The Megyn Kelly Show - 20220228_robert-oneill-and-dakota-meyer-on-trust-and-humili
Aired: 2022-02-28
Duration: 01:34:34


=== Welcome to the Show (06:07) ===

[00:00:00]  And now, what's up from Kix?
[00:00:01]  Kix can afford the grensless mangy selfies.
[00:00:04]  The suit can handle both the axes and crush the tail.
[00:00:07]  Then we will go to the beauty here at the Nurstrasse.
[00:00:10]  And you can also handle the Kix.
[00:00:12]  So, welcome to the grensless mangy beauty.
[00:00:15]  Connect with your beauty.
[00:00:17]  Pus Kix Beauty Unlimited.
[00:00:20]  Fiken presentes here at Super Enkeld Renskaps Program for all the Renskapsgreinen that you're interested in.
[00:00:28]  That will be it.
[00:00:30]  Fiken at Super Enkeld Renskaps Program.
[00:00:35]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.
[00:00:47]  Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly.
[00:00:48]  Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
[00:00:50]  Wow, what a day we have for you.
[00:00:53]  The news cycle and the guests, you're going to love today's show.
[00:00:59]  We are witnessing the citizens of Ukraine right now rise up and fight against Russian President Vladimir Putin and his country, Russia, which may or may not be behind him.
[00:01:09]  We're seeing extraordinary events inside of Russia as people by the thousands take to the streets there to protest what he is doing to Ukraine in a country, Russia, in which one is not allowed to protest.
[00:01:20]  I've got with me today two guys you already love and two guys who have sacrificed so much for our country.
[00:01:28]  They know firsthand about the sacrifice of war.
[00:01:31]  They know about what it's like to put country above self when freedom and democracy are on the line.
[00:01:37]  Rob O'Neill is a U.S. Navy SEAL combat veteran.
[00:01:41]  He has been a part of some of the biggest SEAL missions.
[00:01:44]  Ever conducted.
[00:01:46]  He is best known, of course, for being the SEAL Team Six member who shot and killed Osama bin Laden.
[00:01:52]  But he also helped rescue fellow SEAL Marcus Luttrell in Afghanistan.
[00:01:57]  And he was the lead paratrooper in the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from the Mariscal Alabama.
[00:02:02]  The hijacking became the basis for the movie Captain Phillips, featuring Tom Hanks.
[00:02:08]  I mean, I joked with him last time he was on or the first time.
[00:02:10]  He's like the Waldo of military, man.
[00:02:15]  He's been on everything, and everything he touches turns into a Hollywood movie.
[00:02:20]  You've got Captain Phillips, you've got Lone Survivor, and then, of course, Zero Dark 30, all of which feature some of his heroism.
[00:02:29]  And speaking of heroes, Dakota Meyer is also with us today.
[00:02:33]  He is our country's second youngest living Medal of Honor recipient, our nation's highest military decoration.
[00:02:40]  In 2009, under heavy enemy fire from the Taliban, Dakota disobeyed direct orders and repeatedly went back.
[00:02:49]  Into the fight, into the ambush area, to find his fallen brothers and to retrieve the bodies of those who had died, as well as rescue those who were still fighting and needed his help.
[00:02:59]  He received his Medal of Honor from President Obama at the White House in 2011.
[00:03:05]  And when they finally got to those trapped Americans, Dakota jumped out and he ran toward them, drawing all those enemy guns on himself, bullets kicking up the dirt all around him.
[00:03:17]  He kept going until he came upon those four Americans laying where they fell, together as one team.
[00:03:24]  Dakota and the others who had joined him knelt down, picked up their comrades, and through all those bullets, all the smoke, all the chaos, carried them out one by one.
[00:03:35]  Because, as Dakota says, that's what you do for a brother.
[00:03:38]  A former Marine who read about your story said that you showed how, in the most desperate final hours, our brothers and God will not forsake us.
[00:03:47]  And because of your humble example, our kids, especially back in Columbia, Kentucky, and in small towns all across America, they'll know that no matter who you are or where you come from, You can do great things as a citizen and as a member of the American family.
[00:04:04]  In the end, Dakota is credited with saving the lives of at least 36 U.S. and Afghan troops that day.
[00:04:11]  These two men have gone to hell and back for our country.
[00:04:13]  And when they returned home, civilian life led to a new host of challenges, which we will also discuss over the next two hours.
[00:04:21]  It's my honor to have them here today.
[00:04:23]  They've written a new book titled The Way Forward Master Life's Toughest Battles and Create Your Own Lasting.
[00:04:31]  Legacy.
[00:04:32]  It is a book they hope will help you learn to tackle obstacles in your own life and shows a bit of how they got to become these extraordinary human beings.
[00:04:43]  This is their first interview ahead of the book's release tomorrow.
[00:04:47]  Rob Dakota, welcome to the show.
[00:04:49]  So great to have you back again.
[00:04:50]  Thank you for having us, Megan.
[00:04:52]  Great to be here.
[00:04:52]  Thank you.
[00:04:53]  I'm so glad you guys did this.
[00:04:54]  I'm glad as a human that I get to read this and that you've taken the time to sort of put your thoughts down on paper.
[00:05:02]  You've both talked about your missions before and written books about your missions, but this is like, okay, who is Rob O'Neill as a kid?
[00:05:09]  I love the part about, you know, I wasn't really like a mixed martial arts kid and I wasn't the bully and I wasn't on the football team.
[00:05:16]  I was more likely to be the one getting beat up than doing the beating up.
[00:05:21]  And Dakota, like your stories too about like, you know, your cow Tinkerbell and just kind of like puts a real, the SEAL team guys don't start off totally grizzled.
[00:05:33]  In all cases.
[00:05:33]  So, if you're hoping to be a Navy SEAL or a Marine in Dakota's case, and you're, you know, maybe you're hoping it for your son or whatever, maybe they're like looking a little weak to you right now, fear not, fear not, because they could one day wind up with two Silver Stars and three Bronze Stars like Rob or the Medal of Honor like Dakota.
[00:05:50]  Okay, so we're going to get to all of this.
[00:05:51]  I love, love, love the book and your backstories.
[00:05:53]  But let's just start with the latest news because, unlike most of the people on Twitter right now, you guys actually know what it's like to be in a firefight, to actually be in the middle of a war, try to figure out what's real and what's not.

=== Europe Unites Against Putin (14:55) ===

[00:06:07]  And I want to tell you, this past weekend was extraordinary, extraordinary in Ukraine.
[00:06:13]  To me, I'll give you my layperson's assessment and you tell me whether I'm on to something.
[00:06:18]  But I think this guy, Zelensky, you know, the president of Ukraine, is single handedly turning this thing around.
[00:06:24]  He refuses to leave.
[00:06:26]  We went in and said, they're going to kill you.
[00:06:28]  Let us give you a transport out.
[00:06:29]  And he said, I don't need a ride.
[00:06:31]  I need ammo.
[00:06:32]  I'm not going anywhere.
[00:06:33]  This guy's a former actor.
[00:06:34]  Nobody knew what he was going to be.
[00:06:36]  He won't leave.
[00:06:37]  He's inspiring all the Ukrainians not to leave.
[00:06:39]  You're not supposed to leave if you're a fighting aged male, but they're not trying to leave, according to all reports.
[00:06:43]  They're staying.
[00:06:45]  They're making Molotov cocktails when they can't get their hands on arms.
[00:06:50]  And so he's been inspirational, and the Ukrainians have been inspirational, fighting, not giving up, doing whatever they can to preserve their homeland, which is under invasion right now by 200,000 Russian troops.
[00:07:02]  So that's sort of where we were going into the weekend.
[00:07:05]  It was like, well, they're going to fall because they're outmanned and they're outmatched, but wow, crazy fight and inspirational resolve.
[00:07:14]  Then, over the weekend, finally, Europe found its spine.
[00:07:18]  Europe found its backbone after all these years.
[00:07:21]  And what we're seeing today, I'll give you guys some of the highlights, okay?
[00:07:25]  Because I've been looking for somebody who would just list for me everything that was going down.
[00:07:31]  And here's some examples, okay?
[00:07:35]  The UK sending light anti armor defensive weapon systems.
[00:07:38]  France, more military equipment as well as fuel.
[00:07:41]  Netherlands, air defense rockets and anti tank systems to Ukraine.
[00:07:44]  Germany, now.
[00:07:45]  Planning on devoting 2% of its budget to its own military, which it hasn't been doing.
[00:07:50]  It's gone totally soft.
[00:07:51]  Now it's finding a new resolve.
[00:07:53]  Sending 1,000 anti-take weapons, 500 stringer surface-to-air missiles.
[00:07:57]  Canada sending lethal military weaponry.
[00:07:59]  Canada, Justin Trudeau.
[00:08:01]  Oh, who knew?
[00:08:02]  Sweden, Sweden, 5,000 anti-take rockets to Ukraine, as well as field rations and body armor.
[00:08:08]  Belgium, 3,000 more automatic rifles, 200 anti-tank weapons, 3,800 tons of fuel.
[00:08:14]  Portugal, night vision goggles, bulletproof vests, helmets, grenades, ammo, automatic G3 rifles.
[00:08:22]  Romania, fuel, bulletproof vests, helmets, other military material.
[00:08:26]  Czech Republic, 30,000 pistols, 7,000 assault rifles, and so on.
[00:08:31]  The U.S., anti armor, small arms, body armor, various munitions in support of Ukraine.
[00:08:35]  Now it gets crazier.
[00:08:37]  EU will shut down EU airspace to Russian aircraft, will seek to ban Russian state owned media, will target Russian ally Belarus with sanctions.
[00:08:45]  Japan will join a group of seven nations in the EU, will freeze the Russian central bank's foreign exchange assets, will prevent Vladimir Putin's government from accessing tens of billions.
[00:08:56]  South Korea will ban exports of strategic items and go on.
[00:09:00]  Singapore imposing appropriate sanctions and restrictions.
[00:09:03]  Australia sending lethal aid.
[00:09:04]  Germany, I mentioned, but they're also pushing aside a long held government policy not to send weapons to conflict zones.
[00:09:11]  They hadn't been doing that.
[00:09:12]  Now they will.
[00:09:13]  And they're also allowing the Dutch to send 400 German made anti tank weapons and Estonia to send cold era howitzers, transfers it had been blocking for months.
[00:09:25]  Turkey calls it a war, which could pave the way for the NATO member, Turkey, to enact an international pact limiting Russian naval passage through the Black Sea.
[00:09:35]  Switzerland, you guys.
[00:09:37]  Switzerland.
[00:09:38]  That's the one we're always like, I'm Switzerland.
[00:09:40]  You know, like your brother and sister are fighting.
[00:09:42]  I'm Switzerland.
[00:09:43]  Switzerland is getting into this, adopting the EU sanctions against Russia.
[00:09:48]  I was like, who knew?
[00:09:49]  Hungary and so on.
[00:09:51]  This is extraordinary.
[00:09:52]  And the way my pal Noah Rothman put it over on commentary was the Europe that existed last week no longer exists.
[00:10:02]  It looks very, very different today than it did.
[00:10:05]  Sorry for the long windup, but that's an extraordinary series of events.
[00:10:08]  What do you guys make of it?
[00:10:10]  No, that's a great windup, and I appreciate that.
[00:10:13]  It is, I mean, even a week ago, I was personally talking about Germany as far as NATO.
[00:10:18]  They'd never paid their 2% GDP, which they were, I mean, if you think they said they weren't going to be ready to pay that until 2031.
[00:10:26]  And I thought that was kind of rude of Germany because if you think about it, they're kind of the reason we needed NATO 100 years ago.
[00:10:31]  Yeah.
[00:10:32]  But now with this turnaround, and it comes back to President Zelensky.
[00:10:36]  And again, on social media, you're going to get people here and there, and it's propaganda, this propaganda, whatever.
[00:10:41]  He's the face of it, and he's part of the reason a lot of people are coming together because whether or not he is exactly where he says he is fighting, he is there, along with the mayor of Kiev and all the men and women, the shop owners that are making Molotov cocktails.
[00:10:59]  I mean, I wouldn't personally want to be throwing burning booze at a tank, but if you have that in you to defend your country, and I love the way they're saying, We're doing this because we don't want to go anywhere else.
[00:11:09]  This is our home.
[00:11:09]  Just, and with, I mean, Putin's lost his marbles.
[00:11:12]  And he did say once he got the stiff resistance from Ukraine, well, hey, Finland and Sweden, you better not do this.
[00:11:19]  And those two, they're not in NATO, but they've really not done much.
[00:11:23]  They're getting involved.
[00:11:23]  And I love, well, obviously, the Baltic states, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, they're involved, Hungary, Poland.
[00:11:29]  But it's almost, this is Europe uniting.
[00:11:33]  And I was saying at first, I don't want American troops on the ground.
[00:11:36]  And I was even saying, you know, this is a European problem.
[00:11:39]  Europe's stepping up.
[00:11:40]  And they're talking about paying more than they need for NATO, even though Ukraine's not a NATO country.
[00:11:44]  They're defending innocent people because a lot, I mean, this is something that should almost unite everybody.
[00:11:50]  Nobody really wants this war except that crazy person in Moscow.
[00:11:53]  Yeah.
[00:11:53]  I mean, Dakota, it's like, They're making military munitions there with these Molotov cocktails.
[00:11:59]  You're seeing grandmas in the street go up to Russian soldiers and yell at them.
[00:12:03]  I mean, like the Ukrainian people feel what we're all seeing, which is this is a sovereign nation under attack for no reason, right?
[00:12:10]  Putin's propaganda war isn't winning.
[00:12:14]  He's bellying on about how there are neo Nazis in there and how they're torturing Russian speaking Ukrainians in these sort of more separatist regions.
[00:12:23]  No one's believing it.
[00:12:24]  Even the Russians aren't believing it.
[00:12:26]  The Ukrainian resolve to fight this and get them.
[00:12:28]  Output transcript Out of Ukraine and to live a peaceful life has been extraordinary.
[00:12:33]  Usually we see these countries just collapse when you see a stronger country, like a big bully like Russia go in, they just collapse.
[00:12:39]  Like they don't, not so.
[00:12:42]  Yeah.
[00:12:42]  I mean, look, I think you would have seen this collapse had the president left.
[00:12:47]  I think that, you know, he's obviously not doing all, you know, everything, but I do think he is the keystone of this arch that's keeping that entire country fighting.
[00:12:57]  And I think that, you know, that's what's going to be held on.
[00:12:59]  You know, you see the media who's putting all this.
[00:13:02]  Attention.
[00:13:02]  Everybody wants these, like the wins, or like how far is it going to go?
[00:13:06]  Or, you know, everybody's trying to get their tagline in there.
[00:13:09]  And they keep talking about, well, you know, Putin taking Kyiv, right?
[00:13:13]  And even if he takes it, even if he runs his troops through it and he puts people inside of the city buildings, he's still going to have 20 years of insurgency across it.
[00:13:25]  It doesn't mean anything.
[00:13:26]  I mean, Putin better be ready for a long, long war.
[00:13:32]  If Because if not, I mean, look, we know what it's like to walk in somewhere with air superiority.
[00:13:37]  And we know what it's like to walk in with the money and the troops and the training and then have to fight for 20 years.
[00:13:44]  You know what I mean?
[00:13:45]  And I don't think that we can overestimate the overcomplexity of street fighting, right?
[00:13:51]  I mean, it is a complex deal.
[00:13:53]  It took the United States, which is by far the best fighters on the face of the planet that ever existed.
[00:14:00]  And it took us over three weeks to take over Fallujah that had what?
[00:14:05]  300,000 people in it.
[00:14:06]  You're talking about a city that has, uh, is the size of Chicago.
[00:14:10]  I mean, you know, this is going to be no small undertaking.
[00:14:13]  And then what does he do after he gets it?
[00:14:15]  Right.
[00:14:15]  Um, it's just incredible to see these people, their willingness to rise up and fight for their own country, to fight for what they believe in.
[00:14:24]  You know, there's all this stuff coming out now about, you know, who's supporting who and, and all this, you know, trying to look at, you know, well, what can we believe and what can we not.
[00:14:34]  At the end of the day, um, you know, you have to humanize.
[00:14:39]  This aspect of it.
[00:14:40]  And that's what we did in the Way Forward, right?
[00:14:41]  Is obviously our first books came out.
[00:14:43]  We were talking more about, you know, about the war and the black and white side of it of, you know, who's wrong and right.
[00:14:50]  But there's just a humanization factor to this that we cannot miss.
[00:14:53]  And you're seeing this across the globe right now of what hope can do.
[00:14:57]  And these people hope and they believe so much that they can win and in their country that they're willing to take Molotov cocktails and throw them at tanks.
[00:15:06]  Yeah.
[00:15:06]  I mean, they're at the point now where reportedly, Putin's people are going to meet with senior Ukrainian diplomats.
[00:15:14]  I guess they had to agree to go meet in Belarus, which is Putin's puppet.
[00:15:18]  And they've been doing whatever Putin wants, this country sort of in between the two.
[00:15:23]  But the Ukrainian officials agreed to do it.
[00:15:26]  It's not going to be Putin and it's not going to be Zelensky, but it's going to be underlings that are going to go meet.
[00:15:31]  And there are no preconditions.
[00:15:33]  And Putin last week had been saying, You will agree, you will agree to neutrality and you will agree not to join NATO.
[00:15:39]  And then we will meet.
[00:15:40]  And now here they are, no preconditions meeting.
[00:15:42]  I mean, who knows?
[00:15:43]  You know, Zelensky saying, I don't think it's going to amount to much.
[00:15:45]  And they haven't stopped the fighting in the meantime, but it's something.
[00:15:49]  Meanwhile, can I ask you guys about this?
[00:15:50]  Because the most concerning headline.
[00:15:54]  Has been about Putin saber rattling with his nukes.
[00:15:57]  He's like, that's not really what you want to hear.
[00:16:00]  But, and you know, who knows whether it's true, but there are reports that he seems unstable to those who are around him.
[00:16:05]  People have been watching him for a long time, think he's Putin might be losing it, you know, that he changed during the pandemic was the reporting.
[00:16:13]  And now he's putting their nuclear arsenal and those who oversee it on alert.
[00:16:19]  That's concerning.
[00:16:20]  And it's especially concerning because of all the things I listed at the top.
[00:16:26]  He's got to be feeling concerned about Europe uniting against him.
[00:16:31]  This is his worst nightmare.
[00:16:32]  I mean, you got like Kosovo applying now openly for NATO membership.
[00:16:37]  You got these other countries who had been like considering it.
[00:16:41]  I'm trying to see who it was.
[00:16:43]  It was Finland and Sweden at least making noises about it.
[00:16:46]  And this is the last thing he wanted, right?
[00:16:49]  He hates a united Europe.
[00:16:50]  He does not like to be seen as the universal bad guy.
[00:16:53]  So that combined with the threat of nukes, hmm.
[00:16:56]  Makes you wonder what his next move is.
[00:16:58]  Well, his issue was he was saying that NATO's against him.
[00:17:01]  NATO wasn't against him, and Ukraine was not a threat.
[00:17:04]  And he's gotten exactly the opposite of what he wanted.
[00:17:06]  Now, like you said, with Kosovo, they want in.
[00:17:08]  And you mentioned Belarus.
[00:17:10]  Putin thought Ukraine was going to be like Belarus, but it's kind of rolling, no one fights, and all of a sudden, bam, you're part of Russia.
[00:17:16]  Ukraine, you know, you mentioned Fallujah.
[00:17:18]  We were fighting, what, 300,000, a city of 300,000, but not everyone was fighting.
[00:17:22]  There's several million in Kiev, and they all want to fight.
[00:17:25]  And then, Kukun.
[00:17:26]  Of course, Putin's going to, you know, I think he went crazy during the pandemic.
[00:17:29]  There were reports that his family had COVID.
[00:17:31]  He never wanted to admit it.
[00:17:32]  But even Connelly's a Rice was saying he looks like he's a little crazy, like his face is chubbier and he's not quite making sense.
[00:17:37]  So he's saber rattling.
[00:17:39]  The nuclear threats there, that's scary.
[00:17:41]  I mean, that's something we can't even imagine.
[00:17:43]  But I think the first option is a little bit worse.
[00:17:47]  There's a bomb that he has about 22,000 pounds.
[00:17:49]  It's a thermal barrack charge.
[00:17:50]  We have one that we dropped actually on the Taliban.
[00:17:53]  It's called a massive ordnance air burst.
[00:17:55]  We call it the mother of all bombs, the Moab.
[00:17:57]  But he's got one that it's a thermobaric charge that detonates about six feet off the ground and it'll make a crater three football fields and it'll liquefy anyone inside.
[00:18:06]  And if he dropped that on a populace, it's devastating, but he can say he didn't go nuclear.
[00:18:12]  That's as close as you can get.
[00:18:13]  And everyone knows that we've done it.
[00:18:15]  Russia made one, I'm assuming, because China steals everything from us.
[00:18:18]  They have one too.
[00:18:19]  But that's like the next step in how serious are we?
[00:18:22]  And it's scary when you get someone that maniacal, a little bit senile, but his back's against the wall.
[00:18:28]  Finger on the trigger.
[00:18:29]  I don't care how many times they're in treaties.
[00:18:31]  They say, well, we have them, but they're not aimed at anyone.
[00:18:33]  That's a bunch of bull.
[00:18:34]  They're aimed at something.
[00:18:36]  And he's got access to stuff.
[00:18:37]  And I'm not sure going into Belarus is going to do anything.
[00:18:40]  Putin wants to save face, but it's going to come down to something really, really graphic, or it's going to turn into like a Julius Caesar thing, get stabbed back in a coop.
[00:18:49]  Before I went over there to interview him, I had briefings with former FBI, former CIA folks who've spent their lives studying Russia and Putin.
[00:18:57]  And one of the things that I learned was that Russia is basically a kleptocracy.
[00:19:02]  And whoever's in charge is totally corrupt and has tons of money and houses and assets stationed all over Russia.
[00:19:09]  And the sort of way it works is you just have to stay in power.
[00:19:14]  Like the way of preventing oneself from winding up dead or in jail is you have to stay in power.
[00:19:20]  And that's what he's been doing, right?
[00:19:22]  I mean, he's effectively just an authoritarian leader there now.
[00:19:26]  He went through the sort of the motions of pretending that Medvedev was president for a while, but he took back over and hasn't given it up since.
[00:19:35]  And there's a real worry if he feels trapped, if he feels in a corner where he feels like, okay, not only is Russia losing face and compromising positions that they've worked 75 years to not compromise, what if he's, what if the Russian people and even his underlings start turning on him and the, the, The solution within Russia is Putin needs to go, right?
[00:19:57]  I mean, I know Dakota, you write in the book a lot about like, and of course, this is this led to your Medal of Honor.
[00:20:02]  There's there are times in which soldiers need to disobey orders and understand what's what's right might not line up with what's what you've been told to do.
[00:20:12]  Yeah.
[00:20:13]  I mean, look, and I totally agree with that.
[00:20:15]  I truly think that the you know, the results of Ukraine is going to come down to how far Putin will take this, right?
[00:20:23]  I mean, how far is he willing to go?
[00:20:24]  Is he willing to go nuclear, right?
[00:20:26]  But I think on the backside of that, there's going to have to be someone under him push the button to go nuclear.
[00:20:34]  And you can't ever pull out that, I call it the humanization factor, right?
[00:20:38]  Like the factor that I have to push this and I have to know that my family is going to pay for this because they know that as soon as the nuke comes out, they know that the wrath of the world is going to be unleashed on Russia.
[00:20:51]  They know that the wrath of the world is just going to come out and there are going to be nukes dropped and whatever he does in Ukraine.
[00:20:57]  Will be a hundred times worse on him.
[00:21:00]  So Putin's kind of in this position, though.

=== The Nuclear Question (03:21) ===

[00:21:03]  It sucks for Putin.
[00:21:04]  Maybe we should send him a book.
[00:21:07]  Nice plug.
[00:21:09]  He's going to need a way forward right after this.
[00:21:11]  But I think he thought that he was going to run through this, like Rob said, be over in a couple of days.
[00:21:16]  Nobody was going to fight.
[00:21:17]  He was going to have it and he's going to go back.
[00:21:19]  But for our generation, Putin's kind of been like this guy that we've all been warned about, right?
[00:21:26]  He's kind of like the guy in the bar of, hey, You know, that guy can fight.
[00:21:30]  You know, don't mess with him.
[00:21:31]  You know, don't ever get, you know, don't ever mess with him.
[00:21:34]  So now he comes out and we're watching him fight for the first time that I can remember in my life.
[00:21:40]  And he's losing.
[00:21:41]  He's not good.
[00:21:42]  He's losing.
[00:21:42]  He's not good at it, right?
[00:21:43]  So if Putin goes back and he's going to be the leader of Russia and they want to be powerful, I mean, he's really, Putin's the laughing stock of the world right now.
[00:21:51]  Well, he's put himself in a bad spot too because he's been quoting Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev.
[00:21:58]  And, you know, he's talking legacy talk now and he's pushing 70.
[00:22:03]  Another scary part is you're realizing that he's not tough.
[00:22:07]  What if he needs to go out with the bank?
[00:22:08]  And there's all this, like we said, the human element parts of it, the legacy elements.
[00:22:12]  How does he, because he wants his own legacy, but he also wants Mother Russia.
[00:22:16]  And if he makes it look weak, who knows what he'll do?
[00:22:18]  So, you know, this is not, you know, yeah, I mean, it's scary.
[00:22:21]  There's a lot of ins and outs.
[00:22:23]  And, you know, it's one of those things where you don't want to believe something bad will happen because it never has.
[00:22:29]  Here's a guy that said, if you interfere, you'll see a response you've never seen in the history of your nation.
[00:22:35]  He's talking to us.
[00:22:36]  Yeah.
[00:22:37]  Oh, yeah.
[00:22:38]  Yeah, go ahead.
[00:22:39]  But I just think that, look, no matter how this goes, whether he takes Ukraine or whether he backs out, like, my prediction is this is the end of Putin.
[00:22:51]  It very well could be.
[00:22:52]  I mean, all the things that we were saying that they should do, they're now doing, except for cutting off the oil and gas access to Russia.
[00:23:00]  That no one's giving up yet.
[00:23:01]  Although Germany has now made the Nord Stream 2 disconnection and sort of they've said, we're done.
[00:23:07]  And we're permanently done.
[00:23:08]  It's crazy what happened in Germany.
[00:23:10]  They totally underestimated the new chancellor of Germany.
[00:23:12]  They thought they had another Angela Merkel on their hands who wanted to appease Russia and be more dovish and not build up the military and not be confrontational.
[00:23:20]  And this new guy is like, How you like me now?
[00:23:23]  It was crazy.
[00:23:24]  It's really worth reading what happened in Germany over the weekend.
[00:23:28]  So we'll see.
[00:23:29]  The actual line was that Putin has his nuclear deterrent forces on high alert amid the spiraling tensions, that the defense minister.
[00:23:42]  And the chief of the military's general staff have been ordered to put the nuclear deterrent forces in a special regime of combat duty.
[00:23:51]  Could absolutely just be saber rattling.
[00:23:53]  But then that's what people said about the 200,000 troops around Ukraine.
[00:23:59]  There's so much more to go over with the two greatest guys.
[00:24:01]  We're so lucky that they're Americans, that they decided to risk their own lives and fight for us, and now are continuing to share their wisdom with us.
[00:24:08]  Rob O'Neill, Dakota Meyer, coming right back on their book.
[00:24:12]  Their lives have been fascinating, and they're going to share some of the lessons of heroism, strength, and resilience right after this.
[00:24:20]  Don't go away.

=== Building Muscle Memory (07:44) ===

[00:24:24]  The first song is Alente.
[00:24:27]  Okay, this is fantastic.
[00:24:29]  We will see that the best song is to be a good one.
[00:24:34]  Now, we will have a good one and a good one to be able to make a good series.
[00:24:41]  Here are the tips for Alente StreamFlex 2.
[00:24:45]  For the best of the many months, for this toll TV channel, we will have two play bases for the Via Play Film Series and two extra streaming tenants to be able to make a good one.
[00:24:57]  HBO Max Prime Video, Sky Showtime, you name it.
[00:25:01]  Do for your holding till Helle Familien or the Funkir over alt.
[00:25:05]  Pumobilen it held, net bread the Bilen, Elme Chromecast Botel Teven at Ren Strandag Pagranka.
[00:25:11]  I lente Funkiri Helle U O Eus, Alto Tringer and Net, O I lente da.
[00:25:18]  Tremontir, Sutinicronomontan, Null Binning, Parete Teve, or Streaming Accurate Sonde, we had.
[00:25:24]  Going Pai Lente dot NO, or Teste Sommer.
[00:25:45]  All right, so let's go back to some of the lessons of childhood.
[00:25:49]  Because I love the stories and sort of how you got there.
[00:25:52]  Rob, I mentioned you, not so great necessarily on the football field, not kicking people's ass, more likely to be getting the ass kicked, which seems hard to believe.
[00:26:00]  But okay.
[00:26:02]  And you write in the book about one of the important lessons you took away from your time with your dad on the basketball court.
[00:26:10]  And I have a little aspiring basketball player.
[00:26:13]  He's 12.
[00:26:13]  And so I appreciate what you write in the book about this competition you had where you couldn't go inside at night unless one of you hit 20 free throws in a row, which, and you write in the book, that's effing hard.
[00:26:25]  And that is hard.
[00:26:26]  That is hard.
[00:26:27]  I can see it just with my own son.
[00:26:28]  But tell us about where that went.
[00:26:31]  And, What you learned from the experience?
[00:26:34]  Well, that is hard, but what I was actually learning stuff that would help me in life is do everything like you do anything.
[00:26:42]  And if you want to be good at something, do it a thousand times.
[00:26:44]  You want to be really good, do it 10,000 times.
[00:26:46]  If you want to be great, do it 100,000 times.
[00:26:48]  And a free throw to me, that's just a great analogy for life.
[00:26:52]  A free throw, it's bounce the ball three times, backspin, bend the knees, release.
[00:26:57]  And like the only argument my father, Tom, and I, well, dad, and I had was, Do you look at the ball as you release or do you keep your eyes on the rim?
[00:27:05]  I was a big believer you keep your eyes on the rim.
[00:27:07]  He would keep his eyes on the ball.
[00:27:08]  But yeah, it was one of our things where you start with a make, always start with a make because you know you're in line.
[00:27:15]  Your feet are on the free throw line.
[00:27:17]  Start with a make and then keep going from there.
[00:27:18]  Like I was, even when I watched college and pro basketball, they make their free throw and they go shake everyone's hands.
[00:27:23]  Knock it off.
[00:27:23]  Keep your feet on the line.
[00:27:24]  Make the second one.
[00:27:25]  Then we can all talk about how cool you are.
[00:27:26]  But we got to a point where it was 20 in a row, no matter what, to leave the gym.
[00:27:32]  And it didn't matter if it took us the first try or five hours.
[00:27:35]  But the cool thing was, we also had at the beginning of our season, which ended after my season, it was 20 to leave the gym, but then 20 to go get a steak at the Derby.
[00:27:45]  So it stayed 20 to leave, but once we hit the steak, then it goes up by five.
[00:27:49]  So now it's 20 and 25 to get a steak, then 30 to get a steak, and then 40, 45.
[00:27:52]  And we got to a point my senior year where my father made 91 free throws in a row, and it was awesome.
[00:27:59]  And that was a family record that lasted for less than a week because the next week I made 105 in a row.
[00:28:04]  But what we were learning is that's the same thing with shooting, it's the same thing with your follow through.
[00:28:09]  Do the same thing front sight focus.
[00:28:11]  How are your knees?
[00:28:12]  What's your position?
[00:28:13]  And just shooting free throws like that is like, uh, it's as simple as um, people like aspiring Navy SEALs are like, uh, I'm not good at pull ups.
[00:28:20]  How do I get better at pull ups?
[00:28:21]  It's like, oh, that's simple, you do pull ups.
[00:28:23]  Simple, yeah, right.
[00:28:25]  Do more pull ups.
[00:28:26]  I got, I want to go to this, the Derby.
[00:28:27]  Does it still exist?
[00:28:28]  Is it still in Montana?
[00:28:30]  I know you've been to Butte and the Derby.
[00:28:32]  I mean, my buddy owns it, he's actually the principal at a school in Chicago.
[00:28:36]  I've dropped the Derby, that's three times.
[00:28:38]  I better get something out of this.
[00:28:40]  All right, I'm going to go.
[00:28:42]  They don't even know how good they are, they don't even know they're that good because it's you know, it's Butte, Montana.
[00:28:45]  They don't, they just expect everything to be delicious.
[00:28:47]  Derby's incredible.
[00:28:48]  I'm not going to put anything like that sort of challenge in front of myself to get there.
[00:28:52]  I'm just going to go and eat.
[00:28:53]  I'm not going to go get 106 free throws and beat the Rob O'Neil record.
[00:28:57]  That's what's funny about that story, too.
[00:29:00]  I was okay with 105 in a row, but I was so angry at missing 106.
[00:29:05]  It's crazy talk.
[00:29:07]  You realize that, right?
[00:29:08]  Okay.
[00:29:09]  That's how you become Rob O'Neill.
[00:29:10]  I get it.
[00:29:12]  But, you know, Dakota, it reminded me you wrote something in the book.
[00:29:14]  Forgive me, I don't have his name right in front of me.
[00:29:16]  But it was about one of your commanding officers who kept saying, what was it?
[00:29:21]  Hold the line or 9 9.
[00:29:23]  What was the lesson that he kept drilling into you and you hated it at the time, couldn't understand why you had to keep doing it?
[00:29:30]  Well, you know, so like when I got to the fleet, I came to a group of Marines that had just came back from Haditha, the triad.
[00:29:40]  And one of my seniors, he'd lost, they'd lost quite a few of our unit.
[00:29:44]  And yeah, his name was Daniel Kreitzer.
[00:29:48]  I'll never forget him.
[00:29:49]  Just an incredible guy.
[00:29:51]  He always just like ran into us nine lines, like nine line medevac.
[00:29:57]  It's a format that we use to medevac out wounded.
[00:30:00]  Wounded Marines or, you know, wounded service members on the battlefield.
[00:30:05]  And it's so critical, right?
[00:30:06]  I mean, he just drilled it into us while a lot of other Marines, their team leaders were messing with them and were, you know, playing games and doing all these other things.
[00:30:15]  You know, ours was always just making sure that that was something that we could do with their eyes closed at any point in time under any piece of stress.
[00:30:23]  Because at the end of the day, that was ultimately what was going to take care of, you know, to get our whoever one of our brothers or Or us, or whatever, to safety to where they can get help.
[00:30:35]  And that was why, you know, that was the core to everything that we did, whether we were out training for IEDs or whether we were out, you know, shooting.
[00:30:43]  You know, our nine line was the very basic, the minimum that we had to be proficient at in order to go out.
[00:30:51]  And everything's habitual, right?
[00:30:52]  Like everything in life is habitual.
[00:30:55]  You can't, don't ever think that you can do it when it matters if you can't do it when it doesn't matter.
[00:31:03]  Exactly.
[00:31:03]  And that's kind of what Rob was saying about the basketball in the book.
[00:31:06]  He's saying it's not about becoming a great basketball player.
[00:31:09]  It's about getting muscle memory and getting to the point where you don't even have to think about it.
[00:31:13]  You just keep doing it over and over and over.
[00:31:15]  It becomes second nature, whether it's basketball or it's shooting or it's the nine lines.
[00:31:21]  And in the military, they get that.
[00:31:23]  But it applies, as you point out in the book, to regular life.
[00:31:26]  I mean, a lot of people have goals that they want to achieve.
[00:31:29]  And it's like if you got to think about it in the moment when the stress is on, you're already in trouble.
[00:31:35]  Yeah, I truly believe that.
[00:31:37]  You know, I truly believe, and I speak on this a lot is that, you know, the results of the time, like, look, all of us are going to be tested.
[00:31:45]  We're all tested at some point.
[00:31:48]  And the results of that test, when it comes up, Are already decided.
[00:31:54]  They're already decided by the micro decisions that you made all the way up to that point, right?
[00:31:59]  The results, whether you're going to succeed or fail, are already decided at that moment.
[00:32:04]  And so it matters.
[00:32:05]  It matters what you put in your body, it matters every little aspect of it.

=== Lessons from Adoption (04:11) ===

[00:32:09]  You can't expect to be a good person, but only be a good person in parts of your life.
[00:32:15]  You can't expect to, you know, like it's just, it's either one way or the other.
[00:32:19]  You can't be both.
[00:32:20]  And I truly believe that.
[00:32:22]  Now, Dakota, you write in the book about your own personal background, born and raised in Kentucky.
[00:32:28]  Yeah.
[00:32:29]  Okay.
[00:32:29]  And you tell us a little bit about Big Mike and the role that he played in, I don't want to be too dramatic and say saving you, but kind of in a way, saving you.
[00:32:43]  Yeah.
[00:32:43]  I mean, you know, my dad is probably the greatest man that I've ever met that walks the face of the planet.
[00:32:54]  My dad's a very simple man.
[00:32:56]  My dad is principally based.
[00:32:58]  You know, my dad didn't, he never, you know, he was all about, you know, he never cares what anybody else thinks, right?
[00:33:05]  But with that, you know, my dad's very direct.
[00:33:07]  My dad is very straightforward.
[00:33:09]  But my dad does that not because he's trying to be controlling or not because he's trying to do it out of convenience for himself or to make things easier.
[00:33:19]  My dad was that way because he cared about you, right?
[00:33:22]  My dad was that way because he wanted you to be better and he was going to hold you to a standard that, that, That would accept nothing less than you being the best that you can be.
[00:33:31]  And, you know, my dad was all about people, right?
[00:33:34]  About taking care of yourself, taking care of the things around you, and, you know, taking care of the people around you, not, you know, dishonoring your name, right?
[00:33:42]  There's a lot of people that have the same last name.
[00:33:45]  And when you disrespect that or you make that look bad, that's a spill factor for everybody.
[00:33:51]  Yeah, you know, and what's incredible was, I didn't know it until I was 13, you know, but my dad, Big Mike, He adopted me.
[00:34:01]  And so, you know, as a father, you didn't know that until you were 13.
[00:34:05]  Yeah.
[00:34:06]  Yeah.
[00:34:08]  My mother gave me up when I was like nine or 10.
[00:34:12]  And I honestly, I don't even know the whole story about how they got together.
[00:34:16]  I've asked, I mean, like, if you want to talk about, you want to put an investigator in, you should go try to figure out where I was born.
[00:34:23]  Because if I ask my mom where I was born, she tells me one place, my dad tells me another place, and my birth certificate says an entirely different place.
[00:34:31]  Oh, boy.
[00:34:31]  So, You know, yeah.
[00:34:33]  So just to go ahead and give you a little bit of coordination on that.
[00:34:37]  So, you know, I found out I was adopted when I was 13.
[00:34:41]  My mom kind of gave me up when I was nine or 10, let me go live with my dad, whatever she's got to say to justify it.
[00:34:47]  But, you know, I went to live with my dad.
[00:34:51]  My dad took me in and just, you know, full time dad, you know, working 40 to 60 hours a week on his job and then living on the farm and working.
[00:34:59]  And he's just, you know, he was an example.
[00:35:01]  And, you know, I found out when I was 13, and this is, this will give you a true, Perspective of just how my dad is.
[00:35:08]  You know, my mom brought me in on my 13th birthday and laid these papers down in front of me because she wanted me to move back in with her.
[00:35:14]  And she said, Hey, you know, this is, you're adopted.
[00:35:20]  And I was like, What?
[00:35:21]  Like, yeah, she's like, You're adopted.
[00:35:24]  Your dad adopted you.
[00:35:25]  He's not your real dad.
[00:35:26]  And I just, I'll never forget just being like so lost.
[00:35:32]  It's like, What do you mean?
[00:35:34]  Like, this is like, What do you mean?
[00:35:37]  And so I went back, got dropped off at my dad's house.
[00:35:40]  My dad had no clue she did this.
[00:35:42]  And I was so mad.
[00:35:43]  And I'll never forget, my dad could tell I was upset, obviously.
[00:35:46]  And my dad came in and he looked at me, he heard me out.
[00:35:49]  And I was like, I was really mad at him.
[00:35:51]  Like, why didn't you tell me?
[00:35:52]  You've been lying to me.
[00:35:53]  And he looked at me and he goes, Dakota, what does it change?
[00:35:59]  What does it change?
[00:36:01]  What does it change between us?
[00:36:03]  He goes, I'm still your dad.
[00:36:05]  You know, we don't have the same blood running through us.
[00:36:07]  You know, I'm still your dad.
[00:36:08]  And it doesn't change how much I love you.
[00:36:10]  It doesn't change, you know, anything about our relationship, does it?
[00:36:13]  And so at a young age, my dad taught me that, you know, blood just because you're blood doesn't mean you're family.
[00:36:18]  And just because you're not blood doesn't mean you're family.

=== A Father's Secret (11:02) ===

[00:36:20]  And, you know, that's just the type of man that he is.
[00:36:23]  I mean, he is just an incredible human being.
[00:36:28]  Hmm.
[00:36:28]  That's an amazing story.
[00:36:30]  And he comes as one of the heroes of the book, for sure.
[00:36:33]  I mean, the way, and he got you when you came home.
[00:36:35]  And I want to know Big Mike.
[00:36:37]  Big Mike sounds like an extraordinary person.
[00:36:40]  And, you know, it's good because to me, it's like a, it's just a reminder of the importance of a strong, in particular, male role model for little boys, you know, and the importance of a dad in one's life.
[00:36:50]  A strong father figure or father can teach you all sorts of lessons that, you know, you may not see coming.
[00:36:57]  And over on the front in Butte, Montana, Rob, you had great parents.
[00:37:03]  But you write about a story I hadn't yet heard about you.
[00:37:06]  There was a guy in town named Ben who turned out to be pretty much a badass, and little Rob O'Neill wanted to be just like him.
[00:37:15]  Now, he wasn't a SEAL, but tell us about Ben and the lesson you learned, in particular when he walked into a bar or something.
[00:37:21]  You were like, okay, I see a difference here.
[00:37:24]  Yeah.
[00:37:25]  So I grew up with Ben.
[00:37:26]  We went to the same school, and he was always lifting weights, always working out, huge guy on the football team.
[00:37:34]  And ever since I knew him, he wanted to be a Marine.
[00:37:36]  And that was his thing.
[00:37:37]  Like he was going to be a Marine.
[00:37:38]  He always had a great haircut.
[00:37:40]  As soon as he got a truck at like 15 years old, he had the Marine Corps sticker on there.
[00:37:44]  And as soon as he graduated the next day, like he was going, it's not like he was from a military family.
[00:37:49]  Ben was just going to do that.
[00:37:50]  He was a monster when he left.
[00:37:52]  And when he came back, now we were talking about there's tough guys in Butte, and then there was me.
[00:37:57]  I was working, I was delivering pizza, and it was a pizza joint and a bar at night.
[00:38:03]  And it was called the VU Villa.
[00:38:05]  And I was in the VU one night, and Ben came in.
[00:38:09]  And he just looked like a Marine now.
[00:38:11]  That's him.
[00:38:11]  He kind of walked in and he almost was so cool.
[00:38:16]  He almost looked like he didn't recognize anybody because he knew everyone was staring at him.
[00:38:22]  And it's like the whole, you know, yes, I will go home with that girl, but I'm going to beat up her boyfriend first type guy.
[00:38:27]  But I mean, he didn't do that.
[00:38:28]  Just a great guy, but he looked like that.
[00:38:30]  And it was impressive that that got my interest in the Marine Corps.
[00:38:32]  I still wasn't quite going to go yet, but I was like, if I ever decide to, that's what I want to aspire to be.
[00:38:37]  I want to look like.
[00:38:39]  Butte's not a big place, and you'd be driving around town, and he's out there getting his PT on, you know, his physical training, running down Blacktail Lane with no, you know, Marine Corps shorts and no shirt on.
[00:38:48]  Just like, that's a Marine.
[00:38:49]  That's what Marines look like.
[00:38:50]  God help the enemy.
[00:38:51]  Yeah, right.
[00:38:52]  And you're like, I'll do it.
[00:38:53]  I'll do it.
[00:38:53]  And then you told us in our last interview about you got a little sidetracked by the Navy recruiter who was like, Well, yeah, when I decided to join, I went into it because it was a time to get out of town.
[00:39:03]  And the quickest way out of Butte, Montana, is to join the military.
[00:39:06]  And because of hunting, you know, my dad and I thought we were the best shots in the world.
[00:39:10]  I'll go be a Marine sniper because After I saw Ben and then I watched Full Metal Jacket and I read Carlos Hathcock's book, who was the greatest Marine Corps sniper, and I went to join the Marine Corps.
[00:39:21]  And I walked down there right in the office, and the Marine recruiter was not in the office.
[00:39:25]  But the Navy guy's office was right next door.
[00:39:27]  And Ben had actually been the guy that told me he was a guy that would mess with you, but he's messing with you and he's joking, but he looks like he could just squash you.
[00:39:36]  He said the Marine Corps is actually part of the Department of the Navy, it's just the men's department.
[00:39:41]  And that's why I went to the Navy guy's office.
[00:39:43]  Dakota's shaking his head, yes, for our listening audience.
[00:39:45]  Dakota, the Marine likes this story.
[00:39:47]  Yeah, I'm trying not to brag too much about the Marine Corps because the war hero sitting next to me.
[00:39:52]  And so I went there and The Navy.
[00:39:55]  Now, what I didn't know about the Navy is if you wear khakis and have anchors, you're a chief.
[00:39:59]  And chiefs are very, very clever.
[00:40:01]  And I said, Hey, if anyone knows where the Marine is, you will, because you're part of the Navy.
[00:40:06]  And he goes, Why do you want the Marine?
[00:40:07]  I said, I want to be a sniper.
[00:40:08]  Marines have the best snipers in the world.
[00:40:10]  He said, Look no further.
[00:40:11]  We have snipers here in the Navy.
[00:40:13]  You need to be a Navy SEAL first, no big deal.
[00:40:15]  Then we'll send you to sniper school.
[00:40:16]  Kind of brushed over that part.
[00:40:19]  And I'm looking at this guy, and he's kind of, you know, he looks like a Navy guy, got some coffee stain on his shirt, whatever.
[00:40:25]  And I said, You know, I'm naive.
[00:40:27]  I'm 18, but this guy's a professional recruiter.
[00:40:29]  Why is he going to lie to me?
[00:40:31]  And that's how he became a Navy guy.
[00:40:34]  Way before I went to Secretary.
[00:40:38]  I signed the government contract and then he showed me videos of Navy SEALs.
[00:40:42]  I was like, oh, I guess they swim a little.
[00:40:44]  I didn't really know how to swim.
[00:40:45]  We don't swim in Butte, Montana very much.
[00:40:47]  We shoot free throws.
[00:40:48]  It's so crazy to think about that guy sitting out there in the middle of.
[00:40:52]  What ocean was it when you rescued Captain Phillips?
[00:40:55]  That was in the Indian Ocean.
[00:40:57]  Yes.
[00:40:57]  So that was.
[00:40:58]  Fly from Virginia Beach, jump in, I think we, you know, just below 10,000 feet with four boats, and then we're in the Indian Ocean.
[00:41:04]  I was good at that point.
[00:41:05]  I learned how to swim.
[00:41:06]  Yes, I think so.
[00:41:07]  I think we know that by that point.
[00:41:08]  Can you tell a story?
[00:41:09]  We never actually got to this.
[00:41:10]  If you want to listen, this is literally my favorite interview I've done since I launched the show.
[00:41:14]  It was my Memorial Day interview with Rob O'Neill.
[00:41:16]  It was unbelievable.
[00:41:18]  I have people stop me on the street.
[00:41:19]  Dakota's rolling his eyes.
[00:41:20]  He's like, don't feed his ego.
[00:41:22]  Too late.
[00:41:24]  But seriously.
[00:41:25]  To be fair, I think you should go ahead and say it's only because you haven't had a one on one interview with me yet.
[00:41:30]  Definitely.
[00:41:30]  Like we need to get.
[00:41:31]  Into Hello Medal of Honor, where I was like reading all of Rob's like awards, his many, I mean, like a silver, the double silver star and the triple bronze star and all this stuff.
[00:41:40]  And I was floored until I got to Dakota's resume.
[00:41:43]  Yeah, I know.
[00:41:44]  Hey, whoa, why don't you bring that up?
[00:41:47]  Sorry.
[00:41:47]  No, but I was just going to say if you don't like my May 31st, my Memorial Day interview with Rob O'Neill, I can't please you.
[00:41:53]  I'm not for you.
[00:41:56]  You were spectacular.
[00:41:57]  The way you told the story, just riveting.
[00:41:59]  So if you got two hours, you got a nice long car ride, put it on.
[00:42:03]  Listen, you're welcome.
[00:42:04]  But One of the things we didn't get to in that interview that I wanted to ask you about was the moment before you went off to rescue Captain Phillips and you wrote a story.
[00:42:13]  I don't know, maybe it was your first book, I can't remember, but it was about how you were training back stateside and they gave you the call, you got to go.
[00:42:21]  And you went into like the place where you buy the food and you were in line and some guy was looking at the newspaper.
[00:42:27]  Yeah, we, well, we had never done this.
[00:42:30]  Like, Steel Team Six was designed to rescue Americans at sea.
[00:42:33]  And we'd been announcing since, well, not me, but like the team since 1980, we can be anywhere within 24 hours.
[00:42:39]  Never done it.
[00:42:40]  And we got the call.
[00:42:41]  It's like, you know, kidding, get the call.
[00:42:42]  Like, it's on.
[00:42:43]  We know we're going.
[00:42:44]  And I had a set amount of time to get to where I was going, but I was ahead of schedule.
[00:42:48]  And there's a 7 Eleven right outside the base.
[00:42:50]  So I stopped there with a plan.
[00:42:52]  I'm going to get as much cash as I can out of the ATM.
[00:42:56]  And for an E6 in the Navy, that's a lot of cash.
[00:42:58]  Yeah.
[00:43:01]  A log of Copenhagen and a carton of cigarettes.
[00:43:03]  And the reason I'm doing this is because we are going to be jumping today, we'll be on the East Coast of Africa, but there's never a perfect plan and we might not end up where we want.
[00:43:13]  But if I land in a semi permissive environment, I might be able to buy my way to safety with the cash.
[00:43:19]  I might be able to barter with the tobacco.
[00:43:22]  I do have a gun, and I used to call my gun the M4 charge card, like a credit card.
[00:43:26]  Like the way that works is you have a car, I have a gun.
[00:43:29]  Now I have a car and a gun.
[00:43:31]  But I'm in line to get my stuff, and there's a dude in front of me who I'm assuming was like a lineman up on the power poles or whatever.
[00:43:38]  And he's working all night, night shift.
[00:43:40]  Now he's off.
[00:43:40]  No hurry whatsoever.
[00:43:42]  And he's one dude in front of me.
[00:43:44]  And one of the things this dude, other than a big thing of coffee, is buying.
[00:43:47]  Was a USA Today.
[00:43:48]  And the headline on the newspaper, I could see over his shoulder.
[00:43:54]  Was about the mission we're trying to go do, and very patriotically, he slammed it on the counter and kind of announced to the entire store, you know, whomever would listen.
[00:44:01]  Man, I sure wish someone would do something about this.
[00:44:06]  And I'm recognizing the irony, and I tap him on the shoulder and I go, Buddy, pay for your shit, and we will.
[00:44:12]  And now he's listening to me, thinking, moving along, yeah, I'm looking at this blue collar worker, and I'm like, I'm not even kidding, bro.
[00:44:19]  Like, the national security timeline is squarely on your very broad shoulders, my man, and like.
[00:44:25]  And he was nice.
[00:44:25]  He kind of realized he's right in front of where we're supposed to go.
[00:44:28]  And he was cordial and he got out of the way.
[00:44:29]  And, you know, we got to work on time and everyone got to work on time.
[00:44:35]  And what was, I mean, you got to figure.
[00:44:36]  So there's Navy SEALs, but now there's boats that needed to be ready, gassed up.
[00:44:40]  Their parachute riggers had to have them already rigged.
[00:44:42]  The parachutes for us to jump to tandem rigs.
[00:44:44]  The pilots were on the way to the air crew.
[00:44:45]  Everyone had to be ready.
[00:44:47]  By the time we all got the call, 15 hours and 46 minutes later, we had a full head count of the Indian Ocean.
[00:44:51]  We rescued Richard Phillips a day and a half later.
[00:44:53]  It was amazing.
[00:44:54]  Oh, my God.
[00:44:54]  It's so crazy.
[00:44:56]  This is reminding me of like your story and your story, Dakota.
[00:44:59]  I'll take you back many years ago when I was in law school and we were applying for like the law school or the law review.
[00:45:06]  I think it was law.
[00:45:07]  Oh, no, no, no.
[00:45:08]  Actually, I take it back.
[00:45:09]  We were applying for jobs for out of law school.
[00:45:12]  And I was on the law review with this guy who I went to school with.
[00:45:15]  His name was Brian.
[00:45:16]  And Brian had served in the first Gulf War and Brian had received a Bronze Star.
[00:45:21]  And Brian had received the Bronze Star because he got to a minefield and his job was to refuel the tanks at the front line.
[00:45:29]  And the tanks had.
[00:45:32]  Almost no gas, and he was going to refuel.
[00:45:34]  So he had the fuel.
[00:45:35]  And so, as he said, you know, we call a tank with no gas a target.
[00:45:40]  So he's like, I've got to get there.
[00:45:43]  He's like, I got to get the fuel up there.
[00:45:45]  But, right.
[00:45:47]  So he comes up to a big minefield, and there's no way around it.
[00:45:49]  And he realizes, like, I'm not, if I try to go left or go right, I'm not going to make it in time.
[00:45:54]  But his commanding officer said, go left or go right, because you're not going to try to drive these refueling trucks over this minefield of all these guys.
[00:46:00]  And Brian said, this is a Dakota Meyer move where you just totally disregard the orders you've been given.
[00:46:05]  This is how you get a star, by the way.
[00:46:06]  That's apparently how you get a medal.
[00:46:07]  You just got to disregard our orders and then live.
[00:46:11]  So he got out of his truck and he personally, even though he was in charge of the unit, he walked personally and you could see the mines.
[00:46:19]  So he picked them up and moved them and created a path for the trucks to go through to refuel the tanks at the front line.
[00:46:27]  And they made it.
[00:46:28]  And his commanding officer knew he made it because they got there in far too fast a time for him to have been compliant with the orders.
[00:46:34]  And he reamed them out on the spot for disobeying the orders.
[00:46:37]  That's how he got the Bronze Star.
[00:46:39]  And let me just flash forward to you.
[00:46:40]  So, Brian was applying for the same job I was.
[00:46:42]  He was in the one office talking about leadership and so on.
[00:46:46]  And I was in the other office talking about law review and how I used to be the head cheerleader.
[00:46:54]  Well, hey, it's like Theo Bond says, you know, everyone has their own Vietnam.
[00:47:03]  That's right.
[00:47:03]  For Trump, it was what was like syphilis?
[00:47:05]  I don't know.
[00:47:08]  Oh, my God.
[00:47:10]  This is the thing about leadership.
[00:47:12]  You really do have to do it in order to learn and put yourself out there.
[00:47:16]  And do not, do not put yourself up against somebody who's won a bronze star, a silver star, a medal of honor.

=== Trusting Your Team (03:46) ===

[00:47:22]  You'll lose.
[00:47:22]  All right.
[00:47:22]  There's so much more to go over with these guys, Robin Dakota.
[00:47:25]  They're sticking around for the whole show, loving the interview.
[00:47:28]  And remember, if you are loving the interview, would like to hear that Rob O'Neill interview or any interview just like it, check us out.
[00:47:33]  We are, in addition to being live on SiriusXM Triumph Channel 111 every weekday at noon East, we're a podcast too.
[00:47:40]  And so you can go ahead and subscribe.
[00:47:43]  To Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher.
[00:47:46]  Subscribe to our show on those platforms and you'll get the podcast for free.
[00:47:50]  The Rob O'Neill interview you need to listen to is episode one.
[00:47:53]  109 and check us out on YouTube as well if you want to watch the episode instead.
[00:47:58]  Listen, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly.
[00:48:01]  Go ahead and subscribe to that too if you would.
[00:48:08]  Dakota, you, I can't skip past my cheerleader story without talking about your cheerleader story.
[00:48:15]  And it's not what the audience is thinking.
[00:48:17]  It's not like the young, hot Dakota Meyer and the cheerleaders.
[00:48:21]  It's a lesson about learning to trust.
[00:48:25]  And how important it is, and staying humble, which you, I understand, were taught firsthand while in high school.
[00:48:32]  Absolutely.
[00:48:33]  Yeah.
[00:48:33]  I, you know, I was a football player, unlike Rob.
[00:48:37]  I wasn't getting beat up, unlike Rob.
[00:48:38]  I got to bring up bullshit.
[00:48:40]  But, you know, like I was your typical, I ran track, played football, played some basketball, you know, and that was kind of what I did.
[00:48:49]  And so there were these, you know, they're like sisters, these girls, and Mary McKenzie, and, you know, They were cheerleaders.
[00:48:59]  And so, you know, I was always have, we had that, you know, brother sister kind of lingo conversation, whatever you want to call it, picking on each other.
[00:49:07]  And I was like, you guys are cheerleaders.
[00:49:09]  Like, that's not even a real sport.
[00:49:11]  And so then they're, you know, they're like, well, you should come with us.
[00:49:15]  And I was like, I'll come, I'll come one day.
[00:49:17]  Yeah, I'll come to your cheerleading gymnastics or whatever it was.
[00:49:21]  And so we went over and it was a, I guess it was like a travel team or whatever.
[00:49:25]  And so got over there and I did their gymnastics and we did, you know, Where you do back tucks and things, back handsprings and whatever.
[00:49:34]  And afterwards, they were going to do like some stunt stuff.
[00:49:37]  Well, they had this great idea that in a basket toss, you know, the back is like really the person that, you know, catches the head of the person that you're tossing.
[00:49:47]  They're the person that, you know, is throwing, throwing.
[00:49:50]  You get probably the most leverage on throwing.
[00:49:52]  So I, we had this girl, her name was Keisha.
[00:49:55]  She was tiny.
[00:49:56]  And so, like, come over here and do this basket toss.
[00:49:58]  And I'm not going to lie, like, hanging out with a bunch of girls was not so bad.
[00:50:04]  And went over there and threw up, you know, got under it.
[00:50:08]  And I was like, I'm going to show, I got to show off.
[00:50:10]  There's all these girls watching.
[00:50:11]  So I threw Keisha, and the ceiling in this place was not the highest.
[00:50:17]  And I'll never forget, like Keisha went up in the basketball.
[00:50:21]  So she had to lay flat so that she didn't slam into the ceiling and came back down.
[00:50:26]  And I caught her, and, you know, and there was just, it was really humbling for me to, you know, see just what it took to be a cheerleader.
[00:50:32]  And so obviously I had to join.
[00:50:34]  Uh, you know, I was forced to join.
[00:50:36]  It wasn't that I liked it or anything.
[00:50:38]  Um, but just like being, you know, understanding and just seeing, like, you know, just the athleticism that it took for those girls to do that and to be part of it was something that, yeah, I got taught and to be humble about it.
[00:50:50]  Um, yeah, I got taught real early and to trust the people that they're going to catch you.
[00:50:55]  You know, I mean, that's that's like the military summed up in a line or two, right?
[00:50:58]  Like, you gotta, nothing's going to happen unless you trust each other to have each other's back.
[00:51:02]  You get thrown up in the air or you go out first on the mission.
[00:51:05]  Um, it doesn't happen unless you've got this brotherhood or sisterhood.

=== Overcoming Panic (11:28) ===

[00:51:09]  Yeah, and it's the same thing in life, right?
[00:51:11]  You know, everything I've done, whether it's played football, whether it's work on a farm, whether it's be a firefighter, whether it's be a cheerleader, whatever it is, you know, everything's been a team sport for me, and life's a team sport.
[00:51:25]  The need to maintain calm in stressful situations, whether it's being tossed up with the ceiling coming towards your face, like Keisha did, but not panic, has been a central theme, really.
[00:51:38]  I mean, of both of your stories, really.
[00:51:41]  I mean, in extreme circumstances, the ability not to panic cannot be overstated, but not everyone has it.
[00:51:47]  And it's one of the things they try to train you when you're getting ready for these missions.
[00:51:51]  And I know, Rob, you've talked about how.
[00:51:53]  Fear?
[00:51:53]  Like when people say, How do you not get afraid?
[00:51:55]  And you're like, I don't know.
[00:51:57]  Don't ask me.
[00:51:57]  I'm afraid every time.
[00:51:59]  But there's a line between fear and panic.
[00:52:02]  Not everyone can find it.
[00:52:04]  Talk about it and how you mastered it.
[00:52:08]  That's a tough one to teach.
[00:52:09]  It needs to be learned through observation.
[00:52:12]  And I remember even the first time I went to war, I was assuming the worst suicide bombers everywhere, gunfights everywhere.
[00:52:19]  And as I'm creeping around, wasting energy, trying to hide behind everything every step I take, I look at my boss and he just looked really cool.
[00:52:27]  He was calm.
[00:52:28]  And I just remember thinking, I want to be like that.
[00:52:30]  I want to be cool like that.
[00:52:32]  What I learned is calm can be contagious.
[00:52:35]  No one can tell what you're feeling inside.
[00:52:37]  But if you portray calm, everyone around you will be calm.
[00:52:41]  And that'll happen.
[00:52:43]  But fear is fine.
[00:52:45]  Fear makes you think more clearly.
[00:52:46]  Fear is when you're watching a movie and you can hear everything in your house.
[00:52:49]  That's fear working for you.
[00:52:50]  But it's when you start to freak out that it's dangerous.
[00:52:53]  Like panic is very, very contagious.
[00:52:56]  The proof, Proof is recent.
[00:52:58]  I will prove that panic is contagious.
[00:53:00]  It's called, I call it the great toilet paper debacle of 2020.
[00:53:04]  The reason that happened, as far as I know, and as far as most people should know, using toilet paper is not a survival necessity.
[00:53:12]  It's just nice to have.
[00:53:13]  You can get on with it without toilet paper.
[00:53:15]  But someone freaked out at a store and bought all the toilet paper, and some asshole watched him do that.
[00:53:22]  And he sprinted to the next store and he bought it all, and some other asshole watched him do it.
[00:53:25]  And then everyone started doing it.
[00:53:26]  Bam, we're out of toilet paper because one person panics.
[00:53:28]  We all start to panic.
[00:53:29]  And that's how it is.
[00:53:30]  I mean, you can see it.
[00:53:31]  It's actually fun.
[00:53:33]  I get to go in airports all the time.
[00:53:35]  I flew in here where I am today.
[00:53:36]  I'm flying out tonight.
[00:53:37]  I get to see people in airports, and people are generally nervous in airports.
[00:53:42]  That's why there is no such thing as drinking alcohol too early, it's a problem in the airport.
[00:53:47]  But watch people as somebody moves anywhere.
[00:53:50]  As soon as they announce, hey, we'll be boarding this flight in 15 minutes, look around and watch people as one.
[00:53:55]  It's like watching a herd of cattle.
[00:53:57]  They start to move their heads, they start to stand up.
[00:53:58]  And God forbid someone from Zone 5 tries to board with Zone 1.
[00:54:02]  That's when the fight breaks out.
[00:54:03]  And it's that thing where everybody panics.
[00:54:05]  But we talked earlier about muscle memory.
[00:54:07]  Once we get on the plane, muscle memory, how you should be, you know, do everything like you do anything.
[00:54:11]  I guarantee you, the guy talking really, really loud on his phone in first class about how important he is in his business trip, he doesn't know where his life vest is.
[00:54:19]  He doesn't know how to open an emergency exit because he's too good for that.
[00:54:22]  But he certainly could be the first one on the plane.
[00:54:24]  And then, you know, once I always said, kind of, I don't want to be in a bad one, but like a semi crash, I want to see how people respond on a plane as you need to get out.
[00:54:33]  Who's grabbing their iPads?
[00:54:35]  I heard the flight that went down in the Hudson when Sully Sullenberger said he was the last one in the plane.
[00:54:41]  They're in the Hudson, which I'm assuming has got to be not normal.
[00:54:45]  He said he was walking through the plane.
[00:54:47]  Some dude came out of the bathroom in nothing but his boxer shorts.
[00:54:51]  He went in there, got in his boxer shorts, and Sully said, What are you doing?
[00:54:54]  And he said, Well, we're going to swim, aren't we?
[00:54:57]  Huh?
[00:54:58]  What?
[00:54:59]  What?
[00:55:00]  Yeah.
[00:55:01]  So that's panic, and panic can overtake you.
[00:55:03]  But if you're good enough, if you've done, like Dakota said, if you've done everything in your life to get to that point, And muscle memory needs to take over.
[00:55:09]  Hopefully, you shot the free throws like you should have.
[00:55:11]  Hopefully, you did everything every single time and you're good at it or you're great at it.
[00:55:15]  And I mean, it's January in the Hudson.
[00:55:17]  I'm not jumping in there in my boxer.
[00:55:19]  You know, I have a mild fear of flying.
[00:55:22]  I mean, Rob's been kicked off playing flesh.
[00:55:25]  Wait a minute.
[00:55:26]  Oh, I want to know more.
[00:55:29]  Did that make news?
[00:55:30]  Should I know about this?
[00:55:31]  Okay, but you're in no position to cast stones, Tikal, you little Medal of Honor winner.
[00:55:37]  No, you have not.
[00:55:38]  Because I teased earlier.
[00:55:41]  That one thing that happened at your Medal of Honor ceremony that we did not know, and I played that moment over and over again.
[00:55:46]  I mean, I interviewed you on the Kelly file, and when it happened, we watched it, President Obama, the whole bit, very moving.
[00:55:53]  And at Fox News, we take the whole ceremony and put it on.
[00:55:56]  Wonderful stuff.
[00:55:57]  Dakota wasn't necessarily all there at that appearance.
[00:56:01]  Apparently, speaking of drinking booze in the airport, it can happen before a Medal of Honor ceremony, too.
[00:56:08]  Yeah.
[00:56:08]  You know, we, I mean, what do you expect when you invite 200 and some Marines to the White House, right?
[00:56:16]  You know, we, when we were founded in a bar, just so you know.
[00:56:20]  So we got there and they were serving drinks.
[00:56:24]  And before, and I just mean, you know, everybody wants to have a drink with you, right?
[00:56:27]  Oh, you got to have a drink with me.
[00:56:29]  And we were drinking and drinking.
[00:56:30]  And I'll never forget like they put, you know, everybody went in to sit down.
[00:56:34]  They actually ran, the White House ran out of beer.
[00:56:39]  They ran out of beer at the ceremony and they had to find a way to get more in, which it's not just going down to the 7 Eleven on the corner.
[00:56:46]  That was very risky by you.
[00:56:48]  Speaking of your big risks, I mean, can you imagine if you had like thrown up in the middle of the Medal of Honor ceremony?
[00:56:53]  It would have been awful.
[00:56:53]  No, right.
[00:56:55]  You know, sometimes I don't really think about those things.
[00:56:59]  You know, I, but I'll never forget.
[00:57:01]  I didn't realize how, so everybody went in to sit down.
[00:57:04]  I didn't realize how drunk I was until, you know, me, the president, and, you know, Michelle, we walked in after everybody was in there together.
[00:57:15]  And I'll remember walking in and I'm like, I am wasted.
[00:57:20]  And so I'm standing up on stage and there's this moment, you know, because like the whole back of the room is lined with cameras.
[00:57:26]  And I promise there was nobody who, Uh, didn't want to be there more than me, and so I'm standing up there.
[00:57:32]  You know, my family they're all fighting already, well, some of them.
[00:57:36]  Um, and so I'm standing up there on stage, and you know, I'm at a position of attention, I hadn't been in a uniform in two years, you know.
[00:57:44]  And I'm up there and I'm standing in a position of attention.
[00:57:47]  I know how Marines are like, if you do one thing wrong, uh, you know, they're gonna crucify you, and you've just ruined the legacy of the United States Marine Corps, right?
[00:57:55]  And so I'm standing up there and I'm sweating so bad because these lights from the cameras.
[00:58:01]  And I go, and I'm so drunk that I have to go up, and I'm just like, and it's you don't ever touch your face, and I can't do it.
[00:58:08]  So I've got to wipe the sweat off.
[00:58:10]  And I think you thought that I was crying, and all these candles just start going off like everywhere.
[00:58:16]  And I'm like, yeah, I was just wiping my head off, guys.
[00:58:18]  It's all good.
[00:58:19]  Yeah, not it.
[00:58:20]  Not it.
[00:58:21]  I'm just drunk.
[00:58:23]  Well, the other thing is, with respect, you're a little heavier in that particular shot in that video than you are now.
[00:58:31]  And certainly then when you were fighting.
[00:58:32]  And you write about that too in the book and about your friend.
[00:58:35]  Who gave it to you straight?
[00:58:36]  Like everyone needs this friend.
[00:58:38]  I usually think it was just a woman thing, you know, because we need the friend who will be like, your ass does look fat in those jeans.
[00:58:44]  You should not be wearing those.
[00:58:45]  And you have your ass looks fat in those jeans friend.
[00:58:50]  I did.
[00:58:51]  His name is Tim Kennedy.
[00:58:52]  I don't know if you ever heard of him.
[00:58:53]  Yes, yes, of course.
[00:58:55]  Yeah, we had him on.
[00:58:56]  Yeah, just an incredible guy.
[00:58:59]  He's a no bullshit kind of guy.
[00:59:02]  I moved to Austin and I was going through my divorce, which was just by far, I would rather go through, you know, Five Afghanistan's and a divorce.
[00:59:13]  And, you know, I remember coming to the gym.
[00:59:18]  We were working out on it myself, him, and another guy.
[00:59:20]  We were working out just on it.
[00:59:21]  And it was kind of on it was kind of like my, or the gym was my, kind of my, like my grounding piece to get me through this, right?
[00:59:29]  Working out and working with Tim and Shane and Juan.
[00:59:32]  And it was my getting me through this, right?
[00:59:34]  Like they were literally the people, you know, when you talk about contagious.
[00:59:39]  Right.
[00:59:39]  Like they were the people around me that were holding the line.
[00:59:42]  And I'll never forget, I came in one day and I was just, you know, probably looking for some, maybe a little empathy.
[00:59:47]  And I came in, I was like, man, I said something about like I'm fat.
[00:59:53]  Yeah, I said, I think I'm fat.
[00:59:55]  And Tim kind of like, or I'm weak or something.
[00:59:57]  I can't remember what the exact line was.
[00:59:58]  But Tim looked at me and he goes, Hey, hey, check it out.
[01:00:03]  People look up to you as a warrior, and you need to look like one.
[01:00:08]  You understand?
[01:00:08]  And I'll never forget.
[01:00:12]  I'm already down because my whole life is shattering around me.
[01:00:16]  And that was Tim's way of empathy.
[01:00:18]  But you have to surround yourself with people who tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
[01:00:23]  That's Richard.
[01:00:25]  You know, it's such a, so many times we surround ourselves, and I see this a lot.
[01:00:31]  We surround ourselves with people who make us feel good.
[01:00:34]  You know, and that's the same thing that I was doing when I got out of the Marine Corps I was surrounding myself with people that made me feel good, and I was eating things that made me feel good.
[01:00:41]  And that's why I looked like this fat piece of trash that I did as a state of the globe representing the Marine Corps.
[01:00:50]  I think Dakota learned a lesson I learned from my grandma.
[01:00:52]  She said there's a big difference between a surprise party and an intervention.
[01:00:58]  I needed an intervention.
[01:00:59]  And my life didn't really get back on track.
[01:01:02]  It didn't really start going forward until I started surrounding myself with people who would hold me accountable, who would, you know, we have this false sense of brotherhood across the globe now.
[01:01:15]  And I see it in a lot of services.
[01:01:16]  I see this in being a firefighter.
[01:01:19]  I see this in a lot of things.
[01:01:20]  And it's, we want people to like us.
[01:01:23]  And I see this with people pairing.
[01:01:25]  And it's not about people liking you, it's not about, you know, not hurting someone's feelings.
[01:01:29]  It's about telling them what they need.
[01:01:31]  To hear so that they can go ahead and fix it, right?
[01:01:33]  Could you imagine if you walked in, a doctor just told you, you know, what was going to make you feel good?
[01:01:38]  Oh, oh, yeah, you have diabetes from eating too much sugar and you're, you know, you're morbidly obese, but hey, hey, it's okay.
[01:01:47]  There's just more of you to love.
[01:01:49]  Yeah.
[01:01:50]  No, you need somebody who will give it to you straight.
[01:01:52]  I always talk about my primary care physician on the show because I love him and he really is one of those people for me.
[01:01:57]  He's on the Radical Honesty program, but he definitely does not like it when his patients, Get too heavy because it's not healthy.
[01:02:05]  It's just not.
[01:02:06]  And apparently, there was a guy who went to see him.
[01:02:08]  You have to pay cash and then you seek reimbursement later.
[01:02:11]  More and more doctors are doing that.
[01:02:12]  Anyway, there was a patient who went in with his wife and they each got a physical and they had just moved to the area.
[01:02:18]  So he was paying the bill at checkout and his physical cost $1,000 more than his wife's physical.
[01:02:26]  And he said to the receptionist, Why is my physical $1,000 more than my wife's physical?
[01:02:31]  And the doctor heard it and he came out and he goes, Because you're fat.
[01:02:35]  Oh my God.

=== Credit for Heroes (15:24) ===

[01:02:37]  I was like, what?
[01:02:39]  But he's like, this is the number of things that are going to go wrong with you that I'm going to have to take care of, or the long, long list, way longer than your wife's.
[01:02:45]  And so, yeah, you're going to have to pay more.
[01:02:47]  But, like, as it may sound mean, it's also good to hear because it can be the wake up call that people need, you know, to sort of start changing their lives.
[01:02:55]  And you did.
[01:02:56]  I mean, you look great and you got the drinking under control and, you know, all the things.
[01:03:00]  So, hats off to you.
[01:03:02]  All right.
[01:03:02]  Now, I want to talk about sort of the rule breaking part.
[01:03:05]  Of your lives.
[01:03:07]  And it's interesting because you're these decorated military heroes, but you're also kind of rule breakers.
[01:03:12]  By the way, Rob, my team graciously reminded me that you were banned by Delta for an anti mask tweet.
[01:03:17]  I wasn't going to bring it up.
[01:03:18]  I was going to say something that rhymes with Delta.
[01:03:20]  What'd you do?
[01:03:22]  Just for a tweet, you got banned?
[01:03:25]  I took a photo, a selfie.
[01:03:28]  Because they look, I had a mask on and they were serving us stuff.
[01:03:32]  And I said, I could take my mask off to eat this.
[01:03:36]  They said, yeah.
[01:03:36]  So I took a picture and posted it.
[01:03:38]  That was a bad idea.
[01:03:39]  Don't tweet that.
[01:03:40]  But then, what's crazy is I took off like a two hour flight.
[01:03:43]  I didn't know it went viral.
[01:03:45]  And I landed, no one had said a word.
[01:03:46]  I was wearing a mask the whole time when I get off, turn my phone on, getting blasted.
[01:03:51]  And my wife called and said, What did you just do?
[01:03:52]  I'm like, I don't know.
[01:03:54]  Yeah, that horrible selfie is in the New York Times, you idiot.
[01:03:57]  Did you say, like, did you consider saying, Do you know why?
[01:03:59]  Like, have you heard of Osama bin Laden?
[01:04:01]  Like, did you try to play that card at all?
[01:04:03]  No, no, I didn't.
[01:04:04]  All I said was it was amazing on the 20 year anniversary of 9 11.
[01:04:07]  I'm the one on a no fly list.
[01:04:10]  That's something you and him hadn't caught.
[01:04:12]  Oh, geez.
[01:04:13]  It's crazy.
[01:04:13]  They put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on a plane before they put me on.
[01:04:15]  I don't get it.
[01:04:16]  Oh, my God.
[01:04:17]  Please tell me they reversed themselves.
[01:04:18]  Did they reverse themselves?
[01:04:20]  Not yet.
[01:04:20]  They're too woke.
[01:04:21]  Oh, geez.
[01:04:22]  Delta, you're going to get a lot of people banning you.
[01:04:25]  We're going to choose American Airlines.
[01:04:30]  I prefer American to Delta anyway, I got to say.
[01:04:32]  So, okay, so that wasn't exactly the thing I was talking about.
[01:04:35]  But let's talk about, because we didn't actually get to this last time either.
[01:04:39]  You killed bin Laden.
[01:04:41]  You were the man who actually shot bin Laden.
[01:04:44]  And then there's a reason we know that because you had an interview with, was it Esquire?
[01:04:50]  Who did you give the anonymous interview to?
[01:04:52]  Anonymous was with Esquire.
[01:04:53]  And that was just more of proof that.
[01:04:56]  A lot of veterans don't know what to do when they get out of the military.
[01:04:58]  That's what that was.
[01:05:01]  And then I remember being at Fox News when you gave the big interview to Peter Ducey, who back then was just known more as like Steve Ducey's son.
[01:05:08]  Now everybody knows him as Biden's chief antagonist in the White House press corps.
[01:05:12]  And I know you knew Brian Kilmeade and all that stuff.
[01:05:14]  So you came out with it and you were outed against your will prior to the revelation on Fox because some magazine got a hold of the fact that it was you and they tried to get ahead of it, which wasn't good because you needed to secure the safety of your family.
[01:05:27]  You have to take arrangements before you come out with something.
[01:05:29]  But there was definitely blowback.
[01:05:31]  And you write in this book about how, even before that moment, there was jealousy.
[01:05:36]  And I do want to talk about it because I think we revere our military so much.
[01:05:39]  We try to skirt past anything that doesn't reflect so well on them.
[01:05:44]  But can you just talk about that?
[01:05:47]  Because it was a little bit of a breaking rules to come out.
[01:05:50]  And I think you say in the book, don't sit in the front row.
[01:05:54]  That was sort of a lesson.
[01:05:56]  And there were people who had negative feelings about you even prior to you outing yourself.
[01:06:01]  Yeah.
[01:06:01]  And I can't blame them.
[01:06:03]  I've seen missions done before where I wasn't part of it.
[01:06:05]  And I was actually, why didn't I get to do that type thing?
[01:06:08]  And you have guys so close to doing something and they didn't do it.
[01:06:10]  And at first, I mean, everyone knew what happened.
[01:06:14]  And the first thing that, as soon as anyone found out Bin Laden was dead, especially SEALs, the first question they would ask was, who got him?
[01:06:21]  And it was actually kind of funny at first because I was known for, like, I like morale.
[01:06:25]  I like to tell stories and jokes.
[01:06:26]  I guess the common answer was, yeah, O'Neill got him.
[01:06:29]  They would say, oh, we are never going to hear the end of this.
[01:06:32]  And it was, Kind of funny about that.
[01:06:34]  But then, you know, the further we get out, it would be a Navy SEAL out in town and they would say, Who got them?
[01:06:39]  Like the bartender, don't tell anybody, but.
[01:06:41]  And so the word got out, my name got out around Virginia Beach, D.C., New York, and then other Navy SEALs in California.
[01:06:48]  And so that right there was more of, Yeah, he's out there telling everyone, just trying to get, you know, we'd be at lunch somewhere and a shot of tequila would show up and the bartender would say, They don't want to know, but someone sent this to you.
[01:06:58]  You know, it's for.
[01:06:59]  And just weird stuff like that.
[01:07:00]  I didn't want the attention.
[01:07:01]  My plan was to be in the Navy for 30 years.
[01:07:04]  I was going to be a buds and a SEAL instructor out in Coronado with a mustache and a cigar.
[01:07:08]  Like I had my line ready and everything.
[01:07:09]  All right, gents, today we are going to run 10 miles.
[01:07:11]  And of course, by we, I mean you, stuff like that.
[01:07:14]  But this happened and it was just sort of, it got uncomfortable in the Navy.
[01:07:19]  And then obviously, you know, it was in May of 2011, the greatest time of our lives.
[01:07:25]  And then in August, the worst time of our lives, we lost extortion 170, 31 Americans, to include the dog Bart, died.
[01:07:31]  And we went from planning missions to planning funerals.
[01:07:33]  Morale just hit.
[01:07:34]  Rock bottom.
[01:07:36]  And then, you know, we needed to move guys around.
[01:07:37]  And I decided at that point I was going to get out.
[01:07:39]  It would have been a few months, but I extended for a year to go to Afghanistan one more time.
[01:07:44]  I went because I want, I kind of told them, look, I'm not telling the story.
[01:07:47]  I came into the front door.
[01:07:48]  I'm going to leave through the front door after another deployment.
[01:07:50]  And then it was just time to get out.
[01:07:52]  And then I went to work in Washington, and a congresswoman, Congressman Carolyn Maloney from New York, said, You should probably donate something to the Memorial Museum.
[01:08:03]  I did donate a shirt anonymously and with a flag on it, and it was just to have there.
[01:08:09]  And once I gave the shirt, there were 30 people and they wanted to hear the story.
[01:08:13]  I told the story.
[01:08:13]  I did actually, Peter Ducey was there with the camera crew.
[01:08:16]  We were filming it for historic sake.
[01:08:19]  And I told the story and watching their responses, they'd all lost someone in 9 11.
[01:08:23]  And just the way they came up to me and said, putting a face and a name with this, there will never be closure, but this is healing.
[01:08:30]  And a lot of sitting around with it, I was like, you know what, if I can help them, I've assumed risk before, I can do it.
[01:08:35]  And then I came up with a manuscript and I submitted it to the Pentagon.
[01:08:40]  So my book is the only one that was approved by all the agencies and the Department of Defense.
[01:08:43]  And I believe if you have something historic, you know, and an American, the world should know it.
[01:08:47]  I'm really happy George Washington had a biographer with him.
[01:08:50]  I did it the right way.
[01:08:52]  And then, well, you know, that was after the.
[01:08:55]  The Fox News came out.
[01:08:56]  You were actually, I was watching your show.
[01:08:57]  That was the first time I saw my face on television when, because you had, because there was so much bad press and we kind of had to get ahead of it, but I couldn't get on because the special wasn't on for a few days.
[01:09:05]  But I mean, that was a weird awakening, kind of like the way forward.
[01:09:08]  You're here, you are launching the limelight.
[01:09:10]  Now, what do you do?
[01:09:11]  Right.
[01:09:11]  Right.
[01:09:13]  And you dealt with it.
[01:09:13]  And I know a lot of the opinion on you speaking out softened once they saw the piece on Fox and saw how humble you were.
[01:09:21]  You were given the credit away.
[01:09:23]  That's what you always do.
[01:09:25]  Yeah, but that week of sitting alone in a hotel room watching all the horrible stuff, I couldn't even watch the news.
[01:09:31]  Just a horrible, anyone that ever saw anything was trying to get the exclusive, and it was all over the news saying stuff like, I didn't say that.
[01:09:37]  Why would you say that?
[01:09:38]  And then, but then the Fox News special came out, it was really good.
[01:09:41]  Peter did a great job.
[01:09:42]  He's still doing a great job.
[01:09:43]  Yeah, he is.
[01:09:44]  Well, you know what's so crazy about that?
[01:09:45]  And then people were like, oh, it wasn't really Rob O'Neill who shot bin Laden.
[01:09:49]  And of course, you've already been backed up, but it was you.
[01:09:52]  And then I know with you, Dakota, Medal of Honor winner.
[01:09:56]  The vipers came out like, no, he overstated what he did.
[01:10:01]  Not true.
[01:10:01]  And it happened to Marcus, too, Marcus Luttrell and his story, Lone Survivor.
[01:10:05]  No, he over.
[01:10:05]  Like, what?
[01:10:06]  Who are these disgusting press people who decide it's time to eat our military heroes to tear down these stories of heroism?
[01:10:13]  I mean, my own personal belief, being a member of the media, is they're people who hate America and they don't like any story that reflects well on Americans or the American military or this country.
[01:10:21]  They much rather tell a story of like abuse at Abu Ghraib.
[01:10:25]  All right, hold on.
[01:10:25]  I'm going to get your reaction to that and I'm going to get more.
[01:10:27]  on Dakota's extraordinary story and his rule breaking right after this quick break.
[01:10:33]  Don't go away.
[01:10:35]  Looking forward to more of our conversation with Dakota and Rob in two seconds.
[01:10:44]  Dakota, you write about how when you went for that Medal of Honor ceremony, that President Obama told you that your life was never going to be the same, that it was going to change forever in the wake of that medal.
[01:10:56]  And you write in the book, Obama was right.
[01:10:59]  Nothing was the same again afterward, not by a long shot.
[01:11:02]  And not in the way that the president and other people praising me intended.
[01:11:05]  After the ceremony, reporters began questioning the whole story of what happened, claiming that parts were embellished or made up, that I had never killed the guy with the rock, reference to your story, and maybe hadn't killed any Taliban at all, that I couldn't have saved as many people as I claimed, and so on and so forth.
[01:11:20]  And you say, even before I received the award, I knew I didn't want it.
[01:11:25]  Receiving it made that notion feel even more true.
[01:11:30]  So, why is that?
[01:11:32]  Why do you think the press, because I just pointed out before the break, has a pattern?
[01:11:36]  Of doing this to our military heroes?
[01:11:38]  Well, so in my instance, you know, so we started embedding the press.
[01:11:43]  I mean, obviously it's been for a long time, but like, so the one who came out started talking, started writing these narratives.
[01:11:52]  He was actually embedded with us that day.
[01:11:54]  He was on the mission.
[01:11:56]  We were never in the valley at the same time.
[01:11:58]  On my way in, he was on his way out.
[01:12:01]  There was a point at where he wanted to go in with me.
[01:12:06]  And I looked at him and just said no.
[01:12:08]  And he left.
[01:12:11]  He left out, went back to the base where it was safe while I continued to make four more trips in.
[01:12:20]  And so this was kind of his moment to, I don't know.
[01:12:22]  And, you know, he talked to a lot of the guys.
[01:12:24]  There's a lot of guys on the mission that day.
[01:12:26]  Um, that that that have their own opinions, but all I'll say is, is um, um, you know, I don't, I've never claimed to, I've never claimed that I killed anybody that day other than the guy with the rock.
[01:12:40]  Um, I don't know how many people I killed, I don't know how many people I saved.
[01:12:43]  Just in my mind, I didn't kill enough because the war would be over, and I didn't, um, I didn't save enough because I lost a lot of friends that day.
[01:12:51]  And but when they come back and they start writing these articles and they start saying these things, you know.
[01:12:57]  It used to bother me.
[01:12:58]  It used to smash me.
[01:12:58]  I'll never forget coming home.
[01:13:00]  I flew in from a speech one day and I drove home.
[01:13:04]  And on the front page of the biggest newspaper in the state was my me on the front of it and it said Medal of Dishonor.
[01:13:13]  And I didn't ask for this medal.
[01:13:14]  I didn't ask for the medal.
[01:13:15]  You know, in the whole process of the medal, there's only one statement that's not included and it's mine.
[01:13:22]  So, you know, by writing that, he's calling all of his friends a bunch of liars.
[01:13:28]  So, you know, it's just, it was just an incredible, like just such a contradicting thing.
[01:13:33]  But it really, it just said more about him than me, right?
[01:13:37]  He could have grabbed a weapon and got busy too, you know, and everybody's like, oh, they wouldn't let me.
[01:13:42]  Or they, well, they told me no too, right?
[01:13:45]  So, a lot of people were a lot closer to my teammates and the guys in there getting, getting, you know, getting killed than I was.
[01:13:52]  But again, it's back to the individual choice.
[01:13:55]  It goes back to the preparation.
[01:13:57]  And, you know, Rob talked about a little bit earlier about, you know, why do, you know, why do some people, Uh, act on chaos and why do some people not?
[01:14:05]  And I just think it's, I don't think it's a nature thing.
[01:14:08]  I think it's a preparation thing, right?
[01:14:12]  People who aren't prepared don't act.
[01:14:13]  And, um, and I think that was the case that day is most of them should have had no business, um, being in that situation.
[01:14:23]  And, uh, it showed whenever, whenever they were tested.
[01:14:27]  And, um, yeah, I mean, that's another piece of your story is that you, you had the smarts to disobey the authorities when you could see the authorities were wrong and that they, The trust in them was not warranted.
[01:14:40]  As we've seen now, thanks to the investigations into your military commanders who are calling the shots that day, have played out that you were right, that they were giving you bad orders, that they were not on the right path.
[01:14:53]  But it takes an extraordinary human being, especially as a soldier, to understand a Marine, to understand the difference, because you're trained the entire time in the military to obey orders.
[01:15:03]  And, you know, it's like from a few good men oh, do you only get to obey the orders you believe in?
[01:15:08]  Or, you know, it's up to you to, and it's like, no, I have to obey all the orders.
[01:15:11]  Yes, I get it, right?
[01:15:13]  You found a way to disregard what you were being told, and you did save three dozen lives at least, and took a lot of lives that needed taking that day.
[01:15:22]  And I don't want to skip over retrieve the bodies of four of your fallen comrades, including First Lieutenant Michael Johnson, Staff Sergeant Aaron Kenefic, Gunnery Sergeant Edward Johnson Jr., and Hospital Corpsman, Third Class James R. Layton, including taking the things off of their bodies that you knew the families would want to make sure that those got back.
[01:15:46]  You know, to the people who loved those guys.
[01:15:48]  I mean, these are extraordinary acts of honor.
[01:15:51]  So, I don't know.
[01:15:53]  I mean, when you, how do you describe what made you see, separate the wheat from the chaff that day and know what to do?
[01:16:00]  Well, you know, so before we move on from, you know, the people who criticize or come out, you know, with what I did that day, you know, I was 21 years old.
[01:16:11]  I left a room that was about the size of the conference room that we live in right now.
[01:16:14]  And I had, you know, three teammates that were as close to me as it got, right?
[01:16:20]  We stood up, we woke up every day next to each other, we ate next to each other, we fought next to each other.
[01:16:26]  And I left there on a Monday and I returned on a Wednesday, and I was the only one that came back there.
[01:16:34]  I came back and I had to literally every bed that was in that where I lived in my home at that moment.
[01:16:42]  Every guy that I relied on, every guy that I loved, I was literally putting their stuff in a bag to send home to their family.
[01:16:51]  And so, you know, anybody who criticizes that or what I did, they want to dispute seven versus nine or six or whatever it is numbers.
[01:16:59]  I mean, they're cowards themselves.
[01:17:02]  As far as like why I did what I did, you know, I just, it was a simple, you know, I always talk about, well, it's why I don't understand how I got a medal or I got awarded anything because what I did was easy.
[01:17:20]  It was what needed to be done.
[01:17:22]  It was clear there were human beings who were suffering.
[01:17:26]  They were my brothers.
[01:17:27]  They were my family.
[01:17:29]  It was very clear, very obvious that they were trapped, that they were hurt, that they were scared, that they needed help.
[01:17:37]  And that was clear across the board.
[01:17:41]  Can you just describe?
[01:17:42]  I mean, I described it at the top of the show as an ambush in which folks were caught, and you kept going back in, trying to save people, trying to remove the bodies of the fallen, trying to save U.S. troops, Afghan troops, fight the enemy.
[01:17:54]  But how do you describe it in a few lines?
[01:17:57]  What happened that day on September 8th, 2009?

=== Accountability in War (14:48) ===

[01:18:01]  Yeah, I'll never forget it.
[01:18:02]  Like, I turned, like, we've got the truck close.
[01:18:05]  Rodriguez Chavez was driving, and we turned, and it was like a riverbed going up into this valley.
[01:18:11]  And I'll never forget going in there, and there were bodies everywhere.
[01:18:14]  I mean, there were bodies everywhere.
[01:18:16]  I mean, you had the Taliban.
[01:18:17]  I mean, like, my driver in the truck was literally like, he ran, like, I'll never forget he was running over the enemy because they were that close to the truck.
[01:18:25]  You know, it was just, I was always a worst case scenario guy, and this was worse than my worst case scenario.
[01:18:32]  And, I didn't think I was going to die.
[01:18:34]  There was a point that I remember that I didn't think I was going to die.
[01:18:38]  I just accepted and knew I was.
[01:18:40]  And all I could think about as each one of these guys were shooting at me was, I know I'm going to die and you're going to get me, but you're going to have to earn it.
[01:18:50]  And, you know, we came in and like on each trip we came in, we would bring in these trucks behind us, these little Afghan Toyotas, and we would, I would, or Ford Rangers, yeah.
[01:19:02]  And I don't remember which one it was.
[01:19:03]  But, anyways, it was all these trucks and we would throw, I would throw the bodies in the back of the truck.
[01:19:09]  I'd try to put the dead ones on the bottom, and then I would, the ones that had a chance to live on top of that, and just send them out, just truckload after truckload.
[01:19:17]  And, you know, all I could think about that day was it wasn't about Afghans.
[01:19:22]  It wasn't about, you know, the Afghan soldiers versus US soldiers or Marines.
[01:19:26]  It wasn't anything about that.
[01:19:28]  It was about good versus evil.
[01:19:30]  And it was literally that simple it was good versus evil.
[01:19:34]  And that's not very hard to distinct between in these types of situations.
[01:19:40]  Mm hmm.
[01:19:41]  Wow.
[01:19:42]  You know, I've talked to Rob O'Neill after the Afghanistan withdrawal.
[01:19:46]  I haven't talked to you.
[01:19:47]  This is our first time since that happened.
[01:19:49]  How do you make sense of it?
[01:19:51]  Right.
[01:19:51]  It's been on a lot of minds lately, given what we've seen with Putin.
[01:19:56]  Yeah.
[01:19:56]  I mean, look, this is something we all knew.
[01:19:59]  There, I mean, anybody who went over there and thought that we were ever going to put, you know, some type of democracy or we were ever going to have, you know, build a military up in Afghanistan that was going to be able to sustain itself as soon as we leave, they were just kidding themselves.
[01:20:15]  Right.
[01:20:15]  But, but with that being said, you know, how do I justify it?
[01:20:19]  And, and, and I justify it this, right?
[01:20:21]  You can look, if you want to get in the rabbit hole, um, You know, of why we were there and how we got there.
[01:20:27]  I mean, that's a whole other ballgame.
[01:20:30]  But for me, I leave it at this I didn't make the decision to go in, and none of us who were in that uniform did, who wore the nation's cloth.
[01:20:38]  And what I'll tell you is for 20 years, Afghanistan and Iraq were safer than they'd ever been.
[01:20:46]  In Afghanistan, when there was a US flag, when someone was wearing a United States flag over there, and they were going through these places, women were allowed to go to school.
[01:20:58]  It was as safe as it had ever been that they'd ever seen.
[01:21:01]  When America is somewhere, the place is better.
[01:21:07]  Wherever we're at, it's better.
[01:21:08]  And I'll say that while we were in Afghanistan, while our soldiers and Marines and airmen and everyone who served, wherever they were in these countries, the place was a better place.
[01:21:19]  And we were over there just trying to leave it better than we found it, right?
[01:21:23]  It's not our fault that the people above us couldn't make the right decisions.
[01:21:27]  What do you make of the The president, Biden, and we're going to hear from him in the State of the Union finally this week, calling it an extraordinary success, not the war, but his command of the withdrawal.
[01:21:40]  I mean, look, I think that this is his way, right?
[01:21:43]  I mean, he sinks the boat and then he rescues three people off of it as 10 others drown.
[01:21:51]  And it's a success that he saved those three people.
[01:21:54]  Don't mind the fact that he sank the boat, right?
[01:21:57]  I mean, this is.
[01:21:59]  You know, the Biden and his administration are so incompetent that the incompetency has led to Russia doing this.
[01:22:07]  I mean, I can tell you right now that that is what America is on America's shoulders because of we picked the weak leader.
[01:22:14]  And the fact is, people don't want to hear this.
[01:22:17]  But the fact of the matter is, and you're seeing this firsthand right now, is that when America is strong, the world hates us.
[01:22:25]  But when America is weak, the world suffers.
[01:22:27]  And you're seeing that across the globe right now.
[01:22:31]  Do you agree with that, Rob?
[01:22:32]  Do you think that's fair to Biden?
[01:22:34]  Well, I mean, it's scary because, like Dakota was saying, they can do anything and say anything because most of the media is going to go with it.
[01:22:41]  You even had Jen Psaki the other day saying that we need to stop relying on, we need to become energy independent without creating more gas.
[01:22:49]  It's like, you know, and I tweeted the other day.
[01:22:53]  We can all ride unicorns.
[01:22:55]  That would work, wouldn't it?
[01:22:56]  It's just the issue is it's a political reason to pull out of Afghanistan.
[01:23:01]  Because they wanted the 20 year anniversary of look at us, look at us.
[01:23:04]  And they're going to still say it was a success, even though if we, you know, I can always resort back to the planning for the bin Laden raid.
[01:23:10]  We had some of the best tactical minds in the world come up with the perfect plan.
[01:23:12]  If we took those same 23 guys a year ago and said, come up with the worst way to get out of Afghanistan, we would have come up with exactly what they did, the worst way possible.
[01:23:22]  I mean, let's be honest, everything they've touched, being the administration, has turned to shit.
[01:23:28]  And I should point out to the audience that you're not like blindly anti Joe Biden.
[01:23:34]  You write nice things about him, Rob.
[01:23:35]  And say, you know, he was, of course, Obama's vice president at the time of the bin Laden raid.
[01:23:41]  And so it's not like you came in saying he sucks, he's a Democrat.
[01:23:44]  And I know you've said before, and you've said in this book when people ask me if I'm a Democrat or Republican, tell them what you say.
[01:23:50]  No, I'm an American.
[01:23:51]  And I'm a big believer.
[01:23:52]  I don't need to blindly follow what one party says.
[01:23:55]  I think party politics, I think John Adams thought that too, was the worst thing.
[01:23:58]  Two parties are going to destroy the country.
[01:23:59]  You have people up there on Capitol Hill right now.
[01:24:01]  I love the ones, both sides of the aisle, that call themselves war hawks, even though they've never been to war.
[01:24:05]  No one in their family's been to war, but they sure are good at sending us because a lot of these big time contractors are huge funders of their re election campaign.
[01:24:12]  Everyone on Capitol Hill, I mean, if you're like Nancy Pelosi, 19th term, because we just need some change, are you kidding me?
[01:24:19]  Yeah.
[01:24:19]  But I mean, that's where a lot of this nonsense comes from.
[01:24:22]  And I think.
[01:24:23]  It's okay to go issue by issue.
[01:24:25]  What's best for America first, then what's best for the world?
[01:24:28]  And a lot of this, I mean, one of the things I've come up with is we're going to get destroyed by climate change regulations long before we get destroyed by climate change because there's no money in the cure.
[01:24:41]  There's just money in the process.
[01:24:42]  When's the last time the government started an agency and a year later said, well, clear that problem up, disband the agency?
[01:24:48]  It doesn't happen.
[01:24:48]  It grows and grows and grows.
[01:24:50]  It's like Bagram Airfield when we had it.
[01:24:52]  We, as guys on the ground, would call it the self licking ice cream cone.
[01:24:55]  Not sure what the hell you do, but you keep eating.
[01:24:58]  You know, the last time you were on, you made the point about how these long wars haven't gone very well in general because the generals aren't making the right calls and they don't really have a finger on the pulse of what's happening with the troops who are actually fighting the wars.
[01:25:11]  And they sit in these conference rooms and they make these decisions.
[01:25:14]  Yeah, go ahead.
[01:25:15]  Nobody wants to tell their boss the truth in the military because one day they're going to be that boss.
[01:25:20]  You're going to lie and lie.
[01:25:22]  You asked a four star general how the Afghan troops were going to do against the Taliban.
[01:25:26]  You're going to get a different answer than the E4 on the ground.
[01:25:28]  Not going to happen at all.
[01:25:29]  The thing with the military, too, is if you're in the military and someone else is carrying your bag, you need to retire.
[01:25:36]  Carry your stuff.
[01:25:38]  I love it.
[01:25:39]  Well, and Dakota, you realized this firsthand in the fight at 21 years old that you were being given bad information.
[01:25:44]  They were saying, don't go back in there.
[01:25:45]  And you went back in there and then you went back again and then again and then again and then again.
[01:25:50]  And that's how you got all of the wounded out, not to mention the bodies of the fallen.
[01:25:54]  But I think you raise an interesting point in this book about how.
[01:25:59]  What you did that day was what was right, not what was expected.
[01:26:02]  And you make the point that deference to authority is not always what's right.
[01:26:08]  It's not always the right thing to do.
[01:26:09]  It's not always good.
[01:26:10]  And you write that it may actually be the downfall of the United States one day, just this sort of blind, knee jerk deference to authority that we've had for far too often.
[01:26:21]  I mean, I think if there's one good thing about COVID and the restrictions and all that, maybe it's stopping that.
[01:26:27]  Maybe it was the beginning of the end of the American people's knee jerk deference to authority.
[01:26:34]  Yeah, I mean, well, I don't know.
[01:26:36]  I mean, I think if something else, I mean, look how long it took everyone to stand up to that, right?
[01:26:42]  I don't know.
[01:26:42]  I think there's just too much trust put into people who are in roles, right?
[01:26:47]  And the issue is that because, like I spoke on earlier, people don't want to tell people what they need to hear.
[01:26:53]  They just want to make people feel good, right?
[01:26:56]  You know, all of our generals are all like they have to, like, they're selected, like, they're in politically to be able to get those stars, right?
[01:27:03]  That's one of the problems.
[01:27:04]  But yeah, I seen it firsthand.
[01:27:07]  I seen it firsthand that, you know, there were two investigations that were done on our battle that came back and said, and I'll quote, a direct loss of life due to leadership.
[01:27:18]  No one was held accountable.
[01:27:20]  No one was held accountable.
[01:27:22]  You know, and that's the issue is the lack of accountability inside of our military, the lack of accountability across the globe.
[01:27:29]  Like we don't have a military.
[01:27:31]  Like I can tell you right now, the guys on the ground, the guys who are the lower enlisted, there's no problem there.
[01:27:39]  Like, there's no issue of what they believe in.
[01:27:42]  When you start seeing them become, you know, I hear so often, well, you know, our military's becoming weak.
[01:27:48]  Or, you know, this new generation's weak.
[01:27:50]  Well, let me tell you if they're becoming weak, it's because of their direct reflection of leadership, because the leadership's weak.
[01:27:58]  You want to talk about leadership.
[01:27:59]  You know, we just mentioned Jocko.
[01:28:01]  You know, I think we mentioned Jocko earlier, but, you know, Jocko talks about how there are no bad teams, there's only bad leaders.
[01:28:08]  And let me tell you something we've had quite a few bad leaders here in the past, well, since I've been alive.
[01:28:14]  And, you know, but you're also seeing the power of what a good leader can do over in Ukraine right now.
[01:28:21]  In this 21st century David versus Goliath situation.
[01:28:24]  Well, and Jocko Willink, he's been on the program.
[01:28:27]  He talks about extreme accountability, right?
[01:28:29]  He's the first one to say, It was my fault.
[01:28:31]  Here's what I did.
[01:28:32]  Here's what I could do differently.
[01:28:33]  That's the mindset you guys have, too.
[01:28:35]  And that's exactly the opposite of what we've seen in the wake of so many of these conflicts.
[01:28:40]  You tell me, Rob, because I think about this, about your point you made the last time, because you made this even before you wrote the book about the generals and so on.
[01:28:48]  Part of this is why people are reluctant to do too much in Ukraine.
[01:28:52]  If we hadn't done Iraq, if we hadn't done Afghanistan for 20 years, never mind the initial response, but I think everyone would agree that was justified, except for the truly far left loons.
[01:29:04]  But if we hadn't done those things, I think we would have come to Ukraine saying, oh, yeah, we need to go do something.
[01:29:08]  This is a sovereign nation.
[01:29:10]  It's a democracy.
[01:29:11]  It's not perfect, it's not exactly a democracy like ours, but you can't invade a sovereign nation like Putin's doing.
[01:29:18]  And the United States is, we're the beacon of freedom in the world, and we're the strongest military and the strongest country, and so on.
[01:29:24]  We got to go in there, no fly zone or something.
[01:29:27]  The reason we don't want to do it, not only are we war weary, but we don't believe in the people calling the shots anymore.
[01:29:32]  Forget Biden.
[01:29:34]  We don't have the same faith in the generals that we used to.
[01:29:37]  No, we haven't won a war since World War II.
[01:29:39]  And even if you look at that, I mean, Russia was on that side too.
[01:29:43]  So they're kind of in there.
[01:29:44]  You know, we had to drop nuclear weapons on Japan to win that thing.
[01:29:47]  But I think part of the issue too with the leadership, other than wanting their job and not wanting to upset your boss, is a lot of these places as far as now, Jock was an exception because he was always the buck starts and stops here.
[01:29:58]  This is my fault.
[01:29:59]  Right now, what they're good at teaching is structure.
[01:30:02]  They think they're teaching leadership, but nobody teaches winning.
[01:30:06]  You know, we could have pulled out of Afghanistan probably around 2005.
[01:30:09]  We had it.
[01:30:09]  We went in there.
[01:30:10]  We do what military does.
[01:30:11]  We crush people and then we leave.
[01:30:12]  Give them a stern no.
[01:30:13]  That's a deterrent.
[01:30:14]  Iraq, I mean, no one still knows what that was all about other than, you know, Dick Cheney was filling his pockets full of money.
[01:30:20]  I personally took like 11 shots of anthrax because he had some stake in that.
[01:30:23]  But I mean, now you look back at Iraq and all the hundreds of thousands of people dead.
[01:30:27]  And we can, I fought there a couple of times.
[01:30:29]  And I can literally sit there over a cup of coffee and say, Huh, what was that all about?
[01:30:34]  It turns out one guy was pissed that one guy tried to kill the other guy's dad.
[01:30:37]  Let's invade.
[01:30:38]  I think the towers were still smoldering two weeks later, and the Pentagon's coming up with plans to invade Iraq.
[01:30:43]  And this is the kind of stuff that's happening it's poor leadership, a lot of not, you know, personal greed, personal power, and no personal responsibility.
[01:30:51]  How does Mark Milley still have a job?
[01:30:53]  And the only one they fired was the colonel that had the, he didn't even, he wasn't even disrespectful.
[01:30:57]  He just said, Where's the accountability?
[01:30:58]  Boom, you're fired.
[01:30:59]  Put him in the brick.
[01:31:00]  Yeah, that's exactly right.
[01:31:01]  There's been absolutely no accountability for any of it.
[01:31:03]  Like you say, for Afghanistan in the first place and the way it went south, For the lies that we were told, as we saw in the Afghanistan papers.
[01:31:10]  Of course, that came right from the top.
[01:31:12]  And for the withdrawal, right?
[01:31:14]  And so it's like, we don't trust them anymore.
[01:31:17]  If you guys were commanding the armed forces and we knew we could send them in under your leadership and it'd be a quick strike and it'd be effective and we'd do something that mattered and not get us into some drawn out conflict that would cost way too much American blood and treasure, I think the American people would be more like, let's go.
[01:31:31]  Let's ball to the wall.
[01:31:33]  But we're weary of a lot of things these days in the United States.
[01:31:36]  And tomorrow night at the State of the Union, we're going to hear.
[01:31:39]  President Biden tried to spin this all like it's hugely successful from Afghanistan to Putin's stance now, like he fought back.
[01:31:46]  It's like, well, how did he get?
[01:31:48]  How did he get to the point where he felt confident enough to do this?
[01:31:50]  How did he get to the point where he actually evade after weeks of being on the border saying he was going to do it and you weren't able to stop?
[01:31:56]  Like, how did any of that happen?
[01:31:57]  And so, the accountability, at least with the politicians, can happen at the voting box with these generals.
[01:32:02]  Not so much.
[01:32:04]  Listen, I'll give you the last word.
[01:32:05]  I'm going to wrap it, but I want to give you guys the last word on the regular mom and pa sitting out there, sitting in the middle of my imaginary viewer, Madge.
[01:32:12]  She sits in Iowa and she works all day and she comes home and she has a glass of wine and she takes care of her kids.
[01:32:17]  But she's tired.
[01:32:18]  She can't pay that much attention to the news.
[01:32:20]  What does she need to know in this book?
[01:32:21]  Like, why should she buy it?
[01:32:23]  Well, first of all, we're all cut from the same cloth.
[01:32:26]  And it doesn't matter what you look like or where you're from, you can do anything.
[01:32:29]  And one of the points I've been making recently, too, is the 24 hour news cycle and social media is not real.
[01:32:34]  What's real is out that the real person is coming home taking care of her kids.
[01:32:37]  The real person, you know, the real, I've mentioned before, real America is not the people yelling at each other on who's left or who's right.
[01:32:42]  It's the convoy that starts in Southern California that rolls through Texas.
[01:32:46]  New Mexico picks up people to go to Florida to help the people who are hurting from a hurricane.

=== Support Our Military (01:44) ===

[01:32:50]  That's America.
[01:32:50]  And most people are good, believe it or not.
[01:32:52]  Face to face, most people, doesn't matter what you do behind closed doors, face to face, Most people get along.
[01:32:58]  And, you know, don't live in the past.
[01:33:01]  Learn from the past.
[01:33:01]  Get over it and move forward.
[01:33:03]  And perfectly said the way forward.
[01:33:05]  Now, Dakota, while I have you here and we've given each other shit about Rob's interview, will you be my Memorial Day interview this year?
[01:33:14]  I would love to talk to you about your mission and those we lost and just get into it in more detail.
[01:33:20]  It'd be such an honor.
[01:33:22]  Oh, the honor would be mine and that of my viewers and my listeners.
[01:33:25]  I'm sure we'll love it.
[01:33:26]  I look forward to it.
[01:33:28]  Give it short shrift by just trying to figure it, fill it into like one block today.
[01:33:31]  It's worth so much more than that.
[01:33:33]  So honored to know you guys.
[01:33:35]  Really appreciate you being here.
[01:33:36]  All the best to you both.
[01:33:37]  And thank you for your service.
[01:33:39]  Thanks for having us.
[01:33:40]  Really appreciate it.
[01:33:40]  All right.
[01:33:41]  Don't forget, the book is out tomorrow.
[01:33:42]  You can order it today.
[01:33:43]  It's called The Way Forward.
[01:33:45]  Support these guys, support the military, support our country, and buy this book.
[01:33:49]  Take the lessons to heart in it.
[01:33:51]  Don't forget to tune into the show tomorrow because we will have Gary Kasparov, former chess master and political activist.
[01:33:58]  He has incredible insight on Vladimir Putin and Russia, and he's been making predictions.
[01:34:02]  For years that appear to be coming true.
[01:34:04]  We'll talk to him.
[01:34:05]  Plus, we will get ready for Biden's first State of the Union tomorrow night.
[01:34:09]  I'll give you a preview of what I expect.
[01:34:11]  And we'll talk about the miraculous change in COVID regulations just in advance of tomorrow night's remarks.
[01:34:17]  I'm sure it's totally coincidental, right?
[01:34:19]  What do you think?
[01:34:20]  Let me know.
[01:34:21]  In the meantime, download The Megyn Kelly Show and check out youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly.
[01:34:25]  Go ahead and subscribe.
[01:34:26]  Thanks for listening.
[01:34:26]  See you tomorrow.
[01:34:30]  Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show.
[01:34:32]  No BS, no agenda, and no fear.