Latest / Gil I Am / Pete Hegseth...Exposes The Sacrificing Of America
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: If our military becomes partisan, then our military is a
- 0:09Speaker 1: tool for all the wrong reasons in the hands of
- 0:12Speaker 1: all the wrong people.
- 0:12Speaker 2: You put your life on the line to fight extremists,
- 0:16Speaker 2: and now there are people within it that are calling
- 0:18Speaker 2: you an extremist.
- 0:19Speaker 1: We've got transitioning soldiers in our units. I've got a quota.
- 0:23Speaker 1: I need to meet a certain number of women and
- 0:25Speaker 1: men or a certain number of minorities. What are we
- 0:28Speaker 1: doing here this? We're in the job of kill or
- 0:32Speaker 1: be killed.
- 0:35Speaker 2: I'm so excited about your new book, The War on Warriors.
- 0:38Speaker 2: You offer a perspective that so many infantry men, so
- 0:41Speaker 2: many service men and women, are wanting for people to understand,
- 0:46Speaker 2: but they don't have somebody be in a mouthpiece for them.
- 0:49Speaker 1: Because when you're in uniform, you can't talk. I mean,
- 0:51Speaker 1: you're defending everybody else's constitutional rights, but yours are limited
- 0:55Speaker 1: to say speak with the media or complain publicly about
- 0:58Speaker 1: what you're facing. Your friends and family might know what
- 1:00Speaker 1: the media doesn't know, The public ri at large don't know,
- 1:03Speaker 1: and if politicians don't care or are not willing to
- 1:06Speaker 1: address it, then nothing changes. So I mean, when I
- 1:08Speaker 1: joined the army over twenty years ago. I did it,
- 1:11Speaker 1: like so everybody else, because you love the country and
- 1:13Speaker 1: you want to do anything you can to defend it.
- 1:15Speaker 1: And the army I see today looks nothing like the
- 1:18Speaker 1: one I joined, and the one I joined wasn't perfect either.
- 1:21Speaker 1: So I wrote The War on Warriors. It's not a
- 1:23Speaker 1: book about how the military went woke. It's a book
- 1:27Speaker 1: about how the military allowed itself to go woke. I
- 1:30Speaker 1: mean it's in this military is an institution with a code.
- 1:34Speaker 1: You swear allegiance to the constitution to defend it. You
- 1:37Speaker 1: believe your senior leaders will defend and make sure you
- 1:40Speaker 1: have everything you need, the training, the accountability, the excellence,
- 1:44Speaker 1: the lethality. That's what It's an ultimate meritocracy. And what
- 1:48Speaker 1: we've seen under Obama and then fast forward under Biden
- 1:52Speaker 1: is an erosion of that meritocracy in pursuit of social
- 1:56Speaker 1: justice or social experiments that has created a fragile military
- 2:01Speaker 1: that is not as capable as people think. We're an
- 2:03Speaker 1: uncharted territory as a society. This idea that we're trying
- 2:06Speaker 1: to keep a republic while simultaneously telling the young people
- 2:09Speaker 1: of that republic that it's a terrible country or irredeemably
- 2:12Speaker 1: racist or misogynists. All of those themes seep into the
- 2:16Speaker 1: view that American young Americans have. But the military for
- 2:20Speaker 1: a long time had been this incubator of excellence, this
- 2:24Speaker 1: sort of resistant to all of those cultural trends. Yes
- 2:27Speaker 1: there were there have been changes over time, but more
- 2:30Speaker 1: or less, if you want to not deal with all
- 2:33Speaker 1: that garbage and just go defend the nation, join the Marines,
- 2:35Speaker 1: join the army. And what you've seen, I mean, you
- 2:37Speaker 1: see it now in the recruiting shortfalls.
- 2:39Speaker 3: Wow, you're right, this is uncharted territory.
- 2:41Speaker 2: Because every time, every every Memorial Day, every time that
- 2:45Speaker 2: I'm sitting there with American flags and we're singing God
- 2:49Speaker 2: Bless America and I'm remembering my grandfather, there's such a
- 2:52Speaker 2: sense of patriotism, such a sense of gratitude, and and
- 2:55Speaker 2: you know, the flybys and all of this stuff, and
- 2:58Speaker 2: I'm feeling just something different in the air now where
- 3:01Speaker 2: people are thinking like that's bad, and that's not really
- 3:05Speaker 2: something we should be getting excited about, and.
- 3:09Speaker 3: It is scary.
- 3:10Speaker 1: It's evil jingoism or nationalism. The flag is political. I mean,
- 3:15Speaker 1: I wore a flag on my shoulder when I served
- 3:18Speaker 1: under George Bush and Barack Obama and Donald Trump. I mean,
- 3:22Speaker 1: I volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan under Barack Obama, a
- 3:25Speaker 1: president who I disagreed with on everything, because it wasn't political.
- 3:29Speaker 1: It was about defending the nation. And we're getting because
- 3:32Speaker 1: of the purge that's come into our military. And I
- 3:34Speaker 1: use that word intentionally, there has been a purge post
- 3:37Speaker 1: COVID George Floyd during the Biden administration, a purge of patriots.
- 3:43Speaker 1: You've got a real reluctance of everyday Americans to serve
- 3:46Speaker 1: an institution if they don't feel like it's going to
- 3:48Speaker 1: serve them.
- 3:48Speaker 2: When I think of patriotism, I think of the military.
- 3:51Speaker 2: I don't just think of like patriotism, so I think
- 3:53Speaker 2: of schools and education, or I think of the church.
- 3:56Speaker 3: Although these are important institutions, the military.
- 3:59Speaker 2: Is like inextricably tied and connected with a sense of
- 4:02Speaker 2: a vibrant patriotism in a nation. But with these attacks
- 4:07Speaker 2: on patriotism, calling it Christian nationalism, what does a disdain
- 4:12Speaker 2: for the US military mean for the future of our culture?
- 4:17Speaker 1: Well, first of all, you were raised right, and that's
- 4:18Speaker 1: why you look at it that way. A disdain for
- 4:20Speaker 1: our military in the future of our culture means more
- 4:22Speaker 1: soldiers die. And I mean that. I mean when you
- 4:26Speaker 1: when you uh impose DEI and CRT and gender fluid
- 4:31Speaker 1: standards into the military, you are breeding a less capable military.
- 4:36Speaker 1: You are you are giving commanders less opportunity to train.
- 4:39Speaker 1: You're giving them, uh there's less accountability inside this. I
- 4:45Speaker 1: heard time and time again from leaders. I'm walking on
- 4:48Speaker 1: eggshells because I don't know what pronoun you know I've
- 4:50Speaker 1: got We've got transitioning soldiers in our units. I've got
- 4:53Speaker 1: a quota I need to meet a certain number of
- 4:56Speaker 1: women and men or a certain number of minorities. What
- 4:59Speaker 1: are we doing here?
- 5:01Speaker 3: This?
- 5:01Speaker 1: We're in the job of kill or be killed. This
- 5:05Speaker 1: is this I'm giving you my son. You're gonna train
- 5:08Speaker 1: that my son, and then you're gonna play games with
- 5:11Speaker 1: social engineering inside the units, and you're gonna say, well,
- 5:14Speaker 1: we need more women in this unit, or we need
- 5:16Speaker 1: more of this in that unit, and you're gonna get
- 5:18Speaker 1: promoted because of this. And I'm telling you, if you
- 5:20Speaker 1: don't believe it, talk talk to someone who's serving. Right now.
- 5:23Speaker 1: That's an abdication of the responsibility we have to those
- 5:27Speaker 1: who are willing to put their life on the line.
- 5:29Speaker 1: Your grandfather at the very least believed his leaders had
- 5:32Speaker 1: his best interests in mine. And right now, from the
- 5:35Speaker 1: White House down to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs,
- 5:37Speaker 1: the Secretary of Defense, they're pedaling gender nonsense, race nonsense
- 5:44Speaker 1: that divides troops against each other, environmental stuff, electric tanks,
- 5:48Speaker 1: and things that are not useful to warfighters. And then
- 5:52Speaker 1: we're trying to recruit non conventional people into the unit
- 5:56Speaker 1: because we're scared of all these patriot extremists or Christian
- 5:59Speaker 1: nationalists or plain old white guys that wear cowboy hats.
- 6:03Speaker 1: That's a dangerous spot to be in. Fixing it's not difficult. Actually,
- 6:08Speaker 1: if you have the right commander in chief, we can
- 6:09Speaker 1: talk about that. I mean, it will be difficult, but
- 6:12Speaker 1: the capture is more recent. But it means that we
- 6:15Speaker 1: are when we face that next conflict, How ready will
- 6:19Speaker 1: we be, How focused on the right things will we be?
- 6:23Speaker 1: And that's an open question right now. And that's what
- 6:26Speaker 1: And then you add that to when that next come,
- 6:29Speaker 1: let's say, the next nine to eleven happens. Who's protesting?
- 6:33Speaker 1: Are they protesting for us? Are they protesting that we
- 6:36Speaker 1: deserve it. I mean, look at what's happening and outside
- 6:38Speaker 1: college campuses, like we have an upside down critical theory
- 6:43Speaker 1: infection inside the minds of young people, and that means
- 6:46Speaker 1: the institutions that we used to not question are now
- 6:49Speaker 1: being threatened.
- 6:49Speaker 2: To your point, man, man, this is also sobering when
- 6:54Speaker 2: when a conflict happens, I want Navy seals out there,
- 6:57Speaker 2: so I want Army rangers out there. I want I
- 6:59Speaker 2: want the real deal. I don't want the Purple Hair
- 7:02Speaker 2: platoon fighting for us. And yet what you're saying is
- 7:06Speaker 2: that that is a big part of the agenda is
- 7:10Speaker 2: to get as much of that into the military, and
- 7:12Speaker 2: that is playing right into the hands of those who
- 7:15Speaker 2: hate us and would like to annihilate us.
- 7:17Speaker 1: No doubt, no doubt. I mean, and it's across the spectrum, right,
- 7:21Speaker 1: I mean, China wants TikTok for our kids, but not
- 7:24Speaker 1: for theirs. They want to infect our ability to defend ourselves. Now, thankfully,
- 7:28Speaker 1: they are great Navy seals and there are great Army rangers.
- 7:31Speaker 1: And there's still bad dudes want to do bad. I mean,
- 7:34Speaker 1: there are there, I've met them, I've seen them. They're
- 7:35Speaker 1: still in there right. Our job is to make sure
- 7:38Speaker 1: they have a military they deserve and that we get
- 7:40Speaker 1: the other stuff out. Yeah, because they want to do
- 7:42Speaker 1: their job and they will do it for us. And
- 7:44Speaker 1: that's the good side of this is there are plenty
- 7:46Speaker 1: of great Americans out there who want to join for
- 7:48Speaker 1: the right set.
- 7:49Speaker 3: It's provocative.
- 7:50Speaker 2: On the very back of your book, you talk about
- 7:51Speaker 2: how twenty years ago you put your life on the
- 7:54Speaker 2: line to fight extremists, and now twenty years later, the
- 7:58Speaker 2: same army is infected with a virus and there are
- 8:03Speaker 2: people within it that are calling you an extremist because
- 8:06Speaker 2: you love the country and what it stands for.
- 8:08Speaker 1: I was labeled one. Literally, I deployed. I was in
- 8:12Speaker 1: the Washington, d C. National Guard. I was there during
- 8:15Speaker 1: the George Floyd riots outside the White House when the
- 8:17Speaker 1: insurrection that tried to take out from happened. I was
- 8:19Speaker 1: there for the not the first night, the next four
- 8:22Speaker 1: held in a riot shield. It's surreal to hold a
- 8:25Speaker 1: riot shield with the White House lit up behind you,
- 8:27Speaker 1: with your fellow citizens in front of you. We were there,
- 8:30Speaker 1: and then the election happened, Joe Biden's then January sixth happened.
- 8:35Speaker 1: Then Biden's inauguration is coming, and so you know, remember
- 8:38Speaker 1: all every National Guard unit in America or the region
- 8:41Speaker 1: was there, certainly the DC Guard. So I had orders
- 8:44Speaker 1: to go, and I'll never forget. One day before I
- 8:47Speaker 1: was supposed to go, I get a call from a
- 8:49Speaker 1: commander in the unit saying, Pete, you're good. Your orders
- 8:52Speaker 1: are revoked. You can stand down. What do you mean
- 8:54Speaker 1: I could stand down? Everybody's going. He's like, no, we're good,
- 8:57Speaker 1: we don't need you, and he wouldn't tell me why
- 8:59Speaker 1: in the moment. Went couldn't, but it was pretty clear
- 9:02Speaker 1: to me. I'm like, okay, why, why in the world
- 9:04Speaker 1: is everybody going but me? When I wrote the book,
- 9:07Speaker 1: I was able to talk to him again and confirm
- 9:09Speaker 1: one hundred percent that it was because they had identified
- 9:14Speaker 1: me as an extremist because of a Christian tattoo I
- 9:16Speaker 1: have on my chest, the Jerusalem Cross. I'm sure you're
- 9:19Speaker 1: familiar with it, only a Christian symbol. They searched my
- 9:24Speaker 1: Instagram and some uh, some folks identified it and said no,
- 9:28Speaker 1: he's an extremist, and the leadership of the unit supported it,
- 9:32Speaker 1: and they revoked my orders. Uh, And so I got out.
- 9:35Speaker 1: I didn't it if that was happening to me? And
- 9:39Speaker 1: was it? Was it because of the tattoo? Probably not?
- 9:41Speaker 1: Was it because I'm a Trump supporter? Maybe? Was it
- 9:43Speaker 1: because I work at Fox News? Maybe I don't know.
- 9:45Speaker 1: Any combination is the wrong answer. I've done three tours,
- 9:49Speaker 1: two tours, one tour in I rack and against another
- 9:51Speaker 1: tour one tam obay for my nation, serving under Republicans
- 9:54Speaker 1: and Democrats. It's never about politics. And now you DM,
- 9:56Speaker 1: I'm an extremist. Take that at AD the covid vat
- 10:01Speaker 1: add similar purges that we saw, and it is a
- 10:05Speaker 1: I would call an assault on people of conscience inside
- 10:08Speaker 1: our military. Well, a lot of that comes down to
- 10:10Speaker 1: Christians or Conservatives, patriots, you know, you take that don't
- 10:15Speaker 1: tread on me flag. Can't have that bumper sticker on
- 10:18Speaker 1: your car on post anymore, can't have that flag. Might
- 10:21Speaker 1: be an extremist. So there are so many silly ways,
- 10:24Speaker 1: renaming of bases, all of this. It is if our
- 10:29Speaker 1: military becomes partisan, then our military is a tool for
- 10:34Speaker 1: all the wrong reasons, in the hands of all the
- 10:36Speaker 1: wrong people. It has always been a nonpartisan, patriotic institution,
- 10:41Speaker 1: and I fear we're on the verge of losing that
- 10:43Speaker 1: across the board. You see in the book you will
- 10:46Speaker 1: meet person after person and moment after moment where instead
- 10:49Speaker 1: of choosing standards accountability, meritocracy, and lethality, so called leaders
- 10:55Speaker 1: followed political ideologues in SARTs of social justice outcomes in
- 11:00Speaker 1: ways that made units less capable. And that's the sine.
- 11:05Speaker 2: Explain this symbol on the cover of your book here,
- 11:08Speaker 2: it's an upside down American flag.
- 11:10Speaker 3: What does that mean.
- 11:11Speaker 1: It's a universal symbol of duress, distress. You know, you've
- 11:15Speaker 1: seen it with people flying their flag. I flew my
- 11:17Speaker 1: flag upside down outside my house after the fall of Afghanistan.
- 11:21Speaker 1: I mean, it's just it's a reflect I did that
- 11:22Speaker 1: on purpose. Obviously, that's a combat patch. That's exactly the
- 11:25Speaker 1: type of combat patch I wore on my shoulder. I've
- 11:28Speaker 1: been proud to wear that patch my entire life. But
- 11:31Speaker 1: this institution is in duress. You know.
- 11:33Speaker 2: Sometimes you hear the phrase, you know, follow the money,
- 11:36Speaker 2: and that's a great way to track things back to
- 11:38Speaker 2: the you know, what is the source upstream that's causing
- 11:41Speaker 2: these things downstream? And if someone can get get in
- 11:44Speaker 2: control of the money and they can get in control
- 11:46Speaker 2: of the power, the military power.
- 11:48Speaker 3: There's so much you can control.
- 11:49Speaker 1: What kind of evil people are at.
- 11:51Speaker 2: The top, controlling generals to trickle down an ideology that's
- 11:55Speaker 2: just destroying morale, destroying the effectiveness of a military Is it,
- 12:00Speaker 2: I mean, is it what we think it is?
- 12:02Speaker 3: Is?
- 12:02Speaker 2: Is it really as awful and insidious as as we think.
- 12:07Speaker 1: It's leftists who want control, and the military was the
- 12:10Speaker 1: last vestige that they did not control. An ultimate meritocracy,
- 12:13Speaker 1: based on patriotism and love of country, you can control
- 12:16Speaker 1: other quarters of government fairly easily. Obama's. The Obamas were
- 12:19Speaker 1: famously obsessed with the DoD visited the Pentagon a lot,
- 12:23Speaker 1: very particular about exactly who they appointed into certain positions,
- 12:27Speaker 1: inherently distrustful of the generals, and so over time slowly
- 12:31Speaker 1: filtered out your war fighters, break glass in case of
- 12:34Speaker 1: war types, and moved in Secretary of the Navy, Secretary Army,
- 12:39Speaker 1: who are political appointees, who then pushed prerogatives down to generals.
- 12:43Speaker 1: So once you're picking your secretary Defense and your secretaries,
- 12:48Speaker 1: they're setting the terms of what's acceptable. Now, if you're
- 12:50Speaker 1: a uniform member underneath that you either comply or you
- 12:55Speaker 1: get out, and so the ones willing to comply, the
- 12:57Speaker 1: sheep who're willing to go along with Oh yeah, yah,
- 13:00Speaker 1: women in combat, great idea, Oh yeah, trans great idea.
- 13:02Speaker 1: Oh yeah, electric tanks, let's do that. Great. They get
- 13:05Speaker 1: promoted the PC laptops. So it takes a while. But
- 13:09Speaker 1: if you look at Obama, he would have done a
- 13:11Speaker 1: lot of these things right away if he could in
- 13:13Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, but he couldn't. So a lot
- 13:15Speaker 1: of the most radical things he did in the military
- 13:16Speaker 1: happened in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen, and twenty sixty, after
- 13:20Speaker 1: he'd made the necessary personnel changes or created an environment
- 13:24Speaker 1: where he knew the military which it's DNA and its
- 13:27Speaker 1: bones over two hundred and fifty years, said no, was
- 13:31Speaker 1: willing to be complicit in the erosion of that institution.
- 13:34Speaker 1: Trump did what he could. I think there were a
- 13:37Speaker 1: lot of generals who that just kind of went down
- 13:39Speaker 1: into their bunker and tried not to But the minute
- 13:43Speaker 1: Biden came in, it was just fast forward on everything
- 13:46Speaker 1: Obama had been doing.
- 13:47Speaker 3: Pete, how do you think we can turn this around?
- 13:52Speaker 1: We can? I wrote a book about education, one hundred
- 13:54Speaker 1: year takeover, amazing and the problem with that one is is, yes,
- 13:57Speaker 1: the Department of Education controls a lot, but it's not centralized.
- 14:01Speaker 1: So if you want to make a change, you got
- 14:04Speaker 1: to do it in your community. You got to get
- 14:05Speaker 1: with your family. You've got to make a change. Go local,
- 14:07Speaker 1: like what you're doing at LIVE. You've got to do it.
- 14:09Speaker 1: This is a top down institution, which gives me even
- 14:12Speaker 1: a little bit more hope that we can fix it.
- 14:14Speaker 1: A new commander in chief that comes in and says,
- 14:17Speaker 1: we're not doing this garbage anymore. Fires the Secretary Offense,
- 14:21Speaker 1: fires the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, brings in new chairmen,
- 14:23Speaker 1: new secretaries of the Army and the Air Force, the
- 14:25Speaker 1: Marine Corps. Now that person will be accused he it's Trump.
- 14:28Speaker 1: Oh you're doing a maga take There's no maga takeovers
- 14:31Speaker 1: going on here. We're just going back to how we
- 14:33Speaker 1: used to focus on the right things. See, it has
- 14:36Speaker 1: to be top down and bottom up, because the bottom
- 14:38Speaker 1: up's a problem too right now, Kirk, Because our military
- 14:40Speaker 1: academies are teaching the same wope cr TV. So you've
- 14:44Speaker 1: got a clean house there with your superintendents and professors,
- 14:47Speaker 1: because there's a good core in the middle, a good, honest,
- 14:50Speaker 1: god fearing cop inside our military that wants to do
- 14:52Speaker 1: the right things. And you could get back pretty quick.
- 14:54Speaker 1: You can get the ethos that hey, this is ours
- 14:57Speaker 1: pretty quick. There's things to change and procurement and everything,
- 14:59Speaker 1: but that's the baseline.
- 15:02Speaker 2: And and I'm so glad that you have decided to talk
- 15:05Speaker 2: about education in your previous book and then you're talking
- 15:07Speaker 2: about military here in this book, because at the end
- 15:10Speaker 2: of the day, I think you have two competing ideologies.
- 15:13Speaker 2: You have you have secular humanist, atheist Marxist ideas that's
- 15:18Speaker 2: you're showing up in all the colors of the rainbow.
- 15:21Speaker 3: And then you've.
- 15:22Speaker 4: Got a biblical worldview, which is the root for the
- 15:26Speaker 4: fruit of liberty, opportunity, equal rights, the fruit of the spirit,
- 15:32Speaker 4: and courage and all these kinds of things.
- 15:34Speaker 2: And ultimately it's a battle between these two ideologies. And
- 15:37Speaker 2: that's where our faith comes in. How did your time
- 15:40Speaker 2: in the military impact you and your faith?
- 15:45Speaker 1: I mean, they the old adage is overused, but there
- 15:48Speaker 1: are no you know, atheists in foxholes is a real thing.
- 15:52Speaker 1: I mean, when you are when you are stepping out
- 15:55Speaker 1: on a mission, for example, in the middle of the
- 15:58Speaker 1: night and the air assault in back Dad. Leading a
- 16:01Speaker 1: platoon of forty men into Indian country, into enemy country,
- 16:05Speaker 1: and you're going to hit an al Qaeda safehouse for
- 16:07Speaker 1: a mortar team that's been targeting your unit and others
- 16:10Speaker 1: across Bagdad, and you don't know what to expect. You
- 16:14Speaker 1: face mortality really fast, and you know you're on bendinne
- 16:18Speaker 1: pretty quick to say, hey, God, I give this to you.
- 16:22Speaker 1: I wouldn't say I would say I was a head
- 16:24Speaker 1: Christian more than a heart Christian in service over there.
- 16:28Speaker 1: But it was all there. And I'll tell you one
- 16:31Speaker 1: story during one unit when we got we dropped in
- 16:35Speaker 1: the long spot. We you know, we're going to an
- 16:38Speaker 1: enemy house. I'm in charge for the first time, and
- 16:42Speaker 1: I just remember we had dropped in a mudfield. It
- 16:44Speaker 1: was all going sideways, and I remember having a sense
- 16:47Speaker 1: of calm that I had no business have. I mean,
- 16:49Speaker 1: this is I went from a wall Street job in
- 16:53Speaker 1: the National Guard to an infantry unit in combat within
- 16:56Speaker 1: six months. Like it was a long story, but the
- 16:59Speaker 1: call my well, yes, my men were trained and we
- 17:02Speaker 1: but it was it was it was something else. And
- 17:05Speaker 1: I'll never forget about two and a half weeks later
- 17:08Speaker 1: calling home to my parents, and my mom said to me,
- 17:10Speaker 1: because you can't talk about timing and locations when you're
- 17:13Speaker 1: when you're in combat, she said, Pete, I just want
- 17:16Speaker 1: you to know, on such and such a night at
- 17:18Speaker 1: this time, I felt just an overwhelming urge to fall
- 17:21Speaker 1: on my knees and pray for you. And I get
- 17:24Speaker 1: chills just sharing it, and I triangulated. I asked her
- 17:27Speaker 1: what time was that, And that was the very moment
- 17:30Speaker 1: we were in Wow, the rural areas of bag Dad
- 17:33Speaker 1: going toward an o Kaiya safehouse in the wrong direction
- 17:37Speaker 1: at first, Like, it's just the power of prayers are
- 17:39Speaker 1: a very real thing, and I think, you know, I
- 17:42Speaker 1: think of my company commander, who was a great Christian
- 17:45Speaker 1: who was an amazing leader for us. I mean it
- 17:48Speaker 1: it isn't it's also something that's under assault too. I mean,
- 17:51Speaker 1: chaplains and all that are are something that they're eroding.
- 17:55Speaker 1: But it's it's a it's always been a bedrock of
- 17:58Speaker 1: the American military, is that we believe in something bigger
- 18:01Speaker 1: than ourselves.
- 18:02Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I know my grandfather, you know, was he
- 18:05Speaker 2: was issued a Bible that they gave to him in
- 18:07Speaker 2: the military.
- 18:08Speaker 1: We got bibles. Yep.
- 18:09Speaker 2: Yeah, so many things like that, and and so much
- 18:13Speaker 2: of that has changed, and you document so much of
- 18:15Speaker 2: that in your book, and you've you've been telling the
- 18:18Speaker 2: stories of veterans for a long time.
- 18:20Speaker 3: Why is that important to you?
- 18:22Speaker 1: The best education I ever got was from the salt
- 18:25Speaker 1: of the earth men, mostly men, some women, but mostly
- 18:27Speaker 1: men that I serve with, who reminded me what real
- 18:32Speaker 1: courage looks like, like, what real guts looks like. And
- 18:36Speaker 1: they never They're never going to sit on a stage
- 18:38Speaker 1: like this with a famous guy like you, with cameras
- 18:41Speaker 1: on all over the place talking about it. And so
- 18:43Speaker 1: I take really seriously my responsibility to try to be
- 18:46Speaker 1: their voice. Like I get to wear makeup and talk
- 18:48Speaker 1: on TV every Saturday and Sunday morning on Foxing Friends,
- 18:51Speaker 1: then I better be really good at channeling you know, why,
- 18:54Speaker 1: why what direction our foreign policy is going in, or
- 18:57Speaker 1: how we use our military, or when that cop makes
- 19:00Speaker 1: a tough call in a moment's notice and everyone wants
- 19:02Speaker 1: to second guess it. Well, I've been in some moments
- 19:04Speaker 1: where I've had to make a tough call. Here's what
- 19:06Speaker 1: you're going through, And so I think of all those guys,
- 19:09Speaker 1: I sart a lot. Anytime I give a speech, i
- 19:11Speaker 1: do an event, I'm thinking, Okay, how are they what
- 19:13Speaker 1: lens are they seeing this through that I can help
- 19:16Speaker 1: people understand what they're going through and respect the service
- 19:18Speaker 1: that they gave, because ultimately they pour into the next
- 19:22Speaker 1: chapter of their life, their next profession, and they might
- 19:25Speaker 1: get a pat on the back here or there, but
- 19:27Speaker 1: they just hope that their the legacy of their service
- 19:30Speaker 1: is respected. And that's what I try to do.