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Patrick Bet-David Podcast Episode 97. Download the podcasts on all your favorite platforms https://bit.ly/3sFAW4N
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The Bet-David Podcast discusses current events, trending topics, and politics as they relate to life and business. Stay tuned for new episodes and guest appearances.
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Patrick Bet-David is the founder and CEO of a financial services firm and the creator of Valuetainment, the #1 YouTube channel for entrepreneurship with more than 3 million subscribers. He is the author of the #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller Your Next Five Moves (Simon & Schuster) and a keynote speaker.
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Tu Lam: https://bit.ly/3vveiwX
Adam Sosnick: https://bit.ly/2PqllTj
Gerard Michaels: https://bit.ly/3fMja9z
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#PBDPodcast
00:00 - Start
4:27 - Tu Lam Backstory
11:52 - Communism in Vietnam
14:16 - Unconventional warfare
19:24 - Tu Lam Hiding His Rage
33:52 - Tu's lesson from his mom
35:28 - Why Tu is against Socialism/Where patriotism came from
40:09 - Champagne Socialists
42:07 - Tu's Military Career/The Craziest military experience
45:08 - PBD's Friend Military experience/Tu lam accepting civilian life
51:15 -Tu Lam as a CoD Character
59:20 - Shipping Crisis
1:34:35 - Colin Powell
1:40:43 -1:46:15 Americas Re-education Camps
1:46:18 - Chinese Rambo
1:28:02 - Tu on withdrawal from Afghanistan
1:32:13 - Which country is on top?
1:04:51 - Materialism
1:18:08 - Cash to credit mind shift
1:23:19 - Exodus of Navy SEALs because of vaccine mandate
Special show today, episode number 97, PVD podcast, with Gerard Adam and the one and only Ronin from Call of Duty, aka 2 Lamb, 23 years in the military, 20 years special ops.
The guys got an incredible story of escaping Vietnam on a boat while living at a refugee camp, how Russians came and saved him.
I mean, literally, this is a story out of a movie.
Cannot wait to share that story with him.
I've been following this stuff for a while.
This guy's a badass.
Every time his name comes up, everybody has great things to say about him.
So it's an honor to have you on here, brother.
Truly.
It's great to have you on here.
I got you.
Thanks for coming up.
Thank you for having me on.
Yes.
Absolutely.
So, you know, we got a lot of stories we're going to cover.
Obviously, I woke up last night.
I was doing my business.
I had a few people over, and we're sitting out, having a conversation until one o'clock in the morning.
I get this exciting message.
Kai, I've never seen Adam this excited about Trump opening up a social media site and wanting to be a part of it.
And then I think it's important for us to talk about the traumatic event you had this week.
It's a lot of trauma.
A friend lent you a car.
Some stuff happened there.
The audience needs to know.
And then we'll talk about some serious issues outside of that on shipping crisis, which you have a lot of experience with.
We'll talk Afghanistan.
We'll talk about what's going on with the SWAT team quitting.
Navy SEALs quitting because they don't want to take the vaccine.
And we want to get your insight since that's the world you were in for 20-year special ops.
Barry Weiss had some interesting comments to make to Stelter on who told you you are not allowed to cover certain stories.
And she laid into him.
We'll talk about America's re-education camp and a few other stories that we may get into.
Carl Icon made a few comments this week that I think it's good to cover.
Kiyosaki was at the birthday party.
You had a chance to spend some time in a group.
He had a great time.
He had women flocking to him.
Was it women flocking to him?
They were actually attracted to this guy.
Well, maybe he was doing good talking.
It was very hard to get a word in with Rich Dad.
Him?
Yeah.
Poor Dad, much easier to get a word in.
Rich Dad, not going to ask.
A lot of people want to have it.
The rich aren't trying to talk to you.
We had a good time.
You want to work with the service staff.
The birthday party started at 7.
Okay.
And we thought, you know, maybe like, you know, you can tell people's stamina on how it works and whose stamina can last, right?
You had not had any sleep because the night before you were spending way too much time reading books.
And so with your friends.
Avid Reaver.
Yeah.
So it goes.
Happy birthday, by the way.
Appreciate you.
You see the first crew leave, second crew leave, third crew leave, fourth crew leave, fifth crew leave.
By the sixth, seventh, eighth crew, they're not leaving.
You got to kick them out.
It's like, listen, guys, you got to go and four o'clock in the morning.
I'm not leaving.
So having said that.
Two, would you be the early crew to leave?
The late crew?
You staying late for the party?
What's your party vibes?
I'm the first one to leave.
I have to use the restroom.
The old Irish goodbye.
The Irish exit.
You got to hate it.
The Irish goodbye.
Two's out.
Yeah.
There were people waiting outside for Ubers and Kristen and I were walking in with five cases of white claw.
You did.
People were like, can you imagine?
Gerard was the white claw bully that night.
Have a white claw.
I'm good, Gerard.
You're going to be drinking yourself at White Claw.
Are you still on only on 10th date?
Have you guys had an 11th and a 12th and a 13th?
Or what's the number?
So the Irish exit.
Change the subject.
That's right.
Yeah.
So we're going to listen to you.
Listen about a girl that liked him.
First of all, not only did she like him, she was attractive.
Yeah, that's very attractive.
Wait a minute.
Why are we all shooting nervous?
No, girl.
Gerard's getting nervous because Gerard, Gerard's one of those guys, he just can't wait to get married.
He wants to have a family.
He wants to settle.
He's one of those guys.
Family values kind of a guy.
Yeah, but anyways, let's change the topic since it's making too much pressure for it.
My dad turned all red.
Weird.
I've never seen him turn red.
This guy's still in the middle of the day.
This guy's always associated with kids.
Today, today, today.
Appreciate all the love.
Appreciate all the birthday wishes.
Thank you.
Today is about two, for the audience that doesn't know.
Maybe they only know you from Call of Duty.
Maybe they've seen a couple interviews, stories that you're done, whether it's with the knife, whether it's how to handle the gun, whether it's how to handle a weapon, which is your specialty.
Why don't you take a few minutes and share with us your story, your background, how you went from where you were at at the age of 2-3 when you, your brother, your mom, the whole story to coming to the States.
Share your story a little bit with the audience.
Yeah, thank you, Patrick.
I mean, it's through the struggles that we find our strength, and that's truly what my life is about.
I was born in Vietnam.
I was born on a cold cement floor in the basement of Saigon Hospital.
My mother shielded my body from incoming artillery fire in my morning of my birth.
At this stage of the war, you know, American troops had left Vietnam, and this left a devastating impact on people and stuff.
I was born on the losing side of the war.
Mid-70s, when is this?
I was born in 1974.
74.
Yeah, so American troops already left Vietnam 75.
It was when Saigon failed Vietnam.
You know, everybody always talks about, you know, Vietnam reminds them of Afghanistan, you know, everything that's going on.
And truly, that's what it was, guys, because we were oppressed.
We were, my uncles that served alongside Americans, they were in prison.
They were brought out to the re-education camps.
These were labor camps, torture camps.
When I received my uncle in the States, he was in prison for 15 years.
When I received him in the States, he had no skin on the bottom of his foot.
They skinned the bottom of his foot.
They broke him as a human being, as an individual.
I mean, literally, he laid in the corner of the room.
He wouldn't even lay in bed because he was that traumatically traumatized.
At three years old, we escaped on a wooden fishing boat.
You know, this boat probably fits about 45 people.
That night, that morning that we escaped, we were fitting over 100 people in that boat.
And guys, the trip was to come out of Vietnam and into Malaysia, right?
So two-day trip.
That was roughly.
On this fishing boat, on this fishing boat, right?
So we had to sleep on the bottom deck.
I was a little child, three years old, but we had to sleep sitting up.
So think about like, you don't even feel your limbs anymore, your legs, right?
Because everybody's just overstuffed.
So the pie tree was going on during that time.
So a lot of bandits, pirates, robbers from surrounding countries, it was a lucrative business for them to stop the boats, kill the men, rape the women, and torture the children.
It was common practice amongst the fleeing refugees to carry poison within their belongings.
And the refugees would poison their children if they tripped in for us.
As opposed to subjecting them to like a life of slavery.
Life of slavery, human trafficking, torture.
The bandits were known to torture the children.
Just the thought of that is just parents carrying poison to prevent their kids from going through that level of struggle.
I mean, that's just trauma at this highest level.
Please continue.
So we navigated out of Vietnam.
My mother said there was a Navy captain.
So he knew the tactics, you know, and how to get past the pirates.
He shut off the engines, quiet down the motor, and he X-Filled out there at night, you know, under cover of darkness.
We went into the shores of Malaysia, and this time the Malaysian Coast Guard, they shot at us, they stopped us.
No more refugees in their country, you know.
So basically, they hooked and anchored us back on with a line.
They forcefully drug us back out into the South China Sea, shot our motor, cut the line, and left us there to die.
Now, what I want to say is, guys, it was a two-day planned trip.
So there was hardly any water.
There was hardly any supplies.
There's hardly any food.
We didn't plan that.
So what I'm saying is now we're stranded.
Now this is a desperate survival situation in the middle of the South China Sea, you know?
So people were dying.
My mother said that we drifted roughly a month.
We're out to sea.
So people were dying.
People were getting thrown overseas.
People were getting sick.
And my mother, she's concentrating on that poison.
Because you're three years old at this time.
I was three.
And are there other family members of yours with you?
My brother, my brother, my biological father, and my mother.
And you're three.
He's seven, right?
If I recall your brother was seven at three.
You're a baby.
I mean, like the seven-year-old at least kind of knows what's going on.
You've got no clue what's going on, I assume, right?
Yeah.
You know, I study the mind later on in life.
That means I study how the mind works.
And, you know, if you suffer from something so traumatic, and if you can really slow down the analytical mindset and get into your subconscious, you know, I do have visions of that trip.
You know, it's small little flashes, but long story short, we were drifting out in the ocean.
People are dying.
People are getting sick.
We were drinking urine.
I mean, it was a desperate survival situation.
And my mother said that she contemplated on the poison, that she woke us up one night.
And she contemplated this poison.
And we had ulcers growing on our legs.
I mean, there's no blood circulation in our legs.
Think about how overstuffed that boat was, you know, malnourished.
And my mother gave us everything she had, the water she had, the food she had, but now she was down to her last bucket of water.
And she contemplated this poison.
She said later on, you know, she woke my brother up and made him drink half of the bucket of water, and she made me drink.
And then she cried.
She couldn't do it.
She couldn't kill us.
You know, so it was a miracle that transpired at night because that's the night that we got caught up in a storm.
A huge tropical storm.
Think about like the South China Sea, Patrick, right?
Huge tropical fishing boat.
These waves could have easily tipped us over.
Crazy.
Kyle, can you pull up the South China Sea for a location reference?
Yes, it's crazy just to think about it.
And this storm, this storm, saved us.
See, it washed us into the lat-long coordinations of this route where a Russian supply boat was Xing out of it.
Now, if that's not a God's story, I'm going to tell you that's a God's story, man.
The South China Sea is a huge ocean.
And we were drugged back out into the South China Sea.
And then somehow, through the coordinates of a lat long, a Russian supply boat intercepted us.
And that right there is a million and one channel.
That's the type of thing that happens in a movie, and you're like, no way.
What's the chances that a ship intersects them?
And somehow, if you guys had gone to Cambodia, it would have been even worse for you.
I mean, in that time.
I mean, the killing fields of Cambodia had gone insane.
So the Russian supply boat.
I want to paint this picture, guys, because the Russian ideology, the socialist ideology is what ripped apart our country, right?
Right, the Marxism and everything.
Can you mind sharing the story of how the leader at that time came to America for help?
They turned him down to bring Westernized philosophy back to his country.
Then Russia said yes, then he brought communism down to Vietnam and everything.
Can you mind sharing that story?
Yeah, so you know, the French are trying to call on the Indo-China War.
What people don't understand is they think the Vietnam War is only the American involvement.
My mother was born in war.
You know, it's France's mess.
Right.
The Indo-China War.
Like, by the time the Vietnam War ended for my parents, they'd been at war for close to 20 years.
Oh, wow.
Right?
And that's what people don't understand.
So what Patrick was saying is Ho Chi Minh came in and they were trying to colonize.
He started seeing a divide between his country, right, Vietnam.
So you had the South Vietnam, you had the North.
It's clearly a divide in ideology, right?
So first he came to the Americans and he asked for help, but we didn't want any involvement there.
Because we didn't want to go against our French allies.
And they did have a point.
The French were being brutal with their plantations.
The French were colonizing America, like they were colonizing Vietnam.
Like they, it was still Africa and America centuries before.
It was imperialism from the 1800s still going on, imperialism.
There was plantations, but what?
What they?
What they didn't understand was the, the Vietnamese people.
They're trained with the warfare of Sanju.
Right, that means unconventional warfare.
As a Green Beret, I'm telling you I'm a master on conventional warfare.
We found our independence as Americans in the Revolutionary War under unconventional warfare.
So when the French try to colonize, they're facing an unconventional warfare type of army, sanju type of tactics.
So they're having a hard time.
And Ho Chi Minh went to Americans and asked for help.
We didn't have any interest there.
He went to the Russians.
Obviously that, that communist ideology was embedded into Ho Chi Minh.
He only cared about uniting his country under one country again, right.
So communism came the, the Russians started supporting the, the communist ideology.
The North Vietnamese grew their armies and they raged unconventional warfare against a conventional force of Americans.
How long does guerrilla tactics need to, you know, be implemented before that actually is conventional warfare?
Like at this, at this point, there's no standing armies lining up across the battlefield from each other anymore right, like?
Isn't all unconventional warfare today, or all warfare today, technically unconventional.
I mean yeah, the warfare that I fought in is very unconventional because you know, there's no declared two sides to the army.
Right, you're not?
Not, you know, you're in this uniform, in this uniform, this is the battlefield.
No it's, the battlefield is in the United States.
The battlefield is in Yemen Sana'a, in Iraq Afghanistan, all these different areas.
The battlefield for for me was the secret wars.
You know so and that's what I mean.
So when, when Vietnam fell to that You know, they started raging unconventional warfare.
They knew, look, guys, warfare is expensive.
We know that, right, after Afghanistan, Iraq, warfare is expensive.
So, the Chinese, if you study their tactics under San Ju, warfare is expensive.
They'll never employ soldiers to put a footprint there for too long.
Americans do, and that's our mistake.
Right?
So, we employ Americans overseas.
We're funding Americans to fight these wars, right, overseas.
How expensive is it to keep Americans overseas?
How expensive is it to afford ammunition, supplies, weapons, you know, the assets, like the drones?
Potentially, intentionally so, though.
I mean, the industrial military complex has made a lot of people mega-wealthy, and they've never had to step foot outside of D.C.
So, when the country fell to communism, eventually it fell to communism, and Americans pulled out because it was an expensive war.
It was an unpopular war.
It was an unpopular war because up until then, the media censored everything, right?
So, if you think about World War II, right?
Think about World War II, World War I, the Philippines, all these different wars.
You watch that, the media censors everything.
It wasn't until the Vietnam War was when they allowed reporters to come in.
And unfortunately, guys, hey, look, when you see women and children dying in warfare and you see the true realities of war, it's ugly and it smells and it stinks.
So, when America is getting a snapshot of, I don't know, an American killing a civilian, is it a civilian?
Because I've been in countries where rebels will come in and wipe out a whole village and have an eight-year-old, is he now a militant or is he still a child because he just killed his parents?
You see, it's a different world, which is why I'm saying to you.
So, you know, when Vietnam fell to that, and the Americans, they could not sustain this unpopular, very expensive war that's unconventional.
They're not used.
In fact, the Green Braves and the special forces were developed to combat, you know, this insurgency.
You know, that's where it came from.
So, when that country fell to it, Ho Chi Minh was able to establish a more communist regime.
And his main concern once he took over the country, South Vietnam, was to make sure that our leaders would never rise up to power again, like Afghanistan.
Think about it.
Like, anybody who holds a position of power, they're murdered.
They're killed, right?
So, the same with the Vietnamese.
If anybody holds position of power, like my uncles had, they were officers.
They were drugged out to the camps and tortured.
You know, we were oppressed.
Simply for what?
Opposing ideas, ideas that they did not agree with, ideas that contradicted what they believed in.
Well, like, you know, Sarajevo, Bosnia, you know, people, different ideologies.
They will wipe out a whole existence because you don't believe what they believe.
Yeah, and dissension, you know, disagreement is seen as dissension.
It's not seen as civil discourse.
One of the great things about the way our country was founded is it was founded on civil discourse.
Let's have this disagreement.
Let's have the two houses argue it out and then let's have it, you know, then let's have a law as opposed to the top-down, you know, decree mandate from the king, right?
So, but I want to say this because when I came over to America, right, you know, because I lived in a rep, like I lived in a refuge camps for a year and a half, guys.
In where?
You know, in Indonesia.
And it was a grass hut in the middle of the jungle.
You have to survive.
You have to live off the land.
They don't give you anything.
Hipsters do that for vacation now, too.
They do.
It's very spiritual.
It's very spiritual because you know what's really weird is that we are all successful men and we value certain things.
But I tell you, man, when I went into these third world countries and these villages where there was nothing, they were happy.
So what are we doing wrong?
We're looking at the externals to be happy.
You know, it goes underneath samurai teachings.
It goes underneath the primary.
But we look for the externals to make ourselves happy these days, right?
So I think that's what's wrong with America and what's wrong with a modern day society.
If you go to these third world countries, they are happy because they're around their families and they're around their friends.
Let me ask a couple questions based on where you just went right now, because we just went a completely different place, which is good.
It opens it up.
So I'm watching your body language as you're telling your story.
I get two sides here.
I see a side.
If I didn't know you and I met you for the first time and I saw you at a restaurant, I'd say this guy's a gentle, sweet, you know, the way you talk, calm, all that stuff, right?
On the way you speak.
I don't know if you guys get that feeling.
That's the feeling I get a very sweet, gentle side, right?
How are you hiding that rage inside?
How did you do that?
Because there's no way in the flippin world that you are going to be able to live that kind of a life, have that kind of trauma, have that kind of animosity on what was done where nobody can describe that to you.
This is your life.
This is not a movie.
This is not a book.
This is not an article we're reading.
How are you managing that rage?
Because the same way as you're gentle, on the other side, special ops, I know what it is.
You know, the special ops, I hung out with those guys, you know, whether it was Delta.
I was about to become 18 Delta with 5th group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
I went and interviewed a lot of guys like you, and I said, I'm going to go a different direction.
I got out of the military.
How do you manage that gentle side and the rage side?
You know, Patrick, I'm going to put you in my worst day.
You know, it's through the struggles, right?
When I said, I'm going to put you through this day.
You know, I was eight years old.
And people always ask me, too, what's your first memories of America?
I'll tell you, my mother took me to a grocery store and she bought all this food.
And look, that don't mean anything to you guys, but I'm telling you, when you starve and you were in the refugee camps for a year and a half, that means everything.
And then she was so happy and she took me out.
It was Mother and Sunday.
You know, we were loading the groceries into the car.
And this man came up to me and he spit in my face and he flicked my mom off and he told me to go home.
He called me Ching.
This is in America.
Eight years old, Carolina.
That was my first memories of America.
Unpopular Vietnam War, and I was the image of an unpopular Vietnam War.
And when I was eight, I went to school.
I was very poor.
I had holes all in my clothes.
You know, we lived in a poor part of town.
I was reminded how poor I was every day.
And we went in school.
It was Sub-Tu Teacher Day.
And my name is pronounced Tu Teng Lam in Vietnamese, right?
But I say two lambs, so you guys don't mess up my Vietnamese name.
So it was Sub-Tu Teacher Day.
He called my name, and obviously he said it wrong.
And everybody made fun of me.
Everybody's throwing papers at me, remind me how poor I was.
And it was this bully.
He made fun of me, made it slanted eyes, and we both got in trouble, right?
I don't know how I got in trouble, but I got in trouble.
I know he went down to the principal's office, and the principal sat us down.
He told me, our parents need to come pick us up.
My mom didn't drive at that time, so I knew I was going to be there for a while.
And then the bully's mother came in first.
And she demanded to know what's wrong.
The principal stood up and he looked over and he goes, your son caught that boy right there, a chink.
He sat back down.
The mother went in the corner.
She picked up her son and walked over to me.
And you know how somebody stands there, you have to look up because I was looking at the ground.
I was already defeated.
I looked up and she said, my son is right.
You don't belong here.
And you need to go back home to your country.
You're eight years old.
I tried so hard.
I hyperventilated, and principal said, boy, you're going to cry like that.
You need to go in the home.
And that night I came home.
I didn't even talk to my mom.
I was so upset.
And my mother came in.
I didn't even eat dinner.
She came in.
She sat down next to me.
She said, son, there will be the bad days.
But what do you learn from it?
Never asked me what everything happened or anything that's wrong.
I knew at that point that I got tired of being this weak human being.
You know, I was escaping from war.
I found, you know, I faced death.
I faced, you know, the refugee camps.
And I got tired of being this weak human being.
So I made a promise to myself that day that I was going to be stronger than hate.
But what's that even look like, right?
So what you see in me, Patrick, is I have rage.
It's there.
And I can switch it on and off at any second.
But it's like a weapon.
I can safety that gun, right?
Because I drive as a warrior.
I drive off of compassion.
So let's go through this, okay?
When you said that, I'm trying to see how that trauma affected me.
I'm a kid.
I come to the States.
When I came here, it was seventh grade.
So whatever seventh grade is, I'm 12 years old and I'm coming here.
And my English sucked.
So for me, I had a hard time pronouncing government.
I would say government.
I had a hard time pronouncing Wednesday.
I would say Wednesday because of that and that's there.
It really screws the whole thing up.
Whoever came up with that name, they need to be fired as, you know, right now.
There was a show called Gilligan's Island.
I would say Gilligan's Island because that S is there.
Why the hell would you put an S there?
What's the problem with these guys here, right?
I'm sure you struggled with lasagna?
Lasagna?
That was easy because my mother made lasagna.
But fresh off the boat, you know, hey, you're fresh out of your phobe, you're fresh off the boat.
I'm like, I'm going to buy the damn boat one day.
You guys are going to piss me off, right?
But that rage was either going into humor to lighten the load, because you have to be like, hey, funny, all this other stuff.
You know, it's the humor side to kind of calm you down.
A lot of times, comedians have lived a very difficult life.
What did you do with it?
Like, did you put it in martial arts?
Did you put it at 13, 14 years old in sports?
Did you put it in fighting kids?
Like, were you the guy?
We had a guy in school.
His name was Andy, Asian guy.
And this guy would walk so calm.
One time a guy called him something.
A good friend of mine.
He didn't just beat the guy.
He almost killed the guy.
We had to pick him up.
We couldn't even pick this guy up.
He was like going to kill this kid if we didn't stop him.
And he went from a calm, sweet kid to a guy capable of killing somebody.
Where did you release your tension and anger into?
What was that for you as a young teenager?
You know, I was raised.
My stepfather was Special Forces.
My uncle was special forces.
So I was raised in Fayetteville outside Fort Bragg, the biggest special operations base.
More commandos walked there than anywhere in the United States.
I was raised around that.
But when you asked me what my outlet was, you know, Patrick, I was beaten.
I was bullied.
My whole, all the way to high school.
My outlet was, you know, spending time with my father, the special forces.
But I knew, let me bring you to this day.
So I was being picked on, was spit on, clothes, you know, being ripped off me, just reminding how poor I was.
And my uncle, Special Forces, American Special Forces, he was the one who funded our paperwork to get us to the United States.
American Special Forces, he was an officer.
His G-base got overran Vietnam.
He got stabbed by SKS.
E-vaced out.
This guy's, he's an amazing American.
And my uncle picked me up, right?
And he drove me.
He must have sensed something was wrong with me that day because he said something just out of blue.
He said, you know, too, there'll be days that people are going to spit on you and they're going to judge.
They're going to flick you off and they're going to say, you don't belong here.
You need to ask yourself, do you want to be a fucking commando today?
You know, when your bones ache and you found all your injuries and you just want to quit on life, you need to ask yourself, do you want to be a fucking commander?
Then when it's cold outside, it's raining and you know the right thing to do is to get up and exercise your body because you're this weapon that America needs.
You need to ask yourself, do you want to be a fucking commando today?
God, I love that.
And I was 11.
Can you imagine the impact that meant?
Commando, a life of discipline, when I'm so weak and being picked on.
See, I don't think you were weak, though, because it would have broken a lot of people.
Yeah, you weren't weak.
You were just, you didn't know how to take control yet.
You didn't know how to set boundaries.
You were not weak.
And not to disagree with your life story, forgive me, but that would have broken a lot, a lot, a lot of people, man.
And, you know, Jordan Peterson has a great saying that only the violent are capable of peace.
Because if you're not capable of violence, you're incapable of peace.
You're obedient.
You're subservient.
Only people capable of violence can choose to be peaceful.
You know, everybody else, it's not your choice.
So, I mean, in that regard, it sounds like, you know, the light went off where you were like, I need to become capable of violence in order to gain the respect I need and then, you know, scale it back from there and know when to use it and when not to use it.
The light went off when a year after my father left me, my biological father left me, and I haven't heard from him.
And I was being spit on, picked on.
I was now indoctrinated into a very strict military upbringing because my stepfather was a drill sergeant in special forces.
It's 4:30 in the morning.
I would raise the flag, put the hand over my heart.
I would do physical training before I even start school.
Dress code.
What I'm saying is I had a hard time with the discipline.
And my mother came to me with this box.
And she said, you know, son, this is from your father.
And, you know, and I sat the box across the room because I was so disappointed in my father because I didn't hear from him.
So finally, I had the courage to open up this box.
I opened up the box, and inside this box was four contents.
It was these VHS tapes that were dubbed, right?
And I rambled, and they were written in Vietnamese.
I didn't know how to read Vietnamese.
I just rambly picked up the tape.
I threw it in the VCR.
It was the Art of Buddha.
If you don't know what that means, it's the martial arts side, being samurai.
The way.
Bushido.
You know, I was very defeated at that moment.
And then this image of samurai, this image of a higher mobile way, moral way of living, a moral values, to dedicate your life to being a warrior, to help others, compassion.
You know, that's the Bushido code, right?
So if you asked me, Patrick, that was my escape education.
Bushido, a warrior's upbringing.
In the samurai culture, they call it bushi, the study of being a warrior, samurai.
So at 16, you know, I tried out for, you know, a lot of the intensive training, the physical training that I know I needed for special ops.
And at 18, there was no direct hire into special forces back then.
So I went to the 82nd paratroopers.
I went to the long-range reconnaissance amphibious reconnaissance teams.
And then I made it to special forces at 21.
Two, were you, what was the first fight you ever got into?
Like where you beat somebody up?
How old were you in the first fight you got into?
Oh, I was beaten almost every day in elementary school in junior high.
I wouldn't say it was more me fighting.
It was them beating me.
When did that stop?
When was the first time where they said, you know what, it's probably not a good idea to mess with two anymore, man?
This guy.
I remember that I started studying martial arts when I was eight, more of the discipline.
My stepfather was, he taught me the screen beret side of combatives, you know, special forces, hand-to-hand combat.
So there was this bully, picked on me, and I smashed his nose in.
You know, unfortunately, he shattered his whole nose.
Eight years old?
No, I think I was 12 at that time.
Okay.
had enough so by middle school you were ready to yeah i was that kid that you know when you go back uh when you're wall locker and you have posty stickers like chink and go back home like those were normal for me right And I got tired of it and I smashed it in this kid's face.
Yeah.
And, oh man, I was in trouble, you know, not only in school, but at home, because my father was teaching me these moves, and here I am employing them in a very lethal way.
Did this happen consistently or no?
Were you the guy that got into a lot of fights or no?
No.
Okay.
You know, I believe in the martial arts.
I believe in if we can not fight, don't fight.
So here's the story of not fighting.
So my father didn't want me to fight, right?
He said, you're not doing it.
You're going to go to school.
You're going to be this gifted kid, AP classes.
You're going to do this, right?
I told you not to fight back.
Yeah.
Yeah, because some of the moves were killing moves.
Because you knew the moves, but he didn't want you to make it even for destroy these kids.
I mean, the moves that we were taught is to blow out somebody's eardrums by cupping your hands, to put your fingers through somebody's eyes, to smash in their face and nose, to break their neck, if we did too.
But these are moves that were taught to him in the special forces, and moves that was given to me, but in a very secret manner.
Yeah, this is not breaking balsa wood to get your yellow belt type of stuff.
This is true.
It's true.
Budot.
It's true, the art of Budot, which is the combat side of being a warrior.
So I knew all that, and I was being picked on as being, you know, but this is where strategy came into play because I was a student of ninjutsu and samurai and I was studying.
When I say a student, I would study, right?
Their history and the arts.
And the ninjas are always about what?
About outsmarting your opponent, right?
Because they were employees of spies, right?
Reconnaissance.
So I realized that and I knew the bully schedule, so I would write down his timeline, his schedule, and I would look at his pattern of life.
And then I knew his pattern of life and his schedule, so I avoid his pattern of life and his schedule.
Now, you seem to have been very, very alone in your upbringing.
A lot of the Viet community down south at my time, Biloxi, Mississippi, some other places out by Dallas, they come in groups.
There's entire families that come and they resettle from the refugee camps.
Were you and your mother and your brothers alone in Fayetteville?
No, so Fayetteville, I want to say, is a mixed town because of the military population, right?
So a lot of military marriage, foreigners, so very mixed town.
But what are you saying?
The Vietnamese refugees, I wanted to bring this because this is another incident that led me to who I am today.
Was when I was 11, first, my uncle, right, he gave me that speech.
Later on that year, my mother would drive across town and dude.
We would drive hours.
Hours she would drive to drop off food to these refugees, right?
And I told my mom, so I asked my mom, like, mom, why do you do this?
Why do we waste all day driving across town to give food to people that don't even care?
They didn't even say thank you.
And my mother, she stopped the car, she grabbed me, and she said, look at me.
She said, you know, son, it doesn't matter conditions or circumstances.
If we can, we must help others.
And in doing so, we create a better world.
You see, that's Confucialism.
That's Confucius, right?
If you want to make a better world, it starts within.
And I realized that, and I knew the special forces had the ability to enter countries and to free those oppressed and to free the enslaves and to fight for the people that were my family.
What's really very, very fascinating to me about your story is the juxtaposition with socialism that you talked about earlier.
You know, the CCP in particular uses those Confucian origins to spread socialism.
They said socialism is just the logical economic implementation of Confucianism.
And you are in that upbringing, in that environment, where you're getting picked on constantly.
The upper class are reminding you of how poor you are.
You're feeling very, very helpless in that moment.
You are ripe for the picking for extremist, communist, socialist ideology.
You are their top target.
And yet you, from what I know about you, you're a pretty staunch anti-socialist.
How did those two things come about?
Well, socialism is what imprisoned my family.
Socialism is what murdered my family.
I saw the genocide.
I saw the oppression from it.
So I felt that energy.
It's not like I'm reading a socialist ideology.
I've seen it firsthand.
I've seen it around the world.
I've seen communist countries.
You know, I've been to 27 countries.
You know, communism was our primary enemy when I first came in.
We would study the sounds of helicopters and vehicles, of Russian tanks, Russian helicopters.
We would close our eyes and hear Russian helicopters on a headset, and we had to write down what we're hearing and the distance we're hearing from and the direction it's coming from.
So what I'm saying to you is we study Russian doctrine because that was our enemy.
It's always been our enemy.
We took our eyes off the ball.
I have a question for you regarding patriotism, right?
So I totally understand why you would have no love for communism or socialism.
That's literally what killed your family and friends back in Vietnam.
But to use Gerard's example, juxtapose that with coming to America is capitalism, home of capitalism.
And there you are, eight years old, getting spit on, called the chink, beat up, you know, left for dead, so to speak.
Where does the patriotism come from that you say, all right, I got to fight for this country?
It's like you're almost like a man without a home where it's like you're getting kicked out of your country.
You come to America.
They're literally telling you, Ching, go back home.
How do you become an American patriot?
Like, where does that come from?
I was raised by warriors.
I was raised by Green Berets.
I was raised by patriots.
I was raised by my grandfather who fought in the Second World War and, you know, the Korean Wars.
I was raised by my father who fought in wars and defended our countries and our freedoms.
I had no freedom coming in this country, so I know what it means to not be American.
I wasn't given a status of freedom.
I didn't have even a country.
So when people say, go back to your country, we had no country.
We had nothing.
So why the patriotism?
Because America gave me a home when no other country didn't.
So no matter how unfairly or unjustly you're being treated, you still loved America?
Is that fair to say?
Do you believe that one person that's racist towards you reflects all of Americans?
That's a good example.
That's a good thing.
Do you believe in, you know, because I served in the United States Army and I felt racism all through all the way to the top tier, the national asset of America?
Do you stereotype everybody because of one or two?
You know?
So the thing is this, I'm stronger than hate.
I said that when I was eight.
So I'm stronger than racism.
I'm stronger than oppression.
I'm stronger than all these things.
Did you have friends in school that said, come on, too, like, you're my guy, man.
Like, just let's forget about that asshole over there.
Like, let's hang out.
Let's go.
Like, who's cool?
I was ostracized.
I was the kid that was poor, that stink, that smelled like fish.
I was that.
Does it still make your blood boil?
No.
Because it's through the struggles you find your strength.
So I realized that unless I faced that at a young age, I wouldn't have the strength I needed to fight for the oppressed.
I wouldn't understand what it means to be that.
So when I go into a village in Afghan or in the Philippines and I'm fighting in Zamboanga and these children lost their freedoms, I can understand at a deeper level than anybody else.
How do you feel, taking that to today?
How do you feel when you see somebody incredibly wealthy, like Jon Stewart, somebody I'm a fan of as a comedian, do a segment on the problem with freedom?
Or you see incredibly well-fed, wealthy Ivy League students championing socialism and telling people to give up their freedom of speech.
You're coming from a place of, like you said before, this isn't reading philosophy.
You're not reading Das Capital.
You've lived it.
So now you see these people, and do you pity them?
Do you say they just don't know what they know?
Or what are your thoughts on this moment?
It's hard to see America at this moment because we're so divided in our ideals and the greatest country.
I mean, any patriot loves our country, right?
We all love our country.
Yeah, it hurts me divided.
But the thing that I realized is this after the war was you have to know what you can change and what you can't and you have to put you have to put focus on what you can change and what you cannot.
So if America is so divided, I as a patriot, as I as an American, as a refugee that made it into this country, and you tell me, man, what other country can you come here as a refugee and be who you are?
To be an entrepreneur and to be who you are, to be this leader in America when you came from absolutely nothing.
You know, I slept on the dirt floor, rats in the jungle, and here I am this entrepreneur now, a leader in America.
Where else can a system, a country, allow you to do something like that?
Let me ask you this, if we can't go back, because I want to get into some of your thoughts on current events right now and what's going on.
But so you're at Fort Bragg.
You choose to go special ops.
23 years you're in, so I'm assuming first three years you do boot camp, AIT, all the things you do.
Three years later, you join special ops.
Is that kind of how it happened?
You know, I went to basic, you know, airborne.
I went to ranger training, you know, so all of the advanced infantry training.
And then when I went to special operations, then that's, you know.
Did you do special forces?
Special Forces.
Okay, and what was your MOA?
Were you an 18 Delta?
I was 18 Bravo, I started, 18 Fox, and then Zulu.
Got it.
Were you part of Special Ops with Delta or was it more Special Forces?
I was in the unit for eight years.
You were in the unit for a year.
I was a direct support asset to the unit conducting the Loviz reconnaissance.
So basically I was the guy who would go around, work with the CIA at the embassies.
We'll go and we'll find, fix, and finish the enemy abroad.
What were some places you were deployed?
Yemen, southern Thailand, Libya, Nigeria.
I mean, you name it.
I mean, we were everywhere during the global war.
What's the craziest situation you were in when you were in the military that you can talk about?
You know, every mission is crazy, Patrick, right?
You know, obviously the gunfights are always crazy, but that gets played out almost every day, you know, in the war zone.
I want to talk about, like, okay, so Libya.
Gaddafi, dictator, right?
So he brainwashed his people.
You couldn't even have a Western education.
And there was this, we call them sources, people that work for the Americans that provides intelligence.
And he was working for us, and he was a proud father.
He had a beautiful daughter.
She was very smart.
And she wanted a Western education.
You know, so he would secretly get her these books and have her read.
And then one day the government came to their door and drugged their family out in the street, put them down on their knees.
And they burned out her eyes.
So those are some things that we see overseas, you know, that people never understand.
So those are the crazy things that we see is that people get tortured, you know, in today's society.
People think that, you know, we live in America where everything is good and dandy and everything's nice, but in today's world, it's still savage.
You know, and if you don't have no law and order and governance system that's set in place like what our country is, which is the greatest country, then we will too be down.
So, you know, Patrick, I have a lot.
You know, I just, you know, it's so, there's so much emotions tied to some of these events.
You know, when my friend got out, he was in special ops, and not only was he special ops, he was also a Delta unit for eight years, same as you.
And he went all over.
And my orders at the time was to go to Vicenza, Italy.
I was going to go to Sears School.
I was already aerosol.
I was going to go to Airborne.
I was going to go DLI to tighten up my language because I spoke five languages at the time.
And I was going to go Vicenza.
And then from there, you know, light it up and eventually go into, you know, choose to go Delta.
I went a different direction.
He chose that route.
He took the orders.
He went in.
When he retired after 20 years, I said, let's meet up.
We hadn't seen each other for like 15 years.
I thought he was dead, quite frankly.
I was trying to find him everywhere.
I couldn't find him anywhere, not on Facebook, not on social, nowhere.
He appeared out of nowhere on social.
We got connected.
And this is my guy.
This is the guy that you hung out with every day for two and a half years.
So I said, let's meet up.
So we meet up in Madrid.
So let's go watch, you know, we'll go to El Clásico.
Ronaldo was playing.
Messi, I said, let's meet up in Madrid.
He didn't come to the game, but he met me at Madrid.
I said, how you doing?
And very traumatic.
This guy wasn't this kind of a traumatic guy.
He was a fun guy to be around.
He was not in a good place at all.
I said, what happened?
What have you seen?
Can't talk about it.
He had a drink.
Then he had a second drink, three drinks.
He still wouldn't talk about it, some of the stuff that he had seen.
But he was very, very emotional.
He would call me regularly saying, Pat, I don't know how to deal with this stuff right now.
It took about a couple years for him to disconnect from that life.
How long did it take you after your 23-year stint that you had to live a normal life?
I know, you're still married, I think, right?
20 plus years you guys have been married.
It's pretty crazy to know that you lived that life and you're still married for 20 plus years.
How long did it take you after that life to actually accept a civilian life?
Three years that I realized I don't have to have my bags packed and watching the news.
Three years.
Three years of me not having to watch current events and worry about me being deployed.
Six years before I found calmness in the mind.
Six years.
Do you ever itch the desire?
You know how athletes retired, they want to go back.
You know how the movie hurt Lockheard.
He got out.
He couldn't wait to get back.
These stories were just like, man, Chris Kyle, I got to get back, man.
I don't feel like the civilian life is for me.
And the wife is trying to tell you, listen, relax, let's enjoy it.
Let's have a life together.
Do you have that itch like, dude, I want to go to this freaking place because I know I can bring some value?
Is that itch there to want to get deployed and get into the mix or no?
I always want to help people.
And I guess that's my path as a Ronin.
Now is I help people.
My time overseas helping people, staying in villages and all that, I just can't physically do that anymore.
You know, but I always want to help people.
Was it hard to let go of the gunfights and all that?
The adrenaline is very, there's no drug out there like the adrenaline like that, at that level of a gunfight, right?
So people have a hard time disconnecting.
For me, I worked hard after my time in service to disconnect, and I do it through meditation and everything else.
So I purposely walked down a path of peace, you know, when I got out.
Not a lot of people do that.
No, no, and especially not in your world, because it's typically drugs, alcohol, you know, some crazy shit that they end up doing when they've seen that kind of life.
Because as much as you're glad you're out, somehow your body's, that's your norm.
That's your normal life that you've had.
So it's very hard to adjust from that pacing to this thing being this slow.
It's going to drive you insane.
Most people, it's going to drive them insane.
Yeah, you know, what's real funny, Patrick, when I got out, I went into the entertainment kind of world really fast.
They found me really fast because, you know, I'm a knife, I'm a martial artist, I'm a gunfighter.
So it appeals to Hollywood, you know?
So they reached out to me.
They wanted me to be on shows.
I'm Call of Duty now.
So it's really like a different mindset now.
You know what I mean?
I have to let it go sometimes.
You know, like sometimes when I walk in, I'm like, okay, this is a pool door, this solid core door.
This is my exit rail.
This is how many pace.
I had to let those things go.
Are you able to take orders from people that are not, you know, I mean, imagine taking direction from somebody that's like, you know, 35 years old, 120 pounds, and they're telling you what to do.
And you're just sitting there like, man, I can take your eyeballs with my pinky.
No, I don't think that way.
I don't think that way when I look at people.
He's asking you because he's struggling.
He wants to.
Yeah, that's not how my brain works.
You know, guys, how my brain works is 4.30 in the morning.
I'm embracing God.
I'm showing gratitude to life in the day.
Like, that's who I am today.
Like, you know, I never wanted that to be that violent, you know, in my career.
I did it for compassion.
I did it to free the enslaved.
And as soon as that was over for me, what's my next purpose?
My next purpose is to mold Americans to, you know, law enforcement is having a hard time right now.
You know, with their image and their tactics.
And that's why I'm teaching.
I'm teaching law-abiding citizens to protect themselves, you know, across America.
So along with that, I had to let go of that hate.
You can't be who you are if you hold on to hate, right?
I don't think it's about holding on to hate.
I think it's maybe more addiction to power.
When you're talking about guys that come out and they're getting violent, it's because they can, because somebody tells them something that they don't want to hear.
And they're like, you don't get to tell me.
You don't outrake me.
I'm going to show you.
And 20 years of imposing your will on other people, you don't just get to turn that off.
No, and you know, like I say, three years, you know, I was talking to one of my friends is, you know, when you're in the special forces, when I kick open that door, when I come in, I have you're going to feel an energy.
Right.
So I don't want that energy when I live in civilian life, right?
So I have to cut it off.
And a lot of guys can't cut it off when you're there.
Yeah.
So, so, Ronan, how did that happen with Call of Duty?
I mean, you know, how does it even feel knowing you're in a video game?
Oh, man.
So, you know, at first I was in the history channel when I was filming there.
So, yeah, what's Bill Goldberg like?
Is he cool or he's so cool?
He's one of my friends.
I go out.
Goldberg, Goldberg?
Goldberg, the wrestler.
Goldberg.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So Bill and I were.
We're Jew.
We're friends.
The third best Jewish athlete of all time behind Sandy Kofaks and Adam Sosnick.
There he is.
There he is.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
So that was my first time being on the set.
Like literally, that day was my first season.
Rookie year.
Yeah.
Rocky day.
That's day one.
That was the second season.
So we did three seasons, really popular.
It got really, so it was broadcast in like 12 different countries.
This is what show?
Knife or death?
Beating the hell out of ice with knives.
Robes don't stand a chance.
Yeah.
So you're a big dude, man.
Goldberg must be 6'6.
How big is this guy?
He was 260 there.
But height-wise, I mean, that guy's massive.
So he's like 6'4.
Okay.
He was a defensive man in the NFL before he was a wrestler.
That guy don't play.
But he's so intense.
You know, I want to bring you to this day.
So I'm here, right?
He's intense.
You're literally the most intense person I've ever met in my life, and you're calling him intense.
So I had my notes and I was sitting, dude.
It was like 115 degrees in that hangar because they had these fire barrels.
It's in the middle of the summer in Atlanta, right?
So I had these fire barrels.
So I'm sitting there.
And it gets hotter during the day.
People don't know the lights that are on.
So Bill gets hotter and hotter and hotter.
Bill comes in with his shirt off, his cowboy boots, you know, and he was like, it's so fucking hot in there.
And he goes, I need a cooling tent and this and that.
And I'm like, I don't even know what a cooling tent is.
So then he's like a typical Hollywood star.
Love him, not all of them.
Then he looks at me and he was reading his note.
And then he looks at me.
He goes, Are you fucking meditating?
Because I was sitting there like this.
And I say, I'm slowing down my heart rate.
Not anymore, Bill.
Right?
I'm slowing down my heart rate because then it cools down my body.
So I won't, you know, sweat.
Right?
So here's Bill trying to meditate.
He's so funny, though.
You know, that was one of my first days.
He tried to meditate.
You got Bill Goldberg to try to meditate right now.
Yeah, he tries to meditate.
He's a pretty cool dude.
So he has a spiritual side of him, what you see.
He is high energy.
But getting back to Call of Duty.
So we're doing close quarters training in San Francisco.
And Infinity Ward, they follow us, you know, on social media, on YouTube.
So I post where I am and I post like what I'm doing, right?
Training.
And I was training close quarters battle.
And Infinity Ward emails us and says, hey, can you fly out to LA?
So here we are.
We're toting our guns or equipment.
Kai, can you pull that up?
Type in Call of Duty to Lamb.
And then we go out there.
It was my wife and I.
And we're standing out there and we met the president, right?
So first we met the teams and they're broken.
Man, they're so professional.
They're broken up, so creative.
And then the president comes out and he was a fan and he said, hey, man, big, big fan.
Thank you for everything you do.
And he goes, he talked to us for a good three minutes and he said, how can I get you on a game?
And I was like, excuse me?
And he goes, how can I get you on a game?
My wife is standing there.
And she goes, well, if you want Ronin, he has to come in as Ronin.
And he goes, okay, what else?
And we run our own gear.
Yeah, we design.
And then she's like, well, if you want that, then he wears his own gear.
He goes, okay, done deal.
Is that your gear?
Basically what they did was they plucked me out.
They just threw me in the game, literally.
It's special force.
Good for them.
All that, right?
And I did emotion capture.
So you see there in motion capture in the studios with them.
You know, we recently did motion capture all the gun scenes and everything with them.
So it's been really amazing journey.
And you know what I take from this is that, man, you know, a bunch of kids are playing my character now.
That's going to be wild.
A bunch of kids.
But you know what?
You know, Bruce Lee, when he was an actor, right?
He used this platform to spread about equality, right?
About martial arts, educating people.
And I do that the same.
You know, I'm not Bruce Lee, obviously, but I use my platform to spread the word about compassion, love, you know, leadership, right?
So I use that.
I'm giving the tools to all these youth, right?
They're such a multiple age right now, and they're playing my character.
So why not give them a word?
Where does the character or your alter ego, Ronin, where does that come from?
Because that's what is the basis of that.
So, you know, I lived the life of Bushiro.
I lived the life of the way, the warrior, right?
So Bushido in Japanese is broken down.
Bull means to intercept the spirit, to go to war.
She is the one who chooses to walk the path, the one who's strong enough to walk the path, the way, a warrior.
And do is to take your whole life experience and to give back for the sake of humanity.
Bushido, right?
So I walked the path of Bushiro.
So let me explain what Ronin means.
So back in the frugal stating periods of Japan, war-stating periods of Japan, you had samurai who served the daniels, right?
So if you were fired, you become Ronin, the masterless.
So it was very shameful, dishonorable to be the Ronin back in war-stating periods of Japan.
But there were Ronins that were, you know, famous, like Miya Motomosashi, the 47 Ronins.
You know, there were stories of these Ronins that were amazing.
So where did Ronin come from?
You know, I was, after I got out of the army, I was heavily addicted to painkillers.
You know, and Patrick would tell you, man, like, that's a normal thing in our world.
You had a similar problem, did you?
No.
Okay.
Don't blame me, Doug.
Maybe it was something else.
It wasn't painkillers.
Okay, but Patrick would tell you, like, in this special operations world, we...
I thought he had that.
Dude, we mass our pain, man.
It's such an intense world, you know, that world.
The special operations world.
You come back from a rotation, a combat rotation, you can't even talk to anybody about what happens.
You're driving defensively on the road, and you don't even know why you're doing it because your brain is switching to that level.
So I was really messed up, right?
And I got out.
And I was sitting in the dark room one day, defeated.
Defeated.
My wife was working out in Denver.
I was defeated, caught up in painkillers.
When I had to quit, then the voice told me, get up.
So I got up, I had this blanket, I walked around in a dark house, and somehow ended up in my library.
And I opened up this bookcase, and I had books from since I was, gosh, I started reading since I was 11.
I have books all around the world, too, right?
And somehow I just reached in, I grabbed the book, didn't even look.
It was the Book of Five Rings by Miyomotomashi, a Ronin that was born in the late 1500s and died in 1645 after writing a book of five rings.
Now I'm holding in my hand.
He wrote it in a Buddhist cave after meditating for three years, finding his peace.
And here I am holding this book in my hands.
And the pastor said, all your love, all your emotion, everything exists.
Everything exists.
Look nowhere else but within.
It's a legendary book, by the way.
It's like Art of War, Five Rings.
You know, 40 Laws of Power, I think, talks about five rings.
Yeah, it's a 33 Strategies of War book.
Also spends a lot of time talking about that.
Fascinating stuff.
Would you mind if we get some of your thoughts on what's going on today?
I want to kind of hear your thoughts on what's going on.
So, number one, let's go to page five, shipping crisis in America today.
So, there's a lot of talk about shipping crisis, and people have different opinions on what's going on.
America isn't running out of everything just because of a supply chain crisis.
America's running out of everything because Americans are buying so much stuff.
This is an insider story.
And this story is coming from Warren, the National Retail Federation.
Americans aren't buying everything they can get their hands on, and they'd be buying even more of it if it weren't for those pesky supply chain snarls the National Retail Federation said.
Those shortages seem so say that word right there for ubiquitous.
Ubiquitous.
That the term everything shortage is now being used liberally to describe consumers' frustration as they try to get goods of all sorts, paper towels, milk, toys, and more.
To understand the situation, consider the country's inventory to sales ratio.
This metrics tracked by the U.S. Census Bureau compares how much stuff sellers have on hand on how much stuff consumers are buying.
The ratio is at a 10-year low, which indicates that we're low on stuff.
It's low because sales have gone completely nuts in the first nine months of 2021.
Retail sales were up 14.5% over the same period in 2020.
And today we have 100 ships waiting offshore at LA ports with cargo, which is an examiner story.
23 of the waiting ships are mega containers, meaning they are the largest shipping vessels in the world that can hold more than 10,000 20-foot containers.
Ships must abide by a set of rules, which when picking up a spot, such as standby shiplanes and anchoring at two miles out from shipping, all this other stuff.
So anyways, we hear all these stories about shipping shortages.
Two, you have some experience with this.
What do you think is really going on here?
Is it really a supply chain crisis or are we just buying too much stuff?
I definitely think it's both.
Like we've been doing this to ourselves for many years, outsourcing, right?
Manufacturing, right?
Bringing in imports instead of pushing out exports.
So we're relying so much on other countries.
Think about what we're doing with all the products, you know, manufacturing in China, manufacturing in South America.
All these are cheaper labor, right?
So businessmen is going to want to go and get.
So we've been doing this for years, growing a wealthy America, right?
Independent business owners are getting more wealthy by outsourcing to Ford.
So we've been doing this, and this became a norm in America.
We've been building this infrastructure for years, relying on external imports.
China built an empire off of slave labor.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So now, with us relying on other countries with COVID hitting, right?
COVID obviously shut down the whole world.
So now we're at that backlog.
What you're saying now, Patrick, is do you think that America is overspending?
Yes, I do think that too.
Because we do not, okay.
I feel there's a percentage of America, a large percentage of America, that does not trust the administration right now, does not trust the future of America and our safety of America.
So that's why they're going to stock up.
They're going to stock up on water.
They're going to stock up.
What's causing the lack of trust, though?
What is causing the lack of trust?
I hear many different things.
I'm curious what you think.
Well, you know, like how, you know, deceitful the media is on certain things.
Like they're saying there's no shortage, but then we go into a grocery store.
They're saying there's no shortage, but then it takes us forever to buy something online.
Getting a steak these days, right?
So what I'm saying to you, there is a shortage.
And, you know, I feel like the administration, too, is kind of playing it off.
As in, you know, I mean, we heard about, you know, the imports of goods.
And, you know, they made a comment.
The administration made a comment about the reclining chairs.
Oh, you won't have a dishwasher?
Right, right.
So they're kind of like pushing it off, but America is kind of overspending.
They're being condescending about it a little bit.
Right, right.
But that's why Americans are overspending because they do not trust the media.
But there's also a lie, too, because if the reason why there aren't things to buy is because we're buying so much stuff, then why isn't the economy booming?
The economy's tanking.
So if we're overspending, why is the economy tanking?
I feel the economy is tanking because we're mass reducing the American dollar, right?
So inflation's going through the roof right now.
Unemployment is going through the roof.
You know what I mean?
We're supporting the non-working class.
So that's not going to bring back our, that's not going to bring back our economy.
Did you guys see the county in LA?
The Central Coast County in California.
Can you pull that up?
Central Coast County in California, gas prices.
I posted this yesterday.
ABC Eyewitness News, Kyle, Texas to you.
California gas prices in this county hit.
No, this is not an exaggeration.
$7.59 a gallon.
$7.59 a gallon.
Premium is nearly $8.50.
I predicted $10 gas prices are coming.
I'm $2 away at that point.
Bad time for anybody that just bought a Ferrari.
Premiums threw the roof.
Shut someone that's not.
I walked here this morning.
It took me seven hours.
I'm thinking about getting a car, but not anymore.
Well, that's definitely not going to happen.
Well, you brought up, there's two sides to this because you brought up the supply chain issue.
We talked about that on the last podcast.
Phil Heath, who I believe you know, he said his mom worked in the supply chain.
He had a good personal story.
But I also think there's another side to this, which you touched on, is that in America, we buy a lot of shit, like a lot of shit.
And you said that some of the happiest people you've ever seen in your day have just been the poorest people that didn't have a lot of stuff going on their life.
And I think that what I've seen is that Americans consume a lot of stuff.
I'm not saying I'm a minimalist, but I definitely gravitate towards being a minimalist, not needing the fancy stuff to fulfill your life.
Like it's actually scientifically proven to be a sugar high.
Oh, I want to get this.
I want to get this.
And three days later, you're super excited to get a new pair of shoes or a new bag or a new whatever.
And three days later, scientifically, your emotions are amorphous.
That's why I mean, it's like we look at the, like Bushido, right?
Matsashi said, we look at the externals to allow us to feel something internally, right?
And wealth is one of them, right?
Materialistic items is another one.
Look, that's an American thing.
Exactly.
Okay, that's an American thing.
We're not going to change that.
Well, I don't know if we're going to change the entire culture, but this is where you have to look inside yourself and look in the mirror and say, do I really need this?
Is buying more stuff really what I'm looking for in life?
I get it.
People need the basics.
People need milk.
People need gas in this case.
No, I disagree.
All the consumerism.
But also the shortage is because the gas prices are going through the roof.
The shortage on truck workers and the mandates.
So I feel like that's shorting.
That's closing down the supply chain as well.
These are two different issues here.
What you're choosing.
Okay.
So let's just say what you're saying is save that money.
Fine.
Well, I'm just saying that there's a flip side to the supply chain stuff.
It's that how much stuff do you need?
We talk about they're canceling Christmas.
So you're not getting 20 Christmas presents.
Holy girl, that's a question to say how rich is good.
How rich is rich?
So if you live in America, the reason why you love America is because the person has the freedom to choose.
America was founded on four different things.
Freedom to choose, freedom to buy, freedom to sell, freedom to fail, freedom to try.
Buy, sell, try, fail.
It's up to you.
Go for it.
It's capitalism.
Do what you got to do.
You want to buy it?
Buy it.
You don't want to buy it?
Don't buy it.
It's totally up to you.
This is not a philosophical conversation here about this.
This is about why the hell do we have the shortages?
One is saying we're buying too much.
The other is saying, oh, it's because 100 ships are sitting out there.
We can't get it off.
People don't want to come in here and work and take that stuff off.
10,000 containers that you're talking about, the biggest one.
They got 23.
These ships are the biggest ships.
And then you got Jen Sackey who comes out yesterday saying, when asked about Biden's supply chain crisis, Sackey cracks a joke at the expense of Americans.
This is a post-millennial story.
She says, it was clear in March of 2020 when COVID hit that the supply chain across the world had been disrupted.
Even as the sort of work to fight back against COVID proceeded people, it was crystal clear that things were not improving on supply chain.
People couldn't get dishwashers and furniture and treadmills delivered on time, not to mention all sorts of other things.
So why did the tragedy of the treadmills that's delayed?
She talks about it and joking about it.
During the pandemic, many gyms were closed, et cetera, et cetera.
So, you know, this is about this Christmas.
People are not going to get stuff on time.
And they're preparing everybody.
Don't expect your gifts to show up on time.
Why is this happening?
America is not going to change their habits overnight.
That takes a generation or two to do.
But this concern here, you've got a capitalistic society who's accustomed to getting products being delivered on time.
Now they're not.
Yeah, this isn't philosophy.
This is mismanagement.
You know, philosophically, you want to talk about minimalism?
It's a different conversation.
But this is mismanagement.
I agree.
Yeah, like this is, you know, but this isn't just America.
This is a global supply issue.
It's not like this is immune to America.
Yeah.
Only in America.
I'm not having a support.
It's crazy.
It's almost like coordinated.
I know.
It's crazy.
It's almost like we'll run nothing and be handy.
Right.
Because the entire world's been dealing with a pandemic.
But yeah, poorly, too.
So listen, LA in particular, the regulations are what are shutting down the LA right now.
It's government that's causing a six-month backlog.
It's not the pandemic.
It's the government response to the pandemic.
It's also a lack of workers we discussed.
Which is due to the government response to the pandemic.
You know, this is, it's very, very, very clear.
There's not a backlog in Jacksonville right now.
One of the biggest ports on the East Coast.
Is there a six-month backlog?
supply chain broken and in the you're saying this is on Gavin Newsom It's on Gavin Newsome.
It's on Bill de Blasio.
It's on Andrew Cuomo.
It's on people that are in control.
How is New York affecting LA?
De Blasio.
This is a literal nationwide logistics problem that we're doing.
You just said it was Jacksonville.
Jacksonville's LA is a problem.
Jacksonville's fine.
You can look at where the backlog is.
There's a backlog in New York Harbor.
There's a backlog in Elizabeth.
There's a backlog.
The LA backlog is as nine.
It's like six months behind right now.
It's actually cheaper for a lot of these ships to redirect from the Pacific, go through the freaking Panama Canal, and then come to the East Coast.
They will unload quicker than waiting in port in LA.
You know, so.
Freedom to try.
Freedom to try, man.
Listen, this is a logistics.
Just this morning, there's a guy I had breakfast with at my condo, man.
The guy sells pepperidge farm cookies.
It's incredible how much money there is in cookies, man.
$398 was where the cookies started this year.
They're up to $417.
He sells them wholesale.
He said they'll be $5 by the end of the year.
I mean, that doesn't seem like much.
That's a 33% increase in one year just off of shipping.
33% on cookies.
What's milk?
What's things that need to be refrigerated?
Cookies can stay on the shelf for two years.
What are things that are perishable?
I mean, it's going to go through the roof, man.
We've only just begun to feel the pain.
Look, I'm with you.
Clearly, we need our stuff in America, especially if it's staple industry.
But we talked about it takes generations to fix.
Well, I'll flip it on you.
There's somebody named Marie Kondo.
You know who that is?
Who basically said, you know, goes to people's houses and says, does this spark joy to you?
And if not, get out, get rid of it.
Sure.
No matter what's going on with supply chain and macroeconomics and tariffs or whatever, at the end of the day, this comes down to how many fucking cookies do you actually need?
How much extra stuff do you need?
I get staples.
I'll put you on Front Street then.
Why do you live in Boca Raton for three times the amount of money it would cost you to go live out in Coral Springs?
You can go west in the swamps and live for $500.
If it's about efficiency, how come you don't live out there?
Like where I live.
Yeah.
That's your choice.
Exactly.
That would be the money to do it.
That would be seen as excessive.
I don't think that's excessive.
How dare you?
It's excessive as compared to buying a single wide out in the swamps, right?
Like, I mean, if everything is about efficiency, if everything, if materials are not.
Yeah, but if the world crumbled and I had to go live in a smaller place, I didn't have any money, I'd still be happy.
Like, I get it.
Like, supply, like, I'm not going to be like, oh, my God, I have to go and move into a smaller unit.
Buddy, I lived in a little shack in Dallas just to be a minimalist.
But you loved it.
Not really.
But I did it because I wanted to be a part of Valutaine, and that's what I was willing to do to go through the struggle in this case.
I mean, not that big of a deal.
But that's what I was willing to do.
But a part of me, I understand our supply chain.
I get it.
But Crimea River, if your cookies are a dollar more, bro.
Let me ask you a question.
Pull up a larger problem.
Pull up the top 10 ports in the U.S. Pull up the top 10 ports in the U.S. Top 10 ports in the U.S.
Yeah.
So let's go through.
So number one is what?
You got LA is one.
Okay, Long.
Got it.
So hang on, let me see the numbers right there.
7,500 acres, 1800 vessels, 178 military revenues, tons, $276 billion of value.
Leading trading partners, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, $1.6 million.
Okay, keep going to the next one.
That's our gate to the west.
Yep.
Long Beach.
I'm sorry, the gate to the east.
Long Beach is next.
370.
Okay, go to next.
New York and New Jersey is third.
Got it.
That's also China, India, Germany.
Then it's Georgia Port, Savannah, and Brusnick.
Okay.
Well, just so you know, guys, number three, New York and New Jersey, that's actually three separate ports.
There's Port Newark, Port Elizabeth, and then there's Port of Manhattan.
Okay.
Then the New York Naval Lard, which is actually in Brooklyn.
Got it.
So you got Georgia ports, Seattle-Tacoma ports.
So Georgia gets automobiles, heavy machinery, agriculture products, deep water terminals, gardens, and collections.
Okay, got it.
So that's coming from where?
Savannah.
Okay, so then we have Seattle-Tacoma ports, oil seats, grains, machinery, computers.
Then we got six, Port Metro, Vancouver.
Go to the next one.
This is basically Seattle.
Yep, Virginia is next.
Then we have Houston is eighth.
Go to nine and ten.
South Carolina, Oakland.
Oakland is willing to help LA, by the way, because right now, apparently, Oakland is not that busy.
So Oakland's sending their workers right now to LA to help out with the shortage that's going on.
Yeah.
So listen, there's two conversations here with what you're saying versus what's going on.
One, the issue at hand is what?
We have all these ships and they're waiting.
And we're going to get that car go out because people are running businesses.
And if they don't get it, and some of the stuff that we talk about sits there, you may not even be perishable.
Can you sell it?
Can you not sell it?
That's a big problem, right?
Two is a mindset about saving money, which that goes to a conversation of America being one of the worst savers in the world.
You know, we're overspenders.
We're constantly financing everything, which I don't disagree there either.
We went one time to, I was at an island.
I don't know where this was, Barbados.
I think I was at.
So the driver is taking me, and we got 40 people in this bus.
He's driving me.
I said, so what do you do for a living?
He says, I'm the mayor.
I said, yo, they call you the mayor.
That's your nickname?
He says, no, I'm the mayor.
I said, no, I'm serious.
He says, I'm the mayor of this town.
You're not the mayor this time.
He said, Google me.
Because I'm like sitting there.
I'm like, come on, bro.
I said, let me see your license as a driver.
He gives me a license.
I Google him.
I'm like, mayor of this city.
I see the freaking mayor?
I'm the mayor.
He goes, that's freaking sick.
Good for you, mayor.
So we're driving, we're having a good time.
He's telling these stories.
I said, so tell me how the economy works here.
If you want to buy a house, he says, you see that house right there?
That was my house.
I said, what'd you pay for that?
He said, I paid $80,000 for that house.
Some small number, not a big number.
I said, so when it comes down to financing, how do you finance that thing?
He says, oh, there's one thing we don't do here.
We don't do financing here.
I said, how do you buy that house?
He says, you have to have cash.
If you don't have cash, you don't buy that house.
What city is this?
This is Barbados.
Some weird place I was at with that.
That's like Dave Ramsey Fantasy Land.
Yeah, but so I said that Jen would remember this.
So I said, okay.
So I said, so you mean to tell me anybody that buys a house here buys cash?
He says, anybody that buys a house here, you buy cash.
If you rent, you rent.
If you buy, you buy.
So that's the extreme of the complete opposite side.
You have to have a, you want to buy a million dollar house?
You got to buy cash.
You want to buy a $600,000 house?
You got to buy cash.
So now you're not happy about that part because to you, it's like, wait a minute, we need financing, right?
Well, to that country, financing and being able to go finance the million-dollar loan and only put 10% down, which is $100,000, and you live in a million-dollar home where you're financing $900,000, making a $5,200 mortgage payment per month, you're being a little aggressive.
I think that part needs to be a balance.
When the no-income, no asset loans we had and people were financing 100%, we financed 98%.
That was aggressive.
So I'm kind of with you on a little bit more of putting up cash to buy a house, a little bit more of less credit cards, everything being debt, more buying stuff that you can afford with your cash.
But at the same time, that's philosophy.
This is reality that's going on today.
And they got to address this.
They don't have a lot of time to address this.
That's a long-term fix.
We need a quick short-term fix right now.
Being positive, don't you think that's something that will get fixed over time?
I get it.
That's an issue right now today.
But don't you think they're actively?
I'm not even being political here.
Don't you think that the people in charge are actually trying to figure it out?
I don't know if that's true.
You think they're trying to purposely sabotage it?
Part of the Build Back Better agenda is, yeah, there's some odds.
So they want sabotage.
No, yes.
I'll just say yes.
Who wants to?
It's a sabotage.
There's a global community.
I think that there is a push so we minimize our wealth in America.
It's a wealth.
I don't disagree with that.
So if they're able to control the supply chain, we can't buy and continue to, you know, and they're trying to save the earth, right, with the climate change.
Buying keeping these ships out that burn millions of gallons of diesel.
Well, not making, not running these factories to keep on producing our materialistic goods.
I think that there's a lot of, a lot of what we've dealt with in the pandemic is some sort of long play into climate change agenda.
Well, I want to talk to you about this because my grandfather, right, fought World War II.
So he always told me, hey, you can't buy, you can't buy it.
Unless you could pay cash for it, like that kind of attitude.
Where did that mindset change?
Because if you look at the Americans that came out of the Depression, that era, that they grew up in that era, they're all about minimal living.
So I think that once America goes through this, just a tip of an iceberg, we're going to go back to that same methodology.
I can actually answer that question when it changed.
1978, the Community Reinvestment Act, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, started student loans, government-backed student loans, government-backed housing.
That's what started the free credit spigot, and it's only gotten worse from there.
Well, credit cards that came before that.
Well, diners car, diners' clubs, all the cards.
Diners clubs.
Exactly.
But what you had to do to get a credit card back in the day was insane.
The credit, you want to talk about income inequality in the world?
Credit score.
You know, nobody ever talks about this ever.
You've never seen anybody march against credit, right?
Isn't that crazy?
Nobody's ever marched against Visa.
Nobody's ever marched against MasterCard.
There's never been a Occupy Discover.
Credit score is the largest wealth disparity in the world.
The wealthier you are, the more access to funds you have.
If you're not wealthier, if you've struggled and you need the money, they won't give it to you.
But, you know, listen, part of that also, it's really, really genius.
It's really genius why they went to education first, especially when you look at the fact that they got rid of, you know, like scores to get into higher education.
Now that there's no testing in a lot of high schools, they're getting rid of the SAT.
Higher education is not about intellect anymore.
It's 100% about obedience.
And the longer you go in education, the more you're willing to put up with.
It's more of an obedience test.
If you get your PhD with a state school, you may not have ever been in the top echelon of your class.
You just stayed in school.
Now think of the brilliance of that.
The brilliance of having people literally pay to do work instead of getting paid to do work for 10 years.
And our society looks at them as if they're the value.
Our society looks at a trucker, a CDL, about to make 250 grand this year as if he gave up on life.
He looks at somebody that enlisted in the military as like last ditch, right?
But somebody that doesn't earn anything, that pays money to do work, they're somebody noble.
They get a name.
They're a doctor.
They're a PhD.
Well, there's the flip side to the story is that they actually have to enter the working world at age 35 and then they get paid, hopefully, a quarter million dollars, half a million dollars.
How's that working out for people with masters in basket weaving?
Well, obviously some people don't think ahead of the ROI of what you're going to go to school for.
No, clearly.
But there's, there's, I believe there's a longer strategy in place.
I think there's two things.
I think there's two things.
I think there's those who maybe are evil motivations that they have.
Let's just say there's a group like that.
I think it's a very small community.
I don't think it's as big of a community as it's a small community, but they got a lot of power.
Yeah, yeah, no, I'm not disagreeing.
I'm just telling you, it's a very small community that is actually trying to do that to ruin the westernized philosophy, capitalism, the rich, all that other stuff.
I think there's a flip side of it where sometimes you do something in your life and you didn't count all the possibilities of negative things that could happen to you and you're going to pay some consequences, suffer some consequences.
And that's what's happening right now.
Today's a byproduct of bad policies.
Today's a byproduct of falling for the trap of let's keep giving people free money.
Today's a byproduct of getting people not to go to work and saying, oh, they need three more months.
They need six more months.
Keep sending them money.
Keep sending the money.
We're talking about this right now and our transportation czar is at home.
Yeah, two-month paternity leave.
month paternity leave uh which which anyways two month paternity leave uh is what they're going through while we're going through babies you take paternity leave i didn't The day I had it, I was working.
But that's a different story.
I don't have the luxury of being an educated, smart guy like Pete.
I don't have the fancy degree.
It's true.
I don't have that luxury.
Anyways, going back to it, byproduct, bad policies.
Manipulators behind closed doors?
Sure.
Small community.
Bad policies would produce this kind of environment that we currently have.
I don't hate the manipulators, Pat.
I got to be honest.
That's their job.
This is what they want to do, right?
They want to take over the world.
They want fair, okay?
That's what they want.
Who I actually, hate's a strong word, who I really blame, I blame the useful idiot.
I blame the person that goes along with the manipulators because they just want to fit in.
They don't actually look into anything.
They don't look at anything other than a completely superficial understanding of what's happening.
And they want to tweet something so their favorite celebrity retweets them.
They want to put social pressure on a nurse that she has to choose, a single mother nurse, has to choose between putting something in her body that she doesn't want or losing her job and not being able to feed her kid.
The people that are pressuring her into doing the quote-unquote right thing, those are the people I can't stand.
Not the manipulators at the top, because you're right.
It's very, very, very few of them.
But they manipulate the masses into being these valuable people.
Let's talk about that.
What just happened right now with the potential exodus of Navy SEALs brings backlash.
I want to read this to you, especially you being in that world yourself and want to get your thoughts on this.
So potential exodus of Navy SEALs brings backlash on vaccine mandates.
This is a center square story.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced in August that with Biden's approval, that all U.S. service members must receive a COVID-19 vaccine shot.
The decision came after the Pfizer vaccine received full approval from the U.S. and FDA.
That mandate, though, leaves many U.S. troops facing a tough personal decision.
It has been reported that hundreds of Navy SEALs have been told they will not be deployed if they will not receive the vaccine.
They will no longer be able to serve as the Navy SEAL.
We generally have about 2,500 Navy SEALs, said Robert O'Neill, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who claims to have killed Osama bin Laden.
It takes time to get to certain levels.
Hundreds are leaving because of this nonsense.
And you said this is happening right now with SWAT as well.
What are your thoughts about this, too?
I mean, the military, unfortunately, when you started to draw the line, you're Uncle Sam's, right?
So you're going to have to listen to the orders of your superior officers and these superior officers that you're serving under is going to listen to the orders of the four-star generals that are underneath the politicians.
So we don't have those luxuries in the military.
But for the special operations guys to be mandated, look, guys, it takes a lot of money to train one of those.
For me, they spent over a million dollars training one of us in our experience level.
It takes a long time to grow one of us.
It's not like you graduate the training and you get to the teams, you're proficient, right?
You get to the teams eight years into the teams, maybe you're proficient.
And you get more training as you're going.
So what I'm saying to you, if these are senior members of the Navy, of the teams, and when I say Navy SEALs, this is SOCOM, Special Operations Command, all together, right?
So they're mandating all these mandates that you're going to have to get the vaccination, but guys are getting out.
They're not re-enlisting.
They're getting out.
They're turning in their paperwork.
They're getting dishonorable discharge.
Whatever.
Are you hearing these stories?
Because is it just a couple guys writing about it?
Are you hearing about this actually taking place right now where guys are leaving?
Oh, I know some guys that are doing it.
And I'm into that world, you know, and not just the military.
I cross-train.
I teach SWAT teams.
I teach major police departments all through the United States.
I've been doing it for six years.
And they too are getting out.
These major cities, like, come on, Chicago, one of the dangerous cities in the United States.
I have some friends that are getting out.
They're taking unpaid leave because they're not going to do this.
And they're all leaving because they don't want to take the job.
They don't want to take the job.
And it boils down to this, guys.
They don't trust the administration.
You know what I mean?
Like, if there's another maybe administration that's, you know, not so deceiving maybe to their people, right?
Think about Afghanistan.
Think about all the borders, all this stuff, right?
Right.
So many fronts that were looking at lies.
And then, you know, making fun of, you know, our supply chain, just blowing it off.
So that's why they're building this group of Americans that don't trust the administration.
Well, you told the story, I think you said it on Rogan, where when you joined the army, like you had no choice.
Like you went in.
11 shots.
Yeah.
They got you.
But you didn't have a choice in that matter, right?
No choice.
So how does it work in the military or in the Navy SEALs or in the Army that at some point you do get a choice?
No.
Okay, you don't get it.
So you have to do it.
That's why they're getting, that's why, you know, some of them are getting disarmed with discharge.
They're being punished.
That's the part that's being punished.
Dishonorable.
That's like you're getting fired.
Like you're fired.
That's like telling us.
Don't we want as many Navy SEALs as possible?
Like, don't we want them?
You want as many warriors protecting our country.
Right.
Unless you don't want, unless you're not actually trying to protect the country.
And you want some highly trained individuals protecting our countries in an unconventional war that's highly trained in an unconventional war.
So what I'm saying is, dude, we fought these wars overseas to protect our homeland.
You know, don't let them throw the mask on saying, oh, we were there to kill this guy.
Yeah, that was a mission.
But we're there to stabilize the region because that is a natural resources.
That's why everybody's trying to flock to the Middle East to control it because he who controls the Middle East, control the natural resources, will become a superpower.
Yeah.
The gateway to the East.
Obviously, the exit in itself was a disaster leaving Afghanistan.
Look, man, look.
But getting out.
I'm not going to lie.
Afghanistan was a long, drawn-out war.
America, we dumped trillions, trillions of dollars.
And just not if Afghanistan, but Iraq, the Philippines, the war in Africa, the war in the middle.
You know, I mean, you guys are not hearing the wars that we're fighting, these secret wars, right?
So imagine that being dumped.
So we needed to get out of there.
But man, any military guy would tell you there's a planned withdrawal, even if an ambush, a raid, anything so simplistic like that.
But imagine you've been fighting a war for 20 years.
We own that region.
We militarily owned that region.
And when we started collapsing our forces in, did you know that the Taliban took 90% of that country already?
When they were getting the intelligence and then they're saying, oh, it won't collapse?
They already knew it's going to collapse.
Who do you put that on?
Meaning, is it the generals?
Is it actually Biden?
Was it the agreement that Trump did with the Taliban?
I'm going to let you know how the rank structure works.
The president is where the buck stops, but he has his military advisors.
The military advisors advise him on the tactics and the strategy on how to withdraw.
It's up to the president if he willing to listen to it.
So I wasn't there.
I don't know what conversations are being held, but I'm telling you, when I saw how things unfold on, I don't know, on a public television, I could tell you I could war game it from there.
You shouldn't have closed down all the air bases and go down, condensed only one airbase.
We had Bagram.
We had all these other air bases.
Why are you going to condense all your forces in one area?
We know that the Taliban's going to control that area.
So what I'm saying to you is there was a strategy, just like there's a strategy in war and withdrawal.
There was no strategy on this withdrawal, and we lost our footing in one of the most important regions in the world for America, for not only our safety, but for the growth of America.
Right?
Economically.
We left it.
And then now we're legitimizing the terrorist organization.
We're about to finance them.
We're going to finance them.
We're allowing them to enter our country.
You know, so for me, look, I'm not a politician, man.
Do you feel betrayed at all as a service member?
When you leave our troops, when you leave our troops to die, when you, you know, gosh, man, I've been in these countries.
I worked at Singletons.
You know, I couldn't imagine being left overseas, serving my country under the orders that you gave me.
And you're going to leave us.
And that's not the first time this administration did.
We did in Libya when the annex got attacked and the SEALs and the CIA guys got drug out in the streets.
We left the Obama administration, yeah.
We left them.
Right?
Hillary.
We left them.
So this administration is showing that kind of same lack of support for our military, who's ordered to go and fight for the home for the safety of our homeland.
And what about the Border Patrol, who's ordered to protect our borders is now being scrutinized, right?
Judged off of a photo, off of racism.
Everything is racism.
They're going to throw it in your face.
You know, you got to look at the bigger picture here.
Right?
The bigger picture is the safety of our country and the growth of our country.
And how are we going to sustain, you know, to be a superpower?
Because I tell you, man, there's a lot of countries in this world that wants to take us down.
And our military is the only one that's fighting overseas to safeguard our country.
And that, too, you know, is being taken away.
To who would you put at the top when you said there's a lot of countries that want to take us down?
Who's at the top?
Is China at the top?
China's always been at the top, Patrick.
Has always been at the top.
Yeah, China.
China, you know, people say, do you think we're going to go to war, China?
You always say that to me.
And said, you know, first of all, what does modern day warfare look like to you?
That China's been at war.
Do you think it's propaganda?
Yes.
Do you think that it's cyber warfare?
Yes.
Do you think it's manipulation of social media?
Yes.
Currency.
Economy.
So we're already at war.
Right?
So don't judge war as troops on the ground.
Right.
Hot war.
Right.
So once you own infrastructure, you own supplies and everything.
How can we even go to war?
We can't even.
We can't even fill up our tanks and jets because we're buying our gases and oil from where?
Russia.
Our enemies.
We're making our enemies stronger.
That's what we're doing.
And us losing Afghanistan and now China moving in, you don't think they have the energy supply it needs in northern Afghanistan supply there, China?
There's interest there.
And they'll go to war for it.
And let me ask you this.
So Taiwan, that's our allies, right?
So we left our allies in Afghanistan, right?
India now is surrounded geographically by the Middle East.
Now they're in a state of deficit, right?
So now, who's going to protect, you know, who's going to protect our borders now?
Because we don't have eyes and ears in the Middle East anymore.
You know, Afghanistan was a hub that we used to get eyes and ears into the Middle East so we can flex where we needed to, that we can control the region, stabilize the region.
Now you have a country that's ran by terrorists and is known to train terrorists in that country, and now they're the richest, probably one of the richest countries.
Kai, can you?
There's two things I want to get feedback from you on.
That was powerful on the exchange there.
One, with the time that we have left, we got 18 minutes left.
I want to get your thoughts on Barry Weiss to Stelter.
We'll cover that.
I want to talk about the re-education camps.
And then there's a story that just came up about Joe Manchin.
I don't know if you saw Joe Manchin's story that came up.
Colin Powell will address that before we wrap up.
Matter of fact, let's just do Colin Powell right now, page eight, and then I'll go to the other two stories.
Colin Powell, first black U.S. Secretary of State, dies of COVID-19 implications, amid the cancer battle.
This is a CNN story, and he was fully vaccinated.
First black U.S. Secretary, leadership in several Republican administrations helped shape American foreign policies in the last years of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st century as the complications of COVID.
It was 84 years old.
And Donald Trump wrote to his supporters, wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the fake news media.
Hope that happens to me someday.
He was a classic rhino.
If even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans, he made plenty of mistakes.
But anyway, may he rest in peace.
And President Bush said he was a great public servant starting with his time as a soldier during Vietnam.
He was such a favorite of presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom twice.
Two, thoughts?
What a great general.
What a great American.
At least he served his country.
He rose up to be an amazing general.
I didn't serve underneath him.
I was in high school.
I read books on the leadership that he gave to our armed forces.
So I think he's a great American.
What I think about Trump's statement.
You know, man, politics is ugly.
It's so ugly.
And unfortunately, some people can't control their emotions online.
But do I support that statement?
No, obviously I don't support it.
I love what Colin Powell did for our country.
And I don't support that statement.
But I will tell you that wars are very political.
And lies and deceptions are made to employ soldiers overseas.
So what I'm saying is politics can get ugly, but I do not support that message that Trump said to General. Adam.
Yeah, I think Colin Powell is one of those people, whether you're on the left or the right, I'm sure that there's going to be people that disagree, but you look at him and just say, wow, like what an admirable man.
Sure, he didn't get everything right.
And I know that towards the end, he definitely didn't align himself with the Republican Party, especially Trump.
So shocker alert, Trump's talking crap about a dead general.
I don't think anyone didn't see that one coming.
But as an American, I think you can always look at Colin Powell and say, that's what America's about.
He came from a family of immigrants like yourself, like yourself, served in the Army, Presidential Medal of Freedom twice.
And may he rest in peace.
Yeah, I don't think a lot of people know his story.
You talked about dealing with your racism.
Nobody talked to him at West Point for four years.
He was in West Point.
Nobody spoke to him for four years.
Not a word.
Not a single word until his graduation.
He didn't quit.
He didn't turn coat.
He didn't say, screw this.
I would have been out.
Listen, to hell with this.
Nobody spoke to the man.
They didn't look at him for his first year.
He stuck through it.
I had lunch with him once, an incredibly powerful, powerful, powerful figure.
Disagreed with foreign policy.
I hate the Bush doctrine.
I don't think we should have been in these places.
I think we're just now seeing the fallout of the Bush doctrine.
I think it was a post-Cold War trying to, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.
I can write a whole book on how these guys were evil in my eyes.
And I think H.L. Mankin said that war is the logical conclusion of politics.
And guys like Cheney and Rumsfeld never had to go overseas, but they sent a lot of people over there.
And I can't stand that.
Colin Powell said to me, you know, I met him.
I was playing with the Newark Bears at the end of my early career.
And he goes, you know, when your career is done, you should go into the service.
And I was like, man, I don't know if that's what I'm doing.
He goes, that's a shame.
We could use guys like you.
And that was a really, really powerful thing.
It's to this day, my biggest single regret is that when baseball was over, I didn't go immediately into the service.
How old are you right now?
35.
It's not too late, Dr. Let's say.
I don't know if I can run the miles, though.
That would be the struggle.
But look, they keep lowering the standards.
I don't know.
Maybe I can identify as a tree and not have to run at all.
I don't know.
We'll see what happens.
May the man rest in peace.
Any chance to meet with him or speak with him or have any interactions with him?
And real quick, Pat, before we move on, this should put to rest that whole conversation that we had three podcasts ago about DeSantis running or not.
That's not presidential.
To attack a guy who served his country.
I'm not a fan of that.
I don't know why.
I mean, that's like the least breaking news ever.
This is seriously.
That's not the point.
I'm not a fan of that.
But at the flip side, he said he's right.
Politics is ugly and dirty.
You know, God, when Trump dies, what do you think the left's going to say when he dies?
What do you think they're going to say?
What an admirable man.
Yeah, okay.
So when that dies.
He's not doing anything to change it.
Yeah.
No, he's not doing anything to change it.
But at the same time, like this comment, McCain comment, these are not comments that are what part of that comment gets support, though?
Like, if you're trying to flip anybody, okay, tell me how that flipped anybody.
It's too petty for they said there's two perfect people, right?
There's two people, like minus a handful of people, but the unborn and the dead.
Man, just leave those two alone.
It's dead.
They can't do nothing.
They can't argue with you.
The argument is over with.
Move on.
So, anyways, it is what it is.
May the man rest in peace.
Let's go to the final couple stories that we have here.
America's re-education camps.
This is a real clear policy story.
We rightly criticize and condemn China for sending more than 1 million Uyghurs, Muslims, to re-education camps, but we have our own Milder version of re-education camps that indoctrinate all for a supposed good evolved cause.
We call our re-education camps public schools.
Here's one example of it.
For Evanston, right outside of Chicago, of what first and second graders are now taught in school.
This is not a one-off or a rogue teacher.
This is the curriculum endorsed by the superintendent and school board.
This is curriculum.
This is the curriculum for teaching seven-year-olds.
It covers more than 7,000 kindergartners through eighth grade attending 15 school.
What Evanston and school across the country are doing is unequivocally misguided.
It is dangerous.
It is divisive.
It hinders, not help, inclusion, healing, progress, community, and self-worth.
What do you say about these re-education camps?
You got some thoughts yesterday.
I'd love the audience to hear it.
You know, guys, look, you know, I know about the re-education camps, right?
My uncle was part of the re-education camps.
I interviewed my uncle growing up.
It's about changing your mind, right?
It's about brainwashing you to whatever ideology they're trying to.
So, yes, I do believe in the re-education camps is our schools, right?
They're targeting our youth, and they're targeting our youth with the critical race theories, right?
Blaming a certain race for everything.
What do you think is going to happen, man?
What do you think when these kids grow up?
What do you think?
You think it's going to be a more racist world, or you think it's going to be a more civilized world when we're introducing critical race theories into education.
Well, critical theory comes from the Frankfurt School.
It's Marxist in its origins, and it's meant to be divisive.
It's an actual, you talked about modern warfare.
This is psychological warfare.
This is propaganda.
It is.
This is indoctrinating an entire generation into believing that there are good and evil based on immutable characteristics, things that you cannot change about yourself.
You were born as one of the good guys, or you were born one of the bad guys.
And the only way to help the good guys, if you're a bad guy, is to completely cede any personal agency.
So anybody who doesn't know about the Frankfurt School, anything, anybody that doesn't know about critical race theory, I really, really, really encourage you to start reading up as much as you possibly can.
And if you want to see what indoctrination looks like, look up, what was it, Kai, that I sent you?
My China, My Life as a Communist Party member.
It's from five years ago.
I can't believe this is up.
There's two different videos.
It's My Life as a Communist Party member.
Look at like two minutes in.
And then the other one is I don't want free media.
And it's actual Chinese communist members talking about why you don't need free media and why life without free thought is actually beneficial to the collective.
It's fascinating, fascinating to watch if you guys have ever seen this stuff.
And it's, isn't it interesting, though, that they want public school in our country, that they want public school to essentially extend into people's mid-20s now?
Public school, free college, free community college, four-year classes.
Let's talk about those free colleges.
China funds our major universities.
They've been doing this for a while.
So along with them funding our major universities, don't you think they inject an ideal into these universities with the professors?
Because they're funding it, right?
So they're funding the curriculum.
So they have a say in this.
So think about it, like 70s, right?
So let's say the post-Vietnam War hippie era, right?
Think about that.
So now they're injecting a communist ideology where are these youth now?
There are politicians.
There are leaders in America.
John Kerry.
Right?
So now they have this communist ideology was embedded to them in college.
Now we're just embedding in elementary school at a very vulnerable state in their subconscious mind because they're going to take things in the way it is.
They don't have the analytical mind to decide what is right or wrong yet.
Bill de Blasio's parents fought and funded the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
And then this guy became mayor of New York City.
His parents helped finance and they were part of the consider like a Cheguevara type for the communist Sandinistas overthrowing Nicaragua.
Now this guy, you know, ran the most important city in America.
I mean, it's not, what you're saying to people sounds like crazy right-wing conspiracy theory.
They're like, this is insane.
This is the 30, nobody has the 30-year plan.
There's a 30-year plan.
It's a 50-year plan.
It's playing out in front of people.
And they just refuse at any point to connect very obvious dots.
And it becomes incredibly frustrating from the other side because at some point, like you, and Patrick is the same way.
You have natural proclivities.
Patrick always talks about being a synergist.
Bring people together, make the argument.
I'm kind of at the point where I, you know what?
Sink or swim.
You know, the information's out there.
Read it or don't.
I don't care.
I tried.
Now it's time to move on.
Now that's kind of where I'm at.
I fall more into the catalyst category than the synergist.
But I have nothing but respect for the synergist.
You guys have the patience that I just don't have.
So I don't know.
Like the information is out there.
Well, I want to talk about this before we run out of time, Patrick, because, you know, they made a Chinese Rambo.
Yeah.
Right?
And so let me explain this to you.
When I was young, I had a poster of Rambo in my and I had a poster of Arnold Schwarzenegger, right?
And these were my influence.
That's what made me who I was today, Commando Special Ops.
But right now, they made a Chinese Rambo.
And look, guys, if you guys view this, he's holding the Chinese flag as he's coming in on a raid, right?
It's very propaganda.
So what I'm saying to you is this, man.
That Chinese pride is growing.
They have the strongest, they have the strongest present in the last 50 years.
China pride is through the roof right now.
Look at where we are.
We're protesting jokes outside.
Go back to that article you were on, The Business Insider article.
So here's a Chinese propaganda film about the defeat of the U.S. Army set to become the country's highest-grossing film ever.
The battle at Lake Changjin has made $769 million since release in China on September 30th.
In the state-funded movie Outgun, Chinese troops beat their U.S. foes during the Korean war battle.
China's box office is the biggest in the world, meaning this film is also the biggest in the world.
John Cena probably starred in it.
He's probably crying somewhere that's a bit of a drink.
If you're China, why wouldn't you do this?
Meaning, why wouldn't you do a Rambo?
Why wouldn't you do a Rocky?
Why wouldn't you do a Russian colour?
That's not the debate.
That's not the debate.
The debate is we did that in the 80s, right?
Rocky versus Russia.
Rocky, Rambo versus Russians in Vietnam.
We did it, and what did it build?
It built our culture.
It built our pride in our people.
Of course.
But what I'm saying, the debate is now that China is doing that.
So what I'm saying is they have a present that's very effective right now.
They're taking national pride going on.
So what I'm saying is that country is growing in ideology, right?
And it is infectious throughout the world because now they're employing soldiers, right?
They have their first soldiers.
I read somewhere.
China has their first soldiers for deployed now to hold ground in certain regions.
Never done.
China and Russia.
That's a show that can circle the globe.
You saw that, the missiles, right?
So these missiles are so dangerous because they're subsonic missiles that can, dude, they can hug the terrain of the earth.
Let me explain to you what that means.
It's almost impossible to pick up radar-wise, right?
When we go in on infiltration, we would, we call it map of the earth.
We'll get low under radar and we'll just basically follow terrain.
It's almost, can't pick us up.
What they have is this capability now.
Subsonic missiles.
You know what I mean?
And China has that.
Does the American military have that too?
I don't, you know, I can't talk too much about what the military has, but we have some, but they have some advanced technology now and they have the technology that made us who we were.
Drones.
We left it all.
There was an episode on Rogan where he had this CIA guy, Mike Baker.
It was like literally right after you were on.
And this is some of the stuff they were discussing.
I don't know if you saw that.
We left our weapons in Afghanistan.
So now think about China owns Afghanistan because they're working with the Taliban now, right?
They own Pakistan.
There's a road from China through Pakistan to in Afghanistan.
And now they have a direct route into Kabul, which will open up the corridor into the Middle East, where we have no eyes and ears on anymore.
And they're building a supply chain all the way to the tip of Africa.
And not to say to Iran with their nuclear weapons and their hate towards Americans.
I mean, they openly said it.
Two, before I literally go kill myself, can we maybe get a little silver lining from all this?
I mean, look, you're literally the most intense guy I've ever met.
But how do you stay positive?
What do you look at?
What are your outlets?
I think life's good.
I think instead of wrapping out of that way with the two minutes that we have, because we may, I have a mastermind right now.
I have to be right on time with this that we're doing.
Two, this has been great.
I wish we had two more hours.
Really enjoyed the conversation.
I think we have some conversations we'll have off the podcast that we can have some follow-up conversations together.
Your energy, your spirit fits the culture here, what we're doing, man.
Just love what you stand for.
Love what you got going on.
I think two hours is not enough, but unfortunately, that's the only time that we have here today.
Gang, if you enjoyed this podcast, give it a thumbs up.
We are 800 subs away from 100,000 subs.
Look at us.
This last week's been an explosive week for the podcast.
I think it was the biggest week we had in subs.
and we will have the 100th episode that won't be this week, but it will be next week, and we will not be, yes.
I'll answer him real quick.
10 seconds.
The silver lining is we got men willing to fight.
We got these guys.
That's the silver line.
It ain't over.
And we got a guy that takes Uber, brothers.
Very fuel.
It makes us very, very safe.
So, Adam, everything's going to be all right.
I hope so.
I mean, seriously.
You don't have anything to worry about as long as Uber and Lyft is here.
