as [ __ ] and we'll get into it but that sounds like a [ __ ] cool place worth worth going to but it's beautiful yeah for sure alright any animal any cut favorite piece of meat and before you answer it it can't be my mom you got to leave sandy out of this lady I would go with and this is a recent one I actually hunted for this animal for the first time a few months ago but I think my favorite piece of game is access dear accidents dear if I if I prepared it for you properly which anything beyond medium-rare is improper yeah but if I prepared it for you properly and kind of cut it in a way where you wouldn't be able to tell what type of meat that it was just from taste alone I don't think most people could identify it it isn't so I'll send you something all overnight you some it's so delicious it's so flavorful and as far as that cut goes there was a butcher we were hunting it in lanai it's it was imported from I think India and there's like 30,000 of these things on the island of Lanai like 2,000 people they're everywhere is that the only place they're no they're actually a ton here in Texas as well it's it looks like like a nice brown body of a deer but they have these really nice white spots it's a beautiful animal yeah the female ones should be shot on sight because their entire job in life is to look like look at you and and then blow your stalk that you're on and the middle ones are just majestic they've got these great racks they look awesome and velvet but honestly I'll take any cut of access tear it is unbelievable is there a meat that most people are familiar with that it you could even remotely compare it to like the people would mistake it for or might might mistake it for pro man in bro I don't know if I have enough experience in my palate for that but I would say probably a very very expensive filet okay so it's super lean and like almost buttery that way yeah that's good [ __ ] I'm looking forward to play yeah awesome shirt sweet and appreciate it what is the political issue you find most [ __ ] irritating how to keep safe in school yeah yeah well that's on the list we're good I'm sure gonna get into that yeah you guys have had a bad had a bad week yeah yep yeah well we'll dive into that headfirst here in just a little bit favorite band this Britney Spears count as a band I was gonna go with Meghan Trainor one more reason for more relevant I'm a fan of Metallica I like some Five Finger Death Punch when I'm really it's just trying to relax you know in a condom sleep yeah both of those are pretty solid yeah amen the most embarrassing moment ever ever oh boy I know I know there's a commit a lot of competition for for that but most embarrassing moment ever I would say at work it would be going to the helicopter and really realizing shortly before takeoff I didn't have my gun that one kind of sucks when was that which time yeah that was in Afghanistan it's pretty awesome that goes down and uh as a bookmark in the old career of things that didn't go the way that I wanted to personally most embarrassing thing god I don't even know I mean I'm generally I think I walk around as kind of a buffoon and an idiot so it's hard to really nail one down right I mean to me the showing up without a gun to a gunfight you know we weren't in the gunfight yet I caught it before that going to one I guess but yeah how hard it is to hide that you don't have your gun in front of a bunch of guys who have their gun I do act strangely enough hey guys I gotta go uh keys in that truck I need uh I'd be right back that's [ __ ] great um what what's your favorite drink alcoholic or non preferably alcoholic but if there's something that I would say alcoholic wise beer wise would be Guinness it's just a strong American brand was founded in Kentucky I believe and on the harder side of the house even though they are one of my sponsors you know who's gonna people that didn't realize you're [ __ ] with them that's I can't help them sarcasm is my favorite weapon system so harder side of the house even though they're one of my sponsors kill cliff it was a recovery drink founded by HOD Elric the team guy kill cliff in vodka is lights out good yeah and I feel that you can talk yourself into believing that you're recovering while you're drinking so it's it's basically a vitamin and mineral it's um pretty much balances or yeah the neutral and I will say to people who have never had kill cliff in vodka I would start with the blood orange it's the actually called it's the killer Texan is what we called it it's Tito's vodka and blood orange kill cliff and just be careful because it will sneak up on you yeah because it's it's little it tastes but I wouldn't say tastes like it because it actually tastes nothing like Gatorade but it's delicious and it goes down really really smooth on the first one and by the time you get to the fourth one you're in trouble that's my kind of [ __ ] drink that's [ __ ] good [ __ ] I'm more of a bourbon guy but I I damn sure I mean I love kill cliff they've we did a couple of high school football like little mini to our buds hell week like yeah you know leadership things and kill cliff sent out a [ __ ] ton of a product it was [ __ ] awesome so good brand for sure yeah yeah there's all this [ __ ] alright so last but not least is that something that you've not mentioned publicly yet that would surprise most people or is there [ __ ] anything Oh something that I haven't mentioned good Andy on a [ __ ] exclusive um um you know one thing that I haven't talked about and probably because it's recent would be I have I personally am struggling with where I consider the SEAL Teams to be going and how a lot of guys are representing themselves in the public perception of the community that both you and I come from is I have a theory about that we might as well get right into it yeah well I mean for me it started it started recently like I said I've had and maybe that maybe it stems from me putting my own expectation on individuals the problem certainly could be from me having or expecting too much from people but I expect a lot from the people who come from our community yeah but what I will say is that I expect more for myself I don't hold anybody to a standard that I wouldn't hold myself to and as of recently I've had some what I would consider to be poor experiences with people from our from our shared background and it's put a it's put a bad taste in my mouth and I've actually found myself really wanting to distance myself from the seal community as of late so what I'm curious you know to to further into that what I'm curious of is do you find or have you found a a specificity towards a certain generation of guys that you're referring to because to me like and I hate to sound like the bitter old guy that's like back in my day but to me like the the community seems different nowadays you know the the the guys that I've run into that are that are more recent I would I would say over the last couple of years that you know that are either active or recently active and and I would consider kind of a you know the the generation after-hours seem different to me now maybe it's just because I'm old now and I've been out for a [ __ ] decade and that's not to relinquish any [ __ ] [ __ ] eree or shitbird affiliation with guys from our generation or even older because there's certainly plenty of them but to me there seems to be a shift yeah do you find that or was it more all-encompassing well the experiences that I was referencing were actually from people more of our generation but I think the teams are different I don't I don't see how they couldn't be because the world is different and when I was a buds instructor I remember having conversations with other buds instructors because we were putting through the younger generations coming through and there certainly was what I perceived at least to be a difference in mentality and attitude from when when I went through training yeah but the question that I had for the other instructors was I wonder if the instructors who put us through had these same conversations I'm sure they do and so I think it's now I think as the world shifts and advances in technology and society I don't think there's any way that the teams can stay what they were in the past and I think that's actually good I don't necessarily think that the routes that the evolution or the expression of that that they're taking are good but I don't think there's any way that we can you know you can't put the genie in the bottle and hold it in there forever I am NOT as connected to the teams as I once was as you know it as time goes by you kind of just lose touch a little bit and kind of like what I said when I started I mean about the the issue that most people wouldn't know about or I haven't talked about is I'm I'm kind of slowly just pulling the tentacles back I'm trying to be less attached to the community and I'm I'm less interested in trying to stay in touch but from what I've seen from the from the younger generation I saw a lot of the same stuff that I think define the community when you and I were in and then that you know when we came in there was no seal ethos yeah but I'm pretty sure we still live by one you know the fact that they put it on paper and they make the guys memorize and recite it which I cannot I know that it exists but the SEAL Teams existed before that ethos I think that's a good step as long as they actually live it because you know repeating [ __ ] then you don't actually aspire to be means nothing yeah I mean it's like it's like a pedophilia Act priests that [ __ ] can memorize the [ __ ] Bible like I don't give a [ __ ] you know are there those there's got to be okay again people I am slightly sarcastic so I'm I've heard there was but it's uh there so from what I have heard about what is going on in the teams I don't know if I would describe it as a crisis I don't know what level you would put it as but there are issues um I think recently it started coming out that there are some issues with drugs in the teams and I have no idea what that level actually sits at now mm-hmm I know that there were issues when I was in I'm trying to think if I ever saw anybody personally using I don't think that I did but I have been at commands where people pissed hot and they were removed so I know that that's not new maybe the level that it's at is new the the desire or the drive for people to seek the public notoriety in the spotlight I don't think that was happening as much in the beginning of our careers yeah but was there much for them to seek the notoriety for yeah when we started our career I don't think there was so again it's part of the evolution I don't necessarily agree with the expression of it but you can't put the genie back in the bottle yeah yeah I mean I think that just like with most things there's there's examples set and exceptions made at certain levels in terms of chain of command that set the precedents and if you know if guys you know whether it's back in oh four oh five you know when you know after you know when the lone survivor kind of kind of kicked it all off really in terms of that that public you know new generation cuz I mean we all grew up reading the dick Marcinko road warrior [ __ ] Vietnam era books and that's that's why a lot of us join and with green faces yeah which I try to explain to my kids there's a brick and mortar building that I actually had to go find the book at was no no library yeah Amazon Prime didn't exist and they couldn't just double tap and there was but men with green faces and then there was yeah the road warriors serious which I'm not gonna lie I thought that was a nonfiction at the time that I did when I was young wildly let down when I got into the actual SEAL Teams but a point man with the James patches Watson was another good one I don't know if I read though I read read that one as well but yes my point is is that there was there was a huge [ __ ] gap between sustained combat operations that had enough content for for things of that nature to be written about about thirty years if you think about it the Panama Grenada Mogadishu I mean not handful of guys and by that I mean literally handful like Mogadishu there was fourteen guys there yeah and you know so you got this huge huge you know disparity between major you know conflict open or were combat operations and so like you said I think you know a lot of it is is what was there to [ __ ] write and talk about you know obviously writing books and being kind of in that spotlight is nothing new because there are guys you know from the 80s and 90s bie dick Marcinko and and company that did so but yeah I mean to me just like with most things I mean I don't care if you're talking about slaughtering animals raising your [ __ ] kids training a dog whatever like there's a right way and a wrong way to do every [ __ ] thing you know and I think that's where we're you know there there's been some issues is that there's there's good ways that reflect positively on the community don't compromise capabilities and you know and overall gleam a a positive spotlight on on the Brotherhood and then to me you know that's a good [ __ ] start you know I think the intent matters yeah well what's your intent behind publishing something anything a podcast a blog a book I don't think I'll ever go down the road of writing a book I think mostly because I think my capabilities would end at a coloring book which I have considered by the way an adult coloring book the history of the Navy SEALs lots of red it's gonna be amazing but what I always try to say is that I do believe that the individual experience is that you get throughout a career they're yours and you can do with them what you want to do with them some people choose to publish them and I think the intent behind that matters I think if your intent is to seek fame and notoriety and money for yourself I'll put a moral judgment on that at a minute because I definitely certainly inherently have a moral judgement of that and then there's the example I'm going to use is Giacobbe Jacko's books on leadership there's now I know one of them is out extreme ownership and I I don't know if his second book that dichotomy of leadership is out but he and lathe Babbitt run those books and when I read that book I don't hear somebody beating their chests I don't hear somebody who is telling war stories about themselves what I see is an intent to pass on lessons learned what I see is an intent to educate is there money that can be gained from the publishing of those books absolutely and his experiences are his to do what he his and life's at the the book is both of there's not just Jacko's but I see it just a chasm of difference between an intent to educate and pass on the legacy because that it mean really what is passing on the lessons learned that's passing on the legacy that's passing on the things that the guys who served in that 30 year gap of sustained combat I mean if you think about who put us through buds no they didn't see any combat mmm why do we have the same moral compass inside of the community and the drive and the desire to hop up hold but a lot of people call the Brotherhood I would say not as many people live that Brotherhood is like to call it a Brotherhood but we got that compass orientation from people who never saw combat yeah and they passed on the legacy and I have no problem with people who have the intent of honoring and educating that that doesn't bother me I am I am more I am bothered by people who are pursuing purely monetary gain for themselves purely notoriety in fame especially when they start deviating from the truth mm-hmm if their intent is to raise their own star I start having an issue because the reality is their [ __ ] career and that trident it's not theirs yeah the experience is from there I take that back their career is theirs but the community is not yeah we rent our time in the SEAL Teams and in my opinion your goal should be to make it a percentage point better than the day that you got in but you don't own it yeah and they are taking ownership over something that I don't believe that they own and it mean to me I guess the where where I think some people is especially outside of the community and for that matter [ __ ] even inside of it you know is to me like who dictates that a like you know where do you draw the line from using your experiences and training to make a living you know which which ultimately like it to me it's there there's an element of scalability that exists with that is it like on the one extreme end of the spectrum you could say hey you're not even allowed to put it on a [ __ ] resume because if you get hired well then then you know to me granted it's scaled way the [ __ ] down but there's an element of your making a living off of the fact that you were a seal mhm you know no it's it's a title that you're never going to get rid of right you know so so it to me like that I think that the tough part to figure out is and again I think it boils down to like there's a right and a wrong way to do everything is is that you know at some point you know yeah you're crossing over into where you know if you're willing to lie about your experiences misrepresent [ __ ] truths or half-truths or things about the community that that don't exist or the world appropriate other people's experiences as your own yeah absolutely I mean 100 [ __ ] percent and there's a number a number of examples of that yeah and to me like that from my perspective as as somebody who's written two books you know three if you count you know the the second one being a young adult adaptation of the first you know and I'm happy to get into my reasons as to why but you know to me the you know that that's where we're at least from my perspective that that's where like I would draw the line in the sand is that you know we all come from a background of of those experiences help a lot of guys get hired or open a lot of doors that wouldn't normally exist had you not been a seal but but taking advantage of them to the point where now you're misrepresenting things and lying about things or representing stories that aren't yours as your own then yeah for 100% sure I mean I know we could spend [ __ ] three hours talking about just that alone but I would say that's prime e nigh don't I don't know where I mean I guess right and wrong would be a subjective for me personally and and I guess for anybody who is listening to this anything that I say is my opinion alone right ice being free and easy for might we do not speak for the SEAL Teams but I'll certainly give you my opinion on them yeah in my opinion I would say the right and wrong is it's it starts and stops with the truth you know when you start deviating from the truth in my opinion one if you can I mean I'm sure when you wrote your books you probably felt the burden of integrity and honesty oh absolutely and having multiple people you know read them to make sure like hey you know because some some of the the things that I talk about or I mean [ __ ] them some of them are my childhood somes going through buds it's been a long time yeah like yeah and the last [ __ ] thing I I would want to do is misrepresent something or write something that was wrong and so yeah I mean I had a [ __ ] ton of people read it to make sure that that didn't happen whereas I know for a fact there are people that didn't have anybody read their [ __ ] you know and there's a lot of misrepresentations but well if they had had them read their stuff yeah there might have been an issue yeah I think we're beholdin to the community that we come from and you and I count I mean I don't really consider myself to be a public figure at all but people know me as a seal yeah and I feel responsible to the community and I'm if people say negative things about me where am i representing myself or misrepresenting myself I mean all adjust my behavior I haven't heard it yet yeah you know I try to be honest and open and the probably the first things I'll ever tell you about are the things that I [ __ ] up I did more of those than things that are correct yeah but I think you have to be that way yeah and you have to if in a massive portion of the community is pointing at somebody and saying that's not right that's not true yeah no it has meaning yeah no absolutely mean to me like the classic 8020 rule is that you know there's gonna be 10% of guys that don't give a [ __ ] what you do there's gonna be 10% of guys that if your name is attached to the word seal on the internet what's oh [ __ ] yeah ever they're gonna [ __ ] you for it it's that 80% middle-of-the-road community that the meat and potatoes of the community is that if if you know the the overwhelming majority of those guys are like yeah you know what this [ __ ] guy's doing it right then chances are you're [ __ ] doing it right you know and unfortunately I agree there's some that that don't fall into that [ __ ] category but like I said a membership we could really go on and on about it but what I will say is I think one of the things the SEAL Teams is the least I wouldn't say I it's not that they're the least capable of doing it's one of the things that they're the worst at is policing their own mm-hmm it's a you know as well as I do you could easily associate the terms catty and [ __ ] you know the SEAL Teams we are a I mean god help you if there's blood in the water because you're your peers and your friends and your loved ones will consume you alive and legit because I love you yeah and we're really good at talking [ __ ] behind closed doors and I think we do a poor job as a community I mean let's be honest so calm and even JSOC to a degree could go hold a press conference they could go get a national stage and microphone and they could clear the air you know but they don't know and I think it's because it they feel my suspicion is that it's they feel that it would negatively represent the SEAL Teams yeah whereas in my current opinion I think it would be the beginning of the rebuilding of the integrity in the public space yeah no I think that's a fantastic point and one that that I certainly didn't think of but you know on that I'd to your point of doing a poor job I would take it a step further and say I think we do a a as a community a piss-poor job of being consistent in how we police our own because there are times where guys are made a [ __ ] vigorous goddamn example of yeah and then there's other times where it's Mao I mean he's the [ __ ] good like it just gets brushed under the [ __ ] rug you know and to me that's [ __ ] like if there's one thing I can tell you that I've gleaned from from training dogs is that consistency is [ __ ] everything well as standard the blurry that is blurry is not very it's not a standard it's especially when it's the metrodome swings back and forth and yeah yeah it's the same thing as discipline with kids yeah if that's either right or it's wrong or a [ __ ] gay can't be right on Monday and and wrong on Wednesday cuz you just gonna sit there with dude looking at you with apples squirrel wheels and as I can't it can't be okay when I don't feel like getting in your ass about it you know and yeah so I mean that's that that's part of it but no it's good good [ __ ] so and we'll come back to some some team community stuff here I need a friend I got multiple pages I have no notes I'll get you know about there and [ __ ] crayon and napkin I told you coloring book all you're gonna get stick figures doing inappropriate things nothing wrong with that all right so going just kind of want to chronologically go through your growing up just a little bit um in terms of growing up in Northern California like first of all what the [ __ ] all right NorCal you can't pick where you're born I mean but like how do you come from Northern California's as I guess what what my question is is what what was that like in terms of family dynamic politics growing up siblings influences from your parents what kind of shake us through that well so I was born and raised in Santa Cruz for all but four years of the the 18 I lived before actually leaving for boot camp Santa Cruz is an interesting ecosystem yeah I mean there are left-leaning towns and I don't give a [ __ ] about people who are on the left of the right I really don't care live your life enjoy your life just appreciate what it takes to be able to do that so Santa Cruz I don't think it's any stretch to say that it's left its very liberal it's so far left in my opinion that somehow it ends up on the right there's no it's not conservative by any stretch but they're just they're just full tilt to the left which is which it makes her pretty interesting to grow up in I mean it was hard to get in trouble in that town and my family was pretty well established I mean my grandfather built two of the high schools in the town is one of the first masonry companies in Santa Cruz which he then passed that skill onto my father my grandfather was in the Navy my father was in the Navy my mother's side of the house was she was a military brat as well from the army her mother enlisted in the Navy in the Nurse Corps and got such bad post-traumatic stress from treating the soldiers that were coming back from World War two that she actually got discharged from the Navy took some time off and went back in and lied about her previous service and joined the army nursing Corps and went back into the exact same job damn her husband was somewhere in the logistical supply chain he was an officer so I mean I had military on both sides yeah having said that I truly think that my parents absolute last desire for me would be to have continued down that path I mean public school system except for two years of private school when I was in middle school a kid at my middle school hung himself in his closet and it freaked my parents out and so they put me into a private school for I think it was seventh and eighth grade maybe half of a year in sixth grade as well but it was a short period of time a couple years and then right back into the public school system totally average athlete baseball and water polo did junior lifeguards was a beach you know I did junior lifeguards and just and did that and I worked for my father in the summer times I started working for him when I was either 10 or 11 he paid me about a dollar fifty an hour which I still gave him [ __ ] a battlin yeah I mean every I mean he's probably more of a smartass than I am cuz I did how did how did you possibly pay me a dollar fifty you were only worth a buck so he throws our right back in my face I wonder where I get it from but I think that job site so from a political perspective there I mean there was no there were no topics that were off-limits we could you know I had either sister we really didn't get along well growing up and I would say only recently in probably the last five or six years we really connected more and become more of a family probably started when she started having kids as well it's just you know life's yeah yeah if you have brothers a brother or sister you know the deal sometimes you don't get along that walk yeah I see it in my own kids my middle son of my youngest daughter and I think where I learned a lot of the lessons and got a lot of my drive was working on the construction sites at a young age I mean at 12 years old I was working at kwikki saw cutting bricks and blocks and moving and making concrete and I remember when I was I think I turned 13 my dad was like all right this summer you're learning how to use a jackhammer it's two rules one don't drop it off the roof and two don't tell your mother okay I would just stay up on top of chimneys because the earthquake hit an 89 just destroyed Santa Cruz from a masonry perspective yeah so we were still back and when I left for the Navy in 96 we were still fixing damage from the earthquake so I would go to school and every summer it was I was working I've had a job since I was 11 years old and I remember coming back from a particular job I don't remember the job but I remember the drive we were driving on my dad to work truss truck from Aptos California which is south of Santa Cruz by 20 miles driving into Santa Cruz and my dad made a comment about seals it was the first time I'd ever heard of it then he wasn't a seal himself but he worked with seals in Vietnam he was on you know the mark fives right now yeah he was on the mark ones no [ __ ] yeah he had to brown water Navy oh yeah totally he had to 50 cals some foot pedals and just two triggers are fun yeah look uh I don't know if he was having fun because he had some issues we had to the four years that we moved away from santa cruz my mom gave him an ultimatum and said you need to you need to fix your [ __ ] head or I'm gonna leave you so we went to Missoula Montana of all places and now we moved back to Montana those two are not connected but it's interesting how the world yeah brought your back comes back and he was some very intensive counseling and I was too young to really remember it but I'm old enough to remember holes and doors and I'm old enough to remember my dad in his underwear in the backyard just screaming at nothing oh sure and I didn't put those two together until a long time after and it didn't it doesn't scarred me in any way but I remember it um was there a nothing up but was there an element of that being brought out on you guys or was it all a not at all it was I mean to be honest with you I didn't realize it I think until I saw some of it in myself yeah and and uh yet never never an issue I mean my parents were incredibly loving and they tried to enable us to pursue our passions whatever it may be for both my sister and I and that is something that I've passed on to my kids as well so he brought up seals and I mean you you and I know this narrative so well it becomes this magnetizing pole that consumes it consumes you and people hear and they they go how do you what what do you mean you wanted to be a seal since you're 11 and I still to this day I definitely then didn't have the vocabulary yeah it could be argued I don't have a better vocabulary now I definitely don't have a more enhanced mental state but it just hooked me as I'm sure people who go into the Army SF world it hooks them and you know whatever it helps you at that age it hooks you and that's what it was for me and that's all I could think about that's all I thought of that's all I wanted to do I never took my SATs I never studied for college I've never applied for college which in hindsight was a terrible plan yeah and brought home a permission slip essentially when I was 17 from the Navy recruiter brought it to sat it down with my parents is like this is what I want to do wasn't a shock to them I mean it's I freaking seal flag on my wall since I was like 12 yeah and they signed it no [ __ ] he didn't try to talk me out of it yeah they Navy recruiter sat with them they signed it and they didn't stand in my way even though I know for a fact that it's the last thing on earth they wanted me to do and in that moment I didn't realize I was just satisfying a recruiter billet cuz you still have to be 18 to go to boot camp but the recruiter had a good month that month so I sided in the delayed Entry Program and while everybody else was getting ready to celebrate their summer from graduating high school I left for boot camp yeah and the in the journey begins so how I came out of that environment as Santa Cruz I mean I don't know I I think the people that you surround yourself with are the people that raised you are much more important than the environment that they raised you in outside of that ecosystem that they can control yeah I mean to me that 100 [ __ ] percent is that you know one of the things that I I asked a lot of similar questions for that same reason is that all the guests that come on here you know regardless of where they grew up the the common thread and recurring theme that I find with every single one of them is is that exact thing and I had the exact same experience with my parents is that extremely loving supportive of whatever like I don't care you want to be a [ __ ] male stripper fine be the best [ __ ] male stripper out there like I don't know if they would have gotten on board that far but I like when your parents heads are at George and sandy shout out to you guys that that phase I went through of talking about being a Chippendales dancer no but you know but that's that's it I mean like like everybody's parents were you know we're kind of cut from that same cloth of being you know that involved in their in their kids lives and and and you know fostering a mentality in them you know not just here's what you need here's your [ __ ] iPad which you know didn't exist back then but the same you know parallel in terms of just you know redirecting them to something else like they gave a [ __ ] you know and agreed like whether it's I mean I've had guests from from all over the [ __ ] place at this point and and and that that seems to be a recurring theme with all of them which which I don't find interesting frankly I was because you were surrounded by it for so long well that and you know the parallels that I draw from from dogs and there were the parallels that exist between training dogs raising dogs breeding dogs the genetic theory behind how to replicate certain pre genetic predispositions that we're looking for in specific working traits it's all the exact same [ __ ] is that you know you're when you're raising puppies and when you're breeding them and things of that nature the same things that you do to not not inhibit certain things in to channel and magnify and encourage other working traits by by specifically setting them up for for certain things exist in the exact same parameters it's it's obviously different because the what you're going for and a dog is very specific to what it's going to be doing and in a working capacity but how you get that you know eight week old puppy to a two year old [ __ ] and in a good way is done very very similarly to raising children properly you know it's consistency it's black and black and white in terms of what your expectations are baby stepping your criteria but it's all the exact same stuff it's just you know the medium is a little different but so again like I I don't find it even really interesting or fascinating that that there's those parallels and similarities between the guests that I have they're all worth having on here what I do think is important is for everybody listening is to [ __ ] understand that and stop raising a bunch of little [ __ ] [ __ ] but we're gonna rest assured we're gonna get into into child rearing here in a little bit but that's a it's neat to hear one one other question I did have is in terms of politics I know for me like I didn't give a [ __ ] about politics growing up I do now yeah did that play any role in your childhood did you even pay attention to it I honestly can't think of a single time where I gave it a second thought yeah I really do yeah I mean I was the same way I think a lot of kids are but when I see like these ten year olds on [ __ ] on TV I expound off [ __ ] political [ __ ] I'm just like it you know I don't know if that like to me that seems like a recipe for [ __ ] disaster but it concerns me in two ways it concerns me for the kid because they don't realize they're being manipulated by somebody who understands more and then it concerns me for the people who are doing the manipulation though because I want to run into them in a very very dark alley yeah with a [ __ ] vehicle weren't bat I was thinking more of a bat but I'm like we're heads I do a full school go old school maybe maybe [ __ ] shankam who knows but yeah I mean to me the what I worry about is the is the after a fact like I mean cuz to me that's that's conditioning and brainwashing the same way would you know Muslim schools do and then even Christian academies here for that matter you know but there's elements of that conditioning that that's permanent you know I mean one yeah when it's learned at that age like that's that's pretty tough to get rid of but I'm sure the same parallels exist there with dogs as well too yeah and in in a good way and that you know you're essentially using that to your advantage you know if I want the dog to be basically neutral towards gunfire I'm gonna expose them to it at an early age whereas you know in that first six to eight months as an example like that's kind of your your really big window of opportunity from an exposure standpoint both environmentally sociability temperament wise exposing them to all these different stimuli that that you know later on when they're older and more mentally mature and can handle more stress and more chaotic environments but they've been exposed to fractions of that prior to that and again it's all it's all a scaling thing is that your your baby stepping or scaling your way up from you know very very small and short bursts of exposure to those things and then building on that whether it's you know as bite work as an example because that's one of the things that I think people find most interesting is that you know you see a three-year-old finished dog that's you know on a bicep you know mole or deep in a bicep and and getting picked up by his skin and stuffed and [ __ ] trash cans and thrown against the wall and you know the camel clutch over his [ __ ] back and then you know sprayed water on them and all these crazy things if you were like holy [ __ ] like that's a bad [ __ ] like yes it is but but he's been brought up yeah just do that on day one yeah just just like an MMA fighter but it starts out with here's a [ __ ] dish towel the puppy grabs it and I just tap his head and tap his ribs and make some noise and lift them up and it's it's all just a little [ __ ] game where we're using this prey drive to carry him through and things of that nature and then you're scaling it up but yeah I mean so the I guess the irony is is that you know it just like with everything it's a doublet or like you know kids because there's logic and reason behind it is that you know a lot of times kids are manipulated in that way and and that's a [ __ ] detriment whereas when it comes to working animals whether you're talking [ __ ] thoroughbreds or dairy cattle or working dogs or whatever is that you know you use those certain conditioning techniques to your advantage you know but yeah I give the kids you know a good example would be the the leaders of the March for our lives movement right and in this moment only person's name I can remember is David Hogg and not that he's the the leader but he's the name that I can remember yeah he says some dumb [ __ ] mm-hmm and I give him some latitude because he's a kid yeah you know he doesn't have that many laps around the Sun he's not getting on that stage by himself and the people who are enabling and pushing that I don't give them any latitude because they know better yeah no I mean it's a it's a good point and to me the the thing that I think you know it is the the shittiest part of that is that he's just old name and people like him are just old enough to think that it's them yeah you know like that like at least a ten year old like is just kind of being spoon-fed and whatever me not that it makes it right but like to me the dangerous part about guys like like hog is that you know he's gonna grow up to be you know a prominent figure I have no doubt politically you know that's gonna be a real real [ __ ] twisted mentality to you know to deal with but I think you know from a from a kind of a theoretical standpoint the those elements exists in a lot of different areas of our of our society that that one of the things that I find irritating politically is because I'm kind of the same boat like left-right I don't give a [ __ ] I don't really consider myself a conservative necessarily I probably align with right-wing conservatives on more issues than I do on left-wing but there's enough that I don't or I wouldn't consider myself one but there's elements of that in you know on the right and on the left and the LGBTQ communities I mean there's a lot of elements of that where where kids are being conditioned you know whether it's in you see it in you know with illegal immigration issues same thing and you see kids with signs of [ __ ] swear words and [ __ ] on them you know being conditioned for all that same kind of stuff and you know again for parents out there stop using your kid like a [ __ ] puppet right concur yeah hey you man all right so I think we're about the same age then cuz you you graduated ninety-six and join the Navy yeah I'm 40 yeah I'll be for us this summer but you look way younger than I do but I was gonna say the same thing but I didn't want to upset you here's my leash one of your dogs only here class later we'll get that on permits on YouTube but yeah I don't know how you do it with three kids I have two kids and I don't no idea they make me act like I'm [ __ ] 50 but um but anyway so we both draw joined graduated 96 join the Navy did you go to a school I did what because it was requirements because you know in the current from my understanding I kind of left when they were redoing this pipeline but now buds isn't a school yeah I you know took the same watch the same shitty video I'm probably a VHS tape I'm like the second week of boot camp it's like a grainy SDV coming through the water yeah and use the the magnum p.i is fast broken [ __ ] flight suits terrible and no I can't raise your hand if you want to try out well I was there waiting for them to play that video I'm totally let down by it but I raised my hand and it mean you can attest to this the test the physical test to get a slot at Budds during that time period does not represent the only word that could be used to describe it as pathetic you know it's a run of a not far distance a swim of an even shorter distance yeah push-ups pull-ups sit-ups yeah and none of those physical activities those last three we're not talking 50 pull-ups I think it was six six yeah a minutes it's not representative of what the trainings gonna be not even [ __ ] close which I'm totally fine with it having gone through it and then having applied it to others I'm completely fine with that I like the look of surprise on day one but you know so then to get a billet because of the attrition rate you know it's probably not a good idea to have hundreds of young men who had one particular dream not achieve it and not have a job to do yeah I'm pretty sure they found that out by living that exact scenario and having hundreds of kids who were probably what I would call Liberty risks yeah so you have to pick a school or you had to pick a school when you and I both joined I literally looked at the piece of paper it based on which one was the longest and picked os a school I'm sure which is RadarScope operator I've never seen one yeah but I've graduated the school yeah did you pick did you pick because it was a long it's just to give you that there's my shortest oh the shortest I am at felt like personnel Minh was like [ __ ] three weeks or some stupid habit but you know that's all depend on how manned up to school were there were the choices so I went to the damn neck maybe base because I was an IAS I was there yes you were a [ __ ] dime I had no idea what that command was on the northern side of the beach no clue whatsoever just random gunfire occasionally and learned about a radar scope that I've never physically seen in my life I mean it's [ __ ] the similarities between our you know experiences joining the Navy or [ __ ] uncanny it's pretty priceless well anybody who'd joined in our Arab is gonna have one that's very similar yeah yep no no no [ __ ] two ways about it um all right so you go through OS a school you go to buds and you were in what to 12 to 12 p.m. I started to 14 so I'm a new guy yeah but I've graduated to 15 though right yeah you are who you class that's right [ __ ] well that I wasn't your [ __ ] then yeah I was to it we were to 11 because I was 214 so my 215 hurt the people who are completely lost now so I was the who yoga class for class 209 and all that means is you go to their graduation and you basically yell at the very end of it yeah whoo yah class whatever the [ __ ] and then they tell you to get wet any other and you go get your dick kicked in like you do everything but yeah yeah all right so you went to team five spent a fair bit of time there and then two platoons area two platoons at team five and then you screen to go to today I'm Nick you know which is SEAL Team six for those that don't know that one of the things I'm curious of because I never went there is the experience of Dam Neck versus the regular teams that they're you know from my perspective of seeing some guys that I was fairly tight with at team 3 and then and then went on and then kind of that the difference in mentality and how they they changed and their perception of the regular teams what was that experience like for you and did you notice that same kind of thing or what what's your take on that oh I mean there's a lot of layers to that question you know first I can only speak about it in the time period that I went through but again detached from the SEAL Teams and extremely detached from that command I would I would wager that it is almost nothing like when I was there I mean they have a new compound a new facility all of that stuff so I screened in September no I screened in October of 2001 ok there were some significant events in September of 2001 I don't remember I was I think I was high that month yeah I knew that I wanted to screen pre 9/11 it was my second deployment and pre 911 deployments are vastly different than post 9-11 deployments both of them you train for 18 months and you deploy for six my first deployment at SEAL team five was to the Kadena Air Force Base in Japan yeah you know you basically trained to become ready in case the nation needs you anywhere in the world if you happen to be geographically close and then they didn't and so I drank yeah even if they did need me I might have drank anyway as soon as we were done because that is what I was raised on in the SEAL Teams was a combination of Jagermeister and probably vodka ah not the healthiest thing probably Taylor's some of my drinking habits now but that's a different story for a different day so first one was Giannini Air Force Base second when we come back the geographic geopolitical world was largely the same inez applied to go home another hot spot of insurgent activity got there right and but on that deployment I knew I knew that I wanted to screen to go to development group and one thing that is important I think to bring up is pre 9/11 maybe even pre 2005 2006 even inside of the SEAL Teams I would say there wasn't that much no about development group because it's in Virginia and if you are a West Coast seal like we were to go to selection you uproot your family you you do a pcs move or personas a permanent change of duty station and if you don't make it through selection what I found at least for the guys that I knew they didn't come back so there's not a lot of beta on a what you're getting into yeah and B what happens after selection if you make it through because I mean they're on a different Coast yeah and you know as well as I do if you're a West Coast team guy you don't see the East Coast team guys that often yeah because they're not as good as us it's not like you're gonna talk to I'm sure yeah I'm sure the East Coast guys say the same stuff you know absent an enemy the SEAL Teams will fight each other that's what were the best at and even during somebody sometimes during so I didn't I had an idea of what I thought it was gonna be and from what I had understood I didn't when I joined the Navy I didn't know it existed when I was at OSA school I literally didn't know it was a mile down the road I had no idea and I I think one of the reasons that I wanted to be a sealed and part of the reasons that it was draw for me was because of the fact people told me there's no way you can do this because of the fact that it was hard and I wanted to test myself when I first started hearing about development group to me it seemed like the Nets next logical step and that only applies to me a lot of guys in the community have no desire to go and guess what they're as good if not exponent and exponentially better SEALs than I am I don't think that having gone through selection whether you make it or not or especially whether you do make it I don't think it's a it's not a metric as to certainly not a metric that you should use to gauge your career it's just it's different but to me it seemed like the natural next step and the natural next progression the biggest difference that I noticed and I notice it immediately was the access to budget yeah and what the access to budget will bring to you I got issued more gear on my first day there than I ever did in the history of my SEAL career before then and after combined yeah and it wasn't used gear everything was in the plastic wrapper it was all of the stuff that we wish we would have had at the conventional teams that we didn't have because of the budget and with the budget comes better facilities more access to weapons to newer weapons to technology and part of the Charter Development Group is to test develop and evaluate equipment so you get a lot of new high speed stuff if I look at it objectively it gives you the opportunity to thumb your nose at the the white soft teams more than conventional SEAL Teams JSOC would be considered the black side of the house white soft would be considered the SOCOM versus Jay comm split the opportunity exists if you have that inside of you as a person and you want to thumb your nose at people you're gonna take that opportunity while you're there if you don't and it's a job and you try to stay grounded and who you are and not what you do all it is is an enhancement of what you were doing before it is different than the conventional teams you are at a regular SEAL Teams I would definitely describe you as a jack-of-all-trades a master of none and you know this as well as I do I mean we would go and we would do every photo oh my god OTB right over the beach Oh th over the horizon we do it for weeks driving zodiacs without board motors over the horizon for no goddamn reason whatsoever throwing up in the ocean pissing in your dry suit because you forgot it was a dry suit instead of a wet suit all have fun things that happen when you spend an extended period of time in the water cold leather training in Alaska land navigation weapons skills CQB CQC whatever the hell the acronym is these days and diving diving jumping and you would just go training block to training block to training block and you actually get I'd see you get really good at a lot of those things like the end of a two-week OTB oth block your balls like you're your celestial e navigating you know compass navigating remember we were using GPS is that were four times the size your hat yeah basically the size of the flag sitting over our left shoulder or my left your right and but then it was on to the next skill yeah so you're constantly flirting with currency and competency at development group yeah you could probably do all those things but it's not your main job your main job is to figure out a way to get to the threshold of the door and then own what's on the other side of the threshold it's much more kinetically focused in my opinion yeah that was my experience when I was there we spent almost every day in the kill house refining our craft mastering the trade you know the chaos was amazing moveable walls multi-story they could turn all the lights off 360 degree ballistic shooting we had access to the TF 160th right again budget amazing helicopters and even more amazing pilots and we would do vehicle interdiction so we would do every different variation of a target set that you could ever possibly want to do as a seal over and over and over again and you just don't have the access an ability to focus at that level at a conventional team you don't because you're responsible for so much more so then when it comes to being overseas you are I would say much more focused on that kinetic aspect because that's what your sweet spot is and then that's what the Ground Force commanders in the battlespace owners expect of you the conventional forces are inherently kinetic if you work in the Special Operations realm and every military branch as a Special Operations realm it's you know you're Oda guys you're Green Berets you're Rangers you're MARSOC Air Force P JCCT they have a kinetic focus to their job the JSOC aspect is more kinetically focused and your job terminates in more of those type of activities that was the biggest difference there is a difference in capability because there's a difference in currency you know it's the same people they were the same uniform if I took a doctor and I allowed him to operate or practice operating one day out of 30 he would not be as current incapable as a guy who did it 30 days out of 30 that's it that's really the only difference it can lull you into wanting to thumb your nose at the people who are your peers they can lull you into be in an [ __ ] some people take that opportunity some don't yeah one of the things that I noticed I guess in addition to everything that you just outlined is one of the one of the things I think the hamstrings and holds back the regular SEAL Teams is there is the reset button of every time you come back is that you're getting a fresh batch of [ __ ] retards from buds that are bringing you back to that Ground Zero level where is it them that collect guys at least have a couple of platoons under their belt and you know it means areas yeah that's an element to that it that I think plays a [ __ ] pretty significant role but it does and for people who are again might be getting lost at a conventional team you live on it basically a 24 month cycle you start an 18 month workup and at the beginning of that you meet your platoon you meet the people you're going to be with for the next two years and at the end of that two years sixty percent you think leave yeah leadership is certainly gonna leave which sometimes as a blessing yeah but in yeah and there'll be a core group of guys but then it's five or six new guys yeah then it's new leadership new head shed you have to regen and Reve figure out how you're gonna work together and the strengths and the weaknesses and break your unit up into pieces to make sure that you're mutually supporting a development group when I graduated from Green Team I think four guys went to Gold squadron yeah there was 40 dudes there you know they mean they got a 10% influx of individuals and not even every team got a brand new guy and then every year it was a slower it was not a slower every year was a slow influx of individuals it's not this bolus of fresh bodies so you're you I think it lets you keep up on step a little bit more well then I think just in terms of currency incompetence the speak of is that you know a guy with two platoons under his belt while isn't gonna be at the level that you know dev group guys are he's still way [ __ ] closer yeah then a guy fresh shot stt and you can get the guy there quick after two platoons yeah especially if you strip away a lot of the other stuff they were focusing on though and you hand them a you know and for yo of hk416 and say this is your tool yeah master is your [ __ ] scalpel yeah just real quick did I know for me it didn't but did did politics play any type of role for you while you're on active duty in terms of it being a backdrop to feeling certain ways about countries you were in what you were doing who you're there with did that play any role or was it kind of a just a non-factor like it is I think for most of us I did not vote while I was in the military and perhaps I'm an idiot but the way I thought of it was that if you are an action arm of foreign policy you should not have an input on the direction that it takes you know when you when you listen the military you serve or you you swear an oath right to support and defend the Constitution and uphold the orders of the officers above you in the president United States yeah doesn't mean you have to like the president United States and doesn't mean that you should like your job even more because you love the president United States in my opinion it shouldn't matter you serving the people right and in the will of the people or the the elected officials that are supposed to govern the people whether or not you feel represented by that is a different story but I never really thought about it yeah about being totally honest I paid enough attention to politics to harass the people that I worked with by antagonizing them and arguments ya know I'm [ __ ] right there with you I mean to me I was I'd say similarly like I just I think with most guys it's you know it's the guy in the right and the left mentality of like you know it doesn't matter why we're here doesn't matter who told us why they told us the fact is that we're here like you know when flash crashes are going off and bullets are snapping over your head like it doesn't [ __ ] matter anyway you know like Jack does your job is to is to [ __ ] kick ass and come home but for me and I'm curious if you if you had any of this - I mean I did 12 a little over 12 years but even in that amount of time as I got you know further down the road in terms of career I in that that little bit of peek behind the curtain was a little bit of the wizard I Wizard of Oz disparity you know in terms of like goddamn really you know there was a little bit of that a little bit of disenfranchisement and you know it's so romanticized as a bud student and as a new guy and whatever that as you start to to peel some of those layers of that [ __ ] leadership onion away I found some some kind of heartbreaking [ __ ] at least from from my perspective did you have a similar similar experience yeah I mean the closer you the harder you look through the magnifying glass at the SEAL Teams at the seams the more you're gonna find the bureaucracy yeah and the reality is is the military is a massive bureaucracy it's not fast-moving fiscal teams are faster moving the JSOC commands are slightly faster moving than most but if you look hard enough you'll find it you'll find you know what I try to tell people is that there's weeds and every long you know regardless of the size that's true of and how nice the rest of the grass is correct you know it's true of special operations it's true JSOC it's true whatever garden or grass you're looking at you're gonna find some weeds and the harder you look the more you're gonna find you're gonna find people who are therefore self-serving reasons you're gonna find people who are there for a bullet on a resume and that's all they want is a bullet on a resume you're gonna find people there for political aspirations I'd say there's two of those individuals in the news recently gratings and [ __ ] tippin's yeah ah don't vote for him yeah [ __ ] [ __ ] Birds extraordinaire unbelievable and again the SEAL Teams the SEAL team leadership could crush both of their souls but they don't know and they should and it's wrong and it speaks to the moral compass of the SEAL Teams but it's a different topic yes eventually you pull back the curtain and you realize that the the machine running the engine is actually a donkey with a fly buzzing around its head and you kill God and a lamb [ __ ] back quarter it is and you know when I speak when I do public speaking and people ask me about leadership I always say exactly the same thing I say during my time in the SEAL Teams I was surrounded by the most exceptional leaders that I've ever seen that have embodied every bit of humility and accountability and responsibility and empowerment and I was also surrounded by the worst leaders you know that I've ever seen yeah that embodied the exact opposite of all of those qualities that I just mentioned because it's human beings yeah and no selection process is perfect there are some that are better than others the SEAL selection process I think works really really well you're still gonna get weeds that come through there there I just I did my best to not let the anomaly paint the norm but it you want to talk about yeah you get some bad taste in your mouth for sure yeah no yeah I mean I had had similar experiences and that you know like I said just as I went further and further along I became you know a little bit disgruntled in that regard but to me the irony is is that you know as I went further along I also saw guys who you know had had stuck around long enough and had put up with enough [ __ ] and and had buried their own careers you know for the greater good of the community because they were good guys because I mean it seemed to be kind of the running joke you know while we were in is it like the you know the good the turds float to the top and then the good guys like [ __ ] does him out of here I'm gonna go start a business or whatever and there's some truth to that I mean so the guys that stayed in like there was a kind of a dichotomy of of that is that I saw more you know more of the [ __ ] really you know type of leaders but then I also saw guys that I was like holy [ __ ] man my hat's even further off to you yeah for sticking around and towing the [ __ ] line the way well you can game it I mean let's be honest you can game the military system yeah you can't if you have a pulse and a certain amount of time in service yeah you are eventually going to get put into a leadership position mm-hmm if you progress far enough up the ladder there's no coming back down you can cut the rungs off underneath the person in the hopes that they fall they generally don't yeah and then because it's a pyramid they can't go any higher and nor can you or others until they had either timeout or whatever reason they may choose to leave yeah I mean you you can absolutely game it yeah no absolutely so a in your instructor time structure duty just coincidentally we were actually there at the same time which I know you were in second phase I was a brown shirt rollback coordinator in PTR so we didn't really work together then but now we were over at the pool deck all the time there yeah we were there at the same time so you know for me I'm curious to get your take I mean for me that was a pretty pretty unique and a fascinating time in that in a good way and saying behind the curtain of you know almost team guys just to have the experience of going through it and you know there's not a huge percentage of us that have I would say the the honor and pleasure of actually being one's facilitating and that selection process but to me like I we'll always be really proud of that experience and what I found really fascinating was was the the psychology behind why guys quit and in watching that process of going from inspired the same way you and I were and then making that that crippling and life-altering decision in the most negative [ __ ] way possible to say you know what I don't want to do this anymore and watching like that you know magnitude of it of a decision to take place during stressful times right in front of your face was to me was fascinating what was your your experience I guess as an instructor in terms of that nor in general I think that my time there I spent eighteen months there a it could possibly be the most rewarding tour of my career yeah if you if you look at it for what it is you have the ability to be wildly impactful on the community moving forward because I tried to think of it from the eyes of my 18 year old self looking at the the instructors we're in the green shorts in the blue shirt and the ridiculously gay starched hat the eight point yeah and I don't mean that in the old English definition of happy I was I mean I've freaking terrified of those guys jump no problem how high run how fast how far um I remember what that felt like and I remember one and I encountered my first Bloods instructor on the back of my head I had this thought of I think this dude's a piece of [ __ ] you know and it stuck with me and then later on in my career ended up serving with that person and that initial thought yeah it was reinforced notion it was found to be true and I didn't ever want to be that guy and I I mean it's it's your chance to be a representative of the community that these guys are volunteering in a time of war mind you post 9/11 now I don't think you and I necessarily knew what we were getting into to a degree I had an idea yeah but my career ended up being more than I ever thought it could be in going in directions that I never thought I could go and we volunteered in peacetime there's something to be said for people who put their life on hold and volunteer and in time of war vastly different yeah vastly different I mean I was there from 2000 six too late late 2006 to October 1st of 2008 there was some kinetic activity taking place people were dying a lot but I loved it I loved one I loved the psychology aspect as well too I loved talking with people who quit and I would like to say I would love to be able to say that I was doing like some tour type of sociology experiment yeah but truthfully I was trying to weaponize their reason is because I wanted to make as many of them quit as possible because I don't want them to die yeah and I don't wait brothers that you only want to get the right people to make it through and once I realized that the common theme existed between most of them that quit they just got overwhelmed in a moment of being low yeah all right well I have these elements that I can use water no temperature sleep I can push you low you know and then oh maybe I just need to try to overwhelm you and I would start with the first student in line and he ignored me I can't [ __ ] you I just go to the next student life I mean you're weaker but it's fine but you can see this the seeds of doubt sprouting up and it that was my simple recipe for getting students to quit is I would try to make them think about their world in a big perspective like can you really be this cold for 180 days you really think you can tolerate me in a hell week for the next seven days because every minute of every shift I'm gonna be up your ass and of course I started with the officers yeah why because [ __ ] them yeah even though I wasn't officer that was a fake officer limited limited duty heavy on the limited light on the duty no but you know there it's a rock paper rank organization yeah you know if you're gonna go into the military as an officer you better be damn well ready to lead and you better not lead by pointing at your collar device because I'm gonna knock it off your collars I'm banging your teeth down your throat yeah so I would start with them and I and I would work my way down but I took I took the job very seriously and it was I my personal perspective I taught second phase which is diving we taught open circuit which means bubbles escape closed circuit which means they don't and there's a test called pool comp that I think was four weeks into it and if you pass pool comp it's pretty much you got like high 90th percentile you could be stupid and get I mean this way out of the SEAL Teams is probably an alcohol-related incident so you could do that as if to violate or safety violation feel free to do both of those at any time you're gonna get ejected faster than a heel on Musk rocket launching a car into space right but absent that if you pass pool comp you're you're probably gonna be in and one thing that I really tried to do was one I always treated the students fair and equitably pre pool comp even like in when I worked hell exists cuz all the instructors have to I never yelled not even a single time when I was at Bloods I never raised my voice and I actually think that freaked him out more just yes psychologically that has such I mean you see like the the Marine di and Beyond Trask to the seal instructor it's a polar [ __ ] opposite and and for sure like it raised voice me the same with parenting it's yes a lot with dogs actually is you know the it becomes white noise you know look wider you talk the harder they have to listen yeah well and the harder it is not to listen yeah you know to it to me like it the harder it is to block that out if if they're having a almost monotone like spooky [ __ ] narrative yeah or no narrator's type of voice and right there and you're [ __ ] hear like you can't you can't block that out as well you know older and again you know I I tried to remember that I'm looking at students but I'm also looking at peers at some point especially past pool comp and they may not end up being my peers but they're gonna end up being peers of people that I know and again I remember being a buds instructor and having that [ __ ] or a buds student and having that [ __ ] instructor and just logging it in the back of my head like I'm gonna see you one day at a bar yeah and you're gonna be loaded and I am gonna coldcock you so hard in the side of the ear and it just you know like you Harbor you can you can plant seeds as an instructor that there will be resentment harbored for the rest of their life towards you and it's there's no reason to do it you're not a better instructor if you do that and I'm glad I took it as seriously as I did I I would do I ended up doing a lot of the like every Friday they were supposed to or they they weren't supposed to that the students did they would sit down and they would do a core value talks like an hours his QA and most of the time would be a chief petty officer above who would conduct those and I ended up doing most him because I would just sit there and I would just talk with him and I would answer questions and I would answer them completely honestly about SEAL Teams they would ask about combat they would ask about the impact of SEAL Teams on married life on how and how it you know and how all of those things exist in the push and the pull and I'm glad that I took it as seriously as I did because when I went to team three in my next duty station I ended up working with like thirty of those kids which is what they were they were kids yeah and I had a great relationship with all of them I'm sure there's some out there that hate my guts and you know what that's that comes that's the way the cookie crumbles do you know nobody's perfect and I really don't care if everybody loved me I was actually doing my job wrong yeah I don't want anybody to love me actually just wanted to be good seals yeah yeah now I think those are those are very poignant you know experiences that that you can gleam a lot of you know life lessons from that really no matter where you're at is is taking that same attitude I mean I know a lot of times depending on where you're at in life you know it can it can be easy to not take something seriously or not find the value in doing something and obviously at a at a command such as that it's almost impossible not to draw some of those those principles from but you know to me taking that attitude into no matter what the [ __ ] you're doing I don't care if you're making french fries a burger king like you know having a similar mentality I think is just a good way to make the world a [ __ ] better place but that's good [ __ ] I love hearing about it and um so moving on you you went back to the teams after that got the what would we in the Navy call the Mustang you know router or Commission in terms of being a prior enlisted and then getting a commission if you can I think of it as being an unbridled Sal you mean unbridled stallion the must run free yeah I'd actually I don't know where the term Mustang comes from but yeah it's a prior enlisted that becomes an officer yeah that's what what was the deal with that basically man so I got shot in the middle of deployment and that deployment was my LPO tour no and the Navy in their infinite wisdom consider my lpo tour to be incomplete and if you want to advance in military system there are mandatory go/no-go wickets and in the Navy the big jump is from a 67 right now petty officer 1st class super heavy on the petty to chief petty officer still very heavy on the petty is your LP auteur without that you know every year you fill out you have a notebook in front of you you literally create a record and from my understanding your record gets about 30 seconds in front of a Raider and the first look that it gets they're looking for all of your mandatory leadership positions the most important one being for chief is LPO and been for those listening that's leading petty officer which is kind of like a main supervisor of a platoon but like middle I would say yeah like a middle manager and then you get to chief and you would certainly be you're not in the c-suite I would consider that more than I was but you're definitely upper management at that point so my record got swept off the table two years in a row and I had good evals I had good awards I had good experience administratively and in combat and it just kept getting turned down and I wasn't ready to be done in the military and I you know I was so then I became the LPO at second phase but you have to hold the position for two years so when I first got there I had to wait till a guy finished yeah a year after being there he finished so I actually was on the LPO for like six months so I basically got put on hold I would have gotten put on hold for about five years because I didn't meet the criteria for having completed my LP Oh to work is apparently getting medevacked out to launch tool is unsatisfactory in major breaker I know I shouldn't have jumped in front of that aka round I don't know what I was thinking um but I was looking at I was looking at my options and I stumbled across a commissioning program that didn't require a college degree and it was actually designed for the fleet and in the history of the SEAL Teams it had only been used by isse Evans and EAS that either transition to the warrant program because it's it's kind of the same package you put in it's actually the identical package I think you just check a box one says Warrant Officer one says L do an L do the difference between the two an L do is still considered a line officer and I mean really the only difference on that is is that you wear a star on your sleeve which means you can still maintain some semblance of tactical command or you can be put into a tactical leadership position a Warrant Officer no longer is supposed to serve in that capacity although I'm sure there are examples of them needing to or having to be in an extremist situation so I put a package together I had my commanding officer from Development Group write me an awesome recommendation he ended up being the commanding officer of the bin Laden raid so he had a quite storied career so it was a good recommendation and from my team leader he wrote me one and the command master chief and I put it in and in a program that had historically only selected isse Evans and e8 so I got picked up first as an e6 over 28 other applicants so I ended up becoming the first East 6th selection in the LDO program in the history of spec war Naval Special Warfare and on spec war general pretty sure there's a plaque for that it's a belt buckle yeah it's pretty big that's why I picked that book so I October 1st of 2008 I went from being an e6 to an O one with no additional training that's [ __ ] great that's that's classic textbook [ __ ] I literally went in to the Navy exchange across the street and I said hey I need some officer uniform so they fitted me and I had them double and triple check to make sure that I was like putting the belt on the right way they later sent me off to Newport Rhode Island to the most ridiculous I guess like Mustang University which was completely designed for Fleet individuals I was there with another seal and we were excused from three-quarters of the training dudes like they were doing they were literally doing like mow board type stuff like radars like I was like you guys were fine see you on Thursday so really I just I just I went from being a an ELISA guy to an officer overnight zero additional training and then from there became the training officer at SEAL team 3 I got it I mean at that story in and of itself says a lot about both the military and the community you know yeah I mean that I mean the advancement system is obviously broken yeah I mean because if you're gonna pick me up you're not paying attention twelve Shades of [ __ ] up that's [ __ ] great yeah how do you know that the officer selection program is broken because I got through he slipped through the cracks is I'm talking about real quick if you could just can you share the the experience of when you were wounded yeah uh it wasn't pleasurable no [ __ ] it was not it does a little pinch you know you it was not an ad normal night it wasn't a typical in any way we had been I was actually on a I don't know what would it be called if it would be called a cross-training deployment or it would be a currency deployment but I got shot at February 5th 2005 and in that time period or at that time development group was heavily focused on Afghanistan and the army component of JSOC just because I don't know what name they're currently using or they want to be used by I'm just gonna say the army component of JSOC was heavily focused on Iraq and the powers that be sometimes they make very good decisions and they realize that it's probably not a good to have that much geographic specificity so they wanted to take an element from each and train with and deploy with the other one so I was actually on a deployment with army guys five other blue guys which is the JSOC term for a development group TF blue army guys RTF green we were with them in Iraq based out of the Green Zone staying in one of you day and ku says palaces we would go bang it at night and then sit on inflatable flamingoes in their pool poppin viagra and drinking Johnnie Walker Blue Label we would go the other way but so I was working with those guys and I get asked often on my thoughts about other special operations forces and and I have the same answer every time I got nothing but respect even internally in the SEAL Teams and specifically a JSOC you know there were people like you know [ __ ] those army guys and I'm sure there are some of the army guys really [ __ ] those Navy guys I had great experiences with him though still maintain contact with some of the guys I was on deployment with they they became really good friends at an operator level awesome but no difference they just wore a different uniform at the higher level is the political levels I'm sure because they're battling for budget and probably the operational mobility or not ability but operational mission sets I could see there probably be some tension but so we were banging hard with those guys I mean we were it was awesome every night we would go and the Sun would go down and you'd get your game gear on and the target set would start lighting up and we would launch and we would roll it into another one into another one we had a full TF one sixtieth package with Blackhawks and little birds and DAPs we had the MHS in the AHS which is a magnum p.i helicopters you can sit on the skids or they have rocket pods and they literally aim with a fricken grease marker literally the pilot gets up he's like if he misses he's like boobs it over those guys were badass so I mean like five nights out of seven I was on the skid of a little bird fifty feet over the top of Baghdad just bangin targets out it was awesome in this particular night we were doing what's called a gaff or a ground assault force we were taking vehicles because it was in Baghdad itself and we walked through a burning garbage dump which was awesome yeah which is now the rear favorite scent of aster aftershave yes indeed it smells amazing and I forget who we're after what we were doing because it wasn't a typical it was totally just another night and I was walking point for my element and I know we were looking for a particular handset meaning a cell phone and we were having some difficulties actually locating it and we were making some noise in the process we actually had to somebody run out of a courtyard and see us further down the road we pursued them and detain them determined that they were not the people we were looking for we let him go I'm pretty sure we shotgun breach the door too during that time period point being we didn't necessarily have our ninja slippers on anymore yeah so I was for about 10 minutes I was standing on a ladder looking over a courtyard wall and all the courtyards there have probably six to eight foot walls that are six to eight inches thick of mud just looking at the front of a building and there was a light on in the main front window and it looked a lot like an American house at least in the architecture it had a recessed window and it looked like a section of the house came out that could have had like a normal place where a garage door was going to be except for the garage door was a window in this instance and then the the widget guy who I don't know magically knows where these things are I said hey this is this is actually the building so I hopped over the wall and was gonna make movement to the door because I was gonna hold security wall a friend of mine ended up putting a breaching charge on the door but something in the back of my head just told me just to hang out so I waited until I heard some more people come over the wall off the ladder and I started making my way towards the door and right when I got to the corner of the building that was sticking out before I turned my back on the window I wanted to take a look in it just as a good operational principle to stay alive and as soon as I took my head off of the window or my vision and attention off of the window that was lit and I swung it to the right I heard off my left shoulder just kak in the first round out just pounded into my hip and it spun me sideways and kicked my feet out from underneath me it felt like I had had a nine inch nail and a baseball bat and just let fully juiced up Jose Canseco or Mark McGwire take a swing at me yeah flat on my back gunfire erupted from the house seemed like it took about four and a half years but it was probably about half of the second and the guys and the wall started hammering back I ended up pinned underneath the vehicle I had a shotgun underneath my right shoulder and the bungee strap that I had attached to my armor ended up a wrapping around a piece of the undercarriage I was trying to get out from underneath the vehicle while staring at a cave fire from probably bout 15 feet away just listening to the rounds impact on the vehicle and my buddy ended up having to come over and grab me and dragged me around the corner basically right underneath the window that I was going to look in which was empty and dark and they continued to prosecute the target and then ended up being 8 guys wounded that night some of them were blue on blue actually the keg and whatever the cat guys damn it I think that's a nun class name so we should be fine it had made entrance on the other side and they were working their way internally towards the building that the guy was shooting from and they had gotten into a gunfight inside well they ended up reaching a metal door that was facing the train that was coming towards us so there were multiple gunshot wounds and then there was wounds sustained from the breaching charge itself because we put a c6 strip on that thing which is a robust charge and I know that's not gonna make sense to a lot of people but it's enough to take down a very heavily reinforced metal door yeah and I don't think this door was either of those things so most of the explosive blast went into the Army personnel they ended up flying in little birds to get the people who are the most severely wounded out I ended up getting put in the back a Bradley Fighting Vehicle with another guy that I was with who'd getting shot in the hand that was it that was the end of my deployment in terms of your your triage on yourself what did you do anything to yourself to help mitigate blood loss and [ __ ] like this so I grabbed I grabbed high on my left leg it's funny my buddy who ended up homey around the corner is awesome guy he's out now thrive and doing his own thing in the civilian world he comes over and he's got a pair of trauma shears cuz I do you move your hand man I want to see how bad it is I looked at my [ __ ] you do direct pressure because I was probably too much of a [ __ ] in the moment if I had seen my own blood squirting out I've been like so in the end it actually wasn't bleeding that bad I mean the the pants that they cut off me in the hospital were soaked in blood on that side but all they ended up doing was wrapping kerlix and God like a big wad of gauze and wrapped it and then left it I've still never had surgery was it a clean through and through no it's all still in my pelvis so there were metal bars in the window and I'm I never saw the guy I just heard it but from what I was told basically as I turned my head full Somali style the gun just comes up and just got so the round that hit me I suspect nicked a piece of the rebar that was in the window because it was coming apart I mean you look at the x-ray of my leg the penetrator of the round is on the right hand side of my pelvis and there's a couple hundred pieces of frag in my leg that's just spackled everywhere you had me at penetrator I know I did that's why I use it and then the second round that the guy shot at me because it spun me it actually hit my belt burned about three inches of my belt and the copper jacket is welded to the belt that I was wearing that night and then the round continued through damn so if it hadn't spun me I probably would have just detonated my pelvis and anybody had knows anything about medicine there's some important thing in your pelvis in my time on earth doubt would have been probably counted in in minutes if I'd have been lucky but you know they took me to the Green Zone like I said I wasn't the most injured person there by any stretch of the imagination I wasn't happy about it wasn't having fun but I actually my main complaint was my ankle I felt like somebody had just taken Thor's hammer probably for himself and just pounded on my ankle and come to find out it was because the round either severed or interacted with my sciatic nerve no so it short-circuited it down all the way to my foot and I just didn't know it was I remember them slowly and gingerly cutting off my left foot you move you're pretty mobile slowly and usually they cut my foot off no they cut the laces off and they took my shoe off and I remember just like God did it hurt because I hadn't had any morphine because I had never had any and I thought if you took it it'd be like the movies and I'd be like blowing bubbles you know I come to find out it doesn't do [ __ ] yeah they ended up juicing me with like a two-liter bottle and then handed me a phone to call my wife that was an interesting experience but they you know the guy the doctor said well first they had to check to make sure that there was no internal bleeding so I got a finger up my ass no that was emasculating bonus and then he's like well he wants to try to take it out and at least at that point I had was doing about the finger of the bullet uh he kind of he might have done both at the same time both your hands on my shoulder yeah I had to wherewithal in a moment to say what do you mean by take out the frag he's like well there's some ferrous metal in there obviously so we're not gonna give you an MRI what we'll do is we will knock you out put you on your stomach tube in your mouth two-dimensional x-ray and basically what we'll do is exploratory cuts through your ass cheek yeah cutting and spreading and looking for the metal along wait I was I was with you until exploratory yes and I remember saying to him is there an option B and he said yeah well your body will naturally encapsulate it in calcium and as long as the lead portion of the round doesn't contact a bone you should be fine like [ __ ] can you leave with that so I won with the option and so they put me on a pretty heavy morphine drip and put me up and they literally just wrapped it I mean they were I was on Pain Suppression was basically all that it was and then the next day myself and a couple of the guys were moved to balad the day after that and again I was getting a heavy doses of morphine and it was weird I remember like waking up and like I'm pretty sure was McChrystal like standing at the end of the bed and I was like okay and then like back to sleep and like next thing you know we're getting loaded on a c-141 that has stretchers on the far wall two rows of stretchers in the middle and stretchers on the right wall completely full of dudes who are in the worst shape if anybody's ever seen it a doctor assigned every two I was a JSOC right more budget I had a doctor for me yeah I mean that's there's some of the difference too they traveled with me to Germany and then went back to Iraq got to Germany and then he started the journey home from there but I mean what year was that mm 505 it was early they weren't especially when I got back stateside they weren't necessarily used to seeing a lot of injuries from overseas yeah that's a I guess for me that I didn't realize that that that was prior to Budds mean obviously explaining it was kind of my rehab yeah I had to I I chose to leave development group for a variety of reasons I satisfied my minimum term there and not a day more and I left for myself and I left for my family yeah during that rehab process was there anything out of the ordinary mean was was that process was there a lot of pain involved or was it was a fairly textbook or what was that like so for about a year I would say the neuropathic pain in my leg was it was bad and at that time I can't speak to how it is in the modern day or what the medicine like is like now it was definitely an environment of prescribe and checking with me later I had oxycontin I had percocet I had vicodin they had me signing waivers for the dosage of gabapentin that they were giving me in neurotic I can't remember which one of those it is but one of them is an anti-seizure medicine for kids and it has a secondary or tertiary side effect of reducing neuropathic pain but it also reduces your central nervous system processing and it really it had an impact and it didn't help that I was completely in the rabbit hole of boozing my ass off to try to go to sleep I was taking three and four ambien and I can stay awake but I was drinking every night I had 1314 pill bottles that I could that I could take from and I was and I remember I was driving with my wife and she asked me a simple arithmetic question about it had something to do with the price of gasoline and filling up the vehicle and gas back there was like a dollar fifteen and I think we probably needed to spend ten bucks the problem was that I recognized I couldn't do the math and I and I recognized why and the Navy didn't have me on a rehab protocol they would I would go in every other day and they would put me on an east-end machine they would just put the pads on my muscle and they would fire it for an hour and see you later you no good to your thing so I did my thing in the in the pill bottles and drinking my ass off and I mean I put my wife through hell a lot in my career for sure but I'm sure that year of our marriage is one that stands out for her where I was not her favorite person yeah because I sucked I mean I was in a bad place I was the exact opposite of what I wanted to be and I remember in that moment though I'm she asked me about the the gas and not being able to do the math I knew I had to make a change but I also knew that if I stopped cold turkey on a lot of those meds it was gonna be an issue specifically the gabapentin neurontin because if you lower your threshold the seizures and then you stop all the sudden no you're gonna do well you can have seizures even if you're not prone to him yeah so I slowly started working myself on them off of them and that's actually how I found CrossFit and ended up getting introduced to the people that created the program and ran the program I used that as rehab in and of itself it was painful I had limited range of motion but if I could get myself to exhaust myself in the gym and I could sweat I could finally fall asleep and that was the biggest difference for me it was actually being able to rest and slowly over about the course of a year I got myself off of the pain pills were the easiest ones to get off of I think I was doing it more out of habit and leisure time enjoyment yeah and I mean if I'm being honest and that neuron and gabapentin ones were a little bit tougher because I did start feeling that nerve sensation and the burning and I don't know if I learned to ignore it or it eventually just went away but about a year later I was off everything I'm sure you know shout-out to CrossFit right yeah it's interesting it when I was an instructor there I was part of a group that there's a handful of us that went from the center and early o-5 was like February March of oh five and went up to Santa Cruz oh cool to a level one surd and I remember that didn't had never heard of it was basically like hey why don't you handful you [ __ ] go up there and see what this [ __ ] thing's all about and one of the guys got rhabdo we all [ __ ] threw up after Fran like it was a [ __ ] total [ __ ] show but and of course like a bunch of dumbasses I was just coming off of an eight-month convalescent leave stent losing 40 percent of my lung capacity from Valley fever there's a whole nother [ __ ] story but so I was kind of that saying like that's the big reason they're really the reason why I ended up at Budds to was was to kind of get back on my feet physically after that but going up there on the on the backdrop of that and having no idea what I was getting myself into holy [ __ ] you talk about eating a [ __ ] humble pie well the best thing to do is if you're new to cross but is to dive in headfirst crash into the wind do Fran [ __ ] has prescribed what everything we have like I did guy so I ended up working for them for years afterwards on the weekend and I got to again administer that protocol to many people who came in with a chip on their shoulder oh yeah and then they deposited that chip in many small pieces in a bucket in the [ __ ] hole it works it's not it's not ethical and responsible to introduce it to people like that but what it deserves a purpose in what we did it anyway so is I'm assuming that that that played probably the largest role in your medical retirement yeah I mean the cumulative lis they looked a lot at the concussions as well you know and I went in so I was five days from separating just from the Navy I was just gonna get out because when I got back off my last deployment in 2010 I was told that you know now that I'm on the officers out of the house even though I was in a tactical role on that deployment I needed to now do my a OIC tour and my OIC tour back-to-back yeah like no that's not happening like I actually want to be present for my kids and for my wife and for my family so I was just gonna separate no retirement nothing and I went in for my physical and the doctor said no we're not gonna sign this so I was in the pic it was in a pinch yeah because yeah daddy was gonna stop get paid in five days so I needed to call the officer detailer who happened to be the commanding officer from gold squadron I was there same guy who wrote the evaluation for me in the recommendation he's okay I gave me 30 minutes call me back he's like your extended for a year no problem so they sent me out to Nyko the national intrepid center of excellence which is attached to Walter Reed in the Washington area and it was 30 days of the most intensive and encompassing medical treatment that I've ever received the beauty of it is it was run by civilians so therefore it's better than the military put together and actually know what they were doing yeah in large part yes if it's run by civilians they're gonna do a better job than most of the military organizations are going to and I answered all their questions honestly and I delay sit sit down to talk to psychologists and saikal psychiatrists and psychologists I still don't know the difference between the two other than one can prescribe that psychiatrist can prescribe meds in uh and answer all their questions honestly and when it came to my operational history you know from experimental tests jumping of tandem canopies to being around explosions to being blown up to being around breaching charges I can't get an MRI because of the retained metal so they had to make an estimate on exposure to concussions off of operational history and the number they came back with was relatively high it made me uncomfortable when they started talking about you know what it may look like in my later years from a cognitive perspective so that I left there like 150 pages of documentation that was the true horsepower behind the medical retirement yeah that's immense interesting because I mean that that's definitely an atypical experience you know as relates to most you know service members or veterans exiting of their prospective military branch but to me that's how it oughta [ __ ] be yeah great for everybody but I'm glad at least at least one of us had a good experience back in spring boarding out of military I don't know if it was good well it worked out of my favorite I guess I would say appropriately [ __ ] everybody should get that screening yeah and it would be I mean that the best value would be or the most telling information would come from if they got it when they came in and then when they left it because without a starting point it's a little bit of a sliding scale yeah it was no baseline but I mean to me the fact that you know if you mean the entrance exam in terms of your medical screening at least gives you some sort of baseline that you're not you know a complete [ __ ] pile of yeah of broken parts but at any rate all right so so you find yourself medically retired what I'm curious about I know you know we all have our own path journey story etc how did you find your purpose after leaving and and kind of bring us up to up to speed in terms of what you're doing now and and all of that chick than others there's a lot yeah accidentally would be the only word that I think is as accurate so I got out and I remember I remember driving in the day that I was picking up my DD 214 which is I mean I guess it's a what to be considered a glossary of your service I mean a snapshot yeah snapshot at list when you came in list when you're gonna get out all the schools you attended your duty stations and your yeah the schools your qualifications your words there's a lot of information on that document which actually a lot of people who are dishonest used to fool people who don't know how to read it yeah which is again a different story yeah I rode the day I drove in and I left na s North Island for the last time and it was I mean it was surreal man I was crying as I left the base because so many memories there it was all I ever wanted to do yeah I didn't know what I wanted to do next and I I don't know I had never had thought I'd never thought about who I was gonna be afterwards so I mean that was in 2013 last day of June of 2013 I went in and picked up my DD 214 and in that time period a lot of the work we put in overseas was getting unraveled an inch at a time Missoula you know was falling Ramadi I mean all of the the literal and figurative and literal blood sweat and tears that guys that we both know they got put in in those places was just getting unraveled so I didn't find my purpose for a while I sucked I struggled I mean I was working for CrossFit I was getting a paycheck but that's what it was it wasn't my purpose it was just it was paying the bills and I got to the point where I couldn't watch the news anymore it was driving me absolutely batshit crazy because I felt like I had no avenue to give back or to continue to do anything and then I didn't I also just didn't know how and I am a firm believer that I've had never had a unique idea my entire life I just tried to take the advice of people that are smarter than me I had a buddy of mine I don't remember the exact conversation but the subject of fundraising came up specifically for the Navy SEAL foundation and it piqued my interest a little bit and then we started talking some more of course for a cocktail it actually was a killer Texan again all right it needs to be one part kale cliff if you're a pro it's four parts Tito's I would recommend starting at the reverse of that four parts go cliff when parts tee don't you'll get there people a train scale up yeah scale it uh anyways like hey don't you do you don't you jump and it was his idea why don't you do something jump related and raise money for the steel foundation and it wasn't like an instantaneous ding but really rapidly I realized like holy [ __ ] that's cool like what I really want to do is go fight that's what I want to do I almost sometimes feel like that that's what I was put on this planet to do is to fight but I can't yeah and not in the way I want to and then I started thinking about my own family and the strain I didn't I didn't I was I was selfish in my approach to my world when I was in the military and I think our job requires and demands some level of myopic focus on what it is that we're doing and it wasn't until after I got out that I realized what I had put my parents through in the [ __ ] help that I had drugged my wife through now my kids don't necessarily remember it because they were very young and I'm fortunate I feel very lucky that's in that situation but I was very selfish the easiest role to fill in a military family dynamic is the service member for sure no [ __ ] you know and I think the families are often forgotten but I remember sitting on the skids of a helicopter at the one minute out getting ready to go into a target that I knew was gonna be hot and thinking it's my mortgage check in a clear yeah or you know or in moments overseas were instead of thinking about my job I'm thinking about the argument that I had with my wife and thinking about the things that I wish I had said in them and and wishing that I could take back some of the things that I did say and I realized talking to my buddy and thinking about fundraising but the next best thing that I can do absent fighting with the guys is to support their families because if you can take some of that strain off of the warfighter it actually makes them more lethal yeah so once I connected those dots in my head I definitely felt like I was finding my sense of purpose again and people ask me all the time like where did the wingsuit stuff come from well I don't [ __ ] juggle chainsaws if I knew how to juggle chainsaws I would have tried to set a record for juggling I don't know how to do that yeah I fell in love with skydiving the first jump that I did yeah and I was able to pursue that passion of my own which is kind of rare inside of the military to really be able to pursue an individual passion inside of that bureaucracy yeah so I went to all the air schools and I ended up basically going through all of the air schools and got a bunch of jumps for somebody in the military a very small amount of jumps for somebody who's outside and works in the sport but I heard it up I was like alright this is what I do and that led me to that's how I got introduced to kill cliff actually it was an employee of kill cliff who made that gave me that thought planted the seed they agreed to fund it which became my first sponsor which became my first Avenue into I guess what I'm still doing now it's something I my life is an absolute mess my least favorite question is what the hell do you do for a living because I don't know what would you say you do here today I became my first sponsor in the skydiving world again it would have happened if I wasn't a seal yeah and the company was founded by a seal so that helped that really helped me bridge the gap between experience and where I was and where I needed to be to actually be a sponsored skydiver so and that led me to another sponsor which eventually led to me leading some very influential people in the skydiving world who became friends and I'm just a fan of surrounding myself with people who are way better than me and I consistently and constantly still try to do that so that led to some sponsors and so the jumping career if you want to call it that kind of took off and then I ended up finding a job that allowed me to kind of give back and teach some Air Force guys jumping skills which also felt like again I was keeping a foot in the door with the fight and I just came to the conclusion I mean not too long ago really I mean probably a couple years at most that I just want to make a difference men I think and I think that is also in addition to people telling me that I couldn't be a seal I think that was probably the other half of the equation I just wanted to do something that made a difference and I don't think of anything or I can't think of anything that would make more of a difference than passing on the lessons that we were taught in our career I mean it's it blows people's minds when I talk about leadership and the message I have a leadership is not unique and it guess what it's not mine it's what was taught to me but what keeps you alive in a gunfight is the same thing that allows you to thrive in business and that's why Jacko's killing it and he should be killing it people should listen to what he's saying what he's saying is the truth and I bet you Jacque it would say the same thing he's not necessarily creating his own message he's crafting the message that we all learned in a manner that people can digest it I don't think he would say this is my unique idea yeah because it's it's not you know and that's fine it's he's passing on the legacy he's staying in the fight so somewhere in there a buddy of mine hit me up and said can you come speak at my company about teamwork right there like SEAL team oh can you talk about teamwork all right sure when spoke to his company and somebody in the audience say can you come speak at my company and so that's wholly built as well - and somewhere in between the jumping and the speaking I made a guy met a guy named Tate Fletcher who was a MMA fighter he's got a podcast of his own but he I met him through the CrossFit world actually so it's weird how it all comes together he introduced me to Joe so I wouldn't I did Joe's caste and we ended up staying in contact and you know just like dude you should start a podcast so that's how that came to be and then the the reason I enjoy doing that is because it's a larger microphone mmm literally and figuratively yeah that allows you to reach more people with an a message that I think is important and it's all driven around making a difference yeah so I found my purpose again by accident and I found it through listening to people who I respected and then taking action on it I don't think there's a magic recipe yeah you know maybe it'll take people while to find theirs but I think if you do find it I know I'm a more satisfied person now now that I have a much more clear compass direction that I'm at least trying to follow ya know I mean it's interesting because there's a ton of parallels between you know obviously you know come in the teams like there's a lot of similarities in terms of you know our our journey along the way and I I'm similarly I guess in the last just few years really have kind of figured out and and felt like I'm actually standing on my own two goddamn feet yeah you know and not like just looking around like what the [ __ ] am i doing you know even as purpose filled or or or you know strategically driven as as the exterior may seem to a lot of people because it's so dog heavy over the last 10 years you know since I exited the the Navy there's been a [ __ ] ton of pivots there's been you know a lot of a lot of doubt and in times where I honest I didn't know what the [ __ ] I thought I was even trying to do and in some instances and I had that happen to me on Thursdays every Thursday I scheduled and that's you know that's one thing I hate about I don't understand social media yeah I don't find it to be social or media but it's what I hate about is its selective right and people can put what they want and it's look at me my life is [ __ ] amazing and they're probably got a gun in their mouth every morning there like pistol or toothbrush which one do I want to brush with yeah well it's a brochure it is and it's it's just not truthful and the truth is is that I don't care who you are you're gonna be on a sine wave just deal with it yeah yeah there's there there's good days and bad days and I think you know that for for anybody listen I mean the you know the epic and an ever-present question of you know what's the meaning of life to me like that it's really the the simplicity of it is is is as beautiful as it is poignant is that its its purpose you know because money you mean I know a lot of rich [ __ ] that are absolutely [ __ ] miserable most of them that I know are you know and and they have they want for nothing you know they have everything but they re I mean I can't speak for them but if I were forced to I would say they feel wildly unfulfilled yeah and and I think there's a number of reasons that swirl around that you know that that contribute to that but but for me I know in my own happiness at least it's only been in the last few years where I really felt like what I was doing mattered and was making a difference in people's lives and in law enforcement lives and military lives as it relates to dog training and helping you know regular average everyday citizens understand and communicate to their dogs better and drawing parallels between that and raising kids and leadership and then it's all very connected but you know that hasn't that I certainly you know ten years ago that wasn't the [ __ ] case you know like it really has been been a relatively recent but in terms of the the wingsuit stuff how much of that are you still like it is most of that recreation or are you still doing some fundraiser or kind of mission driven elements to that I haven't done anything fundraising other than the record attempt which was in 2015 the fundraiser is still active and you know the donations they still trickle in I still I still am active with the seal Foundation to a degree but again to be honest like right now I'm pulling away from it because of how I currently feel about the seal community it's nothing negative about the seal foundation it's my own I'll be the first to say it's my own personal issue and desire to detach a little bit from it yeah but it'll be back you know I I just I think I can make more of a difference by passing on the lessons that I was incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by for basically so far my entire adult life yeah it was one of the things I know meant you know a number of times to me like because you and I had such a similar you know from a chronological standpoint a similar timeframe that that period of your life from eighteen that for me it was from eighteen to thirty mmm you know to be to grow up essentially and you know my parents did a phenomenal job in terms of the male role model my dad did it but the spectacular job being on the other side of the coin my mom did a did an equally spectacular job but but you know that that only gets you to the point of when you leave the [ __ ] nest and yeah cut the cut the cord and it can lay the foundation but they can hold the house you know but but to have that those experiences you know but again being surrounded by grown [ __ ] men who led and walked and and exemplified and exerted a warrior mentality you know in every [ __ ] facet possible you mean that there's there's no better school for for you know becoming in it in a really an adult than that you know and I'll be forever grateful for that I mean it to me like I admit I think it makes sense to have mandatory service for that same reason you know I agree because there's elements of things that you learn in the military that you can't pay to [ __ ] learn anywhere else you know I think we'd be a better nation if I would completely support a two-year mandatory service and I've been fine if it was Red Cross I don't care if it's you know Habitat for Humanity just a service outside of yourself to change your perspective at least a little bit hopefully from me to we ya know I'm a hundred percent in agreement with that spot on real quick the before we get into some some political components all I know everybody's wondering about in terms of the bowhunting stuff can Gambia can you give us a [ __ ] elevator pitch on that on the bowhunting oh yeah you know it's an interesting one um for one not everybody's gonna have time to do it I love it because it's ninety percent of what we used to do mm-hmm the navigation cover and concealment stalking physical prowess visit it's like that you like you once you get out into the field you're hunting you like yes I'm so happy like I've never been happier when I'm in the outdoors in bow hunting is just ridiculously challenging and I for myself enjoy challenges mmm I suck at it but I get to do it every day and I don't worry about trying to become a master I'd rather just worry about mastery at some point than being a master today and for me I got into it for one the challenge into - you know - sustainably harvest my own meat and detach at least economically from the traditional factory farming yeah I know that not everybody has the chance to do it but if you do have the chance to do it I think what you can expect to find our rewards in your life that have nothing to do with bow hunting yeah because it requires discipline and training and integrity and you know it's just yeah to me with I mean I've literally zero [ __ ] experience doing it I didn't grow up hunting it doesn't do a whole lot for me in the traditional sense especially here in North Texas where from my perspective like what I like about bow hunting especially in places like Montana Utah whatever and there's there's bow hunters here too but it's different you know to me most people around here and and and I would say probably 95% of the Hunter population I mean it's like [ __ ] legal poaching yeah I mean to me like using a cornfield you know of deer feeders and trail cams and fencing and a deer stand and a scoped [ __ ] 300 Win Mag over the course of a year you know to get certain animals into a certain area and then take them like to me that's not [ __ ] hunting I mean that's that's my take on it like if that's what you're into like hey I don't think it should be illegal but you know to me like I wouldn't stand up there and beat your chest and be like look at the [ __ ] buck I just pulled like it took you a year and $40,000 to do it yeah you know I agreed that that doesn't uh that doesn't do it for me yeah again if people want to do that that's fine and but also that is well I think a lot of the negativity the negativity and yeah people often associate a lot of rifle hunters with a dude sipping on Jack Dean I was in a lawn chair in the back of the pickup truck unfortunately there's some people who embody that what I have seen at least in the especially in the bow hunting community is that they're the exact opposite of that well sure you have to be I mean if you want to be successful you don't have to be well if you want to do it other than yeah I mean it's like you anybody can sit in the [ __ ] boat that doesn't make you a fisherman correct so you can sit walking around with a bow and your hand doesn't make you a hunter yeah yeah so I mean to me my point is I guess is that you know my my hat is off the [ __ ] like I watched and follow some of Cameron Haynes sniffing and I know Joe is getting getting that big into it and you've been doing it which you know by default piques my curiosity into it but now it's rewarding I mean and then I had the exact same feelings about hunting with a rifle it's just I didn't feel like it was fair quite frankly yeah and then you pick up a bow and you realize all of those distances smash down into your face yeah you're talking 30 40 yards can sometimes be a long shot yeah I mean it's hard to get next to an animal oh yeah that is used to in their genes looking for Tigers yeah because they're gonna attack their face yeah so try to be a bush you know and then find a place where you can draw back and then place an arrow while you're getting the deuce you control all the stuff you need to control I mean you would dig it it's rewarding it's it's like I'm talking about bow hunting again like well yeah it's awesome yeah I mean to me it's it's just like it's with jibt same as jiu-jitsu right yeah like there's elements to it that that goes so far above and beyond the scope of actually rolling on the ground and [ __ ] wrestling somebody that that are life lessons that are ever-present and prominent our society and an outlet especially as you know a or double-a type type male personalities that a lot of us have I think it's great [ __ ] I'm definitely interested in it but alright so politics as we as we move politics everybody's [ __ ] favor this is a you know when we I think you know we probably posted a proposed a question to to everybody a couple weeks ago about you know who do you want to see on Mike Trapp or whatever in a ton of [ __ ] people I got to get Andy on there and talk about politics and whatever so I don't know why people would think I'm necessarily a political powerhouse I think honestly yeah yeah all right we'll see where this goes I might be lettin quite a few people down that to me I think there's there so few platforms out there that you know just like will [ __ ] talk about whatever we want I mean I've listened to some of your stuff I try to anybody that I that I think I'm an interview or have on or or no I am I try not to actually listen to interviews that they're on or do I do the same thing because you end up you avoid certain topics yeah we're having frequency like I already know what you think like I don't want to know what you think yeah until you've been on here so I it's it's fairly limited but at any rate I know you know for for all of the of the listeners for this show in particular politics are a huge component in terms of just having a kind of a refreshing no [ __ ] attitude towards it and actually saying what's on our mind which which is the whole point of this thing but I've got a whole a whole slew of a [ __ ] how much we get to and send it in and whatever but anyway first thing it was the the one you mentioned right out of gay is gonna you know gun control or gap specifically we're kids safe in school yeah a very recently here there was a shooting in Texas ten kids or actually eight kids to two teachers killed there's been a ton of them and people you know the the there's such a divisive nough sin terms of it goes from on one side it's the guns problem on the other side that's just the people and you know yeah obviously those those are kind of you know extremes on either end I have the same same thought process that you do that Jacko does it I think most people do it in our field and before I asked kind of your opinion one of the things that I find really just [ __ ] irritating it is when it comes to policies like this I find the the squeakiest [ __ ] wheel are generally the the people that are the least educated about it and that's on both sides you you can hear press conferences on on either side of the spectrum of people talking that that within 10 seconds anybody that you know has shot a gun for a living can can see how [ __ ] ignorant and uneducated they are as it relates to firearms competency and they use they incorrect terminology everything I mean yeah you name it and and so to me it's like in in just about every other realm of our society like it's a medical issue you asked [ __ ] doctors you know it's fire safety who do you talk to like you don't talk to politicians about what the best [ __ ] way to protect your house from from a fire is you talk to firefighters why is there not more engagement from our political parties and and you know [ __ ] that run the show to asking guys like us for people that that again have have had a profession in terms of firearm competency I don't know why there isn't more of that but what you know it to me it it's I know that it's a it's an element of protect me you've got a hard in the schools first but I'll just I'll let you get into it um you know it's kinda like for one it's frustrating I I agree with you I'll be the first to say I am NOT an expert on school shooters in school shootings I haven't ever been in one thankfully I I wish that nobody ever had to be in one I've been in plenty of shootings though and I've been around firearms almost my entire adult life but I think you I think you brought up a large portion of the problem just in your description when there is an event you have people who come out and they say guns are the problem and then there is the other side of the coin where it says it's a societal problem and in my personal opinion there is essences there's an essence of both of those in there but if the entire conversation is framed around just those two things I don't think anybody is actually trying to solve the problem because the problem is safety for kids at schools I'll know that this country and the people in charge are taking this problem seriously when the leading topic is school safety yes guns are an issue involved in that yes society is an issue and how we raise our kids and generational changes that is an issue but that's not gonna stop a school shooting from happening tomorrow yeah or from next week I think we have reasonable gun legislation in this country already I support the Second Amendment and reasonable gun legislation which like I said I think we already have I just don't see how adding more gun laws is going to change behavior of people who are not interested in following the law yeah because the last time I checked murder is illegal yeah and that is not stopping the people who are going into schools with guns and murdering people yeah I do believe we have an issue with society and I I was I did a podcast specifically about this recently just trying to figure out one kind of just worked my way through my own feelings on it I just I was thinking about the difference between when you and I grew up and when my kids are growing up and it's not a difference in access to firearms I could have gotten my hands on guns you could have gotten your hands on guns so guns have been here since the founding of this country there's definitely more now than then but it's been part of our culture so it's not a difference of access I mean I would argue they're the hardest to access at any given time in our nation's history right now I would have a hard time arguing against that for sure so it's not an access to guns and then I started thinking about the way that I interacted with people when I was the age of my son my oldest son turns 15 here in October and one of the biggest differences that I keep coming back to is that when you and I were growing up if we had a face-to-face interaction or interactions in general the consequences from that interaction whether they be good or bad were instantaneous if I wanted to run my mouth to you there was very few ways that I could actually do it yeah I could do it to your face yeah in deal with the consequences right you litter I could write you a letter that was one of the ones I covered in the podcast but that's assuming I knew your address because I couldn't just look it up I find new your phone number I could call you and if I had your pager number I can page you in the hopes that you could call me back and then I could talk [ __ ] to you no that was really it by and large though the interactions were directly tied to consequences the things that you said were directly tied to consequences and now I look at the world that my children are growing up in and surprisingly enough my kids like first-person shooter video games I am okay with that to a certain degree because I liked them as well and I turn into his serial killer but what surprises me and worries me about those video games is not like the the mode where you go in and you play the campaign it's the mode where you go in and you play in this online universe an ecosystem and I'll go down and I'll listen to my son playing and you won't know that I'm there cuz I'm a sneaky [ __ ] but basically it's cuz he has headphones on it he doesn't pay attention very well and the way that people talk and interact is substantially different than the way you would talk and interact in an elevator mm-hmm the things that people say to each other that they say they're gonna do to each other the way that they interact that [ __ ] would work face-to-face no but they can get away with it because there's no consequence my son is connected to people through snapchat but he doesn't actually know in real life he can talk [ __ ] to anybody he can pick any random name he can see somebody getting piled on and getting bullied and he can pile on with no interaction or not not an interaction with no consequence and you know I think one of the things that I've heard in again the only I bring up his name cuz I can't remember the other ones I know that there's a couple other young men and women but David Hogg I heard him say one time with the mass shooting generation and you're not you're the Avatar generation you're the generation of people that can create yourself online and exist in this world that is detached and devoid of consequence coupled with that I see I mean just go out to a restaurant and watch families interact they're not they're doing this they're looking down at their phone it drives me nuts like you literally look around and a mother and a father husband and wife and kids and they're not talking to each other they're sitting there on again social media that's not so Shawn it's not media yeah so they're more connected than they've ever been but to what did they're actually more disconnected and I think somewhere in there is this detachment from real life from the reality where you can find yourself in a place that [ __ ] it I'm gonna take I'm in pain I'm gonna take a gun to school and impart and inflict this pain on somebody else well now to me that makes absolutely no goddamn sense in the world I can't even imagine a way that that would ever be something that I would either sitter doing but I grew up in a different world yeah with a different set of rules and I don't know if that's the difference but I think there is something there for sure so that's the societal aspect of it and that's only part of it but god damn it make the kids safe at school and people oh that takes time really now I'm not a fan of the TSA by any stretch of imagination is other than the TSA correct but do you remember the airports pre 9/11 mm-hmm I remember walking through my dad with a Swiss Army knife yeah [ __ ] I mean I kept the 3-inch Spyderco in my [ __ ] pot when I was a kid I would walk up and chat with the pilot while he was flying the plane yeah and then what happened some people took over some planes and flew them into buildings and killed a bunch of people and I don't think he was overnight but I think it was pretty goddamn fast that aircraft got locks on their doors ballistic doors that were lockable and unopenable and then look at what happened to the airport's right it used to be an invited just total laissez faire attitude of that yeah what's good nobody's ever gonna do this well it happened yeah and not that many times controlled entry points enhanced security measures both to the physical infrastructure and the security personnel on site metal detectors screening devices prohibited items is it an invasion of privacy you're goddamn right it's an invasion of privacy at the TSA yeah but there's numbers I'm saying that things happen at the airport there are invasions of privacy at the airport and there's also no more [ __ ] airplane hijackings yeah what are we waiting for yeah no I agree and I think I mean to me like yeah that that's step one and to me I don't know how that's even [ __ ] debatable honestly you know like the fact that there's there's even you know a counter-argument to any of that or any feet dragging whatsoever again I think just speaks to the volumes of the or speaks volumes to the the [ __ ] and blood mentality that our political system is and it's more about saying the other guy's wrong than it is actually fixing the [ __ ] problem that's that's a big part of it on the big picture scale I think to add one thing that that I I notice when you talk about you know devoid of consequences in terms of interaction with people I see that same problem both at schools from a disciplinarian standpoint and from a parenting standpoint is that I think a huge component that that is is a catalyst that's magnified by what you're talking about starts with hamstringing both parents and teachers from jerk and a knot and a [ __ ] ass for [ __ ] up you know because I mean that that's the reality of it is is that just like the consequences that they were immediate in like now you look at what what a ten-year-old at school can get away with yeah verbally towards as teachers towards his classmates it is [ __ ] astounding the amount of [ __ ] that can come out of a kid's mouth and nothing will happen well nobody wants to draw a line between right and wrong and I don't know where that disappeared I mean well it to me it's a when it comes to physical consequences I mean to me and why this drives such a point home for me is from the dog parallel is that that's what they understand now granted I'd say 85 90 percent of the training I do is positive reinforcement and I would subscribe to the same percentage recommendations in terms of positive learning environments and in shaping your child's behavior positively and in in a fun environment where they're being rewarded for doing the right thing however yen without the context of yang is not [ __ ] in anymore and and when there is absolutely no [ __ ] consequence for doing the wrong thing other than withholding something positive now you're completely [ __ ] skewed and now the world doesn't exist the way that it's supposed to and to me when you when you couple those two things like it's it's actually not even the slightest bit surprising that [ __ ] like that is continuing to happen you know and again like where do you go from here I don't know how there's not more viable and these serious discussions about hardening these [ __ ] targets the same way we would planes but then the other the other concept that needs to be addressed on the societal platform and I do I mean our guns part of the problem to me not really you know and again like they're the mechanism used to express whatever the issue is I agree that hardening the schools doesn't in and of itself solve the issue it it just removes one avenue for people to express that whatever pain or whatever they would describe it as I don't know what it is it doesn't solve the problem it just makes the schools that school environment safe yeah it makes that expression way harder to correct to actually [ __ ] execute yeah it mean to me the the the biggest thing is is the the politically correct mentality of not you know being being held accountable you know it seems like we've turned into kind of a victim based society where where everything's somebody else's fault and I'm the victim and I have to remove your ability to do something as opposed to me just saying yeah you know what I [ __ ] up to me like if there's one thing I can pinpoint that that I learned and drew from and took away from the SEAL Teams in terms of a of a benchmark fundamental principle to live by is Minden Jacko's I mean a half of it as the is the name half of the name of his book is [ __ ] ownership it is take [ __ ] accountability when you make a mistake we all do it you and I ever have storied storied passive record it's a story things up and they're making mistakes but you know the difference between you know you're saying yeah you know and I [ __ ] up and taking accountability versus pointing a finger at everybody except yourself is to me like that's that's the paradigm shift that took place that is is enabling a lot of these things to happen where where it's that coupled with you know not being able to discipline [ __ ] people and children and in a manner in which is is a you know fair and appropriate now granted just like with everything is that you know the road to hell is paved in good intentions that you know the the intentions behind removing any any assemblance of corporal punishment in schools and in households yes is so that you know abuse doesn't happen and and you know fathers aren't coming home you know pissed drunk off a six-pack a [ __ ] PBR with it with an extension cord and whipping the [ __ ] out of their kids like yes that's not any more acceptable either but just like with everything is there needs to be balance and and to me it's it's so far imbalance is it that that's why you see this now in such a prevalence but anything you want to add to that I agree man and that's really all I can add yeah times to ship mate you know drug use you know instead of polluting your your answer well just say what what's your take on drug use the war on drugs legalization of certain ones or all of them what what is your perspective cool man the war on drugs how long have we been at that war long [ __ ] time are we winning or losing I mean to me it's it's a it's a never-ending battle of that sort of that's what I mean I don't Didit II I don't know I mean is cocaine more dangerous if you make it legal and you tax the [ __ ] out of it and you use that money for something else and I mean it you run the same risk as somebody using it illegally right are there any substance or any drug do you get you get bent out of shape and you do something irresponsible you hurt somebody else that's probably the worst case scenario if people want to be irresponsible and the only person that they hurt is themselves I am kind of a fan of Darwinism when it comes to a lot of that stuff I'm on board hundred percent I mean to me like there's one devil's advocate role I'm gonna play here in a minute at the tail end of this but you know to me yeah I a lot of people subscribe to the mentality of well heroin and meth like those things you know they ruin families and whatever was I mean so does alcohol yeah so does money so does gambling so does [ __ ] McDonald's and Snickers bars for that matter you know if anything in excess yeah we've had that effect if you give it the the teeth to enact such lafalot ii on your family on your lifestyle whatever is that you can you can use a lot of things to [ __ ] ruin your life and to me the these i look at it just like i do with with a gun debate problem and that you know if you look at it from like a surgeon's table standpoint you know there's a [ __ ] variety of tools on their guns are one of them drugs are one of them yeah you know by removing one of the tools like the person that's gonna find a way to [ __ ] his or her life up guess what there's a whole bunch of other ways to do that yeah and i agree i mean to me like you know people may think that it's a harsh mentality i don't give a [ __ ] I mean Darwinism is what it is you know whether it's not wearing your seatbelt and drinking or [ __ ] you know sitting on the back end of a pickup truck truck driving through a [ __ ] you know bumpy pasture out here with a with a shotgun in your lap hog hunting and you shoot yourself in the [ __ ] chin or what I mean there's a lot of dumb [ __ ] to do out there and and my only issue with it is when it starts impacting others yeah but that mean to me like even then I mean alcohol is a good example in in both there are already means in which people are [ __ ] killing each other ruining their lives ruining their families by using alcohol by using cigarettes those are both legal and taxed but you know as an example look at you know prohibition like that didn't work the same way the war on drugs hasn't worked you know it I think it was probably recognized as a failure very early on and instead of taking ownership of that failure and perhaps looking for a better salute I mean how many bill probably trillions yeah I mean I know quite a few law enforcement men and women they they spend the vast majority of their time policing in the world of the drug-related realm and I mean I don't know I just feel like their time could be so much better spent and that money could be I mean this infrastructure falling to pieces all over this country yeah no I agree I don't have the answers but from what I see from the cheap seats right which is the easiest place to make criticisms from maybe we should call that one a strategic loss and reevaluate what it is that we're doing no I agree but I think the other part of it is that you know from a from a black market standpoint you know and you I would use the same argument with guns and I do all the time is that you know let's say just hypothetically you banned every gun or you ban you know drugs are banned like name one place in the country where with cocaine is banned yeah well with with two hours and a couple hundred bucks you can't get your hands on [ __ ] anything yeah I live in northwestern Montana Meth is illegal and banned yeah cocaine federal feel evil banned heroin illegal banned those are the number three one two and three problems in our area that law enforcement is facing yeah they are banned yeah and it's the biggest problem yeah and and you know by by them being banned it also creates just like to say the eye every tree yes people don't typically give a [ __ ] about ivory but over Cuban cigars like people who don't even smoke [ __ ] cigars want Cuban cigars you know historically back when you know that it was harder to get your hands on because there's a stigma attached to it you know but yeah I mean we can sit in the echo chamber all day I guess but the one that here is the one thing that I wanted to play devil's advocate on though that made me think which is a dangerous prospect a little bit don't do too often yeah yeah well it's I've scheduled that every Thursday also the similarity to the war on terror in terms of the war on drugs failure do you to me there are elements of similarities between the two and and I think it boils down more in execution then it does in principle but I'm curious if you see a similarity in some instances with that you know I never thought about it like that um I mean just thinking my way through this I can certainly see I can see parallels addiction could certainly in my mind be parallel to indoctrination I could see it but I guess and again having never thought about this I there's a difference to me between an ideology and a methodology there is a difference between that in a substance I guess from my perspective in terms of how its fought of you know essentially trying to change ideologies is similar to trying to change addictions in terms of its scope of difficulty and by by fighting it in certain ways that we are fighting it by actually making the problem [ __ ] worse I would agree yeah you know we're not solving we're not solving terrorism by the way that we're executing these wars no it's actually not a problem at the Western world consult in my opinion I equate it to you're standing in front of a dam and it's leaking and you can either put your finger in the dam and buy yourself some time to try to empower or enable the grander solution or you can sit there and you can drown but I'll be the first to admit like even looking back on my career and everything that I was involved in I don't think I made the world any safer for my kid but having said that our job served a purpose and hopefully it served a purpose the purpose being to purvey provide space and time so that's somewhere between us having our kids come up and have to put their finger in the dam and replace us which is not what I want we can educate and enable enough I mean the problem we're fighting with with terrorism is not gonna be solved by a non-muslim actor it has to be solved from the Muslim religion in and of itself much like the problems with extreme Catholicism yeah you know they have to be solved from inside of that organization cuz I'm not gonna listen to us yeah and I don't blame them I can see yeah I can see the parallels yeah and the drug world as well I definitely need to think about that one for sure yeah I mean to me like I said just in in preparing for it you know always trying to look at things from from different perspectives that again I think it's more on on execution similarities that yeah it is principal levels I think there's far more relevance and justification in fighting a war on terrorism that's not even debatable you know but but the way that we're doing it I see some a lot of parallels that I think you know just could be gone gone about a lot a lot more brain and a lot more bright fashion but yeah you'll encounter in both of them people saying well we're doing this you know maybe it's not making the biggest difference but at least it's something yeah and that's that's not a solution yeah yeah yep one of the things I say in in dog training is no training is better than bad training because it is you'll [ __ ] a dog up faster training I'm shitty than you like just not doing it at all but all right so I'm curious to get your take on government structure in terms of you know just basic you know three branches of government overhaul term limits age competency restrictions etc man you know this gets too rapidly to the limits of my to my knowledge and understanding unfortunately I'll be the first to admit that you know when it comes to the true understanding of the makeup like I understand the broad strokes you know the separations of power and the the the three organizations inside of the government for me you know what sucks for me personally and I think this is probably happening to other people as well is that with all of the [ __ ] we are bombarded by I find myself paying attention less and less know and I know that's the wrong approach to take but I'm at a point where I don't feel represented represented once it crazy word I don't feel represented by our government yeah I I don't feel like quite often most often I hate using terms like always and never but quite often I just feel like they're the aims and goals of politicians and those elected officials are not parallel with my own yeah I think they're they're self-serving primarily I think so too I mean the I you know things I would like to see I would like term limits yeah um how about if we can't balance our budget you don't get to be putting yourself in for re-election yeah you know you you come in on a four-year cycle these are the criteria that have to be met if you aren't able to create a balanced budget you are no longer eligible for re-election see ya oh and your pension you don't get that either yeah but again I don't know the secondary and tertiary consequences of a month at what might be caused from that it sounds great to me I think it's an amazing idea I wouldn't mind pulling the trapdoor on all of them yeah I I mean I I hate to say it but I'd almost like to see our government fail because I almost am at the point where I believe we'd be better off starting from scratch than continuing down the [ __ ] Road we're on yeah I mean I mean I don't want the country to fail I'm not saying that at all I don't want anything to happen to anybody but I almost want to see I almost want to see this system consume itself so we can rebuild it in something that represents the people better you know but I think the fact that Trump was elected regardless of any of what you think of him or what what's transpired since or even leading up to it is that the the principled reason as to why he was elected is that I think most people feel that way and and thought kind of like well [ __ ] it like here's a guy who's gonna kick over the yes what's the worst that's gonna happen like well we've been trying the same stupid [ __ ] for decades and getting nowhere being promised everything and under-delivered as bad as you can be under-delivered I lied to in hoodwinked and in what have you it's like [ __ ] it let's give this nutjob a chance yeah and I think that says a lot you know it it says a lot to the mentality of the common man and and where our country is at I'm curious you know one of the things that there's two things one in terms of age restrictions is one of the things I've mentioned a couple times on here but when I see people like Pelosi or McCain or you know some of these people that that when in any other context of our society you'd be looking at them like I don't know if you should be driving you know or are you trying to say they're 142 years I mean they're they're [ __ ] dinosaurs you know and and it me you can see it when they talk you know they're they're borderline incoherent if they didn't have a teleprompter like III wish they didn't it just it highlights the it highlights the system for what it is yeah it the system is actually extremely resistant to change yeah it you know if you're in it almost seems like it's harder to not stay in mafia it yeah I mean honestly the yeah right again I'm not I don't feel represented yeah by that I mean it no I mean I'm curious enta Jabbar population is in their age range versus somebody who's 40 and under I mean maybe our represented officials should represent more of the the mean yeah the beverage of average of ages in the country yeah no I think I mean that for sure that's a good start I mean that'd be a good it'd be a revolving formula to a certain extent based on you know the population is but I agree I mean maybe revolving is what we need a little bit more no yeah it needs to be more of a turnstile in the [ __ ] Capitol building as opposed to a [ __ ] jail cell that seems to trap everybody in but last thing on that is a what's your take on on the job that Trump's doing overall you know comes back to I don't know I don't know what's [ __ ] I don't know what's political banter I don't know I ah I can't separate the wheat from the chaff 90% of the time some of the stuff he says I laugh oh my god damn yeah I like that you said that some of the stuff he says I say goddamn I can't believe you said that yeah um the country hasn't fallen off a cliff some things are happening that people said would never happen the Korean War you know the what's happening the Korean Peninsula is a good example of that it's an amazing thing seeing the [ __ ] ruthless dictator of North Korea walk to the border South Korea shake his hand and then come across the border yeah did Trump and a hand have a hand of that I don't know if the previous administration had been in office when that happened would they have given him the credit for that I think so yeah so it's bad you should get the credit if it's good you should get the credit or the responsibility on the bad side the credit on the good I don't know um I don't see it as being much different yeah and the people that came before him I just look at it honestly is it's the status quo wearing a different suit is all it is same hoard different dress it really is yeah yep um they you know they like he's not a politician well he is now yeah well and I mean to me like I mean you know plenty of business guys same as me and in the circles we run in nowadays I mean how many how many powerhouse business guys that are you know in in those revenue ranges that aren't [ __ ] political you know now it may be it may manifest itself very differently than from a government standpoint but rest the [ __ ] assured those people know how to put that hat on when it needs to be put on look at admirals and generals is no different yeah so I mean he's a politician just one of a different sort but anyway Department of Education you got kids I've got kids they're similar age ranges where they're kind of right at the at the cusp of their educational instruction in Tula jiff you will I'm curious to get your take from a national standpoint department of education schooling issues problems you see fixes etc you know one of the things that really bothers me is that I'm incapable of helping my kids with their homework yeah on a lot of the issues maybe I should have paid attention to it more but at some point they switched over to this common core curriculum and my kids will bring back you know like math problems so and I don't suck at math but I can't help them with their homework and it bugs me because I want them to come to me and I want to be able to help them like when it comes to helping them write papers or do research or when they give speeches like I'm all in on that no problem but it almost seems like they're teaching ineffective means especially in this arithmetic realm and then I look at some of the way that they are teaching the kids it's almost as if they're teaching them to take tests not solve problem is absolutely and there's a [ __ ] difference between those two I remember we lived in California it seems to be better in Montana remember with it in California for like two weeks before they started taking the state tests all of the homework honestly seemed to be based around getting them to practice filling in circles it no longer was about teaching and educating it was practicing for a test that I assume the teachers get their ratings from no and I get the desire to do that I mean they want to get a better rating but I want my kid to be able to function in life I want them to be a critical problem solver I want them to be a nonlinear problem solver and I am NOT an expert in education I try to teach them that I don't know how you would do that on a mass level but I feel like that is missing in the educational system for sure I think you know to to expound on some of that at least from from my perspective on a broad spectrum national scale is the fact that there is a Department of Education I don't think there should be you know - - keyhole you know California with Pennsylvania with [ __ ] Iowa with Nebraska you know to me like I'm a huge advocate and proponent of that money coming from the federal government just not being a national cabinet level bureaucracy that dictates all of the these types of things that were because that that is a byproduct of it in my opinion is that the big reason why our our schools aren't teaching kids to be critical thinkers is because there's a national [ __ ] pot that you know they're they're vying I mean it's almost like Navy promotion honestly yeah they got to hit the wickets if they want their money yeah you know and so so it doesn't it's not about learning it at this point you know it's about money and about resources you know that that continue to fund their own [ __ ] jobs and and it's you can't really blame teachers for it because I mean it's their [ __ ] job it's their livelihood yeah you know but I just I really wish it would go back to the states I mean to me that that is in my opinion kind of the the crux of the United States of America is not is to have as few you know nationally cabinet or you know national driven cabinet level positions to dictate certain policies like yes homeland security that makes sense immigration makes sense [ __ ] human trafficking makes sense [ __ ] you know whatever but but you know it just it boggles my mind I'm in the same boat like there's a lot of times with homework and I'm embarrassed to say it's not just math you know but but yeah there's times where I'm just like [ __ ] I don't know yeah I mean I'm honestly like I'm I'm going on my phone and trying to figure out how to [ __ ] solve some of these problems and when they say this is how we were taught to do it I'm just like holy [ __ ] [ __ ] that they might as well be in Greek they lay it out for me and I and I look I'm like what yeah no I mean it like it's it's almost like if we were having a competition to see how long it could take you and how confusing of a method you could find to figure out yeah the problem to an answer like you you won and that's it you know it's it's [ __ ] staggering I was raised on the simple principles right there's three types people in the world those that are good at basic arithmetic and those that are not yeah [ __ ] crisis so which category do you fall into you're the third right yeah no it's a again I you know to me it hits home I think for both of us because of where we're at in our lives with you know with children but you know that and coupling on to you know some of the other issues with with tying the parents and administration's hands in terms of discipline I think you know when you a couple all those things together and and it's kind of a [ __ ] sandwich all right women's roles in specifically society military spec ops sports etc there's a lot of you know the war on women and gender pay gaps and I'm curious to get to get your take on most specifically like you know military society and and specifically Special Operations I guess I'm sure Terry but I mean for me let's start with the understanding that women have been serving in combat and near combat and damn near on the front lines since the inception of war my grandma is a great example of that the post-traumatic stress that she suffered the things that she saw him that she had to deal with are worse than most things that 90% of people who serve in the military have to see I'm believer in blind standards you know they they two or three years ago they dictated that all all military occupations to include every special operations occupation should be open up to women and if your standard is legitimate it should be blind it's really the only way to have any integrity in it and if there is a woman that can meet the exact same standards as a man not gradiated in any way or degraded in any way I can bring it I have no problem with that whatsoever um I mean I live with a woman she's more lethal than most men I served with she'll kill a dude no problem more than likely it's gonna be me if I never go missing she's the suspect um I have no problem with it uh you know there's some environments I think they might be better suited for than others there's some environments where I think they might be more lethal than men but it has to fall back on this standard and not a desire to show a proper ratio the standards for our job are driven from the occupation they're driven from the demands that we see overseas not from the demands that we want to see overseas so as long as again I'll keep going back to that standard it you can meet it I have absolutely no problem yeah in terms of the one follow-on question to that is in terms of integration mm-hmm do you take because that because I scrub to the mentality of that that standard that we're talking about is is ever-present right it's it's in the integration it's and everything is that there's there's no accommodations made birthing showers your if you're on the team you're on the [ __ ] team if we're talking about Special Operations the enemy is not gonna care if you want a special shower if you want a unique time to do whatever it is that you want to do they don't they don't care about your considerations so your training has to replicate that now as far as integration goes yeah you're gonna have problems yeah when you mix men and women look at submarines as an example I mean [ __ ] yeah they integrated submarines and rapidly started having issues yeah I mean even on ships I mean [ __ ] I don't know if you did any any article tunes or not I never did we would trans it on from time to time but it this is the issues you have with men and women in society outside of the military hey guess what sometimes men like women and sometimes women like men yeah and sometimes there's some issues that come from that yeah and yeah is that gonna happen is that's gonna be something that you have to deal with yes but deal with it if it if it's that important then deal with it yeah I mean to me I look at it as one of the beauties that the military at least in theory should be able to adhere to is you know take any any issue any question that you have and then separate it into into a or B is that does it make us a better war fighting force does it not if it does you do it if it doesn't you don't yep by and large you can pretty much drive that whole military train on that [ __ ] fork in the road to me the the the big question is you know I referenced the Jeff Goldblum and [ __ ] Jurassic Park is you know we've spent so much time whether or not you know thinking about whether or not we could or couldn't whether or not they could or couldn't do it yeah we never stopped and thought about whether or not we should and to me like that that's that's the the concern I have or really what the the burning question is is that is is the detriment and issues that would inevitably come and stem from integrating women into those types of roles is that worth the augment of what they're gonna bring to the table we're fighting were fighting capability wise because to me I look at that is Israel as a great example of I agree and that there are there are instances where women I think are better suited especially from a tactical and even covert standpoint of being able to get into places and do a lot of things you and I would never really need to do is look at your average bar yeah yeah if you were to give me the tasking of going into a bar in eliciting information from as many women as possible I'm gonna come back with probably zero if you give an attractive woman the same role of going into a bar in eliciting information from men she's gonna come back with all of them all the information you could possibly want or women correct yeah and there's no character or value judgment there it's just I'm not physically capable of doing one and they are better suited in that environment based on the way that men and women interact Afghanistan is another great place where you have to have women involved because the women there will not talk to men that are not their husband I cannot force well I guess I could force them to but I'm it's I'm gonna be defeating the purpose of getting them to want to talk to me in the first place yeah is it worth it in my opinion if the sole purpose is to prove that it is possible no it is not even remotely worth it in the SEAL Teams would it be worth it no yeah I I agree I don't think that it would I think my take again is is take Israel as why reinvent the wheel like have female Special Operations detachments that are stood up from scratch they're all female that do their own [ __ ] thing like there just shouldn't be women which by the way exists in the US military it's just not talked about yeah but you know to me like bring that to the forefront and and have have a bigger slice of the pie dedicated to that you know but alright so moving on abortion religion the freedom of religion liberty of abortion kind of how they all factored in to a certain extent with each other what is your take on on those from a society standpoint okay it was not expecting this question um you're welcome uh I don't like telling people what they should do I don't like I believe in I believe in freedom yeah I believe in an individual's right to choose there's an interesting argument or a discussion and I don't know exactly where I net out on it when it's you know when it comes to abortion they say it's a woman's body it is but at some point a fetus becomes a child in and of itself that is being carried in a woman's body and again I don't necessarily because then it's is a inception and I don't I personally get lost in how I feel in those issues but I always will come back to as a person the reason that I want to make a difference and the reason that I'd be willing to give my life for this country is that so people can have the ability to choose yeah and I feel that that should be the case with religion if you want to practice extreme religions I'm not saying you shouldn't but be [ __ ] prepared for the consequences no you know if it goes outside the realm of what affects you and you're correct you can believe you know it when it comes to it you know a good example is uh you know freedom of speech people look at freedom of speeches I should be able to say whatever the hell I want to say I look at freedom of speeches how much can I tolerate somebody else saying something that disgusts me that deterrent that turns my stomach people not people burning the flag I don't think I'd be able to stop myself from getting involved in that if I saw it in person but I think they should have the right to do it yeah I don't agree with it at all kneeling at the national anthem okay I stand at the national anthem and I try to choke back tears every single time I don't support kneeling but I'm not gonna tell him to stop because I don't look at my rights is what I can force other people to do it's about how much I cannot tolerate from other people that's freedom to me it's not about me trying to express myself it's about allowing other people to express themselves yeah I think you hit the nail on the head and I think you know that that mentality seems to be much more prevalent in in those of us who have you know written a blank check up into including our lives to that cause I never wrote that check did you go down to the PSD unit I actually had a I was drunk and I had a buddy Forge it but did they notarize that yeah I didn't know yeah I know that's uh you know but but to me that there there is a there's a I think a pretty pretty significant element of people who have fought for it yeah you know so vigorously that when you feel the cost if you've ever felt the cost if you've ever have you ever looked in a casket and saw one of your best friends in seen their family members destroyed if you've ever watched a son or a daughter looking at their dead father who is laying enough you know flag draped coffin it'll have a different meaning but and I understand why people don't understand that yeah which is a ridiculous sentence I understand the people understand I understand how they can forget yeah I understand how it can feel free but it has a cost but the cost doesn't ever touch you if you never feel the weight on your shoulders a little bit it's hard to appreciate I understand I don't support it at all but I have a level of understanding of how it occurs yeah no I think I mean that's really the the backbone of it is it is you know I feel I'd say you know pretty much textbook very similarly and that you know it's there's so many [ __ ] things that drive me nuts yeah that I can't [ __ ] stand that similarly like I don't know how I would react in person you know given certain circumstances I think they have the right to do it you know I just don't know if I could because it has a different meaning to it conceptually do I think they ought to be able to yeah I do like that's the whole [ __ ] point you know to me whether it's the First Amendment you know or really just Liberty as a broad concept is that it's it's it's not designed for what we already agree with it what we're already comfortable with what we can stand and or tolerate or not mind it's for all of the other things that don't fall into that category you know so that's good [ __ ] I love hearing it um in terms of surveillance you know as it relates to you know combating terrorism etc I know a lot of times you know Patriot Act or whatever is that there there's some you know infringement sore you know what you could argue are removals of freedom yeah well and that and you know walking a very fine line you know disguised under the cloak of of protection and freedom that that kind of stomps all over the [ __ ] Constitution I'm I'm curious if that didn't give you an indicator as to my my thoughts on it but yeah I mean I'm forget to to equate the the quote to but I might mess this up but it's when a government fears its people you have freedom when people fear their government you have tyranny no and I think it's true yeah um after 9/11 there was a sense of fear and you know hopelessness and lack of security I think by most people in this country and the government dove into that gap yeah headlong and I think we lost a lot more freedom than people understand mm-hmm it's invisible I think to most parts and it's interesting because you can tie this into how do you feel about people who send documents to Wikileaks how do you feel about the Peyton Manning's of the world who Brad Manning the Payton man is a quarterback but I mean hey no how do you feel about him I sometimes like I sorrow oh yeah I'm an idiot obviously no but you know any of the people you know because it ties in are they criminal or are they Patriots are they trying to show us that the government has overstepped or should they be put to the torch it's an interesting conversation I feel like we have given up a little bit too much of who we are I feel like we have lost a lot of the freedoms I mean I've won freedom that I want is autonomy I want to be able to think what I want and write what I want and say what I want and not have every [ __ ] thing recorded and dissected and potentially used against me some other day yeah and that's not the world we live in right now yeah in those leaks display a lot of that stuff and if it's not our own government looking into their own society we just have one of our allies do it from across the border right the agreements that they enter into so therefore it doesn't necessarily trample on the Constitution it tiptoes right but the result is the same yeah I'll tolerate the risk for the freedom I'd rather that then be in a prison and not be able to see the bars yeah I mean to me that so there's two things is that you know the the been front I think it's Ben Franklin's quote of any man who would trade safety for freedom deserves neither that's a good one too yeah which I [ __ ] love and then I thought that was Peyton Manning's this one dammit that's John Elway I said that like in the Ricky Bobby's once said no but the to me that so that's the first thing is that I agree like to me with with great freedom comes great responsibility it's big-boy rules I mean it's it's being in a platoon for the first time and saying yeah you can do whatever the [ __ ] you want but if you know if you don't show up with your [ __ ] wired tight and your [ __ ] ready to go guess what the [ __ ] you know the House of Pain is coming it is that there there's an element of that to where yeah that that is freedom and whether you're talking drugs whether you're talking about whether you're talking whatever is that to me like I equate freedom to pregnancy you either are or you're not like you you're not kind of free or half pregnant like [ __ ] you're either free or you're not the issue is when they when it moves in either direction 1% at a time its Sidious the slippery slope and that that's I know that that's a big concern Second Amendment wise of you know where does where does that stop it's it's the you know the bump stock here it's the [ __ ] background check there whatever and when I get it one thing that I am curious though what ties into the next subject is immigration and the reason why this comes on the heels of the surveillance threat is that I think from a broad spectrum standpoint is that you've got a lot of the issues that I see that justify that our government justifies surveillance would be fixed by staunch our immigration policies and and much more robust but border security because without you know the [ __ ] gates wide open you don't need to monitor your people nearly as much in my opinion and one of the references you used earlier of you know plugging the hole in a leak is that you know I view border security and immigration reform slash policy that same way is that like right now I truly do believe border security is is is one of if not the most important [ __ ] thing our country faces right now because of that is that I equate it to you walk into the bathroom and the [ __ ] shooters leakin and and you and I grab mops and we try to [ __ ] mop up the the leaking [ __ ] like while it's still overflowing like that's what we're doing right now you know and and that's never going to solve anything but by fixing that you know one of the the enormous positive byproducts of that is a decreased sense of necessity for such robust surveillance policies in my opinion what do you think I think we are a country of immigrants I think we were founded on that right and I also I would say I would agree we are a country that was founded on immigrants but the world changes technology changes things that were not an issue previously can become an issue in the modern day I want there to be access and availability for people to come to this country because it the best [ __ ] country on the face of the planet people dismiss more [ __ ] every day blindly and under appreciate or don't even recognize what we have people would kill to have those opportunities guess what that's why they're trying to come here yeah I don't blame them for doing that now I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking like a terrorist it's a problem yeah and I enjoy it so I'm not gonna stop anytime soon we haven't defeated terrorism and it's it's actually just a military tactic right it's an effective tactic we're a numerically inferior force can control a numerically superior population through fear through doing [ __ ] that nobody could ever possibly believe by strapping bombs on kids and sending them to birthday parties and clacking them off so we've hardened our aircraft that was one step I look at this from a perspective of what would I want to do if I wanted to get people inside of the borders of the United States one of them would be through the internet right which is I mean that's a border that's a tough one to secure especially if you have freedom of access to information and speech San Bernardino shooters are a good example of how people can become radicalized without physical contact but there's other ways if I had a chemical weapon if I had a man-portable nuke it's so easy to walk into this country let alone skipping the immigration process in thinking about it from a Manchurian Candidate perspective right of playing the long game which I'm sure countries like China and national state actors are already doing and I'm sure we are too yeah that don't you know the twenty thirty year long game where they get worked their way slowly into these organizations where they have influence and they can exert that at the appropriate time so physical actual physical border security yeah that's an issue that we need to handle for sure because if I was looking at this from a perspective of wanting to do damage and get things into this country that they were not having access to here that's how I would do it yeah and then from an immigration policy like I said I understand why people want to come here but that doesn't mean that we can have or cannot have a very robust screening policy that does the best we absolutely possibly can do to make sure that the people that we are going to accept into the country are not here to do damage to it yeah I don't see why those two things are mutually exclusive you know yeah I mean to me the what I would do you know put put us in charge of the country for a [ __ ] 20 minutes which is a dangerous prospect that is more than enough for us to sink the ship yeah well I challenge accepted that's what it needs anyway right the I would swap the Department of Education and make a Department of Immigration you know Samoa is I mean to me that is a national level cabinet position that warrants you know justification and necessity to to be made is is that you know to have exactly what you're talking about because I agree like I don't think nobody should come here it's that [ __ ] what are you bringing to the table you know you don't come because it's you know the family policies are the goddamn lottery like that to me is absurd I it freedom needs to be earned yeah and the freedoms that we have they have been earned you know and they should be protected and I honestly feel quite often like were the only ones at the table play in the short game while other organizations and entities are playing the long game and their long game is the degradation of our society which is what's happening which is what we should be doing everything we can to possibly and practically defend against you know no I agree hundred percent climate change didn't see that one coming did you see it coming that's what she said all right so climate change to keep it fairly short is that what what you're taking on uh this is a huge hole in my personal game I'm actually trying to nail down a guy named Jeremy Jones who is a he makes snowboards but he also founded an organization called POW protect our winters winters and self-admittedly huge hole in my game I don't know because again I get bombarded with it's true it's not true there these people are idiots these people are geniuses and I I don't have the intellectual horsepower to crank my way through the raw data yeah I think is real that's my my assessment I mean our population is exploding yeah well I mean we do a lot of dumb [ __ ] is a race there's got to be consequences to that I just don't understand at the level that I should what those consequences are and I'm trying to close the loop on that yeah I mean I would say I'm probably similarly ignorant to it other than the fact that to me common sense would tell you you know basically what you said but then also just just take automobiles as an example is that you know if you can shut your garage door turn your car on and be dead in a matter of minutes like chances are with you know I think you need a hose for that too but you know yeah a [ __ ] host yeah you know chances are that having you know hundreds of millions of vehicles billions you know driving or if you know is probably not that great for us you know and that's one example you know the [ __ ] water and factories and plastics and and you know the [ __ ] beads and your toothpaste and antibiotics going down I mean you know so so yes like that there has to be a significantly detrimental impact from us as a species you know enacted on the planet to me I'm with you and I think more people should take a little more even-keeled approach and then it's like you know I I don't [ __ ] know how big of an impact that isn't and I don't think anybody really does I mean to just say well it's [ __ ] science and like yeah for sure there's some some negative impacts there's no two ways about it but just like with most things I talked about balance whether it's dog training life in general is it you know take a little more [ __ ] you know on on the fence approach to just saying obviously there's there's an impact and there's things that we can be doing better to what extent I don't know I mean the fact that most weathermen can't [ __ ] accurately predict what [ __ ] day it's gonna rain here three days in advance like you know tells you that if you're if you're telling me I mean [ __ ] thirty forty years ago they're worried about the next ice age you know so you know to me it's like temper it a little bit with it with the people that are running around throwing bricks through your [ __ ] truck window because you drive a diesel [ __ ] pickup it's like stop being an [ __ ] you know but campaign finance I mean is there a dirtier system in America than the political system I would argue to say that even porn is not as dirty as campaigns and in their finances yeah and again I mean I have a broad understanding and I do know that there have been exclusions now where corporations can donate as much as they want to and you know why would they do that it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out why they would I perform surgery on several rockets yeah I mean I just i disgusted by the whole system it's I think it should be burned to the ground it's again I don't want it to fail but maybe that's what we need and if you can and just inject I mean it's it seems to be that the more money that you have into it the more likely that you're gonna be able to succeed in your goals because you can out market yourself you can now promote yourself well none of these individuals other than clomp clomp well other than Trump claiming that he has the ability to do so I mean they don't have the ability to do that so they're taking in money yeah I mean it's in a normal monetary transaction you write a cheque for something you want something in return I mean I just I think it's a filthy system yeah to me I agree and I think you know similarly I don't want it to I don't want it to fail either to me like the the the simple solution is is have a cap on it but have it be obnoxiously [ __ ] low you know like literally like a hundred grand yeah you know even if you want to give a campaign okay a million fine but I mean for [ __ ] sake a billion dollar campaign you know it mean is is was in the upwards I mean the the Clinton machine it may have even been over that [ __ ] mean with all of their dirty [ __ ] overseas [ __ ] who knows maybe it was over a billion it wouldn't surprise me but you know to level that playing field so that you know we talked about under under-representation not being represented excuse me properly is that to me by by doing that by making it something obnoxiously low to where it might as well be nothing you know on a national scale to say a hundred thousand dollars is to me that that is what would would ultimately give the ability for you and I and the best of the ninety nine point eight percent of the population that that is the common man that makes up the fabric of our [ __ ] society that is how we are represented at that point yeah it is to have it be like to me while that may not sound like [ __ ] campaign finance like what big of it like to me it's a huge [ __ ] deal because of that I mean imagine I mean this well I don't think it'll ever happen but imagine if they had to run just on their principles alone yeah as opposed to the checkbook of the people supporting them yeah I mean it would be a different race yeah I didn't mean to me like having run a non-profit for a [ __ ] decade almost like I understand that there there are some elements that you have to be able to accommodate for in terms of the logistics to even be able to get your principles out on that level but I mean Christ with with social media and the internet and the in podcasts and the platforms that exist technology wise today you don't need much to get that message out you know and to me like you know if I could pinpoint one thing that that could potentially fix this this system it's actually that and for that reason is that when you when you cut all of that that monetary influence from corporations because it's not just at presidential campaigns it's I mean the [ __ ] delta county that i live in here you know i mean like the smallest time isn't Dan Crenshaw running somewhere in Texas down in Houston you so I put him through training awesome guys seal officer and one of the first things he was talking about internal to the community when he wanted to run was like guys I need your support I have to raise money no he can't run on just his principles alone he's got to be able to have money to combat the person he's running against because of their checkbook yeah yeah and so to me like again like a lot of people may hear are you talking about campaign finance like does it really make that big of a difference to me like it really [ __ ] does like like to me and that's why I'm ending with it in terms of talking about politics government of whatever is that is I truly believe by by doing something that simple the the profound impact that that would have on level that on legitimately leveling the playing field for the actual [ __ ] that are going there to fix the [ __ ] problems like that that's what fixes that you know without hitting the reset button to a degree in which this country just completely [ __ ] implodes like to me that that's the most common-sense step that we as a society could take and I know and you know and most people know that because of of the hooks that are in in Washington DC with the people that are in charge like that will never [ __ ] happen because of that because they know better and they're gonna protect that position like a mama bear and her [ __ ] cubs coming out of hibernation but but anyway I mean that's that's my take on it what that the last question I'm gonna ask you before we wrap it up is where do we go from here Andy dinner we're gonna break in the Tempurpedic you're gonna shake here and show me your expertise on the PETA campaign its supports your lower back and your aching muscles where do we go from here oh man that's a cool story bro hey so I just want to yeah um I think we might need to go backwards a little bit I think you know I don't think this country was founded on perfect principles and ideologies as much as we like to over romanticize we do like to over romanticize it and there's a lot of [ __ ] that's tied inside of there but I think that their baseline desires and values were true and I say that because of the Constitution they created and the Bill of Rights that came from that as well and the creation of this [ __ ] amazing country and I just find us drifting farther and farther and farther away from those values and I don't think that there's anything good down that road yeah I in my personal opinion that might mean something to some people and nothing to others and I'm fine with that I think we maybe need to go backwards a little bit I agree completely and that you know to me there should be a constitutionalist party you know and I really do think I mean some people may may I assume or cross wires with that being the Libertarian Party I don't to me like the brilliance in that document should drive every decision yeah it really should it's like what do you think about this what's the [ __ ] Constitution say yeah to me it's amazing how much foresight they actually had yeah and I mean to me like the the fact that that after all this time the the relevance that it still holds in our society even with the technology advances and cultural changes that we've gone through as a country it still is very very [ __ ] prevalent in our society in terms of the impact that it that it should play or can play if if it's you know adapted to correctly but I would love to see that I wish that that you know between campaign finance and just using that as our nation's Bible as it were to truly separate church and state but just you know make the constitution our Bible and use that as the compass because I you know to me it's it's the the the ridiculousness of it is that it's [ __ ] easy you know like you don't really concept yeah I mean like you don't really have to think about it's like what's [ __ ] Constitution say you know but it any rate I got to tell you man we've been been at it for over three hours now help me really we have yeah it's like good sex and II you can experience that over 300 that's being lost yeah well you're married right so yes true um the we want do but yeah we've been going out in a while we've covered a host of topics we flipped the page a few times we've gone through some stuff yeah and I did there's a couple things that that we covered inadvertently or you know through kind of a back channel to where we're I kind of skipped over it but it's been [ __ ] awesome having here I knew it would be you know the the depth of conversation that that we have is is pretty [ __ ] cool I think and I enjoy the hell out of talking through these things with you and and look forward to having you back maybe I can come up there and you have to it Matt do the show on on your on your stage but but you know again I can't thank you enough for coming down here for sharing your insight for making the trip looking forward to having a few drinks and shooting the [ __ ] getting some good food and and hanging out but again I you know it's been [ __ ] great having you here and there my pleasure make sure you come in so with that ladies and gentlemen where where can we find you online and and follow what you have going on and all the things that that our Andy well I'm contractually obligated to have social media from the sky I think what all of you so I I am present on social media I'm certainly not a powerhouse I have the you know the Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and they're all versions of my name um I think my ain't my Instagram is Andy stone 31 to my Twitter is Andy stump 77 because some [ __ ] has Andy stump for both of those Facebook is just my name and then yeah that's about it I mean if you want to look at see what I do I have a website Andy stone comm which again was somebody else's suggestion yeah and hosts a podcast is well called cleared hot I'm a little bit ahead of you on the episodes a number but you'll surpass me soon enough I don't know for sure it's not a race I tell you but oh you're racing me don't lie to me in out account now it's got a race to dinner Reubens raisin well good in terms of any of the fundraiser stuff work and people go to continue to contribute to that for the Navy SEAL foundation there's a couple ways one of them and when it comes to fundraising in general I with our DNA right we leaned towards the seal Foundation and I've had people ask me enough times now about organizations that are truer are closer to their families if you want to support but you and I are talking about in our community the Navy SEAL foundation is a great way to do so and just go to their website Navy SEAL foundation org if you were to give me a penny the pennies gonna go to them anyway so you can find anything you find associated with me will have a link to it at some point but just go to their website if you want and for everybody else you know who wants to make a difference when I was serving I never had a good answer for people who would say thank you most often but what can I do to help because I didn't understand how selfish I was being like we talked about earlier in helping the families does help so find a charity that supports whatever's closest to your DNA for Army and Air Force Marines Coast Guard whatever it may be and donate your money if you have extra money and if you don't donate your time you know there's always something that you can give but there's a lot of great charities out there find one in the avenue that you want to support and then just do that and if you're a parent and don't raise little [ __ ] indeed we're gonna end on that note for all the listeners again I can't thank you guys enough if it were not for your support this show would would not exist if it were not for a spectacular guests such as Andy here it transversely would also not not exist so I'm fortunate enough to just sit here and flap my gums a little bit I appreciate everybody listening tuning in and until next time this is you

Channel: Mike Ritland

Views: 278,687

Rating: 4.8378997 out of 5

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Id: S8qMpEbrQq8

Length: 197min 5sec (11825 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 07 2018