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A Retired Air Force Colonel on Religious Extremism | Col. Jeff Pixley (Ret.) · Follow the Leighder

• Leigh/@followtheleighder: Howdy folks and welcome back to another episode of Follow the Leader. I'm your host, Leigh Larson, and you'll know how much I love to travel this country and find good folks doing good things. And I found for you guys, Jeff Pixley out of Oklahoma. Welcome, Jeff. ⁓ Jeff Pixley: ⁓ thank you for having me. I'm pleased to be here. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely Jeff. So folks. ⁓ Why are we going down to Oklahoma? Well, that's real important, isn't it? We've got Jeff Pixley. He is a retired United States Air Force Colonel, a fighter pilot, and also is a commander of the OUROTC. He is running for Congress out of Oklahoma's 4th District. So that is just south of Oklahoma City. And of Norman, and we'll talk about that area in a second. But you know, you're running as a dim. You've got a lot of military experience. What was the call to office for you? Jeff Pixley: So first of all, thank you for having me on your program. I'm a big fan of your work and I was just super pleased to get the outreach from you. So you can tell me if I go too long, but it's important to understand where my head is for folks to get an appreciation for what drives me. So I spent my whole adult life in the United States Air Force. I joined right out of high school when I was 17 years old. I'd always wanted to be a fighter pilot and I took kind of a long way around the barn to get there to become one by enlisting first. And went to school here at the University of Oklahoma and I was a California kid but I picked Oklahoma because it was a place you could afford to go to school and had a great ROTC program. So I kind of adopted Norman as my home when we were going through college. My wife and I were going at the same time. We had a two-year-old when we started. And fell in love with Oklahoma and then after I graduated was commissioned and went off to pilot training him to do my officer career We stayed connected with Oklahoma through OU football. Sorry. I know you're a longhorn We stayed connected with OU football We had lots of friends here and family that ended up settling in Norman as well so this was this was always kind of that home base we kept coming back to and then after a career of flying jets and staff officer work being commander down at basic training ⁓ and working for Air Force One. ⁓ The opportunity was presented to come back to Oklahoma and be the commander of Air Force ROTC. So that kind of full circle come back and lead the unit I was once a cadet in. And for those who don't know, what an ROTC commander does or professor does is ⁓ their job is to teach college students who ⁓ intend to commission into the Armed Forces and give them the teach them about the Constitution, about what leadership is, what our core values are, the mission of the service they're gonna join. And it's honestly for guys like me, old guys, colonels, who ⁓ are near the end of their career, it's this just really cool opportunity to give back and prepare the next generation to replace you, because it's typically the final job for a colonel. So getting a job was this huge gift, and I was really looking forward to the three years in the seat and then retiring here in Well, a year and a half into my tenure, I woke up, it was Saturday morning, February 15th of last year, 2025. And I woke up and opened up my phone and the news said that the president had fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General C.Q. Brown. He had fired Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who ran the Navy, and he had fired, to me most alarmingly, had fired the lawyers that advise. the branches of the armed forces and their jobs of those folks is to make sure that orders that come down are constitutional, lawful, etc. And when I read that news, my mind started spinning as I kind of contemplated what that might mean. And I quickly realized that I might be put in position for the first time in more than 30 years of service that my oath of office would be in conflict with what was coming down from higher headquarters. So I made the decision to retire. And within a couple of weeks after deciding to retire, I realized that my path to in retirement to not be on the sidelines to help fix what I thought were the ills in our country was to get involved in politics. And pretty soon as a Democrat in Oklahoma, I realized that that path required me to run for office because honestly, we just haven't been feeling strong candidates here in the fourth district for a long time. So I threw my name in the ring and I asked my friends before I did it, I am I crazy? ⁓ thinking about running for office and they said, you are absolutely crazy, but you should absolutely do it. So that's why I'm running for office. And I just see this as continuation of my oath that I took when I was 17. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely, and thank you for your service. ⁓ And also, ⁓ Jeff Pixley: Thank you for your time. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And for folks who aren't too aware, ⁓ OU, yes, they are a rival school to University of Texas and we do have the whole football red-rubble rivalry, but ⁓ Norman is a beautiful town. There is so much ⁓ science, medicine, ⁓ weather, meteorology coming out of Oklahoma. Oklahoma's got a great program. So don't sleep on Oklahoma, And I totally understand why you would come back to that area. It's a cute little town. ⁓ But you, I want to point out to folks who've been listening to me for a while, you know how much I have questioned the credibility of our current I'm going to keep it DOD. It's not DOD on my side. ⁓ But I have questioned DOD Hegseth quite a bit on here. And I've shown how even his commander of the ROTC program that Hegseth was a part of at Princeton, his own commander during the hearings and appointment of Pete Hegseth came out and said, no, this man is not qualified. I've known him since college. no he's completely unprofessional, can't do this. Talk about, ⁓ you know, kind of help us kind of figure out or kind of flesh out as a commander that you were. ⁓ Do you see that sometimes with some of your ⁓ the men that are the people that are in ROTC where you're like, not this one? And ⁓ is there some validity to what this commander at the Princeton's saying? Jeff Pixley: Certainly. Yeah, well, yeah. Here's what's odd about that. Of course, I never saw Secretary Hagsat in action on active duty or certainly as a cadet because he was after my time. I'm about 10 years older than him, maybe a little bit less. But what baffles me about that, so let me back up. As a commander, absolutely. With a detachment my size, about 80 new freshmen come every year within, you know, day or two of meeting some young students you're like But that's pretty uncommon More commonly what happens is they all are kind of a mess and our job is to kind of help them not be a mess because these are 18 17 year old kids sometimes And if you get a couple of years under your belt you begin to see the daily interactions you get to see what their maturity level is Specifically for me what their integrity looks like the, ⁓ you know, what kind of leader they are. And at least in the Air Force program, as the commander, I had very wide latitude. If I didn't have faith that someone belonged in the program, if they weren't already contracted, that is, they hadn't already sworn in and we already contracted that, is, you know, the agreement that, we're gonna keep you on. I could terminate them just by saying, you don't want here and turn in your uniforms. ⁓ And that happened a lot. If someone had already contracted and revealed themselves to be problematic, we'd get rid of them too. And I did frequently. In fact, I actually got rid of two folks on their commissioning day. And if anybody who knows how big a deal that is, we don't do that lightly. And I say all that to say that I'm a little bit surprised that 15 years later someone would say, yeah, he was. He was, you shouldn't have faith in me, he was no good. My question to that commander would be then why did you commission him in the first place? Why'd let him in? So, ⁓ you can't always get every single one, but it speaks volumes to me that ⁓ someone remembered enough about someone to speak in that way at the confirmation hearings. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, and you know, like... From what I've read from the Princetonian, from that era that I've researched, it looks like he wasn't drinking at that point. The drinking came after his deployment. And so he's a very smart, he's just got a lot of energy. It's just a certain, it's a vibe. It was like, according to research, he showed up to everything on time. He was an athlete. He checked all the boxes. It was in his language. It was in the vibe. It was just in how he carried himself that it's like, he's checking a lot of boxes, but ⁓ I don't know. And now we're here. ⁓ Talk about, you mentioned how seeing this administration fire military leaders with amazing years of experience, knowledge, institutional knowledge that you can't just go and find and replace real quick. We have seen him go over, go after Dachowicz and removing that for, that's a lot of acronyms for folks, but Dachowicz is the women's group that is primarily responsible for the recruitment and treatment of women in the military and Hegseth went after that. And then of course the big thing is, there's lots of big things, but then there was the whole full-fledged attack on Senator Kelly as well as some other ⁓ elected officials who were veterans that chose to make that video with him. you know you look at those legal documents towards Senator Kelly and it claims he you know was trying to incite or you know try to get people to not listen to lawful orders that's not what he said he said unlawful orders but Hegseth is running with it I mean he's threatening his pension he's threatening the credibility of Senator Kelly Can you talk about what watching that from your point of view as a retired Colonel must feel like? Jeff Pixley: Yeah, absolutely. Even if I weren't running for office, that attack on Senator Kelly and his First Amendment ⁓ protections, his rights, ⁓ I would find, I would object to. ⁓ Because although Article 88 of the UCMJ protects ⁓ certain people and institutions from criticism from military officers. and makes it a criminal act for ⁓ contemptuous words to be spoken about them. ⁓ It's unprecedented historically for someone to be ⁓ threatened with legal action after leaving the service for those words. And the charges against Senator Kellyanne specifically were about Article 133, Conduct on Becoming Article 134, which is a catch-all article, and Article 88. And I appreciate the need for Article 88 to exist for active duty officers and perhaps for some circumstances for very high level retired officers and generals. I can imagine a retired four-star general, or maybe General Brown would be a good example, and I don't know General Brown, I've met him, but I don't know him well. For someone with that level of prior status and authority to speak out overtly, and very critically of the Department of Defense or the President of United States, I think that could reasonably be seen as interfering with good order and discipline. But I certainly don't think that just speaking truth about the expectations and the law and the rules of the military, specifically about not following unlawful orders, about the duty to not follow unlawful orders, things that were straight out of my curriculum as the professor at OU, it was literally in our curriculum. We taught that. So he was doing nothing other than stating what was already known. And yes, it was in the context of questions nationally about whether or not what we were doing was proper, but it certainly wasn't seditious. as a candidate, is, I'll tell you, my 35 years in the military is my area of expertise. I've never been anything as an adult other than an airman. So national security matters, air power. the warfare and the nexus between politics and the military instrument of power. Those are my areas of expertise. And now, based on the interpretation of the Department of Defense, I don't know how much I'm allowed to say about any of those things. So the stifling effect is real. And ⁓ although there's some winning comms coming from Senator Kelly's case with a temporary stay. ⁓ a partial victory, I fear and some folks that I stay in contact with are fearful that a judgment that is narrow and specific to his case is actually a loss for the rest of us. It can't be that because just letting him keep his pension while the looming threat ⁓ of me losing mine or having a similar attack, because I don't have millions of dollars in the bank. I don't have a PAC backing me. I don't have ⁓ name recognition nationwide that would allow me to fight back against this if if if secretary fence knocked on my door today and said shut up or I'm taking your money i would have no recourse but the shut up which is not how our system should work so i i really want this to get resolved and i'm frustrated that ⁓ honestly i'm a little bit frustrated that that the press nationally hasn't found other folks like me or or identified me as someone worth talking to about this because they they're focused only on senator kelly ⁓ But it's not just about me, it's about millions of veterans and certainly thousands of recent retirees who have probably have some very strong feelings about what's going on in our country and ought to be leaders, ought to be sought out by those people in and out of government as people who are really a great resource to explain what does this mean, what's going on here. I'm an F-16 pilot who was trained in maritime interdiction. I could do a great interview on the legality and the propriety. of bombing boats off the coast of Venezuela. If I gave that interview right now, I would fear that the FBI would be knocking on my door and I'd be ⁓ under investigation for sedation. That's crazy. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It is. ⁓ And it's also ⁓ just ⁓ fascinating for anyone who's watched. Hegseth, yes, went through ROTC. Then he joined the Army Guard. He was deployed. He's seen Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and Afghanistan. ⁓ But aside from that... It's strange to watch someone as decorated as someone like Senator Kelly or even talking with someone like you. You have this experience. Pete Hexeth has very little military officer leadership experience of him actually leading groups over 50 people. And now he is leading the country's largest employer, the United States military, at two million service members, probably another half million contractors, million whatever. But... ⁓ and he is doing this all very much fueled. He's got a lot of rhetoric coming out. ⁓ What is that even before we start talking about the last week? What has it been like to be a colonel watching, a retired colonel watching someone with so much less experience run something that is so sacred to you? Jeff Pixley: In any other time, it might have been something that didn't keep me up at night because in years past, the Senate has often been, and traditionally been very deferential to the president and letting the president select their cabinet members. And ⁓ sending someone to the DOD with a thinner resume ⁓ might not keep me up at night ⁓ if I was confident that they were surrounded by Experts who were allowed to do their job allowed to bring their expertise to the table and to speak freely I have no I'm under no illusion. That's really happening now I like I can I can detect what I detected while I was still on active duty was a a you know near-immediate capitulation to every Every policy that came out with very little pushback on things that I think deserved at least some conversation I'll give you I'll give you an example and this is something that Secretary Hegseth's his first public appearance after being confirmed, he came to Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. in an auditorium filled with colonels and below, and ⁓ in a classroom that I had been in when I was at National Defense University. ⁓ in that, was the first time I'd heard him make his ⁓ speech about ⁓ unity is our strength. And what he said was, and I'm not gonna quote him perfectly, but this is darn close to being accurate. what he said. He said the dumbest words in the English language are our diversity is our strength. And then he went on to say, no, our unity is our strength. And when he said that alarm bells went off in my head, that was a very clear signal that ⁓ the policies of the last really of my whole career, the Air Force was a leader on integration, racial integration on ⁓ putting women in combat roles, the integration of after Donatello was repealed, my personal role in integrating transgender troops into basic training when I was the commander of Air Force basic training. I had been singing the song of our diversity is our strength for years because I believed it in my heart and I saw it in action because I'd led diverse teams. I'd led huge teams of diverse folks and I learned through my experience that a diverse team is a better team. And while unity is important, and he's not incorrect that unity matters, but diversity as a starting point, and unity coming from a unity of purpose and a shared set of core values that we issue them and lead them to, that's unstoppable. And he reversed that in my mind. So that early on sent me a wild signal and that was in January. So less than a month later when the generals were fired, I saw the writing on the wall. ⁓ the thinness of one's resume is not as terrifying to me as that the people around that leader and I've been the case too, right? And every commander is new at the job of the first day, right? My first day as a group commander was my first day as a group commander and I relied on my staff around me to keep me honest. If I was going down the wrong path, I told them from day one that ⁓ I wasn't just hoping they would, I was demanding that they would make sure I didn't go and do something silly that they could help me avoid, know, helping me avoid mistakes. And, you know, some of it seems... It seems small now in comparison to the removal of improper ideologies from our workplaces where I had to take down posters. I have a Tuskegee Airmen poster hanging right over here in my office that they made me take down. It was illegal to hang in our office spaces because it featured the Tuskegee Airmen. That seems silly now compared to what we're doing in Iran, but I'll tell you, I feel like I got out just in time. I loved being in Air Force so much, I can't even express it to you. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, Jeff Pixley: But I retired on September 1st and on September 2nd we were bombing boats in Venezuelan war. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And that in and of itself to, it's Venezuela, whether it's Iran. there is so much hype video that I have not seen. I remember wrapping, I deeply remember that sense of patriotism after 9-11. I was in second grade and obviously you said, that I, but it's not, it's not, it just wasn't like it was here. Like this propaganda, I mean, they're putting like very high res flashy, lots of quick transitions and they are hyping up war Like it's call of duty ⁓ As someone who works a lot with particularly youth young people going into the military ROTC Are you seeing that? mean, I know you've had but how does that impact recruitment to and the kinds of people you're recruiting when you have a GI Joe hype video coming out of the White House? Jeff Pixley: Yeah, you know, it's, I can't speak truthfully to the numbers I'm recruiting right now, but I'll tell you that, you know, I don't, I wouldn't begrudge the Department of Defense for doing a great ad campaign, right? I want people to be fired about joining the service. But the truth is that, combat, preparation for combat, the lifestyle of becoming a warrior is not as sexy as the commercials make it out to be. And selling people the idea that this is, you know, it's all all glory ⁓ and there's no cost, I think sets them up for disappointment. ⁓ But if it gets them in the door, then I can live with it. Here's my problem ⁓ with it. It's not that it's a bad advertising campaign. It's that ⁓ those of us who ⁓ want to speak honestly about what this all means and that every decision about going to war has consequences, sometimes generational consequences, ⁓ is something that we need to be, we should feel free and unconstrained to speak about. And it's not seditious and it's not un-American to remind people that when, you know, when there are, you know, millions of people who have for years seeing our country as the great Satan, going in and decapitating their leadership is probably not the solution to that. I got him calling me crazy, but that's probably not the solution to fixing that. So I think my kids, my kids are, youngest is 27, so my grandkids, I think, are gonna live in a world that looks far too similar to the one you grew up in, the post 9-11 world, and it's gonna look a lot like that. unfortunately and I think that was an unnecessary ⁓ acceleration to that. I think it could have been avoided. They didn't ask me though so I guess I'll just have to live with it. Leigh/@followtheleighder: It's just, I'm just watching this and between that and DHS and ICE, like these hype videos, these ⁓ non-congressionally approved invasion, I mean, there's just so many things. And again, no one can really tell us why exactly what we're doing, why we're doing it. which is just causing misinformation, conspiracy theories out the wazoo. ⁓ The past few months, our country has been overwhelmed by the horrors of the Epstein files. And I don't know whether or not you've read them. I have, they're terrible. Do not recommend it for your own sanity. But there are a number of people who believe that we struck Iran because of the Epstein file as a distraction or something. ⁓ Does that align with how military strategy works? Are we just gonna go and go all the way? Are we gonna move all of our aircraft carriers over there just for the Epstein files or kind of talk to us about military strategy? Jeff Pixley: Yeah, certainly, you know, there's the folks who advise the Secretary of Defense and the President about the giving best military advice strategically are never going to be based on that on some political controversy that's brewing in the country. You know, that's not going to be their driving force. But the way it works in the military is, you know, the commander in chief sets the Strategy right the national security strategy national military strategy are documents that come from on high on down and the way those read is here are our priorities and here are our what we consider to be the biggest threats or the ⁓ the ⁓ the greatest Concerns that we have so build a strategy or build a campaign To counter that and have it ready to go at the you know, the time of the commander-in-chief's choosing ⁓ So nobody would build a campaign against another country to satisfy some political distraction move. ⁓ But they're gonna move out and they're gonna figure out a way to build something that is gonna be militarily effective. So I don't fear that the military was complicit in some kind of wag the dog move. But the truth is, we have to follow the orders of the president of United States as long as they're lawful. ⁓ We can argue though, think, rightly, even though people are playing word games about it. that the fact that Congress wasn't involved in this conversation at all suggests to me that it was improper and it is illegal. Nobody can tell me we're not at war right now. We are. And in fact, the Secretary of Defense has called himself the Secretary of War and he's been on TV in the last five days saying, we don't do defense, we do war. So we're at war and Congress should have had a chance to speak about it. And one of the reasons, And I didn't mention this before, but probably worth noting that the guy I'm going to run against in November, Tom Cole, is the House Appropriations Chair. He's been in Congress since 2003. He ⁓ knows better. He took an oath to the Constitution and he is sitting by silently nodding as the House Speaker says, this is all good, no big deal, this is completely reasonable. ⁓ And ⁓ that abdication responsibility is just the latest in a long string of those that have happened since the President. was sworn in where Congress has basically made itself a vestigial organ and doesn't do its job anymore. I don't know why we're paying Congress. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yeah, no kidding. And to watch that State of the Union last week, and it felt, I think I made a meme of like, it was a photo of like, everyone clapping, half the other half of the room was seated. And I just like stitched it to Emperor Palpatine in Star Wars. And like how democracy ties to the sound of thunderous applause. Like it was just so shocking. And there's, there is. Conventional wisdom of, you know, the Peace of Westphalia, a 1600s convention of nations leaders states that holds that really since the Enlightenment, Western countries don't engage in religious warfare. So we would not ⁓ look at or pass and say that the American Revolution was a religious holy war or the Civil War, even though faith has been heavily, heavily used in all wars. mean, as speaking of someone from the Chaplain Corps, it is inherent. war and spirituality are intertwined there. And also the care of veterans and service members. What we have seen and heard, particularly back in December, is we heard Secretary Hexes come on and say we're going to make the Chaplain Corps great again. We're going to streamline faith codes. ⁓ We are going to remove the current chaplaincy guide, spiritual readiness guide. Makes a whole lot of things. And on the surface, you might say, Like why doesn't the spiritual readiness guide of the military chaplaincy only, you know, mention God a few times and it should. And there's a couple of things that he's calling to question that the reason they're in place was actually to be more inclusive. The reason why God is not mentioned more than a handful of times is because once you start talking about God after a you have to eventually define it and that's where things get hairy. So they choose to take away that language so that they can focus on the end results, which is what the military is after. Like what is the result? ⁓ right now, you know, in the past few days, ⁓ we saw the strikes in Iran. ⁓ and then we heard rumors coming out that military commanders around the world were claiming ⁓ that chaplains and commanders alike were calling this a holy war stating this was basically sanctioned. ⁓ you know, looking at it's a concern that even if those things were happening that the DOD is not saying, hey, that's not right. We don't do that. But they're allowing the story to go and they're not calling it out. ⁓ Which again is a concern. Can you talk about some of your concerns with Hegseth and faith and military action? Jeff Pixley: Yeah, you bet. One thing I'll say, and I probably should have led with this, it's impossible for me to overstate my thankfulness for a strong chaplain corps in the military. What chaplains do to minister to troops, all the way from day one at basic training to... ⁓ the funeral of a fallen service member for their families is incredibly important work. I think it's wildly underappreciated. And I'll admit that when I was young in my career, I didn't appreciate either. wasn't ⁓ attending church on base. My interactions with chaplains were ⁓ very occasional. ⁓ once I sat down with one, as I watched them take on a really tough challenge, and then when I was a commander at basic training, where the chaplains are critically important. to the mission. I really fully began to realize the role that y'all played and how critical it was. And one of the reasons chaplains are so successful in or had been at least in my experience was there was no litmus test, right? When you, when an airman needed you, you didn't go in and say, what's the secret handshake for our religion? You just ministered to them. If they asked for a Catholic chaplain, ask for a, you know, a ⁓ for a rabbi or an imam they would get it but that wasn't that you didn't ask them to prove themselves worthy you just took care of them ⁓ and that's what the chaplain corps is supposed to do where it goes wrong is when it becomes the chaplain corps ⁓ becoming the source of military guidance right they should be the source of comfort and a source of spiritual guidance as people struggle with the the difficulties of life in the military and the struggles with facing combat and ⁓ loss. ⁓ The chaplain's job is not to go in and be another source of ⁓ guidance for how to conduct war. ⁓ And I saw that happen. had a, when I was a squadron commander, I had a chaplain assigned to my unit and he was going down the wrong path and began take overstepping his bounds as a chaplain. ⁓ In fact, after I fired him, I remembered that he had given one of the invocations at one of our ceremonies and he was using language that would probably fit in very well today. Maybe he's back in, I don't know if he's in the Air Force anymore, but he was using language about irrigating the fields with the blood of our enemies. like, mean, the moms and dads are here watching Junior graduate from BMT. They don't want to hear that, but that this kind of idea to glorify and make holy warfare. is very troubling to me because as a guy who spent my whole life preparing for combat and was ready to do that ⁓ for all my operational years, there was never a day where I was hoping that we were gonna go into conflict. That's not how it's supposed to work. And I feel like there are people out there who are craving it. They see it as a path towards something that I just don't understand and I think it'd be just. Leigh/@followtheleighder: And I completely agree with your sentiment. Like on the chaplain side of it, I had an opportunity to be down in San Antonio at Brook Army in the Burn and Amputee Unit and to see, like I saw what war can do and not only just looking at human beings that didn't even look recognizable because they had been just so impacted by combat, but also their families. Like, and then I had the opportunity, I know I've been out for a while, but this past summer I went Jeff Pixley: ⁓ my goodness, yeah. Leigh/@followtheleighder: on behalf of an American Christian organization over to Pakistan and worked with Muslim women over there towards women's rights and working with Taliban refugee women and which is its own other tie with American military. But my point being like I got to see what religious extremism looks like in a foreign country and how that's impacting people and being a religious nationalist country. I know Pakistan is not necessarily something like Iran and they're different and I want folks to recognize that but I got back and between talking to the women who were refugees of the horrendous harm that the Taliban has inflicted on them ⁓ between just doing general chaplaincy and talking to people particularly moral injury PTSD just any kind of support groups and then you see like the real physical burns the amputees that the destruction on the human body there is not a single part of me that wants war like and I know like I have that call to fight I have that leadership I can go but it is if you've ever seen anything like it it's not something to be glorified and I really want to thank you for for bringing that out because it shows the lack of maturity or respect maybe for how significant all of this is and they don't it's as I mentioned all these talks about this being Armageddon and the secretary has not denounced that and that's scary not only for us as American taxpayers who supporting this, American voters, American families who have family members in the service. I live in Great Falls right near Malmstrom Air Force Base. ⁓ But I mean if the head of the military is not going to call that out, anybody around the world including Muslim countries are watching that and watching this just unfold like okay we are moving forward. So everyone feels on high alert when you start bringing in religion. Jeff Pixley: Right. And the other thing that is a little bit troubling now, and it's only been a few days, so I'll give some time for them to adjust. Maybe they didn't have their continuity books dusted off recently. We've already lost folks. We've already lost a service member. Less than 10 right now ⁓ confirmed. But everyone matters and deserves ⁓ national mourning. And I'm seeing very little of that coming ⁓ from the department right now. And I fear, and I hope this isn't true, I hope I'm proven wrong, but the rhetoric about, and this goes back to your quick slash cut call of duty glorifying this, I fear that rather than mourning their losses, avoidable tragedies that we wish the price we shouldn't have to pay, I fear instead it's gonna turn into more of a celebrated martyrdom. approach and I can imagine I could I mean it does it's not hard if you've been watching the leadership recently to imagine them turning this into you know a we're celebrating these people for what they did and you know you should be proud to go and if you come back you know in the back of a c-17 to Dover don't worry we're gonna you know we're gonna you know sing a Lee Greenwood song for you that's not that's not how I want moms and dads and airmen, sailors, soldiers, Marines, and guardians to imagine themselves. I want them to know that our leadership wants to avoid war when we have losses to treat it with the dignity and honor that the sacrifice earns. Leigh/@followtheleighder: You're absolutely right because so far, lack of continuity book, ⁓ the deaths have been dismissed. Like I think Trump said like, ⁓ that's the way it is sometimes we'll probably lose more. Like as if just no humanity. ⁓ can't imagine being a mother watching that speech. like I, that's just how it is. that's, ⁓ hold on. There is certainly just, there's no tact or sense of comfort for the American people. It feels very feverish. And like you said, the martyrdom is very real. We just watched how it was all handled with Charlie Kirk back in September. ⁓ And which is ironic because he actually spoke pretty openly about not getting engaged with Middle Eastern conflicts. He was like, let's just keep, and here we are. So. ⁓ It's certainly, I like that you brought up the Christian martyrdom because it's going to keep happening and I wouldn't be, yeah. The other thing that I had on here. ⁓ was last night, I don't know if you've seen this yet, but in DC, ⁓ Montana, where I am, Montana Senator Sheehee got into an altercation with a decorated Marine in dress uniform and it ultimately led to the man breaking either his hand or some part of his arm. It was all videotaped, thank you. His arm got lodged in the door. ⁓ Tim Sheehee then left the room pretty promptly. ⁓ And you know, watch it a few times, you ask yourself why if someone not tackled Senator, but like in the moment I can imagine just being shocked. What was that like for you as a retired colonel to see Tim Sheehy, who is also served, ⁓ get in an altercation with that Marine veteran? Jeff Pixley: Yeah, it's alarming not just because of the unnecessary violence, ⁓ but it's alarming because there seems to be a growing trend that ⁓ speaking out against this administration is grounds for violence ⁓ or being shouted down. I think the lack of respect for our First Amendment rights has ⁓ has emerged at an alarming rate. you know, I think reasonable people can disagree about how helpful it is for someone to shout in a congressional hearing or on the floor of the house or elsewhere. But the truth is our country is built on one of our first foundational things is about... being able to speak out against the government. And if you do so nonviolently, it doesn't have to be peaceful. In fact, I stopped saying peaceful protest because when I protest, I'm not peaceful. I'm loud. It's not peaceful when you're around me when I'm mad about ICE or anything else. I'm nonviolent. And he was being nonviolent. And then they turned that violent and the congressman get directly involving himself speaks volumes about where his head is. I think it also, ⁓ betrays the fear that he personally has for his political future because I think they see the writing on the wall. They know that when we speak out, we are speaking with moral clarity that they don't possess. We are angry and it's spreading to places that they thought were kind of sanctuaries for them, for their supporters. And I think that may explain why he was prompted to get directly involved. I think it should be, he should be charged with ⁓ battery for sure. ⁓ It's disgusting to watch, but we shouldn't let that stop us. We need to be louder because it's working. I think the more people in our country that are willing to ⁓ risk getting tackled or pepper sprayed or arrested, as long as they're not breaking the law, if they're just exercising their First Amendment rights, we need to stand tall and take it. And because ⁓ if we fold, it may be the last time. I'm not exaggerating. Everybody says every year, this election is most important. This is 2026. If we cower, if we fold, if we let ⁓ ourselves go, shoot, I can't be mad about the war because I'm looking unpatriotic and they're going to paint me as some kind of pink Okami bad guy, liberal, bull crap. If you're against the war, protest against the war. If you're against overstepping governance, protest against it. Be loud. Leigh/@followtheleighder: All Jeff Pixley: be proud to be ⁓ speaking up for your values because if we don't, ⁓ they are going to win and this experiment will end at its 250th anniversary. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Well, I gotta tell you, I know you told me to call you Jeff, but for the purposes of conversation, I just want to thank you, Colonel Pixley, because what you have come on, and with your background... Obviously with the way the military has ⁓ impacted you over the years, your experience has given a lot of weight and just you being here and walking us through how you feel as a veteran, as a high ranking veteran. ⁓ I really want to thank you because yes, you are offering a solution by running for Oklahoma Congress or Oklahoma Congress District 4. Yes, that's the action you're taking and yes, you're protesting. We need to be able to name harms and be on the same page about what the harm is and that helps so much when military leaders like you, like Senator Kelly, ⁓ McGrath is another one out of Kentucky. There's ⁓ one out of Colorado. There's a lot, ⁓ Virginia, I think, was that Spanberger? ⁓ It's really, I want to thank you because it's a comfort to all of us. Like, okay, we're not crazy. And there's some credibility there that what we're seeing is wrong and enough people think it's wrong. My last question on this topic, and then I'm going to ask you one or two about your campaign because you are running for office and I want folks to at least know something. But you brought up DHS earlier and ICE. If the funding gets approved, DHS will have the budget equivalent to the six largest military in the world or something like that. If you put all the country's militaries, know, the United States is buying away, just our DHS alone would be in the top six. ⁓ funded departments across the world for militaries, meaning, and that is an insane stat to think that our DHS, our Homeland Security, rivals other countries' militaries in size and funding. Can you talk about what are some of your concerns with having DHS funded to this extent? Jeff Pixley: Yeah, so I'll set aside for a second. ⁓ what a galactic waste of money it is to give that much money to an organization when we have other fiscal concerns that are certainly a higher priority. But this isn't about the money. It's about what that money says about our priorities and our values. And having more money going to DHS than to the United States Marine Corps allows them to rapidly build up, rapidly arm, equip, and establish before the term elections. think is not an accident. They want to do this so rapidly that by the time I'm sworn in on January 3rd of 2027, they are a juggernaut that we can't undo. That should terrify folks because the immigration problem is going to be solved once serious legislators get into office and decide to solve it because it's a problem that's created on purpose to create an exploitable underclass in our country. It's partially based on the economics of exploitation and it's partially based on xenophobia and racism. When we fix that, which I intend to be a part of fixing ⁓ it, DHS is going to potentially run out of stuff to do. Now, I'd love to put them out of business, we can't wait for that. The atrocities committed in Minneapolis and other places demand full investigations and not just a hearing. I'm not just talking about oversight hearing where someone says, explain yourself and then they don't explain themselves. I'm talking about real consequences. And just today, Kristi Noem ⁓ was announced that she's being fired ⁓ and replaced by Oklahoma Senator Markway Mullin, the, ⁓ has, ⁓ I'm glad he won't be my senator anymore, but he's not, he's no better, he'll be no better at DHS than she was. And I fear that an unserious, no law enforcement background, person running that program that's already got this giant budget is a recipe for further disaster and an influence by the ⁓ administration, the people administration that appear to be pulling the strings for this nonsense. So ⁓ we need real investigations, we need real oversight, and I'm talking about every form, every letter, every memo, every training record, every recruiting poster, every internal ⁓ document regarding misconduct or ⁓ accusations of abuse. a ⁓ full committee to understand this because this did not happen by accident. And you can't say, well, some bad apples. If you purposely flood ⁓ an organization with money and then take off the reins for hiring, let them hire anybody, and it seems to be that the bigger jerk you are, ⁓ the more qualified you are, they did that on purpose. None of this is accidental and there needs to be a real investigation. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for your comments towards DHS and military, DOD, Hexhef, and Christian nationalism. Before we wrap up, I just want to talk about, we've talked about how your campaign, again, running for Congress, Oklahoma District 4, you know. ⁓ Oklahoma has got a lot, how do I want to say this, it's made a lot of headlines in the past year between, oh my gosh now I'm drawing a blank, but he was the superintendent of the schools and I used to talk about him all the time and then he left, yes, yes, and then there was Ryan Walters and then he left to join an anti-teachers union. Jeff Pixley: Yeah, yeah, Ryan Walters, national, yeah, national office talk. Leigh/@followtheleighder: sit with that one for a minute, ⁓ folks. And then there's also, I've seen and noticed that Governor Stitt has made some comments that aren't necessarily denouncing Trump, but are kind of skirt in the line. ⁓ Clearly you aren't here to cater to that. Like you are here to focus on the truth and national security. ⁓ When you talk about national security outside of everything that is going on right now, one of your campaign promises and points is that veterans health and mental health care. A concern ⁓ this year is that they cut Doge, they also looked at VA cuts, and then they also started a war. So from where I'm sitting, how do you cut mental health care and then go start a war for your, you clearly don't care about your veterans if that's the case. So kind of talk to me about what you're seeing in Oklahoma how the military is impacted by these cuts and how you would like to see a better support for them. Jeff Pixley: Yeah, I will say that my experience with my retirement process to go through my, ⁓ to get my disability claim settled was better than I expected, but it was not as good as it should have been. ⁓ When they started firing people, the staff that was supposed to take care of me was cut in half, and they became so overwhelmed they couldn't help me, and I ended up having to go to a private... ⁓ a volunteer veteran services organization to help me. And that shouldn't have to be the case. ⁓ But it ⁓ took the full ⁓ six months, me working to make that happen. So when I retired, my disability would kick in on time. And if a guy like me who had plenty of time to dedicate to that effort, kind of set my own hours and my last job. And most probably most importantly had has a generous pension as retired Colonel. I'm not you know, I'm not living paycheck to paycheck and worried about where my food's coming from. That's the exception. You know, it's not all colonels retirement from the Air Force people leave the DOD leave the Air Force as veterans in need and deserve it and have earned VA benefits that have no retirement pay aren't getting any benefits from the DOD other than a pat on the back and a DD 214. The VA is a critical source for taking care of them financially, for their medical care and perhaps most importantly, their mental health care. All those have been adversely affected by what happened in Doge ⁓ and will get worse as ⁓ funding for the VA is threatened. Because they don't even have to cut all the funding for it to impact because people have a choice of where they work. Now if someone doesn't have faith that their job's going to be there in six months, what do they do? They start looking for another job and they're take their talents elsewhere, so I have to worry about the, you know, the sword coming down. So I think we are in trouble in Oklahoma. We have veterans across the state. This is a very attractive state for retirement because the cost of here is very low and it's an amazing state. We have three major military installations in the state and thousands and thousands of veterans that deserve to be cared for. And Oklahoma is not unique in this, we do, you know, my district is 33 % And the folks out there on the rural parts need to be able to be taken care of and a good strong VA is essential and it's not a privilege to get taken care of by the VA. It's an entitlement that people earn. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. Well, and thank you for detailing your campaign stance on the VA and taking care of veterans in your community. The other part of the community to be aware of and face of so many things going on is the workforce. You're talking about the working class and helping build economic opportunity. What are some issues you see in your district and what is your vision? Jeff Pixley: All The main issue in our district ⁓ is ⁓ not unique to our district is affordability, adversely impacted by the tariffs that the president laid on the whole country, ⁓ which for those that haven't been following Republican politics for a while, there have been people that have been arguing for a national sales tax for a long time because they hate the income tax. And they've been trying to float a national sales tax for years. And they couldn't get it passed because it's a terrible idea. It's very aggressive and it hurts poor people most. Tariffs are essentially a national sales tax that have been impacted. imposed on us. Now they've declared illegal, but that doesn't mean the impact doesn't happen. So taking money out of our pockets through higher prices is something that's impacting all Oklahomans. The minimum wage in Oklahoma is only $7.25 an hour. We have a ballot initiative that we're voting on in June to raise that to $15 an hour over a few years. That's too little and too slow for my taste. I think it should go up faster. And I fear that that vote is is going to be interfered with by our governor or the Republicans who dominate our state politics. The good news is I have a sneaky feeling that you mentioned Governor Stitt kind of mysteriously talking like a reasonable person. Well, I think we know now why he was doing that is because this Mark Wayne Mullen move to DHS is going to open up his sentencing. I haven't seen the prediction markets on this, but I would not be shocked. if governors didn't resign from the governorship and have his replacement have a deal to name him as the senator so he can run as the incumbent, which would put him in the Senate because he's termed out anyway. This was his last term as the governor. So affordability is a big deal in our state. ⁓ Insurance prices are really high. Home insurance prices are high in our state, higher than they should be. there's some, and there's things we can do to fix those. I think the national minimum wage should be higher and it should be indexed to inflation. So as it goes up, we don't have to keep having this fight every 10 years. It should just go up as things go until we can actually have ⁓ an economy that's working for everybody. And the other thing I'll tell you is, and this is tied back to the medical care we talked about before, I'm a proponent for and I'll die on this hill of universal health care. had amazing health care when I was in the military for 35 years. Everybody deserves to be taken care of the same way I was and it's not some gift from the DOD. It is because it's the humane thing to do and honestly economically it's the smart economic thing to do. It cheaper to give universal health care with better health outcomes, longer lifespans, lower infant mortality, mortality for women giving birth. It's the right thing to do from every perspective and if we can get that over the hump when I'm in Congress, ⁓ we will be remembered well. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Thank you and absolutely I know that healthcare. If you're a damn running free office and you're not talking about healthcare, start now. And folks listening, hold your candidates accountable to that because this is outrageous and I think the collective rage all of us are feeling for A, this is a religious war that a lot of us don't believe in, to begin with, the theology behind it. But then geopolitics and everything aside, Americans are not doing well. It is an insult. for us to sit there and watch our tax dollars by the millions if not billions go and and do this and then get hyped up as a call of duty video that gets posted to White House like the whole and then you got soldiers dying and he's like ⁓ that's just the way it is. More will die. And you're like there's such a level of outrage that I mean it's ⁓ we are between the DHS and and all of this funding going to military or violent type ⁓ aggressive services, Americans are simply not being helped. Like we have been left behind and it really has, I hope more and more folks see over the next few weeks that ⁓ it is very much like all of us versus them. ⁓ Anyway, I feel like I've just been rambling, but sir, I am so grateful for your time today. ⁓ You know I'm up in Montana, River runs through it, and it's a lot of veterans up here, so if you need a few days away from the campaign or just some peace, like, ⁓ definitely you have my email, but sir, Don't you really? Jeff Pixley: I'll reach out, my daughter lives in Spokane, which isn't too far away and maybe we'll do a road trip up. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Does she? I'm going to have to connect with you after that because I have a few Spokane followers. So it'd be cool if we're already in connection or something. Yeah. Well, Jeff. Jeff Pixley: ⁓ That could be, could be. Leigh/@followtheleighder: See, isn't it? told, guys, he told me to call him Jeff, but every time I want to call him Colonel. So just so you know what's happening. that, Jeff Pixley is running for office. He's a Democrat running for Congress, Oklahoma's fourth district. Jeff, tell us where can folks learn more about you or donate or support you? Jeff Pixley: Great, thanks for asking that. ⁓ I have a website called PixleyForCongress.com, which is my last name, the word for congress.com. Or if you just Google Jeff Pixley, it will be ⁓ the top of the list along with a bunch of pictures of me from my service. ⁓ And on my website, there's an ActBlue link you can donate. And someone watching this might think, well, I don't live in Oklahoma, so it doesn't matter to me. It does matter to you because Tom Cole is doing a terrible job and it hurts every American as he does. ⁓ because I'm not taking... ⁓ Leigh/@followtheleighder: It does. Jeff Pixley: I will refuse any corporate money and I'll refuse any foreign influence money like APAC or other folks that are ⁓ not with America's interest first. ⁓ It means I'm this grassroots. So five bucks ⁓ from 100,000 people across the country, that's one cup of coffee would make it possible for me to have a real competition against Atom Cole. I'll never out raise him because he has unlimited money. ⁓ if they like what they see, then go to Pixley for Leigh/@followtheleighder: Yes. Jeff Pixley: My media page has other interviews like this. They can hear my perspectives on other things. ⁓ if the two things people do best for me honestly, and you're doing one of them for me right now, is spread the word. You said earlier people are sleeping in Oklahoma. Yeah, they are. But they're not going to be for long because Oklahoma is going to matter in 2026. So spread the word. Tell people, send them to my website, know, get one threads or wherever your social media choice is and spread the word about me and say, hey, this guy's worth a cup of coffee. if you do that to every one of your followers, it will change everything. And I can stop sitting here making cold calls to people asking strangers in Oklahoma for money. And I get out there and knock doors and make eye contact with Republicans and independents who I need to want to vote for me to get us over the hump. So that I would love that. And on the website, there's a way to reach out to the campaign to volunteer or to ask questions. I'm happy to answer questions via email. Someone wants to know where I stand on a subject. I'll never lie to you. You may not like the answer you get, you're you're gonna get the truth from me. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. I want to foot stomp that. Do not sleep on Oklahoma and support candidates everywhere so that we don't get these redwoods. Like let's go break up these red states and get our power back. Like this is our country. This is our constitution. And if you identify as Christian, this is our Christianity that's been exploited by a very specific interpretation of it. So, ⁓ you know, Jeff, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you again for for joining us. Folks, that is a wrap. What did you think? Let me know in the comments below, but make sure you like, share, follow, subscribe, and go follow Jeff Pixley. He just gave you his contacts. He's also on socials, Jeff Pixley for Congress. ⁓ Go support that because this is exactly who the kinds of people we want running for office. And I know even like down in Texas, we just saw the primaries between Crockett and Talarico. And it was really exciting to have two good candidates running. and they're different whatever they are but ⁓ you're a good candidate and I wish you success and thank you for again your service to our country and then for raising your hand out of some sort of insane courage to run for office. ⁓ We're fully I support you and thank you sir. Jeff Pixley: Thank was great chatting with you. Thank you so much for having me on. Leigh/@followtheleighder: Absolutely. ⁓