Jocko Podcast 431: You'll Get The Political Leadership You Deserve. With Robert F. Kennnedy Jr.

this is Joo podcast number 431 with Echo Charles and me Joo willink good evening Eko good evening we rode behind the gun Carriage uniformed Soldiers and Sailors with fixed bayonets marched slowly before the Kon as rows of drummers pounded a mournful beat the Grim sea of people on Pennsylvania Avenue was utterly silent but for the occasional whale of Anguish behind us was a long file of black limousines carrying all the other members of our clan behind them the sidewalk crowds stood nine deep all the way from the White House to the Capitol rotunda where Uncle Jack would lie in state mesmerized I studied the riderless ebony funeral horse that followed the queson with empty boots mounded backward in the stirrups the symbol of a fallen Prince looking back over his truncated life the gelding's name I Learned was Blackjack after General Persian he was tall with the fiery temper of a thoroughbred stallion and his and his rioting against the poor soldier who struggled to cling to his Bridal earned the horse national attention over the next two days [Music] [Music] like most children I saw my father as Invincible but having lived through Jack's assassination and other violent deaths I knew he was at risk nevertheless I understood that violence was not going to deter him from his course we had been raised to live life fearlessly and to fight for our principles without regard to personal Danger the bullets found him as he reached out to shake the hand of a $25 a week Mexican bus boy Juan Romero in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel my father died surrounded by his fiercest [Music] supporters we placed my father's flag draped casket in the last car of the train resting it on velvet chairs in the dining section high enough so that the crowds lining the tracks could view it as it passed 2 million people lined the tracks to bid my father farewell as we moved through the ghettos of new Newark Philadelphia Wilmington and Baltimore and through the rolling Countryside of Pennsylvania and Maryland the morning multitudes slowed the train so that a 2 and a half hour trip stretched to seven hours [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I could see onlookers crying covering their faces and kneeling with clasped [Music] hands in the countryside people held babies high in the air and shouted pray for us Bobby and those are some excerpts from a book called American values which is written by Robert F Kennedy Jr and this book Chronicles one of America's most prominent families a family that has served and sacrificed a family that has LED and followed a family that is surrounded by both commendations and controversy that family is the Kennedy family and it is a privilege to have the author of that book the son of Robert F Kennedy the nephew of John F Kennedy here with us tonight to share his experiences his lessons learned his values and to discuss his decision to follow his family tradition into to the political world Robert thank you for joining jao thanks for having me EO pleasure to be with you so I grew up in New England and I heard about your family as long as I can remember and it's uh incredible to be sitting here talking to you U just knowing the the lore behind your family and and believe me I heard from all sides uh I heard every bad thing that could be said about your family and every good thing that could be said about your family and everything in between and so it's it's definitely was very interesting to go through this book and hear your perspective and the way things the way things looked through your eyes through your life and uh pretty amazing to to to be able to experience it through the book what you experience at least to some extent so um let's talk a little bit about this and and you know it's interesting and I was kind of telling you this before we before we started recording like I said I'm from New England and I guess I'm old enough I'm 52 years old but there's a lot of people that might not fully understand the Family itself so a little bit about the family so you're born 1954 Georgetown University Hospital your grandparents Joseph and and Rose Rosa Kennedy and and she's the daughter of John Fitzgerald otherwise known as honey Fitz yeah he was the first Irish Catholic mayor boss and there was actually a he was the first Irish Catholic ghetto mayor there was a handpick um uh Irish Catholic mayor before him who was kind of uh a toou of the brahin the brahin were as you know in in New England they're they're kind of they're the Yankee class the original sort of descendants of of the Puritans who run New England uh they call the the wealthy ones are called brahin the poor ones are called swamp Yankees and U I know you knew a lot of them growing up in Maine they run the country stores and all those towns and uh and uh sell lobster um so but uh but my my grandfather honey Fitz was he had a a beautiful singing voice um and he which is how he got the name honey Fitz and he would my grandmother my my great grandmother uh Josie who I spent a lot of time with when I was little kid uh hated politics and so he relied on his daughter Rose one of his three daughters to to escort him essentially to be his escort in political events and she was a beautiful piano player and he would have these famous torch light parades where he would have mules pulling a flat bed trailer they had a piano M mounted on it she would play the piano and he would sing his favorite song his signature song was a Sweet Adeline and he'd sing these patriotic songs and Irish songs Italian songs French Canadian songs to the crowd and she would play and then and um he would give a speech and he was elected he was elected mayor he was the first mayor he was elected to congress and he was kind of one of the reigning he he had my uncle's seat in Congress later inherited by John Kennedy and he was a reigning political uh patriarch of boss and for for a long time his contemporary my whole family came over from Ireland in 1848 at the height of the Potato Famine and they arrived here with nothing one of my my great great grandfather was a Cooper he was a barrel maker and then his uh son uh owned a saloon and which was one of the common things that the Irish did but the Irish came over from from where from uh Ireland where they had been a colony of the British for for 600 years and they were not under under the law they were not allowed to practice laws or practice any profession they weren't allowed to uh learn to read or write in some jurisdiction some time periods I had a I actually visited my ancestral home over there and there was an article about a priest who had been hanged for teaching some of my ancestors how to read and what they call the Hedge schools these Secret schools behind the hedges um and they weren't allowed to own land or or participate in politics so when they landed in the United States they took to politics like a starving man takes the food and they became you know very Adept at it and they took over bosson essentially but my my so my great-grandfather on one side was honey Fitz joh Fitzgerald my great-grandfather on the other side was Patrick Kennedy and they were both in politics Patrick Kennedy was in the legislature he was a political boss in Boston and their children married my uh grandfather Joseph Kennedy was he won the mayor's cup for best baseball player in Boston and he ended up going to Harvard he was one of the first Irish Catholics to go to Harvard um he then became a bank examiner during the great he was the youngest Bank president in the country on at age 26 and during the Great Depression or just before in the 20s he made a huge amount of money on the stock market he got out in 1929 just before the crash and during the Depression he was one of 10 millionaires in the country people say that he was a bootlegger he was not um there and I show that in in the book and you know all the people have actually seriously examined that say yeah he had nothing to do with bootlegging yeah he was he had distribution rights for some whiskey but that really kicked off after the after prohibition was over right during during prohibition um he when they saw you know prohibition was passed I think it was the 16th Amendment 17th amendment I forget which but it was passed because enough States voted for it to put it in the Constitution and in order to get it out of the Constitution they had to have a certain number I think 26 States had to vote against it so when they got to around 25 and the other ones were about to topple he he went with Jimmy Roosevelt who was FDR Franklin Roosevelt's son over to Scotland and they brought one of the leading Scotch companies pinch and they shipped the entire inventory to Canada and they put it in warehouses like 2 feet from the US border so they knew that you know as soon as prohibition was over they shipped it all in and they made a killing on it and um and that was his invol his only involvement with uh with the liquor industry but he was um he was the first SEC commissioner he was the only guy from Wall Street who supported Roosevelt so he was very powerful in the Roosevelt administration and he became the first commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission he then became the ambassador to uh the court of St James which is Great Britain and my um my his nine children were were raised at least for those that fiveyear period in England and that was right at during the war and right at the beginning of the war so they you know developed a lot of relationships over there my aunt kick who was killed um in an airplane crash immediately after the war I'm married into the biggest house in England the Duke of devire she would would have been the Duchess of devire her husband was killed on the magut line I think three weeks into the war her brother Joe Kennedy my uncle was killed during the War uh after he completed all of his he was in the um the Naval Air Force he was he completed I think at that time he had to do 42 missions and then he came home or something like that and he committed he completed those he was on his way home and they asked him to volun for what was essentially a suicide mission which was flying the first flying bomb so they had developed a remote control the capacity to control the the controls of a aircraft while it was in the air they couldn't take it off but you can control in the air and so they loaded this plane with bombs and they were sending it over to the submarine base in Norway at Nazi submarine base in Norway and it was supposed to explode on impact but they needed a pilot to take it off and and then jump out in the parachute before they hit the English Channel and that's what he did he volunteered for that job there was a um a companion plane that was controlling it and as soon as they turned the remote control on the plane uh blew up and evaporated and H no part of him was ever found so that broke my grandfather's heart he was kind of The Golden Child he was the one that my grandfather had Ambitions political Ambitions for Joseph Kennedy and um his death my grandfather never recovered from 40 years later if you mention his name my grandfather would cry and um and he had everything he had every gift except for gray hair he was you know he was goodlooking he was brilliant and uh he was Charming people loved him um and he you know he he had a lot of you know personal courage Etc his younger brother was Jack Kennedy and during World War II he served in the Pacific on the PT boats his PT Boat was cut into by a Japanese destroyer in The blacket Straits near the Solomon Islands it was a a corridor known as the Tokyo Express and his uh his his boat hung two of his crew were killed one of them was badly burned he told that uh the burned uh uh crew member I think about six miles with a lanyard in his teeth he'd been on the Harvard swim team so he was a very strong swimmer and he brought his crew to a little spit of sand where there were some palm trees and they hid from the Japanese his Patrol boats for the next week he was presumed dead his family was told that he was missing an action presumed dead he was hiding in that on that spit of land and uh at some point some Solomon Island natives came by to gather coconuts and they were climbing the coconut trees my uncle came out of the the his hiding place and the Solomon Islanders didn't like the Japanese Japanese were't occup occupying Force um I uh my uncle communicated with him and then he carved his um his coordinates on a coconut and the Solon Islander put that coconut at the bottom of his canoe that was filled with coconuts paddled about 20 miles across the blacket Straits to the British base and gave the coconut to the commander and my uncle was then uh was rescued and my uncle had that coconut on his desk uh during his entire pre presidency in the Oval Office but I'll tell you something at his inauguration he invited the admiral of the Japanese Fleet who had been who had been piloting the commanding the Destroyer that cut him into so I got to meet him there but he also invited the two Solomon Islanders and uh and the British governor of the Solomon Islands was embarrassed by their appearance cuz they were Barefoot they never had shoes they were not I think they were wearing like loin cloths or something and they didn't speak any English so he did not want to send them as kind of ambassadors from the Solomon Island so he picked two more presentable Solomon Islanders Islanders and when my uncle met them he was like these are not the guys who rescued me and he was furious at the British Governor a years later my little brother Max went over um with with Robert Ballard you know the undersea explorer who found the Titanic and uh my brother was with they they went over to find PT 109 and they found you know I think the engine block or something they were not uh they were not sturdy craft and so it you know there was one not much left of it but during that trip he ran into the two Islanders who had rescued my uncle and they were both wearing t-shirts that said I Sav John F Kennedy and and ma says that when he met him he he he he fell to the ground and kissed Ma's feet and he kissed his legs and he had tears coming down his face and it was just an incredibly emotional um and very very moving uh moment for both of them anyway funny story yeah that's one of the many Amazing Stories um I want to I want to read a little bit from the book about uh well about your grandfather your grandmother and then kind of what was like growing up for you my father this is what your dad said Robert Kennedy my father went on to say of Grandpa what it all really adds up to is love not love as it is described with such facility and popular magazines but the kind of love that is affection and respect order encouragement and support he loved all of us our awareness of this was an incalculable source of strength and because Real Love is something unselfish and in involves sacrifice and giving we could not help but profit from it his feeling for us was not of the devouring kind as is true in the case of many strong men he did not visualize himself as a son around which satellites would Circle or in the role of Puppet Master he wanted us not himself to be the focal points so that's a interesting or I would say a different take than what a lot of people think also here from the book at Cape Cod Grandma alternated her afternoon lunches and evening meals with different sets of grandchildren it took courage to be late for a big house dinner like Grandpa she was prompt and rigid about decorum elbows off the table hair groomed Fork placed neatly NE next to the knife on our plate after dinner etc etc her love of learning along with her deep religious Faith were principal remedies against materialism which she declared eroded everything of value she was an Exemplar of platonic love of knowledge and beauty without the need to possess Grandma wanted us to be well-rounded interested in every aspect of life including politics music art science religion architecture history Sports and languages over dinner of chipped beef asparagus and angel food cake she inquired about our summer reading or instructed us on how to distinguish Doric from icon from I Ionic and Corinthian columns she led us into discussions of topics ranging from local politics to a African topography to gay look Renaissance she would accost us on the compound lawn and Grill us about endm ology multiplication tables or the Stations of the Cross or give us spot quizzes on History astronomy or religion it was scary that's that's definitely she had yeah she would um she'd read the papers every morning and she would also read all kinds of other reading material and if she she saw an article or a poem a stanza that she' lik she would clip it out and then she would pin it to her her her sweat so she had all of these clippings you know flowing off her sweater she looked like a Christmas tree and and uh and then she would go long walks every day she would walk probably eight miles a day and usually she'd pick up one of the grandchildren to walk with her and uh and then she'd quiz them on stuff read read from these clippings and quizzes on French or Spanish or uh you know American history this is what you say about growing up there this kind of describes Life as a as a young Kennedy in this day in that day and age every day we spent time on the ocean my mother and father took us on victura a 26 foot wooden day sailor for a picnic lunch on one of the nearby islands where we fished for Shand sand shark scup flounder puffers and sea robins gathered hermit crabs Periwinkles and scallops and or dug for tasty Steamers that betrayed their location on the title Flats by squirting with Captain Frank at the helm we also Al took lunch outings on Grandpa's wooden cabin cruiser the Marlin crossing the sound uh mon Monomoy or cudy hunk to explore the Elizabeth islands and Gorge from picnic baskets of Grandpa's favorite foods lobsters with hot butter and lemon corn on the cob Strawberry Shortcake Boston cream pie baked beans and clam chowder we children talked and caroused up on the bow while Grandpa sat a Stern with the grown-ups Uncle Jack my father Teddy my mother Aunt Eunice and Sarge Shriver Jean and Steve Smith and Pat and Peter Lawford hyport was a magical Paradise for me I love the endless pallet of colors the Vivid blue sea the bid the Vivid blue of sea and sky separated by Rich green Landscapes peppered with roses and daffodils each in their Seasons the gleaming white houses and offshore a penopoly of brightly hued spiners running down wind the ocean was always changing from Blue to every shade of green to gray to and almost black to match the moods of the wind and sky here surrounded by my family I could indulge my obsession with the natural world when I was 11 my father gave me a motorized Aqualung a two horsepower compressor wedged in a styrofoam ring that bobbed at the ocean surface pumping air down a 15t umbilical hose into a mask the perfect Contraption for exploring the shallow Waters off hyport I filled its tank with gasoline from the private gas pump adjacent to grandpa's garage and wearing this apparatus I swam with my little spear gun into dark Caverns the wrinkled rocks below the mile long hyannisport Jetty yeah that both the Marlin um was like a Hemingway esque you know uh uh cabin cruiser on mahogany and I uh a guy B bought it in Capri and when during my honeymoon with Cheryl we ended up staying at his house he's a guy who owns Tom shoes and uh and we have ended up going back on that boat every day and going to the Greek Islands was really like a magical magical you know renewal of my youth so that's the childhood it's like kind of uh amazing amazing childhood I was very lucky to have that and you know during the White House years every Friday afternoon three Marine helicopters would land on the football field we had a football field in front of my grandfather's house where we would play every day and there was a baseball field they President Kennedy's house all these all of the houses were uh the properties were all attached to each other so it was and then there there's probably even today there's probably 50 Kennedy own houses that are adjacent to each other in that town There's 110 of us or 105 of us last July 4th that were there my kids and all their cousins grew up kind of communally too but when I was a kid the the US one would fly up to hit Air Force Space which is on the cape um from Andrews Air Force Space in Maryland and bring you know basically the whole White House and my and then they would get on three Marine helicopters they land on the football field and my father would get off President Kennedy would get off my uncle my I my uncle Steve Smith who was the chief of staff at the White House my uncle s Sher who was the director of the Peace Corps my uncle Ted Kennedy who was in the US Senate who you know won Jack seat after Jack won the presidency and then there top AIDS Dave Powers what they call the Irish mafia um Kenny odonnell and they would all get off and and uh and spend the weekend at the Gabe and then there was people coming in of celebrity guests who they all had in their houses every week Judy Garland would be there Frank SRA all kinds of uh you know people and my grandfather had owned one of the biggest studios in would you know in path a Studios which later became RKO and he made about a thousand films and uh uh none of them incidentally very good but they were kind of family films that you know for all these theaters that were popping up in every little town in the Midwest and they needed something where there was nothing controversial happening so you know my my grandfather made Tarzan and all these you know very innocuous family films but because of his contacts in Hollywood he could get first r films and he had a theater in his basement so all of the families would Gather in that theater on Fridays and Saturday nights with their House cast and and watch films and you know after a day outside uh in the ocean oh it was a very kind of magical idealic idealic childhood and you're born in 1954 so when when JFK is elected it's 1960 so you're six seven years old something like that yeah you pretty good memories I was at the convention in 1960 I was at the convention in Los Angeles I think there's a picture of me in that book on the way home from the convention we we had a family airplane called the Caroline K which my my uncle used as a campaign plane and I sat in the seat next to him during that ride and there's a lot of us you know talking of pictures of us talking intensely with each other on that plane ride uh and he sent me a picture saying and with that he signed saying president gets his advice from all kinds of people and I love Uncle Jack and and your dad was appointed as atten attorney general yeah my father had been my uncle's Chief counsel in the mafia hearing I had attended the hearings I saw him Grill Sam Gan con I saw you know Joey Gallow I was there when that happened my mother would come and we'd sit in the front seat so my father then in 1960 became the campaign manager for my uncle and when my uncle won the presidency he appointed my father to be attorney general and um you know my father then you know they then kind of got introd they were he originally was really targeting the mob as attorney general that's what he was interested in he by 1962 civil rights had been their became their biggest priority MH you're uh once your once your dad becomes attorney general then you guys move to a different spot um called Hickory Hill well we we had moved there when I was two years old so we moved there in 56 okay so you'd been there for a while there all the all the time up at hyannisport was in was in the sum in the summer time but the winter we were always in Hickory Hill Hickory Hill had been was nny Bellum house it had been General mcan's house during the Civil War so it was It was kind of Union headquarters there was all kinds of Civil War artifacts that we could dig in the yard that my brothers and I when we came up from school we'd get shovels and just dig up the yard looking for stuff um apparently the Green Berets came and and built like a ropes course as well you mentioned that they built a ropes course which is still there by the way I was there recently and uh they built a really very dangerous room course and we had a lot of people going to the emergency room they had a uh they had a they um they had a a zip line I went from the top of Hickory Hill down into a Grove of pines and there was no real way of stopping itless somebody grabbed a tail rope on it before it hit the pine tree and a lot of people got hurt including Muhammad Ali who got his face really wrecked in those pine trees from the from doing the zipline yeah from doing the zipline okay uh you also say in the book here at Hickory Hill my life revolved around the seasons in the springtime it was rare not to come across a box turtle with its blood red eyes and Brilliant pattern shell or butterflies of a dozen species producing explosions of colors as they danced among the wild flowers once teeming populations of bats honeybees amphibian and flying insects have now dwindled to obscurity in Northern Virginia but in those days we could capture bats by lofting a bandan draped Stone High into the twilight sky and netting the flying mammals as they chase the floating hanky down to the ground salamanders and frog eggs crowded every roadside ditch and puddle transforming them into bubbling cauldrons thick with tiny poliwags on weekends I wandered nearby streams with David and Michael and my sister Carrie searching for frogs and crayfish snakes and mud puppies or spent time with my little brothers digging in the yard for civil war relics in the summer honeybees covered the Clover in our yard making Barefoot play a hazard David Michael and I would capture a dozen or so in a jar then let them go one at a time triangulating them to track their hive and then smoking them into sedation to get the honey without too many stings on Autumn weekends we would often visit Camp David while my dad conferred with Uncle Jack we explored the mountain Woodland sometimes with Secret Service guards turning over logs and rocks capturing red and Dusky salamanders winter in those days still brought snow to Northern Virginia David Michael and I spent long days building bob sled runs on Hickory Hill or skiing at a neighborhood neighboring farm that operated a small skoe we played pond hockey or practiced Barrel jumping on skates a once popular sport that seems to have lost its mighty grip on the American imagination do you remember the days of barel jum no I never have Barrel jump I'm not quite that old I've seen pictures of it and actually you know skateboard a crazy sport what was it you just line up barrels and jump them is that the deal you can jump with SK no wonder it didn't last very long so there you are you're grown up and again it's a you're you're like you said it's it's very clear in the book and you talk a lot about it and obviously this leads to what you ended up doing in your life but you are very obsessed with nature spend all kinds of time in nature um and as you're living this sort of movie like life there's also what's going on in the rest of the world and and what your uncle is doing with the in in as the president um 1961 April you got the Bay of Pigs happens and you you the book is has great perspective uh you did obviously what you remembered but also what you researched what you knew the stories that you put together and some really interesting Dynamics come out of the Bay of Pigs um primarily don't trust the generals don't trust the CIA don't trust the FBI yeah my uncle was lied to by you know not only by the CIA by the three top officials of the CIA um Alan Dallas Charles Capell who is the general military guy at the CIA and Richard Bissell and over the next year he fired them all because of the Bay of Pigs during the Bay of pig they had lied to him you know Nixon had planned the Bay of Pigs Nixon intended to be president at that time he had planned the Bay of Pigs and uh and my uncle came in and said my uncle felt very uncomfortable with it because you know why he felt like Cuba yeah Cuba's a this before the Soviets were in Cuba you know that late that Rose later but he said yeah we don't like the government in Cuba but you know it's a little tiny Island and we we don't get to choose what other people have as their government and he also he had grown up going back and forth to Cuba from Palm Beach you know they'd get on a boat and go over there and go to the casinos and stuff and he knew that Batista was um who was you know who was overthrown by Castro that Batista was Nightmare and that the ma he invited the mafia and to run the island and he was oppressing torturing people and he was he understood that Castro had been revolting against something real and that the US was involved in that so he had a more nuanced view of it and he didn't think America he didn't like Communists but he didn't think America should be telling other countries should be bullying other countries into telling them what kind of governments they should have and I Cabell and dllas and Richard bisell said look we've already armed these guys they're trained they've got you know weapons and they're they're dangerous and if you keep them here it's going to be a huge problem you got to let them go and these were these were Cuban Nationals that were in America training to go back and invade yeah and they were all kinds of people some of them were became very close to my dad particularly one called Harry Ruiz who was spent a lot of time with us as kids he went on he he had been an engineer he had been with Castro in this year my so Castro had come over in I think 57 from Mexico and they actually I talked with Castro I I spent a whole day one time I spent a lot of time with Castro but one of the times I visit him with Cheryl and my kids and we spent a whole day at his house talking about everything including the assassination everything and um you know he's a he's a really interesting guy and but he said he told my son Aiden who was then about 10 years old was asking him about because we had the day before we went to the Cuban national museum and we visited the the uh the grandmother which is the big ship which is in the museum now it's the it's a cabin cruiser I think it was like 60ft cabin cruiser that they had come over they had gotten a hold of that there was a bunch of revolutionaries Cuban revolutionaries training in Mexico and they had all come over in 57 and landed on the beach there 63 of them had been on that boat my my son Aiden said to him said to cash how did you decide which guys would come with they the ones who were most you know fervent about communism and cas and no we just brought the smallest people cuz we wanted to fit as many as possible on they were ambushed on the beach and 11 of them made it up into the mountains to the SE myr and that from there those 11 people created the Cuban Revolution three years later they marched into Havana on New Year's Day and you know and took the country it was really an extraordinary story and um and but one of those guys was a guy called Harry Ruiz who was an engineer he was he was just he ha he didn't like Batista he wanted democracy he had been very close to CASRO but um when CASRO had declared that that uh Cuba was was going to be a Marxist Society he had turned him against turned against them like many of the people who been in the revolution with him and gone over to the other side he had fled to the United States and then you know it was part of this this Bay of Pigs some of the other people were just um they were people who were involved with mob um which was running the casinos or they were like Bad actors from pti's army they were you know officers who were like bad guys they were like Killers torturers those kind of so it was a whole mix of people but a lot of them were very idealistic my uncle didn't want any part of it um because he thought the the US cannot be involved in overthrowing the government of another country that's not what we do as a country so uh so he was skeptical and they originally their plan was to have the US Navy use amphibious vehicles to drop the men off and he said we're not going to do that the US government can't have anything to do with this so they ended up getting a bunch of ships from United Fruit Company which owned all the sugar cane fields in in that had been nationalized by Castro oh they're the ones who dropped him you know who dumped him on the beach my uncle said um I want to make sure that you don't expect air cover from the United States military because you're not going to get it and do said don't worry when we land over there my uncle said how's this going to work cuz that Castro has an army 200 ,000 men how are you going to get 1,200 men to overthrow them and they said we have the whole thing wired that as soon as they land there the the uh the nation is going to rise up we have people from every sector of the country are going to rise up and overthrow him so they were just lying to him they also he also you know he knew a lot about military operations and he said you're landing on a beach here it's not like when Castle came and landed in the mountains where he could go hide there's no place to hide here it's a beach with a swamp and they said don't worry we got the whole thing under control so as soon as they landed there and CASRO met him he knew they were coming and they were dying on the beach um douas went back and said we need air cover and my uncle said no and my uncle ler said to his age they want they thought that I was a young president who would be terrified of of having this you know this terrible failure and would give them the air cover and send in the Essex which was the aircraft carrier and he and he said he wasn't going to do it he took public blame for the pay of Pigs invasion but privately he said to his AIDS I want to take the CIA and shatter it into a thousand pieces and Scatter it to the winds then after that he fired bisil cabel and um and uh Dallas and he tried he wanted to appoint my father to run the CIA because he recognized the CIA was a huge problem for our country and um my grandfather said you can't do that you can't have your brother as the head of the spy agency it's just it's got a bad look to the Optics are wrong and he said it'll be like stalling a Molotov if they were brothers you know they essentially were brothers um but you know you you could turn that spy agency against the American Republic pretty easily and you got to make sure you know to have some daylight between you and the between the president the executive and and the spy agency so they br again a guy called John mccon who was a very Pious Catholic and he was a republican conservative and they were confident that he would end the monkey business over there but but in fact mcon uh never knew what was happening there nobody ever told him what was really you know happening at the CIA and you know the indications are dullas continued to run it from a distance and when my dad when my UNC was killed in 63 um I came home that the first thing my father did was to call the desk officer at the CIA and say did your people do this that was his first instinct the second call he made was to Harry Ruiz this Cuban who was at our house all the time and he Harry Harry was then in Washington DC with a famous writer who had written a book about the b pigs a famous American journalist they were both in the hotel room and my father said the same thing to him did your people do this was the Cubans the CIA Cubans and then um I came home the early that I was pulled out of school my mother picked us up I was brought home with my brothers from Sidwell Friends when I arrived at home my father was walking in the lawn at Hickory Hill with John mcon and we went down and hugged him and mcon went back to the CIA the CIA was only less than a mile from my house so we W rode our horses through the CIA every morning my father took us on a horseback riding nine little kids horseback riding at 6:00 every morning before breakfast and we always rode through the CIA campus and mcone would come to our house during the springtime and summer to swim every day at 4:00 after he got out of work my parents were close to him and he and mcon was the first one to arrive at the house and my father took him for a walk in the yard and said did the CIA do this and said no you know I don't know anything about it but so anyway that was his first instinct we had Green Berets at the house all the time my my grandfather I mean my uncle was very close Green Berets my uncle started the Navy Seals but he also the Green Berets had been started earlier but the Pentagon would not let them wear their paray and my uncle ordered the Pentagon to change that rule so there was this we ended up going a lot to Fort Brag um we saw the you know the we ran the obstacle courses there did the zip lines and then they came to our house and in one of the pastures they created this really hairy obstacle course um and uh uh and and we had Cubans at our house all the time my when we rode in the morning we would ride to the houses of some of the Cubans cuz my father and my mother found homes for them when they came back to the country and they made sure they got into schools they made sure all of them could find jobs a lot of them were put in the US military the ones because my father you know his job was to get all those Cubans out of jail and and C CASRO captured 12200 of them and my father was my uncle was heartbroken and said we got no matter what the cost we got to get those guys out of jail and so my father's a year negotiating with Castro and um he sent two of his AIDS John on Nan and uh and Ray and and John Donovan who was his famous byy who had been top of OSS there's a movie about him that came out last year about a deal that he made to free his spy in in East berland but he was a famous spy my uncle sent the two of them down to negotiate with castra they spent a year every weekend in Cuba and they went all over Cuba they went to all castra would go to baseball games every weekend and they they so they would go to the baseball games with Castro it became very close to him and he they said that when he walked in the stadium everybody in the stadium would jump up to their feet and cheer and they were looking at that and they said this is not orchestrated these people love him and they told that to my father and my uncle and it it started opening their eyes about Cuba and the last day when my my uncle's life he had an ambassador at veradero beach talking with CASRO about dayon and my uncle said uh we don't care what kind of government you have um we want two things from you one is get rid of any Soviet military in Cuba number two stop your efforts to to disrupt um Latin American government's Chay efforts and uh to disrupt the Latin American governments that were part of the alliance for progress and Castro said we need to talk but we need to do it when Jay is not around so my uncle had a an ambassador with him at verad darl beach the day that he was shot talking about dayon and ending the Embargo and they were progress through that yeah you know it's interesting uh I wrote a book called Extreme ownership and it's about when you mess up you know you take ownership of it and that's an interesting fact uh when your uncle when the when the Bay of Pigs went down there's some and I forget the exact numbers but there's some uh sort of of report that came out that his his approval numbers went up after the Bay of Pigs because he got on television said hey I'm the senior guy I'm responsible for what happened this is my fault and his and his approval numbers actually went up when that that happened it was the lowest point of his presidency and he he actually considered resigning at that time he was absolutely heartbroken cuz here he was two months in office and he made this you know disastrous judgment go but having been in the military having been around politicians and and the Pentagon I can see how they're thinking oh we listen if we just get over there we just we get these guys on the ground yeah we hit the beach head like he's going to have no choice of course he's going to say yes he's going to give us air we get get ourselves a nice little war going on here and we can we can do whatever we want to do do whatever we need to do you can see that so for your uncle to say nope it's not happening and again how can you portray that you can portray that as Kennedy let those guys on the beach and didn't back them up that's one way to portray it the other way to portray it is oh Kennedy didn't get another War started by saying look I'm not going to do this and and unfortunately the the I guess they didn't have a good enough relationship to where they understood your uncle and that your uncle was not going to appease what they wanted to do yeah and and you know they they they really thought he was a traitor the myami station particularly which was the cia's biggest station it was run by a guy called Bill Harvey and he hated my uncle after that just despise him and despise my father even worse and um and it was the same group of people it was David Atley Phillips who was the propaganda Chief at the CIA he did the 1954 coup in um in Guatemala where they overthrew yakoba aren the you know the greatest Democratic leader in the history of Latin America again it was the United Fruit interesting thing dullas was the attorney for United Fruit and for Texico and so he was overthrowing leaders whoever screwed around with Texico or United fruit when he became he was in solvent gromwell and they were the attorneys for all these big corporations and David Talbert's written the the best book on Dallas which is riveting is called Devil's chessboard and he says in that book that that Dallas was incapable of distinguishing between US national interests and the Amile interests of the corporations he had he had represented at s Cromwell well um he he uh that group of people in the Miami station were also part of this larger group with David Morales and operation Phoenix who were running the Vietnam War if the Vietnam War was completely a CIA Enterprise the CIA owned the go um the the pro provincial governments and like I I think 60% of the prenal governments in South Korea South Vietnam were um were were CIA agents who are actually running those provincial governments so they were it was their issue well my uncle they kept they tried to get my uncle to go into LA and he refused he negotiated a peace with the Soviets which they considered treacherous they tried to go to get him to go into Berlin in 62 during the Checkpoint Charlie um uh confrontation and he refused he was able to peacefully negotiate that with kushev and then they started corresponding with each other and he they in store hot lines so they didn't have to go through the state department at the CIA they could talk directly with each other I grew up in a house where there was a red phone you know my uncle's house that we knew if if we picked that up KF would answer because they wanted to be able to talk directly with each other which is what we should be doing with Putin right now oh and then um and so and then my uncle they really wanted to go into Vietnam and he refused to send combat troops he said I'll send advisors these advisers were mainly Green Berets they were helicopter Pilots they were mechanics those 16,000 it was fewer troops than he sent to get one black man James Meredith into o into Old Miss so that's what he had in Vietnam and he heard that a Green Beret and on October 22nd uh 1963 he heard that a Green Beret had been killed in Vietnam and he asked Walt Rosal he said to Walt Rosal bring me a casualty list and because they weren't supposed to be fighting you know that their or their Rules of Engagement are they don't participate in combat but of course they do because they can't resist down so they um so he brought him back a Cas and and 75 men had died over there and my uncle said that's too many I'm pulling them all out and that afternoon he signed National Security order 263 ordering all troops home from via all US military personnel out of Vietnam by 1965 with the first thousand coming home in December 63 beginning about 6 weeks later after the order well 30 days after he signed that order he was murdered and then a week after that LBJ his successor uh remanded the order and then LBJ after the talken golf Institute nine months later sent 250,000 troops over which they they had been asking Jack to do and he refused and uh and then it became an American war and then you know Nixon came in sent 560,000 over 56,000 never came back including my cousin George sko who died in the Ted offensive um but you know that's like you say it's it's all Mission creep yeah um you mentioned it quickly but you your your dad and your uncle also went after the mob hard yeah and that was no easy task yeah I mean they my father during part of his was shocked to learn about the mafia and at that time his employee Jay Edgar Hoover uh was jayed G hooer was an interesting guy right okay yes he certainly was but one of the things he did is he loved gambling loved the horse loved the track and he was going to um uh he was going to the he went he he took his his partner you know in the modern sense the word partner um to uh to on their vacations and weekends he would take them to the uh the track the the horse tracks in California which were run by Mickey Cohen's mob and he was getting markers from the Mobsters so his position was the mafia didn't exist and you know my he was furious at my father because my father was like obsessed with the mafia my father when I was a little kid there was a lot of police departments that realized the mafia was running their towns one of them was the Los Angeles police and they had a you know they had an organized crime division the New York police had an organized crime Division and they were infiltrating the mob and they were and my father would come home he would go on raids with them of you know these um uh card houses and gamling houses and he would come home with these artifacts and you know he gave me one night a a pack of marked cards that they had confiscated and and a pair of red tinted glasses where if you were wearing those glasses you could see the patterns on the back of the cards and if you memorize those patterns then you knew what you know the cards were um but my father was you know was in a war with with Hoover during that time and hoover then so who he was trying to prosecute the mafia and which he did he had not only FBI but US Marshals and they were harassing Gian kanana I think he did 650 prosecutions including some of the guys who were involved in my uncle's death Sam Jan K Santos traic who was the Tampa boss Jan Conor was the Chicago boss and Carlos Marcela who was the boss of um of New Orleans orans in Dallas and Marcelo was an interesting guy who was a Tunisian he was only about I think he was wasn't even 5 foot tall but he was absolutely homicidal and um my father deported him twice at one point he dropped him to had an airplane bring him to Guatemala and then a helicopter and they dropped him in the middle of the Jung go barefoot cuz he was illegally in this country in ille you know he wasn't was was not here legally and my and he was actually in trial when my uncle shot and a lot of the people who were involved in the assassination had deep ties to the you know to that New Orleans mob yeah it's it's uh and I I usually say this when I'm reading from a book I haven't said it yet I'll say it right now there's so much detail in the book I mean the book is like 400 and something pages long and you go into so much detail so much research so much memory so get the book for these details but that you really lay out this kind of conflict that I think a lot of people don't understand how you have different different departments different organizations within the government that are at odds with each other and like a real like the most friendly of these is between let's say the Army the Navy the Marine Corps and the Air Force and they they they all oh well they're trying to get a little bit more money and they're trying to get a little bit more Manning and so you have this sort of little rivalry where they're all competing but it's it's all very much in the clear it's all very obvious to to the to the world that this is what's going on so you know they the budgets are all in the open but when you start talking about the FBI you start talking about the CIA you start talking about the marshals and then you throw in the mob and you throw in the Cubans it is like it is it is it's Mayhem it's Mayhem and so that's what your uncle was up against and brought your brother in as well to to go against but it's it's you have all these competing and it's not really just competing for money they're also it's competing ideologies and so you had Jay Edgar Hoover who like you said was an interesting person and he's got his ideology that he's trying to protect and and push and that goes against what what your un trying to do in a lot of cases and you brought up you know and this is a huge part of the book and a huge part of your your family's Legacy as well and that is the the Civil Rights Movement that's happening I mean this was like again it's it's Mayhem it's movies get made about these incidents uh you talked about the the old miss getting James Meredith enrolled at Old Miss what do you remember about that from a perspective of what's going on in the country what does that look like well that was all happening at Hickory Hill so my you know my father would be the Hickory Hill was a satellite White House and we had phones in every room with five lines on them which nobody else had I never knew anybody who had you know five lines in their telephone and they were directly connected to the White House switchboard so they could literally get anybody in the country on the phone within minutes um but and the you know there would be US Marshals at our home there would be the entire civil rights staff from the White House meeting in our living room or around the swimming pool and having lunch and planning these actions what are we going to do and I'd sit behind the couch and listen to them my father when when important things happen like when they integrated University of Alabama University of Mississippi um or when they were fighting with the Freedom Writers my father would write letters to each of his kids and tell them what was happening he also talked to us every night at the dinner table and he'd either talk about history he was a incredible military historian and he would talk about the battles that um That Changed History you know the deats Andes and whatever but you know all of these great battles and he give give us very very vivid descriptions of those battles but he also would talk about what was happening in the white house and he you know I have a letter at home that says dear Bobby today we nationalize the uh we federalize the National Guard and Alabama and we got six Negroes the six Negroes into the University of Alabama and I hope these troubles are gone when you go to college so you know he he wanted to keep us kind of updated which his father had done for him on current events and um the story with my father my my dad in the civil rights movement and my uncle call they grew up in Boston and like you know having grown up in New England they just it was Civil Rights was not an issue there it wasn't even on their radar they didn't know people who had been they didn't know what was happening in the South they assumed that you know the blacks that they met the very few that were in Boston rock expen that you know their lives were much like other immigrants you know and um so they they didn't it just wasn't on their radar and then during the 1960 election um they needed to win the South Nixon and you know the South was going to be key to the election that's why they chose Linda Johnson as the vice president because that was the way to win Texas but they were also worried about the other deep sou states which traditionally had been always voted for the Democratic party with a psych the solid South but during the Roosevelt era um whites in the South began defecting a little bit to the Republican party and blacks started voting Democratic some blacks a a majority but enough to change the elections the few blacks who were allowed to vote you know did they there were as a voting block and but the whites were more important and the only way you could hang on to whites in the South was by um expressing an antipathy for civil rights either indirectly or through dog whistles whatever so my my father who's the campaign manager had made deals with three Southern Governors powerful Governors including van dner from Georgia that um they would support JFK and but all of them had said if you get involved with Martin Luther King we're g we're out cuz we can't stand up for we cannot stand that take that from our own constituents so my father was kind of avoiding King and made sure his brother avoided King Nixon was doing the same thing now Nixon had been very close to King they had a strong relationship and Republicans had traditionally been on the side of blacks in the South since the Lincoln and the Civil War so um so in October of 1960 right before a month before the November election King gets arrested at a lunch counter sit in into calb County Georgia and he didn't even want to do it he was pressured to do it by some young you know uh guys radicals John Lewis and others from SN Southern non-violent Coordinating Committee which is another group and he reluctantly did it and then he got arrested and then he's in the dacal county jail at 4:00 in the morning cops come into this jail cell drag him out they don't tell him anything they throw him in the back of the police car they head south he's saying where I'm going they won't talk to him and he said they would brought him down at what he called Cracker country a place in Georgia where you could easily Lynch him and nobody would complain so um he and what they were really doing they bring him to a state prison and they threw him the sa prison but they didn't tell ketta his wife where he was and she was terrified so she called sge dver my Uncle who was always involved in the Civil Rights issue and they she said I tried to talk to Nixon who's then vice president could helped her he won't answer my phone calls and that destroyed King's relationship with Nixon that in this incident he calls sge driver and she says can I talk to the president um sge then goes into my uncle's office and his AIDS are in there in the Oval Office and and serge says I want a favor from you I've never asked one before and I talked to you alone cuz he knew the aids would not let him make this call the AIDS old leave the room and Jack then hears the story and says yeah I'll call her so he calls ketta my father then a few M moments later finds out about it and he goes to sge dri angrily and he said you just lost us the election and my father then goes home he's out ofal changing cuz he's got getting on an airplane and he starts thinking about it you know that they arrested this guy for doing nothing and now they moved him in the middle of night now they might kill him and he just he's he he he didn't know much about civil rights but he hated bullies and in fact when he he had played football for Harvard and they had gone on the road and there were he had learned for the first time that blacks could not say a black teammate of his couldn't stay in the hotel and he had raised holy hell and then at University of Virginia he had invited this black statement Statesman Ralph bunch to speak there and he learned about the segregation laws that he could not address a integrated audience and for and he raised such hell at University of Virginia that it was the first integrated audience in the history of the state and the state institution so he had a sort of a sense of it he just didn't have you know the whole view so on the way to the airport he starts steaming and thinking about it he hates bullies he gets the airport he goes to a phone booth and he gets the um he gets the Dalal County sheriff on the line at home and he says this Robert Kennedy my brother's going to be president in a month if anything happens to Dr King we will remember who you are and you will not forget it and then he calls the judge and says you know says has a similar conversation with him and he gets Jack to call the governor and uh Jack calls V dner and says can you get him out of jail and Van dner says I don't think I can and Jack said well listen to what I'm saying I want you to try and then I want you to tell me call me back and tell me what you have done and the next morning King was released so King never made an endorsement but his father daddy king spoke I think at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church that week and on Sunday and he had previously endorsed Nixon and he changed his endorsement to Kennedy and and that word spread throughout the black community and my uncle won the Black vote and because of that he won the presidency because it was the narrowest margin in the history of our country at that time so um I think that was one of the things that kind of cemented the relationship and then they just became partners with king and the Civil Rights Movement they um you know they did the 1963 March on Washington with King they handled all the arrangements uh and uh that was the that was the famous speech where King says you know I have a dream I Have a Dream speech um and then my father had a very close relationship with king after Jack died and and you know when King was killed my father gave this impromptu speech to the in the black G in Indianapolis and I was the only city that didn't Riot that night and it's attributed to the speech that my father gave and before King died my father and king um uh collaborated on the Poor People's Campaign which was summons all the poor people in our country to Washington DC and when the day that we you know we buried my dad we drove past these encampments there were 10,000 men encamped on the mall in Washington DC and who you know both my father and King who had died two months before had summons there and now both of them were gone um rewind just to rewind a little bit you talked about LBJ you talked about Vietnam um one of the quotes from your uncle was in the final analysis it's their war and that's why he had decided to bring everyone back from there LBJ I don't like LBJ um I guess if I'm allowed to not like someone that I've never met before I I don't like him and I also throw into that basket um mcnamer and in the book you seem to shine a light a a friendlier light on mcnamer than I do it it seemed like maybe mcamera um was trying to do his best to control LBJ and just he felt like if he didn't kind of go along with what LBJ wanted LBJ would just get rid of him and someone else would and drop a nuke on North Vietnam yeah he I mean that's always a dilemma and you know was a dilemma for a lot of the people who um who said who were criticized for staying with Trump you know then who said no I stayed there because it would have been so much worse or other presidents you know um so I you know I I don't know history I think is history judges him like you do very harshly and I think that did you see the movie fog aore yes and what how did you think he came out of that I felt the same I really felt ter he looked terrible yeah I and I I just yeah when I when I look at the Vietnam War and the books I've read and um mcneer what is it MC Maris folies I think is what he lowered the the the mental or the uh the Acuity score so you basically had people that were mentally disabled being accepted into the military so they could fill the slots they needed I mean it just it was just a disaster across the board and and the fact that they knew you know halfway through the war and that they that they weren't going to win and they had they knew they weren't going to win and they still lost another 20 or 30,000 men so yeah all those things make me really kill killed a half a million of them and killed a half a million of them um after after that because they killed a million all together yeah and the fact that LBJ during you know he his whole his you he was in the military but he kind of got in as a political person and he went on one operation flying to bomb somewhere in the plane uh he got a silver star from this the pilot of the plane that saved the plane didn't even get a silver star and he got so I just yeah I I have a grudge against those guys I guess yeah I think he came from I think my father and Uncle um brought him into the defense department because he was a good manager you know he'd been the CE of the for motor company and he was you know they wanted a um they wanted some Republicans in the administration he had been a republican my father really liked him personally and I you know sort of grew up with him and his kids what I would tell you I and I wouldn't differ with your judgment about him I think you know there's a lot of different ways as you know of judging you know men and character and you can never be completely sure but there's a lot of bad evidence against him my father thought uh my father called him every single night I think I write about this in the book literally every night and my mother says before he went to bed and said you got to publicly resign and uh and and magnamar would keep saying to him I can't do it if they if I do it they're going to drop a nuke on on anoi so you know if so who knows yeah um you also have the um the the obviously the you mentioned it briefly but the the whole thing that went happened in Berlin and then the big Berlin speech that JFK gave um Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect but we have never put never had to put up a wall to keep our people in then like like you mention um JFK gets or JFK gets assassinated what what's going on in your world when that happens I mean what's going on in the Kennedy family when that happens how do how do things change as anybody says what do we does it does it strengthen our resolve you know I I I have a friend that's a ER doctor and he always tells the story that if a family has problems in and something tragic happens to the to the to the family like they someone gets killed if the family has some fissures it can either explode the family and they come apart or it can actually make them Tighter and stronger and strengthen their resolve it would appear from the outside that it strengthened the resolve of the family when your uncle got killed what did it look like from the inside I don't know you know I'd have to think that through because I think of everything was happening all at once first of all my father was utterly uh shattered he was bereft and he was um you know he was staring out into space he was trying to do his best to be apparent to us and I think um the one time that he kind of escaped from um the very Grim thoughts that he was having was when he was with us that he would play sports we'd play football we'd play in the pool he started doing a lot of wilderness trips um with us you know started doing a lot of like mountain climbing climb M Kennedy the tallest unim peak in the hemisphere he uh he took a whitewater kayaking which we all learned when we were very very young this is a time when people were not doing white water in our country um and uh and then doing other kind of extreme sports he also um he was he went through kind of a uh I think what it was a a healthy sort of uh philosophical reconstruction where he he never left the Catholic church or his faith but he he kind of had this very simplistic belief that you know that good was rewarded here on Earth um that you know that that that good would ultimately triumph over evil and that you know good people got some kind of reward like here on earth a tangible war and his brothers shattered all that you know anything he believed about you know a beneficent Universe was now gone and he had to he had to reconstruct a philosophy that was much more stoic in its nature so he started looking for you know outside of the Catholic faith he read Shakespeare he read the existentialist he read The Poets um he read a lot of the Greeks and um he he immersed himself in in the philosophies of stoicism um I talk a lot about you know my father two weeks before he died he gave me a book uh called um by Kemo called the plague and that book is uh that book and I've talked about this before but that book is about a and he said to me with kind of a special intensity I want you to read this book and he he would tell me that about poems or books all the time but this time there was something about how he said it and then he died two weeks later and so I ended up reading that book several times to try to unlock the key of what why it was so important to him the book is about a doctor in a in a quarantine City North Africa that where there's an unknown plague that is ravaging the city and people are dying it's very high infection fatality rate nobody knows how to treat it anybody who comes into contact with sick people ends up sick and almost all of them die and it's the story of a doctor who is um of a conversation that he's having with himself about whether he should leave his quarters and try to treat people and he's almost certainly going to die if he does that and there's nothing really good that's going to come of it of course because he doesn't know how to treat him nobody does and so what's the point of doing it shouldn't he just take care of himself in the end he ends up going and doing his duty and he consoles people he gives them consolation he ministers with them as he dies and you know and Kimu was uh was an existentialist but he was uh he was kind of the legga of the of the existentialists were of the stoic philosophy and the stoics um believe that uh you know that life is kind of meaningless the universe is absurd but that somehow through individual character and acts of courage we can bring meaning and order to an to a disorderly universe and there uh their hero was Copus Copus is cursed by the gods to push a boulder up a hill for the rest of Eternity and he's got to push it over his his mission is to push it over the edge of the cliff but every time he gets to the very top he pushes it all all day when he gets to the top of the hill just before it rolls over it rolls back on him and it mangles him in some new way every day and then and then it rolls all the way down to the bottom of the mountain he has to go down there all night long and then he comes back and pushes up the next day of a normal person would look at that and say this is a very miserable man but in the view of the stoics Copus was a happy man and Camo wrote a book about him called cisus smile where you can see him smiling because ultimately happiness comes from doing your duty from putting your shoulder to the Wheel from undertaking the the task the unpleasantries of Life the difficulties and challenges of life and doing the right thing and and that's the only source of happiness and order in the universe everything else is just you know window dressing but true happiness comes from hardship and from you know from pushing the from challenging an AB the UN absurd and meaningless Universe through development of personal character so um you know I think my my that's a very clear explanation as if that's what your your father was thinking after your uncle gets killed and a few years go by and he decides that he's going to he's going to run for president himself that that that actually makes perfect sense yeah um well you you you you mentioned this briefly but I think it's actually uh worth reading and that is so so now fast forward a little bit again get the book get all the details but your dad's now running for president and um oh I'm going to go to the book on April 4th my dad was scheduled to give a campaign speech in the roughest part of Indianapolis black ghetto a place no white American politician would go as voters were sparse and safety concerns manifold just before he headed into the inner city neighborhood he learned that an assassin had murdered Martin Luther King Jr in Memphis my father staggered in anguish at the news oh God he said when is this violence going to stop the Indianapolis Police Chief warned him not to enter the neighborhood when my father said he was going in the captain withdrew his police escort most of the electrified crowd were unaware of the tragedy as he climbed on the flat bed to address them the night was cold I have bad news for you for all of our fellow citizens and people who love peace all over the world and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight the crowd gave a collective gasp of horror then my dad went on to speak directly for the first time about the circumstances of Jack's death his brother was killed by a white man speaking from the battlefield of his own psychic struggles with a calm but breaking voice he urged everyone quote not to be filled with bitterness with hatred with a desire for Revenge we could respond with violence and polarization he said or we can make an effort as Martin Luther King did to understand and to comprehend and to replace that violence that stain of Bloodshed that is spread across our land with an effort to understand with compassion and love my dad's Indianapolis speech was not an Artful rehearsed oratorical Masterpiece it was an anguished visceral expression of shared Agony he had never spoken about his brother's death like that before the crowd sensed he was doing something unusual and gave them gave him their hearts Indianapolis was one of the few cities with large black communities that did not explode in riots that night 119 other cities were not so fortunate and President Johnson deployed 75,000 soldiers to quell the violence casual included 2,500 injured and 39 dead from our boarding school in Rockville Maryland we watch Smoke Rise over the capital and Troop trucks roll past all day what the hell did that feel like in the country at the time I I I I can't imagine it it must have seemed like everything was just kind of hanging on by a threat yeah I think it was I mean there you know there's a story I think that I wrote in there about my father toward flew home and toward Washington DC that morning and it was just a you know burning heaps of rubble Southeast Washington and um my father s of climbed over a big pile of a of a U of A A A exploded building and was coming down this Rubble pile and there was a black woman standing in the street looking up at him through the smoke and when she recognized him she said uh oh it's you I know I knew you would be here so that was you know I think that that was um you know that was the place that he began to fill in the American psyche and then I mean you have LBJ drops out of the race and then your your father gets killed um how old are you at that time 15 I was 14 I was with him I was out with him when he was shot my little brother David was and some of my other younger siblings were um but I you know he was brought to Good Samaritan Hospital I was woken up in my bed was in a boarding school and in Washington outside of Washington DC I was woken up by the priest and he said he didn't say what happened he just said there's a car waiting for you I was woke up maybe 5:30 in the morning and I was taken to um to the I think it's Andrew's Air Force Base and then put on uh with some of my siblings the older kids who were not traveling with my father Kathleen and Joe um and myself I'm I'm the third of 11 kids um that we were sent out in Hubert humph plane who was the vice president to uh to Los Angeles and my father died that night so I was with him when he died and then we brought him back to um to wash we brought him back to to uh to to New York and I it was interesting I mean he had he didn't have police protection he didn't want protection from the LAPD because they were very racist and the in in the black communities which were supporting him they were hated and then the Secret Service he wasn't entitled to Secret Service that time you you didn't get it until until after the convention whoever won the convention got Secret Service the FBI Hoover offered him FBI protection but he thought that that's just going to be Hoover spying on me and reporting to Johnson whatever I do so I'm not going to do that so HEI he uh the Oakland Raiders The Fearsome Force some had you know these um big linemen from the oak Oakland waiters who were his personal bodyguard and and then you know Rosie Greer also raer Johnson who was a Deaton and then when he went on the road he had this odd assortment of escorts he had a black panther party which was acting as his as his bodyguard and uh and the Hell's Angels and when we uh which is you think of it today it's weird and I remember when we took off the they all rode their bikes out onto the runway and they were kind of like escorting you know us to which you know of course today you couldn't get away with but back then the runways were very accessible and so you had about 100 bikers on the runway and well I don't think they never understood how the plane engine work but when the jet took off it was it blew a bunch of them off their bikes and we were watching from the plane windows and that was just one of these little things that vignettes that you know in a very weird period we flew him to New York and we waked him at St Patrick's Cathedral I remember you know I was one of the Paul Bears who we brought him down and it was Fifth Avenue was just jammed you know people8 or n foot deep the whole length of fifth AV Fifth Avenue the part of Fifth Avenue and we the coffin was very heavy and we brought him down the steps there and there there was a crowd of blacks who were singing um the battle him of the Republic Glory Glory H Allelujah as we came out and this this very very large black woman stepped you know in front of the coffin as we were we were trying to Lug it down the that staircase and she collapsed on the stairs and she was waving a handkerchief at the coffin saying you know you've done your best you done your best was very you know emotional and uh you know you can rest now she was saying and then um we brought him to Penn Station and we brought him down to uh Pen Station to to Union Station in Washington and and as I say in the book it was supposed to be a 2 and 1/2 hour ride but it was 7 hours cuz there was a couple of million people on on the tracks and there was the whole panoply the crosssection of the American Experience blacks and whites and that we were going one mile an hour the windows were all open on the train the people on that train you know Arthur C later said would have made the most interesting government in American history they were HS and economists and you know civil rights activists and Indian rights and Hispanic rights and um you know some of the great musicians and Poets um in the world at that time and uh ketta King was on there with us and but we were going one M hour or so when we went through those train stations we could hear people singing that you know there thousands of blacks who were in those train stations they were singing that b battle of the Republic um and then we got to Washington President Johnson picked us up in a convoy and we went up the hill we went you know past the mall where the Poor People's campaign there were you know thousands of poor men and they all came to the sidewalk and stood you know eight or nine deep uh with their heads bowed their hat itss their hats it holding their heads of their chest just standing there silent as we drove by and we drove up to Arlington and buried my dad um next to his brother under a small Stone and then um four years later I was in Boston I was a college student and I was studying American history and politics and I I came across demographic data that showed that those those whites who had lined the plane the train tracks and they had voted strongly for my father and P in Pennsylvania and Delaware and New Jersey um Maryland they had supported my dad in 1968 four years later in 1972 they didn't vote for George MCG who was completely aligned with my father on every issue but they voted L largely almost all together for George Wallace who is diametrically opposed to everything that my dad believed and he was a rampid segregation as his announc speech that year he had promis segregation now SE segregation forever he had stood in the schoolhouse door when my father you know tried to get um uh you know Vivian Malone and five other blacks into you Old Miss and uh he was a you know he was a bad guy and you know I later got to know Wallace very well he made a big turn in his life after he he himself was shot um and was paralyzed for life but he he ran for governor successfully after that a couple of times and I knew him when I was living in Alabama but um he was antithetical to everything my my father believed in and it occurred to me then how could these same people who voted for the idealism of Robert Kennedy then go vote for the cism of George Wallace and it occurred to me then and and struck me many times since that every nation like every individual has a darker side and a lighter side and that the easiest thing for political leaders to do is to appeal to our our greed to our bigotry to our hatred to our xenophobia you know to to push all the alchemies of of demagogy and that my father tried to do something different which was to get people to persuade people to trans send their narrow self-interest and see themselves as part of a community to see themselves as part of a noble adventure to find a hero in each one of us and say okay we're going to take a risk you know by trusting people by being part of a community by U by thinking that we're part of something that's larger than ourselves that's worth devoting our lives to you know making this country live up to its promises and exemplary Nation and my dad was able to do that with people and I think you know there's other politicians throughout our history who have done the same thing you William Jennings Bryant did that and a lot of other ones Lincoln um but um you know I think that's the challenge because the same people can go to a dark place you know we all have the lighter angels of light and the angels of of darkness and you know there's a there's the old metaphor about each of us has a has a a white wolf on one shoulder and a Dark Wolf on the other and uh you know how do you know which one is going to win the battle and it's the one you feed and you know if you if you feed feed them with good activity and Good Conduct and and virtuous thoughts and you know then the white wolf is going to get bigger and if you them with hatred and bigotry and fear and you know and uh self-interest the Dark Wolf win win so I think the same is true for our country yeah yeah I've never heard that metaphor of the the nation having go I I've wondered about that what what that actually was so this traumatic period that we went through with the death of your uncle Martin Luther King and then your dad and yeah let like I was talking about earlier with a family that has something bad happened to it it can either solidify their values and make them stronger or it can turn them to the dark side and yeah that's uh the thing with voting for Wallace as opposed to who's who's diametrically opposed to what your father believed in in four years time that's a that's a dramatic turn um I want to go to to to the book here for a second July 4th 1969 up until that point in my life in conformance with King Frederick 2's prescription against the inebriation among falconers which I which I had not talked about you were a falconer and you had started hunting with Falcons and other birds and this guy King Frederick II had all these rules that you were following I had resolved to never use drugs or alcohol in fact I had never even tasted coffee however I recently gathered from my favorite comic book to rock son of stone that hallucinogens might allow me to see dinosaurs which I greatly desired Jeff O'Neal assured me that this was a near certainty so I swallowed the LSD which more than delivered on his promise buildings melted like wax candles trees bowed and sueded and on a windless night bright lights with long Comet Tails lent hyport the Cheery Aura of Christmas in July still tripping I rode into hyenas with two older kids struggling and struggled in a Main Street Diner with a plate of lively white noodles that squirmed and squeaked as I stabbed at them with my Fork I became suddenly appreciative of the impossibly complex choreography of minute movements required by my mouth and its various parts in order to chew and swallow food abandoning that endeavor I looked up to see a picture hanging behind the counter of my father Uncle Jack and Jesus all of them had their hands folded in prayer until that moment everything had been a delight my soul was happy with this strange new adventure and I was laughing along with my friends now things turned sour I greatly admired all three of those fellows and I doubted that any of them would have approved of my hallucinogens a Paul came over me what was I doing my father had practically had been practically a tea Toler a Straight Arrow his personal life was beyond reproach he had sacrificed his life to a higher purpose and here I was high on drugs I left my friends and walked the three miles back to hyanis Port swearing I would never do drugs again by then it was morning and I was in a funk wondering how I was going to explain my all night absence and cope with my exhaustion a few blocks from my home I ran into a group of boys who prescribed me a line of Meth Adin and that snort miraculously solved all my problems for that day so thus begins a a period of your life with drugs yeah so my my what they call progression was very very fast within several weeks I was shooting heroin and I did that from when I was 15 years old to when I was 28 and and I got sober at 28 you know virtually all that time I was taking drugs against my own conscience so I was trying to stop I was constantly making vows making efforts to stop um but I couldn't do it and the weird thing was for me that I had iron self I had iron willpower in other parts of my life I gave up candy for Lance when I was 13 and I never ate it again till I was in college I gave up desserts the next year and I never for Lent I never had another dessert till I was in college I was playing sports I was playing rugby and was trying to bulk up so I started eating desserts against and I I felt I could do anything with willpower and yet this um compulsion was completely impervious to anything that I threw at it I you know I can make resolve and stay sober for a week two week weeks uh 3 weeks but then I'd be doing it again and um the most demoralizing feature of this illness of addiction for me was my incapacity to keep contracts with myself I would tell myself at 9:00 in the morning earnestly sincerely honestly I am never going to do that again and at 4:00 in the afternoon I'd be doing it it was like somebody else had stepped into my body and was now you know was now manipulating the gears and and driving the rig and I had no capacity to B that person with anything that I said earlier and um you know I went I I struggled like that for 14 years I'm not saying it was all bad cuz I had a lot of fun during that period And I did a lot of wild things and uh but I was always I was always trying to stop and you know particularly toward the end it became it became miserable it's like it's like dancing with a gorilla you know it's really fun and exhilarating in the beginning and then you know you realize that you're dancing until the gorilla tells you to he's ready to stop yeah you end up and again a bunch of this this is the stuff from the book you you get kicked out of a couple schools you get arrested with your cousin in 1970 for marijuana possession you end up getting you graduated 1972 from high school you go to Harvard you graduate from Harvard um you end up getting your law degree from University of uh Virginia you get sworn in as the assistant district attorney for Manhattan uh you get married you fail your bar exam which is interesting how'd you fail your bar exam by one point okay fair enough 659 out of 660 you know I I was you know I was you know I was the weird thing about heroin for me is that I um it made me I was very bad in school when I was a kid I had ADHD and I just it the the voice of the teachers just sounded like a foreign language to me I couldn't understand anything I couldn't sit still my mind was Raising all the time and uh I couldn't read you know I couldn't I just could not sit still in my head or physically I was always movement and when I started doing narcotics I went from the bottom of my class to the top of my class so I went from I was either the first or second in my class at every school I went to after I started after I started doing narcotics and um I you know it allowed me to get into Harvard it allowed to flourish um and if it still worked I'd still be doing it but you know it stopped working for me and it also was destroying my life in other ways well yeah most people don't get off that train I mean most people don't get off the heroin train alive right I don't know most but I would I would say that's probably a good guess that um you know in particularly these days I think you know with the with the Advent of the fent age of fenel it's you're much more likely to die than you are to get sober um and you know I had this I had a um I was lucky um I was um you know I got I had a I had in 1983 at the end of 1983 I had when I went to a rehab and I had a spiritual awakening that freed me from addiction so it was it's almost like for me it was like a miracle like almost as if I could walk on water it would be that shocking cuz I had really tried and then suddenly it was just lifted it was like as if it never had happened as if I never had the compulsion and I had um I knew that I I knew that I wanted to have a and the only thing that was going to save me was a profound spiritual realignment that I had to change in some fundamental way the person that I was because I was an addict you know I was a junkie and um if I didn't change in a very very fundamental way who I was that I was going to either be white knuckling it for the rest of my life and fighting the impulse which would have been a miserable existence or I was going to find some way to to make myself into a normal person just a guy who wakes up in the morning and is not thinking of heroin all day and cocaine and um I had a couple of things happened to me one is first of all I'd read the lives of the Saints because we did that every night when we were kids so I knew that there were templates there were examples of people who throughout history who had had these very decadent lives like St Augustine was one till he was 30 years old you know his mother was St Monica and she prayed for him every day till she he was 30 and then and he was a hormonger he was living with prostitutes he was a sex addict he was um he was a total alcoholic and at the age 30 he transformed he became the most important figure in one of the most important figures in in the history of Christianity um St Francis faisi the same thing he was um you know he l deot life he was a he was a soldier and he was a um he was uh he was a party guy he was a musician and you know he was a party guy and then he had had this spiritual transformation St uh St Paul had the same thing everybody knows at Damascus but I also had a personal experience because I had a friend two of my brothers died from this disease David and Michael you know in in ways that were as a direct result ultimately of this disease um one of them had an overdose the other in a ski accident um but uh but one of them my brother David had a friend who was one of his best friends who had the same level of addiction that I did and that David did that and took drugs with the same enthusiasm and compulsion and you know Reckless and out of control and he became a Mooney so he joined the unification church and became a follower of Reverend son young man and he didn't want to take drugs anymore and he would still hang out with us but he would be chattering about his new life and um and we could take drugs right in front of him and he was he was indifferent to them and I used to think about him and I would I think to myself when I was when I went when I was getting sober I think i' I'd rather be dead than be a Mooney because that's the kind of narrow you know view that I had of Life at that point but I wish somehow I could distill whatever was that gave him this imperviousness to the to the compulsion without turning into a religious nuisance and um at the same time I picked up [Music] his biography is extraordinary because he has Perfect Memory and he was having dreams then that were um you know very significant but also these other spiritual uh things that happened to him and I I'll tell you one of the things that should I that happened in this book he young um so young spent a lot of time thinking not only about mental health but also of how to induce profound spiritual experiences and he the book that I read is called synchronicity and synchronicity means a coincidence essentially it's one of these things that happens to us like if you spend if if you you're talking about somebody that you haven't thought about in 20 years and the phone rings and it's that person on the phone and these kind of things happen to us all the time right and we can either dismiss them and say that's just a coincidence but he would put significance into them and he thought this was a way that God broke his own rules that he set up when he put the universe in you know in spinning the rules of mathematics the rules of science the rules of biology and the God was and and the rules of chance and God was breaking those rules to come in and kind of tap us on the shoulder and say you know I'm here and I'm I'm watching stuff and I'm interested in you particularly you know I'm showing you these these kind of Little Miracles where you know the the rules of the universe are shattered so he was sitting he ran the biggest sanitarium in Europe and he's sitting in in uh with his back to the window and he's talking to a patient a female patient who's sharing a dream with him and he was very big on dreams and the dream is about the central fulgrim of the dream is a scarab beetle and which is a creature that has these profound kind of spiritual significance it's it's very common iconography on on the tombs the hieroglyphics on the ois and the tombs of Egypt but it's almost unknown in northern Europe where he was he was in Zur and Switzerland and so he's talking to her and she's telling him about this scarab beetle dream and he's hearing this ping ping ping on the window behind him and he doesn't it's irritating him but he doesn't want to turn his attention away from his patient so he just he's he maintains his posture for a while but then it BEC so exasperating to him that he finally he gets up and he throws the window open and a Scarab beeto flies in and lands in his palm and he turns to her and says is this what you were talking about so and those kind of things happen to him all the time in his biography which is called dreams memories and something else which is if anybody wants to read about young they should read his biography they should not read synchronicity which was the one that was much more difficult read but um uh so he he saw these as Divine interventions and what he tried to do is to he tried to reproduce that phenomena in a clinical setting so he would put one guy in one room another guy in another room and he'd have them flip cards and he and then guess what the other guy had flipped and he believed that if he could beat the laws of percentages laws of chance the laws of mathematics that way he would have proven the existence of a supernatural Force because this was beyond the laws of nature and if you could beat the laws of nature then you could say there's something out there that we cannot explain through La laws of nature and that that was the first um Step In proving the existence of a god which he was you know he was a very spiritual man but he was also a very faithful scientist so he's trying to use these tools to impr prove the existence of God well he fails he can't do it and he says in the book that you he could not use empirical tools or scientific tools to demonstrate the existence of a God but he then said this he said having seen tens of thousands of patients come through his sanitarium that he could prove that people who believed in God got better faster and that their their recovery was more durable than people who did not and that statement had a profound impact on me much more profound than if he had said that he had proved the ex existence of a god which I would not have believed right but what he was saying is it's irrelevant if there's a God there if if you believe in him your chance of getting sober are much higher than if you don't believe and for me you know I had already made a vow of myself that I was going to do anything that improved by even 1% my chances of staying sober so you know I made an intellectual decision I'm going to start believing in God and then I confronted you know the universal dilemma which is how do you start believing in something that you can't see or smell or touch or taste or hear or acquire with your senses and the um and young answers that question he says fake it to you make it act as if that the compliance will precede the evidence that once you start complying and living like you're somebody who believes pretending you believe you'll actually start seeing evidence that will put that supposition Beyond any reasonable doubt so that that's what I did I started I just said okay I'm going to pretend there's a God up there that he's looking at me the whole time and that everything that I do is um is kind of a moral choice has a moral Dimension to it and I began uh breaking my and then I had to behave myself even when I didn't have an audience you know and uh even when I didn't W eyewitnesses so I started um I started breaking my day down into about 40 different decisions and each one has a moral implication do I when the alarm goes off in the morning do I get out of bed immediately or do I lie in bed for another 15 minutes with my indolent thoughts do I do I hang up the towels when I go do I make my bed that's the most important thing every day even when I'm staying at a hotel now I make my bed which is ridiculous it's crazy to do that but I do it because it's part of building character which is what we're doing here we're not here to build a pile for ourselves and whoever dies with the most stuff wins you know we're here to build character which is the only thing that is enduring that's durable that will survive our our own lives and uh and so and you do that by making the bed even when you don't need to you know by by doing the right thing even when somebody's not looking at you so do I put the water in the ice tra before I put the ice tray back in the freezer I you know when I reach into my closet and I pull out a pair of blue jeanss and all those little wire hangers fall on the floor of the closet do I go in there and say because what I used to do is say hey I got a lot to do today I am too important for that job that's somebody else's job and i' shut the closet door and I left a lot of those closed closets all day long you know for other people to do right and um so so I now I go in there and I hang them all up even if I'm in a rush um when I uh do I put the shopping cart back where supposed to go you know and I remember when I first got sober I was I was my my life has gotten very very small which is what happens you get isolated you get small from addiction and when I got sober my life started getting big very quickly and um and I was I was running through national airport and I was late for a plane it was mission critical like the I don't even remember what it was but the apocalypse was going to happen if I didn't make that plan and I was late and was already going to miss it and as I was running I was putting a piece of denene in my mouth and I wrapped the the wrapper up and I was running and I threw the wrapper and into a garbage can and make a perfect Arc right into the center swish of the can but I noticed through the corner of my eye that it must have hid something in there and jumped back out I was like well that's God's fault cuz I made the shot right so I come running but then I got about 40 or 50 feet down that you know that down the uh terminal and it just started eating at me and I put on the braks and I went back and put that little piece of garbage back in the can and I still made my plane but the most important thing that day was you know that I did was to do that that little task is the most important thing I did on that day because the whole challenge with life and both sobriety but also life is how do we stay in that posture of surrender of humility you know how do we stay there even when the cash and prizes are flowing in and people are telling you how great you are and you got everything going for you and that's when I want to say to God thank you God I got it from here you know and take the wheel and drive the car off the cliff again you know what I mean yeah got watch out for that one how how long did the uh Spiritual Awakening take like how long were you in rehab for within I I had it from when I made that decision I'll tell you what happened to me I went out I finished that book and by the time I finished that book I had made a decision I'm going to turn my life over to God okay whatever that means however I find him and so I made that decision and then that I Clos that book and I go to out you know these rehabs they have a lot of volleyball and we went out to play volleyball and during that volleyball game a uh a ball somebody hit a ball on a you know very very powerful punch it went way up in the air and then it came down and it hit the top of the post with the net was tied and it started up again and I said out loud so everybody heard me I said that ball is going to get hit by a Mac Truck so then the ball goes up again on this kind of errand flight it lands right dead on the center of a chain link fence and it topples over the other side onto a driveway and and and it rolls down the grade about probably 40 or 50 ft into the middle of a thorough fair and a big 18 Wheel Diesel with a bull bulldog on the on the on the hood comes and pops and goes bang you know a big resounding pop and everybody there just looked at me and said how did you know that it was just a moment but I was like okay this is you know and I had just finished that book about synchronicity so I said I felt like you know I was being tapped on the shoulder and I said I can either just say that was a coincidence and walk away or I can see God in it and I can be grateful and thankful and joyful you know that I um you know that I got to see it so soon you know and that and now I see those things every day in my life I I rely on them and as long as I stay in that posture of surrender you know I I have miracles in my life all the time and it's like you know my life before I figure this all out was all activity and no progress you know I had a lot of ambition I was like a big truck you know that is has the headers and the pipes that are Spitting Fire and smoke and the engine revving and the wheel spinning stuck in a ditch going nowhere but a lot of energy going into it and a lot of activity you know getting stuff right to the end of the go line and never getting across and all of that that and now and when you when you connect to that higher vibrations to that spiritual side then you know it's almost like like you can put down the ores and Hoist the sails and that you're being propelled and it's it's like Judo because you know the E if you apply the effort toward your spiritual condition then it pays off in all these other ways that it that just don't in the reality that we live in they don't seem connected but they are you know if you if you can stay in that high vibration um just good things happen so you get sober and then you kind of let me give you another metaphor just why I'm think that I just occurred to me when I was a kid sometimes I'd pick a flower like a rose that was still in the bud and then try to unfold it and it never looks right you know and a lot of times you have to just learn to be still you do your job which is watering the flower but otherwise you leave it alone and you know I remember when I got out of the rehab I read a a line from Isaiah that said be still and know that I am God and that had a huge impact on me of learning to be still is so much because my life before was including drugs it's about you know feeling discomfort and then having to fix it somehow and you know growing up is about learning to live with this discomfort and just experience it like dark clouds on the horizon that it's going to come through and that you just have to experience it and let it keep flowing going and there's nothing to do about it you know and and learning that learning to be still learning to be indifferent to pain learning to be indifferent to pleasure to desire Al those this should be ultimately the ambition of of an Enlighten you know of a spiritual enlightenment now your next phase in life which is a long phase is this environmental uh War you go on well environmental support and trying to clean up the Hudson it starts with the Hudson River uh Fisherman's Association which eventually became River Keepers which became all kinds of Keepers in a variety of different things across the world um I mean the the amount of work that you did in that is epic epic amount of work and you talked about this when you were on Joe Rogan's podcast you you went into significant amount of detail and by the way if anyone hasn't listened to that podcast on on the podcast when you were on with with Joe Rogan and also when you were on with the all-in podcast you really you really kind of laid out your history when it comes to the environmental piece with the the whole vaccine piece you you go into incredible depth on those so that's a great I don't want to have to have you rehash all that stuff right now um but that's what you do for the next well I mean I guess it's the next like 20 years uh basically actually more than 20 years almost 40 yeah 40 Years of of these lawsuits you're a lawyer you end up in these incredible legal battles uh protecting the environment going after big companies and industries that are destroying the environment and and that's what you're focused on for years and years and years you know you sued Monsanto um and I just I it's too many to name there's too many to name um 2020 comes around uh and actually Co hits I got a I got if you go and look at your Wikipedia page which I got a good kick out of um your Wikipedia page says uh quote known for advocating antivaccine misinformation and public health conspiracy theories uh so that's just part of it um and what's really crazy and I mean of course uh Joe Rogan has talked about this a lot the kind of thing that people were being banned from Twitter for saying have now been completely proven to be true there's all kinds of things like that you wrote a book uh the real Anthony fouchy about Bill Gates big Pharma and the global war on democracy and public health you wrote another book called The woan Cover so you've written these books you were crusading against those you know this sort of just vaccination for and again I want to point out the fact that you're not antia you there's all kinds of vaccines that you support there's just vaccines that you don't support um 23 April 19th 2023 you decide that you're going to run as uh run for president and and to the best of what I can sus out right now you you go back to this Albert Camu theory of you got to do your duty is that a a good assessment yeah I mean that's kind of a good summary of of you know those years and you know I um I hit a place where uh all the signs were telling me that this is something this is the place that I can be most effective in my life so I you know I had I toyed with the idea of running for political office earlier in my life uh in that 90 when it would have been when Hillary was um when well it would have been around 2006 when Hillary uh was appointed the Secretary of State under Obama what year would that have been anyway that when she was um I thought about running for the senate seat which my my dad's seat in New York state my numbers were better than anybody else in the state and a lot of people had pulled me then and my I had very you know I was working on the Hudson I was on TV all the time I was you know people really had affection for my dad who had been senator from New York so it would have been a kind of an easy run for me to run for United States senator of New York and I was going to do that the year that Hillary ran but I had family issues that time that kept me from doing that and then um and so I helped Hillary take that seat I did advertisement for her I did a lot of work for her and then when she left and to go to the state department David Patterson who was the governor of New York called me and offered me the job he got to appoint her replacement so he said I want you to do it and I um said give me 24 hours to think about it and I had some of the same family issues at that time that made me just say no and at that point that would have been the easiest way to political office just an appointment without ever having to run um but uh I at that point I kind of was I I any thought of ever running for political office was you know I felt like I was too old because not that I lacked energy but the you have to be particularly the US Senate you don't get a chairmanship of a committee till you've been there for three terms which is like 18 years oh you have to be there for a long time before you get any power and um and so it's really a young man's you know game or young woman you know you you need to get in there a little earlier in life if you're going to be effective at it and I didn't need the attention you know a lot of people may run and just say I'll use a bully pulpit but I I already had is you know as many microphones as I want I could go on TV anytime I wanted so I didn't need a attention and I didn't you know i' been in politics political I I could call any politician America and they'd answer the phone I could call the president get him on the phone I could call virtually any business leader and get him on the phone so being in the Senate was not going to add to my life my effectiv this and it caused a lot of misery because you have to go and live in Washington and my family was in New York and you know and I was happy doing what I'm doing was effective at it it was fun it's fun going for me I love being in a fist fight and you know I was in every fist fight at that time whether you know name a corporation that was polluting and Ice I've sued them I brought over 500 lawsuits successful lawsuits you know I've lost plenty too but you know if you're not people who say they've never lost a laws that are not taking difficult ones and I was taking anything you know I was trying to figure out a way to to anybody who messed with the environment and I tried a lot of Novel stuff that didn't work but I tried mostly I was successful and um so I you know and I was having fun and I got to do what I wanted to do I didn't have you know press questioning me I and I had a wildlife you know I was you know I I was a heroin addict I I rode freight trains across the across the country and been you know I'd been arrested I I had all kinds of stuff that you know are not I didn't want to explain to people so you know I was happy and I didn't have to explain to anybody about my personal conduct you know and and so anyway I it was out off the shelf for me and I started thinking when I saw this censorship which I never beli the democ party you know moving to censor political opponents and everybody being okay with it I saw this explosion of chronic disease in our country that was just being covered up you know diabetes today we spend more on Diabetes than um than we do for our National Defense this is crazy when I was a kid a uh um a typical pediatrician would see one diabetes case in it his career and today one out of every three people who walk into his office kids is pre-diabetic diabetic and nobody's explaining this to us when in my generation 70 yearold men autism rates are 1 and 10,000 today right now one in 10,000 in my kids generation one in every 34 kids one in every 22 boys and nobody's explaining this why did food allergies just appear why did I know not know a single person I had 11 siblings 70 cousins I knew nobody with a peanut allergy when I was growing up why do five of my seven kids have food allergies why you know why does this entire generation have autoimmune disease why are we the sickest Nation on the planet why do we have the highest covid death rates we had 16% of the covid deaths we only have 4% of the world's population somebody needs to explain that why are people getting awards for this and the intensity of the you know of the cover up of why nobody's talking about it and then you know I saw that the Ukraine war and the Democrat and Republican parties become parties of war and nobody's asking the questions like with Iraq you know nobody asks why are we a war in Iraq s wasin didn't bomb the World Trade Center he didn't have weapons of mass destruction you know what you know why are we in another country's business and why we spend 8 trillion over there and you know destroying the one country that was the bull workk to Iran and now Iraq is a proxy of Iran you know and and that's why this attack on Israel happened because we destroyed the one you know obstacle between uh between the mulas and Iran and and the hemony across the mid East they had Israel's one and and Sadam was the other and Sadam had a country that was fully functioning and had electricity in 100% of the population it had you know is better operated than any country in the mes it have been our Ally for many years and S was not a good guy he was a horrible you know Tyrant and torturer and murderer but so is MSB so are you know a lot of them right and uh and you know what were we doing no why was not why was the Press not asking question real questions about it you know the lessons we were supposed to have learned from Vietnam about not getting into Wars of choice so I saw all this stuff happening and uh uh I felt like I was in a unique position to be able to stop it and to be able to change the direction of the country and then I saw the Democratic party go to war against the American middle class you know and there's a whole gener my kids generation none of them are going to get into a home something wrong with that and you know we've spent A8 trillion dollar on Wars since 2020 and we've killed millions of people and all unnecessary and we're less safe and we're here Americans are less safe abroad we our country is depleted in power we got a $34 trillion um debt it's gone up another trillion dollars in the last 100 days we to service that debt we now pay more than we do for our military within five years half of every dollar that's collected will go to service the dead 10 years it could be 100% And you know that's not tenable and nobody's talking about this nobody's trying to do anything about it so I just felt like okay you know I'm going to start talking about this stuff and the best the only way to fix it is to run myself so that's why you know that's what led me to this place and obviously the Democratic nomination didn't work out they're speaking of Mafia right I was in a SP take I mean uh yeah well I got a friend named Tulsi gabard and and they kind of did the same type of thing for her to her they the same to tsy they did the same to Bernie Sanders yeah so that's a little Mafia scenario so now you're running as an independent yeah now what how does this how do you win well the first challenge I'm going to the first challenge is getting a VP because I can't get signatures in half the states without having a vice president so you know they don't the other parties don't have to get vice presidents till August but I have to get one now and um there's a lot of advantages they have they don't have to collect signatures I have to collect a million signatures they don't they're automatically on the ballot they get secret service on don't you know because the the president decided that he didn't want me to have it um and uh and so I have to spend a lot of money on that so those are all challenges I'm going to I'm going to announce the VP within two weeks on the 26th of March uh in Oakland we we announce the VP within um we we then can start collecting signatures in about half the states and we will complete those States within 6 weeks um and I'll get on the ballot everywhere and then you know my big chall I'm beating president Trump and President Biden and Americans who are under 45 years old so I'm beating them in all young people I'm beating them among Independents and independents for the first time are the biggest demographic in this country so as the first election in history where self-identified Independents are registered Independents are are a larger part than either Democrats Republicans the independence now 43% of the voting voters 27 are Democrats 27 are Republicans so it's huge and I beat president Trump and President Biden among Independents I'm tied a three-way tie with Hispanic voters and my um my uh popular with Hispanics is getting higher all the time I'm the most popular candidate favor highest favorability rating by far have a 52% favorability rating I'm I'm I think 20 points uh in the black in in other words 20 20 points net favorability so when you measure my unfavorability favorability nobody else is even I think Five Points I'm 15 points ahead of anybody on favorability the one demographic that is a challenge for me is Baby Boomers and if you think about it they should be I should be most popular with them because they're the only ones who remember cam a lot and they live through the Kennedy a I also was really popular with them when I was the environmental Champion but they get their news from ABC CBS NBC CNN and MSNBC and the New York Times And The Washington Post and you know if I was living in that ecosystem I'd have a really bad opinion of myself oh my I asked my my son Conor who incidentally was in Ukraine he fought in Ukraine for Special Forces Unity he joined the Foreign Legion and fought for three months during the car offensive thank God he made it out alive um but I asked him the other day he's very well informed you know he um he reads everything he listens to podcast I said to him have you ever listened to a or have you ever seen an evening news show on TV and he said no never you have a whole generation of kids who is getting their who are getting their news from you know places like this from podcasts and uh those guys are on my side and they're supporting me so my big challenge is breaking through the Baby Boomers yeah that is that is a very strange place to be where the generation that should know you the best yeah is is not on board and yeah you're right it's because they're they're not on board with the new forms of media and they're being fed whatever's to them I'm a wacko an science an facts or a crazy person conspiracy the check check and check uh well you know I would I would advise people you you just did a a State of the Union uh or I think you called it uh how I see the state of the union or the state of our Union something along those lines it's on your YouTube page that's a really good piece to go check out you like I said you were on the all-in podcast you've been on Rogan's podcast you've been on Theo Von's podcast a couple times and they put his back up because they took him down for a while and so there's so much information out there about you and I would recommend people go and listen to those because they can learn more about you clearly the books that you've written there's great information the book that I covered today American values fantastic book to read and then like I said the Wuhan cover up and then the the real Anthony fouchy those books are are filled with information that you might want to you might want to check out if you if you don't understand these things or if you have questions so I think that's a probably gets us to a pretty good spot does that does that get us up to speed yeah um people can find you Kennedy 24.com you're on Instagram you're on what I call Twitter X called t a good thing because there's no way to talk about it if you don't call it Twitter or tweeting yeah so Instagram Twitter X and Facebook you're robertf Kennedy Jr you got a YouTube channel which is Team kennedy4 Echo Charles do you have any questions uh no questions just I did notice that you're in a lot better shape than most politicians I know is that like are we working out every day is that yeah yeah I'm at the gym every day you haven't se there's a video of him at uh you remember we were up at at at at Venice Beach recently Muscle Beach yeah he's up there at Muscle Beach okay no shirt getting after it that makes perfect sense to me yes good to meet you good to meet you too um we got to get on the ballot in in California right now people can go we need 75,000 people to sign up for our political party which is we the people and they can go to kennedy. or Kennedy 24.com California and we need 75,000 to sign up and then we're on the ballot there okay well I'm sure we can definitely make that happen any Robert any other closing thoughts you want to cover no I you know I just want to thank you for your service and uh you know we talked beforeand that I had represented a lot of the seals during covid on uh who what who uh were non-compliant with some of the mandates and anyway it's a it's a real honor to be with you and you know thanks for you know for everything that you've done for our country well I appreciate it and um well thanks for your service and and the sacrifice of your family um especially your Uncle Joe who who gave his life and your Uncle Jack and your father both them served in the Navy all all three of them actually served in the Navy and and gave their lives for our country so thank you for what you've done your family's done thank you for what you've done for our environment and thank you for what you are trying to do today to help fulfill the true promise of America thank you thank you very much Joo thank you Echo sir and with that Robert F Kennedy Jr has left the building Echo Charles yes sir how was that for a uh historical review good yeah good yeah so a lot of us on kaai if you grow up on kaai you you're not quite as privy to all that you know like a lot of this was probably a lot more familiar just from general knowledge to you than it was for me so yes to kind of in a way go down memory lane and in my case get privy to all the you know all the Back info very helpful yeah it's it's definitely interesting and yeah you're right for me and I told told mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast growing up in New England you're going to hear about the kennedies yeah and you're going to hear like I said you're going to hear the good you're going to hear the horrible and everything in between the the the Catholics that I knew from Massachusetts MH these people I mean they love the entire caned family can do no wrong yeah uh the Protestants that I knew growing up MH other other the Spectrum deal can do no right the conservative Republicans bro like not even close no and it's it's so interesting because now we're so much more aware of how things are like how the med media manipulates things yeah there's so much we could be unpacking the entire media view of the Kennedy family you could just unpack it for years it would take years yeah of you know what the what the conservatives would put out about them what the what the Democrats would put out about them what the Liberals would put out about everybody's got there gonna they're going to spin it yeah and so it's it's very difficult to look at and figure it all out yeah the red I always thought that the a red big red flag as far as like convincing someone about someone you know like who if someone's going to say something about someone else like the a big red flag was always if it was like a name calling like he's a XYZ he's a Nazi he's a whatever he hates this like all reading their mind and stuff like or uh he's anti um well actually anti- can be accurate sometimes but just the whole name calling in general which is just all it's pretty much all the time now you can notice it when you're really looking for it it's like it's just name calling anytime this name calling yeah I feel like no no yeah yeah you're suspect cuz there's probably like way more to it in fact I would say that might even be an indicator yeah yeah and I what what I guess I guess the way I look at things in general is it's I talk about this a lot at front as well you want to you want to look at a you want to look at a Target if you're going after a Target if you're assulting a Target you want to see it from as many different perspectives as you can and so it's the same thing when you're looking at an issue or you're looking at a political figure you want to see that political figure from as many different perspectives as you can because what you see or what this other person sees if you only listen to what one other person says about a about a topic or an issue you're only going to see that one perspective you have to see things from as many different perspectives as you can and you have to keep an open mind when you do that so when you're reading something about a particular topic you need to do with an open mind then and then when you read the counterargument you need to read that one with an open mind and what you're going to end up with is not some solid 100% like okay well this is what I now believe what you end up with is a a a broad picture of the possibilities that could Encompass this particular issue could be this could be that and you've got to be aware of all those things which is which is a a very different approach to take because most people especially if you go on to online social media everybody's an expert about everything yeah and what when they make a statement they're making the statement of what they believe to be the capital T truth capital T like the thing is boom and they going to say it yeah instead of saying well that's an interesting perspective I I will put that into my calculus of how I view this particular issue yeah people don't do that so this was for me it's good to hear a firstperson account of a lot of this stuff and a very well researched book and even then you go okay well there's there's his perspective there's going to be other perspectives that we could come up with and go oh there's a counter to that yeah oh well here's another view of and we didn't get there's there's one of the things that I always heard about the Bay of Pigs was and it's very similar to what he's saying that's why I didn't think it was worth bringing up but is that the Cubans that were saying hey don't worry when we get to Cuba when when the free fre forces get to Cuba yeah there's going to be all the Cubans are going to be on our side well all the Cubans that were saying that were in America that's why they were saying it and all the Cubans that didn't think that were in Cuba and so when you went down there you're like oh well we thought everyone was going to be on our side oh no no no that's what you think yeah so I always heard that now you take Dallas and you put you know what Robert said today is like oh their spin was like Hey listen we just don't want to tell we'll tell them that everyone's going to be on our side and we'll get we'll start a little war here and we'll be able to beat them so we'll be okay no F yeah and so yeah very interesting to hear all these different perspectives and and learn more in an open-minded way so that's what we're doing we're also you noticed that Robert F Kennedy Jr's in pretty good shape was he 69 years old I 7 years wait wait unless he didn't have his birthday but yeah yeah yeah so he's something like that yeah pretty just rolling around so yeah you know how like Okay so I was I was going over this with my daughter mhm and she was like what did she say she goes oh yeah you get shorter when you get older or whatever and I was like yeah but and we were talking about someone in our family one of the Elders of our extended family we'll say and he goes oh yeah she walks around like she it's almost like she's trying to be short you know how people you know older people they start hunching over I was like yeah that's true I was like yeah well you figure you know your your muscles and your structures they get fatigued right and like if you notice older people even if they're not that old or whatever they'll start walking super flat on their feet you know and then younger people they got this hop this pop in their step you know little pep but it's all it's like a physical like bounciness in their steps and she's like yeah that's true that's true RFK popping the step 70 years old where we at and I noticed and then when after we went over that I started really just paying attention and being like man that can kind of add um youthfulness just to your whole appearance if you got that pop in your step I think some people they just have it naturally when you stay active You Know M and I think he was one of those guys what it felt like he put down that go didn't he and he was hyped in the break he said he's going to have to put a seat you said you said hey you want another do you want another one he goes no I already need to feel like I need a seat belt on so that's what we're doing we're staying in shape we're keeping that pop in the step yes sir how are we going to do that we're going to work out we're we're going to get after it joof fuel.com fuel your workouts joof fuel.com we got everything that you need we got a clean energy drink by the way his uh uh assistant there mhm Stephanie or maybe she's not assistant I don't know she's his chief of staff let's say she she was like oh I'm an ingredient reader and I go read up and she goes I noticed that I noticed your confidence yeah I was like read up and she said I can't eat natural sweeteners like oh there's none in there she goes oh monk fruit okay yeah she was fired up so very cool yep that's what we're doing clean energy clean protein joint Warfare for your joints super kill we got it all going on we got it all going on greens oh by the way my mom came and uh visited for a few days or whatever how many greens did she steal from you no she didn't steal any greens but she mentioned the greens she mentioned it again she told the exact same story you know and you know how like when you tell a story that you heard from somebody and then then after a while you're like I hope I told that story completely accurate bro it was the exact same story word for word she's like I've been into greens since I was freaking a kid and all this Stu and you just accept the fact that greens just don't taste good it's just it's just part of the healthy lifestyle it's like you got to eat some stuff that doesn't tastes good that's how it is but these greens they actually taste good and I was really surprised like she's in the game joof fuel.com go get yourself some good fuel for your system also you can get a WWA vitamin shop GNC military commissaries AES Hanford Dash stor and Maryland wake Fern shop right HB down in Taos yo Meyer Harris Teeter Lifetime Fitness Shields small gyms everywhere Jiu-Jitsu gyms CrossFit Gyms powerlifting gyms if you want to get joof fuel to your clients email JFS sales joof fuel.com joof fuel.com go get some also you're going to be training some also you're GNA be training some jit too and you know we talked about and this was a there's so many categories we could have gone down but you know RFK Jr has been in a crusade for the environment and I was going to start talking about the environment start talking about clothing manufacturing start talking about what clothing Manufacturing in other countries does to the environment see we have environmental laws some of them are attributed to Robert F Kennedy Jr there are environmental laws that are in place in America so that we have to take care of an environment as we should so when we make Clos in America at origin usa.com at origin USA when we make clothes here we protect the environment not like what they're doing overseas when there's no rules no laws the only law overseas that they have is the lowest possible price which means we're going to destroy the environment so don't get your clothes from a chemical spewing environment destroying slave labor owning company get your clothing from origin usa.com jeans boots Jiu-Jitsu GES Jiu-Jitsu rashguards t-shirts joggers yes sir jackets hunt gear did you get a puffy jacket yet no oh I got a big box from origin oh you didn't open it but I haven't fully explored and it's big so okay yeah yeah so so we got everything you don't need to go to www. destroy the environment. comom or www.lavc.edu facturing back to America look Robert F Kennedy Jr wants to do that I want to do that he's running for president I'm building companies that manufacture here in America that's what we're doing you want to support it so there you go origin usa.com y very true also Jo has a store called Joost store.com also known as decore.com anywhere you anyway you want to you want a uh if you want a shirt hat hoodie all this stuff with discipline equals Freedom good you know all these things that that are representative of the path is where you can get it I'm telling you it's it's it's good stuff so one of actually I told you my mom was visiting and it was my mom's friend's like son or brother okay anyway and they had met or whatever and they're in the game we'll say and they're like hey and the guy was like Hey the man they do good work or whatever the discipline equal Freedom shirt man they do good work cuz it's the my favorite shirt not only because it says displine con but how it fits you see what I'm saying that's that quality stuff right there don't worry I got you anyway you want to represent that's where you go that's where you get it um shirt locker let's talk about it sh Locker new design every month people have been liking and giving me feedback on the latest one sugarcoated lies here's the thing what we what we don't realize that sugarcoated lies is one of the OG OG sing and it's in reference to donuts and how Donuts trick you and they're lies they're lies and you say hey your willpower is is not going to be defeated by a donut I would hope not I hope not right that was the whole message right there but yeah in in the event of you know some newcomers who maybe miss that OG saying that's what it is that's the explanation it's in in this book he talks about the whole and he mentioned it today where he's basically like taking or when he's addicted he's taking orders from this other bro that's real that's real so sometimes that other thing is heroin I hope it's not sometimes it's a donut yeah it shouldn't be a donut dude shouldn't be heroin either no but give yourself orders you're the general you're in charge yeah don't listen to that guy over there that's funny cuz like it kind ofes and you know how like when you're you know how they say and there's all these different Behavior like helpers right behavior modification like helpers where it's like they'll say hey don't do just don't do this if you hey look if you have a problem with d Donuts right the kind where if you see a dut it's really really hard for you to resist a donut then don't keep them in the house like that's like it's help and here's the thing that that works for a reason or actually for a few reasons or whatever so you can literally and so one of them is don't go shopping when you're hungry like that's the old school one right problem bro I'm telling you if you have like let's say this affinity and this love in your heart for the taste of donuts and you're not and you're full you just ate dinner you know had a mul and you're kind of like kind of kind of full like right after then you go shopping and see the donuts but it's like whatever I think it's good if we're going to go extreme here I'm going to say like have a good day like work out in the morning early MH get a run in get some Jiu-Jitsu done go home eat yeah a lot by the way steak MK greens creatine like and then go shopping oh cuz you'll be like just overflowing with discipline you you know what I mean and that's just one part of it so you don't even have any like desire really you know and if you do like because of the the what do you call you how much you like it or whatever it's not at its full peak in fact it's at its lowest Peak so now you just got this like for you to do that is it's almost impossible to just betray your whole self like that you know you're not getting donuts you're not getting donuts so nonetheless don't get donuts this shirt this this current shirt from the shirt Locker is just a small little reminder that a donut is not stronger than your will there you go hey uh here's another thing another little tie-in Robert F Kennedy Jr talks about uh factory farming and Factory processing of meat like big giant corporations we don't like that not good for you not good for the country not good for the environment not good for anything that's why if you want some steak which you should by the way get your steak from Primal beef.com or from Colorado craft beef.com these are small nice little Farms where we have control over the whole process so go to Primal beef.com or colorcraft beef.com and check it out get yourself some good steak that supports America supports America supports the small ranches out there the small farmers that's what we're doing so check it out colorcraft beef.com they got they got meat stick by the way at colorcraft beef.com they send you m yes okay yeah they're really good they are let's face it they're like kind of replace in general speak for General person they replace a Snickers bar you know what I'm saying they replace a Snickers bar cuz you could be you know how look when you when you when you want a Snickers bar yeah you're not you don't want a steak right you just want a snack little something right a little something sure well well Snickers bar is about the same as a meat stick from Colorado craft beef so how is it the same meat think or would you say just in the because it feels that snacky it's a snack thing it tastes good it's it's gratifying cuz a Snickers bar is gratifying now it's not going to be a Snickers bar isn't as gratifying for as long because it's just like sugar and so you get you burn through that pretty quick those beef sticks dude they're freaking they they are gratifying for for an extended period of time yeah like like they they make you feel uh satiated sure so it's like uh what's the slogan freaking Colorado craft beef sticks satisfies you yeah yeah yeah yeah they try and say Snickers satisfy you but let's face it Snickers satisfies you for about a half an hour yeah it doesn't makes you want more Snickers this is what I notic about Colorado craft beef sticks is if you like sometimes I'll cuz you know me you know my oh my eating habits you know like I don't really like to have a big lunch but sometimes hungry cuz I lifted and I ran maybe I even surfed oh hell yeah but I'm a little bit more hungry and so maybe the handful of nuts or bowl of nuts that I might have right doesn't do it no then I have one of those beef sticks and all of a sudden I'm I'm kind of like not hungry for a long time GTG yeah which is pretty awesome so check those out and also subscribe to the podcast and also go to jock underground.com you know we're talking about uh Theo Von's podcast dude they they took his podcast down when he had Robert F Kennedy Jr on why I think they were talking about the vaccine they were talking about Co I don't know what they were talking about I forget who took it on YouTube YouTube amongst others I don't really know but listen that's why we have the jock underground.com so we won't have that happen on that channel so if something's going to get taken down not going to get taken down from there because the only people that can takeen down from there is Eko Charles so it ain't coming down and that's why we have it and look it costs $818 a month if you want to support it if you can't afford that and you still want to have freedom just email assistance atj underground.com will take care of you we just want to make sure that information that there's freedom of speech and on that platform it's guaranteed it's 100% guaranteed so there you go also YouTube subscribe to that also psychological warfare also flips side canvas books uh covered today Robert F Kennedy Jr American values he also wrote the real Dr fouchy he also wrote The W the woan cover up check those out I've written a bunch of books so if you want to get the books that I've written you can check those out as well especially the kids books yeah get the kids books the kids need these books you should be able to square yourself away whoever you are but your kids those kids your neighbors your your niece your nephew the kid around the block they might not be able to do that they need more guidance than you get them these kids books they will help them immensely also we have a leadership consultancy we solve problems through leadership go to Echelon front.com for details we actually have a battlefield coming up in Gettysburg and there's another thing in the book talk about touring these battlefields these Civil War battlefields if you want to learn about leadership it is outstanding to go to those battlefields and check it out and learn the lessons from the battlefield I'll be there Leif will be there will'll walk around JD will be there Jason Garner will be there we'll be getting after so if you want to go to those check it out ason front.com go to events also we have an online Training Academy because leadership is integral in every part of your life when you talk to your kids when you talk to your wife when you talk to your subordinates when you talk to your peers when you talk to your friends when you talk to your boss leadership that's what all that is and you need to go to the gym every day to stay in shape and you need to go and work every day to maintain and sustain and improve your leadership so go to extreme ownership. comom take some of our cour there's free courses on there that you can take just go take those just go take those at a minimum go take those the framework of extreme ownership go take that course learn how to take extreme ownership that's what we're doing and there's a couple other courses on there for free check those out also if you want to help service members Act and retired you want to help their families you want to help gold star families check out Mark Le's mom mama Lee she's got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to Americas Mighty warriors.org also check out Heroes and horses. org also Jimmy May has got an organization called beyondthe brotherhood. org check all those out and if you want to connect with Robert F Kennedy Jr if you want to support him go to kennedy4 SL California if you want to register and he's need 75,000 of those so get on there make that happen also he's on Instagram Twitter Twitter x Facebook robertf Kennedy Jr and he's on YouTube at team kennedy4 go check out his state of R Union if you want to get a feel for what he's thinking and where he's at if you want to connect with me I'm at jco.com I'm also on show social media I'm at Joo willink ekko's on social media he's at Echo Charles third measure is on social media dang third measure made the cut they made the cut at third three Rd measure That's Where It's At if you want to see some scraps sure right sure we call scraps yeah scraps some uh post-apocalyptic possibilities okay kind of a thing any forthcoming anything we need to know about nope nothing you need to know about at this time hey if you do go there don't don't do an infinite uh scroll yeah infinite scroll through your life addictive it's addictive don't let that happen watch out for the algorithm and of course we get to talk about elections and presidents and democracy only because of our brave men and women in uniform so thanks to all of you that are out there in uniform right now protecting our freedom and our democracy and our way of life and also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol Secret Service as well as all other First Responders thanks to you as well you keep us safe here at home and everyone else out there I'm going to leave you with a quote from John F Kennedy who was a lieutenant in the Navy he was also president of the United States and he said quote in a democracy every citizen regardless of his interest in politics holds office every one of us is in a position of responsibility and in the final analysis the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities we the people are the boss and we will get the kind of political leadership be it good or bad that we demand and we deserve end quote that's it we are responsible it's on us so pay attention and until next time the Zeo and Joo out

Channel: Jocko Podcast

Views: 296,940

Keywords: jocko willink, podcast, discipline, defcor, fredom, leadership, extreme ownership, author, navy seal, usa, military, echelon front, dichotomy of leadership, jiu jitsu, bjj, mma, jocko, victory, echo charles, flixpoint, underground

Id: 21MLrDMeuOo

Length: 175min 21sec (10521 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 28 2024