#268 Mike Waltz - Special Forces Green Beret Turned UN Ambassador Warns About China

Mike Waltz is an American politician, diplomat, author, businessman, and retired U. S. Army Colonel, a combat-decorated Green Beret with 27 years of military service and the first retired Special Forces officer elected to the U. S. House of Representatives. Born in Florida, to a family steeped in military tradition as the son and grandson of Navy Chiefs, Waltz graduated from Stanton College Preparatory School in Jacksonville, Florida, before attending Virginia Military Institute (VMI), earning a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in 1996. Commissioned as an Army lieutenant upon graduation, he excelled by graduating from elite Ranger School and selection for the Green Berets, deploying worldwide on multiple combat tours to Afghanistan (starting in 2000), the Middle East, and Africa, while serving in the Pentagon under Secretaries Rumsfeld and Gates and as a counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney. Waltz served three terms as Republican Congressman from Florida’s 6th District (2019–2025), resigning to become National Security Advisor in President Trump’s second administration (January–May 2025) before his September 2025 Senate confirmation as the 32nd U. S. Representative to the United Nations, where he currently serves. A successful business owner, he co-founded Metis Solutions, a strategy and intelligence firm that grew to hundreds of employees worldwide and was acquired for $92 million; he authored the bestseller Warrior Diplomat recounting his military and policy experiences, along with Hard Truths on Green Beret leadership, with proceeds benefiting veterans’ charities, and he continues media commentary on defense and foreign policy. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Download the DraftKings Sportsbook app and use code SRS to turn $5 into $300 in bonus bets if your bet wins—see full terms and responsible gaming resources at https://dkng.co/audio. Go to https://drinkag1.com/SRS to get their best offer—plus, for a limited time, receive a FREE AG1 duffel bag and FREE AG1 Welcome Kit with your first subscription order (while supplies last). Sign up and get 10% off at https://betterhelp.com/srs. #ad Get 27% off sitewide at https://helixsleep.com/SRS, exclusive for listeners of the Shawn Ryan Show—enter our show name after checkout! Mike Waltz Links: X - https://x.com/michaelgwaltz IG - https://www.instagram.com/michaelgwaltz Warrior Diplomat - https://www.amazon.com/dp/1612346316 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:04Shawn Ryan?

  Ambassador Mike Walz.

• 1:06Speaker 03

  Thank you, brother.

• 1:06Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome to the show.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  Honored to be with you, man, and I'm so proud of you and what you've done with this platform, what you're doing with it. Really honored to be here.

• 1:16Shawn Ryan?

  That means a hell of a lot coming from you. Thank you. Thank you. And it's an honor to have you here, so...

• 1:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's been a heck of a year.

• 1:27Shawn Ryan?

  I'll bet it has. I'll bet it has. But, man, like, congratulations to you too. I mean, you know, very interesting breakfast, but growing up, you know, Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida. I mean, sounds like you came from damn near nothing.

• 1:46Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:47Shawn Ryan?

  And Green Beret, congressman, entrepreneur, ambassador to the UN, national security advisor. I mean, holy shit, dude. It's impressive. It's quite the arc.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  You know, it's been a blessing. It's, it sounds cliche, but I mean it. Only in this country, the most amazing country the world has ever seen.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Uh, I think I was telling you at breakfast that there was this moment, I grew up in the west side of Jacksonville, which is the kinda, the definitely the poor side of town. Yeah. Uh, one of the poorer sides of town, big Navy town. Grandfather was in the Navy, father was in the Navy. I obviously defected in win Army. Um, but there was this moment, a couple of years in the Congress during the presidential campaign and I'm, I'm standing up on this big stage, thousands of people, the mayor of Jacksonville had just walked off and, and, uh, President Trump's rolling in with Air Force One, like literally boss move, rolling in in the backdrop.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  And we're on this Navy base Cecil Field in Jacksonville and I'm looking out at the PX where my grandmother and I used to go to buy her cigarettes because they were, you know, they were subsidized, uh, back then and like, I mean, you know, look out and see my mother, um, who literally my dad, when I was an infant, just went out to sea and we never saw him again. I mean, he just left her and left us. Oh shit. Yeah. Um, so I never really knew him. I saw him once before he, before he passed when I was, when I was an adult and I was at VMI, Virginia Military Institute. It was like, who the hell is this guy? It's my dad and wrote him and went and saw him, but. You went to see him?

• 3:35Speaker 03

  He was, yeah, I went to see him, you know, it was just. What was that like? Um, mixed, right? Uh, you know, as a, as a teenage boy, you, you build up a lot of anger, I think, and resentment when you see your mother. Yeah. Struggling like she was, but, um, man, I didn't expect you to go there right out the gate, Sean, but it, um, but at the same time, you'll know who your dad is and, and I'd always had this kind of military bug and I knew this family history of Navy, you know, Navy chiefs and seeing all the, the photos and stuff and went and saw him and he, you know, he kinda had some reasons and excuses, but I was just there to get to know him and thank God I did it because he died a few years later. Holy shit.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  How old were you? Oh, twenty.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Twenty-one, twenty-two. So you, you, you, you did not meet your dad until you were twenty-two years old. I was nineteen. I mean, I had met him, but I didn't really remember him. I had not met him, you know, where I could really remember him and have a relationship, have a conversation with him until then. But the point is, my mother was my rock, is my rock. Worked three jobs, night security guard, dental hygienist, pick and save clerk. But then put herself through college on nights and weekends. We actually ended up graduating the same year. Took her fifteen years so that I could get through in four, right? Are you serious?

• 5:04Speaker 03

  And then, as you well know, and the military becomes such a pathway, you know, not only for you personally, but kind of has been for, for the United States really since World War II, out of, out of poverty and into the middle class. And now my daughter is my, I've got a twenty-one-year-old and a three-year-old. That's a whole other conversation, but my daughter's going to, is about to graduate school on the GI Bill, right? No kidding? And so to go from, because you can pass it on now to your, to your kids, great thing that Congress did a few decades ago, but to have that full arc and to have been

• 5:47Speaker 03

  standing with the President of the United States in the Oval Office, to have been representing, every congressman represents about eight-hundred thousand people, to have now been a part of the republic that you and I and so many others were willing and did die for, has been an honor and an amazing ride. Man, I'll bet. Yeah. Man, I did not, the childhood stuff, man. Wow. We're gonna dive into that, I hope. We'll go anywhere you want. Perfect. Yeah. It's all, I'm not gonna do a deep-water swim with you out in the, out in the Pacific, but anywhere but that. Cool. Yeah.

• 6:29Shawn Ryan?

  But uh, well, Mike, everybody starts off with an introduction. So let me uh,

• 6:33Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 6:34Shawn Ryan?

  Let me do yours. Ambassador Mike Waltz. An American politician, diplomat, author, businessman, and retired combat veteran, US Army Special Forces Colonel.

• 6:47Shawn Ryan?

  First Green Beret elected to Congress and still served in the reserves while you were in office. While in Congress, you represented Florida and served on the Armed Services, Intel and Foreign Affairs Committees and the China Task Force. Co-founded a bipartisan veterans caucus called the Four Country Caucus of Veteran Members of Congress to work issues together and increase the number of vets running for office. Fucking amazing, by the way.

• 7:14Shawn Ryan?

  You come from a family steeped in military tradition as the son and grandson of Navy chiefs. Author of three books, including War Diplomat, which recounts your military and policy experiences. Also a successful business owner founding Metis Solutions, a strategy and an intelligence firm. Husband to Amy, an Army veteran, father to son.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  Let me jump in on you.

• 7:40Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry?

• 7:41Speaker 03

  Husband to Julia.

• 7:42Shawn Ryan?

  Well, excuse me.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Julia's my wife.

• 7:45Shawn Ryan?

  Husband to an Army veteran.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 7:47Shawn Ryan?

  Father of son Army, and most importantly, you're a Christian.

• 7:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, man.

• 7:51Shawn Ryan?

  Welcome to the show.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  I gotta throw in my daughter Anderson in there, too. Yeah.

• 7:55Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 7:57Speaker 03

  Thanks, man.

• 7:57Shawn Ryan?

  My pleasure. My pleasure. Like I said, man, well, very accomplished career. That's, that's um, very impressive. But uh, I'd like to, I'd like to, you know, one thing that I wasn't expecting to go here, and if you don't want to, that's okay, but, you know, the, the, the, the, the childhood stuff that comes out on this show is, is, it just always surprises me how many people go through some type of, you know, abuse or parentless childhood. It's, it's just, it's, it's, it, it, it makes it real to me how many people there are in, in the world and in the country, you know, that, that,

• 8:40Shawn Ryan?

  that go through that. And um, and I think a lot of America's youth find answers to things that they're going through from people that have been on this show because it, because we go in so deep on that. And so on, you know, and just.

• 8:57Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what so many people I've had on the show have grown up without fathers. And you hear about this, you know, all these kids that do this and, and, and I mean, what so, what was it that, can you just describe going to your dad?

• 9:16Speaker 03

  Well, look, I, I don't want to make too much of it, uh, because

• 9:23Speaker 03

  my mother did such an amazing job of, of, of filling the void. I mean, she was provider, mother, father, rock, inspiration, kick you in the ass when you needed it.

• 9:37Speaker 03

  Uh, forced me, I wanted to go hang out with my friends, but I had, I'd like tested for this gifted program and she forced me to go to this charter school, um, because she could see that I was just gonna screw around, you know, and, and, and not apply myself. I didn't want to do it. She made me do it and it was a fantastic education, graduated with, you know, uh, 36 college credits, uh, right out the gate. So, but I also remember her sitting me down and saying, "Look, um,

• 10:08Speaker 03

  I've gotta work, I've gotta provide, I've, I, I can't be here to make you do your homework. I can't be here. You've gotta have a, a sense of self motivation. Um, if you want to do these sports and other stuff, you've got to get yourself there. You have to get ready." Uh, and it just, I think imbued in me this, uh, a level of independence and self motivation.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  I, I hear you on the, the, the lack of fatherhood, but at the same time, you can't let yourself become a victim.

• 10:40Shawn Ryan?

  Well, that's, that's what I'm getting at.

• 10:42Speaker 03

  Of your circumstances. And I just, just quick as aside, because she's an amazing woman. My, you know, my wife is, um, one of five, uh, raised by a single mom who literally was an immigrant from Jordan, Christians, uh, that, that fled persecution and, and came here. Their dad died in an accident when they were young. She being the oldest became the quasi-parent. And they now are doctors, lawyers. She's an army veteran and a diplomat herself, right? I mean, they, they pulled themselves up from a one stoplight little town because of the strength of their mother.

• 11:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:20Speaker 03

  Um, so if anything, I just. I also, I think two things. One, there's been a revival of men, and I would put myself as one of those that are determined to be good parents, to be, as Christianity calls us to do, to be the moral leaders of your family. And you're seeing that revival, post Charlie Kirk and his assassination and others, you're seeing that, I think, revival of people focused on family and being good fathers and leaders, but also just the strength of the women in this country. And you see in this administration, strong women, from the

• 12:02Speaker 03

  Chief of Staff, the Attorney General, and on down. I forget which journalist made some comment that the President doesn't like strong women, like, surrounded by them. And so, I don't know, you know, bootstrap yourself, suck it up, dust yourself off, and move forward. In the greatest country in the world, you have opportunity here.

• 12:25Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Did you, did you have any brothers and sisters?

• 12:29Speaker 03

  I have a half-sister, but it was really mainly just me and my mom.

• 12:33Shawn Ryan?

  No, is she older or younger?

• 12:35Speaker 03

  My, my sister's older.

• 12:37Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's older.

• 12:40Shawn Ryan?

  No shit? So just you and your mom growing up?

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty much.

• 12:43Shawn Ryan?

  What did she, what would you?

• 12:45Speaker 03

  But I also sought out to, and my mother pushed this. I remember her walking up to a group of men at my church, saying, "I heard you guys are doing a men's Bible study." And said, "Yeah, we are." Her name's Brenda. And they said, "Good. I've got a teenage boy, and he's coming to it this, this Sunday." And so, she sought out for me positive male role models. My priest went to VMI, that's how I got really focused on Virginia Military Institute, and then through him, my two favorite generals, George C. Marshall, who's, by the way, the only general to also win the Nobel Peace Prize for the Marshall Plan, who led

• 13:30Speaker 03

  the entire effort in World War II, and of course Patton, went, went to VMI and through them, through him, got steeped in history. And then my friends' fathers, I had, they're, you can surround yourself by positive role models, and the old saying, you are, you become who you surround yourself by. But again, that was back to my mom.

• 13:50Shawn Ryan?

  Great insight for your mom. Wow. That's, that's awesome, man. I fucking love stories like this. You know, I mean, it's, it's sad, but it shows. I mean, you just see so many people who victimize themselves. And I, I can't talk about childhood because I had a great childhood, you know, and so to me, for me to get up on a fucking soapbox and, you know what I mean, would, would be asinine. But for somebody like you, or a lot of the other people on the show, I mean, it shows like, you can still fucking make something. You don't have to victimize yourself.

• 14:21Speaker 03

  I don't even feel like it was a bad, you know, I mean, we, we didn't have much. The only place my mother could afford was literally in the flight line of Naval Air Station Jacksonville. So, P3s, those, you know, four-engine submarine hunters were buzzing our house every 20 minutes and rattling the whole thing. But, I think part of it is, is serving now abroad, uh, across Africa and the Middle East where you really see true poverty.

• 14:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  I don't even want, I don't want to come out of the show that I had a, you know, a tough childhood compared to others.

• 14:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  But, but I could have easily, and we've all seen people that just fall into victimhood and they never leave where they are and they never push themselves and, and, you know, thanks to great parenting and a kick in the ass when, when a young man needed it.

• 15:10Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 03

  I think we've done okay.

• 15:13Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, man. Well, I forgot to give you your gift too. There you go. The Gooch Unser Lee gummy bears legal in all 50 states made here in the USA. Probably the only reason you came. I don't blame you.

• 15:26Speaker 03

  This was it.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  I've got one for, a couple for you, actually. I don't mean to turn this into a, uh, to a whole thing, but first and foremost,

• 15:38Speaker 03

  I've got to add to your collection over there. Bottle of Horse Soldier Bourbon. Uh, this is distilled, uh, by the Green Berets who went into Afghanistan, dropped off in the middle of the night, linked up with warlords, uh, and, and rode into, to liberating that country and kicking the shit out of al Qaeda on horseback.

• 16:00Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 16:01Speaker 03

  And those, that, that team, those guys have now become entrepreneurs, much like yourself and me and so many others. I'm so proud of them. Uh, they're building a massive distillery, uh, nine 11 themed, uh, veteran themed in, in Kentucky, but, uh, they, they batch this bottle for the 250th anniversary of the army.

• 16:23Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding.

• 16:23Speaker 03

  That was, uh, that was their original batch.

• 16:25Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 16:26Speaker 03

  So I'd love for you to have that, add that, um.

• 16:35Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  Same team that made the president iconic red hats. Uh, and this just captures, you know, people ask you, what the heck are you doing at the UN? Which is a whole other conversation, how we need to clean house and doze that place, but also save some of the goodness. Make the UN great again. So when all the world leaders come together in one place in the world once a year, uh, where the president was just there speaking to prime ministers, presidents, uh, they call it UNGA, the UN General Assembly, but we've now relabeled it Munga. Make the UN, uh, great again, my mission. And then finally, of course, uh,

• 17:17Speaker 03

  copy of Hard Truths, my latest book. Uh, so I, you've mentioned Warrior Diplomat. That was really, uh, about my time in the Bush White House as a civilian policy person. But then, as you know, both the SEALs and the Green Berets have reserve units.

• 17:35Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:36Speaker 03

  So I was a reservist, mentioned I have a day job. My day job was in the, the Pentagon and then the, the, the Bush White House. I had to be the only idiot in Washington that was writing the strategy, but then I would get mobilized and have to go do it. Um, that was my first book, Warrior Diplomat. I've done a children's book, uh, and then we're happy to give you this copy of.

• 17:56Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Hard Truths, which talks about the lessons I learned in combat and how I've applied them now to, to Congress and.

• 18:04Shawn Ryan?

  Is there combat going on over there in Congress?

• 18:08Speaker 03

  You know, man.

• 18:09Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  There are many days I thought the tribes of Afghanistan were easier hurting hurting those cats than than the tribes of DC.

• 18:18Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 18:19Speaker 03

  I don't know which were more dangerous, right?

• 18:22Speaker 03

  Right? For sure.

• 18:24Shawn Ryan?

  What a disaster over there. Well, Mike.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:27Shawn Ryan?

  Let's get into your story.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  All right.

• 18:29Shawn Ryan?

  So grew up in Jacksonville, single mother. What got your interest in the military?

• 18:36Speaker 03

  Was always a, a, a history guy. My, um, I remember mom would, um, she was a runner. Uh, and I would literally ride behind her and, and on my bike. She tells the story better than I do. Talking about Pearl Harbor, Midway, Battle of Coral Sea.

• 18:56Shawn Ryan?

  Your mom was talking to you about this stuff?

• 18:58Speaker 03

  No, I was like, I had read, I was literally read every World War II history book, military history book in our elementary school library. In fact, they brought in more from the high, local high school. That I was just devouring these things and, um, and, but I would ride behind her and recite, you know, how Yamamoto got shot down and his strategy for having shallow torpedoes to, to, to come after our fleet. And then also obviously in Europe and Africa, Patton Eisenhower, Marshall, all the greats.

• 19:30Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  Right? So, so that was there. I always knew I wanted to serve, uh, my, really my high school or childhood priest was a VMI grad and, and, um, I went up and then tortured myself through. Uh, I, you know, told you about the great education I had through high school. And, um, rather than going party at Florida State, like a lot of my friends did, I went and got my head shaved every Monday. And the snot kicked out of me, uh, for four years. Right?

• 20:03Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Uh, but proud to say I graduated, distinguished military graduate, commissioned in the, commissioned in the army. Got a full ride, uh, to go there. So at least I didn't pay to suffer. Um, but it is actually an amazing education. You want to talk about another place that's completely steeped in, in both discipline and history. Uh, the, my.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  Barrick's room was Stonewall Jackson's classroom. Wow. And I mean, there's all kinds of stories about having ghosts and what people saw and didn't see. We had to literally prop up our beds like these plywood, we called them racks with little thin mattress on them. Every day we'd prop them up. You're in the, you know, gray uniform in formation every morning, but it taught me.

• 20:58Speaker 03

  A couple of things. One.

• 21:03Speaker 03

  The rules that are the most important.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  You have to appreciate, and that was our honor code.

• 21:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I will not lie, cheat or steal nor tolerate those who do, and that period. And we had a ceremony there that if someone was convicted by their peers violating the honor code. They called it a drum roll. You gathered everyone up at night. At two, three in the morning, you'd hear this drum roll starting to come out. And everyone would line up against the rails and they would announce the cadet's name that had been found to be dishonorable and they were. Banished, right? So there's that. But then there's all the rules that are bendable. And I think that served me really well in unconventional warfare space of knowing.

• 21:53Speaker 03

  When you can push the rules and then which ones are, which ones are sacrosanct? And again, another male role model, the Sergeant Major.

• 22:05Speaker 03

  Sergeant Major Bill Goodson, Green Beret, E9 became, and the guy was probably 45, 48 years old, still outrunning all of us. Great looking, charming, funny, knowledgeable of the world, spoke multiple languages. And. Is that what captivated you? Yeah, yeah, it is. I started out, so in Army Special Forces, you have to do something in big army first. You can't even try out until you're a captain or a staff sergeant. Right? Unlike the SEALs where you can just go, go right in. They want you to go season. And kind of big army. So I started out in armor and tanks, loved it.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Uh, but it was the nineties army and uh, I remember we had to get a Colonel or one star generals permission to basically start and move your tank. Because we were so short on money, on fuel and everything, parts, the whole deal. I used to take my platoon out on golf carts that I would just go rent to my own to practice our formations. And so that was pretty frustrating, uh, to say the least. And um, but I loved the special forces mission where one day. Uh, you know, you're out with your medics, building a clinic. Uh, and actually, this actually happened to me down range. Um.

• 23:31Speaker 03

  Just to take a step back on the story real quick, but we um.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Were embedded with Australian Special Air Service, uh, Australian Commandos and also some SEALs. They were doing the traditional kill capture. Uh, they had sniper teams out. That they were watching this, uh, really bad guy, this really bad Taliban commander, uh, who had beheaded a couple of police officers. Tortured a kid on, on radio and uh, live. You guys are listening to this? Just bad guy to, to force, uh, his tribe to listen to it because they weren't working with him. Anyway, they have their snipers out. They've been out there for days. Uh, we all know what happened. For example, uh, Operation Red Wing and Lone Survivor, really worried about them getting compromised.

• 24:23Speaker 03

  My medics come up to me and say, why don't we just. Host a medical clinic right down from where we know this guy is. We did, we got a bunch of local doctors. And as, and sure enough, people are lined up down the road because they haven't seen a doctor in forever. Uh, and we got a bunch of local doctors and as they come in, we're fingerprinting them, getting the biometrics and whatever, and then they get treated. Sure enough, this guy steps in before we can take his picture. He turns around and bolts. One of my guys goes to go after him, said, no, no, no, no, wait. We didn't go after him. We called the local police chief. He goes and gets him, wraps him up. It's our guy. Uh, and um.

• 25:08Speaker 03

  Now the police chief is a hero. We've treated all kinds of villagers. One of the, one of the village chiefs so appreciated us treating their kid. They gave us information on three of his other lieutenants that we went and rolled up. And the cool thing is I was able to go back to the Australian commander and say, we got him. You can bring your, bring your guys in. So what I loved about the special forces mission was one day you can be doing that. You have to learn local languages, specialize in a certain part of the world. And, you know, as we saw in one of my tours, there were three of us embedded in a UAE Arab task force,

• 25:52Speaker 03

  partnered with 180 Afghans. Right? Closest I'll get to Lawrence of Arabia in my entire, in my entire life. And, and by the way, if I never eat goat again, I'm good because we were just out there living off the land. It was me, a medic and a, and a commo sergeant, three Americans, 90 Arabs, 180 Afghans out in the mountains. Say that again? Three Americans, 90 Arab soldiers from the United Arab Emirates Special Operations Task Force that was deployed in Afghanistan. We were in beds with them, partnered with 180, a unit of 180 Afghans. We were Holy shit. Just completely out there.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  What are the UAE guys like? I've never even, I've never seen them. I've never worked with them. At the operational level? I've never even heard of them. No, the operational level, they were great. Sometimes at the command and control level, we had to, you know, we had to work with them. That's what we were there to do. The close air support with the, with the drones, with the fire support, coordinating with other units, the, the whole deal. One point I got caught, we had a miscommunication. I mean, I had an interpreter that was doing four-way translation in combat. He was doing Pashtun, Dari, the two languages spoke by the Afghan unit, Arabic and English. Holy shit.

• 27:21Speaker 03

  That guy was worth his weight in gold, right? By the way, he was left behind by the Biden administration, but we're still working on getting him out.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  So that, you know, that complexity of mission,

• 27:37Speaker 03

  I found fascinating. And so as a, as a captain, I went and tried out. And I'm one of those that took me twice. Right. And I, I say that because I talked, when I talk to student groups or young soldiers, like, it's okay to fail. You know, it's set up often time for you to learn to fail. So, but I got through it. Uh, got through Ranger School and, and, um, then somebody turned me on to the fact that you could do this in the reserves and I, and I fell into this kind of policy world and this, like I said, this back and forth of there I am writing it, there I am deployed. And then the really fun part or sad part, and I write about this in my first book, is coming back

• 28:21Speaker 03

  and saying, hey, Mr. President, I was there in the room when you said, do this. We're now out there on the ground not doing what you said, uh, and, and coming back and speaking that truth to power.

• 28:38Speaker 00

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• 29:08Speaker 01

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• 29:37Shawn Ryan?

  How did you, I know we're on a time constraint, so we're gonna skip some stuff, but I think that is one of the, one of the things in your story that I found most interesting is that at some point in time, after special forces, you were, you were writing policy, and then living out that policy in a, in a wartime environment as a Green Beret. I mean, how, how did you go from special forces to writing policy back to special forces?

• 30:09Speaker 03

  Well, I just, um, my first office in the Pentagon that I worked in as a civilian was actually set around dealing with the narcotics problem in Afghanistan. Uh, the office was originally stood up to go after the narcotics problem in Colombia, relevant again today, what we're seeing in Venezuela, under what was called Plan Colombia in the 90s and early 2000s. I think one of the real success stories, Green Beret success stories, American success stories, if you remember where the Medellin and other cartels were basically about to take the, the place over, blew up an airliner attacking parliamentarians, just a few Green

• 30:51Speaker 03

  Berets in their train, uh, advise and assist the Colombian military, and they defeat the Far Consurgency over time.

• 31:03Speaker 03

  We were looking to do the same thing with how opium was funding international terrorism in, in the Taliban. So, yeah, they were attracted by my background. We did that. I helped craft that policy, and then that started the back and forth, right?

• 31:20Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit, so they sought you out?

• 31:22Speaker 03

  No, no, I applied, it was through, it was through a mentor of mine.

• 31:26Shawn Ryan?

  Were you still in the military?

• 31:27Speaker 03

  I just, uh, yeah, I was in, at this point in the reserves, at this point in, uh, both the SEALs and Green Berets, that actually it's in National Guard, uh, have, have National Guard units and went in with that, went in with that background, started kind of really working on not just the counter narcotics piece, but then the broader Afghan policy, went back out and did the tour where I was embedded with the Emiratis and with the, um, The Jordanians were there to a smaller extent and with the Afghans, just a few of us. I had others embedded with NATO special operations. So I saw at that time that the

• 32:11Speaker 03

  Europeans were in way over their heads in terms of what they were willing to do politically. The soldiers out on the ground were great, but I tell a story in my first book where this Danish unit had to call back to their parliament to send us a QRF because it violated their ROE. Or the Germans were in the north, wouldn't send us a medevac, wouldn't send us close air support because we couldn't identify the enemy the way their, what they called national caveats demanded it. And, you know, I think it's one of the reasons that we struggled so badly in that, in that conflict.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  College football is back. So Hilton called to me, the superstition concierge, to make your fan rituals a reality. Need a room to match your lucky number? We got you. Want to make sure our team doesn't wash your lucky jersey? Oh, that smells lucky. Hilton's unmatched hospitality can keep up with any superstition. Even a marching band wake up call at 5:55 and 55 seconds. Hit it. When you need a team that will do whatever it takes on game day, it matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay.

• 33:21Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Damn. How do, what are, what are some of the things that, I mean, I just, it just is so wild to me. You're writing policy and then, and then you're living it.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  I mean, how fast. But then bringing that knowledge, you know, bringing that knowledge back to policymakers. And then, you know, that's one of the reasons I stayed in the reserves while I was in Congress too, was to have that ground truth to bring in when I was on Armed Services Committee, the intel committee and others. And it's, it's part of what I write about, you know, in the book is you have to stay, I call it bottoms up leadership, where you are talking to the soldiers or as a CEO. I would always end my staff meetings with my team on what decisions are you waiting on from me? What resources do you need from me?

• 34:16Speaker 03

  How can I empower you? And that's that kind of Green Beret mentality. You empower the teams, you empower those out there. But I've tried to do it as a CEO, as a member of Congress, and now as Ambassador of the UN.

• 34:35Speaker 03

  But, you know, one of the, you know, a couple of things that I have really focused on, that I write about and that I'm trying to

• 34:46Speaker 03

  instill now and to live, that I think we really need more of. One of the stories I write about, if you don't mind, is discipline and how that applies, not only as a leader, but as a Christian leader. And I know you have people who've been through Ranger School here.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  You know, the difference there is they starve you and they sleep deprive you. And one of our patrols, you know, they give you like normally when you're going out, like five MREs for seven days, right? And you're supposed to have the discipline to kind of ration your... Nobody does. I mean, they've eaten like all five MREs by like day two because you're starving and you're moving 23 hours a day. You're getting like an hour sleep a night out on these patrols. And so by the time you come to day six or seven, it's time for the resupply mission. And man, that is the most important mission. I'll never forget this second lieutenant got tapped. Hey, you're in charge. Get us to the resupply site. And we're moving all night long. We're trying to get to this thing.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Every, I mean, you're hallucinating. I'd lost 31 pounds by this point. As you're over mountains and across streams. And as we were getting near the site, we could hear the helicopter, the resupply helicopter that was going to drop a bundle with our like next batch of our MREs circling, but they're only circling for a certain window. And this poor kid got us so lost. I mean, I'd never forget, see Avito. He's in there looking at the map and he's stopping. We can hear the helicopter and everybody's bitching and grumbling. And then the worst sound you'll ever think of, that helicopter flies off.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  I thought the whole platoon was gonna beat his ass. Um, cause we were, and I forget the, the ranger instructors like, ah, man, I think there was a big, big batch of Snickers on that one. That sucks, guys. I hope you, you know, I hope you're not too hungry. Well, I had had the discipline, uh, to, you remember the MREs? They have those like little Halloween packs of Skittles? Yeah. I had saved my Skittles from every one of those. Everybody else had inhaled everything. And as we're like trudging through, uh, through the mountains again, I decided every 500 meters, I was gonna treat myself to a single Skittle. And this thing was like a burst of

• 37:10Speaker 03

  energy and happiness and, um, I mean, just, it just kept me going every 500, cause I had, I was on the verge uh, of either just falling flat on my face or quitting. I was, it was so demoralizing to hear that damn helicopter fly off. And I'll forget, we're laying down in a, in a fighting position. I pop one in, I look over and the two guys next to me are, I mean, they're just staring a hole through me and they're like, give me one.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  And they're like, come on, man. Like you didn't share. You know, we're having like this argument.

• 37:48Speaker 03

  I thought they were gonna come, you know, like come after those Skittles. They wanted them so bad. Anyway, long story short, I ended up, I don't forget it was a purple one. I throw it and I hit him in the face. And I'm thinking, I had the discipline to, you know, to, to ration my food. These guys didn't. They didn't help me out. Whatever. Fast forward, finish the phase. You go in for your final evaluation. So big burly master sergeant, I don't forget standing there in front of me. He's got big, big dip in and he's flipping through my stuff. And I could see, I mean, you know, you get evaluated by them, but also by your peers. Yeah. Which is incredibly important. Had all, all goes, he said, uh, Ranger Waltz.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  You did great. You got all these good, good marks, except you got two bad peers must not pass from two of your fellow squad mates. And I could see the red slips sitting on his desk. And I'm like, those, if they, if I don't get my tab over those assholes and Skittles, I, I'd be, it's just like rolling through my mind as I'm sitting there. And he said, it's the point of the story. He said, I see you put down your psych profile that you're a Christian. Yes, Sergeant, I am. He said, I see you kind of describe your leadership style as servant leadership. Yes, Sergeant, I am. He said, well, I have one question for you, and this is for all the marbles.

• 39:14Speaker 03

  Said, in that situation, what would Jesus have done?

• 39:19Speaker 03

  And I was like, oh.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  He would have given him, he would have shared his Skittles, Sergeant. Yeah, you're right. He would have shared it. You're damn right, I'm right. Like Dip Spit. You don't ever tell an NCO, he's right. I'm always right. I'm a Ranger instructor, da, da, da, like spits flying. And I'm like, oh, man, I'm screwed. Now pissed him off. And I'm standing there with Dip Spit all over my face going, I, I blew it. And he sits back down and he says, I'm gonna let you have your tab. Said, but don't you ever forget. Earning it was the easy part. Living it is the hard part. And as an officer, officers always eat last. And if you have the discipline

• 40:05Speaker 03

  to, to do the right thing, you pay that forward when your men don't, right? And so

• 40:14Speaker 03

  I've tried to apply that

• 40:17Speaker 03

  my whole life.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Fast forward, there I am in Congress, running my first, my first, not in Congress yet, running for the first time to be in Congress. I get the call that you dread when you're doing this. That my opponent just had millions of dollars dumped in their account by Pelosi, SuperPax, Bloomberg. The whole thing, by the way, Bloomberg dumped money into 24 races. This is in 2018, Trump's first midterm. Pelosi comes back in. He dumped money into 24 races and won 21 of them.

• 40:54Speaker 03

  Right? And you get that call.

• 40:58Speaker 03

  I couldn't compete with that.

• 41:02Speaker 03

  But what I could do is outwork them. So my team of volunteers and I ended up knocking 210,000 doors. And I'll never forget. And so what I started doing was popping a skittle every like, successful door knock. And I'll never forget, I've taken up too much time, but by last door, a woman opens up and I saw as I was walking up, there was a little shrine in her yard. And I asked her who it was. And I introduced myself and she said, Oh, I know who you are, Colonel. I've seen all the negative ads on you on TV. And I said, Well, that's not who I am. And this is who I am. And she said, You're pretty

• 41:45Speaker 03

  conservative for me. But you know what? If you've had the guts to do what you've done, you'll have the guts to do the right thing in Congress. And it turns out, her son was an E4 that was killed, Second Ranger Battalion in Panama. And she had a little shrine to him. And as I was thanking her and hugging her, and she said, Don't ever forget him, and be worthy of him. When you're walking up those steps in Congress, be worthy. And so I think about that. I think about, you know, one of my Green Berets I didn't bring back, Matt Pacino, and his sacrifice, and all of them.

• 42:20Shawn Ryan?

  What happened to him?

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Matt was an absolute stud, former police officer up in Massachusetts, before he became a Green Beret. And the shorter version was, he always volunteered to go on point.

• 42:44Shawn Ryan?

  You want to keep his story alive?

• 42:46Speaker 03

  What's that?

• 42:46Shawn Ryan?

  You want to keep his story alive?

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:48Shawn Ryan?

  Give me the full version.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  He was probably, if I had to rank all of my, all of my guys, you know, at that point, I was commanding a special forces company, about 90 of them, I'd have ranked him top five. I mean, he was just incredible. Smart, sharp, good looking, built like a, you know, built like a linebacker. But, and this was kind of a bigger story of the war. The, the enemy had gone to IEDs. We had all of these jammers and antennas and whatever, and they, you know, the good news is they had worked. So what did the Taliban do? They went back old school. They went back to tripwires. And the difference in Iraq, where they tended to come in from the side, in Afghanistan, because it was dirt roads, they tended to

• 43:34Speaker 03

  come up through the bottom. And it, the conventional units and what have you, didn't know how to deal with it. And, and a lot of them shut down. Not this team. And these were, you know, I'm sure you've seen them. They just got after it. And they were going out one night after, after a commander. And Matt started volunteering to go out on either motorcycle or four wheeler, ahead of our armored convoy. So that he would be close enough to the ground to see if there was any dirt disturbances, or tripwires, or, or what have you. I don't forget stopping them before they went out on the mission. I was the commander approving the missions. And saying, guys, you guys are pushing it. And I said, Matt, you're

• 44:19Speaker 03

  volunteering to go out every time. And he said, you know what, Mike? If I miss something, or we miss something, I wanted to get just me. Not my four or five brothers in the car behind me. Right? Like, who, who thinks that way? I mean, this is, this is the best America has to give. And, you know, they were, they were going, going out one night, successful hit. Came back, alternate route. We think somehow it got compromised because they set up the tripwire at night, which was highly, highly unusual. And he was on

• 44:57Speaker 03

  an ATV when it, it came up and down. But, his family is amazing. They have set up, of course, a foundation. They work a lot with Gary Sinise. It's the Matthew Pacino Foundation. I've donated the proceeds from my books to him to, and, and his family to pay it forward.

• 45:19Speaker 03

  So those are the ones, you know, it's one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about now veterans serving again. It doesn't have to be in Congress. It can be city council, state rep, up in Congress. And, you know, you mentioned in the bio, I co-founded a bipartisan Veterans Caucus because, you know, if we were all willing to die together a few years ago, we could figure out things like healthcare policy, or taxes, or whatever together as veterans in office. When I ran in 2018, we were at a record low. 15% of Congress were vets. That was down from 75% in the 1970s. And we've now-

• 46:04Shawn Ryan?

  In the 70s?

• 46:05Speaker 03

  In the 70s, three quarters. Now, a lot of people would say, okay, of course, that's because of the draft. But, you know, after 20 years of warfare in the Middle East, we've had a lot of veterans go through. They're just not taking that next step to run for office.

• 46:20Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I think that's great that you did that, Mike. I'm just curious, why do you think it's important for veterans to continue service in Congress and the Senate and local politics? Why do you feel that that's important?

• 46:35Speaker 03

  You're not done serving just because you went overseas and came back. That doesn't mean you get to sit in the VFW hall and drink beer and tell war stories. With such a few, a small percentage of Americans now post-draft serving, the country needs you. Leadership, teamwork, followership, discipline, mission focus. If you look at, no offense to lawyers out there, but if you look at the type of profession that's gotten into politics now, lawyers and activists have largely replaced business owners and veterans. And we're looking to right that ship.

• 47:19Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think that is?

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Well, I think on the veteran's side, you used to, back in the day, you'd go serve a couple of years, and you'd come back to your hometown, pick up your life, get well-known in the community, and, you know, and perhaps run for office. Now, you're running around the world for 20, 25 years, and then you come back home and decide you want to do this, as I did. And people try to call you a carpetbagger, like-

• 47:47Speaker 03

  I've been around defending you, thank you very much, but so I think it's the nature of service that that shifted somewhat over time. I also think it's the amount of money involved and there's a number of organizations out there that are focused on on getting veterans back in. And again, we've seen that we've seen that uptake coming back. But at the end of the day, it's the ability to overcome differences, focus on a mission for the betterment of your country and get things done.

• 48:17Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I just, I can't remember. I think I can't remember if I just had this conversation with Jaco or Mappus and that.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  This is not a beer, by the way, this isn't.

• 48:25Shawn Ryan?

  Just for everybody out there. No beer. But, you know, we were kind of discussing, I think it was with Jaco, and we were talking about, you know, how in soft units and military units, I mean, we have to work together because our fucking life depends on it, you know, and then we look at what goes on in Congress, what goes on.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  You have to work together, your country depends on it.

• 48:52Shawn Ryan?

  Exactly. And, you know, from the outside looking in, it doesn't seem like much is is getting done.

• 49:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, part of that is the media, but the media loves to focus on the dysfunction. Like, we've had a defense bill get passed, a lot of veterans on that committee consecutively for, it's the only piece of legislation for 61 years running that has passed, and there's a lot of of good stuff in it. But, like, case in point, several years ago, impeachments going on, everybody is hating President Trump, everyone's calling everyone a racist, or this or that. I sent a note out to all the veterans in the House and said, "Meet me 6:30 a.m. tomorrow morning." You know, whatever 40 did.

• 49:41Shawn Ryan?

  How many veterans are there?

• 49:43Speaker 03

  At the Vietnam Memorial Wall. And we linked up with the Park Service, who himself, the head park ranger there, the Vietnam Memorial Wall, is a disabled veteran who who lost his leg. And we washed the Vietnam Memorial Wall together, right? And we had, you know, camera crew out there, Brett Baer from Fox, and others have come. America needs to see that. They need to see we can get over it, and come together to solve their problems. Quit bitching, bickering, fighting. Now, we need to fight for what we believe in, but at some point, you move the, you know, you move the country forward. And, you know, other things we've done, I mean, to share with you a fun one. And it was actually the Horse Soldier Bourbon guys that put this

• 50:25Speaker 03

  together. I brought 10 veteran members of Congress together. We went over to Normandy for the both the 75th and 80th anniversary of D-Day. And we jumped out of the original C-47, Sean, that led the 101st Airborne in the invasion in 1944. And we did it, by the way, with a 97-year-old paratrooper. I remember. Who was tandem buddy of mine. Yeah, I'll never forget landing. His name was Tom Rice. And I walk up to him, Tom, you okay? He's like, hell, yeah, that was a hell of a lot more fun than last time, you know, back in... [laughing] Nobody shooting at me. Right? Yeah, right? But the point is, you know, if I could

• 51:08Speaker 03

  get every high school class over to Normandy, where you see more American flags flying on French homes, you see all these French kids running around with American flag t-shirts and big banners that say, "Thank you for our freedom, welcome to our liberators, thank you, America." You would think D-Day had happened like last year, not 80 years ago. By the way, last time I took...

• 51:38Speaker 03

  10 members with me, I'll never forget. Speaker Johnson stops me on the way out and he said, Mike, I heard you're doing this. Yeah, it's gonna be amazing and this is good for people to see. He said, you know, we only have a two-seat majority and you're gonna be out there jumping out of original players like, yeah, it's all right. The parachutes are new, the parachutes are new, Mr. Speaker.

• 51:58Shawn Ryan?

  We'll double check them.

• 51:59Speaker 03

  Everything else is vintage. He was a little worried.

• 52:02Shawn Ryan?

  I remember seeing you doing that. That was, that was, that was really cool to see.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  But the country needs to see that, right? And I think the next generation needs to see that and always appreciate and be worthy of those who made this American country what it is.

• 52:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Be an American worth dying for. I want to go back to veterans and serving in the, in the political sphere.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:27Shawn Ryan?

  You know, you, do you, his, have, in your mind, have veterans lost interest in serving in, in politics? Or have the American people, do they just not give a shit anymore? And they're not getting elected?

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Um, I think it's more, I think it's more the former. Uh, nothing's 100% one way or another. I think it's, I think it's more the former. Um, there's organizations now that help them set up a, you know, how do you set up a political campaign? There's a lot of consultants out there that are shysters and ripoff artists. They knows someone with your profile or raise a lot of money. They're happy to spend it, even if it's a hopeless strategy or race. So, uh, I, I became very passionate about helping them navigate. I mean, you look at, at Sheehy, uh, who just came in, you, you know, you, I mean, just great veterans, uh, Mark Wayne Mullen and Tom Cotton, uh, uh, you know, I, I.

• 53:29Shawn Ryan?

  I was telling you at breakfast this morning, Jared Hudson, running for Senate in Alabama.

• 53:33Speaker 03

  Right.

• 53:33Shawn Ryan?

  You know, but.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  Get in it, you know, uh, you, you yelling at the TV and throwing shit at it and saying, this is what I fought for, not good enough. Get in there, roll up your sleeves, be part of this amazing republic that we are willing to die for.

• 53:48Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think veterans are leading the way in Congress?

• 53:50Speaker 03

  And I think, and I think American people have been incredibly responsive to those who step up. Not always. Look, I'm not going to say that always makes the best politician, and I certainly don't agree with a, there's not that many progressives that are actually veterans, which are odd, but it doesn't mean we always agree. We disagree on all kinds of things. But we do agree almost always that America's been a force for good historically. And certainly, it's not systemically racist, misogynist, and, you know, a terrible country. So, in that sense, we have that commonality. And that leads to, that leads to mission accomplishment, getting things done.

• 54:32Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think the pulse of veterans within the sphere is? Are they hopeful? Are they?

• 54:40Speaker 03

  I think they're hopeful now, not to sound overly partisan, but they're hopeful under President Trump's leadership. The recruiting numbers show it. Pete Hegseth is, is restoring that warrior mentality. Dan Driscoll at Army, right, is, is taking the military mindset with technology into the next, the next level. We have great leadership in Navy and Air Force, so it's about leadership. I was the chairman of readiness, the readiness subcommittee, and we were focused on everything but putting two bullets or bombs on foreheads when you have to. And that pointy end of the spear, everything else should be to support that,

• 55:22Speaker 03

  not these social experiments that are going on. I, I pushed, the Biden administration fought back left, right, and center on gender neutral standards. The rucksacks, the rucksack. The artillery shells, artillery shell, right? Doesn't matter, black, white, or brown, man, woman, it's about standards, not all of, not all of that other stuff. And so, now to see that being enacted, you've seen the recruiting numbers follow, and I think the mentality and the retention numbers have followed, all of which were at a record low just a year ago. Just a year ago, right? And, you know, the amazing thing about President Trump is, he puts the right people in the right seats in the bus, gives them a vision,

• 56:07Speaker 03

  and says, go. And expects results.

• 56:12Speaker 03

  And that's what I think our military members want, right? It's what I loved about being a Green Beret is you're given a broad mission set and you're dropped off in the middle of nowhere and told be a warrior diplomat, figure it out, win that guerrilla chief over, win that government official over in line with what America needs. And, you know, nobody's going to micromanage you on how to get it done.

• 56:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I want to, I just have to ask you this, totally off, totally off subject right now, but I met you through Scott Mann at Tyler Andrew Vargas's thing at the, in DC that I spoke at. That's when we first met, I met you through Scott. Then Scott told me about this operation you were on, where it sounded like you were a singleton and on escape and evasion. And Scott was on the top, kind of walking you through where to go. You gotta tell me this. He never told it to me.

• 57:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:14Shawn Ryan?

  I want to hear it.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  So young, young Captain Mike Waltz.

• 57:18Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, this sounds fucking badass.

• 57:20Speaker 03

  With Major Scott Mann, who I think is, is one of our legendary Green Berets in his own right, is a, is a thought leader, speaker, founded Task Force Pineapple, by the way, that got so many of our Afghan allies out in the Biden withdrawal debacle. But this was actually in the tour where I was embedded with the, the Arab Task Force, with the UAE Task Force. So it was just three of us. The first call I get from them, by the way, we're out in Helmand Province, middle of nowhere. This is back in oh five, oh six. There were less than 50 Americans in the entire province. 10 years later, there were

• 58:02Speaker 03

  over 20,000 Marines. Back then, there was just none of us.

• 58:06Shawn Ryan?

  One of the hottest zones.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  One of the hottest, I mean, it was a everyday firefight. This is the amazing thing about, you know, our, our mission set. I had worked with the UAE Command and my command and reached back to DC because I was the, this reservist back and forth and, and convinced them to build an airfield out in this hottest Taliban zone where we were going to get an Arab partner now with all of their assets. Oh, by the way, in this hot Taliban zone, not that far from Iran either, this strategic asset. We were taking the survey,

• 58:43Speaker 03

  Emirati Air Force Survey Team up there and got into a running gun battle. Um, my only medic got shot with a femoral bleed. So I'll never forget. He was left-handed, round goes through his arm, bounces off his chest plate and shoots down and you know with a femoral artery, you got minutes. Uh, I'm down there working on him, uh, you know, calling in, calling in the medevac.

• 59:16Speaker 03

  Literally put my knee on his, on the artery while we're, while we're running and gunning. And I think it's got to be the only deployment of the, uh, of the Taliban Navy because the road where they were ambushing us, cliff on one side. So they had us pinned and we're trying to drive out of it. They had barges with mortar and RPG teams that were paralleling us that we couldn't, uh, that we couldn't get out of. So we eventually fought our way out of that. Um, I broke some rules and, uh, when we called in the medevac and told them that the LZ was clear, it wasn't. Uh, the bird got a little, bird got a little shot up, but we got our guys and a couple

• 1:00:01Speaker 03

  of UAE guys out as well, uh, that got, that got shot up. Got them out of there. So the first call I get that night is from Scott Mann on, and you know, the satellite radios, everybody can hear it. I mean, when you call up that tick, that troops in contact, everybody hears it. You're directing fire, directing the fight. When you get the notice to, hey, step off of the satellite radio that everybody can hear, and have a one-on-one on the sat phone, like, something's up. First call, he calls in and says, hey, we think someone's inside your perimeter. What do you mean? Well, we just got an intercept that the Taliban think they can capture you and, you know, the two other Americans that are with you if they overrun, but they were just offered a bounty from a

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  guy that was in Pakistan to get you alive. And we think they're working with somebody on the inside. Mike, if you have to go full E and E, you do what you gotta do. Holy shit. And this is, it was so remote back then. There wasn't much, many assets. I mean, we were probably a solid hour, hour and a half flight from Kandahar. And oh, by the way, when they had tried to send in some QRF, it got shot up. So This is an oh five? This was oh six. What is this like? Oh six. Wow. This was an oh six. I mean, longer story, what had happened was the British were supposed to come down as the transfer to NATO. They were delayed. So it was just us and our little,

• 1:01:30Speaker 03

  you know, UAE task force out there, trying to establish this airbase, trying to pacify the region, doing, doing the best we could. The next call I get was even better from the major man who's up at the headquarters. Hey, Mike, you need to get out of there. Your mission is canceled. I was pissed. I'd been working on this for months to get this airbase, strategic airbase set up. You're done. I was ready to fight my way forward. He said, no, you're not. Gave me a direct order. He said, they believe they have you surrounded. They're gonna overrun you.

• 1:02:13Speaker 03

  Uh, when I give you, when I give you the next call, you need to get under anything you can. It's gonna look like apocalypse fucking now. And, uh, he, he had B1s, Preds, F-18s from carrier strike groups just stacked up and just, just laid, laid waste, including, um, I saw the footage later, uh, where everybody was celebrating. I don't know. I hope this didn't get you in trouble, Scott. They hit, uh, they, everybody was celebrating in a mosque and they just blew this knot out of it. I mean, body parts flying everywhere. So we ended up, you know, we ended up fighting our way over the next.

• 1:02:52Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you, where, so you, you hunkered down?

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  We hunkered down as, as Scott was commanding, controlling every air force asset they had in theater, just as we were trying to get out of where they had us surrounded and, and fight our way out. He ended up staying on the phone with me for, uh, probably the next 40 hours, uh, on just, just constant as they were guiding us through, um, these various ambushes that we had till we could get back to our base. Which, by the way, was for everybody who served out there was, uh, Fob Robinson, who's named after Chris Robinson, one of the Green Berets we lost that tour.

• 1:03:33Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, dude.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  So that was Scott and, uh, he's a, he's a great friend. Uh, he's written several books on like Green Beret mentality and, um.

• 1:03:46Shawn Ryan?

  Forty, 40 hours of kinetic E and E?

• 1:03:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. Off and on. Yeah. As you know what it, I mean, it's not, rounds aren't flying. Well, I mean, rounds aren't flying every minute, but it was, you know, you don't know that. And so I'll never forget, I don't know why, um, it seemed like every AC 130, which is my favorite platform in the air force, by the way, the big cargo gunships, right? That have that 120 millimeter cannon and the miniguns. It seemed like every targeting officer was a female. And I've never asked the chief of staff of the air force why this was, but I'll never forget my guys, um, uh, I mean, she was like an angel and then the angel of death in, in every minute. Target eliminated.

• 1:04:34Speaker 03

  Ambush 50 meters to your left. Boom.

• 1:04:38Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 1:04:39Speaker 03

  They're gone. And then my guys are running bets on whether she was blonde, whether she was brunette. And of course, they're all tripping over themselves when we get back to the base, back to, uh, finally get back to Kandahar and then Bagram airbase to go thank her in person. And, um, yeah, I mean, it was, it was, it was a hell of a fight.

• 1:05:00Shawn Ryan?

  What, what?

• 1:05:00Speaker 03

  UAE fighters were fantastic. Uh, the soldiers were fantastic, but man.

• 1:05:05Shawn Ryan?

  What was going through your head when they said it was an insider, somebody inside the perimeter? Do you have it? I mean, did they ever figure that out?

• 1:05:13Speaker 03

  You know, I don't, they didn't that tour. Um, but a year later, uh, I saw some, some traffic that they, the Emiratis themselves rolled a guy up and, uh, he just kind of disappeared.

• 1:05:29Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 1:05:30Speaker 03

  And then fast forward that, uh, uh, uh, fast forward a few years later, I'm actually in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE. And we have, you know, it's a bunch of people, but we have a, a kind of a meeting and, and greeting with the, with the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Zayed. And the ambassador, uh, at the time is introducing everyone. And then as he comes and introduces me, he says, and your highness, this is the American soldier that was embedded with our forces, da, da, da, walks him through, you know, what had happened a couple of years prior. And he stopped and locked eyes. And said, um, you know, basically we've carried each other from the field of battle and we will defeat the extremists.

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  Together. It's, look, it's an amazing country and not to, not to sell UAE, but I mean, I've been to Paul McCartney concerts and, uh, and they were a key, key member now of the Abraham Accords. And you can go there and go to a church, you can go to a synagogue. And you can go, um, of course to a mosque.

• 1:06:34Speaker 03

  Very tolerant, very open.

• 1:06:37Speaker 03

  Take it back to Afghanistan with those guys. We would go into these villages that hadn't seen a Westerner probably since the Russians, right, up in the mountains. And Sean, I can't tell you how powerful it was to be standing there with an Afghan officer, an Arab officer, and then me, but I'm bearded up and just kind of trying to blend in. Because you've got a whole sea of Afghans sitting there with black eyeliner and AKs sitting on their laps. They're all Taalabs. But for the Arabs to say, "This isn't the way forward. This isn't true Islam. Look at Jakarta. Look at Dubai, right? Look at Istanbul.

• 1:07:20Speaker 03

  You can have a better life for your children and not follow these, you know, basically these Al Qaeda losers." That was incredibly powerful. What was even more powerful is they would then turn to me and say, "Look at what the United States did for Germany. Look at what the United States did for Japan. Look at what America does, even though they were once enemies. That's what they're trying to do here for you. Stop attacking them. And oh, by the way, don't let Al Qaeda and ISIS, you know, attack America. You could have a better life." That coming from them was worth its weight in gold. It turned whole areas. I'll take that over a division any day. That strategic messaging was critical.

• 1:08:02Shawn Ryan?

  That's, wow, that's great to hear.

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:06Shawn Ryan?

  Mike, let's take a break.

• 1:08:07Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:08:08Shawn Ryan?

  And when we come back, we'll get into all things UN. I know you're a big fan, so, cool.

• 1:08:13Speaker 03

  We're Dojin. We're cleaning house.

• 1:08:15Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:10:54Speaker 01

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• 1:11:23Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Mike, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into some UN stuff, but I know we've got a couple of things left to wrap up here. So, one of them being a story, I believe, from your service.

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, so much of today's discourse, right, is punch back harder if you're punched, you know, get ahead of it, be aggressive, hit hard, which, look, I'm all for it. But you have to also know when to show restraint. And one of the chapters that I talk about in Hard Truths, and I know a lot of other veterans that have faced this scenario, but we were told to hold the line, you know, in a valley, we were holding a flank. And as you know, in Afghanistan, as soon as you're static for a while, eventually you're going to come under fire.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  And I had a coalition element, because again, you know, as Green Berets, we're always embedded. Sure enough, we hadn't been there. Thirty minutes, mortar rounds, start coming in, hit, next one comes in, it's closer, next one comes in, it's closer. Pretty quickly, one of my sniper's spots of probably 10, 12-year-old boy up on a hill. Every time this kid brings a phone up to his, unarmed, but every time he brings a phone up to his ear, brings binos up, another round comes in closer. And after about the third time that happened, sniper asked for me permission to take him out. He was sitting on a Barrett.

• 1:13:02Speaker 03

  You know what a 50-cal round's going to do to a 10-year-old boy, and...

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  I, you know, thought about it for, for half a second. He's screaming four-letter words at me. Give him permission to take the shot. You start thinking about your own kids. I was thinking about my daughter. Another round comes in, actually wounded one of our Afghan just starts screaming. And, um, you know, I ended up telling the sniper, take a warning shot. Took a warning shot, splashed rocks, you know, right at his feet. Kid dives behind a boulder, comes back up, takes another shot and kid ends up running over the, running over the hill and, and we didn't, we didn't kill him. And if you think about it for a moment, like, kind of take a

• 1:13:50Speaker 03

  step back. And I wrote about times when we've shown restraint as a country and whether that was a right thing. Grant, showing restraint with the surrender of Lee, I think prevented a insurgency in the South for many years, uh, following helped the country heal. Um, Truman in Korea didn't hit China. MacArthur fired over it, but showed restraint. Bush, 41, stopped in Kuwait, didn't keep going all the way to Baghdad in the Persian Gulf War. But one of my favorite stories that I think is really untold in history was during

• 1:14:31Speaker 03

  the Cuban Missile Crisis. A Soviet submarine executive officer, the number two. So Soviet submarine is coming in under the US Navy's blockade of Cuba. They get picked up, Navy destroyer starts dropping depth charges on them. And the Soviet submarine captain believes that World War III is broken out over the Cuban Missile Crisis and orders his executive officer to turn the keys, the dual keys, to launch a nuclear tipped torpedo into our fleet. Which had he done that, No doubt would have, would have kicked off World War III.

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  Vasily Arkipov was the Soviet Russian XO, refused the order. Didn't do it. And you imagine, I mean, Soviet Navy, debt charges are dropping. He refused to launch a nuke at our fleet. They eventually ended up surfacing and found out no, World War III had not kicked off. And I mean, that restraint saved all of us, right? So, I mean, back to the story, we we ended up following the kid into his village, lined up all the elders, you know, reading him the riot act. And one of the elders stepped forward and said, look, the Taliban were here this morning. Told us every family to give their oldest son to go attack the Americans.

• 1:15:58Speaker 03

  Al Qaeda had been in and out, Al Qaeda had been in and out of that village telling them the same thing. One family refused and they hung a seven year old boy. His body was laying right there.

• 1:16:11Speaker 03

  So I don't know, man, you know, like, was that the right call? I'm sure a lot of people watching this saying, you should have taken the kid out. I don't, you know.

• 1:16:20Shawn Ryan?

  I was in a similar situation.

• 1:16:21Speaker 03

  I say that in the sense of we've got people making these life or death decisions every day. They stick with you one way or another. If I had been sitting, if I, if one of my guys had been killed by one of those mortar rounds, could I explain that to the family?

• 1:16:39Speaker 03

  Right?

• 1:16:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you're saying, sorry.

• 1:16:45Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I just, I don't know. You know, I think that

• 1:16:52Shawn Ryan?

  showing some mercy, having a heart is definitely a good thing. I mean, I was, I was in a similar situation in Baghdad where the, the MSR was getting, you know, IED'd every fucking day. Americans are dying every day. They sent us out. We go sit up outside of, it's what's happening right outside of a schoolyard. And so we're all in, in a rural environment. And so we were all gillyed up.

• 1:17:19Shawn Ryan?

  And convoy goes by first within the first, you know, 24 hours and these but right before the convoy comes in, school gets out, these kids come and they set up. I mean, it was 10 yards from me, right fucking there. They did not even, I mean, right, I could have reached out and grabbed him. And there was three of them. One pulls out a cell phone. I'm like, fuck, please don't do this shit. And uh,

• 1:17:49Speaker 03

  This is all rules of engagement, right? Like you make a bad call.

• 1:17:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:17:53Speaker 03

  You can be prosecuted.

• 1:17:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And convoy goes by, we called it in, said, hey, we got a group of, you know, kids sitting here and they said, don't engage convoy goes by, they fucking hit the ID, they missed. We asked if we could restrain them. Nope. Let them go. And then, you know, I mean, you're just thinking back, it's like, I didn't want to kill that fucking kid.

• 1:18:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I did not want to kill that kid. But then on the same, on this, you know, on the same accord, what happens tomorrow? Whose convoy comes by here tomorrow with this kid sitting in this exact spot?

• 1:18:38Shawn Ryan?

  Knowing I could reach out and touch him, at least restrain him, kill him, anything to save an American's life and fucking nothing. And I, you know, I just, I don't know what the right call is in those scenarios.

• 1:18:52Speaker 03

  Well,

• 1:18:53Shawn Ryan?

  But in yours, I didn't have that kind of closure.

• 1:18:55Speaker 03

  I'll say, um, as now, as leaders, uh, you have to give our junior officers and leaders and NCOs the latitude to make those calls, the right training, right? The understanding of what you can and can't do.

• 1:19:17Speaker 03

  But, you know, I mean, President Trump, God bless him, pardoned a number of guys who were just prosecuted to the hilt. One was put in jail for 19 years.

• 1:19:28Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, four of them are right up there. They're their pardons, the Blackwater guys.

• 1:19:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, right.

• 1:19:33Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 1:19:33Speaker 03

  And we saw what happened to-

• 1:19:35Shawn Ryan?

  Three for 35 years, one for life.

• 1:19:37Speaker 03

  We saw what, you know, what the media tried to do to Eddie Gallagher.

• 1:19:40Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, there's Eddie Gallagher's murder charges, right there.

• 1:19:43Speaker 03

  Right, and, and it's, it's one of the many things I love about our president, but he instinctively knows, you let your warriors be warriors, they're inherently good. If one goes way off the reservation, fine, but, you know, in these kind of life or death, seconds go by a cause.

• 1:20:02Shawn Ryan?

  And same goes for law enforcement.

• 1:20:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, even more so for law enforcement. I have so much, I tell this to all my sheriffs, my district, my state, all of them. You know, we go downrange and we're in it, but then when we come home, we can psychologically turn off. A police officer can never, never psychologically switch off. They're never off duty. And they're one cellphone, you know, away from a riot for making a bad call. At least, we make one, it's out in the mountains, right?

• 1:20:33Speaker 03

  I don't know, in this case, I, you know, I talked about those times in history, we showed restraint or strategic level. I made that call then. You know, I remember my, again, back to one of my campaigns, early on, this guy accused me of stolen valor on the, you know, on the Bronze Stars and stuff, and I swore the next time I was gonna see him, I was gonna punch the guy in the mouth. And I wanted to go back out and win the media and online, he was putting all this stuff on online. Thank God for my amazing wife, Julia, and my team said, "Rise above it," right? Show, show some restraint, show, you

• 1:21:14Speaker 03

  know, some dignity and don't crawl in the mud with them. So I just, I think it's important for people to think about sometimes the- Discretion's a better part of power and take a step back, rise above all the noise.

• 1:21:28Shawn Ryan?

  I think that is a major thing people could learn right about now.

• 1:21:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:21:35Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I wanted to ask you, um, but I lost my train of thought earlier. When you were coming out, when you were creating policy and then going back into the field and fighting and living that policy and seeing, you know, the repercussions of it and then going back and giving the feedback on the, I mean, I'm curious, how seriously did they take you? Did you feel like they gave a shit when you were giving them the information?

• 1:22:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll tell you, even though, um, I disagree with a number of policy decisions they made in the Bush administration, Iraq being one of them. And, and I hope that's not too hurtful to people out there, but I think it was a strategic mistake. The intelligence got it wrong. Um, but they valued that ground truth. They knew they were being fed, you know, I mean, the most politicized thing in Washington's what's coming into the, what's coming into the White House and they knew they were in a bubble. And so for me to come back from the field was very valuable to them. They appreciated it and I appreciated that they appreciated it.

• 1:22:42Speaker 03

  Um, I also broke a lot of China and, but I had to have the guts to speak truth to power. And yeah, I'll never forget one general piping in saying, Mr. President, Mr. Vice President, the Afghan army will be operating on its own, independent of us, kicking ass and taking names within 18 months. We're going to get it done. Here's how we're going to get it done. Oh, by the, this was 2007, by the way, right? And oh, by the way, guess what his tour was, was 18 months. Um, shocker, right? Like it was all going to be, you know, unicorns and rainbows and the Afghan army was going to be, you know, fighting like the British army by the time his watch.

• 1:23:26Speaker 03

  And I'll never forget, he turned off and they looked at me, I said, Mr. Vice President, they can't even count. Like, look how long, not that it's a perfect analogy, but, you know, we've been partnered with the South Korean Army for 70 years. By the way, the South Koreans had a higher illiteracy rate after years of occupation and devastation, no army, no police force, no government, you know, by Japan up until World War II. We've been with them 70 years. I'm not saying we should do that and should have done that in Afghanistan or elsewhere, but we have to appreciate what we're dealing with, number one.

• 1:24:09Speaker 03

  Number two, decades to defeat communism, World War to defeat fascism, Islamic extremism, we can't take our eye off the ball. It will follow us home. And, you know, we've just got to find a better way to deal with it, and we can't do nation building. Like, a counterterrorism approach, partnered with, by, with, and through small teams. I want it fought over there, not here. So, yeah, I mean, is that speaking truth to power, you had to do it. And whether it's, whether it's as a captain coming back from a tour, or a major coming

• 1:24:51Speaker 03

  back for a tour, or now in Congress, or as ambassador of the United Nations.

• 1:24:55Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, did you feel, did you feel like the generals were fighting against you for their own self-interest? I mean, obviously, that one, his self-interest was, oh, no, we have to fucking continue because I need this extra star after.

• 1:25:10Speaker 03

  Man, this is a, this is a longer conversation, but I think an important one. I think we have, you know, the incentives have changed so much since the all-volunteer from the draft Army. Don't get me wrong, all-volunteer service, the best the world has ever seen, but it is different.

• 1:25:28Speaker 03

  A tour on an otherwise very promising 20, 30 year career, which you've sacrificed a lot. A tour is a blip on that otherwise career. Back at the draft army, it was get over there, fight until you win and don't come home. Take every risk necessary that you need to. Now, um, you know, don't have a base, get hit too hard. Don't take any casualties. Don't, you know, don't take too many risks. God forbid you don't lose a sensitive item. And so the, you never see anybody relieved for the enemy actually making gains.

• 1:26:06Shawn Ryan?

  It's really fucking odd, Mike. I mean, we, you, you, the biggest fucking risk you can take is to actually go to fucking war. Correct?

• 1:26:14Speaker 03

  I'm with you.

• 1:26:15Shawn Ryan?

  That's the biggest fucking risk. So we take the biggest fucking risk and then we, and then we, and then we, and then, and that's when we do the risk mitigation shit. The, the, the, the risk analysts.

• 1:26:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:26:28Shawn Ryan?

  What the fuck is that?

• 1:26:29Speaker 03

  The default, uh, action becomes inaction. Because nobody gets fired for kind of getting through, getting through your tour. And we had an accumulation of 20 years of that. I mean, I'll never forget, I, you know, we switched to the MRAP, right? Which was the, the, in order to deal with the IEDs, it had a V shaped hole, armored hole. It was great in the sense of how it protected people, but the vehicles were too heavy. They made you use predictable roads. Um, they were often broken and we had this accumulation of rules. I'll never forget dealing with this platoon. It was a conventional platoon.

• 1:27:14Speaker 03

  We had to get our guys in there and clean, um, clean out Al Qaeda and the Taliban out of this area. That was right next to the hill that this platoon was on. I go up and talk to the platoon leader. We had a tough conversation, but he made me realize that it was this accumulation of rules that tied his hands. He couldn't leave the base unless he was in a minimum, first of all, unless he was in an MRAP, even though he had all these armored Humvees, that he could have taken various routes, or gone at night, or what have you. So he had to be in the MRAPs, he had to be in four. He only had five, and two or three were always broken, so vehicles were out. He had to have a certain number of soldiers to go out on patrol, but he had to have a certain number of soldiers to defend the base. It didn't

• 1:27:58Speaker 03

  add up to the right total, so he basically sat, right?

• 1:28:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. He's like, fuck it, look, what am I gonna do?

• 1:28:08Speaker 03

  You know, what are you gonna do? Or I, you know, this was back to my point on VMI, where you learn which rules to bend to get the mission done, but that doesn't cross the line. I mean, at one point, we had this village chief who really wanted to be on our side. Every time Al Qaeda, ISIS, Taliban would come in, this one commander in particular, he would call us, but the third or fourth time, we didn't show up and take care of business, he and his entire tribe gave up. And what turned out, and the generals would tell you, to answer your question, they never declined a mission. I laid out

• 1:28:50Speaker 03

  the 12 different headquarters that we had to ask permission of, 12, to get approval to go out. And if you went out on helicopters, regular, you know, Chinooks or Blackhawks, you had to have an Apache escorting ahead of it, because you didn't want the birds to get shot up. So then you had the Apache. Well, then if you had the Apache, those were getting shot up, so you had to have a Predator ahead of that. Then you had to be within an hour of a medevac. Then you had to have a certain size QRF. And all of these risk of mitigation measures added up means, you know, we were tying our own hands. And I think that that added up in many ways to strategic defeat.

• 1:29:35Speaker 03

  I do want to say, Sean, though, because there's a lot of, I think, our generation out there hurting, and what was it all for?

• 1:29:43Speaker 03

  We didn't have another 9/11 for 20 years and they had every intention of hitting us again. I've seen the intelligence of plot after plot after plot that was thwarted. The more they were running around worried about where they were going to, where they were going to sleep at night, the less they were plotting and planning to hit us. We kept an entire generation safe. We've got to find a better way to do it now, but

• 1:30:14Speaker 03

  I don't want people to think their sacrifice was in vain. It was not. It absolutely was not.

• 1:30:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I wonder that a lot too. I know everybody does.

• 1:30:27Speaker 03

  We all do. And again, for those out there that are really wondering, saying, this and that was all screwed up, get in position to make a difference, right? One of the first couple of things I did when I got into Congress was address things that I saw that were effed up when I was downrange. One of them, I think I told you, one of my guys I lost, the Pentagon went and paid to bury him in two different places. So I get a call from my sergeant majors that the Green Beret I lost was Brian Woods and the family wanted him celebrated in one place, but his wife wanted him buried in another and they tried to hand him a bill. Said absolutely not. We ended up passing the hat around our unit

• 1:31:12Speaker 03

  to, to pay for it, you know, 8, 900 billion dollar budget. But anyway, we got that into a bill. We got it passed. We got a guy by the name of Richard Stayskill, who was misdiagnosed, the military doctors missed him with lung cancer until it was stage four. And on his deathbed, rather than enjoy his life or joy his family, or you know, as he was heading into stage four anyway, he's up on the hill. Making it, making it happen. And we ended up getting the law changed to where you can sue for malpractice if it's here stateside, not a medic downrange, but if you're misdiagnosed

• 1:31:54Speaker 03

  here. We got service dogs introduced into the VA, right? Believe it or not, the VA were saying, we're not paying for service dogs. They don't do anything. Here's your bag of pills, right? You know, here's your therapist appointment. I can't tell you how many veterans I know that got off their meds, got out of their house, are out socializing again because of a well-trained, good service dog. We fought through the bureaucracy and got the legislation.

• 1:32:23Shawn Ryan?

  You got all this stuff pushed through?

• 1:32:25Speaker 03

  We got the stuff pushed through. Not just me. I mean, this is a team effort. This is a team effort. Right? But my point is, the service wasn't in vain. We kept the country safe as best we could. And for all the stuff that pisses you off, get in there, knock the doors, put you in touch with people to help and get in there and keep serving, man.

• 1:32:45Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:32:46Speaker 03

  Right? Next generation deserves us pushing all the way through to the end.

• 1:32:50Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. I agree with you. There's a lot of

• 1:32:56Speaker 03

  It's frustrating.

• 1:32:57Shawn Ryan?

  There's a lot of, I mean, I got a lot of buddies in there too. And I mean, you were in there, but I got a lot of buddies that are in Congress. I got buddies that are in the Senate. I, you know, and, and they're just so fucking distraught. They really are. Some of them are thinking about not running again because they haven't been able to make it the difference. But then, then, then you come in here and you talk about these things that you're able to get pushed through. That's, we never

• 1:33:21Speaker 03

  The media doesn't cover half of it. They cover the, they cover the drama. And look, I, I get, I get the frustration, but this is the greatest country the world's ever seen. We've got a, you know, as Reagan said, we're one generation from, from losing it all.

• 1:33:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 1:33:39Speaker 03

  So, and with fewer and fewer of our population serving those attributes, we've got to get, we have to get in there and fight the fight. And then, look, I mean, This administration, in just a year, you're turning the military around. Recruiting numbers have turned around. We're getting focused on the right things in terms of technology. The legislation's moving to rebuild. It's going to take a lot to rebuild our shipyards and our shipbuilding. At the same time, you have new technologies like Serronic and Andro and others that will leapfrog us. That will leapfrog us forward.

• 1:34:21Speaker 03

  Look at the Middle East. I mean, I just got back from Israel, Jordan, looking at the whole Gaza situation. We got the entire UN Security Council unanimously to support the president's 20-point peace plan. Just a few months ago, you had hostages in tunnels. And a lot of people had lost a lot of money betting that you'd see all of them come out alive. And now every, all of the remains, except one left. I met with the family of Ron Gavelli. One left that have come out. Ceasefire in place. Hezbollah on its back foot. The Assad regime gone. Decisive action from the president.

• 1:35:04Speaker 03

  Iran no longer chasing a nuke. The Houthis no longer using our ships as target practice. That's what leadership comes, you know, that's what leadership brings you from a commander in chief who gets it. What is the plan with Gaza now?

• 1:35:21Speaker 03

  So what the UN Security Council resolution and the president's peace plan establishes, a board of peace led by him. That will have Led by who? Led by the president. President Trump? President Trump. So American leadership will continue what, just underneath that, there's three things. A funding mechanism, not the UN, it's independent, but it'll be run by the World Bank that countries like the Gulf Arabs can contribute to for reconstruction, one. Two, a technocratic Palestinian committee that everybody's going to agree to who's sitting on it, not Hamas,

• 1:36:03Speaker 03

  to restore government services, water, sewage, you know, basic, basic services. And number three, an international stabilization force. Countries like Indonesia, Azerbaijan and others. What the president did that was so brilliant, he actually did it at the UN, was pulled together not just the Gulf Arabs, but countries like Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Muslim-majority countries, and said, "We're gonna tell Hamas this is the way it's going to be." And that united pressure got us to the peace plan, got the hostages out. And I think will get us to the next phase. And the president's been clear, like, look, a lot of valid questions. I asked it, others are asking it.

• 1:36:48Speaker 03

  Is Hamas really gonna disarm? He's been clear, they're gonna disarm one way or another, either the easy way or the hard way. And I think only he could pull together the Arabs, Palestinians, the Israelis, the Europeans. It really, I think, history is going to look back on that Sharm El-Sheikh peace agreement and say it was one of the turning points in history towards Middle East peace. You think this is gonna bring Middle East peace? You know, I think if anybody can do it, it's him. And that's not, you know, that's not just coming from me. That's coming from Prime Minister Israel. It's coming from the Palestinians, the leaders of the Gulf War,

• 1:37:33Speaker 03

  or the Gulf, excuse me, Arab countries, the Europeans and others. I do. And the team that he puts around him, Steve Whitkoff, Jared Kushner, Marco Rubio, the Vice President, Susie Wiles, they're very business-oriented. Why does that matter? They're not beholden by this is the way it's always been and has to be. They're focused on results. DC is horrible for a priority means more people, more money, more inputs. They're focused on the outputs, even if they're unconventional. They're not held back by the way things have done in the past. And, you know, the business people he's put around them, and I've, you know, I've worked with all of them and still am, are incredibly focused on commercial diplomacy.

• 1:38:21Speaker 03

  Business binds people together. And that was the brilliance of the Abraham Accords was, you know, the more we're talking about rail and ports and data centers and, you know, just a better life for everyone by working together, the less we're talking about 2,000 year old animosity. Is it going to be bumpy? Is it going to be difficult? Absolutely. But again, just look in the last decade, no one would have believed you would have had Arab countries and the Israelis coming together like they have under the Abraham Accords and the next step is going to be expansion of it. And being at the UN, you know, we have, we have a key piece of that.

• 1:39:01Shawn Ryan?

  What else did you learn on that trip? Israel and Jordan trip?

• 1:39:05Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think there's, it's a, it's a real fragile moment, but it's a moment of opportunity. You have a real opportunity in Lebanon. We have a

• 1:39:17Shawn Ryan?

  What's the opportunity?

• 1:39:19Speaker 03

  Well, you have a former general, the head of their armed forces, President Aoun. So you have a non Hezbollah line, actually, he's committed to fighting Hezbollah, now elected as president. You've got Hezbollah, if you remember the pager, the Beeper and Pager operation, plus taking out their leader, Nasrallah. They've been decimated, they're trying to rebuild, but they're on their back foot right now. Iran is on its back foot that have supported all of these guys and the Assad regime, which was also a puppet of Iran, is gone. So you have this window, I think, to get everyone moving in a common direction.

• 1:40:02Speaker 03

  It's going to be a lot of work, but it is a real opportunity. Had the opportunity to sit with the King of Jordan, King Abdullah. I think I told you, my wife's family is Jordanian Christians, came over as immigrants through Ellis Island in the 1950s and built an amazing life here. He's a real leader in the region, has a real clear eyed view, not always seeing eye to eye with their neighbors, the Israelis, but if you look over the, over the arc of time, have been a great ally. And I do believe, under this president and this team's leadership.

• 1:40:44Speaker 03

  Is it going to be, I don't know, you know, they're going to be Switzerland? No, but we can get to a level of stability. And the key, as the president said recently in an interview, was knocking the Iranian regime back so that they're not meddling nefariously and against us, against Israel, and against stability in the region and all the Arab allies. I think that was a critical, critical step.

• 1:41:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What, I mean, what about the, what about the humanitarian crisis that's going on over there? I mean, did you go into Gaza?

• 1:41:21Speaker 03

  I went right into the edge of it. There, you know, it depends on the, the security situation. It looks like, I mean, it's, it's devastated.

• 1:41:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, it looks.

• 1:41:30Speaker 03

  It is just.

• 1:41:31Shawn Ryan?

  It's not even.

• 1:41:32Speaker 03

  It's absolutely devastated in many ways. So in my role, you know, a lot of the key agencies that are providing humanitarian aid are aligned with the UN. Some of them, one of them called UNRWA, the UN Relief Works Agency, has been completely infiltrated by Hamas over the years, has radicalized the Palestinian youth through radical educational material and curriculum, and has to be completely dismantled and reformed. So that was a piece. There's a humanitarian corridor coming through Jordan. By the end of my trip, we were able to get that border crossing reopened.

• 1:42:16Speaker 03

  Look, we've gone from almost nothing going in to by the time I left, nearly a thousand trucks a day were going in, screened and acceptable by the Israelis so that it's not smuggling in. All the things that Hamas used to build all of these tunnels. I mean, we can't forget who started all of this. And the miles and miles and miles of concrete and generators and fuel that they could have used to improve Gaza, they used to build the most nefarious, incredible tunnel network I think the world has seen ever. And that the Israelis are still working to destroy.

• 1:42:56Speaker 03

  So it's, it's, it's a challenge and I think we all have to appreciate that President Trump has taken this on. He could have just said, you know, you guys work it out. But ultimately, what it'll lead to is an expansion of the Abraham Accords.

• 1:43:13Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think it would have been a bad thing?

• 1:43:14Speaker 03

  And that will lead to broader stability and so that finally we can, you know.

• 1:43:18Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think would have happened if we wouldn't have interjected ourselves into that?

• 1:43:25Speaker 03

  I think, I know, um, the hostages would either still be there or no longer be alive. Remember, we had a, a, a number of Americans pulled out. Uh, Israel will be bogged down in the most vicious urban warfare. There will be no expansion of the Abraham Accords. Uh, and Iran would have the opportunity to reassert itself, uh, in the most nefarious of ways. So it's only with American leadership and really only with this president. So look,

• 1:44:06Speaker 03

  look where we were under Biden. I mean, the whole world was on fire and continuing to spread and to get worse. Look what happened under the Obama administration when he just completely walked away with no plan. You had attacks all over Europe and attacks here in the United States with ISIS expanding and growing, a caliphate the size, you know, a caliphate the size of Indiana with an economy the size of Austria. So I just don't think we can afford to ignore the problem and wish it away. Um, it's just how do we get it to a place, uh, that, you know, we can focus on as the president's also doing on our

• 1:44:44Speaker 03

  own hemisphere. We have all of the energy, food supply, critical minerals that we need in the Western hemisphere. We just have to pay attention to it and he is from the Arctic to our own border to South America, uh, and, and Central America. We have to continue to focus on the Pacific on what I think is the greatest threat this country has ever faced, which is the Chinese Communist Party. Um, only the president can uniquely work with them and get this to a, a place that's workable, but, um,

• 1:45:20Speaker 03

  If the Middle East is constantly on fire, I don't think it could be ignored. The president is putting this on a trajectory with this peace plan that we can have an expansion of the Abraham Accords and get this to a much more stable place.

• 1:45:37Speaker 00

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• 1:46:07Speaker 01

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• 1:46:16Speaker 01

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• 1:47:18Shawn Ryan?

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• 1:47:33Shawn Ryan?

  I'm just gonna ask a couple of questions. Yeah, it's okay. And, you know, I mean, when we talk about, and I don't, I don't know the money. I know, I just, I know we sent another, what, sixty, was it sixty billion to Israel? A couple week ago, maybe, or so? No. Okay, whatever. Well, throw the fucking numbers out. Yeah. We spent a shit ton of money in Ukraine. We've sent a shit ton of money on Israel Gaza conflict. We're no longer spending money on Ukraine. You, you know what I mean, though? Yeah. Like, if you, if you take all the aid that we have sent all over the fucking globe, and I'm not talking about this administration, the last one, the one before, I'm just talking in general. Right?

• 1:48:13Shawn Ryan?

  We have, we have Chicago, fucking disaster, San Francisco, disaster, New York, disaster. Yeah. Detroit, disaster, St. Louis, disaster, North Carolina, East Tennessee from the hurricane, fucking disaster. We, I mean, lots and lots and lots of American cities are damn near fucking destroyed. And we are sending sixty billion here, a hundred billion there, a billion here, I mean, all over the place. What?

• 1:48:46Shawn Ryan?

  And we've been doing this strategy for fucking ever. Why aren't we taking, and maybe, I don't know why we aren't, but why aren't we taking the sixty billion here and the hundred billion there? And why aren't we not taking all that aid and going, you know what? Fuck you. I'm gonna take the sixty billion and I'm gonna dump it into Chicago. That doesn't mean free phones and free food and free everything for Chicago, but that means I'm gonna, I'm gonna get the fucking, I'm gonna build up the police, I'm gonna build up the sheriff's apartments, I'm gonna build all this shit up. Look. You know, I mean, I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fix the education system and we're gonna go city by city by city.

• 1:49:27Shawn Ryan?

  We're gonna go and we're gonna invest sixty billion dollars in our southern border. Because if we're gonna sit here and say, we need, we need X country to go and kill all the Islamic terrorists for us, okay, great, we've been doing that method for a while. We were over there for fucking twenty years ourselves doing this shit. You know? But what we haven't done is dump all of that into our border. We haven't dumped that into our border patrol. We haven't dumped that into our police departments. We haven't dumped that into our, just our infrastructure.

• 1:50:03Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:50:03Shawn Ryan?

  Our infrastructure. We have not dumped that into our infrastructure.

• 1:50:07Speaker 03

  Under this president, we are. First he started, first thing you have to have, which you know, I mean, security is the oxygen, commerce, everything else needs to breathe.

• 1:50:19Speaker 03

  Started with DC, our own nation's capital, and the National Guard there, you've seen from carjackings to robberies to murders, dropped dramatically, just by the presence of security. You've got Jeanine Pirro and actually prosecuting people that, that commit crimes and, and, and keep them in jail. You saw what he's done in LA, you saw what he's trying to do in other cities to establish a modicum of security first. $150 billion. That's almost the entire budget of the entire United States Army in the big, beautiful bill to go to our border, to go to CBP, to ICE and others.

• 1:51:01Speaker 03

  And you've seen encounters in our borders, which we were told it was impossible, go from over 12 million people coming in unvetted to now virtually zero. You have down in Venezuela, you have the Iranians, the Russians, the Chinese, massive amounts of trafficking, an individual that is the head of an international cartel.

• 1:51:30Speaker 03

  That's now under a hell of a lot of, of pressure from this administration. So I do, so I would argue that exactly what you just laid out, which is an America first policy, this administration has done, and I'm proud to have been a part of it. And then separately, what is that abroad? It's American leadership, but it's also burden sharing. No, I mean, I was there at NATO ministerial after NATO ministerial. I told you about the fact that their soldiers were there with their lives on the line in Afghanistan, but their governments were tying their hand. And at these NATO ministerials where, I think, seven countries at the start of the first Trump term were meeting their bare minimum 2%.

• 1:52:09Speaker 03

  Now, second term, he's got them all signing up to 5% of their GDP to contribute to their own militaries. Oh, by the way, we're not providing any more money to Ukraine. The Europeans are buying the hardware from us, creating jobs from us, also reinvigorating our industrial base, and they're paying for the defense of themselves. And then, you know, where does the UN fit on that? Look, first of all, we're dozing it, we're cleaning it up. I already have a commitment from the UN Secretary General to cut 2,600 UN bureaucrats. These are international bureaucrats.

• 1:52:52Speaker 03

  We pay for a fourth of everything. They do 2,600 gone, 25% of global peacekeepers gone. Overall, at 18% budget cut, first real cut they've seen in their history. They've only been there a few months, we're working on it. This is all because they see what's coming with President Trump. But here's the other side of that. On the, you know, why don't we just, why does President Trump say, "Look, it has potential, help it find its potential rather than just get completely out"? There needs to be one place in the world, if he's the peace president, we take a diplomacy-first approach, which we should, backed by the big stick of a rebuilt military.

• 1:53:37Speaker 03

  There's got to be one place in the world where everybody comes together to talk. I want that to be here in the United States. And if we didn't invent it, somebody would reinvent it. And I don't want it in Beijing or EU or somewhere else. Every year, every world leader comes to New York to try to hash things out. That's one. And then number two, burden sharing is a key part of America first principles. So for example, talk about cartels. Haiti has been completely overrun by gangs right off of Florida shores. They are moving people, guns, drugs, fentanyl, you name it, working with the cartels in Venezuela and Colombia over into Europe, the United States, what have you, much less if we have

• 1:54:21Speaker 03

  a migration crisis because the country is collapsing onto our shores. Under the last administration, they spent over a billion dollars trying to take care of it ourselves. Now we've shifted that to the UN. You're going to have other countries coming in and we pay a quarter of that. I don't think we can just completely ignore it and wait till it's a total crisis. But we're now sharing the burden. Others are taking that on. Same thing in Gaza, like I described. I don't want US boots there. We talked about the problem with having the Israelis go back to war, like it was at least. So there's a burden sharing aspect to that that I think is important. And then finally, this is the piece that's that I'm only fully coming to appreciate.

• 1:55:05Speaker 03

  There's all of these international bodies that kind of govern global commerce. Everything from international shipping to the seabed, the, you know, the ocean bottoms, which by the way, President signed an executive order to begin mining critical minerals out of that. How was that all, how is that all regulated to space, to telecommunications, to international civil aviation?

• 1:55:34Speaker 03

  If we just walk away 193 other countries, Europeans, Chinese, Russians are all calling the shots. I want us calling the shots. We have to get in there and block and tackle. We talked at, we talked at breakfast a recent when the International Maritime Organization was on the verge of putting in place a carbon tax on global shipping. Yeah. What the fuck is that? What? Who the fuck would we even pay that tax to? Let, well, it would be levied on shipping companies that didn't have, that basically had fossil fueled ships as a way to reduce the carbon footprint and to force them into kind of like what they've tried to do with EVs with cars. Here's, here's the problem.

• 1:56:19Speaker 03

  It would have passed on an estimated billion dollars a month on to consumers, would have constant, would have created a slush fund for the UN, would have pushed ships towards biofuels that the EU subsidizing and that only Chinese shipyards could, could transform, right? And so we got, I mean, Secretary Rubio was engaged, our Secretary of Energy, Wright, Duffy, the president got involved. They called us diplomatic gangsters, but we got in there and.

• 1:56:53Speaker 01

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• 1:57:51Speaker 03

  Fought the good fight, defeated.

• 1:57:54Shawn Ryan?

  Mike, before we...

• 1:57:57Speaker 03

  So I guess my point is, is the president has charged us with cleaning it up, but also with the burden sharing and diplomacy aspects of working in line with our, with our interests.

• 1:58:08Shawn Ryan?

  Before we go into everything we're gonna, we're gonna talk about at the UN, I just, one more thing on the Venezuela stuff.

• 1:58:19Shawn Ryan?

  It's been Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, cartel, cartel, like all this cartel shit coming out of Mexico. China sending in the precursors to Fentanyl to Mexico, to the Mexican cartels. I'm not saying we shouldn't be in Venezuela, but why are we not in Mexico? Because it's been Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico, Mexico. Now we're fucking around in Venezuela. Mexico's on our border. We've been talking about...

• 1:58:43Speaker 03

  Well, we're pressuring the hell, I mean, the, uh, the Mexican government sent back several dozen major leaders of cartels that they had refused for years and definitely under the last administration, they extradited all of them into our court system. Uh, that was a huge win, uh, from just a few months ago. Uh, the Mexican government put 10,000 of their own guardsmen onto their side of our northern border and they're sending security forces to their southern border, which President Trump had them, you know, worked with them to do his first term. Biden let it go. Now that's back again. Um, I think the bigger piece, and you know, when I was in Congress, I pushed for us to be able to go on

• 1:59:26Speaker 03

  offense against these cartels. You know, I tell people this all the time. Back in the nineties, the FBI was running around the world trying to arrest Osama bin Laden. And remember that? I mean, in Sudan and other places. And, and Al Qaeda lieutenants and oftentimes didn't because it wouldn't stand up in court. They viewed it as a law enforcement problem. After nine 11, we saw it squarely for what it is, a national security problem. We have to move in the same direction with these cartels. They are killing Americans. They are attacking our inner cities. They are poisoning more people than we law in a year, more people than we lost in 10 years of Vietnam.

• 2:00:11Speaker 03

  This is a national security threat and we have to treat it as such. And these cartels aren't like, you know, I don't know, your mafia groups back in the 60s of organized crime. They are armed to the teeth.

• 2:00:25Shawn Ryan?

  They're armies.

• 2:00:26Speaker 03

  They are many armies and they control whole swaths of Mexico and they have a state backer in Venezuela. So that's the kind of the mental shift. I just, you know, the media doesn't want to talk about that this administration has brought Kristi Noem, Homeland Security, Stephen Miller in the White House, the president, of course, vice president. And that's squarely America first, but it, I just push back. It's Mexico too. I think Venezuela is getting all the media, but it's Mexico too.

• 2:00:54Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Okay. All right, moving into the UN. So it's just, it's just been a question on my mind and.

• 2:01:03Speaker 03

  From the DC swamp to the international swamp up in New York.

• 2:01:08Shawn Ryan?

  So the UN, I mean, what, what is the UN's purpose? What is its purpose supposed to be?

• 2:01:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:01:15Shawn Ryan?

  And where are they getting off the rails?

• 2:01:18Speaker 03

  It was established post-World War II by basically the victors led by the United States for the victors of World War II. To prevent another world war, certainly to prevent World War III with nukes. And I think in that sense, looking through the Cold War, it was largely successful. Unfortunately, since then, much like, you know, many of our own federal agencies, it's now trying to do everything for everybody. 80 years of bureaucratic bloat focused on all this nonsense. I mean, Sean, there's seven agencies, seven major agencies with massive budgets focused on climate. So set aside the whole debate on climate. You don't need seven.

• 2:02:02Speaker 03

  You arguably don't, you know, get it down to one. And then, oh, by the way, there, let's talk about. Energy independence, all of the above solutions and the right things. But so just cutting this massive bureaucracy down is first and foremost. And I just laid out to you step one. How is the UN broken down? Doing that. Who controls it? So it has, um, think of it as kind of, you know, like a legislature in the sense it has a general assembly, 193 countries participate. Um, they give that, it's a rough analogy, but kind of like the house, the bigger body, smaller body, the UN Security Council.

• 2:02:44Speaker 03

  That has the five permanent members, UK, US, China, Russia, uh, France, right? We all have a veto and then you get elected members that rotate on and off 10 other elected members. What they, what the UN Security Council passing passes is binding international law. And then it has a secretary general that's kind of the administrative head that's over the peacekeeping forces and the huge humanitarian agencies. But it's also got a lot of these independent agencies that you've heard of like World Food Program, UNICEF that focuses on children. And then all the IAEA focused on the, the International Atomic Energy Agency and others, right? World Trade Organization. Keep, keep going down the list.

• 2:03:29Speaker 03

  Um, again, there is a body that governs from space to telecommunications to, I mean, there's an international civil aviation organization under the UN. Wow. Well, I want pilots as I fly around the world, international travel to all speak English, the air traffic controllers to, you know, be trained up to a certain standard, the mechanics to be trained up to a certain standard. So, you know, I just worked with, um, Secretary Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture, because as our farmers export food. The Europeans and others through these international agencies are trying to put all of these crazy regulations on it. So just as we're deregulating in DC, I've got

• 2:04:09Speaker 03

  a mandate and mission from the president to deregulate, get out of the way of, for American businesses and industries in these international organizations. They're trying to put, I mean, the Chinese and others are in there trying to overregulate AI. We're making sure they stay out of the way so our entrepreneurs can win that race, right? But my argument is, we have to be in there and block and tackle, like I told you on that international shipping vote. If we walk away, they're going to do it without us and...

• 2:04:42Shawn Ryan?

  So there's 193 countries in the...

• 2:04:43Speaker 03

  There's more. So the UN is this international, kind of like the Vatican is in Rome. It's this international entity in New York. That's where we established it, post-World War II. And all of these countries have embassies to the UN in New York. There's actually more in New York than there are in Washington DC because there's countries we don't have relationships with, like Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and others, that by treaty can be in the UN, but not in Washington. The other interesting thing about it is, New York, because of that dynamic, is one of the most active spy versus spy cities, like Vienna, where a lot of these other organizations are in the world. Because you've got all

• 2:05:28Speaker 03

  these other players there.

• 2:05:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:33Shawn Ryan?

  How was it funded?

• 2:05:35Speaker 03

  So, everybody contributes, but we contribute the most. It's us, number one, China, number two, now, with the world's second-largest economy, and then, and then on down the list.

• 2:05:49Shawn Ryan?

  We're at, we contribute 25%, correct?

• 2:05:52Speaker 03

  But we are, we have withheld that funding until we see the reforms that, that we want to see. So that conversation and negotiations ongoing.

• 2:06:03Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. And so how is the

• 2:06:05Speaker 03

  We need to see salary reform, bureaucrat reform. We need to see all kinds of of things before they get another dollar of the taxpayer.

• 2:06:13Shawn Ryan?

  Do we have more pull than everybody else since we put in 25%?

• 2:06:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, we not always. We should. One of the flaws is that everybody gets an equal vote in the General Assembly, where we have more pull than anybody else is in the Security Council, where we have a veto. Something's going against our interests, then we'll veto it.

• 2:06:35Speaker 03

  But, you know, again, things like getting the UN to get Haiti under control, we just got that through. Why did we go to them for Gaza? Well, a lot of these countries that are willing to contribute forces so that we don't or others don't have to, they need the stamp of international law for their own domestic reasons to be able to do that. So in order to get that the President's plan now endorsed by the international community unanimously was it was a big deal. And there's other, you know, there's other crises around the world that we'd rather them deal with than than us.

• 2:07:19Shawn Ryan?

  How are you? I mean, how is it introducing reform into the UN? I would imagine that.

• 2:07:29Speaker 03

  I mean, it's.

• 2:07:30Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, here comes the new ambassador. I mean, how's that?

• 2:07:35Speaker 03

  Look, well, first of all, a number of administrations haven't even really tried.

• 2:07:42Speaker 03

  We're determined to do it. And the the President's going to use, and I on his behalf, whatever leverage we have to. I, you know, as a former member of Congress, standing before, you know, a town hall of firemen, nurses, doctors, lawyers, everyday Americans, need to be able to look them straight in the eye and say, we're going to get this organization to work for us. And look, I know rightly, a lot of skepticism. Look where the President took NATO since the beginning of his first term. Back to real, you know, they're at least on a pathway to burden sharing and real partnership. I think what he's done with NATO and what we've done with NATO, we can do with the UN in the second term.

• 2:08:27Shawn Ryan?

  What would happen if we don't see the reform?

• 2:08:31Speaker 03

  If we don't see the reform, we don't pay. Do you, will we leave the UN?

• 2:08:36Speaker 03

  That's up to the president. That's ultimately up to the president. The president just gave in his speech at the UN General Assembly. He said, look, we need to get back to basics. We need to get back focused on stopping wars, maintaining the peace, preventing wars, and stop all of this gender, climate, all of this other nonsense. Same conversation we're having in Washington DC. But we're having it with the world, especially if we're going to be the biggest bill payer. So back to basics, fight for American industry in these, in these international bodies. And then, you know, it can provide a platform for issues that we really care about.

• 2:09:19Speaker 03

  I did not have on my dance card, man, that I was going to have Nicki Minaj at the UN talking about the persecution of Christians, mostly in Nigeria, but all over the world.

• 2:09:34Speaker 03

  Just, I don't know, quarter billion followers? Yeah. I mean, that's incredibly powerful. So as much as it needs to be cleaned up, it does have that 80 years of kind of a brand, it's a platform for people to do that. We want to focus on human trafficking. We want to focus on a number of things, antisemitism and others that are righteous, worthy causes that the administration cares about and that this can be a platform to touch the global community.

• 2:10:11Speaker 03

  I told you, tribes of Afghanistan are easier some days. I mean, it's, it's tough. Yeah. It's tough. I'll bet it is. I'll bet it is. I mean, do you have any?

• 2:10:21Shawn Ryan?

  I don't have a whole lot of insight into, you know, how this all works within the UN. So I mean, I'm the way you're kind of describing it almost sounds like Congress for the world.

• 2:10:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:10:32Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and so what I'm, what I want to ask is, you know, when you were in Congress, I'm sure you had allies, you know, people that you were working with to get stuff pushed through. Do you have anybody within the UN? Do you have other ambassadors from other countries that, that you consider to be friendly that you, you have a common agenda, a common goal?

• 2:10:50Speaker 03

  Yeah. Look, um, I mean, this Sean, this is where kind of so many of the lessons being a Green Beret comes in, right? You know, I mean, we're dropped off in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of a tribe or allied military, half of them soon kill us than, than, than they would the bad guys. And it's through relationships, it's through influence, it's by with and through, it's building coalitions. Um, it's negotiation, right? It's, it's all of those, bringing all of those skillsets. Uh, oftentimes in special forces, we can't make that partner military or that tribe or whomever guerrilla force do exactly what we want to do. But we're the

• 2:11:33Speaker 03

  United States of America. We come with that moral authority. We come with that leadership. We come with the, you know, in the case of the horse soldiers, the backing of the United States Air Force and that leverage that comes with that. Um, so it's bringing all of those tools.

• 2:11:48Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I'm the other, right?

• 2:11:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm. You know, who I, I've worked with Argentina, I work with Italy, of course, with, uh, with, with the United Kingdom. Um, you know, we have a lot of like-minded leaders, a lot with the Gulf States now. That Gaza resolution, uh, we had all of the same, uh, countries that were with the Abraham Accords, plus the ones the President Trump had developed these relationships with, come with us publicly that led to the Palestinians that kept the Israelis comfortable. And then we had to tell the Europeans, you can't be more Catholic than the Pope here. You can't care about the Palestinian issue more than the Palestinians and Arabs and Egyptians, everybody

• 2:12:30Speaker 03

  that, that's right there dealing with it. And we got everybody on board, but it was.

• 2:12:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:36Speaker 03

  A lot of sleepless nights, a lot of work.

• 2:12:38Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, when you're talking about, you know, when, you know.

• 2:12:43Shawn Ryan?

  Fighting that carbon tax, woke-ism, all this kind of stuff. What goes through my mind is, I just don't see any other countries fighting against that.

• 2:13:00Speaker 03

  Well, we end up winning the vote, right, on that carbon tax, but we had to lead. We had to give a little bit of, you're going to work with us or else. We had to, you know, we had to lean in and use the leverage that the United States has. And that President Trump uniquely does. There's no other, you know, the, the head of NATO in our first meeting in the, in the Oval Office said, only you could get the Russians and Ukrainians, could get Zelensky and Putin on

• 2:13:39Speaker 03

  the phone from where they're annihilating to each other to now at least we're talking. We're not there yet, and I don't want to get ahead of the President in these negotiations or his team, but that's only the United States and, and I'm convinced only this President could have gotten us this far.

• 2:14:00Shawn Ryan?

  You know, earlier you had mentioned that you think that the one, the threat that you're most concerned about is the CCP. Why is that?

• 2:14:08Speaker 03

  Not the amazing, wonderful Chinese people, Chinese culture. But we have never faced an adversary, not the Soviet Union, not Germany, Japan, never faced an adversary with rival economic might that openly talks about surpassing us technologically. That is building ships at a rate of three to five to one. You could fit every shipyard in the United States inside China's one largest shipyard.

• 2:14:42Speaker 03

  You know, we have 1% to 2% of shipbuilding. Yeah. There are over 50%. And the rest is South Korea and Japan, right? That is increasingly dominate dominating, not dominating, but challenging us in space. That intends to put a station on the moon, the ultimate high ground by the end of this decade. Thank God for Jared Isaacman and the renewed push. I had the northern, I touched Cape Canaveral in my old congressional district. And, you know, in 2018, the Chinese launched more into space than us and the rest of the world combined.

• 2:15:23Speaker 03

  By last year, SpaceX was launching more than the rest of the world combined. That's American ingenuity, right? At its best. So no other adversary has the, has ever had the ability to challenge us in all of those domains. Add cyber to that and has such an aggressive influence operation here at home. In academia, through Confucius Institutes. Many of these Chinese students are wonderful young people, but if their families threatened at home, they don't have a lot of choice.

• 2:16:04Speaker 03

  And it's, it's, it's a challenge unlike any we've ever faced. Now,

• 2:16:12Speaker 03

  ultimately, I convinced we will prevail.

• 2:16:17Speaker 03

  It's, it's a real competition.

• 2:16:22Speaker 03

  How close is it?

• 2:16:25Speaker 03

  Ultimately, we will prevail.

• 2:16:29Speaker 03

  We always have. What's the biggest thing in the way? I'll tell you, well, right now, and, and a number of us and the president is laser focused on this. Supply chain, supply chain, supply chain. If there was any lesson from COVID, was that seemingly inexpensive things that cost pennies, like mask gowns and gloves can become a national security risk. I'll never forget in 2019, the Pentagon, I was on the, on the relevant committee in Armed Services. Committee comes to us kind of in a panic about ammunition, the cost of ammunition, and they need more money, and we're all shooters. We know how expensive a bullet is

• 2:17:12Speaker 03

  these days, and need more money, need more this. We dug into it, and it turns out the biggest missing piece was an element called antimony. There was formerly five mines in Idaho and Utah. They'd all been shut down by overregulation, environmental regulation, investors, and the owners had walked away. Three countries in the world that mine and refine antimony, Tajikistan, Russia, China, go back to the Pentagon like this is, this is a crisis. What are you going to do about it? This was, actually, I think by this time it was 2021, 2022, and they said, oh, no, we're, we're, we're demarching, meaning sending a strongly worded letter on, you know, why these countries have withheld shipments from

• 2:17:57Speaker 03

  us. You kidding me? So like-minded group, mainly veterans, we forced the Pentagon to create a stockpile, at least, so we have some emergency supply until what we see now with Secretary Burgum and Wright and the President and others are revitalizing our mining and refining industry. And if it can't happen here fast enough, at least it's happened with allied countries, Seabed, and, and, and other places, right? So, supply chains across the board, we have to be self-sufficient. I mean, that, you know, the, the arsenal of democracy has to be there and present. It's what President Trump so uniquely realizes,

• 2:18:39Speaker 03

  the big stick isn't our military, the big stick is the strength of our economy, and our supply chains, and our resilience. And, you know, he's taken all kinds of measures to revitalize that. And I have to, you know, I, my small piece of this is blocking and tackling in these international organizations.

• 2:18:55Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think your biggest challenge is going to be as Ambassador to the UN, as far as the reform goes?

• 2:19:01Speaker 03

  Well, it's a challenge, but it's an opportunity, is we'll have a new Secretary General, so kind of, you know, the administrative head of it all, elected this year. Again,

• 2:19:16Speaker 03

  China, Russia, Europeans, we all have a veto, so it has to be somebody that we come to a consensus on. But this needs to be, has to be somebody that is reform-minded. We have to save this institution from itself. It's just sinking under its own bureaucratic weight. And it should be the Secretary General, it should be the UN that's solving things like Cambodia, Thailand, and India, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Armenia. They should be in there. Yeah, fine. President Trump has stepped in as the peace president. I think he'll get the Nobel Peace Prize for it. I'm now getting the UN in a supporting role, but with the next Secretary General, they should be in a leading role. Again, back to basics, not

• 2:20:00Speaker 03

  solving all this, trying to solve all this other woke nonsense.

• 2:20:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, Mike, is there anything we didn't cover that you want to cover?

• 2:20:09Speaker 03

  Uh, well, I would be remiss if I didn't just very publicly thank my amazing wife. She is herself a combat veteran, both Afghanistan and Iraq, a family of immigrants. She was also established the State Department's Hostage Negotiation Office. She was one of the first hostage envoys and was President Trump's Homeland Advisor in his first term. So, man, you know, as husbands, like, we try, but we never win an argument. Like, I really never, ever win an argument. And oh, by the way, she's dropped it gorgeous. So, you know,

• 2:20:54Speaker 03

  I say that because my wife's amazing and my family's amazing, but I say that as a Christian. But I also say that as a veteran, in the sense that, like, it's the families that bear the burden of service. You know, we're out there...

• 2:21:11Speaker 03

  Being commandos or diplomats or whatever, you know, serving this amazing countries in ways that are incredible.

• 2:21:21Speaker 03

  The families like, we don't come home.

• 2:21:25Speaker 03

  We come home missing limbs or we come home not right up here anymore, right? So I just have for both the Gold Star community.

• 2:21:35Speaker 03

  And all the families out there, whether you're in the intelligence community, diplomatic service, military, whatever, just a deep, deep appreciation. And one last thing, we don't want to go too long. I think my most amazing moment.

• 2:21:51Speaker 03

  With President Trump, and I talked about this in my speech at the Republican National Convention, was with the 13 Gold Star families of Abbey Gate. These families were, it's, it's bad enough, the loss and how the loss happened. But they literally couldn't get an audience with the previous commander in chief with Biden. They were so distraught and they come to us in Congress. And, and this is what I love about him. I said, let me give him a call. Call him. He, he's, Michael, get him up here.

• 2:22:27Speaker 03

  Tonight? Tonight. And so we get him up to Bedminster. The scheduler calls me and, you know, a little bit distraught and says, all right, we can, we had a lot going on. We can carve out an hour.

• 2:22:43Speaker 03

  He ended up spending the entire night with them. He shook every one of his hand, heard the stories, talked about their loved ones, then invites them up to dinner. Shaun, by the end of the night, he had one of the couples who was having a really hard time with it all up dancing. The moms were laughing. Like a couple of the moms came up to me and Julia, my wife afterwards, and said, this is the best thing that has happened to me since I lost my son. So I just say that in a sense, that's a side no one ever sees that I, you know, deeply appreciate, and I think your viewers would appreciate too. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. Yeah, man. Best of luck to you. I'll take prayer.

• 2:23:35Shawn Ryan?

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