Joy Purdy’s full interview with former Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller

we do know that you have several events here in the jacksonville area you know you've got one tonight you've got an event tomorrow looking at your life right now how popular have you become the circuit that you are running nationwide tell us about this it's tough because like where am i running to and i'm not completely sure even myself but i i believe in america that's why i joined the military that's why i joined the marine corps i've seen my dad go from nothing to very successful working hard and right now it just seems like people have lost their minds a little bit it's hard to even have an intelligent conversation without people attacking you as a person it's hard to just address certain things without everybody getting super emotional even with my social media posts like even now i've had to remind people like if you want to we want differing opinions but you need to logically explain why you disagree and not just attack the person with these you know russian puppet woke right-wing extremists i mean like both sides apolitically it's very hard and it's like do we want a united states so i know i'm veering from your question a little bit but i guess my point is i'm here to talk to veterans to talk to americans semper fidelis society and vets for vets brought me down and i think veterans have a very good perspective because they work with people from everywhere across the united states and there are no right wing left wing it's just americans wanting to serve their country and so speaking of veterans to me fills me with passion because they really to me epitomize what america stands for you know you have people that come here trying to become citizens and sometimes military services is the quickest way to do that i'm supporting a candidate in florida right now who came from jamaica um and got her citizenship went on got her master's degree like just the american dream in a lot of ways so i guess i started with where am i running to i think we need leaders that have moral courage which is a lot of the endeavor that i went through and so i'm speaking to people about honesty accountability moral courage doing the right things and i'm kind of just letting the path lead me where it leads me i don't have i think a master plan other than just supporting good people some of the veterans you'll come across or maybe have come across already have that deep-seated affection that deep-seated loyalty to the military and there may be some who might not agree with what with what you did and say you know what you took an oath yeah and you violated that oath well i disagree with that so i took an oath to support and defend the constitution of the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic and so we can have an academic argument about whether i broke that oath i would submit to you that i upheld it more than all my peers who didn't do that uh i know the people that disagree with me disagree with my methods not with the content of my statements so there's a difference there so all the people that spoke to me were like hey we agree with what you said but the manner in which you did it wrong way or it's going to come at too high of a personal cost or you're not going to make any difference long list of arguments but very i never even heard the argument of what he said is wrong and i guess i just fundamentally disagree and there are you know i didn't make it 17 years in the marine corps time commander by saying whatever i wanted whenever i wanted there has to be order to the system and if you do i mean i acknowledge that i broke some of the rules but i did it knowingly and i did it because i thought the rules that i were breaking outweighed the potential gain the military service could could get from this and so i did it out of a love for service love of country not out of anger and emotion it was very deliberate and calculated and i just think there's exceptional times in american history where people need to be brave enough and willing to sacrifice certain things to say some hard truths i mean let's just let's go through afghanistan evacuation we decided to withdraw all american troops before american citizens that doesn't make sense we decided to conduct it in the timing of april to september the peak fighting season you could have done it the other six months and been unmolested by the taliban we decided to abandon the key strategic air base bagram air base we decided to leave 7 000 prisoners in that prison on the air base which most likely the suicide bomber came from we then after the situation deteriorated such that the taliban took the whole country tried to rapidly throw 5000 troops back at it at that point they were forced to rely on the taliban for external security out of there was no other options the taliban obviously allowed the suicide bomber to go through the external security killed 13 service members all the people are staying out there and then in response to that we flew a drone strike and killed nothing but women and children like if that list is not enough to get a general officer fired it's like what could it possibly take let me ask you this though was there and i'm playing devil's advocate was there any other way to get your point across could you have gone through the chain of command could you have done it another way besides going on social media in uniform and saying what you did even what i did didn't get that general officer fired i really hoped it would but he's his staff picked april fool's day for his change of command and he's actually still conducting his change of command on april 1st meaning he hasn't been relieved and so the question you're asking me is you know could you have done it another way the ant the obvious answer is yes but what the question i ask myself is what's the most effective to bring attention to publicity to apply pressure on a situation that i know is not going to apply pressure and the way to do that was the way that i did it now it still was ineffective you could argue because he didn't get fired over it but i think i did start a conversation that wouldn't have happened had i gone through the proper channels and i'll tell you i've got a book coming out in september i'm really proud of it i think it's gonna be really good but i point out in the book that i went through all those processes after i made that first video and they were all denied illegally in my opinion and so i guess the point i make in the book is everyone wants to credit these other ways that i could have done it but when your complaint is senior leadership like those processes aren't going to allow you to go after those senior leaders they they find creative ways to stop you in those processes and then it's quietly done so that no one knows about your complaints and so i was in a situation where there was no way to address it congress doesn't hold senior military leaders accountable the president's never going to hold senior military leaders accountable because to fire a general in their command implies as the commander-in-chief that they failed so in terms of politics no one holds general officers accountable congress or the president and they've just kind of run unchecked for too long you mentioned politics what effect does it have on you when you see that there are politicians people in in leadership roles that take what you've done and use it for their own game twist it use it to go after somebody else in politics i mean what kind of effect does that have on you it was uh emotionally and spiritually draining i actually just got the final fake twitter account taken down last week i mean i had to send like multiple forms by d i mean the social media platforms that were created like they stole my pictures and used it to further right-wing anti-biden propaganda um my name was everywhere and it wasn't me to the point where even the commandant of the marine corps referenced me attacking the president referring to one of these fake social media accounts i had politicians that were using my name openly that really was it was about them and not about me and so in all this was exacerbated by the fact that i was under a gag order so not only were politicians and different people you know probably just civilians with fake social media accounts there's also media was running one of them was just blatantly like lies and so where do you stand with our current government our current president do you want to make that record clear so those messages that have gotten out there we hear it directly from you how you feel about i yes i clearly think uh president biden is not very good as a strong leader i think there are some things that he does uh all right like the russia ukraine situation i mean he called the shot on russia invading and he's been at least wise enough to not get involved in the no-fly zone which could quickly escalate the nuclear war he hasn't thrown troops at the problem so like there's some things positive things you can say in terms of afghanistan like he couldn't have played that worse and he doesn't demonstrate a lot of leadership but my i would never say that as a uniformed military member and quite honestly the way you hold a president accountable is by voting so like me as a military member complaining about it would do no good my problem in my whole series of videos had to do with the general officers that were unchecked the general officers that preached to me about accountability but don't hold themselves accountable the double standard that was illustrated when i was fired you know 12 hours after that first video without an investigation yet general mckenzie can kill a bunch of civilians and children with a drone strike i'd take a whole investigation and then declare that he's there's no fault like it's just it's a microcosm for the breakdowns in the whole system do you ever think back and wish that maybe you would listen to friends who are like stu what are you doing what are you saying all right one video is cool but you kept going and going and i'm sure you got the little birdies on your shoulder going stew come on i mean so to be fair to me after the first like when i made that first video first of all i went into that day not knowing i was gonna make a video it was like one of those things where i needed an outlet to vent i broke something on the computer and i was like somebody needs to make a video made a video and even then i didn't post it like i drove home and chewed on it thought about it and then finally posted it well after i post that first video i was like i'm not making any more statements i don't plan to resign i'll let the investigation take place i'll let it let the course run but then they fired me then they started attacking me in the media and then i had former bosses attacking me on my social media and it just got to be one of those things where it was like i believed what i was saying no one was addressing the content of my statements and i felt like they were bullying me and it's like if you get in a fight and someone starts pushing you and you feel like you're protecting somebody you push back and so those follow-on statements yes your question was did you ever think about you know your friends telling you like maybe i would go back and do different things i probably would go back and tweak the verbiage of the follow-on statements because i started getting emotional then at that point i knew you know my marriage was falling apart my retirement was going to be gone this was heading towards legal action but i couldn't i couldn't back down like i believed that strongly and i just like i said when they started bullying me it was i was not gonna back down from my statements there are other young men and women who are in the military who saw what you did saw the process they see that you've emerged and you're still alive yeah would you i've read that you would not encourage others to do the same thing that you've done well so what i yeah let me put that in context i believe when people think strongly about their values they should really analyze it and you have to you have to analyze your values before you get into a position of conflict because if you don't understand your values before position of conflict fear is going to drive your your actions so like most of my peers where they're worried about their family they're worried about their retirement the word about these things their their fear drives how they react to a situation now yes in some previous interviews i've said i wouldn't recommend anyone take the course of action that i took and you know i stand by that what all to clarify it if you do what i did you have to be prepared to take the consequences in the manner that i did and i did i pled guilty to all of them i was willing to go to jail i posted and said i'll meet you at monday 08 and go to jail like i'm ready for it and so the whole time i'm thinking like i'm going to take accountability i'm going to show you what accountability looks like but i'm not backing down from what i'm saying so it's just to qualify like if you're going to go out on that ledge you can't act like a victim when the branch breaks and you then have to you know answer for all those things that you did and and i was willing to do it so yeah i guess i to be honest knowing that i was taking the brunt of everything that was going on i really thought more people would ask for accountability within the military and it just didn't happen but i understand why it didn't um they got a lot to risk uh but somebody needed to say it when you talked about that branch breaking tell us a little bit about what you've lost i mean a video that wasn't even five minutes long ended a 17-year career yep um i lost my retirement i got a i did not get an honorable discharge i got a general under honorable which is the rung down meaning i couldn't go into the reserves the national guard to try and finish out my retirement so they closed the door on that um that's probably the biggest loss you know guilty at special court martial which is equivalent to a misdemeanor really doesn't affect me too much and it affected your family as well and i ended up going through a divorce over it you know we were happily married for 17 years and i don't have anything bad to say i mean she's still the mother of my children and we still have a good relationship but it's hard for people to even comprehend the stress of this situation we had reporters showing up at the house we had people feeding her information she was getting contacted by investigating officers by ncis my kids were getting taunted at school because everyone knew that their dad was in jail it was a circus in my hometown and so it just became one of those situations and then on top of all that stress was this very new direction of my life that was starting to materialize and you know i bring it out in the book that will be coming out later this summer but she has just been through a lot in 17 years too i've been deployed probably about four years cumulative and she was looking forward to this retirement learning to play golf life that has been like the mirage on the distance that we've been moving towards and then all of a sudden she saw me getting pulled back into a service in a different capacity and it just became one of those things where it was a agree to go separate ways and looking at all of this in its totality was it still worth speaking out yes i wouldn't i mean i i've never apologized i don't regret what i did i feel very passionate about it and it's like if not me then who if not now then when somebody needed to say it and i'm just really worried about the future of my country like my goal in life is to leave a better country for my three boys so could it would it have been easier to not speak out take my retirement go learn to play golf with my wife yes but would my sons live in a better america had i just hid in my stability probably not

Channel: News4JAX The Local Station

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Id: p9esAX3HVho

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 28 2022