Military Heroes John McPhee and Jason Redman - Megyn Kelly's "Double Feature" of Fascinating Interviews

the least. Hey everyone on Megan Kelly, welcome to the Megan Kelly show and today's double feature episode to celebrate July 4th, two of our interviews on the show from the archives with American heroes. First, my conversation with John McFeed, the sheriff of Baghdad.

He is a true patriot badass, this guy is amazing and then my lengthy sit down with

the inspirational Jason Redmond, my god. If you're not inspired by Jason Redmond, I can't help you. Like if he doesn't inspire you to be a better, tougher, greater person, no one will. Enjoy. Have a great rest of your weekend, god bless you and god bless America and we'll see you tomorrow.

We are bringing you the story of a remarkable veteran, and what a story this vet has. Joining me today is retired, US Army Special Operations Sergeant Major John McFeed, aka the sheriff of Baghdad, John served our country for over 20 years, specializing in various special mission units and combat experience across multiple theaters, including Afghanistan and Iraq, where he hunted both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

John, great to have you. Thank you. Pretty good, pretty good. I'll leave you up there. Oh my god, you've done a lot.

I've tried. How tried?

When I say that, when you hear that intro read, and given all the time that you spent serving

the country, what's the one that you focus on? That's the one thing that really kind of defined the service in my mind. Man, kind of none of that, I guess. You know what I mean?

“Like, later in the war as leadership, that was a challenge, you know what I mean?”

Those like the Battle of Torbora, I was a new guy, like let's go kill everybody, you know what I mean? And then the war rages on you learn, your more experienced, you just learn, as it goes on, you're going to learn different lessons. Everybody's going to do this.

And I think the lessons I learned as a young guy weren't the lessons I needed. Really? Yeah, everybody learns, right? I thought that was a mistake. When I read your bio, I thought the opposite because you had a very rough childhood.

And I thought, it made him one tough SOB. Maybe, yeah. And so they said. You know, capable of doing what needed to be done in like the darkest days of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yeah. And. So I'm a regular guy, I do everything, everyone else does. I joined the army, and I think when when 9/11 happened, I was too far in to like choose a different life.

Mm-hmm. And what do I mean? Mm-hmm. Let's start back at the young, John, south side of Chicago. Yeah.

Only white kid in the class? Yeah, for a long time. How'd that happen? Uh, I don't know. You give, you get in fights.

You go to ding-dong, you call it ding-dong school, that's where kids have fight all the time. Yeah. And you end up there. How did your parents settle in a neighborhood where you would wind up being the only white

kids.

“That's where we live, do like, it's South Chicago, it's where we lived, you know what I mean?”

I would say the South Chicago with the 70s, 80s was like a different place. Mm-hmm. So I know that you were very badly bullied on the bus every day, heard you telling our pal. Don't mind about that.

I mean, it was every day. They beat you up. Well, no, till they got me a cab. I mean, it must have been bad for the South Side of Chicago school system to get you a cab every day to school.

I think, yeah, yeah, it cost them a lot of money because the police would have to come to the bus on the side of the road. They'd have to break up the fight. And then the seats were broke, or window was broke. And then the school's got to pay for all of that.

And then by the time we get to school, school would be over. How old were you? Uh, I don't know, uh, sophomore freshman maybe, sophomore. So sad. I have a freshman, and the thought of that happening to him every day is upsetting.

I mean, it's heartbreaking.

Your parents never intervened.

Did they know? Uh, or they knew, yeah, it's, is they doing anything? What are they going to do? Get you out of there. That would have been a good idea.

Mm-hmm. They probably never thought of that. That's a good idea. So what was the story, were they just young substance of people? Yes.

Well, no. I think my parents were young. I think my mom was, I don't know, maybe always kind of maybe just bit her as a lady. You know what I mean? She was like the, like mean divorce lady most of the time.

“Um, and like, I just think that's how people thought their lives should be.”

I don't know.

Yeah, but brother. Is he older or younger? Older. So did he go through this too? Yeah, but he's just a little older.

Yeah. Mm-hmm. But I just can't imagine like a mother allowing this to just keep happening to her child. Um, yeah. Well, there I am.

You know what I mean? What are you going to do? Did you, like, maintain, I know you wound up living in a brothel, which is another interesting story.

“But did you, you might do you keep contact with your mom?”

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Was she still around? No, she died. I don't know why I like it.

So did you, were you close?

Um, I mean, yeah, as close as you could kind of be with someone that you know is always

like mean, bitter. Wow. You know what I mean? What happened in her life? It left her there.

I don't know. I don't got the energy to hang on to that much shit. Yeah, I don't know me. Yeah, good. Yeah.

So. No, we always joke my husband's brother. They're Presbyterian. And he always jokes when you're thinking about something like that. Push it down.

Push it down. Yeah. He's not wrong. You got to let it go, like letting it go is the better way, you know what I mean? But the beatings, that would be tough to let go.

I mean, I just feel like did that create any resentment in you? Um, I don't know.

Yes, I mean, of course it did.

It did, it didn't. I mean, look, I look at it this way. I turned out the way I turned out. And I think anybody in the situations I was in would come out the same way.

“And then you have to realize like, uh, you got to want to choose good.”

You know, it's easy for people to be bad. And I say this all the time, no one has bad intent, but shit gets fucked up. Oh, can I say that? Yeah, you can. I wouldn't have had you on if you couldn't say that word.

That's your favorite word. Yeah, no, right. I'm trying to be nice, but shit gets fucked up. So, you know, I don't think my parents have bad intent. I don't think they were bad people.

I think they were young. I think they drank, you know, anytime you drink, like, yeah, I used to drink a ton. But, uh, anytime you drink, like, you know, of course there's going to be drama. It, it, it takes your filters away. You know what I mean?

Like, it's probably a better way to deal with and tell in someone just, you know, hmm? So I think it's just like a product of being young.

I don't think anyone had a bad intent.

I just think it is what it is and, and I tell you, it's, it's generational. I'm not the only one, you know what I mean? But I would say it's generational and I'd say there's kids in the same neighborhoods living about the same life and their parents were probably in school with me, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm.

And I think that's, uh, just how it works. It's like a cycle. Does it create, like, a resentment toward black people? No, I don't know. I don't use any.

Well, it's beating you up every day. No, I don't get nasty. Like, I could see how that would cause, uh, yeah. As the easy target, like, you know, uh, later in school, I didn't get beat up every day because I, I realized I learned the fight.

I could protect myself and, like, a lot of the actual gang leaders in that, like, they respected that. Mm-hmm. And, uh, so I didn't really have, I had to earn my way in. I guess, but once I earned my way in, it was fairly easy for me.

I mean, uh, and I look at it this way, is like, you know, look, you could be the victim. Okay. Great. What's next? What's that going to do you?

How long are you going to do that for? You know what I'm saying? I'm guessing that, um, given the way you describe the school system there, you were not on the college track and you knew that. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

“Did you know you're going to wind up in the armed forces, though?”

Um, you know, I knew I wanted to join. I kind of joined late. I was almost 21, but uh, I wanted to join, but um, I didn't know like when. You know what I mean? And then one day, I was just like, back at, let's go.

Okay. We'll get to that. But um, I've got to spend a minute on the brothel since I mentioned it. How, how does, how do two guys, two kids wind up living in the room? Um, well, um, I don't know.

You know, they say hookers have a heart of gold, you know what I mean? Uh, that would happen. Hooker took you in. Yeah. Uh, we weren't the only kids, you know what I mean?

But, um, yeah. Were it? No. Who else was in there? How many kids?

And like, so me and my brother helped raise other kids, stuff like, well, what happened to your parents? Uh, me and my brother decided we would be better on our own. How old were you here? I don't know.

12, 13. Oh, maybe this is pretty high school. So you went back with your parents by 15 when the, the bus situation was happening? No, I went to school myself. Okay.

Walk me through it. So you're growing up. You're with your parents until around 12. And then you wind up living at a brothel. Me and my brother.

How did you get connected with this woman running the brothel? Uh, well, I was living with my, I guess my step mom. Anyway, it's a mess, you know, but, uh, as a living with my step mom. And then me and my brother just moved over there.

I knew you don't know me. So.

“And was that, you were there for the duration until you hit 18?”

Uh, no. I was only there for a little bit. Um, let's see what else happened. Um, I don't know. I didn't live there that long.

Like, just, I don't know. High school. Some, most of my high school years, but that was it. Okay. Yeah.

So now you got to find a direction once you hit 18. I got to do something. Well, I always worked. I've been working since I was a little kid. I was a welder.

I worked on trucks.

So that's another thing I did is I always showed up at work on time.

Put myself to work, like earn money. You had a couple of skills that are completely foreign to me. Like being good with an engine. Yeah. And being a good navigator.

Yeah. I don't, I think you're born without your not born with that. Am I wrong? I don't know. Maybe.

Did you always have that ability that sense of navigation? No. Because you, like, you really needed it. It would be very, become very important to you. It would.

Uh, I am very good at navigation. Um, I don't know. I guess you're born with it because I would have never thought and I've never not been good at it. Have you, have you, do you get lost a lot?

Never. I have always lost. You don't understand. Well, you don't have this gift. It's so frustrating.

I'm at the point when I drive whatever my instinct is. I know to do the opposite. Like a George Costanza situation. I just know, do not, whatever my instincts are telling me. It's wrong when it comes to directions.

I'm missing this chip. You could get a GPS. Well, I do. Thankfully. I live in 25.

Yeah. Nowadays. I could get lost nowadays. I'd say that only because, like, I just listened to the lady on my phone. Turn left.

Okay. Yes. But, no, I have a pretty good sense of direction. Maybe it's natural. I don't know.

So, what?

“During these four of the years before we go off and join the military, are you, do you dating?”

Is there a special woman in your life? No, not really. Nobody. No, like, you hadn't been in love yet. Um, yeah.

No. I pretty much avoided people. Most of my childhood. You know what I mean? Hmm.

Didn't anything happen in the brothel that would deflower you? Uh, no comment. Okay. All right. Just saying.

She was like an obvious thing to do. Um, okay. So you originally wanted to join the Air Force. Yeah. Uh, well, I was a mechanic, right?

Uh, very mechanically inclined. Uh, I was a welder as well. I fixed a lot of semi trucks, broken frames. Um, dump trucks, whole wall, collapsed stuff. And it took me like weeks to rebuild these trucks.

But it's kind of what I did. And then, um, and then, yeah, uh, I figured I could do this for the Air Force. You know what I mean?

And then, uh, the biggest thing was like, my hands were like always black.

Like, cracked fingers. Like, you're always welding. It's always dirty, uh, greasy dirty stuff working on these trucks, right?

“And like, honestly, my thought was, no girl is ever going to let me put my hand in their pants.”

If she sees my hand, you know what I mean? There's just, there's not happening. You know what I mean? Does that stuff not come off with a right soap? I don't care how much soap you got.

Like, when you work like that, like, your hands are black. So, uh, yeah, so, uh, I figured I got to do something else. You know what I mean? Like, I just can't do this forever. You know, only because I was always dirty every day.

And you couldn't, you couldn't, like, not be dirty. Like, even your days off, you couldn't wash and you weren't clean. You know what I mean? Uh, I figured well, maybe now it's the time to join the army. Mm-hmm.

And so, what happened at the Air Force? They said, uh, I didn't have high enough skills to, uh, be a mechanic, which I was. Uh, they told me, uh, I could be admin. And I'm like, okay, what's that? Maybe I'll do this, what's an admin.

And, um, he was like, well, you type memos, maybe process the words. And I was like, my mom's a secretary. Like, that's what that sounds like. I'm out, you know? Yeah.

Talk about this. Judging a man. Yeah. And they're like, hat sun. Have you talked to the Marines of the army yet?

I'm like, uh, no. I didn't even think of it. You know? So I went to the army. Why the army?

Uh, well, a buddy of mine was an airborne ranger and said how great it was. So I just went down there and told him I wanted to be an airborne ranger. Did they give you hard time? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Everybody's giving you hard time. Oh, yeah.

Like, well, I had like a, so first off, I had a mallet.

But who didn't have a mallet? I was like, you know what I mean? What year are we in now? We got to be like, uh... And he's 80.

No, 989. Yeah. Yeah, you're my age. Yeah. Yeah.

So I had a mallet. And they're like, you know, guys like, yo, Bob. Hey, this guy wants to be a ranger and they come out. And they like laughed at me. I mean, don't they shave your head anyway?

What do they care what your hair looks like? I don't know. But uh, yeah, I was just like this skinny mallet head kid, you know? And they didn't believe in me, but I didn't care. You know?

Right. You might have been used to that feeling. Yeah. Yeah. I figured, well, mom was a fat, bald guy anyway.

And the guy I was talking to seemed like a dullard.

“So it's not like these guys impressed me.”

I just knew there was more to the army. You know what I mean? So this is all before 9/11. You know, you're signing up. But you don't know exactly what you're signing up for.

I assume it's just, I want to be part of the military. Yeah. I had no idea. I didn't know if I was doing like in my day. I was like, you signed up for the college money.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like people did. Uh, I didn't know why I signed up. And I definitely didn't think I needed college money.

What's so ever? You know what I mean? Um, but I joined, uh, on my family. You know, turned out it's like a family business. But my grandpa was both my grandpa's my great grandpa.

World War II. Like so, uh, it turned out a lot of people my family were in the service. And like no one really talked about it. What do you know what I mean? Yeah.

Yeah. So you escalated up the ranks. It seems to me pretty quickly. You like you got moved to it from thing to thing challenge to challenge. Some of which were a surprise to you.

But didn't sound like you had a lot of failures as you were making your name. Tons. You did? Daily. Daily failure.

Oh, yeah. Lay failed quick. Let's get it over with.

“Maybe we'll get it right by the end of the day.”

How did you do like the military setting? Because I would think with your background. You weren't exactly big on rules. I don't like rules. Yeah.

So how do you, I mean, that's got to be a problem in basic training. Um, not really. I mean, it's a game. You know what I mean? And their trash talk was great.

Man, basic training. Like you enjoyed that. Oh, God. They would like yell at people. And like, I just be, I'd be like, not even getting yelled at.

And I'd start laughing. And they just be like, um, my drill sergeant called me Maffee. And they'd be like, Maffee, do push ups. And I just start doing push ups. Because he'd hear me laughing.

And like, uh, man, the trash talk was great. Like, I loved it. You were bored for that little. Did they know it was possible to upset you? Yeah.

Well, they couldn't upset me. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I feel like at this point in life.

Is it hard to upset you? He's been through so much military-wise and childhood-wise.

“I mean, you know, like, we got to look if you want stuff.”

You got to do it yourself. It's called responsibility. It doesn't matter your age. I call it a dull thing. I hate it.

But I've been doing it for a long time. If you want something, you got to put in the work. Does anybody irritate you? Like, do you get irritated? Oh, yeah.

You get, yeah. I don't like everybody. You know what I mean? Like, do you like everybody? No, no.

It's such a long list of people I just like. See? There you go. I would like to cover politics for a living. So it's nice.

Your list is longer than my- Very long. Okay. So let's go back. So then you'll be under over to the army.

Yeah. They take you. Yeah. You're going through basic training. People are getting yelled at and you're enjoying that.

Yeah. And what's the plan? Just like see what they do with you? Well, yeah. Why I had a ranger contract.

So I go through basic training. Airborne school. And then I go to RIP. Explain what ranger is. The ranger regiment is it's own unit in the army.

They're infantry, basically.

And nowadays they're tier one unit. Back in my day, they were just like specialized infantry or whatever they call. But yeah, the ranger regiment is a way of life. And then back in my day was RIP is what they called it. And like basic training was a joke.

We jog in the morning and sing songs. Just like summer camp, you know. In RIP like a some random looking dude just takes off faster than you've ever seen. Another human being running. You're just like holy shit.

Like these guys do this. And let's go. Yeah, real talk, you know. And then like the whole time, like, I mean, I didn't know if I was going to make it or not. I was just doing my best.

How long is the training? It was three weeks back then. Okay, but it's intense. Yeah, back then it was. Yeah.

And back then it was more about creating guys that won't quit than it was like training you at your actual job. Now, from there, you joined special forces. How long did that take? I did five years in ranger battalion. And then like the the summer major at the time was like sending people to like career.

Or some random army shit that I wanted nothing to do with. What did you want? And not that. Like on that.

Not that, you know, and I mean, I never wanted to go to career.

I heard it's cold and like anyway. Never wanted to go there. Sorry, no offense. Where were you in the States here? I was in Savannah, Georgia.

Okay, yeah. Yeah, here you go. Especially when you grow up in Chicago. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for once.

Yes. Yeah. So loves Savannah, right? And I didn't want to go anywhere. So I figured and hit special forces selection at least it would like give me a path where I might control my ending.

Can you talk about that? Because as a civilian, you hear special forces in you. Yeah. Something cool. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, I don't know. I mean, like, it's okay. I like special forces. Why do it? When you were back a ring.

Oh, yeah. It was a lure. I don't know. Like the John Wayne chip. And I was a kid, right?

It's badass. Yeah. Like Rambo, right? Like that's what I thought. Yeah.

Kind of in the middle 90s, not really what was happening. But later on it got better. More towards the G, what? Everything got better.

“What do you mean you thought it would put you in charge of your own destiny?”

Well, if I went to special forces selection, I know I would go there next. It's like coming down on orders for Korea one day. You know what I mean? Just like, hey, guess what came. Some paperwork for you.

Korea, holy shit. No fucking way, right? Yeah. So I wanted to like avoid that. So how do you get into special forces today?

You got to go to selection. They got selection. Like it's like a try out. Yeah, try out. What does it, what does selection mean?

Uh, it's a lot of stupid shit. You know what I mean? Like it's a one day show up. Oh, no. It's like a run.

Uh, okay, special forces selection kind of works like this. It's based off a team and you're going to work in a team. Right. And it's 12 guys in a in a 18, a special forces 18, right? Uh, and then so you're kind of grouped in 12 guys.

And then like you do like random stuff. Like you got to build these. They'll give you like one wheel, some pipe and a 500 pound barrel. And it's like it's got you got to take it 20 miles that way. Go.

It's very mug ivory. Very mug ivory, right? And then.

“You got the right background for this too, though.”

Yeah, but I, you're not in charge every day. And then if someone bads in charge and they talk about today do stupid shit. You're stuck doing their stupid shit all day long. Mm-hmm. As on the worst team, ever.

I think in selection. Oh, no. You do have some of those guys might be listening to this right now. I don't care. They were pussy.

You know what I mean? Like I do not give a shit. You know what I mean? It's probably where that why they are where they are now. You know what I mean?

They're bringing it down. Trying to hold me back. So you made it, though, you got select. So you get selected to then train into special forces. Yeah, and then they call it the Q course.

Oh, and what's that like? The qualification. A lot of, I was an engineer, so that's the explosives. But we do a lot of other stuff, like building stuff.

Like basically you're a general contractor for like houses.

They teach you that stuff. Oh. And then yeah. Yeah, yeah. Super useful, right?

And then explosives and a lot of explosives stuff. What? What's Delta Force? And when did you travel? Oh.

So yeah. The mid 90s, special forces, you know, the Bill Clinton Army kind of sucked. No ammo, no training, no money, right? So a buddy of mine. I was at his house.

I don't know, I was on leave. We were drinking, smoking cigars, and he just gave me a yellow sticky with a time and place. So I was like, what's this? And it was like this field on post. So he's like, yeah, you're going to be there six in the morning.

It's like mid night, man. No way. I ain't going nowhere six in the morning, right? So he went and he talked me in the go and he was a mortgage issue guy. And I went and that's it.

I passed, yeah. So that was you in special forces trying to make it Delta Force, which is yet another sort of next elite level. But in my day, you didn't know what Delta Force was.

Like if someone went there is a black hole, you just never seen him again.

You didn't even know they were alive, you know what I mean? So why'd you do it? Why'd you show up at six a.m. What else was I going to do? Sometimes I do my best work hungover.

What's that? How hard was the trial or the? Oh, so first off, it ain't easy. I'm going to say that, but at the same time it's fucking great. Man, they leave you alone.

You walk through the mountains. Yeah, yeah, I'm here. You got to go like, I don't know. Like you have maps. You ever see like the big force.

I'm already sweating. That's making me nervous.

“I know it's probably the worst thing you want to hear.”

I would never make it. But like you'd have maps and they're like this big. And like the guy would give you a point and you'd be like, wait, wait. And you're like, you got like five of these.

And you're like, I got to go like three of these maps today. Man, you know what I mean? And then. Hey, man. Yeah.

And then you just go. And then. This, I mean, maybe they knew even before. Been Lawden knew where you were going to wind up.

But that was perfect training for what ultimately would be as of you.

Yeah. 100% I was ready. Were you in Delta Force when 9/11 happened? Yeah. Okay.

So you're doing your training. What? Still down in Savannah? Uh, I was at Brake for Brake. Okay.

And then. Well, 9/11. I was trying to skydive to go to a free fall jump master school. Hmm. Teach people to skydive.

What I do. So what happened on 9/11? Were you? What was your reaction to that day?

Well, the first plane I was like.

Like it looked like a little plane crashed in. You didn't know.

“The drunken idiot in his little plane crashed in, right?”

And then the second was like, oh shit. And then we were grounded. And that was it. You know, then you knew it was like something bad. You know.

You knew. But unlike the rest of us, you actually were going to have to answer the call. I mean, does that? Is that exciting? Is it nerve wrecking?

Is it everything? Uh, it's a lot of things. But I would say this is, uh, as too far in, not to go. You know what I mean? Excited as nervous.

You know, like, the whole, I see this all the time. People are going to have a thousands of motions today, right? Like, it's just how people work. You have a thousand emotions. Don't let it stop on the bad ones.

You know what I mean? I know what you mean, but it's harder to do than actually, you know, it sounds. Maybe. I don't know. You know, people get stuck.

They get stuck in the sort of obsessive thinking, especially if their life might be online. Uh, yeah. People get stuck. How do you rejigger that if that's you?

And you get stuck on something. You might come in the back of the heads. Sometimes you need that. You know what I mean? Sometimes I need that.

You know what I mean? Snap them out of it.

“So what, what was the first word you had that you were getting deployed and to where?”

Um, well, There's a lot of things happening between 9/11 and before we deployed. Uh, I think the original plan as we were supposed to save some hostages in Kabul. Uh, and then we end up doing the Torah Borough thing. So what we trained for and what happened were completely different animals.

You know what I mean? Do you know why? That's the way to cookie crumbles. You know what I mean? I follow what they do.

Let's go. You know what I mean? You're not in charge. Someone else is making the calls. You just got to do your best on the time comes.

Was Torah Borough then the first place you went? Yeah, Torah Borough. Well, yeah. Alright, can tell us about that. Tell us what was that.

How did that? I just described it because I've heard you. Talk about a young bride. I mean, like you were looking for bin Laden. Yeah.

So yeah. We were looking for bin Laden. The Torah Borough was like a strong hold for bin Laden, OK, whatever they would call themselves. Right.

And the Russians could never get in there.

Right.

“And I think somebody, I don't know who said it, but it was.”

It took 10 of us 10 days. To do what? To get everybody out of those mountains. Either kill them or have them come out in surrender, but it took 10 of us 10 days. The Russians never took it.

They had 10,000 soldiers, you know. So how we do that? We bomb the shit out of those guns. You know what I mean? Hmm.

Thanks to all your explosives training. Hmm. No, there was more like air force stuff. You know what I mean? Unfortunately, not my.

I mean, if I had a blow them up one at a time, like that would be awesome. But we bombed them. So it was more of an air force thing. We had a call in the radio for mom. Was that deployment?

That moment when you showed up in Torah Borough the first time you ever killed a man? Um, yeah. Yeah, war. Like, let's go. We killed hundreds of people on the first day.

Like, I can't tell you how many people died or, you know what I mean? There's just everywhere. Side of the mountains. Like, and then sometimes guys get blowed up. There's only pieces.

You know what I mean? And they'd just be on the side of the mountain like, what do you do? Like, well, how does that affect you at all? As a, you know, as a man or is it just, no, I'm a soldier? Um, I mean, you know, you come.

You, I'll tell you this. You want to come to a gunfight and you end up dead. It's your fault. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean?

They started it. Well, and it's the Delta Force. You're going to die. Like, it's not going to be a good look for you. You know what I mean?

So, uh, yeah, I just felt like, uh, all those guys needed to die. Like, they're evil. You know what I mean? Like, it's evil to just, like, uh, you know, Afghanistan in generals. It's like biblical times.

Yeah. Trucks and cellphones. Like, they do fucked up shit. You know what I mean? So, I don't, there's no doubt in my mind that these guys needed to die.

Mm-hmm. You know? Were they connected to bin Laden? Yeah. All his, like, inner guys, you know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, in 10 days, you managed to route out this mountain area. And then that nobody else had gotten to. The Russians included.

And then what? Well, bin Laden wrote a death letter. He wrote a death letter. It's on the internet. But he wrote a letter.

He thought he was going to die. Is this the one where he was, is this a different letter from the one that the morons

were circulating on TikTok about a year and a half ago saying this is amazing.

He's so smart. He's got such good reasons for attacking us. Just that happened. I don't know. Yeah.

I don't know. You really wouldn't. You should stay up the internet and you should not.

Gen Z. I don't think you'll be happy. I don't do any social media. Well, so what happened? Because you, you didn't find bin Laden there.

Yeah. But you found all of his henchmen. Yeah. You killed him. Yeah.

And then are you like done? Because bin Laden still out there. We're fucking ceasefire. A fucking ceasefire. And someone called a ceasefire.

And I would also say, uh, there's a couple helicopters. And helicopters flew over to battlefield, which I still do this day. I don't know who they were. Oh, I think he was escaping. I look at it this way.

Um, if, if the first 10 days of the war, 10 guys killed bin Laden. Where's the war on terror at? Oh, this is interesting.

To check, but couldn't never got open.

Oh, that's really interesting. That's what I think. So you're pretty cynical about our military industrial complex. I wouldn't say cynical. Like, I mean, I enjoyed my time.

I love grenades. You know what I mean? Uh, but, uh, I do think like the rug was pulled out from under us. Well, it mean it definitely was at the end.

“But we're, are you talking about right here, right now?”

No. We're not. You don't think that the military brass wanted you to find him. They wanted it to go on and on. No.

I think someone else intervened and put him in hiding. Someone who owned helicopters. Mm-hmm. Regular people own helicopters. Who owns helicopters?

You know what I mean? And then how come I've never heard about this anywhere else? I don't know.

No one wants to talk about this.

I know, right? See what I'm saying? But, I mean, are you talking about, like I say, the military industrial complex? Like, one of these big contractors, are you talking about us, us, us? I don't know.

I mean, you can make your own guesses. You know what I'm saying? But I would say this is like, okay, where is the story between where he lived in Pakistan and Torabora? Where's that story also?

By the way, I want to know that story. Do we know? I have no idea. Yeah. You ever heard anything?

No. We need this like these JFK files. Let's go. Well, I don't know me. You actually have a shot at it right now with this administration.

Well, there you go. You talk, you know these guys. You got a friend over at the Pentagon. There you go.

I mean, we can get to the bottom of that.

There you go. Well, that's, I mean, unfortunately and totally understandably so many of our veterans are asking these questions now. Including Sean. You know, I'm talking about length about his questions about who are the good guys.

And we're not. We're not. I don't think we are. You don't. I don't think we're good friends.

Why?

“I think we deal on a short timeline of four year timeline.”

And I think everyone else is like men and charts for 50 years. You know what I mean? And they've seen us flip flop back and forth. And we pull, we push, we tug a war with the rope. It never ends out good.

We're not good friends. And then as soon as you don't do what you we want. We're going to chuck you out of the bus to move the fuck on. You know what I mean? Like give me an example.

Uh, I don't know tons of stuff. You know what I mean? I'm giving you an example right now where these helicopters at. Where is the story of been logged into from about a bad? Where that's where the officers are trained in Pakistan.

Interesting, right? And how did he get out of Afghanistan? He's on dialysis. You mean this guy walked over 14,000 foot mountains in the snow with his little woolen blanket and his dialysis machine but left all his people behind.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But I think there's I think George Bush said that her alive and I think the Pentagon was risked verse. And I think that's where the disconnect was at that time.

But I think someone else stepped in and took bin Laden in hiding. And when we found him in 2010. I was in my exact time. It was 2011. I was on maternity leave with my son. It was an election year. So you think that was by design?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was more useful. He was more useful, dead.

A mom and need to get reelected. It's time. And so allow him. So a loud. A loud.

Yeah. Yeah.

“So is that just your gut having been in the army for 20 years?”

Or. Hell yeah. I mean, that's like, that's the worst possible like fake on our commander and chief. And what they might do. I can danger continue a war where guys are going to kill.

And it limps blown off. What to improve your. So you can get the election under your belt. It's just so. So it works.

Oh, my gosh. It's so horrible to even consider. I mean, so it works. Well, on it. If I had been over there and seeing my guys blown up.

I think I'd be very angry.

Are you angry? I mean, believing this. I mean, being angry wouldn't get me a cup of coffee. You know what I'm saying? I know, but either you feel it or you don't.

If you, you know, I'm, I look at it this way. I had a great time. I did everything I could. I did as much as I could every time I could.

And I always try to do the right thing.

At the same time, like, I can't control everything. You know what I mean? And then, uh, shouldn't make me mad. Sure. Do I hate that, like, you know, uh, the, uh, the politicians disagree on something.

And it costs your son his life, right? Like, ridiculous, right? But at the same time, like, I was having a time on my life. So I wasn't questioned and shit, you know? Anytime you drink from the bottle of hindsight, everything gets clear.

You know what I mean? But at the time, like, I didn't question it.

“I just want to, I was on the next, like, uh, war was my life, you know?”

And I was good at it. And I saved lives. I saved a ton of lives and war. Um, all those things combined kept me back. Coming back to it.

Whether it's right, wrong, indifferent. Like, uh, these are things that I can't control. So why even dwell on it? You know what I mean? It's almost, it's, and then you'll get stuck in there.

It's muddy water. You'll get stuck, it's quick sand. You'll sink in it. Like, why this? Why that?

Like, why ask why? You haven't been through therapy. This is just your own thinking. Uh, I don't go to therapy. No, I do.

No, I do. I do. I actually know really good one. But I don't think you need him. I don't think you've got your head on your shoulders.

I try. That's life therapy right there. I don't know. Somehow you managed to get, like, a really clear view on all of this. But so many guys I've talked to them come back.

You know, traumatized. Well, I call it the, the last chapter. They're stuck in the last chapter. You know what I mean? Like, they can't get out of that chapter.

And whether, but what really happens is, like, the story is not over. You know what I mean? I mean, I was under the age of 40 doing all that stuff. Well, I've had a lot more, a lot of years.

Like, so your life never gets better.

You're never going to enjoy anything again. Like, get out of that chapter, right? And write a new chapter.

“Is it the impart, like, the adrenaline rush that you miss?”

Like, it's tough to recreate that in civilian life. Yeah. It's more than the adrenaline rush. You know what I mean? It's so much more.

I mean, when you're really good at something, it's all you want to do. And when you know guys are really good at something, I could, you could save lives by sending guys that are really, really good at this. You know what I mean?

So, I think it's just one of those things where it's a calling. And it's not really your choice. You know what I mean? But at the same time, it's a choice you've got to make. When were you in Torabura?

Um, I don't think December of 90 or no. Oh, one. And then you went back, right? Yeah. I went back to Torabura.

Yeah. When did you go back? Two, just a few months later in 2002, I went back. And was that your, like, solo? Hmm.

How did you end up solo in Torabura? Pretty easy. I needed popdarts. Okay. I heard that you mentioned the sunshine.

Yeah. I didn't popdarts. So I need to clarify this. You wanted the popdarts. And there's something else.

What was the other thing? Beef jerky. Okay. So you needed this.

“So you convinced them to send you on some mission back to, like, the Chao Hall, the stuff?”

Yeah. I just told my boss like, hey, we're doing anything tonight. I'll schedule the helicopter and I'll go to the Chao Hall. I'm, I'll have their guy fill our truck. Okay.

Then I got lost. What happened?

Like, you never went back with the popdarts and the beef jerky.

I did. We used it. But it seemed like you got sucked into this unit that had the good food. Yeah. And then you were off to the roof.

Well, it was where everyone was. It was where all the guys were. You know, I mean, okay. First off, the defa. When they deploy, like, they have beef jerky.

They have the defa. The defa? What's that? Delta boy. Delta boy.

Delta boy. Delta boy. The defa. Oh, like, who was he? But anyway, like, you're the highest army unit.

You have beef jerky. You have popdarts. You have, you know what I mean? Like, stuff army guys, like, might see once a month. We should be getting every day.

You're like, they're serving capuccinos. Yeah. And then, like, the food is really good because we have our own cooks. And they care about what you eat. You know what I mean?

So it's good. It's, it's, it's the army system. But it's within the army system, which makes it a little better, right? So I was just going to go get some popdarts. And really, it's just a resupply run.

They fly me to Bagram and then, um, one of the commanders. The guys that wrote Killbin Laden was like, hey, what do you do? And I'm like, I'm stealing pop. That's right. I hit up here for food.

Yeah. And he was like, you want to go on a mission? And I was like, yeah. I was like, well, you got to call my boss and he's like, okay, I'll call him. And they did.

And then, um, guys, like, what is it? You know what I mean? And they're like, we want you to go on a loan. And I'm like, the sounds are risky. Just just happened.

Like, you were just there getting the popdarts. And they were like, you know, you'd be good for this. Yeah. Wow. And you, this is what kind of you wanted to do anyway.

Be on your own, make your own decisions.

Oh, I didn't know if I wanted to, like, never thought about it before then.

But it turns out, so yeah, something I do. So what was the mission? Why did you have to go out by yourself? Why couldn't you have another? Well, uh, this goes back to the politics of it is the general at the time.

Wouldn't let us, to do it to hit a target in Afghanistan. We needed U.S. eyes on make sense. So how do you get U.S. eyes on?

“You have to send out reconnaissance guys.”

And that's what I did, right? Mm-hmm. And then, um, but you can't no one can leave the wire. What's the wire? The perimeter, the base.

You can't. So. So that's the general's like, no one can leave the base. But you got a launch reconnaissance to get U.S. eyes on. Someone's going to leave the base.

Someone's going to have to leave the base. And that was you. Was there another guy or is it just me? Well, the only reason they sent me is they, they kept me in, because I was coming from one base to another and out station to a major base.

Yeah. I was in transit so they just kept me in transit. Yeah, you're like, who knows?

So basically they had a lie about what I was doing.

You just to make really a certain issue. Right? You're not giving up. No. The guys back the original place were probably like,

"We're the hell of the Pawtarts." They were in my truck. So okay. They get them later. So this solo mission to back through Torabora.

Just how he took me 10 days-ish. Why are you going back there when we already blew up the people? Uh, well, the last guy to supposedly help in Laden, not of the valley just came back from Pakistan with him in his sons. With Bin Laden and his sons are with his own sons.

Yeah. Supposedly during the Battle of Torabora, because he lived near there, uh, there was he was the facilitator of getting people in and out of there. Okay.

So we wanted to kill him or we wanted to capture him. We wanted to capture him because we thought maybe he brought Bin Laden out of there. Mm-hmm. Okay. So the last lead for Bin Laden was this guy.

Because we have everybody else, all this people, his bodyguard, his cook, his everybody. So do they tell you where you're going?

“And then it's just up to you to get yourself there?”

Yeah. Like, they do they show you that spot on the map and you're like, you've got to figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So they're like, we believe we know where he is. Yeah. Now good luck to you. Yeah. Go find him.

And it. Wow. Pretty simple. Like, he's, it's only one valley. Like, and there's only, you know what I mean?

There's only, I had already been there. That's one of the things. Right. So I kind of knew the area. I knew the terrain, right?

And it's like, oh, I know that. What do you guys want to kill you everywhere? Everywhere. Yeah. How do you get past them?

Bad guys like in checkpoints? Yeah. Uh, yeah. Like a retard. Like an American though, right?

They knew you were an American? No. They thought you were one of them? Yeah. What?

Yeah. How's that possible? You're just pasting his I am.

“I have a big, because of Russians rape people.”

People look like me and Afghanistan lost some of them. Oh, wow. I didn't think of that. Yeah. So you would act like a local.

And like a nuckest. And they'd let you walk right by. Mm-hmm. All the time. What would acting like a nuckest look like?

Uh, well, uh, so like this guy, the first time I happened to

me and this guy, like, jams as AK in my chest and it's like, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, like, I'm supposed to say something. And I just figured if I speak American right now, I'm dead. That's it. You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm. So I figured well. I'll act like a retard. Uh, and uh, I figured, okay. How would a retarded guy sound?

First off, it'd be volume 11, right? So loud. You don't even want to listen. And then it'd be mongloid stuff. So I was just kind of like,

"Burn it, burn it, burn it, burn it!" My guy's like, uh, good thing. Good, move along. Yeah. I got the move.

Did you have your AK? Yeah. Did he know that? Yeah. Oh, so he knew, like, it's not unusual to be armed there,

even if you're not at it. Everybody's out. Yeah. Everybody's out. That's incredible.

Yeah. So you find the destination? And did you get eyes on the guy? Yeah. Video tape, too.

And that's, that was the mission. Not, don't take them out. Don't try to kidnap him. Just tell us if he, in fact, is there. Mm-hmm.

So now you got the evidence.

Was that a moment like when you saw him or like, "Holy shit? Did you know it was him first of all?" Or he just could, could be some random. Well, when I was, um, I was in a truck. I said, with a bunch of people.

No one knows, um, American. I, as we drove by. I put my video camera under my arm. And I video camera to the house. And like, dude was on the front porch, luckily.

So you got a good shot of him? All of it. Yeah. All of it. Got everything I needed.

Are you sure, because I would imagine in the moment. I've been, sort of, not in this circumstances. But I, not long ago, did this undercover video of somebody. And I was like, "I hope I got the shot. You don't know until you can go check it later."

But this is a very important shot to get. Dude was on the porch. She was perfect. You knew you had it. Yeah.

Did you recognize him? Uh, no. I didn't know. Okay. I didn't know.

You found out later that you did, in fact, get the guy. Yeah, correct. So then did we get him? Yeah. Okay.

“And do you think it was instrumental in getting us to bin Laden?”

Uh, no. It wasn't. It was not. Madam CIA analyst whose name we still don't know was not using that particular information and figuring out where bin Laden was.

I don't know what any of that means. Uh, it did not help. He had no idea. Okay. All right.

So what does that mean for you? Anything? Does that make you feel disappointed about it?

Or like, well, I always thought, well, I thought at the time, like, ay, they were going to find out.

He was like dead in a cave later. You know what I mean? I just figured we blew him the smithereens. It might be hard to find the parts. You know what I mean?

Uh, so, and then I figured one day the truth will come out. I kind of always knew that. So. Well, when you heard about the raid and you saw Barack Obama on television. Yeah.

Yeah. What was your reaction? I thought it was great. You did. Yeah.

I thought it was great. I mean, for whatever reason Obama had, I thought it was great. And then I can tell you this, if I was a commander and chief, the minute I heard that, I'd be like, go smoke that fool now. You know what I mean?

Yep. And the discussion. Rob O'Neill was our first Memorial Day in death interview back in when we launched the show. We didn't even have a video yet. It was, uh, it would have been Memorial Day of 2021 right after the show launched.

And that story was just unbelievable just to hear it told the first hand. He's controversial now. Some people don't think he should have said it was him, blah, blah, blah. What do you think? Seals.

You know what I mean?

It's always fucking drama with those guys.

You know what I'm saying? I adore him. I really admire him so deeply. Yeah. I'm not buying him any that drama.

All right. So now he wasn't done. Like you're, you're not done. The war's still going on. And then you wind up going to Iraq.

Yeah.

“And I think that was like the, you know, they were gearing up.”

You know what I mean? We're trying to do this. They were gearing up for Iraq. I mean, that's a nightmare. Like when you look back on that one, what do you think?

Iraq. Yeah. I loved Iraq. What? No one says that.

Why? I don't know. Yeah. You're out of their mind. You have an interesting take on it.

And I love to hear you take on Saddam Hussein because you're making some good points. I hadn't considered. Saddam, man. Like we should have left him. We should have killed his bastard sons and told him play along or you're next.

Who did? Yeah. Adam dudes needed to go. But he was kind of a fan of the Christians. He was.

He was. His inner circle was all Christians. The people that touched his food washed his butt. All Christian, all inner circle. And it's because of the martyr thing.

You know, if you're Muslim, you kill yourself. You're a martyr. You go to heaven. You know what I mean? As a Christian, you kill yourself.

You go to hell. So he's surrounded himself and put up with the Christians.

“That's why Iraq was actually pretty Western even back then because he allowed Christians”

to have their own areas, do their own things, right? And then, you know, ISIS allows none of that. You know what I mean? And we had a mess with it. So did you, you did go on a mission where you, you could, you tried to get him.

I tell me again what it was. It was like a woman. His affair partner's husband. Yeah. Is.

Yeah. We rolled up everybody that met Saddam. You know what I mean? And then we used to say, look, we're in the army. Like, you know, in the, you know, our intelligence agencies.

They give polygraphs. And they determine their rating as sources. And like, they be like, this is an unreliable source. You know what I'm saying? And we'd be like, I'm in the army.

I'm pulling every thread. Let's go. I don't care. And we go check it out anyway. Most of the time, they were wrong.

Yeah. Go. What a shock. Yeah. Go figure.

But yeah. Saddam had like a favorite sex lady.

I never even heard of this.

I heard you say in short, right? Because she was not hot.

Like, like, I don't know what they got going.

“But like, who knows what she was doing when close doors?”

Yeah. There's no talent. She must have a real pro. You know what I mean? That's all I could think.

She had to know something about something. Yeah. Like, you would think, like, I don't know. Like, you would just assume she would be attractive. I don't know.

I didn't know what to do. You would. Everyone pictures the fair partner as somebody is very hot. The wife could maybe or maybe not. And none of that happened in here.

Well, maybe he had some hot ones. I didn't see them. Yeah, different taste. Maybe she had a routine. We have no idea.

She obviously had something. Okay. So, but it wasn't her. You were looking for it. It was her husband.

She was married. Well, we were. We couldn't get to her because it's hard to get to women in Iraq. So we had to get to the husband. Oh.

See what I'm saying. And what information could we get from the husband? I don't know. Maybe Saddam, kind of. You know, was honey potted a little bit.

He told his favorite honey pot. I don't know something, you know? And as an army guy, not an intel guy. I'm like, let's go. Yeah.

I'll do it. Yeah, I'm care. And did we get him? Yeah, we got him. Yeah.

Did he know anything? Yeah, they didn't know shit. You know what I mean? Like, they didn't know shit. But we did get him.

And yeah, it was okay. This is kind of legendary. But I was across the street in a mini van. And I was kind of watching this shop. I had two Iraqi guys that I would use.

And then I had the assault force kind of park on the corner close to the shop. And then enough time went by. We were just waiting and waiting. I told my guys to start fighting in front of the store. If too much time went by.

So they started a fist fight in front of the store. And then people come out like what's going on out front of the store. And the dude came out and literally put his back to like the van door or the assault force. And I'm like, yo, open the door. It's that dude right there.

And they grabbed him. And then it was over. And people were like looking for him. No one even knew he was. Everyone had been watching the fight.

Mm. Wow. And then later my boss was like, man, we're so lucky that dude started the fight. I was like, that was our guy, right? What is it?

I was trying to speed this up a little bit. I mean, yeah, it's hot in the back of the man.

“So you don't have to do the interrogation or you do?”

Um, I've done a lot of them. Okay.

They don't always send in like the dark arts guys from the CIA to do that crap.

Like that's, that's us too. Uh, those guys are chump change. You know what I mean? They're to get my lonely. Yeah.

Okay. So how do you make a guy like that talk? And by the way. Easy. How do you communicate with one another.

You have a translator there? Yeah. You got to have a term. People speak the language. Uh, yeah.

What do you mean easy? How is it easy? Uh, everybody talks. They do? Oh, are you getting a torture on what do you do?

You don't kind of do shit. It's easy. What? Yeah, fear and common sense is a powerful tool. You know what I mean?

Most of the time like, what? Okay. Think about this. Okay. This is every human being.

This is me. This is you. Look, they're stuff that you're going to die with. That you ain't telling no one about. Everybody does that.

Right? Does that make sense to you? No. I don't know. I'm kind of an open book.

But okay. Yes. I am too. Really true. There's secrets people keep to their grave.

Right?

That's basically what I'm saying.

Right? And then there's other shit.

“Like, what's your cousin's car look like that you just ain't holding?”

Any worth like getting beat over. It ain't worth fighting over. Hmm. Uh, it's a little white car. Is this a small point of order?

But did he know that the wife was having an affair with Saddam Hussein? The entire time. He did. What do you do? Was he okay with it?

It was just kind of curious with the sex dynamic. I would imagine he felt lucky to be alive every day. Right? Yeah. He'd be a very easy guy to get rid of.

And then you could have the sidepiece whenever you wanted it. But I guess he could anyway. So what's the point of killing the husband? I don't know. So he gave up whatever info.

And did we find Saddam Hussein after that? Uh, shortly after that. Yeah. We were, uh, look, we had to run all the, look, man hunting is like a sweater. When, like, you have a yarn on a sweater, you pull it.

Right? One of those threads is going to, the arms going to come off. Hmm. One of those threads you pull it out forever doesn't do nothing. You know what I mean?

So we're going to pull every thread. This is the process. Yeah. So when you, was that the biggest thing that you did while you were in Iraq? Would you say like the most serious thing?

No. No. What else did you do? The serious days. Oh my god, that was dark.

That was the dark stuff. You're over there with all the beheadings and all that. Hmm. Oh my god. Does it, I mean, does that scare you?

You're only a man. You're a man. I mean, I don't know. I wasn't really scared, but I did get a sword.

That was like a Roman short sword. And I'm like, there's pictures of me. I got my shirt off. I'm like, I don't know if you ever seen this. But, uh, I wanted to, I would have caught one of their heads off.

You know what I mean? But, um, no, it didn't scare me. You know, uh, Zarkawi was a bully. And he liked to pick on the week. He didn't want to pick on us.

Hmm. You know what I mean? And then, you know, um, yeah, there's our cowey days. We're great. Foreign fighters was great.

I mean, I don't know. I loved it all. But, uh, like the foreign fighters. I could just show up in front of the house. I had my guy again on the bullhorn.

They'd start shooting. We'd level the house. You know, like, those days were great.

“I mean, uh, I think those days were great.”

Because that's when the military finally let us take the gloves off.

And be like, okay, you guys do this your way. You know what year is this now? Oh, six, seven. Uh, yeah. It's our cowey was six.

You know what I mean? But they finally start to let the gloves come off. You know, I think. Like, I think we were, we were throttled, uh, a lot through a lot of stuff. But I feel like through this our cowey days.

No one gave a shit how we were getting it done. Mm-hmm. You know what I mean? So how long were we over there? Or how many deployments do you have?

Uh, I think I got 10. And then, like, I got a bunch of, like, the surge in the stalades. And shit, like, back and back. Yeah. Ten deployments?

Yeah. And then, uh, as a star major, I spent a lot of time there. But I didn't really count as a deployment as back and forth. Oh, wow. So then, what?

Like, how does it end for you? Oh, no. Like, they just send you back home before the fight's done. Or did you fight all the way into the-- Uh, no.

I was a star major. I retired in 11. Did you get an older man? Yeah. They don't let you serve forever really, right?

Uh, man, you're only young, so long, you know? But I'll tell you what, with stem cells and shit, I could have stayed another 10 years if modern science was happening. It's so interesting to talk to you and hear you talk about how fun it was. Because it seems like the hell of war and the trauma that guys have, the PTSD.

But there is something about, like, what is it? Is it working with your comrades and arms?

“Is it like doing the thing that you've been told to do and you're really good at it?”

You love that? Is it all-- like, what is-- what is fun? I mean, uh, why be ashamed of trying your best? No matter what that is, I think, right? Uh, and I think that's really what it boils down to.

I mean, yeah, I could be ashamed of a lot of people dying. A lot of people died. Did there-- Can you be ashamed? Some of the wrong people die, sure.

You know what I mean? Did innocent people die, sure, but like, this is war. And essentially war is you kill the bad guy and break his shit. So we can't use that shit against you. Mm-hmm.

If I was told to go do that, why am I the bad guy in this? I'm not. You know what I mean? I'm just doing my best on a daily basis, you know?

And then at the end of the day, I always seen it as I'm in the army.

I take orders. Let's go. And a lot of times, I like those orders. You know what I mean? What was the-- what was the brotherhood dynamic?

Oh, uh, man, you would think-- It's kind of interesting. You would think the brotherhood would have been strong, um, but like the war, like, builds bonds.

You can't-- you can't get anywhere else. I guess. You know what I mean? Like, uh, you'd think like there's always a brotherhood, right? Well, we talk about the brotherhood,

but I would just joke about sealed drama. You know what I mean? Yeah. Uh, so having said that, uh, I think there's like guys that I'm like, I was in combat with that we have a bond.

Um, I think there's certain people I have bonds with over different stuff, but I think that bond, the brotherhood is just, you know, the experiencing, uh, the best and worst of humanity at the same time. Um, you know?

“And when your life is on the lies, just adds,”

I don't know, so much more to it. I would think like you're risking it all together. And any one of you might not be there the next night. Yeah.

I mean, I always say like, I always say,

well, I said this to my guys too, but I-- we all gave Uncle Sam a blank check. Get ready. Don't be mad if it gets cash, but don't be mad.

For somebody when their check is cash, because they died doing what they loved. Mm-hmm. Can't be mad at that either. Were there any women in your unit?

Um, maybe? You're not allowed to tell me? I don't know. Can women be Rangers? Uh, I don't know.

That's a good question. I think so these days. I don't know. Like, I don't know how it works. Oh, I guess.

Did you ever have to deal with that dynamic out in the field? Uh, like my hands dirty together? Yeah. It just seems so weird to me. I don't know.

I think I think women have a very niche roles and can have very niche roles.

I've had women partners. They were great. Um, but I think there's a role for them and they're not like the one you send, you know, gets our cowy, right?

There's other stuff they do.

So, uh, yes, we have women always have women like--

Uh, and it, yeah, I mean, it's--

“I think there's more women on the planet than men.”

I don't know why that's true. Well, like, I'm curious about-- I'm back to your dating life now. Like, can you meet a woman somehow, or you're like, how do you fall in love?

How do you, like? Man, I'll tell you this. As I started out married at 9/11. I've been divorced several times. It's a hard life, you know?

I don't think-- I think it's a hard life because no one understands like your level of commitment. And I, I say that in a way, like, you're choosing something that might cause your death over and over.

People don't see that as rational. Mm-hmm. But they don't understand, you know what I mean? Uh, so I would say-- I always say this is like being married was like being in prison.

You could call home. And you ain't going there anytime soon. You know what I mean? I guess that's just how it works. What do you mean?

I don't think I get it. That's how marriage works in the army. Like when you deployed a war, you could call home. You could get your one phone call.

You could call home, yes. Yeah, call home, like once a week or so. You gotta go together a whole lot. Yeah, but you ain't going home. Yeah.

You know what I mean? And that's tough on anybody. I would say this. Only guys that had perfect relationships, their marriages survived the war.

Wow. You know what I mean? And I'd say the bulk of guys end up divorced. Do you have kids? I do.

How old are they? Uh, I stopped keeping track when they turned over 21. Okay. How many kids do you have? I have two.

Okay. Yeah. Are they good? They're good. They're good.

They're good people. Are they going in the middle and to the middle? All right. My son was in the army and works for the army now. Okay.

So when it all went when it ends, you know, Iraq eventually ends at Afghanistan ended disasterously and recently. Yeah. Is that a moment for reflection on what it meant?

What role you played, whether it was worth it? Like, or no? Is it just, I'm a soldier. I did my job. Next chapter.

Well, it wasn't worth it. I mean, everyone can see that, right? It sounds just me. I don't think it was worth it at all. I had a great time.

I would say none of it was really worth it in a strategic sense, in a tactical sense. You know what I mean?

Like, honestly, but the reality is,

is like, man, I had the time of my life. And I would want anyone to know, like, people, people like to thank me for my service. And it's like, I did whatever the fuck I wanted. I don't actually need anything.

So you know what I mean? Like, a kid who was like a cook getting murdered in fucking wherever. And I racked nightly. That kid needs to be thanked.

Like, I was just, I was just, doing what I do. Well, how do you reconcile it with stories, like,

“you know, Marcus Lutrell, and what happened to him?”

And he's definitely got some lasting PTSD from that, been a rough ride back home. Yeah, I don't even get that. I was out alone all the time. I was out alone in Afghanistan.

I don't get how being the lone survivor. I just don't understand that story, only because I was out alone all the time. It didn't happen to me. You know what I mean?

Because of the decisions I make on the ground. Well, you're not blaming him. I'm just saying it's so that's so foreign to me. I don't even understand it. Because I can tell you this.

The Taliban could come after me. There'd be a whole lot of dead bodies for sure. And I'm just one of those. I believe that. Imagine if there was two or three of me.

Bring that. I mean, this is one of the worst stories of the war. And what he went through is, this is awful. And it's not just him.

You know, was it last year? No, it was two years ago. We talked to Dakota Meyer. He's doing great now. But, you know, he came back.

He was awarded the Medal of Honor and wanted to kill himself. Like he, there are tough, tough guys. Not these are not weak men who they don't process it the way you do.

“I think if you could somehow teach this,”

it would be extremely valuable. I could teach anybody this. I feel like anybody could use this. People who have different traumas.

It would start by me locking you a room and beating you first.

Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. I know exactly. I might sign up for that. I think people would.

Don't touch the money maker. No, of course. No bruises. No marks. I'm a pro.

Like I've done a bunch of interrogations. No, but I got this. I mean, like, is there some sort of tough and you up John Camp? Oh, no. There isn't.

I mean, did this shirt? No. What does it read? Team SOB. Yeah.

I called you tough.

So this is not something I can sign up for.

So we're, I can go learn. I don't have any guilt. This is like this. Oh, no. Maybe I should.

You're missing an opportunity. Leadership, right? Leadership. Can it be taught? I think so.

I think so. Like, um. Most of my guys, if my guys killed somebody, I brought them all in a room. I made everyone have a drink.

I made sure I told them they did exactly right. You know, this was expected of them, right? Like, this is your job. Someone should thank you.

“And I think if all that happens on the spot, you're less likely to carry the goat”

with you later. So I believe a lot of this is framed up poorly a long time ago. Yeah. And then I believe guys ride the hall pass for a long time. And I call the hall pass booze.

But some people do drugs. Some people do, I don't know what people do. But for me, my hall pass was booze. You know what I mean? And then still drink or no, no more.

Uh, well, I'm training for worlds right now.

So I am currently not drinking. Worlds and what? Do you get to? Oh, wow. How are you?

Ex-military guys. Do you? Why is that? I don't know. Do you get to?

It's an hour of my day where I don't have to look at the phone. It's, uh, sometimes there's minutes where someone's actually like choking the living shit out of me. And the stubborn side of me is like, I'm not giving it to them. You know what I mean? I think is it involuntary?

No. What? No. When they choke you out? No.

Yeah. No. It's not involuntary. Uh-uh. Okay.

I have to learn those moves. If you make me give it to you, I'll give it to you. Otherwise, you could choke the shit out of me. And I'll just ride it. Oh, no.

But, uh, when I'm in real survival mode, someone puts me in trouble. I got to think about what's next. My leverage, my everything, control my breathing, my heart rate. I call that real survival mode. Like, that's, um, I'm so thankful for that.

It's, uh, it's a clarity of sometimes. Oh, I don't know what I mean. I think of it. Yes, I do. So it's like, you know, like, people talk about runners high.

Like, you know, I do cardio. It doesn't make me high ever. I've always hated it. But like, due to it's, um, I don't know. Sometimes when I'm in real survival,

I don't kind of think about my phone. I don't kind of think about my life.

Are you always going against somebody who knows what they're doing.

Is it, is it usually an instructor or another, like, um, well, participant and class. Because I travel.

“I hit, I think, 28, 30 different dojoes a year.”

I just walk in and I do worry about, like, out matching somebody to the point where you're going to hurt them. No, no, no, no. I'm not going to hurt anybody. Cause from a damage.

No. I'm a recovering lawyer. This is how I think about these things. Oh, uh, no. No, no, no.

You're just like, look, this is unheard of. I'm hurting somebody. There's not. There's hurting somebody. Yeah, I'm not going to hurt.

Well, yeah. But I guess it like, yeah, as you get better at it, right? Like, this is the point of submission. If you thought I was going to hurt you, you could tap. Okay.

So that's your escape button. That's like the, the safe gesture. Don't don't hurt me anymore, please. I've had enough. Yeah.

It just tap. So what are you doing now? I'm training for worlds. I've been waiting for money. Oh, I teach people to shoot.

No, okay. Okay. 'Cause you were sniper. I was. We didn't even get, we didn't go over that.

No, no. Yeah. Yeah. How many guns do you own? Seriously?

I couldn't count. More or less than J.D. Vance's Mamal had in her house when she was. I don't even know how many. I think it was 19. Oh, yeah.

I don't want to admit to anything. You know what I mean? Where are you living? I live in Broly, North Carolina. No, we're specifically.

Give us the street, I don't know. I'm like, I don't like it. So you settled in the warmth? Well, I live near Fort Brag still. Okay.

“And you, you work with them and do you do anything?”

Mm-hmm. I don't do anything with Fort Brag. Try not to. What do you do for fun? Like, how do you let your hair down?

Uh, I do do get to. Mm-hmm. Uh, I off-road with my buddies. I got one of them side by side off-road vehicles. That's fun.

Yeah, I do that. Yeah, I do. I just, just, guy, who goes on the side. One put on a little white scarf and a little leather helmet. It'll get it muddy in there, man.

I wouldn't bring light on these trips. Uh, we, we normally off-road in the years on mountains, yearly. Uh, yeah, we go to this place, crown king, oldest bar. There's no dirt. It's all dirt roads.

No pavement. Stay up there in cabins. And it's kind of like, I don't know. Uh, we off-road. We drive.

I eat cheeseburgers. And I drink whiskey. And then sounds right on the ground. I do that all weekend. I don't shower either.

I don't even care. Ever. Let's go. We're poor wheeling. Yeah, we're good.

So you took shower just now on this particular trip. Yeah. But, um, I four wheel, um, man. I, you know, and then I just, I love teaching people to shoot. It's kind of like the thing I'm really good at.

Um, what do you think? I know you're not. You don't really watch the news. Do you follow politics at all? Like, what do you think of Trump?

Uh-huh. Oh, uh-huh. Oh, uh-huh. Yeah. Well, first off, talk to Pete.

I need one of these Pentagon jobs. Tell me I shouldn't be. I will. The deputy of special operations. Is that what you would like?

Oh, yeah. Let's go. I'll make a call. Oh, man. Uh, but, uh, look, I like Trump.

Uh, I like fans. I like Pete. Uh, I like what they're doing. Um, and like, what can I say?

“Like, I think they make good inherent decisions.”

Like, for long term, which we're not really used to here. I mean, uh, I think they're all good. I don't watch the news or nothing, but I think they're good so far. I think I thought Trump made great policies last time. You know what I mean?

What have you seen enough of Pete to know what you like about him? Uh, or, man, I got a ton of buddies that know Pete. Like, everybody loves Pete. You know what I mean? Like, that's all I need to hear.

And, you know, like, uh, look the Pentagon. Uh, we want to warn lately. And, you know, these generals will be like, oh, well, he was just lower and listed. Say in that. But like, yo, I watched you guys every day make bucked up decisions.

I try to tell you and you'd be mad at me. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Not that I was always right.

But like, sometimes you're wrong also. And it's the, I think it's the humor. So the Pentagon that needs to be taken down if you're not just, you know what I mean? Yeah. And like, uh, anyway, yeah.

Uh, so I would happily serve this country and make everything better. You know what I mean? That's awesome. Oh, we need, we need guys like you raising your hands. Thanks.

Well, I love that you came in to tell us their story. It's your such an interesting man. I love, I love everything about you. What a character you are. Thank you.

I hope we can find a way to get you back. Go, let's go. Let's go. Let's call Pete. Pete, where you at? Let's call Pete. Let's call DJ T. Let's see.

You got something to work. Call him right now. Get him on the line. I'm in. I, whether you want to hear or not.

Thank you for your service. Ah, you're welcome. Thank you. Pleasure to meet you. Ah, thank you.

Yeah. All the best to you. Ah, didn't I tell you? He's unbelievable. What a guy. John McVee.

Thank you once again.

Um, you know, it's just incredible that the stuff that our troops go through

and the different mindsets that they develop along the way, right? It's an honor to talk to him. It's our honor to talk to all of our troops who have served in battle. And if you're into what you heard today, she'll go back and listen to the earlier memorial day shows that we've

done since we launched. Uh, the first one was in 2021 and that was Rob O'Neill. Um, we've done, uh, Marcus Letrell. We've done Dakota Meyer, uh, recipient of the Medal of Honor. It's just, these guys are, they're living life around us.

They're kind of back to normal in the extent one can be with having these incredible backgrounds. So it's well worth our time to take a moment to learn from them and remember what they and our other troops have done for us, uh, while we've been sitting at home in our air conditioning, right?

“So that's what today is all about, especially honoring the fallen.”

We'll do that here. Thank them and their families for their service. We want to bring you the story of a remarkable veteran, who stared death in the face and lived to share his incredible lessons on leadership, bravery, and how to overcome any obstacle,

no matter how devastating it may feel in the moment. Lieutenant Jason C. Redmond joins us now. Jay, welcome to the show. Megan, honored to be on, Happy Memorial Day, everyone. Oh gosh, to you too.

It's so great to talk to you and to see you again. Do you remember when we met? Absolutely. Maybe it's still a foundation dinner in New York. Many years ago when you were still working with Bill Hammer.

Exactly right. And I never forgot you. I've talked about you to basically every Navy sail who's come in this show and talked about you with Lake Babin and his wife, Jenna Lee and all these people.

And just have been thinking about you because your story was so incredible

and back then it was still pretty close in time to when you first were injured. You know, that was like 2010. I'm trying to think of it year. Uh, 2007.

So I think I was still active duty.

“I think I still was trying to get back operational when I went to that dinner”

because I didn't retire until 2013. Yeah, I remember that. And it was like just your whole story was so incredible. And of course, I've met so many people over the years. And I've met a lot of that, too, of veterans and active duty.

And honestly, I can count on one hand the number of people who really stand out to me where I'm like, you've got to hear this story. And you're one of them. So I'm truly honored to have you on here and to be having this discussion with you today. Great to see you.

Likewise, thank you.

So you grow up from a very early age. I think it's fair to say. I mean, like, well before you actually signed up for the Navy at age 17,

“had your eye, was it on the Navy in particular or just the military?”

It was both. The Navy kind of came about a little bit later. I mean, it's still young. I think it was about 15. I mean, from a very young age.

I mean, my parents tell me when I was about three years old.

I always just talked about service-based.

And what I like to call in American society protectors. And I was always interested in, you know, that protector mindset. When I was three years old, I wanted to be a firefighter. Uh, that as I got a little bit older, my grandfather was a decorated B24 pilot. Um, you know, I learned about it.

And my uncle, uh, along with my grandfather on both sides served in World War II. Uh, my dad had been an army veteran serving during the Vietnam War. Um, and had been a pair of trooper and jump master and rigor. And that's where he had encountered seals for the first time. And started learning more about special operations, started learning more.

You know, I was kind of about the GI Joe era. So GI Joe was cool to me and definitely the special operations guys within the GI Joe universe.

“And it was about the time when I was maybe 14 that my dad said, hey, you should look into the Navy seals.”

Um, having spent some time in the Virgin Islands, I was pretty strong in the water.

And he said, hey, these guys are tough. They're some of the best. He said, you know how to swim. He said, you're a little crazy. You should check them out.

They'd be perfect for you. And uh, and he was right. Uh, I don't know what it was. And I'm not the, I'm not probably the likely candidate that most people would think of, you know, I think when people think of Navy seals, you know, they see a picture of Jaco and Jaco.

And he looks like he's chiseled out of granite, you know, and he is the Hollywood version of a seal. And I like the joke. But I'm not, I was like five foot, nothing, especially at that age. I was, I was probably, I don't even think I had hit five foot back then.

“I was probably 95 pounds when I decided that's what I want to do.”

And everybody was like, there's no way you'll ever make it. Uh, and I don't know that just created a few older my fire. And I just said, this is what I'm going to do. And step my sights on it and start a training. And, you know, the rest obviously leading up to joining the Navy when I was 17.

Uh, on amazingly enough coincidentally September 11, 1992 is the day I joined the Navy when I was still a senior in high school. You are the guy who says, say I can't say I can't. Like there's no better fuel for your fire than those than those than that message. It's a fact. And you know, and that's a good thing.

I've come to learn as I get older, there's a balance there. You've got a balance reality with where we're at because when I was younger, man, that was the catalyst. And I would do just about anything if you told me, hey, you can't do that. I mean, I just had to prove. And I think some of that, who knows, had to do it.

Maybe I was a smaller guy. So I felt like I had to prove that I was big enough or whatever to do it. But I tell you back then, it was definitely a fuel that enabled me to make it through training and to overcome a lot of the impossible odds. It's a matter of fact. I was told right from the very beginning when I went to the recruiting station in Lumberton, North Carolina where I was living at the time.

And I walked in that door probably the first time I might have been 15. I'm probably 15 and a half basically and I walked in that door and I said, hey, I want to join the Navy and I want to be a deal. And boy, they took one look at me, it's five foot, nothing, you know, runs.

And they were like, you'll never make it as a seal.

And they basically, the recruiter chased me out of the office. And of course, that didn't deter me. I came back and he would chase me out again. And multiple times that happened. Funny story.

I almost went and joined the army because I got frustrated that they wouldn't let me, you know, that this guy wouldn't even give me. I wouldn't even give me the time of day. So I almost joined the army to become a ranger. And I ended up failing the airborne physical because they said, oh, you can't equalize because I had ruptured my ear drum when I was a kid. And when I, you know, thankfully, my dad had been in the military.

He said, well, why don't we go send you to a specialist and they can, and because I knew I could equalize. I'd go by it done all these things. And sure enough, I went to a specialist by the time that it all transpired. I tried and explained to everybody, you know, everything happens for a reason. And by the time this had transpired, there was a new recruiter in the recruiting office in Lemerton, North Carolina, Henry Horn, who I got to link up with last year after all this time.

But Henry Horn was the new recruiter.

And he said, hey, you want to be a seal? Come on, man. And he helped me get into the Navy. He put me on the path to become a seal. And I got to give a lot of credit to Henry for that. He must be so proud of being that guy in your life and the life of the service industry in our country.

Can I ask you, how, so when you actually did sign up because I understand you, you officially were allowed to join when you were 17. So what was your physical stature then? Because it's interesting to me.

You always do think of these guys being bigger and you do picture like a jacco going in there and then being like, right this way.

Sir, yes, duh. Of course, we belong together. So I probably hit someone of a growth spur and, you know, my junior senior year, but I was definitely not that big. I mean, even today, you know, I'm five eight and about a hundred and seventy pounds. So I'm on the average seal. A lot of people don't know though. The average seal is only about five ten and a hundred and eighty pounds. This this Hollywood version of the Arnold Schwarzenegger type just is not necessarily the case.

I mean, seals typically are lean muscle and, and, you know, usually don't have, you know, a larger upper body because they have strong muscular endurance strength. From from the gear we have to carry in our ability to have to do a lot of activities with our body weight and gear. So your ability to pull yourself up the ladder, your ability to pull yourself up onto a rooftop. Any of these different things are marked by what we have to do, especially when you're going through training.

“So when I went through training, I think I was probably five seven.”

And I started training as 18 years old. I was five seven and I think I checked in to buzz it about one thirty five. So I was one of the lightest guys in the class. That's a traditional though. They're probably a lot of guys out there thinking, oh my gosh, maybe I, maybe I too could be a seal. Yeah, oh, a hundred percent and I'm not one of the smallest. I mean, believe it or not. Like I said, I'm on the smaller one of the spectrum, but we've had seals. I think the smallest I ever heard was about five two.

And I obviously, we've got a great big huge guys. There, it's, it's not normal. The big guys really have a hard time making it through training. The amount of pounding on their joints ends up breaking them for the hundreds and hundreds of miles that you run in the amount of body weight strength. You have to have to be able to do twenty thirty pull-ups to be able to do fifty dips to be able to do hundreds and hundreds of push-ups. It's really hard on big guys joints.

My little, my little, my little, my little, my little, my little. My, my little. My nine year old was listening to me prepare for you. And we were talking all about the seals and training. And he wanted to know if they make you do one handed push-ups. Do they make you do any of those? Yes. And I actually, when I, I broke my arm and training and I had to do a lot of one arm push-ups because just because I broke my arm did not mean that I, that I wasn't still getting the L.D. and dropped it to push-ups and do things.

“Well, it's, so that's how good you know, but I think you tell me, but it seems like whatever the height, whatever the stretch here, the number one thing the reason you made it as a seal was that attitude.”

It's that attitude like that just never say died. I will not quit.

There's something different in the guys who make it through as seals versus everybody else because they have that thing that just it will not let them quit. That's right. It's I think there are two things that enable individuals into special operations. Number one that we like to call it the no-quit gene. I mean, the Navy has spent millions of millions of dollars trying to figure out how do they increase the number of graduates from seal training. And all these things they've done going all the way back to World War II when they started training.

It really, the expression rate has stayed roughly the same. It has been around 75%. So 75% of the people that start training do not graduate. You know, we often talk about it's the no-quit gene. Everybody gets pushed to the point. Everyone has a breaking point. And in seal training, they push you to that point. They teach you how to grind through it and keep going.

“You're brain will tell you you have to stop. You're brain will tell you if I don't keep going. I'm going to die, but the reality is your body can keep going almost 10 times further beyond that.”

And so it's the ability to do or that gets you through training. But the other thing that I think special operations guys, they have the ability to process massive amounts of information and a very chaotic environment and make rapid decisions. And there's a lot of people that can't do that. I mean, we send guys into, you know, a, imagine a hostage rescue scenario where they're now. I'm going to make entry into a room where there are bad guys in the room that are shooting at you. You very quickly have to assess that situation.

And they're definitely guys that make it to training. Unfortunately, they don't have the ability to to process that information at that rate.

And sometimes they end up going away just because of that. So it's those two things.

“I think truly make actual, and special operations, you know, people, they make great deals.”

You know, kind of reminds me of I was talking one time to the coach, the head coach of the Minnesota Vikings. And he was saying, when he recruits quarterbacks, he does need, you know, a agile, you know, guy who can actually complete the plays and knows how to throw the football and has sort of a physics. A basic knowledge of physics and an instinctual knowledge of physics. But he was saying, some of the guys can't remember the playbook. They don't remember everything that's in there.

And when to call which play depending on how the guys line up in the field, far less dangerous, obviously than what you do. But it was kind of a similar thing where it's not enough to have the physical capabilities.

There has to be this mental thing that you either have or you don't have.

And if you don't have it, it's as much of a deal breaker as not having the physical strength. Absolutely. Sometimes it will become the deal breaker. I mean, you know, there are a lot of guys out there that are strong. I mean, a lot of individuals who will say to me, oh, you know, they're there. And if he were from professional athletes to believe it or not, I mean, a lot of high level business individuals.

In the financial market that we'll say to me, I definitely could have been a seal. And you know, I laugh at a the arrogance of that statement. But maybe they do have a little bit of the financial. I mean, the physical ability. But do you have the ability to process information and continue to execute when you're in the middle of a firefighter after you.

You know, a phone in, taking fire, maybe you've jumped in. And now you're patrolling long ways. Maybe you've been in a firefighter. You're having depth of the target building now you're in the target. You know, you're in a firefighter.

You have people that are wounded. Now you're trying to move people out. You know, now you've got civilians you're trying to take care of and along with your wounded. While things are still blowing up around you when you still got a process all this. I mean, that was all stuff that I experienced in my career.

And there are some people that can do that. And unfortunately, there's a lot more that can't. They just. High pressure environments. They shut down professionals.

Sports is the same. You put people that often talk about the, you know, the high level games. You know, like the Super Bowl or the NCAA championship games and how some of the players just can't manage that stress and that overwhelming pressure. Yeah, you can see it when people choke. I mean, in sports, we have an opportunity to see it in a way we don't in military where you can see who's a choke or who's not who performs at that high level in the most stressful of circumstance and who doesn't.

Now wait, this is a stupid question, but I have to ask it. So are you telling me that even in my own exercise life, which I will grant you is more limited than it ought to be. When I am doing the jumping jacks and I am so burned and my legs are on fire. And I'm like, I've got to take the next eight out and I've just got to like bend down for the next eight. I'll come back after an eight B pause.

“Are you telling me I can just keep going? Are you telling me that like if I would just get mentally tougher?”

I can do it straight through. Just keep freaking pushing. Absolutely, um, believe it or not. Most people could, if you had the fortitude and the ability to do more of the pain and the discomfort, you could probably push yourself right to death, you could jumping jack yourself to death. It would take a long time. There are the all kinds of alarm bells going off in your brain probably days before you got there.

But it isn't amazing to resiliency of this amazing machine we've walked around in.

And unfortunately, in this day and in age, we are not. We're not building that much in our people. We are not. We're getting softer as a generation and you know, every Monday I put out a leadership and resilience video I call it Monday. And this last Monday it was exactly about that. I just finished reading this book called Kingdom of Ice by Hampton sites. And it is about the trek to the North Pole in 2017, '79.

And absolutely amazing. I read that story and the level of heroism and the level of pain and discomfort and frozen temperatures all the time that those guys had to deal with.

“I consider myself fairly tough guy and I remember reading it thinking, man, I would I have fair to miss.”

So fast forward to today. We don't have to do a lot of things that really push us. People have to do hard things in order to build a grit and resilience.

Otherwise, we just get that softer and softer and we'll just, you know, two minutes or we want to be comfortable. Everybody, including me.

“I mean, we all want to be comfortable, but grit and I like to tell people the overcome mindset is not something you can just feel like a switch and say, oh, I have to be tough right now.”

So let me throw my little switch and now be tough.

It's been both doing the hope that thing and if you don't do hard things, you will never be able to throw that switch when you really need to.

It reminds me your story about your book reminds me of one time I was skiing in this very posh ski resort with my husband and my brother-in-law, some others. And just like a downpour of snow came right on top of us, just this huge snowstorm dumped on us and it came fast. And so before we knew it, the snow was above our knees, you could barely see in front of you. And I said to my brother-in-law, Ken, I feel like Shackleton. And he said, except with no hardship. Yeah, exactly right.

Well, they've got the ski butlers who are going to take off the boots when you get back to the resort. Oh, for me. And they warm beer boots. I mean, I love the resort. It's like that. We love the ski. So anything like that, I'm all about, but yeah, I hate to cold down. And that expedition. I mean, you are in sealed training.

It is the one common thing. You are a wet cold covered in sand. So I despise the cold and I just think about these guys. These guys were literally cutting frostbite out of their feet.

“I mean, that's how insane the conditions were and how hard.”

And then continuing to go. I mean, there are other people that'd be like, I'm not an invalid. There's no way I could afford. But literally, it wasn't until like bones were exposed, where they weren't able to walk at all. I was just fascinated with this story and the level of grit and resilience.

And society, we may never get back to that.

I mean, thankfully, or hopefully we live there. We are. We are things to people like you. This is what our children need to be watching and listening to. Guys, like you, with that same messaging. You know, and I'd like to say it's still the military writ large.

Notwithstanding, milly and some of these other guys in the messaging from them. But that's what I have my kids listen to. I don't want them listening to your week. We lean into your weaknesses. Everyone's sick. Everyone's depressed.

Everyone's near suicidal.

You know, here's another poll to confirm all that. Here go back on social media to make yourself feel better slash worse. We're watching your Insta Jaco's, all these guys who have been through about just grit and mental toughness.

“Because it is a skill. Like you were saying, it's a skill and you have to practice it.”

Yeah, absolutely. And that's what a lot of people don't. I love the fact when people read my book and they don't really know my story. What's out there is, hey, this guy got all shot up. And he wrote that sign on the door and he's this top seal. But they don't realize as there's a huge part of the story that most people don't know until they read my book.

And that's that I failed as a young leader. And I'll be honest, it was that journey building myself back up against really hard odds that really built the overcome mindset and all the leadership things that I talk about today. And, you know, making you nailed it. Right now in this country, you know, I joke with people about, you know, we're still in the midst of a pandemic. And, and people who go COVID, and I'm like, no, we, the pandemic is the victim mindset.

But there is a large, flat society that is being convinced you are a victim. You know, you know, there, there are, you know, political leaders that want to convince you regardless of your race, Creed, color, demographic, gender, gender persuasion, religion, religious affiliation. I'm sure what it is. They want to convince you you're a victim.

There's no way you can save yourself or we, someone else have to save you or oftentimes it's only the government can save you, which is scary and a dangerous thought itself. I, everything I teach on is on self leadership. You have the power to drive forward and create change in your life. And, and it is the exact opposite in this victim mindset, but it is pervasive. It is pervasive across social media.

It is pervasive oftentimes in the media. And we've got to break this. I mean, America was built on these, on the assumptions of resilience and grit and self leadership. You know, these individuals that came across here to this country and said, hey, we're going to, we're going to figure out how to overcome them. We're going to figure out how to make our way.

And right now we're not there. Everything, even in the military right now, there's this idea about individualism.

You know, in military units, it's working together.

It's all a whole bunch of leaders who create this unified organism, if you will, that does incredible things.

So fascinating to watch and a little sad. I hope that we can wake up. You know, there is, you know, I learned the hard way about individualism because when I was, when I got myself in trouble as a leader, it was about me. I was selfish and I was supposed to be and I wouldn't poke it outward.

“And I think there's a lot of that going on in our country right now.”

You got to take care of yourself, but how does that impact? How do you set the example for your staff, your employees, your children, your spouse, your family, your community? You know, we need more leadership and we need more grit. How do we even still have a military given this mindset amongst the Gen Zers? Do you think today's guys are coming into the military with this victim mentality?

And then it gets sort of beaten out of them? Or do you think it just naturally attracts the minority amongst that generation that doesn't have the victim mentality? And that's what they're doing there. I think there's still a lot of individuals that are coming into the military who have that grit and resilience and want to be part of specific units and certain things.

I think the problem is there are parts of the military that are becoming a little bit of a social experiment.

Like, hey, you know, I'm I'm I'm conservative, but I probably have a little more liberal views when it comes to social norms, like I don't care if you're gay. But in the military, there's no room for individuals. You're in the military. We all have to fight together race, creed, color, demigrad, gender, gender persuading, none of that matters in the military.

“If you want to do that in your off time, that's fine. You can embrace that.”

But as a military, we are a unit that must work together and there is not time or all of that's going to distract. If we're so focused on a certain segment or demographic of society that we need to, I don't know, highlight a promote everybody in the military when I was in. We all wore the same uniform. We didn't highlight anyone. And it was amazing to me. And just, you know, the guys across the different cartoons that I work, they were different race, creed, some were religious, some were Christians, some were atheists.

You know, a few other religions that were out there, but it didn't matter what mattered was our ability to execute the mission and you could depend on that person. And I think the military deeply needs to get back to understanding that and understand that the purpose of the military is to protect our country. To protect and to find the United States of America, but which should be the same mission for any country that's out there. And it's not on highlighting whatever is going on in society out there.

Those are political aims. The military should always be apolitical with a singularity of focus, which is to protect and defend our nation against all enemies.

You know, this is, you correct me if I'm wrong, but this is why the focus by Million having you guys learn about white rage or Austin defending, handing out candy to the troops is so problematic.

“It's not just a distraction from what you need to be focusing on, which I believe it is.”

It's divisive. It's kind of sending exactly the opposite of the message you need to ingrain in order to be an effective soldier, right, or frog. Like you, you, you, you, all the messaging is forget that stuff. That stuff is not relevant to us here. No, 1,000 percent. And I mean, it is the same thing in the military as it's happening in our country. I've talked about this. Our, a lot of political leaders are doing things are just abiding us as a nation. And they want to focus on, you know, specific segments of time, slavery happening. It was a terrible thing.

But there is no country in the past, you know, 250 years that has made more advances in trying to create equality. I mean, it has been a slow process. Obviously, but there have been leaders who saw this is wrong. We need to fix this. And this idea suddenly that, you know, these different initiatives are out there, you know, that focus on America was built on racism. I don't think this is true. We're throwing the baby out with the bath water. And there's a lot of incredible things that have occurred. And when we start to talk about the level of success of the American dream.

And they're all racecreen color engenders.

You know, when there are some people who are trying to say, well, white males are the majority. Maybe that's true right now. But instead of trying to create division, why aren't we not looking for ways, you know, two wrongs don't make it right. To continue to create division, especially in the military, you're creating individuals and how you're creating separation. You're creating a line of distrust. You're creating potentially even a level of hatred, which is not going to further that unit. It's all about culture.

It's all about trust. It's all about respect for each other that we are equal warriors that are trying to get out there and make something. And it should be the same in this country. So it's disheartening to me. And it's crazy to me because I think back to Martin Luther King's speech when he said, you know, I had a dream that one day men will be judged by the content of their character, not by the caliber of their skin. Yet our political message right now is we want to judge individuals by the color of their skin.

That's terrible man. We're all human. We need that we are in my opinion moving backwards. We're moving backwards both in the military and both in the nation. And both as a nation. And that's sad to me because I have worked with everyone, you know, everyone. When I lived in the Virgin Islands, I was the only white kid in my class, but I didn't notice that. I didn't care. They were all my friends. And we're becoming the society that wants to focus so much on race. I hate the fact that every single form I fill out today is like what race are you?

“Yeah, we should eradicate that and it should just say, are you an American? If you're an American, if you're an American citizen, that's what you are.”

You know, I think the only things that maybe they still have that on is potentially medical documents because there is some linkage of course to race and nationality and hopefully they can help prevent that. Anything else that you go away because it's just used as a method to divide us and that should not be the case, man. Our leadership should be looking at how to unite us. And right now, all I see is political leadership who's continuing to divide us and it's happening in the military too, which is Cooper, Cooper, dangerous.

All right, let's talk about your experience and sort of get the audience through what it was like for you. So you as I understand it September 11th, 1992, join the Navy. Is that right September 11th, 92? That's right. Little did you know, I mean, you know, what nine years later, what was going to be happening in this country for guys in the military in particular. So you go into boot camp, you do buds training, that was January of 1995. I know that this is like small ball for seals guys to talk about buds training.

But everybody else loves hearing about it. So can you just give us a couple of examples. I was, you know, just listening to these guys talk about like your friend. and Jack are their own podcasts talking about how, like, it's bullshit to talk about buds. Like,

talk about combat. Oh, anybody, the only people who want to talk about buds are people who never

actually went to combat after buds. And that's the highlight of their Navy career. But give me a

“minute on it because I think my sons will enjoy it. And I think a lot of people love it hearing about just”

what we put you guys through in order to call yourself a seal. Yeah, trading is hard. It's, uh, I mean, there's no doubt about it. But at the flip side of that coin, I kind of knew what I was getting my scalp into. I had a research. I actually served with one of the East Coast seal units before I went out to buds. I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting myself into. And it is on a

equivocally hard. Trinney's broken into three different parts. First phase is designed to

we people out. It is designed to be as hard as possible, physically hard as possible. And so it's massive amounts of physical exercises and evolutions that are pushing you out of your comfort zone into that zone of discomfort and pain. And forcing you to come to grips with your brain is telling

“you you have to stop. But your, your body can keep going. That culminates with how we can, how we”

could probably consider to be one of the toughest blocks of training in the US military. Some say in a lot of our, or even global military units and how weak is exactly that. It's a week long, goes from Sunday to Friday. And during that week, you will get maybe on average two to three hours to sleep. You are constantly wet, coating in sand, you're carrying the boat around on top of your head, everywhere you go. It's not uncommon for guys to shave holes inside their, uh, inside their

legs or inside their armpits or to rub the hair off their head. It's not uncommon for your toenails and fingernails to fall off during hell. It's also not uncommon to hallucinate during hell week.

I was in the, I was, boat crews go by height. So the, the tallest boat crews are in boat crew

“around one, uh, those are the studs. And, and, uh, in our class, I remember boat crew one,”

one, everything leading up to hell week. They were the beasts. And, uh, we got into hell, we could on Tuesday night. I was in the shortest boat crew by the way, which is called the smurf crew. So for those of you that enjoy that, complete with a little smurf on the front of your boat. So, uh, and, uh, I remember, like, the boat crew one were like, God, you know, we were like, those guys went everything, you know, they just dominated. And on Tuesday night at hell week,

which is one of the hardest evolutions that culminates on Tuesday night. Everybody in boat crew one quit that night except one guy. And it made me realize they're human too. Every single person

out there that is like, oh, that guy's got it all figured out, like, they never have any doubts.

That's BS. Everyone is doubts. Everyone has, you know, their hangouts and issues. It's a different between successful people as they continue to drive forward, besides those doubts. And man, when those guys quit, I was like, I got this. Now, keep driving forward.

“I think it's hard. It's miserable. It's you have to deep within yourself. And the evolution we”

were doing is something called steel pierce. And what they do is, um, you know, they have a, like, a firearms that they're missing you. It's at night in San Diego Bay. I went through how we can march. So the temperature was probably in, uh, low 50s, um, the water temp. I would imagine was probably in, um, maybe high 50s. And, uh, uh, and it was a large floating steel pier. And, uh, you, you were forced to remove all your clothing and fold it up. You were just wearing a

small pair of shorts. It was it. And they would, you were with your swim buddy in these little metal. I don't know. They were probably like three by three foot squares in the whole class. It spread out with their swim buddy. And you would have to fold your clothes up and the instructors would say, place your, you know, pants folded up in the northwest corner. And none of us had a compass. And you've already been awake for like 48 hours. So you're like, it's nighttime. It's like,

it's not Northwest. So you know what we're trying for your outwards favorite Northwest. And the class would come to a conclusion. This is Northwest. And, and, you know, you'd mess it up. And then you get yelled at and they force you to lay down on the cold steel and it's free you with water until you are shaken enough. And at some point it scream at you to get up and jump in the water. And, uh, and I remember we'd all run over to the edge. And it was like, your body was telling

you to go, but your brain would like slam on the brakes. And it was so funny. You'd watch everybody. I remember this in my mind. Everybody would get up to the edge of the period. Like, come to this stop and be like, well, and then you just have to force yourself into the water and the instructors would like throw your clothes and your boots into the water, which, you know, you're in the base. And now you're having to dive down in the darkness and find your stuff. And this went on for hours,

probably four or five hours. Um, and, um, I remember when guys quit, they, the steel pier was down below the concrete pier, which was up above where the bands were parked up there. Um, and, and there's all, there's a method to the madness. I mean, a lot of what, um, steel training, special operations training is, it's psychological, um, you know, steel training is not, you don't accomplish steel training through this. It's accomplished through

this and through this, your ability to find it within your heart and to think through the problems. So when guys would quit, they would be given a blanket and a hot cup of coffee or cocoa. And they would go sit in the van that was, uh, had the heater on. And you would see them up there, sitting in that van drinking with their blanket on all, looking down on you while you're getting your bucket. And, uh, it was so easy to say, man, all I have to do is say, I quit and I can go sit in that warmth.

And that's, man, that's like life. How often do we find these moments like, man, all I have to

do is get a little further. And I try to explain to people, keep pushing. You're never know,

“it's always darkest for the dawn. And, um, so anyways, that's what happened to Bokeh Ruan. All of”

now, my thing got caught up in it and, uh, and they quit during that evolution. So, wow. I remember on Thursday or on Wednesday night, I was hallucinating. We were doing an evolution called around the world where you wrote your boats around, uh, corn out of island. And, um,

guys start hallucinating. And I was, I was seeing fences, chain link fences out in the middle of the ocean. And I'd tell the guys, we got a turn. We're going to hit this fence. Uh, I was seeing concrete walls that I was trying to steer around. Um, I was hearing voices out in the middle of my, my buddy. He was telling me, he saw a rich standing out in the water. And like he told himself, like, okay, that, that's not there. So I'm just going to look away. And when I look back,

it's going to be gone. When he looked back, she was still there. Oh, so he was like, guys, we're going to row faster. This which is going to get us. Is it from lack of sleep? Is that what's causing

the hallucinations? Yeah, yeah, lack of sleep. Man, it is amazing. People really underestimate sleep.

And, uh, I'll go to sleep and explore you and help bad it is for you when you don't sleep. I'll bad your brain starts to break down and your decision making becomes poor. Yeah, even if you're starting to hallucinate. I was just talking to a doctor about this. And we were talking about how, you know, some people, they get up at the crack of dawn. Pretty, pretty crack of dawn to work out. And that's fine as long as you've built in enough sleep prior to that point

that you've gotten a good night. You know, did you get you seven hours or did you get four hours so that you could get up at four a.m. And he was saying they're completely missing the point

“because sleep is as important as exercise and nutrition to your overall wellness, your your mental”

wellness, your brain function, your heart function, all of it. And so unless you can get the seven hours

before you get up before, it doesn't make much sense to do that just so you can work out. Yeah, you need both. You need sleep. A thousand percent, this something that I really had to come to grips with. I mean, I teach, you know, something called depending on a peak performance in the base level is physical leadership. And sleep is a big component of that. My whole life, I've gotten up early. But I wasn't getting the, the, I need, I know my body. I need a minimum six hour step in

his ideal for me to optimize. And I wasn't getting that. I was running, you know, I got to go up at 530 every single morning. And in the last year, my cortisol levels were high. I was having, you know, some of these health issues. And I, I said, okay, I'm going to force myself to get more sleep. And it is reset a lot of things. People just underestimate the power of sleep. Especially, I mean, people in the business world are guys who think they're really tough. And they'll say to me, hey,

I, you know, I get by on four hours sleep a night. And I'm like awesome, man. Congratulations. You are chronically fatigued and nowhere near the optimal shelf you could be. And you'll be dead soon. I mean, really, it's shortens lifespan. So it's really, you can't sacrifice sleep, but work out and eat healthy. That's, that's just dumb, dumb strategy. All right.

“So you, um, you're in the Navy, you 9/11 happens. You are deployed in Afghanistan, right?”

In Afghanistan, as an officer in 2004, is that correct? I, I commissioned in 2004. We went to Afghanistan in 2005. Okay. And this is where you, I think it's fair to say, would face this major leadership challenge that you referenced earlier in which you feel you fell down on the job. So tell us what happened. There's a little bit of a perfect storm. So I came into the Navy in 1992 into a peacetime military. And there's a, you know, there's a big difference in a peacetime

military and a wartime military. I try to, you know, you nailed it when you said, when you signed up on 9/11, you had no clue what was coming. And that is a fact. And I try and explain that to younger

guys and gals from the military. You never know when something's going to happen. None of us

saw 9/11 happening. We went from total peace time to total wartime. Within, I think two or three years, all the sealed teams were 100% combat experienced. And that was one of the goals, obviously. So I actually started school in the summer of 2001. And 9/11 happened, obviously, in September. Myself and a couple of my teammates that were at school together, tried to get out of the program like, hey, we know we're going to war, get us out, you know, let us go back to a platoon and

“one of our most respected leaders who had helped me get commissioned. I remember prophetically said,”

red, this war is going to go on for decades. He's like, go back to school. You will get your chance. So while I was at school, the community, obviously, was going off the war and both I rack in Afghanistan. And one of the things that occurred was, typically, the military basis tactics and strategies off the last sustained combat. And the sealed team base, a lot of our tactics,

to Iraq in Afghanistan, we quickly realized a lot of those old tactics used in the jungles and

“Meek on Delta and the swamps and Vietnam didn't necessarily apply quite as well in the mountains”

in the urban and desert environments, other actually. Not only the technology of bands for vehicles, so the bottom one, our tactics changed pretty drastically. So here I was, it's excellent list of guys who thought I was like, God's gift, the leadership, the ego and arrogance kind of got the best of me. And I came back when I got commissioned in 2004, thinking, man, I'm the man, I know everything. I'm going to step back. I'm going to be like Pat and reincarnated or something.

And there really wasn't a case. I step back in and technically I was probably one of the more inexperienced guys because I didn't have combat experience and probably 60% of our platoon at that point definitely did. And instead of humbling myself and saying,

“and not only that, all our tactics had changed. So instead of humbling myself and saying to the guys,”

young younger guys, you might have been more experienced. Hey, man, I don't know how to do this. I made them to stay because a young leader is saying, oh, I'm a leader, like it's a sign of weakness if I say, I don't know how to do this, which is a fallacy. It's wrong. But in doing that, I started to damage my credibility as a leader. Well, that was hurting me. So when I recognized him as hurting me, so then was the next thing I did. Well, I started. I recognized that I was damaging my credibility.

I was stepping on my toes, not keeping up, like I should be. And I started drinking away my stress. So then I became known as a drunk on top of everything else. Fast forward to blow it out

the Anastand in 2005. And the very first mission. We were getting ready to transition over.

So Operation Red Wings was our group. Lieutenant Commander Eric Christiansen was my boss. A lot of the guys that you will read about that were shot down on the helicopter. And that Red Wings is the the loans of our story for those that may be familiar with that. If you stay in that movie or watch our red marcuses book. We had the show last August with his brother. It was just an incredibly compelling episode. So they know the story.

Okay. So, so I was a part of the group. Our sister platoon was a platoon that was on the helicopter for Red Wings that was shot down. We were getting ready to fly to Afghanistan to turn over with those guys that following week. I think we were set fly right after the 4th of July. And of course,

on June 28th, the helicopter was shot down. So this was our first introduction to combat.

But that's when I first, I met Marcus at the hospital in Longstool, Germany. We stood watch on Mike Murphy and Danny Deeds and bodies. They had not recovered.

“Matt Axelson yet flew to Afghanistan and that recovery was underway. And that's how our deployment”

started. So, here I was. This knucklehead young officer who was stepping on his toes. Now, you know, got to combat. I wanted to prove myself, you know, hey, Red Wings happened. You know, we won't pay back. Which is okay. That's fine. But there is a balance as a leader. We have to, you know, it should be the mission than the men or the team that you're working with. And you're last on the equation. Unfortunately, I inverted that. And you know, how do I make

myself look like a, you know, a great leader and a great hero. And I mean, I continue to make mistakes culminating with a bad call on a mission in in September of that deployment. That call really did damage to my, my reputation. I am very fortunate that no one was injured or killed because of that call. But what he did kill was my professional reputation. By the time I got back out of that valley, the guys were like, get rid of that guy. They were calling me Rambo Red,

which that is not a compliment. You know, for those who think Rambo is really cool. It's a cool movie. It doesn't apply in the military. It's kind of what we talked about before. There's no room for individualism, especially a leader who is, um, maintenance since based on his some glory. And that was, I saw, I wanted to get in the fight. And I saw an opportunity. I took it. And I am very fortunate that that no one was killed because of my deceit you're making.

So that, that started a whole new journey. Um, because there were guys who said,

stand and run on my commanding officer and explain my own, uh, my actions. And I'll never forget,

he, he, he, he, there were guys in that room. Never like to get rid of this guy. He's going to get people killed. And, um, and my commanding officer told me to go back to my room and he would let me know that next morning, uh, what the decision was. And I went back to my room and, uh, and I almost killed myself. I put a gun in my mouth and I started to pull the trigger. Um, but fortunately, I think God intervened. I looked, uh, I just, I about time did it. It looked cross, um, at the desk and there

was a picture of my wife and kids. And, you know, just this voice was like, what are you doing? You know, what are you doing? What, what, what impact are you going to leave behind on them? And, uh, I remember, I put my gun away, I went and saw out special operations, Chaplain, and talking him. We talked a lot and he said no matter what happens, you know, if they take your tried entrance, they kick you out, then, you know, you've got to figure out what the path forward is,

“but never forget for every day and moment in your life, there becomes a new beginning. It's up to”

you, what you do with that new beginning. This is a big part of what I talk on. It's a part of, uh, my TED talk that I talk on, it's part of what I speak on. And it was absolutely right. And thankfully, you know, credit to my commanding officer who did not kick me out, even though he, he absolutely could have, as a matter of fact, I'm actually surprised he didn't. I mean, here's a guy who's grieving from the loss of 11 teammates. Only a couple months earlier, he didn't get to go home. He didn't

get to go to the memorial ceremony. We had to stay and continue the mission. So, and now he's got this knuckle head incident, who's making bad calls. I think it was super easy for him to say, I don't have time to deal with this. Nor do I have the emotional capacity to deal with this, but he didn't, he said, you know what, Red, you've done some good things. I believe in you,

I'm going to give you a second chance. And he, he did. I mean, there was some,

“uh, there was some punishment that came along with it. They, uh, any awards I was supposed to get”

that they were attracted, um, I had to sign an, an unofficial letter, a rapper man that was held in a commanding officer's safe. And if I had, uh, if I messed up again, that letter would have gone into my permanent officer record, which would have ended my career. And, uh, and I got sent to US Army Ranger School, which is probably one of the best things that could have happened to me. I mean, it's pretty cool. I mean, to learn how to be a Ranger and develop all those skills, too,

but you emerge out of that with a whole new set of leadership skills. I did. Uh, Ranger School, uh, I'd love to tell people that when I walked out of the office and

Afghanistan after getting that second chance, I was immediately like, yes, I'm going to, you know,

recreate myself. But, you know, sometimes in this life, our new beginnings take time. And, uh, and, you know, I talk about this victim mindset. I had a little bit of the victim mindset. I, I was seeing myself as a victim that the guys threw me under the bus. And I hadn't come to grips yet with, you know, the only person that put himself there was me, my core decision making and really selfishly viewing, looking more at myself and not outward at the team and the mission and

the impacts of that. And thankfully it was at Ranger School that I really started to figure that out, um, you know, kind of an interesting side note in Ranger School. Um, I screwed up. I failed to land that test and seals are a little bit of anomaly. We don't go through Ranger School that often. And, you know, there's that great professional rivalry between the Army and the Navy. And, um, and a lot of the Rangers, I don't think like to me very much. So they, they let me know it and

gave me a lot of grief about being there. And when I failed to land that, of course, man, they laid into me. They, I'm sorry, land navigation. This is, um, orienting with a compass to figure out where you're going and the woods and the dark and all that. And, um, in the Ranger School of Land app, of course, it's pretty long. You started in the middle of the night. And I had taught land app once again, you go in there against, I thought, I'll cross this course. And I didn't

fail that I missed a point. Um, and the instructors were totally heckling me and in the moment I allowed my emotions to get the best of me. And I basically told those instructors what I thought of them. And they said, are you quitting? And I said, yeah, I'm out of here. Um, it's only thing I've ever quit in my life. Um, and, um, so I had to go meet with the Ranger Colonel.

“And, uh, and the Ranger Colonel listened. And he said, I think you should talk to one of your”

CL teammates. And I'll be honest, I was utterly ashamed and embarrassed. And I was like, I don't want to talk to anyone. You know, I just want to crawl under a rock. And like, I guess this the end of my military career. And he said, hey, I'm friends with a, uh, that the guy's name is Colonel, he was

with him, because he really amazing guy, amazingly, or saved my career. And he ended up calling

one of our most respected, uh, CL leaders who happened to be a mentor of mine who had helped me get a commission. And he put me on the phone with him. And I remember telling him this whole story, how, you know, I ended up there and he said, Red, I know all about what happened with you. Did you ever think that you're seeing this as punishment? He said, did you ever think you might learn something from this? And I said, no. Um, and, and then I told him, I said,

but sir, no one's ever going to follow me again. I've made too many mistakes. I don't think I can recover from this. And then he gave me the foundation, a level of everything that I teach in leadership now. He said, Red, people will follow you if you give them a reason to that's it. That's it. That's all leadership is. He said, don't care how bad you've messed up. It's human nature that if someone is on the winning team, if someone is leading a team or community, uh, company

to success. And they're a pretty good person, you know, despite any mistakes, they made it in their past as human nature. We're going to follow him. We want, we all want to be on the winning team. He said, so go back to Ranger School. Crush it. Come back and give the guys your reason to follow you. And, uh, I was like, Roger that. I hung up the phone and I, I looked at the Ranger Colonel and I said, well, you put me back in my class and he said, no, you quit. You get to go sit in Ranger School

of jail for a month and you'll class up with the next class. For a month, I walked around for

“Benny and picking up trash. Uh, and it was probably the best thing that ever going to happen to me”

because it finally humbled me and it gave me a lot of time to think about, I was the problem.

I was the problem. It was my lack of my own self-leadership, selfish leadership that put me there and it really changed everything. I created a new, you know, my three rules of leadership that I now teach and, uh, and that enabled me to drive forward, graduate Ranger School and slowly over the next couple of years, build back my credibility as a leader. This is what is so extraordinary about our military and some of the leaders who are in it. They somehow know when it's time to

temper that extreme discipline and harsh unforgiving training with mercy and inspiration and encouragement. The best leaders do. I mean, that's just a gift when you have a guy like that above you who knows you and knows what you need in the moment and whether it's kicking the pants or a lift. That's, I love that story and I love knowing that there are guys like that out there training the next generation of warriors and that you're out there using these same skills to

help civilians to try to get through just life with some of these lessons they apply and and and our military. I mean, I frequently speak to the military. I've been fortunate

“to not to speak almost all of the service academies West Point. All you have to is call me.”

I will come speak for you guys. Yes, and it's amazing. It's so beautiful there. You should go.

I know. I want to. I mean, I speak Army. I wear the Ranger Cat. I speak Army. Yeah, exactly right. Well, thank you for sharing that with me. That's like with all of us. That's that's a very moving story. That could be the most moving story of the exchange we have. I feel like I learned so much already and we haven't even gotten to the, you know, apex of everything that you've gone through. I do before we get to your injury and what happened.

Can we just spend a minute on Erica because she's a huge part of your story and we got a glance by, oh, my wife and my kids. By the way, when you told me about that moment when you were feeling like you might take your own life and, you know, God stepped in and stopped you. I completely believe that was an angel. That was an angel was sent to you to stop you in the same way. I talked to Dakota Meyer last last, last Memorial Day. And he talked about the same thing.

It was back when he got stayed side again now for him. And he actually tried. He pulled the trigger. He had the gun, pulled the trigger and an angel had taken the bullets out of the, out of the gun. He thought it was loaded. Which is like, I feel like so many of you guys go through these massive travails and emotional traumas, whether it's while you're serving or the build up to the serving or just you're so hard on yourself and you're so used to being able to do everything at a high

level, right? And then when you have a failure, that's when you really get tested. And I just think every once in a while, you need an angel to come help you. And I agree with you that that God plays a role. So I'm glad you had, I'm glad you had your faith to get you through. All right, so Eric,

“I just to rewind now because we're in 2005. I think when you did Army Ranger School and you had”

all that's happened to you. But five years earlier, you've been out on the town, where what town were you in this backstage side, right? Little more Kentucky. Louisville Kentucky. And you guys were out a bunch of you and you decided that night for whatever reason you're going to pretend that you were all there as boxers that you were there for some big boxing match. And you see this stunning blonde with a thousand-watt smile from across the room. And I mean, man, did you woo

managed to woo his amazing woman into having a drink with you. Well, she ditched me at first. So

once again, you know, tell me, I can't do something. And I hung out with the guys a little more, and it was a great big place where to give you a better familiar with Louisville Kentucky. It was the Phoenix Hill Tavern, which is a huge warehouse type bar at like, I don't know, three levels, six or seven bars in it. I got upstairs at some point. I looked across the upstairs bar area. And she was kind of across the room standing on top of this. I don't know, elevated structure.

And there was a guy talking to her. She just looked miserable. Like, I wish this guy would leave. And I was like, yes, here's my chance. So I went up and I kind of jumped up on the platform with her. And she seemed rather shocked. And the guy seemed rather perturbed. But I just kind of ignored him. And finally, he got the message and left. And I don't know. We just hit it off. There was kind of a natural chemistry that we talked from that point forward through the rest of

the night and ended up linking up with her the next day for a barbecue, which is kind of a funny story because she didn't mention that she had a young son who was four months old. There's six months old at that time. And literally, we opened the door and she like hands him to me. Here, hold awesome. And then she's like, hey, by the way, we have a new grill. So can you put the grill together? So yeah, that was kind of our first day. I put this grill together

for barbecue. Get them trained early. I like this girl. Like, this is how it's going to be. You're going to help me with my son. You're going to put my grill together. And I'm going to do things for you too. And so yeah, I remember I read from your book. Your opening line was, um, hi, I'm Jay. How are you doing? Can I buy you a drink? I cringed it my lack of wit and charm and the weakest pickup line ever. What the hell? That's the best I've got.

“Well, you know what? That's what all it takes. Any like, faux attempt to be overly clever”

is usually seen right through. So I think, you know, you did the right thing. Obviously, because it all worked out. So you wound up getting married. You married Erica. And you had two additional children, two daughters. So those are the three kids and the wife and the family that you referenced when the times were tough. And she's still with us. I mean, she's still with you and we'll get to all of that. But I love the story of Erica. So now we're post-range her school.

And you got to go back out there. And is this, it was what it was May of 2007 that you were deployed to Fallujah, Iraq. And oh my god, can I tell you, Jay, whenever I even hear Fallujah, I brace myself. It's just like all the stories are awful. They're just all awful. They're terrible. Just so many bad things happen there. And it just seems like it went so poorly. And it was so incredibly violent and dark. And our guys were just overwhelmed time after time and kept fighting

“and the sacrificing. So it's already a trigger, I think, for a lot of people who covered the news,”

you know, as I was doing at that time, never mind the guys who actually lived it. So you knew

going over there at that point high levels of danger here. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the jacos deployment was 2006, prior to operating and out of Ramadi and a lot of the guys who were operating prior to us. All Fallujah, Ramadi, and haven't here are the big cities in the Ambar province. And a lot of the fighting had intensified in '06, and there was seven really heavily. The second big battle, a large battle occurred in blues

in '06. The Ambar awakening had occurred, so a lot of the local tribal skates had finally I think had enough. And whereas before they weren't really cooperating much with the coalition

“forces, the American government and the American military machine, I think finally they said,”

if we don't cooperate with them, we're never going to be able to get our country back. So what started

to happen was in '06 and '07, they started feeding us real intelligence at which enabled us to really start going after Al-Qaeda and in search of leadership. So I will say as seals, even though we knew it was a high level of danger, it also was everything we had ever trained to. At the pinnacle of special operations is direct action missions to take out, you know,

And, you know, we got exposed to a lot of direct action going to those leaders, but also even at one point, trying to rescue an army soldier in a marine. And I just, those moments stood out

in my mind, like how amazing it was that was part of a unit that had trained at the level that

these were the things that we could do. So we had a lot of close calls on that deployment, but it also, I was with one of the best troops I've ever been a part of. It gave in opportunity to grow as a leader and learn and really put a lot of the new leadership things that I had incorporated in my life starting a ranger school along this very intense combat deployment. You were second in command?

Yes.

“Okay. And you'd been over there for quite a few months when I think it was September rolled”

around and you were out on such a mission as you just described trying to take down this

relatively high-level leader and been given some intel about where you could find him and you guys moved in to do exactly that and what happened. To make a long story short, we walked into a very well-excuted ambush. The initial building we took down, they were not there, but we found a lot of signs that someone had recently been there while we were collecting intelligence and we had found ID making components

and we were going to blow all that stuff up. Our snipers saw a bunch of activity on another building

about 150 yards away, so my boss had me take about nine members of my team, myself and eight other

“members, seven seals in our interpreter and and move on this other building where we had seen”

individuals come out of the front door and run across street into this vegetation. What we didn't know is our number one alkyne leader for the Ambar province. He had been in our original building we were in and he had moved to that building and he had about a 15-man security detail that that set up an ambush line in the vegetation across the street and those individuals we saw and go out the door were the last part of his security detail that were part

of that ambush line and my team and I walked unfortunately right into that ambush. We knew that there was enemy. We had air assets overhead. We had the Air Force AC 130 gunship that we were talking to and hey can you see weapons, they couldn't see anything. So you know and we had seen this

“before we weren't just walking blindly. I mean we had seen cases where the enemy would hide not”

recognizing you know the you know technology and things like that. So unfortunately yeah we walked into a very well executed ambush. My medic was initially hit taking around directly below the knee and then one of our other guys Maddie ran forward, grabbed our medic started to drag him back. Maddie was shot up the right side two rounds in his leg one in his arms still man is strong enough to pull himself and and loop back to back to the tire behind us. There was like a large tractor tire nothing

but thousands of yards of empty Iraq and desert and there was kind of a large John Deere style tractor tire and then there was a tree maybe I don't know 10 yards away from that tractor tire and DJ fell back to the tree. Everybody else was behind the tractor. I was still out front at this point. I was trying to lay down fire when both machine guns turned on me and I was stitched across the body armor. I took two rounds in the left elbow which I thought shot my arm off in the moment.

I took rounds off my gun rounds off my helmet. I had my left night vision tube shot off. I took rounds off my right side plate turned to try and move back to the guys and it was at this point that I caught around in the face. It hit me right from the ear travel through my face. Exited the right side of my nose took off. Most of my nose blew out my right cheek bone. It was left in the cheek broken kicked out to the right. The bullet travel dried under my eye vaporized my rope

little floor broke all the bones above my eye. I fell in this newfound hole in my face. It broke the head of my jaw and shattered my jaw to my chin and it knocked me out. The the guys saw me fall and initially thought I was dead. Thankfully, a tribute to the seal teams and how we train

fall back or whatever we can do. I was pinned down by 15 yards in front of them while this literal gunfight was happening correctly. When I came to I realized I was still in this gunfight. I realized that I was totally unable to do anything. Thankfully, my team lead J, who combat experience seal what we call a J tack. He has trained to coordinate air strikes from aircraft to the ground. And J coordinated and said, hey, today I see one thirty we need to meet it. We need an immediate

fire machine. Unfortunately, we were so close. I was only 45 feet from the machine gun that had me pinned down. And that's well, well, well within danger close parameters. And the gunship said,

“no way we can bring this. We're going to kill you guys if we do. And so they said, hey, you need to”

figure out a way to fall back. So gunfight went on for another five minutes or so. The entire gunfight

last in about 35 to 40 minutes. J called for another one. They said, no, on the third attempt,

probably after 15 minutes, he basically said, hey, look, you know, if you don't bring in this fire machine, there's not going to be anybody left. You know, I got people critically wounded. We're running out of ammo. Like you have to bring in this fire machine. It was at that point, they basically put the onus on him. They made him give his J tack designated number, meaning the training that are joint tactical air control controllers go through that basically say they have the ability

to do this job. They understand all the ordinance. They understand all the danger close parameters.

And they made him read off his J tack number or give his J tack number. That basically said,

you're acknowledging that we may potentially kill you if we bring this strike in. And then J didn't

“amazing job coordinating that. I remember him calling out to me incoming. And the aircraft flies”

at a pretty high altitude. You can hear the gun go off. And then there's at the way, probably five or six seconds before the rounds hit the ground. And I remember here in the, you know, woo, woo of the gun up overhead. And the enemy was still firing. So she and guns turning away and all the sudden, you know, explosions incurred in front of us and blew up over us. And all the sudden that that gun went cold and machine gun in front of me, that heavy pin down went cold. And I heard the

enemy like crying out to Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah. And I remember thinking to myself stay on by man like here he comes and sure enough, next rounds came in, which took him out took other enemy out. J came forward at this point grabbed me, got me back to the tire, got a turning it on me. I owe my life to him. And we ended up calling in. I think either nine more fire machines before we were able to bring in the Metaback, you know, to get us out of there.

Oh my god, what's Jay's full name? Um, I think it's okay for it to be out there. So Jay, Alley Austin. I was whipping this weekend and this was a conversation we had. So this is kind of the

first time, but he told me he's okay with being out there more before I had not, we had not talked about it.

Or I had not given him his name. But I mean, what, I don't know my life to him. I love that man, uh, and all my teammates. I owe my life to my teammates and that gunship. I mean, you know, people want to say, oh, you're so tough. You know, maybe, but I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those

“guys. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that gunship up overhead. And that's what frustrates me”

with the military right now with this focus on individualism. Like it is the team effort. It is all different, you know, it's all of us together from different backgrounds and different demographics and different race and creeds and all these different things that that come together for a very unified mission. In this case, that mission was to make sure that we all came home alive or at a minimum, you know, if I had died, they would have brought, you know, hopefully my body

home to to Eric and the kids. But thankfully, you know, I was able to hang on and they did a great job fighting in that gunship. So, rightfully so the gunship was decorated. I don't feel like our guys were decorated enough. I am going to come back around. It's something I've been talking about with them about resimitting them for a reward reviews. But I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those guys. Hmm. We took some hits, obviously, but we didn't lose a single guy and the other guys

They came out in the ambush. He managed to sneak out the back of the house, but everybody that

“engaged us, there was no one left to go home and talk about it. He got away but never long.”

Not for long. Another team ended up about four months later, finishing the job. Good. We got him eventually. So, you, what next thing you know, you wake up where they take you to the hospital. And it's an incredible story. You sort of coming back to consciousness and starting to process what's happened to you.

Yeah. So, they initially, normally head injuries go to Belad, but I was so critical. They flew me

directly to Baghdad. I got to Baghdad. And I'll be honest, I don't think I thought I was going to make it. But thankfully, you know, and this is a shout out to the amazing military medical teams and the trauma surgeons. A lot of people don't know that the greatest advances in trauma medicine are made in war. And it's incredible. There are a lot of civilian trauma doctors and orthopedic surgeons and all kinds of anesthesiologists that volunteer to go over to the war zone in these

dangerous places. And literally some of the best in the brightest doctors in the world end up coming and helping to save our wounded. And they're so good. I knew that if you made it to the hospital with a pulse, you had a 90% chance of making it home alive. And I hung on to that fact like a lifeline. As I flew that metabolic helicopter and drifted into that consciousness. So, I got there.

“They saved me. I remember waking up and I was so related to know the house. I was still alive.”

I also was fascinated because I thought my arm had been shot off and I remember learning that I still had an arm. I greatly damaged later. They would talk about the imputating it and they would keep it. But in the beginning, I was happy for that. And I remember my commanding officer and my commanding master chief were there in the hospital as I woke up. And I remember going to talk and I couldn't talk. And the nurse said, "Hey, Lieutenant, you're you're you're you're you're

you're you're messed up. You're wired shut. You're tricked. You're not going to be able to talk." So I said, "Okay, give me a piece of paper." And I wrote down three questions. I said, I said, "Are my guys okay?" And they told me that that Luke and Matt were out of surgery and that they were going to be okay. And I said, "Okay, has my wife been notified." And that's a funny story or kind of a crazy story in itself. But at this point, she had been notified. Although

my commanding officer did not know my mental state. Now there's a real concern of theirs with this head injury. They didn't know the angle, the bullet, the only new item shot in the face. So they didn't know if I did survive what level of mental did I have a major traumatic green injury or anything like that? So he would later call her after this and let her know I was doing okay. So that was

second question. And the third question, I don't know why I said, "Do I still look pretty?" And

they told me, "No, it's all we know that getting shot in the face would probably be an improvement." And it actually was. I used to have like a big old Tom Cruise nose. So two facts. Jay and I were actually joking about this. That I had a big old Tom Cruise nose that I had broken and I had a deviated step on that. Right before that deployment I had gone to see about surgery to fix it. And they told me I would be down for like two months. I was like, "I'll wait till after deployment."

And then, and then obviously they shot my nose off. So, you know, I got a brand new nose. Thanks, sir. So if you've ever wanted to go where your touch dollars can go, this one made a difference. I have to tell you, I've been looking at you and I've been looking at your before pictures. And you actually are a better looking now. Your nose is obviously a little crooked. But you just look like a little bit more grizzly. I don't like the long hair and the beard.

And like the eyebrows are something's working about it. You look a little bit more clean cut before. And this look is a little bit better for like the navy seal who served the, I'm digging it.

“So I think, I'm sure Erica backs me up on this, but I, I think you look a piece of shit.”

She likes the longer hair and the beard. And thank you, Megan, tell me. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's working for you. It's working for you. I mean, there were easier ways of getting there. But, you know, you managed to find your way through. So can we talk about the time you talk?

You first, the first thing you said to Erica when you talked to her, because it's sort of

to, it evidences your mental state. And while some people thought it was a little surprising, it's a great story about how you telegraphed her, you were fine. Yeah. So, um, so I went from Baghdad where they stabilized and saved my life to Balad.

And one of my teammates, we with me. And I obviously, I could not talk. So Erica had not,

and I had not talked at all. She was trying to get everything taken care of with the kids. And she knew they had told her approximately when I would get to Bethesda. So she was trying to get ready for that. And so my, my teammate, um, who was there with me was like, do you want to call Erica? And I said, yes, let's do this. I said, you know, you talked to her all right down

“what the state were. And, uh, so I don't remember the first couple of things might have been”

hey, babe. I, I got, I'm sure you've heard. I got all banged up. Uh, and the same thing I said, but my wings, okay. And, um, and, you know, and military members will fully understand this, because, you know, as service members, unfortunately with IEDs and everything else, I mean, that is a fear, um, you know, obviously. And, uh, it was kind of a running joke. Uh, so when I told her that, it let her know immediately that he's okay. His sense of humor is still intact.

So, as is the wing. So good news on multiple fronts. Absolutely. I love this too. This is from from your book. Uh, when you, when you were talking to Gail, who is the one who is answering the questions for you, uh, your wife has been notified. I spoke to her myself. I tried to not. I want to thank him, but the trick and my wire job reclude that. Gail then adds, I'm response to your third

question. And the guys wanted me to tell you, you never looked pretty. It's great. It feels good to be

insulted. It's a certain low points in your life. It's actually a pick me up. It's one of the great, it's one of the things I missed the most, uh, now that I'm out of the military, especially the state and age where like we've created it once again, the victim mindset, you know, oh my God, if you say this about me, I must be insulted. Even though half the time people say things that are unjust, oh my God, how dare you joke about, I don't know anything today. Uh, and in the

seal, there's nothing off women. It's, I mean, we would poke fun at anything and everything, including when I was injured. I got, I mean, one of the guys showed up in the hospital. I'm wired shot with my face blown out and he showed up with beef jerky. So, I mean, that's the type of humor,

“and I mean, you know, this life is too short to think yourself that seriously. And that's,”

I've missed that the most. Um, yeah, yeah, I can see why. So you, I mean, we're not going to go through it all, but you did. You, uh, 39 surgeries? Yeah, 40 when it's all said and done, although Erica, also known as the long-haired Admiral, tells me that the last two don't count because they were kidney stone surgeries. But I'm like, I've had 40 surgeries since I was wounded, so. I mean, was that, I, I, not to ask like another dumb question, but like, was that dramatic?

Is certainly like a surgery of any kind, I want to had sea sections, but I mean, it's traumatic. And just that alone, you remind after a massive injury in a battlefield and, you know, the emotional trauma of all that, like, how did you handle that many times in and under the knife? So it's interesting. I mean, you know, I tell people, once again, a lot of people assume

“that my battlefield injuries were like the worst thing that ever happened to me. But that failure”

is a leader, you know, God works in mysterious ways. It prepared me to deal with all this adversity. That journey back, having to take small incremental steps to build back my credibility and reputation, the leadership lessons that I built in myself. And when I was in the hospital, I told myself, hey, man, this, this is no different from that journey. Now, it's a medical journey. I said,

this is medical buds, which buds is the acronym for steel training, basically under water

demolition, steel training. I said, this is medical buds. You know, you don't have to like it, but you have to do it and we have to go. And I wanted to be operational again. So I knew I had to go through all these surgeries. If I even remotely had a chance at doing that. So every surgery, the doctors used to laugh because literally I would be in the post-op and one of my very first questions after they would tell me how the surgery went would be I'd write out when can we schedule

the next one? Let's get it on the schedule now. Because I wanted to just, you know, churn and burn, I wanted to try and recover as quickly as I could, which ended up to, you know, battlefield injuries, really dirty. I had a lot of infection problems. There were a lot of setbacks. I mean, it ended up taking almost four years to put me back together. Well, I've gotten ahead of myself because immediately post the massive injury before the 39

stones. You, you posted the infamous sign, the sign, the famous sign, not infamous. That can

“know it's something bad. And that's how you came to be so memorable, my own life,”

hearing that story after meeting you, when your face was still pretty banged up,

was just incredible. I mean, it was just a true inspiration to me as a human and it's inspired

countless of numbers of others since then. So just set the stage for, we're going to read it, but just set the stage for where you were and what made you realize you needed to post a sign like the one we're going to discuss. So I'd probably only been in the hospital about a week. I would say seven days give or take. And I will admit I struggled a little bit in the beginning. I think there's this big spike of a nation like I survived. And then the reality kind of set in

that I am really messed up. Doctors were telling me it was going to be months to put at a minimum or when we were afraid that doctors were telling me it was going to be years to put me back together whereas I thought it'd only take a few months. The prognosis was not good. My elbow was totally destroyed. I had no use in my left hand. There was massive nerve damage. Obviously, the massive amount of damage to my face. And I just, I was kind of struggling. I felt like a monster.

You know, I was really scared before I saw Eric of the first time. I was really scared. She

“is a rock star. That's how she earned her name. The one here that had grown is she didn't”

bad at night. So I had her, but I was kind of struggling with where do I go from here? How do I overcome this? You know, pain and I'm disfigured. I felt like I'd be a monster for the rest of my life. And I had some individuals that came into the room and we had a short conversation and then I guess I maybe was drifting off and they were talking amongst themselves. And if any of you have been in that, you know, that in between a wake and you're not quite asleep, you can still hear

20 sounds, the TVs. Yeah. And I caught bits and pieces of their conversation. And I don't, I don't fault them. There are some people that are like, how rude. How could they have that conversation in your room? Military hospitals are really hard in place to be during a time of war. There are young men and women that are blown apart. Missing women's traumatic brain injuries. It is very overwhelming to see this many young people. And they were there and I think they were caught up in

this. And they started having a conversation about what a shame, what a pity. We send these young

men and women off the war and they come home, broken and battered and they'll never be the same.

And then they left. And Erica had gone down to get a cup of coffee or something. So I was in my room by myself just thinking about this. It kind of woke me up. And I was, I was both angry and like exactly me and am I going to be this broken veteran, you know, that is never successful again. Am I going to be like Lieutenant Dan from the movie Forest Come, you know, to get into the movie Hookers and Boos, Lieutenant Dan. I'm not, not you got new eggs with Lieutenant Dan. And I

just, I wrestled with it for a few minutes and then I went back to everything that I had been through. And when I try to explain to people is that the victim mindset focuses on all the negativity,

it focuses on, it's unfair, you know, I'm never going to be better. We focus on the immediate

“here and now, not recognizing that the greatest gift you have in this life is you have a choice.”

You know, one force is you to lay there and feel sorrow for yourself. I don't care what situation you're in as long as your brain is still working, you have free will. And you have the ability to decide how you're going to handle this situation. No matter how bad and uncomfortable and unpleasant it may be. And it was a not moment when Erica walked back in the room. I said never again, that is never going to happen again. On this report, I will never feel sorry for myself again.

And I will not allow anybody else to come in this room and feel sorry for me. And I asked her for my pen and paper and I wrote out this sign and it said attention to all who enter here. If you're coming in this room with sadness or sorrow, go elsewhere. The wounds I received, I got in a job that I loved, doing it for people that I loved, defending the freedom of country. I deeply love it. I will make a full recovery. What is full that's the absolute utmost

physically. I'd the ability to recover and then I'm going to push that about 20% further through sheer mental tenacity. This room you're about to enter is room of fun, optimism, and intense rapid reggae. If you were not prepared for that and we signed it the management and the original

bottom of the large orange red piece of poster paper and we transcribed it word for word. Put it on the door. A teammate tact is tried and into it. And a New York firefighter wrote a blog about it and went viral. It went all over the place because all of the news. Today, you know, it's been

written about it in multiple books. Secretary Robert Gates wrote about it. First lady Michelle Obama

wrote about it twice in her book. Becoming Michelle, send me a handwritten note on how much it moved to her. And it is now an early invitation to White House to be president Bush who signed it. And we had it framed and dedicated. I didn't feel like it was mine. I felt like it belonged to the hospital and the other wounded warriors. And it now hangs in an even Walter Reed in the middle of the wounded war and continues to motivate and inspire other wounded wars. It's been amazing. I mean,

I don't know hundreds of thousands of people who have written and said, "Hey, I put your sign on the door. I have cancer. I've been injured. My kid has been injured. My kid has cancer. You

know, thank you." So you just never know the power of positivity and choosing to drive forward

“despite the hardship and adversity we face. And that's what that sign is.”

People will follow if you give them something to follow. Like who knew? Who knew that maybe your most important role in these conflicts would be helping severely wounded guys come and back with no hope, understand that there was a way out. And it began with attitude and the decisions about how you'd handle what happened to you and who would have access to you in this your most vulnerable time. I mean, I'm sure we have no idea the number of people you've helped. Even outside the military

as you point out people can't afford to read that message and remind themselves, "I have a choice here and the choice I make really could be the difference between life and death. It really could." Well, and to lift up those around you, those were one of my big goals. Like I wanted to set the example for my kids. I wanted to set the example for Erica. I wanted to set the example

for other wounded warriors around me. And I think that's such a powerful thing because you can't

we may not be able to change this situation we're in. You know, we've got to navigate through that. We've got to navigate through the pain and the misery and all the things to work. But we definitely can change. We can be what I like to say. It's one of the shirts we've created. Be the light and the darkness. Either the light. You know, in those dark times, so many people are waiting for someone else to come saved them or someone else to help them. What you do it? You do it, but you

be the light, man. And it'll help. It helps with your mindset. You know, you start pouring some positivity into yourself. It's amazing how much it makes an impact. You know, I try to explain to people that's part of the overcome mindset. And you may not be able to get back which you've

“lost. I meet so many people who that's what their focus is. Like I want back my health. I want back”

my relationship. I want back my business or whatever it is I've lost. And that may not be in a case. But a willingness to drive forward. You're going to take the end moment and create a new beginning. I read in your book about how it was when you saw Erica for the first time post injury. And it was actually kind of shocking because you were writing about how, unfortunately, there are a lot of cases where the wife or the girlfriend comes in and sees this severely injured

soldier. And peace is right out of there. I mean, that's horrifying. So there was, you know, in the back of your head, some concern, you know, given how badly injured you were in the face and so on. And obviously, what was going to be ahead of you guys is she going to stick with me and Erica was solid, the long-haired admiral came through. She came through a huge, it wasn't a thing, huge. But I know you were worried about you said, don't don't bring the kids right away. Like I don't

want them to see me like this. So how was it? Because obviously, when you first saw your kids, you didn't look like you look now. You definitely looked closer to right after the injuries. So how did they handle that? Good in a lot of that. I got a student to, you know,

“Erica and I were really locked on. I mean, I think that's one of the, as a couple, your ability”

to be unified in your decision-making and, you know, her and I discussed how would we handle this? You know, it's been something that's been a common theme throughout our marriage. So much. So 99% of first off seals have almost a 90% of horse rates, special operations pretty close. Guys who are wounded have almost a 99% it's just very hard on families to

this? One of the things we said, and we were fortunate enough that family to help, we weren't

going to change the kids' schedules. The kids' schedules were going to stay the same. We had family that came in, if they had dance and soccer and school. They were going to be there. So they would be home. Erica stayed up at the hospital in the weekends. Family would bring, not in the beginning. I didn't see the kids for probably three weeks. And there were several things that I told I said, I wanted. One, I was really, some of the original pictures are not out there.

“I think if you take deep enough, there's some surgical journals that have pictures in me in it.”

But my head swelled almost to like the size of a basketball. I looked pretty grotesque. You know, stitches just stretched on my face. And I told Erica, I didn't want the kids to see me until they had done some more surgeries and some of the swelling had gone down. And I was in, you know, I see you at the beginning. I also did not want them to come into the room. I wanted to walk into the room where the kids were. I wanted it to be like a family room and I

wanted to walk in. So that was my goal to get well enough and strong enough that I could get up and walk into the room. So that took about three weeks. And then the other thing, Erica, was super smart. She, she knew the kids wanted different toys that they had talked about. I mean, it's now September. So she went and, you know, normally they would have had to wait till Christmas. But she went and bought

“my son wanted a Nintendo DS. One of the girls wanted to baby doll. I'm sure you remember what the”

other, what Sierra wanted. But, um, but, um, Erica went and bought those things for them. And that had me give them to them in the room that I walked into with them. So, and, and I tell you what, that I learned over the next couple of years. People often talk about unconditional love. And I think, I think you can build unconditional love with your spouse, but you learn what unconditional love is through your children. Your children have unconditional love for their parents,

especially when they're young. You are their world. And even though I looked messed up, my kid's loved me. And there was a lot of healing that occurred over those couple of years, especially with my youngest daughter because my, my middle daughter and my son, they went back to school by the time I got home. But my youngest, she was only three. So, she was home with me. And she became, and I had not been around her whole life. And she became my little buddy. She would climb into bed with me as I recovered

and we'd watch cartoons and, um, and, man, I think that was very healing for me. I needed that because I was so worried about what my kids be afraid of me and the way I look. And, you know,

“they just, I'll never forget. I went to pick my kids up at school one day and my daughter was like five”

she and kindergarten. It's like, what happened to your dad? And my daughter, matter of fact, it's like, he got shot off. He got all shot off. He's fine, though. You know, I mean, just

the second daughter of a five-year-old. Yeah. You know, especially when they're young,

they have that healing power. And there is something almost angelic about them in moments. And I really believe it's like someone said it to me this way. And it made sense. They're closer to the other side than we are. They're still closer to the other side. And I think they still have that sort of halo effect around them. And on us, there is something sort of magical about really young kids when you're down, you're blue, you're struggling. And I'm so glad if that was

you're so lucky to have your three-year-old with you during those moments. I'm sure she was a healing bomb. The rocks are airic, I too. Those are all great stories about her. And I'm so glad, thank God this doesn't end with. And she just left. You're still together. You're still, right? The family's still intact. Yeah. I mean, I got it. I mean, and so to credit her, she became my best nurse. Even though I had nursing home nurses in between surgeries,

you know, for the first eight or nine months, I was a mess. I'm going to wheelchair. I've got metal hardware coming out of my arm, what's called an external fixator. I was tricked for seven months in two days that her feeding me through a stomach tube. Erica was doing those things. She was helping to clean my trade. She's trying on meds and grinding on food so that I could eat. And I recognized the burden. I mean, I became like a fourth child of their her to take care of me.

And I, and I'm just so thankful how strong she was because never once did she ever say,

path and because I would have been devastating. And if she thought it, she never said it. So man,

she is a leader in herself and we're an amazing team. Real excited right now. We are working on we're almost done with a relationship book called "Indensible Marriage." Because it's a question of you. How did you do it? You guys made it to a special operations career. You made it to wounding. We've run a business together. We've had business failures together. We have three amazing kids. You know, so yeah, I'm really excited to get that book out there and hopefully help others,

you know, build a strong, invincible marriage also. Oh my gosh, you both are welcome on the show when it hits. I would love to help you promote that. I feel like everybody will buy that. That's such a great. I mean, think of how we tell ourselves, we outside of your marriage tell ourselves, "Oh, this was really hard. Oh, he didn't empty the dishwasher. Oh, it's annoying. You know, he didn't show me enough emotional availability. This is what, you know, you hear. My God.

You don't even understand what the challenges are. I had no idea about the divorce rate amongst the wounded. I want to ask you in the time we have left. I would be remiss if I skipped the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan because everyone who served there like yourself had some thoughts on it and somehow had some real trauma when it happened and just sort of the abandoned mind of it of the translators you mentioned that was one of the guys with you in Iraq when you got

“hurt. How did you process that whole thing? Well, I got involved as much as I could. I think”

I think that's going to be viewed in my opinion probably one of the greatest failures. I think the way we went through from Iraq was poorly done, which in my opinion directly led to the creation of our ISIS and Iraq. And then we repeated the exact same thing except that exponential scale in Afghanistan. And Afghanistan, I think we had done so much of a better job, you know, helping the people, there were so many people that had embraced this newfound freedom

apart from the rule of the Taliban. I mean, they were women in leadership position, they were women in political positions, they were women, leaders in the military,

commerce was starting to grow and thrive in Afghanistan again. And we had basically convinced these

people like, hey, a free democratic Afghanistan is a real thing. And yeah, when we pulled out of there in the way that we did, I mean, just us, I don't understand. I mean, you can't tell me that there weren't senior political leaders who are saying this is not going to end well. Why we didn't maintain forces in Bagram? We knew Bagram, Bagram was protected. How did we ever agree to allow the Taliban to provide some level of security? How did we ever, you know, who in their right mind

allowed this to occur with, you know, American citizens that were left behind? I mean,

“trying to get people in the car's eye airport, that's how I got involved with Lieutenant Colonel”

Scott Mann, had created a group to try and help. He wanted to get his interpreter out there.

A lot of special operations, guys, Chad Rubitschall, Tim Kennedy, a lot of these guys did amazing

things that I ended up working with Scott. And we were trying to get people out of Afghanistan. And we saw firsthand the chaos and the disorganization and the mass confusion by the U.S. government. You know, the focus became, we're just going to get the military out and ignoring all these U.S. citizens. And most importantly, the individuals who had been in process, Afghan, who had sacrificed their lives to protect us and work with us, who had lost

family members and risked their lives who had been told you're going to get a special immigrant visa. And you're going to be able to come to the United States when all of this was transpiring that the Taliban was going to take back over, which I did, she's within the first place. Why did we turn the country back over to the exact same terrorist group that we were fighting against for 20 years? I mean, it's mind blowing. Mind blowing. It's infuriating. And it's not

irritating. It will impact our national security, election abilities for decades to come. Because who when they're right, mind is going to want to work with America and risk their lives to help us collect intelligence when they're going to go, I'm not going to work with you guys. If anything goes wrong, you're just going to sell me out to dry and I'm going to be killed.

“We sent such a negative message across the world. I think it was such a poor display of”

leadership. I think it was just straight up anti-American.

die for? What did I, I mean, you were in Iraq, but the same similar question. Like what I get blown up for? What, you know, what? We just tucked down and ran at the end. I don't know. I still think the way I process it from over here, you guys kept to say for 20 years.

“You know, remember how afraid we were after 9/11, we were going to get attacked again,”

kept to say for 20 years. And we're still safe. We're still safe because what you did over there, it was not all for not. It was terribly, terribly handled. And even before the withdrawal, there was a lot of criticism to be leveled, but that with withdrawal, it was just a stain,

it was just a stain on our leadership, not on our guys. No, I mean, I never once have ever thought,

oh my god, what a waste. I mean, you know, the mission there we did was, you know, we helped a lot of people. We definitely got rid of a lot of very bad people who given the opportunity would gladly do bad things here in our own country and even in other countries of balance. So yeah, I definitely felt fellow veterans don't ever think that what we did absolutely made a difference. So I'm fortunate the way it ended, but, you know, I'm proud of the time that I had to serve over there and hopefully

“make a small difference in the Afghanistan that I wrapped in. Men beyond beyond. So now, how old are you?”

I turned 48, next week. Oh, you're still a spring chicken. You're a young guy. You got it, you got your three kids. Yeah. And your career as a motivational speaker, as an author, how's that going? Are you paying the bills with that? You feel like things are going well? There. I mean, the demand is high. I mean, you know, I think the message I deliver is very needed. And I think companies recognize that, I mean, our combination of coming out of the COVID era

and also into just society as a whole, my message is on self leadership. How do we lead ourselves to be successful? How do we build better routines? How do we build more positive culture within companies? And then how do we find balance in this crazy world that we're living in? And then all about the resilience and grit. I teach something called getting off the X. It's one of the foundational principles in my overcome book. I'm now teaching the appointment and for life program, which is a

structured process of building long-term goals that ain't understanding based on your values, which are mission or purposes in their life, what kind of a Bethel operations twist. And then of course, we have the relationship book company. And then something I've started working on. We just concluded our most recent overcompensified workshop. A lot of my teammates have a lot of experience and they are training law enforcement and

national organization, even military organizations and tactical abilities. But I keep meeting every day Americans who are like, I'm scared for the future. I wish I knew how to better defend myself in this dangerous world where every time we turn around, there's a match to be shooting or God forbid something happened to my family. How do I, how do I, you know, save them? How do

I know basic first aid or, you know, God forbid society, you know, collapsed or at least we

were. All right, if I take this course, you're not going to throw me in the ocean and hose me down with a, with a hose and tell me to find North West to you. No, no, there's not a matter of fact, it was funny, right? People signed it up for the course. I had to put it right on the website overcomingsurvive.com. We do not, yeah, let's do it. We want to take the average every day in America to make them better. That's it. And to give them a basic level of reparations so that they

can overcome and survive if something bad happens. And I've really enjoyed that. I met people from all across this country of communities courses. And I'm doing it with some of my former teammates, which in some of the guys that were in the gunfight with me, and it's pretty neat to be able to say, you know, out of this, we're able to teach you this. So that hopefully you can protect your family

“should work. It keeps the brotherhood connected. That's so important for you guys. I know there's such”

a unique bond. And if you don't nurture it, maybe you lose it, and it just becomes a memory, which is not okay. I want to tell our audience that the book that talks about Jay's experience is called

the "Try Dent." And then you heard him reference a second book, which is called "Overcome

Crushed Versary, Adversity with Leadership Techniques of America's toughest warriors." And we will look forward to the third book, which is the relationship one, and we'll have you back on for that. Lieutenant Jason Redman, I'm moved, I'm inspired, I'm excited for what comes next in your life and to read your next writing. And I just wish all my best to you and your family. I know my audience is joining me right now in thanking you, thanking you for so much for your service,

you. God bless you. Wow, thank you. Oh, such an inspiring guest. He's amazing.

“Isn't he? Go to Jason Redman, REDMA and dot com to find out much much more about Jason about his”

books, about his courses, everything, everything, Jason Redman. Well, worth your time.

Today I join you in remembering all of the men and women who have served our country,

and also thinking of and thanking our current military members serving today.