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Feb. 10, 2023 - Triggered - Donald Trump Jr

01:33:06

Woke Won't Win Wars: Live with Sean Parnell | TRIGGERED Ep. 6

Woke Won't Win Wars: Live with Sean Parnell | TRIGGERED Ep. 6 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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	What's going on, guys?
	Don Jr.
	here.
	This one's actually gonna be a fun one.
	I'm here with my good friend, Sean Parnell.
	Legit American hero.
	Thank you.
	Guy that's dabbled in politics, wanting to get in this fight.
	I dabble.
	I dabble.
	Well, but a guy that also got screwed by a system from both sides.
	Not just, you know, the opposing side, but even, I guess we'd call it friendly fire.
	Yeah.
	You know, in the consultant class, but sort of an amazing story.
	And I think, you know, a dirty underbelly of the political process and what the other side, and even some of, let's call it the consultant class,
	Right?
	I think that's the safe way.
	Meaning the guys on the Republican side that make all the money.
	There's guys that they get shitty candidates to run for office because they're rich.
	And even though they have no chance of actually winning, they figure they can get 15% on the ad buy, and the this buy, and their buddy's getting a kickback here for this.
	And it's all a big money laundering operation for a couple guys
	Who aren't fielding candidates that even have a chance, but are getting really rich in the process.
	And I mean, I think we have a really interesting conversation to have.
	And I mean, your stories about war.
	I mean, we're going to cover a lot today.
	We may go along.
	Sean, he came in from Pennsylvania today to do this.
	He calls me at about five after sitting in traffic for three hours on I-95.
	Like, we haven't moved.
	There was like a, I mean, they were rescuing someone.
	What I was saying is when women in dresses are getting out of the car on I-95 North to look at the traffic and figure out what's wrong, you know it's a traffic jam, the likes of which are very, very rare.
	And you got so screwed because he's literally sending me pictures.
	He's like, I'm like four cars away from this thing, but there's no going through it.
	I was worried, yeah.
	Hey, Rumble's been cool.
	They're, like, flexible.
	It's like, hey, we're going to go a couple hours later and just, you know, try to have some fun in the process.
	We roll with the punches, man.
	We roll with the punches.
	And I appreciate the flexibility.
	And hey, look, here we are, right?
	Yeah.
	So what's going on?
	Well, a lot.
	You know, just watching our country, what it seems like, our country fall apart.
	I used to say on the campaign trail, and I've heard you say it actually too, if you were trying to destroy this country in, you know, eight, well at the time it was eight months, and now it's two years.
	If you're trying to destroy the country in two years or less, what would you do differently than Joe Biden's doing right now?
	The answer is nothing.
	Nothing.
	You know, you don't want to overuse the Manchurian candidate thing, but it's like, you know, I think, you know,
	China doesn't give a billion dollars to Hunter.
	They don't invest in crackheads.
	It's not what they do.
	Just so we're clear, the Chinese have a diligence process, I would imagine, that does not involve giving the Dave Chappelle crackhead character a billion dollars and say, have at it.
	Don, they paid Hunter Biden in a bag of diamonds.
	Well, that too.
	Do you think?
	That's like out of a James Bond film!
	There are some cast of characters that would be James Bond villains right now.
	Who gets paid with a bag of diamonds?
	What I'd like to know is, if it was me, do you think they'd have a problem with it?
	And why are they so strangely silent if not?
	Well, they've already tried to try you for treason and a litany of other things based on hoaxes, so I imagine if people were paying you with a bag full of diamonds, it would probably be a little bit worse.
	Well, I mean, let's talk about that, because we've seen that, right?
	The double standard, the accusations.
	When they throw stuff at you, they did that.
	When they throw it at me, it's like covering up the stuff that they're actually doing, right?
	Oh.
	You know, Don Jr.
	was leading... Like, yeah, I needed to collude with the Russians.
	Like, you know, in 16, I was like, we couldn't collude to order a cheeseburger.
	Like, we had no idea what was going on.
	We just had a good message.
	We understood the people.
	We went out there and delivered.
	And I think the policies then actually followed through and did amazing things.
	But you experienced some of that, you know, running, where, I mean, they threw out the most slanderous things they could possibly say about you, your ex-wife, your children, I mean, but it felt like everyone got in on the system, and then the second you withdraw from a race that I think you would have, I mean, I had endorsed you before anyone else was in the race, you know, like, you're the guy that could win that race in Pennsylvania.
	The second you're like, well, I gotta fight these battles, I gotta try to save my children and my relationship there,
	Oh, we were just kidding.
	There was nothing really there.
	Talk about it, because I don't think people fully understand that story.
	And they also don't understand that it wasn't just the Democrats.
	They threw plenty at you.
	I'd love you to talk about that, what you can, because obviously there's still sort of...
	Most of it, I think, is litigation in the court of public opinion as opposed to anything else, but everything I've seen, it was total bullshit, and it didn't matter because they got what they wanted at the time.
	They forced you into an untenable situation.
	You're not like some of the other people that were running.
	You're not from the billionaire class.
	You're a hard-working, blue-collar guy.
	You did well for yourself.
	You've written books, fiction and nonfiction.
	You were an American hero, but you couldn't sustain that legal battle, and they knew that, so they did what they could to get you out.
	Yeah, now we have John Fetterman.
	Yeah, so let me start at the beginning.
	I ran for Congress in 2020 in a very, very important swing district in western Pennsylvania, PA-17.
	Now, I'll actually tell you the story.
	I had really no plans to run for political office.
	Like you said, I was
	Writing books.
	I was working hard to have them developed into miniseries, screenplays, whatever.
	I have a service dog charity where we travel around the country and we surprise veterans with service dogs.
	I mean, that is what I was doing.
	And then your dad comes to Western Pennsylvania and I didn't even know he was coming to Western Pennsylvania because at the time I think I was in the Carolinas or something giving away a service dog.
	And I just come off the stage, and my phone is in my pocket, and it's just vibrating over and over and over again.
	And I look, and I have like 50 missed calls.
	Some of them are from reporters, consultants, and my mom was calling me over and over and over again.
	And I pick up the phone, and I'm like, Mom, what's going on?
	Because I just walk off the stage, and she goes, Sean!
	Are you running for Congress?
	And I said, Ma, no, I'm not.
	I'm not running for Congress.
	And she says, well, President Trump says you're running for Congress.
	And I'm like, what?
	And so I'm, like, scrolling through my text, and I see this video of your dad up on stage.
	We want that guy.
	Yeah, saying, Trump, who knows, is going to run against Conor Lamb.
	So that's how I got into it.
	And after that, so I've told that story on the campaign trail a couple times, Don.
	But after that, I asked Melanie, who is my wife now,
	I said, you know, I don't know if I want to do this because, you know, look what they did to Brett Kavanaugh.
	And I was afraid, Don.
	I mean, he was a gang rapist that managed to get to the Circuit Court of Appeals and be one of the most public figures in the judiciary.
	But it was only once he could get on the Supreme Court that he became a gang rapist.
	That's exactly right.
	When was this ever fucking plausible?
	That's exactly right.
	And so, you know, Christine Blasey Ford.
	Unflop!
	She must be believed!
	Why?
	Like, why?
	She seemed like a lunatic to me.
	Yes, so believe all women is a dangerous premise, and I'll tell you why in a little bit.
	But, you know, so Melanie said, Sean, like, President called you out.
	I don't care.
	You got to do it, you know, because she's amazing.
	She's amazing.
	So Melanie was like, so she tells me,
	Like, if you let them control you, that is a form of political terrorism.
	And they use those accusations to scare normal, decent, good people away from running for office.
	And I think that's part of the reason, Don, why we have so many dirtbags on both sides of the aisle in Washington.
	They call it a swamp for a reason.
	And so, I get in, I run for Congress in PA17 in a highly contested swing district.
	I speak at the convention.
	Your dad supports me every step of the way.
	The election was a total disaster, and I can talk about that all you want, but that's a whole other story.
	Well, I do want to talk about it, because we've got to figure out how to win these things.
	You know, there's not sort of, you know, the ghost of Hugo Chavez came back and manipulated the machine.
	Like, that stuff was bullshit, and I think everyone knew.
	But the other side says, that's what they really mean.
	But there were things that went on in individual districts.
	And like, when you look at these, it doesn't take much.
	You know, one guy doing something.
	It wasn't like it was one process that was done everywhere.
	Right.
	There were things that were done, a little bit here, a little bit there.
	There didn't even have to be unity.
	You just have to have a couple people acting as bad actors to change these elections.
	Well, and first of all, you know, once in a hundred year pandemic, right?
	Yeah.
	The first time in Pennsylvania where we've used no excuse mail-in ballots.
	And, you know, you look at what happened after the election, you have people in Homeland Security come out and saying,
	No, no, no.
	This was the most secure election in American history.
	Why?
	Well, because we said so?
	There's no evidence that that's the case, right?
	They just said it.
	Don, think about it.
	It makes no sense.
	Once in a hundred year pandemic, there's total chaos.
	We're still in the midst of lockdown.
	This is the first time we implemented a system where we're sending ballots to millions of people.
	If the government had come out and said, you know what?
	We had some problems.
	We're going to get better.
	It wasn't perfect, but we're going to improve.
	I would have believed that more because that's actually plausible.
	And so if you think about the top of the ticket in 2020, as it pertains to your dad, you had your father, you had
	You had Joe Biden, and you had the Libertarian candidate in Pennsylvania.
	The Libertarian candidate in Pennsylvania got about 80,000 votes.
	What was your dad's margin in Pennsylvania?
	It was about that.
	So right then and there, Republicans are at a disadvantage.
	And part of the reason why is that the Democrats, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, removed
	In the lead up to 2020, the Green Party candidate from the ballot.
	So typically, Green Party candidate votes typically siphon votes away from Democrats.
	Libertarian votes siphon votes away from the Republican.
	They negate out.
	But the Democrats didn't have to worry about that in 2020.
	So they did a great job at setting the conditions at the top of the ballot in Pennsylvania to set them up for success.
	But also, you know, when you talk about the way we conducted the election, everything that the Democrats did because there was a Democrat governor,
	Operating via executive order with emergency powers in the middle of a pandemic.
	It was all legal, right?
	But we have never conducted an election like that ever.
	And while it wasn't, they said, well, it's extenuating circumstances.
	Then they bully a Republican on a panel who doesn't want to go against them because they don't want people protesting in their backyard.
	These are low-level guys, but they have a little decision-making power for the first time ever, and they just don't want to be bullied.
	So they fold.
	And so you think about it like this.
	In Pennsylvania, we removed any semblance of a deadline for mail-in ballots.
	We removed the signature verification for mail-in ballots.
	There was no ID requirement for mail-in ballots.
	There was no postmark requirement for mail-in ballots.
	Add to that the fact that you have Zuckerbucks
	Where Mark Zuckerberg was pouring millions of dollars into the state to fund these Dropboxes in heavily Democratic precincts.
	So you remove all the safeguards from the mail-in ballot system, and then you put Dropboxes in heavily Democratic areas.
	Trust us!
	Yeah, and a common misconception is that most of this happened in Philadelphia.
	You know, you walk down the streets of Philadelphia and you say to somebody, like, is there voter fraud here?
	We're good to go.
	Democrat governor, everything they did was legal.
	We gotta learn how to play that game.
	And I agree with all of this, but it doesn't matter because you can't win with that right now.
	Meaning, same day, paper ballots, ID, like the rest of the civilized world actually uses.
	But guess what?
	Until you actually have power to implement that, you gotta play the game on their battlefield.
	They've set that pieces, they've done it well.
	We sit there and be like, oh, this is wonderful, but you can't, can you win?
	No.
	The answer is, if we continue to operate the way that we're operating on the political battlefield, no, you can't win.
	There is a pathway forward in Pennsylvania.
	I know exactly what we need to do to win there.
	But Pennsylvania is a tough hill to climb, as it is just by virtue of the registration deficit that Republicans have.
	Republicans cannot win in the state of Pennsylvania with just Republican votes.
	Democrats have over 400,000 person voter registration advantage with 1.2 million independents.
	So whoever the Republican is going to be, you've got to get your Republican votes, you've probably got to get 90% of the Republican votes, you've got to get 60% of the independent votes, and you have to get disenfranchised
	Blue-collar Democrats.
	And this, by the way, Don, this was something that your father was so good at doing.
	If you look and analyze his path and the way that he won in 2016, it had never been done before in that state.
	Oftentimes, Republicans talk about the suburbs.
	Yes, they're really important.
	Toomey's, but if you look at Senator Toomey's plan versus your dad's, and what the path in Pennsylvania, two very different paths, and they both won.
	Right?
	And what Republicans need to do moving forward is find a candidate that can bring out low-propensity voters that had never voted before in an election in their life, but came out to vote for your dad while simultaneously carrying the suburbs, having a message to win there.
	But I also think we've got to be playing the ballot-harvesting game.
	Of course!
	I bet, whether it's Allegheny County or Philadelphia, I went to school in Philadelphia.
	I went to school for five years outside of Philadelphia before that.
	I bet you there's a lot of voters there that couldn't tell you who the candidates were.
	Who filled out ballots and voted.
	And by the way, maybe legally, but not in an informed manner.
	If we're not playing that same game, and we like to collect votes, oh you'll vote on that election day?
	Oh that's wonderful, thanks so much.
	They're walking away with a ballot, and they're cashing that chip immediately.
	And until we play that game,
	I don't think you actually have a chance.
	I'd love to believe the candidate mattered, and it does to an extent, but it doesn't matter if we're not playing that same game.
	They have a two-month-long election day, and we're hoping it doesn't snow so that our people show up that day.
	That's not a great way to win.
	The pathway forward in Pennsylvania, it's a twofold strategy that Republicans should have been implementing yesterday.
	But I will say this, the Republican Party in Western Pennsylvania is in disarray.
	They struggle with funding.
	And frankly, it's a bunch of old-school Republicans who don't get it.
	And so, right now, Republicans need to be focusing on voter registration and doing everything that they can to throw money behind projects that close the registration gap.
	Because the Democrats have a formidable advantage.
	If you give them two months' lead time to vote, they've already got a 400-plus thousand-person voter registration demand.
	So focus on whittling that down before 2024, and then shift into a phased
	Mail-in ballot, where you're going out and you're going to people's doors, you're getting low propensity voters, what you call one of four voters, people that vote one time in every four election cycles, knock on their door, say, have you filled out a mail-in ballot?
	If you haven't filled it out, hey, there's an automatic opt-in button.
	Like, find them, get them a ballot, make sure that they vote,
	And this process should have been happening three months ago in Pennsylvania.
	Unfortunately, we're already behind the curve.
	It's not too late, but we're behind the curve.
	But to your point about, to your initial questions about, like, what happened to me, you know, jumping for Senate.
	We didn't take hardly any downtime from that run for Congress, which by the way... You went right into it.
	I know, I was... It was amazing.
	I was early pushing.
	I was like, you're the guy that I think could win.
	And like, I was telling you the story earlier, and I think we had this conversation since, you know,
	Andy Sarabian or not.
	My team and your team.
	I was driving.
	It was, I guess...
	December of last year, and I was driving.
	I had like a long drive, so I was just banging through all these calls and stuff like that.
	I was by myself.
	I was driving from South Dakota to Montana.
	I was going on a hunting trip with a couple buddies, and I was talking about your race to Andy.
	He goes, listen, we got a little problem.
	You know, Dr. Oz is going to enter the race.
	I go, well, you know, listen, I know him through New York Circle.
	I think he's a good guy.
	And I go, that's going to be really hard to win in a general election.
	And Andy looks at me like, what are you talking about?
	I go, well, he's running as a Democrat, right?
	And I mean, and I like the guy.
	I think he's a good, but like, I assumed he was running as like, probably not the ideal candidate to run in Pennsylvania at the time.
	You may like him.
	I think he believes in a lot of these things now, but like.
	I'm reasonably well-informed in this stuff, and I just assumed he was a Democrat off the bat.
	It's probably not going to bring out the sort of red-meat-based Republicans that I think you would speak to.
	I've seen you speak to.
	We've done those events.
	We had an awesome time with Ted Nugent when we did that event.
	Thousands of people were there.
	And there was blue-collar Democrat Pittsburgh, and we had 5,000 people in the crowd.
	Do you remember you asked, how many of you are Democrats?
	Do you remember how many hands?
	65% of them were like, yep, and we're voting for this guy.
	That was the flip.
	That's the one thing Joe Biden has gotten right the other day when he's like, would you believe that blue-collar people are voting for Republicans?
	Of course they're fucking voting for Republicans, you imbecile.
	You despise basic Americans.
	You shipped off the American dream to China.
	It's the only export we've actually created is the American dream to everyone who hates our guts.
	I mean, we'll talk about the military in a little bit.
	But talk further about exactly what happened to you in that one, because I saw it happening firsthand.
	But I don't think people understand.
	As vicious as this game is, you said it's worse than anything you experienced in combat, and this guy experienced real combat.
	He wasn't like Pete Buttigieg.
	It's a little bit... I mean, where's the lie?
	There is no lie.
	I'm not allowed to say that because I didn't drive around on a military basis for a little bit.
	You did these things, and you said it's literally worse than actual combat.
	You know, because Don, I'm not a political type, if that makes sense.
	Like, I was an outsider that jumped into this because, you know, I love this country.
	Period.
	End of story.
	I don't care about the Republican Party.
	I don't care so much about the Democrat Party.
	I care about doing what's right on behalf of the American people.
	And sometimes, you know,
	In this day and age, it means almost always taking a stand against what the Radical Democrats are doing, because what they're trying to do when they talk about transforming the nation, that means tearing down what was already built.
	And I think what we have here is pretty damn good and exceptional, and my mission was to stop them from changing that.
	But also Republicans, when we get it wrong, do right on behalf of the people.
	That was my mission.
	And we built an amazing movement when we ran for Congress.
	And that's part of the reason why I said, when people came to me and said, you should run for Senate, I was like, I don't know.
	I wasn't successful in my first run.
	It seems like it would be a big jump just to run for Senate.
	But we had Democrats that were coming out and campaigning for us.
	We were knocking on... Actually, we were also going to heavily Democratic areas and doing everything that we could to build bridges there.
	And by the way... I was with you.
	I felt the vibe.
	It was fun.
	We had a great time and it was a unifying message.
	If you love this country, we don't always have to agree on everything, but if you love this country, you can stand with me.
	Please.
	Please stop being racist.
	I'm sorry.
	You're racist, misogynist, and homophobic for loving your country and for believing in those things.
	I'm sorry that my white guilt got the best of me.
	All right?
	I'm sorry.
	Your privilege.
	But that's what they'd have you believe at this point.
	That's exactly right.
	That's a real attack.
	I mock it because I've gotten to the point where they attack me every day.
	I'm at the point maybe where they try to cancel me.
	Probably makes me stronger.
	So have at it, folks.
	They'll try to get me for the Pete Buttigieg one, and I'll say, fine, how about this?
	Pick a military discipline, I'll compete against Pete, let's see who does better.
	It's fine.
	You are a pretty good shooter.
	I'll never stop.
	I can hold my own.
	You do!
	I won a lot of those bets where they're like, oh, the kid from New York?
	That's not going to work.
	The son of a billionaire can shoot a rifle?
	Yeah, right.
	Then you win.
	Yeah.
	I think I'm undefeated in Governor's Clay Shoots also.
	I also shoot a shotgun.
	I hold a pretty good record.
	Talk about what they tried to do to you.
	I think they realized, and the Republicans did it too, which was more disgusting.
	It wasn't like, hey, let's talk about policy.
	They weaponized your ex-wife and lies.
	Conveniently, of course,
	You know, like you mentioned Kavanaugh.
	Perfect example.
	Like, the second it was not an issue anymore, they disappeared.
	And there didn't have to be any... Don, I ran for Congress in one of the biggest swing districts in the country.
	I spoke at the Republican National Convention in prime time.
	None of this.
	In fact, when the media inquired... It's national.
	Well, that, I'll tell you what... And a lot more money.
	That's exactly right, Don.
	And I didn't realize that going into it.
	And you just call it, I was naive going into it.
	For Republicans, anyway, about 50 Senate seats up for grabs in the country.
	If we're lucky, maybe 51.
	But every billionaire, rich, and powerful person in the world, they hang on every single race.
	And in the state of Pennsylvania, the race was over $300 million.
	So lots of money, lots of power on the line.
	Lots of people getting rich.
	Not a lot of great people.
	Like, you know, that are involved at that level, that watch races like that, frankly.
	And so I, you know, never had a single issue during my run for Congress.
	In fact, when the media inquired into my personal life, and at the time I was going through a divorce and a custody fight, I'm still going through a custody fight, my ex stood with me and said, hey look, our private life is our private life, you know, Sean and I, we both love our kids, just basically go away.
	And that was that.
	But then it flipped.
	Then it didn't happen for Senate.
	That didn't happen for Senate.
	And you even had judges citing that you're leading as a candidate.
	I mean, I remember reading this.
	You're leading as a candidate.
	Therefore, he shouldn't be able to have custody of you, which was never a problem before.
	And then the left weaponizes that to, all of a sudden, you're a terrible father.
	It's sick.
	So I'll tell you the timeline.
	And as a father of five young kids.
	Yeah.
	I mean, that's a declaration of war.
	Don, yeah, look, like, I'll just give you the timeline looking back now, because it's easy to be, like, a Monday morning quarterback, and, like, when you're in it, right, and you're in this haze, it's hard to see through it.
	And what I mean by that is, like, when you've, you know, I had every media outlet, it seemed like every media outlet in the country at my custody trial.
	I mean, I walked out of the trial, and there were 50 cameras there.
	So, I'm not used to that.
	And by the way, you have no, I mean, as a man, you have no chance anyway, right?
	Oh, well, yeah, we can talk about that all you want, because I'm learning a lot about that.
	But let me give you the timeline, and I'll let the viewers decide what they think about this, right?
	I get in for Senate, you know, basically every judge in my county in western Pennsylvania blanket recuses my case.
	The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, 5-2 Democrat supermajority, specially appoints, you know, a Democrat judge who's not from my county over my custody case.
	Your dad endorses me.
	I don't remember the exact date, but it's sometime, I think, in September, I think.
	But whatever exact date it was, that same day, and I know because I have the email, private custody records and other things were leaked to the media that same day, and also to my donors from Republican campaigns.
	And I'm thinking, where are they getting all this information?
	Some of this stuff isn't supposed to be out there.
	And then the custody trial was in November, and when my ex initially filed for a custody modification, because if you go through a divorce, custody modifications can happen at any time, right?
	Because it's always about what's in the best interest of the kids.
	When it was initially filed, it was over homework and extracurricular activities.
	And somewhere along the way, all that changed.
	And I get into the custody trial, and all of a sudden,
	I get accused of this horrific, horrific things.
	You know, I got just horrific things.
	And by the way, Don, all of this stuff had already been, like these things that were being brought out in the trial in front of every media outlet in the country, all of these things, all of these accusations, had already been litigated three years prior in a court by a judge where a judge said those aren't true.
	And thrown out entirely.
	And so I thought to myself, like,
	This is America.
	Like, how many times can you be charged with the same crime in America?
	But here's the thing.
	In family court, it's as many times as you want.
	Because there's no clear and convincing standard in family court.
	There's no clear and convincing standard of evidence at all.
	And so basically, it's like, he said, she said, and whoever the judge thinks is most credible is who wins.
	You see, like, you talk about dads struggling in family court.
	Now, since I've been in this, I feel like I've become an advocate.
	And by the way, this has been
	Is that what you should be?
	Even in this or on social, the amount of guys that reach out to me, is there anything I can do?
	I'm not saying all of them are perfect, but many are and you just see them getting fucked by a system that is so brutal to them.
	Well, probably like me too, meaning guilty until proven innocent by a standard that's impossible to meet and not by any other system that's ever been like that in America.
	I mean, I see it, the amount of dads, I believe the vast, vast majority of them, just good dads trying to do right by their kids and try to be involved in their lives, getting screwed over in a process is scary how many reach out to me about like, is there anything you could do?
	And I'm like, honestly, I think if I came out, you know,
	Trying to help you?
	It would probably make your situation much worse, because, you know, whatever lunatic judge would be like, this guy's gotta be... Well, I think, I will admit, I will say that I do think that the public perception of me being a Trump guy, I mean, that colors everything, you know?
	But don't get me wrong, like, I don't care, like, your father and you, you all launched my political career, you all, and you, your father, you stood by me through all of that, and that means a lot to me.
	How many people didn't?
	How many people sort of like, they heard the news, they read the headline, and they're like, yep!
	You know, you reached out to me.
	You were there for me.
	Megyn Kelly reached out to me.
	Tucker Carlson reached out to me.
	Scott Pressler reached out to me.
	And there were some others.
	And I feel like the people that know me, know the real me, and know that I am not capable of doing those types of things that I was accused of, they reached out to me and stood by me.
	But by and large,
	You know, those types of accusations, whether they're leveled at you in a family court or somewhere else, they're sinister.
	Because, you know, a very close friend of mine is a sheriff and said, you know, oh my gosh, like, I love Sean, I think he's a really nice guy, but who knows what happens behind closed doors?
	It seeds the sows of doubt.
	I get that a little bit.
	I saw that, I used the example of like, you know, General Flynn.
	Right?
	Well, the CIA said that he was doing this stuff.
	The FBI.
	You know, back before, when I thought these guys actually were doing good work and weren't, like, literally corrupt, broken bureaucrats, I was like, well, there must be something to it.
	These guys, you know.
	And then, that's when you realize you have to make the distinction between the door kicker.
	The amount of guys I see, FBI agents, the guys doing the work.
	Sure, yeah.
	They're like, hey man, love what you guys are doing.
	We're so sorry.
	It's insane.
	But we're powerless.
	If we said anything, we'd be out in two seconds.
	So I get it.
	And look, the things that I'm talking about, this is the first time I've ever talked about them.
	This timeline that I'm talking about, the press who is probably watching this, go out and verify it on your own.
	Look at this stuff on your own.
	It's all 100%.
	Well, you also want to know why it's bullshit?
	Because the second you got out of the race,
	It's not an issue anymore.
	Meaning, they weren't, like, if you did the things they were accusing you of or alleging, like, there'd be an investigation.
	There would be police knocking on your door.
	There would be XYZ happening.
	Instead, no, no, no, we got what we wanted.
	We're just kidding.
	It shows you how vicious that system is, you know?
	Yeah, and you look, like, let's not even make it political.
	Like, let's look at what happened to Senator Warnock.
	The same thing happened to him.
	Exactly the same thing.
	Similar accusations, custody trial, a contested custody trial,
	Not any media attention.
	Like, in fact, if you're watching this right now, throw it in Google, you might find one article.
	But every single... But there's a police report of him running over his wife, wasn't there?
	Yes!
	There's nothing like that for me!
	But he's the Democrat!
	Running for Senate, so we're just going to cover it.
	Not a single, not hardly any story, Don, like almost nothing.
	And that's why the Republicans, like we're working, we're not just competing against their ideas or their values, you're competing against them, plus a trillion dollar mainstream media machine, plus a trillion dollar big tech enterprise that's literally functioning as the marketing department of the other side.
	Like, we're not in a fair fight.
	Makes me want to fight harder, but it just, you've got to understand, we're working from a deficit, from instant number one.
	And you talk about my decision-making, and again, I haven't talked about this, but the decision-making that I went through when I was trying to decide what I was gonna do in that race, because I don't quit, I've never quit anything else, I've never quit anything in my entire life.
	But I knew, by virtue of this custody order, the most significant factor weighed, and again, this is all public knowledge, you can go out and read the order yourself.
	Right there in the order, Sean is a leading candidate for Senate.
	I testified, too, when I was asked, do you think that you're going to win?
	I said, well, hell yeah, I think I'm going to win.
	In the order, significantly, father is a leading candidate for Senate, and essentially,
	You know how that happens, right?
	I know now and I've got new hobbies.
	It's amazing.
	I got into politics because it's less brutal than raising young kids and trying to do it right.
	That's actually true.
	It is.
	It is.
	Kids teach you crazy things.
	Kids are amazing because they teach you new things about life every day.
	But my kids are everything to me.
	I've always had an unbelievably close relationship with them.
	And in fact, the first paragraph in the judge's order is like, these are two great parents.
	So to a certain extent, the judge saw that as well.
	But I knew that, one, my time with my kids, at least for the foreseeable future, was going to be greatly diminished, and they needed me to be there for them.
	Period.
	End of story.
	Full stop.
	But I thought that if I could remove the Senate campaign from the table and file a motion for reconsideration, the judge might say, because if it's always about the best interest of the kids, they always come first,
	I thought that he might say, you know what, okay, the Senate campaign's gone.
	Let's go back to equal shared parenting, which by the way, should be the standard nationwide.
	This gladiator stuff in family court is wrong.
	You talk about dads having a rough go of it.
	Listen to this statistic.
	The Dads Resource Center, which is a Pennsylvania family court resource group for fathers,
	They did a study of 15 random samples of contested custody trials in 15 counties across the state of Pennsylvania.
	700.
	So when I say contested custody trials, I mean mom and dad fighting over who should have the children.
	So over 400 times the mother got primary custody, 104 times in the state of Pennsylvania an order of shared custody, and 100 times father got primary custody.
	So if that is not- I'm actually surprised
	Yes, it's even that high.
	I'm telling you, if that is not evidence... I've seen stories that, you know, like, father, hard-working guy, mother, drug-addicted, accusing this, schizophrenic, and it's like, well, we can't do anything about it.
	It's like, wait, you're gonna leave a child, a baby, with a schizophrenic, drug-addicted mother, but not a father that's like, well, it's the mother, it's just... Here's my thoughts on this, Don.
	Like, when you go through something as horrible as divorce, and it is terrible,
	Kids don't ask for it.
	Children deserve to love both parents.
	Children deserve to have a relationship preserved with both parents.
	And frankly, one of our most sacred constitutional rights, and this is upheld by the Supreme Court, is the ability to raise our own children without state intervention.
	But that is violated in family court.
	Not just for me.
	Think about this.
	And I know that you know what I'm talking about here, given what you and your father have gone through.
	That's being violated in public school systems right now.
	If it can happen to me, if it can happen to me, if it can happen to me, how many other tens of thousands of people, not even just fathers, just people is this happening to?
	Because you talk about the family court, we're talking about
	It's not just sometimes the injustice of the orders itself that gives kids to one parent or the other.
	It's the tens of thousands of dollars in a system that bleeds families bone dry and puts them in poverty.
	And you know, equal shared parenting should be the standard across the board.
	It's something that Congress and Senate, I think both sides of the aisle should take up.
	It should be a federal law.
	But you know who fights against this the most?
	State Bar Associations and Family Court Attorneys.
	Why?
	Because they benefit the most.
	They make the most money from the dysfunction.
	And it's wrong and we shouldn't allow it to happen in a country like America.
	You're rather illustrious military career.
	I do.
	Before I do that, I got to remember, we got started talking and I'm like, Hey, I love it.
	I hope you guys love it.
	And honestly, this is one, we may just do a show on this one because literally it's such a disproportional request I get because so few people are willing to say that, you know, it makes you a terrible person.
	If you're a dad saying, Hey man, I think some dads are getting screwed big time.
	You know, it's crazy, but I do want to thank our sponsors.
	Guys, Gold Co.
	Go to DonJrGold.com.
	These are companies, if you're watching the world, and you're seeing the world go to crap, and you're seeing inflation, you're seeing us being on the brink of war, you see what's going on in interest rates, if you want to hedge against that, maybe you want to look at diversifying your portfolio, check out maybe Precious Metals.
	Go to Gold Co.
	and go to DonJrGold.com.
	I got to say that because
	These are companies that actually it takes balls to like support a show like this and you know to do that so I want to make sure they go and actually do that and also that those companies actually understand where it's coming from because you've seen cancel culture you've seen how difficult that is so you know go check them out.
	Gold Co.
	has done a great job with that but you know my URL for that is donjrgold.com
	And again, if you're like me and you see the world going to crap and you've heard me bitching about this for every episode thus far and probably on all my other social media, maybe it's a good hedge.
	But remember to support those companies that share your values.
	And if you have the guts to come out here to support a show like this in the age of cancel culture, in an age where they've weaponized, you know, going after companies for even
	Supporting a conservative, let alone taking those kind of positions, I think it's really important.
	So donjrgold.com, check it out.
	Maybe a great hedge against that.
	But now I want to talk a little bit about, obviously, your military service.
	Sort of incredible stuff, you know.
	I've heard the stories, but I don't know that everyone else does.
	How'd you get into it, first and foremost?
	That's a great question.
	So, I was a sophomore in college.
	I don't come from a military family, you know.
	And you were going to be a teacher, right?
	Yeah, I was an elementary education major.
	I remember waking up in this rundown college apartment, sleeping on this rundown college couch.
	Not really sure how I got there.
	Crushed Iron City beer cans.
	I mean, I'm from Pittsburgh, so Iron City beer cans everywhere.
	Cigarette butts all on the floor.
	I remember staggering over to the television set.
	We were like a natural light organization.
	Or Nanny Ice if we were going to really spoil ourselves in college.
	So I remember staggering over to the television set, the world spinning, I had the hangover of a lifetime, I turn it on and I watch the TV flicker to life, just in time to see an airplane crash into the World Trade Center.
	You know, I sobered up real quickly and I remember, you know, staggering back and sitting on that run-down couch and watching 9-11 unfold on my TV.
	People tumbling from those flaming towers and landing on the sidewalk and dying.
	People that were lucky enough to survive that fateful day, stagger out of the wreckage, covered from head to toe in that thick gray soot.
	And the only thing you see were those bloodshot eyes and a thousand yards there, you remember that?
	And I wasn't even there.
	Ironically, I graduated from the Wharton School of Finance and I moved to Colorado to be a bartender so I could hunt and fish and just make sure I knew what I was getting into before.
	So 9-11, I came out of the mountains.
	I was elk hunting that morning.
	I came out of the mountains.
	I heard it on the radio.
	I figured it was some moron in a Cessna.
	I didn't know what was going on at first.
	A little bit more ham and I was like literally the next day I was in my car you know driving home because like that was my home I knew people that worked in those buildings and you know the whole leaving to go to Colorado to be a bartender after graduating from Wharton that was a conversation that
	With my father, that was rather interesting.
	I was like, hey, you did what?
	I'm like, well, you know, it's gonna, you know, that was.
	How did that, how did that go?
	That is, that is.
	That was, that was rough.
	You know, like, that was like, you know, Hillary at the debates rough.
	Yeah.
	You know, so it was an interesting one and it was like, okay, well then, you know, you're cut off and you got no credit card.
	The only thing they forgot to cancel was my gas card.
	So I literally like, you know, I worked at a bar and I did fine.
	And once you sort of, in small like ski town in Colorado, like,
	Once you became local, you sort of ate for free, and I worked in a bar, so you took care of the guy that took care of you earlier.
	It was like one big bar system.
	And I made up the differential, basically, by living off gas station food.
	So the gas station sushi thing is real, and it may not be ideal, but you can survive.
	Yeah.
	God, that's almost like a modern-day Bruce Wayne story without the Batman, where you just disappear as Don.
	We're Don Jr.!
	We're Don Jr.!
	Yeah, so after 9-11, I was just so affected by that, I just thought, you know, up until that point in time in my life, I had
	I never really knew what my life's purpose was going to be.
	I heard my mom tell me, and I've heard it said, two most important days of your life are the day that you're born and the day that you figure out why.
	In the wake of our most horrific terrorist attack in our nation's history, I just feel like I knew exactly why God put me on this earth, and that was to serve in the military.
	I went down to the recruiter, said I wanted to go to airborne school so the Army could teach me how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes.
	I wanted to go to ranger school because I knew it was the best leadership school that the Army had to offer.
	And I wanted to be the best leader that I could for my future soldiers.
	And then I wanted to be on the front lines of America's collective response.
	And man, Don, I ended up going to all those cool, sexy schools.
	PCS'd up to, moved up to Fort Drum, New York, which is, I don't know if you know what that is in northern New York, two seasons up there, like July and winter, with the 10th Mountain Division.
	And I was assigned an infantry platoon, and eight months before we went to Afghanistan, we did everything we could to shoot, move, and communicate together as a team, but we found ourselves boots on the ground.
	We're good to go.
	My platoon, we had a company, we had a full company that was thrown out there and we were in charge of everything from Bermel, from Marga, which is a town where we built the very first combat outpost there in 2007, to Bermel, all the way down to Shkin.
	That's the Wild West.
	That's Pakistan.
	We chased the enemy into Pakistan.
	More than a few times.
	I mean we got shot at from PAX.
	So this base that I was assigned to, it was Ford Operating Base Bermel.
	We took over 4,000 and 485 days of combat.
	16 straight months of combat.
	Over 4,000 indirect fire attacks and those were rockets and mortars and artillery.
	And I mean we've gotten hundreds of direct fire engagements with the enemy.
	Now by the way like this was not something
	In 2006, you read about, I'm sure you know, about the horse soldiers and the invasion of Afghanistan and driving the Taliban back into Pakistan.
	If you think back to 2005, 2006, the eyes of this nation were wholeheartedly fixated on the Iraq War.
	You know, George W. Bush was president.
	Like, the surge.
	That was the word.
	Like, should we send more troops to Iraq in a war that's already failing?
	And then the weapons of mass destruction debate was raging, so... Yeah, I guess that was still going on then, right?
	That was where the focus was.
	So you were just... Afghanistan, everyone!
	And we were getting no intelligence from the front line.
	Nothing.
	And that was probably, in terms of combat, more brutal.
	Afghanistan?
	Not even close, right?
	Well, I mean, I don't know that I would say that, because all combat's pretty shitty.
	It was just different.
	It was a different type of combat.
	So, like when you're doing Iraq, you know, there's...
	Military operations in urban terrain, I mean, that is absolutely the worst shit you will ever do.
	Because, first of all, you go into it just with military doctrine expecting to take something like 50 to 60% casualties when you're operating in an urban environment.
	Because you have civilians, you have buildings, you've got guys kicking in doors, clearing rooms, anchoring, kicking in another door, clearing rooms, and that's just exhausting.
	Well, in our techniques, from my understanding from my friends in the military, we weren't used to fighting that kind of war, right?
	You had a breaching system where you ran into the door, but the IED took out the first person in, and it took a while to adapt to the realities of what was going on versus sort of what the textbook procedure would have been, right?
	It was a different thing in Iraq, right?
	We learned a lot on the go.
	We refined what we call our TTPs, our tactics, techniques, and procedures.
	I was never in Iraq, though.
	I was in Afghanistan and my brigade specialized in Afghanistan, meaning like the 3rd Brigade Combat Team in the 10th Mountain Division, the Spartans, we just rotated in and out of Afghanistan.
	And so Afghanistan really, first of all, we weren't getting intelligence from the frontline.
	We didn't know we were getting ourselves into.
	We thought that Afghanistan
	was just a stability and support operation.
	And we realized very quickly that that was not the case.
	Because the Taliban did retreat.
	Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, the Akhani Network, Hekmatyar, they did retreat to Pakistan.
	But they consolidated, reorganized, and came back in 2005.
	And they were ready to fight us.
	They did some fighting in 2005, but they were ready to fight us in 2006 when we got back there.
	You talk about the different styles of combat.
	Let me address that for a second.
	Afghanistan was like an infantryman's dream.
	What I mean by that is, like, you never want to find yourself in a fair fight with the enemy.
	The only thing that you want to do is kick boots on the objective.
	If you're in a fair fight, your tactics suck, right?
	Yeah!
	And so in Afghanistan, we were able to leverage the full military might of the military.
	Like, where we were fighting in...
	When we were fighting in eastern Afghanistan, we were in the mountains, it was like no man's land.
	There was very, very little collateral damage.
	We did a lot, we spent a lot of time and energy relocating people so that we didn't have to worry about hurting civilians when we were there.
	And then it just became about, like, direct fire engagements, using mortars, using artillery, using air power effectively, both rotary wing and fixed wing.
	You know, combat sucks, it's horrible, but if you have to go through it, that's the best way to do it.
	When you know that you're riding into a kill zone, like, you spend enough time in an area of operation, you know that the enemy starts to ambush you from certain places.
	So, the good leaders look at those places and they plot what's called target reference points.
	So, when you're calling for fire, artillery, you're not calling in an eight-digit grid.
	You're not calling in, like, oh, we're at Whiskey Bravo 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and I want you to fire Whiskey Bravo 1.
	No, it's like, hey, fire TRP-1, you know?
	And so,
	When you do that, you know you're going into an ambush zone, you can actually time your assault on an objective with your trucks.
	Okay, we're going to start our movement now, right before we get to phase line alpha, you know, fire target reference point one.
	Okay, fire, fire TRP two and three and so on.
	So that by the time you hit the objective, you just had an artillery rocket, you know, and you can hit the objective
	If you're lucky, the enemy is either dead or severely injured, and you can hit them with some level of surprise.
	And then we were able to use rotary wing, we were able to use fixed wing a lot.
	So what's some of the craziest stories from Afghanistan?
	Maybe both vicious and funny, because I mean, I've heard some interesting sort of funny stories from friends, probably you, I'm just trying to remember which ones there are, but I think there's some amazing ones that, you know, I think people would find interesting.
	Well, we went through, I mean, God, where do you, how much time do you have in this podcast?
	I'm going to tell war stories, but I mean, the one is to talk about the day that I was wounded.
	Um, I call it like my alive day.
	We were perched on a, on a Hill doing an, uh, what we call an observation post and OP.
	I had 24 soldiers on the ground, five gun trucks.
	I had a, an interpreter with me.
	We had two, two 40 Bravo machine guns and Mark 19 and two 50 calibers.
	Um,
	We had our trucks in 360 degree security with my men perched in between the trucks behind cover and concealment.
	We set in at night, did everything right.
	Sun came up.
	I used my Ford Observer, called for fire on places that I thought the bad guys would be.
	Back then we called them.
	Harassment and interdiction fires, OH&I fires, we don't do that anymore, but harassment and interdiction fires, so if the enemy's there, we wanna let them know that we know they're there, and we're just gonna shoot those hilltops to show them.
	And so, we did that that morning.
	I hit this place where it was a cave site where the enemy was moving rockets from Pakistan through this cave into Afghanistan, so we hit this cave with some 105s, and when we did that, man, we just got, it was like hitting a hornet's nest with a baseball bat, and
	We just started getting pounded.
	I mean, um, all I remember probably about 30 seconds after hitting that cave site was waking up in a smoldering hole, probably 20 feet from where I was.
	And I remember the first thing that I remember when I came to was like a burning piece of shrapnel on my leg about this big.
	And,
	I was, Don, I was so out of it that, obviously I was knocked unconscious, and like, I talked about this recently, but this is only really the second time I've ever really talked about this.
	I thought that I was going to die.
	I thought that I was dying.
	And I just remember, I could have sworn I felt like God with me there.
	Yeah, and I'm always afraid to talk about it, man, because there are going to be people out there that, oh, you're crazy.
	Oh, you're a nut job.
	I think that'd be comforting to a lot of people as well.
	I just could have sworn I felt it.
	You know, and I could have sworn I felt my grandfather, who is like, my grandfather was like a second father, figured to me he died the day before I was supposed to go to Afghanistan.
	So, like a St.
	Christopher medal, he wore one, given to him like Christmas of 1945, wore it every day, never took it off.
	I was wearing it in Afghanistan when I got hurt, and I could have sworn I heard him just saying, get up, get up, wake up.
	And I remember things came back to me real slowly that day, it was like somebody was
	You know, turning the sound up on a TV that was sys-static, you know?
	And one of my squad leaders, or one of my team leaders, rather, was sitting on my chest, like, slapping me in the face.
	And he had this big smile on him, and I'm like, like, what is wrong with you, dude?
	And he just, he's like, he's like, sir!
	I'm like, what?
	He's like, you got blown the fuck up!
	And I'm like, what?
	Like, what?
	And so he grabs me by my chest and pulls me up and I'm sitting there on the ground with my legs splayed out in front of me like a two-year-old or something on Christmas morning and I'm looking around at just the devastation that was being wrought in our position and we were getting hit by airburst mortars so mortars that blow up in the sky and the shrapnel rains down on you.
	I think two of my trucks were immediately knocked out of commission and as we later looked and analyzed this attack all of my key leaders were knocked out of that fight within the first minute of the engagement.
	And myself included.
	I had my platoon sergeant who was behind a huge tree.
	And some of these trees in Afghanistan feel like they're untouched by humans.
	They're almost like prehistoric.
	Huge!
	Platoon sergeant laying in the prone behind one of those things, just pointing to his back, screaming to me that he got hit.
	And his back was covered in blood and he got hit with a piece of shrapnel back there.
	And my platoon sergeant, a guy by the name of Greg Greeson,
	You know, I was a second lieutenant.
	Like, I didn't really know what I was doing.
	You know, I was lucky to have guys like my sergeants and even my soldiers who taught, coached, and mentored me every step of the way.
	The fact is, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those guys teaching me everything I know.
	But, so my platoon sergeant was like my partner in crime.
	Like, he taught me everything and he was the voice.
	You know, he was my go-to guy and he was already hurt.
	And so, I knew it was real serious.
	And so,
	I remember standing up and as I stood up I had this clear fluid leak out of my ears and my nose just gushed out and I remember doing this and looking at it and I was like well it's not blood I'm good to go I'm still in the fight.
	Ran back to my truck and I started calling fire on those target reference points that we talked about and I started calling fire on danger close on on our position.
	I don't know if you know what that means, but danger close means that the rounds are going to be exploding around you and that your guys on the hilltop should take cover.
	And as I'm trying to surveil the battlefield and try to keep my head down, because mortars are still raining down all around us, and I remember looking at my hand when I was laying on the ground, Don, the level of fire was so intense.
	I mean, I'm looking at my hand and it's laying on the ground just like this, right?
	And I'm watching bullets land between my fingers.
	Kick up dirt, land between my fingers.
	And later that day, I would look at my uniform.
	I had bullet holes in my pants of my uniform.
	I mean, it was just, it was just... Like an act of God that you weren't... I mean, this is when I learned the whole philosophy of, like, small bullet, big sky.
	Like, it's really freaking hard to hit something.
	It really is.
	Like, even with machine guns.
	And so...
	And the importance of good cover and concealment, but...
	I just, so I'm looking out at everything.
	Got a couple of trucks that are already out.
	So immediately as a leader, I'm thinking, I'm not just going to be able to leave this hilltop.
	We can't leave our equipment out here because we've got top secret radios out here with our CommSec.
	CommSec is basically like all the frequencies that we use to talk.
	Can't leave that out here for the enemy.
	So I'm stuck here on this hilltop with 24 guys.
	And I'm looking at those two hilltops.
	I'm on a hilltop, but I got two hilltops directly east of us, like just right on the Durand line, which is right on the border of Pakistan.
	And on both of those hilltops, so we're getting pounded with airburst mortars, but on both of those hilltops directly east of us, you had three machine gun nests, like each on each hilltop.
	And they had us in a wicked crossfire and they're hitting us with plunging fire.
	So they were in an elevated position.
	They're actually arcing the round down on top of us.
	So that like, if you're in a spot,
	Yeah, so even if you're in what you call a Ranger Graver hasty fighting position, you're laying in the prone and bullets are landing on you, you know?
	So what I was thinking, I was watching them fire, Don, and it was like, they weren't just firing.
	They weren't just firing on Cyclic.
	They were talking the guns.
	Like, one gun would fire and then stop.
	The next gun would fire and then stop.
	And the reason for that is because they didn't want to melt the barrels on their machine guns.
	And so, I'm thinking, okay, I'm on the phone calling for fire, calling for air support, but I'm also thinking like, okay, they hit us with air burst mortars to keep our heads down, while they simultaneously emplaced two different support by fire positions.
	It sounds much more sophisticated than everything you read about, where it's like, oh, you know what I mean?
	You hear about catching these guys, you know,
	With farm animals and stuff like that.
	You're like, no, it's gotta be, but like, this sounds like a really, I'm sure you have some of those stories, too, but.
	Yes, I can tell you want to have this, but you're absolutely right.
	These weren't farmers with pitchforks.
	This wasn't a ragtag consergency.
	These were hardened Afghan fighters that fought against the Russians in the 80s and the Afghan Civil War in the 90s.
	Their whole life has been war.
	Yes, their whole life has been war.
	In fact, you know, your average Afghan fighter or foreign fighter has 10 years combat experience on your 18-year-old American private, so.
	So, I'm thinking to myself, okay, hit us with indirect fire.
	They simultaneously place two support by fires.
	They're attacking just like us.
	What are they going to do next?
	Well, if I'm them, I attack.
	And, like, no sooner did I think that the two platoon-sized elements, 40-man elements, rushed down the hill.
	Like through those support by fire positions, down their hilltop, into the valley below, and started bounding up towards us.
	So about 80 enemy.
	Wow.
	And that was just about the time that the rounds started landing danger close.
	And I remember running out to where the contact is heaviest, because I just believe that that's where a platoon leader is supposed to be.
	If you're leading men in combat, if you aren't where contact is heaviest, you're a fucking useless leader.
	You're a platoon leader, your job is to lead your troops and lead them boldly.
	And so I get out to where the contact is heaviest, the easternmost portion of our perimeter.
	Three of my soldiers had already been shot in the head out there, but every single one of them was still in the fight.
	I'm looking up at a guy named Mike Emmerich, who was up in the turret, and he had taken a bullet to the head.
	Kyle Lewis, it was his very first patrol ever.
	And he's out on patrol with his up and a gun, he gets shot in the head, falls down in the turret, stands back up, no helmet on his head, but gets right back on his gun.
	You hear lots of different advice or philosophies when you're talking about leadership in the Army, and you always hear that good leaders are supposed to inspire their troops.
	Well that day,
	I learned that great troops inspire their leaders.
	And that's sort of become a bedrock of my leadership philosophy moving forward, is that leaders should draw the inspiration from those that they lead.
	It's all about service, right?
	Being a leader is about service.
	And so, watching these rounds land danger close, they're vaporizing these guys, who by the way, this isn't a human wave attack, they're bounding, right?
	With squad level elements, team leaders and a squad leader yelling commands, they're bounding up the hill after us.
	Rounds are hitting danger close.
	I'm watching, you know, two, three guys be vaporized by these artillery rounds that we're dropping and just, you know, two or three more running through the shot and the shell, sprinting up the hill to our position.
	Nothing what we did, nothing of what we had was stopping them.
	There were just so many of them.
	They were outnumbered 10 to one.
	And I'm thinking, man, I want to give the command to fix bayonets.
	And then I realized that the army didn't issue us bayonets for that deployment.
	So, you know,
	So that was outnumbered 10 to 1 on a hill in Afghanistan.
	24 guys on the ground.
	I think the fight ended up being something like 10 hours before we got everything off of that hilltop.
	But it was Apache helicopters with the call sign fullback.
	That two Apache helicopters that came in and saved us, along with my company commander with a platoon, a Delta platoon that was in the area, responded as a quick reaction force on the hilltop, responded with, augmented with ANA, two Apache helicopters.
	And then, and we talk about bringing the full might of the U.S.
	military to bear, we brought in a B-1 strategic lancer that dropped like 12 2,000 pound JDAMs on the cave site.
	Then and only then did we get them to break contact.
	So that, that like 485 days of stuff like that.
	Tough stuff like that.
	Yeah, mine are too tough.
	And by the way, by the way, as a young platoon leader, as a young infantry guy, like... But you're a terrible American, Sean, according to the radicals in the mainstream press.
	Well, well, I'll say this.
	I did want to test myself, like, see what combat was like, and we got in our first firefight, and we did all right, you know?
	My men were amazing.
	I mean, I say men, because we only had men back in the infantry back then.
	Like, now, you know, it was... All right.
	That's got to be where we go next, right?
	Thank you.
	Okay.
	Talk about woke military.
	Okay.
	I love seeing a leader, it seems sort of opposite from what I see today.
	And again, I didn't say I can't, whatever, but I see a guy like Millie, like I want to learn about white rage.
	He's got medals from here, never won a war.
	Not sure he's even seen combat, but then you see Eisenhower, like one little pin, like one World War II fighter dude.
	It's so, like, insane watching this, but you see a general, I use the example on the stump speech all the time, you know, when the Afghan withdrawal.
	I want to hear your thoughts on that, because to me that was like a low point in American history, and I didn't shed blood or lose brains there like you did, right?
	But I saw that, and then I see him testify before Congress.
	I want to learn about white rage.
	Really?
	You couldn't have seen, a quote, I could not have seen, meaning,
	I know nothing.
	Let's just assume I know jack shit about Afghanistan.
	I saw it coming.
	We leave them $86 billion worth of equipment.
	The Russians are now buying it to use against us in Ukraine.
	They couldn't have seen it coming, but he's worried about white rage not actually winning the war.
	What do you see with woke military?
	What would you tell your son as a patriotic American about joining the military, knowing that if he's a red-blooded
	No, you may have no chance.
	If you want to be an admiral, go be trans.
	You'll get it in two weeks, it feels like.
	I'm saying it kind of funny, but I'm also not.
	There's truth in it.
	Yeah, there is, of course.
	After Afghanistan, I watched Blinken get up there.
	We are shocked and dismayed.
	I think this is almost verbatim.
	We are shocked and dismayed that the Taliban did not install a more diverse and inclusive government.
	What the fuck have you been watching?
	All of a sudden the Taliban are third generation feminists.
	I can't take these people seriously.
	You're going to be the Secretary of State of the United States and that's a serious question.
	What did you think?
	There was going to be a trans coalition?
	They were going to bring in Leah Thomas?
	What the fuck did you think was going to happen?
	How do you take these people seriously?
	And again, you lost friends there.
	You could have lost your own life there.
	And you're watching these clowns
	It was very difficult to watch the fall of Afghanistan.
	It was very difficult.
	And the reason for that is, and this has shaped my view on foreign policy, and we can talk about, you know, people talking about the war in Ukraine and how we should support that.
	And by the way, I understand
	The idea of peace through strength and that the idea that if there are republics in the world... Trump believed in that!
	Yes, he did.
	But he wasn't a warmonger because he wasn't worried about getting on the board of Raytheon.
	The way to do that is to sell a lot of missiles to make sure you have the connections to keep these things going.
	You know, I think that's why you have woke generals now.
	Like, the American public actually doesn't want to be in Neverending Wars anymore either.
	Both sides.
	It's actually like a bipartisan issue, so... That's exactly right.
	Rather than, you know, their exit for the generals isn't like, you know, a board seat at Raytheon.
	Now it's a board seat at Disney.
	Yeah.
	The way to do that is by... Look, we have... Giving Disney what they want, which is woke bullshit.
	We have a senior leadership problem in the military.
	Full stop.
	And in fact, when Milley was talking about white rage, I was in the thick of running for Senate at that point.
	But I think that there's a tweet out there from me prior to the collapse of Afghanistan.
	I think I said something like, maybe you should stop focusing on white rage and start focusing on withdrawal responsibly from Afghanistan.
	Two months later, Afghanistan completely collapsed.
	And by the way, the intel was completely wrong.
	We thought that the Afghan National Army could stand on it.
	I knew they couldn't.
	I know guys on both sides.
	I have other friends that served over there that have gone to great lengths.
	They had an interpreter or someone that they fought to get in there.
	But you've seen the opposite.
	You've had a story where... There are Kandaks, what they call battalions, that
	Can stand on their own, that are courageous, that are elite fighters, they're great, you want them by your side in the trenches.
	But Don, you don't have an army unless you can pay them, water them, feed them, sustain them, supply chains.
	Afghanistan is so corrupt, I knew in my heart of hearts that they would never have that.
	Because most of the aid that we were giving them was going to their cousins, their brothers, their uncles, corrupt warlords who were in charge of large geographic swaths of Afghanistan.
	And Afghanistan is largely tribal, so it's very, very corrupt.
	But I knew that an Afghan collapse was imminent.
	By the way, again, I knew nothing about it, and I knew it was imminent.
	Let's give the Taliban the biometric scanners so they can find anyone who's been helping us in a war against them for 20 years.
	They're going to do the right thing because they're good human beings.
	Remember, they were supposed to install a diverse and inclusive government despite the fact that they were throwing homosexuals off buildings for the last few decades.
	They would put journalists in cages and douse them in gasoline and light them on fire.
	And we're going to leave them $86 billion in U.S.
	equipment.
	How much of that equipment will be used to oppress
	Good people in Afghanistan.
	Murder, maim, pillage for generations to come.
	It's not like us where it's like, oh, well, we used the truck for two weeks, let's just leave it to someone else.
	They'll get 30 years out of a truck that we've used for two years.
	And look, when I say we have a general problem, we do.
	There's something about when you pin the stars on your shoulders, you are less of a military leader in this day and age and more of a politician.
	So what made that happen?
	I think that there is a shift in focus in our military.
	If you look at World War II, we have the same amount of generals today in our army that we did in World War II, and our army in World War II was far bigger.
	So I think we have, to a certain extent, too many chiefs and not enough Indians.
	And by the way, there are some really great generals in the army too, but the problem is, is that you have a lot, like we talk about Millie, when you're focused on things like white rage, you're not focused... I had never even heard about white rage before.
	I heard, I was like,
	That's weird.
	I'm watching congressional testimony and it's like a made-up phrase to satisfy woke... Those are not... Here's the thing.
	In combat, people's lives are on the line.
	Yeah.
	I don't care if the guy is black, blue, green, purple, like...
	I just want the best fighter in my foxhole.
	It seems pretty logical.
	Yeah, absolutely right.
	And when you're focused on things like weight rage, and people will say, oh, well, the military can do two things at once.
	No!
	Stop!
	You still have men and women in the field.
	The men and women that serve this country are America's most precious resource.
	And you have them out there, front towards enemy, while you're on Capitol Hill talking about some liberal bullshit.
	Two months later, an entire country collapses.
	And oh, by the way, we've been there for 20 years.
	We've spent billions and billions and billions of dollars in Afghanistan.
	Like, blood, sweat, and tears in Afghanistan.
	I've lost probably 30 of my friends since I came into the military.
	30 of them!
	We're good to go.
	We're amazing.
	Like, we built schools.
	We built wells.
	We did humanitarian distributions.
	There are little girls that are reading in Afghanistan today because we taught them how to read.
	Boys and girls working in the economy of Afghanistan, never having had that opportunity before.
	And those girls, by the way, they're not allowed to even get a basic education anymore because we let the Taliban...
	Yes, so when I say, no, we did so many great things, but our leadership in Washington broke it.
	And by the way, Republicans and Democrats.
	So this is why I say, if you're going to send America's sons and daughters into the fight, and you're a senior military leader, you have a moral obligation to win with a clear-cut mission and a clear-cut end state.
	Here's the mission, here's what success and victory look like, and when that's done, we're done.
	And here's the problem, and this is why I have real issues with Ukraine.
	You know, never mind the fact that there's a weird incestuous relationship between Biden and fire the prosecutor and a billion dollars and it's honoring Ukraine.
	If it was Don Jr.
	it'd be a problem.
	We're not even questioning whether we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars because we don't know what they have.
	Seems like a reasonable question.
	We don't know what they have on us.
	Is that blackmail?
	And God knows there seems like there's a lot of it, right?
	Imagine what Hunter didn't put on the laptop, right?
	Do we really not think that there's a solid chance that one...
	Name a foreign nation that probably doesn't have a Hunter laptop.
	This guy has more laptops than any human being in the world, and they end up everywhere.
	It's very clear that Hunter and the Biden family are compromised.
	They are.
	The media is not reporting on it, but they are.
	You can't do the things that Hunter Biden was doing, 10% to the big guy, and have that family not be compromised.
	In fact,
	They shouldn't even have top-secret government security clearances.
	They should not.
	But here's the thing about Ukraine and what I was talking about.
	There are conservatives out there and neocons out there, of which I am not one.
	I am willing, if our freedom in this country was ever threatened, I'd be the first one in line to defend it.
	Well, you've proven that.
	Most of them haven't.
	I'm not.
	What I'm saying, Don, is that we just came off of 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
	There are already people in Washington trying to send us back into the fight.
	My kids now will be a part of that.
	Go into Ukraine where the stakes are much higher, where you've got nuclear weapons, the geopolitical situation is
	Far more complicated.
	We probably still have Americans trapped in Afghanistan, and we're already trying to start a new war.
	Well, we left them.
	I mean, it seems to me like the basic tenet, we're like, leave no man behind, but we left our civilians.
	We left!
	We pulled out our military, left the equipment, left our civilians, left the enemy's biometric scanners to make sure they could root out all, like, I'm saying, who?
	My five-year-old could have done a greater job, you know, at the time, you know, pulling us out of Afghanistan than the people who are supposed to be the generals in charge.
	So listen, like, you have Reagan era, and by the way, Ronald Reagan was an amazing president.
	Foreign policy at the time was incredible.
	Like, the Reagan era peace through strength doctrine, right?
	And the idea that the promulgation of democracies all over the world will make the world a safer and freer place is true.
	It is true, but
	I don't know.
	There hasn't been enough time that's gone by, right?
	Let's just get in another one!
	Yeah, so let's get in another one before we learn the lessons of the past.
	No, by the way, every American that's watching this that, like, are you willing?
	Are you willing to sacrifice your son or daughter fighting for Ukraine?
	By the way, a regime that by any standard is just as corrupt, in some cases, rated more corrupt than Russia itself.
	I'm not saying Putin's an angel, but we're creating a billionaire oligarch class who's taking care of it.
	Now, I understand that a lot of this is a kickback to Big War.
	Big War watched Big Pharma get rich over the last two years.
	They're saying, bitches, it's my turn again.
	I want to get back at the trough.
	But, like, it's insane.
	And the guy that was supposed to start World War III, Donald Trump, is the only person that's been the voice of reason in all of this, ending the many wars.
	The man had peace in the Middle East, and I never thought I'd ever see that in my lifetime.
	Yeah.
	That was the holy grail of geopolitical, you know, like, accomplishment.
	And no one could ever do it.
	And Trump, the guy that was going to start World War III, according to all of these people, was the only guy, actually, that got peace deals done, only guy advocating to end the never-ending wars, only guy, frankly, right now, in and on the Republican side even, too, being like,
	Hey, uh, like, what's the endgame in Ukraine?
	He's pursuing peace.
	Peace is the responsibility of anyone with enormous power.
	But he's also the only one.
	They weren't floating balloons over, despite what they said.
	They tried that story last week.
	Oh, there were multiple balloons under Trump.
	Really?
	Where?
	All of a sudden, that disappeared really quickly once you called them out.
	But you also didn't have Russia invading their neighbors.
	They did under Bush.
	They did under Obama.
	They're doing it again under Biden.
	They didn't do it under Trump, because they understood resolve and strength.
	That's right.
	You'd be able to build back the military so you would be capable of actually fighting a war, which I think would be very questionable right now.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, especially when you look at the threat of China.
	We're spending resources and missiles and depleting our stockpiles.
	Look at what just came out about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
	Yeah.
	Well, that's an act of war, by the way.
	It looks like.
	With a nuclear power.
	With a nuclear power.
	So we basically destroyed a pipeline that supplied natural gas to almost all of Europe, right?
	So by destroying that pipeline, a byproduct of that would be hurting the European people in those countries that are now struggling and paying more for gas.
	But it gets more complicated than that even, though, because the problem we have is that
	We allowed Europe to become dependent on Russia oil.
	We sat there and said, OK, Germany, oh, you want Russia oil?
	OK.
	And then they say, OK, well, NATO, we need you to kick in billions more to protect us from Russia, who they're enriching by using their natural gas rather than getting it from us, rather than drilling for it themselves.
	We're sitting there being like, OK, so we're going to spend more money protecting you from the guys that you guys are getting rich.
	In that case, Angela Merkel.
	It's insane that we're even having these conversations.
	And Trump was the only guy to be like, this is bullshit.
	Trump was the only one, the only leader that we've had in my lifetime that pursued peace.
	And for all the bullshit that the media talked about, he's going to start World War III.
	Well, the fact is, we're closer to World War III.
	I hate to use that hyperbole because it's almost cliche, but it's true.
	The Biden administration said it.
	It's exactly right.
	We have not been this close to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
	And everyone's like, ah, it's fine, let's keep giving money to Ukraine.
	I'm sure Zelensky's a wonderful, you know, he's not corrupt at all, right?
	Despite everything we know.
	Well, if the reporting is correct, it seems like they did everything in a way to avoid ever having to bring it to Congress, even though, had they done, you know, moved this widget there, all of a sudden that would have merited it.
	So, you know, you do that with a nuclear power who's sitting on a 6,000 nuclear warhead arsenal, you've backed a
	Dictatorial strongman into a corner.
	I think I'd say the Russian performance in Ukraine, while devastating in many respects, was also one of the great underperforms of modern military history.
	Meaning, I think everyone in the world was like, oh, that'll be over in two weeks.
	The Ukrainians.
	And now we're here a year later, the Ukrainians have put up a good fight.
	They're great, yeah.
	We're in a proxy war.
	I mean, they've used our equipment.
	We're basically at war with Russia, whether we're going to pretend to or not.
	Where does it end?
	That's the question.
	When does Russia say, you know what?
	Fuck this.
	We're actually fighting the US.
	Let's do something about it.
	Or Europe.
	I will tell you that Russia is not going to break contact in Ukraine.
	And what it's looking like... It's because of the personalities, right?
	It's different than the US, where everyone's a participant.
	I grew up in Eastern Europe.
	I understand that there's a strong, tough guy mentality.
	They wouldn't do it just to save face.
	It's a cultural thing as much as anything else.
	Putin's not going to lose
	They're not going to.
	Russia is not going to break contact.
	They're not.
	And so, what it looks like, we're going to be in a 10-15 year stalemate in Ukraine.
	And that's not an ideal situation.
	And frankly, nobody in the Biden administration
	And not even anyone, very few people in the media are even asking questions about what peace looks like in Ukraine.
	What does a negotiated settlement look like?
	No one's even asking, not one single question!
	Because as long as there's this much money floating around...
	Like, it's going to continue.
	Like, you know how to get peace talks going?
	Hey, there's a finite, we're cutting this off at XYZ point in time.
	Literally, otherwise they're going to, hey, we're using American missiles, we're going to send this away.
	Like, there's going to be nothing left.
	It's, the loss of life is disgusting and shit.
	But like, until we say like, hey, the blank check ends at a certain point, you better get to the table.
	It's like we're not even trying.
	It's like, oh, well, you know, everyone's making some money along the way, and big wars, you know, we haven't been in a war in like, you know, nine months, so like, seems like a good time to start making some money selling missiles again.
	That's my opinion, but it just seems like so obvious.
	And nobody in the media is asking questions about it.
	I think that during the White House press briefing today, nobody asked the White House press secretary about the Nord Stream 2 bombing, which is probably one of the most significant stories of our time.
	And it's also the most plausible.
	Oh, yes.
	I remember when that happened, I go, oh, of course.
	I mean, I didn't know evidence, but I was like, of course we did that.
	They were like, well, maybe the Russians did it.
	I was like, the Russians blew up their billion-dollar pipeline that was going to be a leverage point that gave them the money to fuel?
	I don't understand.
	Maybe if you told me the Ukrainians did it, I'd say, fine, but I don't know that they have the sophistication to do that.
	They don't have the sophistication to do that.
	So I'm sitting there being like, oh, yeah, the Russians did it to themselves.
	You read Seymour Hersh's report.
	It's unbelievably rigorous and detailed.
	It's like... It's like Wuhan Lab Week.
	Of course it came from the Wuhan Lab Week.
	No, no, no.
	Bullshit.
	It came from three feet outside of the lab.
	It came from a bat in its seat.
	Somebody ate a bat sandwich outside of the lab.
	It clearly didn't come from the lab that studies the fucking virus.
	The coronavirus, yeah.
	And we've been funding with Game of Function Research for like...
	Years.
	It came from right outside.
	And if you were a doctor and said, but wait, but this is like, you know, Ockman's razor, right?
	Like, this is obviously where, like, you know, the most plausible answer is probably the answer.
	There's a coronavirus lab there.
	No, no, no.
	You'd lose your tenure.
	You'd lose... That clearly didn't come from that.
	Of course it's the most plausible, but we're at a stage where we're incapable of even talking about the obvious.
	I agree, I agree, and it's scary, it's dangerous, and so that's why, you know, look, freedom is worth fighting for, America's worth defending, but we also have to be careful about
	Yes, absolutely.
	Yes.
	Putting America first is terrible.
	Sean, how could you possibly do that?
	You know, the globalist agenda?
	It's crazy.
	I know.
	I mean, we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Ukraine, the lion's share of which we have no idea where it's going, while Americans struggle to put food on the table for their family.
	Like, they can't afford groceries.
	Gas is through the roof.
	You know, you talk about kitchen table issues.
	There are a lot of kitchen table issues that Americans are struggling with on a day-to-day basis, yet this administration seems like they're focused on
	Well, I mean, one of the things I see that being out of touch with the American people is sort of the crisis at the border and immigration.
	I remember, I think it was Tucker, you told a story about sort of being just against sort of this unvetted
	Yeah.
	Not everyone there is a true refugee looking for a better... There's a lot of bad stuff going on there.
	And let's just say this, too.
	The United States of America is the most generous country on the face of the planet.
	It's not even close!
	We let millions of legal immigrants into this country.
	There's not another country in this world that does that.
	So, like, right then and there... Any notion of, like, America's terrible, it's off the table.
	It's ridiculous.
	We're an amazing country.
	People would die to come here.
	But we do have to secure our southern border.
	And you talk about the people that are coming across the border, specifically we talk about Afghan refugees.
	And I do use that term loosely because not all of them are refugees, especially when you're in the midst of an asymmetric fight and there is zero record keeping in Afghanistan.
	If you talk to an Afghan out in Paktika province and ask them how old they are, they often don't know when their birthday is.
	Because they don't, you want to go back to a time where Jesus Christ walked the earth.
	Add the AK-47 and the Hilux pickup truck and you've got Afghanistan.
	There's no economy.
	At least where I, there's 90% of Afghanistan, no paved roads, no running water, no electricity.
	They cut down wood in the summer and they burn that wood in the winter to stay warm.
	They've got a bazaar where they do trading, but that's it.
	And so it's impossible.
	It's physically impossible to vet those people when they're coming over in large swath either from Afghanistan or across our southern border.
	Well, so you had a particular story, I guess, with an Afghan interpreter sort of turned on.
	Yeah, so we had an interpreter.
	This was one of the ones who was vetted.
	But as is typically the case in Afghanistan, a lot of the loyalties there shift with the debtor center.
	They can be bought.
	As the tide shifts, it's like, oh, those guys are going to be in charge.
	We're going to do something, throw them a solid?
	And I'm not saying that we shouldn't take care of our interpreters.
	We should.
	I had great interpreters in Afghanistan when the fall of Afghanistan happened.
	We worked overtime and put the Senate campaign on pause to work our asses off to get them out.
	I remember you speaking to me about that.
	You know, but these are guys that we knew and we vetted.
	And when we were in Afghanistan, like, these guys, we vetted them to a certain extent, but we had a guy turn in our platoon, ended up working as a sleeper inside of our unit, and was tracking our movements, and I was home on leave, and he brought, he coordinated with a Pakistani IED cell, and they put a plastic TC6 Italian anti-tank mine
	We're good to go.
	from an interpreter who turned on us.
	And so I'm not saying that America shouldn't work hard to save the people who are good for us.
	I'm just saying that in the most extreme form of flying tens of thousands of unvetted refugees into our country and releasing them onto the streets is not a good idea.
	And you see that playing out in New York City now, where you've got the mayor of New York City.
	I can't remember his name now.
	I'm drawing a blank.
	Yeah, he's handing out train tickets to Canada.
	To elsewhere.
	You know, we want them in there, but not here.
	Sanctuary cities everywhere else, but not here.
	This is too much.
	I'm like, wait, so you expect others to take millions and you can't take a few?
	It's like, well, it's going to stress our area.
	And so all I'm saying is that the left's position or the mainstream, and even some on the right are like, bring them here, bring them here, bring them here.
	It's like, wait a second.
	Let's take a step back.
	Let's have a plan.
	There wasn't one in place.
	And we're seeing some tragedies play out now where we have Afghan refugees that are getting in trouble, getting arrested, assaulting people.
	I think some have even been arrested for murder.
	Well, look at Europe.
	I mean, the rape statistics and all these things, and they're coming from a very specific demographic, and you're not allowed to say that, and that's a terrible thing.
	I mean, I got... I got in shit, like, in 16, I put out a... It was like a meme, basically, a bowl of Skittles.
	Like, you know, if one of these were poisonous, and you die eating it, like...
	Here's the thing that kills me.
	The left conflates legal immigration with illegal immigration.
	To them, it's the same.
	There's a process by which we bring people to this country.
	Go through the process.
	My mother went through that process.
	Yes.
	They're like, oh, you're anti-immigrant.
	I'm like, I don't know, my mom's an immigrant.
	What are you talking about?
	My grandmother was an immigrant.
	My dad's current wife is an immigrant.
	I know.
	It's just common sense, but common sense is not so common anymore.
	It's not so common, especially inside the Beltway on Capitol Hill.
	So tell me about your new podcast.
	Oh, yeah.
	So I've got this new podcast.
	We've got nine episodes out.
	You guys got to check this out.
	Yeah, so it's a podcast called Battleground.
	And I mean, we just have, we've had some incredible guests on.
	We had Pete Hegseth, Lisa Booth, Joe Kent, Amber Smith.
	I mean, probably a lot more coming.
	We have Nick Palmashano.
	We got to get you on the podcast too.
	But it's, but it's awesome.
	So, you know, please subscribe to my YouTube channel.
	Like we'd love to have you.
	And we just basically.
	And you're on Rumble, right?
	Yeah.
	We're good to go.
	So yes, I just, I did start a Rumble channel and go subscribe to the Rumble channel too.
	But look, we have super interesting, great people on.
	We talk about life, leadership, overcoming adversity, you know, in a soundbite culture, you know, you don't get to learn a whole lot about the people that you see on your TV every day.
	And so on my podcast, we talk about that stuff.
	Yeah, and that's what's interesting.
	I mean, I think we had this conversation sort of earlier.
	We've known each other a long time, but we're so used to being the interviewee.
	Yes.
	We're also so used to being like, you have four minutes to make 97 points.
	Get it done.
	And they're like, Don, you talk so fast.
	You're very good at it.
	Yeah, you're very good.
	I got to crank that shit out.
	I'm from New York, first and foremost, but I got to get it all in there.
	So it's cool to have this format.
	It takes some getting used to, actually.
	Trying not to be the guy that's always talking because I've spent years of just being the guy that's answering a question.
	I'll talk forever.
	So it's a cool format but I think the long form thing is actually really interesting.
	I hope the viewers find it that way because you can sort of learn a lot more about what's really going on and you're so used to it.
	You've got four minutes on Hannity and you've got to pitch it.
	If we're going to change this country, there are ways in which we can organize, like The Left does, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, together.
	One of those ways to do that is podcasting.
	I started this podcast.
	We've only been doing it for a month, but it's been a pretty amazing journey.
	I do it myself.
	It's fun.
	It's fun.
	I think it's important.
	I think the industry of podcasting is in its infancy.
	It's great.
	Help me out.
	Subscribe to it.
	That'd be great.
	Yeah, it's Battleground with Sean Parnell, and yeah, you're right, I think it's interesting also that even the mainstream media, and even conservative mainstream media, like, you can see their agenda.
	Yeah.
	You know, I mean, there's a lot of, like, I used to be on all the time, and then they were like, well, we don't really like that, we're gonna go a different, like, you don't even get asked anymore.
	I know.
	And it's like, wait a minute, like, I don't know, I think I have a pretty big voice, and you can see that's their sort of hand, no different than politics, trying to control.
	They want the power back, they want, you know, a candidate that
	They really own.
	Because they need them to actually do it.
	That's why Trump's a threat.
	He doesn't need the money.
	He doesn't need the airtime.
	He sort of has his ability to get it.
	And so, you know, even watching that dynamic, even amongst the conservative side of things, you realize, you know, like, I feel like we're doing this for, like, the right reasons.
	Like, we believe in it.
	Like, I didn't need this shit.
	You know what I mean?
	Like, I had a pretty good life.
	My dad definitely didn't need this shit.
	And it's like, well, now I'm in the fight.
	Now we're not going to stop.
	Now I see what we're up against.
	You know what's interesting, Don?
	Some of the people on the left are some of the most unqualified individuals ever.
	The only thing that they're qualified to do is bloviate and talk about politics, but rarely have they ever done anything.
	If you're a leftist, you'd be a White House press secretary or something, which, by the way, is an accomplished position.
	It's an important position.
	You know, checkbox, lesbian, whatever it may be, and it's like, well, that qualifies you.
	It's like, I got shit last, two weeks ago, another Buttigieg one, you know, we're going through like the fifth transportation crisis, you know, this is the most qualified, well, what made him qualified?
	Basically, my opinion was, he was most qualified because he was gay and he was a presidential candidate, but he would have never been qualified to be a president.
	He was a consultant and a mayor of a shitty town in Indiana that was small, like, he had no accomplishment, no one knew who he was.
	But, like, he was gay, so, like, obviously you can be a presidential candidate.
	You don't have to do anything.
	Listen, listen, you're exactly, like, yes, this is exactly what I'm talking about, how it seems like the whole of our country, like, if you're a Democrat, you can be the most unqualified person in the world, be, you know, work as a consultant in the White House, and then go be on the board of Amazon.
	You know, if you're a conservative and you run for a political office, you lose everything.
	Yeah, well, I got attacked because I said, like, hey man, like, you can be smart on paper and academic, doesn't mean you're qualified to do the job.
	And someone went, like, oh my god, he's attacking people.
	Of course I am, like, because he oversaw a supply chain crisis that it was a disaster, right?
	Like, we've never seen before.
	Then, in the midst of a supply chain crisis, he goes on paternity leave.
	I think that's wonderful.
	Unless 350 million Americans are depending on you to do your job.
	Then maybe you say, maybe we should, you know what I mean?
	Like, I don't know, I'm fine.
	If you're a kindergarten teacher and you're dead, like, you know, hey, go earn a paternity leave.
	I think it's wonderful.
	I don't, but like, if that many million Americans, you can't just be like, I'm just going to check out.
	Then you oversleep.
	He was on paternity leave for like six months.
	Well, yeah, you know, and I, you know, I understand that, you know, we're allowed to chest feed and all this shit today, but like,
	You then oversaw the train crisis.
	Then you had, you know, what was either a cyber attack, they don't seem to know.
	But, you know, our air traffic control systems were grounded for the first time since 9-11.
	And like, where's Mayor Pete?
	We think we figured it out.
	Like, if it was a conservative in that position... It would be non-stop outrage.
	He'd be on trial.
	I know.
	Mayor Pete, like, who knows?
	Maybe he was back on paternity leave.
	They're beyond reproach.
	I remember when he took over as Transportation Secretary.
	I remember seeing this video of him driving up in a Suburban close to the White House.
	And then the Secret Service pulls out the bike and he puts on some stupid element.
	I got fact-checked.
	They said it wasn't true even though it was on video.
	So I don't know exactly what happened, but that's the point.
	What is that guy doing in that job?
	Well, he's a Rhodes Scholar.
	Well, that's wonderful.
	Elon Musk is an incredible rocket scientist.
	If I wanted to
	Go to Mars, he's my guy.
	I wouldn't let him perform brain surgery on me because they're not the same.
	I know.
	The intelligence doesn't equate to actually being able to do something.
	Look, we know plenty of people that are academically smart that don't do shit in the real world.
	The left is filled with, you know, well-educated, well-credentialed midwits.
	Yeah.
	You know?
	So that was, yeah, that's the...
	I realize we're way over time, but that was fun.
	We're gonna figure this shit out, folks.
	We got this.
	Tune back in.
	We're gonna do seven more hours with Sean Carmichael.
	I'm coming up in a minute, but... Now listen, we're gonna have to continue this conversation, because I think... I hope it's refreshing for everyone else to...
	Stay salty on Rumble, see?
	They're liking it, so we'll have to do this again.
	But guys, go check out Sean Parnell, his podcast, Battleground.
	Now that we're competing in the podcasting world, it's okay.
	I don't know about that.
	We're on the same team.
	We're on the same team.
	A guy like you, it's an honor to be your friend.
	Thanks, Don.
	I hate what happened because I think you'd be awesome
	In that role, but I think you're the kind of guy that's going to stay engaged, and whether you're in the Senate or whether you're in the House, you're going to do just as much fighting for our country as you have throughout your whole life.
	And I think it's just an honor to call you a friend, and I want to thank you for being here.
	Yeah, thank you.
	Guys, I want to thank you for watching.
	Again, go check out Sean, go check out his books, everything that he's done.
	It's an amazing story.
	Just a true American patriot.
	I want to, again, thank our sponsors of this show, Gold Co.
	Go check out DonJrGold.com.
	Go check it out.
	You know, it's weird doing that, but like, to actually be able to get out there, it sounds... You're just crazy, man.
	You're still laughing about the things that you were saying about Budokai.
	Oh, and guess what?
	Tomorrow, like, they're gonna try to cancel me, say that I'm being... Like, I don't know how... Like, show me something that's factually inaccurate, you know?
	They... You know?
	But... No, but because he's a Democrat, he's beyond reproach, right?
	It was like Mueller.
	Well, Mueller was a... Like, Mueller... Do you remember when they sang the song about Mueller?
	How come they don't talk about him anymore?
	And then you see him get up and testify.
	I'm like, holy shit, like...
	Joe Biden looks articulate compared to Robert Mueller, but because he was a former Marine, it was like, you know, they tried putting someone that you couldn't attack, but that's the problem.
	You know, just, you could be a Marine, plenty of these, doesn't mean you don't turn into a piece of, I honor that service, I think that's wonderful, but it doesn't mean you're beyond reproach for the rest of your life.
	It doesn't mean you could be a bad actor.
	You know, Hunter Biden, like, he can get away with anything that I couldn't get away with, and it's fine.
	Just call it out.
	Like, you know, again, I promise you, someone's going to try to cancel me for that one, but I don't give a shit.
	Like, bring it.
	Like, please show me someone with common sense that doesn't, like, even someone on the left isn't like, OK, fine.
	Don't cancel me.
	I can't take it anymore.
	Don't cancel Sean, OK?
	I can't take it anymore.
	I'm not the son of a billionaire.
	I can't take being canceled anymore.
	But, yeah, guys, thank you again.
	I really appreciate it.
	Go check out DonJrGold.com.
	Listen to this.
	The world is going to shit.
	It's probably good to diversify your portfolio, to have other options.
	And again, it's really critical.
	A whole tenant of this podcast is going to be shedding a light on those who are willing to support the conservative cause.
	We've seen how quickly people will cancel that.
	We've seen how quickly they'll throw you off.
	We see what they do to you, attack your families.
	These people would put you in the gulag.
	So if someone's going to go out there and have the balls to support a conservative cause,
	If you're going to look that way, do whatever you want.
	But if you're looking at something, take the time to find the companies that share your values.
	So Don Jr.
	D-O-N-J-R Gold.com.
	It's Gold Co.
	They've been awesome.
	They'll teach you about it.
	You'll learn about it.
	You make your own decisions.
	But again, support those who believe in the stuff that you believe in and who will put their business, their lives on the line to fight for the stuff that we all believe in.
	So I really appreciate them.
	I really appreciate you guys.
	It's been awesome.
	I think we went really late, but I'll do a couple minutes of locals as well.
	Sean, if you want, I'll do that.
	You go get a beer.
	Everyone likes Kimberly.
	We'll come down, hang out, maybe have a cigar before this is all over.
	So thanks a lot, guys.
	I appreciate it.
	You're the best.
	And we'll see you probably on Monday.

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