Kris “Tanto” Paronto | 2/75 Ranger, OGA contractor, Benghazi survivor | Ep. 101

special operations covert ops espionage the team house with your episode 101 with the team house i'm jack murphy here with dave park we are here with our guest tonight this is chris paronto chris is a former oga contractor he's a second ranger battalion uh soldier as well and of course most of you guys know him from the book in the film 13 hours uh chris is a survivor of the attack against our consulate and our uh or the annex in benghazi so uh chris um thank you again for joining us tonight really great to have you here and chris i also gotta mention chris does the battle line podcast with our friend ian scotto who was on last episode and i hope that if you guys like uh the team house i think you'll really like battle line dave and i have both been interviewed on that show as well um so please go check it out if you have the chance yeah i mean they're they're great to listen to have a great you know great guest as you know you can tell well of course which one was the best one let the listeners decide go and go and listen to it and then make sure when you decide you you put that on the team house and you let the loser know because we are not we're we're not against shaming here especially with ex-rangers we we love to shame each other so we act better that's how that's done right the the negative reinforcement it's all about negative reinforcement so chris you know as you know like especially when i was on battleline you know we talked and we both found that uh you know we're all kind of geeky in our own ways um and one of the things that we like to do is ask people their origin stories because you guys are all superheroes everybody we have on the show in their own in their own ways as a superhero and so you know tell us about you like where do you come from how do you grow how did you grow up what led you to the military uh as we talked about um and make sure everything's going right are we still streaming make sure we're good gotta check yeah we're good yeah all right yeah and yeah we're good okay because i want to make sure we have that momentary pause so everybody's uncomfortable before we start talk because that's how again you got to be uncomfortable you have to nothing gets done unless you're that's when you find out what somebody's made of right when they're uncomfortable yeah they're uncomfortable oh my lord anyway but you know raised i i was raised you know i and i i wasn't again i i we we were raised lower middle class we were but we're just normal family but my mother and my father grew up with the values of hard work and my mother being mexican uh my gran my grandfather was a was an immigrant who came from mexico and i this shows you the value of hard work busting his ass being just to pick her on a farm to actually owning his uh running his own farm you know how i grew up on his farm um and the value of hard work my father you know his parents died when he was one so he really grew up with without a family but still both of my mother and father even with the hardships that came with their lives which i didn't have to experience because they made sure i didn't have to because they were successful but they instilled in my grandfather as well and my grandmother uh rose garcia and joaquin garcia um instilled in me that just hard work just hard work pays off and i saw that within my grandfather every day that he got up to to get on the farm and you know and i took it for granted because i'm a kid and i didn't know him when he was the immigrant i i saw pictures but who knows i didn't know what that was i played with the i played with the wetbacks on the farm we played baseball together one actually saved my life playing hide and go seek uh in the back potato truck when i couldn't see what i was running into and i was bleeding out the back of the truck and you know a migrant worker climbed in there and pulled me out because i was i was i was well i guess i was hiding in a good spot because nobody could find me i was always basically bleeding out there and uh but what i was saying is that the value of hard work was instilled in me and but it wasn't hey you got to work hard to be excited it was just it was just there yeah i grew up just with how you do your life this is just what you do that's just normal and it wasn't that you know and the thing is that that i can't say well i was so poor and distraught and everything was awful we didn't have anything no we had food we we had a good middle class life yeah i lived out in the country i didn't i grew up in the rural areas not in the cities but it's still i guess that's that that says something for my family and my grandma my grandpa and them is that we could have had that hardship life um but that i didn't see it because they made sure i didn't see that hey yeah things might get bad sometimes but we're still going to work hard and be successful and you know we did i might my father ended up getting his phd my mother retired she was a teacher educator for many many years retired after 28 years um my dad coasted a university that won the national championship one year when he was at brigham young as a linebacker coach which was a cool experience in its own right when you're a kid growing up yeah around around steve young and jim mcmahon and guys like that little coach levi edwards they don't make college coaches that college football is not like that not like those days the lavelle edwards the pallbearer bryants the uh the um guys like that um and and going up around that and and just seeing that man if you just bust your ass you know it doesn't matter how bad it's gonna be it you're you're gonna eventually win out it doesn't matter and you don't know when it could be tomorrow it could be five years for not to be ten years from now but as long as you just keep busting your ass you're gonna be successful and also i also learned that money doesn't always mean success and that was something that was great to learn because when the movie came out and the book came out i wrote a couple other books you know i'm getting down the line a little bit i i had a lot of money and i was probably the most miserable i had ever been in my life i i deemed that as you know i will be successful i know it really has not at all but the prep before that watching my ground while i had seen what success was that it wasn't money gave me something to go back to like wait a second i am way out of what i have been taught and raised with i need to i'm full of myself basically i'm full of [ __ ] i'm buying into my own [ __ ] what would my grandma say what would my mom say which she said anyway because she was so alive and she would tell me hey remember who you are son remember who you are so it was good because learning it at that age that origin story of learning humility but also learning that hard work does pay off but having a lot of money doesn't mean that your success it just means that you have money right um it helped me down the line when i got caught up in in some of the [ __ ] that i i did i got caught up into it from 2016 to 2000 it was about 2015 to 2018 where i was yeah i had plenty of money probably the most money i've ever had in my life and i was completely miserable yeah and so yeah yeah i think the origin story for me if there was any heroic story it was just the value of humility and the value of of yeah you know you hear that all that is the meek will she'll inherit the earth you know that sort of thing people misinterpret that they think meek means weak no meek means humble that's that's how i interpret it maybe we can get in theology all you want we can a people can argue on that but i interpret that as people being humble are the ones that are going to inherit the earth literally figuratively everyone where this is not a theology podcast are you getting i'm just saying we're on everything podcast yeah yes cool and you know i know i know rangers you know as good as i do rangers are some of the most free thinking sons of [ __ ] out there and uh most i'll be honest most intelligent i know it's a shock guys i know some of the most intelligent [ __ ] out there and so you know they believe me they have ideas rangers all their ideas on god and faith and or being an atheist or agnostic and so forth and so i that's why i think i'm able to talk like this because you sit around the team room and i know jack and dave you guys have had your own experiences in a team room where [ __ ] like this popped up and like wait a second i'm just supposed to be talking about women's in bikini and drinking whiskey no no we're talking about comic books and and we're the creation of man and it's like holy [ __ ] yeah this christmas the right range i uh i got a question for you i know we're we're not going in any sort of chronological order here but i i would be i know you've been pretty open about some of the things that you struggled with but yeah when you when you say that when you had the most more money than you'd ever had in your life but you were also the most miserable what did that what did that mean was it because of all the um attention on you all the added attention that there were other people who had thoughts about what kind of man you should be or was it the extra patience i mean what was it for you what was it that would make you miserable it was a sense of emptiness i i had divorced from my wife i'd left the family i left the people that actually stood by me for years thinking that hey man i don't need them i got myself you know i and i succumbed to a lot of devices that people you know you watch the documentaries about and i was not that on this levels at all but of rock stars and movie stars right on the drugs and alcohol and or if you're in gene simmons case the vices of the of the human flesh if you're in that granted i'm kiss i can't even imagine guys that being in that level but it was it was succumbing to my own vices succumbing to my own temptations that destroyed the relationships that i had made with my wife with my i mean i finally have a chance because i'm home to be a father to my kids and i still wasn't because i chose well what's the temptations let's go do all this i can do it now i got money i got a name and i can attract a certain group of individuals with that that they don't care about me they don't give two shits about me they just give [ __ ] about who's tano you know tano i was talking way before tano was cool if it's even cool but i always say is that the uh the emptiness that came with it because and the because of me really losing family and faith and everything that i had learned at ranger battalion everything i'd learned at grs i said this in 13 hours i was my best man when i was overseas because i didn't care about anything but the mission and doing and being there for my brothers and yeah having having a good time at what we were doing but i didn't care about women i didn't drink a whole bunch because i couldn't do the job effectively as i got older and and um when i came home and was on those three years it it was it was man this is cool red red carpets i've never done that before getting drunk all the time wow i'm divorced now my wife you know and i've got a you know one-year-old son and i'm divorced it's like dude i look back at it now i'm like what a [ __ ] scumbag i i was but it was it was losing myself and and trying to create an identity that didn't need to be created creating a auto identity based off what people wanted to see right when tonno was i was tonno that was my call sign when i was working grs it was given to me as a joke because that's what you do by right by a seal and a forced recon marine we're like hey you're an indian you look like an indian one i'm kind of my grandma's navajo she's mexican primarily but we don't give a [ __ ] your last name is piranha tano good to go right and uh yeah and so it was working as tonno as a call sign but not tono is somebody that felt some self-importance because i i don't know and it was during the election time too yeah so it was it just it was out of control and i don't know if guys i know that i'm not bred to handle that sort of sp i don't need to be there i i don't want to be i've accepted it now but i've also reconciled with my wife that i would divorce i'm also back to being family first i would like to even tonight guys you know like i said hey we got to cut it a little short because tonight's family night right of course rangers always understand they're they we give each other [ __ ] but rangers are all going to say yeah family go not especially because we've seen enough divorces and [ __ ] up relationships in our tenure to not say that well we'll make fun of each other but we all know i know it's it's all good fun so uh that was it brother it was it was the vapid lifestyle and yes rangers also have a big vocabulary i do know what vapid means the vapid lifestyle of being just a total douchebag and buying off on my own own bs of how self-important i thought i was and i was humbled i i mean god to help me come up the only thing i need that's all the things sometimes you get a good major hey dude you need to [ __ ] your ass which is what i needed to hear i wasn't uh you're gonna be okay you're gonna be okay i know you're going through hard times it was actually a first bat ranger friend of mine looking at me going they knew me since high school going dude you are [ __ ] what's wrong with you and me [ __ ] finally stepping back and going you know what i am what have i turned into so it it really was it was it was that in itself and some guys can have that lifestyle uh and enjoy it i i i that's it's not me yeah it made it terrible terrible that's that's interesting that it was a uh a teammate that came to you and like told you like hey man like you you want you've lost sight of yourself and that was that that was the moment for you that you were like oh man you're right that was a that was it it was it was actually i was going through a hard time going through another crappy relationship with with the crazy and she was she was batshit crazy the typical uh but i asked him i said man what's wrong with me and he it was on the phone i was actually at planet fitness working out going through i was on another road trip again and he was one guy i could call you know and i i i didn't talk to my you know i was divorced didn't talk to my family a whole bunch and i called him and i said hey dude uh his name's ben oh you guys may know ben ben morgan he actually does the vodka and stuff with me we train at battle line together now we served with 19 special forces together and he was a first bat guy um i said what's what's wrong with me and he goes hey dude you just you just need to unfuck yourself you've you've gone off you you've gone off the deep end and he said it with as much respect as he could he says dude you're make you just you've done this to yourself yeah and and then i went home after the trip and i looked in them i did i had to take a look in the mirror that's the hardest thing i think anyone can do if you're having issues within yourself and you don't want to think it's yourself you want to blame it on others just look in the mirror and that's what i did i looked in the mirror and i said uh i said is this where i want to be you know and for the rest of my life is this how i'm going to live the rest of my life and i i looked away twice i couldn't look at myself i was so ashamed of the person i'd become and uh yeah so it took that step and then the step of me actually looking at myself and saying hey is this how you want to live your life essentially and that's when i started to turn it around and it wasn't overnight either it took three four years for me to finally just get it all turned around and and i had to stop the drinking as much donut hey so that's it i still drink a little bit don't turn uh you know i started to work out again like i used to which now i'm back in great shape i reconciled my wife i became a good father i finally fixed relationship i had 16 now which we we didn't have a very good relationship up until last year my 12 year old daughter and uh yeah it's been fantastic but it took that kick in the ass and then self-reflection like i told rangers this i said guys we don't quit on ourselves as a thing i want to quit no no no no you'll quit on yourself we've never quit on anything just toughen the [ __ ] up and that's what i need to do here yeah toughen the [ __ ] up dude you can do this stop being a big puss and get your [ __ ] fixed and it's like your squad leader would be if you're fun or not they're gonna cry about it no get your [ __ ] fixed get going and and it helped me it doesn't help with everybody i'm not gonna say it works with everybody but that's what i needed to hear i i think that it's easy for for people who have not had that that kind of fame or notoriety or recognition it's easy for us to judge anybody celebrities whomever you know pundits whomever yeah you know to um uh the whole thing with brittany right now yeah i mean it's like it's easy for us to judge people but but you don't i but it's it you you really can't put yourself in that situation and know what you're going to do until yeah until people are like throwing themselves at you or people are constantly in your orbit trying to get things from you or telling you how great you are or everybody is saying hey what you say is really important you have to say it louder right and yeah and when it it it becomes it does it becomes that um it becomes the what i found is that people were able to make a lot of money off me right and and and in the gist of well i'm helping you to make money uh but i can you know we can do this together and i lost control of even just dictating myself where i could go what what events i could do where do i what radio shows do i want to do right uh and and it or or tv or something like that and i i even said it to to uh one of the people that we sent some parted ways that that worked with me that was terrible for me um i i told her i said i feel like a monkey on a street i feel like i'm that dancing monkey and you're cranking this box and every time i've got it i i've got to jump around and dance around for fox and cnn and whoever the hell [ __ ] else wanted me to be on the show i said i'm tired of this [ __ ] i'm tired of being the benghazi guy i'm there's more to this i'm tired of the politics of this being and i and i took the blame for it i said hey i was i know we got in the politics of it i was responsible part of that i think it was possibly no i said at the time it was good people needed to know but i said now three years later let's stop that [ __ ] right because because this is not the story and this is after me being able to look back at it more over the years and over the years or self-reflect and do my own ars on that night or other operations or and this is leadership this is faith this is overcoming adversity this and then learning from you know i'm going going back because we're not crawling order here i was kicked out of the mill the first time i was in a lot of people don't know that i wrote about it in the range of way but it was i did that was hard to say that was hard to say hey yeah i know you guys all maybe think that i'm some badass but i'm not i'm really 160 pounds dripping wet oh and by the way the army said hey you're [ __ ] get [ __ ] i don't need to be here the first time i was in so but then you know that is going i'm sorry no so let's let's go back to that because i you know these are important like i think that you know it's important you know when we have a guy you know who failed down at sfas the first time or you know i think it's important for people to see the the human side of these things right so first off what led you to the military what led you to the rangers um but it was it i and i i'll say this it was a path it was just the path i was supposed to be on why do you say that chris well because i had no intention of going in the rangers or seals or the military at all i played college football i was graduating from college i was walking through the student union bearing that career you know at the end of career end of every before graduation there's a career day where people come in and you know who's who's at college career days or high school career days well army military recruiters army recruiters they're there with their with their cubicles and or their their stands and i was walking through the student union building and it's career day so all these jobs the military's there uh and the army recruiters right next to the navy recruiter and he i don't know how he picked me out or maybe he was yelling to somebody else and i just turned my head i don't know but there's kids everywhere and he goes hey and i looked and he goes you know i was like me and he goes yeah come over here and he showed me an airborne ranger video he showed me a 75th ranger recruiting video you know the one blowing [ __ ] up jumping out of airplanes all the stuff that's really cool he doesn't show you the grind stuff but just the cool stuff right and that's also i like i love seeing the blackberry back there because that was when we all just had the black beret and i don't care you like green berries or not that black beret was the [ __ ] and that was badass i mean you said yes that's what i'm talking about you saw that and if and if you have a rant you know we you know when you're a real ranger 75th and you know how to count that thing down so it's kind of flashed down just a tad and it's caught over that run i i'm like god that is badass i want to do that and he's like well you can just you know these cars just sun right so like he said well he goes coming down the recruiting office we'll talk and and i that was it that was i i did stop at this at the navy office when i did go down the recruiting offices because navy was here army was here i had to walk this direction so i walked by and they did have a seal challenge uh recruiting poster up and i walked in and it just didn't intrigue me as much as that ranger video that i saw on recruit and i just walked in and i said i go is it tough he goes yeah excuse me i go do do people quit he goes yeah people fail out all the time i said all right roger that so i was looking for a challenge because you know playing college football you know you're already when you play football through high school and then you get up to those levels and i just got out with the buckles in the vikings decent but when you're five nine 170 pounds and you don't run a four or four forty you're not going to the pro i don't give a [ __ ] how good you think you are you're not going but it was another way to be like okay this is something that first of all it could it's gonna make me feel cool it is people quit so it's hard and it's something that whether i knew it or not it was something i could challenge myself at because there was that essence of failure which i think all of us that joined the special operations community we kind of digs like well can we do this let's see let's test ourselves and that's essentially what it was and and i had read the charlie rangers books back in college about you know those guys were badasses the oh my gosh do you have those the charlie ranger books oh right right here is that that may be the same one i still have it i still have it in a tough box that's it yeah that's it i still got it in my tough box oh you know so i i knew a little bit about rangers but i i loved reading vietnam war history and those guys epitomized what badasses were yep and so when i signed up it was like man this is you know it's not gonna follow this lineage that's what those guys were right i know i you know and and yeah it and i went and i went to fort benning and went to echo 258 and i still remember the first day yeah we went to 30th a.g we did all that other stuff that people take for people don't understand even that's a [ __ ] show being at 30th a.g forever what was i there for three weeks which sucks on its own right but we don't talk about that we just talked about when you started business you know getting off the cattle cars and going in there and this i still remember you know the kid from new york because we had four we had four college e4s which is basically i mean i mean i'm a private four is what i am but you have co i have college so i get that e4 rank so all those college e4s there's four of us we're all in charge you know we're the platoon leaders squad leaders because you're the college kids well there's this kid in new york we couldn't get to do anything day one couldn't do anything and i remember we took him into his office with sergeant charles girl sergeant charles who was from third ranger bat had his tab and uh i remember the kid walked in drill started charles is the senior drill sergeant in our platoon he's not the senior drill star but he's our head he's our e7 in our platoon and he's sitting there like this and i remember the kid from new york walks in and goes what and did that little back on the block swagger holy [ __ ] the charging drill started i don't even know he got around his desk and just the kid i mean elbowed the [ __ ] out of the kids and i remember standing there going the recruiter told me they don't do that in my head i'm going they don't do this [ __ ] anymore what the [ __ ] is going on there's nothing there's nothing left but a pair of smoking boots there isn't and the kid the kid was in sick call for three weeks because he had a hit pointer and it was i mean it was just black and blue all the way down to his kneecap and i remember thinking myself that was you know we all have that moment at basic i think every one of us especially if you went through in the 80s 90s maybe even the early 2000s i'm not for sure where you go oh i made a mistake but that was that was my indoctrination into into the army and and i loved it i was like a square peg in a squirrel i excelled and because of football i already had a good base for physical fitness so it was just changing those muscle fibers from fast twitch to slow twitch from going from running sprints to being able to run a two-mile and 11 whatever it was which and i was very blessed to have good genes i was always a good runner so and you know as good as i do when you're when you're an infantry guy and you're going to go to ranger town and you can do pt you can score 300 max it well they're already starting to look at you and and you start feeling good about yourself right man this is yeah and and i did i i did well and went to airborne school finished that went to rip um my my he was the first he was our rip tac and i remember he came out of the door i still remember this and he's just looking this was this is the most intimidating man that didn't have to say a word he didn't have to say a word he just came you know you get on that damn blacktop they're going into going into rip they're at their the third bat barracks where hhc is and they you run in and and they shut that damn gate you're on that damn basketball court everybody's [ __ ] themselves i remember he walked off and on those stairs right there he's just right at the door come out he's out the stairs and he's just like this and he didn't say where he looked at us for it felt like 30 minutes it was probably 30 seconds because each of us felt like we were getting just beaten down with his with his gaze and then he walked back in and it was it was on like donkey kong it was so you know what you're not talking about it was just on the same same basketball court and i think jeff strucker i i believe i can't remember if you use the battalion or the regimental chaplain at the time by the time i got there yeah i i could not heard that i could not believe like how could they make satan in charge of leading these guys but you know i i who you think about it now and then i think about just even benghazi libya those guys like that or why i was able to get through that night because of those badass sons of [ __ ] that put us through hell right which which no i surely i i honestly i know for a fact there's a lot of times downrange where i would have made it out of something if i hadn't been intimidated out of my mind not not not beaten down physically just the sheer intimidation that the hasting the hazing with your with the attitudes right of just like you know what [ __ ] this is nothing dude i can get through this right and i i will rip the first i'll be i'll be quite honest with you you know getting the range of italian i went through a very bad divorce it was the first time and it destroyed me because i grew up i grew up not knowing what a divorce was as far as i knew families stayed together i was rural america you know we don't get divorced and so i wasn't expecting it and you know and everybody you guys have seen hopefully you haven't experienced it but you guys have seen guys that have have had wives that have cheated on them on deployments and it just completely destroys their world and that's what happened to me i was a young guy i didn't know how to handle it you're going through immense pressure because i'm a private ranger battalion you know i you know that's that's pressure enough in the 90s you know and uh and i remember i came home and i i just lost for sure i tried to kill the guy that she was cheating on me with and hey that's uh yeah that's a serious either jail or section section eight for terms of a match term i'm using but so that's essentially what it was you're saying you failed i failed oh yeah i failed miserably no i did i did because i chickened out yeah i ended up trying to take my own life i really because i was like now i was like jesus i'm a terrible failure yeah i know i was that's just ready to ambush him yeah i had the gun in there and i couldn't do it my sister i remember talking to my sister that night after i mean later and and uh but no again it's and and really it wasn't she she was like man she talked me off the ledge and then luckily i did have a ranger buddy that was home only because we were on block leave that time and i had a buddy that was home he was the army buddy at the time he went to rangers later um and i called him and i said hey man i you know i and i i i said this is what i'm doing i've i'm already three whiskey bottles in and a bottle of tylenol in uh you know i and i need to and i didn't know tylenol could kill you yeah that's the thing it shuts down your kidneys i mean yeah i don't know and um but that that was the essentially the you know i got back this is what gave me so much respect for ranger battalion though i got back to second ranger and i had a tremendous captain at the time you guys probably know it was captain pete lecamera who is now three star general pete cameron he was my captain he's my ceo is this general the camera who just took command of south korea yes yes yeah this is uh this is he was my again that's my career now like he that that that was my co i how lucky was i to have holy [ __ ] and i had a also first sergeant frank griffey who was later mass sergeant major trippy he was my first yeah and i'm still friends i still talked to frank frank is a ranger guy and he always will be yeah he's yeah the dude i mean come on he has what does he have three mushroom stains and he's been he's been to comet you know even with 10th mountain where he was caught in anaconda and that was his mortar team that was [ __ ] but um yeah how i went back and all that hazing and you know that you that i saw now for what it was it was a show to see if i wanted there because when i got back i was hey dude we love you man come on it is i thought it was going to come back and everybody because i'm an untapped private right i mean i i thought i was going to get you [ __ ] put you know you see you can't handle it was nothing that at all it's like sergeant major grippy your first sergeant grippy and and captain the camera said nope you get your ass in the barracks because i was married i was living off post which wasn't helping now get your ass in the barracks we're going to take care of you when you're ready and they did they they got me at least my head back right that was better than any you know i had to go see a a army shrink because of what i did right but but that was like holy [ __ ] this is an awesome place um and uh i was given a choice um i would have been there for now for about a year and a half um i was all at this point i hadn't gone to school yet i was about ready to go to school i was doing well you know but even then even if you're doing well at that time you're still going to wait a year and a half two years to go to ranger school because there's a lot of guys that are doing well you know there's not just and um i remember i remember walking into kaplan camera's office you know hey specialist piranha reporting you know that's ordered sir and i remember first sergeant grippy's standing behind him like this and uh captain goes that you know pete goes uh hey ranger what do you want to do because my wife of course i'm buying the [ __ ] from my wife we're still married she said that we'd work it out if i left ranger town now come home we'll work it out yeah yeah um i said sir my wife said we could work it out if i went home he goes roger that because so do you want to stay cause if you want to stay we will keep you in you'll be fine and you'll just keep moving on um we'll go back to and i was with sergeant uh sergeant henderson who was my squad leader at the time he goes you go back to henderson squad the herminator you go back starting and you'll be not like nothing happened you know i go now i want to go home and work on my marriage and i remember first sergeant grippy goes yeah and that was it papers were signed and i was out and of course i went home and it's just yep she was cheating by eight gosh we're friends now i i gave her a lot we've let bygones be bygones and have you know old wounds but you know ended up failing anyway and and it was awful because now i was like everything that i was going to do what do i do now where do i go i'm back in grand junction colorado i just got now this is where the rangers and this is where captain the camera or general camera and sergeant major grippy saved me and this is why i always tell sergeant major grip i said dude you have no idea you saved my life you have no clue they managed to still get me an honorable discharge granted it had a re-entry code of three which meant i had to if i wanted to ever come back in i had to go get three psych evaluations and make sure i was i was a good place but how they got me an honorable discharge i have no idea right i should i should maybe a general with honorable conditions or a medical or something yeah something and uh it saved me because two years later and i go back i go i met my second wife here that i'm with right now and i went to grad school because i didn't know what else to do i took the gre i said well my parents they're educators i can still do that i don't want to work at a gas station let's uh and that's essentially not knocking guys to work at gas station but you know that's really a dead end street if you're in a small town you're not that's what you do and you're gonna be stuck um i took the gre and i up i went to my buddy he came to me and he says dude you look great we're going to south padre island you want to come and drove down to south padre island i took a week and i told him my second wife was actually at uh i met her at louis on the lake there in south padre island is where we met and um she was a volleyball player at university of nebraska a very good volleyball player and that guys don't the dancers not you know the best bodies on women are volleyball players i'm telling you right now there's hands down there's not even close all that jumping all the time not even and their bodies stay this say my wife's 44 her ass is still up to her neck which is which is why she stays with me i i yeah that again those are the heroes of rangers for the families and the wives behind or from the men whatever you want to say yeah anyway um uh it went well i we we got back and and um i moved hey guys speaking speaking of balls i just got a a quick read here to do for you guys uh it's summer and sheath wants to save your sweaty balls if you're out there with hot stinky nuts we're here to tell you that there's a better way the sheath way what sheath they were invented by an iraqi war veteran on his second tour the heat was so intense he thought there had to be a better way to pouch the package and underwear to keep things separate sheets high quality boxer briefs are made with moisture wicking cooling fabrics designed for your man parts to keep cool and separated with 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was a perfect perfect segue because of the the getting out from the covid action which was kind of like what spring break is in a nutshell aside from the viruses right it's not a covet virus there's other viruses right going on there but those can usually be cured with a shot of penicillin or whatever yeah so yeah that's what i don't know where people worry everything can be cured you're fine chris can i can i hit some of your questions yeah yeah all right man jackson asks what did you make of ground branch and how much cross-pollination is there between grs and gb did you ever see grs guys become gb pmos or contractors you know there there's none basically there's none there's there is a little bit of an alpha male thing going on there there is i mean we know each other we'll use their bases they may use our our stuff every once in a while or if they uh or if they don't know an area we may know it a little bit better like cities we generally cities grs generally knows the layouts of cities better than ground branch but ground branch is a direct action option unit so generally they're not been doing a lot in cities anyway except for maybe running assets but then they need us to find out where those assets may be if there's like and that's happened before in kabul i'll be honored where where they have uh needed to do something an admission in the city and they didn't know where the asset was located and i've been to cobble by that time i'd say four to four different deployments i didn't see like the back of my hand so they're like hey where's this at can you go run and grab this guy sure we'll go do it so i shouldn't say any but it was minimal and i i think just also not because not just because of the attitudes because alpha male is a contradiction in terms we all have the small dick big dick syndrome working with your regards what you're doing but i think it's just the job is different it's just a different job they they are d.a they are they're running assets to go kill guys we are running assets to protect people we're we're running those assets to get information and to but i shouldn't even say we're right ceos are running we're making sure they don't get killed or or kidnapped so it's a security operation operation um i've seen it go both ways you know i've seen guys but primarily no if you're grs you enjoy being grs you enjoy the protection element of it right you and you enjoy what i enjoyed about grs more than ground branches that if [ __ ] went south kind of like it did there ain't no assets coming to you that was what dug me to it it was the you know the surveillance was cool during the surveillance doing the counter surveillance the taxi cab service protection yeah that sucked but that was just part of the job but the uh but uh the being able to live within the cities and actually live on the local economy and they get to experience the restaurants and which which you know unless you're a pm unless you're like yeah like a pmo not a contractor but pmo with groundbreaks generally don't get to do that from because they're they're out in the bush doing their [ __ ] right um but um you know what i dug is that gram ranch generally had you know they had as far as fires went they had priority of fires if they needed something they were going to get it before we did right and i actually i actually thought that was kind of cool granted we were less likely to get into a high we were less likely to get into a benghazi than they were but if we did it was just us and and that i i i remember uh and this in kabul where we responded to everybody that needed help we had freaks for military police osi the nsa guys the scorpion guys you know ground branch too when they were out running you know they were out doing their running assets and i remember that whenever there was a call on a radio which was i won't give the nomenclature out because it is opsec i don't want i know i don't like the agency but i want to [ __ ] the guys over that are working um but the uh if we got a call on a radio from any unit whether it was military or paramilitary or whatever it was awesome guys would just i mean it was getting cars you would just it was like bees leaving a hive to go find whoever we need to sting you just see guys shooting out from everywhere i thought that was really awesome because it was it it didn't matter if we knew or not who you were it was right you need help and it was just a radio call and everybody knew what they needed to do in their small uni little units the two-man teams right and we did that quite often there was i i think i did write about one in a range away which i thought was really cool with some military intelligence guys that got hemmed up in town and it was seeing because the jrs you know the city is better than the locals yeah i knew every alleyway i mean that's your job and you have to learn that within a couple days you've got to learn everything uh quickly um and i remember when we were rolling up to to to the afghani afghani national army guys or afghani police over they were nds guys i don't know who the hell they were they were yanking on these military guys doors and they were in a nondescript car because they were supposed to be out there without their running really clandestine vision obviously they weren't um it just you just see land cruisers and local hiluxes and local trucks just coming out of every alleyway dude i still get chills thinking about it because i saw it and i just you know our cars are coming out of this alleyway another grs cars coming around out of another alleyway then we've got two gyros cars coming out the main road and it's like out of nowhere they're surrounded and it's and instead of afghanis jumping out these trucks because this is we're we're hot you know we're this is a this is a descriptive mission we can get out there people can oh we are because this is a cure recognition you see all these usa seals rangers marines getting out with their kid on guns up and down a fortune magazine yeah and just just seeing the afghani's eyes of just i mean it was out of nowhere it's like holy [ __ ] that to me that was i thought that was really cool or granted i i love i have friends that are on ground branch and i i they do a tremendous job it's just it wasn't for me that wasn't but to answer this question not really every once in a while like i said if they don't know a location in the city they'll come ask us hey where's this what's around it you don't do they're they're doing their their necessary planning they're doing their intel collection and sometimes they'll have us hey you guys know it better go get them bring them back um that's very rare because they'd like to run their own assets and they're very capable they're you know a lot of us serve together on the same units but the missions are completely different right and uh and of course we we're we of course to each other's faces we're going to talk [ __ ] to each other because that's just what alpha mystic right but we have we do have a respect and i have a much respect for ground brass because i said a lot of those guys i knew from serving with and or being contractors with in the early days on other contracts before it became grass and ground when it was like polar quest and and high threat protection and all this other cpa stuff um but but um yeah the yeah the jobs the jobs are completely different the sad is their sad hey we're support i know that sucks to say that but that's what grs is we're part of the support element of the agency don't think we don't take [ __ ] for that we do but that's just part of but i don't mind it because i love my job and i did get to perform in one of the most optimal challenging circumstances the no [ __ ] you wish never would happen i gotta be in that and if i would have went to the ground branch i would never have been to i don't know i i where i needed to go we're supposed to go and i enjoyed it the grass is always greener yeah yeah but but it also i mean it sounds from what you're saying it sounds like they're basically the same guys just yeah it's just different with the same skill sets in a lot of ways just using them in a different way but yeah you know it it is i mean i can't say anymore but i've been out of the game now for what seven years eight years yeah maybe it's changed but the requirements when i was going in was six year special ops for both um and that's at the contractor level of course at the pmo level or if you want to call ours the tl level the requirements work the same why yeah why should the guy leading you has to have less requirements than the contractors but that's just yeah that's how it goes now granted gb still though at least on their staff side they were still holding pretty good requirements as far as having having to have some special ops background on the grs side of the house no because i worked with guys that had never been in the military that were in charge of us our guy in benghazi our tl our team leader rhone was our assistant team leader he wasn't rt we but he we we made him because uh in the movie we put him as our to because we had a lot of respect for him and he was our team leader on on the ground we didn't listen to our tia we listened to rome right but rtl there in benghazi had no military he was a former secret service guy that it wasn't even a protection he was he did money laundering and i'll be honest his actions and he knows he knows how i feel about him so does everybody else his actions that night were representative of his lack of lack of military lack of special office background um i i so i i i i don't i don't think that's that's talking derogatory about him it's what he did it was his actions and that just showed the difference though in grs if there is a complete difference the leadership in my opinion at least on the staff level is much higher caliber on ground branch that is on grs but the contractors no it's it's it's relatively the same and yeah i've got to get back to more user questions i got to uh get in another read here for you guys uh this one lucy nicotine which is a company that was founded by caltech scientists and former smokers looking for a better and a cleaner nicotine alternative finally tobacco alternatives that don't suck now we got this thing this bad boy was researched and developed for three years and made for people not patients lucy was created uh they created a nicotine gum with four milligrams of nicotine that comes in three flavors wintergreen cinnamon and pomegranate lucy also has a lozenger with four milligrams of nicotine that comes in three flavors cherry ice citrus and mint lucy lozengers and gums are fsa and hsa eligible so you can use your fsa cards to purchase lucy now and it's convenient and discreet products can be enjoyed anywhere on flights at work on the go or even in the gym it's 20 21 get rid of cigarettes unplug your vape throw out your dip tanto 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you guys this product contains nicotine derived from tobacco nicotine is an addictive chemical lucy.co and be sure to use that promo code team house okay more user questions viewer questions are we ready jackson wants to know what were the cag guys like who helped you dudes on xvil i guess he's talking about benghazi yeah um do i do i detect some shade do i detect some shade um you know they i'll tell you guys i'll tell you exactly what here's what happened oh this is and you make your own you make your own assumption you make your own decision you your own thoughts they came in with bub bubs team can't you know bubs flew in it was bub glenn's awesome i wish they would have portrayed he was a lot funnier than what he was portrayed in the movie he was super funny yeah he's hilarious yeah um but um but the the bravado there though that was spot-on the bravado was right on i mean the the yeah the grip yeah he was humble but he was tough as tough as [ __ ] it was tough as nails but um he came in there were two other grs operators that came in the two delta the two delta force two cat guys the d boys and then uh and then also uh an interpreter a an actual combat interpreter came in that we had tripled well they all came in every one of them except for bub went into what we had building c is what it was it was called building charlie that was our main building i had our talk had our skiff had all of our equipment it had where the chief slept where the tl slept where the assistant t i mean it was our commanding control building it also had the most people in it and it had the most people on top of it well i remember they all walked in because i'm on alpha and i did say guys hey welcome to the party i remember saying that like hey [ __ ] better late than never welcome the party all it's glad to see and i was trying to be funny and all i got was dirty looks from everybody bunch of sour pusses but they they walked in and bub is the only one i saw climbing the ladder he was on the back i saw him come over the top of the ladder because he wanted he wanted to go say hi to ty right you want to say hi to ty they were buddies you know and they and he was looking you know he was also friends with jack that wasn't movie magic he was friends with both of them well he got up there and i remember i saw three other silhouettes so i saw bub and i didn't know it was bub at the time i i didn't know i did i just saw a guy get up there but i was bob come find out later obviously uh he was talking to tyrone i knew tyrone was up there because tyrone was awesome tyrone was our medic he was making rounds dude was incredible did [ __ ] i mean if he was a military operator got the medal of honor easy easy but uh he's out there running around passing people up making sure everybody had water but he's right and then he's also taking positions well he's up there and then i see another guy which was oz and then i saw dave uben the state department officer who actually did it he did an excellent job that night he actually one of the and i'm not knocking the state guys he just they just didn't do anything except for dave that i saw um well that's when the mortar started come long story short i i i did hear the first it didn't sound like a mortar to this day i initially thought it was a uh it was a katusha rocket or a uh or a 275 because i heard a sh it didn't sound but yeah granted my hearing was to [ __ ] i don't i never were hurting protection ever because of the the fire fight previously at the embassy yeah yeah and then and then at our place because boone has had that sr 25 the 308 he was right next to me right here right we're all night we're shooting and uh you know and and i'm shooting you know i'm shooting what i can with the 46 and i'm switching to the m4 because of 46 we didn't have a lot of ammo um so um i just but it did in the back of my head it says hey man was that a mortar and i'm talking to myself and i just went you know it was hey mortars mortars take cover not knowing what it was right i just i just what else could it be um unless the damn isr is firing on us but then we would have blew the whole compound up so i mean that was impossible but anyway um the first one hit you know and lobster if you watch the movie does does a pretty [ __ ] good job depicting it because the first one hit and i remember it blew up and my night vision went completely white and i just remember i'm just like okay i gotta add my fire to what's going on i saw tyrone who had our other machine gun he spin he did go cyclic because and it wasn't daytime the movie shows his daytime it was basically it was uh is it before not before bmnt is that what it was before tomorrow not of course i should know this from our damn ranger hamlet radiant enough times but we still haven't we forgive you okay sorry if it was emt or b and empty i know what you get the two robert rogers won't forgive you but we will yeah you thank you well i i did say hey don's when the french and indian president yeah it wasn't movie magic i actually can't say that [ __ ] [Music] here's the sun's coming up this is right before the mortar [ __ ] yeah and um he spun he he held that trigger down he went cyclic and all i'm seeing on night vision i'm just seeing that it's like you know laser beams and everybody lights up and the first one hit about 10 meters off the backside of building c i'm shooting over their heads because i want to shoot something oh god damn it's the fifth fire fight though we're not gonna but i'm thinking okay wait a second look behind you idiot who's got the six well you do ghosts make sure nobody's they're not overrunning the compound because i'm thinking well if we brought mortars in we'd be walking guys for my mortars not into the mortars but again we're fighting terrorists so who knows what their mindset is but i'm looking thinking okay let's make sure nobody's overrun in our our walls nobody was there i turn around i look again another one hits boom i see a guy just disappear um my night vision goes white so i'm watching the mortars hit which again to me is just incredible i was able to experience that because who gets to actually and consciously watch it i know what's going on it's not like where people oh it's just a flash of light it was it was i didn't know what was going on it was over no i'm i'm taking this all in it was amazing just being able to actually take it all in boom i'd take a few other shots guys out it was dave dave shrapnel had ripped through his leg in his arm um i turn around again and make sure nobody's overrun in our six because i got our six i'm on alpha and then i turn on again i see a boom boom boom i see fire for effect you know the the right bam bam bam through real quick and as my night vision comes back after the over bunch of light um yeah i don't see anybody but i just see the the debris raining down it is charged a bit whatever particles dust and it's all heated and it does i i did i put my head down and i went man we can't beat this i was saying this to myself we don't have an air support and i did i know i'm a man of faith i'm a terrible christian but i am and i i do believe this people say i was a god or well to me it was god said get your gun up ranger and i know that sounds poetic i know that sounds cheesy i don't give a [ __ ] that's what i heard and i just threw a few more rounds downrange and jack was in a great position boone was in a great position i was not but they kept fighting and i i guess they got the damage done i did see the more the team that brought bub's team in the team that i thought was running away i heard tires screeching out where the mortars were coming from i heard some gunshots there was a gunfight going on what had happened is their their their leader had got caught into building cease when the mortars were hitting he was calling them hey [ __ ] you're not getting destiny and they we got lucky we just got lucky they they took the water team out for us they ran them off or we would have just i mean they would have just obliterated our compound well i remember where uh tig got up on the roof first i don't give a [ __ ] what people say what the military says with their army says i saw it i saw it he gets up on there he sees what's going on first he goes i need some help up here i need help um crickets me and boone and jack are still holding positions we're still waiting for them to [ __ ] crush us right and he's like i need some [ __ ] help up here now and that's when boone says oh gotcha i'm coming i'm coming i said boom you got a better sector i'll get down i'll go help and that's what we hear finally and this is again it seemed like five minutes i think it was five minutes maybe it was two three it was still it was entirely too [ __ ] long and i i said boom i'll go you got a better position and then finally somebody from inside building c i thought it was i don't know who it was maybe it was the delta guys maybe it was our team leader that were in building c during all this says we'll go help we're getting up there to help and it really was to me it was like what the hell are you waiting on in my head i'm going we gotta beg you guys to get out first of all you didn't come up to the rooftops i actually asked for a relief i had to take a [ __ ] that's actually when i had to take a [ __ ] too i was like guys and that's when i actually shimmy down this ladder and before the mortars hit took a [ __ ] and jumped backed up and i was like guys i need i need a ready to break couldn't get anybody to come help me on the roof couldn't get anybody to give us any kind of breaks so ron was still running around giving water out before the attack i mean all this is happening within minutes before the attack that last attack and then to me it was like jesus and to insult the injury we can't even get any of you in that building to come up on the rooftop to [ __ ] help out we got injured guys i didn't know how bad it was i knew it was pretty damn bad because i watched my team get vaporized before my eyes right that's why i sweat rust be the wrong way that's why it always pissed me off and that's why initially i spoke out really hard against it and then i stopped because it wasn't doing any good i was doing we were arguing amongst ourselves and i have respect i do i know a lot of guys that went to delta sergeant wheeler was dude he was breville company with me over there i was going to be his team leader before i got stupid and went full and [ __ ] and got commissioned he asked me to be his team leader when he was going to get a squad those guys are outstanding they do amazing things they're warriors but again it's a little different when you have a specter or ranger platoon or somebody else backing you up then when you don't have anybody and i saw that difference too i learned that and it was pissing me off because uh we actually had to yell at him in the radios hey get the [ __ ] up there and help we need help you know and uh they did they got up there they did they they took they took uh they got dave's body on on a makeshift i don't know what you call stretcher they basically strapped him up like like a backpack and carried them down to they they helped take got the tourniquets on first they helped with the tourniquets oz actually climbed down on his own i they didn't help him oz me and oz don't get along we don't like each other very much but i have the ultimate respect for that guy's toughness that dude is one of the toughest sons of [ __ ] i've ever he is he's tougher nails dude he climbed down the ladder by himself i remember just hearing him just go just every ladder wrong he took it was like he was in this [ __ ] pain yeah and he slipped once too on the blood he was bleeding so bad on it he caught himself with his one arm and i even remember because i'm pulling security out and i hear this oh just this i never heard a man groan in that much pain before it was just weird and i turned to look and as i'm looking he's going into building c he's walking his own ass in there like well [ __ ] that's a bad ass son's a [ __ ] right there well they get dave's off there because dave couldn't because he was arms and leg on one arm with me and uh and you know it's like well that's good it's over you know and then finally towards the end of the night and the movie does a very good job showing that militia coming to rescue us the qaddafi's guys which is sort of ironic i think you still laugh at that now even more so to this day gaddafi's militia coming in um tig's like hey we got to still get rowan and bub they're soap on the rooftops and we're so we're all johnny okay let's figure out a way to we're going to lower him down because ron had that tire that he would he did he would pull that tire around so we were going to go get that tire tubular nylon thing that he pulled the tire on for pt and you know do the do the harness the the pj coast guard para rescue harness lower them down and i just remember that thinking that and then we look up and there's the d-boys pushed him off and i i used to talk about it a lot um because it really angered me because uh i i you know i'll tell it on the show and and it's okay and i'm not mad at them i'm not upset at them they're badasses delta they did i know they did awesome missions out there it's just for some reason that night it just something went wrong or or they did what they thought they needed to do in demise it wasn't right but i saw a roan hit that's that's traumatizing anyway anyway you cut it that was your boy and now you're seeing him throw it off a rooftop maybe that was a pragmatic thing to do but it's still hard to see that why it bothered me is because the attacks had stopped now we had we actually had a perimeter now we had a perimeter surrounding us we weren't going to get hit again at least in my eyes maybe they thought we were because they had really just gotten there a couple hours prior um it just bothered me if we were under a fire gosh it makes sense we're under fire we're taking every fire we got to get the [ __ ] out of there let's just get him down it we were safe as mice we were like oh dude we got the mortar team and it did and then they dropped bob down and bob hit a bush and you know as good as i do those bushes i don't care if you're north africa or the middle east those things don't give it and he didn't have his armor on because he got taken it off um it had it hey it sliced him open so when he hit it and it that so when people ask me about delta and now i have much respect from it because that's that's the pinnacle and that still is the pinnacle you go into counter-terrorism you go to special ops you still that's where you go man there's no higher than that and i still know that um but [Music] thanks again which um i saw those initial articles even on military.com it came out delta comes in and saves was like jesus i i no they didn't save us they didn't fire around maybe they made a good i don't know maybe they're doing great calls inside i don't know what was going on in building c um they got awarded like the navy cross the other one got the defense service medal great i awards are worth fantastic um and that was where i i finally you know i it bothers me to talk about a little bit what does obviously you can tell it bothers me but um it doesn't bother me that hey i'm gonna take these guys down sort of way anymore it's just hey this is what happened there's nothing to take down i think they thought they were doing the right thing you're right pragmatic they thought they were doing the right thing and to myers like i didn't know i don't think it was but that let's leave it at that war as hell what and it was personal to you and it was raw to you and it's and these were two dudes who just showed up and they're like oh i got we got to deal with this issue and you were seeing it to you these were like your friends up until a second ago when they were killed yeah yeah and that's why that's why again for your whoever asked that question don't hate delta and don't think i'm sore about i'm not it's what happened worse hell of course it's going to affect me and it always will but i signed up for this [ __ ] and if i see those guys ever again i've met their commanding officers and stuff and i've never said anything no and i have nothing to say about it i'm like hey this just happened and um i know there's guys probably within cat i know there's the younger guys within cag some of them don't like me then some of the older guys do like hey he talked he spoke out against what you guys but in my eyes it's it's what happened it's what happened man and i know you guys if we're in a gunfight again i know you'd have my back so it [ __ ] let's water under the bridge and and and let it go and and i do want people to know about it because i want them also to know it's not just all glorious and gunfights and this and that it's there's other [ __ ] that goes on that that's what bothers you not it's not shooting somebody uh it's watching something like that happen because that was unexpected right uh jerry says i never worked as a contractor many friends do in syria and south africa as former intel i was afraid i'd end up with some lunatics how do you handle that rangers lead the way i guess he's asking like are you ever afraid you're going to end up with lunatics on your team as a contractor you know as we saw that from 2003 when i started till the end the the the the uh and you guys know as good as i do the requirements start to go down because as a contractor you got to feel numbers right you know that and you can't there's only so many secure special ops guys out there then there's so many three-year special ops guys out there then there's so many one-year infantry guys out there then it's hey did you drive a car down baghdad one time a biop one time yeah i did or then it goes to did you put your did you sign your name correct i mean i guess that's that you can only pick by so many guys and so yeah that and you i i think it i do sell buddies that are in grs i i haven't been a giraffe in seven years i haven't been in anything in seven years but the standards continue to be lowered right and whenever you lower the standards yeah i wouldn't call them lunatics but you're going to get substandard individuals that we didn't we didn't have as much of in the beginning and that's just that's just the nature of the beast brother that's just that's corporations that's big money that's that's the conglomerate triple canopy black water dying core whatever the hell they're calling said yeah we can get a hot we can get a million guys yeah yeah yeah do we have a million guys right okay how do we get right and yeah the good old days us guys that we talk about the good old days but they really were the good old days because the numbers were smaller you could maintain a standard yes we did have some lunatics that were bloodlust thirsty but we handled it within ourselves right um but now it's just it i wouldn't call them lunatics i would just say you probably have guys that aren't the standard that they need to be um as far as just tactics or even just even that you get to the mental standards of i said looking at you guys you know people david and jack you guys are rangers and you're free thinkers you're smart you're you really do think outside the box i think we lost we've lost a lot of that over the years in our checklist society and and uh i just say pro tips for all of you out there if any contract agency says we can get you a hundred special forces ex-special forces guys tomorrow that should send up all kinds of red flags you should be a little suspicious about that kind of claim like you know there you go actually jack said it better than i did and he said it simpler so there you go right there yeah i also imagine though especially in early days especially for security type that you have a lot of like peacetime soft guys who spent all that time in special operations yeah yeah i wanted to get it on and they want to get their kill on i mean that look i mean that's not that sound that might sound really horrible but when you spent like there's nothing worse than a frustrated soft operator who never got to go to war who trained for all that time and never got to go to war and now they go to war but they're in more of a security position and maybe maybe they're a little hot on the trigger because you're you're right because they're right because they want it you know and you're right and we look i think that most soft guys want to get blooded like we want you know that's why we were there we want to get flooded and you put them in a situation where you know anyway go ahead i'm sorry no you're you're spot on i saw both ways but that's also where you go you guys do you want to go grs or you you want to go ground branch yeah if you want to get bladed up you know dda get the ground branch if you and it is it's a different mice you want to do security you want to sneak around you want to do surveillance you want then you go to grs and that was that's what i had we had the options and and uh but you're spot on brother that was a mindset we would get yeah the guys with the sleeve cats down to here the you know the this the uh valhalla is gr you know whatever i i yeah no i don't want you for grs you don't fit here everybody go do a state department contract go go go over there we we we want the nondescript non just the guys that are hey man i just i'm just here to i hope i don't get into [ __ ] but if i do we're going to kick the living [ __ ] at you the switch it likes it like the batman the switch is on [ __ ] right i don't want to turn it on right that's what you wanted at grs where if you wanted to do that other stuff then go do another contract now i don't know if that's the way but back then there were those options right and you could go do the hey go work for custer battles they'll throw in the middle of [ __ ] with with one bullet you want to get into it yeah with a rusty ak and what you're talking about i think especially in the movie in the book but especially in the movie is really displayed by you at the meet with the arms deal where you know the agency wants to follow these dudes so you guys are doing the arms deal and everything's tense and you're kind of like shocked bro you're not like well what what again what what else could you and that wasn't just from there it was from learning that from you know i said i've been doing it for how long at that time that was just wisdom i i love knowledge knowledge is great quantitative analysis and and getting the book smarts on but learning and the qualitative analysis the qualitative learning that the the wisdom that comes from just making the mistakes and then figuring out wait a second these aren't just savage i know we no they're not savages they just want to be treated okay how do we treat them how do we kind of talk to them i can't speak to them what are they doing out there and i i learned it from the sudanese i didn't learn this from hawaiian sudanese go he's like hey john boltano he was when i was in mizzou working you know i was like what the hell does that mean he's like i cuz you know i thought he was like hey yeah right he's like no it just means it means good morning because it is it's officially means good and if any of you guys if you if you don't think java is real watch madagascar three they actually and they have those same shirts downrange i should have bought one they have jumbo right here it means good morning that's what officially and it was started in tunis in west africa but it just morphed because of pop culture because of movies because of the shock of the surfer thing yeah it really to everybody now just me saying man be cool are you are you cool dude yeah yeah trigger i i don't want to you know this is this could end badly and we all are gonna get shot so hey right but it was and it was me you know that was that was also me and that was what tono and i say tano in the third person but that was what tonno really was working it was that goofy hey man let's just have some [ __ ] fun right and you know let's let's enjoy it smile hey yeah we may get in a gunfight but why don't we smile before we start it and do you understand and it was i did remember throwing that up and they did he just you know and they do they they know how to do the chin just like everybody else it's just yeah yeah right all right we're good we're cool and um it was that was just again the learning of of when you're working overseas and that came from the lineage of what we started with with the caught with the origins of just learning from other people learning from other cultures working playing baseball with wet backs is was a great it's funny what other cults is when they just like there's no difference maybe we don't speak the same language but baseball man we get along and i know how to deal with people and i know how that we can figure out a way to communicate if it didn't start there it sure so wouldn't have transgressed all the way to that point in time and then i just got better at this i haven't explained the overseas situations that's why i love reading battalion as much as they had some sort of indoctrinate had the regimental stuff the the discipline at least i had squadrons that still had me think outside [ __ ] figure it out dude it was and yeah do what i do what i'm do do what you're told well you didn't tell me how to do it then well then you better [ __ ] figure it out just like this wait that's the option i'm you're telling me but then you're not telling me how to do something so i do it wrong so you're just telling me now to now i can think on my own and it was that back and forth that it really helped me when i got to the agency in grs because it was all right i got to figure this out on my own because the agency doesn't know what the hell that their head from their [ __ ] as much as they should and the guys that are coming before me some of them are teaching me great some of them aren't teaching me [ __ ] all right let's figure this out and it was making errors and living through those errors but then remembering what we're getting a lot of times you know as good as i do guys sometimes being lucky is better than being good yeah i got i got lucky a hell of a lot all right uh richard thank you uh what else do we have here andrew asks can tonto paronto recommend a pair of sunglasses that enhance clarity and boost color i'm really looking for a pair where are they damn it i knew i should have had them ah man okay guys i still love that commercial i don't give a [ __ ] what you say you sons of [ __ ] i love that damn even though i've only watched parts of it just because i i still on and this day is still on its shows and guys they are the best range glasses i have ever had i still wear them at the range and boy they and when i leave them at the range i'm not pissed off that i lost a pair of 20 glasses that's like when i used to leave my oakley's at the range right no they're amazing yeah chris throw it up there man where can people get these amazing sunglasses come on come on actually don't hold on no no you can you can get them you just gotta go search hd vision they're still sold by hd vision and for all you guys that don't know that that company they still they're they they actually are the copper fit people idea village is oh cool they have if you look at ideal village they have done copper fit they do all those non-stick pans and it's just and but that was so fun doing that commercial in the middle of the heat desert in las vegas i still get that was a fantastic crisp and yeah i loved it i the only thing we had to change i don't know people if you watched the first few commercials it said special forces civilians don't get that they don't understand and i remember a couple of my buddies because i wasn't locked i was i actually got picked up on the oda because they didn't have enough guys and then i was able i knew more about it's amazing how much we learned at range of battalion and don't and we don't think we do i knew more about weapons than our bravos did um but uh so i stayed on the oda but i remember and one of my one an sf guy patrol on it's amazing that as to as alpha males were still trolls on all the dance social media sure at trolls he said oh you weren't [ __ ] sf and i said you're right i wasn't who says i was and then he shows the commercial and i i remember i called the lady that the hd i said hey i know it doesn't mean a lot to you guys but it means a hell of a lot yeah and um i said you got to change it and they did yeah their defense and then i talked to this guy offline and the the team i served with he had served with three of those guys on this 10th group team so we actually became friends but you know he was like stolen you know stole a valor sense of i was like [ __ ] not so i range from town was a hell of a lot harder than being in a group where you got to kiss my i'm we're going back and forth and then it's at the end it's like two guys getting in a fist fight and at the end of the day going hey you man [ __ ] you no [ __ ] you yeah uh but um yeah it's great jamison says hey chris i work at the largest dam in the us and we're planning to have about 120 rangers come plan and perform an opposition rate on the damn want to come play at the damn um no because i'm old and i love being home and i like sleeping in until 10 00 10 a.m every morning but thank you for the offer samuel donated 250 dollars thank you channel tonight that's pretty baller he says great show you all put together with great guests alana duffy's story on the reunion struck me thank you that was the last episode one of my close family members was hit by an efp in iraq 2008 and he didn't do the amputation but he's now going through it i subscribed so having fun with this cheers those efps were a [ __ ] nightmare man i i still those things those i mean they're [ __ ] platter charges so you look at unbelievable i i still have and i know you guys because of who you are and because you guys think how you do i still have the utmost respect for i don't like terrorists i think terrorists are scum of the earth but i have utmost respect for their capabilities and the things they use at their disposal i mean jesus oh they're resourceful so for for our for so for our viewers who don't know an id is obviously an improvised explosive device which could be anything that is used to explode well when this military started using these south african design vehicles it had these sort of v-shaped holes that would disperse the blast of ieds to protect troops actually solomon solemani and and iran started uh facilitating the import uh and creation of these uh is it explosively formed projectiles explosively formed projectiles which would shoot basically molten uh metal it was putting a copper just like a platter charger getting a copper piece over the explosion so an explosion was so hot it would heat that turn it into molten lava that it would puncture whatever armor i mean it would puncture a armor yeah um it would puncture the armor and then of course when it got through it would cool and then it would turn eventually you're going to get hit by hot molten lava or it's going to cool now turn back into a steel uh a copper piece is going to go through so some buddies yeah with the efps the thing is is the death tolls weren't super high but the amputation rates because it would come through like a rod the amputation rates were insane it was and the way they were putting them i remember i remember them remember putting them now they're putting them in the plumbing tubes or so they're actually basically basing it putting a um help me out like a shaped charger guys a shaped charge yeah they're making safe charges in the streets with the guy i had never been so nervous in my life when that started happening you're going by sewer outlets yeah you're i mean you're just like holy [ __ ] is this the time yeah didn't matter how much armor you had on you yeah that was that was a definite game changer on their end it did change tactics yeah quite a quite a bit because you're right the the the uh just the the severity of the injuries and just the distance i mean explosion isn't bad enough as is seeing a guy hit by molten lava oh my lord lasik asks whatever happened to henry amal the translator dude that we had a lot of brave acts that went on he was the bravest little son of a [ __ ] ever um he did because he he was we have different levels of interpret interpreters combat terps and they have linguist he was a linguist he he was not bred to go out with guys and um actually long story short anyway he he actually has a citizenship but he's still working for the agency i don't know what capacity grant this is the last i heard this has been a few years um and um he did testify and all the testifying he did and he's the one that i didn't even again the militia that came to help us in the militia that brought bubs team in that was qaddafi's militia they were gaddafi's loyalists um i didn't know they were until he testified he's the one that actually got him on the phone and so if anybody say this that night it's freaking a mall it's amazing yeah and uh and um yeah and he didn't look like that in the movie though he really what he looked like bob newhart no [ __ ] he looked like an egyptian bob newhart the and the older version of bob now bless you he was uh yeah it was it was having bob newhart basically [ __ ] his pants with his eyes about this big all night is something again that i will always remember and it's it's a treasure because he he really was and he did take my i was like hey tono not a combat trip or not weapons qualified i said you are now yeah and taking my gun again it's just another experience that i'm glad i got to go through man uh all the [ __ ] that went through i i i missed i missed that i missed guys like that that he wasn't trained and he still just did he did what he had to do jimmy yeah yeah yeah that shows the human was frightening he wasn't the age that he should have been doing that either right yeah amazing man that's a great question it brings a smile on my face whenever i talk about him because it's like man you know we we we trained to do stuff like this this is what we're supposed to do yeah yeah he was just a guy that manned up yeah that's cool he rocked him so chris you you are out of range of patel you're out of the army you you meet your future wife in south padre you go back to grand junction i did i did and uh that's when i took the gre and and then started looking for grad schools i did well in the gre um and uh that point i i i i knew i didn't want to stay in grand junction i i knew i didn't want to stay in colorado i wanted to go someplace that i'd never been i've been to the west coast i've been to the east coast i've been to florida i've been to texas been to washington i'd never been to the midwest and well b hey look at the girl i met in south padre she's playing volleyball at the university of nebraska at omaha well [ __ ] yeah what a coincidence why don't i apply there and i still had the thinkings at the time of my ignorance and my uh my naivety days of me wanting to be a fed at some point which i'm glad i never went that route wow i dodged a bullet there but um i applied to for a criminology at several colleges some undergraduate program and criminal justice and i was accepted at a yeah i got accepted at university of basket omaha for their master's program and it's like well i know tanya i know her well [ __ ] it let's go and it was just not knowing anybody not having a job i had a huge hernia from ranger baton because we did a jer uh we did at jrx during regis exercise at fort bragg and my shoot was too tight on the jump pin and uh you know i so i caused a double hernia but i didn't let anybody know and um um but i'm like [ __ ] it i gotta get out of here i gotta leave i packed up my bronco for bronco 2 and drove from grand junction to omaha and uh i asked her to find me a place to live that was cheap she found me a place uh in the ghetto of omaha on 38th street uh overlooking the mutual omaha headquarter building which is near down it was a hundred and i think a hundred bucks a month for rent in a house i had no air conditioning and it's like screw it i start i basically what i did i just started over just wipe the slate clean okay let's start over and um yeah i moved down there and you know those two years i got my graduate degree but i always knew again from my mom and my dad and my grandfather it was you you don't quit anything you never we don't quit we don't ask for handouts we don't quit and i felt like i'd quit ranger battalion and so for those two years i got my master's degree i i took a full-time job at mutual of omaha actually and started to become an insurance adjuster so if you watch the movie where they right or the chief rags on me that's true that's how they would make fun of me i'm like oh [ __ ] you should watch go be an insurance suggestion that was that actually happened um but i learned how to be an insurance adjuster and but all that time frame i was every day trying to find a recruiter that would put me back in and it was i had an re code of three which i didn't know it it was difficult and they just i had i had to go to recruiter to after recruiter after recruiter and finally um after i got my masters and i was like well i got to find a way to get in i didn't know it for two years i had no idea there was a us army command a recruiting command that was a block from my street how i didn't know it was there i i i can't i i don't know or maybe just popped up i just never saw it but i remember i was like [ __ ] it i had three recruiters tell me no it was gonna be too hard to get back in it's like your waiver's gonna be a bear it's gonna take forever no we're not gonna help you yeah recruit her thanks right doing your job i walk down to the personnel the recruiting command and the sergeant major was there that day and i said sergeant major uh you have guys that don't want to go in the service you have guys that want to get out i said i am trying to get in i said i've been through the thrillborn school here's my 201 file yes i had a hiccup here's what happened but i said i want to do this and he said roger okay he says this is what you need to go get me three behavioral behavioral uh sign or behavioral um wellness basically psychological reviews go see three psychiatrists get their thumbs up that you're okay bring it back to me i'll send you the recruiting office and i did i got them done within a week three different recruiters everyone clean bella health clean bella health he's good he's good i'm feeling much better now um and i went to the recruiter and i laid it on his desk and i said hey and i had the signature from the from the sergeant major there the nebraska recruiting command sergeant major um and he goes okay you've been out for three years though because it was going on for years because after those two years of getting a mastery it took me another year just to work on getting back in and um and i'm still seeing my wife we're still we're you know we're tight now we've been dating for three years everything's going great on that end my current wife and um he goes all right but you got to do it all over again and that's how at that point i was like [ __ ] i don't care i was in such good shape i knew what to expect i that's all i did was work out and work and work out and work you know and i was at the age now you know have sex with my wife you know workout work which is kind of a workout anyway because you're at that age where you're just you're having fun you know and i love her to death and the sex is good because again her ass is up to her neck so it's it turns me on all the time but we you know it got to where i was like screw it fine if i send it i don't give a [ __ ] he goes well we can't give you 11 bravo because it looks like you've got a problem with your back now it's like are you [ __ ] me i said well okay then make me 91 bravo i'll go 91 he goes he goes yeah we can do that because they're also now they're training 91 bravo's at fort benning because it's now it's not just an infantry bashing train so uh i signed up for 91 bravo um i got on the plane i knew what the games were going to be so i was ready for um but i got the 30th ag and the uh the head drill sergeant at 30th ag was looking at my record so he pulled me because hey i want to talk to you come in here it's like roger sorry where's your drill sergeant what do you want you know respectfully of course i'm doing respectfully um we hadn't they hadn't introduced stress cards yet so it wasn't that easy yet so no stretch cards um but he goes i see that you're a range of battalion before he goes now you're a 91 bravo he goes what the [ __ ] do you want to be at 91 bravo for he goes do you not watch your blue cord again i'm like i was like drill sergeant it's not my decision yeah i'm locked up i'm going holy [ __ ] you're like dressed it's not my decision i didn't make that decision he goes go see the tmc medic he's he's a former first special special forces group guy he's a surgeon now he's going to get you changed and he's going to give you picket fences you know that oh you're taking fences i said roger that and i mean again the pat to me i really did the pass that i've been on they were laid i really do feel there are coincidences but i also feel there is a path that you can go on if you choose it right so that path was there now i could have said no i said no no i'll go to fort sam you know i'm gonna go hang out with the nurses and you know do i'm gonna i'm gonna have an easy life yeah right yeah [ __ ] [ __ ] that i was like no i want my blue cord and now i'm super amped up because like yeah look and um i went and saw the the the surgeon who was he was long tapper got his long tab on he's and you know again i'm back in an element where i'm around you you know it's good when you go in you guys know as good as i do you're around i'm around rangers now again i'm around sf and i'm still a fire breather i've still got that energy in me i also want to go kick ass take names and be like john wayne and yeah oh yeah i'm motivated and i'm in such good shape and i know their [ __ ] [ __ ] games aren't going to mess with me because i'm already expecting them and yeah i went to at first and 50th they [ __ ] this down and i'll be i was disappointed the army had changed so much in just in that three and a half four years one guy had his ranger tap when i went through basic training the first time every drill instructor including the captain the co had a ranger tap or had and had been the ranger battalion not only have been the ranger battalion but it was either one had been to school except for one it was my drill sergeant drill sergeant harney but he had also been the head of the guards of the tomb of the unknown soldier so you know i think that's pretty that's pretty he was an honor guard you know maybe not a ranger japanese honor guard he was he was the head guy at the tomb of the unknown soldier as an e7 right that's which is a really tough job to get very hard and very hard job to keep like it's a very hard job that is that's yeah and that's discipline to to the utmost yeah and i i love that guy that first thing drills aren't harney even they look like satan that guy is tremendous um so real quick just to catch people up so at 11 bravo which you were and they told you you couldn't be again is infantry 91 bravo is infantry is the army by the way just to point that out yeah and infantry yeah it needs to be pointed out on every podcast really and and when he talks about the blue chord the blue the the 11 bravo's the infantry has a they were a blue on one of the sites which which is uh the infantry you know it's a thing that's just your decision it's your it's your mark it says and it is it you know you got you know it's good it's important right because you do earn that and you do feel well at least at that time i still think it is i still respect the guys that came before me the battle of the bolds the the guys from you know from from damn hamburger hill i mean that's to me that's what that blue cord represents those guys not what just but it was disappointing because it long story short it wasn't as tall and it wasn't the standards had dropped the drills they couldn't lay their hands on anymore going from that where the drill sergeant charles basically launched the kid into jupiter to now they can't and it you could tell it was it was this year and and granted it was going to be easier for me regardless because i already knew what to expect and i was in great shape i knew what i was getting into and that's half the battle mental you will you can mentally mind [ __ ] yourself more than your body can take the your body can take so much pain you're going to quit up here before your body ever quits you know for the most part you know losing lens and stuff yeah i get your trolls yeah if you lose there's something there that i get it but but um but it it really was easier and the drill starts i i was really shocked to not see and not see drill sergeants that were at least tabbed and i think as an infantry guy if you're going to teach infantry tactic then you should go to the leading infantry school of the us army it should be a requirement there shouldn't be a or actually or maybe maybe a asterisk here for the honor guard or something else which is completely hugely disciplined that's that's even more so the range school yeah but uh but it lost it was very easy went through it it was a piece of cake i only had to do the last week of jump school just jump week basically go throw yourself out the 40-foot tower okay go put a shoot on go jump out of the plane yeah gotcha easy and then i went back to rip and no rip was still hard it was still it was still a kick in the nuts um the only difference was is two of the rip techs that were there the rip instructors i'd been to the rip before with i knew so they were like what the [ __ ] are you doing back here right you know yeah and so it the mind game wasn't there the physical it was still physically hard now again i was ready for it but the mind [ __ ] it's like all right just play the game just [ __ ] play the game and and i went back to second range of italian and and no i i did very well i it was weird i just went back i have the same company back to bravo company i went to a different platoon that's really good um you know what was amazing is that and that basically training class first 50th i look back at it now we we had some all-stars in there at the time leroy petry was in my company oh wow um a guy named chris voss who is a vortech agent that took out the two it was about five years five or six years or maybe a little bit longer but when the two uh there were two fugitives up in the northeast that were loose and they said the federal agency took them out yeah i remember this it was it was the vortex the boy you know that's that's a that's an unknown if you ever want to go with the feds you want to go to an actual attack team that's [ __ ] incredible check out the border patrol attack teams the board tag teams those guys are incredible but he took those guys i mean he actually had a name for himself in the community there and then um you know just it we had another another couple ranked guys that went to range battalion that did amazing things on the for the first initial pushing oef it was just thinking now looking back like man we had some all-stars in that basic training class but then going through rip um it was close they were trying to get me to go to ranger school right out of rip because it just was if you guys went through it again they would have done the same i mean you just you know your heads and shoulders above everybody else you know what to do you know this tactics you already been arraigned uh sergeant major roberts um hugh who was my regimental uh battalion sergeant major at the time he led became the rsm to get another all-star tremendous ranger legend that i was able to learn and watch from he says nope bring that sun [ __ ] over here it ain't going anywhere you get in the second ranger time we'll figure it out over here um because sergeant sansone who was one of my rip cadre he was trying to get me to be able to go to ranger school right out of rip out of that second rift and and sergeant major roberts wouldn't have none of it which is i'm glad he didn't shouldn't have let me slide i gotta do what everybody else does went back to broad third platoon was with another tremendous uh platoon sergeant uh sergeant uh first class rothke who was named sergeant major peter rothke he was you know he finished second in uh ranger competition back in the day dude was incredible just as hard as nails hey bud hey bud what the [ __ ] you doing but i just remember the butt bye bud it's like jesus here comes but that's where the actual chubbin came from it you know we changed it in the movie to ranger school beret i don't know why we did but it was actually sergeant major rothke who was sergeant rothke he started the first class platoon starting rocky he's the one that would leave his beret all the time and i was on the toads the school my squad was the work toads when i first got in we're the ones that would always find his beret and rubber dicks on it so that's where that they said we got to put that in the movie somehow chopping was infamous you know like when your squad leader or team leader asked you to like a donut from the chow hall and the guys would [ __ ] the hole in the donut and they'd stir the the the fruit punch with the [ __ ] and not that i did that but you know presumably yeah i heard you heard your friends of mine and it's funny because you and i i mean we didn't find this out until after we started chatting after uh you know that your food got jumped i was on battle i know i chopped my own food but uh i mean i i always i always figured it was better to take control of the situation so if i chopped it i didn't have to worry if it if it had been pre-chubbed it's like you did yeah you protected the chub yeah basically you were a preemptive chubber yeah i didn't know you know what that's a hell of a hashtag down the line somebody you young rangers got to use that as a hashtag that's got you got to give credit to park here the hashtag preemptive and i were were actually in bico at the same time and knew like yeah i mean i was leaving heading over to hsc to the snipers when you were when you were there but we were there like you know all the same people let me hit some uh more user questions here i want to i just want to make sure we get through them uh thank you hammer and nails andrew asks did the u.s government have the ability to get help to benghazi that wasn't set for whatever reason i've heard a lot of contradicting claims yeah um yeah there was units i in the area that that could have made it not to us and and that's even i've even testified that i've said this many times to us we were the immediate reaction to this consulate that was us we were there and i testified to that i even said it too that when i was sitting in michael rogers committee which was a joke that was such a chill um but i remember saying because when you go to these these hearing these little hearings just closed our hearings you have the congressman then you have their um their their little lawyers but they're young kids like their aides and whatnot their their aides or their their their little yeah and they are some of them have their degrees but they're the ones that sit behind and ask the little snipey questions and you just want to jump across like really shut up but i remember yeah that her at the end because i had an ash and i forget which congressman it was but then the eight asks they say could you have made it in time and what about the stand down i said well i said there were two different all right there was one with us and that was initially and i said that i don't believe that was malicious i don't think that was nefarious i just think that our chief was [ __ ] down his leg and he made a bad call and instead of letting the guys that knew what the hell they were doing because i had to remind them i said remember we're all 40 year old every one of us had been serving and we're all 40 year 41 42 43 44. um we're senior guys and we all have been senior guys or officers within our respective units we're not just new guys so he should have said you guys got this he didn't i said that's the cia way i said on the state department side yeah there were units um there was a marine fast cut that was the main one so we had two families that could have and could have made it um one was in spain and then one was that sigonella we actually had one in the med too um yeah there was actually three uh the delta team probably not not the death team would but again still though i don't give a [ __ ] you're still getting the spun up the sift team the commanders in an extremist force that 10 special forces group team that was actually the ambassador's psd team they were his they were in tripoli i remember they would come out dinner with us when we worked in tripoli that was his actual psd team that was a team i couldn't believe they had pulled out of the country when he was coming to benghazi that they were tasked to him um if you watch the movie that's when we that's the team that that's the jock team the jsoc team that's that's that that's the sifting um they could have made yeah and then they were up because we were on call right off the bat the 555th fighter wing yes easy right had and they had a detachment in soda bay greece well how do you know there were soda bakeries well because that's where we would pre-station before we'd go into libya my bed was right outside their barracks and as range as it goes within the grs and i know the seals and marines there hate me to say this but every time there was going to be a a a call a fire plan or a any uh csar plan it was always tasked to the rangers now you guys do this where are all the units that can get to us if we're going out to sebha or if we're going to derna or if we're going like i said if we're going out if you're in afghanistan you're going out to los gagar from kandahar you're going to um shin dan or somewhere like that it was always tasked us so i knew where all my units were because that's was my job that was my responsibility um and there were many in the air and we had called them all and the big one was that the fast movers and it was we did tell them i remember saying that hey man we don't need your bombs just fly the [ __ ] over these guys these guys are shitless they're scared shitless um but it just kept saying not available and then it and every every i remember boone kept giving me sit reps because he had some radio calls as well we had a great radio guy he was a former vietnam guy named larry and he was on the radios he was on our he was on our 117s doing the big calls out we're on our inventors saying hey call this guy call this guy call this guy he's putting it out vietnam veteran he's guys he's he's calling him and boone is coming back to me going dude they're coming he remembers coming to me say hey the marines are on their way fast is on their way he'd walk back to me no they're not coming hey [ __ ] the uh the specter gunship is coming oh no it's out of fueling range a 555 the 555th fighter wing and they those guys i love they they got spun up the pilots they got to their planes i've met some of those guys apologizing to me like you guys don't need to apologize to me they said we got to our planes and they just didn't say anything it wasn't they were even told to stand down and just they weren't told anything and they just stood there because and he goes and he would come to me and said the 550 fist coming that's the aviano fighter wing it's like not they ain't coming and it just from about 1 to 3 a.m i was just jesus there ain't nobody [ __ ] our way where was where was this in the timeline when you say 1 to 3 a.m was this after glenn and ty had been killed or where i'm just curious to place this you know within the timeline no no jack no you and you know you can always ask me these kind of questions brother i know issues um this was before this was that actually they had actually got they were just waiting at the airport because they didn't have a ride they didn't know where the [ __ ] we were at they actually got from tripoli to benina between midnight at 1 a.m so this 1 00 am is real time 1 and 3 okay this is where we're like we're like holy [ __ ] there really isn't i mean because you know we're doing what we do doing what seal and jack jack was this comms guy when he was on team five so jack is working it too you know silva um and it's just we're we're asking the right questions i know where our assets are because i have that's my job on the map i have hey here's this here's who that's what we do on c-star that's what rangers do and so i'm like did you call here did you tell them did you call yeah and larry's like i'm calling everybody and nobody's responding or nobody's come why it's just crickets and we didn't know it at the time and it wasn't like those [ __ ] but you know it was okay what do we need to do it wasn't till after it wasn't until after we started to find out wait a second they really did i mean we're confirming our own worst fears they really did leave us why and that's we started put pieces together on our own and then all but then of course all the tr all the hearing started and then i even started to find out more like whoa wait a second this is nefarious [ __ ] this just wasn't a mistake and i know what we're doing there i mean we're moving arms i mean and that's why i started to also started to pay attention to the politics in the military and what we're doing i never paid attention to before i didn't care right i never ever did and that's when i was like jesus there is a bigger picture here that i just never cared to see because it put a damper on what i was doing i i didn't i didn't and that's when i got pissed and that's when i started to talk do talks but the talks weren't like what i do now it was anger right right it was it was it just it was sheer i'm going to get even with somebody right i don't know who hadn't even turned off of my own guys it was like this even my guys that were trying to help me are you really trying to help me are you just trying to find out what happened right if you're not saying what i'm saying then you're not trying to help me it's like wait a second i'm still trying to find out i'm still trying to figure it out too so it was but that 1-3 a.m yeah bro just to answer your question that 1-3 a.m was actual real time and and bub bub had gotten there i didn't know it at the time i had bob had gotten there with that oh it wasn't executives jet they'd rented it they had gotten there uh right around 12 30 midnight and we did have an isr 11 30 overhead what what was beyond that isr was always armed because it was always over derna and tripoli was bad benghazi was worse derna was benghazi times 10. i mean we would we couldn't even get into durham i mean they would turn us our asses away we try to sneak in there nope get the [ __ ] out of it i mean it was they were that was that was bad and so there was always a drone over durna you know that was the obama administration that was hellfire city dude hey let's just we'll just well i will he'll fire him for an isr it was always armed and i remember saying hey get that hellfire armed on that isr well it's not armed what the [ __ ] it's always on why isn't it armed this and i i don't get in those arguments on the radio it was just me making my smart ass comment why the [ __ ] isn't it armed not expecting a reply but yeah it was it was i i've been told that like the big three case studies to look at for like drone strikes is really uh derna raka and monsool and like we've we've not too many people talk about derna because it was mostly hellfire strikes but i mean there were a lot of strikes i mean there's a lot there's a lot of bad guys going on there and durna yeah was one of the places that sent the most foreign fighters to iraq i mean that is a hotbed a hotbed for bad guys buddy that was that place was it was that's that was a training ground to me that they say you know syria was a training ground for isis and rock n [ __ ] derna was the training ground for where i to my opinion that's where isis started a ton of foreign fighters yeah oh yeah the foreign fighters coming in and well i remember i remember doing an op in benghazi and this was we were supposed to be doing this um because they didn't want us out doing surveillance with me and boone are like dude this is our job and we had a targeter come to us she was an incredible target she's actually the one ca and he's still working i don't want to give her name up but that actually sided with us that tried to help us and was completely blacklisted but um she says she came to me and she goes we get word that we got word there's foreign fighters and now in benghazi can you guys go to this location and we had a 10-digit grid like hey and go see if there are and we're like yeah whatever all right well whatever you know me and boone got to go get some bootleg cds anyway so what the [ __ ] we'll go i mean like dvds anyway so we'll do it on the way so we get in a local car we drive down there and you know i you know i can actually grow a beer and when all this is i i look pretty good now boone's black i don't people know that boone is actually black he's he's uh but he when he gets it he looks he looks local and we're sitting there on this on this this we're driving around this compound it looks like it's a compound looks like a fort you know it looks like but there's forks there's [ __ ] old compounds everywhere over there and that's that's how people live they have their damn eighth high block walls around their eve every house has its own demarcation line because if you don't your neighbor's going to come and annex your property so so we're sitting there and we're looking and i remember i could see through this wall so we're off this street we're in we're in this little little pajero i think it was and um i'm looking and i remember there's just it's no bigger than maybe three foot by two foot opening that i can see by the gate and i'm looking we're looking and we see this guy walk and i remember i didn't have to look at him i knew the hair on the back of his neck was standing up like mine it was like holy [ __ ] that's that's al-qaeda man i mean you did you do it for so long you just it's like jesus they're [ __ ] here and it was a wake-up call to us that okay what the hell what's what's going on there's foreign fighters here yeah there's terrorists here except when gaddafi was there so qaddafi didn't allow her there were no terrorists in libya when qaddafi was in charge just so all you guys know that yeah gaddafi was the bad guy whatever um but um there were that's was holy [ __ ] there's foreign fighters here you're talking about like you saw a guy with a big like jihadi beard and almost saw the jihadi beer and you've been doing it long enough now and he's in he's actually was dressed in bdus army woodland camo beans and pretty pretty cool how do you know how do you know you could just just by the face just the hardness the crustiness the you just after that many years it's jihadi for sure yeah oh [ __ ] yeah yeah and uh and i'm looking at boone and i you know bruno's been doing it boom started with me at blackwater we were class one of blackwater we started together he's been doing this with me and he's been a different area he's not saying we've been on the same team for 10 years but he's we've been to working grs and contracting world for 10 years in pakistan and yemen and all these other places libya and iraq and afghanistan of course and um i look at him i go did you see what i saw and he goes yeah i go was that a [ __ ] aqi he goes [ __ ] yeah that was like she and it to us to me that was it just bro you know to me i had so much fun doing the contracting job for so long it's that's when i started to see there's something and i i was always maybe i was ignorant i didn't i took the green pill instead of the red pill ignorance is truly bliss that's when i really started to see the government know and we're not we're not here to save america anymore we're here to i don't know and at that time i don't know what the hell we're doing what are we supposed to be doing here and then eventually i saw that no we're there we're here to stabilize regions and loot what we can get and put people in charge that we want in charge like at that time you know the muslim brotherhood was supposed to were the good guys that was the past administration that's what they said and hamas was you know and egypt had just been the coup in egypt had just taken place and it was me finally waking up to that this is something greater that i started on that we all started on and that something greater was was was gone it wasn't there anymore what i'm not doing this for patriotism and to save america i'm just doing the bidding of our government just just to do it you know and as we're flashing back both you know it wasn't a disappointment in the job because i still love the job because i said i went to yemen after but it was it just opened my eyes to what our what foreign policy is not what it was i didn't even know what foreign policy what the name would have meant right at that time this was doing the job gross i uh i got a good one here actually emmett uh oh and this this has got to be emmett olani's from me yeah he says i miss seeing you guys in times square it was the safest pub in the world when you were there buddy we you i was it me you and scoveland had our books right next to each other yeah little loon it was at your book signing chris that i came to where i met my publisher who my editor who who picked up my book that that's right that's where natasha that was that was your was that your opinion not your epiphany but that was and that was where that was where like you're starting i mean that where you're gonna hey we're gonna do this and we're gonna knock it out of the park not epiphany i should say i mean i yeah i met her there and she was like yeah i mean i would be interested in that let's talk further and yeah it all came out of that oh man that and i miss them dude i know me too down there in times square that's a great place that damn good food too yeah uh lasik says tonto did you ever meet a grs or contractor who had no mill or law enforcement experience but got a lot of psd training and experiences that was a solid guy who could have been sf um well i i met like i said there were team leaders there were staffers the staffers weren't held to the same requirement as contractors um but all of them had at least law enforcement in some capacity made they weren't all military but some of them had some federal you know they all had some law enforcement whether it was big city uh or like a south side who passed away you know on that attacking coast with was a bad call by another chief at the time um uh he was atlanta swat you know he was a detective he wasn't military but he was atlanta um or like our guy who didn't do very well during benghazi but was a former secret service so but neither of them were military um south side guys if i missed his military time i apologize rest in peace as south side actually was a tremendous team leader um you know um but um yeah i never didn't know any juris guys that didn't have anything now that being said the people that run grs now um have had no c have no security no military experience agenda i'm not going to tell you what gender they are because it shouldn't matter but i brought it up anyway so you guys can figure it out but they um they have the ones that run grs to the date and i this is from my buddies that still work grs they no military knows no security no law enforcement yeah i mean it should be guys that come up through the ranks right that end up running it always seems to work best that way i mean uh you don't become a platoon sergeant by just showing up and signing yeah i'm gonna be a sergeant now it should be the same and should be the same in the civilian world too should have that experience to go along with whatever pedigree you have uh and i mean and for the guy who was the secret security or the secret service agent like in a standard and or dss or whatever in a standard diplomatic environment you know that would be enough you know it would be close protection you know get the you know get the the primary to the vehicle get out of there but when you go into these semi-permissive or non-permissive areas it becomes more immature and i i've interviewed thomas pacora who uh was like an og you know but he was with a pock before it was grs and you know he told me he was like you know that guy had to make a difficult decision was it necessarily his job to put his boys in harm's way to go and uh go and do a rescue mission at the embassy you know but it was it was you chris and it was ty and those other dudes who kind of manned up and were like no this is we have to choose the hard right over the easy wrong it is and and it wasn't you know it wasn't that we just decided right off the bat too it was like oh [ __ ] you we're doing what we're going to do nobody waited right and and during this time frame not only waiting for him to make a decision but we're still we're collecting our own information we're doing what season operators and i use it i hate saying operator but you know it's such a catchphrase a catch word now but you're doing what seasoned professionals do right you're taking it all in yes we're still waiting and waiting for him to call because we're he's in charge but we're still as a group taking is the fire increasing or is it not increasing what's the chatter on the radio do we have an asset have they somehow mysteriously found an asset that can help us or not and and then our and then just doing even us our normal uh uh preventive prevent pci's your print checks and there's a pcs sorry about that too much vodka sorry guys um you know do i have all my gear is my still am i still on the right spot is my vehicle how much gas do i have i've been paying attention you you're still going through just the normal stuff not just gosh this guy's an [ __ ] we're not going what a dick we can't go no you're still trying to to so when you do because you know eventually we're going to get out the gate right what do we expect right what if what if we run into this what do we need to do and if we do as all the mechanical equipment that we have on us and everything that we're carrying whether we're driving is it's going to work is it going to work to proficiency if not let's fix it now um and uh it is it's one of those situations where that's where the military experience helps right that's where the special ops background helps that's where going through ranger school or buds or ripped or bringing a private helps because you are putting those situations in training you are where it's you're gonna fail right how can you handle that or even the first thing you do before you go to rip trying to get all your bags in the back of a deuce and a half in 30 seconds that's damn near impossible but are you gonna do it anyway right and god maybe you might figure out how to do it but that's where it all starts and i don't think people realize right realize that yeah no that shit's easy now he was secret servant no no no no no it starts there lower echelons of being set up for failure but can you succeed and then how do you do it and then if you're in a situation that may be a long situation but longevity does your brain continue to problem solve or does it just shut down because you're overwhelmed with all those stressors right uh and andrew says uh do you have any other stories about shady pmcs or contractors uh let's see i wrote a book about i'm two other um you know the book the other two books i wrote were about leadership and and faith and they are they're they're faith-based books so i tried to stay away from that um yeah but i have i've run around a lot of shady guys i've rented a lot of tremendous unbelievable guys i learned from as well it comes with the territory especially in the early days where there is no oversight would you literally when you're who animal mother you know you're a jolly green giant with guns that can do whatever you want it's hard not to be that jolly green giant with guns that can do whatever you want because you're as a contractor at that there was no oversight right and yeah i did and there's youtube videos of who who was who was that sas this guy's company asus eight what were they called man you know there's a couple i mean there's a group it was fight spicer's company tim spicer's oh yeah and they they drove around they had a video of them just driving around baghdad shooting up cars and i remember that went viral at that time well that's when i was there that was during that time frame it was yeah you could we had teams of block water bad shoots and the only way to stop it is you had to control it in house nobody else would and that's the only way we but i i saw bad shoes i it [ __ ] pissed me off it's like dude we are making our own terrorists here we're making the terrorists for the f are you guys not understanding that right and i'm not saying that i'm just some high and mighty guy but also life is precious i don't care what it is and and you have and at that point in time also as a contractor with little oversight you have to have some intestinal fortitude some self-restraint but just as you said yes a lot of peacetime guys that this was their war right i gotta get i gotta get my shoot on i gotta get my first confirmed kill right and it didn't happen a ton but it happened enough that i remember it um and yeah i could call out guys here and i won't do i'm not no i'm not doing that i'm not going to call them out but i'll just say yes did it happen yeah [ __ ] yeah it happened yeah worst [ __ ] hell especially when it's especially when it's a profit when it's war for profit it's really [ __ ] hell yeah um but then i also saw a lot of tremendous kind-hearted things done to help injured iraqis or to help injured afghanis or even just just having a guy get out of a car and just having a conversation with a child i i mean i did that i i that was one of the most precious things in the world is is getting out there and having a conversation with a child then handing them a candy bar but then getting in your car real quick and getting out of there because by the time all the rest of the kids find it right but yeah i i remember trying to do good and having some good but i also remember the bad right and that we we all do that's that's why we all have our nights where we made i i don't anymore but when i used to have my nights when i was in a bad place where i would drove where i drink too much because i just didn't want to [ __ ] just take this i don't want to i don't want to think about this anymore stop stop having it go through my head so what where is that crucible right it brings out the very best in human beings and it brings out the very worst in human beings like everything outside of war is sort of that middle ground where people will operate sort of within some boundary yeah because you see people for who they really are i do i think i think when i i i do i i agree i agree with that i do agree with that jack i i do agree that when you are when you have the opportunity to be the biggest baddest person in town and there are no rules you can be the bully if you want it well it's it's moral courage i i i got an argument with with guys i have a problem not saying i'm not not one that's done it but i have a problem with guys that have affairs on their wives i do not saying i hate been there done that i know i have a problem with that but then think that that sin isn't as bad as other sins out there so they're you know i i do i have an issue with that um and it's moral courage these guys have tremendous physical i've seen guys a tremendous physical courage they can't keep their dick in their pants when they need to and it's and they see what that does to people right destroys people and i've seen women do it to to guys too either there could be a study on how many how many veterans have killed themselves or gone down that road when the other route's gone the moral courage is what shows itself when there are no parameters when you are supposed to set your own parameters you're supposed to stand within your own guidelines and the alpha male it's not the physical courage that they lack it's it really is yes um it's easy to run towards gunfire it is i i know it is i i'm saying it from experience the moral courage part to do the right thing when nobody else is looking to not take that drink to not oh man nobody's going to find out what stays in vegas what happens in vegas stays in bed you know right right that is much harder because you don't think it's i don't know i don't know what the process you know i i chris and and correct i i i would invite you to weigh in i i think that there's something to you know when you show physical courage the military rewards it and there's the there's awards there's the respect of your peers but if you show the moral courage more often than not you're kind of shat upon and seen as kind of the bad guy that you know kind of you're kind of going against the grain and it just you know it depends on i guess it depends on what it is um and why i say that well we have seen some of the who are the ones that spoke out on on national security stuff where uh i don't remember remember who they are where they they they were reprimanded um help me out here there's some of the intel people in the nsa stuff they gave up oh uh drake was one of them who spoke out and he had like d.o.j kicked down while he was in the while he was in the shower yeah or or was it snowden is that another one help me out here guys yeah i mean i i think it's a dirtbag like i don't think he spoke out i think he like was but that's me personally again i guess so so what i'm getting at though yeah is if if you know you're right if you speak out against no if you speak out against the the status quo right why not the system and affairs as an example because it is rampant in ranks it does right and it's actually something that hey you gotta you're cool i mean that used to be hey you've got a multiple you know you're cool you've got multiple women yeah you're getting it on yeah yeah exactly i got and um yeah it wasn't it was actually a cool thing to look at right and it took honestly brother it took me coming to my knees and being humbled and that was one of my vices that i succumbed to um and it took me figuring it finally outward really god said you're you're a [ __ ] knock this [ __ ] out and making me down to my knees where i find like wait a second no this isn't good and i shouldn't be allowed to do i always thought you know i was i should be allowed to do this i should be you know i'm out there saving lives i'm out there running a gun and i'm protecting america don't i get that little past no the sins of sin just might just because my sin isn't any better than and i'm gonna tell you my sin isn't any better than that guy that's out there mass murder sends us in i'm still fi and it had to come to terms that way and that's when well when i wrote the patriots creed i was going through that dilemma what what moral courage is versus physical courage and there is a difference and that physical courage just based off the army values which i didn't know at the time till i actually started to sit down and read the army values and then go through holy [ __ ] there is a difference holy [ __ ] i have no moral i mean i'm looking at myself going i have no moral courage and that is the hardest thing to come to one but once you get it and you're able to get the two i really think you could take on the world but i don't think many many men or women in today's society now with with everything because everything's equal right we're all equal i don't think men are women i don't think many of us are able to bring those two things together well and i mean and it's challenging also because you know there are levels of moral courage right there is or or whether it's moral courage or discipline light it's funny is is it okay to have an affair maybe is it an okay to have an affair with another ranger's wife maybe is it okay to steal from cif central issue facility maybe is it okay to steal money from your from your buddy maybe you're right so like they're all these different like people are not it's not this yin yang black white type of of thing where we're all sort of shades of gray like and then the job inherently exists in a very gray area that yeah right and and like who would you rather be your friend the guy that when you walk down an alley and get jumped is there at your side but would sleep with your wife when you're like away or the guy who would never dream of sleeping with your wife but would run away from a fight and leave you to get jumped and seeing that and that's but that's so but that's okay that's the dilemma because right we're not per we're not perfect right that's one thing i don't know that's wrong with you right just just continue to there's there's only one and put me on christian there's only one perfect being out there and that's it we will never be perfect right we can but we can continue to strive it's the purse i became where it was i wasn't even trying anymore like i'll do whatever i want right well chamberlain's got nothing on me i know what but but that's that's where i had the issues and that's where i had to look at myself like am i ever going to be perfect no nobody is we're human we're fallible that's how we're made right but i can try i mean at least let let me try let me at least give that effort i'm not living with guilt it's not that the only guilt i live with is how much i've missed with my children i feel just don't be guilty about no i do i because i get experienced the fun i'm having with my five-year-old that i don't even remember when my 16 and 12 year old were five i can't even remember i look at pictures i'm like god i don't remember that because i was gone so much but um it's it's that we try we try and we try to be better and and yeah we're going to screw up and fail right it's that when we give up trying that's that's when that's when we need to be humbled and that's i i gave up trying because and that's but that's when ego comes in right that's what you're kind of going full circle when all that was going on with me and i was going through those bad times is it's not that i was committing those acts or doing things that i shouldn't be doing and i was divorced at the time to be honest you know some of those things i was divorced but right it was that i had given up because you know what [ __ ] it i'm i'm too i don't have to worry about that [ __ ] this is what we do this is what i devices i'm gonna do whatever i want right you know why because i can't yeah i'm a badass it's when we make excuses for or justify our actions right even if we know right uh yeah that's it jim says he asks uh did the state department security team at the consulate do anything to help with the situation in benghazi that night they they did and you know don't don't knock scott or alec i mean for god's sake scott was basically trapped in a pizza oven right what what would what would i have done right holy [ __ ] he's getting burned alive and there's decent and that diesel smoke was no joke well i mean i've read that the that type of smoke can incapacitate a person in a heartbeat like that we almost lost tyrone in that we had to do marco polo to get him out because yeah and you you know it's just like putting white lights don't work it's just like putting on your brights on uh in dense fog i mean just reverberate back so uh but the scott did lose control the ambassador and he did and i know he feels terrible about it and i would too i mean it but do i oh he sucks no not at all i might have right you know and and um alec henderson i i don't i never have talked to him after but um yeah just imagine yourself you got your friends everywhere and you're sitting into a a a a a a room that has cameras cct and you're just watching your friends get decimated and you have a choice do i run out there and commit harry carey and right maybe shoot a couple and die right or do i stay in here and try to raise us which is what he should which is what he was doing which it was the right thing to do right so we can come help but god i i how hard would that have been right and and on dave's side dave actually did an excellent job he he was in that fight he did feel guilty i think the actor that portrayed him in the movie was spot on he's like man where can i help here that's how he was where can i help i want to help because he knew that they didn't have they didn't do the job that they're required to do not knocking it god damn that's a hell of a situation you put into but he was trying to do the right thing and go above and beyond to try to make up for it you know and and you know he he got hammered he was up on that rooftop fighting with us he was shooting with us when those mortars hit um he didn't go run downstairs he didn't hide he could have the other two guys could have come up they didn't right i don't know what's going on their head they have to live with themselves on that decision i mean it was essentially what like four or five security guys for an eight-acre compound whatever and they did request um eric nordstrom who was the rso there in tripoli and i got to know him well when i was in tripoli he he was doing everything he could to try to get more security he did at requested 240 bravo twice which they did turn down because they deemed it was going to be too high profiles going to offend the locals i remember scott talking to me about that during the famous pool incident which actually happened as well when i looked at him like dude you all are gonna [ __ ] die i remember looking just said geez dude look at this this walls are soft the sniper's paradise that you have no concertina wire on the walls going to get in through the gate you guys are going to [ __ ] die if any big element gets in here and that was the day before that just i would say about 30 minutes before that he had told me yeah we we'd ask for machine guns they won't give us a 240. and i remember eric even telling us when he came up for dinner it was about three months prior to the attack in benghazi yeah four months because i took it too much leave off um when i was in tripoli he was they would come over eat dinner at our place because we had better food at the annex than they had at the consulate there in tripoli or the embassy in tripoli i remember he said it he said it and he it still resonated he goes man i feel like i'm fighting the taliban in my own office it's like you know i dismissed it to being state department because i worked with the state department before grs i'd been a year and a half with state department on their security stuff when it was cpa during the bremer negropani days so i was just like well such for you state department what do you expect right i mean i feel like i feel like a jerk saying it now but at the time it was a state department what do you think you get what you pay for man and um yeah so they did uh could they have done more i would not that's that's that's up to them you'd have to ask them i don't want to answer that question i know that i we all could give more everybody wants in combat feels like they can give more that that is lift at least in my opinion but to answer that for them i'm not them i i don't want to answer but i do know i did just know from my perspective from where they were at the disadvantages they had at the beginning in the middle and the end man it's been [ __ ] tough dude holy [ __ ] you're you you basically are signing your own death warrant which yeah we kind of did too but yeah they were all spread out as well right i had five guys next to me going hey you dumb enough to go you dumb enough to go all right let's go all right let's go ahead uh jerry says i think the military intel language it was expect it was an expected loss at the time nobody much cares in poor leadership also yeah um andrew says the military or i'm sorry the movie showed some point ambassador stevens donning armor and bearing a pistol is there any truth to that um expected to carry weapons you know they they had their his safe room was by his bedroom that was right his safe room was back there um people have shown that the windows and stuff back there they they they had the the wrought iron on them so they couldn't get out of them even if they broke them but when they broke them the the diesel smoke you know how it is now it's got a space to go and i was just coming that way um yeah they had a shotgun back there they had arms they had armor they had a helmet but again he died of smoke inhalation right he didn't die of bullet wounds or explosions or anything now that that that gate that they had up front the ballistic lock they had on it was a pretty [ __ ] hefty lock you weren't you weren't going to just shoot through that with an ak-47 or i mean i i would have been hard-pressed to think an rpg i'm granted they would have killed themselves they weren't sure if you'd cheat in there i i would have been hard-pressed to say that that thing was pretty [ __ ] hefty it was an opening so they they smoked them out that's what they were trying to do i don't even think my opinion they were trying to smoke them out to kill them i really do think they wanted my enough for themselves they wanted yeah they wanted to capture them it was a hell hell yeah he's a high-value target he's a three-star general he's an ambassador that is literally the vice president at the level of ambassadorship that he is and he's got nobody around him what would we do right probably either go snatch him if we wanted information or you know we drop a hellfire on him and blow him up but no that was my opinion because the reason being is because they could have brought those mortars on us at any time and they didn't so when they couldn't get him they were just trying to get somebody and when they realized man we're taking a lot of casualties here [ __ ] these guys let's just why they didn't blow an ied up because we were lucky they would have just destroyed us with an ied on the front gate yeah i don't know why they didn't i'd like to ask one of them one of these days because i was like man you guys [ __ ] up you they just crushed this you just killed all of us easily well that was something that was pretty evident in the sense of how few mortar you know they didn't have to bracket you guys like their mortars were dialed in from the first hit basically the first hit was a little far but the second like for granted who don't know getting a direct hit with mortars is like it it doesn't really happen it's not it's an area effect weapon you like don't really get directed yeah and that one you know i'm not a mortar man but i've been around him enough that first foot going over the top generally that first miss is because that if that place if you have a trp or that place is set in target reference point if you're if you're trying to figure out where those mortars are so basically that's a place to mortar the two that's been sitting there for a while it's going to set so that base plate's going to set so you're maybe long or short on that first one because it's been sitting there for so long it's got to get back in the dirt and again i'm not a mortar i'm not but i just have seen enough mortars from guys that aren't very good mortar men that if something's sitting there for a while sometimes that first base hit is going to throw it off a little bit because it's got to get set and then they're on fire for effect after no that that thing had been oh they knew where you're at there was no hiding but they weren't they didn't just know where you were at they were dialed in which is not easy to do they they uh they knew um and that was the building that if you're gonna hit that's why i made it a point to tell people when they asked yeah that was our talk that was where our weapons were that was where all our equipment was that was where our leadership was that was the skiff all of our intel is and that was where most of people were that night out of the 32 people 20 26 of them were in that building so that's what you want to hit but they knew that from the get go right that's just from good intel collection locals just telling them and you know you see enough white dudes coming in out of a right right you're eventually gonna figure it out all right last uh question here how did you react when you met pablo do you still talk do you watch whatever he's in what's your favorite jack and dave opinion on master chief i i don't know who pablo is who are we talking about the guy that played me in the movie schreiber oh okay okay pablo um i actually knew who he was before he got picked to play me um because i watched origins i thought oranges was the new black was a good i love that show and so i knew who porn stash was from his actor and he was the sadistic sexual deviant security guard in orange is the new black in the recent seasons and um when uh the movie started to come out our agency three arts entertainment that wrapped us on the movie and it still wraps me on books the great people there i don't care if they're liberal i i i give two shits they're liberal as hell doesn't make a difference to me they are outstanding people there they take good care of me i love richard abate and irwin stop to death tremendous and i'm name-dropping because i love them they've taken such good care of me um but i remember richard hit me up he goes hey porn stash is playing in the movie and i knew who he was i was like holy [ __ ] that's perfect sexual deviant [ __ ] doesn't disrespects authority he [ __ ] has a cool ass mustache man this yeah that's about what and i hit him up on tw that's when i had a twitter account and i hit up on twitter i said because i'm if you watch the seasons where he's in oranges and you're black he's he's frumpy he's a he's an overweight frumpy security guard i hit him i said hey [ __ ] you better start working out and i want to see no small calves you know and and yeah i mean i got no [ __ ] five minutes later he goes i'm doing push-ups already and i hit him back we then you better elevate yeah and his uh yeah we're still friends we he we are you know we don't talk a whole bunch um but it's something we're like we didn't talk a bunch and when i was living in nebraska he's like hey i'm coming through nebraska can i hang out hell yeah and we got pictures of me with and him sitting around our little fire pit doing our best uh vatos locos impression with our airsoft guns hanging out drinking beers and i'll post it one of these days but um you know that was kind of one of our things and i got and honestly even before the movie we went on shot together i went and met his mom we hung out went to the gym together and uh yeah well i still consider his friends and it's a guy where we don't have to talk but he'll hit me up on a text and i'll hit him up it's been about six months or so but it's just hey dude what's going on hey or hey man i i want he shoots and he goes and shoots because hey what do you recommend on this you know on a gun question or or even just on instagram we'll give our little shout outs to each other every once in a while just to hey man we still respect each other and um no i i do he's got tremendous kids he's a tremendous father and um he is a monster though the dude got yoked for 13 hours and he's i don't think he ever is going to go back to that frumpyness ever he enjoys this yeah you know now he now he's playing master chief in the new halo movie so um i i was wondering if that's what mastered oh okay um but yeah pablo no i i i i love him to death and he he actually i know i'm being biased here but out of all the characters i think they all did a great job but i watched the movie and he really got my personality down spot on i mean just spot on and i really think he stole the show because that is his personality he is he is a smart ass jackass i don't give a [ __ ] sort of guy in the hollywood world and you know his characters come across yeah the the movie the stars series that he's in american gods where he plays the uh he plays the uh the he plays the um lucky charms guy help me out what are the the the leprechaun he plays it oh is that okay i didn't know that was him i haven't seen that show for a couple of years actually but uh awesome then he played the sexual rapists on onish law order suv again how well i know we're going this isn't a constant theme guys i am sure but um yeah and just as a person just just a genuinely nice guy he him and guys like irwin and richard and even krasinski who i got to meet you know we got to meet him a little bit his wife is wonderful she was such a nice person she was so nice to my family but the max martini even or dominic just the guys in the movie and i'm not name dropping i'm just this is the guys that were in the movie i i got a i had a lot different perspective of what hollywood people are like yeah yeah and i think martini is a nice guy i i've interviewed him before too out of curiosity and i i don't want it like this i don't want us to get partisan or even political here we go no no i really don't here we go um but i know that like you said that you felt like a puppet on a string and so when you came out the you and you know your teammates came out of this situation obviously was highly politicized because of the time um where you may through your conversations know where where the communication stopped or whatever and i don't really want to get into that either because you know i i want people to just kind of get a sense of you and this as opposed to like uh accepting you know rejecting it because well i i kind of have an idea why not i'll go you know when when we sold the story i i we actually pitched it you know when the book came out and then the movie the book came out initially the book was first uh we talked to to be the first news because it was it was a huge story right i mean it was going to be a huge story well yeah we talked to bret baer who initially did the first one i talked to anderson he was actually my first my vote i voted no let's go to anderson cooper's show first that was i i thought he was the nicest i know it was very genuine very respectful to me um msnbc was never i i don't care which side drawn they're not a legitimate newsroom they get just getting out there all right so so but those were the two and i did i voted for we had a vote because there was a team like who should we go well i i want anderson cooper well the other two well we want bret mayor and um at that time in my opinion i i i'm actually an independent i'm not registered either way i actually registered independent if you want to and you can check my records and stuff but um but um and i didn't care about politics even then but i knew that at least from what i had saw when i was in yemen working and up to that point it didn't didn't pass up past me that fox had really been backing us on what was going on we're seeing and wasn't right my opinion was seeing why why should we do cnn well we've gotten here's me thinking we've got fox they know what they've got our backs at least that's what i thought at the time or at least the bat you know whatever it was we need this we need them if we want to pull people together we gotta invite them to know the story and not it just to turn into a right wing hey let's elect trump sort of you know which it turned in well it wasn't well i did it turned into that i didn't know it at the time then but you know that right [ __ ] the left third benghazi yeah it's like no they need to know what happens because right now it's bashing hillary which she deserved to be bash that wasn't because of her political affiliation it's just because she she was [ __ ] but she's horrible on her own right even independent of benghazi yeah yeah it did i mean that was that was nothing political but we voted as a team and i was not voted and it was okay and it did well and i as we got going um where it turned into let's tell the truth that was taken and it started to turn into republicans needed it's hard to turn the political message right i was part of that not gonna say what i was i bought into not the republican message it was [ __ ] the left they left us it went we didn't go from the individual anymore it went to like every desert everybody else when you start to buy into the [ __ ] it was the entire party right even though i had friends on the left that were like no you you they [ __ ] you guys over it was oh let's buy into the hard left is against us and they hate it right right and um then it got to a point two where it was man you know the agency doesn't like us right now i know how shady the government is if we don't have at least this status quo or at least this people on our side a massive group of people my mind said it was our protections not from our lawyers it's not from the movie people because they don't they you know the movie people now they care again they did they but it's they're not going to do anything it's not from the book it's not for money it's from we need people behind us so it's they don't come after us because if they do it's going to be a complete overthrow of you know of the goat because they're coming our protection was the people right and that was my mindset um but as it went and i remember i was actually sitting yeah [ __ ] speaking of pablo i was actually uh sitting in his trailer i i went and saw him at the dinner thief set i went and you know watched and watched the shooting scenes and i said i i was in atlanta and actually we're friends we can just go down just talk to him and um you know he he's a liberal he's the left he's canadian what do you expect but uh um i remember i said to him and i love the uh i love the line from tombstone i took it from tombstone uh the doc holiday character um with the kurt russell movie and the valkyrie remover where he go you know he's he hands back the badge and he goes my hypocrisy only goes so far right right well that's that's me in politics i remember said to to pablo he's like he says and what do you think because you know this is going to be during the election what do you think trump and and i said to him dude politics my hypocrisy only goes so far he goes what does that mean i said i don't give a [ __ ] right i said i go like a brother the only reason i've been speaking out is because she's not going to win i said i don't care about the parties i said she's not going to win i said and then when that's over i'm done i said my hypocrisy goes so far because right now i'm pitching a party that i don't even care about the parties i care about america right i don't think either party has the best interest of anyone of everyone involved they have interest of their agendas and i was part of an agenda right so yeah yeah i can speak eloquently i i believe so even with a couple shots of vodka that yeah i do believe parties are part of agendas now they're not they don't have the best interests of everyone it's it's they're it's whoever their base is and and that's when i started to after the election and i i there's even a video i mean i think it was even on fox fox and friends something it was one of those fox challenges where they were they wanted hey what was your reaction i just got done speaking in phoenix i'd spoken in pennsylvania the night before florida phoenix did a speaking event phoenix i was tired of [ __ ] i remember they asked me so what what's your opinion on the election and i said hey job's done continue mission i said charlie mike i said that's all you go what do you mean i said you just continue on i i they wanted me to get oh yeah she lost you i was like yeah i said you would just continue to live i said it's over let's just continue and i and that's also when i when i started to see the cracks of of me being in the public eye anymore i got tired i was like man i'm i'm starting to turn into the benghazi guy right then right liberal hating ben god and i said i'm not i'm not at all and two years later i mean i i kept on it and i'm not saying i stopped right away it's it's hard to stop it's like doing cocaine it's hard to stop that that drug of public figure-ness sure but um two years later i i i was the last interview i ever did i i i was actually a fa i was actually a write-up on a website and i said i'm not doing any more news ever again i don't care who it is and i haven't done it i haven't watched news since and it's been since i reconciled with my wife actually it's been three three years and i won't i'll do podcasts i love podcasts um but as far as doing mainstream media whether it's written whether it's uh radio whether it's satellite whether it's no done i'm not doing it because you guys are making money pitting us against each other yeah right i'm tired of seeing you guys fight with each other on tv and then going to having a drink at the bar right manhattan and we're we're just trying to have an make money interesting conversation case uh you know we're we're not trying to kick off a civil war 2.0 and that's why i wanted to ask because you know i mean we talk about that sometimes but yeah like you said you were a puppet on the stream where there were probably people on the left and the right who did have your best interests at heart just because you're a human being and they support our country because people on the left and the right can support the country but then there were also people who had something to gain on both sides oh yeah yeah now they they're definitely they're always they're always and that's why that's why i always speak highly of the guys at three r's oh hell yeah i know they're liberal as hell i don't care right they they're awesome people um there are also people on the right i know tremendous people on the right um you know i know some people don't like trey gowdy he was the only man that was honest with me throughout everything no matter if it was good or bad he's the only one that told me honestly everything that happened that was going on and um i have respect for him too and but there are people on both sides that hate that hate the right so much that they just can't get over it that's why but you know where that came from too is coming back from my upbringing with being an immigrant's grandson running being someone who who you know nowadays the latin community the latino community is all supposed to be left left left left and like no that's honestly i at the time i i don't i didn't know what that was and we didn't care all i knew is that hard work paid off my grandpa who wasn't given anything always told us we don't take handouts well you know what is he's an immigrant worker so do i fall into the left category by your by your interpretation but wait he's a hard worker that doesn't want to take handoffs does that put me in the right category it's like i'm not in any cat that's what i try to it's just i'm not in any category but those three years that i was doing well with my financially but that i had put myself in a category right chris we uh we got one one one last question for you and just something i wanted to tell to you um just to be candid i i s i was one of those people i saw your uh your sort of presence on social media and things like this and you you seemed like a super angry person the uh the things you said often were quite honestly like very vile like uh like oh my this this person is filled with hatred and anger and when i met you in person it was like i met an entirely different person and it was very difficult to reconcile those two personalities i was i was like this is this this person that i had seen through the media or whatever that wasn't who you were it was it was someone very different and even when i announced that that we're having you on the show tonight and people are like oh [ __ ] chris paronto that guy [ __ ] that dude it's like no you like you don't know chris like you you don't understand you don't know who he is and yeah sure he's like a right-wing guy which is fine but like that you got the wrong impression from him and that's honestly that's partly your own doing um but i also hope that people would give you a second chance and to try to understand you a little bit more before they throw you under the bus in that manner but you know it comes with the territory i want you to i can't make everybody happy and i never will and as far as uh you know right wing left ring i i don't care i i i don't violate you have the commandments you have the constitution it's that's that's that's all i followed before and that's what i was taught to follow growing up by a mexican grandfather and by a well my dad's wife to say he's spanish but he's white as hell he's west texas he's lulik all right by my father my mother um but so as far as me doing it yeah i did i put myself and that's fine that was the route i chose right at that time at the time but also knew looking back going back on man that's you're right that's not me and that was the stuff you were seeing was what i was internally fighting with right right which made me try to i did three times made me try to kill myself three times because like i would i put that face on of being me and then i go to my room by yourself in a hotel room being stupid and reading comments or just getting your mind drinking or you know not being able to see my kids and wondering what the [ __ ] am i doing by my own fault and getting pissed off and where's that pissed off come from right where does it go to of course right what's the easiest thing it can go to well let's see what troll i'm gonna hate on today on my twitter who am i gonna [ __ ] on my twitter today yeah and but you know at that time too i don't know if people realized i knew every one of my social media accounts when i just turned over a new leaf and i i i when i said after the last time i did the crying game in the shower with the glock in my mouth and it was the straight-up crying game uh by myself looked in the mirror after i got out and said do i want to live my life like this for the rest of my life that's when i actually knew everything wow you know and i had what did i have like yeah and the followers and i give a [ __ ] but i'll tell you because people like why you did what ian still tells me that he goes why did you nuke all this fall but um ian scott he's but he understands he just gives me [ __ ] for me you know i twittered like 275 000 you know if i was smart enough to use them commercially right but i wasn't right on instagram i you know 180 and something facebook actually treated me right facebook actually gave me back all my followers when after i nuked him but i nuked all that because that was the only way i could get rid of all that anger right right right and yeah i'm not angry i i i got i'm not angry anymore yeah we talk about stuff boils me up it pisses me off but am i angry all the time no i'm just angry that happened but as we're done here and i walk out to my i'm it's not going to sit with me i'm not going to sit in my rocking chair and i own guys i have a rocking chair i'm 50. i'm not going to sit in my rocket you're going that damn hillary she needs to go to hell gosh damn this world is going to it's i'm going to we're going to go watch despicable me and i'm going to enjoy a bacon with this tomato sauce and it's it's perfectly normal to be angry uh about some of the things that you went through and that you experienced that's nothing wrong with that by any means um so andrew says uh max martini looks like he has pure testosterone for blood and so this is a good one to end on i think uh chris i also want to say that man i i totally get where that anger started because at whatever level it happened wherever that communication stopped with military commanders with state department whatever it was without getting political you guys and everybody got [ __ ] and got left out and and and of course as as a patriot and as somebody who one is doing it for yourself but you also doing it because you do believe in the constitution and you do believe in this idea of america and you do believe that that you know even if america isn't on the right track america still got your back even if they're not doing the right thing for the right reason in a country they've still got your back yeah and then to be left like that and you come back you like anybody's gonna feel angry about that and anybody's gonna feel betrayed and you want answers and then go ahead i'm sorry well and no no you're you're you're right on it it was but the uh when i was able to to come back and and just finally let it all go and realize you know what i we we all want i think everybody in america not every guy it's how you're using absolute [ __ ] it's again vodka guys i'm trying not to use absolutely but but but we like train wrecks we like to see the anger we like to see we want to see the person in the stockades we want to see that public hanging sure and i wanted to too and when i finally you know being a christian said no god god god you don't need to see that what you i don't i don't need to see the punishment to feel vic vin uh vindicated um if i let everything that took place keep bringing me down or keep having i'm have to see a punishment i have to see a guilt i'm missing my five-year-old growing up again right missing being with my sister it's just like let [ __ ] it you know what if whoever deserves to be punished for this they will be i don't need to see it if they don't they don't i'm not judge jury in execution i'm not judge dread i'm not god i'm right it's not me that's who am i to think and then i'm thinking about who the [ __ ] am i to think that i am that important right i've got to see all that no my job now is to be here is to go with my family is to be with my kids it's to talk to other guys who are angry right i went through i i get it i completely get it and it's also to yeah you know the people that are still even that see me and see like man that right wing crazy guys come on man i'm no i'm not i'm not if you want to see me that way that's on you if you want to be filled with hatred forever that's on you but you know what if you want to have a beer too we'll go have a beer and we'll talk and you'll either like me because you do or you won't like me because maybe it's not because of this but maybe it's because i still wear pink shoes i know maybe it's do you hate me because of that i would say it's just it's just one of those things where i had to let the anger go and the only way i could move forward and get out of that is to let that anger go of what happened and to understand that whatever what that happened there and what happened leading up in my life the the getting kicked out of the military the divorce is the ulcer of colitis when i got medical from the military because i didn't that was a shock getting getting medical out of the military after actually succeeding now in 2003 and then having another door opened with blackwater calling me out of nowhere on the phone said hey do you want to go to iraq to be a contractor and me saying i don't build houses thinking that's what a contractor was at the time but uh yeah i would have if i stayed angry then i wouldn't be able to look back at all those experiences even in benghazi that experience and even the experiences of falling on my face when the movie and the book came out of looking back and learning from them being like man what a [ __ ] hell of a ride this has been right and i should be happy and who gives a [ __ ] who's in office just give it my grandpa just work your ass off just keep working hard and being a good father and my dad be a good father be a good husband and just be there and i even when i was home with all this anger that was in me at that time i wasn't home and of course again it led to the divorce and me being just a total douchebag but um yeah right it's it's it comes a point where people just have to just live their daily lives and turn it all off and or and nuke all your social media and start over which is what i did and and honestly i'm i i'm so much happier now you even see on my post now if you look at the posts i do when i do do them i don't do hateful posts what does that do there's enough hatefulness out there and i don't do any yeah let's show somebody getting shot in the face so what did we learn from this sort of post cert you learned that you you don't want to get shot in the face is what you do but you know it's it's more of lifting people up but in the meantime it was me trying to leave and lift myself up a bit and right just continue to stay positive but i i get you but and but i'm i i get where jack j word came from because i i did lead myself down that road and it was the anger that i was able to vent and get out and i just wanted people to know it but you're right jack that wasn't me at all it was just the anger coming out and social media that's right so easy on social media right to be angry yeah and and people become personas on social right right you know right and even pundits you know like i don't i don't think that every left-wing and right-wing pundit actually believes everything they say but it becomes a thing you know so tell us what you're doing now tell us about your books out uh tell us you know yeah i really my primary job now is is i'm a father and a husband i i love i live in kansas middle of nowhere kansas i love it i just love getting up and going for a run and and and just looking out my window in the morning having breakfast and seeing the hay bales and you know i just it's it's where i need to be at this point in my life and where i want to be really for the rest of my life and my kids are here and i how i gotta go i've never got to with my 12 year old my 16 year old teach them how to ride a bike before i came on the show when we were doing the test that's what i was doing yeah it's like who gets i i gotta do that i i so it's i get i'm experiencing the things as a father that i think some fathers take for granted yeah that i definitely don't anymore and i'm getting the chance to do it again with a third child even though i'm 50 and you know when he's 16 i'm going to be 65 and i'm saying is that your grandpa no that's my dad he's just he's in the way you know but you know who is who's lucky i'm so bl lucky and i do say blessed i know that we can hashtag it there's that's enough um to get to experience all that stuff you know and that i didn't get experience because i was either gone or just not mentally there when i was home with my 16 or 12 year old and i get experienced life with my 16 and 12 year old so that that's first and foremost um you know i do have the craziness now is now that i got over myself and got over my own ego um in the hd vision commercials i actually you know people have always asked me why aren't you doing merchandise why don't you do stuff for battleline or and i started doing it even the podcast ian was like bugging me for a while to do it i'm like dude nobody wants to hear what the [ __ ] i have to say god but again if you have a guy like ian who is a he was a subject matter expert in podcasts and radio that's not hard to do but um i got into that so no i have a lot of merchandise a lot of but i get to do it my way now it's not let's do merchandise and put you know [ __ ] hillary on the back right it's positive stuff now i get it which is where where it needs to be and uh and i have a training company battle line which um people ask me why did you call it tono's or something i said well because i didn't ever want it to be about me i want to have other instructors because there's i learned from so many people and uh believe me i don't know [ __ ] from yeah i know how to shoot a little bit but i i want other people to come in and it's like all the battle line um guys the name means nothing i was listening to a five-finger death punch battleborn and i was listening to frontline it was a hard rock christian group and their songs came on at the same time and that's where i came to name i mean the battleborn came on five feet of death punch and then front line came on after it so i said well let's just call it battle line so that's where the name's from but the firearms company is doing well and actually i i turn it i i don't have as many courses because i want to be home more but i could have more but we do one a year and boy not intimidating environment i love it i mean we'll get swat guys in i had the chicago cops in on the last one those guys boy they get after i love them they just yeah but then you know i got another guy that comes in that's missing a hand um i mean that's what we and i love seeing that he comes in and the dude started as a basic pistol um his name's ralph love ralph awesome guy and um now he's actually knows how to do hide ready's low readies and he can pop it into his shoulder he has no hand that is so motivating to me it's like oh my gosh look at this dude i got all my fingers and toes and this guy is and he doesn't let us stop him he's missing a hand and he's working his ar and you should see the smile on his face and their confidence and so battle line is is tremendous because it's not just firearms it's not just ah to a community or let's go shoot and chill and it's i feel like there's people that come in that we get because we're not intimidating we like to joke and have a good time um that we get people that maybe wouldn't come in and it's empowering and inspiring them because you just see the smiles on their faces and and uh yeah that and actually we got more courses this year tremendous shooting is fun i mean people have been shooting you owe it to yourself to at least try it once you know last try it's fun and where can people find it is that battleline.com where can people find that yeah you can just go to battleline.com if you search christina pirano you'll that's the first thing that pops up and i have a oh [ __ ] i that's what i'm drinking and i i'll go we're we're ordering some of that this came out yeah this came out at a dalton distillery a vietnam veteran who was a moonshiner uh came up to me and ben first ranger bat ben my buddy ben that told me to unfuck my head for my ass um he asked us if we want to do a vodka and i'm saying wait okay vietnam check infantry check um yeah moonshiner check he's still in north georgia check and he's also the best small bass distillery in georgia it's a no-brainer i know everything that you know it's tough it's tough to market stuff with your name on it because you do you feel like you know it's just like the hd vision you feel like that deuce you're just trying to market stuff to make money but on that note make sure that you like and share and subscribe to this channel hit that bell icon make sure you hit all notifications and join our patreon yeah yeah down in the description i'm sorry please continue no no and i will send i will send everybody a free pair of hd vision oh as many as i have i'll get some more but no seriously if you guys want me to but um that's the one thing is about now with me being control of everything wherever i wasn't in the past everything that i market out there i use i try i vet um and it isn't it's it's not about just hey let's get something out there and make a quick short it's and it's awesome and it's fun and my wife does it with me she runs the company with me and an old army buddy that's a g-watt vet he is he's the worst speller in the world because he's from north alabama sorry good but he is he's terrible terrible dude is brilliant and he runs the company and then we've got the podcast and i do a lot i was very blessed i got a lot of public speaking because i'm with kepler speakers bureau out of dc i couldn't have been blessed to be picked up by a bureau and wouldn't when you i worked my way up it was hard i busted my ass speaking for nothing and then speaking to small groups and then i've worked my way up for the last four years and i spoke as a corporate speaker and it i i have to admit it's been very cathartic for me and man speaking to corporate leaders like burger king execs and and buffalo wild wings execs or red bull execs or insurance companies like american families they want to come in and be inspired and hear about leadership and when i sit back and be like man they're listening to me trying to inspire these it is it's it's pretty awesome now it's like man you've come a long way from being that hateful that hateful that wanted to want to kill everything ranger smash too yeah so yeah i mean i holy crap this is this is interesting all right tell us about your books real quick yeah go ahead yeah tell us you're not sure yeah and i know you like i told you guys you remember we were gonna go an hour i told you i go down rabbit holes you guys know this already here we are we're happy but honestly um honestly i planned on taking you down rabble hole so we could keep you longer than an hour that's right i'm not getting any sex tonight but it's cool thank you thanks dave i appreciate it man no worries no worries tomorrow though i'll get back tomorrow we'll make it up to her um but it the uh the ranger way they're they're all by the same publishers the publisher did 13 hours after i did 13 hours um i gave them so much material for 13 hours for mitchell to help us write because he did he helped us write it you can't have rangers and marines writing books it turns into coloring books it turns into pop-up books you just can't do it um but i gave them so much they're like would you like to do a follow-on book and and when i decided to do it that's when the good chris came out that's when the you know how did i learn about success by failing my ass off what ranger has not been successful but they learned by being from sick they learned to be successful by failing so much it's like let's just do a book on failure on how to be successful and it is and it was there's there's there's faith pulled up and there's a lot of faith in it and then the patriots creed when i was asked to write that one i had my own book which was good the ranger way we did 13 hours i wanted to do a book because i knew so many guys that had gone through even more they've gone through more than i have gone lost lost eyes and explosions lost legs in a mule bomb uh you know scotty who who burned in on a halo jump and died on the drop zone it's like man those guys have stories let's write about that but let's pull the army values into it because that's when i was going through the moral the moral courage and the integrity portion of my life to where i was trying to figure that out and that's what the patriots creed was about ranger ways does has done very well i of course because i'm the i'm a right right-wing zealot i'm gonna you know i'm gonna fill in for alex jones on the next alex jones i'm kidding he's not gonna i'm kidding guys that's what but i know that's what you think of me i'm gonna fill it down you know um of course i didn't get much push by the near the new york times but you know what on its own that hashtag took care of me and it's it's done it it done very well the patriots creed what came out during the covid so the books on edit but it's it's doing very well too and and what i love is just it's just faith-based books it's faith-based books and it's using my experiences as an arranger and also in the army and my own just experiences being not being me and learning from my own mistakes which uh yeah i think we all can learn from our own mistakes i know this is that's that's what that's what those two books are it's tough though right it's tough to have that our mistakes fit us like a glove and it's tough to feel them sometimes yeah i think no no no they they they help us learn i always if you haven't failed then you haven't taken the steps towards success that's how you learn how to be successful why the [ __ ] did we do aars after operations arrangement right well that's that's another place where i learned from mistakes or or playing college football and having a monday having it is so painful sitting in front of your peers after a football game where you've lost and maybe you've and i have and maybe i've made that mistake that caused us to lose and having a coach with a clicker slow motion over and over okay this is where you screwed up okay this is where i'm breaking your heart let me rewind that and show it to everybody in the room again this is where you are a total [ __ ] up and you cause this but you learn from those failures over and over but and then if you well you either learn from over and over or you don't learn from them and you just keep failing and you know ranger battalion if that's one thing you taught me is that yeah you better learn from your failures because if you do it again yeah that's not going to happen because you won't be here forever chris last one best ranger story for posterity best ranger story for posterity ah all right let me come on let me think i wanna i wonder if i pick a ranger school story or a ranger battalion story i think oh just you know you know i think i know it's simple but it still sticks with me is uh the second time i was at ranger town i came in um you know i knew what to expect you know you come in you're the new private of course as it always works out you're coming in and the squad or the petunia on is out in the field so you gotta you gotta wait for him which is even worse because now you're just waiting for everybody to come back to find hey who's the new guy that we can [ __ ] with all right so i remember i'm sitting in the squad room waiting for them to come back i already know how to tie inline bowlines i know how to tie you know i know a tie half hitch i know how to tie my knots i know how to clear the 550 the paracore i know the 550 cord appear to clear out the innards i know how to melt it off so i'm getting it all tied up because i'm like yeah my squad leader i'm going to be squared away he's going to come in i've done this before he's going to look at my [ __ ] and be like dude you're a squirter a ranger well he comes in and it's sergeant mccasl and i remember the castle and he went to group he went to first group um later uh after but he comes in i should have known this but it didn't make a difference i could have wrapped everything in gold and and you know gave him a million dollars it would didn't make a [ __ ] difference he comes in he put and my [ __ ] is perfect i know it's tied off perfect i he looks at it and he goes what the [ __ ] is this what is this [ __ ] who tied these knots who who i did who tied this kevlar who [ __ ] did the paracord on his damn cat and i'm sitting there and he knows i'm sitting in the corner now i'm feeling all proud i feel you know of course what do you feel even though i know it's gonna i'm feeling this big and of course the usual knife comes out cuts everything off throws it in a [ __ ] pile in the room and i have five minutes to retie everything before we go do a pt test and the people like is that the smallest ranger score no that that was still resonates me because it it reminded me that no no matter how cool you thought you were no matter how cool and prepared i knew i was no matter how good it is sometimes people are just gonna [ __ ] on your parade and you're gonna have to [ __ ] figure out a way to make a [ __ ] sandwich out of that pile of [ __ ] and i did i remember i got in and i did my little half hitches it got all tied up and got it all burnt off and he still and regardless he still smoked my bags anyway and but i love that about ranger time because it just it made you it didn't matter would you be you're gonna have to deal with adversity regardless and it's going to come at times where you feel like you're on top of the world and then i went out honestly i didn't let it affect me i got him it got it out of my head and i went out and maxed the pt test and but i still remember that day because i remember him screaming and yelling and it doesn't matter who you are at range of a town when you're a new private did that's feeling in your stomach like oh my god i'm this is really scary i i i feel like such a [ __ ] right now i'm so scared you see how i feel like that's an awful piece of [ __ ] and um but after that you know it was for sure because after we've done actually uh he moved me past one of the ammo bears because it was a gun team and he moved me right to assistant gunner even though i was untapped and and um yeah i pissed some of the guys in the squad off but what were they going to do i could i could take them so so it was it was cool i remember that immensely were you were you there i don't remember when it was were you there when they did the sketches and they did this sketch this or the skit of uh grippy uh they did the samsonite luggage sketch oh i did i heard about that one [Music] i remember him i don't even remember first sergeant nolan who would always talk to gazoo remember first sergeant no he'd always talked to we all made a joke about him all the time because every he'd always walk down the hallways first start no and tremendous range ranger hall of famer but he'd always be doing this yeah and you'd be talking stuff on his shoulder and that was when the flintstones and kazoo was a big deal and i remember i saw him doing that one time coming through the the the uh the barracks and and i remember i didn't know who he was like what the [ __ ] he doing he's like don't worry about first certainly he's just talking to kazoo and it was the flash i guess there's another ranger story for you there and it was like oh my gosh this is the most i got it you know i got one more i do got one more i got a rip story all right and this this was a coming to jesus story um you're i don't know if they still had it but when you went through rip did they have the the viet cong the picture at the end of the hallway at rip oh yeah one of the rangers had painted yeah yeah i i i wasn't ready for that after after we got smoked after stroker came out did his thing and and we got smoked on and then we're you know then you go in and you get your because it's a friday and you know you go in and you get your bedding and stuff and you got to walk down the hallway i remember walking and i remember seeing that picture and it it was an awesome picture whoever painted it i mean how i mean it's graphic as hell but you're seeing the bullet the little slant cap the vc cap and you're seeing the brains come out that side i really didn't know that that you know the cool stuff that you see ranger battalion that's cool but then you start to realize man i may have to wait this is okay i may have to take a life i think if you're not ready for that because i i didn't i i i wasn't born you know i'm not a killer i'm not born i'm born born to be hard born i'm no i'm not a killer at all i'm seeing that be like is this what my job actually is it kind of set in a little bit of wait what is what what is a ranger and then you know then as i started to become more into it i learned and that's just you know that's war but all the fun of it and the reading the charlie rangers and the excitement of and you know and of the excitement of being a ranger the blowing [ __ ] up the the the drops out of the airplanes that kind of set in the realism of wow this is that's that's what being a reward is that's what rangers are that's they're yeah we do it but you may have to shoot somebody in the [ __ ] head and are you ready for that and uh yeah that was the first time i went to that was the first time i went through rip that was that was the story and and i don't know if there's a lesson to be learned off that it's just you know it just was it woke me up that it wasn't a cartoon fantasy land anymore it was even though even though that's kind of ironic because it was a cartoon picture on their wall but it's like wow this this is what this is what we do and and then it didn't you know then then of course rip took over and i forgot all about that just the pain and suffering well chris thank you so much for spending so much of your uh evening with us tonight really appreciate it man and uh thank you everyone who joined us live tonight it's awesome and next episode uh episode 102 is going to be with steve silva who is a diplomatic security service agent so hope you guys will tune in next friday for that chris thanks man it's it's hey guys it's been real i mean seriously like we thank you i appreciate it no you you guys are awesome and ros i i love you both man and you know you're always welcome on our podcast and uh thank you whatever you need from me and seriously with the hd glasses if you want to do a giveaway just tell me the address i'll send you a few you give you all right whatever you need brothers wait signed by i will sign the boxes yes i got right here we'll figure something out also just so you know i'm originally from wichita so next time i'm back in the area come down to fort scott kansas that's where i'm at yeah i got you ma'am i'll roll

Channel: The Team House

Views: 239,316

Keywords: The Team House, Jack Murphy, Special Operations, Special forces, Army rangers, Kris tonto, Kris paranto, 13 hours, Benghazi, Battleline podcast, CIA

Id: 6VP_-x4pIqM

Length: 189min 15sec (11355 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 03 2021