The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 279 | We're ALREADY in WWIII with Islamists & Trump Knows It | The Glenn Beck Podcast
Aired: 2026-02-21
Duration: 01:22:33


=== Fighting Media Lies (09:26) ===

[00:00:01]  And now, a Blaze Media Podcast.
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[00:00:51]  Espionage is the second oldest business after prostitution in humanity.
[00:00:55]  You know, Jimmy Carter is the one who gave us the term first responder.
[00:00:58]  Right.
[00:00:59]  The first responder before Jimmy Carter's time was you.
[00:01:01]  Wow, are you lucky to be alive?
[00:01:03]  I live every single day.
[00:01:04]  Look at September 12th.
[00:01:05]  And if you look at things like Trende Aragua and we go, oh my God, how did this happen?
[00:01:09]  And you look at the tactics at their training camps and you look at, I don't know, the Al-Qaeda training camps or the Hezbollah training camps.
[00:01:15]  It's funny.
[00:01:16]  Even the monkey bars are the same.
[00:01:22]  Brian, welcome.
[00:01:24]  Thanks for having me.
[00:01:24]  I appreciate it.
[00:01:25]  Oh, yeah.
[00:01:25]  It's great to have you.
[00:01:26]  Great to have you.
[00:01:27]  I think people started to know who you were because of Venezuela and what you did.
[00:01:32]  And I'm going to get into that here in a bit.
[00:01:36]  But I kind of want to give, I want to find out a little bit about you beforehand.
[00:01:41]  You had a couple of pivot points, and I want to hit those pivot points.
[00:01:45]  But how did you start?
[00:01:47]  Tell me where you were in 2000.
[00:01:49]  2000, I was in Tampa.
[00:01:52]  My government time was done.
[00:01:54]  2000.
[00:01:55]  Oh, 2000.
[00:01:56]  I was in working.
[00:01:59]  I was in the Army in 2000.
[00:02:00]  In 2000.
[00:02:01]  Yeah.
[00:02:01]  That's 100 years ago.
[00:02:02]  That's a good idea.
[00:02:02]  Yeah, I know.
[00:02:03]  Right?
[00:02:04]  Yeah.
[00:02:04]  Where were you?
[00:02:06]  I was working in Northern Virginia, working in Northern Virginia.
[00:02:09]  I had gotten recruited into Army intelligence as a kid.
[00:02:12]  I started off in the infantry and then got picked up in Army Intel, specifically counterintelligence, which no one really likes CI guys.
[00:02:19]  No one likes us.
[00:02:21]  No one likes us.
[00:02:23]  And it's not like they're becoming more popular.
[00:02:25]  You know, it's across.
[00:02:27]  Counterintelligence is awesome.
[00:02:30]  There are different flavors of CI guys.
[00:02:32]  There are good ones and there are bad ones for sure.
[00:02:34]  So our bad reputation can be earned.
[00:02:37]  But I always gravitated towards weird things.
[00:02:41]  And those weird things are, nobody else wanted to do them like that.
[00:02:47]  Like what?
[00:02:47]  What are we?
[00:02:49]  In 2004 as an example, a little bit later, I was working underground facilities, right?
[00:02:55]  And hardened deeply buried targets, which in the middle of the global war on terrorism was not popular, right?
[00:03:02]  If you're not going after, you know, Ishkanabibble, whoever in some mud hut somewhere in Afghanistan, you're a second-class citizen.
[00:03:09]  Really?
[00:03:09]  I would think that, because, I mean, I just think of all of the hardened, the things that had to be hardened after 9-11.
[00:03:16]  Yeah, this is, I was looking at bad guy, hardened, deeply buried targets.
[00:03:20]  So like small things like, you know, nuke sites in Iran, which became a little popular this year, right?
[00:03:26]  So in fact, one of the lead analysts for the B-2 strike that happened in Iran, that guy, I actually happen to know from way back when, that's all he's looked at.
[00:03:38]  There's a man and a woman, both of them.
[00:03:40]  This is all, those facilities are all they've done.
[00:03:43]  I knew them in 2004.
[00:03:46]  So 20 years.
[00:03:47]  So when we bombed, when we bombed that facility, everybody was like, wow, how did we do it?
[00:03:53]  It's like we designed bombs long ago specifically for that.
[00:03:59]  So specifically for those facilities.
[00:04:02]  I mean, we've been talking about doing that for 25 years.
[00:04:05]  Forever.
[00:04:06]  Forever.
[00:04:07]  Yeah, when you hear about military operations on TV, I don't care which one, the Radon Osama bin Laden, just recently Nicholas Maduro.
[00:04:17]  Any of these real big, precision, audacious.
[00:04:22]  epic things that seem to go off without a hitch.
[00:04:25]  The reality is, is that's usually the intelligence community succeeding so that operators can execute.
[00:04:32]  Right.
[00:04:33]  Somebody said to me about the Nicholas Maduro, and I want to get into that again.
[00:04:37]  I really want to go back, but there's so much to talk about.
[00:04:40]  The Nicholas Maduro, somebody said to me this week that, did you know that the CIA, that was all planned out?
[00:04:46]  And I'm like, that's their job.
[00:04:48]  Their job, I'm sure, and correct me if I'm wrong.
[00:04:51]  I'm sure for every bad guy on earth, somebody has put together a plan of what do we have to do to stop or get that bad guy, should the president say, get that bad guy.
[00:05:03]  Is that their job?
[00:05:04]  Isn't that your job?
[00:05:05]  At least theoretically, they're at least thinking about it.
[00:05:09]  So they may not have a plan per se, but they'll understand.
[00:05:12]  But somebody who's a large target, I would imagine, because the president could say, we got to go.
[00:05:17]  Get me.
[00:05:18]  Sure.
[00:05:18]  The plan.
[00:05:19]  If, you know, at the very least, these things are listed as a thing that we need to pay attention to in the intelligence community and start to work to answer questions, which is what the intelligence community is all about.
[00:05:31]  The intelligence community is very simple, is to get answers.
[00:05:35]  Do you think the intelligence community can be trusted?
[00:05:37]  The CIA and all of this stuff?
[00:05:40]  I think the entire national security apparatus today in 2026 is suffering from a big credibility problem.
[00:05:46]  And that's very sad.
[00:05:47]  Justified?
[00:05:49]  I think justified in a lot of ways and not justified in a lot of ways.
[00:05:52]  There are tremendous patriots who are working as we are talking right now, who are in horrible places trying to stay alive.
[00:06:01]  Isn't that the difference?
[00:06:02]  It's like, you know, I learned this after the fall of the Soviet Union.
[00:06:06]  We all thought every Russian was a bad guy.
[00:06:08]  Sure.
[00:06:09]  And then the wall fell down and we're all like, no, they're just like us.
[00:06:13]  It's the leadership sometimes that's bad.
[00:06:15]  It's the big guys that are bad that are doing all kinds of bad stuff.
[00:06:19]  The everyday guy is usually pretty good.
[00:06:22]  You know, we have this at Grable Rescue, right?
[00:06:26]  People think that we have this adversarial relationship with the government, right?
[00:06:29]  Because we work and we do things that ostensibly they should do or could do.
[00:06:33]  Right.
[00:06:33]  Right.
[00:06:33]  That's true for every operation that we've done.
[00:06:36]  We're doing our 801st mission tomorrow.
[00:06:39]  It was supposed to be yesterday and we slid it to tomorrow.
[00:06:42]  Maria Karina Machado, Operation Golden Dynamite, was our 800th mission.
[00:06:47]  The government could have done Maria.
[00:06:50]  My entire operating budget is a rounding error for paperclips for a week at the Pentagon.
[00:06:57]  You know what I mean?
[00:06:57]  Right.
[00:06:58]  But I don't think they should have done it.
[00:07:00]  Well, I think there's some debate.
[00:07:02]  We've extracted the U.S. government has extracted world leaders and opposition leaders before.
[00:07:07]  We extracted the Shah of Iran in 1979.
[00:07:10]  We had a plan for Karzai.
[00:07:11]  We had a plan for Dostum, for Governor Ada, for all the big warlords in Afghanistan.
[00:07:14]  All those guys had extraction plans.
[00:07:17]  Key assets that we have, sources and assets that we have overseas, we have a whole procedure for what to do if they get caught, if they get burned.
[00:07:26]  I, as an intelligence officer, if I'm operating overseas and I'm on the run, I have a plan for me too, that people come and help me out and do all kinds of mousetrappy type things.
[00:07:34]  So, you know, it becomes a policy decision, should we or should we not?
[00:07:39]  But they could have.
[00:07:40]  They could have.
[00:07:41]  They easily.
[00:07:41]  Could have.
[00:07:43]  For our operations in Afghanistan, we've rescued hundreds and hundreds of American citizens.
[00:07:50]  Blue passport holding American citizens.
[00:07:53]  Oh, I know.
[00:07:54]  Left behind after the withdrawal.
[00:07:55]  Oh, I know.
[00:07:56]  I love interpreters.
[00:07:57]  I love commandos.
[00:07:58]  I love judges.
[00:07:58]  I did hundreds and hundreds of those too.
[00:08:00]  Hundreds of them, thousands of those.
[00:08:02]  I know.
[00:08:02]  No problem.
[00:08:02]  But if your passport looks like my passport, historically, the government comes.
[00:08:09]  You know, but you know, the problem was there.
[00:08:12]  I mean, besides the entire thing, State Department ran that.
[00:08:17]  Sure.
[00:08:17]  That's not the State Department.
[00:08:19]  The State Department's job is to go get the blue book passport guys.
[00:08:22]  Correct.
[00:08:22]  You go get those guys.
[00:08:24]  Yep.
[00:08:24]  But they were running all of it.
[00:08:27]  All of it.
[00:08:27]  And it's a mess.
[00:08:28]  Total mess.
[00:08:29]  You know, so when we say we talk about the intelligence community, is it justified that they have a bad rap?
[00:08:37]  A lot of it is leadership.
[00:08:39]  A lot of it is bad leadership, internal bad leadership.
[00:08:42]  We have counterintelligence problems within the government that are, at least in recorded history, that we've never seen before, meaning bad guy, you know, good guys working for the bad guys on unprecedented levels with no way to find it or fix it.
[00:08:57]  That's always been.
[00:08:58]  Espionage is the second oldest business after prostitution in humanity.
[00:09:03]  As long as it's been a secret to keep, there's been someone that wants it.
[00:09:05]  That's why it's called a secret.
[00:09:08]  But, you know, we're messy right now.
[00:09:11]  That said, that said, I wouldn't want to make us angry.
[00:09:15]  The full weight of the intelligence community bearing down on you, no different than the FBI.
[00:09:20]  The FBI is a mess.
[00:09:22]  I wonder if the intelligence community isn't so big, so out of control.

=== Why Trump Survived Every Agency (15:28) ===

[00:09:28]  And I mean, even the five eyes.
[00:09:30]  I mean, here's how I know Donald Trump is what he says he is.
[00:09:35]  Not only do I know him, I know he's clean because you've had every intelligence agency in the world wanting to take him down and not being able to find him.
[00:09:47]  Including our own.
[00:09:48]  Exactly right.
[00:09:51]  You know, I always joke about President Trump.
[00:09:53]  I've never met him, but President Trump and I went to the same high school.
[00:09:56]  And we have three distinguished alumni that ever became anything of note, at least publicly.
[00:10:02]  John Gotti, John Gotti Jr., Donald Trump, and me, right?
[00:10:06]  And it's remarkable how similar, we're all from the same neighborhood.
[00:10:09]  And it's remarkable how similar we are in a lot of ways.
[00:10:14]  You know, sticks and stones and all that.
[00:10:17]  80,000.
[00:10:19]  That's not a stat that you scroll past.
[00:10:21]  That is not a number on a page.
[00:10:23]  That's 80,000 babies who are alive today because somebody decided to stand in the gap last year.
[00:10:31]  80,000 last year alone, 80,000 lives were saved through pre-born network clinics because when a woman walks in with a crisis, she walks through those doors.
[00:10:41]  She doesn't get shame.
[00:10:42]  She doesn't get pressure.
[00:10:43]  She doesn't get a lecture.
[00:10:44]  She gets truth and love.
[00:10:46]  And most importantly, she gets to see her baby.
[00:10:48]  And that moment that she sees an ultrasound, she hears the heartbeat.
[00:10:52]  Everything changes.
[00:10:53]  Something deep and frankly holy happens.
[00:10:56]  That sound, that simple, steady rhythm, doubles the chances that she chooses life for her baby.
[00:11:02]  One donor said something that really stuck with me.
[00:11:05]  My mother chose life.
[00:11:07]  That's why I'm here.
[00:11:08]  And that's why I give.
[00:11:09]  So other mothers can choose life as well.
[00:11:12]  This culture changes with love and truth and in an ultrasound room where a mom meets her child for the very first time and you can provide that for $28, a life-saving ultrasound.
[00:11:23]  Let's make this year the biggest baby-saving year in history.
[00:11:26]  Dial pound250, say the keyword baby, pound250, keyword baby, or visit preborn.com slash glenn, preborn.com slash glenn.
[00:11:36]  Let me take you back down.
[00:11:37]  Sure, sorry.
[00:11:38]  Your first pivot point.
[00:11:39]  The reason why I started at 2000 is because from what I understand, your first pivot point was 9-11 and you were there.
[00:11:47]  Yeah.
[00:11:47]  I was right at my work, I was an E4 in the Army, which is a nice way of saying I was like belly button lint.
[00:11:56]  I had there are coffee cups that had more power in decision-making than I did.
[00:12:01]  I was nothing.
[00:12:02]  I was absolutely nothing.
[00:12:03]  I was young.
[00:12:04]  I was pretty stupid, frankly.
[00:12:07]  We take for granted now that everyone's got 15 deployments to Afghanistan and have all this experience.
[00:12:12]  Back then, no one knew nothing.
[00:12:13]  Back then, if you went to Bosnia, you were a ninja.
[00:12:16]  You were a ninja.
[00:12:18]  If the army sent you to a place you got onto an airplane and you went someplace, it was an extremely big deal.
[00:12:25]  When I was in infantry school, if you had a drill sergeant that had a combat patch, it was such a prestigious badge of honor that your drill sergeant actually did something because most of them had never done anything.
[00:12:38]  Now it's hard to find those who haven't, I'm sure.
[00:12:41]  Well, now they're metering, you know, they're petering out.
[00:12:43]  Now we're getting back to that cycle again where the, you know, but yeah, I was on my way to work.
[00:12:48]  Tower one was already hit.
[00:12:49]  Tower two would get hit.
[00:12:51]  When Tower two got hit, I was kind of standing at the base of it.
[00:12:55]  I was on the opposite side of where the plane hit.
[00:12:57]  So I was at like the exit hole, if you will, right at the base of Tower two.
[00:13:01]  And then all the stuff from right at the corner, all the stuff from the plane fell on top of the plaza.
[00:13:07]  And that's kind of where I was standing.
[00:13:09]  And then I was in both, they fell in reverse order.
[00:13:11]  Most people don't know that.
[00:13:12]  The tower one got hit, then tower two, but tower two fell first, which was bad news for me because I was right at the base of tower two.
[00:13:20]  When it started to collapse.
[00:13:21]  Yeah, I was in both.
[00:13:23]  Wow, are you lucky to be alive?
[00:13:25]  I live every single day.
[00:13:26]  Like it's September 12th, every single day.
[00:13:28]  9-11 is a, every, every day since 9-11, I'm on gravy time.
[00:13:32]  Lots of people didn't make it out.
[00:13:36]  Lots of people, lots of my friends have died of cancer from 9-11 related illness.
[00:13:40]  What I think saved me was that I was very young.
[00:13:42]  I was young.
[00:13:43]  And I think if I was in my 30s or 40s, I probably just biologically, you're more susceptible to stuff.
[00:13:51]  What do you say to people who say that wasn't a plane?
[00:13:53]  That plane never went into the tower.
[00:13:54]  That was...
[00:13:54]  What do you say about that?
[00:13:55]  I...
[00:13:56]  I meet stupid people every day.
[00:13:59]  I have an uncle who swears that he invented aluminum foil, and it's just sadly not true.
[00:14:04]  I really wish it were true.
[00:14:06]  It really is.
[00:14:07]  I really wish it were true.
[00:14:09]  But sadly, lots of people believe different things.
[00:14:13]  Lots of people have a hard time believing different things.
[00:14:19]  But I heard it, and when the plane hit, 9-11 is one of those experiences that you really can't understand it until, unless you were there.
[00:14:29]  You really can't.
[00:14:30]  Documentaries and movies and all kinds of stuff do great justice to it.
[00:14:33]  They do.
[00:14:34]  But you know what it's like?
[00:14:35]  It's like childbirth.
[00:14:36]  I could watch a woman have a baby.
[00:14:39]  I can understand how it works.
[00:14:41]  I can understand pregnancy.
[00:14:42]  I can understand all those things.
[00:14:44]  But the reality is, I really don't get it until I give birth to a kid, until I have a baby grow in my belly and pop it out and do all the thing and go through all that stuff.
[00:14:52]  I really don't, I can get real close probably, but I actually don't fundamentally get it.
[00:14:57]  9-11 is just like that.
[00:15:00]  You can talk about it.
[00:15:02]  I can explain it.
[00:15:03]  I can use big colorful words.
[00:15:05]  But tell a man is peed an apple.
[00:15:07]  Like, yeah.
[00:15:08]  You don't know what that is.
[00:15:09]  Yeah.
[00:15:10]  You know, it's like that.
[00:15:12]  When the second plane hit, I felt the explosion was so big.
[00:15:17]  I didn't see it.
[00:15:18]  But we heard it.
[00:15:19]  We heard the plane, heard the engines, and I didn't know what it was.
[00:15:23]  There was a lady that yelled, oh my God, there's another one.
[00:15:26]  And all of us that were where I was kind of standing, we all looked up as you would.
[00:15:32]  And the tower was in the way of my field of view.
[00:15:35]  So I was looking all the wrong directions because in front of me where the plane was coming from was the giant was tower two.
[00:15:42]  So I was doing one of these, looking around, looking around.
[00:15:45]  I don't know in retrospect what I was looking for exactly other than just kind of instinctual.
[00:15:52]  So when the plane hit, it was obviously extremely loud and we kind of heard it and then we heard the bang and heard the explosion.
[00:16:00]  But the thing that always that people don't understand is the fireball on the other side was so big, I felt it on my face on the street.
[00:16:09]  Wow.
[00:16:09]  It was that hot.
[00:16:10]  70 stories up.
[00:16:11]  70, 80 stories up.
[00:16:13]  So it was just for perspective, you know, and it was one of those, like I squinted.
[00:16:18]  It was like, it was the heat.
[00:16:19]  It was like opening up a barbecue after the lid has been down.
[00:16:22]  Just that the heat was just extreme because it's all jet fuel.
[00:16:26]  Did you have any idea at the time?
[00:16:29]  Because I remember watching it on TV.
[00:16:31]  I stood there.
[00:16:32]  And the first one, I remember Katie Coric said, looks like a small plane has hit a tower in the World Trade Center.
[00:16:41]  And I turn on TV and I'm like, that's not a small plane.
[00:16:44]  Not a small plane.
[00:16:45]  And then the second one hit, and I knew instantly.
[00:16:48]  Sure, we're at war.
[00:16:49]  Yep.
[00:16:51]  But I remember I immediately got in a cart, drove to the radio station.
[00:16:57]  But at that time then, I had no idea they would collapse.
[00:17:01]  That didn't even occur to me.
[00:17:03]  Yeah, I didn't think about it either.
[00:17:05]  I was also very young and stupid.
[00:17:08]  I wasn't so young, but I was stupid too.
[00:17:10]  It never, I don't think it occurred to, I don't think it occurred to anybody that they would collapse.
[00:17:15]  And certainly if I think about it, if I try and say, well, if I put myself all the way back then and say, well, what would I have thought?
[00:17:24]  I would have thought that Tower 1 would have fallen first.
[00:17:26]  I just would have instinctually thought they would have gone in order, right?
[00:17:29]  Because they're burning for longer and all that stuff.
[00:17:32]  But yeah, I was supposed to call in sick that day.
[00:17:37]  It was a Tuesday.
[00:17:38]  I was supposed to call in sick for work, but I had a meeting that I couldn't miss.
[00:17:41]  And as a young kid, you can't miss a meeting.
[00:17:44]  You can't be late, God forbid.
[00:17:45]  So I rode the train into work.
[00:17:48]  And I've been at war pretty much ever since, one way or the other.
[00:17:52]  Was this a pivot point because you survived?
[00:17:55]  Or was it a pivot point because it changed your life and set your life?
[00:17:59]  All the above.
[00:18:01]  I'm a New Yorker.
[00:18:02]  I'm from Queens.
[00:18:03]  And 9-11 touches New Yorkers in particular in ways that, again, most people don't really get.
[00:18:12]  When you're in New York and you come out of the train, but when I was a kid, you come out of the train and you come up and you're on the street.
[00:18:17]  What I would do is you find the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers as landmarks.
[00:18:21]  And now I know that way's north and that way's south.
[00:18:23]  And now I know that way, you know, now I know where I am.
[00:18:25]  I'm oriented, right?
[00:18:26]  The skyline changed.
[00:18:28]  The skyline changed.
[00:18:30]  And to not see the Twin Towers that have just been, you know, it's like losing an arm.
[00:18:35]  It's just, it's always been there.
[00:18:37]  It's always been there.
[00:18:38]  So sure, you can live without it and sure you can adjust and people do, of course, and have and all those other good things.
[00:18:43]  But, you know, it's a scar.
[00:18:44]  So when 9-11 happened, you know, I wanted my pound of flesh, right?
[00:18:50]  That's a big part of it, right?
[00:18:51]  Who did this?
[00:18:51]  Let's go find them, hunt them and kill them.
[00:18:54]  Let's go find their friends and kill them too, you know, and let's be strategic in our communication to remind everyone, don't do this, you know, and that we're angry.
[00:19:03]  Where did we go wrong on that?
[00:19:05]  Lots of ways.
[00:19:07]  I think after Tora Bora, you know, Tora Bora during the war in Afghanistan, Tora Bora was a fundamental mistake.
[00:19:15]  We could have killed Bin Laden and ended the war 20 years earlier.
[00:19:19]  My really good friend Gary Bernston wrote one of my best friends in the world.
[00:19:23]  He's a lunatic.
[00:19:26]  I like he get a bad rap sometimes.
[00:19:29]  But he led the jawbreaker teams in Afghanistan and he was one of the last people to see bin Laden alive running into Pakistan.
[00:19:36]  And it was the military that didn't believe him as an intelligence officer and the beef between Don Rumsfeld and George Tennant and Kofer Black and all this nonsense between DOD and CIA and the intelligence community and all the spooks and all the opera, you know, all the guys with guns and all the guys with brains and brains versus braun and all this other good stuff could have ended right then and there.
[00:19:56]  Imagine if we would have killed Bin Laden in 2001, then the withdrawal never would have happened because we never would have wanted to.
[00:20:06]  No, completely different.
[00:20:07]  Yeah.
[00:20:08]  I have a friend who was very high up in Intel and he said to me, Glenn, historically, all wars are miscalculations.
[00:20:17]  Sure.
[00:20:18]  Somebody has miscalculated one way or another.
[00:20:21]  Claus Woods will say that war is just an extension of politics.
[00:20:25]  And there's a lot of truth to that too.
[00:20:28]  Mistakes happen in war, sure.
[00:20:31]  And you always could, hindsight is always 2020.
[00:20:34]  That's how it goes.
[00:20:36]  As Grable Rescue, we're about to do our 801st operation, right?
[00:20:41]  We were supposed to go yesterday.
[00:20:42]  Now we're going tomorrow.
[00:20:43]  And why?
[00:20:44]  Because as Grable, we've never successfully started or completed our plan A. Never happened.
[00:20:50]  800 missions later, all over the place.
[00:20:52]  Jailbreaks from Russia, hostages, Afghanistan, Haiti, Ukraine, all kinds of crazy stuff.
[00:20:58]  Gaza, Israel, all these crazy Lebanon, Syria, real crazy, epic, you know, made-for-TV action movie stuff, you know, getting chased by bad guys and taking missiles and those other good things.
[00:21:10]  We go and rescue Americans and we're doing our bit.
[00:21:13]  I've never, 800 missions.
[00:21:15]  It's a lot in four years, four and a half years.
[00:21:17]  That's a lot of work.
[00:21:19]  Never have we ever said, all right, today's Tuesday.
[00:21:22]  We're going to leave at 9 a.m. and then we're going to do this and do this and do this and be back by Thursday at 2 p.m.
[00:21:27]  And it's going to go smooth as silk and it's going to be great and we're going to do high fives and no Instagram picture left behind and all the thing.
[00:21:34]  We've never actually successfully completed a plan A 800 missions later as a nonprofit.
[00:21:41]  Tell me about Grabel.
[00:21:42]  Why is it named Grabel?
[00:21:43]  Grabel, Grable, somebody asked me a long time ago, where do you work?
[00:21:49]  Because you're not quite government because we're not.
[00:21:51]  We don't get a thank you note from the government, let alone a dollar.
[00:21:54]  You don't want to know.
[00:21:56]  Well, give me the dollars without the strings.
[00:21:58]  How about that?
[00:22:00]  It doesn't exist.
[00:22:01]  How about that?
[00:22:02]  A thank you note would be nice.
[00:22:04]  We've never had anyone in the executive branch of government even acknowledge our existence, which is really annoying because we broke this kid out of jail from Russia.
[00:22:15]  He's the first American victim of war crimes alive since World War II.
[00:22:18]  Captured by the Russians.
[00:22:19]  He's from Detroit.
[00:22:20]  Captured by the Russians, tortured for 37 days, the whole nine yards.
[00:22:23]  We bust this kid out of captivity from the FSB and the GRU.
[00:22:27]  First in history.
[00:22:29]  Hold on.
[00:22:31]  But why have I not heard of this?
[00:22:33]  Well, we collect a huge amount of intelligence and turn that over to the FBI.
[00:22:39]  They then take this data and this becomes the first indictment of war crime for war crimes against an American in United States history.
[00:22:47]  The Attorney General, Attorney General Garland and director of the FBI, Ray, did a 90-minute press conference that remains on the FBI website as we speak about our case and about this kid.
[00:22:56]  And they don't even mention our names.
[00:22:59]  Now, all these FBI guys that are friends with the FBI, all these FBI guys get promotions and getting awards and medals.
[00:23:06]  Meanwhile, all they did was take our stuff.
[00:23:09]  We did the operation.
[00:23:10]  We did the whole nine yards.
[00:23:12]  And the least they could have done is say, hey, Brian and your team, really appreciate it, man.
[00:23:17]  You went 200 and something miles into enemy territory and took an American that they were torturing.
[00:23:22]  Thank you.
[00:23:24]  Right.
[00:23:26]  And that's never happened before.
[00:23:27]  Yeah.
[00:23:28]  It's never happened before.
[00:23:29]  800 missions later, well, maybe one day they'll pay attention.
[00:23:32]  I don't know.
[00:23:33]  It won't be tomorrow.
[00:23:34]  Well, that's not why you'd do it, but I can see why you'd be frustrated.
[00:23:37]  Well, it's frustrating because we love what we do.
[00:23:41]  My whole team are volunteers.
[00:23:43]  I'm not paid.
[00:23:44]  I'm a volunteer myself.
[00:23:45]  I'm the boss.
[00:23:45]  I'm the chairman of the board.
[00:23:47]  I'm the CEO.
[00:23:47]  I'm the lead bottle washer, too.
[00:23:49]  My whole team are volunteers.
[00:23:51]  We love what we do.
[00:23:52]  It's what we're good at.
[00:23:53]  We're very good at this.
[00:23:55]  We love it.
[00:23:55]  We have a great time doing it.
[00:23:56]  Every time we get a call to go do something, we get really excited, real passionate.
[00:24:00]  We're like a volunteer fire department.
[00:24:02]  It's like, you know, volunteer fire department guys are like insurance adjusters by day, hoping their beepers go off to put their stuff on.
[00:24:10]  You don't hope for fire on fire, but it's exciting when it happens.
[00:24:14]  Yeah.
[00:24:14]  Right.
[00:24:14]  You're really proud to be a volunteer fireman.
[00:24:16]  That's very much like us.
[00:24:20]  But it would be nice just for morale purposes if we've done things that President Biden and President Trump have talked about on TV.
[00:24:33]  What's the most harrowing thing?
[00:24:36]  And maybe you didn't see it or you saw it coming, you knew this was going to be a nightmare.
[00:24:39]  But when you're in it, it was something that's movie-like.
[00:24:45]  We've done a few ops that are, you know, well, we've done many ops that were scary.
[00:24:51]  Most of them are.
[00:24:52]  But there have been a few where when we got done, I was like, I can't believe we survived.

=== Proudly Rescuing 2,000 Americans (07:10) ===

[00:24:56]  I can't believe this worked.
[00:24:57]  I can't believe we're here.
[00:24:58]  We took 32 hypersonic missiles from Iran before lunch in one day in Israel.
[00:25:05]  32.
[00:25:07]  These things are the size of school buses, and Iron Dome does not work against them.
[00:25:11]  So, you know, can you say how you did that?
[00:25:14]  We just survived.
[00:25:15]  Look, divine intervention.
[00:25:17]  God loves us.
[00:25:18]  We rescued 2,000 Americans that were trapped.
[00:25:21]  State Department rescued zero.
[00:25:24]  Ambassador Huckabee, who's a rock star, huge, he's amazing.
[00:25:28]  I'm a big fan of Ambassador Huckabee.
[00:25:30]  Proudly and smartly did not evacuate the embassy.
[00:25:34]  Thank God.
[00:25:34]  Because under the last administration, they would have, you know, somebody stubs their toe and everybody evacuates.
[00:25:40]  That's what happens.
[00:25:40]  Sudan, Haiti, Afghanistan, Ukraine, right?
[00:25:45]  The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine was evacuated like a month before the first shots were even fired.
[00:25:51]  Like nothing happened yet.
[00:25:53]  So, you know, big props to Ambassador Huckabee for not leaving.
[00:25:57]  But at the end of the day, 2,000 Americans called it's their government for help saying, we are stuck.
[00:26:03]  Help.
[00:26:05]  And they directed them to us.
[00:26:08]  Now, that's fine.
[00:26:09]  That's what we're there for.
[00:26:10]  We love doing it.
[00:26:11]  But I also think that it's a little nuts that we did that proudly, happily.
[00:26:17]  No, no, not complaining.
[00:26:19]  But it is odd that there's nothing because there's nothing that I do that they can't do.
[00:26:24]  I can charter an airplane.
[00:26:25]  They can charter an airplane.
[00:26:26]  In fact, we have this small thing, maybe you've heard of it called the Air Force.
[00:26:30]  They have these things called airplanes.
[00:26:33]  When we were in Afghanistan, we raised millions of dollars to rescue people.
[00:26:38]  And we went to people like you and said, can you help?
[00:26:42]  And we provided the planes and provided, one of our guys was actually running the airport at the time.
[00:26:50]  And we've never heard.
[00:26:53]  We've heard thank yous from people.
[00:26:55]  The whole was saved.
[00:26:56]  We heard thank you from organizations like yours that, hey, thanks.
[00:27:00]  And we're like, yes, thank you for actually doing the work.
[00:27:03]  Government?
[00:27:04]  Nothing.
[00:27:05]  Not a word.
[00:27:05]  Nothing.
[00:27:06]  Not a word.
[00:27:06]  So, you know, I think, you know, it is odd to me as a nonprofit, we love to say thank you to our sponsors, to our donors, right?
[00:27:17]  You know, Ray Rombowski from Spray Tech, one of our, it was on our board, one of our big guys, Andy Wilson from UDC, Andy Wilson from Quiet Professionals, Matt Herring, UDC USA, a couple of Mac Murphy from Murphy Auto Group.
[00:27:29]  We have a core group of just patriotic Americans who help us, right?
[00:27:35]  Some other nonprofits.
[00:27:36]  We love to say thank you.
[00:27:37]  Love to say thank you.
[00:27:39]  It's odd that that is a one-way street as it relates to the government.
[00:27:44]  Recognizing that, you know, what do you think would happen if a team of American Special Forces guys or Navy SEALs went 300 miles, 400 miles into enemy territory and rescued an American being tortured?
[00:27:55]  What kind of medals do you think they would get?
[00:27:57]  We'd have a parade, right?
[00:27:58]  We'd have a parade, right?
[00:28:01]  Fort Bragg just did, I just did Maduro, right?
[00:28:03]  And just an epic operation.
[00:28:05]  Epic.
[00:28:06]  150 aircraft and all the things and they cut through the door.
[00:28:09]  I mean, just truly epic operation.
[00:28:11]  Epic.
[00:28:11]  Epic.
[00:28:12]  Amazing.
[00:28:13]  Thank you, Donald Trump, for welcome to the war.
[00:28:15]  Yes.
[00:28:16]  Welcome.
[00:28:16]  Yes.
[00:28:17]  As the guys who work in Venezuela and cartels for most of my adult life, thank you for getting this piece of crap off the street.
[00:28:25]  I don't care about the politics.
[00:28:26]  I don't care about the legality.
[00:28:27]  Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.
[00:28:29]  I'm so happy they didn't shoot him and they had to perp walk him.
[00:28:31]  I think it's humiliating.
[00:28:32]  I think it's great.
[00:28:34]  But at the end of the day, we are lauding our heroes.
[00:28:38]  Appropriately so.
[00:28:40]  What kind of medals do you think they're going to, all the dudes that broke down the door and cut Maduro out and rolled him up and all the things, all those dudes, appropriately are going to be showered with every medal that there is.
[00:28:50]  Their careers are set.
[00:28:53]  I'm still in the reserves.
[00:28:55]  People don't know.
[00:28:56]  We don't talk about it a whole lot.
[00:28:57]  Not that it's a secret.
[00:28:58]  I'm still in the reserves.
[00:28:59]  Would you believe it if my reserve career, if I told you, me, and I have a lot of reservists on my team, every one of us as reservists have been targeted and our careers have been ruined because of our work saving American lives?
[00:29:11]  Oh, I wouldn't doubt that.
[00:29:13]  Right?
[00:29:13]  So let me understand this right.
[00:29:15]  Me and a couple of guys go into Russian-controlled territory, rescue an American hostage alone.
[00:29:21]  No 150 aircraft, no drones, no satellites, no anything.
[00:29:24]  Just brave Americans like World War II style, doing what the OSS used to do.
[00:29:28]  That's how we roll.
[00:29:30]  Not only do we not get a thank you, we get punished.
[00:29:34]  That's backwards to me.
[00:29:36]  That's backwards.
[00:29:36]  That's a mistake.
[00:29:37]  I don't think that.
[00:29:38]  As a country, that's a mistake.
[00:29:39]  Big time, but I think people, people, especially in the government, want to believe the government's the only one authorized to do that.
[00:29:46]  You know, Jimmy Carter is the one who gave us the term first responder.
[00:29:50]  Right.
[00:29:50]  No, the first responder before Jimmy Carter's time was you.
[00:29:53]  Well, and I bring it back to 9-11.
[00:29:56]  Bring it back to 9-11.
[00:29:57]  And I was there.
[00:29:58]  The morning of 9-11, we're really close with the fire department, FDNY.
[00:30:04]  They're amazing.
[00:30:05]  My good friend Liam Flaherty, who's the captain of Rescue 2, who's joining Grabel.
[00:30:09]  That's an official announcement, by the way.
[00:30:11]  He's amazing.
[00:30:12]  He's a beast of a man.
[00:30:14]  But the original first responders on the morning of 9-11 were not just the firemen, and they weren't just the police.
[00:30:20]  They were accountants.
[00:30:21]  They were stockbrokers.
[00:30:23]  They were bodega deli people.
[00:30:24]  They're Americans.
[00:30:26]  No matter if they're a cop or not.
[00:30:28]  Didn't matter.
[00:30:28]  You know, in New York, New Yorkers are not exactly known for being nice, right?
[00:30:34]  We're not known for that, right?
[00:30:35]  We're not known for that, right?
[00:30:37]  We're not known for that.
[00:30:39]  On the morning of 9-11, Republicans, Democrats, black, white, purple, Muslim, Christian, Jews, Hindus, you name it, everybody, everybody helped.
[00:30:49]  Everybody.
[00:30:50]  I remember.
[00:30:50]  Everybody.
[00:30:51]  I will never forget.
[00:30:53]  It's one of the images that haunt me for my life for forever was there was a fireman that was in very bad shape.
[00:31:02]  We forget 343 firemen died.
[00:31:04]  Hundreds were severely injured, though.
[00:31:06]  Hundreds were if anyone that was in the collapse got banged up real bad.
[00:31:11]  And there were these two guys in suits, in suits.
[00:31:16]  They're like Wall Street people, who knows who, carrying this fireman.
[00:31:20]  And it haunted me still to this day.
[00:31:24]  I get emotional thinking about it.
[00:31:26]  It's one of the few images that I really remember.
[00:31:28]  Remember uh, a lot of it.
[00:31:30]  My brain has blocked it out a little bit, but it's one of the few still images that I have in my head of a fireman being helped out by just two civilians.
[00:31:38]  Right, you know what I mean?
[00:31:40]  Yeah, it's in my head, you know.
[00:31:42]  Yeah, when I think about Grable Rescue and I think what mercury one has done and all these different nonprofits, those that went and did things, same same, same same.
[00:31:53]  That doesn't mean that those two accountants hate the fire department, quite the contrary.
[00:31:56]  Well look, they love the fire department.
[00:31:58]  Of course, at Gray Ball, we have no beef with the, with the government whatsoever.
[00:32:02]  We love the, we love our brothers and sisters and, in the intelligence community, the Diplomatic Corps.

=== Venezuela's Strategic Threats (07:30) ===

[00:32:06]  Uh, we've had frustrations with all these folks over time.
[00:32:10]  Happens, it's okay, not everyone has to love each other, but we do all roll in the same direction, or at least we're supposed to, and I would argue that in in, even still today, there's this real big gap between us and them, the government and the private sector.
[00:32:26]  Every other country out there does not have this problem.
[00:32:29]  Wow, if you talk to Chinese intelligence and you ask them, so how do you integrate national security and business, they go, oh, it's same same.
[00:32:38]  Why would there?
[00:32:39]  Why would we want it to be different?
[00:32:40]  It's stupid.
[00:32:41]  We have more business people in the world that are loyal to China than we have people that work for the Chinese Communist Party.
[00:32:46]  Just sheer numbers.
[00:32:47]  Why, why?
[00:32:49]  Why would we be different?
[00:32:50]  Right, Russia will tell you the same thing.
[00:32:52]  France will tell you the same thing.
[00:32:54]  Israel will tell you the same thing.
[00:32:55]  From an intelligence perspective and a national security perspective, they rely it's baked into the fabric of their security to rely on the private sector.
[00:33:04]  It's fully integrated.
[00:33:06]  We have a hard divide.
[00:33:08]  That's a mistake.
[00:33:09]  That's a mistake.
[00:33:10]  I thought that was part of the thing that we were supposed to get rid of.
[00:33:13]  That's what.
[00:33:14]  That's what I read.
[00:33:15]  Yeah, but here we are.
[00:33:17]  Here we are, like during the collapse, the banks are too big and then we went and made them bigger.
[00:33:20]  Right right, you know, we no longer have stovepipes, we have cylinders of excellence.
[00:33:24]  That's what it is.
[00:33:26]  Yeah, cylinders of excellence.
[00:33:27]  It's so funny.
[00:33:29]  We talk a lot about supply chains.
[00:33:32]  Like you know, food just materializes, you know, from a system like it's all automated, impersonal and global by default.
[00:33:39]  But food comes from people.
[00:33:41]  It comes from that family that has been working the same land for generation.
[00:33:45]  It comes from ranchers who know the weather better than the forecasters do.
[00:33:49]  It comes from hands that actually raise what ends up on your table.
[00:33:53]  Good ranchers decided something simple, if you're gonna, if you're gonna feed American families, you source it from American farms and ranches.
[00:34:02]  100 no imported shortcuts, no blurred labels, no games.
[00:34:06]  The entire process stays here, from pasture to packaging.
[00:34:10]  To support a company that has honored Uh America's past and committed to honoring the present, the future.
[00:34:17]  Visit Goodranchers.com.
[00:34:19]  Subscribe to any of their boxes of 100 American meat.
[00:34:22]  You're going to save 500 a year.
[00:34:24]  Use the promo code glenn, get an additional 25 off your first order.
[00:34:28]  Promo code, Glenngoodranchers.com.
[00:34:34]  Tell me about the mission that um, you pulled off in Venezuela.
[00:34:40]  Yeah uh Gold Take, tell us, take us through the tell the story.
[00:34:44]  So um, Maria Karina Machado who uh, is in the press recently, you know, president Trump doesn't have uh has some opinions on her.
[00:34:52]  Uh, that's fine.
[00:34:53]  Uh, she is.
[00:34:55]  Um, i've been following her for years, following her for years right uh I I, I follow her like I follow you right, i'm a fan, i'm a fan right um, she's tough, she's tough.
[00:35:06]  Maduro tried to beat her, jumped her years ago, knocked out all of her teeth years ago.
[00:35:09]  I mean, this is a tough woman, tough woman.
[00:35:11]  She's been through a lot.
[00:35:12]  She's an opposition leader.
[00:35:13]  I've known many of them.
[00:35:15]  Um, She, you know, Maduro is a piece of crap.
[00:35:19]  Carte de la Sols are what Maduro has done to the United States of America.
[00:35:24]  Most people don't realize how horrible that has nothing to do with drugs.
[00:35:27]  It has even less to do with oil.
[00:35:29]  It's all kinds of things, all kinds of things.
[00:35:31]  Like what?
[00:35:32]  Largest concentration of Hezbollah operatives outside of Beirut is Americo, Venezuela for years.
[00:35:38]  Yep.
[00:35:39]  Right?
[00:35:39]  I can swim from Maracaipo to U.S. territory.
[00:35:44]  Okay?
[00:35:45]  That's a mistake where I'm from, right?
[00:35:47]  That's a mistake.
[00:35:49]  Russian technology, the Chinese ground station for their satellites is in Venezuela.
[00:35:55]  So we're talking China stuff, cyber stuff.
[00:35:58]  There's election pieces to it with SmartMatic and Dominion and all those things, depending on what you believe, right?
[00:36:03]  You have election interference stuff.
[00:36:05]  You have social disobedience.
[00:36:06]  Number one donor, the seed capital for Black Lives Matter was Nicolas Maduro.
[00:36:12]  Google it.
[00:36:13]  Right there.
[00:36:14]  So what's the likelihood that Nicolas Maduro was so violently emotionally moved by racism in America that he felt compelled for his Christian Catholic ethics?
[00:36:27]  He just had to do something for African Americans being targeted in America that he felt compelled to do seed capital.
[00:36:39]  You don't buy into that.
[00:36:40]  I just don't, I mean, how come that not cancer?
[00:36:43]  I'm not saying it's not right, but pick your fights.
[00:36:45]  Pick your fights, right?
[00:36:47]  So, you know, what the regime in Venezuela, first under the Chavez and then under the bus driver Maduro, what their nexus to bad things in America is extreme.
[00:37:01]  It's extreme.
[00:37:02]  It's all over them.
[00:37:03]  If you read the old national security strategy and the new national security strategy and you look at the top priorities of each document, right?
[00:37:11]  If you go to President Trump has 45, President Biden, and then President Trump has 47, if you read each one of those national security strategies, the first paragraph lists the priorities.
[00:37:23]  Venezuela touches every single one of them.
[00:37:27]  It's the only country on earth that does touch every single one of them.
[00:37:31]  It talks about cyber.
[00:37:32]  It talks about Western hemisphere.
[00:37:34]  It talks about narcotics.
[00:37:35]  It talks about violent extremist organizations.
[00:37:37]  It talks about terrorism.
[00:37:38]  It talks about China.
[00:37:39]  It talks about Russia.
[00:37:40]  It talks about Iran.
[00:37:41]  I don't know.
[00:37:41]  Venezuela is like 31 flavors for me.
[00:37:44]  You see?
[00:37:44]  So Venezuela has, yeah, there's a drug thing.
[00:37:47]  And yeah, there's an oil play there too.
[00:37:48]  And yeah, the people are suffering.
[00:37:50]  But it has nothing to do with the Western Hemisphere.
[00:37:55]  It happens to be in the Western Hemisphere.
[00:37:57]  What does it have to do?
[00:37:58]  It has to do with a country that has aligned itself with every bad guy out there that hates us and they're in a good geographic position to hurt us.
[00:38:07]  That's it.
[00:38:08]  And they do.
[00:38:09]  Number one passport caught at the southern border was Venezuelan.
[00:38:13]  You ready for this?
[00:38:14]  Number one passport caught.
[00:38:17]  Also, also, of the Venezuelan passports caught, right?
[00:38:21]  Would you believe it if I told you that there was a disproportionate number of Venezuelan passport holders caught at the border who don't speak Spanish?
[00:38:29]  No, I would not be surprised.
[00:38:31]  Well, yeah, why is that?
[00:38:32]  Let's analyze this.
[00:38:34]  You know, I'm a C-plus student, a medium intelligence kind of a guy.
[00:38:37]  Well, the Attorney General of Venezuela up until very recently was a guy named Tariq Al-Asame.
[00:38:42]  Does he sound Latino to you?
[00:38:45]  Well, that's funny.
[00:38:46]  The old vice president is a guy named Tariq Al Sab.
[00:38:48]  Huh.
[00:38:49]  It doesn't sound like Jorge Gutierrez.
[00:38:51]  Yeah.
[00:38:52]  Huh.
[00:38:53]  Interesting.
[00:38:53]  These guys are hardcore Hezbollah guys, hardcore Hezbollah guys, who are the Attorney General and the vice president of the country.
[00:39:01]  Interesting.
[00:39:02]  So why are we scratching our heads going, well, how did all these Hezbollah guys get there?
[00:39:06]  And how do these Venezuelan passport holders, not Venezuelans, Venezuelan passport holders, come to America?
[00:39:15]  And if you look at things like Trende Aragua and we go, oh my God, how did this happen?
[00:39:19]  And you look at the tactics at their training camps and you look at, I don't know, the Al-Qaeda training camps or the Hezbollah training camps.
[00:39:25]  It's funny.
[00:39:26]  Even the monkey bars are the same.
[00:39:29]  The layout of the camps are identical.
[00:39:32]  So, so this is not like Algonquin level calculus here.

=== Outpacing the Enemy (08:19) ===

[00:39:37]  This is easy stuff.
[00:39:39]  This is easy stuff.
[00:39:40]  You see?
[00:39:41]  So when guys like me and then groups like ours, when we operate against these guys, you just put your thinking cap on a little bit.
[00:39:47]  And if you've been working these issues a long time, it's the same song, different verse.
[00:39:52]  How do you react to people who in the press are suddenly for Maduro?
[00:39:59]  Against what this is.
[00:40:00]  This is like my uncle who invented aluminum foil.
[00:40:04]  I tell them, you know, I say, okay, well, I mean, if you think this is good, I'm open ears.
[00:40:10]  I'm a middle of the road kind of guy.
[00:40:13]  I'm a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat, depending on the issue, you know?
[00:40:18]  I'm right in the middle.
[00:40:19]  I'm a patriot.
[00:40:20]  I'm a patriot.
[00:40:21]  I care about Americans.
[00:40:23]  And I ask people, explain to me.
[00:40:26]  This help me understand because I know these issues real well.
[00:40:29]  I've been in this game a long, long, long time.
[00:40:31]  I've worked these issues my entire life.
[00:40:33]  It's all I know how to do.
[00:40:34]  I can't play the piano.
[00:40:36]  I have no athletic ability, right?
[00:40:38]  I could ride motorcycles.
[00:40:39]  I could jump out of airplanes.
[00:40:40]  I could shoot some guns.
[00:40:41]  And I really love this stuff.
[00:40:43]  Help me understand.
[00:40:45]  I'm open ears.
[00:40:46]  And I'm truly open ears.
[00:40:48]  And when you get into these debates with these people, it's really funny because most people come unarmed to the fight, which is the new number one problem in America.
[00:40:58]  We do not have, as Americans, we do not have a capability problem.
[00:41:04]  We don't.
[00:41:04]  When you have a $1 trillion year national security budget, you don't have a problem.
[00:41:08]  You just don't, right?
[00:41:09]  We put a man on the moon in a washing machine without email on PowerPoint, right?
[00:41:14]  See you in the lobby?
[00:41:15]  Oh, yeah.
[00:41:16]  Oh, yeah.
[00:41:16]  Yeah.
[00:41:16]  Right?
[00:41:17]  We are an incredibly capable country.
[00:41:20]  Yeah.
[00:41:21]  And yet people still somehow don't know anything.
[00:41:24]  We have a lack of seriousness in America.
[00:41:26]  If I go right now, I just did this.
[00:41:28]  I was teaching, I was giving a lecture to a bunch of military officers, like a whole room full of them.
[00:41:32]  And these guys are all, you know, geniuses, right?
[00:41:36]  And they all laugh at me because I'm a junior nobody.
[00:41:38]  Right.
[00:41:38]  And what do I know?
[00:41:39]  Right.
[00:41:39]  And I ask everyone with this whole big room.
[00:41:41]  I go, who, what is our biggest threat?
[00:41:43]  And nobody wants to raise their hand.
[00:41:45]  And I go, I go, well, don't we all agree?
[00:41:48]  You know, China is the biggest thing.
[00:41:49]  And they go, oh, yeah, China.
[00:41:50]  I go, you guys are all in the military, right?
[00:41:51]  And I go, yeah, you guys wake up every single day worrying about China, right?
[00:41:55]  I go, yeah.
[00:41:56]  And I go, okay, let me ask you, who's the Secretary of Defense or the Minister of Defense of China?
[00:42:04]  Crickets.
[00:42:05]  And I go, do you honestly believe that if I went to the same exact room in Beijing, China, and I asked anyone in the room, who's Pete Hegseth, that they wouldn't know?
[00:42:15]  So how do you explain to me?
[00:42:18]  How do you explain to me that you guys are a bunch of really smart guys who are focused on these issues and you don't even know who the boss is?
[00:42:24]  But then somebody says, somebody says, well, see, because of this counterterrorism pivot and we're pivotal, no problem, no problem.
[00:42:32]  I got it.
[00:42:33]  I was a CT guy too.
[00:42:34]  Awesome.
[00:42:35]  Great.
[00:42:35]  So CT is what you guys know the best.
[00:42:37]  Counterterrorism is what you guys know the best.
[00:42:39]  They go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:42:40]  I go, who's the CT guy?
[00:42:41]  And everyone raises their hand.
[00:42:42]  Who here's deployed and done the terrorism?
[00:42:44]  Everyone raises their hand.
[00:42:44]  Great.
[00:42:45]  Who's the leader of Hezbollah?
[00:42:48]  Crickets.
[00:42:49]  I go, let me ask you a question.
[00:42:50]  Who's the current leader of Al-Qaeda?
[00:42:53]  Crickets.
[00:42:54]  I go, who's the leader of ISIS?
[00:42:55]  Crickets.
[00:42:56]  And I go, do we honestly believe that these guys went out and got jobs at the Department of Motor Vehicles?
[00:43:01]  They all went out, got government jobs and joined the Girl Scouts?
[00:43:03]  Yeah.
[00:43:04]  So if you tell me that the terrorism thing is what you know the best, but yet you don't know that.
[00:43:09]  And you tell me that China is what you do tomorrow and you don't know that.
[00:43:12]  Well, then tell me, what exactly do you know?
[00:43:14]  What do you know?
[00:43:15]  Yeah.
[00:43:16]  And it's a lack of attention.
[00:43:18]  It's a lack of seriousness.
[00:43:19]  We're very focused on a lot of other things.
[00:43:22]  But I tell you, if I went to any single person in Lebanon, I spent a lot of time in Lebanon amongst the bad guys, and I asked them, who's the director CIA?
[00:43:30]  They know.
[00:43:32]  Where is CENTCOM located?
[00:43:34]  They'll all tell you Tampa, Florida.
[00:43:35]  They know.
[00:43:36]  The bad guys are paying attention.
[00:43:38]  And the metaphor is, if I put my sister, who's tiny, in a boxing ring with Mike Tyson, I can teach my sister, who's smaller and certainly less capable, how to kill Mike Tyson and kill him.
[00:43:54]  Kill him quickly, fast.
[00:43:57]  That only works if Mike Tyson isn't paying attention.
[00:44:00]  If Mike Tyson understands he's in the boxing ring and deserve a fight, he's going to knock my sister in the next Tuesday.
[00:44:06]  But it's implied that he's paying attention and that he knows what he's doing.
[00:44:13]  So if the bad guys are at war with us and we aren't thinking we're at war with them, we just became Mike Tyson and gave our butts whooped.
[00:44:23]  That's a mistake.
[00:44:26]  I've said this forever.
[00:44:28]  If you're not willing to name Nazis in World War II, you don't win.
[00:44:32]  You don't win.
[00:44:32]  Right.
[00:44:32]  You don't win.
[00:44:33]  That's right.
[00:44:34]  So do you think that China is our biggest threat?
[00:44:38]  I mean, it is a huge threat, but I look at the Matrix and I mean, I think we're about to lose Europe.
[00:44:47]  They're so close from Islamists.
[00:44:50]  It's nuts.
[00:44:51]  So, you know, I tell people, you know, we've done ops in Africa.
[00:44:56]  Grabel Rescue has rescued American citizens held at risk, either evacuations or targeted rescues in Africa, the Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
[00:45:07]  As a C-plus student from Queens, where I'm from, that's called everywhere.
[00:45:10]  That's cool.
[00:45:13]  Under the Goldwater-Nichols Act, we established the combatant commands, right?
[00:45:17]  You have CENTCOM, which covers the Middle East, PACOM, which covers the Pacific, UCOM covers Europe, Africa, like this, right?
[00:45:23]  As we speak right now, this is the first time in American history since that system was invented for the military that we have active combat in every single COCOM.
[00:45:34]  The system was designed so that you can move resources around.
[00:45:37]  So if Europe gets hot, you can pivot and move.
[00:45:40]  This is the first time every single combatant commander out there is engaged in something.
[00:45:47]  That's new.
[00:45:49]  So when you're seeing, you know, I've seen stuff where Trump has, you know, he's urging the military, the military-industrial complex, pick up the pace, pick up the pace.
[00:46:01]  What I think he's doing with the Western hemisphere is, I just think it's genius, quite honestly.
[00:46:07]  The negotiations that he's done for rare earth minerals and oils and everything else, I feel like it's 1940 and FDR just got, you know, oh, wow, they're in France, huh?
[00:46:19]  And then realizing we, I mean, in 1940, we were literally training with broomsticks.
[00:46:25]  Okay.
[00:46:26]  We didn't even have guns.
[00:46:27]  Sure.
[00:46:28]  And this acceleration to prepare economically, prepare, you know, physically, mentally for something big, is that because he sees that warfare is changing and we have to lead the world?
[00:46:46]  Or do you think he senses we could be at war at any time?
[00:46:51]  I think he senses that we're at war right now.
[00:46:53]  I think that President Trump understands.
[00:46:55]  I think President Trump understands more than most.
[00:47:03]  Not only does he understand, I think he feels it, that we're at war now.
[00:47:07]  I think he feels it.
[00:47:10]  I think he thinks that.
[00:47:11]  I think he feels that at a very personal emotional level.
[00:47:14]  Part of that is because he's the president of the United States, but also it's because of who he is.
[00:47:17]  I think that the innovation is important.
[00:47:21]  Technology is important.
[00:47:22]  We have got to keep up.
[00:47:23]  We have got to outpace the enemy.
[00:47:26]  If the enemy can shoot, if we can shoot 1,000 yards and the enemy can shoot 1,200 yards, that means they can kill us and we can't kill them.
[00:47:35]  It's what that means.
[00:47:37]  So, you know, innovation is really important.
[00:47:40]  I think one of the major, major, major things that I really love about the Trump, President Trump's 47th administration, and there's lots of things that I don't like to be clear.
[00:47:52]  But one of the things I really love is that this real need to get rid of all the stupid, get rid of the bureaucracy.

=== Outpacing the Enemy with Innovation (14:54) ===

[00:47:56]  Oh, my gosh.
[00:47:57]  It can't take two years for an agency to buy a cell phone.
[00:48:01]  No.
[00:48:02]  Because by the time they, if you buy iPhone 17s for the CIA or the FBI or the DOD or the Bureau of Indian Affairs, who cares?
[00:48:10]  If you spend a million dollars to buy iPhone 17s today and they don't show up for two years, by the time they show up, you can't even get the updates for the phone.
[00:48:21]  The innovation cycle, the technology cycle has fundamentally changed.
[00:48:27]  And that's where the private sector really makes its money.
[00:48:30]  Right now, when you look at going back to Venezuela, the cartels have about a trillion dollar a year budget for their defense.
[00:48:37]  A lot of money.
[00:48:38]  Almost the same budget as us.
[00:48:40]  But their trillion dollars goes a lot farther than ours.
[00:48:42]  A trillion dollar, number one, a trillion dollars in Venezuela is a lot more than a trillion dollars in Washington.
[00:48:47]  Oh, yeah.
[00:48:48]  And they don't have 80 lawyers in between a decision.
[00:48:52]  They don't have that.
[00:48:54]  They don't have that.
[00:48:54]  So they can, their dollar goes farther as a nonprofit that Graveville Rescue is.
[00:49:02]  And you understand, one of our big talking points is how many cents of every dollar goes to the mission.
[00:49:07]  Correct.
[00:49:08]  It's one of our big things, right?
[00:49:10]  All nonprofits, right?
[00:49:11]  Tunneled to towers.
[00:49:12]  Every nonprofit wants to be able to say every dollar goes to a mission.
[00:49:16]  100 pennies of every dollar goes to the mission.
[00:49:18]  And we have such low overhead and all those things, right?
[00:49:22]  Well, the government has to kind of take a page out of that book.
[00:49:24]  They need to really, really, really get rid of lawyers are okay.
[00:49:29]  Oversight's okay.
[00:49:30]  Congress is okay.
[00:49:31]  Healthy debate is okay.
[00:49:33]  Healthy debate is okay.
[00:49:36]  Not stupidity and the clown show.
[00:49:38]  That's not okay.
[00:49:39]  That's not okay.
[00:49:42]  We did this great operation with Lindsey Graham.
[00:49:44]  Senator Graham.
[00:49:45]  So Senator Mark Wayne Mullens from Oklahoma is a really good friend of ours.
[00:49:49]  He's one of my favorite people.
[00:49:50]  He's just a tough bastard just in life.
[00:49:55]  You go into his office and his office is a man cave on the hill.
[00:50:02]  And he had introduced us to Senator Graham for this thing that we call Graham Cracker.
[00:50:06]  We named it after Lindsey Graham as a gag, as a joke.
[00:50:10]  For three Americans trapped in Syria, three Americans from South Carolina trapped in Syria.
[00:50:17]  There were 4,000 U.S. troops within 21 minutes away from them, but they're in a bad spot.
[00:50:25]  And it was the boys on the ground, the operators, the barrel-chested freedom fighters covered in sleeve tats that wake up every single day lifting weights and running the ranges, dying to kill stuff.
[00:50:36]  Scary, scary.
[00:50:39]  These are my friends.
[00:50:40]  I'm an Intel guy.
[00:50:42]  You know, I don't do little birds.
[00:50:43]  I fly business class.
[00:50:44]  I'm a different kind of guy.
[00:50:45]  I'm a different kind of guy.
[00:50:48]  To be on the receiving end of that doorknob is a horrible experience for you.
[00:50:54]  They're chomping at the bit, and the lawyers wouldn't approve the operation.
[00:50:59]  Well, that's a mistake.
[00:51:00]  The lawyers said, or some of these lawyers said, well, they're not hostages yet.
[00:51:05]  And because we do hostage rescue, until they're hostages, we really can't play.
[00:51:09]  And my answer was, is, you know, Where do you live?
[00:51:14]  You know, bless you.
[00:51:16]  I'm like, are you in the army?
[00:51:18]  Bless you.
[00:51:18]  I'm like, become a statistic.
[00:51:20]  Right.
[00:51:20]  Because you're in the way.
[00:51:21]  Right.
[00:51:22]  You're in the way.
[00:51:23]  Right.
[00:51:23]  Do you want me to honestly listen to say you want that?
[00:51:27]  Mind you, the bad guys during this time had executed people, Americans from Oklahoma.
[00:51:32]  The bad guys weren't taking hostages.
[00:51:34]  Bless you.
[00:51:37]  Right?
[00:51:37]  So we went and did it.
[00:51:38]  Right.
[00:51:39]  But can we cut enough out of this to make it efficient?
[00:51:46]  I know that we can.
[00:51:47]  You know how I know?
[00:51:48]  The global war on terrorism.
[00:51:50]  We figured out a way to create technology to hunt individual, to read license plates from outer space.
[00:52:00]  When angry enough, when angry enough and when motivated and when serious enough, we are an incredibly capable country.
[00:52:09]  So what is the, what is the, first, let me ask you about Iran.
[00:52:15]  You think that's going to fall?
[00:52:16]  I hope so.
[00:52:17]  I do, too.
[00:52:18]  I've been working really hard on it personally.
[00:52:20]  Besides, it's kind of a significant thing.
[00:52:22]  I know during the Cold War, we were always there when countries got into this position.
[00:52:29]  We were there.
[00:52:30]  Yeah.
[00:52:30]  To push them over the edge.
[00:52:31]  Push it a little bit.
[00:52:32]  Are we there, do you think?
[00:52:32]  I hope so.
[00:52:34]  What would we be doing?
[00:52:36]  I think we would be doing, I think we'd be helping the opposition.
[00:52:41]  And CIA is very good at this.
[00:52:44]  The intelligence community is good at this.
[00:52:46]  This is what covert action is really all about.
[00:52:50]  And Iran's in a really good space for this.
[00:52:55]  They just got their butts whooped this year.
[00:52:58]  Yeah.
[00:52:58]  Humiliated.
[00:52:59]  You know, I remember I was in Israel.
[00:53:01]  I was in Lebanon.
[00:53:03]  I was in Lebanon when Iran launched like 300 rockets at Israel in one day.
[00:53:09]  No, I was in Israel.
[00:53:10]  I was in Israel when they did that.
[00:53:11]  I was in Israel.
[00:53:12]  I'm in Tel Aviv.
[00:53:13]  And it's, oh my God, they're going to send 300 rockets.
[00:53:16]  Right, right.
[00:53:17]  Holy cow.
[00:53:18]  And like, you know, two made it through.
[00:53:20]  One landed in a parking lot.
[00:53:22]  One landed like a huge.
[00:53:23]  That would be amazing to see.
[00:53:24]  Right.
[00:53:24]  And Iron Dome did its thing.
[00:53:26]  You know the worst job in the world?
[00:53:28]  Could you imagine being the commander of Iranian rocket forces having to go and tell the Ayatollah?
[00:53:33]  No.
[00:53:33]  Sir, I got good news and I got bad news.
[00:53:35]  300 of our martyr missiles, you know, our big ones, 300 successfully took off.
[00:53:42]  But sadly, not a single one hit their target.
[00:53:44]  I'm very sorry.
[00:53:45]  Holy cow.
[00:53:47]  As a military officer that has had to bring bad news to my boss about things that I've done wrong, I cannot imagine being that, being that guy.
[00:53:58]  We have been told for a while now, you know, Russia, spooky, scary.
[00:54:04]  You know, it's a very prepared.
[00:54:06]  Doesn't seem to be that way.
[00:54:08]  China.
[00:54:09]  Ukrainian grandmas kicked their ass for like a year until we showed up, but that's okay.
[00:54:13]  Iran, doesn't seem that way.
[00:54:16]  Venezuela, what we did in Venezuela.
[00:54:19]  Remarkable.
[00:54:24]  Do we have stuff that we're not really aware of?
[00:54:27]  I've never seen anything like that.
[00:54:29]  Right.
[00:54:29]  So we have some sort of new technology.
[00:54:33]  One of the best things that no one is talking about with Absolute Resolve, the Maduro hit.
[00:54:40]  So Venezuela recently invested and paid in gold to Russia for a brand new, shiny, top-of-the-line, brand new, brand new, beautiful, beautiful, and entire new integrated, what's called IATS, integrated air defense system.
[00:54:54]  And the backbone of that is integrated radars, right?
[00:54:57]  Or a radar system that detects things on the sky.
[00:55:00]  And they had S-300 missiles, which are not the big ones and not the most advanced, but for these purposes, it doesn't matter.
[00:55:08]  And we flew helicopters.
[00:55:12]  Helicopters are vulnerable to anything.
[00:55:15]  Birds.
[00:55:15]  Yes.
[00:55:16]  A bird strike on a tail rotor.
[00:55:18]  Right.
[00:55:18]  You got a 50-50 shot, you're going, a bird.
[00:55:20]  Right.
[00:55:20]  Okay.
[00:55:21]  And we sailed 150 shiny American aircraft, not to mention drones and all the other stuff that went in between F-22s and F-35s and all the stuff and B-1s and B-2s, all this crazy stuff.
[00:55:34]  And it's amazing.
[00:55:36]  It's amazing.
[00:55:37]  Not one.
[00:55:38]  A couple of gunshots?
[00:55:39]  A couple of gunshots.
[00:55:40]  nothing heavy though so is that i mean if you're how how is that yeah Right now.
[00:55:46]  How?
[00:55:46]  Well, probably some Intel guys what we call exploits, stole some stuff.
[00:55:52]  And the worst kind of security to have is a false sense of security.
[00:55:58]  So if I'm a Duro, I'm like, yeah, I got brand new shiny radars and this is great.
[00:56:01]  And I'm in bed with Russia and they love me and I love them and oil and gold and all the things.
[00:56:05]  And look at all this cool stuff I have and this is awesome.
[00:56:07]  I've got fighter jets and I've got MiGs and Sukoys and F-16s and all of the good stuff.
[00:56:11]  I can, you know, can I defend, can I win against the war in America?
[00:56:15]  No.
[00:56:15]  But I can defend myself.
[00:56:16]  But I can defend myself, though.
[00:56:17]  I can defend myself.
[00:56:18]  Well, actually not.
[00:56:20]  Actually not.
[00:56:21]  Actually pretty humiliating.
[00:56:22]  So if you're Russia, China, you're any, anybody.
[00:56:26]  More importantly, if you're any of their friends that they sold their radars to.
[00:56:30]  Yes.
[00:56:32]  I want to refund.
[00:56:34]  I want to refund, right?
[00:56:36]  That's the important part, is Russia is making friends all over the place.
[00:56:41]  We make friends with people all over the place, and we very often do that through military agreements.
[00:56:45]  If I'm whatever country and I have Russian radars and I'm good, I'm calling Putin up and I'm saying, and I'm calling Lavrov up and I'm saying, whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:56:56]  You better fix this.
[00:56:57]  I repair it.
[00:56:58]  I want to report.
[00:56:58]  I mean, literally, I want to refund, right?
[00:57:01]  Because this doesn't work.
[00:57:03]  Now, the problem that we have, and this is another thing that no one thinks this way, this is why Greybool's good at what we do.
[00:57:12]  If that is true for Russia, meaning Russia sells military hardware to their friends and we can walk through it because we figured it out.
[00:57:21]  We must ask ourselves the question of our military hardware that we have sold to our friends.
[00:57:27]  Is it equally as susceptible?
[00:57:29]  Because if it could happen to them, if we can hack their stuff, well, surely they can hack our stuff.
[00:57:34]  So are we okay?
[00:57:35]  Do we have a false sense of security?
[00:57:37]  Have we drunk our own Kool-Aid?
[00:57:40]  And that's an important question to ask.
[00:57:42]  I think we have.
[00:57:43]  I mean, the only thing that gives me real hope is, you know, I talked to President Trump during his campaign and, you know, Biden had been ratcheting things up and Putin was like, I'm going to strike.
[00:57:58]  And the one thing I know for a fact, because every time I saw him during that time period, he told me.
[00:58:06]  Nuclear war is the most devastating thing that could possibly happen.
[00:58:10]  It's like, I've rebuilt our arsenal.
[00:58:11]  Glenn, you don't want to know what we can do.
[00:58:14]  He said, once it starts, it's all over.
[00:58:16]  The whole world is over.
[00:58:18]  And that is the only thing I've seen him scared by because, as he said to me, I rebuilt it.
[00:58:25]  I know what Ken is capable.
[00:58:28]  He's rebuilding now.
[00:58:29]  And I said to him at one point, and he seemed like he was still kind of old school, but I don't think he is.
[00:58:39]  I said, why are we spending money on aircraft carriers when we know drones can swarm an aircraft carrier?
[00:58:47]  And it seems like it's going to be the horse of World War II, World War I.
[00:58:51]  Sure.
[00:58:51]  You know what I mean?
[00:58:52]  Sure.
[00:58:54]  And he's now suddenly speeding.
[00:58:56]  He's putting pressure on speed up, speed up, speed up, speed up.
[00:59:00]  Do you think that is because we're in kind of a 1940 situation where the president realizes war is right around the corner and we're not prepared?
[00:59:12]  Or is it because he realizes war is dramatically going to change and we must be prepared for that or a combination of the two?
[00:59:21]  I think both.
[00:59:26]  War is changing at a pace, just like technology is changing at a pace, unlike we've ever seen.
[00:59:32]  And it's always been.
[00:59:34]  War evolves, right?
[00:59:36]  War evolves.
[00:59:37]  You design a weapon, someone designs a countermeasure, then you do a counter to the counter, and it's just kind of how it goes.
[00:59:43]  But the speed at which that's happening is extreme right now.
[00:59:46]  Extreme.
[00:59:47]  Extreme.
[00:59:49]  And you saw what was happening with Russia since Venezuela.
[00:59:54]  And I can't figure out England and the EU.
[00:59:57]  I think the EU is worthless.
[00:59:58]  NATO is worthless.
[01:00:00]  It's over.
[01:00:00]  If they don't change their attitude, it's just completely Europe is gone.
[01:00:04]  But they seem to want war with Russia, you know?
[01:00:08]  And Russia seems to be pounding success.
[01:00:13]  Yes, please.
[01:00:13]  Yeah, I think, you know, as I watch these tea leaves play out, one of the big things that all the countries, Russia included, one of the things that haunts and scares the bejesus out of Vladimir Putin is population.
[01:00:26]  Yeah.
[01:00:27]  So Russia as a country has the highest HIV rate in all of Europe, has the highest abortion rate in all of Europe, has the highest divorce rate in all of Europe.
[01:00:36]  The Chechens, by comparison, who are Muslims, well, they have 9, 10, 12 babies a pop.
[01:00:43]  So real soon, Russia is going to be a Muslim country.
[01:00:47]  Facts.
[01:00:48]  It's just population, right?
[01:00:50]  For the same reason that China's military is aging out because they had the no-boarding.
[01:00:56]  The zero-daughter policy.
[01:00:58]  Well, there's only so many, and unlike our country, they don't like immigration.
[01:01:03]  They don't like legal immigration.
[01:01:05]  We don't like illegal immigration, but we really like legal immigration.
[01:01:09]  We're all about that for forever.
[01:01:10]  It's a fabric of our country.
[01:01:13]  So if you're Russia, one of the big reasons, they don't talk about it a whole lot, but one of the big things they really like about Ukraine is the women.
[01:01:24]  Because all the men are dead.
[01:01:25]  So if Russia can take Ukraine, all the men are dead.
[01:01:32]  and now they can start to remember when it sounds so stupid but it's it's mathematics No, no, no.
[01:01:39]  You remember when, if you're a student of war in World War II, Hitler issued an order to all the men in the army in Russia, or that were fighting in Russia, to rape as many Russians as possible because he needed new young Germans to fight in the future.
[01:02:02]  Correct.
[01:02:04]  The big strategic thinkers aren't thinking about the battles of today.
[01:02:06]  They're thinking about 20 years from now.
[01:02:09]  And you need people to fight.
[01:02:11]  20 years from now, I just feel like we are sitting.
[01:02:16]  We're sitting in World War III with Islamists.
[01:02:22]  Well, this is the thing, right, Glenn?
[01:02:24]  If you look at the national defense strategy, I always go back to our policies.
[01:02:28]  Our policy says China, Russia, Iran, violent extremist organizations, which is terrorists and cartels, and North Korea when we get around to it.
[01:02:38]  When I look at that, well, we just did an epic operation against the VEOs.
[01:02:41]  We're still doing terrorism stuff.
[01:02:43]  We're still killing people in Somalia and Mali and Syria and all those other places.
[01:02:46]  Iran, we already know about.
[01:02:48]  Russia, we already know about, and China's around the corner.

=== Epic Ops Against Terrorists (14:59) ===

[01:02:51]  From our policy perspective, our national security policy, we're failing.
[01:02:58]  The title of that document is Integrated Deterrence.
[01:03:01]  If we're at war with your, if we are in conflict on Instagram and CNN and Fox News with these enemies publicly, therefore we are at war, maybe not formal declaration from a congressional and a legal perspective, but we're killing people.
[01:03:18]  They're killing us.
[01:03:19]  War enough for these purposes.
[01:03:21]  Well, then we're not integrating or deterring anything.
[01:03:24]  And therefore, our policy is upside down somehow.
[01:03:28]  And that needs to get fixed.
[01:03:30]  I think President Trump knows this.
[01:03:31]  I think President Trump sees this.
[01:03:32]  I think that he feels it.
[01:03:33]  I think he's been the victim of it.
[01:03:35]  I think he's been targeted by it.
[01:03:36]  I think he's seen it work.
[01:03:38]  I think he's seen it fail.
[01:03:40]  I think he has a much better handle on the issues, the good parts and the bad parts than people give him credit for.
[01:03:48]  I really do.
[01:03:49]  I think he is the most, and I might be giving him too much credit.
[01:03:53]  I think he's much smarter than anybody thinks, but I may be giving him too much credit and not enough credit for people around him.
[01:04:01]  So let me say it this way.
[01:04:02]  He and the team he has assembled, it's some of the most genius America for we're going to be serious about survival that I've ever seen in my lifetime.
[01:04:15]  I don't even think Reagan, Reagan was bold, audacious, but Trump understands it's the Western civilization that is at stake.
[01:04:28]  And I think that he gets it and is putting the policies together better than I've ever seen.
[01:04:34]  Yeah, I think where he's gapped, I would say, so I agree with all that, where I think he's gapped is I do think he's a little light on strategic execution.
[01:04:45]  I think he's a little light on second, third, fourth order effects.
[01:04:47]  And Venezuela is a great example of it.
[01:04:49]  So he takes Maduro.
[01:04:50]  Great.
[01:04:51]  Great.
[01:04:52]  Thank you, President Trump.
[01:04:53]  Thank you.
[01:04:53]  President Trump, if you're listening, thank you for doing Maduro.
[01:04:56]  Thank you.
[01:04:58]  He leaves Delcey in power.
[01:05:00]  I understand the argument, but specifically Delcey, who's the vice president, acting president, right?
[01:05:09]  You know who her stepfather was?
[01:05:10]  Carlos the Jackal.
[01:05:13]  Oh my gosh.
[01:05:15]  Oh my gosh.
[01:05:16]  Okay.
[01:05:16]  Now she'd have a very good relationship with him, but nevertheless, this is the household she grew up in.
[01:05:21]  Okay.
[01:05:21]  Okay.
[01:05:22]  Ilya Tramirez.
[01:05:23]  Where is he from again?
[01:05:24]  Caracas, Venezuela.
[01:05:25]  Okay.
[01:05:26]  We forget.
[01:05:26]  We as Americans, we as Americans don't remember things.
[01:05:30]  So yes, Maduro, of course.
[01:05:34]  He's a bad guy, symbolic piece of crap.
[01:05:37]  Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
[01:05:38]  Awesome.
[01:05:39]  Del Ced, Diestado Kabe.
[01:05:40]  A couple of these key figures that they are the brains that should go also, that also matter.
[01:05:48]  And saying, I'm watching you.
[01:05:50]  These are slick people.
[01:05:52]  They lie, cheat, and steal.
[01:05:53]  They'll tell you something on TV and do something below you and you'll never know because it's criminal.
[01:05:59]  In La Cosa Nostra, the mafia, overwhelmingly, the vast majority of the mafia is legitimate business.
[01:06:09]  Any organized crime.
[01:06:11]  Most organized crime, the foundation is not illegitimate business.
[01:06:15]  It's legitimate business to hide the illegitimate business where the profits are a little bit better.
[01:06:20]  That's all it is.
[01:06:21]  Well, this is the same.
[01:06:22]  I'm a politician and Donald Trump, I'm going to listen to you because I'm Dulcie and I saw what you did on TV and I don't want that to happen to me.
[01:06:28]  So I'm afraid of you, Jeepers Creepers.
[01:06:31]  If you did this to my boss, what could you do to me?
[01:06:33]  Oh my God, I'm going to, whatever.
[01:06:35]  I promise you, we're going to do elections.
[01:06:37]  Just give us a couple of weeks, let the dust settle, whatever.
[01:06:39]  You know what she's doing right now?
[01:06:40]  She's moving her just pieces around the board.
[01:06:44]  Why did he say the woman you helped escape?
[01:06:50]  Maria.
[01:06:51]  Why do you think Trump said, I don't think, was he talking about, I don't think she has the support in the military, in the government, et cetera, et cetera, to set something up quickly?
[01:07:03]  So we extract Maria Karina Machado, who visually is like Hillary Clinton.
[01:07:12]  She's the most popular face in the Western hemisphere other than Maduro himself.
[01:07:16]  Okay.
[01:07:17]  Just like Hillary.
[01:07:17]  If Hillary walked into any store, any restaurant, anywhere in the world, people go, whether you like her or not, you'd say, holy cow, there's Hillary Clinton.
[01:07:27]  Right?
[01:07:28]  Maria is just like that.
[01:07:31]  Billboards.
[01:07:32]  Two weeks before the operation, there was a 300,000 protests in her favor.
[01:07:36]  300,000 people carried pictures of her face in the streets.
[01:07:40]  Okay.
[01:07:41]  So everyone knows what she looks like.
[01:07:42]  So this is a very daring operation.
[01:07:43]  It's very delicate operations.
[01:07:45]  Very scary operation.
[01:07:46]  Incredibly dangerous.
[01:07:47]  Very dangerous.
[01:07:48]  We haven't released any of the videos of the footage yet, but when you see it, it's wild.
[01:07:53]  Pitch black, 10-foot C's in a 30-foot boat.
[01:07:57]  It's insane.
[01:07:58]  You were on the show talking about it, and it is insane.
[01:08:01]  It's nuts.
[01:08:04]  So when President Trump gets on TV, and so Maria, I say this all to say that I am a fan of Maria.
[01:08:09]  I think she's great.
[01:08:10]  She's super smart.
[01:08:11]  She's super thoughtful.
[01:08:13]  She truly cares.
[01:08:14]  She's kind of like the way President Trump is, who has an emotional connection to the people.
[01:08:21]  Maria is very much the same way.
[01:08:23]  She's a tremendous leader.
[01:08:24]  Great.
[01:08:25]  And genuine, when she was with you, I have heard she was talking about her kids.
[01:08:30]  She wasn't talking about Trump.
[01:08:33]  Yeah.
[01:08:33]  Very focused on the family.
[01:08:34]  Very, it's all we talked about.
[01:08:36]  Yeah, yeah.
[01:08:36]  At sea, bebopping around in the pitch of black.
[01:08:39]  And I was trying to, because I'm a fan of hers, you know, like Starstruck.
[01:08:45]  So I wanted to kind of, you know, get to know her a little bit.
[01:08:47]  And all she talked about was she can't wait to see her kids that she hasn't seen in two years.
[01:08:51]  It's like the main thing.
[01:08:52]  99% of what we talked about was that and how she wants to go back to Venezuela to lead the people.
[01:08:57]  Like that was, that's it.
[01:08:58]  So, yeah.
[01:09:01]  And I asked her on the boat.
[01:09:03]  All right, you ready for this?
[01:09:04]  This is a testament to her.
[01:09:06]  We're on the boat and it sucks.
[01:09:08]  It sucks.
[01:09:09]  This is a horrible operation.
[01:09:10]  This is not like what happened with Maduro, where Maduro flew pretty comfortably in the end.
[01:09:15]  He flew.
[01:09:16]  This is a miserable experience.
[01:09:18]  We're all beat up.
[01:09:19]  We're tired.
[01:09:20]  We're wet.
[01:09:21]  We're cold.
[01:09:21]  It sucks.
[01:09:22]  Pitch black, no lights, trying not to get bombed, trying not to be attacked, trying not to get caught.
[01:09:28]  So I asked her, she says she wants to go back to Venezuela.
[01:09:32]  And I tell her, I go, I think you're crazy.
[01:09:33]  I go, why would you, the world needs you.
[01:09:35]  Your people need you.
[01:09:36]  I go, she says, she says, she says, well, you're the boss of Grable, right?
[01:09:41]  She says, she goes, you're the boss of your people, right?
[01:09:43]  She goes, you're the commander of your people.
[01:09:45]  And I go, yeah.
[01:09:45]  She goes, you're like the top guy.
[01:09:47]  And I go, yeah.
[01:09:48]  She goes, why are you on this boat?
[01:09:51]  She says, for the same reason you are on this boat with your men is the same reason why I want to be in Venezuela with my people.
[01:09:58]  I want to lead from the front.
[01:10:00]  And she didn't say it exactly that way.
[01:10:02]  She said it kind of broke in a little bit, but that was the message.
[01:10:04]  Will she be the leader?
[01:10:06]  I think in time.
[01:10:07]  The reason why President Trump, I think, says what he says about Maria is that President Trump is from Queens.
[01:10:15]  And I bring it back to Mets fans.
[01:10:17]  Yep.
[01:10:18]  So I think President Trump looks at Venezuela and says, holy cow, I took Maduro, but that's one guy.
[01:10:23]  And there's tens of thousands of these bad guys.
[01:10:26]  Street kids, collectivos, the Sabine, the DJM, the Cubans are everywhere.
[01:10:30]  The Russians are everywhere.
[01:10:31]  Punk thugs.
[01:10:32]  Oh yeah, by the way, the cartels, who will gut babies like fish and shove them with kilos a blow just to get them across the border to not get caught by a drug dog for a dollar.
[01:10:42]  The problem with the Maduro thing, with the Venezuela problem, every other war that we've fought and been involved in, there was a higher calling.
[01:10:51]  If you're Russia, you're doing it for your country.
[01:10:54]  I don't agree with what they do, but if you're a Russian army soldier, if you're a corporal in the Russian army, it's because Mother Russia has sent me to war to go fight Ukraine.
[01:11:01]  Got that, right?
[01:11:02]  I'm a patriot to my people, right?
[01:11:04]  If we're fighting in Afghanistan, it's God, right?
[01:11:07]  Allah, and all the terrorism stuff.
[01:11:09]  Okay, fine.
[01:11:09]  Venezuela is about dollars and cents.
[01:11:12]  There's no nationalistic anything.
[01:11:14]  Maduro is a crime boss.
[01:11:16]  The cartels are, if they can make money selling more money selling tomatoes, they would.
[01:11:22]  If there was money, more money to be made in smuggling apples and oranges into America, they wouldn't do narcotics.
[01:11:28]  They'd smuggle apples and oranges.
[01:11:29]  But the margins are so good for narcotics, why would you not?
[01:11:33]  So that's a problem with this thing.
[01:11:34]  So these are very bad people, horrible, that will do anything for a buck.
[01:11:39]  Knowing that, if I'm President Trump and I grew up in Queens and I understand what streets are like a little bit, and I'm looking at this, what I don't need right now in these moments of transition is a nice person.
[01:11:54]  I don't need that.
[01:11:56]  I need someone who will scare the bejesus out of the bad guys to get them to capitulate.
[01:12:02]  You don't always realize you're missing things.
[01:12:04]  You just notice you're working harder.
[01:12:07]  You lean a little more during conversations.
[01:12:10]  You ask people to repeat themselves.
[01:12:12]  Then you nod like you caught it, you know, the second time, even when you didn't.
[01:12:15]  You're exhausted, not from talking, but from straining to keep up.
[01:12:19]  That's what gradual hearing loss feels like for a lot of people.
[01:12:23]  Everything takes more effort than it used to, and that effort adds up.
[01:12:27]  What stops most people from doing anything about it is the process.
[01:12:30]  It's agonizing.
[01:12:31]  The appointments, the tests, the multiple visits, the price tags alone that better hearing is capable of charging you for.
[01:12:40]  It's a major medical project.
[01:12:42]  Audienhearing is trying to take that first step and make it a lot simpler.
[01:12:47]  Their Atom series over-the-counter hearing aids are designed to be approachable, easy to use, without prescriptions.
[01:12:53]  They're not complicated.
[01:12:55]  There's no fittings.
[01:12:56]  You just start.
[01:12:57]  You charge them.
[01:12:58]  You put them in.
[01:12:59]  You start hearing more of what you've been missing.
[01:13:01]  The punchline you didn't quite catch, you hear it this time.
[01:13:05]  The quiet comment from across the table, little details that makes conversation feel effortless again.
[01:13:11]  Don't wait.
[01:13:11]  Visit audionhearing.com.
[01:13:14]  Take control of your hearing today.
[01:13:15]  Audionhearing.com.
[01:13:19]  If you go back to every major speech that President Trump did as 45, every single, the only thing he talked about in every single speech were two things, America and Venezuela.
[01:13:31]  Every state of the union, every major policy speech he ever gave, he talked about Venezuela.
[01:13:36]  And rightfully so, because he gets it.
[01:13:38]  So he knew, this is what I think.
[01:13:40]  I think he knew Maduro has to go.
[01:13:42]  Venezuela has to go.
[01:13:43]  We got to do something about this.
[01:13:45]  I can't just unilaterally go do this thing.
[01:13:47]  I got to get people behind me.
[01:13:48]  So what do I do?
[01:13:49]  Let me start hitting drug boats a little bit because it's good TV for Instagram and I can unite the American people behind an idea.
[01:13:56]  They don't understand.
[01:13:57]  He knows that they don't understand.
[01:13:58]  He has to get them focused on this a little bit.
[01:14:01]  Some people will like that.
[01:14:02]  Some people won't, but everybody will be talking about it.
[01:14:05]  Everyone will be talking about it on both sides of the aisle and all over the place.
[01:14:10]  And he did that beautifully, beautifully.
[01:14:13]  And that's exactly what happened.
[01:14:14]  No one is everyone in America today knows Venezuela.
[01:14:21]  Two months ago, four or five months ago, no one could find Venezuela on a map.
[01:14:26]  No one even knew it was a thing.
[01:14:28]  You see?
[01:14:29]  So I think it was brilliant what he did.
[01:14:31]  President Trump, for all of his faults, and we're all faulted people, especially those of us from Queens, President Trump knows how to message.
[01:14:39]  He knows how to communicate.
[01:14:41]  People don't understand.
[01:14:43]  He's a showman.
[01:14:45]  One way or another.
[01:14:46]  He is a showman.
[01:14:48]  And it is a strength because he knows how to tell a story.
[01:14:53]  Even if he can't tell it himself, he knows how to construct the story.
[01:14:56]  And he understands that in today's world where Instagram is where people think, because no one's paying attention.
[01:15:02]  No one's paying attention.
[01:15:03]  No one's serious.
[01:15:04]  My sister and Mike Tyson.
[01:15:06]  Right, right, right.
[01:15:07]  He knows.
[01:15:08]  He knows how to get everyone to pay attention on a thing.
[01:15:11]  Whatever that thing is.
[01:15:12]  Rightly, wrongly.
[01:15:13]  And he's okay with being attacked with that.
[01:15:15]  He accepts that risk.
[01:15:16]  That's okay.
[01:15:17]  So I think, you know, when we talk about Maria, I think where the president's driving theoretically is awesome.
[01:15:29]  Set conditions for transition.
[01:15:31]  There'll be a council that's driving towards elections.
[01:15:34]  Elections need to happen.
[01:15:35]  When elections happen, Maria will win and then she'll ascend to greatness.
[01:15:39]  It hurts me that Maria isn't like that President Trump isn't Rob Rob Maria.
[01:15:47]  But I understand that.
[01:15:47]  One of the other big problems, I think, again, coming back to Gray Bull Rescue, when we learned this by accident, Maria thought, or I should say, it was perceived that President Trump sanctioned Gray Bull Rescue to go get her in the first place.
[01:16:11]  So when she first came out and she first shows up in Norway, she said, thank you, President Trump, for rescuing me.
[01:16:16]  President Trump is, I didn't do it.
[01:16:19]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[01:16:20]  And he looked over at Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Rubio and said, Marco, did you do this?
[01:16:25]  And Marco said, I got no idea.
[01:16:28]  We know.
[01:16:29]  And hey, Sekta Hegseth, Secretary of War Hegseth, did JSOC or Ninjas or DIA or someone go and do this?
[01:16:37]  Because this is what they do.
[01:16:39]  No, Mr. President, we don't know.
[01:16:41]  Well, Director Ratcliffe, CIA, obviously your guys did this.
[01:16:43]  And he was like, wasn't us.
[01:16:46]  And it caused a little bit of tension.
[01:16:50]  Right after she landed in Norway on a Wednesday.
[01:16:53]  And Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, there was this very awkward tension.
[01:16:57]  And you could see the White House is not even commenting on it.
[01:17:01]  And Maria and her team are like, thank you, President Trump.
[01:17:04]  Thank you for doing this.
[01:17:05]  And thank you for doing this.
[01:17:06]  And thank you for doing this.
[01:17:07]  And there was this weird moment.
[01:17:10]  And I think that the president soured on that a little bit.
[01:17:13]  I think that he kind of, because he likes, I know that he, when President Trump got stiff for the Nobel Peace Prize and Maria got it, Maria smartly, to gain President Trump's support said, President Trump, you support me.
[01:17:30]  I will give you my Nobel Peace Prize.
[01:17:32]  And I know that President Trump loved the way that that sound because he was so upset.
[01:17:35]  And it really is, I'm happy that Maria got it, but it is truly criminal between Gaza and so many other things that President Trump has done.
[01:17:45]  And I'm a very practical guy.

=== Trump's Epic Achievements (04:43) ===

[01:17:50]  I call it as I see him.
[01:17:51]  Lots of things about President Trump and policies and administration stuff that I really don't like.
[01:17:55]  Okay, fine.
[01:17:55]  But there are things that he's done that is absolutely epic, epic, genius that both administrations, both 45 and 47, that just buildings of people have tried for decades to do.
[01:18:06]  Yes.
[01:18:06]  That he's pulled off with gusto.
[01:18:08]  I know.
[01:18:09]  Just unbelievable stuff.
[01:18:11]  So I'm a, you know, I'm a practical, if you will.
[01:18:14]  You know?
[01:18:15]  So when I see, it's a real shame because I know how hurt he was about the Nobel Prize.
[01:18:21]  And it really is a mistake that he doesn't have it, especially with everything going on.
[01:18:26]  Just the optics of that are just so callous.
[01:18:32]  It pissed me off, frankly.
[01:18:34]  So when Maria wins the Nobel Prize and she says, I'll give it to you.
[01:18:37]  I was like, oh, wow, this will be great.
[01:18:40]  This will be awesome.
[01:18:42]  But then the messaging gets messed up a little bit in there.
[01:18:45]  And I think that the president soured on her a little bit.
[01:18:48]  That's too bad.
[01:18:48]  And President Trump, like all tough guys from Queens, we're all very emotional people.
[01:18:54]  We're all emotional.
[01:18:55]  We're all very, you know, we're sensitive sometimes.
[01:19:00]  We'll open your head up with a can opener, no problem.
[01:19:02]  But smile as we do it.
[01:19:05]  But we'll go do crazy operations and crazy things and be very audacious and all those things.
[01:19:10]  But we're also, I think that President Trump kind of was like, I don't, you know, kind of rubbed him the wrong way a little bit.
[01:19:17]  But I do think that that will change.
[01:19:19]  I do think she's the rightful leader.
[01:19:21]  I do think that she's inspiring to me.
[01:19:25]  I think that if she's inspiring to me, she can be inspiring to President Trump too.
[01:19:29]  I do.
[01:19:29]  I think that that dynamic will get better.
[01:19:31]  I can't thank you enough for coming in and spending the time with me.
[01:19:35]  You know, our motto, we have two mottos at Grabel.
[01:19:37]  Our motto is don't be a spectator, which means we reject watching it on TV.
[01:19:43]  We've done 800 missions 801 by tomorrow, entirely donor funded.
[01:19:48]  Not a penny from the government.
[01:19:49]  That's good.
[01:19:51]  8,456 people are alive today as of last week because of my team.
[01:19:57]  And we're all volunteers.
[01:19:58]  We're all donor funded.
[01:20:00]  We run on a shoestring budget.
[01:20:01]  We are like doge on steroids.
[01:20:04]  Love what we do, but it only works if people help.
[01:20:08]  Don't be a spectator means you don't have to get on a helicopter to Haiti with us.
[01:20:12]  That's okay.
[01:20:13]  Follow us on social media.
[01:20:15]  82% of the 8456 lives saved started with social media.
[01:20:22]  Because when you call the embassy or you call 911, they don't connect you to us.
[01:20:26]  Instagram and Facebook is our dispatch system, essentially.
[01:20:30]  My team are brave Americans of all walks of life.
[01:20:33]  I've got men and women.
[01:20:34]  I've got Republicans and Democrats.
[01:20:35]  I've got Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
[01:20:37]  I've got all kinds.
[01:20:38]  Old, young, fat, skinny, hairy, bald, you name it.
[01:20:41]  We got it.
[01:20:42]  And that's exactly who we rescue.
[01:20:44]  When you call 911 and you say, I'm in trouble, they don't ask, did you pay your taxes?
[01:20:49]  They don't ask, did you vote for the mayor?
[01:20:51]  They say, what's your address?
[01:20:52]  We're on our way.
[01:20:53]  And that's what Gray Bull Rescue is all about.
[01:20:55]  And we work what we call it the speed of need.
[01:20:57]  Because when you call us, we are the last resort.
[01:21:01]  You've called everybody already.
[01:21:02]  You've already spoke to your congressman.
[01:21:04]  You've already spoken to your senator, the FBI, the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the ladies auxiliary of the VFW, everyone you went to college with, everyone, by the time you get to us, everyone has told you it can't be done or too hard or we're not sure.
[01:21:16]  We're working on it.
[01:21:17]  And we say we'll see you Tuesday.
[01:21:19]  We'll say we're on our way.
[01:21:21]  If we commit to you, if you call Gray Bull Rescue and say help and we say we're coming, pack.
[01:21:27]  You won't be there very long.
[01:21:29]  Wherever you are, I don't care where.
[01:21:32]  39 countries we've done ops in.
[01:21:34]  Everywhere.
[01:21:35]  Gaza.
[01:21:36]  Five American hostages we got out of Gaza.
[01:21:40]  Those are the only five Americans to come out of Gaza, not negotiated.
[01:21:45]  12 jailbreaks of Americans from Russia.
[01:21:47]  Those are the only jailbreaks in the history of Russia, let alone us.
[01:21:52]  The first, second, third, and fourth American victims of war crimes since World War II, we broke out of captivity.
[01:21:59]  I go on and on and on and on.
[01:22:01]  As a nonprofit, stats matter.
[01:22:03]  What really matters is people listening helping us out.
[01:22:06]  That's what really matters because none of that happens without somebody donating.
[01:22:10]  We're tax deductible.
[01:22:11]  Check our books.
[01:22:12]  We've got clean things and taxes and all the things.
[01:22:15]  We're good.
[01:22:15]  Google us.
[01:22:16]  You know, do your homework.
[01:22:18]  Lots of dirtbag nonprofits out there.
[01:22:20]  We're not.
[01:22:20]  We're a lot of fun.
[01:22:21]  We're as real as it gets.
[01:22:23]  And we like to say yes, but I can only say yes if people help us out.
[01:22:26]  And we don't get a thank you note from the government, let alone a buck.
[01:22:29]  So you get one from me.
[01:22:30]  Thank you.
[01:22:31]  I appreciate it.
[01:22:32]  I appreciate it.