Americans Mark 22 Years Since 9/11 Terror Attacks: Interview with Congressional Candidate, Green Beret Veteran & Gold Star Husband Joe Kent | TRIGGERED Ep.67
Americans Mark 22 Years Since 9/11 Terror Attacks: Interview with Congressional Candidate, Green Beret Veteran & Gold Star Husband Joe Kent | TRIGGERED Ep.67
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Hey guys, welcome to another major episode of Triggered.
We're joined today by Washington State Congressional candidate Joe Kent.
Joe's a good friend.
He's an Army Green Beret veteran and a Gold Star husband.
We're honored to have him, especially on this 22nd anniversary of the
Terrible 9-11 terror attacks.
Joe enlisted in the army at 18 years old, basically right after these attacks, and we'll talk about all of that.
He served our country for over 20 years, including 11 combat deployments.
He's now running for Congress in Washington's 3rd District.
He lost last year in a really
Close election decided by fewer than 3,000 voters, which is why it's so important for us to get involved.
And when we talk about the stuff going on in Washington State and neighboring Oregon and some of the insanity there, I'm sure you'll understand why we need to stay engaged and in the game.
On this 22nd anniversary of the 9-11 terror attacks, hearing Joe's story of heroism, service, and sacrifice really exemplifies what it means to love your country and to put America first.
So this episode, I think, is going to be very powerful.
It's going to lay out just what's at stake for the future of our country.
For those of you who aren't sure which direction it's headed, maybe this will clarify what should be obvious to anyone with an IQ above about 3.
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So with that, joining us now is, again, my good friend, Green Beret veteran, Republican candidate in Washington's 3rd Congressional District, Joe Kent.
Joe, good to have you, buddy.
How you doing?
Great to be with you.
Thanks so much for having me.
I'm doing well.
Yeah, I think the last time I saw you was kind of a rough day for me.
I know you were doing a fundraiser down in Florida, and it was one of the days, you know, they were trying to indict my father, and it got a little hectic.
I was like, well, I got speaking here, but I kind of got to go be with him.
Like, yeah.
I was torn, but, you know, it's awesome to see you're still in the fight.
How you doing?
We're just grinding away at it.
Got a lot of good county level endorsements.
Got the state GOP's endorsement and can't thank you enough for all your support, especially the day that your father got indicted.
I think that was the initial indictment.
You still showed up and spoke at my fundraiser, so that just speaks to your commitment to this cause.
So thank you very much for having me on and always supporting.
Well, listen, thank you for that, but I mean, you know, obviously we all do what we can a little bit, but, you know, I think, you know, you exemplify all the people I know and all the incredible people that I've seen that have served and done those things.
I mean, you really stand out amongst, you know, some pretty incredible Americans.
I mean, today, it's the 22nd anniversary of 9-11.
I guess you were already in the Army when the attacks happened, but
You know, talk about what you remember from that day, how the military changed post 9-11, and how you view that terror threat.
Perhaps, you know, even a few years ago, the differential between, you know, what was going on with that under Trump and what's going on now within open borders.
You know, talk about, you know, all of those things, because I think it's important.
Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, I enlisted right away when I turned 18 in 1998.
I always wanted to be in the Army.
And you know, at the time, I kind of thought maybe if I hung out long enough, then I'd get to go to combat in a scenario like Desert Storm, Panama, kind of a one-off conflict.
I never thought in a million years that we'd be involved in a 20-plus year conflict.
Uh, but when the attacks of September 11th happened, I actually, I thought at the time we were probably just going to maybe do one or two strikes and then just really kind of take it on the chin.
Because under Bill Clinton, we had already been attacked twice by Al Qaeda, by bin Laden.
He had declared war on the U.S., so I didn't think that we actually had
The resolve.
So once we started going over and conducting operations in Afghanistan, I was actually pretty impressed with, obviously, the fighting spirit of the American people, the American military.
But for us, it was like, hey, take us off the chain.
We want to go deal with these threats.
We never want to see our homeland get attacked again.
My late wife, who you mentioned, was killed much later on in Syria.
She was a
Native New Yorker, her father and uncle were both ground zero first responders, a police officer and a firefighter.
So her and her younger brother, who's getting ready to retire from the Marines just here shortly, they both went and enlisted.
And there was a whole generation of Americans who watched the towers get hit.
They watched the Pentagon get attacked.
And they ran off and they found the nearest recruiter they could find.
They said, hey, put me in, send me off to war.
And at the time, I think there was a lot more trust in our institutions.
I mean, Americans were like, hey, we need to rally together because we have to defend our nation and we can trust those who are telling us what's happening.
And we were told that, hey, bin Laden attacked America.
And, you know, right after that, we were told that Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda, weapons of mass destruction.
And it took us years to really unpack this.
And I think a lot of it we're still unpacking how much the national security state lied to us for their
Their own gains.
Now, you know, in doing all these different combat operations, I think we really kicked over a hornet's nest in the Middle East, especially getting rid of Saddam Hussein, who, you know, was definitely a bad guy.
But that led to the rise of Al Qaeda and then eventually ISIS.
So by the time your father came on the stage and said, hey, we've gotten it completely wrong here in the Middle East, he actually called out the national security establishment, which was the first time I had heard any politician really do that.
And he said, look, we're not going to get involved anymore in these stupid wars, but we are going to go take care of business.
We are going to go after those who have attacked us and are posing a threat, which is what he did with ISIS.
I mean, Obama told us that it was going to take us a generation to get rid of ISIS.
We took away all the ground that the Islamic Caliphate controlled within about a year under your father's leadership.
And then the Iranians, the Iranians had been kicking around the Americans.
Since the 80s, since 1979, 1980.
And the first person to strike back was your father when he killed Qasem Soleimani, who had the blood of thousands of Americans on his hands.
But he also, at the same time, didn't get us involved in any new wars.
So I think there's a lot of lessons to learn in this post 9-11 era, but especially holding our national security state accountable, I think is really important.
Yeah, talk about that a little bit.
You know, when we talk about sort of the changing mission, you know, yeah, we were in sort of a long-term stalemate, Americans getting killed by Iranians, so few people actually even knew about it at the time.
We didn't do anything with that, but, you know, I got in trouble one time for saying this, but it was 100% true.
Like, I knew guys in the teams that were like, hey, if Hillary wins, like, we're getting out because we can't do the job that we wanted to do.
You know, they'd have a high-value, let's call it one of the,
They're sort of playing card targets, and under Obama, they're literally calling Washington, D.C., waiting for some lawyer to get to his nice, beautiful, air-conditioned office.
Six hours later, by the time that guy gets the communication and gets involved and isn't taking a nap, a situation on the ground changes.
Kids show up.
All of a sudden, it's not a clean grab or a clean takeout anymore.
Oh, well, we'll just go let that guy go live to, you know, fight and kill Americans another day.
You know, that change, you know, people don't understand just how drastic and just how bureaucratic, you know, a lot of the military became during that time.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Because, you know, you see that getting much worse, because I want to hear your thoughts on sort of today's army as well versus, you know, when you enlisted and call it, you know, the late 90s, early 2000s.
Yeah, you know, as the wars drug on really past the first couple years, that's unfortunately when a lot of the national security state and the bureaucrats said, hey, we want to get involved in this war too.
We can't just have this being a bunch of special operations guys moving at the speed of combat.
We need to get the whole machinery involved.
And when that happened, that's really when the lawyers took over and we had this highly, you know,
I think so.
Swayed by the neoliberals and the neocons who kind of endure every single administration that said, no, no, what we need to do is we need to stay at war.
But Obama didn't have the will to actually let us go and fight.
So for me, the hallmark of the Obama era combat deployments was, hey, we're going to be in harm's way.
We're going to lose guys.
We're going to get guys maimed and guys wounded.
However, we're not really going to be able to fight back.
Exactly like you said, everything became this massive bureaucratic process.
Heavily controlled by lawyers.
I think at the height of Iraq and Afghanistan, those surges there, you know, we probably had, I think, well over 20 general officers in each theater.
Each one of them had a massive staff, you know, a whole assortment of lawyers that would approve every single operation that we were doing.
And so if you're a guy on the ground getting shot at, you're like, well, what the hell are we even doing here?
Because we obviously have no will to win.
And we also, at the same time, and I think this is just as bad as not having a will to win, we didn't have the will to say, well, then let's just get the hell out of here.
I mean, what are we even doing?
And that actually, I think, would have been a viable course of action at the time.
But Obama didn't have that.
He left us in harm's way with no real will to actually complete the mission.
And I think that that's just incredibly dangerous.
And so by the time your father gets into office, I mean, the world's a mess.
I mean, Iran is mopping the floor with us all over the Middle East.
They're expanding throughout the entire region because of the Iran deal.
ISIS has taken over like three countries and is forcing a terrorism and migration crisis into Europe, onto the U.S.
homeland.
So, really, most of these, I think, disasters that we had after 9-11 were a direct result of failed U.S.
policy, when we could have made much more pragmatic decisions, but we let a combination of the military-industrial complex always looking for their next paycheck and D.C.
bureaucrats and lawyers just take over the entire process.
Yeah, I mean, you know, when I talk, again, to my buddies who were there, who were serving in the teams, it was like, it's like, what happened?
How did you take out, they go, well, they just, like, let us do what we do best, which is like, you know, essentially killing bad guys.
It's like, and it, it's so obvious.
You know, clearly it's not rocket science.
Like, let, let the operators operate.
You know what I mean?
Let, let them do what they do best.
And they were able to turn around, turn it around so quickly.
How is it that, how is it possible?
You know, listen, everyone understands now, I think certainly, probably not early on, you know, the depths and the, frankly, the depravity of the military-industrial complex.
But like, how was it that there was no one until Trump that was, you know, again, aside from the operators who knew, but just couldn't break rank, right?
They still followed those things, even if they're being led by idiots.
Um, how is it that no one said, like, hey, this is so obvious, why don't we do this?
I mean, it doesn't feel like you, now looking at the world in which we live today, it's like, I guess everything's sort of like this, but how is it that no one there, not one general even, didn't say, hey, why don't we just do this?
Because it turned around so quickly.
And, you know, you see, you know, after the Afghan withdrawal and the dejection and all of this, people wondering, you know, was it 20 years wasted?
All those lives, all the people maimed.
It's such a terrible thing.
And you tie that into recruiting.
Like, how is it possible that that could still happen?
You know, tragically, we stopped promoting our senior officers based on battlefield performance, and they were promoted based on towing the party line.
And the party line was the unit party line.
It was that, hey, we always need to be involved in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our mission will never be over there, because our mission is going to be to turn these places
I think so.
Any officer, once they reach the mid-level, they figure out that game and they play by the rules, and that's how they get promoted.
But if they stick their head up, they're going to get cut off way, way early at a very junior rate, so much so that you'll never really even know their name.
And so that's kind of how we got in the predicament that we're in right now.
Because if you have a realistic assessment of what our vital national security interest is, like your father did, he came in and he said, okay, so wait, as an outsider, he came and said, what's the deal with the Middle East?
And people are like, well, there's terrorists there.
And he's like, well, that's great.
Let's find the terrorists and let's kill them.
I have a solution for that!
Kill that guy.
He's a bad dude.
I mean, it kind of is that simple.
And then get the hell out.
And so the second that President Trump took away the Islamic Caliphate, really pushed back against the Iranians, that was when he said, we're getting out of these conflicts.
And then the entire apparatus turned against him.
We know what happened in Syria.
That cost my late wife her life.
That left us in Afghanistan for an extra year.
People forget that under the Trump plan,
We would have been out of Afghanistan in May of 2021.
That was the plan.
That was the agreement that the Taliban agreed to as well because we had fucked them to the negotiating table.
However, the military industrial complex cannot have that.
The intelligence community cannot have that.
So then they started doing all their different tricks, the Russian bounties narrative, all these types of things that we now know were complete and total lies, but they're just trying the exact same lies in a different theater in Ukraine right now.
I obviously got to get to Ukraine, but I mean, you lost your wife in Syria.
Talk a little bit about that, because it's not even a country that I would think, you know, the average American probably doesn't even know we're still there.
And, you know, we tried getting out of that, and it looked like we were going to do that.
And then as recently as, I think it was even a couple of weeks ago, a couple of months ago, it was like, like, there was some article, we still have X number of troops.
I'm like, even I didn't know that.
Yeah.
And for what?
I mean, obviously that's going to be something much closer to you, but I mean, that we're still fighting multi-front wars.
We have boots on the ground in Ukraine.
We found that out.
We sort of always knew it was a proxy war.
We're spending billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars for this.
I mean, we still have people on the ground in Syria.
I mean, you lost your wife there a few years ago.
I remember hearing the story from my father because I guess when you first met was when he was receiving the bodies that came over and you guys struck up a conversation.
I thought it was such an incredible story.
I mean, he relayed it to me before you sort of took it upon yourself to take it to the next level and run for office and push back and be a thorn in the side of that
That complex, the military industrial complex, and others talking about it, but that's still going on today.
And I don't even know that anyone can articulate what our goals there are, and yet we're still there, we're still spending money, and could likely still lose more lives.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right.
I think people forget that we have people in Syria and why you went in the first place.
And the Islamic Caliphate like really kind of started in Iraq, but found sanctuary in Syria and their civil war.
And so we had to go into Syria to take away all the ground the Islamic Caliphate controlled.
But your father did something very unique.
He said, Hey, our goal is to defeat the Islamic Caliphate, then we're leaving.
No other president had said
It's a huge issue in the Middle East.
I'm sure that'll fly.
Yeah, exactly.
These are things they really care about.
So we need to just stay there forever and continue to send our sons and daughters off to die there.
But my late wife was part of the Special Operations Task Force that was sent in, that was part of the push into Syria to take away the last little bit of ground that the caliphate controlled.
So by late 2018, we had taken away pretty much all the ground ISIS controlled.
Once we finally took away the last village they controlled, so ISIS then controlled no more actual physical territory, your father did something very significant.
He said, okay, now this is over.
We're actually going to leave.
We're not going to get drawn into this quagmire.
Because under Obama, you had a lot of the neocons and neolibs who said, OK, we already took out Gaddafi.
We took out Saddam.
Now we need to take out Assad.
And that had become an absolute bloodbath.
It was evident that if we did a regime change there, it would be just as disastrous, if not worse, than the regime change we did in Iraq and in Libya.
So anybody with any kind of common sense was pushing back against that.
But again, the military industrial complex, that was their overall goal.
They wanted regime change.
Your father said, hey, let's get them out of there.
And I could see this coming.
I had already switched over and I was working at the CIA.
And I had seen, you know, over the two previous years, once President Trump took over, I had seen mid to senior level bureaucrats do something that was completely foreign to me.
They were saying that, hey, we're not going to follow the policy of the guy in the White House, which to me, I was like, wait a sec, back
Like, that's not the oath that we took to the Constitution.
And so when I heard President Trump give the order to pull out of Syria, I was communicating with my wife because we both had access to classified systems.
And I was just like, they're not going to let this fly.
Like, they're going to do everything they can to keep you guys there.
And sure enough, unfortunately, I was correct.
And her and three other Americans were killed in January.
I think so.
We're good to go.
Yeah, for all the people that, you know, talk all the nonsense about, you know, the Commander-in-Chief and everything like that, that's a big one, right?
I mean, the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S.
military, the President of the United States, gave orders that were basically just ignored.
They just chose not to follow it.
I mean, talk about that, because I mean, it shows, I think, the strength of the deep state, as well as, I think, it highlights some of the illusion
Right?
You're sort of talking about, you know, when you joined, we all thought differently of our country and what we were fighting for versus, you know, the lessons we all learned.
I learned that one the hard way, you know, with, you know, the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.
I'm like, wait a second, I committed treason, a crime punishable by death?
What's going on here?
And it turns out, like, yeah, they've been lying to us, you know?
I feel differently today about Julian Assange than I did, you know, 10, 15 years ago, because I was like, oh, he may be putting people in harm's way.
I was like, no, no, no.
We're standing on a pedestal to the world, telling them X, Y, Z, while doing exactly the opposite.
Like, we're the biggest hypocrites in all of this, you know, so that they could just ignore those orders.
You know, talk about that, because I think
You know, again, the disillusionment, the recruiting problems.
How do you get a patriot to sign up for something, to go fight for their country, possibly give up their lives, when
We don't really know what their actual vision is.
It's certainly not what we all thought.
And I think that was a shame, because it was something I never wanted to have happen.
Even as it was going on and happening to me, I was like, well, if the CIA said something, you know, there must be some truth to it, right?
Like, if the FBI is corroborating this evidence, like, I don't know, maybe some of these people that they accused, I was like, maybe they were talking with... No, it's just...
All bullshit!
It didn't matter!
And, you know, they got caught, but there's also no consequence now, so what's to stop them from doing it again?
Yeah, I mean, it's one of the more stunning things I've witnessed in my life.
I mean, I came in under Bill Clinton, I served through Bush, I served through Obama.
I told you how I felt about the Obama administration when I was serving under it.
But me and none of my friends, we didn't speak out.
I mean, we were out there, we were fighting, we were getting shot at.
We didn't agree with Obama's policy, but he was the Commander-in-Chief, took an oath to support and defend him.
He's the guy the American people supported.
We saluted him, moved out, did our jobs.
All of that completely changed by the time President Trump came into office.
And at that point, I'd been in the military for quite a while.
And so I was shocked to see senior level leaders in the DOD, the intelligence community, the State Department, just say, yeah, we're not going to do what the White House says.
I mean, to me, I was just like, wait a sec, was I following a different script than everybody else?
Because
Eight years ago, I was told that I had to listen to the guy that I didn't like, and I did it.
Now that the guy that you guys don't like is in power, you're just not going to listen to him.
And so I witnessed that for the last two years of my military career.
And then when I switched over and was a paramilitary operations officer in the CIA, it was the same thing.
You had these mid-level CIA guys who were saying like, no, we're just going to blow off kind of what the president's saying, because we know the policy best.
I mean, I think one of the
Most telling things that came out of the first sham impeachment hoax was when we had Vindman on the stand, and he literally said that the President of the United States of America didn't understand America's foreign policy and that he was working against it.
I mean, he said the quiet part out loud right there.
You have a lieutenant colonel, which essentially is a coffee boy in the grand scheme of things, saying that the guy the American people elected
We're good to go.
And now we're seeing it all unfold with the whole Ukraine issue.
And a lot of these intelligence officials, these are the same guys that we now know lied.
The 51 spies who lied about Hunter's laptop.
These exact same guys were pushing the Russia-Russia narrative, accusing you of a crime punishable by death, you and so many others.
And now we're seeing that exact same apparatus that has been exposed.
They're continuing to roll this out and weaponize it against the American people.
So it's just something that we have to stop or we're simply not going to have a country anymore.
Yeah, you know, Vindman was created into a hero, even though it seems like anyone who actually served just called him a fat pig chow thief, which is ultimately probably what he was.
But they put this guy out there.
He's able to contradict there.
He, I guess, the policy is what the deep state decided it is.
That has to be the policy, not the guy that was elected.
We're good to go.
He was, like, put out there as, like, beyond reproach.
You know, any whistleblower that was against Trump, but, like, if there's a whistleblower against Biden, like, you never hear from him again.
They don't get a platform.
They get court-martialed.
They get put in Gitmo.
And it was just so different, because it wasn't the policy of what the American people wanted.
It was the policy of what the deep state wanted, the military-industrial complex, permanent Washington, D.C.
And all of these guys just got rich around this, so that was their policy, and the military had to enforce their policy, get them rich,
Even if it was contrary to what the American people wanted.
And again, I think a big part of my father's 2016 platform was ending the never-ending wars.
Yeah, and it was very popular.
And that's why we had the surprise defeat of the Deep State's candidate, Hillary Clinton.
And your father came in there on that ticket.
And I think that message still resonates.
And I think this is a huge reason why they're pushing so hard against President Trump and against anyone who questions the national security state.
Because right now they're pushing for a whole nother war
They're pushing to keep the same old failed wars going, and so if you have the audacity to push back against that, they're going to literally accuse you of treason, say that you're some sort of a Putin stooge, attempt to ruin your life and all that, because really, these people, they will not relinquish power.
That's what this comes down to in the end.
I talk to folks all the time who don't like MAGA, they don't like President Trump, and it's like, fine, put those personal feelings aside.
Do you honestly think, in the way that you understand how America should work, that we should have these unelected bureaucrats in our intelligence agencies with very potent tools able to control what happens with our government, with our foreign policy, with our domestic policy, violating people's basic civil rights?
Is that the America that you want?
Because that's really what the Democrats stand for at this point, the Joe Biden Democrats, anyways.
I mean, we get a little bit of divergence with RFK Jr., but
I mean, it's just absolute insanity.
But unfortunately, you get people that are just so blinded by their emotions, they can't look past that.
But again, if we don't fix these major issues and restore the people's will back to Washington, D.C., we're not going to have a country for much longer.
Yeah, no, that was the irony of sort of the Russia, Russia, Russia nonsense.
It's like, well, you know, Trump, harder sanctions on Russia than, I mean, I think it was in Syria, didn't they?
I mean, didn't we have our guys, like, take out a bunch of Russian guys that kept encroaching?
We gave them every warning.
They weren't listening.
So, I mean, I think we wiped out, like, 150, like, Russian combat troops in Syria because they, you know, they're doing what they do.
No one's pretending that Putin's a good guy.
But this whole narrative was like, so if Putin really had this stuff on Trump, you'd think,
I don't know, he'd probably use it right after we took out, you know, 100 plus Russian, you know, commandos while playing games.
I think that was Syria, wasn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
That was in Syria.
So the Russians were, they knew Obama was weak.
I mean, what a lot of these foreign policy expert types don't understand is that a lot of what happens overseas comes down to who is the toughest.
It's really sometimes that simple.
And Obama was weak.
Everyone knew Obama was weak.
The Russians would push up against us in Syria.
And under Obama, we literally had to surrender and leave our positions to let the Russians advance.
I think so.
Push back.
And so Wagner mercenaries, they pushed up against us.
They were warned multiple times and they got the business end of an AC-130 and a bunch of other fire from the Ranger Regiment and killed I think well over 200 or so of their troops.
And so like, yeah, after that,
Putin knew that he probably shouldn't expand any more into Syria.
And also, you didn't hear much about Ukraine when President Trump was in office.
And I think that was because of the strength he showed in Syria, but also just economically.
I mean, your father made us energy independent.
Not only did that affect people, their bottom line when they go to fill up the tank, we weren't being crushed by this inflation, but also we took away the power that Putin had.
We took away the power that the OPEC cartel had because we were flooding the market with cheap U.S.
energy.
And it was a win for us.
It made us strong at home.
And it made the dictators and tyrants of the world.
It gave them less resources to have foreign adventures and to invade other countries like Ukraine.
Yeah, I mean, it's such a no-brainer, and that no one's discussing that.
It's just sort of miraculous.
It was like when Germany complained about NATO.
It's like, well, we want to buy cheap Russian gas, but we want you to also then up our NATO spending, so you cover all of that.
We won't meet our obligations.
And then when Trump's like, well, we're not going to pay for you, if you're literally enriching
Rather than getting it from us or somewhere else, you're literally enriching those who you want us to protect you from.
So as you give them more billions, you want us to up our spending so you can get cheap gas and we get screwed in the process.
It's insane, but that's exactly what's going on here.
But what other lessons from the war on terror or the war in the Middle East
Can we apply to like the current challenges we're facing, you know, right now, certainly in Ukraine and obviously, honestly, potentially in Taiwan when we have to start dealing with the Chinese?
I think really, peace through strength.
I mean, that is the only doctrine, whether it was employed by your father most recently or whether it was employed by President Reagan.
I think that's the lesson learned.
If we go looking for foreign adventures and foreign wars, it ends in disaster.
Whether we're talking about Vietnam, whether we're talking about the war on terror,
Yes, there is a time to go and take punitive action against select targets, but those need to be very select, and we need to say, hey, this is the target, this is our criteria for success, and this is how we're getting out of it.
But in general, we need to strengthen ourselves and strengthen our country.
We won the Cold War because we developed an independent economic powerhouse in America that lifted Americans out of poverty, but made us strong, made us secure.
We're blessed in this country.
We don't need to import things.
I mean, we have all the energy below our feet that we need
From sea to shining sea.
We do not need foreign supply chains in China.
We don't need to be relying on other countries to make our microchips and microprocessors.
We can do that all right here at home.
And once we're strong here at home, then we can actually start using our economic power, which is what we just spoke about, what your father did with controlling energy prices by flooding the market with cheap U.S.
energy.
That took away the ability for Putin to do something like conduct a military adventure into Ukraine.
Right now, the world sees that we're weak.
Biden hit us with a real big double whammy.
Not only did he show just how weak he was, because he wanted to keep us in Afghanistan for just a long enough time for him to have a symbolic withdrawal so that he didn't follow the Trump plan.
He couldn't just follow the Trump plan.
He had to do his own thing.
And then his generals backstabbed him like they backstab pretty much every administration because they wanted to stay there.
But the world saw how weak we were with that Bosch withdrawal.
But then at the same time, he killed off U.S.
energy.
And so now we're back to being dependent on the OPEC cartel.
And so we're weak at home.
We're weak abroad.
And so why wouldn't every single bad actor from Vladimir Putin all the way to Xi Jinping in China, why wouldn't they advance?
And so right now, we're in a position where we've got to do a lot of rebuilding back at home.
Accountability is the next one.
We can't allow the military-industrial complex and the intelligence community to throw a dart at a map and say, well, that's where the next threat to our democracy is.
So therefore, we need to forego giving any kind of aid to American citizens in Hawaii and in Florida, and we need to send billions of dollars over there.
Agree with us, or you're a Putin supporter.
We need to start holding those people to account.
I mean, starting with the 51 intelligence officers who lied, all those guys should be stripped of their clearance.
People like Adam Schiff, who continued to lie and abuse their access to classified information, they need to be held accountable.
So I think transparency and strength at home is what the biggest lessons learned from the last 20 years of conflict are.
Yeah, I mean, it seems so basic, right?
Just resolve.
Having some resolve.
And especially if you sort of, you know, take it, let's call it, you know, that Eastern European mindset of Putin or whatever it is, you know, masculinity, toughness.
Like, they're not going to get embarrassed on a world stage, but if they know they're going to be, that you're a pushover, that they don't understand the basic psychology of how that even works is pretty troubling.
But, you know, as we're talking about Ukraine, you know, are you worried that
Ukraine could escalate, you know, much more than it is right now and possibly even into like a nuclear conflict because, you know, again, that mentality, a strong guy is not going to get pushed around by a weak guy, even if the, you know, eventually there's a there's a breaking point there.
You know, Putin's not going to.
Let himself be that embarrassed by, you know, an imbecile like a Joe Biden on a world stage.
You know, what's the trajectory that you see happening in Ukraine?
Just understanding and having dealt with these guys yourself, you know, over the long period of time?
Because, I mean, you know, they've hidden from the American people that we had boots on the ground and that was a leak.
Now that, you know, that guy's never been heard of from there.
It was a story for about five minutes.
Let's hide this from everyone.
We're not going to talk about this anymore.
What do you think happens there?
Because I mean, that to me is scary as hell.
And it's also indicative of what ultimately China then sees that weakness and uses it to go after our proper allies in Taiwan, right?
That's a little bit different.
Ukraine was never in NATO.
You know, we say they're an ally, but I'm not really sure that was ever the case.
I mean, you know, they're not an ally.
They were a buffer zone.
They're a corrupt regime.
Many people before this war talked about them being more corrupt, actually, than Russia, which is almost hard to believe.
But, you know, now, you know, St.
Zelensky, you know, infallible, totally beyond reproach.
He can do nothing wrong, but it's all a lie.
You know, what's the end result here?
You know, right now, I mean, we're about 18 months into this conflict, and when it first broke out, I think it's really easy for the national security apparatus to manipulate the good intentions and the goodwill of the American people.
When we see someone who's bigger, like Russia, come in and invade another country, our natural American tendency is to say, that's horrible, because it is horrible.
Yes, we are.
Like a 500 miles closer to Russia.
It had nothing to do with that, right?
That wouldn't upset you if there was sort of historical precedent.
It had always been that way.
Like, let's call it half the country sort of, you know, kind of Russian, at least one way or the other.
And all of a sudden, we're going to move that border right there.
Like, we pretend like we're so innocent in this whole thing.
It's actually not true if we're going to be literally, like, objectively honest with ourselves.
That doesn't mean Putin wouldn't have done it.
But we gave him every excuse imaginable to take this action that maybe he wanted.
Just like we're showing China, hey, we're going to be weak.
We're not actually going to do much.
We'll do a little bit of dollar stuff.
But we're showing our enemies that we're weak and they can do whatever.
And we're also showing those who have historically been our allies just how weak they are.
And that's a bad combination when you combine both of those mentalities.
No, it's horrible.
And look, the Ukrainians, we've thrown them into this this massive charnel house of just blood and carnage by saying that, hey, we said the quiet part out loud.
Lindsey Graham has said that we're willing to just continue to watch Ukrainians die because, you know, some Russians are also dying.
So there's this sick, perverse fantasy that Washington, D.C.
seems to have with like
Toppling the regime in Russia, which is absolute insanity, but you hear supposedly serious people talk about this all the time.
And so what's Putin supposed to do?
You've got an aggressive, expansive NATO on his border.
He's going to tolerate that as much as we would tolerate an aggressive, expansive Russia in Quebec or in Mexico City.
He's not going to stand for it.
It's an existential threat to Russia, whether Putin's in charge or not.
So there's going to be a conflict there.
And we've basically said that, hey, we're all in.
Secretary Austin just yesterday, the Secretary of Defense said, we're with Ukraine for as long as it takes.
But the problem is, Ukraine is a smaller country than Russia.
Look at a map and you can understand, any person can understand this.
So Ukraine is running out of people to send to the front line and
There was just an article the other day saying that Ukraine is going to start conscripting their women to go fight because they literally are running out of men, regardless of the billions of dollars that we've poured in there.
And so at some point, I personally think right now, if you're a pragmatic Ukrainian leader, the only play you have left is to attempt to get NATO and the US deeply involved, more boots on the ground inside of Ukraine, because they need to bring us in and get us involved in this.
And this is incredibly dangerous because if this happens,
Then Russia is going to say, well, okay, what's next?
Are these guys going to march on Moscow?
Are they going to do a preemptive strike?
And so we move even closer to a potential nuclear war.
The reason why so many folks in the Reagan administration and in the early phases of the Bush 41
And then in the Clinton administration were against NATO expansion was because of this exact scenario right here.
They said the last thing we want to do is provoke Russia.
So we need to have a pragmatic approach.
We need to have a policy of containment, but don't move NATO one inch further to the east.
But we've completely and totally violated that.
So I think we're headed for an absolute disaster.
And you mentioned what's going on in China.
China has come in and they've underwritten all of Russia's financial woes in this conflict.
Oh, we're creating incredible financial alliances for both of them.
You know, Chinese are going to get cheap energy, they'll take crappy oil, zero environmental concern.
All the things we're doing for, like, we're literally creating the roadmap for them to ignore all of that, boosting our enemies, giving them the security that they need.
While simultaneously just destroying our coffers, you know, our military, stockpiling, all of that, you know, it's just gone.
Like, you know, I'd say the sanctions have helped Russia far more than they've hurt Russia.
You know, the sanctions.
They've pushed Russia into Saudi's arms.
They've pushed them into China's arms.
They're being embraced on a world stage.
The BRIC nations are getting together and saying, hey, this is like America's week right now.
Let's get together.
And, you know, they're going to beat us in GDP?
Like, we're literally creating our own demise and no conversation about what the end result of the policies are because, you know, Slava Ukraine and all of that shit.
Like, enough.
Yeah, I mean, Russia or China is actually our number one foe right now, and they fight on an economic front.
And a lot of that is because we sent our manufacturing base over there and we became deeply dependent on China.
But China is not going to come and fight America directly head on.
That's not how you take down America.
You go after our currency, especially when we don't produce things here anymore in our country.
And the only export we have is the U.S.
dollar.
So what do you attack?
I think we're good to go.
They're now selling oil, not using the dollar, so they're taking away our one advantage.
They're selling the dollar in rubles, in gold, in Chinese yuan.
And so now the Chinese are poised to actually attack our status as the prime reserve currency holder.
It's not going to happen overnight.
However, if we lose even just a little bit of influence we have as the prime reserve currency holder, that's basically our number one export.
That's the whole way our economy is geared right now.
Yeah, the only good thing that can come from that is at least maybe we won't be giving countries like Pakistan $20 million for gender studies in their schools because we literally won't be able to borrow and fund the sort of surplus spending that we have.
Man, who was it?
Man, someone was on the show a couple weeks ago.
They were talking about literally the delta between the trade deficit between China and the U.S.
That money is literally their entire military budget.
So you're right.
They're fighting an economic battle right now.
They're playing a 1,000-year, 500-year game.
We're playing, you know, the primaries are in two weeks, so let's make really bad decisions right now to maybe get us elected so we can keep making bad decisions for another two years, or if you're in the Senate, another six years.
But, you know, China's fighting the economic battle right now, but that could actually turn into a military battle in the not-too-distant future because they're using the advantage they got on the economic side to build up their military.
They are, yeah, 100%.
We are foolishly financing all of it, whether we're talking about the way our markets are aligned, whether we're talking about what the major hedge fund holders are doing, BlackRock, Vanguard, and all that, the way they're bailing out the Chinese with our pension funds.
But then also the fact that China controls the vast majority of manufacturing and production, and that wasn't a force of nature.
That didn't happen naturally.
That was a conscientious decision made by Washington, D.C.
elites.
And the second you get someone like President Trump who comes in there and says, this is stupid, it's a bad deal for us,
Well, that's when you get the intelligence community to come after you.
I mean, if you want the intelligence community to come after you, try an endless wars, the military-industrial complex, and onshore manufacturing all at once.
You're gonna get the treatment on that one for sure.
It's also a good way to lose the billionaire conservative donors.
Because, you know, they're like, hey, you know, we don't like Janna that much, but like, if we get our widget for one cent cheaper over there,
You're going to keep doing it.
I think it was Peter Navarro.
Peter was on the show a couple of weeks ago and he was talking about just that.
And he sort of headed up sort of the negotiations against China that we were actually really successful with.
But the second we were out, they just abandoned all of that because they knew they were dealing with imbeciles.
And it changed.
And it's just really scary how we have people making decisions, multi-trillion dollar decisions in many cases, who have
No basic understanding.
You know, it was like, you know, our Secretary of State who thought it was shocked and dismayed that the Taliban did not install, and I quote, a more diverse and inclusive government, close quote.
You know, like, that guy was rewarded that because he was the one that set up the 52 intelligence officers that said the Russian, you know, the Hunter laptop is Russian disinformation.
Like, that's not a serious person.
That guy's a clown.
Like, he's an imbecile.
Young children would understand that that's not, like, the Taliban was going to be, like, they were going to have, you know, Leah Thomas from the University of Pennsylvania swim team was going to be heading up the trans coalition of the Taliban government.
Like, if you're dismayed, fine.
Like, you can be upset about it, but did you really seriously think that the people that were throwing homosexuals off of buildings a couple months ago were all of a sudden going to be woke and they're going to embrace, you know, the insanity of today's radical left?
And, you know, but these are the people that are actually making the decisions that our children and our grandchildren after them are going to be beholden to because, you know, there's a point of no return on some of these things.
China gets that advantage.
They're never giving it up.
And that's where we're heading.
No, that's right.
And look, we get distracted easily by, you know, who can the Taliban install a more diverse cabinet?
And, you know, like, what's the social, what's the ESG score in Ukraine going to be once we liberate all of Ukraine?
But the Chinese aren't distracted by this whatsoever.
They're gobbling up as many countries into their sphere of influence as they possibly can.
They're attacking the dollar.
Like you said, they haven't taken their eye off the ball.
We get easily distracted.
A lot of that's baked into the cake with American politics, for sure.
But we also have an elite in Washington, D.C.
that really, they know that they're getting paid from the endless wars.
They know that they're getting paid from us financing everything that China does, whether it's their military or keeping our manufacturing base shipped over there.
And they don't give a damn about what happens to American workers or your average American back here at home.
That's the biggest issue and the scary thing is China knows that and also we've got Joe Biden in the White House who's compromised six ways to Sunday by pretty much every country but mainly the Chinese and the Ukrainians.
These guys have all kinds of dirt on him so really I think right now China has the freedom of movement to essentially kind of do what they want.
They're in the driver's seat and Biden's in the receive mode.
He's got to run cover for him no matter what they do.
Yeah, no, and again, you know, big tech, our mainstream media, they're totally complicit.
Like, I'm shocked, literally every day, like, CNN has not asked the question, like, hey, as the White House even admits, like, we're the closest we are to nuclear war since the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 60s, like, we're saying that, and they're not asking, like, hey, like, could it be because, like, Ukraine has
The Hunter laptop?
Or maybe has stuff on the Bidens that isn't on the laptop?
Hard to believe that could be worse?
Like, we're not even asking that question.
We're spending $130 billion probably, you know, plus a good portion of what the Pentagon lost in the $225 billion that they, you know, misplaced.
You know, minor details.
What's $225 million between friends?
No one's even asking the question, like, are our policies a derivative of that these guys have information that they would use against the Bidens?
And so we're screwing America to cover up what's already a disastrous, you know, far larger than Watergate by any
By any stretch of the imagination.
And yet, like, they don't even ask the question, like, hey, could our policy that could bring us to nuclear war possibly be affected because they got power over a Democrat president?
And watching the media not even ask those questions, do the Democrat Party bidding because they want to make sure that, you know, I guess we got trans indoctrination in kindergarten and every kindergarten in the country or something like that, that that's more important to them than the big picture, just shows you how far we've fallen.
Yeah, for sure.
I mean, there's no more actual media that's out there doing investigative journalism that reaches the broad swath of the American people.
Because unfortunately, a lot of folks still think they can get their news from the New York Times and the Washington Post and CNN.
And like you said, have they even asked the most basic question of like, hey, we're sending billions to Ukraine, potential nuclear war.
Kind of weird, Mr. President, that your son was part of Burisma Partners.
Can you talk about that?
We have these bank records.
No one will even bring that up.
The same thing applies to China.
And so it just shows
Just how compromised the media is, and then anytime any of that even starts to scratch the surface, you've got big tech working in direct coordination with the intelligence community to silence all of it, you know?
And the Biden DOJ indicting Trump, like, the next day, every time, to, like, just...
Cover it up!
Maybe it's out there a little bit, but we're just gonna cover it.
I realize now, Joe, that I'm a schmuck.
I should have been out there selling America for billions to China, because apparently, if you're the son of a president, you can do that and get away with it and face no consequences.
But I have a feeling it would be different for me.
Yeah, I think if your last name's Trump, the rules are going to be just a little bit different.
I'm pretty sure if you had any late library books right now, we'd probably know about it.
I'd be in Gitmo.
Yeah, that'll just make something up anyway.
The military recruitment crisis is really, it's a historic disaster.
I mean, we've never seen anything like this.
You know, is it a combination of things?
What are the cause?
I mean, it's not just COVID mandates or, I mean, maybe the wokeness, but
You know, what are the primary causes?
What are you seeing out there?
And how do we fix it?
Because I have guys that are buddies, you know, multi-generational military service guys that are like, I would never let my kid go to this military.
I mean, he's a patriot.
A, he'd never be able to get anywhere because, you know, he'd be cut out for basically being a conservative.
But how do we fix this problem?
Because, I mean, it seems like now more than ever, we're actually facing
Bad actors throughout the world, not just fictitious ones to enrich the military complex, but actual bad actors around the world.
I understand that Admiral Rachel Levine, formerly Dick Levine, is an incredible admiral and would be great on the front lines, but the guys we'd actually want fighting the battles for us have no interest, and I understand why they wouldn't.
Yeah, I think it's multifaceted, and I don't think people have realized yet the scope of how dangerous what Biden's doing right now truly is, and then also how quickly he's done it.
So right now, we're pushing closer and closer towards World War III, potentially in Europe with Russia, but there's also a heated escalation going on right now in the Pacific with China and Taiwan.
And so you would think with a military posture like that we'd really care about military recruiting, but Biden has thrown all of that out the window.
Day one that he came in, and this is crazy because day one that Biden came into the White House as the Commander-in-Chief, he inherited the most battle-hardened military that we've ever had.
Every other time that we've gone off to war,
We've had to draft the military and then demobilize it.
The GWAT, the Global War on Terror, was fought by really the same cast of characters for 20 years.
Like, I did 11 combat deployments.
I don't know very many of my friends and brothers and sisters in arms that just did one combat deployment.
Most of us did multiple trips overseas because we believed in our nation.
We trusted our country.
There was problems here and there, but we were still willing to go over and to fight and to die.
And so now you're seeing a lot of people who are questioning that, and I think that's, you know, a result of 20 plus years of lies kind of coming unraveled in the last couple years.
But also, Biden, day one, the first thing he does is he says, well, because of January 6th, we have to have an extremist stand down to make sure that none of these patriots, these people that have been going over and fighting and getting shot at for 20 plus years, to make sure that they're not
White nationalists or secret terrorists.
So they started going and going through people's security clearances, withholding their security clearances.
And, you know, these are guys that just got back from the most recent combat deployments that are being told, hey, we think now you're potentially a terrorist because you had a Gadsden flag on your pickup truck or on your personal Facebook profile.
You know, you had a Trump flag.
And then we had the COVID mandates.
You said, hey, we're going to give you guys this shot that's not ready for prime time, but you have to take it, even if it's against your religion, take it right now or I'll kick you out.
And then the catastrophic withdrawal in Afghanistan, the way that no one was held accountable for that, the way that we're not even allowed to ask why those 13 were killed and who was making those decisions.
I think when you add all of those into one big lethal cocktail, you're starting to see why people are, the generational military families, are saying, absolutely not.
You don't get my kids at this point.
And why you're seeing a lot of red-blooded patriots, young men and young women, who would gladly sign up for the military in any other circumstance, just saying, you know what?
I'm not going to go serve a government that absolutely despises me.
Yeah.
Now, it's mind-boggling.
I mean, it feels like the military VAX mandate for, you know, they were having, you know, SEAL team guys, like, leaving because of it.
It was, like, fighter pilots.
Like, the most trained people in the military, right?
Not guys that are easily replaced, but guys that spend millions of dollars getting to a point where they're elite.
It was a way to weed them out.
Like, who's the guy that could be a thorn in the side of our woke leftist agenda?
I mean, it almost felt like that had to be it, because there was no other logical reason to force that on them.
And they did that full-heartedly.
And if anyone put up a flag, they were out.
They were never going anywhere.
And that was clear.
And if they left, who cares?
It doesn't matter.
Just because we may be weaker, just because we may be unprepared, it didn't matter to them anymore.
Yeah, no, it's absolute insanity and it just speaks to the leadership of the Biden administration and that's why you're not getting people that sign up and I'm glad you brought up the retention piece because a lot of the experienced people who it takes a lot of time and a lot of money to train, pilots, special operators, a lot of them have gotten out and these are guys that probably would have stayed in first.
At least 20, if not 25, 30 plus years.
And these are the guys you need to train the next generation that comes in.
So we've got a real double whammy here.
Again, we've got people that won't come into the military.
So that's a recruiting crisis.
But what I think is even more dangerous is the retention crisis.
And so I think if you get better leadership in there, if we get President Trump back in, a lot of folks are going to say, okay, now I'm going to join the military once more.
But a lot of the damage has already been done, because once you get that next crop of young, eager patriots to come in and serve, a lot of those senior non-commissioned officers and officers that we needed to stay and train the next generation, they're gone.
And those guys probably aren't coming back.
I think some of them might, but that's going to be a major issue.
I think we could turn the ship around pretty quickly by getting rid of all the different, you know, woke propaganda nonsense that's happening.
Get rid of the DEI commissars in there, lift the VAX mandate, make people whole again.
Accountability is a big one, too.
If we start holding a lot of these senior
Yeah.
Listen, shifting to the next 2020 to the 2024 race, you know, obviously you're running again.
You had a really close race last time.
Is there anything you're doing differently from 2022 to ensure that you win a congressional race?
Because I'd love to see guys like you in Congress, you know, people who are sort of
Unapologetically, America first.
People who are patriotic, especially from a state like Washington, where, you know, candidly, that doesn't exist, at least in, you know, the population centers.
But if you sort of get, let's call it, east of the Cascades, the entire state is sort of, you know, super America first.
These are, you know, incredible patriots, but they've been commandeered by a bunch of lunatics, you know, around Seattle.
What are you going to do differently?
What do you see differently?
Are people waking up to what's actually going on as you go through these cities that were honestly awesome cities not that long ago?
Even if they were always left-leaning, but it's absolutely insane what you see coming out of these places every day.
Yeah, I think one of the biggest differences between 22 and this next cycle here in 24 is that we're going to have a much more unified Republican Party.
So I've gotten the endorsement of all the counties in our district and the state party.
So we're not going to have that hard-fought primary.
Republicans, I think this last cycle, especially in my district, the biggest lesson that we can learn is that, hey,
If we're divided, and we don't unify after the primary because the person that you liked didn't get in there, guess who wins?
Not your candidate, the Democrats win.
And there's no such thing as a moderate Democrat.
So we unify the Republican Party, and then we focus solely on highlighting how radical the Democrats are.
The woman I'm running against, if you listen in on her media, she'll say moderate probably.
You know, that's every other word that comes out of her mouth, how moderate she is.
And then you look at her voting record, and it's the same voting record as AOC.
It's the same voting record as Nancy Pelosi.
They're voting to let biological men into your daughter's dressing room.
They're voting to keep the U.S.
on this crazy inflation cycle.
They're hyping Biden economics.
They're for, she's voted multiple times now, for keeping the southern border open.
Washington State, where I'm sitting right now, we're leading the nation in fentanyl deaths.
These are fentanyl assassinations from the Mexican drug cartels that are happening because of the wide open southern border, and the Democrats refuse to do anything about it.
We're staying focused on those key issues.
I think it's the economy, crime, protection of our children.
Those are the big ones, and we're highlighting the Democrats' record.
I do think people are starting to wake up, but in order to really combat that and get all of our good conservatives out there to actually vote,
We've got a ballot harvest.
A big mistake that I think Republicans, my campaign included, myself included, that we made in the wake of 2020 is we said we hate mail-out ballots.
We hate machine voting.
Everybody flood the polls on election day because, by God, that's how we want to vote.
And my heart is there.
I agree with that.
Unfortunately, in a state like Washington, we vote for 30 days.
We send out a ballot to everybody.
We forfeited 29 days that we could have been out there collecting ballots.
And so right now we're working heavily at the county level
I agree with you 100%.
Like, I would love, you know, same-day voting, paper ballots, voter ID, like all these things.
I don't think so.
It doesn't work.
We got to play that game.
We got to do it aggressively.
And we can't sort of hope for, well, I really hope it's not raining somewhere because turnout is going to be lower because people can't be bothered.
Like, we can't play that game.
We got to play their game until we can be in power to make like a national, you know,
Rules that make sense.
But until then, we're obligated to play on their battlefield and we can't just take our ball and go home.
But, you know, your opponent is doing the sort of the typical leftist move.
They're smearing you as a white nationalist.
That's like the easy button of today's political left.
Everyone's a white nationalist.
Everyone's a racist.
Everyone's this.
How do they get away with this stuff and continue?
And how do you push back against it?
I don't think it has the effect it would have five years ago because literally there's not a person in existence that doesn't agree with 100% of the Democrat platform who hasn't been smeared as a racist.
So now, honestly, it's like,
You know, people turn the other cheek.
It doesn't mean anything anymore, even if that does a disservice to those actually affected by it.
But, like, you know, how do you push back against this insanity?
Yeah, I mean, it's challenging because the Democrats just have such a capture on the mainstream media.
And so if there's consumers out there in the mainstream media, all they hear is that, you know, Republicans are white nationalists, racists, whatever.
So I like to point out why they have to use these insults.
If you can't argue on your record, if you can't argue on your ideas, you have to turn to insults.
And the Democrats' most potent insult is, hey, you're racist.
It's like, no, I'm talking about securing the border and getting jobs for American citizens.
You're saying racist while voting for an open border.
I think it's just aggressively pushing back but then also exposing their record is how we do it but it is challenging because there is a lot of folks out there who maybe aren't on media as much or even the older generation where they still believe and I don't fault them for believing this they still believe that if you're called a racist like that's the worst most horrible thing in the entire world and you must be racist because someone would
I think really just highlighting why the Democrats are using petty insults because they can't discuss their record and they can't discuss their ideas.
Yeah, no, I mean, you know, these days if you're pushing back against the leftists and they call, it's almost like a badge of honor.
It means you're getting to them because that's all they have.
They can't win on policy.
I'm not, you know, I'm not saying that actually being one is a badge of honor, obviously, because they'll try to take that and turn it into that.
You know, that's what they do.
But like at this point, like if you're actually going up against them and you haven't been called that, you're not that effective because that's sort of their
They're button of last resort.
And again, you're right.
I always say like the biggest shame is that, you know, it's there is still some racism in this country.
It's just not the cause of and solution for all of life's problems, which is what the left has turned it into.
So those who may actually be affected by it somewhere, whatever small number appear, you know, that
Those people are left in the dust because people just sort of ignore when it actually happens because, again, it's the answer for everything.
But I want to get your opinion.
You know, what are your thoughts on the presidential primary so far?
How do you sort of assess the strength, the momentum of what's going on with my father?
And what do you think is going to happen with Joe Biden?
Will he ultimately even be the Democrat nominee?
I think that's the more interesting question.
I mean, I feel like the Republican primary is over.
I mean, if you look at any polling, even like polling that does not like President Trump, he's just in the lead.
There's never been a Republican presidential primary like this.
So really, I think there's a lot of, unfortunately, there's a lot of money being wasted.
I lost my election by less than 2,600 votes.
I had 60,000 Republicans who didn't participate in the last election.
We could be using these funds right now that are being spent on all these other candidates and all this other nonsense.
We could be using that to make sure that we're ready for lawfare post-election and to make sure that our ballot harvesting game is strong and well-funded.
But unfortunately, we've got all these different side shows going on, probably billions of dollars at this point, and yet President Trump is still up, I guess what, conservatively by 20, 30 points.
Some polls have him up much higher.
So,
It's a good point, you know, because it's not just about, well, you know, money spent in the presidential primary.
Well, if we don't like Trump, it's not going to him.
It's like, no, no, there's races like yours or, or others, maybe even, you know, in places that you have, you know, a less America first, but still a Republican, not, not a lunatic, like what the left is putting forward, you know.
A little bit of money of the hundreds of millions that will be spent in this, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars could could be a game changer.
I mean, that could be 10, 15 seats in the House that we barely control now by, you know, by like four seats.
You know, people like, well, I just don't like Trump.
So it doesn't matter.
It's like, no, no, no, there's there's a lot of downstream
That's what everyone wants to play in because they get the big photo op or whatever it may be, but it actually has a lot of consequences downstream, probably all the way down to the school board because you're just draining a supply from what would otherwise be conservative donors.
That's exactly right.
There's only so much money that you can squeeze out of the donor base, and especially guys like me, grassroots guys, and President Trump, too.
We run off of small-dollar donors.
The Biden economy right now is hard enough on small-dollar donors when we need President Trump to stay in a legal fight, but then also to stay in a primary fight.
That's going to suck away a lot of dollars, and that's fine.
I want him to win, but at the same time, it's like, is this even necessary?
Like, look at the polling.
Like, the people have basically spoken.
Fine.
You want to go ahead and, you know, have your Republican convention and all that type of stuff.
Like, the people will speak again.
I think he's going to be the eventual nominee.
The only question is, like, how much damage are we going to do?
Are there going to be Republicans that are going to say, well, if it's Trump, then I'm going to take my ball and go home?
Like, because if they look at what happened in 2022 in races like mine, that's exactly how you get Democrats elected.
So there needs to be people that are ready to say, okay, I gave it the old college try with one of the other candidates, but once President Trump is the nominee, they need to get behind him and make sure that we just don't have this brutal post-primary, you know, never Trump 2.0 or any of that nonsense.
Because at the end of the day, if we do that, the Democrats win and they're going to destroy the country.
Yeah, so as a last thought, New York, which has long called itself a sanctuary city, is now losing their mind.
They're unable to deal with the influx of illegal immigrants.
It's okay when it's in other people's backyards, but now that some of them are ending up in New York, it's creating a problem.
I talked to my friends that are still there.
They're like, man, Central Park feels like a big migrant camp right now.
People just coming out.
But the New York City mayor,
Last week basically gave a press conference talking about how insane it is when it has to stop.
You come from Washington State, Seattle, another one of these just uber leftist cities.
Will the left finally rethink its embrace of open borders?
Or do they just hate themselves and the country too much to ever change?
Meaning it doesn't matter if you destroy these cities, it doesn't matter if you take taxpayer resources, whether it's through health care or education, that are already
Let's just say we're not exactly over-performing and failing American citizens who are paying into the system just to be able to give others more.
Do they ever rethink it or does it not matter?
They just don't care.
At this point, it's evident that they just don't care.
I mean, had they left the border open for like six months, a year, and then readjusted course and said, we can't continue to do this, we can't do this to our people, then okay, yeah, maybe I'd believe that they had just made a policy error, like they had a bad idea.
But look, it's 2023, and they're not doing anything to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and fentanyl coming into our country.
Over 100,000 deaths from fentanyl, like Washington's leading in fentanyl deaths.
And the Democrats don't say anything about it.
They won't shut the door.
They won't shut the border.
As a matter of fact, you've got federal courts down in Texas saying that they can't put up the barriers on the Rio Grande.
You've got federal courts in Arizona saying that the Arizona state can't build their own wall, so they want this open border.
It's essentially their business model.
I mean, I personally believe at this point they want to flood the zone, not just with cheap labor to undercut U.S.
labor.
That's definitely part of it.
But also, they want to put a ton of people
Into all these major urban hubs, the next time they do a census, they can essentially create new House of Representatives seats with folks that they can just ballot harvest the ballots from.
So that's their game, and their game is so cold-blooded and callous that they are overlooking all the damage that's being done to American citizens.
Nothing makes me more mad as a guy who fought overseas for so long than to come back here to see Americans living on the street, Americans without enough to eat, Americans that can't get health care,
When we have this massive apparatus that's sending money overseas, but at the same time, also, we're not allowed to secure our own southern border.
So, the Democrats' policy is just atrocious right now.
And again, it goes back to why all they can do is name call.
Yeah, no, 100%.
Well, listen, I'm glad there's guys like you out there continuing to fight.
You know, again, it's a somber day for our country on 9-11.
But it's guys like you.
It's so awesome that you stepped up the way you have throughout your career, and you continue to do so.
Let everyone know, Joe, how they can find you, how they can contribute to your campaign, what they can do to help you do this.
Because I think it's a seat that's very attainable.
And, you know, God knows the people of Washington State could use a guy like you in their fighting for them.
Yeah, absolutely.
Please go to joekentforcongress.com.
Any amount that you can give is going to be a weapons that we can deploy right away against the Democrats.
So I run off of small dollar donations.
I don't have any big massive donors like the Koch brothers coming to donate to me or the military industrial complex.
So joekentforcongress.com is where I need folks who share our America first vision to come support my campaign.
That's awesome, man.
Well, thank you again for all of your sacrifices.
You're a great American, and I just appreciate the friendship as well.
So you're the man, and we'll talk to you soon.
Thank you.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much for having me.
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