The Megyn Kelly Show - Trump Raid's 1⧸6 Connection, and Building Mental Toughness, with Andy Frisella and Charles C.W. Cooke ｜ Ep. 374

00:00:00.520 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.900 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We have got so much to get

00:00:16.820 into today, including a conversation with the man known as the MF CEO, the force behind

00:00:23.560 75 Hard, Andy Priscilla. I'm so excited to talk to him. This guy's going to get you pumped up

00:00:29.320 and ready to change your life for the better. Just reading up on him, I'm like, yes, I'm

00:00:33.600 ready to go. But we're going to begin today with the very latest on the FBI's raid of Donald

00:00:38.680 Trump's Mar-a-Lago home. Secrets, lies, and half-truths dominating the headlines. The latest

00:00:45.020 head-scratcher having to do with the former president's passports. Apparently he has more

00:00:49.560 than one, as is often the case for somebody who held the office of president. He said that

00:00:55.380 they were taken in that FBI raid. The mainstream media immediately dismissed his claim, several

00:01:00.480 calling him a liar. CBS News' Nora O'Donnell, this is the gal now sitting in Dan Rather's

00:01:06.620 old seat, even cited an FBI official saying the feds were not in possession of the passports,

00:01:14.500 a report that was immediately amplified by some of Trump's harshest critics. We'll get to

00:01:19.680 exactly who in a minute. But it turns out Trump was 100 percent right. The passports were taken.

00:01:25.200 As for Nora O'Donnell's tweet, it's still up. That's right. She's been caught red-handed

00:01:30.220 in misinformation, and she hasn't taken it down, nor apologized for misdirecting people.

00:01:37.280 She's offered no explanation. She'd offered no retraction. She's not sorry. She didn't say

00:01:43.480 she's sorry because she's not. If it's bad for Trump, you can run with it with impunity

00:01:49.580 as a mainstream news anchor or one of their supporters. MSNBC put on Peter Struck to comment

00:01:58.000 on this. The disgraced FBI fired agent. He's commenting on it, and we'll play that for you

00:02:03.800 in a second. This, of course, is just one small story in the ongoing saga pitting former President

00:02:09.860 Trump and his followers against the Washington establishment. But it amplifies the distrust

00:02:15.060 so many Americans have for our elite institutions. Meanwhile, Trump is now calling for the immediate

00:02:21.700 unredacted release of the affidavit that was submitted by the FBI in support of that raid

00:02:28.560 on Mar-a-Lago. In other words, they couldn't get the warrant without submitting a supporting

00:02:33.500 affidavit. And we've seen the warrant, but we haven't seen the affidavit. But the Justice

00:02:37.400 Department is fighting this, saying you shouldn't see the affidavit. It says it needs to, quote,

00:02:42.340 protect the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security.

00:02:53.280 Charles C.W. Cook is a senior writer at National Review. Charles, welcome back to the show.

00:02:59.460 This whole thing is really making my blood boil because I don't care what you think of former

00:03:05.680 President Trump, whether you want him in office, whether you think he won. You know, you can go

00:03:10.700 hardcore MAGA or hardcore resistance. And to me, the truth is evident. This is a targeted persecution

00:03:18.040 of the guy. They want him in handcuffs. They'll do it however they can. And Merrick Garland is risking

00:03:26.520 the integrity and trust of the Department of Justice in order to do it. He has taken us all down a very

00:03:34.240 dark path. That's my take. I've said it before. I say it again, even having seen now the judge's

00:03:41.620 order, the warrant that they got. What's your take?

00:03:46.880 That it seems to be either disproportionate or pretextual. There's nothing wrong per se with a

00:03:53.880 former president or even a president, for that matter, being investigated or prosecuted. We live

00:04:01.380 in a country in which we're all equal under the law. That's important. But that runs both ways.

00:04:10.260 If the argument is that Joe down the street would be investigated and prosecuted for alleged crime X,

00:04:18.860 then so should a former president. But what if Joe down the street wouldn't be investigated or

00:04:26.300 prosecuted or in this case searched? And that's the part that worries me. We, of course, don't see

00:04:33.700 many Joe down the street cases related to the Presidential Records Act. But we have seen a lot

00:04:38.300 of cases in recent years to do with classified information and to do with people having documents

00:04:43.920 that they shouldn't, most famously with Hillary Clinton. She wasn't searched. She also wasn't

00:04:50.300 prosecuted. And I think if this case turns out to be related to the Presidential Records Act or anything

00:04:58.640 of that nature, the search will look disproportionate. And that matters a great deal because the other

00:05:04.800 value in play here, alongside equality under the law, is our perception of our government as even-handed

00:05:13.580 and unwilling to use or abuse its power to go after its political rivals. And it does look to me in this

00:05:18.820 case, either that the Department of Justice has elevated what is a relatively minor infraction

00:05:26.040 beyond its status, or as my colleague Andy McCarthy has argued, used the alleged violation of the

00:05:35.320 Presidential Records Act as a prerequisite, as an excuse to go in and look for other information,

00:05:43.920 perhaps related to January 6th, that it can use against Trump in the future.

00:05:47.640 So that's exactly what I've been saying as well. I've been reading Andy and agree with him

00:05:52.040 wholeheartedly. The night that the news broke, I was watching my television saying,

00:05:56.220 if you believe this is about presidential records, you're crazy. This is about January 6th and getting

00:06:01.540 him however they can. They need the evidence of intent. If they're going to charge him with conspiracy

00:06:06.200 to defraud the American public or government officials or obstructing Congress, they need an element

00:06:11.800 of intent. They have to get into Trump's head and prove he knew what he was saying about the election

00:06:16.040 was nonsense and they haven't been able to do it. There's no evidence of that. In fact, to the

00:06:21.120 contrary, even if you disbelieve his election claims, as I know you do and I do, I will be quick to say,

00:06:29.820 I believe Trump believed them. I believe Trump. I don't think they're going to find evidence that

00:06:34.440 he was actively lying because I don't think Trump thinks he's ever lost anything. So they're on a witch

00:06:39.820 hunt. Andy had a piece, I think, in which he said something like if they may be looking for a needle in the

00:06:44.660 haystack, but they have the whole haystack now. They went in there, they got the entire haystack from Mar-a-Lago

00:06:49.900 and they're pouring through passports and everything else. And if you look at the warrant, it's very telling

00:06:55.880 because it's not narrowly tailored to get classified documents. It really has very little to do with classified

00:07:02.060 documents. And that's no surprise, since as president, he could have declassified everything. And by the way, Hillary

00:07:07.780 Clinton kept 30,000 emails that she shouldn't have, 2,000 of which were classified. And then she destroyed the 0.93

00:07:13.300 documents and the hard drive with a hammer. OK, so nobody rated her. So this isn't about classified

00:07:19.240 documents. This is about something else. And so if you look at the warrant, if it cast the widest net

00:07:24.760 humanly possible, they can get everything, every document in there, as long as it related to the

00:07:30.340 Trump administration doesn't have to be limited to classified things or non or nuclear secrets,

00:07:35.500 as the DOJ tried to leak late last week in an attempt to cover itself. It's as wide as it can

00:07:40.920 possibly go. It's boxes of documents and anything near them, which I suppose is why they were in

00:07:46.040 Melania's closet. This is an attempt to get him, get him in handcuffs and get him out of the 2024 race. 0.73

00:07:53.600 Well, there's the two step, you see, because if the investigation was really about the

00:08:01.480 Presidential Records Act, then it would make sense to have a wide net. And if you're actually looking for

00:08:07.800 documents that should be within the federal government's possession instead of former

00:08:13.760 President Trump's possession, then sure, you would say all four years of his presidency and the warrant.

00:08:19.320 But because it seems pretty obvious that that doesn't or shouldn't rise to the level,

00:08:24.920 because we would not see a search warrant on that basis for anyone else, because Hillary Clinton, 0.99

00:08:31.240 albeit with a slightly different law, in some cases, not in others, the Espionage Act is invoked here,

00:08:35.620 too, was not searched. Then the government knows that they have to sex it up a bit.

00:08:41.420 And so they started talking about nuclear secrets and so on. And, you know, it reminded me of a lot

00:08:47.680 of the games we've seen over the last five years, where people within the intelligence services or the

00:08:53.880 Department of Justice will make the most extraordinary sounding case that they can, even if it's tangential.

00:09:01.240 I mean, maybe there is a document there that refers to nuclear weapons or suddenly that's nuclear secrets.

00:09:09.040 It also reminds me, I must say, of some of the games that were played with weapons of mass destruction,

00:09:14.380 where when you looked at the real information, you weren't too impressed.

00:09:18.600 But if you looked at the way that it was being reported in the newspapers or sold to the UN,

00:09:23.880 again, it sounded absolutely terrifying. So, yeah, that irritated me. But it also showed the

00:09:30.580 way that they're doing one thing with the warrant and another thing when they're leaking to the

00:09:35.260 Washington Post.

00:09:37.000 Andy had a piece talking about how the Presidential Records Act is not a criminal statute,

00:09:41.080 but they're basically trying to use the criminal law to enforce the Presidential Records Act.

00:09:47.200 They went and got a grand. They opened a grand jury. The little guy at the National Archives who is

00:09:53.360 clearly anti-Trump. I mean, he's made public statements about how January 6th was the worst

00:09:58.420 day of his life and how he intentionally resigned under President Biden because he wanted to be

00:10:03.400 replaced by this administration. That guy found out when he got the return of the 15 boxes that

00:10:08.960 Trump had taken with him when he left office, that there was stuff in there that was arguably

00:10:12.780 classified. And by the way, like the notion that Trump sat around, you know, like with his

00:10:18.180 girlfriends braiding each other's hair, packing up the boxes on his last day in office. It wasn't

00:10:23.700 Trump who packed any of this stuff, right? It was clearly some aide who shipped up boxes and sent

00:10:28.700 them to Mar-a-Lago. All right. So this guy, this guy, the National Archives, gets the 15 boxes back.

00:10:34.140 OK, good. So far, good. And he says, oh, my God, I think there's classified stuff in here.

00:10:39.740 Doesn't ask whether Trump declassified them as his power as president, but simply goes to DOJ,

00:10:45.300 goes to DOJ, didn't go to DOJ over Hillary Clinton there. He went back to the State Department and

00:10:50.220 said, hey, yo, she's got a private server. But with President Trump, it's right over to the

00:10:54.180 Department of Justice run by Merrick Garland. And what does Merrick Garland do? He opens up a grand

00:10:59.140 jury. He gets a grand jury proceeding going to look into this, which I mean, the die was cast,

00:11:04.800 right? And so the grand jury says, oh, it looks bad. Yes. OK. Next thing we know,

00:11:08.480 we're in search warrant territory and we're going down the lane. And Charles,

00:11:14.140 it very much looks like they are going to indict the former president of the United States.

00:11:21.580 What exactly on? I don't know. Could be related to January 6th that they get their evidence of intent

00:11:25.840 could be based on the Presidential Records Act, which, again, is not a criminal statute,

00:11:30.920 but they're using the criminal law to enforce it. I don't know exactly. It could be the Espionage Act,

00:11:36.040 if there's something in those boxes that they think relates to national security, despite the

00:11:39.920 fact, again, that he was president and could have declassified anything. And all hell is going to

00:11:44.440 break loose in this country if they do that. Yeah. And I think it should. I'll put this in

00:11:50.820 context for those of your listeners who don't know me. I think Trump should have been impeached

00:11:55.780 by Congress. I don't think, though, that Trump has committed a crime. Those are separate questions.

00:12:02.120 I think Congress would have been entirely within its rights to say that the executive branch led by

00:12:07.940 Trump had behaved in a way that was unacceptable and that Trump was hereby barred from making it all

00:12:16.000 the way to the White House. Again, that's a political question. But Congress didn't do that.

00:12:21.360 It chose not to do that. And the idea that we can just swap one out for another, that impeachment

00:12:31.260 and prosecution are synonyms, is wrong. In this country, and indeed in any free country,

00:12:40.800 we should operate on the presumption that we investigate crimes and not people.

00:12:48.300 We don't start with the suspicion or intuition that someone is a bad egg and then spend our time

00:12:57.920 trying to work out which crimes they've committed. I mean, if we did that with almost anyone,

00:13:06.420 we would be able to find something. I'm a pretty law-abiding guy. I'm an immigrant,

00:13:11.800 so I'm probably more scared of the federal government than some. But I'm sure if you decided

00:13:19.740 as an attorney general to come into my house and look around, you could find something that I've

00:13:26.860 done wrong. I'm sure the state of Florida could find something that I've done wrong. And this seems

00:13:31.340 to me what we are now seeing with Trump. We start with the premise, this is a bad guy.

00:13:37.780 And we go all the way down the line until we are searching in desperation for something that we

00:13:44.960 can bring against it. Merrick Garland's under a lot of pressure, especially from the progressive left,

00:13:50.700 to do something. But that should worry everyone. I mean, it should have worried everyone when the

00:13:56.820 New York attorney general was doing it. It should have worried everyone under Mueller. And it should

00:14:04.340 worry everyone under Merrick Garland, because that's just not how free countries are supposed

00:14:09.440 to operate. Yes. And now it looks like they're getting closer to potentially going after Rudy

00:14:15.140 Giuliani down in Georgia criminally for his role in representing Donald Trump, which also I have to say

00:14:21.940 as a lawyer makes me feel very uncomfortable. You know, bad legal theories are not crimes.

00:14:28.600 They're there. They're to be mocked and they're to be rejected by judges, but they're not to be

00:14:33.400 prosecuted. But one by one, we're seeing Trump's closest advisers fall within the realm of these criminal

00:14:40.680 justice authorities, whether it's the federal DOJ or the Georgia state authorities or congressional

00:14:45.720 subpoenas trying to get it. What may be attorney client privilege communications? I mean, the whole thing

00:14:51.180 is making me very uncomfortable. And, you know, separately, at the same time, Charles, you've got.

00:14:57.820 Yes, the rhetoric on FBI agents has reached a dangerous level. Obviously, some guy tried to

00:15:04.660 attack the Cincinnati field office of the FBI, and that's wrong. And like the rank and file FBI agents

00:15:10.780 are not to blame for this nonsense. It's Merrick Garland who's pursuing this. It's him. I'm not calling

00:15:15.540 for violence on Merrick Garland, but I'm just saying if we're talking about who's responsible,

00:15:18.340 it's not some guy who tried to serve his country honorably by protecting us from,

00:15:22.260 you know, true domestic extremists or terrorists. It's the law enforcement officials making these

00:15:27.220 calls. So no, no attacks on FBI agents or field offices, actual attacks, never mind just words,

00:15:33.680 are acceptable. However, listen to this. Kamala Harris is asked about it over the weekend,

00:15:39.560 that attack on the FBI field office and the growing rhetoric about the FBI coming out of

00:15:45.460 Donald Trump and his allies was the question. And this is what she said.

00:15:50.580 Any attacks on law enforcement are completely unacceptable. And any so-called leader who

00:15:55.920 engages in rhetoric that in any way suggests that law enforcement should be exposed to that

00:16:01.620 kind of danger is irresponsible, can result in dangerous activities. I think it's just highly

00:16:07.500 irresponsible of anyone who calls themselves a leader and certainly anyone who represents the

00:16:12.380 United States of America to engage in rhetoric for the sake of some political objective

00:16:15.800 that can result in harm to law enforcement officers and agents. This is from the same person

00:16:23.340 who, when Jacob Blake was stabbed by or was shot by police officers after pulling a knife on them

00:16:30.220 in Wisconsin, called him a hero, went to visit him and gave us a lecture at the time. I pulled it up

00:16:36.260 because I remembered it about how the life of a black person in America has never been treated as fully

00:16:43.600 human and will only achieve that when we finally come together to pass meaningful police reform and

00:16:50.300 criminal justice reform. And yes, acknowledge systemic racism. OK, so black people are not treated as

00:16:56.000 humans and police are to blame as she calls the guy who tried to kill a police officer, a hero.

00:17:02.740 So I don't really want her lectures on rhetoric that might endanger law enforcement.

00:17:08.880 Well, the Democratic Party seems to be talking itself into a position of defund the police and

00:17:14.460 give the money to the IRS and the FBI. It's really strange. I think it's especially strange for anyone

00:17:20.740 who has been alive for more than about eight minutes. And if you go back to the 1970s and early 80s and you

00:17:28.020 watch pretty much any movie, you pick off the shelf at random, the FBI are the bad guys. The CIA are the

00:17:34.660 bad guys. The federal government is widely mistrusted. And they're broadly seen as these sort of tools of

00:17:44.720 conservatism and of the Republican Party. And now we have a Republican Party that can be irresponsible in

00:17:53.400 its description of the FBI and a Democratic Party and a progressive movement more broadly that wants

00:17:59.600 us to implicitly trust that FBI. I have a slightly unusual view of the FBI, which is that although I

00:18:10.860 don't think that the rank and file officers are particularly worthy of criticism, I think that we have a

00:18:18.820 problem in America in that the FBI doesn't sit especially neatly within our constitutional order.

00:18:26.380 And in fact, one could say the same thing about the Department of Justice. The federal government

00:18:31.860 is not, or at least was not originally envisioned to have police powers of any sort. And in fact,

00:18:41.560 the federal government was supposed to have very limited powers and the president was supposed to be in

00:18:46.660 charge of the limited number of agencies and offices that executed those powers. And what we have now is

00:18:53.900 a really strange situation in which we have this federal police force that is nominally accountable to

00:19:00.980 the president, but that is treated by that president and also by the public at large as some sort of free

00:19:08.100 floating fourth branch of government. And so you have President Biden last week saying, well, I didn't know

00:19:16.200 that this raid was going to happen. You have President Biden saying last week, well, I didn't know

00:19:21.400 Merrick Garland was going to stage a press conference. But of course, the Department of Justice and the FBI sit within

00:19:28.000 the executive branch. Under Trump, we had a really weird situation in which, you know, Mueller technically worked for

00:19:36.440 Trump. So Trump was supposed to oversee the department that was investigating him while not interfering at all.

00:19:43.820 It's just it's a very odd setup that we have, in part because we underuse Congress. And I think what's happened here is that

00:19:53.840 Kamala Harris is looking at the FBI and the Department of Justice, and she's thinking, well, this is within my executive branch.

00:20:01.400 She's the vice president. So I have to defend it, whereas, say, the police department in Minneapolis or Atlanta

00:20:06.620 or what you will is not. But it is extremely jarring. I agree.

00:20:11.700 I mean, it's absurd. I don't remember her getting upset when Chuck Schumer said outside the Supreme Court,

00:20:16.820 you've you've released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you.

00:20:22.700 You go forward with these awful decisions. This is March of 2020 before she became president.

00:20:27.000 But I don't remember her getting very upset about the threats to law enforcement, law enforcement.

00:20:33.120 And and by the way, the FBI, the same FBI, you know, of which now she's so defensive.

00:20:38.800 This group openly said it was too busy to investigate threats against Supreme Court justices as these

00:20:43.680 protesters marched outside of their homes a couple of months ago. And as one of them had a guy show up

00:20:49.320 at his home ready to assassinate him, they were too busy to investigate. Then now we know what they were too

00:20:54.080 busy with getting ready to go down and raid the home of a former president who was cooperating with

00:20:59.280 law enforcement and who had already been participating in a process for the return of the documents that it

00:21:05.520 wasn't necessarily going perfectly or exactly how Merrick Garland went, did not justify these extreme

00:21:11.400 measures. Let's talk for a minute about the media, which I mentioned, the Nora O'Donnell tweet,

00:21:16.840 which has not been corrected or pulled down or revised in any way, even though in response to it,

00:21:22.360 Trump's team put out the actual email they received from the feds saying, indeed, the FBI had seized his

00:21:28.020 apparently three passports, two of which were expired, one of which is the current. I'm not

00:21:32.920 exactly sure how it works. I read something about sitting presidents getting special passport, but I

00:21:36.700 have no idea whether it's true. In any event, there were three. And so they they did seize them.

00:21:42.580 And and she doesn't correct the tweet. Meantime, before they put out the proof that indeed they had

00:21:51.840 seized them, you've got Peter Strzok, Peter Strzok, disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, who said we will

00:21:58.640 stop. We will stop Trump from becoming president. Invited on MSNBC. I mean, it's like, oh, my God,

00:22:05.180 you can't make it up, Charles. It's like something that somebody at National Review or Fox or Daily Wire,

00:22:10.900 which is this would be like a dream of how it would go down. He takes to the airwaves and says

00:22:15.620 the following. Joe, absolutely. The American public should trust what the FBI is doing. You know,

00:22:21.480 what's funny is I think back the year and a half that I spent with a team looking at Hillary Clinton's

00:22:27.020 use of a private email server. There was no concern. There was no outrage on behalf of any Republican

00:22:32.820 as we used search warrants, as we went out and did a very invasive investigation to try and get to

00:22:38.580 the bottom of what she did or didn't do. So it's not that the FBI is targeting any one side or the

00:22:44.520 other. What you see is the FBI going out on a day in, day out basis, objectively investigating

00:22:50.000 allegations of law. It just so happens that the only thing that tends to come up in the right wing

00:22:55.120 ecosphere, whether in the media or on the Hill or from President Trump, are those things where they

00:23:00.240 take a personal affront because it directly impacts them. There's absolute silence when the FBI

00:23:05.420 is investigating former Secretary Clinton. There's absolute silence when the FBI is doing

00:23:10.540 things that isn't targeting them. Okay. And his tweets, by the way, said Trump or Trump was a liar

00:23:17.800 that the FBI did not seize the passports. And of course, he was forced to delete those because

00:23:23.400 he's got Trump derangement syndrome like like nobody. I mean, he's one of the worst and wants to go out

00:23:29.980 there now and tell us that the FBI is completely objectively investigating this, just the same as it did with

00:23:34.540 Hillary Clinton. Well, I think you have to pick one. I mean, I wrote a great deal about the Hillary

00:23:40.600 Clinton allegations. And I came to the view that there was a colourable case that she'd violated the

00:23:47.200 law. But she wasn't prosecuted. She also wasn't searched. And he he played a game there where he

00:23:54.640 said, oh, the FBI using search warrants, fine. But the FBI did not execute a search of Hillary Clinton's 0.96

00:24:03.560 house. So the implication there is a little muddy. But the conclusion was, and we all watched the

00:24:10.780 press conference, the conclusion was that Hillary Clinton would not be indicted. She would not be

00:24:17.800 prosecuted because a normal person would not that the law in question was not routinely used in the

00:24:26.420 way that it would have been against Hillary Clinton. Now, that's fine. I mean, I don't think

00:24:32.460 I raised a peep. I'm a bit of a squish on criminal justice, in fact. And that's fine. But if that's

00:24:39.840 the standard, then that's going to have to be the standard for Donald Trump as well. We can't have a

00:24:45.960 different set of rules. So, you know, if he's going to do the what about? Well, yeah, what about

00:24:52.580 Hillary Clinton, who wasn't searched and who wasn't indicted? Shouldn't we expect the same behaviour

00:24:57.820 from the FBI and the DOJ? In that case, simply saying, well, Republicans didn't say this or that

00:25:04.740 when she was being investigated. Republicans haven't said very much about Donald Trump being investigated

00:25:10.700 under the Presidential Records Act case. What they objected to was when that investigation led to

00:25:17.320 behaviour that is not normal in that circumstance. All right. Shifting gears now, because I've got to

00:25:24.880 get to this sound, but I wasn't live on the air on Friday and I saw this. I just I couldn't I couldn't

00:25:30.440 believe my eyes and ears. But I mean, I don't know why. I don't know why I couldn't. Dr. Fauci is out

00:25:37.280 there on the news again, talking about himself and his effect on others. I'll let the soundbite speak

00:25:43.500 for itself and then get your reaction. Listen to this. It's called the Fauci effect, which is sort

00:25:49.620 of like, you know, as trust me, I'm I don't get excited about that. I mean, it's nice, but I mean,

00:25:59.380 it's it's people go to medical school. Now, people are interested in science, not because of me,

00:26:06.960 because people, most people don't know me who I am. My friends know me. My wife knows me, but people

00:26:12.180 don't know me. It's what I symbolize and what I symbolize in a in an era of the normalization of

00:26:21.440 untruths and lies and and all the things you're seeing going on in society from January 6th to

00:26:30.340 everything else that goes on. People, the craving for consistency, for integrity, for truth and for

00:26:37.020 people caring about people. Oh, my God.

00:26:42.580 It's delusional. It's absolutely delusional. And I think the kids call that a humble brag. He wasn't

00:26:48.360 too good at the humble bit. He did pretend that he wasn't excited by this development or theoretical

00:26:56.460 development. I'm not convinced it's real. But he's clearly thrilled by it, which in and of itself

00:27:03.100 is untoward. But does he not realize how he's seen by most people? That's not how he's seen by most

00:27:11.720 people. He probably more than anyone is responsible for a collapse in trust in science and in the

00:27:21.040 establishment and in public health authorities. That is just that is two Americas right there.

00:27:28.820 Unfortunately, the one he lives in has about five percent of the people in it.

00:27:32.140 It's delusional. It's so delusional. It's not the Fauci effect. The Fauci effect is as soon as you hear

00:27:38.160 something from a public health official, close your ears and run because it's likely to be a lie

00:27:42.140 meant to control you. It's not about, oh, Fauci synonymous with truth and consistency and integrity

00:27:49.160 and caring about people. He's admitted to some of his multiple lies. He's already on record. How is

00:27:56.420 he the face of truth? And he's still in his position, Charles? I mean, I realize that the

00:28:02.780 CDC, which is not his organization, they all work in tandem, has now finally come out and wants to be

00:28:08.840 patted on the back for getting to the place that we've all been for a long time, which is recognizing

00:28:14.400 something about natural immunity and saying don't treat people differently versus if they've been

00:28:21.460 vaccinated versus not vaccinated. And the social distancing doesn't need to go on and we should

00:28:25.920 stop testing asymptomatic people. Finally, finally, the CDC comes out and says that. But Fauci's done

00:28:32.440 absolutely no accounting for his misleading and terrible policies that have hurt so many people.

00:28:38.720 And honestly, you could make a strong case led to the deaths of many people as well.

00:28:43.820 Yeah, I think that the worst part on reflection, I hadn't actually heard the full clip until he just

00:28:48.460 played it to me, is the part at the end where he talks about caring about people. Because this really

00:28:53.900 was the biggest problem that we faced over the last two years is that people like Fauci and his

00:29:01.280 acolytes genuinely believed that the dispute in the United States on policy grounds was between people

00:29:09.420 who cared and people who didn't. People who wanted to save lives and people who didn't. People who thought

00:29:16.180 that human beings are more important than profits and people who didn't. But of course, that's not the case.

00:29:22.320 The debate was how best to navigate a whole host of competing interests. And we're now seeing the other

00:29:30.220 side of the ledger day in, day out with children who are behind in school, children whose social

00:29:37.440 development has been stunted, business owners who lost their life's work during the lockdowns and

00:29:45.240 haven't got it back and possibly will never get it back. Increased suicide rates, drug addiction rates,

00:29:51.740 alcohol addiction rates. I don't know what the answers are. I'm one guy. I have my own priors.

00:29:59.880 I have my own preferences. I have my own way of thinking. But even I was aware that the whole

00:30:06.580 question was one of trade-offs. And it's remarkable to me that two years later, when put in a position

00:30:13.820 from which he can reflect, Anthony Fauci still thinks that this was about truth and lies, that this was

00:30:23.160 about caring and not caring. This was about science and rubishness. And that is just false.

00:30:32.080 His hubris knows no bounds. All right. You mentioned your priors and you said that you could get arrested

00:30:39.280 if the feds ever came through your house. So we'll leave it on that intriguing tease for the next time.

00:30:44.080 And the criminality of Charles C.W. Cook.

00:30:49.320 We look forward to learning more. Thanks for coming on, Charles.

00:30:52.700 Thanks for having me.

00:30:54.920 Coming up, the creator of 75 Hard. And that's a reference to 75 days of hardcore accountability.

00:31:03.620 We'll get into what it means and how it can jumpstart the rest of your life.

00:31:07.140 Andy Priscilla is here for the rest of the show.

00:31:15.760 If you are looking for a little motivation in your life, like when we get to September and the

00:31:21.060 summer ends, it's a good time, right? It's sort of a good. I realize all the leaves die on the trees

00:31:26.580 and it's sort of things are going away and then they're coming back in the spring.

00:31:29.940 But it feels like a new beginning anyway every year, doesn't it? That's how I see September.

00:31:34.020 And it's a great time to sort of restart for yourself. I've always seen September as a bigger

00:31:38.800 restart than January 1st. And so if you're like me, you're looking for a little motivation in your

00:31:43.360 life. Get off the couch. Lose a few pounds. Go after the business chutzpah and savvy that you've

00:31:50.580 been looking for. Then our next guest is someone you don't want to miss. Andy Priscilla is an

00:31:55.540 entrepreneur and how bestselling author and host of The Real AF podcast. Love that. He has an incredible

00:32:03.460 story, one of hardship and challenges, which of course led directly to his success. And he'll get

00:32:09.040 into that. But he will share how those obstacles can lead not only to his success, but to yours,

00:32:14.880 why you should welcome obstacles and challenges as he has. He's the creator of the 75 Hard program

00:32:21.460 focused on mental toughness that many claim changed their lives. We're so excited to have him here today

00:32:27.560 for the rest of the show. Andy, welcome. Hi, Megan. Thanks for having me. I'm so pumped up. I mean,

00:32:33.340 reading so much of what you've written and listening to you, I share so much of your mentality about

00:32:38.140 mental toughness, about grit, about saying thank you when life throws you tough challenges, because

00:32:43.520 that's the opportunity to develop your superhero muscles about not being a victim, but quitting your

00:32:48.800 whining. I love all of it. And then there's another piece of you that I need to get to myself,

00:32:54.340 but it's about how to sort of silence the self-loathing from within that can actually be

00:32:59.520 destructive. Because if you're not a, if you're not a perpetual victim, if you're like a personal

00:33:03.980 responsibility person, it can veer over into the, you're actually too hard on yourself and that can

00:33:10.340 be self-defeating. So there's a lot to go over. Let's start with some of your personal background,

00:33:14.340 because it's an amazing story. You did not come from money. You did from a, come from a kick-ass dad

00:33:19.960 who sort of started placing positive messages in your head when you were a kid, which is probably

00:33:25.840 totally critical to the success that would come into your life later. But tell us about your dad

00:33:30.100 and how you grew up. Yeah. I mean, look, I grew up here, uh, right outside St. Louis, Missouri. Um,

00:33:35.720 we're still, my business is located here. Um, I grew up on a little gravel road called Mooney Lane.

00:33:41.520 Um, my dad was a businessman. He owned an electrical company. Uh, it was a, uh, a small company, um,

00:33:50.400 that he grew into a midsize company and growing up, you know, I was around business. I was around,

00:33:55.200 uh, the struggle of entrepreneurship, um, my whole life. But I mean, my, uh, my upbringing was,

00:34:04.040 was like pretty much any other middle-class, uh, lower middle-class type person. Um,

00:34:11.520 I mean, we grew up playing baseball. We grew up running around up and down the gravel road,

00:34:17.080 uh, you know, just trying to figure out what, what we were going to do with our lives. And, um,

00:34:23.720 you know, I always had an entrepreneurial spirit. I always had the, uh, the want to do more. I never

00:34:29.060 did good in school. I wasn't interested in it. Um, and I was the kid that was, you know, selling

00:34:34.120 lemonade and, and, uh, going door to door. I did things like having baseball card shops and things like

00:34:40.180 that, um, out of my dad's garage and just all kinds of little things, little hustles that I

00:34:45.080 always tried to, to, to make happen when I was a kid. And it naturally lent itself to entrepreneurship

00:34:50.200 growing up. I sort of always knew that that was something that I was going to get into.

00:34:54.680 And I think he kind of knew that too, because, um, he pushed my brother and I both to be very

00:35:00.480 competitive. Um, we were, we were both sports guys. We grew up playing baseball and football and

00:35:06.080 wrestling and basically everything all year round, uh, which kept us out of trouble. And, um,

00:35:12.560 you know, he pushed us really hard, you know, in a way that now, you know, is almost villainized

00:35:18.380 where it's people say, Oh, you know, your, your parents pushed you too hard. Well, you know,

00:35:23.740 apparently that works okay because we're doing all right now. And, um, we don't ever hear about

00:35:28.340 those things. We don't ever hear about the successes created from parents actually pushing their kids

00:35:33.920 to be high achieving individuals. And I was very, very blessed, uh, to grow up with parents that

00:35:40.600 actually, you know, followed up with the idea of you could be anything you want. Uh, like we're all

00:35:47.220 told when we're, we're small and that gets bred out of us as we grow up, uh, through the school system.

00:35:52.980 So I was lucky to have, uh, resistance to the indoctrination at home. You know, I would go to

00:35:59.940 school and I would say, Hey dad, you know, the teacher said I should probably just do this. And my dad

00:36:03.780 would say, well, don't listen to your teacher, listen to, listen to your heart, listen to what

00:36:07.140 you want to be. And, uh, it didn't occur to me how valuable that was until later in life. Um,

00:36:13.300 when I was, you know, probably in my thirties. Uh, so I'm, I'm very thankful for what I had growing up.

00:36:21.420 I'm very thankful for the hardships I had. Um, my dad never gave us anything. He made us earn everything.

00:36:28.120 And, um, it was something that, you know, I'm, I'm very thankful for because I feel like that

00:36:33.560 mentality is lost nowadays and only, and it's villainized to be honest. And that's why I try

00:36:39.600 to give it back through my shows, uh, through the podcast and through, uh, really anything that I do

00:36:45.020 is geared towards getting people to understand the reality of what it takes to, to be competitive

00:36:50.580 and win in real life. Your comment about how they, they never really tell you how it works out when

00:36:56.120 you have a parent who is loving, but has high expectations. I mean, abuse is, is a different

00:37:00.940 category, but loving with high expectations can work out really well. And I was thinking about

00:37:05.100 my friend, Amy Chua, uh, so-called tiger mom, you know, she teaches at Yale law and she wrote battle

00:37:10.460 him of the tiger mother. And she talked about how sort of Western parenting versus Chinese parenting

00:37:14.240 and people gave her such a hard time. The left was like, Oh my God, you're cruel. You're a child

00:37:18.540 abuser. And I mean, I know her and they have two, these two daughters who she was so tough on 0.91

00:37:23.680 have grown up to be absolutely beautiful, well-adjusted, hugely successful young women.

00:37:28.540 And they went to Harvard, they went to Yale, they clerked for the Supreme court.

00:37:32.420 They're, they're just got married. They're loving. They love her. They're fun. Like,

00:37:36.820 it's like, you know what, that where's the media going to going to tell you how that worked out?

00:37:40.240 Cause it worked out really well. I do want to ask you about not going door to door. Cause I just,

00:37:44.360 my, my little Thatcher, my nine-year-old had a lemonade stand just this past weekend with his

00:37:47.580 buddy and they were doing okay. But then they wanted to take it door to door. I'm like, that's too much.

00:37:51.340 Don't, don't bother the neighbors. Was I wrong?

00:37:53.460 No, I don't know, man. In today's world, it's a lot different. You know,

00:37:57.920 we're talking about back in the eighties where everybody was cool. And, uh, you know,

00:38:02.020 I think there's no harm in doing that. You know, I think it's a good practice. You know,

00:38:06.820 you're going to get, it's too annoying. If they want your lemonade, they'll come out. If you knock

00:38:10.740 on their door, they're going to feel obligated to take it. But maybe I was teaching a bad lesson.

00:38:13.740 I don't have to think. All right. Now you talk about how you were, you were into sports and all the

00:38:18.820 sports you just named, but you also say you were a legitimately fat kid. Oh yeah. So how is that

00:38:26.280 possible? You could have been doing all those sports and the fat kid. Well, I like to eat.

00:38:31.280 Um, I love food. You know, I grew up in an Italian family. We, we, we always, uh, everything

00:38:36.400 revolved around food. And, um, I, I, I honestly, I think, uh, I coped with a lot of the, uh, you know,

00:38:44.080 I was bullied growing up. I wasn't, I wasn't a, uh, a cool, I wasn't the cool, one of the cool kids

00:38:49.260 at school. I was picked on, I was bullied. You know, uh, people think growing up in an

00:38:53.640 entrepreneurial family, it means you grow up rich. That's not the case. The case is you usually grow

00:38:58.680 up a year behind everybody else in the fashion department. Um, you know, I was wearing the stuff

00:39:05.480 that was cool, uh, two years ago when it was on clearance at, at, at TJ Maxx, you know, and that's how

00:39:12.220 we grew up. So I got picked on a lot. Um, I got made fun of a lot. I was always chubby. Uh, and you

00:39:19.880 know, I grew up genetically, just one of those people who puts on weight real easy. And, um,

00:39:25.600 if it wasn't for sports, it probably would have been a lot worse, but, uh, it got to a point when

00:39:30.440 I was an adult where I got up to 350 pounds. And, um, that was, that was kind of the breaking point for

00:39:37.420 me where I looked at it. I was 30, I don't know, 32 years old, 33 years old. And I was 350 pounds

00:39:44.340 and I'm like, man, something's got to change. And, um, that was a battle I fought my whole life.

00:39:49.280 And honestly, I'm super thankful that I, that I had that battle the whole life because it's made me

00:39:54.160 realize what it's like to live that way. You know, I've lived a lot of my life as a, as a, as a very

00:40:00.020 overweight person. Um, and so it allows me to understand the thinking that goes, that goes into

00:40:06.080 having to change that. And I think that's been a very integral part of me being able to, uh,

00:40:11.400 connect and communicate with people who are willing and wanting to make changes, but just don't know

00:40:17.020 how to make the change. You know, there's a lot of people out there that, that have been taken

00:40:21.080 advantage of, um, through marketing or through, uh, the, you know, the, the mainstream narratives

00:40:30.180 that they're a victim and they have to accept what they are and they have to, uh, be who they are and

00:40:36.700 being who they are while I've always been fat. So I'm just going to stay this way. And, you know,

00:40:41.040 I can't do anything about it. So I'm going to celebrate it. And to be honest, you know, that's,

00:40:45.320 that's no way to live, man, because I've been that guy. I've been that person. And I understand,

00:40:49.900 you know, what it's like to not go to the pool, what it's like to pass on vacations, what it's like

00:40:54.960 to not have clothes that fit. I know what it's like to look in the mirror and instead of saying,

00:40:59.740 man, I really am pleased with what I see here. I'm really proud of that person to say, oh, you know,

00:41:05.060 I stand this certain way. Uh, you know, I won't look as fat. I won't look as big. And, and, you

00:41:10.140 know, I know what it's like to, to, to have pictures taken of me and just hate the pictures

00:41:14.640 that were taken of me. I mean, all of these things, they stick with you when you've lived that life.

00:41:19.500 And I, uh, as, as painful as they have been, I'm very thankful for the perspective because, um,

00:41:25.980 without it, you know, if I had been someone who was a naturally fit person,

00:41:30.260 I wouldn't be who I am today because I wouldn't be able to connect with the people that I'm able

00:41:34.480 to connect with that are looking to make those changes. So there it is because you're tough and

00:41:38.700 you don't allow victimhood or self pity, but you're also full of empathy. It's not like you

00:41:43.460 have no empathy for people who are struggling. You get it. You just see a very clear course out of it

00:41:49.560 that doesn't allow too much wallowing. It's not that you don't acknowledge reality. That's one of

00:41:54.340 the things I like about your messaging. So you, you know, sports and the dad and, you know, the,

00:42:00.940 the, the weight problems to your like 19, you're kicking around and you decide to start what,

00:42:06.720 what is now a nine figure business, crazy, crazy ass success in the supplements field.

00:42:12.080 And to the point where like, I mean, it's crazy, like the, the amount of money and the amount of,

00:42:15.420 uh, success that you've achieved. But when you were 19, you didn't know that. It was like,

00:42:20.640 I, I, you said something like you want to start a self tanning salon, like a tanning bed salon,

00:42:25.220 but you, the, the tanning beds cost 30 grand. You only had 12 to start the business with. So you

00:42:30.040 decided to do supplements. Cause you knew a guy who did that and did okay with it. Little,

00:42:34.920 little did you know, right? Like flash forward 30 years where things would be. But so talk about

00:42:38.980 those beginning years. Cause they, it was not, uh, too fruitful at first. Yeah, no, it was, uh,

00:42:44.760 you know, I, like I said, I grew up always with an entrepreneurial spirit and, um,

00:42:49.740 I kind of always knew I would be an entrepreneur. I just didn't know if I would be a good one.

00:42:54.160 And, um, I thought about success a lot differently back then. I thought about success

00:42:58.960 as something that you were chosen, uh, by some higher force to have, you know, I call it the

00:43:05.480 success fairy. Uh, I think people generally feel like, you know, maybe if they're, if they're lucky

00:43:12.040 or if they're fortunate, you know, they'll be selected to be one of these successful people.

00:43:18.020 And the truth of the matter is, um, I felt that way as well. And so I thought, you know,

00:43:24.020 I'm going to, I can't really work for anyone cause I'm not good at following directions and

00:43:28.080 I'm not good with authority. Um, so we started a business and we didn't have any money. We didn't

00:43:33.200 have any experience. Uh, we wanted to start a tanning salon was our first choice. Um, but we,

00:43:39.460 we only had 12 grand and one tanning bed was 30. So it didn't work. Um, so like you said,

00:43:46.320 we knew a guy who was successful in, uh, like what's called now mom and pop retail in terms of

00:43:52.120 sports nutrition. And, um, we kind of just copied his idea and we decided to start a business and

00:43:59.180 we started a business called supplement super stores, which still exists. Um, we started in

00:44:04.360 Springfield, Missouri. We're from St. Louis. Springfield is where we went to school. And, um,

00:44:08.960 we started with 12 grand and with that $12,000, um, we had to pay our first year's rent up front

00:44:17.280 because we didn't have any credit and nobody would, would, uh, rent to us. So we found this guy

00:44:22.980 who had a empty bridal store, uh, and he agreed to rent it to, to Chris and I, my business partner,

00:44:30.060 uh, for a thousand dollars a month. And, but he wanted all the rent up front and it was all the

00:44:35.040 cash that we had, but we didn't have a choice because we couldn't get another retail spot.

00:44:38.980 And this spot is located, uh, directly, uh, one block over from the original Bass Pro shop

00:44:45.500 in Springfield, Missouri. What year is this that we're talking? 1999. Okay. And, uh, exactly my age.

00:44:51.620 All right. So you're, you're 51 now. I'm 43. Oh shit. My math is off. Nevermind. Keep going.

00:44:58.420 Yeah. So you were 19. So 19. Oh yeah. Yeah. That does work out. Yeah. That's my math. Keep going.

00:45:03.260 Yeah. So we, uh, we started the, uh, the store with 12 grand and, you know, we didn't have shelving.

00:45:10.920 We didn't have a product. We didn't have anything. It was just a store. So what we did was we went

00:45:16.800 around to campus and we got the pre-approved credit cards. Um, you know, back then there were like

00:45:23.920 three to $500 limits. And we just got a whole bunch of those credit cards by filling out

00:45:28.540 the applications. And then we bought all of our inventory, which was $10,000 worth on those,

00:45:34.500 those pre-approved credit cards. And we opened our business. And, um, Chris and I spent the first

00:45:40.180 three years on and off sleeping in the back of that retail store. Our first day in sales, uh, we sold

00:45:46.560 $7. The second day of sales, we sold zero. The third day we sold $23. It took us eight months to

00:45:53.440 have a day over $200. It took us six years to get our second store open. And, um, this is before,

00:45:59.520 you know, social media was a real thing. Uh, the internet was just kind of coming into its own,

00:46:05.960 uh, just becoming, you know, this was the, the.com bubble time. And there was no real use for small

00:46:12.640 business, uh, in terms of like, you know, being able to leverage it or get attention or, or build a,

00:46:18.280 uh, a brand from social media, like you can do today in a very short amount of time.

00:46:23.180 So what we had to do was we had to go door to door. Uh, we went, we couldn't afford advertising.

00:46:27.580 We couldn't afford radio. We couldn't afford TV. So we, we went door to door. We went all over

00:46:32.820 Springfield, Missouri, knocking on, uh, the main thing that we did was we went to police stations

00:46:37.000 and fire stations and met the men and women at the police and fire stations. And because we figured,

00:46:43.040 Hey, you know, these guys got to be in shape. And we would walk in and we would knock on the door and be

00:46:47.880 like, Hey, I'm, I'm Andy. Uh, I own the store down the street. If you guys ever need anything,

00:46:52.340 uh, feel free to come by. And that's literally what we did to, to make it work. And, um,

00:46:59.120 again, as hard as that was, as difficult as that was, it was, it taught me a skill that,

00:47:04.360 that not a lot of entrepreneurs have anymore because it's not necessary anymore. So,

00:47:09.040 um, that's kind of how we got it going. I know you've written about this, but is learning that

00:47:14.060 in order to be a successful business person, you have to care

00:47:16.560 about more than yourself. You have to care about your customers. You have to care about your staff

00:47:21.460 and they have to know it. Those guys felt that when Andy knocked on their door and lo and behold,

00:47:28.380 the business would grow, but something, something deeply disturbing would happen to Andy. Um, not long

00:47:33.860 into his business, uh, entrepreneurship that would change literally his face. And we'll pick it up

00:47:40.560 there right after this quick break. So Andy, things are rolling along. You're building your

00:47:47.740 business, you're figuring it out, you're making something of yourself. And then a horrible incident

00:47:52.840 happened to you in, I think it was June of 2004 in Springfield, Missouri. What happened?

00:47:59.420 Um, well, uh, I was part of owning a business is usually you have to have other jobs. And one of

00:48:07.380 the jobs I had was I worked at a bar and, um, where I worked was, uh, a lot of block away from where I

00:48:14.460 lived. And I was walking home from work one night with some friends and, uh, we got into a,

00:48:20.320 I wouldn't say we got into, but we were harassed by this, this guy driving, uh, driving by and

00:48:29.780 he, uh, I was walking with, with my friends and, uh, the girl that I was with, uh, she's,

00:48:38.020 uh, she was Mexican and she was very tan. It was middle of summer. And, uh, he yelled out some racial

00:48:43.340 slurs and then ended up parking his car right in the path of where we were walking. And then we had a

00:48:49.000 verbal altercation. Um, I ended up getting stabbed in the face, uh, three times. And then once in the

00:48:56.240 back, I had 160 stitches in my face, uh, when all was said and done. Um, the last thing I remember

00:49:06.860 riding to the hospital was, uh, before I passed out was the, the nurse in, or the EMT in the, in the 0.85

00:49:13.940 ambulance, basically getting hysterical saying that she couldn't stop the bleeding. Uh, I thought for 0.94

00:49:19.400 sure I was going to die. And obviously I didn't die. Uh, I woke up a few hours later. I was in the ER.

00:49:25.500 They had stitched up my face. Um, and, uh, yeah, it was, it was a, it was a violent, violent, violent

00:49:33.340 stabbing. And, um, I'm, I'm lucky to be alive. I got stabbed, uh, right here, uh, right here, went through

00:49:41.060 all the way through my face. Uh, and then it's hard to see because my beer, but on, on my jawline

00:49:46.700 on this side, and then once in my back and, um, my face was swollen up, uh, the size of a grapefruit

00:49:54.620 for the better part of a year. Um, I have zero feeling in this side of my face, even to this day,

00:50:00.620 all the nerves are gone. Uh, affects how I smile. Um, but I've come to terms with it. And, uh, it was a

00:50:08.640 very difficult time in my life as a, as 22, 23 year old man, uh, trying to run a business and a

00:50:15.760 retail business, because when your face, it gets disfigured, uh, people do one of two things.

00:50:21.680 They either look you right in the face and they, and they say, man, you know, um, what happened to

00:50:27.020 your face? I'm not sure if I'm allowed to curse on this show or not. You are. Yeah. Okay. Well,

00:50:31.600 they look at you and they say, uh, man, what the fuck happened to your face? Or they look at the

00:50:37.600 ground and they act like you're not even there. And that, that part of it was very difficult for

00:50:44.240 me. Um, you know, being a young man, uh, I wasn't married. I didn't really have a girlfriend. Uh,

00:50:50.500 you know, I thought my life was over in that regard. Um, I went through serious depression,

00:50:57.240 uh, because multiple times a day, I'm having people walk into my business and say those things to me,

00:51:03.480 you know, either stare right at me or look away. I can remember one particular instance when I was

00:51:09.140 at a store and I couldn't even get the person's attention because they refused to look at my face

00:51:15.500 and it taught me a lot. It, the main thing it taught me was that when you guys see someone who's

00:51:23.480 different, when you guys see someone who might be a disabled or disfigured or handicapped, you know,

00:51:29.240 don't look away, uh, address them like a normal human, because that, that feeling of people not

00:51:35.720 seeing you or not ignoring you was one, probably the most hurtful thing of the whole situation.

00:51:42.200 Um, so I'm just going to put that out there for any of you guys who struggle with that, you know,

00:51:46.740 people would much rather you, uh, come up to them and treat them like a normal human than pretend like

00:51:51.300 they're not there. So that was a very difficult thing for me to deal with. Um, uh, you know,

00:51:56.380 I was a different person then than I am now. Um, I struggled with suicidal thoughts tremendously.

00:52:03.080 I got heavily into drinking, uh, you know, every, I was drinking every single day at that point.

00:52:09.120 Um, and for a year or so, you know, it was, it was really like, it wasn't a matter of if I was going

00:52:16.680 to end my life, it was when and how. And so I spent that year kind of thinking about like what I was

00:52:22.140 going to do and how it was going to disappear, uh, and make it the least, um, the least painful

00:52:30.060 on everybody else. And it was just very, very, very dark time. And, um, one of the days that I,

00:52:38.820 I, uh, woke up, you know, I went to, this is like 10 30 in the morning. I went to the grocery store

00:52:44.120 because I didn't have any alcohol and I was going to go get some beer. And, uh, I went to the,

00:52:51.240 store to get alcohol and I was walking, pushing my cart down the aisle with my head down. Um,

00:52:59.820 and I came to the end of the aisle, you know, and, and you know how sometimes people will be coming

00:53:06.280 at a perpendicular way. And I, I bumped carts with this person at the end of the aisle and I looked

00:53:13.920 up and it was this smaller person. And the reason I say person is because I couldn't tell if it was a

00:53:20.200 man or a woman because, uh, it ended up being a woman, but I couldn't tell because her face was

00:53:26.200 completely burnt off. Um, and I mean like gone, uh, you know, where your nose is, there was, you

00:53:32.600 know, two little holes. And, and, um, I, I couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman. The only reason I 0.99

00:53:37.740 could tell it was a woman was because of her voice when she spoke. And so I hit her cart. I looked at 0.97

00:53:43.280 her and I was like, kind of shocked. And she looked at me like real serious. And she goes,

00:53:50.020 dude, what the fuck happened to your face? And dude, we both started dying laughing. And in that

00:53:56.880 instance, uh, in that instant, uh, we have like a 10 or 15 minute conversation. And, um, we talked

00:54:05.120 about how she had gotten to be where she was. And what had happened to her was she had been in a small

00:54:10.680 plane crash and she had lost, uh, her leg and she had lost her whole family. She was her own

00:54:15.800 lone survivor of this crash. And she had been third degree burned her entire body. And, um,

00:54:21.720 we had, uh, a 10, a real 10 minute conversation. That was probably the most profound conversation I

00:54:29.300 ever had in my entire life on this planet. I, I still question, you know, if that was like an angel

00:54:35.140 or if that was like what that was, because I walked out of that store with a new perspective

00:54:39.880 and the perspective was that one things could be a lot worse too. They aren't that bad. And three,

00:54:48.460 what's the good things that happened to me from this? And, um, you know, what I realized

00:54:55.480 in business, you know, we had had a hard time. Uh, this is the first thing that I noticed that was

00:55:02.040 good. Okay. So, you know, when you're a small business person, you know, you have a hard time

00:55:06.980 being remembered because you're, you're lumped in with the group and everybody sees you as a nobody.

00:55:11.560 And, uh, one of the things that happened after I got stabbed in my face was disfigured

00:55:16.420 was that, uh, people started remembering. So, you know, instead of us going to a trade show and

00:55:23.600 saying, Hey, do you know, Andy and Chris from supplement super store? It was, and they would say,

00:55:27.480 Oh no, we don't know them. And that they could follow it up now. And they would,

00:55:30.980 because people would tell me they would, no, you know, Andy, you know, the guy with the,

00:55:34.540 with the, he got stabbed, you know, with the face. And so I started seeing that as a positive thing.

00:55:39.320 I started seeing that as an advantage that we had, that no one else had. And I chose to,

00:55:44.100 to go that perspective. And, uh, my life changed after that. It really did. Um,

00:55:50.100 I went from being completely depressed, completely frustrated, completely demoralized,

00:55:55.840 no motivation, uh, you know, the poor me attitude to someone who, who, you know, didn't tolerate that

00:56:03.320 for myself anymore. And while it wasn't an instant permanent transition, it showed me enough of the

00:56:10.460 light that I was able to pursue that and grow in that way. Uh, from that point forward, you know,

00:56:16.400 I still had struggles. I still had dark times. I've still gone through very difficult times,

00:56:21.040 but that was a time that showed me that no matter how bad that it gets, um, there's always a good

00:56:27.420 side to it. Uh, and so, you know, I chose to see the proper perspective there and I think it served

00:56:34.380 me pretty well. Um, but that was a very difficult time. And I would say, honestly, looking back,

00:56:41.000 it was the, the, the best thing that ever happened to me. It was literally the best thing that ever

00:56:46.120 happened to me because, um, I was able to work through something that was extremely difficult.

00:56:51.820 I learned a lot of lessons about people. I learned a lot of lessons about myself, but the most important

00:56:56.200 thing I learned was the power of perspective and the perspective is a choice. We can choose to see

00:57:02.000 the bad things or we can choose to see the benefits of any situation. And, and it's hard pressed to find

00:57:07.920 a situation that doesn't benefit us in some way, or at the very least benefit other people around us in

00:57:14.640 some way. And so, um, that that's what happened. Wow. This is a quote from you, your hardships,

00:57:23.220 your challenges, your situation will either be the reason you don't make it, or it will be the story

00:57:28.760 you tell when you do. I love that. It's exactly right. The, the, and you got me thinking, we did a show

00:57:36.800 on dads and boys last Thursday and we took calls when our expert was here and a couple of the callers

00:57:46.480 who we didn't get to because the phone lines just lit up, wanted to ask about their sons whose dads had

00:57:54.960 died. You know, mom's worried about dads not being in the picture because they died. And, and what does

00:58:01.080 that mean for the sons? And I closed out the show with just a couple seconds to go by saying as

00:58:06.380 somebody who lost her dad at age 15 to a sudden heart attack when he was 45, and it's sort of a

00:58:12.560 weird statement, but that there are silver linings, you know, it's not to say I wouldn't want it the

00:58:18.540 other way, you know, but I did learn a lot from losing my dad at such a young age. And it did, it changed

00:58:25.240 everything about the way I would live my life for the better. I mean, like, I think my dad would be relieved to know

00:58:31.080 that that tragedy wound up making my life net, net, very different in the, in the positive column.

00:58:37.980 I understanding that we're here for a limited time, not staying in unhappy marriage, which was my

00:58:42.200 first situation, not staying in a job that, you know, just doesn't fire you up and doesn't seem

00:58:47.960 to be leading anywhere other than to a fat wallet. That was my first, you know, locker. All that stuff

00:58:52.480 is linked. So it's not to say you wouldn't rather have had a life with your dad there. And for the moms

00:58:57.480 out there who are hurting and boys, I know that, but it's to say that there are lessons that come

00:59:01.740 even, well, maybe especially with these big tragedies that if you pay attention, if you're

00:59:06.660 willing to learn as opposed to just do nothing other than wallow, you, you can, you can take

00:59:14.060 something really profound away from it. Yeah. And it's really difficult to do in the moment. You know,

00:59:19.700 I, I, this was not an easy thing. It just happened that I was literally faced with something

00:59:25.920 right in front of my face that showed me like, holy shit, like, dude, you're, you're not handling 0.67

00:59:31.480 this how you should be handling it. And I think, you know, I've talked to a lot of people and they

00:59:35.920 come to me with, when I say these things and they're like, but I had this and I had this and I

00:59:40.420 had this. And Megan, you know, when you talk about losing your dad, I mean, how many other people has

00:59:47.300 that help cope with their losses, you know, and sometimes our benefits from these experiences

00:59:55.100 that happen are not benefits directly to us, but benefits of how we can serve other people to help

01:00:01.980 them with their experiences. You know, I've talked to a lot of people over the years, especially veterans

01:00:07.140 who have had disfiguring industry, uh, injuries or, or lost limbs and they have trouble coping.

01:00:13.580 And, um, you know, I've talked to them about, uh, how they can contribute to the community or how

01:00:20.840 they can contribute or how they can become a better example of what it looks like to be resilient.

01:00:26.060 And, you know, once people accept the path that they're on and, uh, and understand that, you know,

01:00:32.420 it's not just about your own personal gain all the time. It's about what you can do for everybody

01:00:38.460 else around you or what lessons can you teach or what, what can you, what value can you offer from

01:00:44.400 these tragedies that happen? And by the way, these bad things happen to all of us. Every single person

01:00:50.760 listening right now can look back through the Rolodex of memories and think, man, you know, this

01:00:56.540 was really bad or that was really bad, or this was really bad. And we can all draw on those stories,

01:01:02.740 but how we choose to think about them is up to us and how we choose to move forward from those

01:01:09.080 situations is up to us. And I think that having a perspective of service out of frustration or out

01:01:17.720 of tragedy or out of hardship, uh, if for no other reason than to help other people be prepared and work

01:01:25.400 through the hard things they're going to me, to me, I think that's a noble way to look at things.

01:01:30.480 You know, I think that, that, you know, we've lost this in America where we all look out for each

01:01:35.620 other and we've tended to look at our own gain. Like, yeah, dude, it sucks to get stabbed in the face.

01:01:41.260 Like, it's not cool. Uh, I would like to have a normal smile. I wish I didn't have, uh, people asking

01:01:47.420 me all the time or thinking low of me, uh, you know, because, you know, people think things about someone

01:01:52.260 that got stabbed in the face. They don't think like, Hey, this is a good dude. They, they naturally think,

01:01:56.800 well, Hey, you know, I don't know about this guy, those things, you know, they suck. But the truth

01:02:01.680 of the matter is, is that if I look back on my life and I look back at all of the things that

01:02:06.400 have happened to me, good and bad, the most good that's happened to me in my life has, has come

01:02:11.020 from that instant. It's just the truth. Um, so I, you know, I think if we all looked at our hardships

01:02:18.800 and instead of competing for who has the saddest story, we started competing for who overcomes the

01:02:25.340 saddest story, the best, you know, our country would look a lot different. That's exactly it.

01:02:29.680 So, so get to, you know, the next chapter is what you're saying. What we've done lately in our country

01:02:35.680 is just encourage what Brett Hume used to call it, uh, destitution derby. You know, he said it with

01:02:42.340 respect to when we were at like the RNC or the DNC convention one year. And, you know, of course,

01:02:47.860 all these politicians get up there and like, I was born and I walked barefoot to school and,

01:02:52.460 you know, they're giving you their sob story. And he used to laugh and call it destitution derby,

01:02:56.600 right? Like who had it roughest and is running for president. But the truth is the whole society does

01:03:01.360 that now. And they get stuck when somebody's rang for president. They're probably a governor. They're

01:03:05.380 probably a Senator. They're probably accomplished now. And so it's sort of built in. Okay, we get it.

01:03:09.160 You overcame all that. What we're doing now is just gets, just gets, gets stuck in your worst

01:03:13.660 moment. And then we'll all celebrate you for being a victim and in your worst moment. And the

01:03:18.460 more you can publicize how hard it is and how victimized you are and how much struggle you're

01:03:22.820 having, the better. And you never need to get to the spike, the ball in the end zone moment.

01:03:27.800 Just the suffering is enough. That's right. It's a, it's a, we live in an attention economy.

01:03:32.920 Okay. Everything that people do right now is geared towards like shares, comments, what gets the

01:03:41.780 attention on the internet. And, you know, unfortunately you know, being vulnerable has

01:03:48.040 become a, and by the way, it's great to be vulnerable. It's great to share your insecurities

01:03:53.020 if you plan on overcoming them. But to create an identity or to create a brand around all the bad

01:04:00.520 things that have happened to you and continuously talk about them and post about them. People don't

01:04:05.740 realize what that does is that makes, uh, that creates a, a, a jail that you live in because it's

01:04:12.500 now become your identity. It's now become your brand and you can't escape from it. So once people

01:04:18.140 start telling this story about how hard they have it and how bad things really are, and they get

01:04:24.060 attention, they continue to tell some version of that or another version of some sort of victim

01:04:30.080 story over and over and over again. Um, because that's what got them the attention. That's what

01:04:35.340 they're competing for. So now we have the victim Olympics going on in society instead of what we

01:04:40.460 should be having is, uh, the overcoming of victimhood Olympics. You know, we should be celebrating the

01:04:46.040 people who have had these things happen to them and have, uh, you know, pushed through and persevered

01:04:53.260 through and become resilient and then talk about the lesson. Like, Hey, I used to be like this and I

01:05:00.300 changed and here's how I changed. And this is what I did. But instead, you know, it would be American

01:05:05.220 way. We used to, we used to celebrate achievement. We used to celebrate, uh, the nobility of overcoming

01:05:10.540 and we've, you know, we've gotten away from that. It's something that needs to change if we want to fix

01:05:15.840 the country. And now it's, now it's, it's like, if you haven't had a lot of tragedy or bad things

01:05:21.860 happen in your own life, the next move is to just glom on to historical tragedy that may affect

01:05:28.620 your racial group, your gender. You know, you could go down the list, right? I'm thinking of

01:05:33.300 the woman at Evergreen college in that now infamous tape that came out after Brett Weinstein got so 0.58

01:05:38.140 unceremoniously tortured there by the faculty and the students where she, the one girl was like,

01:05:43.280 I come from slaves and you don't know what I've been through. It's like, okay, so that was 150

01:05:49.020 years ago. You, you may or may not, I don't know what your family history is, but you didn't go

01:05:54.580 through that. That's not America today or me coming out there and saying like, well, you know, Eleanor

01:06:00.400 Roosevelt was the subject of a lot of sexism and I'm a woman too. Well, okay. But you know, her experience

01:06:06.580 is not my experience, but like they glom on to like historical wrongs so that they can be part of the

01:06:13.240 victim group. Right. And if you're a victim and that's your brand, then you don't have to do any

01:06:17.920 work. You don't have to overcome. You're already there. So it's an easy, it's an easy out. You know,

01:06:24.260 the best part of it is blaming the white male for every, all the problems. Dude, my ancestors didn't

01:06:29.360 come here until like 1920. So like, what, what, what do I have to do with this? You know, it's just

01:06:34.800 they were Irish, which we were also targeted. Yeah. We were Sicilian. It's the same thing, man.

01:06:40.940 Like we, uh, you know, it's ridiculous. It's, it's bullshit is what it is. Um, well, I like one of

01:06:47.580 the, this is one of the things you, you talk about, which I just a hundred percent can relate

01:06:51.140 to and do it all the time, but you really, you don't like wokeism and you don't like the push

01:06:56.000 for wokeism in our schools. Why? Well, it's not real. It's not reality. It's not the real,

01:07:02.040 it's not real life. Look at the end of the day. Um, Nick natural order is always going to prevail.

01:07:08.300 All right. And this has always been the case. This has always been the case through human history.

01:07:14.220 The, the most undeniably skilled, great people are going to rise to the top. That's the reality.

01:07:21.040 And if you want to get to the top, if you want to get to the middle ground, you're going to have to be

01:07:26.660 pretty good. And so instead of teaching people, uh, in school that, you know, they can be victims,

01:07:34.040 uh, or that they are victims or that they are the oppressor or that, um, you know, everything is fair

01:07:41.400 or that everybody gets a trophy for showing up. Um, all of these things reduce our human potential.

01:07:49.180 They all, it all suppresses our natural potential to achieve. And if we look at the way success is

01:07:55.720 villainized in society, it makes perfect sense. You know, why would they not, why would they not

01:08:01.360 want to villainize success? If they want people to be controlled, which is clearly what they want,

01:08:06.540 uh, from my perspective, they want people who are apathetic, who are docile, who are dependent,

01:08:12.720 who are not strong, who will go along with any narrative that's put in front of their face.

01:08:17.780 And the way they create that is by removing any motivation or desire to create or overcome.

01:08:25.420 And we've been dealing with this for the last, you know, I would say 20 years at least, uh, where

01:08:30.220 they're teaching people that are, they're teaching people that successful people are greedy or are

01:08:36.520 materialistic or bad people because they're successful. Look, man, um, I, I didn't come from

01:08:43.760 anything. And we've got thousands of people that, that earn a living from our company,

01:08:48.480 literally tens of thousands of people. Okay. So I don't understand how that's a bad thing. It's not

01:08:54.640 a bad thing. And, you know, we deal with this, this idea, um, that I think it's just a denial of

01:09:02.460 reality. You know, I think we were be much better off telling people the way it is. Let's like,

01:09:08.200 I was taught when I was growing up, Hey, if you want to win, you've got to practice. If you want

01:09:12.120 to be good, you've got to, you've got to put in the work. Uh, if you don't put in the work,

01:09:15.620 you're going to lose. These are things that were taught regularly in school, like when I was growing

01:09:22.100 up. So it wasn't just my parents. Uh, but as I got older and got through high school, it definitely,

01:09:27.820 it definitely got more suppressed in terms of how much they were willing to encourage you to be

01:09:34.420 great. But I think that's just natural. Now, you know, they're telling little black kids that 0.97

01:09:40.440 it's impossible for you to succeed because the entire world is racist. If that's not the most

01:09:45.920 racist stuff I've ever heard, I don't know what is. Okay. Um, they're telling white kids that,

01:09:52.000 you know, they should feel guilty for being white because they're a bad person for something that 0.84

01:09:57.000 happened 200 years ago. Okay. That's not right. Um, they're indoctrinating our children to,

01:10:04.100 to, to decide what gender they want to be when they're literally four or five, six years old.

01:10:10.380 This is insane shit. We're dealing with insane shit and, um, none of it. And, and, you know,

01:10:16.880 people can disagree all they want. I don't care, but none of it is conducive to creating a populace

01:10:22.560 that is equipped to achieve, that is equipped to win, that is equipped to contribute, that is equipped

01:10:29.080 to help the, the, the real victims of society. You know, to help the real victims of society,

01:10:36.000 we have to have people who are winning so that they can reach a hand down and pull people up.

01:10:41.120 And what they're trying to do is create a situation where the government is the only people that can

01:10:45.700 do that. And if, you know, as you know, that doesn't work out well in history. So, um, you know,

01:10:53.240 I see the entire woke movement as a, as a weapon. I see it as a weapon, a cultural weapon, uh, that

01:10:58.760 is designed to suppress the potential of our great American people, uh, from, from being what we've

01:11:06.220 always been, which is high level, high achieving people who, uh, figure out a way to make shit happen.

01:11:12.240 The, I once interviewed Charles Koch and, um, you know, one of the most successful entrepreneurs

01:11:17.320 in the world. And he talked about the glorious feeling of accomplishment and how important that

01:11:23.240 is, whether you're the greatest burger flipper that ever worked at McDonald's or your Charles

01:11:28.000 Koch. Right. Um, and this, this movement, whatever we were calling it denies that on both sides.

01:11:35.480 So it takes, you know, black kids or Hispanic kids, you know, maybe it's trans kids and says,

01:11:41.160 we want you to advance, advance based on your skin color. We will make it easier for you.

01:11:46.680 We're going to create quotas or we're going to create mandatory numbers of some sort

01:11:50.440 to get you to the next step. And then I'll tell you, I have, I have a friend who works at an

01:11:54.940 investment bank in New York city, uh, who's pretty high up. And this person just told me that they

01:11:58.920 got, they got to get rid of two people. And this person was told it has to be two white guys.

01:12:04.360 And this person said, well, there's some other people of different, you know, characteristics

01:12:08.380 who are non-performers. And I've got only a small selection of white guys who are really working out 0.68

01:12:15.540 well. And they said, we don't care. It's gotta be, you gotta get, if you're going to fire two

01:12:20.360 people, it's gotta be two white guys. Right. So now what does that tell the people who escaped

01:12:24.760 the hatchet? Right. They, they got to stay. They know they're not the best. They know, you know,

01:12:29.180 you know, when you're the best, you know, when you're not, what if, what if they had gone to

01:12:32.140 them and said, you're fired. And then those folks had to hustle to get the next job and then worked 0.96

01:12:36.720 harder, right. To maintain it. And then had the glorious feeling of accomplishment.

01:12:40.220 And, and the, uh, exactly the opposite message to the two white guys are going to get fired

01:12:44.220 who they know they tried their hardest, but they're getting booted because of their skin color and

01:12:48.220 their gender, which are not their fault. There's nothing inherently wrong with them. And they're

01:12:52.680 denied the fruits of their labor and told they're less than for things. It's like the whole thing is

01:12:57.420 so pernicious and damaging. Uh, it's bass backwards. It's bullshit. Okay. Uh, let's be real. Like I saw

01:13:05.360 you, I saw what you said about the FBI raid. I'm going to use your language. All right. I loved it.

01:13:09.340 Um, the, uh, look, it's interesting that the, the group that is accused of being the, the, the

01:13:17.300 domestic terror, white male extremist racist group, uh, that's me by the way, um, is the only

01:13:24.280 demographic that is legally able to be fired because of their skin color. Okay. So let's, 0.96

01:13:31.040 let's be real about what racism really is. Okay. Um, you can argue it all you want, but you can't go

01:13:37.820 into a company and say, Hey, you know, um, we're going to fire, uh, we've got to fire two people

01:13:44.060 and, and, you know, they have to be Asian or they have to be black or they have to be this. You can

01:13:48.680 only say that about white, white man. So is that fair? Is that right? I don't think it is. And I

01:13:55.140 don't think it's American. And I think most people agree with this, no matter what race that they are, 0.98

01:13:59.300 no matter what color they are, no matter where they come from, they understand that it's gotten out

01:14:03.960 of control. And at the end of the day, if we want the country to be great, if we want the people to

01:14:09.600 be great, we have to allow them to, uh, swim or sink based on their own merit. This is a, this is a,

01:14:16.920 a skill based, uh, you know, merit based country. This is always how it's been. And I understand

01:14:23.920 the idea that we needed, you know, back when affirmative action and all these, these, the, 0.52

01:14:29.820 the idea of this was, was put into play. I understand that the need for it, but I think

01:14:34.120 the greater need over the longterm is raising the skillset of every human and allowing people to

01:14:39.600 compete on a level playing field for who's the best. That's what always produces. And if, you know,

01:14:46.280 when I grew up, that was the case, that was the case in America. That was what was about. 0.83

01:14:50.280 And, um, now we're in a situation where, you know, things like that are happening. And, and I don't,

01:14:55.780 to me, like that's, it, it's, it's, it's very frustrating to sit back and, and, and be called

01:15:03.300 all these names when you're the part of the group that can legally be discriminated against.

01:15:09.840 There was, um, you know, I moved to Connecticut about a year ago with my family. Uh, and there was

01:15:16.160 a, there's a school in Connecticut, not ours, but a school in Connecticut, it's a Greenwich country day

01:15:21.820 school. And they just made the news because they had their welcome back cider and donuts

01:15:25.960 outing. But only if you identify as black or Hispanic or indigenous, all the white people 0.94

01:15:30.860 can stay at home. There'll be no welcome back for cider and donuts. And the school seems rather

01:15:34.460 unapologetic about it. Yeah, whatever. And then just today, Chris Ruffo, who does such good reporting

01:15:39.900 on these issues, tweeted out, uh, the Minneapolis, uh, teachers union has negotiated a contract in which

01:15:45.660 the district will fire white teachers first. They're going to, they've agreed. And he posts it, 0.59

01:15:50.600 you can read it for yourself and Chris Ruffo's, uh, feed where you got to go. Like if they,

01:15:55.940 if they need to fire somebody, if you're white, get ready, you're going for like, this is insane. 0.81

01:16:01.300 And I think illegal. And I think these things will play out in the courts more and more because

01:16:06.020 it is unlawful in, in, in the government setting or in which your school is getting any government

01:16:10.940 money in particular, uh, to fire somebody on the basis of their skin color. So this is where it goes.

01:16:17.240 All right, listen, there's so much more to get to with Andy. I want to talk about the 75 hard

01:16:20.340 because that's the, like the restart. I think a lot of people are looking for. Um,

01:16:24.760 and I love his philosophy. Like it's, it's not just about your body. It's about your mind too.

01:16:29.860 I've never done this, but I'm kind of toying with it. I'm, I'm going to tell you, he's going

01:16:33.760 to go through the five things that you would do if you want to take on this challenge of the 75

01:16:38.640 hard to 75 days right after this very quick break. Don't go away.

01:16:41.920 Now, the other thing I wanted to mention that you talk about, we're talking about sort of what,

01:16:50.280 what these crazy policies do to the minority person with black, whatever Hispanic and what

01:16:56.900 they do to the white person and to the white person and the black person, frankly, it gets

01:17:02.160 rid of something you think is one of the keys to success, which is a little swagger. It's okay to

01:17:08.940 have a little swagger and actually it could be very beneficial. How the hell are you supposed to

01:17:13.400 have swagger? If you know, you're getting advanced based on an immutable characteristic over which you

01:17:18.400 have no control, or if you know, you're getting fired over one of those things, no matter how hard

01:17:23.080 you try, can you just spend a minute on swagger? Look, I I'm a person. I don't know if I give it to

01:17:32.260 you in a minute, but here's, here's what I think. You know, I think that these people, uh,

01:17:37.240 that are running the narrative generally want to remove anything of value from the human experience.

01:17:43.480 Um, and I think that's designed so that they could control as much of our existence as they

01:17:49.500 possibly can. And so if they can remove our self-confidence by setting us up to believe that

01:17:56.780 we can only get ahead, uh, if we're a victim or we can only get ahead, you know, these things

01:18:02.820 that they create for us, uh, they never allow us to develop the confidence that we are supposed to

01:18:09.760 develop through our human experience. And, you know, unfortunately, you know, when you talk about

01:18:15.920 the swagger that, that you get, that only comes from, from experience and growing and overcoming

01:18:22.760 things and being able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, you know what, dude, you're a bad

01:18:26.760 motherfucker. I'm proud of, I'm proud of you. And that's where that swagger comes from. And we have

01:18:31.200 so many people that, you know, talk about things like confidence, or they talk about things like

01:18:36.200 believing in themselves and they act as if it's some sort of, uh, magical thing, but you know, and,

01:18:42.840 and we're taught for it to be magical. We, we are taught that things like confidence, fortitude,

01:18:49.780 grit, mental toughness, the things that allow us to look in the mirror and be proud of ourselves,

01:18:55.800 we are taught that those are traits that people are either born with. And if you're not born with

01:19:01.420 them, you're screwed. Or, um, you know, that the, the universe has blessed certain people with these

01:19:08.900 things and we can no longer, we can't have them if we weren't born with them. And it's not true.

01:19:14.100 And I believe that we're not taught these things because they don't want us to be great. They don't

01:19:18.820 want us to be successful. They don't want us to be independent because they need us to be dependent

01:19:23.820 so that they can get what they want. And I am, I, I know that sounds a little bit conspiracy.

01:19:29.160 Um, and I'm not really sounds like China. Yeah. Well, like, you know, yeah, you're not wrong.

01:19:34.380 There are whole regimes who pursue exactly this lack of individualism, uh, snuffing out of, of

01:19:40.420 ambition, uh, grit, you know, go along with the sort of masters of the universe who are those in

01:19:46.700 government who know better. It's scary because more and more it's creeping into our own government.

01:19:50.960 And I, I know I've, I've, I've read, this is from your book, chapter 10, the number one key to

01:19:56.080 cultivating mental toughness is to intentionally put yourself in places that are uncomfortable.

01:20:02.660 Yes. That means the opposite of safe spaces. Safe spaces is a complete misnomer. Those,

01:20:08.420 those spaces make you less safe. They, they take away your mental toughness. You won't be able to

01:20:13.000 handle anything. That's exactly what you don't need. If you want to succeed in life, I couldn't agree

01:20:18.060 more. I gave a speech, a speech, remarks recently at Stanford saying, if you want, if you want to be

01:20:24.180 tough, you want to be confident, run toward the danger. I'm not talking about somebody shooting

01:20:28.560 a machine gun at you. I'm talking about get rid of safe spaces, put yourself in situations in which

01:20:34.440 your worldview will be challenged and which you will be challenged and which you feel uncomfortable.

01:20:38.100 And you merge out the other side like Andy for Sella.

01:20:40.560 Well, look, I'm trying like everybody else. I'm trying to get better every single day. But at

01:20:46.100 the end of the day, you know, we have to understand that all of these things that we look at and see

01:20:54.220 in other people, we also have, okay. When you look at someone and you say, man, because, because I used

01:21:00.180 to be this person, as we talked about earlier on the show, you know, I used to be a 350 pounds. I used

01:21:05.900 to be the person that couldn't stick to a diet for more than five or six days in a row. I used to be

01:21:10.980 the person who would tell myself throughout the year, all right, after, after New Year's, it's on,

01:21:16.240 I'm getting after it. You know, and that would last for four or five days. And then it would be okay

01:21:21.000 after Valentine's Day, because we're going to go out on Valentine's Day, I'm going to get serious

01:21:24.700 about this. You know what, after that wedding, after that trip, after Memorial Day, after July 4. And I

01:21:30.820 would tell myself this for years, and not be able to follow through. So I understand what it's like

01:21:37.480 to be that way. And I used to look at people who had this, the ability to follow through on things

01:21:44.580 or that were mentally tough, or that did amazing things, as they were magical, and they had such

01:21:49.780 amazing gifts. But what I learned and what I found out, because I became a student, I became a student

01:21:58.100 of mental toughness, because I didn't have it. Okay, I wanted it so bad. I wanted to be one of

01:22:04.020 these people so bad, that I would study literally anybody who had done anything hard, and try to

01:22:10.140 figure out what it was that they had that I didn't. And, and, you know, after literally decades of

01:22:15.660 studying, I could never find out. It was like this magical thing that I couldn't identify.

01:22:21.640 And then one day, I met this guy, James Lawrence, who some people know as the Iron Cowboy.

01:22:27.880 I had him on my podcast. And he did at that time, he had done 50 full length Ironman races in 50 days

01:22:37.320 consecutively in 50 states. And that was amazing to me. And I sat down with this man, he's still a

01:22:43.340 good friend of mine. And he said what that quote that you just read, he said something to the effect

01:22:49.820 of that on my show about putting yourself intentionally in comfortable situations. And it automatically

01:22:55.360 clicked for me, that this was not something that was gifted to you as a trait, nobody comes out of the

01:23:04.780 womb, you know, hard as fuck ready to take on anything that's going on in the world, they just

01:23:09.820 don't, you, you, you come out as a blank slate. And you are the result of the stimuli that you are,

01:23:16.920 you know, that is put on to you over time. And so I think the first thing that everybody has to

01:23:22.000 realize is that if you lack mental toughness, if you lack the ability to stick to things,

01:23:27.420 if you lack perseverance, if you lack fortitude, if you lack grit, if you lack what other people call

01:23:32.700 heart or confidence, the reason that you lack that is because you likely believe that these are traits

01:23:40.360 that you cannot change about yourself. And that is the furthest thing from the truth. So the first

01:23:45.580 thing we have to understand is, is that these things that we wish that we had, that we admire

01:23:51.240 in other people that sometimes we even hate that other people have that we don't have, are actually

01:23:56.860 things that we do have, we just haven't invested in those parts of ourselves to make them strong,

01:24:03.420 just like you would make your muscles strong, just like you would go out today and maybe run a mile,

01:24:07.940 and then maybe next week, you're running two. And then maybe next week, you're running 12.

01:24:11.480 You know, these, your mental capacity and your mental toughness is no different than training

01:24:17.040 your muscle. And once you can understand that, now you're in a place to really develop those

01:24:22.280 skill sets. And that's the purpose of the 75 hard live hard program is to get people to put

01:24:29.620 themselves through something that is the equivalent of a mental bootcamp that can help them develop some

01:24:35.120 of these things that they feel like they're missing because you asked about swagger. Well, the reason

01:24:40.020 that most people never develop their own swagger is because they don't even have any confidence.

01:24:44.520 And the reason they don't have any confidence is, you know, is because they've never done things

01:24:49.440 that they're proud of. They can't even follow through on their own word. So we have to change

01:24:55.060 ourselves mentally before we can change ourselves physically. You know, the idea of, of, um, you know,

01:25:02.080 75 hard and, and, and this program being a body transformation, it really has nothing to do with that.

01:25:08.200 It really has to do with about developing your mental toughness. Your body will change throughout

01:25:13.060 the program. Uh, but it's entirely, entirely intended for you to develop the mindset necessary

01:25:20.260 for you to win these battles that are going on inside your own brain, inside your own heart.

01:25:25.240 And there have been going on for a long period of time. Um, you know, the changes that people make

01:25:32.980 off of this program, the reason it's so impactful is because most people never, ever, ever have even

01:25:39.960 considered that maybe they too have greatness inside of them that they've just never invested

01:25:46.700 in. And once they put a set in 75 days, a very tiny amount of your life, once you get a taste of it

01:25:53.400 for 75 days, it opens up a whole new world for people. And that's, that's what I love about the

01:25:59.220 program more than anything. Just to give people, I said five before the break, six rules of the 75

01:26:04.100 hard program, just to give you the top, the top six here. If you skip a day, you must start over,

01:26:09.100 pick a diet to follow. He's not recommending, you know, anyone you figured out, pick a diet to follow

01:26:14.020 with no alcohol or cheat meals, drink a gallon of water daily, complete two 45 minute daily workouts,

01:26:21.740 read 10 pages per day of a nonfiction or entrepreneurial book, take progress photos every

01:26:29.880 day. So this is, that is for sure a challenge. 75 days. That's not short, right? Two and a half

01:26:38.060 months there. I have my math straight. Um, no cheat meals, not a sip of alcohol, two daily workouts. I can

01:26:46.360 barely get myself to do one. How am I going to do two 45 workouts a day? What, why do I do this?

01:26:51.280 Cause it, it's going to create mental toughness, but what's the regime, what's the regimen about?

01:26:56.380 Well, it's about inconvenience. Okay. Um, there's a reason for every single one of those items,

01:27:02.400 a very specific reason. Uh, and if you read the book, um, it'll go into depth of what each one is.

01:27:08.520 Uh, but essentially the whole point of the program is to put yourself in the most inconvenient,

01:27:14.960 non-compromising situation that you possibly can. Meaning there is no room for substitutions here.

01:27:23.020 There is no room for, Oh, you know what? I don't feel like it. Uh, I'm going to give myself a break

01:27:28.940 or I'm going to give myself a mental day or all this shit that people are doing now about letting 0.62

01:27:34.360 themselves off the hook because letting yourself off the hook is the reason that you are where you

01:27:40.060 are in this state of unhappiness in the state of unfulfillment. And so what we're looking to do

01:27:44.900 over the next 75 days is to correct that behavior and give you a new perspective on what it takes to

01:27:51.620 actually build resiliency, toughness, grit, fortitude. And I can promise you, we've had people

01:27:58.280 from all, and by the way, the program's free. You can listen to the program, uh, on my podcast for

01:28:03.880 free. You don't have to buy the book. Uh, if you want to buy the book, that's great. It'll give you a

01:28:07.780 more in depth description, but this is not something that you must do. And I like to make

01:28:12.920 that really clear because this is not some sort of like money-making thing for me. This is something

01:28:17.640 that I want you to do so that you improve so that our culture improves so that we can get our fucking

01:28:22.920 country back. Okay. Um, but the point of what I'm getting at, uh, in terms of, uh, actually I got off

01:28:31.920 track. No, no, no, no worries. This is actually where I want to go with it because you've got the

01:28:37.600 75 hard. You've got these six rules. Again, the book is called 75 hard, a tactical guide to winning

01:28:42.640 the war with yourself. And you've got to instill discipline. It's got to be hardcore discipline.

01:28:47.880 And you know, you've got to do it faithfully. One of the things I know that you've written about

01:28:52.100 is you may be holding yourself back with negative self-talk, but your friends may be holding you back

01:28:58.500 as well. And you write about how you may actually have to say to your best bud, I'm not going out

01:29:04.700 Thursday or Friday or Saturday or next Thursday. Like it's very, especially for young people.

01:29:12.620 Who's like social life revolves around drinking and eating at the big restaurants and all that.

01:29:19.980 It's not going to be easy. No, it's not. It's very inconvenient. It's very hard and it's not for

01:29:25.120 everyone. Okay. If you're happy living your life, um, and you're happy with yourself and you're happy

01:29:30.440 with like, this is not, if you are happy, just ignore what I'm saying. Okay. Like, but, but make

01:29:37.020 sure you're genuinely happy. Not this bullshit. I'm faking that I'm happy because that's the problem

01:29:42.460 that we're trying to address. We have an epidemic of fake happiness. We have an epidemic of depression.

01:29:48.700 We have an epidemic of unfulfillment. We have an epidemic of people who want to be more,

01:29:54.480 who are actually ashamed to even admit that they want to be more because of the cultural

01:29:59.940 stipulations that society has put on wanting to be more. And if you are serious about wanting to be

01:30:06.080 more than this is a program that you should look at. However, um, you know, one of the things you're

01:30:12.980 going to have to do. And what I think is the magical part about the program is you do have to learn to

01:30:17.840 live with the program. You're not going to stay at home for 75 days. You're going to have to go to

01:30:22.840 dinners and make positive choices. You're going to have to learn how to eat out and make the right

01:30:28.040 choices. You're going to have to learn how to be social. I encourage people to not abandon their

01:30:33.260 regular life, but instead to still participate in it within the guidelines of the program, because

01:30:40.540 what you're going to learn is, is that it's really not that it's really not that hard to go out and drink

01:30:47.120 a water while everybody else is drinking beer. It's really not that hard to order. Um, you

01:30:52.820 know, a salad instead of ordering a pizza, it's just not that hard. And, you know, but, but looking

01:30:59.260 back, I can remember when it was hard for me. So I want to be fair. Uh, when I say that, you know,

01:31:03.580 I was the person who would go to a restaurant and if they had something I really wanted, I couldn't say

01:31:09.860 no to that. I would justify it in my head. I would come up with a story of how it was okay, how I earned

01:31:15.680 it, how, you know, whatever, whatever, you know, we, we, we learn how to justify things so perfectly

01:31:21.940 in our own brain. Um, and I was the best at it. You know, I can make sense of any situation. And

01:31:27.300 that's also what we're trying to fix with this program is to be able to identify when you're

01:31:31.940 actually justifying, uh, things that are not good for you, things that you aren't supposed to be

01:31:37.840 doing. And what this program does is it really creates a higher level of awareness so that you're able

01:31:42.560 to call yourself out on your own shit, uh, from here on out in life. And because the, the

01:31:47.400 is lack of awareness, they don't identify when it is that they are, uh, talking themselves into a

01:31:57.080 decision that isn't going to serve them and their ultimate goals or their ultimate dreams or whatever

01:32:01.940 they're trying to build. Um, so they don't even identify the internal dialogue that's happening.

01:32:06.580 They just think I can't do it. And the truth is we all have two voices in our head. I talk

01:32:12.320 about it in the book. We have a boss voice and then we have a bitch voice and we have the voice 1.00

01:32:16.740 that tells us we're great. And we have the voice that justifies all the demeaning, all the negative,

01:32:21.660 all the, the soft, uh, behaviors, the bad habits, the things that have gotten us to this place of

01:32:29.240 unsatisfaction and disappointment and frustration with ourselves. And we tend to listen to that voice

01:32:34.840 much more than we listen to the voice that tells us that we can do great things like, Hey man,

01:32:39.760 you shouldn't be stuffing that piece of pizza in your face or you shouldn't be drinking four nights

01:32:44.320 a week. We don't listen to that voice. We listen to the voice that's easier because it's louder

01:32:49.320 because we've conditioned ourselves to listen to it. And so what this program really does is it raises

01:32:54.440 your awareness to be able to identify when it is that you are becoming your own worst enemy and

01:33:00.500 teaches you how to become your own best friend in terms of what is really great for you, uh, you know,

01:33:06.900 in your life. Because the reality is, man, those drinks and that food and that dinner,

01:33:11.700 there's going to be a million more of those things. Um, you know, figure out the foundational

01:33:16.820 principles of your life on how to operate and you're going to be able to figure out just about

01:33:21.920 anything. Well, I love the challenge to exercise more self-discipline. It's hard. You know, you,

01:33:30.180 you think about, Oh, it's a little much easier to sit on the couch than to work out so much easier to

01:33:34.400 have that glass of wine. That's why it's called hard. The hearts. That's, that's why, right? Like

01:33:40.480 he's not promising that it's going to be easy. He's promising a better you at the end of it,

01:33:45.420 whatever that means for you. But self-discipline is definitely something you have to practice.

01:33:50.520 And 75 days, not that long. It's not like guaranteeing you're going to do it for a year.

01:33:55.340 Uh, and Andy's living proof that it works. What a pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much for

01:33:59.540 coming on. Well, thank you so much for having me. You know, I'm just out here trying to,

01:34:03.880 to get people to understand that you guys are capable of so much more than what you've been told.

01:34:08.700 You're capable of so much more than what society has allowed you believe you're capable of.

01:34:12.800 And if you would just take a minute and step back and really consider what it is you're meant to do

01:34:16.940 and make an investment into these things that I'm talking about, you're going to come out the other

01:34:21.380 end with a whole new perspective. And that's my whole goal, because once you realize what you're

01:34:25.120 capable of, once you realize that you're not just some plebe floating through the, uh, the universe

01:34:31.420 consuming, and that you can actually build great things with your life, it changes everything.

01:34:36.440 So I appreciate you giving me the platform to come on and share this message.

01:34:40.040 And, uh, I'm a big fan of everything that you're doing. And I, I'm, I'm very honored to be on your

01:34:44.340 show. Oh, thank you. Well, hopefully it's the first of many appearances. I'd love to have you back.

01:34:48.580 I know you mean what you, what you tell the audience that you've lived it firsthand. And if you want

01:34:53.520 to check out Andy in forums, other than his book, check out the real AF podcast. Abby and I've been

01:34:59.480 laughing about this because my assistant, Abigail Finan believes that she is the real AF. So she's

01:35:05.260 a big fan of all your merch, of course, all the best, Andy, take care. I'll see you soon. I hope,

01:35:09.940 and we'll be right back with what's coming up tomorrow. Tomorrow. You're not going to want to

01:35:14.580 miss us because we've got former education secretary, Betsy DeVos. She worked for Trump and she's going to 1.00

01:35:20.820 have some things to say about this madness and the schools just in time for the restart of this year.

01:35:26.080 I wonder if she thinks Dr. Fauci is a truth teller and synonymous with integrity. We'll get into all

01:35:31.740 of it. Download the show in the meantime, so you don't miss it. And also go to youtube.com slash

01:35:35.660 Megan Kelly. Subscribe. If you would, we're trying to make it up to our goal of half a million. We'll do

01:35:41.980 it soon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow. Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show.

01:35:46.780 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

The Megyn Kelly Show - August 16, 2022

Trump Raid's 1⧸6 Connection, and Building Mental Toughness, with Andy Frisella and Charles C.W. Cooke ｜ Ep. 374

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