#151: Strength Is Power - Georgia Congressman Rich McCormick

Voting is a foundation of democracy and key to American power, but also a process that can be ugly and divisive. In what many believe to be the most politically charged election period in modern history, Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/ took a few minutes to sit down with Congressman Rich McCormick, Representative for Georgia’s 7th district. Representative McCormick shared his Elementary Issues of A, B, C, D, E: the American dream, the border, crime, debt, education and energy; why it’s dangerous to develop a culture of government giving, balancing compassion with security along our borders, and not hiding from the fact that America has real adversaries who seek to do us harm. As a Marine Corps and Navy Veteran, emergency room doctor and former American Gladiator, the Congressman knows the importance of earning success and leading through adversity; character traits he has taken from his military service to the halls of Congress. Join our conversation from Congressman McCormick’s Office. Follow us on social media https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/, read the full episode on our website https://greenberetfoundation.org/the-jedburgh-podcast/, then head over to our YouTube https://youtu.be/T6NBJQcGtwk channel or your favorite podcast platform https://pod.link/1558608802 for all our election coverage. Stand for something, or stand to the side. HIGHLIGHTS 0:00 Welcome to Capitol Hill5:45 Georgia as a swing state10:20 The Elementary Issues13:40 Government Giving17:12 A divided America22:46 The Open Border Argument 25:20 Balancing compassion with security30:03 The near-peer fight32:28 Accepting America has adversaries40:10 The role of SOF in the next fight44:26 Why Congress needs more Veterans51:55 Daily Foundations For Success QUOTES “People don’t realize how diverse the south is. Especially Georgia. And the opinions are just as diverse.”“If you don’t have a good economy nobody thrives.” “You’re never given value by what you’re given. You’re given value by what you earn.” “When one party dominates we have more peace. Not necessarily more prosperity; but more peace.” “If you end up isolated, you will end up at war.” “It’s important not to think that we can huddle up in our country and think that nothing bad is gonna happen anywhere else.” “We need to realize that we are less influential than China in about half of the western hemisphere. That’s scary.” “If you want to be amongst greatness, look for adversity.” Special thanks to the For Country Caucus for coordinating this interview. The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are an official program of The Green Beret Foundation https://greenberetfoundation.org/. The opinions presented on the The Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of our guests and creator and host Fran Racioppi. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation and the Green Beret Foundation assumes no liability for their accuracy; nor does Green Beret Foundation endorse any political candidate or any political party.

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

• 0:04Fran Racioppi?

  Welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast. I'm the creator and host, Fran Rychopi. Each episode, I speak with transformative leaders, visionaries, drivers of change, and those dedicated to winning no matter the challenge. The Jedburgh Podcast is founded in the lineage of the special operations Jedburgh teams of the past and is an official program of the Green Beret Foundation, supporting our nation's US Army Special Forces and their families. Democracy is as ugly as it is beautiful. For centuries, Americans have gone to the polls to exercise freedom and choose their leaders. Every election is heralded as the election of all elections, and the democratic process brings out the best and the worst of American society. As challenging as democracy may seem, the opportunities it presents separate the United States from much of the world and ensures that America remains an idea as much as a location.

• 0:49Fran Racioppi?

  To cover the 2024 election from the top of the ticket to the bottom, I sat down with some of today's most influential members of Congress and other leaders seeking to bridge the divide and lead through the good times and the bad. We cover policy, leadership, the role of veterans, and what's next for America. Tune in as we navigate the election battlefield and visit the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation for our full series coverage. Follow us on social media, listen on your favorite podcast platform, and watch us on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge. Voting is a foundation of democracy and key to American power, but also a process that can be ugly and divisive. In what many believe to be the most politically charged election period in modern history,

• 1:34Fran Racioppi?

  I took a few minutes to sit down with Congressman Rich McCormick, representative from Georgia's 6th, soon-to-be 7th District. Representative McCormick shared his elementary issues of A, B, C, D, and E, the American dream, the border, crime, debt, education, and energy, why it's dangerous to develop a culture of government giving, balancing compassion with security along our borders, and not hiding from the fact that America has real adversaries who seek to do us harm. As a Marine Corps and Navy veteran, emergency room doctor, and former American Gladiator, the congressman knows the importance of earning success and leading through adversity, character traits he's taken from his military service in the hospital to the halls of Congress. Check out our conversation, then head over to our YouTube channel or your favorite podcast platform to catch all of our coverage of the 2024 election cycle.

• 2:19Fran Racioppi?

  Stand for something, or stand to the side.

• 2:25Fran Racioppi?

  The opinions presented on the Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of my guests and myself. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation, and the Green Beret Foundation assumes no liability for their accuracy, nor does Green Beret Foundation endorse any political candidate or any political party. Representative McCormick, welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  Good to be here. Thanks.

• 2:49Fran Racioppi?

  It's good to be back on Capitol Hill. It's been a couple of years since we've been here in the building, but appreciate so much. You spending time with us. I mean, it's day one back from recess. So I know you got a million other things to do, but you're starting the session off by spending it with us. Much appreciated. And we want to send our, our thanks out as well to the Four Country Caucus who set up this round, this series for us. So really awesome honor to be here. There's a lot going on in the world.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  There is, and some serious minded people need to address the issues. So I'm looking forward to that. Hopefully we can get past the rhetoric and get back to the meat of the matter.

• 3:22Fran Racioppi?

  Well, that's what we're going to talk about. You spent 20 years in the military, served in the Marines and then the Navy. I'm looking at all these helicopter pictures around your office. I always wanted to be a pilot. I think everybody says that. And then someone told me one day that you were just a taxi driver.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  So, so the interesting thing, first of all, we're about to become the seventh district, the way it got reapportioned. Mostly the same district. We're going to lose East Cobb. We're going to lose Sugar Hill. We'll pick up Johns Creek and Lumpkin County and some of Hall County. So it's a great district, one of the highest GDP per capita districts. Home, homeownership is right in the highest. 10 of the top 25 schools in Georgia. A great district, very influential. It's where Johnny Isaacson, our former Senator came from. It's where Tom Price, our former Secretary of Health and Human Services came from. It's where Newt Gingrich, our former Speaker came from.

• 4:11Fran Racioppi?

  And on the Jedburgh Podcast.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  It is a, a great district. Looking forward to this election cycle. Looking forward to addressing the issues that unite Americans, proceed us forward.

• 4:24Fran Racioppi?

  Here in Congress, you also serve on the House Armed Services Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, the GOP Doctors Caucus, and several others. And you're also an ER doctor. So as if the military didn't give you enough stress for 20 years flying, you decided to then go on and become an ER doctor, which is one of the most commendable positions, I think, that's out there. You talk about seeing trauma, and we talk about the military all the day, how much trauma they see. I mean, go in an ER for a day. And I want to ask you about that. But right now, we're about 60 days from the 2024 elections. There's no punches being pulled in a lot of these races, but especially we're seeing that at the presidential race. I was in the building two years ago, and I sat down right as the 118th Congress started

• 5:09Fran Racioppi?

  with Representative Mike Walz from Florida, your colleague from Florida also, fellow Green Beret. And we talked about the excitement that was around this Congress. They had the most veterans since the post-Vietnam era. And there was really this excitement that the decisiveness might get tamped down. And I think, you know, to a lot of, in a lot of ways, I don't know if that's happened. You know, I think we've seen a lot of decisiveness on all these races. But I want to talk about the state of America, the top line issues, and really, where are we going? And you started with Georgia, and you're talking about your district. But as you look at this race right now, the one you're in in Georgia, and also the presidential race, how come Georgia has become a potential swing state right now, especially when it's leaned Republican for the last series of elections?

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's a complex question. Let me break it down from where I came in. When I first ran for office in 2020, I had not ever been to a political meeting, never went to a fundraiser, didn't know any politicians. And so it kind of came out of nowhere and really didn't understand the political landscape. It's kind of a miracle that I made it past my state senator, who hadn't lost in 33 years, who had the endorsement of 11 to 12 mayors, who had a million dollars in the bank and knew everybody. But there's a reason that we won. I think it's understanding what true politics are. And especially in Georgia, when you realize the diversity of the population, we have a huge population. African Americans, the largest in America, bigger than New York, bigger than California,

• 6:37Speaker 01

  bigger than Texas. We have a huge foreign influx. We have over a hundred thousand Indian diaspora just in my district alone. You have a huge Asian community. It's very diverse. People don't realize how diverse the South is, especially Georgia, and the opinions are just as diverse. The things that matter to people are just as diverse. Now, a lot of people don't know this about me, but I was student by president at Morehouse School of Medicine, a minority university. I was also a adjunct faculty at Morehouse College, as well as Spelman, Clark Atlanta, and Georgia Tech. And if you look at the youth population, and what that implies to voting and how we're trying to win them over both with Turning Point, Laura with Crowder,

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Ben Shapiro versus the left, who basically comes out, in my opinion, promises people the ideal things. And when I say ideal thing, things for free. I'm gonna give you your education for free. That sounds great to anybody who's a college student, right? I don't have to pay back my student loans. That's fantastic. That's buying votes with taxpayer money. When you talk about the other issues in Georgia, we just had gubernatorial race four years ago that Governor Kemp almost lost to Stacey Abrams. And then the next one, of course, we had President Trump lose in Georgia, which surprised everybody, I think, in a very narrow margin, and it became very notoriously famous, whether it be the 2000 mules, or the coercion that they're accusing him of with Rathensberger,

• 8:00Speaker 01

  the Secretary of State. But in my opinion, I was part of that, and I lost. I was told I won that night in 2020. Told I won by a nonpartisan person who'd done six prior elections. It was lawyer. And so I had one, and then I got a call at 2 o'clock in the morning saying, oh, we found 70,000 more votes. What do you mean you found? They couldn't explain it. And they went back and forth during the night, and then, as it turns out, we had no accountability. We don't, we still don't understand what happened. So it went from 1% up to 2% down. Since that time, we had Governor Perdue and Loeffler lost in their runoffs after a special election won. And so we've lost two statewide races. For senate and then we also had a very narrow victory in the gubernatorial race.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  And then fast forward when Herschel Walker was running and the governor was running. The governor crushed it by seven points. Herschel lost. So we've lost three senate state races. So if you think about it, Georgia is very much of a grass. But the nice thing is you can say it comes down to candidate. Cause the governor won by seven percent and Herschel didn't. That means people are voting with their intellect. Now, love Herschel, great name recognition, very much a football hero. But maybe not the best candidate for what we're looking for. This is why selecting the right candidate for senate or governor is very important in Georgia. Because people are paying attention. You may get past the primary. That does not guarantee a general win. That's why I think it's really important when we talk about the presidential race.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  And President Trump specifically, that we address what people are going to be voting on. Now, President Trump did some amazing thing for the African American community. If you look away, he revised the whole legal system and jailing. If you look at the opportunity zones that exist and that primarily exists in Georgia, probably more than any other state. And the benefit to the African American population is significant. But there is also, and that's why you're seeing males and business owners kind of come over and start to vote a little bit more independently. However, there is a large black female population that just is resisting that. I think it's personality based, which is unfortunate because in the end, personality is not going to determine what happens to your children, what educational opportunities they have,

• 10:13Speaker 01

  what business opportunities they have, what prosperity they have. And that's why I'm trying to get people to focus back on those things that we're on the right side of history on. The 60% issues, the elementary issues, I say A through E, A, B, C, D, E. A, the American dream, your God given rights to a first and second amendment, lower taxes, less regulation, the things that make you thrive and create jobs and actually create tax revenue and create prosperity in the nation. B, the border. Everybody understands it's an issue right now. C, crime. There's only one party that says it's okay to walk out of a store with $1,000 of merchandise per day. And that's okay. And that you should defund the police. Only one party. D, debt. Only one party takes that seriously, and probably not seriously enough. The Democrats have never, ever cared about debt. They never address it.

• 10:57Speaker 01

  And it's going to ruin our economy when you have that debt to GDP ratio that basically skews us to a point where we're no longer going to become the gold standard of the world currency. And that's coming if we continue down this road. And then E, education, education choice. That's what won Young in his race. It's what won DeSantis his first gubernatorial race. It's also what, switched over the mayor in Dallas, switched over Michelle Maynard in Georgia. And she's actually representing the AUC, the minority university. She switched from Democrat to Republican over that issue. And E is also energy. Cheap, affordable energy is what driven the economy the entire history of the United States. And if you think about it, if you don't have a good economy, nobody thrives.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  And as Coolidge famously said, "The business of America is business."

• 11:43Fran Racioppi?

  You've said a few things here that I think are important to expand upon. You talked about paying off college debt. You know, to me, that's, that's something that resonates because I served 13 years in the Army after going undergraduate, and I paid every dollar of that. I finished paying that in 2020. I graduated in 2003. I then went to NYU for my MBA. I went on the GI Bill. I went on vocational rehab. Benefits that I had earned through service, through 100% disability rating and back injuries and trauma to my eye and medevac out of Iraq. And yet we sit here and we're absolving loans.

• 12:25Fran Racioppi?

  We're giving money, we're increasing that debt, as you talked about. I want to get into immigration in a minute, but I think when we look at so many of these topics, and you've named them so well, your A, B, C, D, E, I wrote it down because I want to reference it later.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  The elementary issues.

• 12:40Fran Racioppi?

  I think about education and our ability, your ability, those who are up for elections, ability to educate the populace on this. Because I watch the news, I watch the news every day. We watch the news as a, nightly news as a family at dinner. And even my four-year-old son now sits down and he says, "Are we watching the news at the table?" And we watch it. A lot of times it's depressing, but what you see is folks who come on and get interviewed are not educated on the issues. And you hear comments like, "Oh, I'm just going to get free money." There was an interview yesterday with an illegal immigrant, a migrant, who was being interviewed about getting credit cards.

• 13:16Fran Racioppi?

  And going to work and yet we have people who are here legally waiting for immigration status who can't go to work. The law doesn't allow them to go to work and they can't leave the country, but they're not being supported.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:30Fran Racioppi?

  How do we educate the populace? How do we get them to understand that these one-liners that you hear from candidates are not the crux of the issue? How do we do that when the media is not working?

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's the problem is it takes me, it takes you five seconds to say, I'm gonna give you something for free. Free education takes me five minutes to explain why it's not free and why it doesn't benefit America. Why it's not fair for all Americans to pay for some Americans. Why it doesn't encourage people to be independent and to actually have value. You're never given value in life and this is just my background as a youth minister and as an ER doctor and seeing the, anywhere from a quarter to a third of my patients with depression, anxiety, suicidality, drug and alcohol abuse, they all have one thing in common, they're self-consumed. And you can see movie stars with all the money in the world, all the looks, all the girls, commit suicide. Why are people depressed?

• 14:26Speaker 01

  You're never given value by what you're given. You're given value by what you earn. And by giving people things, it doesn't make them better Americans, it doesn't make them better human beings, it doesn't give them happiness. It just gives them free stuff which sounds great until the next thing, because you gotta give them something else after that. And the fact is, the Democrats are never done giving away free stuff. Because if I gave the Democrats everything they asked for this year, all the free education, all the free healthcare, all the free whatever, earned income, let's say, everybody deserves a minimum wage regardless of even if you're working, people are suggesting that. You get paid if you're staying at home because everybody deserves money. If I gave you everything, free housing too, by the way.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  Guaranteed, they would have to come up with something new the next year because they gotta have something else to give away. They know we're gonna fight them, so it's just another talking point. But this is the problem. Is the government's responsibility to give you things for free? Is that why we formed our government? Is that what our constitution is based on? Is that what America's greatness is all about? Of course not. It's never been like that. They're trying to make it like that, and by the way, it's called communism. Because there's no way you can just, we're already in socialism. I'm just gonna face it. Look, we're already redistributing income. We're already saying that you can't, we're already doing the DEI thing openly. Like, if you're a certain race, you get in. If you're not, you don't. If you're Indian, too many successful Indians can't come into this college. You're black, oh, we don't have enough of you, you get to come in this college.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And it creates racism, in my opinion. Because you're basing your opinion off the color of someone's skin, not on the content of their character. Now ironically, we in the military know this, and we hate to see it in the military, because quite frankly, I just need to know, can you keep up? And you got my back? Because I want to survive this mission. I want to go home, and I want to kill the bad guy. That's all I care about. I don't care if you're black, white, Asian, it doesn't matter. We don't care. We just want to accomplish a mission. Most people don't care what you look like, as long as you can do the job. If your business is benefited by diversity, guess what? You're gonna hire a lot of diverse people, and a lot of diverse talents out there. And that's why Coca-Cola is very successful. One of my hometown businesses. Tons of diversity. I want to encourage diversity, but not force it.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Does that make sense? And I think you're seeing that we're fighting some fights that really don't need to be fought, and if we're gonna survive as a nation, we need to focus on the basics.

• 16:47Fran Racioppi?

  If you listen to the news right now, and you listen to the candidates who are out there, everything's really apocryphal. It's a life or death decision, is what you hear. This is a battle between good and evil, right and wrong. You hear this phrase, "democracy's on the ballot." You know, what's gonna be your choice? And divisiveness is permeating so much of the conversation that we see out there, which in many ways is almost against the democratic principles that the country were founded upon in that, hey, you can, you don't have to be wrong for me to be right. We can have different perspectives, we just have to come together and find resolution. Do you think we've become too divided?

• 17:25Speaker 01

  So, here's what's interesting. I'm gonna walk you through, I love history. And I'm reading a book right now on the rise of Theodore Roosevelt. And some of the rhetoric they're using back that time, I mean, this is the most important, you know, we're about to fall as a country, the communists were coming. I mean, literally back this, this is in the 1800s, late 1800s. And it was almost exactly the same rhetoric. It's very ironic. When Thomas Jefferson went against John Adams, they were throwing around all kinds of horrible things about each other, and it got nasty. That was the second presidency run, right? I'm just, oh, actually, third, I guess, technically. But we had this since the beginning. Now it's getting really bad where people were dueling during the Civil War and stuff like that. It was horrible.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  If you've ever seen the movie Lincoln, you'll see, some people would, literally, they'd come up as lobbyists. And as the guy was trying to explain to the person, the guy is drawing a weapon to shoot at him. That's how bad it was. Vietnam was another era. So it kind of comes and ebbs and flows. Ironically, when one party dominates, we have more peace. It sounds weird. Not necessarily more prosperity, but more peace. Because the other party's just trying to fight, but they have no power. When there's more balance, there's more volatility because you're literally, you're vying for control of the government. And especially in this time, and I think we're in another time of divergence. You had it during the Civil War, and you had it during the Revolution. People forget, when we established this great country, a third of the country wanted to remain loyal to the king.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  A third of the country wanted to leave, and a third of the country were neutral. That's great balance, and it created the civil, basically a revolution. And then during the Civil War, our next great crisis, you had a divergence of the parties where one party's like, we want slavery. We want the independence to determine our fate. And don't take that away. The other party's like, you're gonna remain in the Union because that's important to us as a nation. And we fought a civil war over that. The countries, the parties had diverged. Right now, you're having another divergence, in my opinion, where the left has literally left the reservation. When John Kerry Debated George W. Bush, it was the first time I ever paid attention to a debate.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  And I came away, because I wasn't political, but I was a Republican, but I didn't really pay attention to politics very much. I came away thinking, there is no difference between the parties. I couldn't figure it out. It was like, it was a competition, who could spend the most. Kerry would be like, "I'm gonna increase stem cell research by putting in this much," and Bush would be like, "I just did that by record numbers." He's like, "Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna increase the spending on, on security of, of containers coming over here from other countries." Bush is like, "I just did that by record numbers." "I'm gonna increase benefits for older people." "Well, we do Medicare, record spending, I just did that by record numbers." So it was just a competition, who could spend the most money. No offense to George W. Bush or anybody else, I'm just saying, there was no difference. "I'm gonna bring the troops home from, from Afghanistan on this date." "Well, I'm gonna bring them home on this date."

• 20:19Speaker 01

  It was like, there was no difference. Now, there's a massive difference. It used to be Obama ran on the premise that we had a southern, secure border, a sovereign nation, if you will. He literally was the chief deporter. He deported more people from the United States than any other president before or after. And now, look at him. Over 10 million people came into this country illegally, illegally. And all I put, and this is the rhetoric again, "Oh, I put a, a record number of border agents down there." Yeah, to process them. He calls them undocumented migrants. First of all, they're very well documented, because he put a record number of people down there to document them. And secondly, they're not migrants, they're invaders. You came here illegally, and we allowed them to come in there and process them.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Now, the 2 million that got away, the unprocessed ones, the undocumented ones, are not migrants. They are really invaders, and they're dangerous people, because they evaded the process, the due process. They could be terrorists, they could be spies, they could be anything, we don't know. And when 2 million people came in, think about the consequences of just 11 people on 9/11. Think about one person, and what they could do. And you let in 2 million, are you kidding me? This is something that the, the parties are divergent, and all those things I said, A, B, C, D, E, are populist items. 60% or greater Americans believe in those things that unite the Republican Party, divide the Democrat Party, and the people want. If you want to talk about winning an election, start there.

• 21:46Fran Racioppi?

  On the immigration topic, because we went there, so I want to ask you a question about this, because I think it's really important. I'm yet to hear...

• 21:54Speaker 01

  An argument for the no border policy. And while I have you here, and I've asked this question to a number of folks. What is the argument for an open border policy? Because I can't understand it. They keep on talking about compassion. This is what the Democrats say, right? Oh, those poor people, those poor people. Yeah, we're going to be the poor people. There's a reason that no Democrat has given away all their money. If you're that compassionate, give away all your money in quick politics, please. Please, for the love of God, quick politics. But if you're going to have a realistic conversation, you don't leave your front door unlocked. You don't invite strangers into your house. You don't give away your money to everybody. Matter of fact, I'd make the case that the Republicans are far more philanthropic than the Democrats when it comes to charities.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  That's just my studies. Now, I could be wrong, but prove me wrong because we're pretty generous. And the more money that the government takes from you, the less generous you can be in your philanthropic endeavors. Here's the problem. When I support a charity, I get to determine where that money goes. And I'm helping people with accountability. And we're not keeping them forever. We're trying to get them out of poverty. When the government comes in, you're trying to buy votes. You pick the winners and losers, and they stay in poverty the whole time. Look at the black community. Look at what we've done to them. Talk to black politicians, black Republican politicians especially. What has the government ever done for you that has created success for your community? I'd make the case that actually they're trying to keep you right where you're at

• 23:21Speaker 01

  so you depend on the government, so you have to vote for the same people over and over again. And why do we turn to the government to solve the very problem that the government created in the first place? If you come here from Africa, no money, maybe don't even speak the language, no friends, you can make a million dollars within one lifetime because you're in America. And they do. I know people who've come here from Nigeria with dollars in their pocket and are millionaires now. I know people who've done that from South America, from Asia, from Europe, all over the world, people have done that. Romania, I know Romanians who've done that, people from Korea who've done that. I know people who've done that over and over. What other country is like that? And yet, we tell our African American community as politicians, you poor people, you can't make it out of poverty, so therefore I will prop you up and keep you right where you're at.

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Why not just let them be millionaires? Encourage them and give them educational opportunities so they can actually even the playing field. And then we'll see real success for our country and those communities. When faced with a challenge, Green Berets adapt, overcome, and keep moving forward.

• 24:22Fran Racioppi?

  Now's your chance to stand with them. Join the 1952 Society with a monthly gift of just $19.52 to provide critical medical devices for wounded, ill, and injured Green Berets. Your support fuels their recovery, helping them return to duty or continue serving their communities. A Green Beret's mission never stops. Neither should our support. Join the 1952 Society today and stand with those who stand for us.

• 24:49Fran Racioppi?

  How do we balance the compassion with national security, with economic policy? Because that's an argument, I get it, whether you agree with it or not. But the other side, the Republican argument, is, as you've explained, we have 2 million undocumented people who've come into the country. We know that there's terrorists who may be among them. We've detained people who are on the terrorist watch list. Record number. We have Chris Wray, the Director of the FBI, who's sat in front of you on the House Armed Services Committee and said multiple times, "Every red light is blinking." I've had the opportunity to sit down with literally every senior leader in US Army Special

• 25:32Fran Racioppi?

  Operations Command to have this conversation. I sat down with the Secretary, the Sergeant Major of the Army, Sergeant Major Mike Wymer a few weeks ago, and had this conversation. And everybody's opinion, top to bottom, is this is not a matter of if, this is a matter of when. And the biggest threat they see, outside of the near peers that we'll talk about in a minute, China, Russia, Iran, is the open border. How do you balance compassion versus national security?

• 26:02Speaker 01

  And once again, have compassion for Americans first. This is our country. You'll see an amazing number of Americans go to foreign countries to help people, to get them right. It's very difficult to fix any country with a corrupt government. And quite frankly, we are corrupting foreign governments by our purchasing of illegal drugs, for example. We are never going to right the ship. By the way, you could get a fence along the entire southern border. You could have as many security guards as you want. You can kill as many drug dealers as you want, and they'll always be replaced as long as there's a demand. It's a trillion-dollar industry. I keep on telling people, if you really want to solve this problem, we do like we did with smoking. Now, we used to say to kids, "Don't smoke or you get a stomach." You know, you'll get cancer. Kids don't think of that way.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  They don't think they're gonna overdose and kill themselves off of fentanyl, even though, what, 110,000 people last year died of drug overdoses? And yet, it won't happen to me. Kids don't think that way. But if you teach them, like you did with smoking, that when you purchase cigarettes, you're basically killing your grandparents because these evil companies are making profit while they're creating cancer in your elderly population, all of a sudden it becomes a moral issue. And all of a sudden, kids didn't want to buy it. Not because of any other reason, because they thought it was cool before, but it's not worth the uncool part of killing your grandparents while evil corporations make profit. Now imagine if we sold to the American youth that when you purchase drugs, okay, you don't think you're gonna die, fine.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  You don't think you're gonna get hooked, fine. You think it's cool, fine. But you're literally supporting rapists, terrorists, child traffickers, people who slit your mother's throat for a dollar. That's who you're supporting. Every time you buy drugs, you're overthrowing the government. You're keeping Mexicans in abject poverty because they can't fix their government because of the corruption. Same thing with Colombia. Same thing with other governments all across the world. You're supporting that by buying drugs. You'd fix the problem. You'd also right the ship when it comes to these... Think about how much corruption there is just from drug money alone. That we Americans export like a trillion dollars. It's crazy. That goes towards essentially terrorism

• 28:14Speaker 01

  and rape and murder, slavery. That's what we're doing. So if you could right the ship in these countries and actually get them back on their economic feet, you'd see prosperity. And then we could actually be part of that. We'd benefit from that economically and also the immigration policy. That's why Africa is so backwards, too. Corrupt governments equal bad migration policies. And that's why we gotta fight against Brazil, what's happening in Brazil, with that fiasco of an election that now has them with a communist dictator. Same thing with that, what happened in Venezuela. Same thing that's happening in several South American countries. And that's in the Western Hemisphere. We need to reapply the Monroe Doctrine. We need to make sure that we have our influence in the correct place. Don't be isolationist, because guess what happens? These people that say, "We shouldn't be involved in Ukraine, shouldn't be involved in Taiwan, shouldn't be involved in Israel, shouldn't be involved anywhere."

• 28:59Speaker 01

  America first. If you end up isolated, you'll end up in war. You'll end up invaded by a ton of illegal immigrants who don't want to live in the country they live in. And as Reagan said... Isolationism never was and never will be the answer to expansionist tyrannical governments. We need to stand up for what's right.

• 29:16Fran Racioppi?

  Let's talk about national security in that vein. You sit on the, both the Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee and the Cyber Information Technologies and Innovation Subcommittee. As a veteran, you know firsthand the cost of combat, the cost of war, both in terms of our human capital and the financial burden that the country takes on. We spent 20-plus years battling, by most definitions, an inferior enemy. And we can debate, you know, the run they gave us over the last 20 years. But we didn't see what we would call a peer or a near-peer adversary. In the background, as we fought these proxy wars across Afghanistan and Iraq and various

• 30:00Fran Racioppi?

  other regions of the world, countries like Russia, China, Iran became emboldened. The pressure, in a lot of ways, was off them to build capability, build capacity. We've seen some of that capacity may not be what we thought it was. For instance, the Russians in Ukraine. But we know, almost three years in now, Russia is still in Ukraine. We know China has a date in mind to go to Taiwan. We've seen Iran continue to arm proxy groups and the horrible atrocities that they backed and authorized for on October 7th, 2023, as Hamas attacked Israel.

• 30:41Fran Racioppi?

  But the near-peer fight, a peer-to-peer fight, is very, very different than what American forces saw and fought over the last 20-plus years. In your mind, is America ready or prepared for a near-peer competition?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Well, I would say we're not only just talking about 20 years, you're talking about probably since World War II.

• 31:01Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  We've been the preeminent power in the world. Even when Russia was challenging us during the Reagan era, we are far and away superior to them, and I think time has proven that. If you want to talk about the bad actors, I think North Korea is not really an actor anymore. They kind of gave up their inferior weapons to the Russians recently, which is, kind of tells you where Russia's at right now. If you want to talk about what happened in Ukraine, realized that a ragtag, third-rate army took out half of Russia's armor and 350,000 casualties. It's pretty superior.

• 31:30Fran Racioppi?

  Some SF guys have been there for a while.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Not bad, not bad. But I'll say- If you look at what's happened around the world and kind of how we've been caught, you're right. We spent 20 years, $2 trillion, 2,462 lives in Afghanistan to give back to the Taliban what we took from them. Pretty crazy, especially when we had won the war. Maybe you don't like the result of the war, maybe you don't think it's as stable as it needs to be, but we gave them a chance. And we had, what, 2,500 people there? 2,500 people. That's fewer than we have in Spain. We've never fought a war in freaking Spain. And yet, we had to pull out for some political reason? So I can say, I pulled out of Afghanistan? How'd that go for you? We lost more people in one day than we lost in 10 years. I take that very personal. That was the worst withdrawal of all time.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  And first of all, not that it was the worst withdrawal, but I don't think we should have withdrawn all of it. I don't care who says what. I mean, I've talked to every Secretary of Defense that's still alive at the Reagan Institute that participates in anything. Same thing with Secretaries of State and stuff like that. There is a reason for projected power. I'm a big Teddy Roosevelt fan. He's my favorite president of all time. He talked about projected naval power constantly, no offense to the Army, but the ability to go anywhere at any time and touch anyone, walk, talk softly and carry a big stick, is an incredible leverage point. There's a reason that Russia is so preeminent in the world, in Africa, even South America, and across the world, even though they only have a $2 trillion economy. $2 trillion, that's the size of our Texas economy. We

• 33:00Speaker 01

  have a $27 trillion economy, and we're about as influential as they are in many parts of the world. Because they invest, because they scare people, because they have a big stick. And I think that's why we have to be careful what's happening with China. Now, China's paying very close attention to what's going on in Ukraine, I promise you. It's very important that we have regional partners such as India, Japan, Australia, even smaller countries like Thailand. Most people don't realize Thailand is our oldest ally. We're approaching 200 years. Very strategically important when it comes to having friends in those areas. When you talk about a developing nation like India, which has less than, I think, a $3 trillion economy, but in five years, they'll have a greater than a $5 trillion

• 33:44Speaker 01

  economy because they're increasing rapidly. They'll be the third largest economy soon, and they'll be catching up to China. China's around 13 to 15, depending on who you talk to. But we're far and away above all that. But we can lose it very quickly. If you look at our meager growth rate and what that indicates for military spending, because we, right now, we stay consistent on our military spending on percentage of GDP and percentage of our budget. China is crushing us in their advancements. They have 50 deep water ports that could produce their largest carriers and submarines. We have two. If we go to war, we got a lot of catch up to do. And people don't realize how important strategically Taiwan is. Seventy percent of the world's wealth goes through that corridor. Seventy percent of the world's population is the

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Indo-Pacific Command. You have seven largest 10 armies there. I mean, it is a massive, massively important part of the world. And by the way, Taiwan produces 100% of our AI chips. Not forever, but right now they do. If China takes over Taiwan, it will have a ripple effect that we have no idea how big it will be because AI will be the most transformational technology in our lifetime. We have a lot of work to do. And it's important not to think that we can huddle up in our country and think that nothing bad is going to happen anywhere else. I think that's somewhat ignorant.

• 35:01Fran Racioppi?

  When I spoke with Newt Gingrich, it's been a bit, but he told me that the differences between the parties, especially when we talk about national defense, are ideology. And it's not that there are stupid people on each side, although we could probably make an argument for some. They, but his position is that this is an ideology. And the ideology of the left versus the right is that we live in this world where everybody likes each other.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Carter, yeah, idealism. Yeah. That if I give you something, you'll use it for good, not for evil. Like an axle factory, you won't use it for your military trucks, will you? Shake on it. It'll just be for farm vehicles. If I leave you alone with your nuclear program, it'll only be for energy, right? Not for weapons. Yeah, that ideology, that idealism, if you will, that everybody's good. That if I'm gentle with you, you'll be gentle with me. Doesn't work. It's not reality.

• 35:56Fran Racioppi?

  So what does it take for someone to, and we're sitting here, it's going to be the eve of 9/11, 23 year anniversary. What will it take?

• 36:05Fran Racioppi?

  For Americans to understand that these countries, Russia, China, Iran, are not friends of America. And in some of these countries like Iran, you literally go out and protest, "Death to Israel, death to America."

• 36:18Speaker 01

  When in the history of America, when in the history of America have we have tens of thousands of people in the streets talking about the end of Israel? The end of the Jewish people, stealing the American flag, stealing the American flag in our capital while they're graffitiing all kinds of horrible things I won't even say. Then burning, so you're stealing it, then you're destroying public property, and then raising a terrorist flag on American soil, and nobody does anything about it. That's insane. We have reached a point of ludicrousity in our own capital. You mentioned Iran. We already talked about China. We talked about Russia. Iran is one of the, if they were bigger, they'd be more of a problem, but they are the worst actors of all governments. They disseminate and encourage people to use the weapons

• 37:02Speaker 01

  that have killed American troops. And we've done nothing about it, really. Nothing of consequence. Do you remember when Reagan, now Reagan's my favorite president of the modern era?

• 37:10Fran Racioppi?

  Me too.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  And Reagan during the Libyan crisis didn't exactly take it easy on Muammar Gaddafi. Matter of fact, he tried to kill him, ended up killing his son, but basically sent a warning, "You screw with America, the gloves come off." "You kill one of mine, I've killed two of yours." "You put one of mine in the hospital, I put one of yours in the morgue," as they say. And Muammar Gaddafi came around and he said, "I want peace. I don't want to mess with you guys anymore." Because he understands strength. Every country understands strength. If you use weapons, if you produce weapons that are disseminated against Americans, I don't care if it's Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Russia, China, I don't care who it is. If you're producing weapons that are deployed against Americans and its allies, guess what I'm gonna do?

• 37:53Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go Reagan on you. I'm gonna take out your city block. You wanna produce those weapons you're gonna be using against me? That's war. That is literally an act of war. You wanna be at war with the United States? Good luck. Because I guarantee you Iran is not ready for that. We destabilize their country, we encourage the rebels that are still out there to rise up against that. Whenever the students rise up, we don't do anything. I would absolutely destabilize Iran. I would absolutely destroy their capacity to produce weapons against the United States when they're deployed against us. And guess what would happen? They would either become more friendly, or they would go away. That's strength. That's what America is known for. And when you don't show that, what happens? They become more and more emboldened. And what have they done? Supplied their enemies with weapons that are killing Americans and killing our allies.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  Why do we put up with that?

• 38:39Fran Racioppi?

  I think that goes back to the question that you brought up a second ago of, why don't we do anything about people running around our country yelling, "I am Hamas"? Because for 20-plus years, we fought Al Qaeda. And not for one second would we allow somebody to run through the streets of anywhere in the country and yell, "I am Al Qaeda". You would be arrested immediately. Yet, we have universities burning.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  Terrorist threats and activities, and we're doing nothing about it.

• 39:11Fran Racioppi?

  But why?

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Because we're weak and we're scared. We can't even define what a man is anymore without being attacked. This is where you come into the theory of relativism. And this is why it's very dangerous when a government replaces God, family, community, churches. And that's exactly what communist governments do, by the way. You want to see the absolute plan to communism? Take away people's weapons, so they can't defend themselves. Take away their morality. In other words, the only morality that's defined is what the government gives to you. They can determine what's moral, what's right and wrong. If your business gets to be open or closed, by the way, that's fascism. When the government controls your businesses. And what happened during COVID? What kind of excuses were used?

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Literally, you could not travel. Look at my Fauci hearings and what Fauci said when we exposed him. And he's like, "Oh, that was out of context." Bullcrap is out of context. You literally said, "If you don't do what we want, we will make your life miserable." "If you don't get a vaccination, you can't travel. You can't have your business doors open. You have to wear a mask. Everything the government says you have to do because we will use fear against you." And that's how the Gulag Archipelago started. From 1917 to 1957, 60 million people were killed in Russia. And you use the government to make everybody scared of each other to the point where you're reporting on each other, which is exactly what people do, such as Waltz. The Vice President, a candidate, basically set up a hotline to report on people who didn't do what the government told them to do during COVID.

• 40:41Speaker 01

  This is where we're at, when the government's almighty. We have left the reservation when it comes to what made this country great. When you could actually take, you controlled your own risk. I could throw my family in the back of a wagon, go west, maybe starve, maybe freeze, maybe get killed, but maybe be highly successful, have my own land and my own right to survival. Pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, right? And so this is where we lost and we said, the government has to take care of everything. The problem is it's a self licking ice cream cone. It's never over. You never have something else to, you always have something else that you have to give them or they're unhappy because everybody needs the government eventually because everybody's poor. And this is why when the more government takes control, the more people are unhappy and they turn back to government, I want more. They're like spoiled little kids.

• 41:25Speaker 01

  And it always ends up as a dictatorship because it's the only way to keep control. And then you have killings and that's what's happening in Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, you name it. This is just the Western Hemisphere, by the way. I want to point this out because we need to realize that we are less influential than China in about half of the Western Hemisphere. That's scary.

• 41:45Fran Racioppi?

  I gotta ask you about Special Operations Forces. So when we look at the job of Special Operations Forces traditionally, yes, they're utilized to a high degree in declared combat, but really the job of Special Operations Forces, and I'll speak specifically about Green Berets and Army Special Forces, is to operate what we call left of bang, left of conflict, before conflict. If we do our job really well, we never see that peer to peer fight. That term near peer exists forever because we've never allowed someone to reach parity with the US. As you look at the construct and the prioritization of the forces and military forces over the

• 42:27Fran Racioppi?

  next two, three, five years, where do you see Special Operations Forces going in the fight?

• 42:34Speaker 01

  So Special Forces, for those people who probably watched the most, know exactly what we're talking about, they're a force multiplier. When you look, we did, we visited the first forces in Alaska, also the Strategic Air Command, which is a totally different approach to warfare, by the way. At one time in the post-World War II era, we thought that we could just win all wars by air superiority. We could just bomb everybody's submission, you know? This is that false narrative that if I drop a nuclear bomb on you, we win. Then you see when, when we started going into guerrilla warfare with Vietnam and we had an evolution and special forces became really more germane and much more applicable. And, and when, when you look at what they do to keep us from war or to eliminate bad

• 43:16Speaker 01

  guys who are force multipliers in their own right, because bad guys can also be very effective, especially in guerrilla warfare. When you decentralize command, it's very hard to pick them apart. I will say, when I was with the Marines, I served with a group called First Angkor. We get attached to Army Forces. I worked with Hunter First, 10th Mountain, 82nd. Cousin flew for, I believe, what is it? 195th? 160th. Yeah, 160th. And of course, we delivered SEALs in the 53 community when I was a pilot. So worked with a lot of those guys. SEALs almost blew me up in a tactical air control scenario. So, frat exercise is a real thing. But when we talk about delivering a blow, which we shouldn't be talking about, by the way, and that's one criticism I have about sometimes what we do, like Operation Pineapple and stuff like that.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  You don't, you do your job, but you don't grandstand. You never let the bad guys know what you did. We've gotten this habit where everybody wants to make a movie and everybody wants to glorify what they did, but we're losing our ability to surprise people because we're talking about what we're doing. We never used to do that. When we, when I was in, in the Marines and we were attached to some of these units and stuff like that, we weren't allowed to talk about things we planned that we didn't even execute. Now people are talking about the details of how we killed Osama bin Laden. That's crazy. We're making movies about it with all the details right out there. We need to be more careful, but I love our special forces. The amount of training we put into it, the patriotism, the, the courage, the, the tenacity, the, the sacrifice that these families make, and I, I say families because military, a sacrifice and it takes its toll. You look at the divorce rates in special forces, it's off the chain.

• 44:44Speaker 01

  I was supposed to go to JSOC right after 9/11 and one of buddies I played rugby with said, "You're gonna love it." You work with the best people in the world, but you're gonna get a divorce. Every single person he knew was getting a divorce at the time. Because they've gone nine months out of the year and when you're home, you're working long hours. That's the sacrifice. That's the reality. So when you, when you hear about those guys, we need to applaud them, encourage them, try to create some sort of stability for them because quite frankly, when you leave that organization, it can be very unhealthy for you too. You know, a lot of guys that pull the trigger on themselves because they lose their, their only driving force because their family's gone. But my hat's off to, to all the, the special operators out there. They're doing their job daily that we don't hear about that make the difference in very real ways.

• 45:27Fran Racioppi?

  I only got a couple of minutes left with you, but I want to ask you about leadership. So you, you served 20 years in the military. You became a physician. You've had these lessons that you've learned of, that I believe create perspective. And now you serve in the halls of Congress. What are the lessons that you take from the military, from being a physician to Congress? And how has that shaped your perspective and the way that you lead and you govern?

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'll start by saying, I wish it sucked more. I say it tongue in cheek because we will say in the military, embrace the suck. Why do we say that? Because first of all, get used to misery. If you want to be amongst greatness, look for adversity. If you're looking for a warm bed, hot meal and luxury, you're not going to be dining with greatness. You'll maybe success, but not greatness in my, my definition. The things that make us great, the things that make us who we are successfully, are the challenges we meet. When you talk about leadership and what, why do the Marines make their recruiting marks? And nobody else does. Why do we have more stickers on the back of Marine cars than every other service combined? Why is that? Have you ever taken a pause to think, why, why doesn't the army have all of our?

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Because there's a certain pride when you make bootcamp hard. When you make life hard, people take pride in their accomplishment. When you say, I wish it sucked more, that's what molds you into the next great person. When you face adversity and go the next step. That's why special forces guys take such pride in what they do because it was freaking hard to do. Same thing with the challenges we have here. A lot of people, the thing that disappoints me, a lot of people are into messaging. Instead of accomplishment, it's motion, not progress. I want to get things done. And that's why we're top 10 in legislative efforts. But you focus on the 60% issues, those A through E issues I said, you know, protecting our rights, the American dream, border, crime, debt, energy, education, things that make America great. Realizing you got to pick your fights.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Anybody who has kids or a wife understands you got to pick your fights. Same thing with the military, same thing with Congress. The good book says, count the costs. You know, don't go to war before you know how strong the other army is. Don't start a building before you know how much it costs. In the government, we do just the opposite sometimes. And we don't look at the consequences. But I think the worst things are the, the more you'll, you'll develop your character, the more you'll develop your leadership abilities. We don't talk about presidents who served during peaceful times. You don't even know who they are. Remember, you can look at the peace time we had in America by not knowing the presidents. Nobody talks about the presidents who served easy terms. The only presidents we talk about served during tumultuous times where it sucked. Now, do we want war? Of course not. But you had to be ready to step up to that.

• 48:05Speaker 01

  That's why we talk about wartime versus peacetime leaders. Chamberlain versus Churchill, Reagan versus Carter. No offense to Carter, but peace through strength. Not by thinking that everybody's going to behave, but being prepared for the worst possible consequence. That's leadership.

• 48:23Fran Racioppi?

  Last question, quick test question. The Jedbergs in World War II, they had to do three things every day to be successful. They had to be able to shoot, they had to be able to move, they had to be able to communicate. Those were core foundational tasks, habits.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Maneuver warfare.

• 48:36Fran Racioppi?

  Development of habits is what allows you to be successful regardless of what you do. What are the three things that you do every day in your world to be successful?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  So first of all, I do try to read my Bible every day, keep me morally grounded. Doesn't mean I'm perfect, just means I'm striving to, to seek. I try to read, I try to educate myself daily. I, I told you Teddy Roosevelt's one of my favorite presidents, my favorite president. He read a book a day, sometimes two books a day. It's crazy how much he was educated. So spiritually, mentally and physically, I think you have to be well-rounded. If you don't do some sort of exercise or do something, you will lose your You have to have balance to life and you have to surround yourself with really good people. My success is largely due to the people I've surrounded me with and I'm fortunate to have the ability to choose the right people, the loyal people, the hard workers. But be your best mentally, physically, and especially spiritually and you'll be all right.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  And remember that it requires a lot of grace and goodwill because we all make mistakes and be willing to make peace where you can, but come with, bring it, you know? Bring strength and earn it.

• 49:39Fran Racioppi?

  I think one of the, I think one of the resounding parts of this conversation is your, your points on value. You know, we value what is earned.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 49:48Fran Racioppi?

  Representative McCormick, thank you for spending some time with me. You've got a busy day ahead of me. You've got a new session starting here and you've got a lot of work to do over the next couple of weeks as we run up to the election. Good luck in your election and we hope to, hope to have you again on soon.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Thanks, appreciate you.

• 50:08Fran Racioppi?

  American Jedbergs went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jedburgh Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Rychowi. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, extra threads. Send your comments and inquiries to [email protected]. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special Forces and their families. Thanks for joining us on this episode.

• 50:53Fran Racioppi?

  How you prepare today determines success tomorrow. The opinions presented on the Jedburgh Podcast and the Jedburgh Media Channel are the opinions of my guests and myself. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Green Beret Foundation and the Green Beret Foundation assumes no liability for their accuracy, nor does Green Beret Foundation endorse any political candidate or any political party.