Nov. 25, 2023 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
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You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the political cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we welcome you to tonight's live broadcast of TPC.
This is James Edwards, along with Keith Alexander, on the 25th night of November 2023.
We are now officially into the Christmas season here on the program, and we will celebrate that with you and our invited guests for the remainder of the year.
So sit back and enjoy as it all unfolds over the course of the next month and change here.
And to kick off the Christmas season, we welcome back an old friend and someone we haven't talked to in quite a long time.
But I thought that having him on tonight would just make for a wonderful conversation.
He is, of course, Lucas Gage, and Lucas was honorably discharged as a corporal after four years of service in the United States Marine Corps.
During his enlistment, he served on the front lines of both, I guess we can call it the misnamed Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 and then the subsequent Operation Enduring Freedom in 2004, which I think, again, provides heavy weight to his opinion on the current situation in both the Middle East and Eastern Europe.
And so we'll say hello again to him now.
Lucas, great to talk to you again, and a very early Merry Christmas.
Yeah, James, good to see you again.
Good to talk to you again.
It's been a long time.
And unfortunately, I can't see you on X because you've been banned like many others who have been banned.
And I'm glad you did reach out to me, getting to my website so we can get back together on this and talk some stuff here.
And that website, ladies and gentlemen, is LucasGage.com.
You're going to want to make yourself familiar, more familiar with him and his work if you're not already following him on X. He's got a huge following over there, right at 200,000 followers and really just telling the truth in a way that makes people listen.
And again, well, we'll get to all of that.
Lucas, before we talk about your time in the Marines and, of course, your opinions on such conflicts that followed, let's talk about your early childhood.
You actually came here in 1984, but you were born in Italy.
That's correct.
Yeah.
So first of all, my birth name is Angelo John Gage, and some of your audience may remember or be familiar with that name.
So I was born Angelo John Gage in Italy in 1984.
And the first two years of my life was there.
And then I came into America when I was two, and I've lived here my whole life.
I have two sisters.
I was raised Roman Catholic until the age of 23.
Now I'm kind of like nothing.
But, you know, I lived in New Jersey my whole life.
And, you know, the typical Roman Catholic upbringing, Sunday dinners, go to church, that kind of thing.
So, you know, I did that whole spiel.
And then when I was 17, 9-11 took place.
I don't know if you want to skip to that or should I just keep that.
No, no, no, please.
Yeah.
Let's go back to the next one.
I think we can say traditional Italian-American upbringing.
You get here in 1986 at the age of two, and we know those big families and all of that that you just mentioned.
And we can go straight into your teenage years.
9-11, you're 17 years old.
So I'm the kind of guy in the school who is a class clown.
I wanted to make friends with anyone.
And then at 17 years old, I was at the dentist.
I heard on the radio, a tower was hit by a plane.
I said, okay, that's a very bad accident.
And then a few minutes later, another tower was hit.
I'm like, what's going on?
That doesn't sound right.
So it was clear to me something was happening to our country.
And so when I left the doctor's office, I was able to go up to this place called Washington Rock because I lived in New Jersey.
And the doctor was in Greenbrook, New Jersey.
And my town was called Warren, New Jersey, which was above sea level on this like mountain side, if you will.
And so Roshton Rock is actually a famous area where George Washington was able to look out into the New York Bay area and see the British coming.
That's what he did, his little lookout there.
So I was able to see the New York skyline in just clouds of smoke while the towers were still standing.
So at 17, here I am watching our country attacked.
And I said, okay, let me go to my sister.
I have two sisters at the time.
One of them was a freshman and I was a senior.
And so I went back to the school just to check on her.
You all right?
She goes, I'm fine.
And then I went home and I just watched TV.
I glued myself to the TV the whole time.
And then I basically just sat there until the towers collapsed and go, wow, all those people just died in there.
And, you know, me being Italian American and I had some patriotism there.
But also in my family, I had my grandfather.
He was in the Air Force.
He served in the Korean War as a major in the intelligence at the Air Force.
And his father was a Marine.
So we had people here in the United States prior.
So my grandfather lived here.
His father was from here too, but they lived in Italy for whatever reason.
My grandfather was stationed there.
So that's where he met my grandmother, yada, yada, yada.
So I was born there.
But my sisters were born in America.
So I was naturalized as an American citizen over time.
But anyway, so there's a history of service in my family.
So I felt compelled to go fight the bad guys, if you will, because my country was under attack.
So I said, let me go.
So I called up the recruiters.
He said, look, you can't join at 17.
You have to wait till you're 18.
But there's something called the delayed entry program where you come, you sign up with us, you spend every Saturday with us until you go to boot camp.
And that shaves off one of your reserve years.
So I signed up for four years and then four years reserve.
Now it's only three years reserve.
So anyway, I went to boot camp four days after high school.
So instead of going into the beach with my friends and doing one more last summer of shenanigans, I went right to Paris Island, South Carolina in the heat.
You know, it was June 26, 2002 when I got there.
Yeah.
So, and you're from the South, so you know how.
I know what the South Carolina feels like in June.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So Paris Island, the sand, the heat.
I mean, we had sometimes we had black flag days where we couldn't even go outside.
But anyway, so I did three months of boot camp.
And, you know, that was an experience in of itself.
And I wasn't an infantryman.
So when I got out of boot camp, I was assigned as a combat engineer.
So a combat engineer, he does what we do is we do explosive ordnance disposal, mine sweeping.
We build fortifications, barbed wire fences, sandbags, that whole shebang, right?
And so because I'm not an infantryman, I didn't go to infantry school.
We go to Marine Corps combat training.
So that's basically, or Marine combat training, the basics of riflemen, throwing grenades and all the other stuff, just because all Marines are riflemen.
We're not like the Air Force or other branches where you don't have to be training with these weapons.
We have to all be riflemen.
So we did the, I think it was like a month or a few weeks of that.
And then after that, you go to your MOS school.
So MOS stands for mode of service.
So my mode of service was an engineer, combat engineer.
So I had to go to engineer school for three months to learn how to build stuff.
You use deck cord, landmines, et cetera, all the stuff I had to learn.
And then I graduated in like December, I believe it was.
And then I got to the fleet, which would be like the career that I'm in.
And I was in North Carolina, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
That's where I was stationed for my whole service.
And so I was there.
And then January, I got to the fleet one month later.
It was February 14th, Valentine's Day, 2003, deployed to Kuwait.
Hold on right there.
Lucas, just one second, just to give the audience a little more background, because I don't want to skip this as we move forward to your deployment.
But you write that you underwent specialized training.
You had, of course, the Marine Combat Training, then engineer school.
You graduated at the top of your class as a combat engineer.
And then that's at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
And then we move forward.
You're saying in the Valentine's Day, that's what, about eight months after your first day at boot camp, you are deployed.
Correct.
So it was February 14, 2003 on Valentine's Day.
I was deployed to Kuwait.
And we stayed there until like March 3rd or 5th.
I forget when we got our orders to go into Iraq.
And we convoyed up from Kuwait into Iraq and we crossed the lines there.
So that was day three of the invasion.
So the infantry, the Air Force already went ahead of us.
So we're engineer support battalion out of Camp Lejeune, North Carolina.
So we support the infantry, which at that point was 1st Marine Corps Division from California.
So we were behind them.
And, you know, we went in there.
You know, I was on a gun.
I was a 240 gunner on a Humvee, and we had no gear.
It was like, I had to use a wood pallet and then like supply straps, you know, cargo straps to strap it down.
It was ridiculous to mount my gun to the top of the vehicle.
We had nothing.
We had no armor plates.
Zero was garbage.
And so that's how they treated us.
So we got in there, yeah, and it was pitch black.
I had night vision goggles.
Now I'm 18 years old now.
I'm like, oh, this is cool.
I've been Rambo.
I got a radio marble chip too.
This is a marble chip two over.
This is like a movie to me, right?
But everything's already blown up.
Like everything's gone.
Everything's destroyed.
Like there's no one shooting at us.
Everything's pretty safe at the point.
So I'm crossing in Baghdad.
It's like 3 a.m.
Everything's pitch black.
And yeah, it was a disaster what I saw.
But so the first tour was basically the war itself.
Our main mission of that tour was to build medium girder bridges and IRB bridges over these canals that they blew up, these bridges they blew up.
So Saddam's forces would blow up any bridges and crossings to make it harder for us.
A medium girder bridge is kind of like this bridge that's made of like Lego pieces, if you will, not Legos, but you put them together manually with three people on each side.
You build them up and then you launch them over the gap with a truck.
Then the IRBs are these bridges that they unfold into the water and then you have boats that you have tugboats to put them together.
You link them up and then you could drive tanks over them, right?
So in both cases, we're building bridges.
That was our main mission.
I think it was called Saddam Canal or something like this that we had to go over.
I don't remember the name of it, but that was our main mission.
And when I got there, that's what I saw dead bodies, people blowing up.
A few Marines got killed in front of me.
Not from my unit.
They were in an amphibious vehicle.
They were infantrymen.
Now, I personally didn't get any firefights.
Thank God I didn't kill anyone.
But my Humvee was hit by IED, but it didn't get hit technically.
It went off, but it misfired.
You see what I'm saying, James?
So the cap exploded, but the IED didn't go up.
We didn't even know what happened.
We're like, what was that?
And then when the guys went back to check it out, the EOD guys, the exploding orders disposal guys, these like the bomb squads.
They're like, yeah, man, you guys are lucky that didn't blow up.
That misfired.
So either I would have been dead or I would have been maimed.
Either way, it would have sucked.
So I got lucky there.
So, you know, my first tour was the war itself.
We had nowhere to sleep.
We're sleeping on the ground.
We're digging holes in the sand to go take a crap, that kind of thing, like living a dirty life.
But the first 30 days, James, I didn't take a shower.
My camouflage was like sand.
It was like concrete because of sweat and the sand.
We all said to wear a mop gear.
So we had our boots on, but then we had rubber boots on those boots because we thought Saddam made chemical weapons.
So we had the gas mask ready on our side.
We're wearing, you know, this zipper up thing.
So it's like this whole just hot.
You're always hot.
You're always sweating.
And so the sweat and the sand just makes your camouflage like stone.
And my face was completely black.
My knuckles were black.
And I had like the goggles that I was wearing.
You know, I took them off.
I had permanent white eyes.
You know what I mean?
This dark face.
So I didn't take a shower until 30 days later when I arrived.
And this is when the army had these containers, these ISO containers that were just showers.
They're portable showers.
The best shower of my life, man.
But, you know, being in that situation, yeah, being in that situation, you know, sleeping on the ground, you know, freezing at night, because believe it or not, the desert, it doesn't hold any heat.
So it becomes freezing.
I was so cold.
I was wearing my winter gear in the desert when I was on Fire Watch.
And Fire Watch is when you're up to make sure everyone else is safe.
You got to take turns watching the platoon or whatever, the squad.
As everyone else sleeps, you take turns to make sure nothing happens.
Someone's got to be on fire.
Not everyone goes to sleep.
There's always a guy or two to keep guard.
So we take three-hour shifts, me and these other three guys.
So there was nine hours total, and I'd have to stay up at three.
And I was freezing.
I couldn't believe how cold it was.
Because again, the thing about Iraq is it's hot, but if you go into like a pot, if you go under a tree, it's way cooler.
It's not like San Diego or something where it's like boiling hot and the air is hot.
It's either hot with the sun or cold under the shade.
But when it's at nighttime, it's just super cold.
It was the coldest.
Oh, my God.
It is really interesting.
So you're over the, this is Operation Iraqi Freedom.
You're describing some of your work.
This is 03.
And then I don't want to move too quickly, but because I mean, just this alone could fill an hour and it would be riveting.
But you're deployed again, Operation Enduring Freedom in 2004, because I want to move forward to, you know, listen, you're 17.
You're feeling patriotic.
It looks like your country is getting attacked.
You have a history of military service in your family.
You sign up as warriors do and want to get out on the front, make yourself, your family, your country proud.
Something changes at some point.
And we'll get to that in just a moment.
But let's fast forward, if we could, just very briefly and quickly, I guess, to Operation Enduring Freedom.
This is your second deployment.
You're back over there in 2004.
And this is more of a humanitarian phase.
So this turned out to be six.
The Marine Corps is not like the Army where you sit there for two years or so.
We go in for five, six months.
This was a seven-month tour because our plane was late at the end.
But this time we had an Al-Assad Air Base.
We had barracks.
We had the gym.
We had better food at the Chow Hall at Iraq than we did at Camp Lejeune, just so you know, because civilians were running the show, KRB, they were called.
Now, here we're building, you know, we were getting rid of landmines, clearing landmines, clearing weapons, cachets that we find.
Humanitarian work, for example, if we saw that there was a blown-up playground, we'd fix it for the locals, things like winning the hearts and minds of the locals.
So the second tour was much longer, but it wasn't the war anymore.
It was just sustaining and maintaining what was happening and cleaning up the mess that we started.
And, you know, I started questioning, what the hell are we doing here?
You know, because I started seeing a lot of oil trucks going back and forth every time I went in the convoy.
The opposite was oil trucks.
And then I ran into these guys, these Blackwater mercenaries.
They just do whatever they want.
You know, they're in 4x4 Nissan trucks, backwards Nike hats, shades.
They have no accountability.
And they were doing some war crimes the first tour.
But anyway, this time, who are these people?
And they're making $120,000 a year.
And I'm making nothing compared to them.
So we started questioning, like, what are we doing here?
You know, we play spades all the time.
So much time wasted.
So the second tour was that, and we got back, but my ankle, which had an injury.
Yeah.
As I returned my second tour, I was put on light duty.
He's like, look, you could leave and get a medical discharge, but you won't get your GI pill.
You got a year and a half left, Gage.
Just stay here.
I said, I'll stay.
He's like, we'll put you on light duty.
So I don't have to do any marching, all the other crap.
So this is the first time I was in front of a computer.
So as a MIMS clerk, which is like military inventory, maintenance, whatever the hell acronyms, you know, they are in the military.
Because we had gear.
We had boats to maintain.
We had parts to maintain.
So I was just like an inventory guy sitting in front of a computer.
And I kept hearing about Fallujah.
The Battle of Fallujah was so hard.
And I wasn't in that battle.
And I look up the Battle of Fallujah and I started seeing that we were using white phosphorus on people.
And I said, wait a minute, aren't we the good guys?
Why are we using this chemical on people?
And I started questioning things, James.
Maybe we're not the good guys.
So I started seeing these pictures of people being burned with this stuff.
Like, yeah, we're the bad guys.
This is where it started to waking me up.
And then, you know, fast forward to six months later, the six months left in my service, a friend of mine, his brother sent 9-11 Loose Change, one of these conspiracy movies that 9-11 was blowing up, whatever.
And whether you believe it or not, it made me see the towers again collapse.
And I only saw them once the first time on TV.
Never revisited the situation.
So I looked into this video, opened my eyes to possibilities that maybe my government lied to me.
And then when I got out of the Marine Corps, I went to Italy for a few weeks to visit my family there.
Then I went right into community college and I started doing philosophy and started questioning reality.
And all of it was paid for by the GI Bill because remember, I stayed in for a year and a half.
Okay, so but you write here and that's okay, so that's interesting.
So you did get that.
I mean, at least there's that.
But you write twice.
I never finished it.
Well, I know that you had a lot of struggles when you got back.
Yes, and perhaps we touched on that briefly because I certainly want to get to in the second half of this interview your thoughts on the current conflicts from the perspective of a former Marine.
And I think, you know, when you have people like Mark Weber and Kevin McDonald, who I love, and they're both great friends of mine, and they have just incredible analysis on these situations.
But, you know, you have a completely different perspective that I think needs to be put into the mosaic here.
But you write that you were honorably discharged as a corporal after four years of service.
So we know you just shared with us, you get to boot camp in June of 2002 in South Carolina.
You deployed Valentine's Day of 2003, two tours in the Middle East.
And you write that after four years of service, honorably discharged as a corporal, you leave the gates of Camp Lejeune for the last time.
You flip the bird at the Riverview Mirror and shout at the top of your lungs with joy.
You were finally free, you write, from your bondage and nothing felt better.
So that is a big turnaround from where you were in your mind watching the towers come down to just a short four years later, totally different mindset.
Again, elaborate a little bit more on how you made that transition.
Well, I was disillusioned very quickly about the Marine Corps when I got in because the reason I got out as a corporal rather than a sergeant, which is expected, is because I actually got in trouble in Kuwait, right?
So I was writing a letter to my girlfriend at the time.
I said, look, we're going to do this.
We're going to do that.
And I drew like stick figures and we're going to make a bridge here.
It was so stupid.
It's so childish what I was doing.
And instead of the guy saying, hey, Gage, what are you doing?
Ripping it up and making me fill some sandbags, he brought it up to the sergeant.
And then he brought it up to the first sergeant and his attorney brought up to the colonel.
I remember I graduated first in my class in engineer school and I was going to get meritorious Lance Corporal, meaning that they give it to you based on your skill rather than time and grade.
So there's two ways to get promoted.
You get promoted over time that you've been in for so long here, Sergeant, right?
Or you do so well and you excel, you actually get promoted quicker.
So I was supposed to get meritorious Lance Corporal, but because I got in trouble for this stupid thing, which the colonel decided to use me as punishment and tell everyone, don't you ever ruin OPSEC again, you know, operational security.
I was just an 18-year-old kid, like being an 88 girl, this is what we're going to do.
Stick figures, airplanes.
I was trying to act cool for my girl or whatever.
And I got caught in this letter and they should have shred it up.
And instead, they made an example of me.
So I thought, wow, this whole brotherhood stuff is nonsense.
Like, why didn't my boys take care of me?
Why did they punish me for they took my weapon from me?
They embarrassed me.
This is before I invaded.
So I realized that the Marine Corps was political.
I was like, all right, this is so ever since that I wanted to get out immediately.
But I was stuck.
You can't just quit.
So you get a four-year contract.
So that's what broke my illusion about the Marine Corps being this tight brotherhood that everyone loves each other.
Some bits true.
But, you know, in the beginning, I got this taste of, wow, this is nonsense because people want to get promoted faster.
They want to fall on the right side of the colonel or whatever the case.
So anyway, that happened to me and that broke my heart, but it also gave me a reality check.
So that's why I graduated or got out of the Marine Corps as a corporal because I got NJP'd.
And when I got NJP'd, there was a non-judicial punishment.
I lost one half's pay, one month's half pay, so a month's payment, no payment, and I lost my Meritorious Lands Corporal.
So that kind of made me realize I got to get the hell out of this organization.
So that's why when I flipped the bird, I was like, hell yeah, I'm out of here.
Because it wasn't the worst experience of my life, but it was that part right there.
I saw this is not true.
Like this whole the few, the proud, the Marines is all nonsense.
And people warned me.
Listen, James, I didn't even see Full Metal Jacket or any Marine Corps movie before I went in.
I had no idea what I was getting into.
None whatsoever.
You know, I had no clue what was going to happen in boot camp.
Didn't know what was going on.
Everyone warned me, don't go.
But I was a patriot.
I said, no, I have to fight these bad guys.
So that's why I was so excited to get the hell out of the Marine Corps because of that reason I got in trouble for something so stupid that could have been handled on the side.
You see what I mean?
I do see what you mean.
And I am listening to this as I'm sure everybody in the audience is listening to this and I can't wait to hear more.
When we come back in the next half hour, we're going to talk with Lucas about the transition of returning to civilian life and then his takes on the wars at hand now.
You're not going to want to miss this, ladies and gentlemen.
Fantastic guests.
Learn more at lucasgage.com.
We'll be right back.
Pursuing liberty, using the Constitution as our guide.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
USA News, I'm Skip Kelly.
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Ladies and gentlemen, back with you now, along with our featured guest of the evening, LucasGage, LucasGage.com.
And he's got a fantastic synopsis of his life up until this point.
He and I are in the same season of life, both in our early 40s and with kids at home and in tow and took a somewhat different path, I guess you could say.
I mean, to say the least, but we arrived at some of the same conclusions, and that's how we got to know each other some years ago.
But he writes at his website that the return to civilian life would prove difficult.
Reading now from his biography, within months of being home, I began to experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD.
This affected my personal relationships and several other facets in my life.
It also manifested into a loss of interest in all matters, which led to a deep depression and a lack of focus and discipline.
Lucas, you write that you had a 3.83 GPA.
You got accepted into Rutgers, but you kept having trouble there at school, dropping out twice.
Things only became worse.
After learning, and I think this is very important and vital for the audience to hear, that the entire war and my service were based on lies.
This is what you write.
I was also unable to maintain my job or maintain a job for any meaningful amount of time.
This led me to escape that reality by living a pleasure-seeking, hedonistic lifestyle.
So this is your post-war years in the mid-2000s.
Yeah.
So yeah, I did well in school.
And the thing is, every once I hit May of the second semester, I drop out.
In fact, I went back, got my grades forgiven, like, oh, all withdrawals.
And I did the same exact courses again.
And then I dropped out again.
So I knew for a fact, but Rutgers accepted me there because I did well.
But I just, I was like, I don't want to do this.
I don't want to be a slave to the system anymore.
And I had this yearning to learn the truth.
And so, you know, as you mentioned, it was hard in my life with women and stuff.
I'd be like a party maniac, hedonistic, going to the club because I missed college.
You know, I went right to the Marine Corps.
The Marine Corps is not the best place to go.
So I was chasing women at the clubs, and I was a club promoter, and I was hedonistic and all that.
But at the same time, I had this yearning to learn the truth.
So I was also learning about conspiracy theories.
And I went through all of them.
I mean, aliens, lizards.
But the funny part is the one guy who woke me up was David Icke when he mentioned Rothschild Zionism.
And I looked into this.
And so around 2012, I was reading every book I could read with David Duke's Jewish Supremacism, Kevin McDonald's Culture Critique.
You name it.
I read it.
And eventually I learned about what was going on with these banker people.
And then I said, oh, that's pretty crazy.
Well, but then I realized this anti-white racism was still going.
So I said, what's this attack on white people?
You know, all this stuff in history is pretty interesting, but now there's something going on here.
So imagine you learn the war is fake based on, not fake, it's a real war based on lies.
You're betrayed by your government.
You start questioning religion.
And then you wake up to this whole world of who are the bad guys promoting this hatred against your people.
And so I had to become an activist.
And therefore, I became this pro-white activist where I went on this white voice show and I made this video called, you know, Wake Up to White Jenna.
It went viral.
David Duke caught of it.
All these other people from all the scenes caught it.
Come on the show.
Come on that show.
I went on everywhere because I'm a former Marine waking up and everyone's excited about it.
So I did this activism for a long time.
I actually became a chairman of this group called National Youth Front.
And we focused on exposing anti-white hatred on college campuses.
Now, of course, me doing this, I was labeled a Nazi, anti-Semite, Jew hater, white nationalist, white supremacist, whatever you call it, right?
By the ADL SPLC.
So my name started to get tarnished with these people, even though all my group did was go around the colleges like Rutgers University, Boston University, wherever these teachers existed, and just pointed out, hey, this person's anti-white.
And we put a poster of their face and said anti-white.
And we get some press.
And then it would go into the news cycle.
And then, but at the time, James, the word anti-white wasn't even in the mainstream media yet, right?
A few of us would say in our circles, we'd push it.
Now it's everywhere.
Critical race theory is anti-white.
So it was the stepping stones to this bigger awakening throughout the years.
So I did that for a while, but then I stepped down because my wife was pregnant.
So I did nine months with this National Youth Front.
But by then, I already pissed off the powers that be.
And so, you know how that works.
Name is slandered for me.
Yes, I do.
Yeah.
So, you know, when eventually years, I did my own thing for a while.
I tried different groups, didn't work.
And, you know, I never was like a white supremacist.
I never was that kind of guy, but I was talking to different kinds of people, trying to figure out where I belong.
And so one of the reasons why now I'm exploding is because I'm actually on my own.
But before we get into that, I was doing different things.
And then eventually the whole Twitter ban came by.
I think it was 2020 where everyone got nuked off YouTube, off Twitter, everything.
So I got destroyed from that.
And then I kept pushing on Gab, but then I started realizing I'm just talking to myself.
And I hit this like midlife crisis where I snapped and I got really depressed.
And I said to my wife, you know, I got to start a new life.
So this Angelo John Gage character who did good work and I don't regret it and I don't hide it.
I didn't get facial surgery.
So this is, this is your birth name, Angelo John Gage.
That's my birthday.
But now my name is legally Lucas Gage.
I literally changed it because I said to my wife, I'll step away from this political career, quote unquote, and start a new life writing books about self-help and something like this.
And that's what I tried to do.
I tried to get away.
I really did.
Not that I gave up on my people or something like this or whatever.
No, no, I understand.
I never, James, I never took a break.
You know, my friend's like, bro, just take a break.
I was like, yeah, I'll take a break.
I just got, I got away from it, deleted my gab and just tried to go away.
And what happened was I changed my name.
I felt great.
I kind of found a center.
I did some meditation.
I read some books on philosophy, stoicism, Tao Te Ching, all this weird stuff.
Alan Watts is one of my favorites.
And I found this piece.
I said, you know, I've been fighting this war literally physically and against this parasite class that's attacking us for so long.
I never took a break.
So I had this break and it improved my marriage, even though my wife is such a great woman.
Nothing bad was happening between us, but I wasn't there.
I wasn't present in the moment.
My son said to my wife, why is daddy always mad?
And I said, I'm not mad in front of him.
But he goes, wife goes, he could see you're depressed through your face.
That's when I realized I got to get away from this stuff.
So I did, took a break, changed my name.
I said, I'll start my life over.
And then the Ukraine war started.
And I said, damn it, I can't just sit here and say nothing.
But I didn't do anything.
I said nothing.
So eventually I said, I have to say something.
I told my wife, there's no way I can't say anything.
I have to say something.
She goes, okay.
My friend Maram, partisan girl, Syrian girl, the name is, she's a big influencer.
She made a video for two minutes.
She says, you know, she says, Lucas, if this, if I post this, it's going to go viral.
You sure you want to do this?
Because then you're going to get sucked back in with your new name.
I said, just do it.
And that's exactly what happened.
It went viral and it got caught.
This guy, Clayton Morrison, redacted, big channel.
Hey, come on the show, talk about it.
And that's what happened.
I got right back into this anti-war movement.
But tell us, Lucas, tell us, we've got about two minutes before our next break.
Maybe a little less than that.
Tell us what you said in this video that put you right back smack dab in the middle of the film.
That I was a veteran of the war, and this is the same lies they're using for the, they did weapons of mass destruction.
It's the same script, but different, it's the same people using a different script.
Rather, it's the same script, the same people, but different character, different form of script, but it's the same lies to be pushed in Ukraine-Russia war.
So I said this, and I explained how it is, and people were like, he's right.
And it just went viral all over the place.
Being, again, the Marine Corps thing, once again, helping me push my message.
So the Marine Corps was the worst thing that ever happened to me.
But then at the same time, it's the best thing that happened.
It's interesting, guys.
It is.
It very much is so.
So I came back and it became viral again, the spotlight on me.
This time as Lucas Gage, some people remembered it was, hey, it's you.
I go, yeah, it's me.
What's up with the name?
I legally tried to quit.
I literally tried to move out in my life.
Let these Zoomers, hey, let the Zoomers save the world, you know?
But, you know, I guess God or whatever doesn't have, he has another plan for me.
And this time I return, I'm way more effective because I'm not.
And to be clear, I mean, you changed your name to step away, to focus on your family, not because you had recanted anything.
No, no, I never recanted anymore.
Exactly.
In fact, right.
So the thing is, James, is that I don't recant anything.
In fact, all the things I went through made me who I am today.
What happened was when I got away, I cleared up all the anger, frustration.
And I wouldn't call it hatred because I don't hate anybody.
But whatever that feeling is, that negativity that was draining my soul, I got rid of it.
So now I'm saying the same exact stuff, but without any anger.
And I'm just like, to me, it's working much better because I'm more centered.
I'm not depressed.
I'm not angry about it.
And I offer peace and love to everyone.
It's not my fault they don't take it.
So my approach is much more superior.
And that's why, as you mentioned, I'm almost at 200,000 followers on X. Huge following.
Saying the same thing, but just saying it better, saying it with love rather than hatred and anger and frustration, which people can feel.
Well, you know, of course, Lucas, age has a way of refining things and bettering things.
And, you know, we certainly do things better now.
People who are progressing normally in life are doing things better at 40 than they could have done when they were 20.
So this is important.
But I'm at your Twitter page right now, or X, excuse me.
I don't know.
It's X. At Lucas underscore Gage underscore.
We'll get that posted up on the website, folks.
But Wright says, United States Marine Corps, veteran, husband, father, author, philosopher, America first patriot, free speech absolutist.
He has a book at lucasgage.com, Thoughts and Reflections on Life by, of course, Lucas Gage.
And we are going to take this floater if we haven't missed it yet in the studio.
We will take this one.
But when we come back, we are going to talk with Lucas about his.
So I guess we don't really need to ask you your thoughts on the current conflicts, but I do have several questions that are going to hit very close at home to that topic.
I don't want to say we've saved the best for last because this has been a fantastic opening hour of our Christmas season with Lucas Gage.
But we've got some interesting questions that he will have wonderful answers for from his very unique perspective.
Stay tuned.
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Welcome back, everybody.
James Edwards, Keith Alexander.
He is here.
He's just listening.
He's been listening intently to Lucas Gage, as everybody has, I'm sure.
And I want to talk.
I mean, listen, we've covered the background of our guest, his decision that led him into joining the United States Marine Corps, what happened over the course of his four-year career that began to change his mind, and then the continuing evolution in his search for truth in his post-war years and how he arrived here with us this Thanksgiving weekend, 2023.
I would ask you, Lucas, of course, your take on the conflicts in Israel and in the middle, Eastern Europe, but I think we pretty much understand that.
And that is, of course, it's the same old thing, different players, different location, but it's the same script, same people pulling the strings.
You touched on that earlier, and we might circle back to that, but I want to ask you just a couple of questions here that I think the audience would really appreciate your particular answer on, and that is you had the military experience, and you came out of it, and you found the truths that we are discussing tonight.
And how many people do you think of our kind, how many white young men go into the military and have a similar evolution?
I know everyone I serve with who knows and still talks to me has awakened to what I'm saying.
So that I can tell you personally.
But most of us go in there having no idea what the hell is going on, of course.
If we knew, if I knew what my country would have turned into 20 years later, I would have never signed up.
Well, no, yes, of course.
Yeah, we say that, and we say that all the time.
I mean, there are just wars.
I mean, certainly we are anti-these wars that have none of America's interest.
It doesn't take away the valor or the gallantry of the soldier, but my God, I mean, what punishment should be meted out to those who have unnecessarily put people like you into this meat grinder?
How difficult it is now, Lucas, for a normal, straight, conservative white guy to even get in the military?
Well, I'm sure it's not that hard to get in to be used as cannon fodder, but they have to go now through this sensitivity training, and it's got to be like, you know, transgender is a complete joke.
And what I've looked into is that they're having a very hard time recruiting people now.
Nobody wants to fight for this country.
I mean, what is America anyway?
What is this country at this point?
We're getting statues melted down.
Everyone's changing their school names.
Everyone's mad at each other.
We don't know what genders are anymore.
This is not even what it was 20 years ago.
It's literally that different.
I can't imagine what a World War II veteran looks at our country and thinks of himself.
Got him.
You think they would have turned those Higgins boats around?
They wouldn't have even stormed the beaches of Normandy.
Can you imagine going to fight Hitler and then 10 years later being called Nazis?
It just makes no sense.
That's what I always tell people.
If I went back in time with a phone and said, hey, guys, good news.
Where are you from?
The future.
Well, here's the good news.
You're going to win the war.
Yay.
The bad news is in 20, 30 years, you're going to be called Nazis and everything you believe in, your country, everything to be destroyed completely by this globalism that you're fighting right now.
So they would have turned those boats around.
They would have been to World War II.
You'd like to think.
I'd like to hope.
Yeah, right?
Well, Lucas, this is Keith Alexander.
My father was in World War II in Patton's Army, Third Army, and he did what you did.
He was in the Engineer Corps.
But he told me specifically, he said he was going to whip my ass if I got in the military during Vietnam because he said this is ridiculous.
He says we're just like hired mercenaries to be there.
He said we have no interest there.
You know, Lucas, it's interesting what Keith's saying here because, you know, all of the Army recruitment ads for the last several years have been black women and homosexuals, you know, whatever, the coalition of the other.
But then now that they need some people to get in there, have you seen the new Army or Marines, but yeah, they're focusing on white able-bodied men.
Yep, get those white goy in there to fight for Israel.
That's what it is.
You know, they sit around, oh, transgenderism.
And then it's really time to get serious.
You got to get all these poor white kids to die for this country, which hates them.
The country hates them.
Why would they fight?
I mean, this makes no sense.
Like I said, I would have never, ever signed up.
And people ask me, should I sign up?
I say, no.
But if you insist on it, get something like the Coast Guard, get an MOS where you could take out of the military, be an electrician or something or IT guy.
Don't ever go into infantry.
Because I was Mr. Urah.
I wanted to be a sniper.
But the Marine Corps puts you where they want you.
You know what I mean?
But I wanted to go in there and fight bad guys.
But if someone insists on going to the military, I said, listen, go into the Coast Guard, something local where you won't get deployed and get a job like a mechanic or something, you know.
But yeah, I mean, that's the thing, James.
I would never, I tell people do not sign up anywhere because what are they going to fight for?
You're not fighting for anything, literally nothing at all.
You're fighting for these bankers' wars.
And by the way, one of the books I read when I got out was Smedley Butler's War is a Racket.
He was a general.
It's a 12-page book, if you want to call it that, a pamphlet.
And he says it's a racket.
We were basically hired gangsters for big capital.
That's what we were doing.
Good on you for bringing up the name of Smedley Butler.
Smedley Butler was between World War I and World War II.
He'd served in World War I.
This is Keith Alexander, by the way, Lucas.
Good to have you on the show.
Absolutely.
You're the only man.
And Lucas, you're the only guest in 20 years that kept Keith.
Not that we don't appreciate his wonderful contributions to the show, but for Keith not to say a word the first 30 minutes, that's a rare guest.
You've enjoyed it tonight, Keith.
Yeah.
Well, I really was interested in what he would have to say because my father's outlook, he was in Patton's army, had a bronze star and all of this type of stuff.
But he said there's no reason in the world for us to be involved in either World War I or World War II.
He said, we were so blessed by Providence to have two large moats called the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean protecting us and a polar ice cap.
He said, whenever we get into any foreign war, which is directly contrary to George Washington's advice to the nation in his farewell address.
That's correct.
100%.
We're just absolutely being used.
He said, someone wants to use our wealth and our manpower, and they don't have our best interests at heart.
And he was very adamant about that.
This was back in the 60s.
Well, Lucas, let me ask you one quick off-question, offhand question, and then we'll get to where we're going and how you see things playing out over the course of the next couple of years.
Next year is going to be one for the books in America, man.
But what about this new army policy?
You know, I know you didn't have to deal with this, thank God, back in the mid-2000s when you were in the service.
But this new, I don't know if it's army or military policy, this whole thing with COVID, you know, anybody that wasn't getting the vaccine was scum of the earth, but now join up and no vaccine required for the United States military.
Come back, all is forgiven.
Right, yeah.
Fired you before, but now come back is always forgiven.
Yeah, that just goes to show how much nonsense that narrative was.
That COVID narrative woke a lot of people up, too, by the way.
Unfortunately, when I was in the service, I got anthrax and smallpox injections.
So hopefully that was, because they thought, you know, Saddam had weapons of, he had the anthrax, but he didn't.
But yeah, of course it's nonsense.
It's all contradictory, just to get people to sign up.
But again, they're having a very difficult time.
There was actually a letter that was leaked to like an Iran newspaper that said, you know, we're really having hard times convincing these kids to go fight in the Middle East because of Israel.
The word Israel actually came up because people are realizing, what are we there for?
And, you know, Trump actually mentioned it.
He's like, we're in there for Israel.
What are they supposed to leave?
Like, Trump was the one president who just said things he's not supposed to say out loud.
We're taking the oil.
That's exactly why we got in World War I, too.
We were basically the Jewish leadership said that, you know, don't in 1916, Britain was about to negotiate for peace because they were worn out militarily, financially, and every other way.
And World Jewry said, don't do it.
You can win this.
We can get America into the war, but it'll cost you.
And they said, well, what is it going to cost?
I said, well, you need to allow us after the war, the Ottoman Turks control Palestine, to come in there and freely immigrate with the idea of eventually having a Jewish nation.
If you do that, we'll bring America into the war.
And that's how it happened.
Well, Lucas, a quick question before we run out of time.
And my God, how fast this hour has gone.
I say it a lot.
I always mean it, but I mean it again.
We got a lot going on right now.
Eastern Europe, America's obviously already engaged in that in a proxy-type capacity.
The Middle East, I mean, Israel's pulling the leash on the Republican Congress.
And what's next year look like with regards to war?
We've got about a minute to go.
I mean, Ukraine-Russia war, I called it from the start.
Ukraine has no chance.
Of course, the Doolins, the Blinkens, and the Zelenskys are all the same kin, the same tribal people pushing these wars not for our benefit.
America has no, we have no reason to be in Ukraine, none whatsoever.
But these special interests, you know, they're always the same.
Same people.
Neocon-driven wars.
You are in them, too.
Lucas, right now the Gels are going to be a lot of people.
That's why I had to say something.
The Middle East just happened to be in the vicinity of Israel.
What a coincidence.
Everything that Israel wants are enemies are our enemies magically.
And then Russia-Ukraine, it's a mess.
I think Russia is going to come out.
I think everyone knows Ukraine cannot win.
Now the Israel-Gaza thing, which I think was allowed to happen, October 7th, Bibi Netanyahu had losing support.
And now he's got all of Israel behind him to eliminate the Palestinians once and for all.
I mean, even Israelis, like, there's no way they got over that wall without knowing.
There's no way that happened.
It's like our 9-11.
There's no way it happened without something.
And he was warned.
So that's all politics.
And you can go down that rabbit hole.
But again, it's going to be very bad for the Palestinians.
But I'll tell you what, I've never seen so many people wake up so damn fast about Israel.
Yes.
I mean, it has been, it's been an incredible time.
I have to have a theory about that since October.
I think it's because of the internet.
We didn't have to do it.
Of course it's back in Vietnam and things like that.
So there was no alternative source of information.
Now there's plenty of alternatives and people are rising up.
And people like myself who are fighting the narrative in real time, debunking the 40 Jewish beheaded babies and all the propaganda.
It's even accelerating it even more.
Social media has been big.
Yeah, but I mean, and then, of course, there's a whole global community that sees Israel for what it is outside of American media.
It's all the same procedure.
The 40 beheaded babies reminds me of the Belgian babies that were being tossed up and bayoneted, supposedly, by the German troops.
No propaganda like war propaganda, that's for sure.
But anyway, yeah, I mean, it has been remarkable, Lucas, the extent to which Israel has started to lose the narrative in spite of so much media control.
The last two months have not been good.
But then we find out just exactly how sold out our Republican representatives have.
Yeah, they were going to be anti-war, not fund Ukraine.
But then when that leash got yanked, they set at full attention.
Well, anyway, folks, you can learn more and follow the work of Lucas Gage, LucasGage.com.
Find him on X. Just type in Lucas Gage, I'm sure, with his followers.
He'll be your first name to come.
That's it.
Lucas, thank you again.
I hope you and your family had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
You'll have an even better Christmas.
Let's stay in touch and do this again soon.
Really enjoy this.
Absolutely.
Thank you very much, James and Keith.
Honored to be here and good to talk to you guys again.