On today's episode of the Triggered Podcast, we have an interview with retired Army General Anthony Teta. Teta is a force to be reckoned with in the military and has been a long time supporter of the Trump administration. He served as the Commander in Chief of the 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne and 101st Mountain Division, and served as a senior Trump Defense Department official. He is also a regular contributor to the New York Times and is a frequent guest on Fox News and other media outlets. He has a great story about how he and his family escaped Cuba from a raft and found their way to the United States. He also talks about his trip to the UFC in Miami with his father, Donnie Trump Jr. and talks about the craziness that went down at UFC Fight Night in Miami. We also talk about DJT's trip to Atlantic City and what it was like to hang out with DJT and his wife backstage at UFC Card One in Atlantic City. And we get into the crazy things DJT did on Saturday night in Miami, including his time with Dana White and Dana's reaction to the MAGA Nation in the aftermath of UFC Card in Miami and the reaction to Dana's post-fight press conference. We also get to hear DJT talk about what it's like to go to a UFC event with Kid Rock and Dana White in Miami to the tune of "American Badass" by American Badass by Kid Rock. And much more! - Tom and Donnie talk about their trip to Miami and how they had a blast in the middle of the night and what they did to celebrate the UFC Card and the crazy reaction they got from the UFC event in Miami after UFC Card. - and why it was a night that was truly a night of pure MAGA! - we can't wait to do it again. . - We'll be back next week with more! - Tom breaks it all down in Part 2 of this episode. and much more!! - Stay tuned for part two of this amazing interview with a great American Bad Ass! Tom's interview with the great general. Tom talks about what's to do in the future, and why he's going to be in the next episode, and how he's coming back to the U.S. in a few weeks! and what he's looking forward to doing it in the coming weeks, and what his plans for the future of the podcast.
00:00:35.000Big tech, they ain't exactly going to help us get this message out there, so we're going to do it the old-fashioned way, the Trump way.
00:00:42.000We're going to do it organic. So just thank you for all of that.
00:00:46.000Get it out to your friends, because that's, again, how we're going to win and fight back against the insanity that we see each and every day.
00:00:55.000Just ahead, we got an incredible interview with retired Army General, author, former head of the 82nd Airborne, 101st Airborne, 10th Mountain Division, and senior Trump Defense Department official, Anthony Teta.
00:01:10.000Great guy. One of the few guys sort of fighting against the bureaucracy in the DOD. You know, watch, you know, they tried canceling him and they wouldn't confirm him.
00:01:19.000And, you know, again, if you want to do What the duly elected president of the United States wants to do, but that is contrary to the Washington, D.C. unelected bureaucrat narrative.
00:01:32.000But we'll talk about that in great detail with a great American.
00:01:37.000But before that, I want to wish you all An incredible Easter.
00:01:43.000I gave this to my team last second before we went live, so I don't know if they'll be able to incorporate some of the pictures, but, you know, got to spend time with my amazing children and Kim and Ronan, and we just had an absolute We're good to go.
00:02:29.000My little guy Spencer, he's the one that jumped on with me a couple weeks ago because he wanted to say hi to everyone.
00:02:35.000He seems to have the magic touch for finding the golden egg.
00:02:39.000I think in his 10 years of life, I think he's found seven of them.
00:02:43.000And he managed to pull off another one of those victories again, which...
00:02:48.000Creates a total disaster in our household, right?
00:02:51.000Because they're all rather competitive.
00:02:53.000Let's just say the Trump genes run strong.
00:02:57.000It ends up being a bit of a disaster, but it works out well.
00:03:01.000So, Easter was incredible, but me and my little man Donnie were tired because we went to the UFC down in Miami on Saturday night to see my really good friend, just all-around badass, Jorge Masvidal fight at the event down there in Miami.
00:03:23.000Unfortunately, he didn't pull it off, but man, showed a lot of heart for a fighter.
00:03:28.000You know, late 30s, probably his last fight, but someone who's gone so far out of his way
00:03:33.000to be supportive of us, the America First movement.
00:03:37.000He tells, I'll have him on the podcast soon, I think I gotta do that,
00:03:40.000because just the story of his father and how he literally escaped Cuba from a raft
00:03:46.000and how he doesn't wanna bring that shit here is absolutely incredible.
00:04:12.000Dana, Dana White, who's done this, well, at least 287 times, said it was the most incredible cheer of someone walking into the arena in his history of doing it.
00:05:20.000Mean the crowd was showing love the entire night All right.
00:05:26.000DJT had to get up in between rounds of fights because they just started chanting, you know, the MAGA chants in USA. It was just awesome.
00:05:35.000Watch for yourself. But perhaps some of the most fun was actually, you know, backstage, hanging out with Mike Tyson, telling some of those stories with him and his family and his wife, but telling the stories about the good old days back in Atlantic City and the fights with DJT. Not fights...
00:06:16.000Meaning, boxing matches, not fights with.
00:06:18.000He actually said DJT was the only guy that ever gave him good advice.
00:06:21.000He didn't always take it and probably regrets that.
00:06:24.000Actually said he would come on the podcast right here, live.
00:06:28.000So I think you guys will appreciate that.
00:06:31.000But great fighters. Even Jorge came backstage that way.
00:06:34.000You had Theo Vaughn hanging out with DJT. So that's a podcast maybe we have to make happen as...
00:06:41.000As well, even if it's against my interest, I may have to see that conversation take place.
00:06:47.000UFC, I guess he's going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame this year.
00:06:51.000Cowboy Cerrone definitely wins best t-shirt game because he showed up to the UFC in Miami with a Trump shirt on.
00:07:02.000Absolutely awesome. You know, Kid Rock, my buddy Bob, obviously just a great dude, great American.
00:07:08.000And so hanging out backstage with those guys and my son who really loved hanging out with Kyle and Steve Will Do It from NELC, those guys just kicking ass at everything that they're doing and just maybe a little less political, but you can see where they lean, just having a conversation about sanity.
00:08:17.000The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, said he's working on a pardon for army sergeant convicted of murder during the 2020 BLM violence.
00:08:29.000Many on the left called it the summer of love, but Daniel Perry was recently convicted of murder.
00:08:36.000For shooting and killing a BLM demonstrator named Garrett Foster during the violent, vicious, murderous, looting mayhem of the 2020 Summer of Love riots.
00:08:52.000Perry was working as an Uber driver on July 25, 2020, when he encountered a large BLM riot in downtown Austin.
00:09:02.000He told police that a group of protesters encircled his vehicle and that Foster raised an AK-47 at him.
00:09:10.000Prompting him to open fire with a handgun in self-defense.
00:09:15.000Now, this case is an obvious case of self-defense.
00:09:18.000We saw with our own eyes exactly what the Summer of Love riots were all about.
00:09:39.000And Austin has a left-wing, George Soros-backed, radical prosecutor named Jose Garza.
00:09:48.000The prosecutor is being accused by the lead detective of the case of withholding exculpatory evidence from the grand jury.
00:10:01.000A grand jury They're voted to convict.
00:10:05.000Okay? The prosecutor is withholding exculpatory evidence.
00:10:09.000Think about that. I wonder where else that's probably happening.
00:10:12.000I wonder what other Soros-funded district attorney is doing that.
00:10:20.000You think there's anything out there like that, guys?
00:10:23.000Well, Detective David Fugit said in court that there was no evidence, no evidence, that Perry accelerated into the crowd and that Garrett Foster's gunshot wounds indicate that he was in a tactical stance when he approached Perry's door.
00:10:41.000It does not get more clean-cut than that, but it doesn't matter, because the George Soros radical leftists want to destroy our country.
00:10:51.000They want to destroy anything that is good and decent left in America.
00:10:56.000The left is doing a wonderful job of that, as evidenced by literally all of the news about the trans-terrorism going on these days.
00:11:22.000But thank God, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that he's working on a pardon.
00:11:27.000He said, and I quote, Texas has one of the strongest stand-your-ground laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney.
00:11:38.000I look forward to approving the board's pardon recommendation as it hits my desk.
00:11:45.000Guys, the real problem is that at least we have a conservative governor in the state of Texas.
00:11:53.000But you don't have that everywhere else.
00:12:15.000They used to talk about Sheldon Adelson, the one Republican billionaire that actually funded some of these things, and they could say the most vicious things about him.
00:12:23.000He happens to be Jewish, like George Soros.
00:12:25.000Now, if you say anything about George Soros, it's magically anti-Semitic.
00:12:30.000Now, his history could call some of those things into question regardless, but it still doesn't matter.
00:12:36.000People are being shamed and canceled, and they're afraid to call out George Soros for the radical scumbag he is.
00:12:45.000If you look at the things he's done, the people he's helped get elected, and then you look at what happens in those areas, there's literally no one that can tell you it's for the good of the nation, or for the good of anything, moral, just, or decent.
00:13:00.000But it doesn't matter, because that's what we're up against.
00:13:04.000Big tech will have their full backing, and again, they'll call anyone who questions him an anti-Semite.
00:13:09.000Even if you're talking about crime and electing radical lunatics, doesn't matter.
00:13:16.000It's like racism, the easy button of the political left these days.
00:13:19.000Doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be about race.
00:13:21.000You could be talking about anything. No one wants to be called a racist because it's the worst thing in the world, but they do it day in and day out.
00:13:28.000And unfortunately, they've overblown it so far that now people hear it.
00:13:36.000Just another person being called a racist.
00:13:38.000And what they do is they do a major disservice to those people who are actually affected by it.
00:13:45.000It is a real thing. It's just not the cause of or solution for all of the world's problems, okay?
00:13:50.000It's a tiny thing in America in 2023, but they'd have you believe that it's the biggest thing in the world.
00:13:57.000Just like somehow white supremacy is the nation's largest threat, though no one really can name one or has ever seen more than one or two idiots running around doing those things.
00:14:08.000But it doesn't matter. Because we're led by fools.
00:14:25.000So, speaking of idiots, Joe Biden, at the White House egg roll, mumbles through the question about if he's running for election, because of course he can't get that right.
00:14:36.000He basically... But his announcement, and in lighter and still very sad news, Biden was asked by Al Roker if he's running for a re-election.
00:14:50.000This is the guy that won 81 million votes, America?
00:16:48.000Terminates Catholic pastoral care contract right before the Holy Week of Easter, the holiest week in the Christian calendar, and the Biden administration sent a cease and desist order right before the Holy Week that directed Catholic priests to cease any religious services at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
00:17:19.000Are you kidding me? I mean, this looks like an attack on the First Amendment's free exercise of religion, obviously.
00:17:28.000It comes at the same time as the DOD and Pentagon doctors are claiming that seven-year-olds are capable of deciding whether they can get so-called puberty blockers.
00:17:38.000No wonder the military is struggling to recruit anyone.
00:17:42.000No wonder they're falling so short, right?
00:17:45.000A big part of patriotism is actually, actually believing the stuff that your country stands for.
00:17:52.000And these days, it stands for puberty blockers, for minors, for allowing children to mutilate their bodies, for not wanting parents to have any say in the matter.
00:18:24.000You don't think that Christians make up probably the majority of the United States military since they make up a majority of our population?
00:18:34.000If you're in Walter Reed suffering for serving your country, you can't have Catholic services during Easter?
00:18:45.000God forbid! We want a trans person to, I don't know, talk to you about something is probably where they're going with it because that's where they're going with everything else.
00:19:45.000Well guys, before we get to retired Brigadier General Anthony Tata, we gotta thank our sponsors.
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00:20:04.000I hope you guys all had a great Easter, by the way.
00:20:07.000I want to make sure that everyone enjoyed that.
00:20:10.000And Patriot Mobile would actually let you say that, unlike so many other woke companies where that would somehow be misconstrued as racist or something else, because you never know what's going on with these lunatics these days.
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00:20:28.000Not only does Patriot Mobile provide you dependable wireless service at an affordable price, they also share your values and they actually support you.
00:20:37.000Just so we understand, folks, I get it.
00:20:40.000Everyone is going to have a cell phone, right?
00:20:43.000They're going to have some sort of wireless plan.
00:20:46.000Patriot Mobile puts their dollars into action, donating a portion of every dollar earned to support groups that fight for the First Amendment, the right to keep and bear arms, the sanctity of life, and protecting our brave police and first responders.
00:21:02.000So if you're going to give your money to someone...
00:21:05.000In the cell phone category, it might as well be someone who believes what you believe and is willing to put their money to back those things.
00:21:34.000We can keep giving money to the woke companies that have literally tried to cancel conservative programming like Newsmax and OAN, like the parent company of AT&T. Or you can give your money to Patriot Mobile to support the causes that you believe in.
00:21:50.000I also want to make sure you check out GoldCo.
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00:24:41.000You're some kind of phobe if you're a conservative and you're some kind of hero if you're on the progressive left side.
00:24:47.000And so what parents are watching this and seeing that The military, DOD is very political and they don't want their kids involved in that.
00:24:59.000They see an administration that's sharpening the knives to go to war somewhere.
00:25:05.000Your father, the president, was all about Disengaging from foreign entanglements.
00:25:11.000As George Washington said, we should not be in foreign entanglements.
00:25:15.000Disengaging from that while using the other levers of national power, economy, information, diplomacy, which none of that is happening now under this administration, to shape and influence events.
00:25:29.000And China, the tariffs, a perfect example.
00:25:33.000Leveraging the United States' economic power to achieve a diplomatic and Military outcome by achieving deterrence against China.
00:25:45.000Not only is it gone, it almost feels like it's the opposite.
00:25:50.000We're pushing trans stuff in the military and we have the cast of Ted Lasso over at the White House simultaneously You know, Putin is meeting with Xi.
00:26:00.000Right. The Saudis are meeting with China to eliminate the petrodollar.
00:26:05.000I mean, I think our viewers understand what that means.
00:26:07.000If we can't borrow because we have essentially, you know, a fictitious gold standard, you know, backed by oil in the ground, maybe it's a good thing because maybe we wouldn't be able to afford to fund the insanity.
00:26:21.000Right. Right. You know, that our government funds.
00:26:24.000You know, here's a billion dollars for the, you know, trans-education in Pakistan.
00:26:28.000I'm sure that money's going to good use, right?
00:26:29.000It's being stolen and, you know, let's just say...
00:26:56.000Remember, Barack Obama promised fundamental change to this country.
00:27:00.000You've still got all the Barack Obama people, Susan Rice, et cetera, running this.
00:27:04.000They are trying to make sure People like your father, your father himself, never get elected again because he is the biggest threat to this crazy agenda that's out there that is fundamentally attempting to change this country.
00:27:18.000And so what you see is using our institutions, weaponizing our institutions to be levered against, you know, great Americans, hard-working Americans, the middle class, 87,000 IRS agents.
00:27:31.000It's all intended to intimidate And control the population.
00:27:37.000It is dictatorial. And that's what the Joe Biden regime is all about.
00:27:40.000Yeah, and I think that many people make the mistake.
00:27:42.000They look at Joe and they see, you know, a bumbling idiot, you know, on TV, someone who can't get through a sentence or walk up a flight of stairs.
00:27:48.000And yet, you know, I sort of had this conversation with a bunch of people.
00:27:56.000For the radical nature of what they're doing.
00:27:58.000Meaning, I think it's still Obama and Susan Rice in charge.
00:28:00.000They just weren't willing to tarnish their legacies, like, saying this shit.
00:28:05.000You know, they wouldn't, you know, like, alright, maybe we want that, but I'm not willing to sign the paper and risk my reputation or, you know, my ability to profiteer off of it.
00:28:17.000He's like Ron Burgundy. You put it on the teleprompter, he'll say it.
00:28:21.000He'll try to say it on the teleprompter, but if you put it in front of the sign, I'm sure with a crayon he can get through his signature still.
00:28:29.000I actually think he's been more effective at implementing the stuff that the radical left wants than Obama ever was because they don't care about his legacy.
00:28:38.000That and he's effective at doing what he's told to do.
00:28:53.000I had that thought driving over here that Biden is actually a very effective president for the progressive left.
00:29:02.000And he ran as a moderate, and now what he's doing is executing the New Green Deal, the progressive left, everything.
00:29:10.000The school shooting in Nashville, having been a superintendent of one of the largest school systems in the country, in Wake County, that was a big concern of mine.
00:29:21.000Every single day, you've got 150,000 students, are they all okay?
00:29:26.000The fact that they talk about the issue of trans rights and all that instead of talking about Christianity or the school or the victims.
00:29:37.000Or they won't even acknowledge it's a terrorist attack, right?
00:29:40.000If it was a guy like you or me in a MAGA hat, they would jump to those conclusions.
00:30:52.000A good intelligence work is understanding your population and we would have meetings and they would brief me.
00:30:59.000We think we're a little worried about this and we rehearsed school lockdown drills and God forbid nothing happened in my time as superintendent there.
00:31:07.000Okay, so it seems like the solution is a relatively obvious one with some basic training, working with those institutions that, you know, the same ones that the teachers union want to defund and all that nonsense.
00:31:55.000For a tiny fraction of that $130 billion, we could implement this across the country.
00:32:01.000Across the country. At every public school, every private school, every charter school.
00:32:05.000And that we could figure out some scenario where the funding, it would be...
00:32:12.000A net zero, almost, where you could apply those funds, you could find them somewhere else.
00:32:16.000There's so much waste in school systems and education systems, particularly with all this DEI training and all this stuff you've got to do.
00:32:27.000Yeah, by the way, take that training, which serves literally zero purpose whatsoever, you know, other than maybe, again, for the woke agenda, but doesn't actually teach...
00:32:34.000Like, I wish they'd teach math in school these days.
00:32:36.000Right. Because it feels like that's not of a concern.
00:32:40.000I'm not saying because someone will criticize me and say, oh, they're still teaching math.
00:32:45.000We spend more per capita than any nation in the world, and we're like 28 in the rankings.
00:32:51.000We have schools that the entire graduating class isn't proficient in reading.
00:32:57.000So yeah, yeah, they're teaching, but like, give me a break.
00:33:00.000Well, school choice is such a big deal now.
00:33:02.000And for parents and for legislatures and governors to be sure that they provide parents as much opportunity as possible for their precious cargo, their children.
00:33:13.000You have five children. You know, I have two.
00:33:15.000I mean, nothing is more important than your children, their education, their livelihood, their potential.
00:33:21.000And so, why not put some money towards securing our children, you know, a little bit more?
00:33:26.000And you could take a fraction of what we're giving to Ukraine and apply it across the country, and the problem would...
00:33:34.000You'll never eliminate any and all threats, but it would be greatly diminished.
00:33:55.000And when you talk about the rise of China, the threat there, our other allies around the world, whether they be Taiwan or others, how...
00:34:06.000How can we be fighting a proxy war, which is all it's been, right?
00:34:10.000I mean, we're de facto, I guess there's people in there still have sort of the 1980 mentality of we've got to take on Russia now, you know, even if we won economically in the early 90s.
00:34:21.000How do we, I mean, can we fight a two-front war right now?
00:34:24.000You've led some of the most elite units in our army and it feels like So much of what my father spent trying to build up.
00:34:31.000Build up the military, get them the best equipment, get them replenished, rather than fighting an archaic war in an archaic way.
00:34:40.000But are those resources so diminished that we'd actually be able to fight a war at this point?
00:34:47.000Well, the resources are finite, Don, because we can't even meet our recruiting goals under this administration.
00:34:53.000And then when you talk about providing Patriot missile systems, M1 Abrams tanks, and some of our more sophisticated weaponry to Ukraine, and then if the balloon goes up in Taiwan, you know, we've got a real issue on our hands.
00:35:08.000And so, you know, I managed, as the undersecretary, the national defense strategy, which talked about China, Russia as their primary threats, Iran, North Korea as their secondary threats.
00:35:18.000And what this administration has done is managed to create a very solid alliance between our four major competitors.
00:35:33.000Right. And you have to go back to this botched withdrawal from Afghanistan to understand what's happening in Ukraine.
00:35:43.000And I'm furious about Kirby releasing this report that was watered down anyway yesterday into the maw of a no news cycle.
00:35:54.000The biggest insult to every veteran from Afghanistan was what happened on the withdrawal.
00:36:03.000The second biggest insult and the final nail in that coffin is releasing this thing into the four-day weekend.
00:36:10.000Yeah, get into the details of that for our viewers, because again, you know, people wanted to be with their families over Easter.
00:36:17.000And so I'm sure it was intentionally, you know, every time there's incompetence, they release it on a Friday evening, on a holiday weekend, so no one's like, oh, we released it!
00:36:26.000You know, they'll make sure that their lackeys in the media don't cover any of the incompetence.
00:36:30.000I'm sure it'll be whitewashed already.
00:36:32.000So whatever incompetence is highlighted, you'll assume it's 20x.
00:36:37.000But the underlying point, Don, is that when that was happening, I was the deputy commander general of all the troops in Afghanistan, 06, 07.
00:36:47.000And I had 25,000 troops that I was responsible.
00:36:56.000Many others were maimed by IEDs and firefights.
00:37:00.000I had several call on me saying, sir, they were emotionally broken.
00:37:05.000The generation of veterans that went through Afghanistan are emotionally traumatized by what happened then.
00:37:14.000And now, it's almost, because there's been no accountability, there's been no vetting, there's been no airing of really what went wrong, there's been no attempt to learn how not to repeat that in the future.
00:38:08.000They were taking a lot of victory laps at the time because they were able to accelerate it, and they did it during the fighting season, rather, in the winter when a lot of these people are literally in caves in minor details like that.
00:38:20.000All that kind of stuff we had talked about for the transition, which they wouldn't listen to us when the Biden administration came in.
00:38:27.000But the breaking news, really, the one tidbit, the one morsel is that Biden said, get butts in seats.
00:38:34.000I want max number of refugees taken out.
00:38:37.000It didn't matter if they were vetted, not vetted, needed to leave, didn't need to leave, terrorists, not terrorists.
00:39:01.000There might have been a few hundred people we needed to get out of there.
00:39:04.000And they're talking about 75, whatever the number is, a thousand.
00:39:10.000But what that did, according to the report, is it made them increase the flow of people through Abbey Gate.
00:39:19.000And Abbey Gate is where the suicide bombing happened.
00:39:22.000And so... Well, we read now that they...
00:39:24.000I mean, one of the things I saw, like, they actually had the bomber, like...
00:39:28.000A sniper had them in the crosshairs and couldn't get permission to actually take them out.
00:39:32.000They knew. Right. Which is a hallmark of the Obama administration, that 8,000-mile screwdriver to have to go up through several different levels of command for a sniper to do his job, right?
00:39:45.000I mean, you divest all of that responsibility and authority down to the lowest level.
00:39:51.000Well, it's why they took out ISIS so quickly under my father.
00:42:07.000Every NATO nation was in there in some form.
00:42:10.000And one of the things, I had calls sometimes multiple times a week with every, you know, the major NATO nation, UK, Canada, Germany, and I reassured them, we came in together, we modified together, we will leave together.
00:42:26.000And the talking points that, oh, NATO was broken under President Trump, couldn't be further from the truth.
00:42:34.000We had tremendous relations and tremendous respect for one another.
00:42:39.000And so it's Biden who came in and gets to my point for bringing this up.
00:43:13.000There was no, like, oh, hey, guys, we thought you might want to know.
00:43:16.000Yeah, no, I feel they were equally surprised, meaning our allies and the people who fought with us for 20 years and the translators.
00:43:22.000I know friends, again, they were doing sort of like publicly paid or privately paid for missions to try to get some of the people who were actually helpful, you know, who they vetted over decades of being shot at.
00:43:34.000Right. We're not going to help those people, but if you're an unvetted terrorist, maybe ISIS, but sure, get on the plane.
00:43:41.000Come on in. Bring that backpack with you.
00:43:50.000Yeah. So the big point here is Putin's watching all that, and he says NATO is broken.
00:43:57.000The Americans just shafted NATO. And I'm gonna, if, you know, most people recognize the window of opportunity by the sound of its shutting, Putin saw that window of opportunity, began a couple weeks later, moving troops into Belarus, moving troops on a Ukraine border.
00:44:17.000And suddenly, we're left holding this bag in Afghanistan, and you've got the utterly incompetent Tony Blinken, You know, just not sure what to do, you know, and just...
00:44:35.000That's the guy that got up and did a press conference the week following saying that he was, and I quote, shocked and dismayed that the Taliban...
00:44:45.000Did not install a more diverse and inclusive government.
00:44:53.000That's like verbatim of what this idiot said on a world stage after 13 marines were killed, after we embarrassed ourselves, after China sitting there salivating, you know, because whatever the timeline was for taking over Taiwan, it has now been rapidly accelerated because, like, this idiot thought, like...
00:45:56.000On the eve of the invasion, how wrong did the intelligence have to be, the U.S. intelligence community, how wrong do Blinken and Biden's instincts have to be to offer Zelensky a ride out on the eve of the invasion?
00:46:12.000Remember, Zelensky famously said, I don't need a ride, I need ammunition.
00:46:18.000So think about this for a second, Don.
00:46:21.000If your father had done that, and this would have never happened, it did not happen.
00:47:18.000You know, Putin doesn't move 150,000 troops and decide to wrap it up in a few weeks.
00:47:24.000And everybody was saying, all the other blue-check generals were saying, you know, CNN, MSNBC, oh, this is going to be a 72-hour and everybody's going to be speaking Russian.
00:47:41.000And A, I've commanded Ukrainian soldiers in combat in Kosovo, and they're very good, they're very technically competent.
00:47:48.000B, one of my dearest West Point friends that graduated with me left Wall Street in 2014 after the Maidan riots, went and joined the Ukrainian military because he's passionate about it, and he was shot and killed on the Russian front in 2014, Mark Paslowski. And so they have the passion, they have the technical competence.
00:48:09.000And so the real question for me is, you know, just like any border incursion, you know, international law, we probably have a role here with NATO and reinforcing NATO and making sure that nothing happens to NATO. Ukraine's not in NATO. So we have a monitor, maybe push them some stuff.
00:48:35.000I think from a defense perspective, the one thing that the administration has gotten right is the rotational combat brigades that have been going over there from the 101st, 82nd and others, 1st Armored Division.
00:48:47.000And doing what we call flexible deterrent options.
00:48:51.000And that shows some level of commitment.
00:48:55.000But adding Finland to NATO... By the way, that's what got us here to begin with.
00:49:03.000He saw weakness and the nature of a predator is to exploit that weakness.
00:49:07.000That's a story as old as nature itself.
00:49:10.000You look at Joe Biden, it only encourages your enemies to pounce on the weakness, right?
00:49:17.000When you started talking about Ukraine, which is a large country, land mass-wise, you know, hundreds of miles of border, and NATO's like, okay, fine.
00:49:27.000You know what? It's been a 50-year stalemate.
00:49:30.000Let's just add him into NATO. I'm like, wait a minute, are we not encroaching?
00:49:36.000It just feels like, and if you say that, you're a Russian apologist, and I'm like, I'm not apologizing for him, but I'm also not so intellectually either dishonest or stupid to say that, oh yeah, no, no, no, we did nothing.
00:49:51.000Maybe Putin was going to do it anyway, but I feel like we gave him the excuse To do it even if they wanted to.
00:49:59.000It'd be a lot harder on the world stage to do this if we weren't like, okay, we're gonna let them in, and now we're doing the same in Finland, and it's like, you know, what do you do when a megalomaniac and an egomaniac is pressured to that level?
00:50:13.000So, for the record, Putin's a bad guy.
00:50:15.000He shouldn't have done this. We need to make sure that he can't do this anymore, etc.
00:50:24.000I've spent my career fighting evil on behalf of the United States.
00:50:29.000But when you think about it, adding Finland, for example, to NATO, There was no deliberation about that.
00:50:36.000We've got now a commitment that if there's a border incursion in Finland, American soldiers are now going to go fight and die in Finland.
00:50:44.000And Germany still won't pay their dues because Joe Biden's not going to make them do it like Trump did.
00:50:49.000Still buying Russian oil and increasing the war chest that Putin pivots into his war in Ukraine.
00:50:56.000Well, that's the one that I never understood.
00:51:15.000Well, we've all agreed we'd pay, and that was a big deal.
00:51:18.000And then they're saying, well, we need more protection from the United States, paid for by the United States, mostly.
00:51:24.000Which is the vast majority of NATO's budget, is the U.S. But we're going to simultaneously enrich the country Russia by buying its oil because we can get it for a cent cheaper than we could, say, from the US or other sources.
00:51:40.000But we want you to pay extra money to defend us against the people who we're enabling to do this.
00:52:06.000Every collective security arrangement needs an alpha.
00:52:09.000And your father was the alpha in NATO, because NATO for too long has been a cocktail circuit.
00:52:14.000Yes, they have supported us in the out of area mission in Afghanistan.
00:52:19.000They did great work there to try, whether it was a 30 person provincial reconstruction team like Romania had, Which we left hanging, by the way, all the way up to brigade combat team from Canada.
00:52:31.000That seems to be like a recurring theme here, leaving our allies hanging.
00:52:36.000Yeah, absolutely. And as they see that, I'm sure our allies like Taiwan are probably less than thrilled.
00:52:42.000Our level of lack of commitment to our allies.
00:52:47.000And so what you really have is an international geopolitical stage where China has made the calculation, let me come in and from an information diplomatic operation point of view, Do a big meeting with Putin and promise to financially backstop them.
00:53:07.000Think about Russia running low on troops, running low on money, with China's massive economic engine backstopping them.
00:53:22.000Right. I mean, you were right in that you said, hey, it's not going to be over that quickly, but, I mean, I think it's probably one of the gross underperformances, perhaps, of military history.
00:54:43.000Right. And so what does it mean to our economic coffers, our military equipment, If we continue to do this with Ukraine, and Russia's just got an open checkbook with China, is that a reverse Reagan on us now?
00:55:00.000Well, it certainly feels like it, right?
00:55:02.000I mean, China has expanded all over the world.
00:55:05.000Right. They own every precious metal mine and rare earth mineral mine in sub-Saharan Africa.
00:55:13.000Right. I'm sure they care very much about the environmental standards and child slave labor used to mine these things.
00:55:19.000Our ESG scores don't count that stuff against Apple and others because they subcontract it out.
00:55:26.000They didn't pull the trigger themselves, even if it's pulling the trigger.
00:55:30.000But China's expanded their influence in Latin America.
00:55:34.000Whether it be through telecom or other, again, oil and gas and all these things.
00:55:37.000Like, you know, talk about the threat of China.
00:55:41.000Because, again, we think of it, oh, it's just economic and there's maybe some military, but it's so much more pervasive than even, I think, the average person who understands they're by far the biggest threat we face today.
00:55:53.000Your father, the president, absolutely nailed this.
00:55:59.000There wasn't a day as the undersecretary they went by that I wasn't making some decision or recommendation relative to China's Belt and Road strategy.
00:56:20.000The Chinese build a bridge, get the country in debt to them, and then they come in with their military training.
00:56:28.000And all of a sudden, they have pervasively integrated themselves into this country.
00:56:33.000And one of the last things I did as Under Secretary is I went to several different countries, Africa, Southwest Asia, Indian Ocean, And they were all areas where China is trying to build ports.
00:58:03.000We signed an agreement with her and the Maldives and with Mozambique and with Equatorial Guinea and with Morocco and everywhere to try to counter Chinese influence, making commitments and promises that we would work together and teamwork as a partner, if not an ally. But that notion, especially when you see sort of the flip-flopping in our political system, when you see the actual way we treat a lot of our allies, certainly probably doesn't outweigh the, again, briefcase of cash and promises.
00:58:36.000I don't think that China's been a good ally To the general people of a population.
00:58:41.000You mentioned Mozambique. I imagine the average person in Mozambique is probably suffering because of China's incursion.
00:58:46.000But the people at the top and the people who make the power, they're driving Bentleys right now.
00:58:53.000No one will talk about what's actually going on there.
00:58:56.000But talk about what the threat means to the U.S. now as you see that incursion go further into Latin America and otherwise.
00:59:04.000I mean, they're right up on our borders.
00:59:06.000Yeah, they are. Latin America, Central America, Panama Canal.
00:59:11.000They're working with Venezuela, you know, everywhere in South America.
00:59:17.000The Chinese strategy is one to just plant all these seeds everywhere, see what takes root, continue to nourish it, and become, you know, Achieve global hegemony and encounter the U.S. And we're getting really near that tipping point, Don. I really think that from where we are today, remember Obama used to have the strategy that a weaker America made for a better world.
00:59:47.000That was his strategy, his apology tour.
01:00:33.000I understand that. You've written books and become an author.
01:00:38.000You've got to do something when you get out.
01:00:42.000How does someone who can dedicate their lives to this just go along blindly with that insanity in these systems?
01:00:48.000And again, when you think about the threat of China and you're like, yeah, we're wasting our money on the drag queen story hour at Fort Bragg.
01:00:54.000They're taking over Latin America on our borders while we're watching it.
01:01:00.000And consequently, we can't meet our recruitment requirements because a patriotic American's not going to sign up To fight for an America he doesn't understand.
01:01:10.000When we're told the trans, it's the social movement of our generation.
01:01:19.000And I'm fairly, let's call it progressive, on the issue, because if you're an adult and you want to chop off your generals, I don't give a shit.
01:01:29.000Even I've said, look, I don't care what you do.
01:01:31.000In our military, and jamming it down our throats, and then you talk about, we had a...
01:01:37.000We had people on this show before talking about it, like, Ronnie Jackson was here, you know, Admiral and this, and he served in the White House, and he's a doctor, and he was like, well, you know, the military recruitment, like, they'll pay for your gender reassignment surgery, but when you're going through that process, you're so jacked up on hormones, they won't even let you actually fight.
01:01:56.000So, like, they're paying for it, you get to sit on the sidelines, you check the box off, like, I was in the military and served in my country, and like, but, You weren't.
01:02:26.000Marines are the only one that really hit their recruiting goal, and that's because they did a little bit of an accounting fudge where they pulled from next year's recruits to meet this year's recruiting.
01:02:37.000And that's a real indicator of the sort of temperature of the country.
01:02:43.000If you can't get, and we have small military relative to 20, 30 years ago, about 50% of what it was.
01:03:08.000It's a divisive administration that pushes down these ideologies.
01:03:16.000I mean, I know Lloyd Austin very well.
01:03:19.000I can tell you there's no way that Even though he's prophesizing it, that back in the day when he was my commander in the 82nd Airborne, he never talked about any of this stuff.
01:03:33.000The question is, do you think he even believes it now?
01:03:35.000I don't. I hope not, because if he doesn't actually believe it, then maybe there's a chance.
01:03:43.000Right. We can gain back some insanity.
01:03:46.000If he actually believes it and has bought the Kool-Aid, then it's...
01:03:52.000If he doesn't believe it and he's just going along with it because that's the thing and that's the Disney retirement package and board seat and stuff like that, just be the woke general.
01:04:02.000That's a problem too, but it's not as bad as actually being dumb enough to believe any of this stuff.
01:04:07.000He either has fully bought into it or he's going to continue to do so because of You take on that mantle and you can't change this late in life because you're the board seats, the Disney, all that stuff that's waiting.
01:04:28.000He's completely uninterested in being Secretary of State, but he's totally interested in the portfolio that comes after it.
01:04:35.000Yeah, it's like doing his time to get some creds and we'll make some money after that and like, you know, just appease the woke people because there's no consequence for Boeing insane woke, but there is a consequence for being reasonable, even reasonable, you know, these days on some of these issues.
01:04:51.000Like, I don't know if we can pull it up, but we had a clip of John Kirby saying there was no, and I quote, chaos during the Afghan withdrawal.
01:05:01.000Can we play that? And so for all this talk of chaos, I just didn't see it.
01:05:06.000Not from my perch. At one point during the evacuation, there was an aircraft taking off full of people, Americans and Afghans alike, every 48 minutes.
01:05:15.000And not one single mission was missed.
01:05:17.000So I'm sorry, I just won't buy the whole argument of chaos.
01:05:21.000Yeah, so Don, I'm pretty pissed off right now.
01:05:28.000I saw Kirby completely insult the veteran community.
01:05:35.000He's lying openly on national TV from the White House.
01:05:42.000And saying there was no, you know, I didn't see any chaos.
01:05:46.000You had people falling off of airplanes.
01:05:48.000You had, you know, you had 13 soldiers killed and another two dozen that lost limbs and hurt traumatic brain injury for the rest of their lives.
01:06:03.000Anybody who watched the Abbey Gate tape or any of the other stuff happening, not even to mention that you had the Afghan Special Forces soldiers being executed.
01:06:27.000You know, never saw combat or any of that stuff.
01:06:29.000And so maybe he doesn't recognize chaos, right?
01:06:32.000But I think that, you know, A fair interpretation of his words are that they're bold-faced lies.
01:06:42.000It's intentional to damage the veteran community.
01:06:46.000It's because veterans are mostly, at that time, great Americans that signed up to defend the country and they figure that they're on the other team.
01:06:56.000And this administration is 100% about you're either on our team or you're an enemy domestically.
01:07:03.000And the president has been very clear about that.
01:07:06.000This military, this DOD, is trying to find white nationalists within the military.
01:07:13.000And they're trying to politically divide the military.
01:07:19.000Well, you saw it with the vaccine mandates, right?
01:07:25.000The fighter pilots, like the most trained, you know, the people that we've spent millions of dollars turning into, like, elite people who, like, they probably lean conservative.
01:07:35.000There's the guys that do it. They're the guys calling it out.
01:07:38.000We'll replace them with, you know, a trans seal.
01:07:40.000Right, right. No, but it was, you know, you're watching, I'm like, oh my god, like the most fit people in the world, like, that have zero chance, well, I'm gonna say zero because statistics is basically, it would be basically zero of having any problems with COVID, but they're gonna jam the vaccine mandates down their throat, and if they resist, That's the flag that, hey, they're probably conservative.
01:08:01.000And we're going to do what we can to make sure that they don't have any promotion.
01:08:04.000We don't see. We saw the same thing happen in the FBI. If you actually, the agents that come up to me and say, hey, it's disgusting what's going on.
01:08:24.000I'm not going to say who it is because it'll be further reprisals.
01:08:27.000But in the military, didn't take the vaccine, you know, and has been reprised against time and time and time again.
01:08:38.000He's had career opportunities taken away from him, promotions taken away from him, training that he must have to get promoted taken away from him.
01:08:47.000All the while, the Army policy or military policy is that none of that will happen.
01:08:54.000But at the local level, this wokeism creeps down and it has a very real impact on individuals that just want to serve the country.
01:09:01.000And you can't have that any kind of dissent.
01:09:06.000Within the ranks. You can't have people thinking about, well, maybe one day I want to start a family, and I'm not so sure about this vaccine.
01:09:13.000Yeah. Well, so, I mean, we're talking about Kirby, and, like, we also have Kirby and, you know, Millie talking about the Afghan withdrawal, saying that the Taliban, the Taliban troops would not be able to overwhelm, you know, the Afghan fighting forces.
01:09:31.000Again, I didn't serve, so perhaps I have no commentary.
01:09:33.000Let's just assume I know jack shit about Afghanistan, which is fine.
01:09:38.000It didn't take a lot to understand that.
01:09:40.000It feels like everyone I know that was on the ground there was like, no, man, it was a clown show.
01:09:44.000It doesn't mean there weren't some guys that could fight.
01:09:47.000I'm not saying that. But, like, there was no way that they were going to band together and actually be able to fight without us being there backstopping it.
01:09:55.000And yet, you know, they said that to us with a straight face.
01:09:58.000This comes, you know, directly from the Pentagon.
01:10:01.000Mm-hmm. I mean, are they just flagrantly lying to us at this point?
01:10:06.000I believe they are. I think it's all part of this state message, this propaganda that has to come out.
01:10:15.000The reason that nobody's been held accountable, there's been no head roll, For this is because you can't break the narrative.
01:10:21.000Everybody did great. Let's promote this guy.
01:10:24.000Let's give this guy... It's like participation, you know, metal culture has even pervaded now the military.
01:10:31.000If they fired the utterly incompetent General McKenzie from CENTCOM, who oversaw a lot of this and laughed on TV when asked a question about, you know, the dead soldiers, That would have broken the narrative that something had gone wrong and so it's a hermetically sealed narrative and the reason you can't have an honest vetting is because any probe of this from any direction, it was a cluster from Jump Street and it will tear apart the narrative.
01:11:06.000But you spoke about the recruitment crisis and it's very real.
01:11:12.000If that's the case and that's the mentality, how do you ever solve?
01:11:16.000Meaning, I don't see any solutions that are realistic.
01:11:30.000I mean, you were there. How much and how active was DOD, the Department of Defense, in preventing my father from doing the things that he wanted to do?
01:11:42.000I know there are plenty of things, and plenty of guys have been like, listen, they tried slow rolling on this.
01:11:46.000Ronnie Jackson spoke about the trans initiative and combating it and how insane it was.
01:11:52.000And again, you can be accepted of someone, what they want to do as an adult, but maybe don't give someone jacked up on meds and someone who was rated Clinically insane a couple short years ago by these same woke medical institutions that now have magically reversed that for no real reason other than that's popular culture these days.
01:12:12.000But DOD... We're very active in slow rolling anything that they didn't want to do, and maybe they didn't, oh, oh, I didn't realize that.
01:12:21.000That's what you want. You didn't realize it?
01:12:23.000Like, we had the conversation six times.
01:12:33.000The establishment, when your father won, you know, who didn't support your father, jumped across the threshold and said, okay, great jobs for all of us, right?
01:12:42.000And so, good people that supported your father, you know, I've been Secretary of Transportation within the state of North Carolina, working for a governor, and I understand And, of course, working for your father.
01:12:53.000How important it is to have people that are aligned with the vision that you have for the America First vision for the country.
01:13:01.000What happened is some of these people got in these jobs and they didn't agree with the president.
01:13:12.000And this book, Total Empire, is all about that Operator versus unelected bureaucrat, telling them what to do, tension.
01:13:21.000But at the end of the day, what we had, a good example is when I came, I came in in the last year of your father's administration, and I had helped in North Carolina in 2016.
01:13:31.000Well, and they also tried to slow roll you, and they tried to prevent you from getting any kind of thing, and eventually they had to sort of put you in as acting because the bureaucrats wouldn't Confirm.
01:13:41.000Right, right. You know, it doesn't matter if you led the 101st Airborne or the 82nd Airborne or the 10th Mountain Division and served there for 30 years.
01:13:54.000And therefore, we must do whatever we can to subvert Anthony, Tatis, You know, nominations or his ability to access the president or anything, right?
01:14:05.000Let's define him by his worst moment instead of all the great moments that he's had in his life.
01:14:09.000And that's where we are in this culture today.
01:14:11.000But, you know, when I finally did get in there, I was brought this document to sign.
01:14:19.000And I'm reading this document, and it was about the Iran nuclear deal.
01:14:24.000And as I read it, I called the team in and I said, this leaves open a path to doing the Iran nuclear deal.
01:14:31.000Oh, that's right, sir. I'm like, the president has said we don't want the Iran nuclear deal, that it's done.
01:14:36.000We disagree. And they're like, yeah, but we need to have this.
01:14:57.000Jesus, this is what's happening in DOD. It's literally that bureaucracy, which trends liberal anyway, the fact that they had the hutzpah to think that they had the power, the authority to do their own foreign policy, Correct.
01:15:21.000Counter to what your father, President Trump, wanted done.
01:15:25.000And he had exactly the right instincts on all of this stuff.
01:15:30.000And so it's crazy to me that we got as much done as we did.
01:16:05.000There's one four-year term to just to burn it all down to the ground.
01:16:08.000And I think you almost have to do that if you ever want to get rid of the woke shit in the military to eventually meet your recruiting requirements.
01:16:16.000If you want to actually be, you know, a threat to China rather than like, you know, they're watching us like laughing.
01:16:23.000I mean, it's literally, we're a caricature of ourselves at this point when you see the stuff that they're talking about and the things that they're out there saying that matter, even if they're only pretending, it's still lunacy.
01:17:39.000We could have DHS, DOD, and the Mexican versions of those two entities working together jointly on the border like we do any border operation.
01:18:00.000Does that still work in Mexico, though?
01:18:02.000Meaning, you know, obviously the cartels, everyone's on the payroll, right?
01:18:06.000Right. Well, you know, is there a level where...
01:18:13.000Is it past the brink down there where the real de facto rulers of the country are actually the cartels?
01:18:19.000So you can work with the military, but it's not going to really be effective because someone's going to be giving the information to someone.
01:18:27.000I mean, does there come a point where you're going to say, Guys, you've got to let us do what we're going to do.
01:19:08.000Who are the high value targets that we need to take out of the picture and begin some surgical joint operations with You know, some sequestered Mexican Special Forces and U.S. Special Forces and go in there with the right kind of support to do the job and begin to show the cartel that there's actually a new sheriff in town.
01:19:33.000Interesting. I mean, does the same apply elsewhere around the world as we start seeing these things?
01:19:41.000You know, obviously that threat of the cartel is so important.
01:19:45.000And, you know, again, I'm like the last person wanting to wage sort of the never-ending wars, but that one actually feels like one that's worth fighting for.
01:19:52.000I mean, talk about sort of U.S. foreign policy, because it's sort of interesting.
01:19:57.000You know, Trump was the guy that was going to start World War III, and Trump was going to get us into all these conflicts, and it was going to be nuclear Armageddon because of Donald Trump, and yet...
01:20:05.000He's like the only guy out there with a platform that's actually being like, I don't want any wars.
01:20:09.000And if we are going to get into a war, let there be an objective.
01:20:12.000At least the drug cartel one, I'm like, yeah, that's a war that sort of makes sense.
01:20:17.000It's actually going to save Americans, which doesn't seem to be the end result of 99% of what we're doing militarily these days.
01:20:24.000Yeah, so think about—let's just pick North Korea, for example.
01:20:32.000They've been testing nukes under Obama.
01:20:36.000They tested one under your father, and he began the information campaign with a little rocket man.
01:20:42.000Got a meeting, stepped into North Korea, all of that.
01:20:48.000Whatever your dad did, he was going to be criticized, right?
01:20:51.000But the genius of that was he developed an open line of communication with Kim Jong-un, who had been a black box up until that point, essentially.
01:21:03.000And the human-to-human contact, I don't care who it is.
01:21:09.000It's easy to, you know, argue with somebody's online avatar, but it's hard to sit down in person.
01:21:16.000And this is my criticism. I'm blanking and not getting in there with Putin or Biden.
01:21:21.000Your father understood the importance of transparency between nations that could potentially go to war.
01:21:27.000And so whether it was the Helsinki meeting or with Putin or meeting with Kim Jong-un, your father under Xi down in Palm Beach, he understood the importance of that dialogue and he has great instincts and ability to make that connection.
01:21:48.000And of course, it all gets reinterpreted by the 98% of the press that hates him, right?
01:21:53.000Oh, yeah. Listen, I remember that as it was going on.
01:21:57.000Trump's doing it all wrong in North Korea.
01:21:59.000I go, well, why? They never tested another nuke.
01:22:03.000I've been leading the delegation for 27 years, and I'm like, well, what have you accomplished?
01:22:50.000He's invited to the cocktail party and someone kisses his ass because they think he's got some power in North Korea, whereas North Korea's never even heard of the clown.
01:22:57.000That's the unelected bureaucrat piece.
01:23:00.000You know, those perks, that largesse is what they thrive off of.
01:23:04.000It doesn't matter what happens or whether or not they actually accomplish something.
01:23:07.000As long as they maintain that status, that's what they care about for the most part.
01:23:12.000Yeah. So, I mean, talk about that a little bit, right?
01:23:14.000Joe Biden has been mocked in Washington, D.C. for decades in terms of being like Robert Gates, like Obama's own guy.
01:23:23.000During the election, I was like, listen, Joe Biden's been wrong on literally every single foreign policy issue in the history of his hundreds of years in Washington, D.C. I wrote about it actually in my book, Liberal Privilege, because it's so flagrant.
01:23:39.000And yet... Now we're soft on China, and no one seems to be saying anything about it.
01:23:49.000Because it seems like it's the perfect confluence of incompetence and corruption.
01:23:56.000And if you follow the money, They'd be pretty clear.
01:24:01.000I know if it was me, you know, as a Biden, doing the things that Hunter did and my family doing the things that the Biden family did, because it's not just Hunter, there'd be a problem.
01:24:11.000And people would be asking the question and they'd be talking about it.
01:24:15.000Yeah, we'd be raided right now if you had done what Hunter did.
01:24:19.000I mean, it's insane. You know, you look at your family and everybody, upstanding citizen, you know, great, great Americans.
01:24:27.000You look at what's happened with Hunter There's some real issues there, and I'm interested in Comer's investigation that's happening in the House.
01:25:26.000Yeah, by the way, we'd actually end a lot of the problems, you know, like that, if the left actually thought we had the teeth.
01:25:34.000Exactly. Right? I mean, if they actually thought we would do these things and do the, whether it's like my father's indictment this last week, right?
01:25:41.000Right, right. Any of these things, if they actually thought we'd play the same game...
01:25:46.000Right. I think it would prevent like the vast majority of it. Right. You know even though you know understand
01:25:51.000they got the help of big tech and they got the bias from there and that bias from the mainstream. Fine.
01:25:55.000But if they actually thought that like Republicans would fight back with teeth it would probably
01:25:59.000end 99% of the nonsense. But as long as like, you know, we're playing t-ball
01:26:04.000while they're playing fast pitch hardball It's sort of like of course they're gonna keep doing it.
01:26:11.000Of course they're going to take the win.
01:26:13.000Why wouldn't they? These aren't principled people.
01:26:16.000They're communists. Of course they're going to do this.
01:26:18.000It's all about power. Initially, when I was watching McCarthy being put through the wringer there on the multiple votes, I was like, come on, we've got to show some teamwork.
01:26:28.000And then about the fifth time, I really looked at it, and I'm like, you know what?
01:26:32.000We need to make sure that he's going to do what he says he's going to do.
01:26:37.000But listen, balls and strikes, I think he's actually doing a lot of that now.
01:27:01.000And so you also need the other Republicans to be willing to go along with it.
01:27:05.000And again, there's... Probably no one better snatching defeat from the jaws of victory than a Republican that gets harassed by the mainstream Washington D.C. press who's functioning as the marketing department of the other side.
01:27:18.000But it's an easy existence to be a weak Republican in D.C. It's not so easy if you're actually a fighter.
01:27:23.000Right, exactly. You keep your job, you got that power, you got that supposed influence, but if you're a fighter, they come after you.
01:27:30.000I mean, you know, two and a half years ago, whatever it was, they came after me.
01:27:35.000Talk about that. Here I am, Don, a public servant all my life, 28-year career in the military, I had all the right jobs to do the undersecretary policy job.
01:27:47.000I then, being the public servant I am, got out and I was the chief operating officer at Washington DC Public Schools, one of our most troubled school systems, because I wanted to help the underserved community.
01:27:59.000You have about 78% of that community that is low income.
01:28:04.000I did that for two years, got recruited by Wake County Public School System, the 15th largest system in the country, 150,000 students, 18,000 employees, 170 schools, to come be their superintendent.
01:28:18.000From a career standpoint, that was the epitome of my life.
01:28:24.000I was able to Take all my military training, all my leadership training, and then come in and lead from the front as I always did in combat and go into every classroom, go into every school.
01:28:38.000I was in all 170 schools in the first 180 school days of the year.
01:28:42.000And I was a present figure and we made significant changes.
01:28:46.000I can walk down the streets of Raleigh today, people stop me and say, Mr.
01:28:50.000Tata, thank you for creating that leadership school for young men.
01:28:53.000Thank you for creating that leadership school for young women.
01:28:58.000The leadership academies that we created that have a public service curriculum Scored ten points higher than any other school in the state of North Carolina on proficiency and graduation rates and and so the change that you can make in education despite all of the you know liberal agendas being infused in there are huge and so that was and then the governor appointed me as the Secretary of Transportation but what happened in the school system The board flipped from 5-4 Republican to 5-4 Democrat.
01:29:35.000Six months later, after campaigning that they loved me, the Democrats, because I was popular in the community.
01:30:33.000I stopped writing. And You know, I dedicated myself to this.
01:30:38.000And they had to get rid of me because I was becoming too popular.
01:30:43.000And so the governor makes me the Secretary of Transportation Which I got all over the state, had a $4 billion budget, and we made very positive changes in two and a half years.
01:30:55.000And I look at this guy, Buttigieg, and I'm like, this clown has no idea.
01:31:00.000You know, we have these supply chain issues.
01:31:08.000It's not like he had actual accomplishments that he could really run on.
01:31:11.000Like, that guy's going to be president? Of course he is, because he checks a couple of boxes, but that's about the extent of it.
01:31:18.000So then you go and you start working in Trump, and then they're going to just go all out.
01:31:22.000So I have this resume for military, education, transportation, understanding the holistic nature of our society, and I get asked three years into it to come work for your father.
01:31:40.000Instantly, it was just like, let's rip this guy to shreds.
01:32:03.000So talk about it. Any standout moments?
01:32:06.000I mean, obviously that's one of them, right?
01:32:08.000Well, you know, when I interviewed for the job, it was me, your father behind the Resolute desk, Mark Esper and Robert O'Brien, and then John McEntee in the Oval Office.
01:34:33.000It was one of these things. I was a big reader and I said, why am I consuming entertainment when I could be producing entertainment?
01:34:40.000And it was kind of this epiphany moment.
01:34:42.000I was watching TV when I was a young lieutenant in the army and I'm like, I always said I wanted to be a As a writer, why am I just sitting here watching TV? Why don't I produce entertainment?
01:35:11.000It was a way of me releasing stress and escaping into a different world.
01:35:16.000Some people play guitar, some people go woodwork in their garage.
01:35:20.000I would go right as a way of just processing.
01:35:24.000In 2008, a Delta Force friend of mine, quick story, I had come back from Bosnia.
01:35:33.000I was crashing at his house before taking command in the 82nd Airborne and I had a floppy disk and this is 97 and it was going bad and so I had to save it on his computer in the room I was staying in at his house.
01:35:47.000Rob Hobart's his name, great American.
01:35:49.000And the title of the book was Rogue Threat and So I go away for like two days of training and I come back and I have a new floppy disk and I'm going to download it from the thing, but it's not there.
01:37:40.000To talk about foreign policy, you can see how passionate I am about our even school systems and about my writing career because it's so important.
01:37:48.000Well, it's interesting because I'd be curious actually, you know, writing fiction versus nonfiction.
01:37:52.000I wrote a New York Times bestseller myself, you know, it's called Triggered, you know, published that and then You know, you started getting in that world and guys coming up to me like, wow, you're like the most, like, we spent more time with you than any writer.
01:38:04.000I'm like, what do you mean? You're like, well, a lot of the books of people writing their books, like they speak to someone for a couple hours and like literally we hand them a book, they sign off on it and maybe do a book tour.
01:38:14.000And so it was interesting. But I also started seeing, you know, in my world and sort of, you know, nonfiction, writing about politics, I'm very biased in publishing.
01:38:24.000I have friends that are congressmen and senators and other pundits who had books either canceled or just so whitewashed down by liberal editors.
01:38:35.000I actually started my own publishing company, publishing books of some of those same people that were so censored.
01:38:40.000I have people where they bought the book Paid the upfront and just wouldn't publish the book.
01:38:46.000They'd say, hey, we'll take the loss. We're not going to put this out there.
01:38:48.000And this wasn't like crazy, you know, stuff.
01:38:50.000This was like mainstream conservative thought.
01:38:53.000So it's good to see that maybe, you know, someone like yourself hasn't necessarily been affected like that as long as you're still writing, you know, fiction.
01:40:01.000And so my question is, we have Amanda Milius and we have some others, but where is the conservative Hollywood?
01:40:07.000How are we going to, as half the country, going to support our own?
01:40:18.000I've almost given up and yet you see Top Gun Maverick.
01:40:23.000It sells more than any movie combined.
01:40:26.000There was another movie that I didn't even see.
01:40:27.000I almost refused to give my business either way at this point, but I did see Top Gun Maverick and that was great.
01:40:33.000It still had some of the woke stuff, but it wasn't so bad it was jammed down your throat.
01:40:38.000Exactly. There's clear casting decisions like that that probably are an exemplary, but whatever.
01:40:44.000I thought it was great. And so did the rest of America.
01:40:48.000So hopefully they just learn that eventually they got to do it.
01:40:50.000I just hope it's not, you know, like so much of woke corporate, which is like, okay, you can be this way.
01:40:55.000We're happy to take your money, and then we're going to take your money and use it to push an agenda that you couldn't stand for people who hate your guts.
01:41:04.000There's a happy medium. I'm not sure it's happening in Hollywood yet.
01:41:07.000Like I said, they always tell us to build our own.
01:41:09.000That's why I started winning team publishing.
01:41:11.000Publishing Marjorie Taylor Greene's book.
01:41:22.000So hopefully there's someone that can Hollywood's a big one to crack.
01:41:26.000Publishing is, but when you have sort of a platform to be able to push it, perhaps a little bit easier.
01:41:31.000It's a much smaller beast. So hopefully someone approaches that and attacks it the same way and we can get that fair shot.
01:41:38.000But we ain't getting it from Hollywood currently, so I do my best to not support them.
01:41:44.000Well, you know, Total Empire to me is, you know, it's the second book in a series.
01:41:50.000You've got General Garrett Sinclair, who represents all the patriotic values in America, and he leads Dagger Task Force, which is responsive to the president, and has to go on a mission to find his goddaughter in Morocco and Mauritania, Africa. After her father was killed, who happens to be a sergeant major.
01:42:11.000And it pits an operator against the unelected bureaucrats.
01:42:17.000And it's the theme of kind of what we've been talking about in that the operators on the ground, where my heart really is, And the people that want to employ the 8,000-mile screwdriver to micromanage, to protect their own careers.
01:42:33.000It has nothing to do with the troops on the ground.
01:42:35.000And that's really the essence of the story.
01:42:40.000And Chasing the Lion was the first book in the series.
01:42:43.000And it's, you know, Garrett Sinclair, Fort Bragg-based, and his team.
01:42:51.000I enjoy this process of writing and creating.
01:42:56.000I just turned in book three in the series to Mark Resnick, my editor at St.
01:43:01.000Martin's. Writing to me is a great creative endeavor.
01:43:07.000I love that. Well guys, Go check it out.
01:43:09.000I assume available where everything's available?
01:43:12.000Yeah. Audio, Kindle, ebook, hardcover, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any bookstore in the world.
01:44:00.000Again, I hope you had an awesome Easter weekend.
01:44:03.000I'm not going to be able to do locals tonight, unfortunately.
01:44:08.000I've got to go catch an airplane, part of the day job.
01:44:12.000But I do want to make sure that I thank our sponsors, Patriot Mobile.
01:44:16.000For everything that you do, support the companies that support you.
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01:44:33.000The Second Amendment, the sanctity of life, and protecting our incredible and brave police and first responders.
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01:44:49.000Have yours with Patriot Mobile where they'll take your hard-earned money and actually spend it on the things that you believe rather than everyone else who has clearly taken your money for decades and weaponized it against you.
01:45:01.000So that's PatriotMobile.com for free activation.
01:45:07.000And also make sure to go check out GoldCo.com.
01:45:38.000Make sure you're passing this stuff on to your friends so that they can see it, because we know, you know, let's just say big tech, big social, all those...
01:45:45.000They ain't going to be spreading this word, but we do need people to see these things.
01:45:49.000We need people to understand exactly what's going on, so please do that.
01:45:53.000Thank you for everything that you guys do.
01:45:54.000You guys are the best. I hope you all had an incredible Easter weekend celebrating our holiest holidays with your families.
01:46:04.000That's number one, so I hope that was awesome, and we'll see you back here again on Thursday.