KHC 133 - Doug Collins

Doug Collins is an American lawyer, politician, and Air Force veteran serving as the 12th United States secretary of veterans affairs since 2025. Not only does Doug want to help make America great again, he wants to help improve the lives of veterans and reduce suicide rates by giving our veterens better tools and resources for their mental health and well being. Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com Follow Doug: https://www.instagram.com/dougcollinsga/ https://x.com/RepDougCollins Thank you to our sponsors: LMNT: Visit https://drinklmnt.com/cam for a free sample pack with any purchase Ketone IQ: https://www.ketone.com/Cam use code CAM for 30% off your first subscription MUD\WTR: https://mudwtr.com/cam use code CAM for 15% off Montana Knife Company: https://www.montanaknifecompany.com/ Use code CAM for 10% off Grizzly Coolers: https://www.grizzlycoolers.com/ use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% offv Timestamps: 00:00:00 How Doug & Cam Met 00:01:45 Doug Collins’ Role in Congress 00:03:52 Working for Donald Trump 00:06:13 From a Pastor to Law School 00:10:24 Trump’s Cabinet 00:12:44 How Doug Got the Secretary of VA Position 00:16:35 Confirmation Process into Congress 00:21:41 The Media & Authenticity 00:28:50 Suicide Rates Among Veterens 00:35:27 Ad Break (Undeniable Book & Ketone) 00:37:33 Psychedelics for Medicinal Purposes 00:39:44 What Does Support Your Troops Really Mean? 00:46:28 Acknowledging Veterans & Help for the Veterans 00:51:34 Leadership Matters: “One Chance to Get it Right” 00:57:37 Addressing Specifics 00:58:56 Showing Up in Person 01:03:37 Deciding Which People to Cut 01:09:40 Hate from DEI 01:10:42 Protecting Soldiers from Brain Injuries & Mental Health Concerns 01:17:29 The Federal Cap Standard 01:19:12 Overcoming Adversity After War 01:27:57 “Don’t Treat Me as Though I’m Different” 01:29:42 Metrics in Suicide Rates & Building a Culture Change 01:36:39 What Gives Doug Collins Hope 01:38:54 Doug's Family & Making Them Proud 01:42:24 Good Stories from Old Men 01:48:03 QA: How Do We Change the Face of our Veterans to Strength? 01:55:26 QA: The Importance of Continuing to Tell Our Veterans' Stories? 01:59:49 QA: Does Our Veterans Treatment Reflect Our Character? 02:03:07 Outro: Montana Knife Company Packout Knife

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

• 0:15Cameron Hanes?

  This is the Keep Hammering Collective with Doug Collins and let me get this right. So it's Secretary of Veterans Affairs?

• 0:22Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 0:23Cameron Hanes?

  That's it?

• 0:23Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 0:24Cameron Hanes?

  It's a, well, it's an honor. It's amazing that you're sitting here with me. I mean, we've been corresponding for years, it seems like.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it has been.

• 0:32Cameron Hanes?

  And now to, to meet you today and just welcome you to your new role and hear what that's like is a big honor.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Okay, Mr. Brady to be here and we have been over the years, uh, watching a lot of things and connecting. Uh, you had a big impact on me. I'll just be honest with you, years ago, when I was, uh, in Congress and we were going through a lot of stuff and, you know, it was, uh, a time in which you get, when you let life get to you and then you, you don't, to keep you physically up, you don't, you know, get stuff to it and, uh, run across you, uh, through a friend and started watching. That's how we actually connect when I'm, I'm still in the air force and I remember one Saturday I was at the drill and I actually had a message or something. We actually started talking and then just sort of since then, watched the kids grow up and got my first Bokeh kill and others. So just all because of that.

• 1:17Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, man, that's amazing. Yeah, I, I do remember going down Tanner was at Fort Benning down there and, uh, I don't know. It seems like one time I was having trouble getting, I don't know if it's a security thing. Now I can't remember what it was, but we were.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  We did it. We got it through.

• 1:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah. So it's all good, but, uh, yeah, just appreciate everything that you've, you know, just your friendship and just kinda, I don't know, corresponding, it's, it's been amazing, but then also to see you get appointed this new role. It's, uh, I, I always like, you're one of the good guys, you know, like for people like me, it's like the, you're the type of person we want in Congress. It's like, can we get somebody who just, cause you see some of these guys on TV. It's just like, I'm this small town, Oregon. You watch some of these guys on TV and you're just like. Who the, who are they representing? It's not me.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10Cameron Hanes?

  In that you are somebody who people can be proud of up there.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I appreciate that. I think it just goes back to where you come from. And I think there's a lot of times that, you know, my staff will tell me, if you hear me here to speak, I'm, and I mean this with love, but I'm a trooper's kid from North Georgia. My dad is a Georgia State Trooper for 31 years. You know, I grew up in a home and, you know, that was stable, mom and dad. And I lost my mom about eight years ago. My dad's still with me. We still have breakfast in a week. It's just that grounding. And I think when you, it doesn't matter where I am, I still want to be Doug. I, I can have quote, big titles and do those things, but that, that doesn't matter. At the end of the day, if you lose who you are. And I think in Congress, as a government and everything else, we start beginning to believe there's a persona we have to perform. Or there's something expected of us. And what really it is, is why are you there? What are you doing?

• 2:59Speaker 01

  And then they also, here's another thing most people don't realize, in D.C., whether it's in administration, but mostly in Congress, a lot of the guys are bored. Now, that may sound funny, but they're, because they don't have purpose. And I think that's one of the things that, that is very important to me is you find the things in life that matter to you, things that you want to accomplish, and you put your energy toward that. If you're putting your energy toward everything, then you get nothing. And so it's, I just try to remember where I come from. What would it feel like to me? And, and that I, you know, I've heard you talk about this before. When I used to get off the plane in D.C., I'd look over at the Capitol and say, well, is this the day they're going to kick me out? You know, I'm not supposed to be here, kind of thing.

• 3:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I get that. But yeah, I'm, I'm so glad you're there. I did, I did know about your upbringing and how you've come up. I know about your family. I'm just curious and I want to get to all that, but what's it like working for probably the most polarizing? Is it on earth right now?

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Pretty close.

• 3:58Cameron Hanes?

  Is Trump, I mean, he gets people fired up one way or another. So what's it like working with the president?

• 4:04Speaker 01

  He's actually great. I mean, and this is the thing, if he was sitting here, y'all would talk for hours. I mean, this is just the way he is. And we were just talking about this as we were coming over on breakfast this morning. It's amazing to me that here's a man who said the same things for 40 plus years. And you can go back. I mean, it's documented. He was, I mean, he's the man that they write rap songs about. I mean, this was kind of thing, you know, I want to be like Trump. You know, this was 25, 30 years ago. And he said the same thing. For so many years, but yet the minute he stepped into politics, you know, 12 years ago, the same people who vetted and said, this is the greatest guy, oh, he's wonderful, all of a sudden turned. And that should tell everybody something. That should tell that there is very much deep buy-in

• 4:46Speaker 01

  and ideological weight to positions that we sometimes don't even, you know, want to think about. And he's come and questioned all that. And so it's, it's, it's interesting. I mean, you know, working for the president, you get a lot of, and I was, you know, had to defend him during the impeachment stuff. And so defend the, the Republican side of that because I was the ranking member through all that impeachment on the House side. And so we had to go through all the Russiagate and all this stuff. And so I got to know him really well. But he, he truly wants to do good. And I think that's the thing that I really wish that everybody could have five minutes with him to see. He truly cares, in my case, what I'm doing now, veterans, but he truly cares about the folks who are struggling,

• 5:27Speaker 01

  folks who are trying to make it in this country. He really wants everybody to succeed. And it's, it's just genuine when you talk to him.

• 5:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's, I mean, it seems like it, but he is, if you don't like him for whatever, there's, you can find reasons to dismiss what he says or to be offended by it. But everything I see is like, he seems like he's trying to make a difference. And it's, I mean, he doesn't need the job, obviously, but I don't know, probably some people don't need to be in Congress, but they like to because they want to make some probably, probably great intentions and then some maybe not so great intentions. That's why, it's why it's refreshing to see you in, in this position too. But yeah, it's like that, your trajectory coming from North Georgia and just, you know, your dad

• 6:17Cameron Hanes?

  being a trooper. And, and I think that, you know, what you were raised on and that type of fabric, that's, that's middle, or not middle America, but that's the type of people that built, that made our country as good as it is and why we're so great. And so to come from that to, to where you're now is, is, I think it gives hope to a lot of people.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Well, I, you know, from my perspective, I hope it does. I mean, is, look at what I've gone through. And you know, I started in, you know, political and my wife and I, we've been married, uh, be thirty seven years in June. When I first got married, we were going to law school because that was what I was gonna do and that didn't work out. And so, you know, your life changes. Uh, I knew God had a calling on my life. That's why, uh, I finally, after working in sales and stuff, I answered that and got my masters. I pastored a church for eleven years and then got back. And then, as God would have it, he, I believe it was just, I knew it inside. It was time to leave that eleven year comfort zone of that church and he opened the door to law school again. And in law school, he said, oh, by the way, uh, there's an opening for a state house seat. I ran for state house while I was in

• 7:19Speaker 01

  law school and then get for getting out, then the congressional seat.

• 7:23Cameron Hanes?

  Why'd you do that?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Um, it was open. It was, it was something that was a

• 7:28Cameron Hanes?

  Did you have enough to do?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  No, I was bored.

• 7:30Cameron Hanes?

  Getting your law degree?

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Well, and also three kids in which I was coaching football and everything else. So, yeah.

• 7:34Cameron Hanes?

  So, yeah, what, what was the impetus of that?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Well, it was something, uh, again, I think it's a purpose in life. When you look at, too many people, I think, look at their life in, in this, I'll just handle whatever comes day to day. You know, I'm just going, that, that's their goal in life. And that's, to me, is a very short sighted goal to say, what can I do today? Instead of saying, okay, well, is there other things? Now, too many people also do the opposite. They plan out the next ten years of their life and say, this is all I gotta do. No, it's more of, I believe we're gifted in the sense of the things that we have, the things, the tools that we have, and making yourself available. And, and that was an availability time. And when you looked at it, uh, I was in this school, Lisa, my bride, uh, we talked about it. I called her, I came home from a meeting and we found out this seat was gonna be open. And I said, and so I was gonna call her, you know, first year of law

• 8:22Speaker 01

  school, getting into second year of law school, three kids, three young kids. I had quit my job. I was only in the Air Force Reserve. She was teaching. So, I was making my bologna sandwiches, going to school, riding the bus and everything else. And I said, um, so I was gonna call her and I said, Lisa, I said, I got something for you. Because knowing she was gonna say, Doug, it's just get home and cut the grass. Okay. You know, she puts me, she keeps me exactly proper perspective. Um, but she said, I said, I laid it out. And I said, you know, this seat's gonna come open and, you know, we've talked about this before. Because we actually met when I was doing political work when I was a college kid.

• 8:54Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Kind of like, and

• 8:58Speaker 01

  She said this to me and I'll never forget it. She was on the other end of the phone and she said, "Well, it might be time." I was like, "Not the answer."

• 9:07Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Because I was expecting her to say, you know, just to get on it, but it just opened it up. And I think so to go and follow your dreams, follow your passions, but be willing to get out of your boat. I think a lot of times, there's a, it's a great passage from my, you know, pastoral background, where Jesus calls out Peter and he says, "Get out of the boat." He says, "He's come to me." And everybody else is sitting in that, in the boat. All of them were there. All of them heard him say, "Come to me." But only Peter jumped over this, he walked over, didn't even look, got on that rusty and began to walk. And he was, and was doing fine until he did one thing. He looked down. And the minute he looked down, he started to sink and he reached out and of course, but you know what's always surprised me about that story?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  And I think it's sort of where I'm at now, is there's 11 people who, there was one person that day who experienced a miracle. And it was 11 who watched one.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  How many times are we the 11 that watch?

• 10:03Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 10:03Speaker 01

  When we could have been.

• 10:04Cameron Hanes?

  Most of the time.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  And I think it's, so for me, I hope it inspires people just to move forward, to chase what you're good at. And the doors will open. I think too many times we try to force doors open, and I've done that in my life.

• 10:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  You know, and it just probably didn't work out right.

• 10:19Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  But now that you have a chance to be at a table, and I think this is different about the cabinet. This is something I will let people to know about the Trump cabinet this time. And there's been a lot said and, you know, of course, the media makes fun of all of us.

• 10:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  But this is a very tactical, what I call tactical cabinet. Tulsi, dear friend, you know, Pete, all the rest of them. We're there to do something. We're still strategic. We still think about, you know, the big picture. I have 470,000 employees. I can't, yeah, bigger than active duty army, by the way.

• 10:50Cameron Hanes?

  These guys give me enough headaches. Can imagine.

• 10:54Speaker 01

  It's amazing. So this is what we see, but, but he put together a cabinet that was designed to do something.

• 10:59Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  And we're all friends, basically. We either work, most of us on that table have either worked together, served together, or have a mutual experience that, uh, so it's not unusual for us to pick up the phone and, or text each other and say, hey, can you help me out here? Sure, I'll help you out here. And I think that's, I think you're going to see a big difference in government because of that.

• 11:19Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I, I mean, I, I thought it was incredible how, you know, RFK, Tulsi, previous Democrats are now overworking with, you know, that's what people have always talked about. It's like, there's no across the aisle type work. And here's this situation where it's exactly that, and it should be celebrated. And I, you know, you mentioned Tulsi, I love her too. She's like, just seems like a normal, regular person. We did, we did a ruck in Hawaii, 50 for the fallen and went by where she lives. And it's like the most normal house on the normal street. I was like, that's awesome. I just love to see it.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is great. And it's good to see, yeah, again, looking at, you know, the, the backgrounds and, and knowing that, you know, we're there to do something. And I think that's a, it's, I think for many of us, we've allowed the government to become this theoretical, ideological, however you want to look at it, that government is either, in the opinion of many in Washington and some in the country, the solution, or that government is a tool for the people to, to live a normal and productive life. I fall in that camp. The government is limited. Government is not supposed to be all, and government's not supposed to fix all your problems. And, you know, government is not the nanny state. It's not the, oh no, you got the boo boo, let's put a Band-Aid on it. No, it's sometimes, well, if you, yeah, if you having to run and, you know, you wasn't watching where you're going,

• 12:37Speaker 01

  you wouldn't have fell off the steps, you know? I love you and pick you up, but you gotta figure this out.

• 12:42Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a good point. Um, I am curious about, so getting this position, what was that like? Did you think you had a chance? I mean, how, how is that? Cause I know you'd worked with Trump before. You, you mentioned, you know, helped out during the impeachment. So how did, how'd that happen?

• 12:58Speaker 01

  It was really interesting because I was going through a time of being out of the Congress for, for a few years. And when the campaign started, I would start going to campaign events and I would see him and he and I would see each other. And every time he'd see me, you know, we'd talk for a few minutes and then. A little bit later, he began to be, Doug, what do you want to do? I said, well, Mr. Brother, right now, just get you reelected. I said, that's, you know, he said, he said, well, I'm gonna think about it. I said, Mr. Brother, you do whatever you want to do. You go right at it. So, and it began to be, and then as, as the summer moved into the fall, he said, no, I, I want, I want, I want you to come with me.

• 13:28Cameron Hanes?

  Did you pit, did you pitch yourself at all?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Not really, no.

• 13:31Cameron Hanes?

  You just kind of just.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  It was, he was, he would just, he would make those comments. And so it was one of those things with, you also don't know, and you've, I'm sure you've been here before. Was he just being nice?

• 13:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  You know, just being nice. Oh, Doug, we love you. Oh, come on. And so, and then the campaign, when I saw him two nights before, um, the election, or the night before, I'm gonna go two nights before the election. And it was sort of the same thing. And so I said, let's just get you done, and then we'll talk. And then afterwards, uh, he and I communicated and, uh, he said, I was happened to be in, down at Florida at Mar-a-Lago. We're doing a, as a, a group that I was working with, it was having their annual meeting down there. Um, and we began to talk. Uh, Dan Scavino was a dear friend who's been with the president for years. And, um, he said, let's get you in, let's talk about this. And, um, so I remember I was doing an interview one morning. I get this call and, uh, it's the boss. And he said, oh, what do you want to do there? I said, well, here's what I was thinking about.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  And that was the first time I sort of mentioned, he said, veteran. I like it.

• 14:30Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, so you hadn't talked about that position?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, really, no, no.

• 14:33Cameron Hanes?

  Just helping in this cabinet?

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, sometimes you, you get this, well, I'm gonna, here's, you know, and, and, cause there was some other positions thought about, but it's like, you know, this was, was good. So I never really, you know, it was not one of those things, because that's not the way the president works. The president gets in, he is his own person. And he begins to think about, he listens to others and some other people that had talked about it. But then went and met with him, uh, in the, and he said, you're the one. And so I asked him a question. I said, well, Mr. Brother, what do you, what is the main thing you want me to do? And, um, and I've said it many times. He said, take care of my veterans. That's all I said. That's what we've been doing.

• 15:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, that's.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  That was a weird, that was, that was one of them days.

• 15:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I bet.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Uh, I'll have to say, this is sort of funny, you know, behind the scenes kind of stuff. Uh, I'm at the, at this conference, I didn't bring a tie.

• 15:18Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  So, um, I'm there and Lisa's with me and Lisa said, I said, I didn't bring a tie. And so we're at this hotel, so we're going downstairs to get a tie for this, cause we're gonna buy, just buy one. I didn't care what it costs. I just, I gotta get a tie, cause I gotta go see the president. Uh, like, and Lee Zeldin, who is now in the cabinet as well, he's EPA administrator.

• 15:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  He, um, he was coming up, I said, Lee, you have a tie. He said, yeah, I've got some ties. So we go up to his room, he brings out four ties. I picked the one that was matching the only real suit I brought.

• 15:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  So I put it on, go see his brother. I get the job. You know, I'm on my BVS, I'm sitting there.

• 15:53Cameron Hanes?

  So that was the, the decision to.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  That was the day. Yeah. It was, it was a day. It was.

• 15:58Cameron Hanes?

  Decision day.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  So he came in and he said, and I was leaving, not knowing, you know, I left, not knowing, I said, well, maybe we'll talk, we'll see. I said, no, this is it. And then I announced it, you know, like 45 minutes, hour later.

• 16:08Cameron Hanes?

  Guessing.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  So I came back and I said, well, Lee, you're not getting your tie back.

• 16:12Cameron Hanes?

  Keeping it, huh?

• 16:13Speaker 01

  I kept the tie and I told Lee, I said, I sent it. So I sent him a gift card from Brooks Brothers for another tie.

• 16:18Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Uh, and, and I actually ended up wearing it in my confirmation hearing. So it was like, so, hey, you know, you have a tie, you gotta keep it.

• 16:24Cameron Hanes?

  Is, I think Brooks, Brooks Brothers is a good brand, right?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  It was. I, I don't buy them there, so it's a.

• 16:30Cameron Hanes?

  But I've heard about it, so that's a good sign.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. Lee, so Lee got a new tie out of it, I got a job, so hey.

• 16:35Cameron Hanes?

  Perfect. Well, then, okay, so the next step is that confirmation, which seems like just a nightmare. So what, when, when you say you know you're gonna have to go through the, whatever that's called, the questioning,

• 16:49Cameron Hanes?

  is that, did you and your wife talk about that? Because they get, they get dirty.

• 16:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:53Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, they dig up so much nonsense, or like, I don't even know where they get it, but you have to deal with people basically trying to make you look bad.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:02Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. So what was, was that hard to say, yeah, we're ready for this?

• 17:06Speaker 01

  It is a little bit, because I guess it was good in some ways, because we had been, I'd been a very public figure, um, for a while. And so, and I'd went through a, a. Very publicized Senate campaign down in Georgia, which we wasn't successful at, but I think prepared me for where I'm at now. But so it was one of those things where we felt pretty good that we'd been vetted in the sense of, you know, I didn't have anything. I knew that. We don't have anything.

• 17:33Cameron Hanes?

  But still.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Lisa and I've been, you know, we've made good decisions, but you know, so I'm not this way. But you never know.

• 17:39Cameron Hanes?

  They can twist so much.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And then it, but then it became down to positions. It came down to words said. And so we, I visited almost 60 senators. All were good at the time. It was pretty interesting before the president got sworn in. Some of the Democrats were much more open to talk. As soon as he really gets sworn in, it became a little bit different. And I had my, my hearing was the day after inauguration.

• 18:03Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  And so everybody was there. And so we were just one of the, you know, had been through. And we, you know, you study, you practice. It's just like everything else. You know, I have my staff, you know, say, here's possible questions. How do you answer it? You know, you know, what's the answer that, you know, that you are understanding to show you have understanding of the question and everything else. But you never know. And you sit there and, you know, it's like one of the senators, she's become famous now for asking, have you ever been accused of, you know, basically sexual misconduct and everything? It's like, no.

• 18:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And it gets to be rather, I'll be frankly, this gets to be rather offensive.

• 18:40Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 18:41Speaker 01

  In the sense of, you know, no, have you?

• 18:43Cameron Hanes?

  They, they want you to pause or do, or just, I don't know. That's so, I don't know. I mean, and I was wondering, so the day after, I wonder if that's worse because they're all emotional because they just lost.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Cameron Hanes?

  And then you're, then you're the first target. I'm like, okay.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. And, you know, and again, I'd had, I would, being on the Capitol Hill, I speak hill. So I, and I say that as if it's a foreign language.

• 19:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  But it is. It is a foreign language.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  So I understood with the motivation, I may not always agree with it and we have both sides do it. I mean, there's you, you try to get the best perspective on what you're wanting to present. So we made it through it. Some of them were, again, I've got some hearings coming up that'll probably be a little more difficult because one of the things I has done since that, since I've been confirmed is, is the biggest issue is putting out innuendo and rumor about what's going on to VA. Right. And so I made a decision early on to say, the, my position, the VA's been a whipping post for a long time. And I said, we're gonna stop that. We're either gonna get better or, you know, the prophecy is gonna come true. And so if anybody was, would lie about

• 19:55Speaker 01

  things that were happening, they were not telling the truth, I would go on to social media or I'd go on to the, to news media and I'd say, look, this senator, this congressman went to here and they said this, this is a lie. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, we, and even reporters, by the way. Yeah. We've had a couple of reporters. I had one in particular with Caitlin Collins, who wanted to talk about something else. And we told her we'd answer that question one time. It was on the Signal Gate issue. I said, I'll answer it one time, Caitlin. And she came on beforehand and told me, oh, no. I said, but I want to talk about VA. She said, oh, I got plenty of questions for VA. I said, okay, Caitlin, you know, one question we'll do. She asked her question, I answered it. She followed up with the same basic question. And I said, Caitlin, I've already answered that question. I said, and

• 20:39Speaker 01

  then number three. And when number three come, my staff was in the back and I just, I just leaned back and shared it just about like this. And so she asked the question again. I said, well, Caitlin, undoubtedly, you don't want to talk about the VA. So let's talk about why does CNN dislike veterans so much and the fact that you just got a five million dollar defamation suit against you in Florida against a veteran. Who? Have you fired that person yet? Who actually said, we're gonna nail him? And it just, from there, it just spiraled because. Right. Again, too many times conservatives, I'm gonna say on our side, we just sort of take it as if we, if we're, not to be un-nice, okay? Yeah. But I'm not just gonna sit there and let you have a platform.

• 21:17Cameron Hanes?

  Free for all.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, to do something that's not right. So yeah, so it's gonna be, you know, some of those are interesting. But the great part about it is I know what I'm gonna tell them is true. I know what I'm gonna tell them is is honest and we can disagree about that. And you can waste five minutes yelling at me all you want, but my wife's gonna love me, my three kids are gonna love me and my little shit soup puppy is gonna love me and, you know, that's okay.

• 21:39Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I think it's, I can't imagine being there and being grilled like that because it feels like to me, politics, again, this is from the outside in.

• 21:50Cameron Hanes?

  But they want that soundbite, that little clip, the viral clip, and it's all about that. It's not about really even getting the answer. It's just like, oh, I called him out or I made him look bad or I held, you know, held his feet to the fire or something like that. And it's like, you know, that's why the opposite of that is discussions like this.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:10Cameron Hanes?

  Where you're having, you know, a podcast where you're able to, and as everybody knows, that's where Trump really you made a mark on this election is like going to these these new media sources. And people could really figure out, oh, what was he like? What does he think? And obviously Kamala chose not to do that and it's, you know, it's a, it's just, it's, this is how it's supposed to be. It's how you learn about people.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  People know authenticity.

• 22:40Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  And they feel it. And whether even if they feel like it's being forced, they at least still try to understand it. And when you don't do that, the one thing they can never accuse President Trump of is not being who he is.

• 22:50Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:51Speaker 01

  I've I've known him now for, you know, 12, you know, known of him, you know, personally or in about 12, 10 to 11 years, known him pretty good for the last seven or eight. He's not gonna pretend.

• 23:01Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  And I think that's the part that when you go out and you realize that our media landscape's changing. The way people take in information is changing. It's really interesting that your podcast, other podcasts will reach more than the big networks combined in any story that's three minutes long. Now, think about that. They're barely getting people, you're doing it for three minutes that you may or may not see, but yet people are choosing to go to the Keep Hammering Collective to listen to you for an hour, hour and a half, or two hours. And they're choosing to do that. And so they're taking it in. And I think that's a, if you ignore that part of us, and that

• 23:46Speaker 01

  longing for just, you know, information, you're missing people. And so for me, this has been very important to get time out because you're exactly right. I had a interesting, and again, I say this, we all do it. I don't want to be accused of, oh, you're just talking about Democrats. No, Republicans and Democrats both do it. When I first went to Congress, I had three committees, and it was Foreign Affairs, Oversight, and Judiciary, which I ended up being ranking member of. The, and so you go to a lot of hearings, and you've watched this on TV, and you get the five-minute question. Well, when you're new, you're always at the end of the dice. So, all the good questions are gone. It's like good hunting. You drew the last tag on the last day, you gotta go wherever, you get whatever's left.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  And so, I was particularly tired one day, and I had like three hearings in the same day, and each were different topics, and my staff were helping me with questions. And what I had gained a lot of doing was just waiting to see what the person said, and I would make my own questions. Because too many times, the questions seemed forced. Or they were the similar question that had already been asked like six times. So, one day, I was going in, and I found, I looked at one of my staff people who were with me to help me, and I said, "Why are we doing this?" I said, "These questions you gave me are already been answered." I said, "I've not had a chance to sit in here." I said, "Why are we doing it?" And our communications person was there who was supposed to look

• 25:12Speaker 01

  at, and they said, but, and this was so true, and I'm not, it's not a good or bad judgment, it's just an honest, because it's their job. They said, "But Congressman, when we put the video out, nobody knows that anybody else asked any questions."

• 25:24Cameron Hanes?

  Right. Yeah.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  So, there's your whole thing in.

• 25:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. No, it's all for the show. I, yeah, it just seems miserable to be out there. And I don't know how people don't lose it. Because you talk about these crazy questions. Me, I'd be like, that's the dumbest, like, I would look so bad. I don't know how you guys stay so professional.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:48Cameron Hanes?

  They're trying to, they're trying to get that reaction.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes you just wanna say, you know, Senator Congressman, you're chasing wisdom, but it keeps running faster.

• 25:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 25:56Speaker 01

  You know, something about it.

• 25:58Cameron Hanes?

  I wouldn't be that well spoken.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  And I've been there before. No, I'm pretty blunt about it, but I've gotten into it a little bit and I've been on both sides of it.

• 26:06Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Speaker 01

  You know, and I've been on both sides. I remember Eric Holder, uh, who was the Attorney General under Obama.

• 26:12Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  He came to a committee meeting and it's been, this was written about in books. He and I clashed.

• 26:16Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  And he wanted to clash.

• 26:18Cameron Hanes?

  Well, how come?

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Um, because he didn't wanna be there and he didn't wanna answer questions and I asked a question that was something he should've at least roughly prepared for. Wasn't a gotcha question. I mean, sometimes people will bring gotcha questions.

• 26:34Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  Like, if you ask me right now, I have a hundred and seventy hospitals that, and a twelve hundred clinics that we sort of oversee just on the health side.

• 26:42Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Could you ask me a unique question about one of those that?

• 26:46Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, you would.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wouldn't know. And yeah, it would make me look bad.

• 26:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  But again, I don't know.

• 26:50Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, cuz they'd be like, aren't you in charge of that?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm in charge of it. So thank you. You got me. Good job. Next. Um, I'll find out more. So, but he, this was something he should've known. And he just sort of blew it off.

• 27:01Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  And I said, are you kidding me? You come to this hearing, no one, cuz this is one of the pre, it's one of the pre kind of issues we had with. And you didn't answer it. And then he, we just sort of get into it for a minute. Um, and I think that's okay. I mean, it's not, it's actually at least more real than the formatic.

• 27:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  But, so it does happen. I mean, you get to the point. Um, I don't let, uh, reporters put words in my mouth.

• 27:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Uh, we had this the other day in a, uh, cuz I always do press. We're trying, I'm trying to follow what the president's talked about. We're, we do press wherever we go. We do gaggles. I go to, you know, places and take just straight off questions.

• 27:36Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  And, you know, sometimes they'll start off with the, their narrative and I'll say, whoa, whoa, no. You know, we're not, we, cuz one the other day was, well, you fired eighty thousand people. No, no, no. We've not done that. Let's get the narrative straight. You're scaring people here. And the reporter just said, you know, they're sort of, okay.

• 27:53Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  But you gotta, you just gotta state where you're at. To me, I think our country is longing both, you know, from if you're a left perspective or right perspective, just be honest with me. Just be honest with where we're at.

• 28:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, no, it's a, I, there's, I like how Trump is way more available. I mean, we know we never heard from Biden hardly ever. I like that your guys' approach to get out with the people, right? You have to, you have to get your message out with the people. What I, I don't, some of the, like the show, like the Epstein file binder thing, I was just like, I mean, okay, I know what we gotta do, but you know, and still nothing coming out from it is, that gets frustrating, you know what I mean?

• 28:34Speaker 01

  It does. Yeah. I've heard that a lot.

• 28:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. So it's like, I get that, I mean, I guess we'll take some hits and misses sometimes. I get the, I love the availability. I don't, that was like a little show, but whatever. But, uh, who am I? Um, I wanna, okay, so this is like, this has been, uh, probably the biggest question I wanted to ask you. Everybody talks about the suicide rates among veterans.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:00Cameron Hanes?

  Everybody, you know, I listened to, you were on Sean, and of course, he was very, um, you know, interested in that also. Um, do you, is there hope? I mean, this has been an issue for a long time. Everybody says, like President Trump said, take care of our veterans. It's like, are these just words? Can it be done? Can you make this difference you talk about? Because sometimes it feels like it's, it's too big of an issue. So what's your point? It's like, if you did, to me, if you did one thing as Secretary of Veterans Affairs,

• 29:40Cameron Hanes?

  and you, you address the suicide, which I know you're, you're addressing it, but that would solve a lot of the other problems, because the suicide, like what's causing the suicide? Well, it's mental health, obviously. It's depression, PTSD, substance abuse. So if you're addressing that's, to, to address the suicide, you have to address all that other stuff.

• 29:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 30:00Cameron Hanes?

  And to me, it's like, when I see it, it's like, these guys just want somebody to talk to. But is there, are there people? Can you do it?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, I'll spend, that is one of the things that wakes me up every day, wakes me up every night. You know, my background, I've been in the military for, I think, which I really believe has helped me in is I'm the first member of Congress to been in the VA secretary role since originally became a cabinet secretary back in the eighties, early nineties. I'm also still in the air force, 23 years, I was in the Navy for a few years. And I see this from a total perspective. It's the thing that gets me up at night. I'm gonna give you some statistics, you know, you talk about it, I'm sobering. Since 2008, the number has really not changed at all. 2008. In the last few years, just in the last four to five years, we've spent $588 million a year in quote prevention. Okay.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Getting resources, that kind of stuff. We spend 2.3 billion with counseling, treatment, drugs, associations, those kind of things, they're all wrapped up. And the number's not moving. I began to come in and say, why? Instead of just, well, aren't we doing good? You know, getting this word out, why is this where it's at? And I think it's been really interesting to me because at times I feel like I'm the only one that's ever asked the question, are we getting a return of, on investment, so to speak? We've got to bring back the idea that you can't just keep spending money and getting no return. The situation, I need help. And it's one of the reasons why, one, you know, I'm so glad to come see you, but others as well.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  The best many times conversation to a veteran is another veteran. It's somebody who's been there, who's walked that path. I'm reading Slattery's book right now, where he talked about, you know, he only want to talk to the guys from the unit. You know, and Sean talks about this, and I, you know, and for me, who went to Iraq as well, you know, there's some things that I can talk about with those guys. The minute somebody says, "Ballad", you know, I was like, because that's where I was. So I know it. What we've got to look at, though, is are we reaching people at their critical times? Here's some critical times out there. Transition right now is not good. Okay, for whatever reason, we put a lot of money into transitioning from active duty or even out of reserves into the civilian world, and they're not getting resources

• 32:21Speaker 01

  and help that started in DOD, but now is being sort of transferred to the world, so to speak, and the VA. And that transition is tough, because you go from

• 32:33Speaker 01

  A very regimented lifestyle. You have everything, especially if active duty, you know what you're gonna do, you know where you're going, and especially in the last 25 years, the pace has been much quickened. Than any time in our history. Normally, we would send you for a year, or except in World War II, you just went either died or won, is basically it.

• 32:51Cameron Hanes?

  You're there as long as it took.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, as long as it took. But we've sort of changed that up. Vietnam was a year. We've done others now. Deployment times are different. But we also have a smaller per size military than some of those times. So the repetitiveness of going was harder. So you see that in the last years, and so getting out, all of a sudden, what I do in my life. You know, where, and so then you've, then they have, and many of them at that point, it's the first time that they've had to deal with stresses in their marriage, stresses with their kids, finances, these kind of things. Those are all things that raise that stress indicator, that PTS indicator. It just raises it up to where it becomes harder to cope with. We've got to do a better job of giving them resources while they're in that last six months or so.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  And if it's us being able to help in that, we've already talked to Pete, the Secretary of Defense, and say, and we're gonna have a meeting about that. It's who really needs to own this, and how can we own it better? I think it's one issue. The other issue is the three to five years after that. What we have found, Cameron, this is, this is a concern.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Death by suicide among those who serve shorter amounts of time, so a two, four, six-year enlistment time, those shorter enlistment times, are exponentially higher risk for death by suicide. Not the 20, 25-year guys. They, because I think, in my personal opinion of that is, is when you come into the military, you go through basic, you go through your training, you're broken down. Okay, you become the soldier, the marine, the airman, whatever. And then you do that, and you're learning to adapt to who you are then. And then if you, all of a sudden, you've had experiences of deployment, or you've had issues, and then all of a sudden that ends before you're able to process how to get better. Then all of a sudden, you're out in the world three to five years later,

• 34:40Speaker 01

  and some may be going good, and then all of a sudden, it just, it's. crashes on you. Yeah. So we've got to be, we've got to figure out a plan that's much better in that area. Also, uh, half of those folks that are committing, uh, are going through death by suicide are not even being, they're not in our system. The VA system doesn't have them. Mm hmm. So we've got to figure out how we do that. I've taken a new approach. Hmm. And the new approach is this, is that VA can't work at all. Mm hmm. Okay, we're, we're, we can't do everything, but we can do a lot more. But we've also got to take in nonprofits. We've got to take in some of the VSO work, the Veterans Service Organization, and say, how can we spread out our, our wings, so to speak, to let, uh, the VA help with grants and help with funding so that these nonprofits can reach people that we're not going to reach anyway. But I don't care. As long as they're getting the help they need.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Right. Then that's what we need to do. I made, uh, just recently made some, a little bit of a stir in the headlines in, um, the cabinet room because I was asked by the president just the other day, uh, about suicide. He asked about this specific issue. Yeah. And so I, and by again talking, I said, some of the things we're doing. And I said, Mr. President, I've talked to Bobby Kennedy and I've talked to some others and we're working to expand the use of psychedelic, uh, in this as well. I said, it's not, you know, and my thing is not the secure all, it's not a legalization, but is it, if it helps a veteran or helps anybody for that matter, um, get to a place where they're open to the counseling, that intensive counseling. And we're seeing some studies right now that are being done, like at Emory University and other places in which, uh, and even inside the VA, in which we're seeing

• 36:10Speaker 01

  a, a one-time treatment of, of a psychedelic, use of a psychedelic. And then a, a company with intense counseling take numbers that is a scale of this. And it goes from like 46, which is really, really high, down to 19. Mm hmm. And then they stay at the 20, you know, normal levels of how to cope. But for years, we've not, we've been afraid to address that. Well, we're not going to be afraid to address that anymore. I'm not one, it's, you know, like I said, this is not a legalization, let's all go out and get high. It's, but is, is it a medicinal purpose? Is there something there that can help these guys? Yeah. And so we're open to that. So for all of this, as, as a long answer, but I want everybody to understand, we all have a part here. Mm hmm. And if you're in the military or even if you're not in the military and you know, somebody who has been in and they're struggling.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Don't let it go. Be okay to ask a hard question. Be okay to be offended. I've been a chaplain. I've been on both ends of this. So for me, I've actually had the phone calls and saying, hey, I'm ready to end it. I've had them sitting across the table just like this from me and you. And it's saying the same things and you see the hollowness in their eyes because they've come to the point. If they're actually reaching out, many of them are actually reaching out from a point of, I don't know what else to say.

• 37:20Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 37:20Speaker 01

  And so we've got to be willing to say, are you thinking about hurting yourself? And now they may get mad at you. That's okay.

• 37:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  But we gotta be willing to.

• 37:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's, I don't know. I just, I want you to be successful. I want this, but I just know everybody says, it's almost like people say, oh, support the troops. It's just like, what does that mean? Are you supporting or are you just saying that? You know what I mean? Because I mean Biden himself said, yeah, we need to do more for our veterans, right? Everybody kind of says this and we know, I just remember like that, there's that picture of Bush on the plane, hugging the service member. Do you remember that classic one? So people like, they'll say the right stuff. They'll say like, yeah, let's, how are our veterans doing? Let's take care of them. But it almost feels like it's just words and it's like nothing ever happens.

• 38:13Cameron Hanes?

  And that's, I'm not, I didn't serve, so I don't know, but when you said, I have got a lot of messages, just like you said, you sat across from somebody and I had to ask, what should I tell these guys? Because I don't, I'm a bow hunter. I don't know if somebody's, you know, going to kill themselves. I don't know what to say. And it's, it's what I was told is like, mostly you just need to buy them time. They're at a low spot. Check back in with them in five hours or in the morning and just get them, because nobody stays in that low spot forever. You come out of it. But if that low spot is where guys make these decisions that they can't undo. And so it's like, do they just need somebody to talk to? I'm thinking a million different things right now, but you know, my son just got out and they still.

• 38:58Cameron Hanes?

  You can't rely on anybody from the military to do this, so they check on each other, right?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  That's the best part.

• 39:05Cameron Hanes?

  He'll get calls in the middle of the night and you know, they'll just talk. So when I was thinking, when I was thinking that, I was thinking like, these guys just want somebody to talk to generally, whether they're a low spot or whatever. And then when I think about, well, we heard, I heard these numbers, four hundred and some thousand. Employees of the VA and four hundred some thousand active. So it's like, there's almost like one employee for each, each service members. Like you could be in charge of one guy and just make sure that one person, obviously some are janitor, janitors aren't calling people to do this. But point is, it's like, if it's just somebody to talk to. I think that would solve so many, this, this big suicide per day problem.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:45Cameron Hanes?

  It's just, who do they talk to?

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Well, the best, the best thing is, is anybody listening to this podcast right now, if they're in it, now nine eight eight, nine eight eight hit one. Okay, there's gonna be somebody right there to talk to immediately. Okay?

• 39:56Cameron Hanes?

  Every time?

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, every time. Crisis line, our crisis lines are open 24/7, 365.

• 40:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Okay, they've got to be a part of, of, of, that's a part that is out there for them. So if you ever have it, just, you know, and it doesn't matter, just they'll get them. Veteran, they'll get them to where they need to go. Okay? Um, that's one tool to get talking. You've hit something though, that opens up a broader question. And that is, you mentioned our employees, you mentioned how much money, because we're, and this is something. And you made the comment, we want to help our, do anything we can to help our veterans. Well, because that is a complex issue and because that is, uh, you know, something's not. Able to put on a bullet point on a PowerPoint slide, you know, how do you do that? The answer in Washington, especially in the last 10 years, has been to throw money and people at it. Okay, that's our answer.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  And I was part of Congress when some of this happened, Mission Act was passed because of the wait time scandals and stuff where people were dying because they weren't getting their colonoscopies and other things. In 10 years, uh, the budget, budget for the VA has increased almost, uh. You know, well over a hundred and fifty billion dollars.

• 41:01Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  And we've increased over a hundred thousand, hundreds of thousands of employees.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  What we did, though, was just like anything else. It's like throwing everything into a room and just expecting it to be organized. So there was no real proactivity to say, will all these people actually touch a veteran? Like you said, and that's one of the things we're going through right now. I'm taking a lot of heat because we're looking at reorganization. And what I'm looking at it from a reduction force and to say, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna move some people out. We don't need this many people because if you're not touching a veteran, you're not touching a disability claim or those kind of things, then what are you doing here? You know, you're great folks, we love you, but you can go work for somebody else. You know, we're just spending money that doesn't need you. We've got doctors and others who are doing part-time work in a clinic, like one day or four or five hours a week, when the rest of the time they're just moving paper.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Well, I need you, I need you in the clinic. I need you there seeing guys and they come in, I need mental health counselors, I need more. So what we're trying to do is reorganize a workforce that has become bureaucratic. I mean, we're the epitome of what a bureaucracy looks like.

• 42:05Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  And say, you know, in this grouping of, you know, numbers of people, who could we, you know, move back to the front lines? Who could we get more people, as you said, to talk to?

• 42:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  We have vet centers, uh, which are not associated with the hospitals. They're, they're sort of on their own vet centers. That's exactly what people do. They got a great, you got a great one up here in Salem. They go around and see folks and they, they plan activities for, for veterans to come into. Came out of the Vietnam War, basically. That's that when the Vietnam veteran came back and they had nothing.

• 42:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Um, so from our perspective, it's not always a money and people problem if the same numbers are coming along. If you can get them in to see, you know, how do you make this difference? Let's get, for those who've actually reached out to, to come in to get a mental health appointment, how quickly can we get them into the see that mental health doctor? And this is not just a VA. And I want to make sure that everybody understands. The VA is often taken it as a, a one-off by many who want to complain about government or complain about VA. Your local hospitals here have the same issues.

• 43:02Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Okay, they have doctors who don't show up, missed appointments. It's epidemic to endemic, I'm sorry, into our society as far as healthcare as a whole.

• 43:10Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Veterans just get the VA gets more scrutiny because it's a government agent. We're the largest healthcare system. But I want everybody to understand that that is where we have. And community care says that if we can't do it in a fast enough time, then we'll send you to somebody in the community who can and vice versa. If we can do it quicker than or you can choose to stay here.

• 43:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  So that's for me is making sure that our budgets and our personnel align with the mission. And also keeping, again, well, I'll go back to Sean's podcast. When we said, I said there, one of the first things he said, he said, I haven't been to the VA in 10 years. I have no intention of going back. I don't like it.

• 43:44Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  Let's talk about it. So for two and a half hours, that's what we did.

• 43:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  I've got to now get people back into that situation of saying, look, we're trying different things. We're bringing down wait times. We're making sure that bad people are not tolerated. That's one thing also from my perspective, if you're going to hurt one of my veterans, you're not going to work for me.

• 44:02Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  I'll sit you in a closet and just let you stand there, but you're not going to, you know, if you're

• 44:07Cameron Hanes?

  Hurt like not help them or?

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, or hurt them. You know, like we've had, you know, unfortunate examples where they are, they don't treat people right.

• 44:14Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  You know, they do those kinds of things. Uh, over time you see, uh, or they just sit around, they don't schedule appointments. They don't do those things.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  You would be amazed.

• 44:24Cameron Hanes?

  So how do you find, how do you find out that though?

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Well, it's a, it's a management issue.

• 44:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 44:28Speaker 01

  And this is where we, we come in and I get reports every day of things that happen across our hospital systems and our, and others. And what was amazing to me is when those were brought to me, I started asking the question because they'd always have an answer. Well, we're correcting this or, you know, we changed policy. I started asking the question, what happened to this person? Who the individual involved here that you have now said, because you investigated it supposedly, and they did something wrong.

• 44:52Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  What happened to them?

• 44:54Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  And they looked at me like I was crazy.

• 44:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  They said, uh, well, uh, uh, well, we have, I said, no, no, no. I want to know exactly what happened.

• 45:04Cameron Hanes?

  They get written up, they get counsel.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  Did you get rid of counsel? Oh, by the way, we've, we've so forgotten how to do that. When you were working in public.

• 45:09Cameron Hanes?

  That's uncomfortable.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, that means you have to have to be a manager.

• 45:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Senior leadership is unfortunately, sometimes we've grown in government and other places, and you see it in companies. When senior leadership believes that it doesn't affect them anymore.

• 45:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  Then you lose it. And so for me, Um, so we've went back and I've had, uh, I've, I gave back a report just the other day and I said, no, this person goes on administrative leave right now. I said, uh, this is not, they're not even going to be around people.

• 45:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Is, is that frustrating?

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Yes, very.

• 45:39Cameron Hanes?

  Because that should be done already. It's like, are these people, what are they being paid for? This is their job.

• 45:46Cameron Hanes?

  I, you know, I was thinking about, you know, Sean's podcast and you just mentioned that, but I was on the plane yesterday and I don't want to have a million stories. Again, I wasn't a veteran, but I hear a lot of horror stories, right? So everybody can have, have a story about bad experiences at the VA and, and so I, I, you know, I know you hear those all day. I was on the plane yesterday and I was, I just like, you know, veterans, it's like sometimes th- this guy was be- beside me. And he had a service dog and you don't, you're not supposed to touch a dog. Sometimes those guys don't want to be bothered. You know, it seemed pretty quiet. I didn't want to bother him or whatever. So two hours from Austin to Denver.

• 46:30Cameron Hanes?

  Cool dog said, uh, yeah, so it's, I just knew it was a service dog. So we're going to get off the plane and I said, um, I said, hey, brother, I just want to tell you, thank you, thank you for your service and I, you know, the country appreciates what you've done for us. And he's like, oh, thank you. And, you know, it's, uh, sometimes even that's hard. I, I remember one time I, years ago, this guy said, oh, you ignored a service member. And at a show and I was just like, God, I, I would, I don't know. I'm so stressed out at those shows. I didn't mean to, but I thought about that. I think about that all the time. This is probably 10 years ago and how somebody expected me to acknowledge or say, and I didn't.

• 47:13Cameron Hanes?

  And it's just like, I, anyway, I feel bad about that, but it's always like, I don't know. It's tough sometimes. So point is, is we're sitting there and, and the guy that beside me said, um, Um, yeah, I, you know, just, just so you know, you've been a big inspiration to me to, uh, you know, after getting out, there's ups and downs and exercising and things like that. He goes, so yeah, I followed you. I didn't want to bother you or whatever. Super nice guy. And I just mentioned, I said, well, I'm having Doug Collins on my podcast tomorrow. Do you, you know, talking about veterans affairs, I said, what, what do you think? I mean, do you, have you had any experiences? And he said, it's kind of like, uh, reiterated a little bit what Sean said that he, well, no,

• 47:58Cameron Hanes?

  one thing was crazy to me, which I wanted to bring this up to you, but he went in, when I talk about they want somebody to talk to, he went in and he didn't say he was suicidal. He said, uh, he just wanted somebody to talk to. They locked him up. They took him four days. He was locked in back there. And he's, he said, I just, I just want to talk to somebody. And if that is, is experience that happens, who would go back? You got locked up for four, for four days and he was just wanting to get some help. And then he said, you know, the doctor's there. If you do talk to a doctor, it's like bottom of the barrel doctors. There's not the best doctors out there. There's like, you said, sometimes they're doing one day there.

• 48:41Cameron Hanes?

  He said, sometimes they're wearing sweats in there and it's like, it doesn't feel like, we say, we say we care about our veterans. It doesn't feel like it sometimes to those guys. And so he buys his own health covers, just like Sean does. I think he was Kaiser is what he said. And it's just because just to get help is what he does. And so when I, I just feel like your job is so, it would feel almost overwhelming because it's been this issue for so long and now you're tasked with it. And now if the, even if the numbers stay the same, they're like, oh, Doug's not doing his job. Nothing changed. So it feels like, how do you tackle that?

• 49:24Cameron Hanes?

  I know you eat the elephant one bite at a time, but man, so when you talk about these cuts and being more efficient, and I, I heard you on Sean talk about culture and things like this. How do you, how does it not feel overwhelming?

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Well, I don't look behind me. I think that's what I'm saying. I say, I just get up every morning, literally running and, but also just move ahead. And I think, I wish, and I've told my chief of staff this the other day. I said, I wish I could just set everybody down in front of me. This is the hardest part of my job. I've always been a, from my perspective in, you know, when I was pastoring, had a staff and my congress had a staff, legal, I've always led by, here's how we do it. Here's how you want it. Here's the motivation. I want you to do this. You can get better and helping them to get better. I find my greatest joy right now in helping others get to levels that they didn't think they could or succeed.

• 50:14Cameron Hanes?

  How do you do that for 400,000 people?

• 50:17Speaker 01

  That's makes, it's why I'm having to use every tool I have. Part of that is, I'll use an example. Yesterday I was just recently at a hospital and believe me, I am the one they don't want to see right now because they've heard every bad thing. He's going to slash this, slash that. And actually I'm the opposite. I'm saying, give me what I can do to fix things. And we've found things that we can fix immediately. And so they start saying, well, maybe this guy's a little bit different. I still got to prove it every day. It's like, you know, it's like, nobody cares. Work hard. You know, I just got to get up and do it every day. Still have my T-shirt from eight years ago. Still wear it. And, but they don't care because it's about them and I understand

• 50:58Speaker 01

  that. And so what we've got to continue to do here is show marked improvement. Let me say an example right now. The disability backlog claims, this is folks who are looking to get their disability issues resolved. Okay. From hearing to whatever that may happen, service related. The, after COVID, it was spiked high because of, couldn't get doctor's appointment, stuff like that. When I walked back in though, it was over 260,000 in this backlog longer than it should have been there. Under the first Trump administration, they'd actually got it down to under 60,000. There's going to be always a flux right there a little bit. 260,000. Um, we've now, in just in 80 something days, I've been there, we've got it down about 40,000

• 51:41Speaker 01

  from there. But I've taken my deputy, who's my second secretary, and I put him back over there to say, and we're using resources and money that we found from contract, wherever we can do it, to put overtime, and we're gonna get that backlog down as soon as possible, back to hopefully, as soon as we can to that pre-COVID days. Mm-hmm. That's gonna free up benefits to come down on the other side, so people get better satisfaction. Let's take it to the healthcare side, what you just mentioned, your, uh, the guy that you talked to. Yeah. I've gotta get our folks back to understanding that it's a, uh, every visit counts. Uh, most people don't know that the VA also runs the national cemeteries. Hmm. The Willamette up here. Yeah. And it's a beautiful cemetery. I was just there yesterday. Um, and they have a saying in the cemetery, uh, group. It says, "We have one chance to get it right."

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm beginning to believe that that's gonna become the model for the entire VA. Hmm. Not just the cemetery guys, but everyone else. You have one chance to make a difference in people's lives. Yeah. And it's gonna be that first time that they come in, or that next time they come in, um, and say, "We want you to feel welcome. We want you to come in, and we want you to listen." So, in addition to doing this kinda stuff, podcasts, in addition to media, I'm going to, I'm going to as many hospitals and, and places that I can, talking directly to, to our staff, talking directly to our leadership, saying, "I'm holding you accountable." Every leadership table that I have, I tell them, "You are senior leadership, act like it." Mm-hmm. Don't tell me what's wrong, and don't tell me where's that. Act like leaders. Because

• 53:08Speaker 01

  it, culture, as I said, I said before, is, is not, we always just think culture is this thing. Mm-hmm. But it actually comes in the bottom of the tube. It's not start of the tube. It's the bottom. Right. And so what I'm trying to do is say, "Leadership matters. Excellence matters. Doing the best you can matters. If you don't wanna be here, go." And, um, and we're gonna get rid of it. Good people, and we see this all the time at the VA, we see it in everywhere else as well, good people will not stay where bad things are tolerated. Right. And so that's been, that's been my emphasis, is every opportunity I have, is to emphasize this, veteran is first, not the VA. Veteran is first, not the VA. You know what's amazing now? Is it, is within everything? You're starting to hear this from almost every time I have somebody come talk, "We're putting veteran first." Well, good, cuz that's what I want you to hear, but I also want you to do it. Right, yeah.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  And so, in that meet, one of the last leadership meetings I had, uh, while I had this, uh, one of the leaders in one of the departments, I'll keep them anonymous in the sense of... Um, when I first got there, they looked at me and it was this scowl. Hmm. Okay, like, oh, God, here he is. Yeah. You know, you've seen those looks before. Yeah. And so we got into the meeting and after the meeting, um, and we went through, I went through a lot of what I've, some of what I've just said with you and then some other things we had, um, went through a little bit of the tour in the hospital and came back then. And we're getting ready to leave and this person come up to me and they said, um, I thank you for coming today. I didn't really know if I wanted you to or not because I'd give up. Hmm. In this, I was tired of this. I was tired of what we're doing. And she said, and

• 54:38Speaker 01

  This is an employee? Yeah, employee. And they said, I'm going to, uh, I'm, I'm ready to just get out and retire. Hmm. But what you've said inspired me to stay. And I just looked at him eye to eye and I said, stick with me for a little bit. Yeah. And if I can do that, I, I would love to do that with 470,000 employees or whatever we have in the next little bit. And if we can do that, then the veteran becomes first. Yeah. The job becomes a bigger, and they're wanting to get up and go into work. They're not wanting to go in and simply see, uh, ideas. I've told our, I've told our employees and staff that nobody in this organization will get fired for failing. In fact, I encourage you to fail. Hmm. Not in the sense of malicious, but if you fail. But you're doing something. And don't be scared. We're a society that's scared. Yeah.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  I mean, if I was, I mean, if I stopped every time I was scared, I'd, I would be, you know, back in Georgia, probably just doing nothing. Yeah. You know, but that's what we got. It's, it's always, and I know, and, and there're gonna be comments on this and I'm just gonna address it now. And we talked about this other, there'll be comments on this, well, he didn't give specifics. He didn't give this. I'll ask you, I'll come to sit in my office with me a day. Hmm. And I'll show you the things that I'm dealing with. Yeah. And I can give you specifics and then I can also show you the things that I'm having to tear down first. This is, this is a remodel in many ways to get it back into the shape that it needs to be in, if it ever was, or made into a new shape, in which veterans come in, they understand that we're a healthcare system that strives for excellence.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  We understand that there's benefits that you've earned, that we're gonna get you an answer quickly on. We're gonna use AI. We're gonna use everything we can to do it. And then if you actually wanna take part in one of our, and be buried in one of our cemeteries, your family's gonna be taken care of to the utmost. Hmm. And that's just, and, and I wish I could go just like that, snap my fingers and make it happen. But I've been home twice since January 2nd to Gainesville.

• 56:27Cameron Hanes?

  Is it, are you out like going to VA hospitals and clinics and okay?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Doing that, yeah, going all over that, but also in the office in DC. Cause I make this very clear, DC is not my home.

• 56:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  It's a place that I get to work and my wife and I get to, we're not sure if we're experiencing our early honeymoon again, or we're experiencing what it's like to be empty nesters. So, but it's, but it's pretty fun.

• 56:50Cameron Hanes?

  Well, it's, you know, I, I know from managing people, not to your scale at all, but I can, when you were think, I was asking like where you've been and this and that and what you've been doing, just because when I was, I was superintendent of the construction crews, but a couple of times I brought the GM out and I just was saying, hey, can I, we're down by city hall and it's like something about the paving, getting the road put back together once we were done. And I said, could you come out to the job and I could just walk with you? Well, just having the GM there, the guys were like, holy shit, we, Jeff's here? And it like meant something. And it's just like, God, he cares.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:31Cameron Hanes?

  You know, he cares about what we're doing. And that one visit lasted, that impact was for years, you know, because, oh, he cares about what we're doing. So I was just curious, you know, having you out there and just caring.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  I hope it makes a difference. I hope it looks at me and I make a joke sometimes that you see me in person and realize that, you know, I shaved my horns off. I'm not this, I'm not this thing that you see out there because I want them to see and, and like in our friendship and others, I want them to see that I genuinely care. That this is not, I, I'm not building something here. I'm not going to go out and, you know, this is something that my wife and I, after praying about, we took this because we, we want to make a difference. We want to, this is an opportunity in life to do something that's very special and very unique. I don't take a day of it for granted. I walk into those rooms now, which is very interesting. And you saw earlier, I have people with me all the time now, which I've never had before, really, but we won't cancel.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  I downplay it because these folks are the best that I have around me and I'm trying to, you know, hire more, but I never take for a minute to forget that I am somebody who's had the opportunities that others just maybe not have had. Mm hmm. But to make a difference and leave it, I was asked a question by one of my first interviewers. They came and sat in my office and they said, and he's popped a question at the end, sort of one of those off the cuff, and they said, "Well, you know, Mr. Secretary, what would you like to be remembered for when you're done?" And you saw those, you know, you want to come up with this. Yeah. Oh, fantastic. What's your legacy? Yeah, what's my legacy? And I finally, it just popped in my head and it's what I said and I've just, so I've used it ever since because it's the best I could have. I just wanted to say that he made a difference. Yeah.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  And he made a difference. And when we discuss that,

• 59:20Speaker 01

  I, I, I use some terms now and some of my, some of the hospitals I went into and some of the employees and veterans in particular, because I do these town halls with veterans when I'm in certain cities and stuff, and I'll just take any question they have, uh, which I think goes back to the transparency, the more I can be transparent, and I'll tell them, "Look, yeah, we screwed that one up." Mm hmm. You know, you're to the person who's, that they shouldn't have been probably treated that way. There was, there was something. Um, so I say, and you've heard me already say it today, they're my veterans. Mm hmm. They're my employees. It's that ownership issue. Right. And, and for me, um, you're not going to scare them and you're not going to do those things. Because when I get the reports every day, and you mentioned suicide earlier, why this digs on me and digs on me and digs on me, is unfortunately, we have people, I

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  read this, and we have people who have come to the point in their life in which

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  no other answer sufficed, and they actually drove to the VA facility and took their own life. Hmm. I have my police officers who actually, we have police, of course, as you do at all hospitals, who are getting there just in time as this is happening. And I see the tragedy in that. I've been, I know what war looks like. I've been in there. I know what death looks like. I've seen this. And to see this in a sense that we have a society that for whatever reason, there's somebody who feels that somebody doesn't care. I want you to know that there are people who care. There are people who are out there and to be a part of that and it breaks my heart when we don't. But I can't go back to the fact of anymore saying, look, I'm doing this a day at a time, a week at a time and a month at a time.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  And putting into a real place, like my hospitals would say, you know, we have an issue here. And I say, why is that an issue? They said, well, we've always been told we couldn't. I said, well, let's fix it and we fix it. We move forward. So making those real changes, when I see my, I think it's going to be fortunate this way. When my employees in these hospitals and our clinics and our veterans, our benefit side and others, they see that I'm making things better so that they can get their job done. They're going to be much better at doing their job, which then flows into our veterans as in their experience as they walk through the door.

• 1:01:24Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, that all sounds great. It's, it's, yeah, I don't know that. When you talk about being so, I don't want to say top heavy, but you talked about cutting people. Oh, yeah. Talked about, you know, so when I think about that many people and like you, we mentioned culture. I, it's so hard, even just managing people. I remember like the guys used to, you're supposed to stretch out before the workday, right?

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:53Cameron Hanes?

  And there'd be people who are intentional and I was watching out the window and see them, they're intentional, they're doing what they're supposed to do. There's guys in the back walking with coffee.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:03Cameron Hanes?

  Those guys drive me crazy, you know, and it's like, or the excuses, like I'd always say, don't tell me how rough the water is, just get the boat in. You know, and or it's, it's just like trying to get that level of excellence that to, to get people to care. That's impossible for some people, but so when you talk about these cuts, like how, how do you make those cuts? How do you decide that? The managers decide or is like who's, who said, okay, I got a thousand people we're letting go? How does that happen?

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing is, is take it from a total perspective. By the way, it's sort of funny as you're saying that, as a saying that came by an old pastor friend told me about it, the criticism is not a spiritual gift.

• 1:02:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:45Speaker 01

  It's just the one you've acquired.

• 1:02:47Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:48Speaker 01

  But the president came in, he ran, if you remember, he ran on the border, he ran on economy, but he also ran on making government more efficient and smaller. So it shouldn't have been a surprise to anybody when he said, let's look at a reduction in force across government.

• 1:03:01Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  And so the, the target was set at about 15% and it's a goal. I mean, we may or may not get there, but it's a 15%. But for an organization my size, think about this. If, if it was 15% and we did go the whole way, that's 80,000 employees.

• 1:03:15Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  That's bigger than most any business in this country.

• 1:03:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  Okay. We're just looking at. So what we have divided it up into is our career people who've been with the VA for years. They've come up in the system. They know the system, you know, which you have to have. We have also political people who have worked in other industries or in other, you know, other healthcare who bring expertise to the table. We've also brought in some consultants to look at this. And then we just started mapping it out. But you've also got to understand where we were. When I walked into the place in February, early February, it took us a week and a half for me to get an actual chart on how many employees I had.

• 1:03:48Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  I didn't, I could not, they could not just push a button and give me the 470,000 names.

• 1:03:55Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  That's how bad our systems were. So we've had to now piece this together. They were doing an organizational chart. They were trying to put everybody, you know, to say at least where they're solid. Cam, they, they told me this, and I think this probably changed some of these, 978 people said they directly reported to me.

• 1:04:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  It's like, no, they don't directly report to me. This shows you structural problems. So when you start trying to put people in, we had, you know, over, one of our biggest issues is between the field, what we'll call it, and the central office where I'm at. There was a lot of, there's a lot of different things that go on. Some are needed, some probably not so much. What's interesting is, is the minute we started talking about it, each of the agency heads and others were coming up with five or eight or 10% cuts pretty quick. And it's like, Okay, if you can come up with five to eight percent cuts, one, why haven't you done it already? Yeah. And they'll say, well, Congress gave us the money and we just spent it. Well, Right.

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  we got a different attitude about that. So that's how we're going about it in a very methodical way. It's not a, in fact, there was some reporter that made this stupid comment, we're gonna put 15% of doctors, 15% of nurses. They're not, they're just idiots. Yeah. And they're scaring people. That's right. Because they don't like the president. And if you notice, it's always the president and Elon, you know, whatever.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  And they don't listen to what we're saying. And then, so that's the way we're going about this. One of the things that also just drives me nuts is people in the media and also in the Hill saying, if you cut all this, then healthcare is gonna suffer. And I asked them, you know, and I'll probably get to here pretty soon at some of these hearings, I'm gonna say, how can you say that when I, as the Secretary of VA, who makes the decisions, does, I don't even have that plan in front of me? How can you tell me, with your great political certainty, that we're gonna hurt people when you don't even know who we're cutting? Yeah. And explain to me how, you know, some of the areas that we have in, that we're duplicative of,

• 1:05:56Speaker 01

  in interior design, landscaping, some of the other supply for administrative offices and stuff like it. Explain to me how they're actually putting a hand on a patient who comes in a clinic. Right. How are they talking, as you said, to somebody at our vet center? Who's just somebody, needs somebody to talk to. Right. How are they actually taking a disability claim and making sure the person gets paid? They're not. So explain to me in small words and big color crayons, how this actually affects what you're saying. Right. You sold into a system that says, the only way I can help a veteran is to say I'm for them, and I'll spend money on you, buddy. Yeah. And I'm a veteran, okay? I'm the one that's still in. And I appreciate the service. And I appreciate people saying, hey, I would, you know, I'm encouraging them on the other end, come and join me. Especially young people, we need you.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  But at the end of the day, would I rather have?

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Somebody is a veteran, tell me, we're gonna help me and give me a $20 benefit. Or would I rather them take that $20 and say, let's get a, another person in here, and I'm using a metaphorical term, another doctor in here on this shift so that I can see them at 5:30 because I can't get off work until 5:00?

• 1:07:07Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Or can we do this as our women veterans, who are one of our largest growing segments, that we'll have a women's clinic here where they can get mammographies and they can get their gynecological services, they can get this stuff here?

• 1:07:17Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  Instead of having to, to drive further to get that? That's what's gonna make a difference. And like I said, for all the folks who wanna comment and saying, always not doing anything, I've had 80 days.

• 1:07:27Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  And, and like I said, I'll almost take any of them and say, come sit with me. Before, before, you know, it was, it must be nice.

• 1:07:33Cameron Hanes?

  Well, yeah, I mean, I saw, I, I did see an article about it, um, covered your accomplishments in your first, I can't remember how many days it was, but, you know, the DEI stuff, and that, that was, I, I like to see that, but, talk about some of the hate, you'd get some of the hate just from that, just from the posturing, you know, just like, oh, he's anti-whatever, they'll say.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  No, I'm with good workers. I mean, instead of dividing us, let's bring us together. One of the more interesting ones, we put down, um, the flag. We, there's a flag policy, and it became just, uh, under the previous administration in particular, it became very divisive.

• 1:08:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  So I made a simple statement, that said, there's gonna be, uh, two flags, you have the American flag and the POW flag.

• 1:08:19Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  And then it's the service flags and the VA flags that only we fire.

• 1:08:22Cameron Hanes?

  And that caused issues.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, but I'm sorry.

• 1:08:26Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  And when I, when, when I was in Iraq, or when I, when I look at my uniform, I only see one flag.

• 1:08:31Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  And that's who we are.

• 1:08:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, they, they make issues out of non-issues. Um, yeah, uh, you know, so we, we talked about a lot of issues here, but like, one thing I was curious about, I did read, um, Suicide rates, how much they've went up like since the global war on terror, basically since nine 11, last 20 years compared to the 20 years previous. And four times higher.

• 1:08:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, some numbers.

• 1:09:00Cameron Hanes?

  I was, it had me thinking, just because I know, you know, with my son being in, all the blast they are around and the shooting, explosions and the brain injuries, it seems like brain injuries, the mental health part is a big part of why these numbers are going up. And you know how the NFL and even college here, now they're, they're practicing with the big helmets, right? Because they're protecting those kids' brains. You get TBI, your brain's rotting, all these issues we talked about are getting worse and worse by the day. Is because of the different, well, there was no war before nine 11, but with the different

• 1:09:42Cameron Hanes?

  fighting tactics, the more explosions, the mortars, different things like that, some of the fire, the, the mil, the, the weapons that we use that cause a lot of damage. And these guys are subjected to that, so they're having more brain injuries. Are, are we looking at different, in Vietnam, there wasn't stuff like that, so it's probably less brain injury than, than now because of implementing different weapons? Are we looking at protecting the guys and the brains that are subjected to that?

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think this is where DOD and VA are where the, I, I call us twins, but we're fraternal twins. We do do different things in the sense of DOD has, has had its own issues over the years. I mean, if you look at early on in the GWOT, which I call the GWOT generation, which, I include Desert Storm in that as well, but GWOT in particular, 2001 forward. Um, I can remember, if you remember back in the early 2000s, you know, the big issue was we had MRAPs. We had, or had the Humvees that were not armored.

• 1:10:45Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:10:46Speaker 01

  You know, we were, we were, it was just, you know, we didn't go into an asymmetrical warfare with asymmetrical equipment. In a sense to prevent some of those. Uh, Vietnam probably, the big difference probably in the Vietnam era and the, this generation is, is a lot of the folks who received injuries in Vietnam or similar in the tree and, uh, the current time, the current ones are living. Many in the Vietnam era were dying because of just the difference in medical treatments and everything else. So I think DOD has got a lot to look at as they look forward on how they deal in training, how they deal with the mental aspect of an asymmetrical warfare. People that you go into a place and the warfighter that you're against looks like everybody else in the, in the city, so to speak. And that, and that plays on you.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  And I've read, I've read many books and, and talked to many of our guys who went out and it, it plays on you, uh, over. I think the pace of our deployments, especially with using smaller, more specialized forces, our special forces, uh, across the, the spectrum are from a Rangers to, to, uh, Green Berets to everybody else. Uh, Marine Task Force, um, SEALs, everybody, there's a different level there that of going and coming, going and coming. You also have it with the, then the general population that came out of this.

• 1:12:01Cameron Hanes?

  What do you say? Does that help or hurt?

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  It hurts. I think it hurts because you don't have, think about it. Here's probably a good way, maybe it puts it in perspective for people watching this who may not have served it, but they're a hunter. You're September, I, I watch you all the time and you know, you're September, October, you're, you know, you lose weight, you're tired. By, by October 15th, you're spent.

• 1:12:21Cameron Hanes?

  Yep.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Now think about you get 30 to, and, and I'll compress it into your term, 30 days and we'll put you out there and do it again.

• 1:12:26Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:12:27Speaker 01

  And then 30 days after it will put you out there. We're doing 90 days or six months and then the home six months and then do it again.

• 1:12:33Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  Most people don't realize that actual involvement in Afghanistan or Iraq, actual bodies in there was less than 2% of our population.

• 1:12:44Cameron Hanes?

  Hmm.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Less than.

• 1:12:46Cameron Hanes?

  2% of our?

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  Entire population. We only about a million or two million actually were there.

• 1:12:51Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  So when you think about that, that term, you're using, you know, everybody talks about it, but it was really a smaller group of people. So I, I, not to get sidetracked, but that is an issue of how, uh, with what they were seeing, with the explosions, with the other amputees, a lot of other things, that mental aspect.

• 1:13:08Cameron Hanes?

  More opportunity to be injured.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  More opportunities to be there. And so I think, you know, war is gonna be war.

• 1:13:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  And so this is where DOD and us have to work together on that transitioning piece that I talked about earlier. Giving a warm handoff is, is probably a one way to put this. We know that some are coming out with some issues, um, that, that we may need to watch. It may not be manifest because right now the adrenaline is pumping, they're in the military, they're in it. But then when they start getting out.

• 1:13:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Then how do we do that? Um, that's where the, in fact, Secretary and I are, I mean, Pete and I are gonna be meeting within the next week or so. And that's one of the issues that we're gonna talk about is how do we do this? And how do we look at the differences? Vietnam veterans changed the VA in the seventies. They came home and found a VA that basically was not functioning in any form that helped them. They had, they had mental health crisis, they had physical crisis, they, in the, you know, the prosthetics, everything just wasn't working. They and helped, they, that's why we have vet centers across this country that are a part of us. But it also is why, um, the VA began to change how it does our hospitals and our mental health,

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  other issues. I think this generation is going to be this, is a similar, uh, change agent in others because for right now, many of them, you know, as we've said before, they'll buy private insurance, they'll do other things. Well, there's gonna come a time where they're not working or others that they're gonna depend more on VA, uh, for this because that'll be there for them.

• 1:14:31Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:14:33Cameron Hanes?

  So like, like it evolved with the Vietnam.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  It did. I think you're gonna see it more.

• 1:14:36Cameron Hanes?

  Same.

• 1:14:37Speaker 01

  But you also gotta be, you also gotta be ready for mental health. And this is the problem. Anybody out there who wants to help, it's not just the VA.

• 1:14:46Speaker 01

  In our county, in our regular hospital systems, our private hospitals and all, they have a similar issue. Psychiatrists, counselors, mental health worker. And see, I'm also more for the, our, our clinical counselors and others. And as social workers all have to work together. But there's a shortage of those. And I have to also say that especially with doctors and some of the others. I have to, I can bring them at a certain level, but out here in the private and public, they can bring them in at such a higher level.

• 1:15:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Of it. So it makes it harder to recruit sometimes.

• 1:15:16Cameron Hanes?

  Well, because of money or what?

• 1:15:18Speaker 01

  Money. A lot of it's money. There's several hundred thousand dollars differences in some of the specialties.

• 1:15:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. So if we talk about, we have this money budgeted. Maybe with cutting these people, maybe there's more money to allocate.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  And I also need Congress to actually look at the caps.

• 1:15:33Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  I need them to actually to look at the possibility of raising caps. There's a, there's a federal cap standard with some of this that we have to look at from our doctors that keep us from being able to, to do some of the things like that. If, if members of Congress really want to be helpful there, that's something that they could help me with. Is figure out a way to do that. And I've heard this from VHA leadership. I've heard it from doctors and so that it does help. Because we always see the doctors already. The VA is one of the largest training grounds for baby docs in this country. We see, I've, I've heard is, you know, this large percentages of all baby docs who come out have done some kind of a tour at the VA. But most of them, of course, don't come back to us.

• 1:16:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Why is that?

• 1:16:12Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  It's because we've not been where we need to be. And that's what I want to make it clear by. You know, if I get the privilege of staying here for the full term or whatever, I want it to be when at the end, these folks are saying, hey, I liked my tour to VA. I'm going to come back and help veterans. I'm going to come back and be part of cutting edge technology and, and research and training. And we're going to go to an efficient system that has good computer systems. It has the stuff that we need. That's what I want them to be a part of.

• 1:16:38Cameron Hanes?

  So if you have the, the most baby docs coming through, it's like just retaining that talent. Like let's just keep, keep the best.

• 1:16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so that we can compete. Now, a lot of them are not going to stay because again, we're, you know, they're going to go to other places and that's fine.

• 1:16:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  But at least, it was sort of funny when I took the VA job, at least two of my doctors. All said that they had to work with the VA or coming through the VA and they said, "What a mess." You know, so it's like, you know, this is what we're thinking about.

• 1:17:02Cameron Hanes?

  Right, yeah. It's a, I know, that's, that's what you keep hearing. I was gonna say something about the deployment because I just know, you know, you talked about the frequency of it. You know as well as I do, those guys, you talked about the Rangers, the Green Berets, the SEALs, they want to be deployed. You can't send them over there enough.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:17:23Cameron Hanes?

  For those guys. So, I get it, but it's, in some ways, I know how the training goes, so we're essentially turning them into fighting machines. You, you're changing somebody, especially when it's a young man that might be, you know, 18, 20 years old. That's such a developmental time of their life, so we're, we're turning them into this thing that we need to, to kill bad guys. That's what they want to do. That's all they want to do. Send us over there, we want to do our job. Then when it's over, they've been the tip of the spear, they're coming out, and they're like, it's hard to get a good, a job at that level with that intensity.

• 1:18:03Cameron Hanes?

  It's like, you're supposed to be at Home Depot as a security guy, you know, and you were like, the, the baddest, one of the baddest people walking the earth and you felt like that? And you're around other men like that? And all of a sudden, you're around not that? That is hard.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  Yep. That's why we've got to provide opportunities. This is where our nonprofit community, our nonprofit world, is something that I, as a secretary, am embracing. I know in the past, it's not been embraced by some secretaries. And, and let me explain, there's two types. You have our VSOs, which are traditional veteran service organizations, and they're good folks, American Legion, VFW, PAV, those, all those, paralysed veterans, disabled veterans, American DAV. And, and they all have, they're, they're more into their all pattern that they have. But now we also have the nine, what I call the nine 11 nonprofits who've come up, Wounded Warrior Project, there's a lot of others out there, and I don't want anybody to be offended, I didn't name them all, but they're all there.

• 1:19:01Cameron Hanes?

  Rangers Lead the Way Fund.

• 1:19:03Speaker 01

  Rangers Lead the Way Fund, there you go. Uh, there's all kinds, uh, you know, and, uh, you know, this is a, what we've got to do is I'm encouraging all of these to be a part of this. Um, there's one, several that do this and one is Boulder Crest that works. But there's also many others that take, think about it and um, you know,

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  think about how many people overcome adversity. And I remember reading your first book and we always have adversity will come, who have used, that adversity became the fuel for greatness. And so many times, you also take these same guys and gals who come out of this stress of being the top and then everybody wants to treat them as if they're broken. Okay, yes, they've got issues. Yes, they're, they're broken in many places. But it doesn't mean that you keep them there. And we've got to develop a society that helps them see that they're not, they're not done, that there's opportunity that comes out of crisis, that there's opportunity

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  to do great things. And you've seen that in so many of the, you know, from Jaco on down. I mean, people just take, that have been in very stressful situations who've now turned that into, how do I help others? Or how do I build a business? How do I grow, you know, people? Not everybody's gonna do that. But if we have opportunities for them to, to find a life of contentment, that's the key for all of us. And contentment is not necessarily, and some people say, well, I can't be content. You want me to sit on the couch and do nothing? No, no, no, no.

• 1:20:41Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:20:43Speaker 01

  Go run a marathon, go lift weights, go do whatever, but be content in it.

• 1:20:46Cameron Hanes?

  Feel good about where you're at.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Feel good where you are, you know, and, and I think those are the kind of conversations

• 1:20:54Speaker 01

  that from a VA perspective, or just from a, just a veteran talking to another veterans and, and others, is to find their place in life that you've come off this. Find the people you've got touch points on. You have them, I have them. There's, you know, that phone number that you're gonna call at some point and you know you can say anything?

• 1:21:10Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:10Speaker 01

  And they're not gonna care. And at the end, they may look at you and you may have shared something that you was just wanting and they, they'll say, okay, you're an idiot. You know, but that's, that's that, they have that right. They've earned that right in your life. Everybody's gonna have those people. But then there's also some people that it's okay to be challenged. It's okay to say, you know, yes, you know, you're having anger issues. Yes, you're having, you know, these thoughts and nightmares that are keeping you. How do we take that and learn to cope those? And then prepare for excellence. How do we then take those and then go out into an excellence? And excellence may be that you're getting along with your spouse, that your kids now know who you are,

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  and that you're not looking to harm yourself.

• 1:21:57Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  That could be the greatest contentment they find.

• 1:22:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  But we've got to use every tool in our toolbox, and I'm not willing as VA Secretary to allow any opportunity that we can partner with anybody that is competent in helping our veteran get there, because what you said is so true. I can't replicate war in the sense for the adrenaline rush and everything else. Like I said, I've read a lot of the books by some of these guys, and they all talk about, you know, that that's adrenaline. That's why they go out and, you know, skydive. That's why they go out and do high-risk sports, because they're trying to sort of in many ways try to replicate that experience. That's not real life in the sense of you and I every day. We get it in different ways. You get it from hunting. I get it from hunting or getting from fishing or just get it from, you know, going and riding by.

• 1:22:45Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:22:45Speaker 01

  You got to find that way that circles that energy back into positive. And for too many of them, they think they're on their own. And this is probably the biggest thing for the veteran, and I want you to know is, you don't have to come to the VA. Would we love to? You've earned the benefit. Come on. But when you get here, we're going to make it as easy as possible, simple as possible, to get what you've already earned. And too often, we've made it seem like an exclusive club in a sense that you got to go through five million sets of paperwork, all these things. I've told all of our agencies so far, I said, I use this proverbial 10 sheets of paper. I said, if it takes 10 sheets of paper right now to get somebody in the system, can we do it with five?

• 1:23:21Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  Or three?

• 1:23:23Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  And that's just, it's just a mental thing.

• 1:23:25Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. If it's a pain, people aren't going to do it.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  I ain't going to do it. I don't want to do it.

• 1:23:29Cameron Hanes?

  It's what I think, what I think kind of gets lost in the shuffle too, is we talk about these guys who've been in the military. They've been trained at the highest level. And then they come out and like I mentioned the Home Depot security job, but that's just like arbitrary example. The point is they could do any job. I, I think those guys, the way they're trained, the teamwork, the, uh, the attention to detail, the leadership, the serving of purpose greater than yourselves. They could do any fucking job out there.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:24:03Cameron Hanes?

  Exactly. Just, let's give them the chance and it's like, or help them seek out those opportunities. Cause I just know, you know, we talked about the stressful situation of, of war and things like that. But I know when my son, he works where I worked for 26 years. He got a job there in a construction crew. He just wanted a regular job. And, uh, in the interview, they were like, uh, could you tell us about a stressful situation you've been in? And he was just like, kind of smiling to himself because they're used to like the regular stressful situation about a regular person with a regular life.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Cameron Hanes?

  You know, where you ran out of gas on the freeway type.

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. The dog ran away this morning.

• 1:24:41Cameron Hanes?

  You had your kids. And so Tanner was thinking to himself, just kind of smiling like, you have no idea. But the point is, it's like, that prepares them for regular, to excel at regular life and at a regular job. And he is excelling. He's doing amazing. And it's from that, the skill sets that he's learned in the military. So these guys who have been deployed and they've been in for years, they're the best employee you're going to get.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:25:08Cameron Hanes?

  As a private, a position or a private company. And so just reinforcing that, making sure the veterans know that, um, and just keeping that, you know, we give them this edge to be the tip of the spear. Stay there.

• 1:25:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:25:24Cameron Hanes?

  You deserve it. You have these abilities. You have these skills, these talents, just. Getting that, getting that message out and getting them to believe that and getting people to give them opportunity, which even, you know, where I worked, we had veterans preference. So they're doing a better job of, let's reward these guys for serving our country. They're doing a better job of that.

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, but also at the same time, and I think one of the things that's very good, but also at the same time, let's make sure that they, that we're still keeping it out in front of them. And I think this is, I hear this from veterans all the time, you know, and this is, don't treat me if I'm different. You know, treat me with what I can do.

• 1:26:01Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:26:02Speaker 01

  And, and unfortunately, it gets reinforced sometimes when we say, we're gonna do everything we can or do this. It's, it's, okay, we're gonna set you over here because we really don't know what to do with you, but we're gonna make you feel good about it. They don't wanna be feel good. They wanna make a difference. They, they, they could see tangible evidence. I got up this morning, I did this op, we accomplished this mission, I came back that night, we do it all again tomorrow. And so many times, we, we won't, they don't feel like they're finding that place. And that's why we have career counseling, that's why we have, you know, things that we can help with in the VA for that process and to get their educational benefits, use those educational benefits. We're trying everything we can to make that easier for them to get that money, get it into schooling if they wanna go to school, or if they wanna go back home and work on construction projects. They wanna,

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  that's good money. Cam, you and I are very similar age. We've lost the ability to realize that all work is valuable.

• 1:26:53Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  That all work is good.

• 1:26:56Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  You use your hands, you use your, I'm not a plumber, but, you know, I'd pay whatever it takes when my plumbing back's up at my house. I can build wood, I can do stuff, but I value what a carpenter can do.

• 1:27:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:08Speaker 01

  You know, we, you know, and we've gotten away from that.

• 1:27:11Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, I love celebrating the, the blue collar working class. I mean, it's the same guys that joined the military.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Yep, sure.

• 1:27:18Cameron Hanes?

  Those are the guys, that's a fabric of our country. That's what keeps cars running, that's what keeps the roads open, that's keeps your plumbing flowing. It's like, those are the guys, same people. So yeah, let's celebrate that because they deserve it. They're the ones out there right now in the ditch, putting water line in.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:27:36Cameron Hanes?

  We need those guys.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:27:37Cameron Hanes?

  But it's like, I don't know, I think, you know, I think being on Trump's staff or in his administration is risky. He like cuts fires a lot of people. A lot of that's like, how are you feeling pretty confident that that you're going to make the four years and you're going to make all these differences?

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  I think so. I think that's it. And we've talked a lot. I look, I will say this is everything. I keep my head down and do my job. And I think that's the only way to do this. You sometimes, you know, there'll be plenty of people out there want to trip you up. For me, it's a pretty simple, straightforward progress. We're one of the few organizations in government, especially at that level. If we talk about agencies that actually have day to day impact with citizens' lives. Because think about it, how many others are actually transactional on a on a micro level with except maybe the IRS?

• 1:28:29Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  With a person's life in that way. With 170 hospitals, with 1,200, you know, clinics, with administration of our benefits and then our cemeteries and all this going into that structure. We can move forward and there's always going to be things that are not right and we work forward. So the president, we're doing what he wants us to do is fight for our veterans. He wants us to fight against the the crud that we've seen out there in these agencies and especially ours to say, what can we do better? And for me, I just keep up getting there today and, you know, that's what it works.

• 1:29:05Cameron Hanes?

  It's a that's that sounds great. As we know, like people love measurables and everybody, I almost even hate when they talk about, you know, 22 suicides a day and this and that. It's like, just because it's like, it just, it's a life and now it's just a number and a stat. I know we we are addicted to measurables. How many followers? How many likes? How many suicides? It's like, it's it gets, it's it we're inundated by it. I get that, but I almost hate that part of it. But it's like, it feels to me like you're going to be judged on one thing, that.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  Measurables is all it is. I recognize that.

• 1:29:45Cameron Hanes?

  If Trump is sitting in a meeting and I saw that clip you're talking about and he said, how's the suicide numbers? You're going to be judged on that, which is that that's maybe not fair. It's also like. Pretty brat, uh, pretty abrupt, like just to, cause I think about men, these are men and women and mostly men, you know, that's, that's who's killing themselves. But, uh, I've seen like some, some stats say forty to forty-four a day.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:11Cameron Hanes?

  And then some say seventeen a day. It's depends on what you look up, but, you know, I was just thinking like for your, we talked about legacy. For your legacy, to me, it's like, if you could help five people, if you think about it, five different people a day. So it's like, could they call and talk? Yeah. I was thinking about, could they call and get help if they needed? I hope so, because I know when I owe the IRS money, I hear about it, right?

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:30:35Cameron Hanes?

  So it's like, do we care about money more than we care about these men who sacrificed for our country? Because if we're gonna call because we owe the government money, it seems like they should be calling if, if, in talking to us if we're in danger. But if you just, if you could help five, five men or women a day, it's eighteen hundred of people saving a life, uh, a year. And that for four years, that'd be seven thousand. To me, it's like, if you have any legacy, if you knock that number down, you could help five more people than, that feel like they have no options, and that's gonna be seven thousand lives. If, if you survive Trump's four-year appointment here, which I, I believe in you.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:13Cameron Hanes?

  It's, uh, I believe in you, cause you seem like you care and you're gonna do your, your job. But, I mean, that would be, would, would there be anything more beautiful than that?

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  No. Uh, one less, you know, just, we take it, is it daunting? Do I think about it?

• 1:31:27Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Because is, that number stay between, and again, the forty number you talk about is because you have in some areas, uh, there's some, at least some studies, studies and others that say that coroners report or feel that they don't wanna, there's still a stigma to suicide.

• 1:31:42Cameron Hanes?

  For suicide, yeah.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  And so they don't put it on the death certificate, especially in rural areas and places like that. So they could be. And, and so, yeah, does it keep me up at night? Yeah, because it's been between sixty-five hundred, and this is the numbers we have, sixty-five hundred and, uh, sixty-nine hundred since two thousand eight, every year.

• 1:31:56Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Half of these folks, we don't even have contact with. So think about this, in some ways, this number is being judged on a measurable that, uh... I don't even have contact with. So how do I get contact with? It'd be a lot of saying, well, Cam, you've not killed a deer in Georgia.

• 1:32:13Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:13Speaker 01

  You know, well, I hadn't hunted in Georgia. Well, does that mean that, you know, you should have got on a plane, come to Georgia, kill a deer? I, we gotta be honest in our assessment. So yes, it keeps me up. Yes, it's a, you know, if this numbers aren't moving quick. But I think there's gonna become a, if I can create a culture change that allows these folks to say, there's opportunity, there's ways that we can see that it's beyond a VA problem. It's a societal problem. It is something that, you know, we're, the veterans are not the only ones committing suicide.

• 1:32:41Cameron Hanes?

  No, they're small, kind of a small percentage of every day. I looked at that too, because I was like, that many people are killing themselves every day?

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:50Cameron Hanes?

  That's.

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  It's staggering.

• 1:32:52Cameron Hanes?

  Horrific.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. And so, so I just look at it as saying, what can we do to offer every opportunity that we can to people to find hope, to encourage others, to reach out to each other, you know, to be that neighbor that we've forgotten, so to speak, and say, you know, I'm willing to invest in people, other people's lives other than my own. And that starts with us. And it's in the people that we know, are we touching them in the right way? Are we getting them the information? If they've actually came to us and want that, talk, someone to talk to, are we making sure that every door is open for them? And then use anybody else we can to reach these folks that we don't even know about. And so that's something I really want people to take away from, is that about half of these folks we

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  do not know as far as the system. Now, DOD does, but remember, once you leave DOD, your son knows this, they've not called.

• 1:33:44Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:45Speaker 01

  It's not their job anymore.

• 1:33:46Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  But also then you say, well, that's the VA's job. Well, okay, we're not mandatory VA. You know, you can't, you know, some people say, well, everybody's got to go to VA. No, they don't. It probably is not a good idea. So how do we then, you know, work the transition so that they realize that resources are out there, whether from government or not from government? So yeah, that's, that's a big part of what plays on my mind every day. It's a big thing that I called my chief about and I say, you know, even if he does it, we're not doing it quick enough. And he'll sit back and say, here's what we got on the thing, boss. You know, we're working this through. So it's methodical. It's working. We're seeing it work in some ways. And then we'll just leave the picture as we go forward and take, hopefully is going where we need it to go, using the best we have.

• 1:34:32Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. What, what gives you hope?

• 1:34:37Speaker 01

  I think there's an old saying that if you had, if you were drafting two people and they both could run to first base, the same speed, one with perfect form, one with imperfect form, which one would you draft? And the answer, what do you think?

• 1:34:54Cameron Hanes?

  If they got there at the same time, I really don't care.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  I'd do the imperfect.

• 1:34:58Cameron Hanes?

  Imperfect.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  Because when I train them to be perfect, they get there faster.

• 1:35:01Cameron Hanes?

  There you go.

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  So I look at the VA some ways in life that we've had, that we, over the years, have endured the wrath, so to speak, of politicians, the public, and veterans, sometimes deservedly, a lot of times not. We've adapted that mentality sometimes that, well, and I say this lovingly, that we're the VA. Nobody's going to appreciate what we do.

• 1:35:26Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:35:27Speaker 01

  I want my employees and I want the veterans out there to know that I'm looking for us to, to no longer are we going to be the whipping post. I want them to look out and I see it in their eyes when they hear, you know, that we've changed something that was maybe very small to them, it may be a credentialing issue, it may be some, it was small to the world, but it was very big to them. And they said, hey, this guy's actually listening to what we said. When I see that kind of move, that gives me hope that we have people willing to come in. When I made mention of psychedelics in the cabinet room the other day, it's amazing how all of a sudden people who've, who've been looking at that issue for years and trying to get somebody to listen, have all of a sudden lit up a lot of social media and lit it up and said, they actually heard us.

• 1:36:10Speaker 01

  They, you know, and again, it's not a solution to everybody, but if it's a solution that works.

• 1:36:17Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  Then let's at least offer it. So that's, that's what gives me hope. It gives me hope every day that, you know, we can do something that makes a difference. I've seen it happen when I was in Congress, I used to work with people that we had disagree on the, the color of the, the sky. But yet we found areas that we could work on and said it made, made lives differently. And I think that's the, that's what gives me hope every day is looking into the faces of people that I served with and then people that I serve with now in the VA to say, we can make a difference.

• 1:36:48Cameron Hanes?

  Um, where does your family fit in there as far as like making them proud, doing your best for them?

• 1:36:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, one, I, I think Lisa and I have, have taken this on as a partnership and it's been, I'll, I'll have to say for it's probably harder on her. Cause every day I get to go up and I get picked up and I go to work and I come back home 12 hours later. And she's moved to DC with me, which means the world to me. And she still does, she does some travel stuff. She's her tired teacher. I mean, she's earned every bit of her retirement. Thirty-one years in a classroom.

• 1:37:22Cameron Hanes?

  Wow.

• 1:37:22Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:37:23Cameron Hanes?

  What grade did she teach?

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  She taught everything from kindergarten to fifth grade.

• 1:37:26Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  Mainly fifth toward the end, fourth and fifth. And so, so I, I, I've been through that system. So anybody wants to talk about education, I've lived that one. You know, I, how do you know about my education? Well, I sleep with one every night. I sleep with an educator every night. Um, we've been married 36 years. She's my best friend and um, she's come with me and when she's apart, we're apart now for about uh, in this, we just had a time where she was doing some travel and I was doing travel. So we're about uh, two weeks, we're gonna be apart and it's like we talk and text and if I don't, we don't get the chance to text or talk, it's like our anxiety rises a little bit. She's that person that grounds me.

• 1:37:58Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  Um, and she's proud. Uh, I think she sees this as an opportunity, even though it uprooted our life again and uh, changed a great deal. The kids, I have mine are now 26 through 33. Um, and I think they see dad out there trying. I think they see dad out there, you know, trying to make a difference in, in life. I have a daughter, uh, I think you and I have talked about this before. My daughter has spina bifida.

• 1:38:21Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:38:22Speaker 01

  She's 33, she's in a wheelchair and um, that's cause she can't walk and she works every day. She gets up in the morning, five days a week. Gets herself in, gets herself ready. She calls her bus, the bus comes, takes her to the hospital where she works and brings her home in the evenings. Um, and always has a good word. She'll text me, daddy, I love you, doing the work. Um, but it also gave me a sense of working with these veterans, especially those who are disabled, those who have lost limbs, those have um, are struggling in a different way. And it's also gave me a different perspective on people in life. I was that same sort of guy growing up. Uh, I didn't deal with people in wheelchair. I didn't, you know, these, these, you know, quote, different individuals.

• 1:39:06Speaker 01

  And then here comes Jordan. And, you know, it makes a difference in how you see people.

• 1:39:13Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  So for me, the kids, I think, are proud. I think of what they do. I try to make them proud. At the end of the day, I go home to them, you know, and my daughter in laws, and one daughter in law now, and one daughter in law to be in. And, you know, that's all we can do. And they've been very supportive and helping as we go forward because service is about like anything. It's a family aspect to it. And is it hard? Yeah, it is. They don't like to see dad get criticized, you know, and made fun of. And it hurts on them, but they also know who I am and they move forward with that. So it's been good. I miss home occasionally because at least in Congress, I used to go home most every weekend. Don't do that now. So.

• 1:39:53Cameron Hanes?

  Really?

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  And my dad's, and I think my dad, my dad's eighty six and he lives about a hundred yards when I'm at home. And we used to do breakfast every Saturday and Sunday and I don't get to do that every week now. And that's hard because I know, I know those days are numbered.

• 1:40:06Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:40:06Speaker 01

  You know, in a long period of life, hopefully, you know, many years later, but, but he's still the old trooper.

• 1:40:11Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, man. That, yeah, that, I would like to sit in on that breakfast.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  Oh, it's fun.

• 1:40:17Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  It's fun.

• 1:40:18Cameron Hanes?

  I mean, just anybody from Georgia tells good stories, got a good accent. I mean, I love, you know, Waddell, Luke Bryan.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:27Cameron Hanes?

  You know, those Georgia guys, Al Dean, those are some of my favorite people.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, we get together, yes, Waddell and Luke, we had stuff with Waddell now, we talk, you know, we just get talking about stuff. And somebody, I had my producer one day, I was doing a show and then they said, what are we all talking about? They said, because we just started talking about being in country and being, you know, I was like, what are you talking about? He's from New Jersey. He had no idea. So.

• 1:40:50Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, of course. Yeah, that's a different world for them.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  Think about an old state trooper from the sixties in Georgia.

• 1:40:55Cameron Hanes?

  I know. That's what I say. I want to go to breakfast with you guys.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  You gotta come, you gotta come because he can tell some stories.

• 1:41:00Cameron Hanes?

  I bet.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  You know, NASCAR basically grew up in where I'm from, you know, the Elliott's and all those.

• 1:41:06Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  You want to hear a funny one?

• 1:41:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:08Speaker 01

  Dad tells us one all the time is he got to Gainesville in his early sixties. And so it was still a little, you know, wild up in the north mountains up there. And so he knew some of the sheriff's deputies from, had been there for twenty, thirty years who had been going for, you know, some of the fifties. And he said, there's this one, they had the bootleggers who would get the stuff and run it to Atlanta. Well, they all knew each other. And then one day, the sheriff deputy told the story that they knew this old boy was coming through. He was loaded up and he come through and they were waiting on him. They get in a chase and that's what they wanted to chase. Well, the guy got off him in the sheriff's deputy's car, lost at one of the turns, couldn't stay with him. So he lost him. A few days later, uh, they saw each other in town. And, uh,

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  the guy come up to the deputy and he said, couldn't hang out there, huh? And he said, uh, and Deb said nah. And he pointed over to the, uh, his patrol car. And he said, yeah, them tires couldn't do it. And they were ball tires. They, they, they got slick. Yeah. He said, nah, the old boy said, yeah, all right. Well, I'll see you around. About, uh, on the weekend, uh, the last told the story on a Sunday morning, the deputy gets up and walks out on his front porch and there were four brand new tires.

• 1:42:22Cameron Hanes?

  That is, I love, I love that. That reminded me, when you're telling that, it's kind of like the Wile E. Coyote or Road Runner or whatever, how they'd kind of punch you every day. Yeah, let's get after it, I guess. But that's, that's hilarious. I, I would love to hear those stories. I mean, I just love talking to old guys.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do too.

• 1:42:39Cameron Hanes?

  I mean,

• 1:42:40Speaker 01

  Wisdom.

• 1:42:40Cameron Hanes?

  Wisdom and stories and seeing so much. And plus, somebody who can tell a good story, I just trust.

• 1:42:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:47Cameron Hanes?

  I just trust. It's like, I don't know. If, if you can tell a good story, it's like, cause I think somebody who's fake, they, they tell these kind of fake stories, kind of spice it. It's like, is this, this doesn't feel right. But like an old Georgia, North Georgia trooper, that story's gonna be a good one.

• 1:43:06Speaker 01

  Well, you know, and it's, we talked about talking. Uh, you talk about veterans and stuff, you know, and I look around, you got me back out in the woods. I mean, I had hunted some and fished some when I was growing up, but you, you know, not only getting better shape, but also taking up a bow, which I'd never done and getting out in the woods and just going and sitting and then, but being around other folks who are out there. Think about that with our veterans. You know, if they're out there and they don't have a purpose and they're sort of floundering, they, the job is they do the job. But, you know, go pick up a bow and just arrows through a bow.

• 1:43:36Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I know. Just that.

• 1:43:38Speaker 01

  Just that, right? Or, or get a chance to go hunt with somebody and come back at night and sit around a campfire or sit at a table and just start talking.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  If we could get more of our guys to do that, it doesn't have to be a VA program, so to speak. But I'm encouraging anybody out there, if you've got a friend and you're a hunter, um, take a friend. You know, and it may be a veteran or, or someone that you may not even know real well, but say, hey, if you ever went fishing, you know, just something simple.

• 1:44:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Speaker 01

  But it gets them out there. You know, I mean, how many times, what you thought about it, sitting in a boat or sitting on a, on a dock with, you know, a cold Coke or whatever you want and throwing a line out there and just sitting there talking.

• 1:44:22Cameron Hanes?

  That's.

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  That's therapy.

• 1:44:24Cameron Hanes?

  That's all me and my buddy Roy, that's all we do.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:27Cameron Hanes?

  We'd be out there on the mountain.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:44:28Cameron Hanes?

  Talking about life and it's like there's, there's, you never feel more content. And we talked about being content. That's contentment.

• 1:44:37Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:44:37Cameron Hanes?

  It's just like you're in the mountains in nature and doing what humans do, communicating.

• 1:44:44Speaker 01

  And it's sort of, you know, it goes to a deeper meaning of faith. And from my perspective, God understands that. He never meant for us to be solitary people.

• 1:44:54Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  We were always communal, whether it was with him or with each other.

• 1:44:58Cameron Hanes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  And that's what, and when people sense that and you get that real purpose, remember those that are, that are struggling, what's the one thing that you hear from most people are struggling? Nobody understands.

• 1:45:09Cameron Hanes?

  I feel alone.

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this is what we gotta, I mean, so there's so many ways. It's not just money and people. And we, we come to a society that thinks that, oh, we can solve it by buying something. No.

• 1:45:21Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  Conversation costs nothing.

• 1:45:24Cameron Hanes?

  Uh, that is no different than parenting, you know?

• 1:45:26Speaker 01

  Oh, exactly.

• 1:45:26Cameron Hanes?

  You can buy your kids a present or you can just spend time with them.

• 1:45:29Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:45:30Cameron Hanes?

  You know, what do they want more? They just want to be around you.

• 1:45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:33Cameron Hanes?

  And that's, you know, that's, it is, it's like these veterans do feel alone and then feel desperate. So yeah, somehow, and I don't know, I mean, it, you can't do it at a level of 400,000 people. But if you could get those, whoever the government is paying to care about veterans, just do your job.

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:52Cameron Hanes?

  Just care. Just, just do what you're supposed to do.

• 1:45:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:45:55Cameron Hanes?

  And, and that'd be good. But, uh, yeah, this has been awesome. So like these guys usually, normally they're inappropriate questions. Hopefully they're not today, but let's see if sometime, they, they have a different perspective sometimes. So let's hear it. What do you guys got?

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  All right.

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  Okay, so obviously you guys talked a lot about suicide and how you know the suicide and the trauma is kind of the face of how our veterans are looked at and that obviously needs to be talked about, but how do we also go from that to changing the face of our veterans to strength, courage and honor?

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  I think reminding them of the oath, and I think that's what we talked about earlier is is taking, instead of somebody, um, looking at somebody who has a disability or has a broken, we've got to get back to understanding that that's just a phase and then part of their going through that they're needing to be reminded of where they were. You know, would we have said the same thing about these folks, you know, say six years earlier, so to speak, and reminding them that that that struggle has presented opportunities in their life? We've also got to, as a society, and I think one of the things, you know, providing that back is something I'll go back with my daughter. And if Jordan was here, Jordan would roll in here, she'd give you a big hug, she'd smile, and she would just love it to death.

• 1:47:12Speaker 01

  But yet, if if I went with Jordan to a mall or a store, people would look at Jordan and they would want to open the door, they would want to do something for her, they'd feel sorry for her.

• 1:47:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  Now, if I was walking down the same mall with Jordan and I just went up to a bench and sat down and said, you know, I'm not feeling good, Dave, something's wrong with my mind, my mind's broken. If anybody's on that bench, they're gonna walk away.

• 1:47:38Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  We've got to get to a society that says, let's value people for being people, their value for their, just who they are, and then remind them of where they have come from, because most of these veterans, think about it, all of these veterans have overcome something that a lot of people said they couldn't do. They made it through boot camp, they made it through a war zone, they made it through others, they're back home. They have inside them the ability, if we allow them to tap into that ability and remind them that this is the goodness and greatness that they have in them. So I think that's the biggest issue we have.

• 1:48:09Speaker 02

  So, so your answer is to remind them?

• 1:48:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:12Speaker 02

  To remind them?

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Think about it.

• 1:48:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Think about some of the operators who've done amazing things in the field. And then several years later, all of a sudden, they're sitting in a bar, they're sitting at a home, and they're sitting somewhere, and they feel like they have accomplished nothing.

• 1:48:29Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  Why can't you have, you know, hey, there's a reminder here, you, you, you do good things.

• 1:48:35Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  You know, there's stuff that haunts you, and I understand that, let's, let's talk about those, uh, maybe. But we gotta remind you of the greatness that you've already shown.

• 1:48:43Cameron Hanes?

  And how, how are you gonna do that?

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  I think, just going back, this, this is where a lot of the, the good counselors can do it, they don't have to be veteran, but a lot of times, the veteran to veteran actually is a, a big issue here. It's to say, hey buddy, you remember when we went, you know, that, that was a heck of a mess right there.

• 1:48:57Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  But we got out of it. We can get out of this too.

• 1:49:00Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  And I think that's, so if I can be any other, uh, uh, vessel, is to remind everybody you play a part. I believe God has given us the ability to not be a, is to be a river, not a lake. A lake holds all the experiences we had, and we take them for ourselves, good and bad.

• 1:49:18Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  I did this, and see how good, but we're to be more of a river. It just continues, what we have passes to the next person as well. That we went through things, this is actually scriptural, we went through things that we may be a help to others.

• 1:49:31Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:49:32Speaker 01

  And when we understand that, take our different skills, take our sets to, to lift people up.

• 1:49:37Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I was thinking about Jordan too, she might have skills and attributes and talents because of her condition. And, and that, that shows, and that's, she's able to share those with others. So, yeah, you might see it as a disability, it might be, it might be an ability, a greater ability in some other ways.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. She wanted to, we never said she couldn't do anything.

• 1:49:58Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:49:58Speaker 01

  Okay, so, so when she went through high, you know, co- elementary school, high school and everything, she wanted to cheerlead, I was pushing her out there, I had my two boys, I coached football, but I was pushing her on the field.

• 1:50:08Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  You know, they'd go out and do their cheer, I pushed her on the field, I pushed her back. She wanted to be a manager, one year, I'll never forget though, she wanted to be a manager for the wrestling team.

• 1:50:16Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  I could've. Killed the wrestling coach at this point. I had everything going on. And so what he actually got was another adult coach supervisor who I never wrestled, but it was like, but I had to go with her because get her on the bus and everything else. But they loved her, the kids loved, the boys loved her. And so she would sit on the sidelines, the mat and they were wrestling. And we went to this tournament one day. This talks about attitude. Went to this tournament and it's one of the all day tournaments for wrestling. If you've ever been around it, it's just, it's great. I love it with the kids. So one of our kids on the team that she was from the high school we were at North Hall, she, he got up there and he was new to wrestling with a big lumbery 13 year old, you know, just a funny kid. He

• 1:50:59Speaker 01

  gets out there. Well, he's up against probably the one of the better kids in the state at that age. Yeah. So he gets out there and Jordan's saying, you know, turn this kid, our kid gets up there. I mean, like, move left, move right. I mean, it's over. Yeah. This guy comes back over, the kid comes back over, he's demoralized. And he sits a little bit down from where Jordan's at. And he had his back turned to her and Jordan goes over and lays his, her hand on the guy and he, and says, I am so proud of you. Well, this is a typical 13 year old says somebody's making fun of him. Right. And he turns around like this and he said, and he sees it's her. And he says, I just want you, and she just said, and she said, she

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  said, I just want you to know that you tried your best and that I am so proud of you. You'll get it next time. And he, you all have seen his face go from disappointment, embarrassment.

• 1:51:52Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  And mad because you helped someone to, okay.

• 1:51:57Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  I don't have that attribute.

• 1:51:59Cameron Hanes?

  No, most people don't.

• 1:52:01Speaker 01

  Guys, we'd have said, God, you got your rear kicked on that one. But that's why we have people to lift us up. And it goes back to your question, how we remind them that this was the same kid who actually had had some successes. He was, he was growing, but he wasn't there yet. Yeah. Same thing is true with adults. We forget adults still have a lot of kid in us. We still want to be long, we still want to be accepted. We don't want to not fit in. Rare are the people who dress completely different than anybody else in the mall, so to speak.

• 1:52:28Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah. No, I, I think your daughter has, has a gift. She's been blessed with a gift. It's like, yes, a disability, but also a special gift. But I just think that this is one reason why these podcasts are so good. But your, your example and Um, how you've been a dad to Jordan and your other kids, but it's like, if you can't respect that, if people can't listen to this and, and hear your story and, and respect Doug Collins for just being a good man and a good dad, man, I don't know what to tell you, but that's why these discussions are so powerful because in a, in a three-minute news segment, it's just going to be bickering back and forth. You're not going to find out anything about you.

• 1:53:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:53:10Cameron Hanes?

  But now people will know about you. They'll know, to me, it's like, I don't know. I, I, how are we doing on time? Are we? One fifty-three. Okay.

• 1:53:21Speaker 02

  You guys talked about storytelling and how important stories are, you know, your dad's stories. Um, how important do you think it is to immortalize the stories of our veterans and continue to tell those stories decades down the road?

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  I, I think it's extremely important. I, I tell a lot of our folks that I'm the chief storyteller of the VA. Uh, I'm the only one that has the microphone, so to speak. I mean, they can talk to everybody, but I'm, there's only one phone when I get to tell the story. I think it's so important because there's an issue of storytelling that reminds people of the greatness that we have and then the people who've, who've put on that uniform and sacrificed for this country, even if they never went to war, there's still a value in what they have done to keep us safe. We lose that, then we lose the other end. Think about it. And I try, I try to put everything in different perspectives so that if you're not a military person, you don't understand it. Think about it in, in life to go into sports or to go into hunting or going, it was typically somebody who encouraged you to get into it.

• 1:54:18Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:18Speaker 01

  Or somebody that was telling, so like, hey, I went there and talk about this guy. That's the story that needs to be told because right now, if we don't treat our veterans and we don't tell the story of what our veterans, uh, went through and how they did it, then we're not helping our part with DOD and recruitment. And right now, this is one of the concerns we have. And I think right now the Trump administration and Pete has done a great job of, in fact, right now we're breaking records of people wanting to come back into the military, which for, for the last few years, everybody was just getting out.

• 1:54:49Cameron Hanes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:49Speaker 01

  And parents were telling their kids not to go in.

• 1:54:52Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:54:52Speaker 01

  Even if they were, even if themselves were, were, uh, twenty-year, twenty-five-year, they're saying, no, you don't need to go do this. So that story is good because if we're telling the story of even the legacies, then the folks coming in have something to go for. I was in the Navy three, about two and a half years before I went back later into the Air Force for the last 23 years. And I remember one of the first ceremonies that I went to after I had gotten out of part of our training, I was at Camp Pendleton, I went to a retirement ceremony for a, one of our religious affairs officers who enlisted, had been in for 25 years. And they're all dressed in their Class A's, they got it, and they did the bells, they did everything, and they talked about his, and they had people from his career that talked about his career, and then he talked about it.

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  And the story that you, you know, that legacy story that you just have, he, it, it was what, I, I said to myself at that moment, I said, that's what I want. And it wasn't that I wanted, I was an officer, I didn't want to be enlisted, I didn't want to, I wanted that story.

• 1:55:48Cameron Hanes?

  Those words associated with you.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  Exactly. I wanted that experience. I wanted it to mean something. And so I think that's why we tell the story that we do on the VA side, and we've got some great programs that do that. I think we can expand those programs, I look forward to that working, on how we can tell just the general stories of, of what's out there, and it, it works well with both the DOD and with us.

• 1:56:09Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, it's a, yeah, I was thinking about like this transition back into society too, because when I, Tanner, he went through Ranger School there at Fort Benning, and then there's a part of Coal Range, it's a really hard part, it's navigation, and I was thinking about him looking at a map, navigating, and then now like one of his specialties on this job, on the construction job, is the laser level, making sure everything, the pipes in at the right, right, uh, depth and everything in the trench. And it's like that transition from the map at Coal Range, trying to pass Ranger School, to looking at the drawing for the job, it's like he, he would never do this, like be featured, but to me, that's like that showing these veterans that, yeah, these skills you learn do translate to this important job in a regular community.

• 1:56:54Cameron Hanes?

  Those are the stories, if we talk about legacy and stories, it's like that's what needs to be celebrated, it's like, yeah, you were a badass in a Ranger, and now you're a badass on the construction site.

• 1:57:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. Also remind him that he was about 20 miles from my house.

• 1:57:06Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:57:07Speaker 01

  Camp Merrill, when he was in the That's about 20 miles from my house. That was in my congressional district when I was back in Congress. And we moved that back over to the Army. The Army now owns it. But and if you and I'm sure he'll he'll get this reference if you talk to him about his blueberry pancakes.

• 1:57:22Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:57:23Speaker 01

  They never tasted any better until you go back and you realize that really wasn't it.

• 1:57:27Cameron Hanes?

  I I remember hearing about that. That is in between, I think, mountain and what is it swamp or what's it?

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  It goes between bedding, mountain and then swamp.

• 1:57:35Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, yeah. So I I did hear about those. Well, let's do you have one more?

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  I got one more.

• 1:57:41Cameron Hanes?

  Okay.

• 1:57:44Speaker 02

  Do you believe our treatment of veterans reflects our national character? And if so, what does that say about us?

• 1:57:51Speaker 01

  That's a good question. Yes, in many ways, I think it does. But it also goes to reflection of how I think we've got to understand what is a proper understanding of our character and how we fix things. And I think that goes back to what I talked about earlier. It needs to be proper perspective and it means how you actually honor veterans and what their service was is doing. For me, it's doing what we said we're going to do. And I tell every veteran, you've earned the benefit. Use it if you want it. You don't have to. I'm not going to force it upon you. But if you've earned it, use it. It's really there for a reason. But it's also a difference in saying that you're going to make an agency that has become bloated or inefficient at the expense of saying we're taking care of veterans.

• 1:58:36Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 1:58:37Speaker 01

  I had a member of Congress one day, there was a big bill, and this is what I mean by that question. I thank you for it. Is there's a difference in thinking we're helping and a difference in politically helping.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  We had a bill that had nothing to do with VA. It was a it was a bill when I was in Congress. It was more of a budget DOD thing. And we were asked to vote for an amendment that was, I'm just going to be honest, was a bad amendment. Some of the most conservative members, myself and others, about three of us. Had voted against it every time. And what was really interesting was about three of the more liberal members voted against it every time. And we voted for against it for the same reason. It was a bad thing. You've done this for so long, it should be in the regular budget. And I went up to one of my friends in the Congress who was voting for it, and I said, you know, this isn't right. And they looked at me and they said, I know. I said, then why are you doing it? And this is what he said. He said, I'm not a veteran like you, and I can't explain it.

• 1:59:37Speaker 01

  I said, that's not helping.

• 1:59:39Cameron Hanes?

  No. Well, I don't even know what that means.

• 1:59:41Speaker 01

  It means that he's, it meant that this person, if voted against, that if somebody politically brought it up.

• 1:59:49Cameron Hanes?

  Oh, could be used against him.

• 1:59:51Speaker 01

  Could be used against him.

• 1:59:52Cameron Hanes?

  I got you. So just.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  You weren't helping veterans.

• 1:59:55Cameron Hanes?

  It's optics.

• 1:59:56Speaker 01

  That 30-second ad, that mailbox piece. And so, again, I don't care if you served or not, we're Americans.

• 2:00:01Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  Do what's right. What's right for the veteran is right for the American. But I think that goes to the question that we're looking at here is, what is character? Character is treating us honestly, even when you disagree with me. I never questioned my dad's character when I would get my rear end in trouble. I mean, this is a 6'2", 250-pound Georgia State Trooper. I was a scrawny kid, nothing. I fought the law, the law won every time.

• 2:00:25Cameron Hanes?

  You question his intensity.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:00:28Cameron Hanes?

  We just back off a little bit?

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I don't know what happened when the kids were born, but my grandkids, but you know, what happened to that? We couldn't have a nickel piece of candy. Now they get the whole bag, you know? So, but, but I think that, but it's a matter of what we're doing, does it match what we should be doing?

• 2:00:47Cameron Hanes?

  Our actions.

• 2:00:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:00:49Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah, gotcha. Well, I have to go grab something real quick right up here.

• 2:00:59Cameron Hanes?

  Secret Service doesn't kill me. I'm gonna give you this gift. So this is one of my, uh, this would be good for hunting. One of my knives from Montana Knife Company, but I like this. I work with these guys and this is a good story. Josh was a lineman, started Montana Knife Company and now just makes a great knife, but there's a good keep hammering Skinner for that right there.

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  That is amazing. I appreciate that.

• 2:01:28Cameron Hanes?

  But I just like that Josh was like a blue collar laborer on the, uh, a lineman doing an important job for the community and now he's started, yeah.

• 2:01:40Speaker 01

  That's pretty.

• 2:01:40Cameron Hanes?

  And now he started his own company and is kicking ass.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  That is so, yeah. I actually had a chance in looking and hearing a lot of folks meeting with them. It's just amazing. The stories, the stories you're seeing and, and maybe let's go back one quick thing on this. Think about the successes that some of our veterans have had who came from high stress environments and then they, they found ways to, to excel in similar things, but, but do so in a way.

• 2:02:05Cameron Hanes?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  It finds that contentment. We see it in, in the, you know, Montana rifle, we see it in Black Rifle Coffee. We see it in so many things that are going on right now. That's a, that's the pathway.

• 2:02:13Cameron Hanes?

  Right.

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  To remind them of the, the good and the, the abilities that they have.

• 2:02:17Cameron Hanes?

  And, and opportunity in some ways. It's just, yeah, it's a, yeah. I mean, Doug, so much respect. I'm, I'm honored that you're here. Thank you so much for taking the time out and coming all the way to Springfield, Oregon. Never would have anticipated we'd meet here, but it's a, it's a huge honor to have you here and to talk to you about such an important topic like this. And I just, I know you're going to be successful and I'm, I'm very proud of what you're doing.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Okay. Well, I appreciate you and again, thank you for what you've meant to me personally and getting to tell you, uh, face to face means, uh, a lot to me. Um, there's a lot of times when you go through things and you, uh, look at it and some of what you've, uh, talked about just sitting there saying you can do this and inspiration has been a lot to a lot of people, a lot of people who know this and God put you here for a purpose and you're, you're fulfilling that purpose.

• 2:03:04Cameron Hanes?

  No, thank you, brother. I believe in you and I think you're going to do a great job.

• 2:03:07Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 2:03:08Cameron Hanes?

  Thank you.

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  Appreciate it. Thank you.