The Veteran Advantage: Why Those Who Served Are Winning Jobs
Richard Leonard and Stew Peters analyze why veteran unemployment dropped to 4.1% as employers value military accountability over civilian experience, despite declining blue-collar jobs. They debate the professional duty of soldiers versus controversial political stances on Israel and Iran, while interspersing ads for Cortez Wealth Management and hemp products with claims about vaccine side effects. Ultimately, the episode argues that veterans remain a loyal workforce, though their future depends on shifting economic landscapes and navigating complex geopolitical conflicts. [Automatically generated summary]
I don't know about you guys, but it's been quite a while since I have turned on the television or opened up my social media apps or anything like that and was presented right away with something positive.
Well, today's your lucky day if you have been having a time like I have and not really been able to consume too much positive stuff when you're trying to see what's going on in your community and around the world.
Well, today I bring you a positive message and it's something that's near and dear to my heart because I worked doing this kind of work for quite a few years of my adult life.
And we're here to talk today about veteran employment or unemployment.
I am very proud and happy to report that the veteran unemployment numbers have dropped since the beginning of the year.
And it's interesting because the whole rest of the country, everyone else that is not a veteran, their unemployment rates, for whatever reason, are skyrocketing.
So today we're going to have a discussion about that.
We'll dig into it.
I got some thoughts.
Hopefully you got some thoughts to share in the comments as we go on.
But please stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
Hey everybody and welcome.
Welcome here to another installment of the Richard Leonard Show.
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Before we get started on today's conversation, we got to talk about how the lights are kept on in this place and how this camera is kept running.
And that's Cortez Wealth Management.
Get on over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
Check out the website.
There's all kinds of information.
There's videos, there's literature, there's things to read, there's things to see, things to watch.
There are things to consume.
Carlos Cortez and his staff wants to help you plan and execute a tax-free retirement plan.
So go to the website, AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
Digest all the information that you can.
Their goal is to help you plan and execute, as I said, a tax-free retirement plan.
You owe it to yourself.
Do as much of this as you can before you decide to hang it up.
Whatever it is that you do, you owe it to yourself to spend the rest of your days enjoying the fruits of your labor in peace, whatever way you'd like to.
And if you can do it with as little tax liability as possible, I believe that it's a positive thing for you.
So get on over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
Check them out today.
All right.
So veteran unemployment.
Veteran unemployment has dropped in the last couple months.
And it's an interesting, I don't want to call it a conundrum, but it's an interesting thing, right?
The national rate for everybody else who's non-veteran has went up quite a bit since the beginning of the year.
And so let's talk about this a little bit.
I have some thoughts about why this may be.
I found some information online, and I got to tell you guys, a couple weeks ago was the first time that I had really tried to use AI to compile all the information that I had been finding and reading to talk about to you.
And it's interesting because sometimes I get a little wrapped around the axle about it because I do do a lot of reading and a lot of watching and a lot of taking in information.
And sometimes on the show, we hit one part of the discussion and then I fall off the rails.
And it's usually what happens.
You know, we end up on these goat trails and talking about other things that are part of the subject matter, I believe, but not necessarily always part of the actual story or the actual thing we're talking about.
It's just kind of a subsection of it, if you will.
So these are the types of things that we strive to bring to you.
Anyway, unemployment.
So I got about six to eight key points to talk to you about.
Oh, and as I was saying, sorry, I completely lost what I was saying.
So I've been using AI in the last few weeks to copy and paste the articles I'm reading, the videos I'm watching, the information I find, and just have it compile it for me in a way that I'm not really good at doing.
So I'm grateful to have this kind of keep my thoughts organized, or at least that's what I'm trying to do.
So anyway, let's start down this road.
My first key talking point is veteran unemployment has dropped even as the national job market has weakened.
So this is a real interesting thing.
One of the most striking points in the recent, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics recently put out a jobs report.
And so what this is, is they talk about the different classifications of people.
They separate them by race.
They separate them by background, like veteran, for example.
They separate them by geographical location, average household income.
There's all kinds of subsections.
And they put this out every year.
And so it just recently came out.
And as we said, veteran jobs are on the rise.
The veteran unemployment rates are dropping.
Veterans are finding work.
They're staying employed.
And this tells me, this information tells me they're being sought after.
And that's got to be for a reason, right?
Excuse me.
So this says one of the most striking points in the recent report that the Bureau of Labor Statistics put out is that veteran unemployment actually fell while the overall job market has slowed and is showing a lot of signs of weakness.
In February, just last month, the unemployment rate for veterans dropped from 4.5 to 4.1%.
Now, in the same time period, the national unemployment rate rose from 4.3 to 4.4.
So it went up 0.1%.
But keep in mind that this is, of course, a lot bigger group of people, right?
The national unemployment rate is calculated by a whole lot more people than the veteran unemployment rate is.
And also keep in mind another little sticking point to these things when we when we talk about statistics and veteran statistics, for example, it's not always a real clear picture on numbers, right?
We do know that there are so many veterans that choose to not report.
They choose to not identify themselves for whatever reason.
Sometimes it's that they don't trust the government.
They are sometimes ashamed of their service.
Sometimes when veterans find themselves in combat or different types of situations that are sometimes hard to deal with, maybe they're tough on the psyche.
Whatever the case may be, folks just don't really want to talk about it because those questions are always bound to come up.
You know, when you tell people you served, it's not unusual for people to be intrigued and ask you questions about your service.
Some folks just don't want to talk about it.
But in my experience, it's usually that they don't trust the government.
They were mistreated.
Maybe they feel by the government.
Maybe they really were.
They just not, they're not willing to talk about it.
But usually, in my experience, I find that it's because they just don't trust it for some reason, whether it's legit or seemingly an overreaction or whatever.
But, you know, it's hard to tell anybody that they're overreacting or, you know, maybe it's this way instead because everyone processes their stuff differently.
So anyway, sometimes it's not always an accurate number, but it is very true that the pool of veterans in this case for unemployment numbers is significantly smaller than the 4.3 to 4.4 number they put out for the national rate.
But why is this important?
It's important because veteran unemployment trends often mirror the broader economy.
So usually when the economy is doing well, of course, it makes sense that everybody's unemployment numbers will go down.
More people are going to work.
The economy is thriving.
They're making money.
They're spending it.
Supply and demand becomes a whole lot bigger, a whole lot stronger.
And so of course people are going to work.
But this time it's a little bit different.
When the economy struggles, veterans usually feel the impact too, like we just talked about.
But in this case, in this case, our people, our brothers and our sisters, they tend to be bucking the system, suggesting that employers are prioritizing hiring veterans, keeping veterans, seeking them out for work.
And why might this be?
Because maybe people are starting to identify.
They're starting to see and they're starting to experience the values of hiring a United States military veteran to work in their place.
And so when I was working for the state of Minnesota doing veteran employment services, these were things that we talked about with people all the time, right?
When we would approach employers to take, hey, just take a look at our clients.
They're all veterans, you know, and we had our way of disseminating the information and what we do and who we have and the types of people that may be able to be a strength to their business, right?
Because everyone has a different profession.
They have a different industry that they work in.
Clearly, obviously.
And so the challenge became to explain to employers that if you have Richard and you have Tony, Tony's not a veteran, but Richard's a veteran.
Their work experience, civilian work experience, may seem similar.
They may be the same age or similar ages.
But there's always the one thing that veterans bring to the table that other candidates don't.
And this is that lived experience of military service.
There are, no matter what your job is, no matter what you went to school for, what you've been trained to do, maybe what you know from your life, even outside the military, life experience, in my opinion, life experience is something that is not easily replaced by other work experience.
And what I mean by that is if I had made the decision in my life to become a police officer, for example, my life experience outside of the military, outside of my previous law enforcement experience, outside of my time working with Stew Peters as a bounty hunter, traipsing around the country, chasing felons and bringing them back to justice,
anything I've done in my life is life experience.
But it's a little bit deeper in the law enforcement industry in my family because we have history of police officers.
For example, my father was a police officer in the city of St. Paul for 20, I think it was 24 or 25 years.
And so for a large part of my life, the times in which I got to go to work with dad was a whole lot different than some of my buddies who went to work with dad.
When I went to work with dad, I never really got to be out on the street with him, but we would be in, he was in a special unit where they would serve search warrants and do undercover stings for prostitution and drug dealers.
And they would take on some harder investigative cases, some murders, gang violence, that type of thing.
So seeing the planning stages of that and being around the office when they were talking about what was going on, of course, whatever it is I was able to hear without having to be censored and the planning stages and the team laying out their shit, loading their magazines, then they're coming up with a plan.
They had the drawing of the house or the building on the board and they have people on there their names or little icons and with arrows where they're going to go.
So they do all these rehearsals.
They do all this preparation.
I got to see a lot of that as a child.
So it was very interesting to me.
I grew up with it.
And so it was only natural that when I became an adult, I was leaning towards a law enforcement career.
I never became a cop, decided I didn't want to do it.
I had joined the military.
And so, but those are the things that just come natural to our family.
One of my sons is currently going to school to be a police officer.
One of our other sons is considering going into law enforcement.
And so there's just a history of it in our family.
And here's this is exactly what I was talking about.
Military Discipline in Civilian Jobs00:15:08
I got off on a tangent and completely abandon the veterans employment deal.
So anyway, I just say all that to say sometimes these things are just ingrained in our blood.
all these, these different occupations.
Um, oh, I know what I was saying.
Employers.
Employers are seeking out veterans because they have finally realized that we bring more than just whatever the work experience was.
The military experience in itself shapes people into a different person, right?
You learn leadership skills that you don't know at times that you're even learning.
You don't know that you're putting them into practice, but you learn them.
You learn how to keep track of your shit, which also translates great into the civilian workforce because a lot of jobs that veterans go to are usually blue-collar jobs, security-type jobs, not a whole lot of office stuff, right?
Veterans aren't necessarily the best at sitting in an office all day doing whatever those jobs are.
There are some, of course.
But you're going to have to keep track of your company's shit, right?
It's expensive.
It's necessary in many cases.
You can't do your job without it.
So employers value people who are going to take care of the equipment they provide, the vehicles, scanners, tools, whatever it is.
All that's important.
And so when you are a person coming out of the military and you're looking for work, the one thing that my clients, a lot of times who were fresh out of the service, didn't quite put two and two together when they're thinking about how they're going to explain themselves to an employer, when someone asked them, why should I hire you?
Well, even as an E3 infantry soldier, just fresh, young soldier, fresh in the army, fresh in the infantry, you still are required to keep track of thousands of dollars worth of equipment.
And if you don't, you pay for it.
If you have things like sensitive items, and for those of you who don't know, in the infantry, at least in my experience in the infantry, sensitive items were things like night vision, thermal optics, weapon systems, any kind of communications equipment that's encrypted or is timed and pre-loaded.
These are all sensitive items.
When these things get lost, base is shut down until it's found.
These are the types of things that when they go missing, everybody's life stops.
So if you are on Fort Bragg, for example, just pick a really large military installation.
If you're at Fort Bragg or Fort Lewis in Washington or anywhere else, Fort Stewart, Fort Sill, anywhere.
And these types of things go missing.
Gates close.
Accountability is taken.
Where are my soldiers?
And if you're not where you're supposed to be, get there now and don't move.
And then when we find these things, then life can continue.
And so sensitive items going missing is a serious problem.
These are our tools.
Should we be called into combat?
Should we be called to deploy in even a very short time and we don't have all of our tools?
Well, that's a problem, right?
Just like it would be for anybody else.
If somebody who shouldn't have their hands on our tools got them and they're evading, they're extracting, they're getting the hell out of there.
Well, we need to shut this place down and stop them before they can get away with our shit, especially things like communications equipment and weapon systems.
We don't want our enemies or people who shouldn't be hearing us talk on the radio.
We don't want them to have our communications equipment.
Because if you find anybody that knows how to use it properly and find a radio to load it into the, they call it a COMSEC, right?
The secured communications timing for a radio, well, then they can listen to our radio traffic, which is really bad for our troops.
And so these are the types of things that are instilled day one.
And to some people, it seems like, well, you know, if a pistol goes missing, do we really need to shut down a whole base?
Sometimes it seems extreme, but that's just what the rules are, right?
Keep track of your shit and nobody has anything to worry about.
And so how does that translate over into the civilian world?
And what people who are fresh out of the military usually don't understand, especially men and women who spent their whole adult life up into whatever point in the military.
These people that joined when they were 17, 18, 19 years old, and they're now 31, 34, 35, 28, whatever the case may be.
Well, they've never had any other training about how to coincide with the civilian community.
But what you did learn is to keep track of your shit.
What you did learn is to be accountable.
What you did learn is to be on time.
What you did learn is how to be an extremely, extremely strong contributing member to a team.
And if you're a person that wants to use these skills that you learned in this leadership, these leadership skills that you learned in the Army or the Navy or the Marines or the Air Force or the Space Force or the Coast Guard or whatever, you have to be able to talk about them.
You have to be able to talk about these skills.
And one of the biggest problems we had was helping veterans to understand that just because you joined when you're 18 and you're now 30 years old and you're getting out of the military or you're 35, 38, and you're retiring, whatever the case may be, you learned a lot of stuff.
And you have to give yourself that benefit of the doubt.
You have to be able to talk yourself up, which for whatever reason, this community doesn't do well.
And that's okay.
I'm not real good at it either.
I probably say more self-deprecating shit to myself during the day than I do praising myself.
You know, if I at work and a customer asked me for 10 screws and I bring him 11 or I bring them 9, well, fucking dummy.
How hard is that?
How hard is it to count 10 screws?
So being able to talk about ourselves in a way that is positive is very important.
Let's move on.
We've only gotten through one or two of these.
One of the biggest surprises and one of the cooler things about the jobs report is that post-9-11 veterans saw an even larger increase in their employment rates.
Post-9-11 veterans saw an even larger improvement.
The numbers improved even more dramatically for post-9-11 veterans.
These are folks, of course, that joined the military after 9-11.
Their unemployment rate dropped a full percentage point from 5.8 to 4.8 in just one month.
Why is this significant?
This is very significant because younger veterans traditionally have a whole lot harder time finding employment.
A lot of times, at least in our experience, in our office where we worked, we worked in the workforce center in St. Paul, and veterans would come to our office to you know and make appointments to come in.
We had a weekly job club that was just for vets, and we would have employers come in and talk to people, and every now and then they'd grab one of our people, and the next week they're starting to work.
But the younger folks, like we were just talking about, the ones that went in at 17, 18, 19, and are coming out at 30, 32 years old, they also don't have a whole lot of civilian work experience.
Right?
They went in fresh out of high school, they did 10, 12, 15, 8 years, whatever it is, decided not to re-up and got out.
And now they're trying to find themselves into a job.
They're trying to find themselves a job, but they're competing with people who are also of their age, maybe a little older, maybe a little younger.
But the point is that these civilian folks that they're trying to circumvent in their jobs have 10 years of civilian work experience, 20 years, 15, whatever the case may be.
So now you have a person who, when they graduated high school, decided to join the military.
They spent 10 years.
They're 28, 29 years old now.
And they want to get a job as a welder.
They get out, they go to some training, learn how to weld.
Maybe they did some welding in the military.
That's why they want to go do welding.
But what they find is that when they go to all these outfits to apply for welding jobs, they're now also meeting people who are applying for welding jobs who have been doing it for 10 years.
Been doing it for nine years.
And now all I got is a little bit of on-the-job training.
Maybe I took a class here or there, but I don't have real-world experience in the welding game.
So veterans were finding themselves at a much larger unemployment rate for those reasons.
And some of that was put out in data, but it was a lot of that, a lot of those words come from my opinion, from my experience.
And I did this work for just under five years.
So I had a lot of time to spend with folks helping them find jobs.
And it was a pretty eye-opening experience, to say the least.
So anyway, post-9-11 veterans, they saw a huge, a huge increase, a full percentage point.
And so what this also tells me, again, is that employers are seeking out veterans at a higher clip than they were in the past.
The question is, though, why is that?
Why are employers seeking out more veterans seemingly now?
Now, there isn't a whole lot of data that is compiled of all these big companies talking about why they're keeping veterans.
We can only deduce why.
And in my opinion, it's because they offer a whole lot more than some civilians who are applying for these jobs.
And it's not always necessarily about work experience.
Veterans will show up, even when they're sick, unless they're instructed not to.
They can be part of the team.
They don't always have to be in charge.
They're not real sensitive about being told what to do because we live that already.
We're loyal.
I believe that veterans who are working in a place and they're supported, a lot of guys and girls, gals, they need a little bit extra time off to go to doctor's appointments or whatever.
There might be some accommodations that are needed for physical ailments or anything.
But at the end of the day, they will show up.
They will do what you ask, usually without question or without all too much bitching.
Usually, they're not going to steal from you.
You can trust them.
And another big benefit is many veterans, those of us who have VA disability and are enrolled in the VA system, a lot of us don't necessarily need all the benefits either.
So not only are veterans loyal, not only will they show up, not only will they have your back and have your best interest in mind when they're dealing with customers or clients or anything like that.
They're also super loyal.
And they can be very cheap for an employer.
If I'm an employer and let's say I employ 10 people, well, what goes along with employing people?
You have to pay payroll tax.
Maybe you offer some kind of 401k package.
Maybe you offer some kind of health care insurance option.
Maybe there's all kinds of different things you offer on top of salary.
So having employees is very expensive for employers.
And so sometimes it's okay.
For some employers, it's okay that they got to train their people a little bit extra.
Because the truth of the matter is that it's extremely hard to find good help these days.
You know, you could hire 10 people.
You could hire 10 people and maybe three of them are going to be actual solid employees.
Maybe one of them is going to stay with you for an extended period of time and make the money you spent training them if you had to send them somewhere or the time you spent away from your craft to help make your business money, you had to train them and it cost you money.
Hiring Veterans and Employment Mistakes00:02:11
And so veterans become cheaper also.
Now, that's not to say that we don't have some veterans in our community that aren't great employees.
They may have a hard time showing up for work on time.
They may have a hard time talking to customers.
I mean, there is such a thing as people taking jobs that aren't necessarily great for them.
It's like buying a jacket that you really like, but it just doesn't fit you right.
It doesn't look good.
But hey, now I got a jacket.
Well, for some people, it's the same with jobs.
You know, maybe I'm not the best at this, but boy, I'll show up.
I might make mistakes, which mistakes are expensive for employers also.
But sometimes, and maybe more now than ever, employers really value people that are going to show up, be loyal, have their back.
And they also like that hiring a veteran might be a little cheaper for me because I don't have to, they don't need healthcare.
So I don't have to pay the portion I said I'll pay.
You don't, you know, there's benefit.
There's tax breaks for hiring veterans and keeping them on for a certain amount of time.
They used to be really good.
I'm not quite sure what they are now or if they're even still there.
But I know that when I was doing this work, that was a big benefit to employers to have a tax break.
The one thing that was really kind of bullshit, if you ask me, and that really grinded my gears at the time, an employer could get a better tax break for hiring and keeping a convicted felon out of that that's fresh out of prison.
The tax break was better for that than it was for hiring a veteran and keeping him employed for whatever the preset period of time was.
And so that was something in our office amongst our team that we always thought was bullshit.
But it is what it is.
Funding the Stew Peters Network00:02:50
So anyway, we've went over time for the segment.
We got to take a break.
Please stick with us.
Don't go away.
We'll be right back.
Hey, folks, real quick before we get back to the show.
Um.
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Exclusive Access for Supporters00:03:17
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What these researchers found was that vaccinated children had 4.29 times the rate of asthma, 3.03 times the rate of atopic disease, 5.96 times the rate of autoimmune disease, and 5.53 times the rate of neurodevelopmental disorders.
A number of different diagnoses, including diabetes and ADHD and a number of them, in the unvaccinated group, there was zero.
In other words, all these chronic diseases that we're accepting, the reality is maybe 99% of it don't have to exist in children.
That's not the way God made us.
They looked at over 47,000 Medicaid claims between 1999 and 2011.
Those who are vaccinated versus unvaccinated, I say an odds ratio would be like 2.81.
2.81 to 1.
So that would be 181% increase.
Epilepsy seizures, 252%.
Learning disorders, 581%.
If you look at all these different diagnoses, they're all higher.
For example, I'll just give you one example.
Learning disorders in the full term is 581%.
In the preterm, the ones who are vaccinated, 884% increase.
Every single vaccine has an excipient that is human toxin.
Human toxin.
We have parted ways with advertisers here at the network over the course, particularly of the last couple of years, those that were plugged into the pro-Israel, pro-Zionist cause, the cause of greater Israel, the expansionist aspirations of the Talmudic tribe.
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The Difficult Bigger Picture00:15:08
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again thank you so much okay folks welcome back here um thanks for Thanks for sticking around.
Let's continue down this list.
The next thing I want to talk about is blue-collar work and how the job market for blue-collar work has changed, especially in the last few months.
Blue-collar work is one of those things that President Trump, when he was campaigning, talked about making extremely strong.
We're going to bring back factories.
We're going to produce more blue-collar jobs for Americans to work.
Well, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that that hasn't happened.
Let's check this out.
While veteran employment improved, the overall labor market lost about 92,000 jobs in February, in February alone.
And the manufacturing sector lost 12,000 jobs that month and roughly 90,000 jobs in all of 2025.
So just in manufacturing in 2025, we lost 90,000 jobs.
Why is this a peculiar number?
It's a peculiar number because this was, as I stated, one of the things that President Trump campaigned on.
The manufacturing industry is going to come back and be better than ever, is what we were told.
Now, can it still happen?
Sure.
Sure, it could still happen.
But as of late, it seems as though we're going the wrong way.
This is particularly important because many veterans move into blue-collar industries, such as manufacturing, construction, logistics, the energy field, oil fields, turbine energy, all kinds of stuff.
The decline in those sectors could eventually hit the veteran workforce as well.
So what they're saying is that the manufacturing industry as a whole lost all these jobs, not just the veteran community.
But we do know that there are a lot of veterans who work in blue-collar jobs.
So even though the numbers look good right now, the broader economic trend, it could suggest that there's going to be some trouble for veteran employment numbers down the road.
But again, I think that in a time when we have just started a fresh war, Which, please excuse my ignorance on.
I have chosen not to dive too deep into it.
I think that what I will say about it is I think that there are some aspects of what's going on between the U.S. and Iran, and unfortunately, Israel also.
Again, it's I don't, I don't understand why.
I think from one angle, it's about world economic power, and it's about oil, of course, and the oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz and all these things.
But to be quite honest, this whole thing seems more about the beef that Israel has with Iran in the Middle East.
And if that's the case, my response to that would be, let them fight the shit out.
Why do we need to be involved?
And then there's people that'll say, well, we need to be involved because 20% of the oil of the world's oil moves through there.
Now, how true is that?
I don't know.
I'm not up on oil sales and where it shipped and how it shipped.
And maybe I should be if I'm going to choose to comment on it.
But in a time where we have a really, really fucking dirty backyard, I don't know that we need to be getting involved to this level in a war that I don't know.
It's still unclear to me how involved we should be, if at all.
To me, it seems like this is Israel's fight.
And we're doing this under the guise of, well, we've got to protect the Strait of Hormuz because the oil moves through there.
And, boy, if that stops, the whole world economy is going to suffer.
And maybe that's true.
Maybe that's true.
But see, now, here's a point where people get super, super upset and super wrapped around the axle about unnecessary deaths and all of this type of thing, collateral damage and stuff like that.
And I think rightfully so.
I think rightfully so.
I think that if we didn't have an overabundance of people who are bleeding hearts for innocent people dying, that this world would be a whole lot worse of a place.
And I'm not trying to say that I don't give a shit about the people that were killed, innocent people, Iranian, American.
It doesn't matter who they were or where they're from.
and it's the people don't deserve to die but but in war collateral damage happens it's not It's not a good thing.
It's not pretty.
It's not funny.
It's none of those things.
It's a fucking tragedy.
But these are, but this is what war is.
We've talked about this type of thing on this show many times.
We talk about this type of thing on the regular guy podcast on ThreeClicks Media, my other platform.
We talk about this very thing often also.
There is nothing, there's nothing about war that is desirable.
Nothing about war that's pretty.
Sometimes, as hard as this is for people to believe, sometimes it's necessary.
Do I think that it's necessary in this instance?
Maybe not.
But the fact of the matter is, when there is fighting, when there is war, shit gets destroyed.
Unfortunately, unfortunately, innocent people are affected and or lose their lives.
And it becomes difficult to look at the bigger picture.
It becomes very difficult to understand the bigger picture of any of these conflicts, of any of these wars.
It becomes a whole lot more difficult when you don't believe in the cause.
It also becomes a whole lot more difficult when things and people and places around you are, first of all, talking about how it's bullshit.
And then we can see for ourselves as civilians or veterans even, but the people on the outside now looking in at what's happening.
And a lot of people don't understand what it means.
All they see and all they hear is bombs, Trump's a shitbag, innocent people dead.
And then the questions come.
Well, why?
Why are innocent people dead?
Why does the president feel like he needs to fucking do this shit?
All these questions come.
And what we fail to understand sometimes is that there is a much bigger picture.
And I'm not saying we have to agree with the bigger picture, but sometimes there is a much bigger picture.
And in the bigger picture, the effects of these things are greater than, unfortunately, the innocent people that will lose their lives.
The bigger picture becomes greater than, unfortunately, the American soldiers that were buried earlier this week.
It's tragic.
But service members, they understand, they understand the formality of war.
They understand what it does and how it happens and how it affects not just us, but the world around us.
We know it a little better than the civilian population, especially those of us who lived combat.
None of it is good.
None of it's pretty.
A lot of times it seems like it doesn't make sense.
And it seems like it's all for nothing.
But in the end, and let's just take this situation, for example.
If when this whole thing is over, if when this war in Iran is over and America is in a better position financially, we're in a better position globally as a force.
Not a force to take over the world, but a force to ensure that number one, American citizens can live a better, more fruitful, safer life.
Well, that's part of the bigger picture.
And to be quite honest with you, I can wholeheartedly say That if if, if I were, if I were still in the military and I was sent to Iran to do my job and I lost my life doing it, even if I don't agree with the reason why we're doing it, still have the but,
but still have the understanding that there's a bigger picture here and unfortunately, at times, veterans are our people, or military members are people that won't always ask why first.
They don't always, they don't always think the why through as they're preparing to do their jobs and then doing their jobs, and then after.
After is when sometimes you ask, well, why the fuck did we do that?
What was that all about?
But the understanding of what comes with war is something that's not foreign to military members, and so I would say that it remains yet to be seen.
But maybe, maybe there's a bigger picture here that that most of us don't quite understand yet.
Maybe this whole thing will be better for America in the end, or in the long run.
Maybe this whole thing will be better for the world, for the globe.
Maybe it's true, oil will be cheaper, gas will be cheaper.
Maybe it's true that taking out all these, all these places and people and things in Iran is going to make the world but important, very important America safer.
Maybe that will happen, but we have to understand that in the process of getting to that place, people are going to get hurt, people are going to die, things are going to be destroyed, families are going to be affected on both sides.
But this is what this is what committing to a life or a portion of your life to service is about.
Does it make it right?
No no, it doesn't always make the decisions right.
The decisions that are made to send soldiers into harm's way doesn't always make it right.
But we know that.
We know that and we believe that there's a bigger picture.
Are we wrong?
Some, sometimes we are.
Sometimes it's justified in a certain respect when people talk about, well, you guys are just fucking sheep, they sent you over there to kill all these people.
Soldiers Ready to Serve00:11:51
And now what, for what?
Well, maybe at times they're right, but in the moment when you have, when you have, let's just say, a whole, a whole company of infantrymen, say 200, 200 to 300 people, and for months in, for weeks and for months and for years they've been training,
They do three to seven day FTXs, camping trips out to the field to play war games.
They strap on all their gear and they walk 25-mile road marches to train.
They do ranges.
They become proficient with their weapons, experts with their weapon systems.
They become experts in land navigation.
They become expert in leading soldiers into combat and conducting this symphony of movement.
As a leader on the ground in combat, your soldiers are looking for you for leadership, for direction.
Hey, you two, go there, take that window, overwatch across the street.
We're going to move up this side.
Blah, blah, blah.
I mean, just all of this stuff.
And you have to think of it as a situation dictates.
You can train and train and prepare and train and prepare again.
But once you get into this situation and you get kicked in the fucking mouth by something you didn't train for, you have to make the decision.
You have to lead your soldiers or you all will die.
These are the types of things that these 200 to 300 infantrymen are training for.
They're learning.
They're chomping at the bit to do their fucking job.
And when that call comes in, hey guys, guess what?
We're going to fucking work.
People call it brainwashing.
You can call it that if you want.
Call it whatever you want.
But in my opinion, it's no different than an NFL football player who's been preparing for this moment his whole fucking life.
And now he gets an opportunity to go to the show.
He gets to play his first game in an NFL uniform on a field for a real NFL team.
He gets to cash a real NFL game day paycheck.
And in the process of all that, if you told them, hey, man, this is going to get you killed.
You sure you want to do this?
These fucking people don't care about you.
They want to see you destroy yourself for the game, for entertainment.
You're not talking them off that field.
You're not talking them out of that.
It's very similar for many.
I'm not saying all soldiers, but for many soldiers.
We've trained, we've trained, and we've trained again.
And you're telling me now I get to go do my job?
You fucking right.
I'm ready.
Those pilots who were flying those planes and dropping those bombs, do you think that they all were pissed?
Do you think they all disagreed?
Or do you think that when they woke up that morning or 30 mornings prior, 30 days prior, and were told by their command staff, hey guys, check this out.
President called us.
You guys are going to fly your planes.
You're going to do your job.
You're going to drop ordnance on a designated target.
And you're going to get the fuck out of there and not get shot down.
If you don't think that every one of those pilots that were getting ready to get in that plane in 30 days and fly this mission didn't go from 6 to midnight, You're sadly mistaken.
I think.
Maybe that's not the truth, but that's my opinion.
Now, none of that means that they don't have these thoughts about, man, I hope that we don't, I hope we don't hurt innocent people.
I hope we make it back.
All these thoughts that you would think are cause to be super nervous or scared.
Things that you might think will hinder your performance because you're in fear of dying.
Or you don't want to hurt somebody that you shouldn't.
All that's there.
Those thoughts all happen.
Sometimes, even as you're pulling your trigger in a firefight, fuck man, I really hope I'm not shooting in the wrong window.
But it's the most peculiar thing, guys.
I'm telling you, because it's one of those, man, I really hope I'm doing the right thing, but holy shit, this is amazing.
Like the adrenaline rush is unexplainable unless you've lived it.
But I say all that to say, if anybody thinks that soldiers getting deployed are going, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, this is bullshit.
I don't think it happens all that often.
I think the people that decide to raise their right hands and join the military are itching for the opportunity to go to work, just like we were back in the early 2000s.
It was a little bit different back in the early 2000s because we were all fucking pissed that we got invaded and attacked.
And so motivation for people joining the military was a little bit different then, but not all that different.
The mentality of soldiers doesn't change all that much, in my opinion.
And maybe it is true.
Maybe it is true that American soldiers are brainwashed.
Maybe all those people that say they brainwash these young men into being killers and just bloodthirsty fucking maniacs.
You call it what you want.
But I'll tell you what, even as a trigger puller in the military, every life you take affects you.
I don't know that military members are bloodthirsty fucking maniacs.
I think that they're most of them, most of them are consummate professionals.
And they want to do a good job.
And they want America to be proud of them.
And they want to ensure that this proverbial blanket of freedom that's talked about all the time actually exists.
And in a time where there's so many people in our own government, in our own places in this country that want to see us fucking fail, take some solace in knowing that there are soldiers that are just itching for the opportunity to do their job, should they be called upon.
Again, is it always the right decision for our government to send our soldiers into combat?
No, it's not always the right decision.
Is this decision with Iran in particular a shitty choice?
Could prove to be.
It is quite a it is quite a quinky dink why it all happened.
Oh, and I'll leave all that speculation for others on the network because they're better.
People like Stu are a whole lot better at dissecting that stuff for people.
But I'll tell you, the mission is one thing.
The decisions made about the mission is one thing.
I'm coming at it from the perspective of the soldier, just the good old regular guy in the infantry.
Maybe he's some country bumpkin from Iowa or even here in Minnesota.
Joined the military and just wants to be fucking Audi Murphy.
Just wants to help, just wants to contribute, just wants to do his part.
He wants to provide a service to his country, maybe so his kids don't have to.
Or maybe it's a reason for his kids to do it and continue the family service.
Whatever the reasons are.
But trust me when I tell you that when soldiers get the call to do their job in a real-world scenario, they're fucking pumped about it.
And what is that?
What is that?
Now that we're at the end of the show and we've run out of time, what does that have to do with veteran unemployment?
Well, I guess I don't know, but the one thing I can say about that whole rant and how it relates to veteran unemployment is these are the reasons exactly why hiring veterans are a good idea.
And I think that this is probably an indication.
The numbers we talked about today is an indication of all we're talking about to be true.
Veterans want to work.
Employers seemingly want veterans to come work for them, not always because of their skill set, but sometimes because of their life experience.
And veterans bring a lot to the table in the workforce because they sometimes don't know the skills that they have and how valuable those skills are to an employer.
Just showing up, being loyal, not giving away the farm to customers, not stealing from them, having the back of your employer because you're grateful to have that job.
And if you don't have their back, sometimes there's a chance that your job goes away because the business fails.
All of those things are great reasons to hire veterans, even ones that have some struggles.
But of course, if you come to a situation where you just can't do the job and you're more of a hindrance than a help, then we got to find a different solution.
And there are solutions out there for those veterans who have that trouble.
There are solutions.
But anyway, that's all the time we have.
It was great to be able to talk about a win, something positive.
I hope that you got something out of it today.
Solutions for Struggling Veterans00:03:00
Please, if you have any comments, questions, concerns, gripes, you want to tell me I'm a piece of shit and I don't know what I'm talking about, do so down below in the comments.
I can take it.
I've got thick skin, right?
I'm an infantryman.
So anyway, you guys have a great rest of your evening.
Thank you for joining us.
We'll see you next week.
Good night.
In a Christian country, we have a right to be at minimum agnostic about the leadership being all Jewishly occupied.
We literally should be at war with fucking Israel a hundred times over and instead we're just sending them money and it's fucking craziness.
Look at the site of Israel.
Look at the site of Tel Aviv and look at the site of Philadelphia.
You tell me where this money's going.
You tell me who's benefiting from this.
I am prepared to die in the battle fighting this monstrosity that would wish to enslave me and my family and steal away any rights to my property.
And you take away my God, go fuck yourself.
Will I submit to that?
And if you've got a foreign study, you've got dual citizens in your government, who do you think they're supporting?
God, right now, would you protect the nation of Israel and protect those of us, not just our church, but every church in the world and in this nation that's willing to put their neck on the line and say we stand with them?
You go to Trump's cabinet.
You go to Biden's cabinet.
It's full of Jews.
I have a black friend in school.
I have nothing against blacks.
She has nothing against me.
She understands where I'm coming from.
Excuse me, I'm a Jew, and I just like to say that, you know, in our Bible, it says that you're like animals.
The Jews crucified our God.
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