Latest / V / Shocking Death of Epstein Victim + Special Interview with VA Sec. Doug Collins (Ep.191)

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Shocking Death of Epstein Victim + Special Interview with VA Sec. Doug Collins (Ep.191) · V

0:00
Speaker 1: Good morning and welcome to Bungie and a Report Early Edition.
0:03
Speaker 1: We have a lot of headlines to get to today,
0:04
Speaker 1: but I want to let you guys know today's a
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Speaker 1: little bit special because on Friday, we actually, Michael and I,
0:10
Speaker 1: traveled to Washington, D.C., and we did some interviews in
0:15
Speaker 1: the White House. So we have some, this is part
0:17
Speaker 1: of the Trump admin's push to work with new media.
0:20
Speaker 1: So we're not just going to work with traditional media.
0:23
Speaker 1: They're not just going to give access to people like
0:26
Speaker 1: Caitlin Collins at CNN or the folks at MSNBC or
0:29
Speaker 1: even Fox News. They're actually broadening their horizons and giving
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Speaker 1: opportunities for people in alternative media like myself to actually
0:37
Speaker 1: have access to this admin. And so I have a
0:39
Speaker 1: special interview with VA Secretary Doug Collins at the end
0:44
Speaker 1: of the show. I want to get to some headlines.
0:46
Speaker 1: I want to cover the news. But then we'll have
0:48
Speaker 1: this little bonus at the end where you guys can
0:50
Speaker 1: listen to my sit-down interview with Doug Collins, again, VA
0:53
Speaker 1: Secretary Doug. And we had a really interesting discussion, not
0:57
Speaker 1: just on veterans and how things are going. We talked
1:00
Speaker 1: about DOGE, talked about DEI. We also talked about his
1:03
Speaker 1: new plan to potentially allow for psychedelics as a treatment
1:08
Speaker 1: therapy for veterans who have experienced the horrors of war,
1:12
Speaker 1: have PTSD. So that was a fascinating discussion, a really
1:16
Speaker 1: interesting shift in the way that we look at veterans' health.
1:19
Speaker 1: So with that, Let's get to some of these headlines.
1:23
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein's most famous victim is found dead by suicide, apparently.
1:28
Speaker 1: The media falsely claims that Trump deported a U.S. citizen
1:32
Speaker 1: two-year-old child. A Wisconsin judge is arrested for helping an
1:36
Speaker 1: illegal immigrant escape ICE agents. The media gave itself awards
1:40
Speaker 1: for admitting to Biden's cognitive decline, something that, of course,
1:46
Speaker 1: it should have done years ago. Democrats held a sing-along
1:50
Speaker 1: protest against spending cuts. And President Trump reinstates Columbus Day.
1:55
Speaker 1: All this on Bonduna Report, early edition. I am making
2:10
Speaker 1: it publicly known. that in no way, shape, or form
2:14
Speaker 1: am I suicidal. I have made this known to my therapist.
2:18
Speaker 1: If something happens to me for the sake of my family,
2:21
Speaker 1: do not let this go away and help me to
2:24
Speaker 1: protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quieted.
2:29
Speaker 1: That was Jeffrey Epstein's most famous victim, Virginia Jeffrey, in 2019.
2:33
Speaker 1: I think we have that tweet. We could pull it
2:35
Speaker 1: up if you wanted, Michael. Last Friday, Virginia died at
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Speaker 1: the age of 41 years. in her Western Australia home.
2:45
Speaker 1: The cause, per her family, suicide. In March, Virginia stated
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Speaker 1: that she was hit by a bus. We covered it
2:53
Speaker 1: on the show. She apparently was left with these horrible injuries.
2:58
Speaker 1: She had days to live. She was in critical condition.
3:01
Speaker 1: Then the New York Post stated, The New York Times
3:05
Speaker 1: stated that the Australian police described this accident as a
3:09
Speaker 1: minor collision. So they said it wasn't life-threatening. She was
3:13
Speaker 1: lying about it, apparently. And she had these photos of
3:17
Speaker 1: herself looking as if she was on the verge of death, bruised, bloodied.
3:22
Speaker 1: It looked horrific. Apparently that wasn't true. A lot of
3:27
Speaker 1: strange things have happened in Virginia's life. Who was she?
3:31
Speaker 1: As a teenager, Virginia was coerced by Jeffrey Epstein and
3:35
Speaker 1: Epstein's then-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell into having sex with prominent men,
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Speaker 1: including the UK's Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew has denied her
3:44
Speaker 1: claims that he had abused her while she was still
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Speaker 1: a minor, but he settled with Virginia for $ 12 million.
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Speaker 1: Here is Virginia describing the abuse that she endured at
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Speaker 1: the hands of Epstein and Ghislaine.
4:01
Speaker 2: I was so young, Ghislaine woke me up in the
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Speaker 2: morning and said, you're going to meet a prince today.
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Speaker 2: I didn't know at that point that I was going
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Speaker 2: to be trafficked to that prince. And then that night,
4:14
Speaker 2: Prince Andrew came to her house in London and we
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Speaker 2: went out to Club Tramp. Prince Andrew got me alcohol.
4:22
Speaker 2: It was in the VIP section. It was, I'm pretty
4:25
Speaker 2: sure it was vodka. Prince Andrew was like, let's dance together.
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Speaker 2: And I was like, okay.
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Speaker 3: And, and.
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Speaker 2: We leave Club Tramp, and I hop in the car
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Speaker 2: with Ghislaine and Jeffrey, and Ghislaine said he's coming back
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Speaker 2: to the house, and I want you to do for
4:43
Speaker 2: him what you do for Epstein. I just couldn't believe it.
4:47
Speaker 2: I couldn't believe that even royalty were involved.
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Speaker 1: Lady Victoria Hervey is a British socialite and a former
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Speaker 1: model who briefly dated Prince Andrew in 1999. And after
5:03
Speaker 1: Virginia Jeffrey's death on Friday, Lady Victoria Herbie posted this.
5:10
Speaker 1: Karma on her Instagram story with a photo of the
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Speaker 1: bruised and battered Virginia allegedly after her car accident last month.
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Speaker 1: And also, she wrote, what goes around comes around.
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Speaker 4: It's kind of weird.
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Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein wasn't just a perverted billionaire. This is really important,
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Speaker 1: crucial to the story. He was reportedly an intelligence asset
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Speaker 1: running blackmail operations on some of the most powerful people
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Speaker 1: in the West. For decades, Jeffrey Epstein flew politicians and
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Speaker 1: royals and corporate elites, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton,
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Speaker 1: to his private island in the Virgin Islands. It was
5:52
Speaker 1: on that island where guests were allegedly recorded in compromising
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Speaker 1: acts to be used as leverage for political favors. Meanwhile,
6:02
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein's New York penthouse wasn't just luxurious, it was
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Speaker 1: truly disturbing. It was decorated with a painting of Bill
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Speaker 1: Clinton in a purple dress, framed prosthetic eyeballs, life-size female
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Speaker 1: doll hanging from a chandelier, a chessboard with pieces modeled
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Speaker 1: after his female staff, a pair of prosthetic breasts mounted
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Speaker 1: in the bathroom. Really weird. And now, with demands for
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Speaker 1: real disclosure reaching a fever pitch here in the United States,
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Speaker 1: Virginia Jeffrey, the most high-profile Epstein survivor, victim, and the
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Speaker 1: woman who accused Prince Andrew of abusing her as a minor,
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Speaker 1: has turned up dead by suicide. The timing could not
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Speaker 1: be more odd. And it sends a chilling message. Are
6:53
Speaker 1: those closest to the truth being erased? The Epstein operation
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Speaker 1: compromised America at the highest levels. Full, brutal transparency is
7:04
Speaker 1: the only option if we have any chance of returning
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Speaker 1: to normalcy in public trust. If we allow the victims
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Speaker 1: to die and the files to stay buried, then we
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Speaker 1: are complicit in the rot that now threatens the very
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Speaker 1: core of our so-called democratic republic. We need disclosure. All right,
7:27
Speaker 1: I want to take a quick break. When we come back,
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Speaker 1: we're going to talk about some media narratives, media lies.
7:33
Speaker 1: And just to note that as we talk about the media,
7:35
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about it a lot today because
7:37
Speaker 1: there's a lot of narratives to debunk. The media completely
7:41
Speaker 1: failed us on the Jeffrey Epstein story. They were There
7:44
Speaker 1: were a few journalists who knew what was going on.
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Speaker 1: They did the research and they were intimidated into dropping
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Speaker 1: the story. Editors came in over top and dropped the story.
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Speaker 1: People knew about this and they didn't report on it
7:55
Speaker 1: because when you report on institutions of power, especially when
8:00
Speaker 1: it involves the intelligence apparatus, somehow the truth has a
8:04
Speaker 1: way of staying buried. We're going to pivot to some
8:06
Speaker 1: fact checking on this show. The claim that's going around
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Speaker 1: right now is apparently President Trump deported a two-year-old American citizen.
8:17
Speaker 1: Can you guys believe this? How horrific is that? An
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Speaker 1: American citizen, two-year-old child deported by this Trump admin. This
8:25
Speaker 1: is from USA Today. Two-year-old US citizen deported with no
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Speaker 1: meaningful process. The New York Times, two-year-old U.S. citizen deported
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Speaker 1: with no meaningful process, judge suspects. This is horrific. Just horrific.
8:39
Speaker 1: How could he do this? The problem, my friends, is
8:43
Speaker 1: that that is not what actually happened. I'm going to
8:45
Speaker 1: tell you the real story of why this two-year-old child
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Speaker 1: is no longer in the United States. The Trump admin
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Speaker 1: did not deport a two-year-old U.S. citizen. The admin deported
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Speaker 1: the child's mother, an illegal alien, who then chose to
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Speaker 1: bring her two-year-old child with her Back to Honduras. The child,
9:05
Speaker 1: being a US citizen, was not and legally could not
9:08
Speaker 1: be deported under immigration law. The Trump admin wasn't doing that.
9:11
Speaker 1: The father, a legal resident of the US, naturally wanted
9:15
Speaker 1: to keep his children in the US and oppose the
9:17
Speaker 1: mother's removal. But still, that doesn't change the fact that
9:22
Speaker 1: deportation law applies to adults who violate immigration law, even
9:28
Speaker 1: if they have US citizen children. So breaking the law
9:31
Speaker 1: has consequences. And parenthood doesn't exempt someone from following immigration
9:37
Speaker 1: law or just the law in general. If you're an
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Speaker 1: American citizen and you break the law in this country
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Speaker 1: and you get convicted and you get sentenced to jail time,
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Speaker 1: you don't have a right to stay out of jail
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Speaker 1: because you have children. Just because you're a parent doesn't
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Speaker 1: mean you're exempt from following the rules. This mother freely
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Speaker 1: chose to take her child with her. Some important details.
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Speaker 1: about this case. ICE deported the mother after receiving a
10:05
Speaker 1: handwritten note in which the mother affirmed her decision to
10:09
Speaker 1: take her children with her. The difference between a child
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Speaker 1: was deported and a mother took her child with her
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Speaker 1: when she was deported is a massive difference. both legally
10:19
Speaker 1: and morally. But misrepresenting that distinction isn't an accident. It
10:24
Speaker 1: is a deliberate tactic to inflame public emotion and distort
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Speaker 1: the debate. And ultimately what this is about is the
10:33
Speaker 1: safety and security of this country, the mandate to get
10:35
Speaker 1: rid of people in this nation illegally, especially the millions
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Speaker 1: who came under the Biden admin. We have no idea
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Speaker 1: who they are, completely unvetted, lost to the system in
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Speaker 1: some cases. We need to get these people out of
10:48
Speaker 1: the country. And this is a media narrative to, again,
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Speaker 1: inflame the public with emotional manipulation. I want you guys
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Speaker 1: to listen to Tom Holman yesterday on CBS Face the Nation.
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Speaker 1: He does a great job of checking this narrative, putting
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Speaker 1: it into a perspective, and keeping us thinking about the
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Speaker 1: rule of law. Take a listen. Do we have that, Mikey?
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Speaker 5: Okay.
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Speaker 6: On Friday, a federal judge who was appointed by President
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Speaker 6: Trump said a two-year-old American citizen child had been sent
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Speaker 6: to Honduras with a mother who was deported. But the
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Speaker 6: judge said, quote, there was no meaningful process. So, again,
11:32
Speaker 6: this is another similar situation and dynamic. Shouldn't there be
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Speaker 6: special care when these deportation cases involve small American-born children?
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Speaker 7: Now, first of all, I disagree with the judge. It
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Speaker 7: was due process. That female had due process at great
11:52
Speaker 7: taxpayer expense and was ordered by an immigration judge after
11:55
Speaker 7: those hearings. So she had due process. Again, this is
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Speaker 7: Parenting 101. You can decide to take that child with you,
12:03
Speaker 7: or you can decide to leave the child here with
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Speaker 7: a relative or another spouse. Having a U.S. citizen child
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Speaker 7: doesn't make you immune from our laws of the country.
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Speaker 7: American families get separated every day by law enforcement. Thousands
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Speaker 7: of times a day when a parent gets put in jail,
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Speaker 7: the child can't go with them. If you're an illegal
12:19
Speaker 7: animal and come to this country and you decide to
12:20
Speaker 7: have a U.S. citizen child, that's on you. You put
12:23
Speaker 7: yourself in that position.
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Speaker 1: This was the mother's decision to take her child with her.
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Speaker 1: No U.S. citizen was deported. There was no due process
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Speaker 1: to be had for this child. The mother chose to
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Speaker 1: take the kid with her. No matter how the media
12:39
Speaker 1: twists and spins these lies, it will not be the
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Speaker 1: case that a little child American citizen was deported by
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Speaker 1: the Trump admin. This is just a lie. And speaking
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Speaker 1: of fact-checking, the Trump dictatorship, supposed dictatorship, has arrested a
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Speaker 1: well-meaning Wisconsin judge. Can you guys believe it? Who simply
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Speaker 1: cared about immigration due process and the Trump admin in
13:07
Speaker 1: a move to intimidate her and all of the judges.
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Speaker 1: They arrested her. Here was Hassan Piker yesterday, left-wing, young,
13:17
Speaker 1: pro-Palestine activist. He says every person and institution needs to
13:20
Speaker 1: resist against this fascist state before we reach the phrase
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Speaker 1: where they legalize their agenda. It'll be too late for
13:27
Speaker 1: civil disobedience at that point. Okay, this is not a
13:32
Speaker 1: fascist state. This is, again, not what you think it is. Actually,
13:36
Speaker 1: the FBI has arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah
13:41
Speaker 1: Dugan for obstruction after she allegedly helped an illegal immigrant
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Speaker 1: evade federal agents in her courtroom. So actually the opposite
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Speaker 1: of due process. And FBI Director Kash Patel announced Dugan's
13:54
Speaker 1: arrest Friday, saying she intentionally misdirected federal agents trying to
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Speaker 1: apprehend Eduardo Flores Ruiz, a Mexican national facing three counts
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Speaker 1: of misdemeanor battery. After this judge allegedly ushered Flores Ruiz
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Speaker 1: and his attorney through a side door and down a
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Speaker 1: private hallway to escape, federal agents had to chase and
14:16
Speaker 1: capture him on foot. The judge's obstruction was put the
14:21
Speaker 1: public in great danger, Patel said in his statement. Here
14:25
Speaker 1: was Pam Bondi just a couple days ago.
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Speaker 8: Rare for victims to want to cooperate. They wanted to cooperate.
14:31
Speaker 8: They were sitting in the courtroom with the state prosecutor.
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Speaker 8: The judge learns that ICE was outside to get the
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Speaker 8: guy because he had been deported in 2013, came back
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Speaker 8: in our country, commits these crimes, charged with committing these crimes,
14:45
Speaker 8: victims in court. Judge finds out. She goes out in
14:48
Speaker 8: the hallway, screams at the immigration officers. She's furious, visibly shaken, upset,
14:54
Speaker 8: sends them off to talk to the chief judge. She
14:57
Speaker 8: comes back in the courtroom, you're not going to believe this,
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Speaker 8: takes the defendant and the defense attorney back in her chambers,
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Speaker 8: takes them out of private exit and tells them to
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Speaker 8: leave while a state prosecutor and victims of domestic violence
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Speaker 8: are sitting in the courtroom.
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Speaker 1: You know, Madam Attorney General, great to have you here.
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Speaker 1: So for some context here, Flores Ruiz was arrested for
15:19
Speaker 1: assaulting two people during a dispute, punching one man in
15:22
Speaker 1: the face, and body around 30 times, and then attacking
15:26
Speaker 1: a woman who tried to intervene. This left-wing activist judge
15:31
Speaker 1: was the former head of Catholic Charities in Milwaukee. I'm
15:34
Speaker 1: a Catholic. Catholic Charities is not Catholic. They do very
15:36
Speaker 1: un-Catholic things, like facilitating the illegal immigration crisis and an
15:41
Speaker 1: open border invasion into our country. And this woman openly
15:45
Speaker 1: boasted about measuring her judicial decisions against social justice principles.
15:50
Speaker 1: That's the quote, social justice principles. And this, of course,
15:54
Speaker 1: comes after New Mexico Magistrate Judge Joel Cano and his
15:58
Speaker 1: wife were arrested for harboring a suspected member of Venezuela's
16:03
Speaker 1: violent Trenderagua game. This New Mexico judge has since resigned
16:08
Speaker 1: and been permanently barred from serving in New Mexico's judiciary.
16:13
Speaker 1: New Mexico GOP Chairwoman Amy Barrella said the people are
16:16
Speaker 1: tired of a powerful system Worthy, powerful, don't play by
16:23
Speaker 1: the rules. Enough is enough. And I couldn't agree with
16:26
Speaker 1: that more. But again, the lies is what gets me.
16:29
Speaker 1: It's the twisting of the truth. And that's why I
16:32
Speaker 1: love this tweet from Jack Posobiec yesterday. He said, or
16:35
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago, he said, this is the
16:36
Speaker 1: first time in US history a judge has been arrested.
16:39
Speaker 1: This is not normal. That's what he tweeted. And he
16:41
Speaker 1: did that on purpose because there obviously have been times
16:45
Speaker 1: where judges have been arrested. And so then Community Notes
16:48
Speaker 1: comes in and floods his post, pointing out all the
16:51
Speaker 1: different times that judges have been arrested over the years.
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Speaker 1: This is genius stuff from Jack Posobiec. Seriously. The narrative
16:58
Speaker 1: right now is that Trump is trying to send a
17:01
Speaker 1: message to intimidate judges in this country. No, the message
17:08
Speaker 1: is not to intimidate judges. It's that no matter who
17:11
Speaker 1: you are, judge or not, you'll be punished for If
17:15
Speaker 1: you are protecting or aiding or colluding with illegal dangerous
17:18
Speaker 1: criminals guilty of terrorizing American citizens, you will be punished
17:23
Speaker 1: for standing in the way of the wishes of the
17:25
Speaker 1: American people who voted for a mass deportation agenda under
17:28
Speaker 1: the Trump admin. Here's Pam Bondi again.
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Speaker 8: I think some of these judges think they are beyond
17:35
Speaker 8: and above the law, and they are not. And we're
17:38
Speaker 8: sending a very strong message today. If you are harboring
17:41
Speaker 8: a fugitive, we don't care who you are. If you
17:44
Speaker 8: are helping hide one, if you are giving a TDA
17:47
Speaker 8: member guns, anyone who is illegally in this country, we
17:50
Speaker 8: will come after you and we will prosecute you.
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Speaker 1: We will find you. She'll find you. That's the message.
17:56
Speaker 1: That's a strong message. That's not to intimidate judges. That's
18:00
Speaker 1: to say no one is above the law. And it's
18:02
Speaker 1: kind of fascinating. coming from the left, that we're saying
18:06
Speaker 1: no one's above the law, you can't just harbor illegal migrants.
18:09
Speaker 1: And the same people who are flipping out over a judge,
18:12
Speaker 1: two judges getting arrested, are the ones who insisted all
18:17
Speaker 1: leading up to this election that no one's above the
18:19
Speaker 1: law and therefore we should just go after Trump with
18:22
Speaker 1: all the lawfare possible. The same people. And they don't
18:25
Speaker 1: see the irony at all. And on the note of immigration,
18:30
Speaker 1: you guys can't even make this stuff up. Remember how
18:32
Speaker 1: last week DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's purse was stolen while
18:36
Speaker 1: she was dining at a restaurant in D.C.? Well, it
18:39
Speaker 1: turns out that the thief, who has now been arrested,
18:43
Speaker 1: is in this country illegally. It's almost poetic. Noem is
18:47
Speaker 1: out here trying to clean up Biden's border disaster. She's
18:50
Speaker 1: shipping criminals back to where they belong.
18:53
Speaker 4: Well, D.C.
18:53
Speaker 1: Is so overrun that illegal aliens are now robbing cabinet
18:56
Speaker 1: secretaries in broad daylight. I suppose it was in broad daylight.
19:00
Speaker 1: in a normal public place. I mean, it's just absurd.
19:05
Speaker 1: And the media is insisting there is no illegal immigration crisis,
19:09
Speaker 1: that Trump is just targeting two-year-olds and American citizens and
19:13
Speaker 1: people who contribute to this country. That's the narrative right now.
19:15
Speaker 1: He's just going after your grandmother next door who doesn't
19:19
Speaker 1: have her papers or whatever. And then you see stories
19:24
Speaker 1: like this, and it becomes crystal clear that Mass illegal
19:28
Speaker 1: immigration isn't some abstract policy debate. It's real. It's dangerous.
19:32
Speaker 1: And it's hitting even the highest levels of government. It's
19:36
Speaker 1: a great justification for everything the admin is doing. This
19:38
Speaker 1: is not stupid. This is not cruel. This is what
19:42
Speaker 1: needs to be done if we're going to have a
19:43
Speaker 1: real country. If you don't have any borders, you don't
19:46
Speaker 1: have a country. Our nation is not an idea. It's
19:50
Speaker 1: a physical place with real people, with a shared cultural identity.
19:54
Speaker 1: And you can't just separate that and ignore those things. Yeah,
19:57
Speaker 1: F around and find out. I love that. Who did that, Mikey?
20:01
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. We'll bring back some Dan Bongino into
20:03
Speaker 1: the show a little bit. Seriously, F around and find out.
20:07
Speaker 1: And that's what happened to this illegal immigrant who decided
20:10
Speaker 1: he was going to steal the THS secretary's purse. I mean,
20:13
Speaker 1: could not have picked a worse person to rob. I mean,
20:16
Speaker 1: you just wonder, like, how did this guy pick a
20:20
Speaker 1: worse person? I mean, it's as if, like, I think
20:23
Speaker 1: it probably would have been worse if he had robbed
20:25
Speaker 1: the President of the United States himself. Maybe Tom Holman. But, like,
20:30
Speaker 1: Kristi Noem is up there. Definitely Tom Holman. Definitely Tom Holman. But, yeah,
20:33
Speaker 1: this is dumb. He just bought himself a one-way ticket
20:35
Speaker 1: to El Salvador. All right, back to the media. Saturday
20:39
Speaker 1: night was the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which is, of course,
20:41
Speaker 1: this glitzy event where the D.C. press toasts itself for
20:46
Speaker 1: being really bad at their jobs. And Trump, of course,
20:49
Speaker 1: never attends. This is his kind of tradition that he
20:51
Speaker 1: just does not attend this because he thinks the media
20:53
Speaker 1: is very bad at their jobs, and they are, and
20:55
Speaker 1: they don't deserve to be patting themselves on the back. Well,
20:58
Speaker 1: they still had their dinner, and on Saturday, the journalists
21:00
Speaker 1: were honored with major awards for.
21:06
Speaker 1: I guess not doing their job and eventually exposing Biden
21:10
Speaker 1: for his cognitive decline after years of ignoring it. I
21:13
Speaker 1: can't even, again, you can't make this stuff up. So
21:17
Speaker 1: the Associated Press's Amir Mahandi and Zeke Miller took home
21:22
Speaker 1: the top print prize for their reporting on the Biden
21:25
Speaker 1: White House's quiet doctoring of official transcripts. This was, of course,
21:31
Speaker 1: the hoax that there was an apostrophe. He didn't mean
21:35
Speaker 1: to say negative things about Trump supporters and how they
21:40
Speaker 1: feel right ahead of the election with Kamala Harris. Here
21:42
Speaker 1: was Zeke accepting his award.
21:45
Speaker 9: From the White House to the town of White House, Texas,
21:48
Speaker 9: it's a real place, Peoria to the Persian Gulf, we
21:52
Speaker 9: at AP remain committed as ever to accurate, independent, nonpartisan journalism,
21:57
Speaker 9: to carrying light the world over.
21:59
Speaker 1: You can't even make it up. We at AP remain
22:02
Speaker 1: committed to, as ever, to accurate, independent, nonpartisan journalism. Are
22:06
Speaker 1: you kidding me right now? AP pushed the Russia collusion hoax,
22:10
Speaker 1: pushed for COVID-19 lockdowns while covering for BLM riots. And
22:13
Speaker 1: in the case of Biden, the AP and other major
22:16
Speaker 1: outlets failed to seriously cover his mental decline for years,
22:19
Speaker 1: but they reported an apostrophe. Okay, great. We're going to
22:22
Speaker 1: give you an award for it now. Republicans knew that
22:26
Speaker 1: Joe Biden was unfit to serve before he was even
22:28
Speaker 1: elected president. We knew. We talked about it. Everybody was
22:31
Speaker 1: aware of this. It was observable. You didn't have to
22:35
Speaker 1: be some sort of prestigious journalist. You didn't have to
22:38
Speaker 1: graduate from journalism school to understand this. And now the D.C.
22:42
Speaker 1: press is awarding itself for covering an apostrophe in a transcript.
22:47
Speaker 1: And it didn't stop there because Axios reporter Alex Thompson
22:50
Speaker 1: won the Aldo Beckman Award for Overall Excellence Award. specifically
22:55
Speaker 1: for his coverage of Biden's mental decline. Take a listen
22:58
Speaker 1: to Kristen Welker announcing Alex's award. And I want you
23:01
Speaker 1: to pay attention to how she frames this story. It's
23:04
Speaker 1: really important. Take a listen.
23:06
Speaker 4: The judges said Thompson's aggressive reporting on President Biden, especially
23:10
Speaker 4: leading up to and after the Trump Biden debate, revealed
23:14
Speaker 4: the president's cognitive decline was impacting his ability to do
23:18
Speaker 4: his job. Information the White House tried to conceal. Ladies
23:23
Speaker 4: and gentlemen, the White House Correspondents Association is pleased to
23:26
Speaker 4: give the Aldo Beckman Award to Alex Thompson.
23:29
Speaker 1: Did you guys catch it? Who caught it? What did
23:33
Speaker 1: they say in there that was so absolutely ridiculously absurd?
23:40
Speaker 1: Information the White House tried to conceal. The White House
23:44
Speaker 1: tried to conceal. See how the blame is completely deflected
23:46
Speaker 1: from the media? They're awarding themselves. after participating in the
23:50
Speaker 1: coverup for years and then blaming the admin. Here is
23:54
Speaker 1: Thompson's acceptance speech. And he does actually call out the media,
23:58
Speaker 1: unlike Kristen and himself. He takes a little bit of responsibility,
24:01
Speaker 1: a little bit of responsibility. But I want you to
24:03
Speaker 1: listen to how he takes this responsibility. Again, it echoes
24:07
Speaker 1: what Kristen was saying.
24:09
Speaker 5: To my bones, I believe that reporting and the White
24:13
Speaker 5: House Correspondents Association is as necessary as ever. President Biden's
24:19
Speaker 5: decline and its cover-up by the people around him is
24:25
Speaker 5: a reminder that every White House, regardless of party, is
24:29
Speaker 5: capable of deception. But being truth-tellers also means telling the
24:34
Speaker 5: truth about ourselves. We, myself included, missed a lot of
24:41
Speaker 5: this story, and some people trust us less because of it.
24:46
Speaker 5: We bear some responsibility for faith in the media being
24:51
Speaker 5: at such lows. I say this because acknowledging errors builds trust,
25:06
Speaker 5: and being defensive about them further erodes it. We should
25:11
Speaker 5: have done better. I believe our mission is vital in
25:17
Speaker 5: a world where people are struggling to figure out what's
25:21
Speaker 5: true and people with power are not telling the truth.
25:28
Speaker 1: Leftists like Thompson only covered Biden's cognitive decline when there
25:34
Speaker 1: was a top-down push to replace Biden with Kamala. Only
25:39
Speaker 1: until there was pressure for him to resign Did they
25:42
Speaker 1: start saying what all of America has known since before
25:45
Speaker 1: he was even elected, that Joe Biden is not mentally there? Again,
25:49
Speaker 1: the framing is that the White House covered it up.
25:52
Speaker 1: It wasn't us. It was the White House. We should
25:54
Speaker 1: have gotten on it a little sooner, but the White
25:56
Speaker 1: House is really to blame. Yeah, that's the White House's job,
26:01
Speaker 1: to protect the president. This is his administration. KJP lied
26:05
Speaker 1: about Biden's mental acuity because that's her job. She did
26:10
Speaker 1: PR for Joe Biden. So she's going to do the
26:12
Speaker 1: PR for Joe Biden. What's scandalous is not that KJP
26:17
Speaker 1: lied about Joe Biden's mental acuity. What's scandalous is that
26:22
Speaker 1: the media did not do their job, which is to
26:25
Speaker 1: report on the facts, especially important ones, like the president's
26:29
Speaker 1: brain is mush. So no, Alex Thompson, you are not
26:35
Speaker 1: worthy of any kind of award. You simply ran PR
26:38
Speaker 1: for the, when Obama and Axelrod gave the signal that
26:42
Speaker 1: we were ready to drop Joe Biden. Then you guys
26:45
Speaker 1: came out with your mental acuity stories. It's absurd that
26:49
Speaker 1: you're patting yourselves on the back. And they think that
26:52
Speaker 1: they are the arbiters of truth. That's what he was
26:56
Speaker 1: saying and that we need the media. We need the
26:58
Speaker 1: press corps. We need all, we need this institution because
27:01
Speaker 1: people need to know what's right and wrong and what's
27:02
Speaker 1: real and what's fake in this day and age. No,
27:05
Speaker 1: we don't need that from you. We don't need it.
27:07
Speaker 1: We don't want it. You're not in charge of the
27:09
Speaker 1: information sphere anymore. You have lied so thoroughly and clowned
27:12
Speaker 1: yourselves beyond parity that we have no use for you anymore.
27:15
Speaker 1: You have no right to continue gatekeeping and influence in
27:18
Speaker 1: this country. Your power and credibility is gone, and you
27:21
Speaker 1: have only yourselves to blame. And there was not enough
27:23
Speaker 1: blame going around in that room. They should be ashamed
27:25
Speaker 1: of themselves. Instead, they were rewarding themselves. And speaking of
27:29
Speaker 1: Democrats making fools out of themselves, yesterday, House Minority Leader
27:33
Speaker 1: Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Cory Booker hosted a Capitol Steps protest.
27:38
Speaker 1: against Republicans' upcoming push to pass a budget reconciliation bill
27:42
Speaker 1: that is set to cut $ 1. 5 trillion in federal spending.
27:47
Speaker 1: So it was, I guess, a pro-wasting-America-tax-dollars protest, I guess,
27:52
Speaker 1: and it lasted like 10 hours. Here was Cory Booker yesterday.
27:57
Speaker 10: We've got some power here. Now, we said we were
27:59
Speaker 10: anchoring ourselves in the moral traditions. When we came out
28:03
Speaker 10: here over 10 hours ago, Hakeem and I said this
28:07
Speaker 10: is a bigger moment than politics. This is a moral
28:10
Speaker 10: moment in America, and we were going to sit here
28:13
Speaker 10: for a long time. I didn't know we'd be sitting
28:15
Speaker 10: for 10 hours, but it's 10 hours and we're still going,
28:18
Speaker 10: and we've got some great people here. But the moral traditions.
28:21
Speaker 1: This was so pathetic. I actually felt bad. Like she's
28:25
Speaker 1: lecturing about moral traditions. He's sitting on the steps. There's
28:27
Speaker 1: like no one there. Some more people show up eventually.
28:30
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly what the timeline is here. Again,
28:32
Speaker 1: they were there for 10 hours. Here they are singing
28:36
Speaker 1: with a gay rabbi of some kind. Also, I think
28:38
Speaker 1: a pro-Palestine gay rabbi of some kind about rebuilding the
28:44
Speaker 1: world from love. Take a listen to this.
28:46
Speaker 11: You know this song from the beginning. I will build
28:50
Speaker 11: this world from love. And you must build this world
28:56
Speaker 11: from love. And if we build this world from love,
29:02
Speaker 11: then God will build this world from love.
29:18
Speaker 1: It's so bad.
29:21
Speaker 11: It is really hard to overstate just how pathetic that
29:29
Speaker 11: entire spectacle was.
29:31
Speaker 1: The clapping and the swaying and the singing about rebuilding
29:35
Speaker 1: the world from love while the country sings under 34
29:38
Speaker 1: trillion dollars. in debt. Instead of offering any serious argument
29:42
Speaker 1: for why American taxpayers should keep footing the bill for bloated,
29:46
Speaker 1: broken federal programs, they staged this like out, like 10
29:49
Speaker 1: hour long musical tantrum with this gay rabbi against even
29:54
Speaker 1: the slightest attempt at fiscal responsibility. This was not just unserious.
29:58
Speaker 1: It was very embarrassing for the left. Democrats have decided
30:02
Speaker 1: that their priority is a sing-along protest for more government waste.
30:06
Speaker 1: This was theater. Cheap, childish, frankly insulting. And there's a
30:10
Speaker 1: reason that the Democratic Party is in shambles right now,
30:12
Speaker 1: because they want action from their leaders. Whatever that may
30:16
Speaker 1: look like, this is not it. This is not what
30:18
Speaker 1: Democrats want, what young Democrats want especially. It's great for us.
30:22
Speaker 1: I mean, let's keep it up. Let's have a gay
30:25
Speaker 1: rabbi sing along on the steps of the Capitol every day.
30:29
Speaker 1: I love it. Let's keep doing it. But wow, this
30:32
Speaker 1: is bad for them. This is very, very bad, very cringe,
30:35
Speaker 1: very embarrassing for the left. Something cool did actually happen today.
30:39
Speaker 1: Somebody did accomplish something yesterday and it was not Cory Booker.
30:42
Speaker 1: It was not Hakeem Jeffries. It was not the gay rabbi.
30:44
Speaker 1: It was actually President Trump who reinstated Columbus Day. The
30:48
Speaker 1: president wrote on Truth Social, I'm bringing Columbus Day back
30:51
Speaker 1: from the ashes. The Democrats did everything possible to destroy
30:54
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that
30:57
Speaker 1: love him so much. They tore down his statues and
31:00
Speaker 1: put up nothing but woke or even worse, nothing at all. Well,
31:03
Speaker 1: you'll be happy to know Christopher is going to make
31:06
Speaker 1: a major comeback. I am hereby regurgitating Columbus Day under
31:09
Speaker 1: the same rules, debates, and locations as it has had
31:12
Speaker 1: for all of the many decades before. This is awesome.
31:17
Speaker 1: bringing back Columbus Day isn't just a win, it's a
31:20
Speaker 1: battle flag planted in the middle of the culture war.
31:23
Speaker 1: And for years, he's right, the left has tried to
31:25
Speaker 1: smear our country, tear down our heroes, and leave us
31:28
Speaker 1: with nothing but shame and broken statues. The president just
31:32
Speaker 1: reminded us yesterday that America is not built on self-hatred.
31:36
Speaker 1: It's built on boldness and exploration and bravery and faith.
31:39
Speaker 1: Columbus didn't ask for safe spaces. He crossed the ocean
31:44
Speaker 1: with nothing but grit and guts. This is a huge
31:48
Speaker 1: middle finger to the woke vandals who think they can
31:51
Speaker 1: erase an entire cultural identity. A lot of the Columbus
31:55
Speaker 1: hatred actually comes from a book that we've covered on
31:58
Speaker 1: the show before. It's called Howard Zinn's A People's History
32:01
Speaker 1: of the United States of America. And this book has
32:03
Speaker 1: its tentacles in high school and colleges. It's just poison.
32:08
Speaker 1: I had the book in high school. Michael was there
32:09
Speaker 1: with me. And he didn't stand up for me at all.
32:12
Speaker 1: I was like, this is a trash book. We should
32:14
Speaker 1: not be reading this. We should have a real history textbook.
32:17
Speaker 1: And Michael just sat back there and.
32:20
Speaker 5: To be fair, I didn't talk just because I didn't
32:24
Speaker 5: actually read the book.
32:25
Speaker 1: He didn't do the homework, but he should have been
32:26
Speaker 1: reading it to stand up for me as I was
32:29
Speaker 1: battling our teacher on this stupid book. But he did not.
32:32
Speaker 1: He was just... Michael's strategy, he actually liked it. He
32:35
Speaker 1: would just sit back there and watch me argue with people.
32:38
Speaker 1: And then he didn't have to do work that day
32:40
Speaker 1: because I would distract teachers in all of our classes.
32:44
Speaker 1: It was kind of annoying, though, that he didn't stick
32:46
Speaker 1: up for me. But anyways... Howard Zinn is not a historian.
32:49
Speaker 1: He is a self-described Marxist activist. He has no interest
32:53
Speaker 1: in telling the full story of America. He was actually
32:56
Speaker 1: determined to rewrite the history of America. He openly admitted,
32:59
Speaker 1: this is a quote, I came to history with a
33:02
Speaker 1: very modest objective. I wanted to change the world. Now,
33:07
Speaker 1: his People's History of the United States popularized this Marxist
33:10
Speaker 1: lens of American history where it taught generations of students
33:13
Speaker 1: to view everything through the narrow prism of race and class.
33:17
Speaker 1: Nowhere is this distortion more obvious than how he portrays
33:21
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus. Howard Zinn created this cartoonish narrative of peaceful,
33:26
Speaker 1: innocent Native Americans abused by these bloodthirsty European devils. Here's
33:31
Speaker 1: a TikToker actually reading from the Howard Zinn book and,
33:34
Speaker 1: of course, ultimately being indoctrinated by this Marxist narrative that
33:38
Speaker 1: he is presenting. And this is just to show you
33:41
Speaker 1: his tentacles are everywhere. Take a listen.
33:44
Speaker 12: Christopher Columbus in his journal said about the Indians, they
33:47
Speaker 12: are so naive and so free with their possessions that
33:49
Speaker 12: no one who has not witnessed them would believe it.
33:53
Speaker 12: When you ask for something they have, they never say no.
33:56
Speaker 12: To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone. And
34:06
Speaker 12: he wrote that in his journal, mocking them because he
34:12
Speaker 12: came from a land full of the worst kinds of people.
34:20
Speaker 12: And so coming in contact with human beings that were
34:24
Speaker 12: so open to sharing and caring and loving was to
34:29
Speaker 12: be mocked.
34:32
Speaker 13: Horrible people. These people were horrible people. And we have
34:38
Speaker 13: a holiday for Christopher Columbus. We have to start from scratch.
34:46
Speaker 12: We have to pull out every little piece of history
34:49
Speaker 12: that the United States has taught us, grab it and
34:52
Speaker 12: pull it out by our ears and burn it. Burn it.
34:58
Speaker 12: These people were fucking horrible.
35:00
Speaker 1: So that's the message of Howard Zinn, right? That reaction,
35:05
Speaker 1: you have to tear it all out, destroy it, burn it.
35:09
Speaker 1: That's what he wants you to feel after reading his book.
35:12
Speaker 1: I want to just address something somebody said. Evita, regardless
35:15
Speaker 1: of the facts here, you should not tear down your
35:18
Speaker 1: husband publicly. Guys, please stop taking this so seriously. It's
35:21
Speaker 1: just a joke. I'm being sarcastic. Michael's fine. You guys
35:24
Speaker 1: are just super weird about every time I talk about
35:27
Speaker 1: Michael and I joke around with him. Michael, are you
35:30
Speaker 1: offended right now?
35:32
Speaker 3: I'm super offended.
35:33
Speaker 1: Okay, you guys chill out. Chat, you're fine. Okay, let's
35:38
Speaker 1: talk about this book. So the narrative, of course, innocent
35:42
Speaker 1: Native Americans abused by these bloodthirsty European devils. The real
35:47
Speaker 1: Columbus was far from this caricature that Howard Zinn painted.
35:51
Speaker 1: Zinn was selective about what Columbus wrote in his journal.
35:58
Speaker 1: And Columbus stressed, actually, his desire to win the native
36:01
Speaker 1: peoples with friendship and conversation and conversion to Christianity through kindness,
36:09
Speaker 1: not violence. This is a quote, another quote, that did
36:11
Speaker 1: not make it into the Howard Zinn book from Columbus's journal.
36:15
Speaker 1: I want the natives to develop a friendly attitude toward
36:18
Speaker 1: us because I know that they are a people who
36:20
Speaker 1: can be made free and converted to our holy faith
36:22
Speaker 1: more by love than by force. That wasn't in the book.
36:26
Speaker 1: He also, Christopher Columbus, also warned his men to treat
36:28
Speaker 1: the natives fairly, writing, I warned my men to take
36:32
Speaker 1: nothing from the people without giving something in exchange. These details,
36:38
Speaker 1: critical to understanding Christopher Columbus and the era that he
36:41
Speaker 1: lived in, are completely erased by Zinn's ideological framework. Instead
36:46
Speaker 1: of a nuanced, complicated history, students are force-fed a morality
36:50
Speaker 1: play designed to make them hate their own civilization. And
36:54
Speaker 1: by the way, let's not forget about indigenous civilizations at
36:58
Speaker 1: that time, plagued by slavery, cannibalism, and brutal warfare. There
37:02
Speaker 1: was genocide left and right in the Americas before the
37:07
Speaker 1: Europeans came. This is humanity. This is just life. And frankly,
37:12
Speaker 1: I would argue it was more brutal because they didn't
37:14
Speaker 1: have Christianity. Look at what the Aztec Empire was doing.
37:18
Speaker 1: Tearing out the hearts of children, of child, of sacrifice victims.
37:24
Speaker 1: This is the reality of humanity, of civilization, especially when
37:30
Speaker 1: it's pre-Christian. And to paint this narrative that the Indians
37:32
Speaker 1: were just ever, you know, virtuous, blameless, completely innocent. This
37:40
Speaker 1: is a silly thing to say. It's actually, I would argue,
37:44
Speaker 1: infantilizing of the Native Americans. Life and humanity is brutal.
37:49
Speaker 1: History is brutal. All sides have done horrific things to
37:53
Speaker 1: one another. And to create this narrative where one side
37:56
Speaker 1: is perpetually evil and the other side is perfect and
37:59
Speaker 1: virtuous is a lie. It always will be. The poisoned
38:03
Speaker 1: version of history that Zinn championed has seeped into classrooms, museums,
38:09
Speaker 1: the media. It's produced a generation that sees America as
38:12
Speaker 1: fundamentally evil. It's why you see young people tearing down
38:15
Speaker 1: statues and chanting for the end of Western Civ itself.
38:18
Speaker 1: When you teach kids that their country was born in
38:21
Speaker 1: original sin, don't be surprised when they turn against it.
38:25
Speaker 1: So to normal Americans, what President Trump did yesterday was
38:28
Speaker 1: a signal that our traditions are worth defending with pride,
38:33
Speaker 1: not apology. We are a nation of builders, of dreamers,
38:36
Speaker 1: and explorers, not guilt-ridden demons. All right. I want to
38:42
Speaker 1: have some time here to share with you guys this
38:45
Speaker 1: interview I did with VA Secretary Doug Collins. I hope
38:48
Speaker 1: you will enjoy it. Michael and I had a fun
38:50
Speaker 1: time in D.C. I got to see my dad. I
38:51
Speaker 1: got to see my siblings. But I also got to
38:53
Speaker 1: do these really cool interviews in the White House because, again,
38:57
Speaker 1: this admin really cares about new media, about reaching out
39:01
Speaker 1: in unique ways to this exploding information sphere that has
39:07
Speaker 1: removed itself from the control of the corrupted corporate media.
39:11
Speaker 1: Take a listen to this. Well, thank you so much
39:13
Speaker 1: for sitting down with me, Mr. Secretary. I love that
39:15
Speaker 1: you guys are doing new media. I think it's amazing.
39:18
Speaker 3: Oh, we're excited. Well, look at it now. You look
39:20
Speaker 3: at where people are getting their information, it's spread out.
39:22
Speaker 3: It's much more diverse. I mean, you look at even
39:25
Speaker 3: nightly news, even on some of the biggest cable or stuff,
39:27
Speaker 3: there may be touching, I guess, 3 million, and that's
39:30
Speaker 3: some just TVs on. But there's a lot of more
39:33
Speaker 3: new medias out there where you're seeing more and more
39:35
Speaker 3: people over and over. And it's also invested media. That's
39:37
Speaker 3: one of the things I look at it as, is
39:39
Speaker 3: I'm taking a choice to go listen to a podcast
39:42
Speaker 3: or listen to the new media. So I'm excited about it.
39:44
Speaker 3: I think it's a great way to get message out.
39:46
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And you're right, the entire media landscape has
39:49
Speaker 1: completely changed. And this admin is responding to it in
39:52
Speaker 1: a way that I think is really incredible, unprecedented. And
39:55
Speaker 1: other administrations are going to have to follow what you
39:58
Speaker 1: guys are doing or they're going to get left behind
39:59
Speaker 1: for sure. I want to ask you about something that
40:02
Speaker 1: you just did really recently. You sent an email out
40:05
Speaker 1: to all the department employees, having them be on the
40:09
Speaker 1: lookout for instances of anti-Christian discrimination. What prompted that?
40:14
Speaker 3: Well, it was following the president's lead on the executive
40:16
Speaker 3: order and where he had formed the task force on
40:19
Speaker 3: anti-Christian bias. And so what we're basically going back for
40:22
Speaker 3: is as a chaplain, I've been a chaplain in the
40:25
Speaker 3: Air Force now for 20-something years, everybody has a right
40:28
Speaker 3: to their own belief. And that belief, whether you have
40:31
Speaker 3: a belief or even don't have a belief. But what
40:33
Speaker 3: we found in the previous administration and going over this,
40:36
Speaker 3: that everybody's beliefs seem to be okay unless you're Christian.
40:38
Speaker 3: And it seemed to be, you know, and again, the
40:40
Speaker 3: perception became more reality when you looked at areas. So
40:43
Speaker 3: What we're just simply saying is that's not going to
40:45
Speaker 3: be tolerated. Everybody's belief is valid, and everybody's belief is
40:48
Speaker 3: going to be treated the same. Unfortunately, like I said,
40:51
Speaker 3: under previous administrations, it was where you couldn't say Merry
40:55
Speaker 3: Christmas or Easter, but yet you called the other faith
40:58
Speaker 3: groups' holidays by their actual name and was in trouble
41:01
Speaker 3: if you didn't. So those are little things like that. Again,
41:04
Speaker 3: they send a subtle message out there. This is, I think,
41:07
Speaker 3: not any kind of a mass, you know, look is
41:10
Speaker 3: in the sense of saying we're out to do something.
41:12
Speaker 3: We're out to say, look, everybody's equal here. Your faith
41:14
Speaker 3: matters because I do believe faith matters. Yeah.
41:17
Speaker 1: I mean, especially as you're somebody who's served in the
41:19
Speaker 1: military and you come back home and you have this,
41:24
Speaker 1: I guess, perception that your Christian faith is somehow something
41:26
Speaker 1: to be ashamed of or bad. I mean, it's a
41:28
Speaker 1: terrible message to send to people. And so you guys
41:30
Speaker 1: are saying, not necessarily that we're saying this is an
41:32
Speaker 1: epidemic in the military, the VA, but if this is happening,
41:35
Speaker 1: come to us and let's look at it.
41:38
Speaker 3: That's Exactly. And I think this is the thing that
41:41
Speaker 3: you have to see it from a perspective of, you know,
41:44
Speaker 3: that everybody just is treated equally in this. And what
41:47
Speaker 3: we've seen is that if you're not being treated that way, again,
41:52
Speaker 3: it's amazing to me that many people who come forward
41:54
Speaker 3: and say, well, in fact, and I'll just say this,
41:57
Speaker 3: we're not saying everything has to be Christian. In fact,
41:59
Speaker 3: very opposite. Just live your faith or lack of faith.
42:02
Speaker 3: Just know that you're not going to be singled out
42:04
Speaker 3: because of that faith.
42:05
Speaker 1: And it's just incredible that that would even be something
42:08
Speaker 1: that has to be said when our country was founded
42:10
Speaker 1: as a Christian nation. They said, you know, the founding fathers,
42:13
Speaker 1: this was meant for moral and religious people. The framework
42:16
Speaker 1: of our constitution was drawing from Christian beliefs for centuries.
42:19
Speaker 1: So that it even has to be said now is
42:21
Speaker 1: sort of a terrible thing to think about. But I'm
42:23
Speaker 1: glad that you are saying it because clearly there are
42:25
Speaker 1: problems happening across the government. with anti-Christian discrimination. I want
42:29
Speaker 1: to ask you about DEI. You canceled a lot of
42:33
Speaker 1: DEI-related contracts. How was DEI impacting the VA before this admin?
42:39
Speaker 3: Well, I think it was what you saw, not only
42:41
Speaker 3: just the VA, you saw it across the previous administration
42:43
Speaker 3: in particular, that we were going out of our way
42:46
Speaker 3: and not using the merits of someone, not using how
42:49
Speaker 3: their background, what their experience was. We were going out
42:52
Speaker 3: of our way to hit quotas and to hit... if
42:55
Speaker 3: you matched a certain profile, that was sort of the
42:58
Speaker 3: better emphasis. I believe in that everybody is equal. I
43:01
Speaker 3: believe that everybody from backgrounds should be promoted if they're
43:05
Speaker 3: doing good work. They should be encouraged to be a
43:07
Speaker 3: part of it, that all holding that same standard. And look,
43:10
Speaker 3: there's some areas that our country still upholds that protects
43:13
Speaker 3: minorities who have been historically But the issue of just
43:18
Speaker 3: randomly going in and saying we're going to promote the
43:20
Speaker 3: other values of diversity, equity, inclusion at the expense of
43:24
Speaker 3: meritocracy and actually being able to do a job is
43:27
Speaker 3: something that I think is just we're bringing it back
43:29
Speaker 3: to the forefront. Do a good job. Do your hard work.
43:31
Speaker 3: You're going to be related. It doesn't matter what background
43:33
Speaker 3: you come from, what color it is, or what your
43:36
Speaker 3: beliefs are. We're going to be a place where you
43:38
Speaker 3: can work and thrive in that.
43:40
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, in the military, of course, is a
43:41
Speaker 1: great example of that, of a place where anybody can
43:44
Speaker 1: go in and you can rise in the ranks if
43:48
Speaker 1: you're good at your job. It doesn't matter what your
43:50
Speaker 1: skin color is. It doesn't matter what your gender or
43:53
Speaker 1: your sexuality is. And it's kind of incredible to see
43:56
Speaker 1: DEI infest itself at the VA and at the Pentagon,
44:00
Speaker 1: places that I think should really be very merit-focused. It's
44:03
Speaker 1: kind of unprecedented.
44:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is, and also just not in the DOD
44:07
Speaker 3: and VA, but you were seeing it in justice. You
44:10
Speaker 3: were seeing it in HHS. You were seeing it in
44:12
Speaker 3: government as a whole, and I think that's what the president,
44:16
Speaker 3: as he ran on President Trump in his first 100 days,
44:19
Speaker 3: this is the craziest thing. I remember back in Congress.
44:21
Speaker 3: I was in Congress in 2017, and I remember a
44:24
Speaker 3: reporter coming up to me at the time, and this
44:26
Speaker 3: was after the president had been going for about 25,
44:29
Speaker 3: 30 days. He was real early in the presidency. And
44:32
Speaker 3: the press person asked me, the reporter asked me, he said,
44:34
Speaker 3: can you believe he's actually doing this? I said, did
44:36
Speaker 3: you watch the campaign? He said, this is the thing
44:40
Speaker 3: that legacy media and legacy bureaucracy doesn't get. He actually
44:45
Speaker 3: does what he says. You can disagree with him and
44:47
Speaker 3: you can think it's wrong and you can fight him
44:49
Speaker 3: in resistance and everything, but he's going to do what
44:51
Speaker 3: he says. And so when he says, let's get back
44:53
Speaker 3: to a merit-based system, let's get back to actually a
44:55
Speaker 3: government that works for the people and is a service organization,
44:59
Speaker 3: especially ours in the VA, then that's what we're going
45:01
Speaker 3: to be about.
45:02
Speaker 1: You mentioned the media, the narratives that are going around
45:05
Speaker 1: in at least the corporate media. They're losing a lot
45:07
Speaker 1: of their power, but they still have some power. And
45:09
Speaker 1: I watched this exchange of yours with Caitlin Collins on CNN.
45:13
Speaker 1: You probably know which one I'm talking about. And you
45:16
Speaker 1: were talking about U.S. Navy veteran Zachary Young. This is
45:19
Speaker 1: a young guy. He won this multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit against
45:22
Speaker 1: CNN because they implied that he was illegally profiting from
45:27
Speaker 1: helping people flee Afghanistan on a black market with the
45:31
Speaker 1: horrible Afghanistan withdrawal. Can you tell me a little bit
45:35
Speaker 1: about this veteran and why you felt so compelled to
45:38
Speaker 1: stick up for him on CNN as they were coming
45:40
Speaker 1: after him? The admin, the Signalgate scandal, everything else.
45:44
Speaker 3: Well, again, it goes back to the point that we
45:46
Speaker 3: had actually told, I had told Kaylin that, you know, look,
45:49
Speaker 3: I'll be happy to answer one question. It was not
45:51
Speaker 3: in my realm. I wasn't a part of it, so
45:52
Speaker 3: it's not something I'm not there for news of the day.
45:54
Speaker 3: I'm the CA secretary, and, you know, I'll out. But
45:56
Speaker 3: I agreed to answer her question. But I said, let's
45:59
Speaker 3: move on. Oh, and I was promising, oh, yeah, we'll
46:01
Speaker 3: move on. Well, by the third question, she wasn't moving on.
46:03
Speaker 3: So I said, look, you're going to use this interview.
46:04
Speaker 3: I'll just turn it to show the hypocrisy that I
46:07
Speaker 3: believe was happening at CNN. in which, you know, and
46:10
Speaker 3: I take all veterans as part of my role, not
46:12
Speaker 3: just the ones enrolled in the VA. And I said,
46:14
Speaker 3: why are they being, you know, basically so hard or
46:17
Speaker 3: discriminatory against veterans like his case, Zach Young's case? And
46:21
Speaker 3: I think what I wanted to point out is don't be,
46:26
Speaker 3: you know, portraying one thing while you're actually values or
46:28
Speaker 3: something else. Because, by the way, a employee of CNN
46:31
Speaker 3: who actually said we're going to nail him, which was
46:33
Speaker 3: in the transcripts and everything, is still probably employed, and
46:35
Speaker 3: for all indications, still employed at CNN. So, look, we
46:39
Speaker 3: just wanted to point out that legacy media can't just
46:41
Speaker 3: say what they want to anymore. And I've been on
46:43
Speaker 3: a discussion for my almost three months now at the VA.
46:47
Speaker 3: It's saying, you're not going to scare my veterans. You're
46:48
Speaker 3: not going to scare my employees. I'm going to talk
46:50
Speaker 3: about it. We'll have different. I'm okay with honest disagreements
46:53
Speaker 3: on how to do things. What I'm not okay with
46:55
Speaker 3: is rumor, innuendo, and, you know, the things that, are
46:59
Speaker 3: fueling a clickbait economy now that the legacy media and
47:03
Speaker 3: bureaucracy sometimes want to hold onto as if they're going
47:06
Speaker 3: to change something. And we're just not going to play
47:08
Speaker 3: that game anymore.
47:09
Speaker 1: Well, one of the narratives is that the Afghanistan withdrawal
47:12
Speaker 1: wasn't so bad in the last admin. I mean, and
47:14
Speaker 1: it was horrific what happened. And you had guys like
47:17
Speaker 1: Zachary Young go in and try to save the day
47:19
Speaker 1: because the entire operation was such a botched, disgusting failure.
47:24
Speaker 1: And I want to ask you about what's happened in
47:26
Speaker 1: the wake of that because there are so many veterans
47:28
Speaker 1: They served in Iraq. They served in Afghanistan. There's a
47:32
Speaker 1: lot of disillusionment about why were we there? What did
47:35
Speaker 1: I fight for? What did my friends die for? Do
47:38
Speaker 1: you have a plan to address this, the disillusionment of
47:42
Speaker 1: these endless wars that for a lot of people who
47:44
Speaker 1: are in the military felt like was meaningless?
47:48
Speaker 3: There is. But this is something that probably in the
47:51
Speaker 3: last 60 years of our country we've had to deal
47:53
Speaker 3: with on multiple occasions. It's not.
47:57
Speaker 3: Unique in as far as the situation with our Iraq,
48:00
Speaker 3: Afghanistan veteran, well, let's just go back to Vietnam. In fact,
48:03
Speaker 3: it was the Vietnam veteran that actually changed the VA.
48:06
Speaker 3: If you go back and look at history, it was
48:08
Speaker 3: that Vietnam veteran who's coming back and found the services inadequate,
48:12
Speaker 3: the healthcare was not good, the mental health provisions were
48:15
Speaker 3: basically non-existent, and it was that Vietnam veteran who actually
48:18
Speaker 3: began to push to the changes to make more of
48:21
Speaker 3: a modern VA is what we see it. I think
48:23
Speaker 3: you're seeing a similar situation now that bring on new consequences.
48:27
Speaker 3: Whereas in that time, it was more, we see a
48:31
Speaker 3: lot of mental health. We saw a lot of the
48:33
Speaker 3: prescient nature at that point. Now we're also seeing a
48:35
Speaker 3: lot of physical disabilities. We're seeing that it came back
48:38
Speaker 3: from amputees, people who had normally died in other wars.
48:40
Speaker 3: They're now living and they're holding that scars as well.
48:44
Speaker 3: And that moral issue, that moral injury issue of what
48:47
Speaker 3: did I do and how did I go about it
48:48
Speaker 3: is really prevalent. So what I'm doing is we're focusing
48:51
Speaker 3: more on outreach to make sure that it's okay to
48:53
Speaker 3: come in and talk about it. It's okay to to understand,
48:56
Speaker 3: to have these feelings. And it's okay to talk about
49:00
Speaker 3: them with someone who can actually help you and not
49:02
Speaker 3: find yourself turning to drugs or alcohol or even prescription
49:06
Speaker 3: medications to help you get by with this. These are
49:09
Speaker 3: all areas that we're going to be looking on. We're
49:11
Speaker 3: also still looking very heavily at the research we are
49:14
Speaker 3: doing right now with psychedelics that have helped some of
49:16
Speaker 3: our PTSD. Not an addiction issue. This is not a
49:20
Speaker 3: out drugs, but it's using a dosage of a psychedelic
49:23
Speaker 3: and then coupling it with treatment. And we're seeing some
49:25
Speaker 3: pretty good work there. And I would love to work
49:27
Speaker 3: with Congress. I know that Bobby Kennedy over at HHS,
49:29
Speaker 3: we've talked about this a number of times. He is
49:33
Speaker 3: supportive of this effort as well because he's seen it
49:36
Speaker 3: actually work in real life too. So We're doing a
49:39
Speaker 3: lot of different things right now. I would just ask
49:41
Speaker 3: the veteran who's out there who's struggling the best, find
49:44
Speaker 3: your battle buddy, find your wingman, find whoever you can
49:47
Speaker 3: to talk to, and also realize that at the VA,
49:49
Speaker 3: some of this is we're trying to change hearts and
49:51
Speaker 3: minds of statute on Congress because the Schedule I narcotics
49:56
Speaker 3: and stuff, the Schedule I drugs that we just can't
49:58
Speaker 3: use or freely use as we go forward. So there
50:01
Speaker 3: are a lot of things we can do. Just don't
50:03
Speaker 3: give up. Find somebody. Get some help.
50:06
Speaker 1: Talk to me about the psychedelics a little bit, because
50:07
Speaker 1: that's pretty radical. There's a lot of stigma around psychedelics,
50:11
Speaker 1: and obviously there's a lot of legal restrictions, especially if
50:15
Speaker 1: it's for recreational use. Talk to me about what you're
50:18
Speaker 1: seeing data-wise. What's the science showing that makes you say, hey,
50:22
Speaker 1: let's revisit this?
50:23
Speaker 3: Well, and again, I'm going to be very clear. I'm
50:25
Speaker 3: not a legalized drug person. I'm not a, in a sense,
50:28
Speaker 3: but used in a medical context. you know, can we,
50:34
Speaker 3: does it work? And what we're seeing so far is
50:36
Speaker 3: the answer is yes, that there is a significant population
50:40
Speaker 3: that this is actually working on that other things have
50:42
Speaker 3: not worked on. I don't think it's probably the thing
50:44
Speaker 3: you go to first, but it should be, you know,
50:47
Speaker 3: as we need to look at to see, is it
50:48
Speaker 3: something we can use in the process? So you have
50:53
Speaker 3: the issues of how does it affect you? How does
50:57
Speaker 3: it open up your mind in the sense to be
51:00
Speaker 3: receptive to dealing with old memories, dealing with moral injury,
51:04
Speaker 3: dealing with those kind of things. So for me, if
51:07
Speaker 3: it's out there and it helps, then why are we
51:09
Speaker 3: not at least looking into it, setting aside the stigma
51:14
Speaker 3: of the past, as you said, and the others, because
51:16
Speaker 3: we're not looking at it from a perspective of, you know,
51:18
Speaker 3: you can buy mushrooms over the counter. That's not what
51:20
Speaker 3: we're talking about here. We're talking about under doctors' and
51:23
Speaker 3: psychiatrists' supervision, how do we make sure that you're doing
51:26
Speaker 3: something that helps coupled with counseling that works long-term. And
51:30
Speaker 3: so for me, I'm open to that and letting it go.
51:34
Speaker 3: Even from my conservative background says, you know, look, this
51:36
Speaker 3: is something that we need to be a part of
51:38
Speaker 3: because some of my veterans are not getting the help
51:43
Speaker 3: that they need through the current cycle.
51:45
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, to me, this is thinking outside the box,
51:47
Speaker 1: which is what you have to do. I mean, when
51:50
Speaker 1: we're thinking of, when we're looking at massive suicide, depression
51:53
Speaker 1: rates of people who have served this country, Why not
51:56
Speaker 1: just do whatever we can? We'll try everything before they
51:59
Speaker 1: kill themselves is kind of what I think. And I
52:02
Speaker 1: want to ask you about the suicide rates because obviously
52:05
Speaker 1: it's not good. It's pretty bleak. And we've thrown a
52:08
Speaker 1: lot of money at it. And psychedelics is one thing
52:10
Speaker 1: that you're thinking about. Is there anything else that you're
52:12
Speaker 1: thinking about to address this that's new from what we've
52:16
Speaker 1: been doing in the past?
52:17
Speaker 3: I think the biggest thing for us is, like I said,
52:19
Speaker 3: we're spending $ 588 million on just prevention in half of
52:22
Speaker 3: the last number of years. But since 2008, if you
52:23
Speaker 3: go back that far.
52:25
Speaker 3: The number of state, I use the number 17, others
52:28
Speaker 3: use 21. I mean, it's all about the same. But
52:31
Speaker 3: one of the things we're finding is the historical average
52:33
Speaker 3: is 50% of the veterans don't actually have any VA
52:36
Speaker 3: contact when they do have death by suicide. This is
52:41
Speaker 3: a real issue for me is because it means that
52:45
Speaker 3: they're not getting help. So one of the things I'm
52:46
Speaker 3: doing is doing a podcast like this. I'm doing a
52:49
Speaker 3: podcast that may not hit the... what Legacy Media or
52:55
Speaker 3: even local media does, if you're out there and you're
52:57
Speaker 3: listening to this, there is things that we want to
52:59
Speaker 3: do to bring you in. And if it doesn't have
53:01
Speaker 3: to be the VA, I'm also one of those. The
53:03
Speaker 3: VA will be fine. We're working. We're going to do
53:05
Speaker 3: our stuff. But if you want to, if you, you know,
53:08
Speaker 3: even if you're serviced through the VA, if you are
53:10
Speaker 3: more comfortable and you meet the criteria for a community-based
53:13
Speaker 3: health care, we want you in that. At the bottom line,
53:16
Speaker 3: one veteran... is death by suicide is one too many.
53:19
Speaker 3: And we need to move everything we can from a
53:21
Speaker 3: governmental perspective to realize it's not our job to do everything,
53:25
Speaker 3: but it is our job to do something. And we've
53:27
Speaker 3: got to get better at it.
53:28
Speaker 1: Are you working with Secretary Hegseth at all on addressing
53:32
Speaker 1: all the people who were let go from the military
53:35
Speaker 1: because of the COVID vaccine mandate?
53:38
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. We're working on it a little bit. I mean,
53:40
Speaker 3: I think those are some of them. And Pete's actually
53:43
Speaker 3: bringing a lot of those back, which I think is
53:45
Speaker 3: a great thing. I've been in the military for 23 years.
53:47
Speaker 3: I had to deal with those issues. And there's so
53:50
Speaker 3: much to bring back. And how do you rebuild something
53:52
Speaker 3: that was basically broken now for four years almost? I'm
53:56
Speaker 3: glad to see the Secretary, he's handling that. But others
54:00
Speaker 3: have been entitled to their benefits, and we're working through
54:03
Speaker 3: those as well. So I think as you go long
54:04
Speaker 3: term here, there's a lot that DOD and VA, in
54:08
Speaker 3: many ways, we're like opposite twins in a sense. We
54:12
Speaker 3: handle the same group of people, but one gets them
54:14
Speaker 3: at the end and one starts them. But if we
54:17
Speaker 3: don't work together, I've said this many, many times, and
54:19
Speaker 3: Pete agrees with me on this, that if we're not
54:21
Speaker 3: looking at this from a perspective of how do we,
54:25
Speaker 3: not how just we take it, but if he's not
54:27
Speaker 3: looking at it from his medical perspective in DOD, then
54:31
Speaker 3: recruitment's going to suffer. So if we start at recruitment
54:33
Speaker 3: and we're not getting it because we're not taking care
54:35
Speaker 3: of the veteran, we're not taking care of the DOD
54:37
Speaker 3: member while they're there, they're not going to encourage members
54:39
Speaker 3: to join. So it starts at recruitment, comes through DOD,
54:41
Speaker 3: gets to me, and ultimately we, and many times, lay
54:45
Speaker 3: them to rest. So we've got to work together at transition.
54:48
Speaker 3: That's an issue that we could spend two or three
54:50
Speaker 3: hours on. DOD is, I know they want to do
54:55
Speaker 3: it well, but it's a struggle. we're getting it after
54:58
Speaker 3: maybe a poor handoff. And again, a lot of it's
55:01
Speaker 3: on the member as well. I'm not putting this on
55:03
Speaker 3: either agency, but there's some things we can do better
55:06
Speaker 3: to get more of a warm handoff between the two,
55:07
Speaker 3: especially if they're struggling, especially if they're having issues that
55:11
Speaker 3: we can see as they're coming out.
55:13
Speaker 1: You might not know this off the top of your head,
55:15
Speaker 1: but what was the backlog of veterans' disability claims when
55:20
Speaker 1: Trump left office versus as he's coming in after the
55:23
Speaker 1: Biden admin.
55:24
Speaker 3: It's a little bit different. Before COVID, you have to
55:27
Speaker 3: use COVID as a marker here. Before COVID, he'd gotten
55:29
Speaker 3: under 60,000 on the long-term backlog. and they were working
55:34
Speaker 3: that caseload on down. After COVID, without being able to
55:37
Speaker 3: do health appointments and doing the medical exams, it had
55:40
Speaker 3: ballooned back up. But when I stepped in back in
55:42
Speaker 3: the first February, January 20th, it was around 265,000. We're
55:46
Speaker 3: down under 240,000 or about 240,000 now. But just to
55:50
Speaker 3: let everybody out there know, now we have about a
55:52
Speaker 3: million that we're processing, and our days to process to
55:55
Speaker 3: completion is also too high as well. We don't like
55:57
Speaker 3: to talk about that as much, but I'm willing to
55:59
Speaker 3: talk about it to say, We've got to get the
56:01
Speaker 3: number down to about 135 average days to completion. That
56:04
Speaker 3: needs to shorten as well. But one of the things
56:07
Speaker 3: I'm doing right now is my deputy secretary, who just
56:09
Speaker 3: got confirmed a few weeks ago, I've tasked him with
56:13
Speaker 3: getting it back down. He was at VBA when they
56:16
Speaker 3: got it down first time. So he's back at it.
56:18
Speaker 3: We're going to use whatever we can. to really hopefully,
56:21
Speaker 3: in a short amount of time, definitely through the end
56:23
Speaker 3: of this year, get that number back to where it
56:25
Speaker 3: was pre-COVID.
56:27
Speaker 1: The argument is, well, now everything's going to be so
56:29
Speaker 1: much longer because the Secretary's making all these cuts. What
56:32
Speaker 1: do you say to that?
56:33
Speaker 3: Well, at this point, we've made no cuts, so anybody
56:34
Speaker 3: that says that is basically, you know, I told there
56:37
Speaker 3: was a senator, happened to be a senator the other day,
56:39
Speaker 3: went before a group of veterans, and unfortunately he's a
56:41
Speaker 3: veteran as well, and said, well, if you make 80,000 cuts,
56:44
Speaker 3: your health care is going to suffer and all this
56:45
Speaker 3: other stuff. And I went on and I just answered
56:48
Speaker 3: it the other morning on a news show, and I said, Exactly.
56:51
Speaker 3: Explain to me exactly where that happens because I've not
56:53
Speaker 3: cut anybody. Okay. So at this point, the riff is
56:56
Speaker 3: still going on in a sense of we're trying to
56:58
Speaker 3: find the right place. Real quick numbers. I don't like
57:03
Speaker 3: to typically overwhelm a number. Sometimes numbers matter. In 10 years,
57:06
Speaker 3: we've been on a GAO report that says we're high
57:08
Speaker 3: risk for abuse and fraud and waste and these kind
57:10
Speaker 3: of things, plus also health care recruitment and also health
57:13
Speaker 3: care quality. 10 years, GAO said this. In that time,
57:16
Speaker 3: we've raised our budget well over $ 100 billion, raised it
57:19
Speaker 3: over 100,000 employees during this, you know, a lot of
57:22
Speaker 3: it in the last four to five years. And yet
57:24
Speaker 3: our number of veterans served has stayed around 9 million,
57:27
Speaker 3: while actually the number of veterans in the nation has
57:29
Speaker 3: actually declined.
57:30
Speaker 1: Right.
57:31
Speaker 3: So the question is not about money and personnel anymore.
57:34
Speaker 3: It's quite that we're not putting them in the right places.
57:36
Speaker 3: So we're looking at our organization bureaucratically. And this is
57:39
Speaker 3: the one thing I hear from veterans all the time is,
57:41
Speaker 3: why does it take so long? You know, why are
57:43
Speaker 3: we not getting it? Well, part of it is because
57:45
Speaker 3: we have a bureaucracy that everybody wants to do their
57:47
Speaker 3: own thing. That's been my biggest challenge is bringing some
57:51
Speaker 3: basically standardization to the VA so that we're one, we're
57:55
Speaker 3: not 170 hospitals acting as if they're the only one.
57:59
Speaker 3: They're going to act as a VA, our clinics the
58:01
Speaker 3: same way, and our benefits and disability folks understanding we're
58:05
Speaker 3: all on the same page. So it takes a lot,
58:07
Speaker 3: but we're getting there.
58:09
Speaker 1: Homelessness, opioid addiction. Obviously it's related to suicide and depression
58:12
Speaker 1: as well, but do you have anything to address those
58:14
Speaker 1: two specifically?
58:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're working really hard. Homelessness is a multifaceted thing.
58:21
Speaker 3: It's because you end up, one thing leads to another thing,
58:24
Speaker 3: and then also homelessness leads to a higher production for
58:27
Speaker 3: suicide as well. So what we're trying to do is
58:30
Speaker 3: work better in jobs, making sure our veterans are trained,
58:32
Speaker 3: that they can go out and get jobs. Frankly, it
58:35
Speaker 3: also ties back into mental health counseling and just regular,
58:38
Speaker 3: I don't, I hate the term mental health. I'm a counselor,
58:41
Speaker 3: you know, by chaplains. And what I want to know
58:44
Speaker 3: is just what's bugging them? Why do they continue with
58:47
Speaker 3: their anger issue? Why, you know, are there other issues
58:50
Speaker 3: that may have put them in a position where they
58:52
Speaker 3: can't keep a job?
58:53
Speaker 1: Yeah.
58:53
Speaker 3: So we're looking at it from a lot of different stages.
58:55
Speaker 3: We spend a lot of money in that area. Again,
58:58
Speaker 3: I think part of that is that we do it
59:02
Speaker 3: to help, but it may not be helping as the
59:04
Speaker 3: way we need it to help. So we're trying to
59:06
Speaker 3: repurpose that program as well.
59:08
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you want to leave us with,
59:10
Speaker 1: people thinking about veterans and what you guys are doing
59:13
Speaker 1: and changing that we might not have hit on?
59:15
Speaker 3: The only thing I'll say is to the veterans out there,
59:17
Speaker 3: don't believe what legacy means. Don't believe people who are
59:21
Speaker 3: not inside my room or my office that are telling
59:24
Speaker 3: you what is happening. There's a lot of folks who
59:26
Speaker 3: don't like change. Change is difficult for everybody. But the
59:30
Speaker 3: VA has not been through a change question of why
59:33
Speaker 3: we do some of our stuff. So all I want
59:34
Speaker 3: to say is follow us on social media, follow us
59:36
Speaker 3: in our interviews, listen to what I'm telling you, even
59:39
Speaker 3: when I go to the Hill or anywhere else, because
59:41
Speaker 3: I'm going to give you the honest truth, whether it's
59:43
Speaker 3: good or bad for the VA, I'm not as concerned about.
59:45
Speaker 3: I'm concerned about making sure that we're working toward doing
59:48
Speaker 3: one thing, and that was my first promise when I
59:50
Speaker 3: stepped in, is it's going to be about the veteran.
59:51
Speaker 3: It's not going to be about our organization. Our organization
59:53
Speaker 3: is a service organization that takes care of veterans. And
59:56
Speaker 3: so we're just putting that focus back on the veterans.
59:58
Speaker 3: I love that.
59:58
Speaker 1: Thank you so much Mr. Secretary.
1:00:00
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
1:00:02
Speaker 1: The U.S. Soccer Podcast.
1:00:04
Speaker 12: I'm your host, Megan Klingenberg, and I am super stoked
1:00:07
Speaker 12: to be joined by Daryl Dike.
1:00:09
Speaker 1: Arguably, your most impressive quality cannot be measured.
1:00:13
Speaker 12: You're a guy who is the definition of grit.
1:00:16
Speaker 1: Injuries have ended plenty of careers, but instead you decided
1:00:18
Speaker 1: yours would only be a chapter instead of the ending.
1:00:21
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show, Daryl.
1:00:22
Speaker 12: Thank you so much.
1:00:23
Speaker 9: That's a good intro right there.
1:00:24
Speaker 4: That's good.
1:00:25
Speaker 3: The U.S.
1:00:26
Speaker 4: Soccer Podcast.
1:00:27
Speaker 1: Follow and listen on your favorite platforms.