Wesley Hunt, a West Point graduate with 55 combat missions in Baghdad and two tours in Saudi Arabia, critiques the Green New Deal’s unrealistic 2035 fossil fuel ban while advocating for private-sector innovation like carbon capture. He warns of overregulation—like California’s COVID-19 policies—and its harm to children’s development, contrasting Texas’s liberty-focused approach with mainstream narratives ignoring mental health tolls. Hunt also highlights Houston’s human trafficking crisis, fueled by ports and poverty, pushing for specialized task forces and harsh penalties. As a Black Republican running in Houston’s 7th district, he seeks bipartisan veteran collaboration to counter ideological polarization, emphasizing noble causes over endless deployments. Rogan backs his mission, urging listeners to support Hunt’s military-backed leadership. [Automatically generated summary]
And what started this was really just my family and how can we continue service just in a different capacity.
I come from a military family.
So my dad did 23 years in the Army, retired as a lieutenant colonel.
My sister went to West Point in my family first.
So she's 10 years older than me, did 23 years active duty.
She was a military intelligence officer, deployed to Iraq twice, did a few tours abroad as well.
I went to West Point in my family second.
We're 10 years apart, my sister and I, and then graduated West Point in class of 2004, flew Apaches in Iraq for eight, was actually active duty eight years, deployed to Iraq, did 55 combat air missions in Baghdad, and then did two tours of duty in Saudi Arabia as a diplomatic liaison officer.
My brother, who was 10 months and 8 days my juniors who were Irish twins, he also went to West Point.
And he did five years in the Navy.
Went to Harvard Business School for his graduate degree and now lives in Houston with his family.
There's about 60 years worth of military service just in my immediate family.
So she stood at home for two months in 2006 while I was flying combat air missions in Baghdad.
My sister was doing intel in the green zone and my brother was in the Arabian Gulf on a destroy for two months at the same time.
So even though she didn't serve in the military per se, she served those who served by lending her family.
So when people ask me why am I running for Congress, I always lead with that because that's the kind of service and sacrifice it takes for us to live in this free country.
Now, to all the things that are going on in the country right now, what stands out to you as something that you feel like you can contribute and possibly help correct or at least get on the right track?
Yeah, so there's a lot of talk of a lot of racial injustices of the past, and this is something that I think I'm uniquely positioned to talk about.
My great-great-grandfather was a slave.
His name was Silas Crawford, born on Rose Down Plantation, just north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Three of his great-great-grandchildren all attended West Point.
I earned three master's degrees from Cornell University.
Brother went to Harvard.
Sister has her advanced degree in applied mathematics.
We've had the honor of serving our country.
We've had the honor to live in a free country.
We are standing on the backs and on the shoulders of absolute giants.
And while we have a ways to go, by God, that's some serious progress.
And I like the idea of focusing on the future and not the past.
And I think as a black man in this country, I get some of the hardships.
Trust me on that.
But how can we begin to heal by focusing on the good that we have done and building on that instead of standing by idling and watching the country burn?
It seems like you have to concentrate on the good things and have to concentrate on the people like yourself that have made incredible progress in your life.
But I think we also have to concentrate on injustice.
And racial bias and racial injustice and all the problems that we're seeing.
You know, I was having a conversation with a friend of mine.
We were talking about police and how important the police are, but also how important it is to, if you see something like the George Floyd situation, you see that video and then...
That one guy's horrible actions changes everyone's perception of the police.
But meanwhile, there's millions of interactions that police have with citizens that never go that way, that are positive.
And his logic is actually quite sound, especially even in Houston, Texas, where a lot of the affluent areas, see, they have their own police that are paid for by their own taxes that they pay in their own community.
about defending the police, again, you're not taking away the safety of those communities, you're taking away the safety of black and brown people.
And, you know, if you're a person who's a homeowner and you believe in the Second Amendment and you have a firearm and you hear someone kicking down your door, you have a right to defend yourself.
And if you're at home and you don't know, and also if you're a black guy and you're paying attention to the news and you hear it's the police, that doesn't put you at ease.
Let's figure out how to write this and then change our doctrine and then train our forces better so that they can better serve our communities and we can better serve them.
What's really important to me is I heard a story when I went to go visit the police union, and there was a spouse that was there, and she told me, you know, Wesley, the best thing that I could hear every day is the sound of Velcro.
I said, what do you mean?
He said, at the end of the day, when I hear Velcro at night, it means that my spouse made it home alive.
And then they have to, thousands, 600 and how many thousand people, families, have to deal with this every single solitary day.
And most of them do a really good job.
So the George Floyd instance, the Breonna Taylor instances, I want to use those to build and grow, but I want to really hug our law enforcement officers and tell them, hey, you're doing a good job, let's build and grow together.
When I made mistakes as a kid, my dad didn't just kick me out the house.
He taught me right from wrong so that I wouldn't make the same mistakes next time so we could all get better together.
Well, if you talk to anyone who has this defund the police narrative, I mean, and there have been conversations with these people, there's no real answer.
There's no real answer.
Well, what do you do about violent crime?
And if you look at what happened in New York City, murders have gone up some insane number.
I don't know what the...
I watched...
A breakdown of the numbers of robberies have gone up, murders have gone up.
It's fucking insane.
And communities are calling for the police to be reinstated in these areas.
And this is what happens when you have this Online activist perspective and you apply it to the real world.
You have this defund the police and everybody's like, yeah, yes, do it.
And I think the way that we responded to this is a bit overkill because I think there is a way for us to make sure that we keep the people who are at risk to get this virus and could potentially die from it, like my parents who are alive and well, 71, 72 years old, they should probably stay home.
And the beautiful thing about today is we do have, well, at least here we have this rapid response test at the studio.
I hope they have this rapid response, or not rapid response, but rapid result test everywhere.
I mean, if we can get to a point where we can, I believe they're working on, I'd read some saliva test where you lick a swab and you can find out within minutes.
We're talking about You know, our health and being healthy people and the obesity issue that we even have in America.
And there's a piece of also staying physically fit, staying mentally fit as well.
They coincide with each other.
Beating this virus, I think, a lot of it as well is your overall mentality.
How do you feel about yourself?
Mind over matter in certain ways is something that I'm a fan of.
Because when you go into a situation, I've read some studies, you've even heard about cancer, people that have an optimistic outlook actually have a higher chance of beating cancer.
But there's a reason why the placebo effect works, and it's because states of mind do have a profound effect on the human body in a way that we don't totally understand.
That's why I think meditation and breath work is very important and people should do that all the time because it just helps alleviate anxiety.
And I think alleviating anxiety and alleviating a certain amount of stress is probably good for you.
And then also having as little burden in your life in terms of like...
Negative relationships, bad friends that you can't trust, people that are weighing you down, all that kind of shit.
All that stuff compounds and has an effect on your immune system, has an effect on your psyche, has an effect on your self-esteem, how you feel about yourself, how you feel about the world.
You know, and the best thing for me, and even running for office, has been very busy with an 11-day-old daughter, 20-month-old daughter, and just running for Congress in general, and that is you have to carve out time to work out.
And I think it's important to me that I do something extremely difficult that might suck a little bit every single day.
It just keeps the mental edge.
It keeps the mental acuity up.
I had an instructor in flight school.
He would always say, and he was my Apache instructor, he would always say, you gotta kill something every day, even if it's an ant, no matter how small.
Well, the beautiful thing about, like, this is Sober October for me.
And one of the things that I pledge is that during Sober October, I'm going to work out.
I'm doing something every single day.
So when I know I have to, but when I know I have to, and then I do it, I get it done.
But I always work out.
But I take days off.
But now I'm wondering, like, do I take too many days off?
Like, maybe I'm being a bitch.
Like, maybe...
Maybe when I take two days off a week, I really only need one, and that other one is just a bitch day.
I'm not sure.
I'm not sure, because it's kind of amazing when you have a set schedule, when you have to do something, that you get it done, and you realize you can get it done.
I think that that's a great message that we can get out there to the world, and I've been promoting that message for a long time, is that when you challenge your mind and you force your body to do things, You increase your ability to do difficult things.
It increases your overall ability to do difficult things.
By the way, if everyone is noticing that both me and Wesley are sweating, the fucking AC in this room is shit out on us, and it's now, it doesn't even say.
Yeah, the thermostat's broken.
It was 78 degrees when we walked in here with all this equipment and then all this intense talking.
So I announced, I announced about a year and a half ago.
And what you have to do is basically work every day, tirelessly to try to reach as many voters in the district as possible and as efficiently as you can.
And there's avenues in which you can do that.
So there's broadcast television, there's mail, there's digital, there's knocking on doors, there's person to person stuff.
What's really lacking because of COVID is the latter, the person to person stuff.
So you're not really allowed to have big gatherings like you used to be able to do for, you know, fundraisers and meet and greets and things like that.
So you have to get creative.
This has now evolved into a lot of more zoom calls.
It's evolved to what we're doing in Houston, some front yard meet and greets that are socially distanced.
And we make sure that we keep everybody safe and everyone's wearing a mask, but we are still out in the community actually talking to people because there's absolutely nothing like meeting someone in person.
Even meeting you in person at the improv is just way different.
I've been following you for years, but it's just a different touch when you actually see the person.
And so that's what the challenge has been.
So what we are doing is just lining up as many front yard, backyard, meet and greets throughout the district as possible and I think we've done a pretty good job at getting out in the community.
Well, we have people that reach out to us and they'll say, hey, look, we have a community here.
People want to meet you.
We can get 10, 15, 20 people out here that usually set up some chairs or just stand around.
I'll come over, meet everybody to best of my ability, give them kind of my talk, answer questions that they would have with me on how they want to see government run for the future.
How can I continue to be their humble servant?
What can we do to save our country?
What can we do to kind of quell a lot of the division that we're seeing right now?
And then I go off to the next one.
It's very efficient.
It's very good.
And I think a lot of people have been very receptive to it, too.
Like a lot of millennials, quite frankly, I do believe that human beings can influence the climate.
But, Houston is known as the energy capital of the world.
And encompassed in the energy capital of the world is the energy district of the world, which is Congressional District 7 where I am running in in Houston.
And the narrative that I am seeing about fossil fuels doesn't necessarily jive well with me at all.
You were talking about oil when I was saying that I escaped Los Angeles.
One of the things that's going on is Gavin Newsom has passed this new law saying that they will sell no cars that run on gasoline that are new after 2035. And a lot of people are freaking out.
And one of the things they're freaking out about is, do you know how much lithium you're going to have to pull out of the fucking ground to make the batteries for all these electric cars?
I'm a big fan of the government empowering the private sector to innovate to get to the next...
You know, affordable, renewable source that's going to happen.
It's my opinion, if Jeff Bezos doesn't get there first, the first trillionaire, in my opinion, who's already born, is going to be the person that comes up with an abundant, renewable source for the future that everyone can't afford.
Now, I get the Green New Deal and the tenets of it, what they're trying to do, but what's not addressed in that is global warming and the operative word being global.
If we don't get India and China and Russia and Africa and South America to reduce their carbon footprint with us, you can literally destroy the oil and gas industry here in the US at no gain to the globe.
So when we kill Qasem Soleimani outside of Baghdad airport, who was a bad guy responsible for actually killing some West Point graduates actually in Iraq, we don't have to ask them for oil.
So this is an issue where we have to marry economics, innovation, and of course make sure that we are good stewards of this earth.
But right now there's roughly 1 billion, with a B, roughly 1 billion light trucks and vehicles in the world today that are gas powered.
And over the course of the next 20 years, the world is going to add another billion vehicles.
And of that billion, 750 million of them are going to be gas powered.
Again, it's not a California problem.
It's a global issue that we have to take a look at.
From a defense standpoint, I flew Apache helicopters, and we have a joke in the Army.
How do you know if somebody flew Apaches?
We will tell you.
We always do.
And what's funny about the Apache and about destroyers and about F-22s, and that's you can't fuel them on solar and wind.
We literally aren't going anywhere for the next few generations.
What I want to hear the conversation shift to is more of the idea of us working with these oil and gas companies to innovate for the future, and they want it too.
It's a matter of time until we get there, but let's bring them along with the conversation and not demonize them.
And as somebody that's Houston born and bred, this is the conversation that's near and dear to my heart because, again, it's the energy capital of the world.
And I am all for solar.
I am all for wind.
I am all for renewables.
I get it.
But it's a combination of all of the above, not an or conversation.
The Green New Deal, one big thing that Joe Biden talks about and what Bernie Sanders was talking about as well is being carbon neutral by 2035, which effectively is an end to the oil and gas industry in the United States.
That's one tenet of it.
Another one is fracking bans.
And again, as I just articulated, this is the very technology that's actually reducing our carbon footprint.
Also, just more restrictions on oil and gas companies to be able to drill and find resources as well.
And it is a job killer in Houston, Texas, particularly as we recover from COVID-19.
And we've been hit pretty hard because, as you notice, the oil and gas industry has been hit pretty hard, too.
Started off with just obviously a shortage of demand because people just stopped driving.
And that really drove costs down tremendously.
And so we have to recover from this thing.
And the way to do it is not to employ more restrictions on an already hurting industry that, quite frankly, has got to be around, whether you like it or not.
Also, the byproducts of petrochemicals as well.
This microphone, this mug, your phone.
It's hydrocarbons.
The shoes on your feet is all byproducts of the oil and gas industry.
And so what people don't realize is that the chairs that they sit in, the silverware that they eat off of, where they eat, sleep, breathe, and live, the mattress that they're sleeping on is fossil fuels.
We literally aren't going anywhere.
I understand the benevolence of the Green New Deal.
It's always good in theory.
I got it.
I think if we could magically snap our fingers and the world could be just carbon neutral, that sounds great.
That sounds great.
But that's not how this works.
We are always about progression.
This country is always about innovation and progression.
We've been doing this for generations.
Let's continue that progression by enabling, again, the private sector to innovate to the next level.
If you're paying attention to what the Green New Deal says, it basically just demonizes an entire industry, and I think for lack of understanding what the industry does for the world.
Hydrocarbons are a storable energy that have a lot of power in them.
And that's actually the reason why the world uses them.
Bottom line is this.
You can't turn your lights on.
The world can't turn their lights on.
The US can't turn their lights on for the time being without oil and gas, without the oil and gas industry.
If we were able to miraculously even attempt to turn this entire country into a renewable source, it's just not possible.
I don't know exactly what the numbers are, but we would actually only be able to fuel less than, last I read, 8% of the United States' energy demands if we were able to completely transform to renewable resources.
You see, in past technologies, we didn't have the ability to be able to really create something without understanding what the worst outcomes could possibly be.
Do you think over the course of the last 50 years, we've actually advanced to know more and to be able to do better and to be more effective with how we do this?
Of course we have, right?
But it kind of goes back to the oil and gas industry as well.
When you have the over demonization of an energy source, people just, as we were talking about, they just shut it off.
What I've actually heard discussed that's kind of fascinating is technologies that could be on the horizon that can actually pull carbon and pull particles from the atmosphere.
That they can develop essentially enormous air filters.
That can be used in high pollution areas and cities and urban centers, and they actually can pull pollution out of the air and potentially use that carbon, and it can actually be a resource.
And what I always say to people that I have to have this conversation with, and again, I have two kids at the house, and it is my opinion at this point with two baby girls that it is incumbent upon us to make sure that we hand them a better world than we inherited.
These are the perspectives that are the narrative that you see on social media today, which is where so many people are forming their opinions and then arguing them, and it's insanity.
Yeah.
It's such a crazy time where people want people...
I was having a conversation with a friend of mine today.
They were talking about this new social media platform where this person was arguing, don't hear people's opinions.
What we need to do is de-platform them.
Right.
That's insane.
So everybody has to agree with you, and I don't even know if you're right.
Yeah, you have to be able to have these conversations.
What the proponents of the Green New Deal, what are they proposing in terms of replacing fossil fuels and these things that we're relying on currently to power everything and have the country running exactly how it's running now?
And this is literally part of my problem, and that is if you aren't going to tell me a substantive viable solution, so if you want to say, that's it, snap my fingers like Thanos, that's it, we're going to be carbon neutral here.
And okay, so what's the path to do so?
What resources are we going to use to get there?
How are we going to replace these resources?
And again, I'm not a climate denier.
I keep saying this over and over again, but nothing's being proposed that's rational and reasonable that's actually addressing global warming.
Are you troubled by the fact that the Democrats have this gentleman running for president that seems, at the very least, like his better days are behind him?
That was back in December, and I thought it was funny.
And then now, I don't think it's very funny anymore, actually.
And this is very dangerous, I think, for the country.
And we need to be very careful with who we put forward.
There is a clear decline in Mr. Biden.
I think we can all agree with that.
I think we can all say that the reason why Kamala Harris was chosen was probably to make sure that someone of a sounder mind can actually run the country.
As left as you could probably be, if you think about it.
That's not where the values of Texas are, though.
And so what we have to be very careful is in the idea of making sure that if she's going to be running the country, you do understand that those values are going to be the issues that are going to be running Texas as well.
And that's just not where I believe Texas or really the nation is.
Because if you're in the center, you're not supported by the left, you're not supported by the right.
And that's the problem with this country right now is that we're so divided and people seek comfort in being connected to a certain ideology, whether you're full-on liberal or full-on conservative.
So another reason why I'm running is because I always like to add perspective and add color to the history of this country.
That's why I bring in my great-great-grandfather.
And I always talk about the Civil War.
So one of my favorite stories about West Point is there is a monument.
It's called Trophy Point.
It's actually one of the most prominent pieces at West Point.
At one point, it was the largest single piece of granite in the history of the world and in the world at the time that was in a monument.
It's beautiful.
It overlooks the Hudson River.
Surrounding trophy point are Civil War era cannons that are buried into the ground muzzle first.
Why?
During the Civil War, you had West Point classmates that were friends, that would train together, that were in class together, that would graduate, and depending on where you were from geographically, some would go and fight for the North, and others would go and fight for the South.
And you had West Point classmates killing each other.
The reason why trophy point or battle monument was created and the reason why those cannons are surrounding it buried into the ground muzzle first is to commemorate the notion of never aiming our cannons at our fellow countrymen again.
That's division.
When I think about the Vietnam era, when you had soldiers that were drafted, by the way, not volunteer, they were drafted, they'll go off to war to do our country's biddings and they would lose limbs and most importantly, pieces of their mind because of PTSD that they would never get back for the rest of their natural lives.
And they'd come back home, they'd get off a plane, and they would be spat on by fellow Americans.
Joe, I came home to a hero's welcome.
And the first thing people tell me all day, every day is thank you for your service.
And so I always look at Americans like him that get into the breach when it seems like it's dark, it seems like it's bad, we are the ones that step in and pull that pendulum back by just being reasonable people.
SEALs are uber competitive and they are very intense.
And they are my most favorite people on the entire planet.
Because what they do in their dedication to service, sacrifice, and if you ask a Navy SEAL to give their life for this country tomorrow, they don't even think about it.
They don't think twice about it.
They'll do it.
I kind of say that tongue-in-cheek because, quite frankly, I love them.
But that level of intensity is why America is always so different.
It's that passion.
It's that love.
It's that camaraderie that SEALs have.
We've been around quite a few of them.
I mean, I have too.
And it is hilarious to watch them compete against each other.
You're coming here because of low taxes and low regulation and you want to live your life in liberty and make sure that you can protect yourself and protect your family.
There's over-regulation in California that's off the fucking chart.
The taxes are so crazy there, and they're trying to raise them up to 16.8%.
And then what are you going to do with that money?
Fuck it up worse?
You're going to have more money to fuck things up?
I just don't understand their logic of opening and not opening things, especially now when you look at the deaths.
They want to talk about COVID cases.
The cases are low.
They're not that high.
And the deaths are very low.
We've kind of got a handle on what this is.
You can let people open up their businesses.
You can let people wear masks and be careful and take care of themselves and take vitamin D and zinc and vitamin C. And we can at least get back to some semblance of normality.
But they don't want to do that for some weird reason.
And this is the one that drives me crazy.
They keep saying after the election.
Yeah.
They're not even trying to hide the fact that they're politicizing this.
They won't let kids go back to school in California until after the election.
What the fuck does the election have to do with anything?
He makes videos of bow hunting, but literally move to Iowa because the best white-tailed deer hunting in the world, arguably, is, you know, it's arguable whether it's Kansas or Illinois or Iowa, but Iowa's in the mix and his place is pretty special.
So, you know, I experienced a lot of snow and a lot of black ice.
That's the weirdest one because it just rains a little bit and then it freezes over.
And then I was on the...
It was a funny thing when I was in high school.
Me and my friend John were on the roof of...
I lived on a hill, and we were on the roof of the garage drinking, watching people slide down the street and slamming the curbs and bounce off of each other.
Because one day the whole street became just like a skating rink.
Just all black ice.
And we sat up on that roof for hours just watching people slide.
So we called the cops.
And we're like, hey man, people keep slamming into each other here.
So the cops did it.
They came sliding down, and they slammed into the curb, and they bounced off the fucking...
Listen, a lot of people are exiting California and they're trying to find places to go and they're going to Bozeman, Montana and they're going to Arizona.
They're going all over the place and they're realizing that this situation, this COVID situation that we're in that's terrible, it's being handled differently.
And how can you just change your mind because people get upset?
If it's so important that you really think children should stay inside on Halloween, and then everybody freaks out, so you go, okay, we changed our mind.
What are you basing it on, and who are you?
And why do you get to choose?
This is not what the Constitution was supposed to be enabling.
And, you know, the other thing that people don't want to take into consideration or even don't want to discuss is how many people are dying during this COVID crisis because of depression, because of suicide, because they lost their business, they lost their income, they lost their livelihood, they lost their home.
It's happening, and it's a factor, and it's not a factor that's being talked about.
You're not seeing charts that track how—the suicides have gone up so high— I have a friend who talked to a sheriff in Los Angeles who said, we used to see one suicide every week or so.
But I do think that we need to take precautions about that.
That needs to be precaution.
But if you're a person, like, say if you're a 24-year-old and you live with another 24-year-old and you want to go out but you can't go out, that's bullshit.
You should be able to do whatever you want to do.
And just, it's up to you and we should really highlight your responsibility to get tested and not expose yourself to other people that are at risk, that are high risk or that are vulnerable.
But it can't be done with over-regulation, and it can't be done with the kind of attitude that they have in California, where they think they could just shut everything down.
Well, I love what you said is you brought the Constitution.
And again, I've used the word liberty multiple times now because that's absolutely real to me.
I mean, they set this framework up to empower the citizens to have their own religion, to live where they want to live.
If you don't like your state, you can move as you did and vote with your feet.
If you don't like the tax rate in one state, you can move somewhere else.
I mean, we've built this country to allow people to make their own decisions.
And the second we start to erode that and take that away from people is when we're getting in trouble, and that completely flies in the face of what the construct of this country was supposed to be originally.
And that's where people like me, for example, you ask why I'm running for Congress, this is why.
Because we have to get back to empowering citizens to make their own decisions.
My concern is that we're not going to get it back.
My concern is I understand that they have motivation to reduce these freedoms to contain COVID, but freedoms lost are rarely regained.
And my concern is that they're going to find other excuses to keep people locked down, other excuses to try to exercise these powers that they've learned how to use.
This is what's weird about this.
You've let a genie out of the bottle.
You've let people like that Mayor Garcetti guy in LA tell people what they can and can't do.
They're shutting off electricity and water if you have a party at your house.
This kind of shit is like, that's supposed to be, those are essentials.
When are you allowed to do that?
Since when can you do that?
And everybody's like, oh, because of COVID. Yeah.
Well, how do you get that back?
Does it have to be...
What if COVID is a returning thing?
What if COVID is like the common cold and people are just going to get it from now on?
So this is the good thing about information, and we walk around every day with a supercomputer in our hands.
We're actually one of the first generations to ever be able to do that for the bulk of our lives.
And I think that people wake up and they realize that, so no, I don't want to be over-regulated, so I'm going to go somewhere where I am not over-regulated, so I'm going to move.
Exhibit A, right?
I think that people are awakened by stuff like this, particularly when government overplays their hand, and a particular population where they're like, no, we're not going to take it.
And then what happens?
People either A, move or they put somebody else and they elect somebody else and they fire the person who's in charge.
We're seeing a lot of what's happening in Portland and in Seattle and it's kind of interesting.
I'm very curious to see how those elections go in the future because those local leaders failed their people.
There's a lot of Trump supporters in Portland, too, that are doing these big parades with American flags and Trump flags and driving their trucks and honking their horns.
Because the number one role of the federal government is to keep her citizens safe.
That's the number one goal.
And when in Portland you have a police chief that says to small business owners who are losing their businesses because they're getting rioted and looted, and the police chief says this, sorry, you're on your own.
Saying, no, I think I'm right, so I'm going to come in with bigger guns and more people, and we're going to shut out all these businesses, and we're going to put up bigger barriers, and we're going to have more stringent policing.
They were beating people up for filming things.
Unbelievable.
It's so dumb.
You embodied the worst aspect of a dictatorship in a six-block thing, and you did it quick.
You became the worst country in America.
If that's an independent country, and then it's in the continental United States, you became the worst version of what America is.
That is another thing that just goes in and out of the news.
We were talking about on the podcast, the 39 or 35 kids that were rescued in Georgia, and it was a blip in the news.
But meanwhile, I saw a thousand articles on how mean Ellen is.
Ellen's mean.
She's so mean.
People are out there risking their life to stop human trafficking.
They're rescuing children from human trafficking.
What is this?
Wow, 72 million missing children across Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, and Georgia in the past several weeks.
In the past several weeks.
So this is where these...
So when you read an article like that, U.S. Marshals Rescued 72 Missing Children, this is where all the QAnon people get crazy because they think that Donald Trump is secretly working behind the scenes to stop child trafficking and that there's some secret cabal in the government that wants to enable this shit and then Facebook bans QAnon.
Why is this not a bigger story in mainstream news?
This is one of the things that concerns me.
I don't understand why you're not seeing this on CNN. Every day.
Why are we seeing this every day on CNN? That story right there should be leading on primetime news.
That should be leading.
72 missing children rescued.
So it can't be just that they're randomly discovering these kids in a truck or they see a kid on a plane acting weird and that's how they catch everybody.
How are they infiltrating?
Because there's also a bunch of guys that are former spec ops guys that are working to fight child trafficking.
The solution to this, in my opinion, I'll get the answer in a second.
The solution is, in my opinion, is actually, and I would be in huge favor of this, of literally starting a separate task force to address this in known hotspots.
The other way we're finding out, to answer your question, the other way that we're finding out as to how they're infiltrating is really if you go to hubs of the world, like Houston, you go to coastal cities where people are actually bringing people into the country, That's exactly where you're going to find a lot of it.
So if you just kind of hang out around these areas, then you'll see a lot more of it.
You'll discover a lot more of it.
And so Houston has become kind of one of those hubs because of its geographic locations.
It's actually near a port city.
And obviously, people are coming through port cities at a higher rate.
Cargo's coming through at a higher rate.
And so we're actually able to track that at a better rate if you just kind of hang around the hoop.
They get these kids from actually all over the world.
A lot of them are coming from impoverished communities.
A lot of them are coming from impoverished countries.
And they're shipping them in.
A lot of them come from Asian countries, actually.
And A lot of them come from right here in the U.S. And this is something that dawned on me, particularly with having two girls now, and that is it's also my job to continue to protect them and all of these young people, and it's actually young boys as well.
It's not just young ladies.
It's actually incumbent upon them to keep them safe.
If we can't keep them safe, then what are we doing here?
Literally.
Like, that's our role now, you know, as fathers and as responsible human beings, is keeping our young people safe.
And the biggest thing is this, there clearly is an appetite and there clearly is a culture for it.
What I want to do is how do we place extreme punishment on those who behave in this and partake in this behavior?
I'll tell you what, it could be happening right next door to you to somebody that seems to be a normal human being.
But we have got to stop them.
We have to stop the predator from feasting on our children.
I've also heard communicating through just open email inboxes.
They don't hit send, but they have the password for multiple emails, and they'll just go in, get the message, and then never open or close it, so it's impossible basically to track.
And so other people have the login to the account and they check it out through the draft.
That makes sense.
And it's funny because this subject, because of things like Pizzagate, the subject became so taboo that no one wants to talk about it because it sounds preposterous because Pizzagate was so preposterous.
A guy shows up with a gun looking for kids that are tied up in the basement and everybody's like, oh my god.
Well, you don't see it on CNN. You're not seeing it as mainstream television news where it's a big subject that gets discussed, that we have a giant problem like this in this country.
This one from September, which would have been reported five weeks ago, says that they recovered 25 missing and endangered children over the last month.
One in four was part of what they believe in alleged human trafficking situation.
So, again, we're sitting here talking about the division in the country, which is something that I think it's a very real issue that we've been talking about.
But I also just kind of want to say, what's the solution to the division in the country?
We always talk about problems, but then what are we going to do about it?
And the one thing I got asked a few weeks ago, like, Wesley, what are you going to do when you get into Congress?
What can you do differently that nobody else has done to try to start to bridge this gap and bridge this divide?
2018, we had the fewest number of veterans in Congress and in the Senate since roughly World War II. And I think that's actually a part of the issue and a part of the problem.
So when I get to Washington is actually what I believe will be my personal mandate is to go find Democrats that are veterans.
And let's have a conversation.
And it actually won't be about policy or politics.
It would actually be more about where did you serve?
What did you do?
Who do you know?
What circles did you run in?
Maybe we have a common bond there.
Because people that are willing to give their lives for this country just view the world a little bit differently.
So, I want to be a part of that contingent that actually tries to bring military people to the table and to be a part of that.
You look at me, you look at Dan Crenshaw, you look at August Pfluger.
We're all military guys.
We all get each other on that point.
Now, we're all Republicans, but Democrats do as well.
Because we've taken an oath to defend this country against all enemies, both foreign and domestic.
I think that's the beginning to start to bridge the divide, and it lies with soldiers.
And again, you look at this time period, this is the time for soldiers that are, you know, Operation Iraqi Freedom, OEF, Enduring Freedom, you know, folks that actually have gone into private sector, gone and gotten, you know, a further education, but still have that bug to continue to serve, still have that itch.
And I think they need, our country needs more of us than anything else right now.
I think that's where it starts.
I, Wesley Hunt, I'm going to be one of 435 congressmen and women that are currently serving this country today.
Well, when it comes to foreign policy, when it comes to decisions of military actions, when it comes to war itself, there's I think it's very important to have people who have actually served that are making those decisions.
And it's disturbing as hell when people making those decisions that have never served, don't understand it, never been in the military, and they're making decisions that are going to put our veterans at risk.
They're going to send them overseas to do these actions in a way that they do not personally understand because they don't have any actual experience.
The people like you, the people like Dan Crenshaw, Tulsi Gabbard, people that have served, these are the people that, in my opinion, should be the ones that we listen to.
So, it's personal because I lost 14 of my West Point classmates in a global war on terror.
And when I think about these brave men, way better men than me, paid the ultimate sacrifice, gave the eulogy.
This bracelet says David Frazier on it.
Wear it every day as a reminder as to why we are all here and why we have to continue to serve.
And we have to make sure that when we ask somebody to go die for their country, we got to make sure that we know exactly what we're doing and how we're doing it.
Regardless of what the cause is, dying for your country is the most noble death anyone can ever have, in my opinion.
I don't care what the war was.
I don't care what the reason was.
Those brave men died a noble death.
And moving forward, if we're going to ask somebody to pay that sacrifice, we as lawmakers and we as leaders better make sure it's for a reason that is the most high and most noble.
The one thing that I do see about President Trump and his doctrine is the idea of getting us out of these decade long wars.
I tend to agree with that, actually.
That region of the world is actually diametrically opposed to the way that we view the world here in this country.
It is.
And there are ways through technology to continue to be an effective fighting force, the most effective fighting force in the world without having brigades worth of soldiers in the Middle East in perpetuity.
So I like that.
I like using special ops.
I like using small teams.
I like using our brains and our technology.
I like all that.
I think President Trump is spot on on that.
And I do think that he's actually valuing the life of every individual soldier by making this decision.
And then when you do that, you build credibility.
Because when you do send people in harm's way, we get it.
We get it.
This guy is sending us here for this cause.
It's a worthy cause.
Get it up, let's go.
And that's the kind of confidence that you want to have in your leaders, not just the president, but across the board.
When you've been there, you know what it feels like.
When you've lost classmates, you know what it feels like.
And as a congressman, when we choose to send someone to war, and I look at that brave young man or that brave young woman, and I say, look, this might be it for you.
They look at me and they say, yes, sir, but if you're sending me, I trust you.
I don't think anybody who's never served is going to be able to make those decisions and have the respect of the people that are going to be sent over there.
20 years ago, an event would happen, something would happen.
Something bad would happen and you'd turn on the evening news and you might see it twice.
That's it.
You might see it on the news.
You might see it in a newspaper.
That's it.
Something bad happens today.
Your phone blows up.
It's on Twitter, it's on IG, it's on Facebook, and then it's on CNN app, your Fox News app, then it's on Fox News cable, then it's on local TV. So we have now seen the same incident like eight times on eight different platforms, which gives the perception that it's worse than it really is.
I got to thinking about this a lot, because my father is my hero, and he is a very, very wise man.
I got to thinking about this because he goes, son, do you really think it's harder to be a black man today than it was when I was growing up?
That was rhetorical.
The answer is absolutely not.
But it got me thinking about it because it gives the perception that it is, given all that we're seeing.
But quite frankly, we've always gotten better.
My brother and I always joke about America.
He's like, what's the best time to be an American?
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Am I better off being in America right now than I was when I graduated high school in 2000?
Absolutely.
So what is distorting our view so much that gives us the perception that we're way worse off?
Well, over the course of the past 15 years, we have developed this social media system that, quite frankly, sends out just negative information and people then hide behind their words.
They hide behind their posts because they don't actually confront people one-on-one.
Let's just go back to the racial issues in this country.
Let's go back to that.
When I was in high school, I thought about some of the language that was used, some of the language that was said, some of the ways that I was treated.
When I compare that to the way I am treated right now, it's very different, actually.
It's way better.
Again, I'm actually running for Congress in a predominantly white district, overwhelmingly white district.
But what they would say is there's massive amounts of room for improvement and many, many, many things that need to be done to correct the way things are wrong in this country right now.
What do you think could be done about injustices that are happening currently?
One of the things that I've discussed in this podcast many times is there are parts of this country, whether it's Baltimore or Detroit or South Side of Chicago, that are almost perpetually engulfed in crime.
And they have been forever, and there doesn't seem to be any effort whatsoever to reverse that.
How can you fix those?
I understand you're becoming Congressman in a specific district, but when you look at the country as an overall, and you look at these particular bad spots, what strategies can be used that aren't being used to fix this?
Not saying that your culture is so messed up and it's your fault.
Acknowledging that, particularly in the black community, the welfare state was created, and that's actually what has caused a lot of the consternation in our culture today.
That's not black people's fault, actually.
It's actually the system's fault.
Black people also have to take some responsibility for some of the cultural issues that we have as well.
It's not all white people's fault, actually.
We have to accept some of this, too.
If both sides can accept and take on the culpability, some of it, on the problems that we see today, and we can admit it, and we can talk about it, then that's how we can begin to heal.
And physical actions need to actually take place for everybody.
The issue is that when somebody says, one side says, well, they should do this, but they should do this.
Well, you should do that.
We're pointing fingers and nothing gets done.
So the police are brutalizing us and a black person has a two and a half more higher chance of dying at the hands of police than a white person.
That's actually a fact.
It's actually a fact.
So we look at the police officers, but then the police officers and other groups can't say, well, that's because, well, there's a higher incidence of crime amongst brown and black people.
What did that accomplish?
Nothing.
Because nobody wants to assume responsibility that both are issues.
This is where someone like me is actually uniquely positioned.
Look, I have been discriminated against.
I have been profiled.
I get it.
I have been treated poorly by white people.
I've been treated poorly by black people and vice versa.
I understand all this.
So what?
What are we going to do to actually solve the problem?
And this is where it takes real tough leadership.
Because what happens is you start getting in a circular firing squad and everybody is firing on you from all sides.
And it gets tough for someone like me every now and again who's kind of stuck and caught in the middle.
But I always joke around and I say, well, I've also been in combat and I've been shot at before.
I can deal with it.
But somebody has got to take this on.
Instead of pointing the fingers at each other, who's going to bring both sides to the table?
And again, can Wesley Hunt do it by myself?
No.
But what I hope in my candidacy and in conversations like this, thank you so much, is that what I hope, what I hope is that people can hear the message and then say, ah, okay, I get that tone.
I accept this responsibility.
So now what can we do about it?
That's where we start.
And right now we are way over here.
I recognize that.
But we have to work incrementally to get us back together.
I am confident that this country can do it, because just like I've said before, we've been way worse.
We've been at war with each other, and we were able to overcome that.
And someone could say, Wesley Hunt, what would you do about, let's just say South Side of Chicago, which is just one of the most murderous places in this country right now.
So one of the issues, in my opinion, in Chicago, is the relationship with law enforcement and the citizens of that community.
We need to be in the business of building relationships with those that protect them and keep them safe, as long as we can again admit that there is a problem on both sides.
What can I, Wesley Hunt, specifically do?
You've heard so many different ideas on how to combat this.
What I say is this, we start off with conversations.
You have to start off with the community leaders who are, again, who are willing to accept culpability for some of the problems, culturally speaking.
And then you start with the law enforcement officers that are willing to admit that we actually want to be a part of the solution and not be a part of the problem.
And it takes one person to do that on either side to systematically fix the community one person at a time.
You can't take just one big bite of the apple on this thing.
It's going to take some time and it's going to have to be incremental.
Quite frankly, it's going to have to be generational as well.
Because there's so much distrust.
There's so much distrust on both sides that we can't even have a conversation about it.
So we have to start small and then go big from there.
To specifically work on this, and having this be a big conversation that takes place publicly, that law enforcement does want to communicate with community leaders, and that there's a direct effort to try to improve these places, to let people know we care, we know it's a problem, even though it's been ignored for so long, it will be ignored no longer.
One of the things that drives me crazy about social media is this flippant nature, this Way that people think it's fine to just censor people and censor people that disagree with you.
One of the things is Unity 2020 was something that was created by Brett Weinstein and many other people.
Brett, who is very liberal, very progressive.
He was the guy that was the professor at Evergreen State and was run out by these crazy kids that wanted to take over and turn it into a utopia for leftists.
That's the very paraphrased version of the story.
But he created this thing called Unity 2020 and he wanted to have conversations between the left and the right and have these people talk and try to come up with someone who's a better solution to run this country than what we're currently being offered.
Twitter banned the account.
I mean, it was the most reasonable...
I don't know if they got it back.
Let's see if they got Unity 2020 back.
But the most reasonable...
Their take on it was, say no to Biden, say no to Trump, and let's come up with a better solution that this can be done.
And if you are a progressive and you're a liberal, you just have to accept the differences that you have with Biden and Kamala Harris and their perspectives, and you need to just fall in line.
And there's no other third party.
And the idea that you're fucking carrying water for the two-party system in 2020 is bonkers.
Yeah.
Freedom of speech is supposed to be the freedom to discuss ideas.
This is not an enormous percentage of the population that's going along with this guy.
He's offering an educated perspective.
It's our constitution.
It is our constitution.
It's so important to listen to things that you disagree with to understand why you disagree with them and to understand if maybe there's some knowledge in there that you can acquire.
Maybe there's a part of their perspective that you do agree with.
Maybe you see the error in their ways and you can discuss it with them.
You can say, well, this is where you guys got it wrong.
If you ban them, why are you letting the flat earthers still have a fucking page?
Why are you letting the JFK people, the people that think the assassination was caused by aliens, where do you draw the line on what's true and what's not?
And The problem is you just started down a slippery slope.
And look, I don't even know what QAnon means.
I know a lot of people believe in it, but I don't even know what they stand for.
I just know there's a lot of wacky folks involved.
I know them personally and they're wacky, so I'm like, ah.
And I would talk to people, obviously, that were very liberal, and we would meet up on weekends all the time, and we would just talk, and you could probably imagine that we didn't see the world the same way.
But we always got to talk and meet up the next week and the next week.
And they were my classmates and they were my friends.
And we got to learn how to respect each other.
One of my classmates, actually, who is a banker up in New York, who was a Bernie bro, very liberal guy, he sent me some money for the campaign and then sent me a note.
And he said, you know, Wesley, if I was down there, I don't think I'd even vote for you.
I said, thanks, man.
And then he goes, but I hope you win.
Because I know you're a good guy, and I know that you believe in this country.
It's also, a lot of these people are mentally ill that are doing this.
Legitimately, and when I say mentally ill, I mean overridden with anxiety and depression and spending hours and hours and hours a day getting in fights online.
That's an ill person.
I mean, look, we want to talk about mental health, and this is something where people would push back against this, but I want you to consider this.
I understand that they created it, but it's being used by so many people and it's responsible for so much discourse.
The argument should be made, I think, that this is one of the main forms of communication and to deny people Because of their political ideology, the access to this, I think is devastating.
So what can be done about it is we have to increase the conversations like this with what I believe can be reasonable people from all walks of life on both sides of the aisle.
We have to talk about this.
I think if there were reasonable people that were sitting here no matter where you were from, no No matter where you're from, no matter what race, color, religion, creed, political affiliation, if you're sitting here listening to this conversation and you've read the Constitution and you've been in this country for the bulk of your life, you've lived in America for long enough to understand freedom and liberty, you'd hear this conversation and you would say, maybe we should push back on that.
Maybe we should.
So this is what you're doing, honestly, as a leader by just even having these conversations.
And we just need more of it.
And we need to have conversations with leaders in politics and in the entertainment industry.
We have to have conversations with foreign countries and other leaders.
This is how we start with leaders in industry and CEOs.
We have to have these conversations.
I feel like we're at a time right now where we've just flat out stopped.
We're just yelling at each other.
And we spent the better part of an hour, in my opinion, literally talking about the crux of the problem, which is unconstitutional and against First Amendment and our rights.
Let's talk about that, what that means.
And even in my opinion, maybe, I don't know, you know, maybe I see the glass half full.
Even the most liberal person, if they were sitting here as a human being looking at each other, would say, they have a point.
But in this day and age, it's become so tribal that these people, they form these groups and then they live in these thought bubbles and they only want to communicate with people that agree with their ideology.
Part of my, I don't know, I believe in serendipity, and I'm just, I don't know how I got here at this time, at this place, but I do think I'm here for a reason, because This is a courageous thing to be able to have these conversations and then take it out to the public, specifically in politics and this climate today.
But it's kind of my mandate.
I have to do it.
Because if Dan doesn't do it and if I don't do it, then literally nobody's going to do it.
I'm happy there's guys like you and Dan and many others that are entering into politics.
And I think people that have experienced the kind of things that you guys have experienced, there's an education that cannot be acquired any other way.
They're trying to socially neuter men to get them to fall into a pattern that they would like because it's easier to control people in that way.
And also, it eliminates the kind of competition that you can't win.
If you're a nerdy, feminine man and you view toxic masculinity, you view men who are very masculine as something you could never be, You want to try to eliminate that or you want to try to control that.
And you see a lot of that.
You see a lot of it from people that have had bad interactions with men.
Yes, but you also, I was going to get to, you see a lot of shitty men that want to neuter women.
Which is absurd.
Yeah.
They don't like strong women.
They don't like power because they've had bad relationships with women or they've had women that didn't like them or that they feel bad about their relationships with them because the women dismissed them or weren't interested in them or just – it's just – See, when you do that, then you don't have a Wesley and a Rendon Hunt because my sister went to West Point first.
So why would I want to take away her strength and her power and her individuality to actually lead men and women and also be a good example for her brothers?