Pam Bondi's ouster as Attorney General stems from alleged leaks regarding Eric Swalwell and dissatisfaction over Epstein file handling, potentially paving the way for Kash Patel or Todd Blanche. Simultaneously, former Marine Lynn Westover analyzes downed US planes in Iran, detailing SEER training, the utility of blood cards for recovery, and how enemies modify RPGs to exploit helicopter vulnerabilities during extraction. Ultimately, these events highlight a chaotic administration grappling with internal personnel crises while facing escalating military risks abroad. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Pam Bondi Epstein Critique00:12:24
Ladies and gentlemen of the interwebs, you are staring at Eric Swalwell, also known as Eric Swallowell, Bang Bang McFang Fang, or Eric Fartwell, because there was a rumor that he once farted on an interview live.
If you look at his face right now, it almost looks like he's holding one in or pinching one out.
But he's doing neither.
He is asking Pam Bondi a question.
Behold!
A through December of 2025, we received messages at my office that said, I hope somebody shoots you and your children and your wife in the head.
Pew pew, motherfucker.
Pew pew.
I would stay indoors as much as possible, and my children unfortunately have to do that.
The Department of Justice has not charged this individual and cited that he's a prolific caller and has health conditions.
Although, what we have found in our own investigation and his voicemails is that he has said he will employ others to do this.
The president can come after me, it's fine.
I'm in the arena, so are these folks.
But we never expected that the Department of Justice would not seek to prosecute and investigate those who are making threats against us, and that would include.
Those on that side of the aisle.
And I'm just asking for your help to protect life because life is at risk with the environment we're in right now.
Congressman, I completely agree with you.
I know about several of those personally involving you.
I believe one has been charged publicly, and there's something I would be happy to talk to you about off camera.
But I can assure you that they are very serious.
They are being looked into, and I can give you more details on those.
None of you should be threatened ever.
None of your children should be threatened.
None of your families should be threatened.
And I will work with you.
You can come into my office any day.
I will work with all of you on both sides of the aisle if you are ever threatened.
And I'll gladly talk to you after this hearing about your cases.
But I can tell you some of them are very active.
Now, as you've all heard, the news of the day, or at least the news of yesterday, is that Pam Bondi has been.
Removed of her office or removed from her office as attorney general.
I'm going to take this out for one second before I bring it back in.
I do not relish when people get fired.
I don't act like a certain unnamed man who acts like a jackass doing victory laps on social media because someone lost their job.
Pam Bondi ought to have been fired six months ago.
With that said, this is not a victory lap.
Ha ha, she's lost her position.
She really hasn't.
They'll push her to another position, give her another title.
And the damage is done.
Unfortunately, the only question is going to be can some of it be undone?
She's fired.
We're going to get into that in one second, but there are rumorings, and this is from Colin Rugg, who tends to be pretty reliable.
Pam Bondi was fired in part because President Trump believed she had tipped off Eric Swalwell, according to the Daily Mail.
Trump reportedly believes that Bondi had tipped off Swalwell about the FBI's effort to share investigative documents about his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.
The FBI was preparing a cache of documents on Swalwell's relationship with Christine Fang, the Daily Mail reports.
She's intervening in those matters.
The White House wasn't pleased she was intervening due to her personal friendship with Swalwell, a source told Daily Mail.
I'll echo one thing also.
I don't relish in people getting fired, and you should not threaten people.
I mean, you don't need to tell normal people that you shouldn't threaten people.
It's the sort of thing that goes without saying.
You don't need to also condemn public threats because everybody knows they are terrible, they are awful, they are unlawful.
And anybody who says, aren't you going to condemn that, as if it doesn't go without saying, is playing a little bit of shame politics.
Fact, not even necessarily worth the threats, but people are unhinged, and you don't need to tell people not to break the law.
Criminals are going to break the law regardless.
That's what makes them criminals.
But Pam Bondi is out, and the rumor might be that she had a friendship with Swalwell, might have let him know what was coming down the pipe, and Trump believes that she had some communications with him, and she has now been removed or demoted as attorney general.
Now, skip that rumoring aside, and we can get into the New York Post covering it.
The four words Trump said to Pam Bondi the day before he fired her as Attorney General.
So dramatic, so clickbaity, it gets you to want to read the article and see what it says, which we're going to do right now.
And then I'm not taking a victory lap.
I'm just going to highlight some of us have been saying this not unsubstantiatedly for damn near six months.
Fire her.
She's doing damage.
She's discredited the DOJ.
She's disenfranchised and disillusioned people who voted for Trump.
She looks like she's terribly corrupt, in bed with Big Pharma, with Pfizer.
Having been their counsel, she should not have been appointed.
She should, you know, she got confirmation.
She should have been sacked a long time ago.
President Trump told Attorney General Pam Bondi her time in the administration was up while the two rode from the White House to the Supreme Court Wednesday, according to a report.
I think it's time.
Now, technically, that's five words.
Bada bing, bada boom.
Trump said as he and Bondi made the short ride across the town to take in the oral arguments of a highly contested birthright citizenship case, the Wall Street Journal reported.
I covered the oral arguments, we talked about it.
Bondi, who was sworn in as the attorney general last February, allegedly asked the 79 year old commander in chief if she could remain at her post until the summer.
Trump denied the request, according to the outlet.
The two had discussed Bondi's tenure in his administration since the beginning of the year, and Trump seemingly expressed dissatisfaction with the speed she was moving on his agenda, the report stated.
My goodness, it's like some of us have been saying that from the get go.
Wait, wait, wait.
Oh, you waited too late.
Too bad.
Statute of limitations.
Not one singular issue was the reason behind Bondi's termination, but quote, a steady drip of frustrations, end quote, including the handling of the Epstein files, lack of positive news coverage directed at the DOJ sources told the outlet.
Despite learning her fate Wednesday, she remained at the White House, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
Bondi's ouster was the second major, major shakeup in Trump's administration after he previously asked Christy, no.
By the way, if you've been around the channel for a little while, you'll know that both of those people were people that we talked about should be fired.
For the benefit of the administration.
We love Pam.
She'll be transitioning to a much needed, important new job in the private sector, yada, yada, yada.
Blanche is a possible permanent replacement for his former boss.
But Trump also said I'd invite EPA Lee Zeldin, the former lawyer, whatever.
You know what the reality is?
It's not even clear that Todd Blanche would be a better replacement.
I've had my critique of Todd Blanche as well.
And between Todd Blanche and Pam Bondi, it's not clear who.
Was more incompetent and more detrimental to the image and the reputation of the DOJ.
Do recall, Todd Blanch came out and I respectfully highlighted the problems with what Todd Blanch was saying as relates to the Epstein disclosures.
He came out with that email justifying that memo, the unsigned memo, saying that everyone signed off on it, even though nobody signed off on it, including Kash Patel and Dan Boncino.
And somehow that memo saying that Epstein killed himself, there's nothing more to see here, was leaked to Axios, unsigned, and it put The DOJ, or at least the FBI, in a position where they couldn't undermine that memo without contradicting the DOJ and Todd Blanch.
So I'm not sure that Todd Blanch would be any better.
But at this point, we're in a world where any change will at least maybe be a stimulation for some form of change of direction, reinvigoration.
There's the old experiment, you know, like the changing light bulb theory.
And when you go and you change the workers' light bulbs and make them brighter, the workers become more efficient.
And they found that even when you went in and changed the light bulbs and made them Less glowing, dimmer.
Even when you went in and made a change that was for the worse, the employees still performed better because they at least felt that someone was taking care of them and paying attention to them.
Firing Pam Bondi will at least let the base know or at least think that Trump listened finally, maybe a little bit too late, to the righteous critique of the administration, or the righteous critique of some of the biggest supporters of the administration.
I want to just.
Refresh everyone's memory as to a couple of my tweets on the subject.
This is not the right tweet.
And they go back to July, give or take.
And some of the critique was on point and aged quite well.
July 12, 2025, Viva Fry at the Viva Fry.
For those who are not aware, Bondi's DOJ continued the Biden era persecution of Douglas Mackey, Ricky Vaughn, free speech persecuted for a meme.
Bondi's DOJ is continuing the Biden era persecution of Roger Veer, Bitcoin Jesus.
Bondi's DOJ has seemingly been unaware of multiple important Second Amendment cases going before the Supreme Court, even setting aside the debacle, the Epstein debacle itself.
For these reasons alone, she deserves to be fired.
That's July 12.
2025.
What's happened since then?
Continued bungling of the Epstein disclosures to the point where it looks deliberate and like sabotage.
To the point where now, however you feel about the war in Iran, had the Epstein disclosures been done properly and not looked like it was a corrupt cover up or sabotage, had they been done properly, nobody would be referring to the Iran war, in as much as they disagree with it, as the Epstein war, period.
That bungling of an Epstein debacle on its own.
Deserved a firing.
All the other reasons that I listed as well not going after Pfizer, not reinstating Brooke Jackson's Key Tam lawsuit against Pfizer because Pam Bondi was Pfizer's counsel in 2021.
So some of these tweets have aged well.
Some of the commentary, some of the critique has aged well, and other critique, or at least other support or critique of those critiquing, has not aged well.
Bondi's out.
If it's Todd Blanch who replaces her, I don't know that that's going to be any better, but at this point, any change at least lets people think, even if it's not true.
That the Trump administration finally heard and is finally acting on some of the critique of some of its most loyal supporters of the last decade.
So, with that said, Bondi is out, or at least she seems to be out.
I believe the only question is whether or not there's going to be some issues on the market in terms of her not being officially out for the payouts on the markets.
But all those markets hit 90 plus percent yesterday.
Pam Bondi has been fired, repositioned, whatever.
And now Kash Patel's stock has also gone up.
To 60 some odd percent, that he too will be out by the summer.
That's that, at least on that particular issue.
Everybody, how goes the battle?
Viva Fry, former Montreal litigator, current Florida Rumbler, in Longboat Key, and was hanging out at Rumble Studio yesterday, and am now hanging out with Lynn Westover, who you may remember from such podcasts as mine.
He's been on a while back, married to Alison Morrow.
Our families are hanging out and doing some fun stuff over on Longboat Key.
And we're sitting there having lunch, and I'm reading the news about the downed planes in Iran, and it's just, you know.
Not to hype, I don't want to hype, not hype, it's not to make bigger issues out of what happens in war, but also not to downplay what happens in war, which is why some people were not supporting this decision to go to war, being told it wasn't war, it was just strategic strikes.
And now we're a month into the war, and now people are saying it's war, planes get shot down in war.
Yes, exactly.
Might have been the reason why people were suggesting at the beginning that this was going to turn into a protracted war.
Rumble Wallet Crypto Assets00:02:01
Despite being told it's not going to.
Anyhow, set that aside.
So we're talking over lunch, and I'm like, you've got to come on and impart your expertise with the world because he's a combat veteran.
And what he started explaining to me was interesting stuff as relates to what can potentially happen when you're shot down in enemy territory.
An excursion.
Yeah.
No, it was, it was at first it was an excursion.
No, but, but imagine we, we were berated for saying we shouldn't be going to war.
It's not a war.
Okay.
It's not going to be a protracted war.
Well, this is what happens in the war.
And now it's a few more weeks.
If you believe Trump doesn't matter before we get into that, though, I do want to thank the sponsor of today's show, which is none other than Rumble wallet people get the Rumble wallet peeps.
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Fixing Audio Echo Issues00:06:09
And now we can see.
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Cover your assets, people.
Now, without further ado, we're going to talk about what's going on in Iran.
Then we're going to talk about something going on in Canada in the after party, because some of you, it's fun stuff.
In Iran today, you've heard the news now, there have been three planes, two or three planes that have been downed.
And there is a rescue operation ongoing now for the pilots.
Apparently, one has been recovered.
Second US jet took enemy fire but was not shot down as search for F 15E crew member continues.
The plane was shot down.
There's some video actually of small arms fire on the rescue planes.
This is coming from Nick Sortor.
Breaking footage has been released of what is reportedly Iranian police opening fire on a U.S. military Black Hawk, which was conducting search and rescue missions for a downed F 15 pilots earlier today.
The crew of the Black Hawk, which was hit by fire, has been confirmed safe, thankfully.
It's unclear if any other U.S. aircraft were hit by small arms fire or other forms of fire.
And this is what we're looking at.
I'm in the room, And it's an amazing thing.
When I was talking with Lynn, and he's going to explain what's going on over lunch, I'm like, you know, when someone gets shot down over enemy territory, you know, how does the extraction work?
And it was actually, you know, not more complicated.
It was just amazingly interesting to listen to Lynn explain this.
If you don't know who Lynn is, Lynn, come on in and we're going to introduce you to the world and talk about this a little more.
The extraction process is.
Amazing.
But Lynn, sir, how goes the battle?
Can you hear me okay?
Yeah, I just caught up now.
Oh, no, I'm going to hear an echo.
Do you have headphones?
I don't know.
I have my volume turned down.
So you're probably going to hear the echo because you have your headphones on because you can hear me downstairs.
Let me see this mic check one, two.
I hear a little bit of an echo.
Yeah, try taking your headphones off.
Okay, if I've taken the headphones off, just leave them plugged in, but take them off because you're going to hear me.
Okay, hold on a second.
Let me hear.
Let's see.
Before we get this started.
Does anybody in the chat hear echo on Lynn's end?
Man, that sounds pretty good.
Yeah, they shouldn't.
So hold on.
Just mute your speaker on your computer.
Hold on.
Okay, that's mute, mute, mic.
That's already got hold on.
Let me see.
I just want to hear if the chat sounds okay.
Oh, we're going to go with this.
I'm going to leave the headphones off.
See, I got, I got, okay, Lynn, for those who don't know who you are, you've been on the channel before.
I say combat veteran.
Give us your credentials because we're going to talk about what's going on now in Iran and.
The wild insights that you have as to how what's going to happen now and how these things typically go down.
Yeah, no problem.
So, initially, my career started out in the Marine Corps.
I started out in straight leg infantry, worked my way into Marine Corps special operations.
I became a force reconnaissance Marine and a scout sniper, and went through Sears school, went through just about every school you can imagine in that job.
I left the Marine Corps after about 12 years, continued doing work as a contractor.
Both for the government and for civilian concerns.
I did some unarmed and embedded work in Afghanistan looking for insider threats, kidnapping, ransom due diligence, Latin America, also counter piracy and counter potion work in the continent of Africa.
So that's a little bit about as far as like that time frame.
And then the last 10 years I spent teaching human terrain mapping, behavior pattern recognition for law enforcement, and continue to do that on the side today.
Okay, now people are saying there's an echo.
And if it's an echo when I speak.
Lynn, do you have headphones?
I don't, not on me.
Crap.
The echo may annoy some people.
I'm fine with it.
Viva, that's awful.
Hold on, let me see what we can do with this.
Lynn, turn your volume down on your end.
My volume's all the way turned down.
I don't have any speaker going on on my end.
You don't hear me coming out of your computer.
Mm mm.
That's weird because it's better.
All right.
Well, I put the headphones on and I've turned my volume down.
Echo both.
Better now.
Viva, go upstairs.
I'm upstairs.
Lynn's downstairs.
You're both echoing.
Lynn, maybe shut your computer off and come upstairs and we're going to do this upstairs.
Okay.
That's fine.
Okay.
We're going to do it live, people.
We're going to back the camera up and Lynn's going to sit next to me on a chair up here.
Oh, that one says it's fine.
You have no echo.
Okay.
Stay down there, Lynn.
We're doing it like this.
Seems better.
Okay.
So, Lynn.
You only had an echo for a little bit when you had the speaker on your computer on.
That's why they're not hearing an echo now.
Okay.
And now I think it should be good, everybody.
Yeah.
There you go.
Okay.
Good.
Okay.
So now I want to start this because I want to have a clean clip of all of this.
Lynn Westover, you are a former combat veteran.
Captured Personnel Recovery Plans00:15:50
You've seen this, you've done this.
The news of the day now is that two or three planes have gone down in Iran.
The pilots, one of them was rescued.
Apparently.
The other one, unknown.
When we're sitting there having lunch, and I'm like, I'm saying, I can't imagine anything more nightmarish than going down in a foreign country.
And some countries might be more nightmarish than others in terms of their historic treatment of prisoners.
I say, like, what possibly goes on now in terms of the search and rescue?
And how do you avoid another Black Hawk down situation where every plane you send in or helicopter you send in to extract the soldier comes under fire, like what we just saw there?
And then you have now eight more soldiers down that you have to go get, and this escalates or descends into a Black Hawk down situation.
You started talking to me about SEER, S E R E, search, evade, resist, escape, and what will likely go down in terms of this to the extent that you're allowed disclosing what you know and whatever stuff might be proprietary to the government.
So flesh it out.
So, yeah, we saw the big push for.
Seer training, so survival, evasion, resistance, and escape was really after the advent of.
Vietnam, a lot of American service members, mainly pilots that were going down, but just in general were getting captured and going through all manner of torture, interrogation, so on and so forth.
So you had the military code of conduct, and they really determined that, hey, we need to figure out a way to actually be prepared for this because this is a reality.
It's not like Vietnam was the first time.
Where US service members were held captive, but it was after that where the need was really identified that, hey, we have to have training for this because this is an eventuality, right?
So there's training you go through, and right in the name, in the acronym, it's you learn how to survive, you learn how to evade, you learn how to resist interrogation after you've been captured, and then also techniques for learning how to escape.
And there's all manner of things that go into that.
And then what we started seeing, especially during the global war on terror, because for a long time, when you're talking about actual conflict, you know, you had signatories basically of the Geneva Convention, right?
So there's it's kind of like the whole uh, think like the big Lebowski, and they're like, hey man, there's rules, man, you know what I mean?
Uh, there's kind of rules to this, and it was that mutual affirming destruction, like, hey, we to a certain degree, we.
Take care of the people we capture, you know, POWs, because whatever harm we inflict on them, you know, we don't want that to be inflicted on our people.
So it's kind of a mutually assured destruction thing, even though we know that the bad guy is always going to probably treat our people a little worse than what we treat prisoners of war.
Well, that all changed when you started looking at unsanctioned action.
Things like terrorists, their behavior is very similar to how cartels and criminal elements work.
It's the same kind of behaviors psychologically, human behavior wise.
So we started to see some of those changes like, well, now I got to determine certain actions like who has me and what do they want?
And the whole mission and focus of that is to, you know, keep the quid pro quo there.
You know, I need to be valuable because the end state is survival, right?
That's the totality of it.
And as the saying goes, you know, you could go like three weeks without food, you could go three days without water, you know, three minutes without air, but you won't last three seconds without hope.
So it's just that there's a mentality there of, I will.
I will survive, right?
So, to talk a little bit about what's going on now and some of the things that are taking place, whenever it's determined that somebody has been captured or potentially captured, so you're just going to automatically assume that, hey, somebody went down, capture is real, until we know for sure, we're going to continue to try to look for them.
You're going to have the Joint Personnel Recovery System start activating.
Certain things.
I won't get too much in depth on that, but there's a bunch of interests that are going to start actively trying to identify who, what, where, when, and why.
And you may have partisan link ups.
You may have individuals that are agents that are being co opted into it.
And meanwhile, you're also trying to identify, like, hey, where's this individual at?
When you look at things like O'Grady back in 95, I believe it was in Bosnia.
When he went down, it was actually the 24th MU Marine Expeditionary Unit.
So, as Marines that came together, many recon dudes that to do that extraction and do that recovery.
So, there's a whole process that goes there.
And then during the recovery, you know, you have to do basically some, you got to be able to articulate your veracity like, who are you?
Right.
So, there's certain things that are put into place for that.
So, you have to basically verify.
That I am who I say I am.
And there are specific things I get asked for that.
So that's kind of the 30,000 foot view of what that is.
There are other things within the resistance phase of it where they teach you how to deal with interrogation and interview.
Can't go into too much about that, but there's training for that.
And it's for high risk personnel that they do that.
I'm going to unmute myself and hope that the echo is not so bad and then mute when you start talking again.
Apparently, we need to be in the same room or in different buildings, Lynn.
As far as what's going on now in terms of planes going down, getting shot down, and we were talking over lunch in terms of whether it's friendly fire versus enemy fire, and you sort of smiled and said, I'm not sure it would be much better if it were friendly fire because that shows lack of communication.
If it's mechanical issues, that's something that is even harder to deal with if it's internal than if it's an external enemy that you know you're dealing with.
How much catastrophic weight do you place on?
These two, three, it's between one and three in mixed reports, but let's just say two planes shot down in one day after a month of obliteration.
How much weight do you put into how serious a situation that is for the war effort?
I would say the simple answer is I don't know.
I would say for sure that when to say that, oh, it's friendly fire, and as we were talking about at lunch, somebody's saying, oh, well, you're saying friendly fire so that it's not as bad as it would be if it was actual enemy contact.
I don't even think I can wrap my head around that because.
Typically, that's kind of an unsaid thing.
Friendly fire, which does happen quite a bit, you hear the saying of fog of war.
When you put a lot of people into a zone, right, in the combat, there's a lot of uncertainty.
And so to have that situational awareness, we call it situational awareness and understanding, to be able to encompass the whole common tactical picture and know what's going on is very important.
Important.
And you have things like geometries of fire, and we get to the bitter edge of the fringe of, okay, what's the difference between I'm engaging with the enemy and now I'm potentially having it's called fratricide, is what friendly fire is.
It's, okay, we've continued to put ordnance on the ground or whatever, and we got danger close to other friendly services, friendly forces, and yeah, that's a problem.
But it's a real thing that happens.
I'll use another movie reference that people get.
You know, platoon, when Tom Behringer's character starts getting mad at the platoon commander, he's like, You're messed up, fire missions getting people killed, you know, because he's so homed in on what's going on with the battle, you know, you lose the forest for the trees.
So, you know, without knowing the specifics about what happened, I mean, anybody's guess is as good as mine, but.
Yeah, friendly fire happens.
It's not cool.
It sucks, especially when you're on the receiving end of it and you know that the people that are shooting at you are other friendlies.
Like, what are you going to do?
Shoot back?
It's going to make it worse.
So, yeah, that sucks.
But I don't know that I would be remiss to try to say, okay, I would rather say that we're having friendly fire over actually engaging with the enemy.
You know, the Pat Tillman thing is a good example of that.
That's where you saw the opposite of it, is where they, you know, that was a friendly fire incident situation where people died.
And instead, you know, they said, well, no, it wasn't.
That was the enemy.
Like, no, it was friendly fire.
It doesn't take away the fact that it happened, but there is a difference there, right?
Yeah, I mean, that is the irony of the explanation where people say, no, no, it wasn't enemy fire.
Don't worry.
We're still strong, but we either have mechanical issues that brought down our planes or we have communications issues with our friendlies that result in this.
I guess it's a question of judgment as to whether or not this is justifiable to have happened a month into these bombings.
Maybe they're not as degraded as we're being told.
Set all that aside, maybe it's just a game of odds.
I don't know if you have any.
From your experience, or I don't know if you have any knowledge specifically here, you're dealing with one or two or three planes now over a month.
Let's say four planes over a month.
Do you have any idea how many would be going in and out in terms of like, is this one in 100, one in 1,000?
Are there thousands of these missions going on every day?
Yeah, well, I do happen to remember when they came in and did some of their initial explanations as far as what's going on.
And when we're talking about doing thousands, I think one of the.
Interviews, it was like 2,000 sorties.
That's 2,000 missions where you have multiple aircraft doing a mission.
So that's, you know, now you're talking tens of thousands of, you know, actions taking place.
I'm not saying it's okay, right?
So it's, it's, it is kind of a, it's a touchy topic to talk about.
Nobody wants to see where the bad side of this takes place, but it's a reality.
And whether you want to call it war, you want to call it a military action or whatever the case may be.
I mean, shoot, we were, I mean, years ago with Obama, like he was dropping bombs like it was going out of style with drones or whatever.
I mean, there is the impact of that where those drones were hitting, where the ordnance were hitting.
So again, no, nothing about it is great.
Like violence, war, killing, it's never a good thing, ever.
But it is the reality of it.
And when you accept that call, you accept to go and take that action, you are taking the chance that that could mean you.
That could be you that gets shot down.
That could be you that gets killed.
I mean, some of the best military members I've ever met in my life, like dudes that are, we looked at them like Superman, like the Lion of Fallujah, Doug Zimbek, trained me in recon.
Like this guy was unbelievable, amazing.
He was killed in action.
So that's the, you know, the bad guy has a vote.
That's the end state of this.
So you take all the technology, you take all the intelligence, you take all that stuff, but all it takes is one round, one explosive, one piece of intelligence, and you still can lose people.
That's just the reality of it.
Do you, I mean, you were, someone asked if you were a pilot.
You were, What was your role when you were serving?
I was on the ground component on the forward line of troops and past that, is what you would call that, the flot.
I did special operations.
So, whenever you have what's considered high risk personnel, so that was aircrew, that was, and that could be, it doesn't have to be like a pilot.
You know, if you had like an aircraft, like a helicopter or something like that, your aircrew, so your crew chief, your gunners, Your pilot, things like that, they would be considered high risk.
Whoever's riding with them.
So when you look at like the SOAR, special operations, the air contingent, I mean, there was a great example that when they went down and got Maduro, right?
The pilots and all of the special operations dudes that were a part of that, they're high risk personnel.
And the crazy thing is, you could have people not actually make it even into the insert.
For the mission, but just because whatever happens to the aircraft, like aircraft goes down.
Helicopters are 100,000 pieces just flying in unison, right?
They want to fly out, fall out of the sky.
So you have lots of different personnel that would be considered high risk.
It's not just pilots, if that makes sense.
No, no, for sure.
And the question is this now, like getting to this specific incident and the difference or similarities between Black Hawk down.
You get a helicopter going into enemy territory.
They are obviously going to be sitting ducks in a helicopter, like Bill Brown, who's another serviceman, a veteran in our community.
He's like, helicopters are the worst, slow, low to the ground, easy targets.
How do you extract a serviceman who's now lost in enemy territory without creating another eight sitting ducks in order to extract that person to the extent you can relay this information publicly to the world?
Black Hawk Down Comparisons00:08:38
Yeah, so there's a couple ways that you can do this.
And it really depends on how far insulated you are.
So, looking at Grady and giving the example for him, you know, he basically was able to hold down and get concealed.
And meanwhile, he had a way of reaching out with the radio, trying to make contact, and you would get instructions.
And again, it may be you go to a recovery site, right?
Or you may have personnel on the ground who can aid in a recovery without getting into too much specifics about how that works.
But there's a process for that.
And it really boils down to confirmation because you never know.
You're always in a state there of like, okay, is this really who I'm supposed to be?
You know, trusting for this.
There's other things that are used.
There's what's called a bloodshed.
So it's a document, it's made out of Tyvek.
It has stuff in multiple different languages on it, basically saying, Hey, I'm an American service member.
I need help.
If you help me, you will get this receipt and you will get, you know, something basically like an IOU on the back end for helping me get to where I go because.
It's problematic when we talk about money, like trying to use money to buy yourself out of things.
So, or you're going to go to like a DAR site.
So, it's like I said, that's a recovery site.
So, there's going to be things that the personnel are going to have on them that they use for their recovery, things that they use for their survival.
A lot of the stuff, because as the saying goes, you pack light, freeze at night.
So, you're going to, you know, like an EVC chart, you know, evasion chart.
You know, it's basically like an air chart, but it's again made out of Tyvek.
You can use it to repel water, you can use it to be concealed.
It gives you information about the regional area that you're living in, as far as things that are dangerous to you, such as insects, venomous snakes, things like that.
Just something to give you some insight as to where you're at.
The other side of it is, too, because going back to the mental aspect, real quick, hey, I'm waiting till I get to, maybe I'm at the recovery site and I'm waiting to get picked up.
Well, that whole fear of the unknown going on in your head, like, well, you know what?
I'm sitting there reading my EVC chart.
Gives me something to pass the time while I'm waiting to hopefully get recovered.
So you have a bunch of things that are on board that you would use to aid you in your recovery, in your evasion, or escape, depending on what happens.
Because if you do get captured, your best chance for evading immediately is that beginning part of that, right?
I won't go too much into that, but that's, you know, getting, you can possibly get captured by, say, like a local national who is not a Officially, a part of the military or their law enforcement, your best bet is to get out of their hands before you get insulated into somebody that's a little bit more advanced.
And just think the difference between getting arrested on the side of the road versus now you're at the jail versus now you're at the prison.
Once you get to the prison, you're pretty well insulated.
Good luck on making that escape.
Now it's straight up resistance and survival at that point.
And it's the same thing when you look at kidnap and ransom.
So there's a lot of.
There's a lot of things that are similar and all that.
It just depends on, hey, first and foremost, who has me and why do they have me and what do I need to do is kind of the things that you look at when you're trying to do that.
It's fascinating.
And yeah, I mean, it's something most people don't really think of.
And now we're going to see how this goes down.
The question is what does it take to take down, not like logistically, these guys on the grounds have guns.
Can you literally, with a small gun or a small arm fired, You know, take down or do substantial damage to a Black Hawk helicopter?
And to take down the fighter jets, what weapons are required to do that that the Iranians have?
And is it a sign that they're not as good at doing it?
Or is it really just like always random shooting up into the sky and hoping you hit something?
So, I'll start with your fast movers because that's pretty easy one to explain.
You're looking at things like surface to air missiles and stuff like that.
That's really going to depend on the overmatch of the aircraft versus the technology of what they're shooting at you.
And then, does the aircraft have countermeasures?
Like some of the things you've seen on Top Gun or whatever.
That's the best way I can explain it.
Oh, I'm throwing chaff.
You're trying to get that to, if it's heat seeking, you're trying to get it to.
Hone in on that and hopefully not hit your aircraft, right?
You have also electronic countermeasures where it tries to either mask or make it hard for, you know, like a missile or something to hit you.
When you're talking about slow movers, such as rotary wings, so helicopters, yeah, that's a little different.
You're probably your most vulnerable signs or times are going to be on insert.
We call it insert and extract.
For us on the ground component, when you're doing insert and extract, Those are the two of the most dangerous times right next to actions on the objective, right?
So, going back to the 24th Mew when they did the recovery of O'Grady, that was a very dangerous time for them to go in, make the recovery that would be, you know, insert.
You know, luckily at that point in time, it's probably going to be the actions on are going to take place there on or about insert and then extract, right?
Those are your two most vulnerable times.
What you saw with Mogadishu and Black Hawk Down, you know, one of the things that they didn't actually like to talk about for those who watched the movie or whatever, they actually modified the RPGs to have something that would deflect the back blast of the RPG.
And that's how they were able to, you know, aim up at it at such a steep angle without getting fried with their own back blast from the rocket.
And that's how they were able to be very effective because as the Black Hawks were coming in, You know, they were low, they were slow, and they were a little bit easier to get to.
When they're at cruising altitude or higher up, yeah, it's not going to be that effective.
So that was kind of the difference of what you're looking at for those two.
What was the stuff?
There was one of these weapons where it shoots shrapnel everywhere in the sky.
I don't want to say frag, but to try to take down the shrapnel.
Yeah, flak.
So you saw a lot of that in World War II.
You know, they'd throw flak up in the sky, and it was just a bunch of shrapnel.
Trying to take out all of the planes coming in to try to do their attacks, do their inserts, whether it was the airborne or whatever the case may be when they were doing the bombing runs, things like that.
Lynn, where can people find you and what are you doing with all of this?
It's not even a joke.
You have expertise.
I know that you're employing it professionally.
What do you do?
Where can people find you?
You know, it's really easy to find me on LinkedIn.
That's probably the best place.
I've taken a little step back from doing daily training like I used to do in human terrain mapping, behavior pattern recognition, but I still do it.
I still do consulting for.
Law enforcement and civilian interests, as far as use of force and basically understanding violence, is what I do.
But that's mainly like consulting that I do on the side.
So, probably LinkedIn is the best place to reach out to me there for things like that.
Sunday Show Guest Raid00:05:45
Or X, you can find me on X as well.
This is back in the day when you had a badass long beard.
How long, where was this picture taken?
That was when I was doing training for.
Army and Special Operations Command.
So I was kind of bouncing back and forth.
I was doing work for the government as a contractor, but then I was also doing counter piracy and kidnapping ransom at the same time and mixing that with a little bit of training and executive protection.
I was kind of a jack of all trades at that time.
But now I'm a dad, so my wife would kill me if I've had offers to go do contracting stuff overseas and she's like, uh uh, not happening anymore.
So those days are behind me.
I'm going to unmute myself.
I just want to show this was the beautiful lunch that we had today where we talked about all of this.
And I said, we got to do it live.
And everybody, sorry about the confusion at the beginning.
I didn't understand where the echo was coming on your end.
So I didn't realize it was on when I was talking.
No, when Lynn was talking, you guys heard the echo.
But anyway, figured it out.
Scoozy, Lynn, I'll see.
And by the way, Chateau, you said we should have been doing this in the same room.
We were going to do that, but I wanted to get going live and not have a different layout for.
The solo part because I'm going to talk next time.
Next time.
Well, first of all, we'll make a video downstairs afterwards.
And we've been, we're going to also go shelling right now.
Not actual shelling because you're not allowed to take the shells.
We're going to go to the beach.
Lynn, thank you very much.
And I'll see you downstairs in a few minutes.
I'm going to kick Lynn from the studio here.
Boom.
Now the light has changed and it's gotten even brighter up here.
Holy cow, it's like I'm standing against a supernova behind me.
Put the earphones in.
And what was I about to do?
Uh, everybody, that's amazing.
Let me get to some of the.
There was a tip question in our locals from F. Chartrand who says, Hold on one second, let's see what this one has to say here.
View tipped, okay, and it says, Looks like Gates was not likely to be better either.
I remember cheerleading for him.
What did Gates say?
Matt Gates says, Pam Bondi will be known as one of the great crime fighters of our time.
She's a patriot who is all of our appreciation.
Todd Blanche left his comfortable job at a major firm to defend President Trump against horrendous lawfare.
He has shown moral courage, strength, and exquisite legal talent.
Todd will do a great job for the Trump Vance administration and us all.
Well, you look, politics is politics, and maybe Matt Gaetz is playing a little bit of politics.
There's no point, you know, when you're in the sphere, there's no point saying, I told you so, unless, you know, you're trying to prove that your insights were actually accurate when people were taking hot, steaming dumps on you on social media.
Not talking about anybody in particular.
Biltong is in the house and says, This isn't just Biltong, it's premium meat, real craftsmanship, and clean ingredients, all made house.
In house, sold direct.
Welcome to BiltongUSA.com.
Code Viva for 10% off.
Biltong, I think everybody needs to see what Biltong looks like in order to appreciate the awesome deliciousness of what Anton at Biltong is making.
Not a formal sponsor.
He's just someone who crumbles and rants.
Oh, okay.
Here, get in here.
Now you can see.
Oh, yeah, here we go.
He's taking a picture.
And now Lynn's going to come in and say hi to everybody.
Here, Lynn.
Come in.
I'm not on this.
This is Bill Tong and this is a Lin.
Here, hold on.
Oh, yeah.
Bill Tong is great, dude.
You get that in South Africa.
Yeah.
Now, you're hearing through the mic.
You see, people, we are in the same room and we went for a jog this morning.
Oh, stop it.
Stop.
We went for a jog this morning along the beach.
Yeah, you ran me into the dirt.
You're so sad.
It was a strong, strong dude.
It was an early morning jog and we're going to now go in a few minutes.
I want to do one more story, by the way.
49 minutes.
Okay, we're going to go raid.
Somebody.
We'll go raid somebody.
We're going to do a Canadian story and then take some QA in the after party.
Who is live on this Good Friday?
First of all, I don't know if you say happy Easter.
I know some people say you do.
Have a meaningful Easter, everybody.
We are going to be live on Sunday, regular time, because, you know, it's always a different time zone somewhere.
So we'll have our Sunday show.
Happy Good Friday to everybody who's celebrating Easter.
And what am I doing here?
So I was going to go raid Jimmy Doar, and then we're going to talk about a fun case coming out of Canada, which is.
Involving someone who I've had on the channel many times.
What did I just do here?
Raid and confirm raid.
Let me see here.
We've done it.
All right.
Owen is live.
Ah, crap.
I just raided.
We just raided.
And maybe if we go 10 minutes, I think I can raid someone else in a few minutes.
So now we have raided.
Viva is strong for 5'5, maybe.
I am strong for 5'6, sir.
I round up.
And we were taught, look, strength of heart and strength of mind.
Will make up for lack of strength of body.
I'm strong for five, five, five, six.
Sitting there with my kid and saying, My kid says, you should wrestle with Lynn.
I'm like, I'm pretty sure Lynn is well versed in hand to hand combat.
I think he would destroy me.
I used to wrestle in high school and I am in decent shape, but I believe I am stronger heart and mind.
When Lynn and I are jogging, he says, I can beat him down.