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Jan. 23, 2024 - Stew Peters Show
56:30
Power of the Veteran Voting Bloc: A Rallying Call
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Former President Donald Trump won Iowa.
We all know that.
If you didn't know that, you're probably living under a rock somewhere.
Today, Jason and I are going to have a conversation about how Trump in office again may be just exactly what our military needs.
So stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
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Okay, so we need to get started here.
I want to excuse myself.
I'm still a little bit under the weather, and I probably sound like I'm talking to you out of a Quaker oatmeal box.
But I reassure you, I am of sound mind.
And also, for whatever it's worth, I am not suicidal.
Okay, let's find our friend Jason.
There he is.
Hey, Jason, how are you?
Very good, and yourself?
I'm okay.
Are you suicidal?
Nope.
Nope.
Okay, so if anything happens to us and we turn up missing, just know it wasn't by our own hands.
Jason, so earlier this week, I'm sure that you know, just like everybody else, that Mr.
Trump won the Iowa primary, which we saw that same night.
Vivek dropped out and instantly talked to us about how he's endorsing Donald Trump.
Do you think, so the whole premise of the show this week is, do you think that Donald Trump in office again is going to do good things for our military, or is it going to be much of the same when and if he's elected?
Well, geez, I don't know.
Recruiting and retention were at all-time highs.
Military morale, it sure seemed positive.
And I'm pretty sure every leader on the globe understood exactly where he stood in regards to dealing with each and every one of them.
Yes, that for sure is accurate.
I don't know that I have read in any history books, seen any documentaries or anything else, other than maybe since General Patton, where a man in high-ranking places in our government has said, go ahead and F around if you want to, but also remember, I know where you are, and my red button's bigger than yours.
So if you want to, you know, didn't he tell the, what's his name, the boy child in North Korea, that, hey, if you launch another test missile, we're going to wipe you off the map and try me.
Was that him?
That was him.
That was the, I've got a bigger red button and his works.
Yeah.
Which is an important distinction when you're threatening people.
And it's even a more important distinction if you can make them believe it.
Whether or not it's true is one thing, but whether or not you can make them believe it is another.
Why do you think that when Trump was in office his first term, that retention and recruiting and all these things were at all-time highs?
Is there something, and this is maybe kind of a loaded question, bro, but is there something maybe that you think Donald Trump did or showed or just maybe his whole vibe that That soldiers, sailors, and Marines just kind of latched onto better than President Biden?
Right.
Well, I mean, you had the predecessor on the global apology tour, and then all of a sudden, Trump comes on the scene, and it's all America First.
Well, anybody that's joined the military clearly already has America First as a principal in their makeup.
And so I think that resonated with troops.
I heard stories, and I don't know, I want to believe that they're true, but the Marines provide security for the president.
Not security, security, but the Marines are always around the president, right?
Right.
And in years preceding Trump's election, people had to be told to take presidential duty or details.
There weren't a ton or a flood of people going there.
And I heard, when Donald Trump was in office, that they never once had to go find somebody for those details.
I heard that all of those duties were all volunteer, they were all full, and they cycled at the right time.
Well, and maybe it has something to do, just very simply, if you think about the times where you've seen the president, whoever he is at the time.
Walk out of the White House to Marine One and get on it or Air Force One or anything like that.
It was not out of the norm to see President Trump render the salute in which he was returning to the Marine, but then also shake his hand or pat him on the shoulder and you could see him say, hey, thank you, or you're doing a good job or something like that.
Whereas when Biden shuffles to the helicopter, It seems as if he's trying not to trip over a blade of grass.
Or when Obama walked to the helicopter, it was just a quick salute and up the ramp you go.
President Trump actually took the time to say, hey man, thank you.
Or you're doing a good job.
And make those dudes, and ladies if there were any, feel like their service and their reason for being there was appreciated.
Right.
Do you remember that story?
Do you remember seeing it where the media was all over President Trump for putting a hat back on the Marine on the tarmac?
Yes.
You remember that?
And it wasn't about the fact that here was a man that...
As the sitting president of the United States sees a military member's cover come off of his head while rendering a salute, goes and picks up the cover, goes to try to put it back on the service member's head, it falls off a second time and he still went back for that patrol cap or that other hat and got it back on that individual before he took off and patted him on the back.
No effing way will we see that type of effort.
We got a guy that can't get up the stairs right now, let alone try to render help.
I mean, can you imagine being in a worse position than needing first aid or assistance from the current resident of DC? No, no.
Not only trouble going up the stairs, but let's also not forget that he has a whole lot of trouble coming down him.
He seems to fall down stairs a whole lot more than any other president ever.
It's just like riding a bicycle.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, he can't do that either.
Keep him off of those things.
Oh, man.
Well, seriously, though, on a serious note...
I think that it's just those little things, right?
That President Trump showed to the service members around him.
That people were chomping at the bit to take this duty.
Which, in hindsight, being a retired service member myself, that'd be a pretty sweet duty.
You know, like, when he came here...
to help secure the area where the plane lands.
And, you know, I knew a couple of guys that did a couple of those duties.
They were Air Force guys, but still, it's a pretty awesome deal.
What about, do you know off the top of your head, and I don't because I haven't done the research, and shame on me, I should have, how many times or how frequently Donald Trump was in a forward area such as how many times or how frequently Donald Trump was in a forward area such as Iraq or Afghanistan or something like that, just to drop in on the troops and say hi or have a meal or serve them a holiday meal at
see.
Thank you.
I know for sure he went in 18 and 19.
The years prior, I don't know.
Okay.
But those for sure.
Because I remember that's again where the media was all over him that he was you know all golfing in the morning and nobody's paying attention to the fact that there is a nine-hour time or nine to 11 hour time shift and all of a sudden he was off the golf course and you know by the evening evening meal at home We were seeing him serving troops or doing something and so they spent the whole day bashing the piss out of him and then here He was actually doing it the right way because I don't know
Operational security is an important thing, especially when you're, you know, the President of the United States, so maybe it's not something you want to forecast.
But they took every opportunity to beat the piss out of them, and I think, you know, for me personally, like, as a former military member, like, the underdog is who I like to fight for, and the fact that this guy got shit on day in and day out, he became even more endearing to me as a shitbag.
Yeah.
I can just see a commonality between his actions and how he treats people to who I am as a person.
And I think that does respond, or I think that reverberates through the military culture when you see somebody like that.
It's not mechanical, it's not political, it's real.
Well, common courtesy.
And so that brings up a good point, because we hear and read all these Horrible things about Donald Trump, right?
Everyone's got a story about how he did them wrong or he sexually harassed them or he did this or he did that.
And I'm not here to say that he's 100% innocent because I don't know.
Maybe he is guilty of some of those things.
But the one thing that I also do know for sure is that the way that his presence just changes the vibe in the room and the feel in the room is completely different than the other side.
And furthermore, after hearing all these horrible things about him, there really isn't anybody that has any kind of visual evidence or proof of this stuff going on.
What we do have visual evidence of is of President Trump being the guy who picks up the Marines hat, the guy who drops in on the soldiers to serve them a meal or eat a meal with them, or even just stop by to say, hey man, you guys are doing a good job.
We don't have any evidence of Joe Biden doing anything just out of common courtesy other than sniffing hair and nestling his lips on the ears of little girls.
Dude, don't you remember that when Biden went somewhere and he was eating pizza in a chow hall?
No.
You remember, there are some great videos out there, certainly pictures, again, eye funny, of Joe Biden, like, eating this piece of pizza, which looked completely foreign to him, which I'm sure it wasn't.
And then in the background where all these military members just, you know, Watching this guy in comparison to, you know, when Trump was in a room, everybody was lined up behind him to get a picture.
I mean, it looked like, you know, Biden had shit his pants and they all had to be around it and like ignore it for the photo op.
I mean...
Well, and I'm sure that the excuse was, well, you know, there was COVID and we don't want anybody too close to the president, you know, because we don't want him to get COVID. He is 97 years old and he's senile.
And so we don't want him to have anything that's going to affect his health.
Furthermore, just a caveat, right out of left field.
The video that I seen once of him trying to walk to a building and the Secret Service agent was behind him going, no, no, sir, this way, this way.
And he took a left into a grassy garden.
When he should have took a right, what is happening?
And I think we all know, right?
We don't have to put out what we think is wrong with him because we can all see it.
And that's the point.
Just the feel.
The feel of the country under leadership like that is just so much different.
I can remember when Trump was in office that I could go to the grocery store and not feel like, well, there's a good chance that I'm going to get in a fight with a blue-haired hippie of some sort that's going to hate on me because I have veteran plates on my truck or something like that and have some kind of altercation.
It just seemed like he pulled the country together a whole lot better than what we have currently.
Right.
Although, if we're not told that we're all being divided, you know, if there wasn't an illusion of division, and things were all actually stated as facts rolled out, I think you would see the division has come recently.
And that division is probably pretty bad now, but it was not!
At that time, I just, everybody felt, you know, it wasn't like 9-11, like in the aftermath of September 11th, when everybody got together and locked arms and said, this is enough, and whatever happens going forward, we're all together.
But there was certainly cohesion amongst what I feel, you know, the rank and file typical people, and certainly that was reverberating through the military.
There's no question.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
And so, let's shift now.
Let's shift the conversation to the article.
Okay?
So, folks, earlier this week, on the 16th of January, an article came out that suggests that White House...
Staff and other employees, all staff, White House staff, were using military medical services that they were not eligible for.
This article was posted on military.com, which, for the most part, in my opinion, seems to lean left.
I don't know if you agree with me on that, if anybody agrees, whatever.
My opinion is that they seem to lean left.
And so this article goes on all about how these staff members were sent to places like Walter Reed Hospital for medical care and prescriptions and operations or procedures that they weren't eligible for.
Which means that, again, our tax dollars are going to pay for things that they're not meant to be paid for.
Now, here's the interesting part about this article.
Jason, you've read it.
I've read it.
It says here that according to the report from 2017 through 2020, the Defense Department funded and resourced care for an average of 6 to 20 non-DOD beneficiary patients per week at no cost to them.
Medical appointments and services that then were unavailable to active duty military personnel, their family members, or retirees.
So this is when Donald Trump was in office last time.
Okay, so here we go.
If this is in fact true, the folks responsible need to answer for it, whether it was Donald Trump or his staff or whoever it was, they need to be held accountable.
My question is this, if this study was completed or this investigation was completed in 2020, Why was it released on the 16th of January 2024, not 12 hours after former President Trump won the Iowa primary?
Right.
Well, they said in the article that they released it the middle of 23.
I think it was July.
Released it where?
That's just it, right?
So the report was made available on, you know, whatever government website buried under a bunch of garbage and trash.
But nobody wrote an article on it until now.
And I think that's what's interesting.
And then they also allude to the fact that it was a long-time issue.
I don't think this was something that was, you know, necessarily just under the Trump presidency a problem.
It was likely a problem for a long time.
But again, the fact that this is what they found, this is when it came out, and right away, the gotcha headline, you know, when you read it, then you hit the first line in this thing, and it says, under the Trump administration, The White House medical unit.
I don't know why I can't speak again today.
But boom, there it is.
I mean, there's your hit, right?
So you hit him with the headline of the malfeasance, and then who did it?
And how many times?
I think you and I probably read this together about three times.
And each time we read it, we were able to kind of read through the tea leaves of what they were writing, that it was a long-term issue.
It was more regulatory from the pharmaceutical side because those people that are there are absolutely allowed to administer acute medical attention.
And the care that was received at Walter Reed, according to this, were the staff at the White House had given the referrals to Walter Reed.
So, you know, again, did they really get used?
I don't know.
Okay, you've been in the VA system for a long time, right?
Correct.
Did you ever have regular insurance when you were going to the VA? Not till recently.
Okay, because I have noticed that, and it's been a while since I've gone, but in that kiosk, when you check in, it will say if you have, you know, primary insurance, you know, to put that information in to make sure that it gets billed.
And so, to me, there is obviously a way To get VA care with some type of other health insurance making some payments.
And so I think this maybe doesn't do the job of full investigation in this article.
And that just might be me.
But it just seems like this is another one of those hit pieces to kind of drive the narrative towards the negative.
Well, absolutely.
The idea that Somebody, after...
So, okay, as you're saying, this was released this last July.
The idea that somebody just thought to write an article about it the day after Trump wins Iowa, that's one hell of a coinkydink, I think.
Sure seems like it.
But I think that this is another example of the mainstream media of sorts trying to, of course, strategically sway an election.
And, of course, that's part of the game, right?
That's what the media does.
Their whole job is to try to pull you to their side.
And I get it.
But what I fear is that...
This is now going to sway not just this story, but I'm sure there's more to come.
When he wins the next one, there'll be another piece.
And when he wins the one after that, there'll be another article.
And then somebody's going to sue him again.
He'll be locked up in court.
And before you know it, his whole first year of his next term is going to be in court over some crap that happened however long ago.
But again, if he's guilty, he needs to answer to it, just like anybody else.
And so part of the conversation, Jason, that you and I had before we went live today was about how veterans just may be a whole voting block.
Yeah.
And that kind of – that stuck out to me because I never really – I never really thought that we'd be there.
I never really thought that there'd be enough veterans in this country for us to be able to have a voice that matters outside of our circle.
And so if the suggestion is that the veteran population in this country is now big enough in numbers that we can legitimately sway an election, That's huge.
I don't think we've ever been there as a country.
No, no.
I mean, it took 20 years to create all of us.
And again, it's another unintended consequence.
But, I mean, in everything I looked at, depending upon whose research you, or excuse me, whose numbers you want to believe, it's certainly between 6% and 8%.
It kind of skews in that 6.5%, but I did see one outlier that had it in the high 7s.
But 6.5% of the adult population is veteran.
That's a big chunk.
Absolutely.
And it may be a little bit more impactful because, you know, 68% is countrywide, but we all know that how the, well, we don't all know.
That's not true.
We don't all know how the Electoral College works, or even if it's a thing anymore.
But if there is an area that is a lot more predominantly veteran, That could sway the vote for a whole electoral vote or four of them or eight of them or whatever, depending on what state we're talking about and what district and precinct and all that other crap.
Right.
But it's interesting because I think that we can be active.
I think that there are many of us that are active in the community and But I think that if more veterans understood that we have an impactful voice now, well, that might just change a whole lot of things for a whole lot of people.
Yeah.
Politicians have never had to worry about whether or not the old crusty veterans are going to go out and vote for me or not.
Nope.
They either knew or they didn't care.
Right.
Right.
Which is why I think that's why we get screwed over so much.
Part of the reason why we get screwed over so much is just because, well, what are they going to do, right?
We'll give them a little bit to keep them dependent on us in the form of disability and free healthcare and this and that and the other thing.
But now, things could be a little bit different.
And I like that.
I like that idea.
Because this is the perfect time for us as a population to rise up.
And so places like this platform and any other platform that we may participate in or on can be greatly impactful.
We just got to reach our brothers and sisters that maybe are not listening to us yet.
Right?
Yeah, and it's, you know, is it steering them or just getting them in front of good information?
Because you can't be mad at people for not knowing what they don't know.
Exactly.
And, you know, if in any way, shape, or form we can help somebody to at least open up their eyes and start doing a little bit of research, even if, you know, half of what we said is close to the mark, they're going to lead themselves to where they need to get to.
Yes.
I agree a thousand percent.
And so the job of people like you and I are to keep putting that information out for them to see.
And even just get folks talking about it, right?
Just, hey, when you go into the Legion, you're going to have a conversation about this.
When you're at the gas station talking to some old crusty guy next to you, just so happens to be a veteran, make sure you let him know, hey, we got a voice now.
You know, maybe that leads to a bigger conversation.
Who knows where that could go?
But I think that it's something where we can be more powerful as a community of people than we've ever been.
And to me, that's exciting.
But, however, we've run short on the segment, so stick with us, folks.
We'll be right back.
Hey, guys, welcome back to the second segment of the show here.
Jason, I... This question has been lingering in my mind since we took a break.
And so I'm going to ask you, is there anybody out there that you would rather see on the Republican ticket than Donald Trump?
And if not, who would you rather see?
There's nobody I would rather see than Donald Trump.
Why?
There's nobody else out there like a Donald Trump.
There's nobody who's taken beating after beating like this man has.
And shown the resiliency and courage to keep coming back.
You know, he's like, uh, uh, yeah.
I didn't hear no bell.
Like, this guy doesn't stop.
This guy keeps going and going and going.
And he always seems to be on target.
He's got all the right people pissed off at him for all the right reasons in my mind.
Yeah, and the fact that they are as pissed off at him as they are probably means he's talking about the right stuff or he's pointing out the right thing.
Nope.
I mean, history shows.
And so, I agree.
I don't know that there's anybody else I'd rather see on a Republican ticket other than maybe Jim Jordan.
I like him because he's a shark.
And he calls a spade a spade every time.
And he doesn't care who you are.
He'll look you dead in your face and tell you you're a liar.
And here's why you're a liar.
And I appreciate that type of honesty.
It kind of makes me think about the conversation you and I had offline about military leadership, right?
And how having a good commander and good leadership can certainly change the whole morale of a unit as a whole, which means it changes the whole fighting force.
It changes the way that this particular unit will step out onto the battlefield and execute their mission.
Which is why people like Patton were so effective.
This may be another loaded question.
Do you have any examples of good versus bad leadership in your military career?
You don't have to name names.
I won't, but I'll target a time frame, and it was certainly my last deployment.
Probably one of the best officers I've ever served under, bar none.
This guy Played it straight and did the right thing every turn.
I had had pretty good leaders up until that point, until I realized what great leadership looked like.
That's where you started to see the difference between good and great.
You don't really know what it is until you've experienced it, and it's something you would hope for the rest of your career, is to always serve under people like that.
I mean, it's the trifecta of power, right?
So it's the personal power that somebody has, it's the professional power that they're given with their pay grade, and then it's This persona power that comes in for number three, that's what really drives, to me, the great leaders over the good ones.
Well, it's very well said.
I think that there is just a certain vibe that you feel, for example, when you wake up in the morning.
When it's dark out still and it's cold as hell outside, for those of us who live up here in the great white north, and you know that you gotta throw on this uniform, lace up your boots, and step out into the cold and get on your way to work.
Just like anybody else, right?
Just like anybody else in this country that works hard for what they have.
But in the military, so much depends on being confident in the people that are leading you.
Just like they need to be confident in your ability to do your job effectively, you need to be confident that they're going to lead you in the right direction.
And all this reminds me of a very specific conversation I had when I was in Iraq.
It was later on in our deployment, one of the IEDs that hit us that was the big one, right?
The night I was awarded my Purple Heart.
Because of that, I was taken off of missions for three to four weeks while my brain healed and whatever else, whatever the doctors told me I had to do.
Well, I got stuck spending my days babysitting local nationals that came on base to work.
You know, they would flip the generators, they would do road maintenance, they would cook, whatever their job was on post.
But during the day, they had to have an armed escort.
That was part of the deal.
And so you become friends with, I shouldn't say friends, but you become acquaintances with these guys, you know, and they bring you tea and bread and this and the other thing.
And, you know, you give them a Pepsi here or there from the child.
They loved pop for whatever reason.
They couldn't get the pop we had out on the local economy.
But I remember talking to this fellow who was driving a gravel truck.
I had to sit with him all day while he drove back and forth loads of gravel.
And I just asked him about Saddam Hussein once.
And I was like, you know, I don't mean to bring up old shit, but I'm just wondering, how did people around here feel about him?
And his response was super interesting to me.
He got very quiet, dropped his shoulders, and he said, you know, in very broken English, mind you, he said, Saddam was a tyrant.
We were terrified of him for the things that he did, and we all know what those are.
He said, but...
Our country has never been richer.
It has never been more secure.
Similar things we say about Trump when he was in office.
Not to insinuate that Trump is a tyrant or anything like that, but people are sure making him out to be one.
Him and his family.
And so...
I found it very interesting because the people who were suffering under the tyranny of this man also were able to look you in the face and be dead honest with you about how secure they felt.
Financially, their jobs, their economy was booming.
They were a superpower in the region and in a region of the world, in my opinion, that everybody wants to own, right?
I mean, it's the richest region in the world.
I mean, we got Dubai and Saudi Arabia and, you know, these people are, they're riding pet lions to lunch for Pete's sake.
Those are guys that are wiping their tails with, you know, $100 bills and flushing them down the toilet.
So that just makes me think that we don't vote.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that I don't personally vote based on the candidate's moral compass.
That comes second.
My biggest concern is how is this person who's running for president, if elected, going to have the most positive change on my bank account, on how secure I feel, how safe I feel in my own community?
Are my kids going to be learning the proper things at school?
Am I going to even have a police force that's willing to do their job because, again, And of course we see all the time People that
have not made the right decisions especially in law enforcement.
But what we don't see all the time is the good decisions that are made.
The people who are positively affected by the cops in their area.
And why is that?
Because bad news travels faster.
Right.
So when...
And we're bound to have these conversations, Jason, with the people in our lives that are in and around our space every day.
What are we really mad about when we talk about Donald Trump?
Are we mad because he didn't do anything for black people?
Well, that's bullshit too.
It's...
Well, you ever notice there's never a real conversation about Donald Trump.
Anytime that they talk or there's negative spin, it's about hyperbole.
It's about something that is a skewed reality from the facts, right?
And how do you have conversation?
Well, not...
Not how do you have conversations, because then you just talk.
But how do you have positive conversations or constructive conversations with people when their unwillingness to see both sides and then formulate a real response based upon the entirety of the fact or story versus a headline and a snippet, it gets terribly difficult.
And that's what I think we see every day.
Well, and so this may be the positive thing about what we were talking about earlier, the veteran base as it pertains to upcoming elections in our communities.
To the best of my knowledge, the research you've done, a little bit that I've done, we in this country have never been in a position for our group, our culture of people, veterans, to be able to have a positive or to be able to have a positive or negative sway on how this all pans out.
Now, this is assuming that elections are real and fair and not messed with and a whole litany of other things that are all around election fraud and integrity.
Yeah, but I mean, is there any?
I mean, we're four days away from them finally admitting, I think it was, what was it, last Wednesday, that the Hunter Biden laptop was real?
I didn't see that one.
Yeah, I think that, I know that was the middle of the week.
Yeah, that one rolled out.
You know, that took four years.
Who finally admitted it?
DOJ. Okay, so the Department of Justice, four days ago, five days ago, whatever, finally admits that everything on this laptop is real.
Yep.
And why is Hunter Biden not in prison?
And the 51 former high-ranking advisors or bureaucrats who all swore that it was Russian disinformation or whatever the cover was.
And then, what, Jack Dorsey at Facebook suppressing that story from every media outlet that was outside of the mainstream.
You know, again, full circle, four years, and this thing comes out that it was, in fact, real.
That everything that was out there, that all this punitive punishment and carnage that the government, didn't they go after the computer guy?
Snowden.
No, no, no, no, no.
The actual computer guy that had Biden's laptop.
Oh, that turned it in.
That turned it in.
They went after him.
They went after all of these people.
Is that guy even alive still?
You would have thought the Clintons had him wiped out already.
I have no idea, but remember, I mean, they went after everybody, right?
Like, it was illegal for him to turn that over, to make a copy, even though it was in his business agreement, that it becomes forfeited property after X amount of days, right?
And so the guy did everything right and still got, you know, his ass handed to him all over something that turns out years later to be completely true.
And people wonder why, you know, we have a, we have a problem believing everything because it's not the news.
We talked about it in the first part of the show.
It's a narrative driven thing.
This isn't the world of Walter Cronkite and Paul Harvey and reading real message and news.
It's all skewed perspective bullshit.
rather than reality.
So, coming right back into Trump, it's skewed bullshit.
Pay attention to what he actually did.
I mean, he did more for veterans than any president I know other than Bush and Obama making veterans.
He made veterans' lives better.
Expanded the healthcare options for people that were far away from the VA. I know there were numerous others.
I thought he removed some of the bureaucratic nonsense for removing non-performing employees at the VA and trying to clean up that system that, you know, as they use that phrase, I inherited.
Well, you know what?
Once you're the president, you didn't inherit shit.
You now have the ability to change everything.
So cut the nonsense.
If it just wasn't on your highlight list or your top 10 or your CCI, reprioritize.
But he did.
He did a ton of house cleaning when it comes to veterans issues.
And that's where, you know, for me personally, I even became more strong in my feelings towards President Trump.
It's because not only was he doing things for America, but here was this one thing that had been neglected that I was a part of that he was finally reinvigorating through doing some positive change that anybody could have done, but nobody took the time.
Good catch there.
That was close.
That was a good catch.
I'm getting better.
I applaud your efforts, brother.
But I think that we're on to something here, right?
There isn't a whole lot of things that we can say that we're suffering from When Trump was in office.
There's a whole lot of things that we can say are suffering now.
And I agree with you.
This whole idea that presidents come in and they inherit a bunch of bullshit and there's just no way of fixing it.
Well, the narrative every time we get a new president, whether they do four years or eight years, is that, well, you know, I inherited this massive debt and I inherited this war and I inherited this and I inherited that.
I inherited a pandemic.
Well, that's just how it goes, right?
You knew what was going on before you decide to throw your name in the hat.
And so, for me, it doesn't matter Who is in office and what side of the aisle they fall on?
I believe that the issues that need to be addressed by the office of the president are vast.
And you can make all the promises you want in a campaign.
Trump as well.
Goes for him too.
But you can't possibly get to them all.
You can't possibly garner enough support in the House and the Senate to change all these things that we talk about on the campaign trail.
But what's interesting to me about Donald Trump is that he spent four years in office.
They tried to impeach him.
They tried to put him in prison.
They tried to do this.
They tried to do that.
And so not only was he fighting off the horde that came out of the swamp that he was trying to drain, but he was also doing good things for the country at the same time.
So if we want to talk about resilience and somebody who's going to put their neck out on the line for us as a country, I don't know if there's anybody better.
I don't know anybody else in this country, bro, that's going to call that little man child in North Korea and say, do it again.
I dare you.
Right.
And if you do it again, you're going to go pick out your own switch and I'm going to whoop your ass with it.
Right.
Nobody else has balls that big.
No, I mean, again, we've had the apology tour with predecessors.
But what do we have now?
I think I saw earlier in the week, too, where Biden had mentioned very specifically that Taiwan independence was not an important issue.
I mean, the Taiwanese economy is completely integrated with our economy.
And so, I mean, what are we about to see?
Where the CCP is going to invade with high tide here sometime in the spring or early summer and take over Taiwan, which means now we're just even further coupled with the CCP and China hasn't exactly been a good bedfellow.
I thought Taiwan was one of our great allies.
I mean, the Japanese sure as shit don't want Taiwan to be China-owned.
I'm sure not, because that'll mean that Japan may become China-owned.
We have so many processors that come out of that place.
I mean, you've got three chips in a refrigerator now.
It's not like they just come for our computers.
I mean, everything we own has microprocessors, and they're all made in time.
Yeah, it's crazy.
So, what's crazy to me about the whole thing is that the common person...
They don't think complexly enough.
Complexly.
Is that even a word?
Here we go again.
Complexly.
Put it on a t-shirt.
But they don't think deeply enough to put those things together.
Right?
And so I think where a lot of folks in this country get pigeonholed is that they pick out their one or two issues and that's what they roll with.
And you're right.
I'll tell you, we got a new refrigerator about a year and a half ago, and all of a sudden the ice makers stopped working.
So we didn't have any ice in our house for, I don't know, three months because they didn't have the processors or the chips to put in the ice makers to make them work with the refrigerator.
So there we go again, and that's just a refrigerator.
Right.
What about the planes we like to travel on, the cars that we drive, the gas pumps that we use?
I mean, everything, you're right, everything has these things in it.
Yeah, you're right, your cell phone.
Can you imagine what would happen in the world, but more importantly, this country?
If the internet was just shut off?
What if places like Google and Microsoft and Bing, which is Microsoft, or Apple and Samsung and LG and all these places just went offline?
What's going to happen?
I don't know.
I got a mid-rise just thinking about it.
I'm not going to lie.
Yeah.
You went from 6 to 9 o'clock, not all the way to midnight, or what?
I'm a heavy 830 right now.
Sounds wonderful.
But I mean, what if that were to happen?
And then you start to think about the other things that have occurred, because we have very short attention spans.
We were willing to spend, what, $260 billion to defend or to arm Ukraine, you know, so I don't know, the five potatoes that came out of the Ukraine to get to us, you know, we're protected and taken care of, whereas we have a place where we do billions of dollars of commerce with, and, you know, if China wants it, they can just have it.
Yeah.
What's going on?
Well, so, who's the little man behind the curtain?
And as usual, with these types of things, we need to, of course, think about following who stands to gain money, power, and control.
Or any one of the three.
Or all three of them.
Because those people certainly don't give a shit about my ice maker, or my cell phone, or your truck, or anything like that.
They're concerned about their ice maker and their pocket and their vehicle and their family.
What we've lost in this country, folks, is the ability to take care of our neighbors.
To take care of the people around us that help our community thrive.
Because really, at the end of the day, that's what it's all about.
The old saying that it takes a village to raise a child.
Well, you know what?
It takes a community and a village to make that community and village or country thrive.
And that's where I think we've lost a lot.
Because nobody, nobody, I shouldn't say nobody, but a whole lot more people nowadays could give two shits less about what's going on with you, your family, or your business, or what you got going on.
Everybody is so hyper-focused on their own thing.
And so this is, in my opinion...
An opportunity for us as a culture, for the warrior culture to step up, be vocal, and force them to hear us.
Why wouldn't we?
I can't imagine that we wouldn't.
I mean, what did they say the participation rate was amongst veterans in voting?
Hold on.
I got it up here, right?
Hold on.
I do have that number.
It was 74%.
In 2020, veterans voted at 74%, which was a lot higher than non-veteran voters.
Of non-veterans in our country, only 66.1% of them voted in the 2020 presidential election, and that number comes from the United States Census Bureau.
And so let's just say for conversation's sake that 94% of the veterans voted.
Would Trump have won the election?
Maybe.
But I think it's important for us to remember and recognize and talk about to other veterans that we now have a voice today.
We now have a voice and the ability to sway an election.
Which, what that really means in my opinion, Jason, is that we now have the ability to do a lot of great things for this country.
And for each other.
And so those candidates are going to have to, in quotes, pander to the veteran voter base.
The question is, how are we as a voter base, as a community of people, going to use that to our advantage to not only help ourselves as a community, but help the community around us?
Right.
Well, I knew what we came up with.
It was between 6.5% and 7% of all voting age people in America are veterans now.
You know, that's on par with, I think when we looked it up at census, that was on par with Asian Americans.
We're part of a large group, and voting participation is the most important thing.
Again, I don't want to push anybody in any particular direction on who they're voting for, as long as they're voting and getting involved and understanding why they're selecting the lever that they are, right?
But with 7% of the population on the high end, As veterans, regardless of who gets into office, if we can solidify the needs and identify the shortcomings that are set forth that are hurting us, our voice could be much louder than it is to force any candidate to at least listen to what we're saying and theoretically be able to put some corrective actions in place.
And that does get back to Trump being the first one that I know that actually did it.
I just haven't seen it.
And we certainly haven't seen it, with the exception of the PACT Act, which, again, should be another show and another discussion, you know, under the current administration.
But I also think that that one was kind of like the same time delay as Agent Orange in Vietnam.
You know, it was pretty weird.
It was right around 20 years, wasn't it?
Mm-hmm.
Yes, it was.
The only difference is that the government didn't deny it for however many years they denied Agent Orange after it was brought to their attention.
But I think that the important thing to outline here, we got about a minute left.
And so, Jason, your wish has come true.
You're off the hook for final thoughts because we're running short on time.
But I want you to know that the audience loves your final thoughts as well as mine.
We get feedback on it all the time.
So please don't get used to this.
But...
To circle back and complete the whole show, the whole conversation, I think what's really important to outline here is a couple things.
One, that casting your vote for a person based on just their moral compass and who they are as a person It's less advantageous to our country than voting for a person that you believe can fulfill the job and do it in an effective way that invokes change in our communities all over the country.
Not just with one base, not just black folks or Asian folks or just veterans or whatever, but for everybody.
And lastly, that we as a community of veterans are now in a position that we've never been in this country before.
I believe that we've been heard.
I believe that we've had a presence and we've been identified and all those things.
But we now have the ability To invoke change in our country, once again, as a group of people that swore to defend this place against all enemies, foreign and domestic, no matter what.
No matter if you're crippled, no matter if you're able-bodied, if you're all effed up in the head or not.
It doesn't matter.
If you have the ability to vote, Please make sure that you, like you said, Jason, you understand what it is you're voting for and why.
And so with that said, we'll wrap up the show.
I really wish we could fit in Jason's final thoughts, but we'll get double final thoughts next time he's on the show.
Folks, have a great evening.
Take care of yourselves.
We love you.
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