SHNEAKO - March 15, 2026


SNEAKO Interviews The Veteran who Protested Iran War ｜ Brian McGinnis

Hosted by
Nicolas Kenn De Balinthazy
Mentioned
Rabbi Shmuley Brian Matt
SNEAKO Explains The Importance of Being Alone... Professor Jiang Has TERRIBLE Handwriting!

Episode Stats


Length

15 minutes

Words per minute

170.65

Word count

2,568

Sentence count

54

Harmful content

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On this episode of the podcast, we have a special guest, Matt, who served in the United States Marine Corps and served as a member of the elite SEAL Team Six. He is a combat veteran who served four years in the Middle East, including two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Matt tells us about his time in the military and how he got injured in combat.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 the fact that you didn't flinch at all when your arm was locked in the door like that it's
00:00:04.000 i could i've never seen somebody have so little of a reaction it's pretty clear that you probably
00:00:08.160 had some combat history what did you think about the response to this moment so yeah i got 95
00:00:13.200 percent support and then you got some haters people pull a whole you're out of regulations
00:00:18.240 with your uniform type of card and i just can't buy that argument given that we're you know killing
00:00:24.560 people and innocent children and they want to concern themselves about you know uh you know
00:00:31.440 uniform regs i'm not trying to be unpatriotic i am i think i am being actually more patriotic
00:00:37.520 because i'm looking out for uh my military brothers i agree genuinely hey hey man nice to
00:00:46.320 meet you a real uh nice to meet you too sneeko i'm glad to finally get to call you i'm uh i'm
00:00:53.600 I'm in Saudi Arabia.
00:00:54.440 I'm in Medina right now.
00:00:56.520 Really?
00:00:57.540 Yeah, yeah.
00:00:58.040 I don't know if you can.
00:00:59.340 This is one of the holy cities.
00:01:02.640 Oh, my gosh.
00:01:03.840 Yeah, dude.
00:01:04.620 That's amazing.
00:01:05.820 Great to finally meet you, Matt.
00:01:07.660 Where are you calling from right now?
00:01:10.220 From Wendell, North Carolina.
00:01:12.680 Well, I got to say, first off, I love seeing you stand up like that.
00:01:16.660 How's your arm doing?
00:01:18.400 It's doing good.
00:01:19.320 I got it all wrapped up.
00:01:20.860 You know, I got care at George Washington University Hospital, and I had a really great
00:01:28.580 surgeon, and he took care of me real good, man.
00:01:31.700 I'm glad to hear that, and you didn't face any serious, everything's okay?
00:01:38.100 Like, I really like seeing your courage and stand up against that, because...
00:01:41.100 Well, they let me, and they released me from...
00:01:45.780 They released you?
00:01:46.780 Yeah.
00:01:47.780 What's that?
00:01:48.780 They released you from what? Can you explain?
00:01:51.660 Yeah, they released me from, for now, I go back on a court date on April 2nd.
00:01:58.060 And they've got three counts of resisting arrest, three counts of assault on an officer,
00:02:03.420 and one, like, disturbing the peace or one other charge, something like that.
00:02:13.380 Well, I mean, you were just exercising your right to free speech.
00:02:16.500 For sure, for sure.
00:02:17.520 I was just standing my ground,
00:02:18.980 and they were the ones that were being really aggressive with me.
00:02:24.860 Yeah, I mean, that was brutal to see.
00:02:27.900 I could see my friend Lucas Gage was able to identify from your uniform
00:02:32.100 that you served before, correctly?
00:02:35.780 Yeah, I was a four-year enlistor.
00:02:38.240 I was four years in the Marines.
00:02:40.620 Did you fight in Iraq?
00:02:43.740 Yeah, now we were deployed in Iraq.
00:02:45.640 so how did you realize that that war was a scam did you i mean i know a lot of people enlisted
00:02:51.700 post 9-11 and we heard the lies about weapons of mass destruction so clearly as an iraq war veteran
00:02:58.660 thank you for doing what you believe to be right and thank you so much for your service
00:03:02.500 but we realized that that war was a lie there were no weapons of mass destruction
00:03:06.200 a million innocent iraqis were killed and had birth defects so the fact that you don't want 0.92
00:03:11.200 to repeat the same mistakes for the sham war for israel it shows that you you care about this
00:03:15.920 country unlike these politicians who are so cowardly they'll try to get people to die in a
00:03:20.400 war they won't fight in yeah then iraq is destabilized to this day is you know birthed 0.71
00:03:28.340 isis um and the whole praising for it was a lie like you said and to see it be repeated and then
00:03:36.060 the millions of iraqis left that died i uh met an iraqi amazing man he was 30 years old and he
00:03:42.640 looked at me he says but i'm tired man i'm tired and he's been he's been an emergency responder
00:03:49.380 uh emt and he's he's linked up with some amazing uh donors and he does so much for his community
00:03:57.000 he's built an art museum he's uh he donates um bathrooms for the gaza genocide like large 0.95
00:04:06.260 you know kind of trailer type bathrooms he takes trips to sudan and he gathers up the worst uh
00:04:14.580 injured people or most sick people and transport them by airplane to uh hospitals so uh when i
00:04:23.220 met him i had a lot of guilt and i just kind of confessed to him how i participated in the
00:04:28.440 occupation of iraq in 2003 and and he just you know looked at me with kind eyes and said hey man
00:04:35.700 you know i know uh i've i've known many people like this and you know the the world is a big
00:04:44.760 scary place and he just looked at me with uh you know forgiving nature eyes and just and of course
00:04:51.580 we were meeting at the flotilla so you know we had both you know had our intentions to try to
00:04:56.880 help people now at this point so anyway he was forgivable he was forgiving of my past and it
00:05:02.700 meant a lot to me being that he was an iraqi uh man and so anyway yeah i mean that senator who
00:05:10.800 broke your arm but first off you the fact that you didn't flinch at all when your arm was locked in
00:05:15.420 the door like that it's i could i've never seen somebody have so little of a reaction which made
00:05:20.620 me it made it pretty clear that you probably had some combat history but what was your what did
00:05:27.260 you think about the the subsequent response because i had more people i would love to see
00:05:31.140 more veterans like you speak up and prevent the same mistakes from happening i think most people
00:05:37.160 consider you to be a hero i do and i really thank you for speaking up like that that shows
00:05:42.100 true patriotism but also i saw some others who say some disrespectful things you know some other
00:05:47.520 talking heads and streamers what did you think about the response to this to this moment
00:05:52.780 so yeah i got 95 percent support i mean just real heartwarming messages um sharing that they
00:06:03.480 they support me and they're behind me and then you got some haters people pull a whole you're
00:06:08.800 out of regulations with your uniform type of card and i just can't buy that argument given that we're
00:06:14.380 you know killing people and innocent children and and they want to concern themselves about
00:06:20.580 you know uh you know uniform regs and then so yeah and then the senator she's comment about
00:06:29.020 i hope i i get the help that i need was very disingenuous and snarky and uh backhanded uh
00:06:37.000 statement or comment so um so yeah man uh this i'm not trying to be unpatriotic i'm i think i am
00:06:48.060 being actually more patriotic because i'm looking out for uh my military brothers i agree genuinely
00:06:54.360 yeah i mean that's what we're supposed to do is prevent these prevent this from happening
00:07:00.140 what do you think we could do to to wake up more troops about this and see what's really going on
00:07:04.460 i saw trump was declaring victory today you know there might be deploying 5 000 marines you know
00:07:10.160 they want troops on the ground asap what what else do you think could be done to try to prevent
00:07:15.000 more innocent lives from dying on both sides well my friend i'm not sure man i just had my
00:07:22.000 uh nephew come over and he's enlisted in the marines in camp lechon uh he's in radio comms
00:07:27.900 and man, what a conflicting feeling I have about this
00:07:32.820 because I'm proud of him for stepping into this role
00:07:36.240 and he looks like a million bucks
00:07:38.180 and he's young and strong and I was a Marine
00:07:40.520 so we share that enthusiasm
00:07:43.120 but man, my concern for him is serious
00:07:47.480 he's got friends that are going to Iran
00:07:50.780 and that part of the world
00:07:52.120 he may be deployed to Venezuela or Cuba
00:07:55.200 And so what can we do is he said some really beautiful things, too.
00:08:00.940 Like, you know, me and my wife were just asking him, you know, how do you feel about the war and your potential to go to Iran and stuff and being in the Marines?
00:08:11.700 His statement, his remark was just, his reply was just, I thought if there was, if there's more Muslims or more diverse community in the Marines, we can just make it a better place.
00:08:27.740 And that was his real intent.
00:08:31.060 And so I really feel like everybody who has a good-natured heart in every position they are,
00:08:38.880 if we all can just magically and invisibly just connect and bond and know that we're here for each other
00:08:48.560 and make an impact everywhere we are,
00:08:52.620 then I would assume we can make the world a better place in every little way.
00:08:57.740 that we can in our own little ways.
00:08:59.540 Absolutely.
00:09:00.660 And the funniest thing was that the biggest expose they had on you
00:09:04.000 was he has a Palestinian wife.
00:09:08.000 It's like the biggest expose for them is that they're on Epstein Island.
00:09:11.540 For you, it's that you have a marriage.
00:09:14.000 How is that a big reveal of anything?
00:09:17.800 It's a big reveal of their racism.
00:09:19.740 It's a big reveal of their ignorance about my wife. 0.89
00:09:24.600 She's a American-Palestinian.
00:09:25.960 she is from raleigh north carolina that makes her a north carolinian like you know kind of
00:09:31.840 she's just she's a good old american girl yeah that has palestinian descent her dad is so great
00:09:39.760 i love him but he's got a southern accent and he was a fireman from where i was and he's just a good
00:09:46.460 old boy so he's great he's funny man and so these people are so much more people than anybody wants
00:09:53.440 to let them be him and they're just making all these comments without ever knowing them so it's
00:09:58.360 it's complete ridiculousness yeah that was uh i think the biggest moment where you just see like
00:10:03.980 the hypocrisy and double standard where that was supposed to be like a career-ending revelation
00:10:08.400 the fact that you are happily married they really have nothing they have nothing so um yeah yeah 0.98
00:10:16.860 it's silly man that's ridiculous i know my wife she's genuine she's great she's a wonderful woman 0.88
00:10:21.740 We got four young kids. We're doing the best we can trying to raise them up and make them some good kids. 0.98
00:10:29.340 It's crazy, man. They're 10, 9, and 7-year-old twin boys, and a girl and a boy, and they're a handful, but they're the best.
00:10:38.000 And so we was changing diapers for six years straight. We've been through it, just like everybody else.
00:10:42.840 So I wish we could just all relate on the realities and struggles of life
00:10:48.840 instead of just jumping to the stereotypical hate we're throwing back and forth.
00:10:54.140 I know it's a real intense situation with the war going on,
00:10:56.900 but that's all just drummed up drama trying to make Muslims and Christians
00:11:02.400 and Americans and Iranians and Palestinians and Israelis sound like they're enemies
00:11:08.120 when we have more in common than we should, than we realize.
00:11:12.180 yeah absolutely i mean they're trying to try to turn this into a religious war
00:11:16.460 if the rhetoric from i saw trump said yesterday iranians they have something genetically wrong
00:11:22.120 with them they're saying that the people in iran are religiously backwards while they're doing
00:11:26.260 this prayer on trump while putting their hands on his head and hegseth had these weird kafir
00:11:31.940 tattoos and antichrist tattoos when you were in the army what did you hear about because we're
00:11:37.540 hearing some reports from hegseth telling people that this is a holy war and jesus a knight
00:11:41.640 anointed a light on Trump to bless the state of Israel and to destroy Iran what is the religious 0.93
00:11:48.540 aspect that you could tell us having served in the Iraq war well when I was in the Iraq war I was
00:11:55.680 quite a bible thumper I wasn't you know trying to preach to everybody but I was really into my faith
00:12:00.340 you know and and that gave me a lot of stability and I was always you know really uh you know in
00:12:05.880 way you could say that i was just focused on being a good righteous person i never thought
00:12:11.680 i was in this war for for god's message or anything i was just going through the marines
00:12:16.360 and wanting to defend my brother on my right my left just the usual military stuff as far as you
00:12:22.540 know the excess message related to you know how this is prophecy and you know the soldiers and
00:12:29.660 marines and sailors and airmen are fulfilling you know uh you know something on behalf of trump's
00:12:35.560 divine position, that's a little carried away, and it's hard to believe that that's really
00:12:41.420 happening, but some of the YouTube videos that I've been told to watch from some of
00:12:46.820 my friends back in Illinois are quite slanted, as if this is like the end of the world, and
00:12:54.040 Armageddon, and prophecies are starting to, you know, really, you know, roll out or really
00:13:03.260 take place so i think you know it is it is really taking hold of a lot of people's minds and uh
00:13:10.140 and it's scary it's scary to think that but in my opinion is this is uh you know what a horrible
00:13:17.100 fate just what a horrible prophecy to have to lean into the end of the world type stuff
00:13:21.580 i still think we should just like passively accept it we should still keep our eyes wide
00:13:29.020 open and look out for evil and call evil out and try to do good and try to help the world
00:13:33.980 i can't disagree with anything you said man and best of luck to you if you have anything to uh
00:13:41.260 to share how do we support you well um let's see uh just you know i just really appreciate you
00:13:48.460 letting me be on your platform and i really want to wish everybody out there uh you know the best
00:13:54.380 uh the best and peace at this time and you have a good time out there in saudi arabia
00:14:01.020 ramadan mark to you and and uh yeah man i really appreciate you reaching out to me and uh give me
00:14:08.700 an opportunity to speak with you yeah i hope to speak to you again soon when i have uh a little
00:14:13.660 more of a cleaner setup you know when i'm back in america i'll be back soon i appreciate your time
00:14:18.300 brian so much anything you need feel free to reach out to to me i would love to help you in any way
00:14:24.380 Yeah. Oh, thank you. And listen, when you called out Rabbi Shmuley in New York Times Square, I think that was just so motivating, man. And so the last two and a half years has been so hard to witness the Gaza genocide. So having bright spots like that, having strong people speak out on Palestine's behalf, they really stand out. So that was a real special time in my mind. So I appreciate that.
00:14:54.380 one for sure brother all right man take care thanks so much for the conversation talk soon
00:15:00.920 bye peace Brian