#268 Mike Waltz - Special Forces Green Beret Turned UN Ambassador Warns About China

31:35Just a few Green Berets in there train, advise, and assist the Colombian military, and they defeat the FARC insurgency over time. we were looking to do the same thing with how opium was funding international terrorism in the Taliban. So they were attracted by my background. We did that. I helped craft that policy. And then that started the back and forth, right? Oh, shit. So they sought you out? No, no. I applied. It was through a mentor of mine. Were you still in the military? I just, yeah, I was at this point in the reserves, at this point in both the SEALs and Green Berets that actually it's in National Guard, have National Guard units.

32:24And went in with that background, started kind of really working on not just the counter-narcotics piece, but then the broader Afghan policy. Went back out and did the tour where I was embedded with the Imratis and with the Jordanians were there to a smaller extent. And with the Afghans, just a few of us. I had others embedded with NATO special operations. So I saw at that time that the Europeans were in way over their heads in terms of what they were willing to do politically. The soldiers out on the ground were great. But I tell a story in my first book where this Danish unit had to call back to their parliament to send us a QRF because it violated their ROE.

33:15Or the Germans were in the north, wouldn't send us a medevac. wouldn't send us close air support because we couldn't identify the enemy the way their, what they called national caveats demanded it. And, you know, I think it's one of the reasons that we struggled so badly in that conflict. Spring starts at the Home Depot and we are bringing the heat to your backyard this season. Fire up the flavor with our wide variety of grills for under $300, like the next grill four burner gas grill that's perfect for hosting your spring cookout. Then set the scene and turn your outdoor space into the go-to spot the patio sets for every budget.

33:55Bring it this season with grills that deliver flavor and patios that set the vibe from the Home Depot. Start your spring with low prices guaranteed at the Home Depot. Exclusions apply to HomeDepot.com slash price match for details. Yeah, yeah, damn. How do what are what are some of the things that I mean I just it just is so wild to me you're writing policy and then and then you're living it i mean literally how fast but then bringing that knowledge uh you know bringing that knowledge back to policymakers and then you know that's one of the reasons i stayed in the reserves while i was in congress too um uh was to have that ground truth to bring in when i was on the armed services committee the intel committee uh and others and And it's part of what I write about in the book is you have to stay, I call it bottoms up leadership, where you are talking to the soldiers or as a CEO, I would always end my staff meetings with my team on what decisions are you waiting on from me?

34:59What resources do you need from me? How can I empower you? And that's that kind of Green Beret mentality. You empower the teams, you empower those out there. but I've tried to do it as a CEO, as a member of Congress, and now as ambassador to the UN.

35:20But, you know, one of the, you know, a couple of things that I have really focused on that I write about and that I'm trying to instill now and to live that I think we really need more of. One of the stories I write about, if you don't mind, is discipline and how that applies not only as a leader but as a Christian leader. And I know you have people who've been through ranger school here. The difference there is they starve you and they sleep deprive you. And one of our patrols, you know, they give you like normally when you're going out like five MREs for seven days. Right. And you're supposed to have the discipline to kind of ration.

36:09Nobody does. I mean, they've they've eaten like all five MREs by like day two because you're starving and you're moving 23 hours a day. You're getting like an hour sleep a night out on these patrols. And so by the time you come to day six or seven, it's time for the resupply mission. And man, that is the most important mission. I'll never forget this second lieutenant got tapped. Hey, you're in charge. Get us to the resupply site. And we're moving all night long. We're trying to get to this thing. I mean, you're hallucinating. I'd lost 31 pounds by this point as you're over mountains and across streams.

36:46And as we were getting near the site, we could hear the helicopter, the resupply helicopter that was going to drop a bundle with our next batch of MREs circling. They're only circling for a certain window. And this poor kid got us so lost. I mean, I'll never forget. I mean, you know, he's in there looking at the map, and he's stopping. We can hear the helicopter, and everybody's bitching and grumbling. And then the worst sound you'll ever think of, that helicopter flies off. I thought the whole platoon was going to beat his ass. Because we were, and I forget the ranger instructors, like, oh, man, I think there was a big, big batch of Snickers on that one.

37:24that sucks guys i hope you you know i hope you're not too hungry well i had had the discipline uh to remember the mres they had those like little halloween packs of skittles yeah i had saved my skittles from every one of those everybody else and inhaled everything and as we're like trudging through uh through the mountains again i decided every 500 meters i was gonna treat myself to a single skittle and this thing was like a burst of energy and happiness and um i mean just it just kept me going every 500 because i had i was on the verge uh of either just falling flat on my face or quitting i was it was so demoralizing to hear that damn helicopter fly off and i'll forget we're laying down in a in a fighting position i pop one in i look over and the two guys next to me are I mean, they're just staring a hole through me and they're like, give me one.

38:27And they're like, come on, man. I'm like, you didn't share, you know, we're having like this argument. I thought they were going to come, you know, like come after those Skittles. They wanted them so bad. Anyway, long story short, I ended up, I don't forget it was a purple one. I throw it and I hit him in the face. And I'm thinking I had the discipline to, you know, to ration my food. These guys didn't. They didn't help me out. Whatever. Fast forward, finish the phase. You go in for your final evaluations. Big burly master sergeant. I forget standing there in front of me. He's got big, big dip in and he's flipping through my stuff.

39:05And I could see, I mean, you know, you get evaluated by them, but also by your peers. Yeah. Which is incredibly important. Had all, all goes. He said, Ranger Waltz, you did great. You got all these good marks, except you got two bad peers, must not pass from two of your fellow squad mates. And I could see the red slips sitting on his desk. And I'm like, if I don't get my tab over those assholes and skittles, it's just like rolling through my mind as I'm sitting there. And he said, this is the point of the story. He said, I see you put down in your site profile that you're a Christian. Yes, Sergeant, I am.

39:49He said, I see you kind of describe your leadership style as servant leadership. Yes, Sergeant, I am. He said, well, I have one question for you, and this is for all the marbles. He said, in that situation, what would Jesus have done? And I was like, oh. he would have given him he would have shared his skittles sergeant yeah you're right he would have shared it you're damn right i'm right like dip spit you don't ever tell an nco he's right i'm always right i'm a ranger instructor like spits flying and i'm like oh man i'm screwed i pissed him off and i'm standing there with dip spit all over my face going i i blew it and he sits back down and he says, I'm going to let you have your tab.

40:36He said, but don't you ever forget, earning it was the easy part. Living it is the hard part. And as an officer, officers always eat last. And if you have the discipline to do the right thing, you pay that forward when your men don't. Right. And so I've tried to apply that my whole life. Fast forward, there I am in Congress running my first my first not in Congress yet running for the first time to be in Congress. I get the call that you dread when you're doing this, that my opponent just had millions of dollars dumped in their account by Pelosi, Super PACs, Bloomberg, the whole thing. By the way, Bloomberg dumped money into 24 races.

41:29This is in 2018, Trump's first midterm. Pelosi comes back in. He dumped money into 24 races and won 21 of them, right? And you get that call. I couldn't compete with that. But what I could do is outwork them. So my team of volunteers and I ended up knocking 210 ,000 doors. And I'll never forget. And so what I started doing was popping a Skittle every successful door knock. And I'll never forget. I've taken up too much time. But by last door, a woman opens up. And I saw as I was walking up, there was a little shrine in her yard. And I asked her who it was. and I introduced myself and she said, oh, I know who you are, Colonel.

42:22I've seen all the negative ads on you on TV. And I said, well, that's not who I am and this is who I am. And she said, you're pretty conservative for me, but you know what? If you've had the guts to do what you've done, you'll have the guts to do the right thing in Congress. And it turns out her son was an E-4 that was killed, 2nd Ranger Battalion in Panama. And she had a little shrine to him. And as I was thanking her and hugging her, and she said, don't ever forget him and be worthy of him. When you're walking up those steps in Congress, be worthy. And so I think about that. I think about, you know, one of my Green Berets I didn't bring back, Matt Pacino and his sacrifice and all of them.

43:06What happened to him? Matt was an absolute stud, a former police officer up in Massachusetts before he became a Green Beret. And the shorter version was he always volunteered to go on point. You want to keep the story alive. What's that? You want to keep the story alive. Yeah. Give me the full version. He was probably, if I had to rank all of my guys, you know, at that point, I was commanding a special forces company, about 90 of them, I'd have ranked him top five. I mean, he was just incredible. Smart, sharp, good looking, built like a linebacker. But, and this was kind of a bigger story of the war.

43:59The enemy had gone to IEDs. We had all of these jammers and antennas and whatever. And the good news is they had worked. So what did the Taliban do? They went back old school. They went back to tripwires. And the difference in Iraq where they tended to come in from the side in Afghanistan because it was dirt roads, they tended to come up through the bottom. And the conventional units and what have you didn't know how to deal with it. And a lot of them shut down. Not this team. And these are, you know, I'm sure you've seen them. They just got after it. And they were going out one night after a commander, and Matt started volunteering to go out on either motorcycle or four-wheeler ahead of our armored convoy so that he would be close enough to the ground to see if there was any dirt disturbances or tripwires or what have you.

44:55I don't forget stopping them before they went out on a mission. I was a commander approving the missions. and saying, guys, you guys are pushing it. I said, Matt, you're volunteering to go out every time. And he said, you know what, Mike? If I miss something or we miss something, I want it to get just me, not my four or five brothers in the car behind me. Right? Like, who thinks that way? I mean, this is the best America has to give. And, you know, they were going out one night, successful hit, came back, alternate route. We think somehow it got compromised because they set up the tripwire at night, which was highly, highly unusual.

45:41And he was on an ATV when it came up and downed him. But his family is amazing. They have set up, of course, a foundation. They work a lot with Gary Sinise. It's the Matthew Pacino Foundation. I've donated the proceeds from my books to him and his family to pay it forward. So those are the ones, you know, it's one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about now veterans serving again. It doesn't have to be in Congress. It can be city council, state rep up in Congress. And, you know, you mentioned in the bio, I co-founded a bipartisan veterans caucus because, you know, if we were all willing to die together a few years ago, we can figure out things like health care policy or taxes or whatever together as veterans in office.

46:36When I ran in 2018, we were at a record low. 15 % of Congress were vets. That was down from 75 % in the 1970s. In the 70s? In the 70s, three quarters. Now, a lot of people would say, okay, of course, that's because of the draft. But after 20 years of warfare in the Middle East, we've had a lot of veterans go through. They're just not taking that next step to run for office. I mean, I think that's great that you did that, Mike. I'm just curious, why do you think it's important for veterans to continue service in Congress and the Senate and local politics? Why do you feel that that's important? you're not done serving just because you went overseas and came back.

47:24That doesn't mean you get to sit in the VFW hall and drink beer and tell war stories. With such a few, a small percentage of Americans now post-draft serving, the country needs you. Leadership, teamwork, followership, discipline, mission focus. Uh, if you look at, uh, no offense to lawyers out there, but if you look at, um, the type of profession that's gotten into politics now, lawyers have large, and activists have largely replaced business owners and veterans. And we're looking to write that shift. Why do you think that is? um well i think on the on the veteran side you used to back in the day you'd go serve a couple years and you'd come back to your hometown pick up your life get well known in the community and you know and perhaps run for office now you're running around the world for 20 25 years and then you come back home and decide you want to do this as i did and people try to call you a carpetbagger like i've been around defending you thank you very much So I think it's the nature of service that shifted somewhat over time.

48:42I also think it's the amount of money involved, and there's a number of organizations out there that are focused on getting veterans back in. And again, we've seen that upteak coming back. But at the end of the day, it's the ability to overcome differences, focus on a mission for the betterment of your country, and get things done. I mean, I just, I can't remember, I think, I can't remember if I just had this conversation with Jocko or Matt Bessonette. It's not a beer, by the way, is it? Just for everybody out there. No beer. But, you know, we were kind of discussing, I think it was with Jocko, and we were talking about, you know, how in soft units and military units, I mean, we have to work together because our fucking life depends on it.

49:31You know, and then we look at what goes on in Congress, what goes on. You have to work together. Your country depends on it. Exactly. And, you know, from the outside looking in, it doesn't seem like much is getting done. Yeah. Part of that is the media loves to focus on the dysfunction. Like we've had a defense bill get passed. A lot of veterans on that committee consecutively. It's the only piece of legislation for 61 years running that has passed, and there's a lot of good stuff in it. But case in point, several years ago, impeachment's going on. Everybody is hating President Trump. Everyone's calling everyone a racist or this or that.

50:18I sent a note out to all the veterans in the House and said, meet me 6.30 a.m. tomorrow morning. You know what? Over 40 did. How many veterans are there? At the Vietnam Memorial Wall. And we linked up with the Park Service, who himself, the head park ranger there at the Vietnam Memorial Wall is a disabled veteran who lost his leg. And we washed the Vietnam Memorial Wall together. Right? And we had, you know, a camera crew out there, Brent Bear from Fox and others have come. America needs to see that. They need to see we can get over it and come together to solve their problems. I've seen quit bitching, bickering, fighting.

50:56Now, we need to fight for what we believe in, but at some point, you move the country forward. And other things we've done, I mean, just share with you a fun one. And it was actually the Horse Soldier Bourbon guys that put this together. I brought 10 veteran members of Congress together. We went over to Normandy for both the 75th and the 80th anniversary of D-Day. and we jumped out of the original C-47, Sean, that led the 101st Airborne in the invasion in 1944. And we did it, by the way, with a 97-year-old paratrooper. Dude, I remember. Who was tandem, buddy of mine. I'll never forget landing.

51:39His name was Tom Rice. And I walk up to him, Tom, you okay? He's like, hell yeah, that was a hell of a lot more fun than last time. Nobody's shooting at me. Yeah, right. But the point is, if I could get every high school class over to Normandy where you see more American flags flying on French homes, you see all these French kids running around with American flag T -shirts and big banners that say, thank you for our freedom. Welcome to our liberators. Thank you, America. You would think D-Day had happened like last year, not 80 years ago. So, by the way, last time I took 10 members with me, I'll never forget Speaker Johnson stops me on the way out.

52:28He said, Mike, I heard you're doing this. Yeah, it's going to be amazing. And this is good for people to see. He said, you know, we only have a two-seat majority. And you're going to be out there jumping out of original plays. Like, that's right. The parachutes are new. The parachutes are new, Mr. Speaker. We'll double check them. Everything else is vintage. He was a little worried. I remember seeing you doing that. That was really cool to see. But the country needs to see that, right? And I think the next generation needs to see that and always appreciate and be worthy of those who made this American country what it is.

53:03Be an American worth dying for. Yeah. Be an American worth dying for. I want to go back to veterans and serving in the political sphere. You know, do you, in your mind, have veterans lost interest in serving in politics or have the American people, do they just not give a shit anymore and they're not getting elected? I think it's more the former. Nothing's 100 % one way or another. I think it's more the former. There's organizations now that help them set up a – how do you set up a political campaign? There's a lot of consultants out there that are shysters and ripoff artists. They know someone with your profile will raise a lot of money.

53:55They're happy to spend it even if it's a hopeless strategy or race. So I became very passionate about helping them navigate. I mean you look at Sheehy who just came in. I mean just great veterans. Mark Wayne Mullen, Tom Cotton, you know, I just told you at breakfast this morning, Jared Hudson running for son in Alabama. Right. You know, but get in it, you know, yelling at the TV and throwing shit at it and saying, this is what I fought for. Not good enough. Get in there, roll up your sleeves, be part of this amazing republic that we were willing to die for. Do you think veterans are leading the way in Congress?

54:35And I think American people have been incredibly responsive to those who step up. Not always. Look, I'm not going to say that always makes the best politician. And I certainly don't agree with a – there's not that many progressives that are actually veterans, which are odd. It doesn't mean we always agree. We disagree on all kinds of things. But we do agree almost always that America has been a force for good historically. And certainly, it's not systemically racist, misogynist, and a terrible country. So, in that sense, we have that commonality. And that leads to mission accomplishment, getting things done.

55:18What do you think the pulse of veterans within the sphere is? Are they hopeful? Are they - I think they're hopeful now. Not to sound overly partisan, but they're hopeful under President Trump's leadership. The recruiting numbers show it. Pete Hegseth is restoring that warrior mentality. Dan Driscoll at Army, right, is taking the military mindset with technology into the next level. We have great leadership in Navy and Air Force, so it's about leadership. I was the chairman of readiness, the readiness subcommittee. And we were focused on everything but putting two bullets or bombs on foreheads when you have to.

56:04And that pointy end of the spear, everything else should be to support that, not these social experiments that were going on. I pushed the Biden administration fought back left, right, and center on gender neutral standards. The rucksack's the rucksack. The artillery shell's the artillery shell, right? Doesn't matter black, white, or brown, man, woman. It's about standards, not all of that other stuff. And so now to see that being enacted, you've seen the recruiting numbers follow. And I think the mentality and the retention numbers have followed, all of which were at a record low just a year ago.

56:43Just a year ago, right? And the amazing thing about President Trump is he puts the right people in the right seats in the bus, gives them a vision, and says, go. And expects results. Right on. And that's what I think our military members want, right? It's what I loved about being a Green Beret is you were given a broad mission set, and you were dropped off in the middle of nowhere. Figure it out. And told, be a warrior diplomat, figure it out, win that guerrilla chief over, win that government official over in line with what America needs. And, you know, nobody's going to micromanage you on how to get it done.

57:24Yeah. I want to, I just have to ask you this, totally off, totally off subject right now, but. And I met you through Scott Mann at Tyler Andrew Vargas' thing in D.C. that I spoke at. That's when we first met. I met you through Scott. Then Scott told me about this operation you were on where it sounded like you were a singleton. And on escape and evasion, and Scott was on the top kind of walking you through where to go. You got to tell me this. He never told it to me. Yeah. I want to hear it. So young Captain Mike Waltz. I mean, this sounds fucking badass. With a major Scott man who I think is one of our legendary Green Berets in his own right, is a thought leader, speaker, founded Task Force Pineapple, by the way, that got so many of our Afghan allies out in the Biden withdrawal debacle.

58:23But this was actually in the tour where I was embedded with the Arab task force, with the UAE task force. So it was just three of us. The first call I get from them, by the way, we're out in Helmand province, middle of nowhere. This is back in 05, 06. There were less than 50 Americans in the entire province. Ten years later, there were over 20 ,000 Marines. Back then, there was just none of us. One of the hottest zones. One of the hottest, I mean, it was a everyday firefight. This is the amazing thing about our mission set. I had worked with the UAE command and my command and reached back to DC because I was the best reservist back and forth and convinced them to build an airfield out in this hottest Taliban zone where we were going to get an Arab partner now with all of their assets.

59:21Oh, by the way, in this hot Taliban zone, not that far from Iran either. It's a strategic asset. We were taking the survey, Emirati Air Force survey team up there and got into a running gun battle. My only medic got shot with a femoral bleed. So I'll never forget. He was left-handed. Round goes through his arm, bounces off his chest plate and shoots down. and you know with a femoral artery, you got minutes. I'm down there working on him, calling in the medevac, literally put my knee on the artery while we're running and gunning. And I think it's got to be the only deployment of the Taliban Navy because the road where they were ambushing us, cliff on one side, so they had us pinned, and we're trying to drive out of it.

1:00:19that had barges with mortar and RPG teams that were paralleling us that we couldn't get out of. So we eventually fought our way out of that. I broke some rules. And when we called in the medevac and told them that the LZ was clear, it wasn't. The bird got a little shot up, but we got our guys and a couple of UAE guys out as well. that got shot up. Got them out of there. So the first call I get that night is from Scott Mann. And you know, the satellite radios, everybody can hear it. I mean, when you call up that tick, that troops in contact, everybody hears it. You're directing fire, directing the fight.

1:01:08When you get the notice to, hey, step off of the satellite radio that everybody can hear and have a one-on-one on the sat phone, like something's up. First call, he calls in and says, hey, we think someone's inside your perimeter. What do you mean? Well, we just got an intercept that the Taliban think they can capture you and the two other Americans that are with you if they overrun, but they were just offered a bounty from a guy that was in Pakistan to get you alive. And we think they're working with somebody on the inside. Mike, if you have to go full E &E, you do what you got to do. Holy shit.

1:01:43And this is, it was so remote back then. There wasn't much, many assets. I mean, we were probably a solid hour, hour and a half flight from Kandahar. And oh, by the way, when they had tried to send in some QRF, it got shot up. So this is an 05? This was 06. What is this like? 06. Wow. This was an 06. I mean, longer story. What had happened was the British were supposed to come down as the transfer to NATO. They were delayed. So it was just us and our little UAE task force out there trying to establish this air base, trying to pacify the region, doing the best we could. The next call I get was even better from the major man who's up at the headquarters.

1:02:35Hey, Mike, you need to get out of there. your mission is canceled i was pissed i've been working on this for months to get this airbase strategic airbase set up you're done i was ready to fight my way forward he said no you're not uh gave me a direct order he said they believe they have you surrounded they're going to overrun you uh when i give you when i give you the next call you need to get under anything you can it's going to look like apocalypse fucking now. And he had B1s, Preds, F-18s from carrier strike group just stacked up and just laid waste, including, I saw the footage later where everybody was celebrating.

1:03:24I don't know. I hope this doesn't get you in trouble, Scott. Everybody was celebrating in a mosque and they just blew the snot out of it. I mean, body parts flying everywhere. Holy shit. We ended up fighting our way over the next - Where did you - So you hunkered down? We hunkered down as Scott was commanding, controlling every Air Force asset they had in theater, just as we were trying to get out of where they had us surrounded and fight our way out. He ended up staying on the phone with me for probably the next 40 hours uh on just just constant as they were guiding us through um these various ambushes that we had till we could get back to our base which by the way was for everybody who served out there was uh fob robinson who's named after chris robinson one of the green berets we lost that tour holy shit dude so that was scott And he's a great friend.

1:04:26He's written several books on the Greenberry mentality. 40 hours of kinetic E &E? Yeah. Off and on. Yeah, as you know it, I mean, it's not rounds aren't flying. I mean, rounds aren't flying every minute, but it was, you know, you don't know that. And so I'll never forget. I don't know why. It seemed like every AC-130, which is my favorite platform in the Air Force, by the way, the big cargo gunships, right, that have that 120-millimeter cannon and the miniguns, it seemed like every targeting officer was a female. And I've never asked the chief of staff of the Air Force why this was, but I'll never forget my guys.

1:05:10I mean, she was like an angel, and then the angel of death in every minute. target eliminated ambush 50 meters to your left boom damn they're gone and then my guys are running bets on whether she was blonde whether she was brunette and of course they're all tripping over themselves when we get back to the base back to uh finally get back to kandahar and then bagram airbase to go thank her in person and um yeah i mean it was it was it was a hell of a fight Like, the UAE fighters were fantastic. The soldiers were fantastic. But, man. What was going through your head when they said it was an insider, somebody inside the perimeter?

1:05:55I mean, did they ever figure that out? You know, I don't. They didn't that tour. But a year later, I saw some traffic that the Emiratis themselves rolled a guy up. And he just kind of disappeared. Right on. And then fast forward that, fast forward a few years later, I'm actually in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE. And we have, you know, it's a bunch of people, but we have a kind of a meeting and greeting with the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Zayed. And the ambassador at the time is introducing everyone. And then as he comes and introduces me, he says, and your highness, this is the American soldier that was embedded with our forces, walks him through what had happened a couple of years prior.

1:06:49And he stopped and locked eyes and said, basically, we've carried each other from the field of battle and we will defeat the extremists together. Look, it's an amazing country and not to sell UAE, but I mean, I've been to Paul McCartney concerts and they were a key member now the Abraham Accords. And you can go there and go to a church, you can go to a synagogue, and you can go, of course, to a mosque. Very tolerant, very open. Take it back to Afghanistan with those guys. We would go into these villages that hadn't seen a Westerner probably since the Russians, right? Up in the mountains. Sean, I can't tell you how powerful it was to be standing there with an Afghan officer, an Arab officer, and then me, but I'm bearded up and just kind of trying to blend in because you've got a whole sea of Afghans sitting there with black eyeliner and AKs sitting on their laps.

1:07:51They're all Tawibs. But for the Arabs to say, this isn't the way forward. This isn't true Islam. Look at Jakarta. Look at Dubai. Look at Istanbul. You can have a better life for your children and not follow these, basically these Al Qaeda losers. That was incredibly powerful. What was even more powerful is they would then turn to me and say, look at what the United States did for Germany. Look at what the United States did for Japan. Look at what America does, even though they were once enemies. That's what they're trying to do here for you. Stop attacking them. And oh, by the way, don't let Al Qaeda and ISIS attack America.

1:08:37You could have a better life. That coming from them was worth its weight in gold. It turned whole areas. I'll take that over a division any day. That strategic messaging was critical. That's, wow. That's great to hear. Yeah. Mike, let's take a break. All right. And when we come back, we'll get into all things UN. I know you're a big fan, so cool. We're dozing. We're cleaning the house. All right. We talk a lot on this show about preparation, training, and optimizing performance. But none of that matters if your foundation, your health, isn't solid. You can't perform at the highest level on an empty tank or with nutrient deficiencies.

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1:13:12Yeah. So much of today's discourse is punch back harder if you're punched, get ahead of it, be aggressive, hit hard, which, look, I'm all for it. But you have to also know when to show restraint. And one of the chapters that I talk about in Hard Truths, and I know a lot of other veterans that have faced this scenario, but we were told to hold the line in a valley. We were holding a flank. And as you know, in Afghanistan, as soon as you're static for a while, eventually you're going to come under fire. And I had a coalition element because, again, Green Berets were always embedded. Sure enough, we hadn't been there.

1:14:0430 minutes, mortar rounds, start coming in, hit. Next one comes in, it's closer. Next one comes in, it's closer. Pretty quickly, one of my snipers spots a probably 10, 12-year-old boy up on a hill. So every time this kid brings a phone up to his ear, unarmed, but every time he brings a phone up to his ear, brings binos up, another round comes in closer. And after about the third time that happened, the sniper asked for me permission to take him out. He was sitting on a barret. And you know what a 50-cal round is going to do to a 10-year-old boy. And I thought about it for half a second. He's screaming four-letter words at me, giving permission to take the shot.

1:14:53You start thinking about your own kids. I was thinking about my daughter. Another round comes in, actually wounded one of our Afghans. He starts screaming. And I ended up telling the sniper, take a warning shot. Took a warning shot, splashed rocks right at his feet. Kid dives behind a boulder, comes back up, takes another shot. and the kid ends up running over the hill and we didn't kill him. And if you think about it for a moment, like kind of take a step back. And I wrote about times when we've shown restraint as a country and whether that was a right thing. Grant showing restraint with the surrender of Lee, I think prevented an insurgency in the South for many years following, helped the country heal.

1:15:47Truman in Korea didn't hit China. MacArthur fired over it, but showed restraint. Bush, 41, stopped in Kuwait, didn't keep going all the way to Baghdad in the Persian Gulf War. But one of my favorite stories that I think is really untold in history was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. A Soviet submarine executive officer, the number two. So a Soviet submarine is coming in under the U.S. Navy's blockade of Cuba. They get picked up. Navy destroyer starts dropping depth charges on them. And the Soviet submarine captain believes that World War III is broken out over the Cuban missile crisis and orders his executive officer to turn the keys, the dual keys, to launch a nuclear-tipped torpedo into our fleet.

1:16:41which had he done that, no doubt would have kicked off World War III. Vasily Arkhipov was the Soviet Russian XO, refused the order, didn't do it. Can you imagine? I mean, Soviet Navy, depth charges are dropping. He refused to launch a nuke at our fleet. They eventually ended up surfacing and found out no World War III had not kicked off. And I mean, that restraint saved all of us, right? So, I mean, back to the story, we ended up following the kid into his village, lined up all the elders, you know, reading them the riot act. And one of the elders stepped forward and said, look, the Taliban were here this morning, told us every family to give their oldest son to go attack the Americans.

1:17:34um al-qaeda had been in and out al-qaeda had been in and out of that village telling the same thing one family refused and they hung a seven-year-old boy his body was laying right there um so i don't know man you know like was that the right call i'm sure a lot of people watching this saying you should have taken the kid out i don't you know um i was in a similar situation i say that in the sense of we've got people making these life or death decisions every day. They stick with you one way or another. If I had been sitting, if one of my guys had been killed by one of those mortar rounds, could I explain that to the family?

1:18:16Right. Yeah. But you're saying sorry i mean i just i don't know you know i think that um showing some mercy having a heart is definitely a good thing i mean i was i was in a similar situation in baghdad where he the msr was getting you know ied every day americans are dying every day they sent us out we go sit up outside of it's what's happening right outside of a schoolyard and so we're all in a rural environment and so we were all gillied up

1:18:58and convoy goes by first within the first you know 24 hours and these but right before the convoy comes in school gets out these kids come and they set up i mean it was 10 yards from me right fucking there they did not even i mean see right i could have reached out and grabbed them and there's three of them one pulls out a cell phone i'm like fuck please don't do this shit and uh this is all rules of engagement right like you make a bad call yep you can be prosecuted yeah and um convoy goes by we called it in said hey we got a group of you know kids sitting here and uh they said don't engage convoy goes by they fucking hit the id they missed we asked if they we could restrain them nope let them go and then you know i mean you're just thinking back it's like i didn't want to kill that fucking kid yeah you know i did not want to kill that kid but then on the same tuck on this you know on the same accord what happens tomorrow whose convoy comes by here tomorrow with this kid sitting in this exact spot knowing i could reach out and touch him at least restrain him kill him anything to save an american's life and fucking nothing and i you know i just i don't know what the right call is in those scenarios well but in yours i didn't have that kind of closure i'll say um as now Now, as leaders, you have to give our junior officers and leaders and NCOs the latitude to make those calls.

1:20:48The right training, right? The understanding of what you can and can't do. But, you know, I mean, President Trump, God bless him, pardoned a number of guys who were just prosecuted to the hilt. One was put in jail for 19 years. Well, four of them are right up there. They're their pardons, the Blackwater guys. Yeah, right. Yeah. We saw what happened to the - Three for 35 years, one for life. We saw what the media tried to do to Eddie Gallagher. Yeah, there's Eddie Gallagher's murder charges right there. Right. And it's one of the many things I love about our president, but he instinctively knows you let your warriors be warriors.

1:21:29They're inherently good. If one goes way off the reservation, fine. But in these kind of life or death, seconds go by calls. And this goes for law enforcement. Yeah. Oh, even more so for law enforcement. I have so much reason. I tell this to all my sheriffs, my district, my state, all of them. We go downrange and we're in it. But then when we come home, we can psychologically turn off. A police officer can never, never psychologically switch off. They're never off duty. And they're one cell phone, you know, away from a riot for making a bad call. At least we make one. It's out in the mountains, right?

1:22:09I don't know. In this case, you know, I talked about those times in history. We showed restraint or strategic level. I made that call then. Yeah, I remember my, again, back to one of my campaigns early on. And this guy accused me of stolen valor on the bronze stars and stuff. And I swore the next time I was going to see him, I was going to punch the guy in the mouth. And I wanted to go back out and win the media and online. He was putting all this stuff in online. Thank God for my amazing wife, Julia. And my team said, rise above it, right? They show some restraint, show some dignity and don't crawl in the mud with them.

1:22:56So I just, I think it's important for people to think about sometimes the discretion is a better part of our and take a step back and rise above all the noise. I think that is a major thing people could learn right about now. Right. You know, I wanted to ask you, but I lost my train of thought earlier. When you were coming out, when you were creating policy and then going back into the field and fighting and living that policy and seeing the repercussions of it and then going back and giving the feedback on the – I mean, I'm curious. How seriously did they take you? Did you feel like they gave a shit when you were giving them the information?

1:23:40I'll tell you, even though I disagree with a number of policy decisions they made in the Bush administration, Iraq being one of them. And I hope that's not too hurtful to people out there, but I think it was a strategic mistake. The intelligence got it wrong. But they valued that ground truth. They knew they were being fed. I mean, the most politicized thing in Washington is what's coming into the White House. And they knew they were in a bubble. And so for me to come back from the field was very valuable to them. They appreciated it. And I appreciated that they appreciated it. I also broke a lot of China.

1:24:21But I had to have the guts to speak truth to power. And I'll never forget one general piping in saying, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, The Afghan army will be operating on its own, independent of us, kicking ass and taking names within 18 months. We're going to get it done. Here's how we're going to get it done. Oh, by the way, this was 2007, by the way, right? And oh, by the way, guess what his tour was? It was 18 months. Shocker, right? Like it was all going to be, you know, unicorns and rainbows and the Afghan army was going to be, you know, fighting like the British army by the time his watch.

1:25:04And I forget he turned off and they looked at me. I said, Mr. Vice President, they can't even count. Like, look how long, not that it's a perfect analogy, but, you know, we've been partnered with the South Korean army for 70 years. By the way, the South Koreans had a higher illiteracy rate after years of occupation and devastation, no army, no police force, no government by Japan up until World War II. We've been 70 years. I'm not saying we should do that and should have done that in Afghanistan or elsewhere, but we have to appreciate what we're dealing with, number one. And number two, decades to defeat communism, world war to defeat fascism, Islamic extremism, we can't take our eye off the ball.

1:25:58It will follow us home. And we've just got to find a better way to deal with it. And we can't do nation building. But a counterterrorism approach partnered with, by, with, and through small teams, I want it fought over there, not here. so yeah i mean is that speaking truth to power you had to do it and whether it's uh whether it's as a captain coming back from a tour a major coming back for a tour or now in congress uh or as ambassador of the united nations i mean did you feel did you feel like the generals were fighting against you for their own self-interest i mean obviously that one his self-interest was Oh, no, we have to fucking continue because I need this extra star after.

1:26:47Man, this is a longer conversation, but I think an important one. I think we have, you know, the incentives have changed so much since the all-volunteer from the draft army. Don't get me wrong. All-volunteer service, the best the world has ever seen. But it is different. A tour on an otherwise very promising 20, 30-year career, which you've sacrificed a lot, A tour is a blip on that otherwise career. Back at the draft army, it was get over there, fight until you win, and don't come home. Take every risk necessary that you need to. Now, don't have a base. Get hit too hard. Don't take any casualties.

1:27:31Don't take too many risks. God forbid you don't lose a sensitive item. um and so the you never see anybody relieved for the enemy actually making gains you saw people leave for those i mean we we you the biggest fucking risk you can take is to actually go to fucking war correct i'm with you that's the biggest fucking risk so we take the biggest fucking risk and then we and then we and then we and then we and that's when we do the risk mitigation shit and the risk analysts. Yes. What the fuck is that? The default action becomes inaction because nobody gets fired for kind of getting through your tour.

1:28:18And we had an accumulation of 20 years of that. I mean, I'll never forget. But we switched to the MRAP, right, which was in order to deal with the IEDs. It had a V-shaped hull, armored hull. It was great in the sense of how it protected people, but the vehicles were too heavy. They made you use predictable roads. They were often broken. And we had this accumulation of rules. I'll never forget dealing with this platoon. It was a conventional platoon. We had to get our guys in there and clean out Al-Qaeda and the Taliban out of this area that was right next to the hill that this platoon was on. I go up and talk to the platoon leader.

1:29:01We had a tough conversation, but he made me realize that it was this accumulation of rules that tied his hands. He couldn't leave the base unless he was in a minimum – first of all, unless he was in an MRAP, even though he had all these armored Humvees that he could have taken various routes or gone at night or what have you. So he had to be in the MRAPs. He had to be in four. He only had five, and two or three were always broken. So vehicles were out. He had to have a certain number of soldiers to go out on patrol, but he had to have a certain number of soldiers to defend the base. It didn't add up to the right total, so he basically sat, right?

1:29:40Yeah. He's like, fuck it. What am I going to do?

1:29:46What are you going to do? This was back to my point on VMI, where you learn which rules to bend to get the mission done, but that doesn't cross the line. I mean, at one point, we had this village chief who really wanted to be on our side. Every time Al-Qaeda, ISIS, the Taliban would come in, this one commander in particular, he would call us. But the third or fourth time we didn't show up and take care of business, he and his entire tribe gave up. And what turned out – and the generals would tell you to answer your question, they never declined a mission. I laid out the 12 different headquarters that we had to ask permission of, 12, to get approval to go out.

1:30:36And if you went out on helicopters, regular Chinooks or Blackhawks, you had to have an Apache escorting ahead of it because you didn't want the birds to get shot up. So then you had the Apache. Well, then if you had the Apache, those were getting shot up. So you had to have a predator ahead of that. Then you had to be within an hour of a medevac. Then you had to have a certain size QRF. And all of these risk of mitigation measures added up means we were tying our own hands. And I think that added up in many ways to strategic defeat. I do want to say, Sean, though, because there's a lot of, I think, our generation out there hurting them.

1:31:17What was it all for? We didn't have another 9-11 for 20 years. And they had every intention of hitting us again. I've seen the intelligence of plot after plot after plot that was thwarted. The more they were running around worried about where they were going to sleep at night, the less they were plotting and planning to hit us. We kept an entire generation safe. We've got to find a better way to do it now. But I don't want people to think their sacrifice was in vain. It was not. It absolutely was not. yeah i wonder that a lot too i know everybody does we all do um and again for those out there that are really wondering saying this and that was all screwed up get in position to make a difference right um one of the the first couple of things i did when i got into congress was address things that i saw that were effed up when i was downrange one of them i think i told you one of my guys I lost, the Pentagon wouldn't pay to bury him in two different places.

1:32:32So I get a call from my sergeant majors that the Green Beret I lost was Brian Woods. And the family wanted him celebrated in one place, but his wife wanted him buried in another, and they tried to hand him a bill. He said, absolutely not. We ended up passing the hat around our unit to pay for it, you know, $800,$900 billion budget. But anyway, we got that into a bill. We got it passed. We got a guy by the name of Richard Stasekul, who was misdiagnosed. The military doctors missed him with lung cancer until it was stage four. And on his deathbed, rather than enjoy his life or enjoy his family, or as he was heading into stage four anyway, he's up on the hill making it happen.

1:33:22And we ended up getting the law changed to where you can sue for malpractice if it's here stateside, not a medic downrange, but if you're misdiagnosed here. We got service dogs introduced into the VA, right? Believe it or not, the VA were saying, we're not paying for service dogs. They don't do anything. Here's your bag of pills, right? Here's your therapist appointment. I can't tell you how many veterans I know that got off their meds, got out of their house, are out socializing again because of a well-trained, good service dog. We fought through the bureaucracy and got the legislation passed.

1:34:00You got all this stuff pushed through? We got the stuff pushed through. Not just me. I mean, this is a team effort. It's a team effort, right? But my point is the service wasn't in vain. We kept the country safe as best we could. And for all the stuff that pisses you off, get in there, knock the doors, put you in touch with people to help and get in there and keep serving, man. Yeah. Right. Next generation deserves us pushing all the way through to the end. Yeah. I agree with you. There's a lot. It's frustrating. There's a lot of, I mean, I got a lot of buddies in there too. I mean, you were in there, but I got a lot of buddies that are in Congress.

1:34:40I got buddies that are in the Senate. And, you know, and, man, they're just so fucking distraught. They really are. Some of them are thinking about not running again because they haven't been able to make it the difference. But then you come in here and you talk about these things that you're able to get pushed through. That's, we never hear about things. The media doesn't cover half of it. They cover the drama. And, look, I get the frustration, but this is the greatest country the world's ever seen. We've got to, as Reagan said, we're one generation from losing it all. And with fewer and fewer of our population serving those attributes, we have to get in there and fight the fight.

1:35:25And then, look, I mean, this administration, in just a year, you're turning the military around. Recruiting numbers have turned around. We're getting focused on the right things in terms of technology. the legislation's moving to rebuild it's going to take a lot to rebuild our shipyards and our ship building at the same time you have new technologies like saronic and andro and others that will leapfrog us uh that will leapfrog us forward um look at the middle east i mean i just got back from Israel, Jordan, looking at the whole Gaza situation, we got the entire UN Security Council unanimously to support the president's 20-point peace plan.

1:36:14Just a few months ago, you had hostages and tunnels. And a lot of people would have lost a lot of money betting that you'd see all of them come out alive. And now all of the remains, except one left, I met with the family of Ron Gavili, one left, that have come out, ceasefire in place, Hezbollah on its back foot, the Assad regime gone, decisive action from the president, Iran no longer chasing a nuke, the Houthis no longer using our ships as target practice. That's what leadership comes, that's what leadership brings you from a commander in chief who gets it. What is the plan with Gaza now? So what the UN Security Council resolution and the president's peace plan established is a board of peace led by him that will have led by who led by the president.

1:37:11So President Trump.

1:37:41government services, water, sewage, basic services, and number three, an international stabilization force. Countries like Indonesia, Azerbaijan, and others. What the president did that was so brilliant, he actually did it at the UN, was pull together not just the Gulf Arabs, but countries like Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Muslim-majority countries, and said, We're going to tell Hamas this is the way it's going to be. And that united pressure got us to the peace plan, got the hostages out. And I think we'll get us to the next phase. And the president's been clear. Like, look, a lot of valid questions.

1:38:22I asked it. Others are asking it. Is Hamas really going to disarm? He's been clear. They're going to disarm one way or another, either the easy way or the hard way. And I think only he could pull together the Arabs, Palestinians, the Israelis, the Europeans. It really, I think history is going to look back on that Sharm el-Sheikh peace agreement and say it was one of the turning points in history towards Middle East peace. You think this is going to bring Middle East peace? You know, I think if anybody can do it, it's him. And that's not just coming from me. That's coming from Prime Minister of Israel.

1:39:07It's coming from the Palestinians, the leaders of the Gulf War – or the Gulf, excuse me, Arab countries, the Europeans, and others. I do. And the team that he puts around them, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Marco Rubio, the vice president, Susie Wiles, they're very business-oriented. Why does that matter? They're not beholden by this is the way it's always been and has to be. They're focused on results. DC is horrible for a priority means more people, more money, more inputs. They're focused on the outputs, even if they're unconventional. They're not held back by the way things have done in the past.

1:39:45And the business people he's put around them, and I've worked with all of them and still am, are incredibly focused on commercial diplomacy. Business binds people together. And that was the brilliance of the Abraham Accords was, you know, the more we're talking about rail and ports and data centers and, you know, just a better life for everyone by working together, the less we're talking about 2000 year old animosity. Is it going to be bumpy? Is it going to be difficult? Absolutely. But again, just look in the last decade, no one would have believed you would have had Arab countries and the Israelis coming together like they have under the Abraham Accords.

1:40:32And the next step is going to be expansion of it. And being at the UN, you know, we have a key piece of that. What else did you learn on that trip, Israel and Jordan trip? Yeah, I think there's, it's a real fragile moment, but it's a moment of opportunity. You have a real opportunity in Lebanon. We have a – What's the opportunity? Well, you have a former general, the head of their armed forces, President Aoun. So you have a non-Hezbollah line. Actually, he's committed to fighting Hezbollah, now elected as president. You've got Hezbollah, if you remember, the beeper and pager operation, plus taking out their leader, Nasrullah.

1:41:17They've been decimated. They're trying to rebuild, but they're on their back foot right now. Iran is on its back foot that has supported all of these guys. And the Assad regime, which was also a puppet of Iran, is gone. So you have this window, I think, to get everyone moving in a common direction. It's going to be a lot of work, but it is a real opportunity. I had the opportunity to sit with the King of Jordan, King Abdullah. I think I told you my wife's family is Jordanian Christians, came over as immigrants through Ellis Island in the 1950s and built an amazing life here. He's a real leader in the region, has a real clear-eyed view, not always seeing eye to eye with their neighbors, the Israelis.

1:42:07But if you look over the arc of time, have been a great ally. And I do believe under this president and this team's leadership, is it going to be, I don't know, you know, they're going to be Switzerland? No. but we can get to a level of stability. And the key, as the president said recently in an interview, was knocking the Iranian regime back so that they're not meddling nefariously and against us, against Israel, and against stability in the region and all the Arab allies. I think that was a critical, critical step. Yeah. What, I mean, what about the, what about the humanitarian crisis? that's going on over there.

1:42:55I mean, did you go into Gaza? I went right into the edge of it. I mean, there, you know, it depends on the security situation. It looks like, I mean, it's devastated. I mean, it looks. It is just. It's not even. It's absolutely devastated in many ways. So in my role, you know, a lot of the key agencies that are providing humanitarian aid are aligned with the UN. Some of them, one of them called UNRWA, The UN Relief Works Agency has been completely infiltrated by Hamas over the years, has radicalized the Palestinian youth through radical educational material and curriculum, and has to be completely dismantled and reformed.

1:43:41So that was a piece. There's a humanitarian corridor coming through Jordan. By the end of my trip, we were able to get that border crossing reopened. Look, we've gone from almost nothing going in to by the time I left, nearly 1 ,000 trucks a day were going in. Screened and acceptable by the Israelis so it's not smuggling in. All the things that Hamas used to build all of these tunnels. I mean, we can't forget who started all of this. And the miles and miles and miles of concrete and generators and fuel that they could have used to improve Gaza, They used to build the most nefarious, incredible tunnel network I think the world has seen ever and that the Israelis are still working to destroy.

1:44:33So it's a challenge. And I think we all have to appreciate that President Trump has taken this on. He could have just said, you know, you guys work it out. But ultimately, what it'll lead to is an expansion of the Abraham Accords. Do you think it would have been a bad thing? And that will lead to broader stability and so that finally we can, you know. What do you think would have happened if we wouldn't have interjected ourselves into that? I think, I know, the hostages would either still be there or no longer be alive. Remember, we had a number of Americans pulled out. Israel would be bogged down in the most vicious urban warfare.

1:45:24There will be no expansion of the Abraham Accords. And Iran would have the opportunity to reassert itself in the most nefarious of ways. So it's only with American leadership and really only with this president. So look, look where we were under Biden. I mean, the whole world was on fire and continuing to spread and to get worse. Look what happened under the Obama administration when he just completely walked away with no plan. You had attacks all over Europe and attacks here in the United States with ISIS expanding and growing. a caliphate the size of Indiana with an economy the size of Austria.

1:46:08So I just don't think we can afford to ignore the problem and wish it away. It's just how do we get it to a place that we can focus on, as the president's also doing in our own hemisphere. We have all of the energy, food supply, critical minerals that we need in the Western hemisphere. We just have to pay attention to it, and he is from the Arctic to our own border to South America and Central America. We have to continue to focus on the Pacific on what I think is the greatest threat this country has ever faced, which is the Chinese Communist Party. Only the president can uniquely work with them and get this to a place that's workable.

1:46:54but if the Middle East is constantly on fire, I don't think it could be ignored. The president is putting this on a trajectory with this peace plan that we can have an expansion of the Abraham Accords and get this to a much more stable place. You guys know the performance in work and in life starts with sleep. For a long time, I focused on everything except the most important part of recovery, my bed. My old mattress was terrible. I was waking up sore, overheating, and not getting real restorative sleep. So I made the switch to Helix Sleep. And the difference has been immediate. I started with the Helix Sleep Quiz.

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1:49:43i'm just gonna ask a couple questions yeah it's okay and you know i mean when we talk about and i don't i don't know the money i don't i just i know we sent another what 60 was it 60 billion to israel a couple week ago maybe or so no okay whatever what throw all the fucking numbers out yeah we spent a shit ton of money in ukraine we've sent a shit ton of money on israel gaza conflict no longer spending money on ukraine you know what i mean though yeah like if you if If you take all the aid that we have sent all over the fucking globe, and I'm not talking about this administration, the last one, the one before, I'm just talking in general, right?

1:50:24We have Chicago, fucking disaster. San Francisco, disaster. New York, disaster. Detroit, disaster. St. Louis, disaster. North Carolina, East Tennessee from the hurricane, fucking disaster. I mean, lots and lots and lots of American cities are damn near fucking destroyed. And we are sending$60 billion here,$100 billion there,$1 billion here. I mean, all over the place.

1:50:56And we've been doing this strategy for fucking ever. Why aren't we taking, and maybe I don't know why we aren't, But why aren't we taking the$60 billion here and the$100 billion there? Why are we not taking all that aid and going, you know what? Fuck you. I'm going to take the$60 billion and I'm going to dump it into Chicago. That doesn't mean free phones and free food and free everything for Chicago, but that means I'm going to get the fucking, I'm going to build up the police. I'm going to build up the sheriff's departments. I'm going to build all this shit up. Look, I'm with you. I'm going to fix the education system, and we're going to go city by city by city.

1:51:38We're going to go, and we're going to invest$60 billion in our southern border. Because if we're going to sit here and say, we need X country to go and kill all the Islamic terrorists for us, okay, great. We've been doing that method for a while. We were over there for fucking 20 years ourselves doing this shit. You know, but what we haven't done is dump all of that into our border. We haven't dumped that into our border patrol. We haven't dumped that into our police departments. We haven't dumped that into our just our infrastructure, our infrastructure. We have not dumped that into our infrastructure.

1:52:17Under this president, we are. First, he started. First thing you have to have, which, you know, I mean, security is the oxygen. Commerce, everything else needs to breathe. started with D.C., our own nation's capital. And the National Guard there, you've seen from carjackings to robberies to murders drop dramatically just by the presence of security. You've got Jeanine Pirro in actually prosecuting people that commit crimes and keep them in jail. You saw what he's done in L.A. You saw what he's trying to do in other cities to establish a modicum of security first. $150 billion. That's almost the entire budget of the entire United States Army in the big, beautiful bill to go to our border, to go to CBP, to ICE, and others.

1:53:11And you've seen encounters in our borders, which we were told it was impossible, go from over 12 million people coming in, unvetted, to now virtually zero. You have down in Venezuela, you have the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese, massive amounts of trafficking, an individual that is the head of an international cartel that's now under a hell of a lot of pressure from this administration. So I would argue that exactly what you just laid out, which is an America first policy, this administration has done. And I'm proud to have been a part of it. And then separately, what is that abroad? It's American leadership, but it's also burden sharing.

1:53:59No, I mean, I was there at NATO ministerial after NATO ministerial. I told you about the fact that their soldiers were there with their lives on the line in Afghanistan, but their governments were tying their hand. And at these NATO ministerials where seven countries at the start of the first Trump term were meeting their bare minimum 2%. Now, second term, he's got them all signing up to 5 % of their GDP to contribute to their own militaries. Oh, by the way, we're not providing any more money to Ukraine. The Europeans are buying the hardware from us, creating jobs from us, also reinvigorating our industrial base, and they're paying for the defense of themselves.

1:54:45And then where does the UN fit on that? Look, first of all, we're dozing it. We're cleaning it up. I already have a commitment from the UN Secretary General to cut 2 ,600 UN bureaucrats. These are international bureaucrats. We pay for a fourth of everything. They do 2 ,600 gone. 25 % of global peacekeepers gone. overall at 18 % budget cut, first real cut they've seen in their history. They've only been there a few months. We're working on it. This is all because they see what's coming with President Trump. But here's the other side of that. Why does President Trump say, look, it has potential, help it find its potential rather than just get completely out?

1:55:37There needs to be one place in the world, if he's the peace president, we take a diplomacy first approach, which we should, backed by the big stick of a rebuilt military, there's got to be one place in the world where everybody comes together to talk. I want that to be here in the United States. And if we didn't invent it, somebody would reinvent it. And I don't want it in Beijing or EU or somewhere else. Every year, every world leader comes to New York to try to hash things out. That's one. And then number two, burden sharing is a key part of America first principles. So, for example, talk about cartels.

1:56:15Haiti has been completely overrun by gangs right off of Florida shores. They are moving people, guns, drugs, fentanyl, you name it, working with the cartels in Venezuela and Colombia over into Europe, the United States, what have you. Much less if we have a migration crisis because the country is collapsing onto our shores. Under the last administration, they spent over a billion dollars trying to take care of it ourselves. Now we've shifted that to the UN. You're going to have other countries coming in, and we pay a quarter of that. I don't think we can just completely ignore it and wait until it's a total crisis.

1:56:51But we're now sharing the burden. Others are taking that on. Same thing in Gaza, like I described. I don't want U.S. boots there. We talked about the problem with having the Israelis go back to war, like it was at least. So there's a burden-sharing aspect to that that I think is important. And then finally, this is the piece that I'm only fully coming to appreciate. There's all of these international bodies that kind of govern global commerce. Everything from international shipping to the seabed, the ocean bottoms, which by the way, President signed an executive order to begin mining critical minerals out of that.

1:57:37How is that all regulated to space, to telecommunications, to international civil aviation? if we just walk away 193 other countries europeans chinese russians are all calling the shots i want us calling the shots we have to get in there and block and tackle we talked it we talked at breakfast a recent win the international maritime organization was on the verge of putting in place a carbon tax on global shipping yeah what the fuck is that what who the fuck would we even pay that tax to let Well, it would be levied on shipping companies that basically had fossil-fueled ships as a way to reduce the carbon footprint and to force them into kind of like what they've tried to do with EVs, with cars.

1:58:28Here's the problem. It would have passed on an estimated billion dollars a month on to consumers, would have created a slush fund for the UN, would have pushed ships towards biofuels that the EU is subsidizing and that only Chinese shipyards could transform. Right. And so we got, I mean, Secretary Rubio was engaged, our secretary of energy, right. Duffy, the president got involved. They called us diplomatic gangsters, but we got in there and. Get in the game with the college branded Venmo debit card. Wreck your team with every tap and earn up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash, a new rewards program from Venmo.

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1:59:52So if you've been living in the white can, branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe. And every single one is zero sugar. Tap the banner to learn more. I fought the good fight and defeated it. Mike, before we... So I guess my point is, is the president has charged us with cleaning it up. but also with the burden sharing and diplomacy aspects of working in line with our interests. Before we go into everything we're going to talk about at the UN, one more thing on the Venezuela stuff. It's been Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico. Cartel, like all this cartel shit coming out of Mexico. China sent it in the precursors to fentanyl to Mexico, to the Mexican cartels.

2:00:41I'm not saying we shouldn't be in Venezuela, but why are we not in Mexico? Because it's been Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico. Now we're fucking around to Venezuela. Mexico's on our border. We've been talking about - I mean, the Mexican government sent back several dozen major leaders of cartels that they had refused for years and definitely under the last administration, they extradited all of them into our court system. That was a huge win from just a few months ago. The Mexican government put 10 ,000 of their own guardsmen onto their side of our northern border, and they're sending security forces to their southern border, which President Trump had them, you know, worked with them to do his first term.

2:01:29Biden let it go. Now that's back again. And I think the bigger piece, and when I was in Congress, I pushed for us to be able to go on offense against these cartels. I tell people this all the time. Back in the 90s, the FBI was running around the world trying to arrest Osama bin Laden. And remember that? I mean, in Sudan and other places. And al-Qaeda lieutenants oftentimes didn't because it wouldn't stand up in court. They viewed it as a law enforcement. After 9-11, we saw it squarely for what it is, a national security problem. We have to move in the same direction with these cartels. They are killing Americans.

2:02:12They are attacking our inner cities. They are poisoning more people than we lost in a year, more people than we lost in 10 years of Vietnam. This is a national security threat, and we have to treat it as such. And these cartels aren't like, I don't know, your mafia groups back in the 60s of organized crime. They are armed to the teeth. They're armies. They are many armies, and they control whole swaths of Mexico, and they have a state backer in Venezuela. So that's the kind of the mental shift. I just, you know, the media doesn't want to talk about that this administration has brought Kristi Noem, Homeland Security, Stephen Miller in the White House, the president, of course, vice president.

2:02:57And that's squarely in America first. But I just pushed back. It's Mexico, too. I think Venezuela is getting all the media, but it's Mexico, too. Okay. Okay. All right. Moving into the UN. So it's just been a question on my mind. From the DC swamp to the international swamp up in New York. So the UN, I mean, what is the UN's purpose? What is its purpose supposed to be? Yeah. And where are they getting off the rails? It was established post-World War II by basically the victors led by the United States for the victors of World War II to prevent another world war, certainly to prevent World War III with nukes.

2:03:44And I think in that sense, looking through the Cold War, it was largely successful. Unfortunately, since then, much like many of our own federal agencies, it's now trying to do everything for everybody. 80 years of bureaucratic bloat focused on all this nonsense. I mean, Sean, there's seven agencies, seven major agencies with massive budgets focused on climate. So set aside the whole debate on climate. You don't need seven. And you arguably don't, you know, get it down to one. And then, oh, by the way, there, let's talk about energy independence, talk about all of the above solutions and the right things.

2:04:25But so just cutting this massive bureaucracy down is first and foremost. And I just laid out to you step one. How is the UN broken down? In doing that. Who controls it? So it has, think of it as kind of, you know, like a legislature in the sense it has a general assembly. 193 countries participate. Think of that. It's a rough analogy, but kind of like the house, the bigger body. Smaller body, the UN Security Council. That has the five permanent members, UK, US, China, Russia, France, right? We all have a veto. And then you get elected members that rotate on and off 10 other elected members. What the UN Security Council passes is binding international law.

2:05:13And then it has a secretary general that's kind of the administrative head that's over the peacekeeping forces and the huge humanitarian agencies. But it's also got a lot of these independent agencies that you've heard of, like World Food Program, UNICEF that focuses on children. And then the IAEA focused on the International Atomic Energy Agency and others, right? World Trade Organization, keep going down the list. Again, there is a body that governs from space to telecommunications to, I mean, there's an international civil aviation organization under the UN. Well, I want pilots as I fly around the world, international travel, to all speak English.

2:05:57The air traffic controllers to be trained up to a certain standard, the mechanics to be trained up to a certain standard. So, you know, I just worked with Secretary Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture, because as our farmers export food, the Europeans and others through these international agencies are trying to put all of these crazy regulations on it. So just as we're deregulating in D.C., I've got a mandate and mission from the president to deregulate, get out of the way for American businesses and industries in these international organizations. I mean, the Chinese and others are in there trying to overregulate AI.

2:06:37We're making sure they stay out of the way so our entrepreneurs can win that race, right? But my argument is we have to be in there and block and tackle it, like I told you on that international shipping vote. If we walk away, they're going to do it without us. And so there's 193 countries in the UN. There's more. So the UN is this international, kind of like the Vatican is in Rome. It's this international entity in New York. That's where we established it post-World War II. And all of these countries have embassies to the UN in New York. There's actually more in New York than there are in Washington, D.C., because there's countries we don't have relationships with, like Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and others, that by treaty can be in the UN, but not in Washington.

2:07:24The other interesting thing about it is New York, because of that dynamic, is one of the the most active spy versus spy cities like Vienna, where a lot of these other organizations are in the world, because you've got all these other players there. Yeah. How is it funded? So everybody contributes, but we contribute the most. It's us, number one, China, number two, now with the world's second largest economy, and then on down the list. And we're at – we contribute 25%, correct? But we are – we have withheld that funding until we see the reforms that we want to see. So that conversation and negotiation is ongoing.

2:08:14Interesting. And so how is the – We need to see salary reform, bureaucrat reform. We need to see all kinds of things before they get another dollar of the taxpayer. Do we have more poll than everybody else since we put in 25 %? Yeah. We – not always. We should. One of the flaws is that everybody gets an equal vote in the General Assembly. Where we have more pull than anybody else is in the Security Council where we have a veto. Something's going against our interests, then we'll veto it. But, you know, again, things like getting UN to get Haiti under control. We just got that through. Why did we go to them for Gaza?

2:08:58Well, a lot of these countries that are willing to contribute forces so that we don't, or others don't have to, they need the stamp of international law for their own domestic reasons to be able to do that. So in order to get that, the presence plan now endorsed by the international community unanimously was a big deal. And there's other crises around the world that we'd rather them deal with than us. How are you? I mean, how is it introducing reform into the UN? I would imagine that.

2:09:40I mean, it's - Oh, here comes the new ambassador. How's that? Look, well, first of all, a number of administrations haven't even really tried. We're determined to do it. And the president's going to use an eye on his behalf, whatever leverage we have to. I, as a former member of Congress, standing before a town hall of firemen, nurses, doctors, lawyers, everyday Americans, need to be able to look them straight in the eye and say, we're going to get this organization to work for us. And look, I know rightly a lot of skepticism. Look where the president took NATO since the beginning of his first term back to real, you know, they're at least on a pathway to burden sharing a real partnership.

2:10:32I think what he's done with NATO and what we've done with NATO, we can do with the UN in the second term. What would happen if we don't see the reform? If we don't see the reform, we don't pay. Do you, will we leave the UN? That's up to the president. that's ultimately up to the president. The president just gave in his speech at the UN General Assembly, he said, look, we need to get back to basics. We need to get back focused on stopping wars, maintaining the peace, preventing wars, and stop all of this gender climate, all of this other nonsense. Same conversation we're having in Washington, DC, but we're having with the world, especially if we're going to be the biggest bill payer.

2:11:17So back to basics, fight for American industry in these international bodies. And then it can provide a platform for issues that we really care about. I did not have on my dance card, man, that I was going to have Nicki Minaj at the UN talking about the persecution of Christians, mostly in Nigeria, but all over the world. She has, I don't know, a quarter billion followers. I mean, that's incredibly powerful. So as much as it needs to be cleaned up, it does have that 80 years of kind of a brand, a platform for people to do that. We want to focus on human trafficking. We want to focus on a number of things, anti-Semitism and others that are righteous, worthy causes that the administration cares about and that this can be a platform to touch the global community.

2:12:21I told you tribes of Afghanistan are easier some days. I mean, it's tough. Yeah. I'll bet it is. I'll bet it is. I mean, do you have any, what, I don't have a whole lot of insight into, you know, how this all works within the un so i mean i'm the way you're kind of describing it sounds like congress for the world yeah you know and so what i'm what i want to ask is you know when you were in congress i'm sure you had allies you know people that you were working with to get stuff pushed through do you have anybody within the un do you have other ambassadors from other countries that that you consider to be friendly that you you have a common agenda a common goal yeah look um I mean, this, Sean, this is where kind of so many of the lessons being a Green Beret comes in, right?

2:13:09You know, I mean, we're dropped off in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a tribe or allied military. Half of them soon kill us than they would the bad guys. And it's through relationships. It's through influence. It's by, with, and through. It's building coalitions. It's negotiation, right? It's bringing all of those skill sets. Oftentimes in special forces, we can't make that partner military or that tribe or whomever, guerrilla force, do exactly what we want to do. But we're the United States of America. We come with that moral authority. We come with that leadership. We come with the, in the case of the horse soldiers, the backing of the United States Air Force and the leverage that comes with that.

2:13:56So it's bringing all of those tools together, right? Yeah, I'm sure. I work with Argentina. I work with Italy. Of course, with the United Kingdom. We have a lot of like-minded leaders with the Gulf states now. That Gaza resolution, we had all of the same countries that were with the Abraham Accords plus the ones that President Trump had developed these relationships with come with us publicly that led to the Palestinians. that kept the Israelis comfortable. And then we had to tell the Europeans, you can't be more Catholic than the Pope here. You can't care about the Palestinian issue more than the Palestinians and Arabs and Egyptians, everybody that's right there dealing with it.

2:14:44And we got everybody on board, but it was a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of work. I mean, when you're talking about, you know,

2:14:54fighting that carbon tax, wokeism, All this kind of stuff. And what goes through my mind is I just don't see any other countries fighting against that. Well, we end up winning the vote, right, on that carbon tax, but we had to lead. We had to give a little bit of you're going to work with us or else. We had to lean in and use the leverage that the United States has. and that President Trump uniquely does. There's no other – the head of NATO in our first meeting in the Oval Office said only you could get – the Russians and Ukrainians could get Zelensky and Putin on the phone from where they're annihilating to each other to now at least we're talking.

2:15:56We're not there yet, and I don't want to get ahead of the president in these negotiations or his team, but that's only the United States, and I'm convinced only this president could have gotten us this far. You know, earlier you had mentioned that you think that the one threat that you're most concerned about is the CCP. Why is that? Not the amazing, wonderful Chinese people, Chinese culture, but we have never faced an adversary. Not the Soviet Union, not Germany, Japan. Never faced an adversary with rival economic might that openly talks about surpassing us technologically. That is building ships at a rate of three to five to one.

2:16:43You could fit every shipyard in the United States inside China's one largest shipyard. We have 1 % to 2 % of shipbuilding. Yeah, for China, it's 50%. And the rest is South Korea and Japan, right? That is increasingly dominating, not dominating, but challenging us in space. that intends to put a station on the moon, the ultimate high ground, by the end of this decade. Thank God for Jared Isaacman and the renewed push. I touched Cape Canaveral in my old congressional district. And in 2018, the Chinese launched more into space than us and the rest of the world combined. By last year, SpaceX was launching more than the rest of the world.

2:17:38can buy. That's American ingenuity at its best. So no other adversary has ever had the ability to challenge us in all of those domains, add cyber to that, and has such an aggressive influence operation here at home in academia through Confucius Institutes. Many of these Chinese students are wonderful young people, but if their family's threatened at home, they don't have a lot of choice. And it's a challenge unlike any we've ever faced. Now, So ultimately, I'm convinced we will prevail. It's a real competition. How close is it? Ultimately, we will prevail. We always have. What's the biggest thing in the way?

2:18:43I'll tell you, well, right now, and a number of us, and the president is laser focused on this supply chain, supply chain, supply chain. If there was any lesson from COVID was that seemingly inexpensive things that cost pennies, like mask, gowns, and gloves can become a national security risk. I'll never forget in 2019, the Pentagon, I was on the relevant committee in the armed services Committee comes to us kind of in a panic about ammunition, the cost of ammunition, and they need more money, and we're all shooters. We know how expensive a bullet is these days. And need more money, need more of this.

2:19:27We dug into it, and it turns out the biggest missing piece was an element called antimony. There was formerly five mines in Idaho and Utah. They'd all been shut down by overregulation, environmental regulation, investors, and the owners had walked away. Three countries in the world that mine and refine antimony, Tajikistan, Russia, China. Go back to the Pentagon, like, this is a crisis. What are you going to do about it? This was actually, I think by this time, it was 2021, 2022. And they said, oh, no, we're demarshing, meaning sending a strongly worded letter on why these countries have withheld shipments.

2:20:08from us. Are you kidding me? So like-minded group, mainly veterans, we forced the Pentagon to create a stockpile at least. So we have some emergency supply until what we see now with Secretary Bergeron and Wright and the president and others are revitalizing our mining and refining industry. And if it can't happen here fast enough, at least it's happened with allied countries, seabed and other places, right? So supply chains across the board, we have to be self-sufficient. I mean, the arsenal of democracy has to be there and present. It's what President Trump so uniquely realizes. The big stick is in our military.

2:20:52The big stick is the strength of our economy and our supply chains and our resilience. And he's taken all kinds of measures to revitalize that. And I have to, you know, my small piece of this is blocking and tackling in these international organizations. What do you think your biggest challenge is going to be as ambassador to the UN as far as the reform goes? Well, it's a challenge, but it's an opportunity, is we'll have a new secretary general. So kind of, you know, the administrative head of it all elected this year. Again, China, Russia, Europeans, we all have a veto. So it has to be somebody that we come to a consensus on, but this has to be somebody that is reform-minded.

2:21:38We have to save this institution from itself. It's just sinking under its own bureaucratic weight. And it should be the Secretary General, it should be the UN that's solving things like Cambodia, Thailand, and India, Pakistan and Azerbaijan, Armenia. They should be in there. Fine. President Trump has stepped in as the peace president. I think he'll get the Nobel Peace Prize for it. I'm now getting the UN in a supporting role, but with the next secretary general, they should be in a leading role. Again, back to basics, not trying to solve all this other woke nonsense. Yeah, yeah. Well, Mike, is there anything we didn't cover that you want to cover?

2:22:22Well, I would be remiss if I didn't just very publicly thank my amazing wife. She is herself a combat veteran, both Afghanistan and Iraq, a family of immigrants. she was also established the state department's hostage negotiation office she one of the first hostage envoys and was president trump's homeland advisor uh in his first term so man you know as husbands like we try but we never win an argument like i really never ever win an argument and oh Oh, by the way, she's drop dead gorgeous. So, you know, I say that because my wife's amazing and my family's amazing. But I say that as a Christian.

2:23:11But I also say that as a veteran in the sense that, like, it's the families that bear the burden of service. You know, we're out there being commandos or diplomats or whatever, you know, serving this amazing countries in ways that are incredible. the families like we don't come home we come home missing limbs or we come home not right up here anymore right so i just have for both the gold star community um uh and all the families out there whether you're in the intelligence community diplomatic service military whatever just a deep deep appreciation and one last thing we don't want to go too long i think my most amazing moment with President Trump, and I talked about this in my speech at the Republican National Convention, was with the 13 Gold Star families of Abbey Gate.

2:24:11These families were, it's bad enough, the loss, and how the loss happened. But they literally couldn't get an audience with the previous commander-in-chief with Biden. They were so distraught. And they come to us in Congress, and this is what I love about him. I said, let me give him a call. Call him. He said, Michael, get him up here. Tonight? Tonight. And so we get him up to Bedminster. The scheduler calls me a little bit distraught and says, all right, we had a lot going on. We can carve out an hour. he ended up spending the entire night with him. He shook every one of his hand, heard the stories, talked about their loved ones, then invites them up to dinner.

2:25:04Sean, by the end of the night, he had one of the couples who was having a really hard time with it all up dancing. The moms were laughing. A couple of the moms came up to me and Julia, my wife afterwards, and said, this is the best thing that has happened to me since I lost my son. So I just say that in a sense, that's a side no one ever sees that I deeply appreciate. And I think your viewers would appreciate too. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. Yeah, man. Best of luck to you. I'll take prayer.

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