On today's episode of The War Room with Patrick ODonnell, host Steve Kamb joins host Alex Blumberg to talk about the history of Christmas, the importance of spending time with family on Christmas Day, and how to keep your skin healthy and glowing on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
00:01:05.260Okay, welcome. It's Thursday, 25 December, the year of our Lord, 2025. It's Christmas Day. Christmas morning, in fact.
00:01:15.960I want to welcome everybody here to the War Room.
00:01:19.280We've got our traditional, I guess we've been doing it for a dozen years now, over at Breitbart Radio and Breitbart Radio News and the War Room with Patrick O'Donnell.
00:01:31.460It's the combat history of Christmas. We're going to get to Patrick in just a moment.
00:01:35.980Trevor Comstock. It's a day people spend with family a couple of days.
00:01:40.980You know, you've got Boxing Day tomorrow. We have Raheem do Boxing Day, as we always do.
00:01:44.220Another tradition of the War Room. So Raheem Kassam does Boxing Day.
00:01:49.200We'll be back for the Saturday morning show.
00:01:52.880Trevor, so people, you know, on Christmas Day, able to kind of step back, catch their breath, spend time with family.
00:02:02.640I've been such a big supporter of what you guys are doing at Sacred Human Health.
00:02:07.460Talk to me about what you guys have been working on and where people over the next couple of days can go
00:02:12.820and get some more information to really, you know, take care of the most important thing, your family, yourself, but also your health, sir.
00:02:22.880Yeah, great to see you, Steve. Merry Christmas and Merry Christmas to the War Room Posse.
00:02:27.760A couple of things I wanted to mention. Number one, we are rolling out a new product very soon here.
00:02:32.080We had to make a couple of changes to the label, but it's basically finalized at this point.
00:02:36.420So I'm excited to talk about that. But also, I just wanted to mention that we ran our Christmas sale last week just so people could get their orders in time for today.
00:02:46.720But with that said, too, we are going to extend it all the way through today and tomorrow.
00:02:51.840So just make sure to use code CHRISTMAS at checkout for 20% off any one-time order.
00:02:57.280I wanted to mention that before I forget.
00:02:58.720And then with that, too, you know, our tallow moisturizer has, since we launched, been extremely popular, as I mentioned, quite a few times.
00:03:07.580And we continue to sell out. We did recently sell out, but I wanted to say that we are now back in stock.
00:03:13.480We have our team working around the clock to make sure that orders are being fulfilled.
00:03:17.600So for those who don't know as well, because we still get a lot of questions around it,
00:03:22.080the tallow moisturizer is handmade with the two ingredients, which is the 100% American grass-fed and finished beef tallow.
00:03:28.180And then we pair it with the raw manuka honey. So that's it. There's no preservatives in it.
00:03:33.180There's no seed oils or synthetic junk. And the tallow is pretty remarkable just because it's almost identical to the natural oils that your skin produces.
00:03:41.420So it absorbs much more deeply as opposed to just sitting on top of your skin, which unfortunately is the case with a lot of other skin care products on the market.
00:03:48.920And then to take it a step further, it's also loaded with vitamins like vitamin A, D, E, as well as K, which your skin essentially needs to stay healthy and radiant.
00:03:57.120So that alone makes it a pretty powerful product.
00:04:01.140But also one of the questions we get asked a lot is just, you know, who it's intended for.
00:04:05.180It is intended for both men and women. I use it every day. Obviously, I love it.
00:04:10.020But it works great in scenarios for things like dry skin.
00:04:12.700Also, if you have like eczema or a little bit of skin irritation, redness, as well as just daily skin hydration.
00:04:19.340And again, you can use it pretty much anywhere, you know, your face, your hands, your body, your neck, pretty much anywhere where you want to use it.
00:04:26.920And then we pair it with the raw manuka honey, which is a naturally occurring antibacterial, anti-inflammatory and healing property.
00:04:33.900So like I said, it's amazing if you have a little bit of seborrhea or redness on your skin or even eczema.
00:04:39.580It brings that down a lot. We've had a lot of great reviews for people that use it for that intention.
00:04:44.880But again, if you do want to compare it to your standard skin cream or product, oftentimes, you know, if you see products on Amazon or Walgreens, those can be beneficial in their own right.
00:04:55.360But more oftentimes than not, they just contain a ton of synthetic and artificial ingredients as well as chemicals that can damage your skin barrier over time.
00:05:03.240So we just wanted to give the raw natural ingredients that actually work to nourish your skin.
00:05:08.520And again, it has those great anti-inflammatory properties as well.
00:05:11.840So it's a pretty powerful product. The reviews and the feedback we've been getting has been amazing.
00:05:17.000I'm really happy about that product. And as I had mentioned, too, we got something really unique coming out soon here, which I'm excited to talk about.
00:05:23.940But I just want to touch on the tallow with the time that I had.
00:05:27.360Yeah. By the way, the reviews, that's where I want everybody to go to the site, spend time over the holiday weekend all the way through.
00:05:36.960You know, we got four days here is to make sure people get access to the information and also read the reviews.
00:05:44.120The strength of the whether it's Warpath Coffee or Sacred Human Health or Meriwether or I know we tell people, put a review up.
00:05:51.520Tell us what you really think. And then we share it with we share it with the war and posse.
00:05:55.940But it's the reviews that that that sell these products, because people go to the site, they see the information and then they see the reviews.
00:06:02.360It's just it absolutely just just blows them away. So one more time, where do where do folks go?
00:06:07.360Where do folks go, Trevor? Yeah, definitely.
00:06:09.980So you can go to sacredhumanhealth.com. And as I had mentioned through today and tomorrow, you can just use code Christmas at checkout for 20 percent off any one time order.
00:06:19.220If you do subscribe, you're locked into the 10 percent discount for life until you cancel.
00:06:23.560But like you mentioned, Steve, feel free to check out the reviews.
00:06:26.420There's a ton of them and a lot of feedback from the War Room Posse specifically.
00:06:32.360Thank you, brother. I appreciate you. Merry Christmas. Thanks for doing this this morning.
00:09:12.060The first episode, I think the first and second episode really focused a lot on about what we traditionally talk about.
00:09:20.860And here's what I think, at least I think they accomplished one thing, is that we keep trying to tell people that there was a war going on.
00:09:29.800A war had commenced before politically we actually got organized enough to declare war.
00:09:36.760I mean, the Declaration of Independence is essentially telling an empire and a king that we, this is your bill of indictment.
00:09:46.900We find you wanting, and we're declaring independence from that.
00:09:50.460And that is essentially, yes, it is a declaration of independence, but the way we're going to do this is that we understand we're going to have to fight for it because we have been really engaged in combat since over a year beforehand, which is April of 1775.
00:10:09.100And you had both Lexington and Concord, and then you had, you had Bunker Hill.
00:10:16.100Do you, in that respect, I think they did a pretty good job, at least in bringing that out, that this was a continuity.
00:10:22.820You actually had conflict on top of a political crisis.
00:10:25.940Because the way I see the revolution, maybe you differ, I'd love to hear your opinion, is that it came in three phases.
00:10:34.080Number one was the American Revolution itself.
00:10:37.000The American Revolution was not really the combat or the fighting.
00:10:41.140The American Revolution was that 20 years that led up to the American people deciding that institutionally, and as a people, we had to have our own sovereignty, we would break off from the British Empire.
00:10:51.180The second part of that, the War of Independence, was an actual war, because Britain wasn't just letting us wander away.
00:10:58.500We actually had a conflict that took, what, about eight years to actually decide on the battlefield how that, you know, which direction that was going to go.
00:11:07.680And then the third part, which I call the nation building, and my belief is that went all the way up to the Battle of New Orleans in 1850,
00:11:15.280that the British finally threw in the towel and said, okay, I guess we're not going to stop these guys from being independent.
00:11:23.860We've got a couple of minutes here in the first block.
00:11:25.820Your perspective of that very first part and leads us to the Christmas at the Christmas on the shores of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, sir.
00:11:37.120This is the most, you know, the American Revolution is probably the most significant event other than the birth of Christ and life of Christ.
00:11:50.540And as you state accurately, the war itself is only part of it.
00:11:57.060And the actual revolution begins much earlier with the Stamp Act and other things.
00:12:05.620But there's a series of things and grievances that cause the colonists to break from Great Britain.
00:12:18.100And, I mean, there's a lot that I get into with the Indispensables, for instance, which is one group of Americans that are up in Marblehead.
00:12:26.220And their great grievance is they're fishermen, but they're being taxed to death.
00:12:33.180And most importantly, from their perspective, their boats are being seized, or actually their boats are being boarded.
00:12:41.120And men are being taken aboard and kidnapped and basically put into the Royal Navy against their will.
00:13:16.040And in 1773 and 74, there is a true revolution of ideas that are, at the time, groundbreaking, Steve.
00:13:28.280I mean, we're talking about the idea of freedom and liberty, which they base, you know, they look at John Locke's theories, but they also bring in ancient Greece and other things.
00:13:39.580And an American version of freedom and liberty kind of emerges at this point.
00:13:47.260One thing that is extremely significant that was not brought out was the importance of gunpowder.
00:13:55.060And what I mean by that is disarmament.
00:13:56.800And you can be, you know, you can have all the revolutionary ideas that you want, but if you were defenseless against a major empire like the crown, every revolution, every uprising, which occurred prior to 1775, was crushed by the crown.
00:14:18.920And they saw an opportunity to basically disable or defang the revolution by seizing gunpowder supplies.
00:14:29.020And that is a very, very important point.
00:14:32.580We're going to talk about how Lixing and Concord was about gunpowder.
00:14:36.700We're going to take a short commercial break.
00:14:37.840The greatest combat historian of his generation, Patrick K. O'Donnell, joins us for, I don't know what, the 15th annual, The Combat History of Christmas.
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00:16:33.500To the War Rooms, the Combat History of Christmas.
00:16:36.100Patrick, I want to put up for the audience, I want to put up the two books, because you wrote, you went in, in the combination of The Indispensables and Washington's Immortals, two books, both huge bestsellers.
00:16:55.000How many years in research and writing, if I, because you did those, I think, back to back.
00:16:59.980If I have to take Patrick K. O'Donnell's life and the segment of the life of what you did in both in research and the construction of the book and then the writing of the book, how long was it?
00:17:27.560It was a good six years before that book was, I should say it was 2016 that it came out, not 2015.
00:17:35.580So it was a good six or seven years that I spent with Washington's Immortals.
00:17:40.880It was a, it was a book that began with a tour that I took with my battalion commander, the Willie Buell, who was in Belusia with me in 3-1.
00:17:53.520And he was, Council of Foreign Relations, he was the colonel that was there, one of their, the fellows.
00:18:02.680And he said to me, you want to go to the Met?
00:18:04.220I said, no, let's do a combat tour of the Battle of Brooklyn.
00:18:07.720And, you know, it's, it was one of the coolest things is to be able to, to walk the ground of a, of a critical battle with somebody you had been in battle with, especially a man that really kind of understood history and tactics, strategy.
00:18:22.500And we walked through, um, Greenwood Cemetery where the, the Rolling Hills are, you know, the site of some of New York's finest and most infamous, uh, characters.
00:18:33.660But it was also a, uh, the, a great battle that took place.
00:18:37.440The Battle of Brooklyn, um, begins at Greenwood Cemetery in the Heights.
00:18:42.080And this, this is where Washington troops, um, initially are pinned down by the British as a massive flanking maneuver is going behind them, led by Cornwallis and Lord Howell and Clinton.
00:18:55.840And, uh, you know, to their utter dismay and horror, they realize that they're being flanked.
00:19:00.220And they pull back to a stone house or near it, many of the men, and they make a last stand, uh, an American thermopoly takes place here, which buys an hour more precious in history than any other, as one contemporary historian said.
00:19:17.260And it's at this thermopoly that they prevented the junction of many wings of the British army and the Hessian forces from uniting and smashing the nascent revolution.
00:19:31.040I just, what, what I want to do is get the, is get the, Washington Immortals for the audience took you six, seven years to both research and write.
00:19:42.720And you got inspired by this, this combat tour you took with Willie, but people should remember you're going over the battlefield of one of the most important battles in the history of this country, because it almost stopped the history of this country.
00:19:54.940And the first 90 days of this country's birth is, is now in modern Brooklyn, correct?
00:20:00.760I mean, you're at Greenwood, Greenwood Cemetery is, a lot of people think that's the cemetery where the scene in the Godfather was taken.
00:20:08.140I think that it was actually in Calvary Cemetery, but it was made to be Greenwood Cemetery where it has so many of the, so many of the, uh, of the guys, the mobsters, uh, are, are, are buried.
00:20:20.320But you also have to go to downtown Brooklyn, but then go to the, Boss, Boss Tweed, the Indispensables, which I think you followed Washington's Immortals about the regiment from Maryland.
00:20:31.560You followed that with the Indispensables, right?
00:20:33.620About the, about the guys from Marblehead?
00:20:35.420I wrote, uh, the unknowns in between that.
00:21:49.580If, if you took both of those together, Washington Immortals and the Indispensables, and combined them of the years of research, because you do primary research, you go back to the journals, you go back to the archives, and the writing of it, how, how big a hunk of your life did it take?
00:22:07.900It was about 11 or 12 years, probably.
00:22:11.080And each one of the books I write is a journey.
00:22:24.020I, I, um, immerse myself in the history.
00:22:26.940And I try to immerse myself in the story of the men that I write about, as well as their opponents.
00:22:32.260So I try to tell as, as balance a story as I possibly can.
00:22:35.980And I let them tell their own story in their own words.
00:22:39.160So as you mentioned, Steve, primary sources, I don't have an agenda.
00:22:43.280My only agenda is to tell the story and to put you there, uh, in their, their time, what it was like to be in the boots of, of the men that they, that were fighting this or being, that were fought against.
00:22:56.420Or in some cases, it's also people on the home brunt that were, you know, waiting for their husbands to come home, dealing with, um, you know, massive starvation or not, you know, not having any money for years.
00:23:10.160Or having people that are, you know, the, the untold story in many cases is these guys go off to war.
00:23:16.620Nobody brings home the bacon, so to speak, and the creditors are still there waiting to be paid.
00:23:24.040And, you know, many of their, these men, uh, you know, have their, their homes repossessed.
00:23:29.920I mean, it's, it's a remarkable story of, of endurance.
00:23:33.720It's, it's truly, you know, somebody that's interviewed thousands of World War II veterans.
00:23:37.780I think this is our greatest generation.
00:23:39.680And many of the World War II veterans I interview would say the same thing.
00:23:46.320I want to, we got a couple of minutes in this segment.
00:23:48.080I want to tee up to get us to Christmas night, to actual Christmas day.
00:23:52.760But I, people are now just, and I think after we've been talking about this, putting it together, because everything you see on the 4th of July is about the Declaration of Independence.
00:24:04.560Folks, the lawyers creating that incident, it's an amazing document.
00:24:25.620Um, but that immediately kicks off or takes up to the next level, a war that's been going on for over a year, but Lexington and Concord and at, uh, in a Boston at Bunker Hill.
00:24:35.900The very day that it's signed or right afterwards, the largest armada, which has kind of come from Nova Scotia because the British really did retreat for a while to see how this thing would play out.
00:24:47.640Just explain to folks the scale and immensity of the British had no intention of letting this thing go.
00:24:54.540I mean, they basically put together the largest, uh, military expedition, I think in mankind's, in mankind's history, there've been other larger, maybe back in ancient times, but for modern times, because the Spanish armada never really landed.
00:25:10.340This was one, and it was going to, it was there to, to deliver a death blow to this Republic in the first hundred days of its life.
00:25:18.520Just tell me about the scale of what landed at Staten Island and really went to battle in Long Island.
00:25:25.360What I will say before that and before the Revolutionary War is something that is immensely important that I brought out in the Indispensibles, and that is something called the Articles of Association.
00:25:36.740And this is, this is an obscure document that nobody hears about or thinks about, but it's in the fall of 1775, and it declares war, economic war, against Great Britain.
00:25:49.220It basically boycotts their goods, and we won't ship anything in or export to them.
00:25:55.460This is a seminal document that unites the colonies as well.
00:26:00.120It's not so much a path to revolution, but it's a path to being united against a common front, which is the greatest economic power and one of the greatest military powers at the time.
00:26:13.060And it's a, uh, incredibly important document.
00:26:16.160It also covers dependency, and the colonists realized that if they were dependent on British goods, or dependent on gunpowder, or whatever, that they would, they would not have freedom.
00:26:29.180And that rings true today as much as ever.
00:26:33.260Dependency is a very important thing to avoid.
00:26:38.340As you mentioned, though, Steve, in 1776, they pull up with two-thirds of the British fleet to Long Island.
00:26:48.700Most of their army, about 65% to 70%, as well as over 10,000 Hessian members or allies that they hire to crush the rebellion.
00:27:05.580They are there to destroy and crush the rebellion.
00:27:08.760Initially, first, they try to negotiate, but Washington and his lieutenants and battle captains realized that Laura Howe really has no authority to actually have, to hear their grievances or to recognize the independence of the United States.
00:27:25.860This is, uh, and we're going to take a short commercial break here in a moment.
00:27:32.660This force, which is, you know, the, the institution of the Royal Navy is amazing.
00:27:38.020It's really helped create the British Empire.
00:27:40.160It's one of the greatest institutions ever created by man, uh, for a time.
00:27:44.140And the British Army, which was pound for pound, as tough as any professional army, plus, uh, 10,000 mercenaries.
00:27:52.520And the, and the Hessians had a thing in the mind of the colonists that these guys were almost like monsters.
00:27:57.800They were, they were, couldn't be defeated.
00:28:00.000Their size, their, their equipment, they actually had helmets that made them look even bigger than they were.
00:28:05.240That was all coiled to strike a blow to destroy the Continental Army and the militias around it and really end American independence, the independence movement.
00:28:14.140In a, uh, in a, in a hammer blow in the first hundred days of our existence.
00:28:18.720We're going to talk about that and how it led in a retreat all the way back to Pennsylvania and president and then general Washington ready to strike back on Christmas night.
00:28:28.660Short commercial break back in a moment.