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July 3, 2024 - Doug Collins Podcast
51:21
Republican or Democrat, You're An American
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You want to listen to a podcast?
By who?
Georgia GOP Congressman Doug Collins.
How is it?
The greatest thing I have ever heard in my whole life.
I could not believe my ears.
In this house, wherever the rules are disregarded, chaos and mob rule.
It has been said today, where is bravery?
I'll tell you where bravery is found and courage is found.
It's found in this minority who has lived through the last year of nothing but rules being broken, people being put down, questions not being answered, and this majority say, be damned with anything else.
We're going to impeach and do whatever we want to do.
Why?
Because we won an election.
I guarantee you, one day you'll be back in the minority and it ain't gonna be that fun.
Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the Doug Collins Podcast.
Glad to have you with us today.
Hey, look, we always try to bring you the best voices, even if we don't politically align.
And I've always tried to do that here on this podcast.
We've had some great guests before.
Today is no exception.
Former member of Congress, Patrick Murphy, also former undersecretary of the Army and acting secretary of the Army for a while.
is with us today.
Got a great background.
We both covered probably some of the same dirt in Iraq and some other places.
And we're just going to talk about some military today.
We'll kid each other, I'm sure, about politics.
But this is a day that I just want to talk about.
You've heard me talk about on this podcast before the real retention issue and recruitment issue in the military and just really life in general and what our military faces these days and how we're going to overcome it.
Can't think of a better friend across the aisle to talk to about this.
And I think this is going to be one that you'll Hopefully gain some and maybe we can get a better handle on what's actually going on in the midst of the chaos that is Capitol Hill these days, especially when it comes to military issues.
So with this, we're going to take a quick break and come back with my friend Patrick Murphy.
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All right.
Hey, good morning, Patrick.
It's actually morning we're taping this, so it's good to see you, buddy.
And I just wanted to say thanks for coming on the show today.
Doug, it's great to be with you, man.
I appreciate the fact that you love our country much as I do.
And, you know, we were the cloth of our country.
You took the same oath to support and defend the Constitution, both in uniform and as members of Congress.
And, you know, I really just appreciate your perspective.
And I love you, brother.
So thanks for having me on.
But it's a great time.
Like I said, the funny part is, and about like both of us, I always do the shows, and I've had Democrats on, I've had Independents, I've had Non-Political on as well, and it's always, well, why can you do that?
Well, if we don't talk to each other, even if we disagree, if we don't talk to each other, we've got a real problem in our country.
And I think that's, you know, the real situation that I saw developing, you saw developing in Congress, you saw it as a member of administration.
And I make this term, Patrick, I don't think we've got to use it.
You and I usually see each other on Fox or somewhere where they put us against each other.
But I use the term all the time that we've divorced politics and reality.
And I've said this before, and it got picked up.
I was on Huckabee's show about a month ago, and I said that, and I put it out on Facebook, and Instagram.
And Instagram just went viral.
And that people were, because I said both parties, I said, we've got to quit.
I said, because if you don't have 218 votes in the House, you're simply a YouTube video or a fundraising email.
That's all it is.
And it was amazing how that struck a chord with many, many voters out there, even some of my very conservative friends, and even on the other side who watch my account just to see what I'm going to do wrong, actually saying, yeah, this is a part.
Because we don't Take into account what we do in real life and we apply it to politics, whereas we would never accept non-compromise, and I use that word as it is, in our real life jobs, but yet we won't accept it in political discussions.
And that doesn't mean giving up your position, but it means finding a workable solution.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, to your point, I think politics is the art of inclusion.
And you have to get the 218 votes to pass in the House.
And unfortunately, too many people are there to do the clip, to go viral, to fundraise off of it, and not really do the people's work.
And that's why they can't pass budgets.
That's why they aren't trying to meet eye to eye.
That's why they're trying to, whether it's the far left or the far right, trying to really You know, it's sabotage bills that have traditionally been going through.
And I think that's a shame.
You know, Doug, it's especially important, you know, and an honor for me to be on with your program this week because it's 4th of July, right?
So it's America's birthday.
You know, I was at church with my family on Sunday.
And, you know, the priest talked about, you know, I'm a devout Catholic and...
You know, the priest talked about, you know, we really broke away from England and declared our independence and then worked at it.
First, we got divorced from England on, you know, July 4th, 1776. But then it took us a bunch of years over a decade to pass the Constitution.
That was the blueprint of our country.
But the reality of it was, was that, hey, we want to be free.
We don't want to tell you what God we have to, you know, worship or, you know, have taxation without representation, et cetera.
And so for me, again, it was a reminder, like, Hey man, you know, even the preamble of our constitution where it says, hey, in order to form a more perfect union.
So if you're going into politics, if you're going out there and saying, well, my viewpoint's perfect and, you know, you don't know what you're talking about, that's not what God talks about in the Bible.
God talks about having humility and about listening to others and having two ears and only one mouth for a reason.
Yeah.
I think so.
Look, I think we get in, and this is an issue of what you're there, you know, to do.
And I think this is, you know, as we go further, I think, look, you know, there needs to be spirited debate.
Anybody that says there doesn't need to be spirited debate is wrong.
It needs to happen.
In fact, we've actually, in our society over the past 30 years, because I believe, frankly, we've become soft, is we don't have debates anymore.
Debate is not an argument.
An argument is two fools sitting on the side of the road yelling at each other.
I mean, a debate is simply saying, okay, here's my point of view.
There's your point of view.
I disagree in these areas.
We're either going to agree or we're not going to agree, but what do we do?
One of the areas that I have found in Congress, and this is going back to your days a little bit before mine, but also in Congress as you're going forward and then dealing with your later position with the Army and being a part, mine still being in the Air Force, is there's typically agreement On the basics of our military, okay, in Congress.
But I'm gonna posit a question to you that may come across a little differently.
I believe that we're not as Let me rephrase this.
Let me give a story to set it up, Patrick.
I was in Congress and we were getting ready to vote.
And you remember the OCO funding, the Overseas Contingent Funding?
Yep.
Which we grew up a generation of account finance officers in the military that had no idea what a real budget looked like.
They didn't.
I mean, from 2001, from the minute GWAT started to really 2015, 2016, there was, think about that from a career perspective for us in the military.
15 years, you're a senior major, senior senior major, probably lieutenant colonel, and if you were in the financial or management or in battalion command, you never understood a budget that wasn't puffed.
And I say that especially in the procurement side of the house.
And there was a time in which we were voting on OCO funding in 2012, 13, 14, even getting into 15, in which myself, a guy named Mick Mulvaney, Jared Polis, and I can't remember the other one on the other side.
It may have been Tulsi, but I can't remember who it was on the other side, but it was like four or five of us that we voted no every time the OCO... It was coming up.
And here I was as a very conservative Republican.
We had very liberal Democrats joining us.
And finally, the New York Times picked this up.
And they did an article about it.
And basically what we said was, is after this long, that should be in the budget.
It shouldn't be added on top.
You know, look, we're agreeing that you may need to spend it.
But a warehouse in Poland is not, you know, you can't make the direct, direct connection to Afghanistan and Iraq.
You just can't do it.
And I see what you're doing.
So I went to a guy one day on the floor, another member, strong military supporter.
And I said, you know this isn't right.
Why are you voting on this?
Why are you voting yes?
I said, you know this isn't right.
I said, you see it.
And he looked at me and he said these words that just burn, it just seared me a little bit.
He said, I haven't served like you have, Doug, so I can't afford to be seen as not supporting veterans.
And I'm like, oh my God.
This is where we've come to.
So Patrick, I'll lay all of that out there to say, are we actually taking the look that we need to in the needs of our military in Congress, or do sometimes we patronize the needs of our military?
Well, I think there's no doubt that we patronize the needs, and I think a lot of folks do that in nefarious ways, frankly.
You see it on television commercials.
For only $19 a month, you can help these poor veterans.
And listen, as you know, Doug, we have this ethic in our military.
We leave them all behind, and we got to take care of our brothers and sisters that might be falling through the cracks.
But the reality is, our veterans are civic assets.
And as it comes to the budgets, as policymakers, there's no doubt that our colleagues in Congress, part of the reason is, of every five members of Congress, four out of five used to be veterans 50 years ago.
Now that's one out of every five.
So, you know, and I've heard the same comments when I served, you know, I'm the OG Iraq that, you know, you came after me, a young guy, right?
And they would say the same thing to me, like, well, Patrick, I'm sorry I don't have a bronze star to stand behind like you do.
I'm like, hey, you take this oath to support and defend the Constitution and pass the budgets.
Budgets are moral documents.
Moral documents, like, Doug, you look at the Murphy family.
I drive a Jeep.
I don't drive a Porsche or BMW, right?
Now, again, I'm not disparaging anyone that does.
Maybe you could afford it, but I'm worried about my kids going to college, right?
And so, And I wanna try and help them out because I worked my way through college and earned an army scholarship, et cetera.
So, but as it comes to budgets, I mean, people have no idea that what we're passing on to our kids, this isn't a Democrat or Republican issue.
This is, do you love America?
Do you want what's right by her?
And the budgets that we're passing are in the world.
When you look at Six figures in debt every American is right now.
Six figures, over $100,000.
And the problem is, and again, I'm not saying Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
What I'm saying is, when you have that debt, you pay interest on that debt.
We pay more in interest to our national debt In any federal agency we pay, except for DOD, meaning we spend more than we do for the VA, just paying off our debt service.
Because it's like a bad credit card.
And the problem is, is too many folks in Washington won't do the right thing.
Especially when it comes to NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, and what you're talking about.
And so, man, brother, I wish I served with you, because I would have been one of that group with you to get it right.
Because when I was in the Pentagon, I was out there every Wednesday morning, we would have Budget meetings, and I'd be talking to my buddy Bob Spear, who's the Comptroller for the Army, and be like, what are we doing for the audit?
We haven't hit audit.
We gotta hit this audit.
We gotta hit this audit.
And it would just, it would tick me off.
It would tick me off.
Yeah, the Pentagon, and this is what people don't understand, even though it has been passed into law on several occasions, the Pentagon has still, to this day, never passed an audit, never finished an audit, for the most part.
That should offend the, and look, You and I both, we'll take on the world from different perspectives probably on this.
Anybody wants to question mine?
Then one, you had better put on a uniform and walk the same path I had before you even start the question.
Number two, if you have put on a uniform, then I want you to be honest in your assessment.
Because you and I both, there was a trend that started probably before you and I both came in.
And I was in the Navy for three years before I went into the Air Force.
I go back to the 92. So on and off, I've been in for over 30 years.
And it was the move away, and from what I see, and I'd love to see it's your almost cabinet level position, that level that you were at.
It was the moving away from putting contractors into positions that were normally filled by military.
And today, when I first came in, Most of our personnel, most of our finance was at least 50-50 or better civilian to military.
Now, it's almost 100%.
Our IT issues on the military are horrendous.
And they're almost everyone, all of our IT centers are completely civilian with a maintenance or a operational somebody who got tagged with a job because nobody else wanted, is over it, but they don't have any control.
It undercut not only some readiness issues, but it also undercut some ways that we could get people into the military for those vital roles that we've not really worked on.
Yeah, no doubt.
I joined in 1993, and then little did I know that within 10 years I would be going to Tuzo Bosnia.
I don't forget, I saw a clerk that was in the mailroom.
A mailroom is a clerical job.
We're there, and we had to carry our M4 rifles around, et cetera.
And I remember saying to him, like, hey, what did you do before you were this American that was working as a clerk in Tuzla, Bosnia?
And he goes, oh, I was actually a specialist.
And I'm like, oh, I'm like, why'd you get out?
He goes, because they offered me a job to do the same job as a clerk in this mail room.
But I'm making $80,000.
Yeah.
Versus making, you know, he was literally making $20,000, right?
And I'm making $80,000 tax-free because I'm going to combat something.
I remember thinking to myself, that's not the...
And again, I believe, you know, tooth to tail, wherever, where fighters be part of the tooth and not the tail.
But at the same time, The folks at Natal, too many of them are grifters.
Too many of them are milking the American taxpayer and saying, hey, well, we're supporting a warfighter, but then they're not doing what's right.
They're not making it efficient.
And again, I'm not saying Not all of them are nefarious, not all of them are doing intentionally, but at the end of the day, we gotta wake up.
We can't just be playing with the fiddle while Rome is burning here.
We gotta be smart about our American budget, and the number one budget is the DOD. And you and I, we love our country, we love our military, we support it 100%, but if it's wrong, We need leaders of character like you and I that have moral courage to stand up and do the right thing.
Yeah, that's the problem.
I say, you know, how many bases have you been on?
And look, I got friends here, so I'm not, look, I get it.
This is the way this is.
I mean, they take off the uniform, put back, they put on their jacket the next Monday.
They retire on Friday, put back the jacket on Monday, doing basically the same job in a civilian role on the base At either a different pay or a higher pay, and here's the part most people need to remember about this, and good, I know I'm shielding it back and probably gonna get some criticism from my military folks here, but the taxpayer's still paying that bill.
Okay, because these contractors who pop up, you know, they're working or it's either in the budget.
Okay, you're either in the budget, you're just paying the civilian side, you're paying the military side.
But especially if we're contracting out some of this, I mean, especially overseas and things like that, we're still paying the bill because those companies can't exist without the government contracts to give the money that they're giving.
So it goes back.
Brings me to the next question.
When I was on the Hill, I had to spend a lot of time catching up points and everything, doing some work there on the Hill on our Wednesday night session, and that's what we did.
At one point, about seven years ago, we had a group of, I think it was a couple of three stars in the Army, former personnel up at Pentagon.
I think we had one Navy Admiral, Rear Admiral, and others coming, who joined together, and I don't know what's happened to this since, but it was a discussion on our military readiness, and this was, like I said, six, seven years ago, and the fluctuation between how many we have in the draft and other issues.
And they're making the case, because they've seen the numbers, that at some point in time, with the numbers continuing where they are, the draft is going to become inevitable again.
Because we can't keep the numbers recruiting.
But they said something that shocked me a little bit.
And I want to ask you this question.
Do you think the members of the Armed Services Committee, which again, it amazes me how many non-military members of the Armed Services Committee are on there, especially 80 members.
I mean, they got almost 80 members or more.
But...
They were saying that when they take your role of how many 18 to 24-year-olds that are eligible, and they were just using a round number, say it's 100,000.
He said, well, right now, unfortunately, 75% of those will be taken out because they're physically ineligible, drugs, or the medications that they're currently taking.
So 75% to 80% are gone almost out the bat.
That puts you down to, say, 20,000.
I'm just going to use the round number of 80. 20,000 people.
Then you get ones who are actually physically fit, who meet the qualifications and can go forward.
And these are then competing with college, universities, jobs, and other things.
So you're down to about a 10,000 pool to start bringing these people in.
That's way below some of the norms that we're trying to bring numbers into right now.
Pays an issue, work life's an issue, these kind of things.
How do we get through?
And then this is my final point on this, because you can prospect, you've got kids like I did.
The big statistics that came out in the last two years is military members have repeatedly answered on polling that they are telling their children not to go in the military.
Where are we at, Patrick?
I mean, those are daunting numbers.
Where are we?
Yeah, and that worries me because I think the greatness about America is that we're the Athens and Sparta of the world, meaning, you know, we're thinkers, we have the great economy, etc.
But at the same time, we have the number one military in the world, right?
And we need to keep that balance of being Athens and Sparta.
And we're moving away from Sparta too much in America.
Obesity rates, The majority of Americans are obese.
The majority of kids, as you mentioned, about 75% of them can't join the military, mostly because of obesity, some because of drug use, et cetera.
The problem is, Doug, in my opinion, again, in the army, you know, that I used to help lead, we recruited about 120,000, you know, Gen X, Gen Z now, Gen Zers in a year.
And the issue is, is that, you know, it's hard and it's getting harder, to your point.
It's also a problem that we have leaders that don't make it easy.
You can go to McDonald's and apply and be hired the same day or the next day.
Same thing with Target, same thing whatever, right?
And by the way, you'll make more, you know, if you go work at Target or McDonald's and you will, you know, as a private first class in the military.
Now, I know.
And so I know that Congress just did a massive bump up for especially for lower enlisted.
I'm a big supporter of that.
But But I would say to you, we've got to make it easier.
And I get it.
There's much more background on joining the military than it is going to McDonald's.
And I get it with healthcare and making sure you do the physical and drug use and tattoos and all that stuff.
But at the end of the day, We got to make it easier.
It should not take three to six months to join the military.
You're a young American, you want to serve our country, it should be weeks, not months, period, right?
Because we're losing too many qualified folks.
Doug, the stat that the DOD just came out with, I put it on my social media, it's at patchworkvpa, 70% of high school kids right now, 70% want to serve their country.
Now, again, service could be in the military, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, whatever, Teach for America, whatever, right?
But they want to serve.
In 1973, toward the end of the Vietnam War, it was 54%.
So kids today, more than 50 years ago, actually do want to serve.
But we're not making it easy on them.
We're making it harder for them.
We're telling kids, oh no, you had ADHD when you're a young kid and you're on medication in fifth grade.
Sorry, you can't join now the army in eighth grade.
Like, I remember for me, I joined the Army, again, 1993. I was a collegiate hockey player.
I was a three-year captain of our college hockey team, right?
I had to get a waiver to come to the Army because I had a heart murmur.
And again, I went to my own cardiologist.
I got waivers.
I had to go to a board.
I remember being like, it should not be this hard.
Like, I was kind of like, with all due respect, people, like, I'm hitting 320 on a PT test, you know, like, out of 300. Like, I was like...
And it just like, it's like this warrior class of America.
We got to appreciate our first responders.
Dad's like, you know, people like my dad who was in a Navy enlisted cop in Philly for 22 years.
And I think we're moving away from that.
And that's what bothers me.
Yeah.
Well, look, you and I both are law enforcement kids.
So, I mean, we grew up in that environment.
We understood it going forward.
Look, I just had former Rear Admiral Bob Howard on the podcast about two weeks ago talking about his new book, The Gouge, and it's actually a pretty good book.
And, of course, here's an original OG seal, lived in Iran.
I mean, James, my producer, I said, we got to get him on back just to tell stories.
And you and I both know there ain't nothing better in the military.
That's bonds us.
Get a cup of coffee and war stories, baby.
There ain't nothing better in the world.
But he made the point, and it's sort of interesting you brought that up about being hard.
His comment was, we need to be like, and his was, because, I mean, from the Navy, he said, we need to be like the Marines.
He said, instead of raising standards, lower them.
He said, put these kids in there.
He said, most of them respond to a challenge.
If they don't respond to a challenge, they get washed out.
He said, and it was sort of like what you said.
We're bringing these folks in.
And I go back to that conversation we had that night in D.C. What was interesting is there was another member of Congress who now actually holds an executive position in a state.
I'm going to leave it at that.
When they talked about the draft, this person...
Went after that and said, no, the draft would be awful.
It would degrade our military.
And they started going back to saying, okay, did World War II, did we have that big of a problem?
We had men and women from all ages.
He said, even Vietnam, he said, with all the stories of Vietnam, and yes, you get into the rich got out of it or anything, but he said, we recruited across, I mean, he said, we drafted across Harvard down to whatever.
He said, and when you got into the military, and you and I both know this, the unit mentality.
It's like a brotherhood that you can't, you can fight amongst each other, but the other is not going to fight you.
Because, you know, and I think that was the part.
So I'm one of those, and I know this offends the will of a lot of people.
If we get to the point that we cannot sustain, look, your army, your great army is right now.
Did I read this correctly?
And I may be wrong.
You're down.
Three battalions right now, almost, and basically just took it off the books because you can't fill it.
The Air Force, we're down a couple of wings.
I mean, this is not just Army.
I mean, the only ones that would survive are the Marines, which I think is very interesting because they're the smallest and the most particular about who they are.
Right.
And arguably the lower standards, right?
I'm not trying to be a jerk to them, but like, right?
But it's to your point.
I mean, Doug, I was telling you, I know we were on Fox News last week together, but then I was going the next day, I was going down to Georgia, I was going to Fort Eisenhower right there in Augusta, and I did a Hiring a Heroes event.
It was great.
Yesterday, I spent up at West Point all day, right?
And at West Point, it was basically indoctrinated.
It was called Registration Day, basically.
It was when the cadets get there their first day, with their head shaved, yelling, beating their boots, all that stuff.
And by the way, you spend like five minutes around these young Americans, it's hard not to be inspired.
But what the superintendent said, General Caslin, former Delta guy, three-star general, superintendent at West Point said, hey, parents, I want you to do three things.
One, I want you to make sure you're positive to your soldier when they call home.
Number two, I want you to be a good teammate.
Let them know, like, you expect, you as parents, the citizens of America, expect West Point to be hard, and it's hard, and we're gonna make it hard.
But we want you to be positive to them and say, yeah, it's gonna be hard.
If it was the easy route, you would go, you know, to community college, you go to a regular college, right, right?
But you're here.
At the premier leadership institute in the world, the United States Military Academy at West Point.
You just get these young Americans, you get them in the door, you make it hard for them, they're going to pass it.
You know why?
Because you're going to be fighting and training.
The guy and the gallon are left and the right.
You're going to push them through that collective piece.
And you know, that's why I do CrossFit in the morning.
That's why I do stuff.
Because I know iron sharpens iron.
And we got to get back to that mentality that, you know, And you mentioned Vietnam, dog.
If I could just go real quick on Vietnam.
I'm named after a Vietnam veteran.
His name was Patrick Ward.
Patrick Ward gave the ultimate sacrifice.
He was saving the lives of his brothers in Vietnam when he was shot down and was killed.
He was my mom's best friend growing up.
Our nation didn't treat our Vietnam veterans the right way when they came home.
And our nation did not separate the war from the warriors.
It's our warriors that don't choose whether or not they go into Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever.
It's the political leaders in Washington.
That Vietnam generation could have sat in their hands when you and I came home from Iraq.
And they could have sat on their hands, well, we didn't get treated the right way, so we're going to sit home.
They were the first ones, man, the Vietnam vets, to say to you and me and others, welcome home, brother.
Welcome home, sister.
We owe them an incredible debt of gratitude.
And, you know, I know my two uncles served.
My dad served during Vietnam.
I mentioned Patrick Ward.
We got to get back to that mentality that as a brotherhood, that we want young Americans to answer the call.
We want young Americans to serve.
And whether they serve for three years or 30 years, it doesn't matter.
You serve.
And if you serve, as you know, Doug, you become this incredible civic asset because you give that oath.
To be a leader character for a lifetime of service.
And as a veteran, you're more likely to be employed.
You're more likely to be a little league coach or a pastor in your churches.
You're more likely to vote in elections.
No matter what your political persuasion, most veterans are independents, right?
I was independent most of my life.
And I will tell you that we're getting away from that.
And that's why I'm just so passionate.
That's why I hustle.
When I was at Fort Eisenhower in Augusta, Georgia last week, that's why I was PT-ing in the morning.
Man, Georgia's hot, man.
Yes, it is.
It was like that heat dome, man.
I was still PT-ing, but I was like, damn.
Like Captain Murphy from the 82nd Airborne Division, like I was, man.
I'm like, I gotta work harder, man, because it was hot.
Yeah, yeah.
At least you went down at Moore.
Augusta's terrible, but go down to Clem, got him in four.
I did Airborne School.
I still call it Benny on accident, but yeah, yeah.
I was in the beginning as well.
Look, I've got to be at Robins in the next week, so I've got to spend...
Middle Georgia in the summertime is just lovely.
And we're bringing through...
What I love about it is we're bringing through a new group of, you know, we have our chaplain candidates we do training with, and so they're in the midst of it right now, so I can't wait to see them as they come in.
But, you know, you've hit it here, and...
You know, but we've also, in fairness, and being in and going through about the last, especially about four and a half years, five years, I'll even go back 10 years.
We're sort of in a position, I'm trying to word this properly, okay, that, We're in a position in which our military has felt...
And this is their words, you know, because like I said, especially as a chaplain, I have to deal with counseling.
But I mean, hearing them a lot, even among a chaplain, they feel like they're not listened to.
They're guinea pigs.
I've heard this many times for everything that comes along.
COVID did not help.
In fact, it hurt us badly in our reputation.
And then, and again, many ways feeling like They were being ostracized or picked on because of who they are, where they're from.
I mean, we've got this toxic mix in our enlisted and our officer ranks right now.
I mean, when you see And you and I, and hopefully the people who listen to this, especially our veterans, I know will understand.
When you see our mid-level senior NCOs and our mid-level officers, you know, captain, major, that range, and lieutenant colonel, you know, and then you got your techs and your first sergeants and everybody else.
When you see that level right there, and I've seen this, they're getting to, you know, 15, 16, 17, and they're quitting.
They're just saying, I mean, you're losing valuable, let's just put it from a budget perspective, you're losing $1 million, $2 million, $3 million assets right there.
And if they can't keep it, if we don't get a handle on that, that's going to become a big concern for me.
Because look, I was a big, you know, look, I've admitted, I mean, I've said it, I'm just on a mission, I did it, I took the vaccine when it first came out, I was in Congress at the time.
And I'll be honest, I'm not sure I would again, I'll be frank, because Some other issues and everything else.
But when it was put to our men and women in the way it was is you will take this.
Oh, but if you have a religious, you know, we gave mixed signals and it hurt us.
And now there's a big concern in a lot of different areas.
As you always know, if you doubt start doubting one area, you're going to start doubting other areas.
Patrick, how do we overcome that?
And, you know, we can make it political.
I don't want to make it political, but in some ways it is.
But I think it's something that reflects our country.
But we've got to get back to what you talked about, about serving.
But how do we restore that leadership when they feel like the highest of highest do not listen to them?
Yeah, I would say to you two things.
One, I do think there's a toxic culture in America.
And I think it's people that want to score cheap political points.
And it pisses me off, Doug.
I'll be honest with you, right?
You know, to me, when I was in the military, when I had to get anthrax and all this other stuff, and I was in the invasion of Iraq, and I had to get, like, whatever, malaria pills and whatever, like...
I had five people hanging out at me at one time.
Yeah, yeah, right?
And so, but I went to...
Listen, I trust the process.
I trust the military.
I know the military wants the best of me, and they want to be a warfighter, right?
So, but I will tell you, That's why when you have this show and you invite someone like me who's a, you know, I'm a conservative Democrat, but I'm a Democrat man, right?
And we could talk, we might disagree.
We go on Fox, we disagree with each other, right?
And I get it.
People are going to bust your chops right now.
You're going to be like, hey, why'd you have that liberal Patrick Murphy on?
You know, he's a guy that blah, blah, blah.
Or vice versa.
Why are you a right-winger?
I hate Doug Collins.
Dude, you're an American, man.
I love you like a brother.
I genuinely love you.
I might disagree with you.
Like, I sometimes disagree with you.
Literally, my brother, J.J., Air Force officer, did search and rescue down to the Air Force Base.
He's Republican, right?
And I love my brother.
Like, he's my brother.
Oh, yeah.
We do.
We do.
And I love you.
And I don't mean to be hokey about it, but you know what?
If I'm out there, I know you're on my back.
And character is how you are when nobody's looking.
I know when I'm out there, I leave the room at Fox News and someone says, hey, you really like Murphy on air?
You look like you like each other.
I mean, you go at it.
And I know you're like, yeah, Murph's great.
And guess what?
When they say to me, hey, what's Doug Collins?
We're like, Doug Collins is a great American, man.
That guy served his country.
He's a combat veteran from Iraq.
I won't talk highly about you when you're not there.
You know why?
Because I believe in you.
And I believe in our country.
And we gotta get back to that.
Like, hey, I might disagree with you, but guess what?
You tell me to run through that wall, I'm gonna run through that wall.
Because I believe in you.
I know you wouldn't tell me to do that unless it was good for America.
And I just think we're too quick as a society To, you know, if I'm a conservative Republican, I'm gonna turn on Fox News and I'm gonna, you know, reinforce my political beliefs.
If I'm a left-wing Democrat, I'm gonna watch MSNBC and it's gonna reinforce what I believe in, right?
We gotta talk to each other, not at each other.
And we gotta try and find common ground.
And the one area we can find it It's trying to recruit the next generation of Americans to join our military.
It is the greatest fighting force that ever walked the face of this earth.
And we got to make sure we protect that military with all the fiber of our beings because it is pure.
It is pure self-service.
It's a meritocracy.
It doesn't matter if you're a senator's son or you're a blue-collar kid.
You will earn your rank.
You will earn your way, your promotions.
You weren't given it.
And I think our society can learn from that.
And by the way, our military is more diverse than society.
So you want to look at DEI or whatever?
Look at our military, which is 44% people covered.
Look at our military.
That is a true meritocracy.
And that's how it should be implemented in the rest of this world.
Yep.
And one of the things you're getting into, too, and I think that's one of the things that is concerning, and we have to look at this.
As we lose...
People coming in as we lose people.
The interesting thing is, and this is a concern for those of us who have been officers.
I mean, we look at it.
It used to be in certain career fields, especially in the military specialist career fields, and you as being a JAG and others, you understand that we're different in our promotion rates.
There are different ways.
But when you're starting to see promotion rates at Major to Lieutenant Colonel at 80% or higher, That may sound good, but it actually shows a problem.
It actually shows that there's a reason we're having to promote more because we're not getting them in.
And I think it goes back to what concerns me.
When I was in Congress, I dealt a lot with, you know, The freedom, you know, religious expression issues, I dealt with a lot of stuff.
And what I was seeing was, is we have too many of our, and this is the core, this is the heart of our organization.
Everybody points to the admirals, and it's funny to me how, and you, okay, I think you'll laugh about this.
It was hilarious to me when you had two and three stars come to Capitol Hill to testify, and they had three colonels with them and two majors with them, and everybody just sort of got out of their way and is like, Okay, they're guys.
I mean, yeah, they're admirals.
I salute them.
But give me a break, okay?
You know, they didn't bring the tablets down from the hill, okay?
We got to get back into this understanding that they're respected in what they do, but we sort of add on to our own problems there a little bit.
Getting that, though, to a reality check.
I want to switch gears.
We could talk about the actual condition today a lot, and I think that's the...
I go back to the first one I made.
Congress has got to realize they are the oversight role, and they've got to have that oversight role.
It's not a matter of, did I stand up for the veterans or not?
In fact, sometimes what will be perceived as nothing for the military is actually helpful to the military, and we've got to understand that.
But again, unless you're willing to listen and not believe the upper echelon that says we've got to have this, then you've got to dig a little deeper.
But it brings us into after service.
We've talked a lot about going to the jobs and getting things out.
You were up, considered a couple of times, and discussed in the realm of the VA. And the VA has been an issue that Is a problem, okay?
It's gotten a little better.
We've had some issues that made it better.
Senator Johnny Isaacson from Georgia was a very close friend of mine.
Again, and he had the heart of what needed to happen there, and we saw it.
We had some very bad things here in Georgia happen.
Augusta was one.
Decatur's been one.
We fought for this a long time.
I'm concerned that in the long-term process, The VA has got to go under some major, major reshuffling or it will not become relevant to my and your age veteran.
They want choice.
They want to stay closer to home.
They want the ability to interact.
They don't want to drive four and a half hours to be told they need to wait another three and a half hours.
Do you think, and this is a personal opinion, I'm not asking for, you know, do you think the political will is even remotely there to really consider a reorganization, reshuffling of the VA? I think it is.
And Congress passed, and they walked it back under Eisenstein and Tester.
And Senator Eisenstein, he was a great American.
I testified in front of him.
His staff director was a guy, Tom Bowman, who became the deputy VA secretary under President Trump.
Tom Bowman and I talk probably about five times a week, right?
And it's always about veterans' issues.
It's always about doing what's right.
I'm gonna give you two stats, if that's okay.
One, because I think there is the political will, but then people play politics, right?
And they don't implement it.
One, we've lost over 150,000 of our brother and sister veterans to suicide since 9-11.
150,000.
That's 10x of what we lost to combat.
We are losing the battle on mental health and making sure that people understand your physical health is tied to your mental health.
So that's number one.
And what do you do about it?
You know, when I left Fort Bryan, North Carolina, now Fort Liberty, you know, after my second combat deployment, I went back home to Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
They didn't say, hey, here's a person to check in on whatever.
I always got my DD to 14. I was done.
And you and I have made a better number of Congress.
We now have TAP, Transition Assistance Program, and Soldier for Life, and new VA funding, et cetera.
But you got to go back and join a tribe.
You got to fall back on your family and get a job.
But also, why don't you sign off for CrossFit or Crunch or Planet Fitness or something like that?
Because veterans will gain about 12 pounds your first year out, right?
On average.
And again, I'm not trying to be like, you still gotta be in, you know, fighting, fighting shape, right?
But like, you gotta, your physical health is tied to your mental health.
That's why I worked out at this point.
That's why I still have a t-shirt on because I, you know, I was working out this morning.
I wanted to be late for this podcast.
So that's number one.
We gotta do a better job.
And it's not just about working out.
It's also making sure, you know, we're doing what's necessary and best practices, et cetera.
But the other thing is, We can't brick and mortar our way out of this because, you know, if you want to go to private sector, but there is a problem when the average VA hospital is 56 years old, the average private hospital is 16 years of age, right?
Our veterans have earned world-class treatment, right?
And I'm not saying build all new VA hospitals all over the place, right?
But we got to be smart that if you're in a place like Philadelphia or You should have a world-class VA there, right?
It shouldn't be 60, 70, 80 years old where you can't operate some floors because there's flooding, Happens in a lot of VA hospitals, right?
Where you can't fit the new MRI machines because, you know, the doorways aren't big enough or the elevators aren't big enough.
It's crazy, right?
So there is a lot more that we can do, but I do think also I'm chairing this thing called Face the Fight.
It's a private sector-led initiative where it's trying to change the narrative that it's not a stigma to say, hey, I need help, or hey, your physical health is tied to your mental health.
It's okay to go see a counselor once, twice a year, once a quarter, once a month, whatever you need.
And it's just like going to the gym.
You got to do it, right?
And you as a chaplain, as a man of faith, Doug, you know, I appreciate because you are there in the front lines helping our brothers and sisters veterans and their families, making sure that they don't make the wrong choice.
They don't take their own life because we need them.
They are civic assets.
They've been less than 1% that served during a defining moment in our country's history.
Yeah, it's been hard, but they can get through it, especially if they have that ways to get through a difficult chapter.
They can.
And we've got to emphasize that even more because it's interesting.
Every military veteran I have who we discuss military on this program brings back that.
The Admiral did just the other day.
He talked about it.
I mean, because I think it was in the last 20 years, we've lost, what was it, like 9,000 total or maybe less than that.
I think it's actually less than that.
But we have this statistic of suicide.
And that's reportable suicide.
That's not the ones we don't know.
Yeah, we sense this all the time, and it's a struggle.
Look, we struggle with it.
I get those statistics.
We see them come through the reserve side.
We see them come through the active side.
We see where this balance is in all the branches, so it's really there.
Mike Bost, who is now Chair on the VA side in the House, a dear friend of mine.
I remember when he first came in, and again, a service veteran.
He is a Marine.
He gets it, and it's one of those things that they're working through.
But again, it's just difficult to process this when we're, you know, again, and I've made this comment now, and it's starting, I mean, I can't make it in the future tense as much anymore.
I have to make it in the current tense, is we've not seen the problem yet the VA is going to see because the veterans who were in Iraq, I mean, think about this.
You went to Iraq at 20, you're only, I mean, you went in the early part, you're 40 now.
If you went in later, you're 30. And those mental issues, those long-term issues, I don't know about you, but I've slept beside a burn pit for a long time in Iraq.
And we don't know where this is.
But also, we've never seen more people come home.
And they come home not with the, and we can talk about the emotional scar, but the actual physical.
I mean, think about how many veterans you know now.
I mean, we got good friends, Joey Jones, great buddy.
I mean, friends who come home, you know, with missing limbs.
And they're very, you know, now they're not sidelined.
They're in the front lines.
They're actively active and doing that.
We never saw that coming out of Vietnam.
We didn't see that coming out of these other wars.
So our VA system, I call it, you know, the old, what's the old term, you know, I mean, you're a Wharton guy.
You know, the management, the pig and the python kind of thing.
It ain't made it through the system yet.
We're still seeing this, and it really concerns me that we're still sort of playing those games that you talked about.
We got to do anything, anywhere, anywhere, anytime.
And we fix it, we fix it, and it doesn't matter.
Don't give me your brick-and-mortar mentality that, you know, you have to go do this.
Well, the way to fix VA problems is to build 62 more hospitals.
No, the way to do it is make better what you've got and give them more options on the end.
Yeah, and I think that's part of the, you know, when we define our generation, like Joey Jones is a perfect example, right?
If he was in Vietnam or World War II, he wouldn't have made it home.
He wouldn't have even been a KIA, you know, killed in action, right?
And that's the great thing about our medical system.
We see a lot of our brothers and sisters, right?
And that's positive.
But I think part of it, Doug, too, is like, I just did a post on post-traumatic growth.
I'm a big believer in post-traumatic growth, meaning I wouldn't have been a U.S. congressman if it wasn't for my service in the military, you know, or the undersecretary of the Army or, you know, owning 63 veteran-owned companies like I do now, right?
And so I say those things because when you look at it and It took 50 years for the World War II generation to be defined.
50 years after World War II came home, Tom Brokaw wrote a book called The Greatest Generation.
We, you and I, just got done serving the longest wars in American history in Iraq, Afghanistan, over 20 years, two decades.
And we can't wait for the years to define our generation.
We got to get the story out there about heroes that we serve with people like Joey Jones, Dakota Meyer, Kyle Carpenter, right?
Or frankly, entrepreneurs like Blake Hall.
Like, I don't know if you know Blake Hall, but Blake Hall did ROTC at Vanderbilt, was commissioned as an officer, rifle platoon leader with the Ranger Regiment, goes there, gets out, there's two combat, decorated combat veteran, comes back home, goes to Harvard Business School, starts a company called ID Me.
ID.me is now worth over $2.6 billion, right?
Me and my partner are doing 1.6% of it, right?
I say that, right?
Because World War II generation, it wasn't just what they did in Europe and the Pacific and Africa, right?
It was they came back and built our country, the greatest economy in the world.
And part of that was you had people like Phil Knight that started Nike.
You have people like Ralph Roberts that started at Comcast.
You have people like Sam Walton that started at Walmart, right?
They create these great iconic global brands because they're veterans and they started, half the veterans, Doug, start doing small business after World War II. Talk about American innovation.
That's right.
Our generation of Iraq-Afghanistan veterans, it's less than 5% that start doing small business.
So it's access to capital, right?
So how can we make it easier for these young entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs that come home and create their own small business and create American ingenuity and innovation, right?
And so that's why I've invested over $33 million, me and my partners, in over 63 veteran-owned companies.
Because why?
It's not charity.
They're talking about people like Blake Hall, who will do great things.
Or people like Dawn Hefaker, who's a West Point graduate, or others, right?
But we do have a responsibility, Doug, to remind people, like, hey, look at the Joey Jones out there, or the Dakota Meyers out there, or the Cal Carpenters, or the Blake Halls, or the Dawn Hayfakers, or frankly, as statesmen, the Doug Collins of the world, or the Jack Reeds of the world, or the Seth Moulton's, or the Mike Boss, because if we're not amplifying our own brothers and sisters, who else is going to amplify our voices or our brothers or sisters?
Yeah, they're not.
And look, for those who wonder, I mean, those who would have never, you know, and again, we can't emphasize the medical treasure.
Look, we have actually a member of Congress, Brian Mast.
I mean, we have Tammy Duckworth.
There's a lot of them up there that are still serving that have injuries that may or may not last.
Folks, this is why we have these discussions.
This is not a come to you and this is Patrick Murphy's solution or Doug Collins' solution.
This is a national issue.
This is a transcendent of any political party discussion.
Both have their ideas.
The question is, what are you gonna do about it?
To just simply have ideas is not making solutions.
So Patrick, thanks for being on the podcast today.
We appreciate you, brother.
A bunch and look forward to our getting together again on Fox as we always seem to do.
And by the way, people say, well, y'all go at it on Fox.
I said, yeah, but afterwards, one of the others typically text each other and say, hey, have a great day.
You know, look.
Sometimes I'm like, hey, Doug, you kicked my ass today.
And sometimes, you know, it's like, hey, we had fun.
We were.
Yeah.
Or Harris gets us both.
Right, right, right.
All right.
That's it for the Doug Collins podcast today.
Thanks for joining us.
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