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May 27, 2024 - The Megyn Kelly Show
02:02:07
20240527_shawn-ryan-on-the-physical-and-emotional-toll-of-w
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From Infantry to SEAL Teams 00:13:50
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at least.
Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly.
Welcome to the Megan Kelly Show.
On Memorial Day, we remember and honor the men and women who have died while in military service.
Every year, we welcome a military veteran here on this show to share their story.
And today, I'm very excited to talk to Sean Ryan for the very first time.
Sean's a former U.S. Navy SEAL and CIA contractor with 14 years of service spanning multiple combat operations.
He is also the host of the hugely popular The Sean Ryan Show, where he has an audience of millions on YouTube, podcast platforms, and more.
This is where he goes in depth, and I mean in depth, with a host of guests for fascinating conversations on a whole range of subjects.
Sean developed the show to document the untold stories of war, loss, and redemption, and he does that in much, much more.
Glad to welcome him here in person for this special episode.
Sean, welcome.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for your service to kick it off.
Oh, thank you for saying that.
Yeah.
Appreciate that.
No, I appreciate it too.
It's it's it's hard on Memorial Day because it's it's a solemn day, right?
But people are out there trying to get their big TV, and I understand that, right?
People are like they work hard and they, but you got to take a moment or an hour or two just to stop and think about why you have the freedom to shop where you want and wear what you want and say what you want and do what you want.
And that boils down to you guys, you and the friends you fought you've lost.
Well, thank you.
So let's talk about you and your background and how you wound up a Navy SEAL because it takes a certain kind of person.
I know this from my many interviews with SEALs over the years.
It's not like you're not normal people.
I think that's fair to say.
Am I wrong?
I think that's fair to say.
Okay.
And so when tell us what you were like as a child, because there are always some signs of a future Navy SEAL in there, whether it's a rebellious kid or a leader or obsessive about something.
Jocko said his parents wouldn't let him quit anything.
Like if he took up knitting, they wouldn't let him quit knitting.
So looking back at your own childhood, were there signs of the future you there?
There probably were.
I was definitely very rebellious, not a great student, not a great listener, very creative, and just not very academic at all.
So, so the teams, the SEAL teams were kind of came on my radar.
I don't remember exactly, but I was always infatuated with the military.
I was, when I was growing up, the Gulf War was going on, and I remember picking up all the magazines and all that stuff and just looking at all the pictures, really into G.I. Joe's.
And it got to the point where when I got to high school, I just, like I said, I wasn't an academics guide and I didn't, I wasn't interested in school, and I definitely wasn't going to do well in college.
So I decided to look into the military.
Alternatives.
Did you come from a military family?
Not exactly.
I mean, my dad did serve.
He was a pharmacist in the Army.
So definitely a totally different role, you know, different direction.
Had no interest in the medical field at all.
So I started looking at the Marine Corps.
I wanted to be a recon guy.
They wouldn't let me in.
Went to the Army, wanted to be a Green Beret, wouldn't let me in.
And the Navy recruiter kind of stuck his head out and asked if I'd ever heard of the SEAL teams.
And I hadn't at the time.
So he gave me, you know, endless material to pick through.
And so I did that very fast.
And when I realized what it was, it just captivated me.
So how does a guy who's not, you know, devoted to his academics, which does require the kind of tenacity and hard work you put in to become a SEAL, find it in order to go through Bud's training and actually perform that elite level as soldier?
I mean, I don't, it's just the only thing that caught my interest, you know, and so nothing really in school caught my interest.
And I didn't, I never really felt challenged, I don't think.
And so, I mean, there was a multitude of things.
I wasn't the top performer out of my three siblings in sports or in academics.
Where are you in the birth order?
I'm first.
And where'd you grow up?
I grew up, we moved around a lot, but primarily Missouri.
Okay, keep going.
And yeah, yeah, firstborn.
And so I got in there.
And I mean, long, long story short, maybe we'll dive in, but I just wanted to do something.
One, I wanted to serve my country and I wanted to finally give my parents a reason to be proud of me.
And so that kind of carried me through.
And were they?
Like when you signed up at first, were they, what year would that have been?
That would have been 2000, 2000.
No, wait.
When I signed up, it was 2001.
Okay, right.
It was before 9-11.
It was right before 9-11.
I went to the Navy to boot camp in July of 2001.
Oh my gosh.
Little did you know what was about to happen to the country, the world, and you.
Yeah.
So were your parents proud when you signed up?
Were they?
I think they were definitely worried.
It surprised them.
It kind of came out of left field.
And so, but once they wrapped their head around it and saw that I seemed to be serious, they fully supported it.
See, that's how I feel.
I would love for, I'll be sexist, my boys to serve, but I'd be terrified if they actually said they were going to do it.
I'd be in church every day praying to God, lighting every candle in the church.
You know, I can see what your parents went through, and I'm sure most parents go through that, especially if it's not a lifelong military family.
Yeah, yeah.
I would too.
I have two little ones now.
So I get it.
And, you know, especially if you're looking at your kids so far, he's been kind of a knucklehead.
I don't think this kid should have a gun.
I don't, I'm not sure how this is going to go.
Very true.
So there had to be some concerns there.
And what, just out of curiosity, what did your siblings wind up doing?
My brother is in hospitality and my sister has her hair salon.
Okay.
So they were not tempted to follow you down this road.
No.
All right.
So you decide to join up for military service and not just any military service, not just like, I don't know, the regular infantry with the army.
You decide to go for Navy SEALs.
So inside, there's an overachiever just waiting to be born.
And did you know anything about how hard that was going to be?
I did once I started researching it.
I just, I didn't care.
I was just, I was going to do it.
And I felt great all the way up until I arrived at Seattle Training.
And in my mind, I was amazing right up until I started.
Exactly.
And I mean, when I got there, I was 18 and, you know, barely a man.
And when I got there, there were guys that had, there were Olympic athletes.
There were guys that had already been to war and come back.
guys that had been to Panama, guys that have been to Iraq.
It was championship boxers and I was probably about a buck buck 30 what?
Now, is this why I read you got you got laughed out of the one of the recruiting offices?
Yeah, that would be that would be the Army and the Marines.
Yeah.
Okay.
The Marine Corps told you no.
Hard no.
This is a common story.
I've heard this from a few of our Navy SEAL buds that they got they got laughed at when they tried to sign up.
What is it with the Army?
Are the Marines just like, I think, I mean, it's just, you know, it's pretty ambitious to walk in and say, hey, I want to, I want to operate at the top level right away.
And they're kind of like, okay, guy, pump the brakes, maybe do infantry, go the long route.
And I just, I had no interest in going the long route.
I didn't want to do regular infantry.
There's nothing wrong with that, but I just wanted I wanted the challenge.
Do you remember back in those early days when you were first starting to train, what jumped out at you amongst the guys who surrounded you?
Like, were there commonalities in this pocket of the world that were immediately noticeable as different?
Once I got to Buds.
Or even when you just first signed up and started training because you didn't go right to Buds training, right?
Don't you?
You do normal training before?
You do normal training before.
I mean, I grew up in a town of 6,000 people.
So there wasn't that many people that wanted to do this.
I remember the first time I met, they called him a SEAL motivator.
He was kind of a guy that would go around, I don't know, the country who was a SEAL.
And then now he's teaching you how to swim and kind of refining some of your techniques with running and swimming and some things that you might expect.
And he just carried himself different than anybody else I'd been around before.
So there's definitely a type.
Now, knowing what you know, does that come from combat or just the grueling nature of SEAL training?
Like guys who are going through it today, can they get that without actually going into combat like you have?
Oh, I think so.
I mean, I do believe that.
So the Navy will get it into you.
They will.
They'll figure out a way.
I'm thrilled and impressed and want to do it.
And a secret version of myself would love to try this.
I don't think I can.
I can't really even make it through 10 minutes of jumping jacks in my hit class.
But in my mind, this could happen for me someday.
And we've had lots of tough guys come on here and talk about how the toughest guys they knew didn't make it through training, just couldn't make it through.
It's just a mind over matter kind of situation.
But you're telling me you didn't have anything in your past that told you you could, you could put mind over matter and accomplish this.
No, I didn't.
I didn't.
And so it was, I mean, I was an 18-year-old kid at Bud's and it was, it was, I mean, it's scary to see who quits.
You know, I mean, you're seeing people that you look up to, people that, I mean, you, you're, you're constantly measuring up to somebody else and comparing yourself to somebody else and going, oh, you know, if that guy, if that guy didn't make it, I, I don't, I don't think I have a chance.
And so you just put your head down and drive on and try to make it to the next meal, try to make it to the next day and just keep driving on.
And it, it, I got to the point where I did, I wanted to quit, but, um, but I, I could not, I could not face calling my parents and tell them that I, I had failed again.
Oh, wow.
So, yeah, I've had guys say there was no way I was going to see my father's name on that hat and ring that bell.
Nope, not me.
So you, you talked a little bit about your upbringing.
Was it a modest upbringing?
Like, what kind of childhood did you have?
Yeah, I mean, I would say upper middle class upbringing and small town.
We moved around a lot, probably moved over 10 times in my childhood.
But we finally settled in Missouri in a small farm town known as Chillicothe, Missouri, and hadn't been back there in several years.
But I liked full contact sports, tried football, was too small, couldn't make it, got into wrestling, was a mediocre wrestler, nothing, nothing, no state championships or anything like that.
Just kind of an average kid, troublemaker, really into booze and partying.
And yeah, I mean, that was my childhood.
Did you have strict parents?
They tried to be strict, but managed to find ways around it.
That was the future CAA contractor.
That's the foundation was being laid.
Little did they know this is important research for you.
Yeah, good point.
Good point.
But yeah, I mean, they were definitely against a lot of the things that I was doing.
They were not happy that I was drinking.
They were not happy with some of the crowd that I was running around with.
They were not happy with my grades.
And yeah, you know, like I said, when it came time to make some decisions on what I'm going to do with my future, I had to take a hard look.
And so I went the military round.
I was just talking to Riley Gaines not long ago.
Volunteering for Deployment Wings 00:08:46
She was talking about how, you know, she's this competitive swimmer and now she's an activist on the trans insanity that's happening to women.
And she was talking about how her dad put her in the pool one time and just made her be in that pool for some eight to 10 minutes, freezing cold.
It was not a summer pool.
He pulled off the cover during the winter, made her get in.
And it was an exercise in mental toughness, you know, just to like, you're not cold.
You got to get, that's you guys.
You do, you do that every day during SEAL training.
When you're a SEAL, it's horrid and it is somewhat tortuous from what I've heard.
So when you finally see yourself in those situations, how do you, how do you say, I'm not quitting?
How do you get through?
How do you get from minute 10 to minute 11 to minute 12?
I mean, it, you just have to dig deep.
I mean, it's not, it's not, it is very physical, but it's more mental.
And so everybody, everybody in training is going to break.
They're just, it's going to happen.
And it just, you get to this point where you go numb.
You get to this point where you go numb and then it just doesn't matter anymore.
Nobody, nobody really quits after, I think Wednesday night is the day where it's very, very rare for anybody to quit.
It's just, it's breaking time down.
And instead of going, I'm going to make it through this entire six months, it's I'm going to make it to hell week.
And then when you get to hell week, it's, I'm just going to make it to the next meal or I'm going to make it to the next med check.
And by Wednesday night, I mean, you haven't slept.
Remind me of when it starts.
It starts, I think it starts on Sunday night, and I believe it's done Friday night.
Okay.
It's five days with minimal sleep, but your muscles break down.
You get what do they call it?
Elephantitis.
Your ankle starts swelling up.
Oh, I had that when I was pregnant.
Oh, really?
No, I mean, it just happens naturally.
Everything swells up.
Yeah.
But it's just, it's doing those little time hacks and just breaking it down and making it to the next meal, making it to the next med check, checking your buddies.
By Wednesday, you know, it's a pretty tight group.
Everybody's pretty much gone.
And you kind of just go into maybe this flow state, you know, and you're just, you're just moving.
So.
Yeah, it sounds kind of transcendent in a way.
So then you have to actually be a Navy SEAL, which is no easier.
And especially when you complete your training in July of 2001, all hell breaks loose in the country and the world.
And how many combat deployments did you have?
With the SEAL teams, I had two combat deployments.
To Iraq and Afghanistan?
Yep.
Okay.
And two different SEAL teams?
Yeah.
So there was, so when I got into the SEAL teams, it was around 2003.
And the first deployment, we went to Germany, which was a really boring deployment.
And then we went to Afghanistan in the late summer of 05, I believe.
And how long were you there?
We were only there for three months.
So it was right after Red Wings happened.
Are you familiar with Red Wings, the Lone Survivor?
Oh, yeah, of course.
Yes.
I've had Marcus on.
He's amazing.
Yeah.
So we relieved them after that happened.
That was the biggest SEAL team, the biggest loss in SEAL team history at the time.
And it was the SOCOM was doing this surge where they needed more guys.
And so they sped up the deployment cycle.
And that's, so I went from SEAL team eight to SEAL team two, did my Afghanistan deployment with SEAL team two.
We didn't do a whole lot there.
There was a lot of, there was a lot of political stuff going on after that operation.
And to be 100% honest, I was really dissatisfied.
I went to the teams to go to war and to fight for the country.
And I wasn't getting enough.
I think we did one direct action that entire deployment, took a couple of prisoners, no shots fired.
And then we got our admiral pulled us out of the country.
And so at that point, I kind of made a decision.
For me, this wasn't what I had expected.
And so I told my leadership, I said, hey, this is going to be my last pump.
I'm not doing another one.
I'd like to finish my enlistment out on deployment.
So we had a sister platoon that was in Baghdad that was running a lot of sniper operations.
And so I volunteered to go there and they threw my name in the hat and I got lucky and went.
Volunteered to go to Baghdad.
Yeah.
In 2000.
That would have been 2000, Late 05 or early 06.
I mean, the worst absolute time to be in Baghdad for anybody, you know, who's not ready to fight and kill and risk their life.
I mean, that was just a devastating time.
I remember just as a journalist covering those years, and that's when all the beheading started.
And it was bad.
It was about as bad as it could be.
I mean, it's amazing.
Again, it being Memorial Day, I have to think about guys like you who volunteered to go into it.
The guys who volunteered to go into the buildings on 9-11 at great risk to themselves.
And then their brothers in arms in a way who volunteered to go into the fire in a different way a couple years after that.
We all have a lot to be thankful for.
So how long were you there?
I was in Baghdad for about four months.
And so we got there.
The operational tempo was pretty slow at first.
There was an election going on, if I remember.
And then we were on the hook to do like protection for the Iraqi government officials.
And nothing was happening.
So we wound up.
The lieutenant threw our name in the hat to just help conventional units who were getting blown up on their reconnaissance routes, supply routes, whatever the routes were.
I mean, they had these bombs called EFPs over there, which were, I don't know if you remember, maybe you covered this, but they would basically put them on the side of the road and they could be triggered by IR lasers.
So they would pick up heat sensitivity to engine blocks and they had the timing down perfectly to where the projectile would go through the passenger or driver's side door of the Humvees and basically would vaporize everything in the vehicle and you'd just get sucked out of a little hole on the back end.
And so that was chewing a lot of our guys up.
And we just got tired of seeing these conventional guys just get crushed by these EFPs.
And so we started attaching ourselves to these conventional units that didn't have the knowledge or know-how on how to kind of combat this, set up a targeting package to get these guys.
And so what we would do is we would get in with them, in bed with them, train them for a couple of weeks, bring them out, teach them how to set up sniper hides, teach them how to do a targeting package, teach them how to conduct surveillance, teach them how to start running assets within the local population to try to figure out who's doing this and teach them how to shoot, taught them everything, gave them a lot of stuff.
We really kind of like took these guys under our wings and then we would take them out on operations.
And so we would go out, find all the places they were getting hit, and set up sniper teams along all of those different routes, all those points of interest.
And we would take each sniper observation team would take maybe one or two conventional guys with them on the actual operation.
And we started killing bad guys.
Starting to turn things the other way.
You must have lost a lot of friends.
Every guy who serves does.
Blackwater Contracts and Crises 00:15:10
And you're one of the lucky ones if nothing happens to you to take a limb or a traumatic brain injury.
As you're going through it, there's no time to deal with any of that, right?
It's just forward, like we talked about in the training, just forward.
There's no time to think about that stuff.
But you're in active combat situations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And eventually that stops, right?
And is it at that point that you have to deal with that?
Or is it later?
Because I know then comes a CIA stint.
It's a gradual, it just comes on gradual.
And I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot of coping mechanisms that we use and that numbs it out.
Booze, pills, sleeping pills, whatever you can kind of do to numb it out.
And, you know, in the early days, nobody knew any better.
You know, that kind of all came crashing down later on for a lot of guys.
And that's what we cover on my show.
But it took, it took a while, you know, for that stuff to start sinking in, probably well into my contracting career at the agency.
Well, that's the thing if when you have massive crises, especially repeated and ongoing sustained crises, there's only one way, like you have to compartmentalize.
How could you possibly function if you were dealing with any of it?
You're not, you actually are human despite all appearances of our SEALs and our rangers and all those guys.
So was it right after your service in Iraq that you decided to join the agency?
No, honestly, I didn't want to, I never wanted to go back.
And I wanted to pursue some type of a career in business.
And so I tried a lot of things, civilian life.
I just, I wasn't ready for it yet.
And I decided that I'd missed the brotherhood, the camaraderie, the obnoxiousness of being on a team.
And so I decided I would try to get into a fire academy.
And I did.
Wasn't, it wasn't what it wasn't.
What do you mean fire academy?
It's a firefighter.
Firefighter.
Okay.
Yeah.
I wanted to be, I just thought, well, that seems like the next best thing to what I was a part of.
And it just wasn't going to work for me.
A lot of family ties help in the fire service and I had none.
So I had a friend and that was in Afghanistan with me, another SEAL, and he said, hey, I'm working for Blackwater and I think you should come work with us.
And I had seen a lot of the Blackwater contractors and heard a lot of the stuff that was going on over there at the time.
Some of it was true.
Some of it wound up not being true.
But I decided while I was over there and I saw how those guys operated, I didn't want to be a part of the contracting career and especially at Blackwater.
And so I'd express that to him and he said, this is different.
This is a different project.
The qualifications all have to be at least six years in special operations or above.
Then there's a month-long tryout.
I can't tell you who I'm working for, but I think you would really fit in well here.
And it's not what you're thinking.
It's very high caliber operators working here.
So I threw my name in the hat and took about six months to get a call back.
And then I did.
And it was just an email that said, hey, be here at this time.
Bring this year with you.
And it was a betting course.
So that was for Blackwater.
So I don't know how familiar you are with Blackwater, but Blackwater is a massive organization.
And they have, so under Blackwater, they have all these different contracts.
They have the Department of State contract.
They have the DEA contract.
have probably all kinds of government contracts.
And then the very back of the compound, which the Blackwater compound was, I don't know how many thousands of acres is the black, the black sites.
And so you go back there.
They don't tell you anything.
And you're with a group of guys and you start off with a PT test and then you do some shooting qualifications.
They don't really tell you what the standards are.
They're just, it's just, here's the time.
Do your best.
And or sometimes when they won't even give you the time, just hit that target as many times as you can and as fast as possible.
And so you do that.
And it's, you know, it's really, it's, you don't know the standard.
And that's the biggest stressor is there's nobody.
What's succeeding?
What's failing?
Yeah.
You don't, you have no idea.
And you don't even know if you passed at the end of the day or not.
And so it's just, I mean, you, you know, you passed if you're showing up the next day to work to try out.
And so we had made it through the shooting qualifications.
And then you go through a lot of kind of situational stuff.
They'll put you in these in these situations.
And they want to just see how you react, how you can lead a team, how you can integrate in with a team, all kinds of different scenarios, scenarios that you're never going to fight your way out of.
Lots of civilians.
They would plant lots of like role players with simunition rounds, which is basically kind of like a paintball gun, but more realistic.
And they would put you in all these scenarios to see if you could keep your cool under pressure, not shooting any innocent civilians.
It was a protection type gig as well.
So a lot of times they would have like some type of an asset that you have to go in and extract.
And I made it through that.
And then at the very end, there was also driving, surveillance, all kinds of stuff that they wanted to just kind of see how you were in all these different scenarios.
And at the end, they give you the brief and say, hey, you know, this is the OGA, other government agency, CIA contract.
And they start looking for dates to go overseas.
Yes, but you don't know for what?
No, you never know.
You just know that you've been selected as this elite kind of service member.
And whatever it is is going to be very high level and complicated and complex, right?
So you're in, but you don't know what you're in for.
Yeah.
Well, that's disconcerting.
Just listening to you.
You are cool.
You are calm.
Like that, that probably really helped you.
I mean, I was just thinking, who do I know who's kind of more on the hysterical end?
I don't know her, but she's the only one who came to mind.
Somebody like a Bethany Frankel, the former real housewife.
I know that's a bizarre comparison, but I mean, she's tightly wound, Sean.
She's like, always like, everything is up here, right?
And you're just the opposite of that.
She's kind of a cool cat, like a low blood pressure kind of guy.
Well, I mean, when you're in a job like that, and I'm sure you can relate being on TV and with the career that you've had, but I mean, it's so, it gets to be so high stress.
Every day you're being judged, you're being graded.
It's, do you have what it takes to be a part of this team?
You know, from the from SEAL training through the, through the teams, the six years that I was there to CIA or Blackwater training for the subcontractor of CIA contractor.
I mean, it's just, you have to get to the point where you can, you know, blow that stuff off.
And that came to me in the teams.
I was constantly just, it was just stress all the time.
Do I deserve to be here?
Am I going to get kicked out this week?
You know, what does my team think of me?
I'm a new guy.
And you have to, and that stuff can hinder your performance.
And so, you know, the most stressful thing you can do, at least for me as an operator, is when you're doing the kill house, which is entering buildings, saving hostages, killing bad guys all in your face, clearing houses basically.
We're talking about real life now or the training?
We're talking about training and real life.
But primarily, I guess primarily training.
And it gets to the point where if you let this stuff get to you, every house, we call them a house run where you go through the doors, maybe you blow the doors, maybe you're climbing in a window, maybe you're coming in from the rooftop.
It doesn't matter.
But once you enter that house in training, every move you make is critiqued.
And it can make it seem like and purposely that they're picking on you, that you're not any good, that they don't want you there.
And you just have to get to the point where you can't let that stuff affect you.
It just got to the point in the teams where I had hit this mental switch where I don't care anymore.
I had like tricked myself into thinking, I don't care how this run, this house run ends.
I don't care what these guys think of me.
I'm just going to do the best I can do.
And that's all I can do.
Do you know the free solo movie and the story about that mountain climber who refused to use any lines and supports and he wound up dying?
No.
But they talk about these guys who climb these mountains and they're nuts.
They do it with no support.
You know, there's, there's nothing to, you know, and a lot of them do die.
But they identify with a lot of these guys that they've lost their ability to get an adrenaline surge.
And that's actually one of the reasons why they do it the way they do it without all the belts and suspenders.
Can you relate to that at all?
I mean, do you addiction to adrenaline?
Yeah.
And then maybe crossing over to it's gone.
Like, where is it?
How can I get it again?
Yeah.
You find it through, I mean, that's why so many guys honestly wind back up in the in the contracting arena is especially like these guys, you know, that spend 30 plus years at the SEAL teams or a SF team or Delta or wherever, Rangers, Marsock.
You can't, it's never enough.
I mean, it's like, it's like a heroin addiction.
You know, you're constantly looking for the fix and then it gets so bad that even on your off time, you know, you're looking for it.
It's not, you can't take six months and not feel that.
It is, it's the pinnacle of your existence at the time.
I can't imagine, you know, just the other night, I was at a dinner party at a friend's house in Connecticut, and it was absolutely lovely.
Hostess knew all the right things to do.
We had a lovely cocktail hour.
We sat down for dinner.
There was even some dancing after the fact, which is a successful cocktail party, a dinner party by any measure.
I can't imagine a Sean Ryan having lived the life you've lived, right?
Coming back from all of that and even participating in such.
I mean, I just feel like your whole life must have been, you know, when this was done, like, what is this?
Who are these people?
What is this is just absolute drivel around me everywhere.
None of this matters.
Did you go through that?
Oh, yeah.
It created a lot of anxiety, a lot of anxiety.
I had really bad social anxiety when I left the agency.
And I just, I mean, you are thrown into a world that you thought you knew.
And it's just, it's, it's hard.
I mean, it's really hard to relate to anybody who has not lived the kind of life that you've lived.
Yeah.
It takes a long time, you know, and it takes a lot of, it takes a lot of self-work.
It's like you were on Mars for 14 years.
Pretty much.
Yeah, that's a good way to put it.
Right.
And you come back.
Earth has changed a lot.
You know, now there's an internet and GPS and iPhones and social media.
So it's like the dramatic changes.
And a lot of different opinions on what we're doing over there.
So can you help me understand?
Because we talked about leaving the SEALs and going to Blackwater.
And then, but that, and that, do you count that as CIA time?
I don't totally understand.
Yeah.
So, so, so I spent a very brief time at Blackwater as well.
So I did two deployments, I think, with Blackwater.
And, but you're under, so basically, if you're going to get your housework done, right?
You're going to use a general contractor and then he's going to subcontract out the plumbing, the drywall, the air conditioning.
So think of like, think of Blackwater as the general contractor for the U.S. government.
And so then Department of State says, hey, we need 500 guys in Baghdad to protect all of our state diplomats.
Okay.
So Blackwater goes and they, what do you, what kind of guys do you want?
What do you want to pay?
You know, what qualifications are you looking for?
And then they go find those type of people, train them up, put them through a vetting course.
And then here's your 500 guys.
And so CIA does the same thing.
It's, hey, we need, we have this very particular set of skills we're looking for.
This is the job description.
You guys, you, Blackwater, go find these guys for us.
So we're basically subcontractors for the agency.
Okay.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Why, I don't understand Blackwater that well, but why would they not just go tap the SEALs or, you know, the Green Berets or why would they go to Blackwater for any of this?
That's a great question.
I wish I could answer that.
And they do, they do go direct.
And so later on in my career after Blackwater, I wound up the, I had taken a break from Blackwater.
Then I went to a company called SOC, did a couple of appointments with them, got kind of tired of the agency stuff for a little bit.
Colombia Network and Cocaine Addiction 00:10:52
So then I jumped on an anti-piracy gig.
Back, do you remember the Marisk, Alabama?
Yeah.
So after that happened, all these contracts spun up and it was, all right, we need, we need SEALs on ships to kill pirates that are trying to, you know, kidnap the crew and take over the ship.
Just another day at work.
Yeah.
And ransom.
No, that's like Rob O'Neill.
I told him he's like the waldo of servicemen.
He's everywhere.
Yeah.
Every movie that's ever been made, Rob O'Neill had a rolling.
He's been on all of the ops, right?
But yeah.
But so I did that for two deployments and then and then the agency got back in touch with me and then they wanted me to come work direct for them as a contractor, but not through any companies.
Okay.
And so.
And now you're actually earning some money.
Yeah.
So that's good.
Yeah.
I mean, more so than you ever got paid by the, by the Navy.
Way more than I got paid for by the Navy.
But can you get rich doing that or not really?
I mean, I guess it depends on how you invest your money.
I mean, at that time, a good rate was about $1,000 a day.
So that would be a really, that would be a good rate.
Some guys.
A low rate would be about 550 a day and so um yeah, I mean it depends on how much you want to deploy.
Where are you sitting in between, in between deployments?
Are you back here, like going to the movies and Starbucks?
I spent a lot of time well, I mean, it was 14 agency was about a little shy of nine years, and so I would man, I would go all over.
But uh, towards the end I started going to Colombia, South America.
This was not a good period in your life, you know about this.
Nothing good happens in Colombia, nothing good does happen in Colombia.
No, I do know a little bit about your troubles and that was a rough period for you.
Explain why?
And why Columbia?
Well um, originally I went to Columbia because when I joined the SEAL Teams, I had always wanted to go to team four because I wanted to do the counter drug ops.
Well then, you know, 9-11 kicked off obviously, and that wasn't a focus at all.
And so when I was in the agency, I'd broken up with with a girlfriend, and so I decided I wanted to travel, and I'd always.
I was just infatuated.
I mean, those were all the documentaries I was watching when I went to the recruiter it was that was the only thing going on at the time was Panama and kind of the the the counter drug situation down in South America, which a lot of that was in Colombia since documented in shows like Narcos yeah, yeah and um and uh, so I decided I wanted to go check it out down there and um, so I mean that's crazy talk, just like as a pin in this conversation.
That's crazy talk.
Nobody looks at a show like Narcos or Panama and says yes, I want to go there.
That's you.
All normal people are like, thank God, that's down there.
Yeah well, I mean I went.
It was for a number I wanted to see.
I just I wanted to be in a jungle environment and uh, so I went to check it out, had a great time and uh, and so I kept, I just kept going back, kept going back, kept going back all the way past my time at the agency.
But uh, then it turned into we had just kind of spoken about addiction to adrenaline and so I was going down there doing a lot of stuff that I shouldn't be doing cocaine, and and, and then once I left uh, the agency, I kind of started building a network down there and um it just it was exciting to me.
I was in a overseas building my own network, kind of felt like I was kind of running my own operations what kind of operations?
Uh, drug networks, and so I wanted to see how deep into the kind of narcos network I could get myself, And but this was not for crime fighting.
No, this was for crime committee.
Pretty much.
Yeah.
And so I kind of started at street level and built a network out and went to clubs and met people and and and found my guys and started testing cocaine and finding the best stuff.
And I found it.
And that lasted for for a couple years and I would bounce, I would just bounce.
I mean, it was really, I got a lot of satisfaction out of the adrenaline and seeing and just seeing how much I could have been my embed myself into these different cultures.
And so then I started flying all over the, all over South America.
I started going to Peru and starting to build network there in Dominican Republic and Panama, all over Colombia, all over the country and Costa Rica.
And then I started looking up the most dangerous places you could go in the world.
And at the time it was San Pedro, Sula, Honduras.
So I went there and started, I didn't get very far there, but that was my life for several years.
Wow.
And the product was cocaine and you would find what, like would-be dealers, people to distribute it?
I would find dealers and then I would find their dealers and then I would find where their dealers get their stuff.
And I got to a pretty high level.
It's a miracle you weren't killed.
It is a miracle.
It was, I mean, I was, I mean, this is what I do for a living, though, you know, and so.
That's true.
You had some pretty superior training.
I was, I was pretty good at it and pretty fearless at the time.
So when you're talking to your old Navy SEAL buds or Blackwater buds and you're down there and they're saying, what are you up to?
What were you saying?
I would just tell them.
I've crossed over to the other side.
I wouldn't tell them exactly what I'm doing, but I would, I mean, they knew.
Everybody kind of knew.
I mean, it just I started losing friends.
I know the conversations were like, oh, yeah, I mean, he's down in Columbia and nobody really hears from him anymore.
And I would resurface every once in a while.
Sometimes guys would come down to see me.
They wouldn't last very long.
They would head back out immediately.
And it just, it got to be very dark.
And, you know, I OD'd down there a couple of times.
And I remember one time I woke up and it was like, it was Mother's Day.
And I remember, I remember calling my mom and I was all junked out.
And I remember after that conversation, it just hit me like a ton of bricks.
And I knew I needed to pull myself out of that.
And it kind of like went right back to the time when, you know, I told you the only reason I made it through Buds was I didn't want to let my parents down.
And I sure as hell didn't want my parents to get a notice weeks later that their son had OD'd on cocaine in a penthouse in Colombia.
And who knows how long that would take to even get to them.
And so it had it had painted this picture in my head.
And I started seeking help kind of.
It's a big moment.
Yeah.
Before you begin that path to redemption.
Yeah.
What got you there?
What made you establish residency in Colombia and go all over these countries, the most dangerous countries on earth, to mess with other people's drug rings?
My God, right?
It's like playing with plutonium for a living.
Yeah.
And be so reckless with your life and your well-being.
You know, I just, I just didn't value life anymore.
I didn't, I didn't care.
I mean, I had expected to, I had expected to die down there.
And then when I got close, I realized there's a lot more to life than this.
And so, so I cleaned it up.
And truth be told, I mean, that was kind of an awakening, but I wasn't 100% ready to shut it down.
And then I had, you know, I had built quite the network down there.
And I got tipped off that the federal police in Colombia were surveilling me and people that I was with.
And so I hid, I E'd out of the country.
What's E and E'd?
I mean, I just, I abruptly left.
And I did kind of a, we call them an SDR, but surveillance detection route.
And I wanted to see if they were surveilling me, if I was walking around town.
And so I got rid of everything, cleaned everything up and went to an internet cafe, booked myself some tickets to a couple different places, jumped on one and left the country.
Yeah.
Do we extradite to Columbia?
Just asking for a friend.
Yeah, yeah.
But yeah, no, I got out of there and went home, home to Missouri, talked to my parents.
They knew something.
And woke up the next day after telling them with a hangover.
And my dad was, I could just tell by the look on his face that I must have spilled probably just about everything.
Overcoming Addiction in Missouri 00:06:12
What did the look say?
Very concerned and worried.
I didn't take it seriously.
I didn't think I needed any help.
And I just kept at it.
What do you mean?
Kept at what?
I kept at, I wouldn't put the bottle down.
I wasn't ready to do that.
I don't think I could have done that.
And then, you know, through the career, I mean, you just, you know, I had mentioned, you know, numbing it out and numbing it out becomes, it's not even a cycle.
It's just this, it's just pills after pills.
It's a way of life.
You know, it's valuum Xanax, lorazepan, ambient, hydrocodine, oxy, tramadol, what kind of whatever you can just wash down to shut the brain down and get some rest.
And so I wasn't doing that.
I wasn't ready to clean that up.
I had kind of weaned myself off the off the coke.
And then things just weren't getting better.
My life wasn't developing afterwards.
And so I started going to therapy and which was talk therapy.
Yeah.
I started going to talk therapy, extremely hesitant.
I thought, well, I need to go to somebody.
I have to go to somebody that's experienced what I've experienced.
I need like a Vietnam vet or somebody that has seen action.
And I couldn't find anybody.
And so I just Googled.
I just Googled therapist, talked to two or three of them and walked into one, which was very, it was interesting because this was kind of before anybody really knew about the suicide epidemic, before PTSD and traumatic brain injury and operator syndrome or whatever they're calling it this week kind of started getting out there.
And man, it was, it took me a while to warm up, but it was, I love it.
Male or female?
Female.
Nice.
Yeah.
I love a female therapist.
Mine currently is male, but there was a woman who I Googled when I was leaving my first husband before there was Doug.
There was Dan, with whom I'm still friends, but we did get a divorce.
And same thing, I Googled this woman and she totally changed my life.
You never know.
I mean, you can, you can strike gold.
Yeah.
And then there are yellow pages or Google pages as it is now.
And I can relate to doing that and having it be a life changer.
Yeah.
It good for you.
I'm happy for you.
Thank you.
So yeah, interesting enough, she had never talked, ever talked to a combat vet and wound up, I did my own research and wound up being a pretty staunch liberal, which I probably wouldn't have gone to her.
So you were more conservative going in.
I know you're lean right now, but back then you were too.
Yes.
Okay.
Definitely.
Probably more so.
But I got to be honest, you know, that woman is like an angel.
And I don't, I don't care what her political beliefs are.
That woman has saved more special ops guys from suicide than anybody, anybody, than anybody saved in combat, than anybody I know.
And she still does it to this day.
And that was back in probably 2015, 2016 timeframe.
And it was me.
And when I left the agency, I was also trying to save my best friend's life who had a terrible heroin addiction.
And I talked him into going in to meet her.
And then I just started telling everybody.
And I remember my best friend's name was Gabe.
And we gave her a SEAL team plaque just to say thank you.
And because she was helping us out with, she had dubbed her prices down and just an amazing woman.
And now you go in there and her entire office is just plaque after plaque after plaque.
Pretty soon you're going to see a Trump banner.
She's going to be wearing the MAGA hat.
Yeah, but that would be a sight to see.
But I mean, you know, the reason I say that is because there are some things that can that can, you know, political agendas don't get in the way.
Transient.
You don't see that very often these days.
And I think that's important.
I love that you said that.
I feel the same.
I have very strong political views on a number of issues, but pretty much 80% of the people around me who I love in my life, the woman who raised me, all my best friends, my best friends growing up are liberal.
They're not woke, but they're liberal.
They're Democrats.
So I have tons of love in my heart for all of them, even though they don't vote the way I vote and they don't feel the way I do about the issues that are really important to me, but I don't care.
Those don't have to be the stakes of the relationship.
Yeah.
It takes a strong person to overcome that these days, but they're out there.
Yeah.
Do you say her name or at least her first name?
Her first name's Amy.
My lady was named Amy.
What area of the country was this?
Missouri?
Well, no, no, that was South Florida.
Okay.
Yeah.
My lady was in the Virginia area, Northern Virginia.
Interesting.
We'll have a talk after.
All right.
Pacifics.
But same thing.
Finding Faith as an Interviewer 00:04:18
And when you were telling me that story, it reminded me.
So, you know, we have military guys on all the times.
I just absolutely respect the hell out of you guys and what you do.
And as I said, would love to raise two little soldiers, but don't really want to for the reasons discussed.
And we interviewed Dakota Meyer.
Oh.
And of course, his story is just, it's incredible.
Medal of Honor.
He talked about how he was drunk up there when President Bush was painting the medal on him and or was Obama.
And he talked very openly about how difficult it was for him to come back and miss the guys and miss the adrenaline and just dealing with the trauma of everything he'd seen and done.
And he talked about his own moment of super low and being rescued by an angel.
And we pulled the sound bike.
So take a watch.
I felt like where I was at in life at that point that, you know, that I just couldn't get my stuff together.
And I just, I, I should fix it, right?
Like the fear I could see in people's eyes.
You know, with me, like I was a monster.
It's just like drinking and just, you know, you know, the thing is, is some people don't talk about this much.
You know, you don't fight evil with nice people.
And I just, I remember driving home and I pulled off this highway at my buddy's shop because I knew, you know, I didn't want anybody worried about me, right?
So I pulled in and I knew that he would be in because he comes into work every morning.
And I just, yeah, I mean, I was, I was going to do it right there.
I stuck it to my head and I squeezed the trigger and it just like it went click and there was no round in it.
And I don't know if, you know, I feel like I know who did it.
I don't, I don't, I don't truly know though.
But he said he does believe he knows a friend had removed the bullets from the gun.
Wow.
He thinks it was a friend.
Yeah.
Does he know who it was?
He said he thinks he does.
But that's an angel.
That's a real life God's angel on this earth.
Yeah.
Looking out for him.
You know, she saved him.
And I believe, you know, Amy may have saved you and maybe my Amy saved me.
It's like, yes, you kind of have to be a willing participant, but I know you found faith.
And I'm also a person of faith.
And I do think like if you're just open-eyed, you can see these angels like often all around us.
Yeah.
They look like mere mortals, but they were sent here for a purpose.
Your therapist goes home at night.
And when she looks back at her day to say, what did I do today that really mattered?
My God.
Does anybody have a better roster?
Probably not, probably not.
She's.
She's amazing.
Oh, now you're doing it.
I mean, that's kind of how you make your living now, just talking to guys who probably aren't that used to talking about this stuff in like a safe place right, somebody who gets it.
It's kind of a form of talk therapy, just to sort of be able to speak about it.
At least it's a step.
Well, it is.
And uh, you know, I think um, you know, my podcast is done well and super well.
you're being humble.
And, uh, but I give, I give Amy a lot of credit to how I interview because I, I realized, you know, I realized in therapy and she really didn't say a whole lot.
And a lot of times you just start figuring things out yourself by just getting it out.
And, and, um, and so I realized, you know, and I, I realized that if you just let somebody talk, then they'll they're just gonna keep going nine times out of ten and um and um, yeah.
So so being in therapy twice a week for three and a half years really helped me as an interviewer.
Yeah right, as an interviewer too.
Right, just to let people talk and to listen.
Yep, to listen.
It's helpful too, as opposed to be thinking about your next question.
Love, Therapy, and French Fries 00:02:18
So when did you find love?
Because that seems relatively recent right, you got engaged, you got married.
Now you have two kids, and including a new daughter.
Congrats, thank you, thank you.
So what did you find?
Your wife, your future wife, during all of the amy time or when yep, right in the middle of it?
Uh, I had a.
I met my wife on a gun range at a uh nice club and beautiful, that's amazing, I know right.
And uh my, my best friend uh, still to this day, David Rutherford, uh had a new sniper rifle that he wanted to sight in, and he knew he knew somebody that had access to a thousand yard range, and so we went out there.
Her dad met us and uh, my wife's name is Katie.
She jumped out of the truck and uh, and that was that, was that we?
We, we shot some guns.
We went to the the, The Club restaurant.
She gave me some tots and that was that was the.
What's tots, tater tots big fan?
Yeah, me too.
Also, because I haven't had a french fry in three years.
What?
Yes, it was a personal mission.
I'm basically a navy seal too, in my strength and my ability to say no to the, to the, the things that are bad for me.
Um no, I decided in june of 2021 they were becoming a problem for me, i'm not gonna lie, and that I need to swear off, and so I decided to go a year, and now i'm i'm almost three years clean.
Well, congratulations.
But the tot is a back door to the fried potato.
I may not pass like a drug test of you know potatoes right on, but it's not even Call the same thing.
It's called Tater Tot.
It's not even a French fry.
Anyway, big fan because they allow me to still have my amazing.
But I'm not as addicted as the French fry.
They don't have the same down-the-rabit hole quality for me.
Yeah, you know, French fries are like a conveyor belt for ketchup.
Yes, totally agree.
The only purpose of the tot is to deliver the ketchup, right?
I know.
And then somebody will buy like the whole foods ketchup, and you're like, ew, what is this?
Sober Life in Boca Raton 00:02:53
It just ruins the entire meal.
Right?
You need the sugar, the preservatives, whatever Heinz does, that's what we need.
That's right.
That's right.
All right.
So I never realized it could be an aphrodisiac, but I like how Katie rolls.
So she lures you in with the tots and the guns, and you were like, I'm home.
When are we getting married?
That's right.
So, how long thereafter were you married?
Oh, man.
I think it was, I think it was about a year and a half.
So we were in Boca Raton, Florida.
I was definitely a fish out of water in that town.
And, you know, there's a lot of I grew up in the Midwest in a town of 6,000 people in a farm town.
Now I'm in Boca Raton, Florida.
Lots of money.
Super fabulous.
Okay.
Lots of that.
And so when me and Katie got serious, it didn't take long.
And, you know, Katie's been sober for 15 years now.
And I was on a path to get it was on my radar.
And so I had asked her in a couple of questions that really resonated with me.
And, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of fake people in South Florida, at least in my experience.
And so with Katie, I remember asking her a question, and it was something along the lines of, you know, now that, you know, how do you find real hobbies once you're sober?
Because I don't, I had zero hobbies other than boozing.
And she had a real answer and it was just, that's a great question.
It just takes time.
And but she was engaged in that conversation.
And so I knew I was like, this is a good one.
And she's real.
And I had not been around a real woman in a long time.
And that was, I still remember where it was.
It was at a Thai restaurant in Fort Lauderdale.
And she had told me that.
And I was like, the conversation just got, it, it, I couldn't talk to anybody like that other than my therapist and, um, or anybody that had been through something like that, like, like what I was in the middle of.
And so, anyways, uh, we got closer and I knew we were going to get married.
I knew I was going to marry her.
And I just, I said, I don't want to, I don't want to raise my family in South Florida.
White Rage and War Fatigue 00:15:51
So we're going to have to leave.
And so, yeah, we wound up in Tennessee.
Does she have any roots there?
Or was it just the flocking to Tennessee that so many conservatives did?
No roots.
No roots.
We just packed up and went to France.
At least you went from the one state with no state income tax to another state.
That's right.
New Hampshire is suddenly amongst the crew.
That's nice to see here in the Northeast.
Yeah, I know.
I was like, it's blowing up.
We were looking there for a little bit.
Let's go, Connecticut.
That's right.
It's not going to happen.
Far too blue.
That's all good.
On the hobby front, have you considered needlepoint or as my good friend describes it, a high class finger sport?
Interesting.
I have not.
No?
Are you into needlepoint?
Hell no.
I said, we are too young to be doing that.
Get off the beach immediately with that monstrosity in your hand.
I refuse to sit with you.
So did you find whatever, a hobby?
Business.
Yeah, I was going to say, it's this.
It involves this microphone.
I found business and that's my hobby.
So yeah, Mike hobbies, I mean, I don't have time for them.
I don't have hobbies either if it makes you feel any better.
I love being in my business.
And now you have two kids.
And I love being with my kids.
And so anything outside of that, there's just not much time for it.
Yeah.
No, there really isn't.
I mean, I remember we had kids.
A good friend of mine said, you should tell your friends you just had your kids and that you won't be seeing them for about 10 years.
That's right.
And he's like, the true friends will still be there for you when you get there.
And the ones who aren't really your true friends, good riddance.
We're figuring that out.
We are definitely figuring that out.
It's interesting how fast your taste in friends changes.
Yeah.
You know, especially, I don't know how old your kids are, but.
14, 13, and 10.
Oh, okay.
Nice.
I'm looking forward to those ages.
They're great ages.
Highly recommend this period of parenthood.
It's awesome.
Really?
They're so easy and they're so fun and they have the best personalities and they still love us.
I just, I think we're in the sweet spot of parenting right now.
When they're little, I know you've got two littles.
It's hard.
They're adorable, but it is hard labor.
Yeah, we're in potty training right now.
But I love every minute of it.
You know, I just, it's, it's, it's a tough balance, you know, between work and family.
But I always lean more towards family.
And man, it just goes so fast.
I'm already realizing that.
And I don't want to, you know, I'm glad that I waited until after service for kids because it sounds like you've listened to at least a couple of my interviews.
And man, you know, I'm just, I'm glad that I never had to put my, I will never have to put my kids through what that was like, but what it turned to be into, being gone all the time.
And I'm a lot better now than back then.
And you don't have to live with the regret of having missed it.
Yeah.
Even for a good cause, you know, it's hard to miss it.
I've talked to enough people who have made a different choice.
You can just hear the regret in their voice and see it on their face and it's not recapturable once it's gone.
Very true.
Very true.
But, you know, I think in Tennessee, you'll do better in instilling values into your kids that reflect your own, right?
That's one of the challenges here in the Northeast is really.
Whoa, yeah.
I mean, these woke schools, we fled our New York City schools because of that.
Here in Connecticut, we got it made.
We did our homework this time since we were fleeing.
And we found two great ones.
But it's important, right?
Because you find out when you're, how old is your oldest, your boy?
Two and a half.
Yeah.
So you'll find out when they start to go to school that the schools are, they're your partners.
I mean, you need to find a partner.
They're the ones who are going to spend the most waking hours with your kids every day.
Yeah.
So if you're not on the same page about how we're raising a boy or how we're raising a girl, how we're creating a good human being and future citizen, you know, current citizen, but like, you know, responsible citizen, things can go south quickly.
That is a constant topic of discussion at our house as well, how we're going to do that.
Are we going to homeschool?
Are we going to do private school?
What are we going to do?
And turns out we live in a like a homeschool mecca.
That's good.
Yeah.
So we're looking into possibly doing that.
I love the homeschooling communities.
I have a dear friend who's doing that swears by it.
So what does life look like now?
You do the podcast like 25 hours a day.
Honestly, how do you do these five-hour podcasts?
Man, I just, I just listen, you know, and, and, uh, you know, I, I'm, I get people to open up about things they've never talked about before and go to places that they probably have not been in their mind in years.
And, um, and you can't do that on a time, on a timeline.
You can't, you can't do that in a condensed timeline.
And so, you know, my longest one, I think, is nine hours.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Who is that with?
This guy, Cody Alford, who was a Marsock guy.
Okay.
But Maureen.
But, and so, you know, and I think the first one I did was right about two hours.
And, but then I kept getting longer.
And I noticed the more time I spend on the more time I give them, the more they open up.
And what it kind of developed into is, is I remember, I don't remember who the first guy was.
It might have been this guy, Prime Hall, but do you have any idea how many people have been through like child trauma, sexual trauma, abusive parents, whatever it is?
Man, it's like everybody.
And so the first time that happened, I was like, all right, I got to start diving more into childhood.
And I'll bet 75% of the people that come on have experienced some type of abuse as a child.
And I dig into kind of what's happening today with trafficking and pedophilia and all of that kind of stuff.
And so I think it's really important to dive into the childhood stuff because it gives people that have been abused that are trying to process that still into their adult life and kids that are going through it right now.
I mean, it shows them like, man, no matter what I'm going through right now, like I can still find success and find happiness in life.
And, you know, there's just not a lot of people doing that right now.
And so when somebody goes into their childhood experience and they're going to get descriptive about it, you know, when they're done and we're done with that section, I always ask, you know, for a kid that's in your position right now, you know, looking back, what could you have done?
Or what would you advise, you know, other kids that are in your position or were there, you know what I'm trying to say?
What advice do you have for them?
And I mean, it's helping, you know, it's really helping.
And then we get into the military stuff and it's super descriptive.
And, you know, and I want it to be, I don't want a condensed format because when I started doing this, I wanted to do it because these guys weren't getting a voice in the media at all.
And when they did, it was a 30-second blurb.
And, you know, so why are we having talking heads in the media documenting what happened over there with a bunch of people that weren't there that thought they knew?
And so I wanted to, it kind of started with, I wanted to just document history the way it actually happened with people that were at the events.
And so now we've got, you know, just about every major operation that has happened.
We got.
I heard the one with, forgive me, I don't remember his name, but the gentleman who lost his arm and his leg in the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Tyler Vargas.
Oh my God.
And that just his whole life had been rough with the dad who was the child molester.
And it was just, there was a lot in there.
And those stories are, they're infuriating, right?
Because they're recent and we lived them.
And we still have those same leaders who have yet to make any apology for what happened to guys like Tyler.
Nothing.
Yeah, it's very discouraging.
I mean, he's a perfect example, though.
You know, he interviewed with Good Morning America for seven hours.
Did he really?
And they released, I believe he said five seconds of that interview because it made POTUS look so bad.
And so I'd reached out to him.
I wanted to give him the opportunity to get his story out.
And he had testified in front of Congress.
And none of us were getting the actual boots on the ground version of what the hell happened during that withdrawal.
And so he came on.
We got it out.
They tried to censor us.
And he had all kinds of actual footage of what was going on.
And they kept dinging us.
Oh, you can't have that in there.
You can't have that.
And they're in this.
Who was?
YouTube.
You know, and it's like, guys, like, this happened.
Like, how dare you censor what happened to a U.S. Marine?
Yeah.
It's, it's, like, this is actual footage.
This is a lot of this footage has been, some of it had been in the media.
And it's like, guys, you can't, like, this is, this is what happened.
So we yanked all the footage and then put it behind, put, put the real version behind a paywall because the most important thing was just to get his story out.
And we want to, we want to, we wound up getting it, getting it out, you know, after several attempts.
But not for nothing.
I know this isn't at all why you do this, but in any sane world, you'd be getting an award for that kind of coverage.
In any sane world, somebody like you would get recognized with a Peabody for something like that, not the nonsense that now gets rewarded with Pulitzers and other awards like the Kronkite.
That's actual journalism, actually getting the story and being unafraid to tell it no matter where it takes you.
Thank you.
We actually pulled a soundbite from that interview.
Here he is, Tyler Vargas Andrews talking about what happened during the attack as we withdrew from Afghanistan.
Like 10 minutes goes by and just flash and just get hit with this massive wave of pressure.
And then I'm like, my eyes are closed.
My vision's black.
And I'm like slowly coming to my right ear is just like super high-pitched ringing.
My left ear is muffled and I can just hear people screaming in the distance.
And I'm just like struggling to open my eyes.
Finally can open my eyes and it was someone else's fucking body part just like laying in front of me.
And the people on the other side of the canal just immediately in front of me just got fucking evaporated.
I kept trying to stand up.
I'm like, fuck, like, why can't I stand up?
And we started taking fucking shots from the neighborhood.
And like almost immediately after the flash, I tried my fucking hardest to crawl backwards.
All I could do was like put my left arm on the ground.
And I'm just like, fuck, like, why is my right arm not working?
And I remember lifting it up.
It's there, but it's just like fucking shredded up at the elbow and bloodied.
And I'm just fucking red everywhere.
Pretty horrific.
We just got into this recently because President Biden's former press secretary, Jen Saki, wrote a book trying to say it's not true.
He looked at his watch when the bodies came home to Dover.
It's a lie.
He looked at his watch several times.
She's still running cover for him in her job as a so-called journalist.
It's on tape.
You can see it repeatedly.
There he is in the ceremony over and over trying to sneak in glances.
And some of the parents of the fallen are very angry still about that and now about the lies to whitewash it.
But this is no, no one ever got fired for any of it.
Yeah.
So how are these guys, you know, like Tyler feeling about that and about the administration, how it was handled?
I mean, they're enraged.
We're all enraged.
I mean, do you know that we're sending $40 million a week to the Taliban now?
Right.
It's actually like 43 to 87 million a week.
The Taliban.
Yep.
The same people that we fought for 20, 20 plus years.
Who are now not allowing girls to go to school, dressing them in full burqas, marrying them off at age 12.
Those people.
Yeah.
Cutting people's heads off, assassinating all of our allies over there, lining them up, shooting them in the back of the head.
I mean, it's pretty.
I just don't know how anybody can support that.
Why are we doing that?
Why are we doing that?
Why are we giving Iran money, you know, or were up until 10-7?
I don't, you know, I wish I could answer that.
I don't, I just don't know.
It doesn't, you know, what's up is down now and what's left is right.
What's black is white and and uh it's it's the deconstruction of America.
Well, what do you I mean, it's got to be directly related to the recruiting rates, no?
Like guys are looking at this saying, why am I, why would I join up for that?
Why there's no responsibility.
Our lives are taken for granted.
No one, no one gets fired.
No one says sorry.
We continue to funnel money to our enemies who, how much blood and treasure was lost in Afghanistan fighting the same group, which we're now funding.
I just like, I know people say that's not it.
No, I think that's it.
We looked at the surveys as to why guys are not signing up anymore.
And like the top, the top item was fear of death, which is okay, yes, normal, but for centuries and guys have been getting past that and signing up anyway, but they're not.
So what is it?
I mean, I think it has to do with a lot of things.
I think it had to do with the forced vaxes.
I think it has to do with the woke agenda.
I mean, nobody, I mean, talk about miscalculating your body of work.
I mean, it is not liberal Democrat families that sign up for the military.
It is middle class to low class conservative families.
And you just alienated your entire base.
Nobody wants to do that.
Nobody wants to go to become a SEAL, to be going to gender ideology crash courses and pronoun training or whatever the hell else they're doing in there, how not to be a right-wing extremist.
Deal with your white rage.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean, I think it's that.
Military-Industrial Complex Profit 00:05:17
I think it's the way the war has ended.
I think it's the new advertising that they do for recruitment.
She's a lesbian.
Yeah.
Her mothers are LGBTQ.
It's everything.
Everything about what the messaging they're putting out is who are they going to get?
Right.
I mean, the numbers are at record lows, and we are precariously perched on possible conflict.
God forbid in Ukraine.
The United States doesn't want any part of that.
God forbid the Middle East.
And they're still talking about Taiwan.
Like, it's like, I don't like, we might actually get involved over there.
I was talking to a former Navy SAL whose name you would know, and he was like, we're not going to win the Taiwan thing.
Like, they're going to take it.
China's going to take it.
And there's not much we're going to be able to do about it without actually getting involved militarily, boots on the ground.
And the American people aren't going to want that.
Like, if China takes it, his analysis was, we're going to have to let him take it.
I mean, we'll probably provoke them to take it just to start another war, just to spin up the military-industrial complex more than it already is.
And I mean, that seems to be what we do: we provoke, you know, and then capitalize.
And can you zoom out on that, Sean?
Do that, like, explain that to me because I understand people that throw that term around, military-industrial complex, but you understand it better than most.
Yeah, so the military, I mean, let's take it back to the Iraq war.
I don't think we should have been there.
At the time, I think, yeah, it was great.
I got action.
I got to do what I signed up to do.
We got to kill a bunch of bad guys.
Now that I'm older and I'm out and I see a bigger picture, I mean, don't you think it's kind of weird that Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton?
Halliburton was the biggest logistics, not the biggest, probably the only logistics company in both wars.
And so everywhere you went, it was Halliburton did the laundry, Halliburton did the gas, Halliburton built the barracks, Halliburton built the chow hall, Halliburton cooked the food, Halliburton did, they did everything, the mail, everything.
It was KBR Halliburton.
He was the CEO of that.
So all infrastructure in the entire Iraq war was Halliburton.
Who is the former CEO is the vice president of the United States.
That's what we're getting at.
You know, there's then there's, there's, you know, there's Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and all of these that they make a lot of the tech and the missiles and the planes and all of these sorts of things, guns, communications equipment, everything that's everything that is new that's being developed is it's not the government developing it.
It's these companies that get paid ungodly amounts of money to fund, to develop things you would use in war.
And then they put people like Nikki Haley on their boards.
Exactly.
I mean, she's not only was on the on the Boeing board, but she has a husband who's making military vehicles right now.
That's his side business, where he's making the vehicles that will be used in war, which they profit off of.
Yeah.
This is what you're talking about.
And then she, you know, in her world, was about to step into the presidency.
And what have zero conflicts?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or, you know, like Ukraine.
I mean, we send all of our stuff over, all of our missiles, our tanks, our UAVs, our javelins, whatever, you fill in the blank.
And so now we have to replenish all the stockpiles, which is banking these companies.
It's giving the companies work to make more money.
And that's what this, I'm convinced that that's what this is all about.
The saber rattling.
And the reason the politicians do it is because these are big donors.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't be, you know, you would probably know more about that than I do.
But yeah, I mean, lobbying organizations.
Hey, look at all the people that are Supporting what's going on in Ukraine and Russia and still.
Yeah.
Still.
It's just, it's, and why were we, I mean, why were we in Afghanistan for 20 plus years just to completely abandon it?
Yeah.
You know, there was so many things we could have used there.
We gave up Bobram Air Force Base, one of the most strategic Air Force bases of the world.
Afghanistan has endless amounts of lithium that we could utilize for our green initiative, right?
But we'll just give those over to China and let them sell us lithium, even though we had built all the infrastructure there and they're already mining it.
Three Months Free on SiriusXM 00:02:17
Why?
Why would we do that?
Why would we give it up?
Yeah.
Because we made a decision to cut and run and that was the decision we were going to live by.
I guess.
I mean, I can't find any logic.
I mean, the problem is on that one, both parties are to blame, right?
I mean, Trump came up with a plan and then Biden executed it terribly.
Yeah.
But I mean, Trump too wanted to pull us out of there and not keep anything.
I mean, I realized we were over war.
And I mean, the forever wars are a real thing.
And people who grew up, I mean, I'm a little older than you are, but both of us grew up in a time where in the beginnings we thought these are just wars and we're serving a worthy cause here and we understand why the United States is doing it.
And it's only having sort of been in the midst of this like belief and then seeing it all crash down and then seeing the aftermath that you realize I was sold a bag of goods.
Yep.
Yep.
It's really interesting if you can take yourself out of the, you know, the politics and your emotional state and look at these things from like a 30,000 foot view and it might paint a different perspective.
And, you know, maybe we aren't the good guys.
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BRICS Initiative and Ukraine Stalemate 00:09:25
What do you think will happen with Ukraine?
I mean, at what point does the United States say they're not, they can't win?
This is throwing good money after bad and get more aggressive about forcing some sort of compromised end to this thing.
Man, what do I think will happen in Ukraine?
I think, I mean, I think a change in the presidency could possibly end it.
Ours or Ukraine's?
Ours.
I don't think theirs will ever.
I mean, why would you?
Not now.
Yeah, why would you?
So much, they're getting so much out of this.
But I'm just saying, but like, I don't know that the Ukrainian people are as insane as Zelensky seems with his, you know, no compromise.
We're going to see it through to the end.
All your people will be dead.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I mean, I think this BRICS thing has a lot.
I think that things will get interesting when China starts making more moves.
That's what I think.
I don't think any of these wars are going anywhere.
Should we have nothing to do with that?
With Taiwan, China.
Man, you're asking some tough questions.
That's one I think we would probably need to step in on.
Actually step in, though.
I mean, do you agree boots on the ground would be required?
How are we going to fight that one from drones?
How are we going to fight that?
I think that I don't know.
Definitely a lot of Navy.
That's right.
We don't have enough ships.
A lot of Navy.
And I think all of our allies would need to come together to, I mean, I think that, I mean, I personally think we're on the brink of World War III.
With China.
Yeah.
Over Taiwan.
I mean, look at all the angles they have on us.
You know, they are behind the fentanyl crisis.
They're sending in all the supplies.
They're trading the cartels how to make the world's most potent fentanyl.
Actually, now they're teaching them how to make nidocin, which so it went from what?
Heroin to fentanyl to nidosin.
They're behind that.
They're buying all our farmland.
They're capturing all of our elites, politicians and just tech gurus.
I mean, not to mention the spying.
Yeah, I mean, we have our, I mean, yeah, that's, that's out there, right?
What's his name was Sleeping with a Chinese Spy?
Eric Swalwell, right?
Is that I get, I get my far left Democrats confused.
I can't remember his name, but that's who it was.
But I mean, they have so, I mean, look at California.
From what I understand, all the real estate signs now are all in Chinese.
And I've always wondered, I mean, you see this massive migration happening all across the country with red states being inundated with people fleeing California, New York, Chicago.
And I've always wondered, you know, who's buying all this real estate over there if everybody's leaving.
Yeah, right.
Who's buying all this real estate?
They're selling it to China.
We rolled out the red carpet for them when it came to visit.
Their takeover of Hollywood.
Yep.
The NBA.
Yeah.
They have more money than God when it comes to buying things that are American or American-owned.
You know, their own people can suffer, but they're very interested in spending tons of money buying up our industries and our land.
And we're just suckers for the dollar.
So we say yes.
You know, that's why, that's why the NBA said, sure, we'll do whatever you want and we won't criticize you.
That's why Hollywood takes anything they find offensive out of its films so they can make money over in China on, you know, the sales there.
We've bent the knee, you know, to our Chinese master.
So you're right.
It's happening in more and more.
People just aren't paying attention.
They're living their lives, not paying attention to a little bit more here and there.
It's happening all over the world.
I mean, look what they're doing in Africa.
You know, they're settling Africa.
They've, they've, they have, they are the influence in Afghanistan now.
I mean, they have.
They go in with their money and they make these countries dependent on them.
And that used to be us.
That used to be the United States being the leader of the free world and being out there helping the third world countries and in creating some loyalty and some allyship.
We're not doing that anymore, but China is.
You're exactly right.
And then you just, I mean, that right there alone shows how many angles they have.
And I know there's more.
I'm just, I'm put on the spot.
Yeah.
But it's scary to think about.
It is.
You know, it's very scary.
And I don't think people understand how pertinent it is that we need to start addressing this stuff like immediate, like yesterday.
I mean, the one thing we have going for us is their economy is not strong.
That's what I keep hearing.
But I hear both sides, you know, and I don't, I mean, they have so much influence across the world now and their version.
I mean, the BRICS initiative, you're aware of the BRICS initiative, you know, and devaluing our currency.
And I think the last time I checked, there's like 22 countries on board that now.
And it's a sketchy crew, but they have a lot of money.
Yep.
So now more than ever, we need new up and coming the next generation of Sean Ryans.
Yeah, I guess so.
So what do you do?
Trump's got to win.
And people have to see America as strong again.
And maybe he'll be a little afraid of us.
You know, I mean, that's the New York Times just did a poll showing that Trump's beating Biden in five out of the six swing states, same as it was in November, by a healthy margin in most of them.
And they were so befuddled by their own poll, they went back to their, to the people who responded to say like, why?
Why again?
What is it?
Really?
The orange man?
He's so bad.
How could you?
Insurrectionist.
And in particular, it was interesting because they went to some black voters saying, we don't get it.
Why are your numbers surging?
And they said, you know, we don't love Trump.
He's got a big mouth.
He says some stuff we don't like, but he's strong.
And I think the country's going to be a little safer with him in there.
He keeps people off balance.
And then others said, the economy, I don't need to like him.
I need my wallet to be a little fatter.
And it was.
They just did some look back in the economy was like definably 16% more was going into people's average paychecks under Trump than it is now.
So yeah, we need a strong leader.
There's a chance we won't get one.
It's not a lot Trump wins.
Robert Kennedy, also anti-military industrial complex.
Could you ever vote for him?
I think I could vote for him.
Could you?
Yeah, I definitely could vote for him.
He's too left for me on many, many issues, but I'm not as hardcore or conservative as like a lot of my audience.
I love that he's kind of anti-establishment, anti-military industrial complex, anti-big pharma, that he's an environmental lawyer.
I'm actually, I'm kind of green.
I like the green agenda, not the green new deal or any of that nonsense.
But like, I have a mother, you know, I would like to see us be a little bit more realistic about this climate.
You know, that's something I love talking about this, you know, because you do something positive for the planet and conservatives like throw a shit fit.
Yes.
And it's like, hey, man, we live here.
Right.
In case you haven't noticed, everybody's dying of cancer.
Yeah.
Cancer from shit in our foods, cancer from shit in the air, cancer from cancer from everything.
It might be, you know, might be good for us to improve the planet a little bit, but that's just my take.
What if we had a RFKJ in there saying, don't eat that, don't do that.
That's not getting a blessing anymore.
This is a problem over here.
He spent his whole life filing lawsuits against people who are polluting our environment in one way, shape, or form.
I love that.
I realize, I mean, he said he would allow abortion to the ninth month.
Then he walked it back.
He's not good on my issue, which is women's rights against the crazy trans lobby.
But I have more issues than just that.
So I definitely could vote for RFKJ.
I just asked him about the full-term abortion thing.
I just interviewed him last week and he told me that the only reason that he would go full term would be for the mother if she was going to die, if there was a life threatening.
So he's arrived at that a little late.
Yeah.
He told Sage Steele.
It's up to the mom.
Okay.
Whatever she wants all the way through ninth month.
And then Sage, who's amazing, was like, a lot of us get uncomfortable when you say it's okay for a mother just based on her own desire to abort a baby at full term.
And he answered it again saying, well, I would.
Heavy Interviews and Teen Chat Rooms 00:02:45
Oh, really?
But then all the shitstorm came and he walked it back.
It was like, oh, oh, oh, gotcha.
I mean, I understand if that's your biggest issue.
And it is for a lot of, you know, deeply faithful people in particular.
He's out.
Yeah.
But anyway, it all depends on your hierarchy of, you know, principles.
And I just, I love how anti-establishment he is.
Me too, man.
Me too.
So speaking of faith, you are, you've had a bit of a metamorphosis in your own life on this front.
Is that because of Katie or is that your own journey?
That's my own journey.
And do you want me to go into it?
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, so I interviewed some really, I have some really heavy interviews.
Tyler Andrew Vargas was one of them.
And I mean, it's been a long time since I've seen that.
And to see a 24-year-old, you know, my studio is on the second floor and to watch him hobble up there with one leg, one arm, you know, it's just, it's, it got to me.
And the, the day before I interviewed him, I interviewed a, a hacker who had hacked into all these websites and kind of in pedophilia websites and downloaded all the user list, got it to the FBI.
The FBI did nothing with it until I interviewed him.
And super dark interview.
The reality is, I mean, we pulled, we caught a child predator in five seconds because I didn't realize, I was like, you hear about this stuff, right?
And how common it is, but you don't, I don't, I didn't see it.
And so he's in there.
We're doing the interview.
And I said, hey, you had your laptop, pull it out, get in any, I don't care what it is, Instagram, TikTok, whatever teen chat room you want.
I just want to see how long this takes.
He made the screen name Ashley13, New Jersey.
Literally five seconds.
It's on camera.
We screen record.
Until he was in like a room where five seconds before 40-something year-old Bam was wanting to meet a 13-year-old girl at a, wherever.
Sick.
Yeah.
And so, so that's that.
That's what, I mean, this is the stuff that I cover.
And so me and my wife were going on vacation.
I just, I just finished up those two interviews, especially the one with Ryan Montgomery.
He's the hacker that that just really got to me.
Sedona Bungalow and Online Predators 00:09:49
You know, the kids stuff really gets to me.
The guys who work in that industry shutting those down.
Yeah.
It's a very hard life.
Yeah.
And so we went to Sedona and there was also what else was happening.
The Chinese spy balloon just flew over.
I saw, I think it was, was it Reba came out saying, oh, I think it's freedom of speech that drag queens should be able to, you know, push up town library kids.
And I'm just, and it, I got to this point where I was like, man, am I the only person that like gives a shit about this stuff that actually cares about kids and like why we just abandoned our allies in Afghanistan?
And why is there a 24-year-old that was blown up unnecessarily?
I mean, they had the guy PID in his sights.
They could have killed that bomber, you know, and now all of his friends are dead.
And he's, and so these are all the things that are going through my head.
And, and I had, uh, I had hit this point.
I was having a conversation in my head and I, I had hit this point where it was, it was like, why do you even talk about this stuff anymore?
Like, nobody cares.
You know about the maps thing, minor attractive persons.
They're trying to redefine pedophilia into this minor attractive person, normal, just like, just like a fetish.
You know, like you have, some people have a foot fetish, some people have a toddler fetish.
Yeah.
And we're supposed to accept this.
Yeah.
And, you know, and so I'm just seeing all these things.
And I'm, I'm like, how, how can, like, how, I, how can anybody like buy into this shit?
I have family that like votes left, you know, and it's, it's, it just, it gets to me.
It makes my skin crawl.
Like I, I can't, I don't understand how anybody can support any of the, what I just list rattled off.
And so it, it got to me and I got to this point where I was like, I'm, I can't, like, I can't live like this anymore.
Like I can't, if nobody gives a shit, maybe I'm, maybe I am the one that is, maybe I'm the one that has something wrong with it.
You know, maybe, maybe this is all acceptable and I just, I'm not, my brain isn't switching.
Maybe I'm the problem and I shouldn't be fighting this anymore.
I need to, I need to be happy.
And it basically felt like I was surrendering to evil.
And I was trying to convince myself to be fine with it.
So we're staying in this nice resort in Sedona.
They got a guarded gate and I pay attention to that kind of stuff because of my background.
And a lot of the guys knew me that worked there from my podcast and wanted to talk.
Well, this, we were there for a week.
The last day I walked through and it's this old, old man in there.
And he's wanted to talk to me.
Me and my wife had gone up to a hike because I was like, I just, I got to get the hell out of here.
Maybe a hike will make me feel better.
Walk back down.
And this guy starts trying to talk to me.
It's dark at this point.
I had already kind of surrendered.
Like, I'm done.
I didn't feel good, but I had kind of made my decision.
Like, I'm not doing this anymore.
And I'm kind of looking at him over the shoulder like, I'm not in the mood to like strike up a conversation.
And, but my wife starts talking to him.
And I'm like, shit, I just want to go to my room.
So I turn around and this guy, this guy read my mind from front to back.
And I mean, like, I've never had that happen.
It wasn't, I mean, it was descriptive.
It was, it scared the shit out of me because I was like, how are you?
How, how are you in my head?
And he started rattling off all these thoughts that I was having on that entire hike.
And he's like, this stuff that's going on in China, that's not your fight anymore.
And this stuff that's going on with the kids, that's not your fight either.
And this stuff that's going on with the trans community, that's not your fight.
And I had shut down.
I was like, well, how is this guy in my head right now?
Freaked me out.
We're walking back to our bungalow.
We were in a place where it was kind of like a duplex.
And we're on one side, somebody else on another side.
We got there.
When we got to Sedona, my best friend that I was referring to earlier, his name's Gabe.
He died of a heroin overdose later on.
But Gabe was a SEAL.
Gabe was a pro hockey player.
Gabe was a fighter.
We was into MMA.
Gabe was at the agency with me.
And no matter where Gabe was, Gabe was always known as a protector.
Like, no matter what unit he was in, no matter what he was with, could be the manliest of all men.
Like, everybody knows Gabe has got you.
And he was my best friend.
Well, we get there and we see this guy, and he looks identical.
He could be Gabe's identical twin.
I mean, you could see differences, but same brow line, same jawline, same build, same walk, same three-day shadow, same everything, muscular.
And me and my wife are both like, man, that looks exactly like Gabe.
And everywhere we would go, this guy was at.
If we were at the pool, this guy was at the pool.
If we were going on a hike, this guy was coming back from a hike.
If we were out in town getting dinner, he was out in town getting dinner.
And we had always thought it was weird because I'd kind of had a breakdown on the plane to Sedona.
And so I was in a vulnerable spot.
My wife knew it.
I was in a vulnerable spot.
I knew it.
I was with my buddy Dave and he knew it.
And it was just odd that Gabe, who's always known as a protector, is like every, this guy that looks identical to him is everywhere.
Well, it turns out right from that gate, we walk to our bungalow, and it turns out this guy and his family is staying right across the thing from us.
And we hadn't seen him all week.
And I'm like, that was weird.
And on the way back, I'm telling Katie, I'm like, holy shit, like, I think that was God that was reading my mind.
And she's like, yeah, Sean, that was God.
And I'm like, I can't believe this.
Like, how is this happening?
And she's like, Sean, God's always been around you.
You just don't make time for him.
And I knew that to be true.
So we get to the bungalow.
Gabe's staying across the way or the look-alike, whatever you want to call it.
We find out he's staying right across.
This is all within like 10, 15 minutes.
Then we go in and I'm crying and I'm like, I can't believe this is happening.
And right before, also right before we went to Sona, a good friend of mine, his name was Dan Cirrillo, died.
He was kind of the only, he was a SEAL and a businessman, and he lived in Franklin.
And I don't have a lot of people that I can relate to where I live now in Franklin.
And Dan is one of those guys that he's very successful.
He owned a couple of hospitals.
He owned a big security business.
And he's like one of the few people that I can sit down with and talk business and talk friends.
And he doesn't need anything from me.
And I don't need anything from him.
And those, you know, those relationships get hard to come by.
And so we hit it off really fast.
And then he died on a hunting trip with his son, had a heart attack.
And, but hey, I mean, if there's a way to go, good on him.
But anyways, his daughter, who I had never met, I'm having this breakdown in the hotel.
And his daughter, I heard my phone go off while I was talking to Katie.
And as soon as we kind of finished what we were talking about, about what was going on, I checked my phone and it's from his daughter.
And it's this text.
I'd never even met her before.
And she says, she must have got my number from her dad's phone.
And she said, hey, Sean, this is Taylor, Dan's daughter.
And I just walked into my dad's gun room for the first time since he had passed away.
And he grabbed me by the arm and told me that I needed to contact you because you knew a side of him that nobody else knew.
And that he wanted me to tell you that he loves you just the way that you are and that you're doing exactly what you should be doing.
And then I'm trying not to lose it right now.
But so that was like the third thing all within, like I said, 10, 15 minutes.
And I was like, holy shit, like there's no denying this one.
Eddie Penny as a Mentor 00:04:48
Exactly.
And a low brick wall.
Yeah.
And so, you know, I grew up Catholic and never really took church seriously.
I never did.
And then when I left home, I never really went back and had kind of lost faith.
And I'm not saying I wasn't a believer.
I just didn't really care.
And I didn't think about it.
And I had definitely no time for God.
And so I took that as a, I mean, that was like a slap in the face.
And I decided I needed to get serious about faith and at least look into it.
And so I started looking into it.
And it's been great.
And, you know, to be honest, it's the only thing I can find that makes any damn sense anymore.
And it's all in that book.
Everything we're seeing happening right now is in that book.
Is that how you started just reading the Bible?
I did.
I did.
I started trying to read it from front to back.
And I wasn't really getting anywhere.
Some shocking stuff in that Old Testament if you go that way.
Yeah.
And but then turns out, as it turns out, my entire team, I'm really close with my team, my podcast team, the guys that work for me and make it what it is.
And turns out one guy was raised Southern Baptist, super well versed in the Bible.
My editor, Darren, grew up with Jehovah's Witness and escaped it, but knows, I mean, knows that book from front to back.
My IT guy, Adam, devout Catholic, knows it all.
Everything, Elijah, my production manager, he's the Southern Baptist guy.
And they kind of started pouring into me.
And a lot of my buddies that were in the SEAL teams, Eddie Penny really kind of paved the way for all of this, I think.
Eddie Penny was a, we were a team two together.
And then he went on to Dev Group and just like, oh my, like, I mean, not who you would expect to come to faith, but he was my Christmas episode a couple years ago.
And ever since he came on and gave his testimony of how he came to everybody that's been on the show has brought it up.
And he became kind of a mentor of mine.
So I called Eddie and told him and I said, hey, this is what happened.
I don't really know where to start.
I don't really know what this means.
And we had a conversation and he goes, he was like, oh man, he's like, a lot of us have been praying for this to happen.
Wow.
And that kind of freaked me out.
I was like, what do you mean?
And he's like, we've been waiting for this.
He's like, you have a big voice and this needs to happen.
And so that was at about midnight.
Now I'm getting into some other kind of weird synchronicity coincidences.
And so about 12 hours later, I had a meeting that Adam, my IT guy had scheduled with me at noon.
And Eddie was telling me during the conversation, he was talking about Guardian Angels and all this other stuff that was spiritual warfare, stuff that I know nothing about.
Well, fast forward 12 hours, I'm talking to Adam.
I didn't know what this meeting was.
I thought it was about email marketing or something.
And he wanted to talk to me about spiritual warfare and guardian angels.
And I was like, it was literally like almost the exact same conversation as I had had with Eddie Penny.
You're like, that's not on the dropdown menu of message manager.
I know.
And they're not friends.
I mean, Adam is with all due respect.
They had to coordinate those two guys?
Eddie is a built like a shit brick house, a dev group operator.
And Adam is a IT computer nerd who I love to death.
And so, no, they don't, they don't, there's no cross-pollination.
They're not friends.
I've never spoken.
Exact same conversation at noon, come home for lunch from my studio to be with the wife and kids.
And Adam, and anyways, I go back to work.
I look at my clock in my truck and it says it's 444.
I look at the odometer.
It says 444 miles left to E.
And this is four hours and 44 minutes after my conversation with Adam about Guardian Angels.
Guardian Angels and Number 444 00:05:48
So I look up the meaning of 444 and it is, your guardian angels want you to know that they have got you.
And I'm just, I'm like, holy shit, man.
Like we just had two conversations about guardian angels and now I'm seeing 444 everywhere within.
Yeah.
And it's in the meaning of it, supposedly, according to Google is your guardian angels want you to know that they've got you.
And so I've been in it ever since.
And I've had some great mentors and started going to church.
That didn't last very long.
And now we have we have a group of, there's four families including us, a lot of trust, very close friends of ours.
And we just have a discussion every week, every Tuesday.
So when I get home today, that's what we're doing.
And it's cool.
You get to ask the tough questions.
You don't need to be embarrassed.
You're not going to offend anybody.
You don't feel judged like you're going to church.
You know, I always feel like I'm being judged.
Oh.
Hello.
We're Catholic.
Yeah.
Built in.
And there's none of that.
And man, you know, when you, when you kind of take all of the BS that religion kind of injects into your journey of building a relationship with the Creator and Jesus, it's really interesting.
And it can be a lot of fun.
I know what you're saying.
My audience knows I've been having a not unrelated struggle on that exact score.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm I'm Catholic, lifelong Catholic, and I started the process of having my first marriage annulled.
And instead of like bringing me closer to God or setting me in a path that I thought would land well, it really has kind of alienated me.
And it's caused a bit of a crisis of faith, you know, like who are these middlemen I have to go through in order to have a clean relationship with God?
That doesn't make any sense to me.
I think God loves me and God sees me in a loving marriage with three wonderful kids who have two great parents who are in love.
And he's thrilled.
And he will accept me into his kingdom when it's all said and done.
And if he doesn't, it's certainly not going to be because I didn't get a paper.
I got a paper divorce from Dan, but I didn't get an annulment from a priest, you know, and then married Doug in a Catholic church.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
So that's sort of where I am right now.
I'm still wrestling with it.
I got tons of great feedback.
By the way, thank you to my audience because so many thoughtful emails on it, you know, from Catholic listeners, but also just Christian listeners who don't believe in that, you know, middleman thing either.
And I haven't resolved it.
Well, I'll keep my opinion to myself.
But why?
The middleman is a lie.
There are no middlemen.
It's just about you and your relationship.
And that's it.
They'll let you know that.
And when you think like that, I mean, it's a, it, it gives me a sense of peace, you know?
And then you start looking at all the stuff that's going on, like Trans Visibility Day being declared on Easter Sunday.
Like, you can't tell me these aren't signs, you know?
And this is all, like I said, this is all in there.
I'm still reading through it.
I'm not through it all yet.
I don't claim to be an expert, but, you know, I see things.
I have a team to lean on who's well versed in this stuff.
And very fortunate.
And it's everything we're seeing happen is in that book.
And when you can, when you come to that realization, it's really odd.
But all the stuff that like, all the stuff that was bothering me, and it still does bother me.
But at the same time, it makes me stronger because up that was supposed to happen.
You know, up, that's in that book.
Up, like, really, like, Transvisibility Day, a confusion of genders on Easter Sunday, making a mockery of the resurrection.
Like that was in there.
Yep.
And so.
So how do you feel now?
Do you feel a difference physically, emotionally now versus during the Chinese trial balloon period, which was dark?
Definitely.
I mean, I'm at peace with it.
I mean, I'm still going to fight the good fight and I'm still going to bring truth and uncover corruption and tell these stories.
And I'm not going to bend a knee to anything.
And but, you know, it, but seeing it all happen, it's, it is actually making me stronger because I found something in a world of nothing that makes any sense at all, not a damn bit of sense.
This makes all the sense in the world.
It's, it aligns with the values that I've always had, or maybe I align with its values, you know, but it, yeah, it's helped me.
And then you start learning about, you know, maybe forgiveness is for you and not for the people that did something bad to you that was unjust.
Forgiveness for Your Own Peace 00:01:08
You know, it's for your sense of peace, not for theirs.
You know, you can go on and waste all that bad energy hating somebody and talking shit about them and, you know, complaining, you know, I got screwed over and I'm a victim.
But the minute you forgive them, that's off your plate and it just, it's like a cleanse.
Amen.
God bless you.
Thank you so much for coming on and telling your story and all these personal details about your life.
What a pleasure.
What an honor to know you.
Well, thank you.
Thank you for having me.
And like I said, I was really excited to meet you and just happy to be here.
I'm honored.
And honestly, God bless you.
Thank you for your service.
Thanks to all of our military members, active duty and retired, and those we've lost for the service and sacrifice.
I appreciate it.
God bless you too.
I hope this is a first of many, Sean.
Me too.
Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly Show.
No BS, no agenda, and no
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