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Ops, Spionage, The Team House with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.
Hey guys, this is episode three hundred and twenty of The Team House. I'm Jack here with Dave and joining the show for the second time is Nate. I missed the first time he came on here because I was in Iceland. We're really glad to have him back, and we were talking earlier about, you know, some of his recent videos. So he has a YouTube channel and we should mention. Nate is a retired Green Beret. His YouTube channel is Valhalla VFT. Hope you guys will go and
check it out. There's some really good stuff on there, and there's a link down in the description. Before we jump into the interview, though, I'm gonna kick it over.
To Dave Yes.
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And back to U Nate again. Welcome to the show for a second time.
Happy to be here.
I'm a big fan of your channel.
Also, I am a little disappointed that you're not wearing your beaters. You and Jay both on your channels, are always wearing your beaters.
No, I was going to, but I was like, I'm going to be on their show.
You're not going to show the gun yeah, I find.
It's a little bit more professional.
If I'm ever going to be on one of your podcasts, I'm definitely wearing the beaters and the camo hat. If it's with Jay, I'm just messing with you, man.
I love it.
So I missed the first interview, but I mean, you are something of a Special Forces thought fluencer now whether you like that, whether you like that title or not, you are found yourself in that position. But I bet you didn't like initially set out. I mean valhal of firearms training. You must have started somewhere else and I'd be interested to ask you how you how you came from transitioning out of the military to that to being a YouTube guy.
That's well, that's great. So I mean I was on I think I think over a year ago now, and again I think it was on Your Guys show initially when I was maybe two months retired, so I had just retired, just started the social media channels. I had maybe like four or five thousand subscribers I think on YouTube. So that interview is going to be very different in this one. And that was like, you know, we told stories, we talked about my career, crazy war missions, which was awesome,
great episode. Fast forward like maybe twelve, like thirteen months later, and you know, almost one hundred thousand subscribers within you know, a year. Amazing, and I've you know again, Yeah, I guess I am a influencer. Now. I think it's so dumb, and I think I might have told Dave that when I first did the episode. I begrudgingly started these social media channels because of my firearm's business. So my in person business is arms instructive business, run all sorts of
different classes, teach law enforcement departments. So we got a good business going out here in the Pacific Northwest. But everybody was like, dude, with your resume, you have to market yourself. If you're going to do this field firearms training, you're a retired Green Beret, valor awards like all the shiny shit, you have to market yourself on social media. So I begrudgingly started, you know, the YouTube channel and
just doing firearms content, just doing that. And I did one video maybe in the first month that was the harsh reality of becoming a Green Beret, and it was maybe eight minutes and I just told, like, you know, all the shitty backstory to it, like going through the Q course, you're probably going to get divorced, right, Like you're not going to see your fucking kids for six
months out of the year. And that video, when I had a brand new channel, got five six, seven hundred thousand views, and that sort of like started that trajectory on the YouTube channel where I switched from firearms, trauma medicine,
do something here and there. But like two I started doing Special Forces related content, talking about you know, things in group things and just backstory stuff or like realities of what have s F s F life is like, and that all that content blew up, and so I again was just like, I guess this is what I'm doing now. Yeah, fast forward a year later with the success of the channel, now it's like, yeah, this is what I'm doing now. So yeah, that's that's how I got here.
Nate real quick.
For anybody who has not seen Nate's episode is episode two and twenty seven.
Check it out. Is fantastic.
You'll see him when you'll see him when he was a baby, a little baby YouTuber fresh from the egg, hanging out in the nest.
Yeah yeah, well, you know that's that's a really good episode. So for for my fans, they know I don't talk about war stories. I don't talk about any of that type of stuff. So if you want all the best war stories and the valor Oort stories like they're encompassed on your g It's episode, nobody else has them, because again it's just not like it's not for me, but I do. I like to talk about it with guys like you, guys like us that have done the job.
I'm not like gonna make videos by myself talking about my war stories, like it just doesn't feel right.
And also, like how many different pods do you want to go on and tell the same stories over and over again, right, and every interview, every interviewer is going to approach it differently and maybe pull different things out. But like I've been on I think one interview where I told my story and that's enough for me. I'll go on pods to talk about other shit, but I don't talk about me.
Yeah yeah, And I don't think I've told any of those stories since, because again they're awesome stories, like awesome stories, but you're right, you know, like I lived them and like talking about them. One I also don't and I don't want to knock like the guys that go on the podcast tour and that's all they do is tell their war stories. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that.
But for me, it's like, in my worstes, my teammates got blown up and fucked up, and you know, I've got teammates that have killed themselves since, so talking about that doesn't one doesn't feel great for me. And also like I'm always so hyper concerned that I'm gonna get something wrong and not respect my teammates for their families that it's just like I would rather just not really talk.
Hey, that's gonna be a little dark and a little bit of insider humor. But I'm assuming you remember their names.
I wish I wasn't. I wish I wasn't drinking right there. I do not only do I remember all my teammates' names, I also remember like all of the guys in first Special Forces Group in the last ten years that have been killed in their names. So yeah, well, I'm sure we'll get into that subject.
But before before we dive into the vetpro cinematic universe, I did want to ask you about.
I love that that's what it is at this point.
Yeah, yeah, one of one of the more recent videos you made that really it resonated with me and I think probably other people too. You made a video about why Special Operations guys are not necessarily role models, and I thought you laid it out very good about you know, like, yeah, these guys are amazing.
They can do incredible things, and they're.
Really nice guys, but they're also human beings and there's a dark side to the job that they do, and there's a reason why they ended up.
Doing that job.
Yeah. Again, I was telling like I was talking to you guys a little bit before we started, but I mean, I'll just bring it back up since for the viewers. But the reason why I initially made that video and I didn't think it was going to be as popular as it did. I figured I just wanted to sort of talk about it. I mean, it's like a half a million views in two weeks, I think. But and like I said, it's definitely resonating with people based off
of the feedback. Is when we started to do the exposure of Tim Kennedy the initial videos, the backlash from the civilians that are fans of him was insane. They lost their minds at the idea how could we possibly attack this war hero and all this stuff. So like this cognitive dissonance of like finding out that one of these famous soft influencers potentially isn't who he claims to be.
I think it just shocked so many people because you know, I mean that old guard of the soft influencers, nothing against them, your Jocko's or Tim Kendee's, all these guys have been sort of telling these stories and doing this type of thing and building up this sort of like mystique of like the soft operator being this god that's like untouchable and can do no wrong. And for those of us that done it of known like we're just regular dudes that did you know, a really high functioning job.
We're not any better necessarily morally than anybody else. And so that's why I initially wanted to make the video, is to explain to everyone like here's the backside, here's the truth, here's like the psychology of how a Green Beret is literally selected for at SFAs, Like I'm not making those things up, Like there was a back channel of actual I think was SFAs Cadre talking about one of the sites, was like, yeah, that's exactly what we're
looking for, right, We're looking for high functioning young men that have been through a lot of but not necessarily trauma that built up resistance. They have the ability to cope with insane things still get the job done, still come back, reintegrate to the society. It's a very specific type of person. But as we've just seen with the things like Matt levels of Livensburger, right, that also can
lead to some insane psychosis. And when you're in that realm of sociopathic behavior and that scales too far off the spectrum, we can see what happens there too. So that was the intent of the video. It wasn't necessarily like the I didn't want to make people feel like uncomfortable anything. I wanted people to understand, like how these brains actually work.
I have.
You know, I'm as much a violator as any civilian fanboy in a sense, because those old school guys are my heroes that I will.
Yeah, my dad's a Vietnam era GB. All his friends are mac be saug legends, right, Like I grew up with my dad's best friend, Riley Lott, who was just inducted in Special Forces Hall of Fame because he was Mike Force's n CIC for six years. Like, that's the guys I was raised around, and I do it myself to them. Yeah, what I mean, I understand it.
Right, there's there's still my heroes, you know, but I do know them well enough now that I understand their human beings. And there are even cases where I've heard stories about people who I really admired and you find out they did some things that were not just accidents. But it's like, what that's like a character failing. You know that I thought you were better than that. But
you know, also, they're human beings. I put them up on the pedestal, they didn't put themselves up there, And then I find out that they're a human being, And maybe I shouldn't be so disappointed because I'm a human being, right, Yeah.
And we are. We are human beings, right, and we're but we're human beings that are called to do a horrific job. At the same time. Man, it's not just it's not just me as a soft operator you talk about any better. Let's talk about the Marines in Fallujah, right, called on to just do absolute horrific and not necessarily that they're wrong or they're we're in the wrong as Americans.
I'm not saying that, but I mean going through a city and slaughtering, you know, one hundred thousand people that is not necessarily the best thing ever, too, was kind of my point, you know.
Yeah, well, and the brushes with death, the you know, for the people that you lose, and you know, it's like you say, like we're all normal people, but also we also have these sociopathic traits that allow us to compartmentalize and do things that maybe the average guy on the street, you know, won't. And then on top of that, you pile on years of trauma that we shove aside so we can we ignore completely so we can keep doing the job.
And then one day it's just all bubbles back up.
And now you know, now we're talking about blast injuries and CTEs and how they play with post traumatic stress, like it's.
Just it's this stew of just stuff.
They've my my therapist, because yeah, I've been through a lot of behavioral health Like I'm honest about that, right, and it's been great for me.
Right.
I don't say that to you know, sound soppy or PTSD or O me like I did it for myself, my family, my wife, because I had temper issues whatever. But my therapist, really good therapist, explained it as think about your brain as a filing cabinet. What you've been doing is stuffing that trauma, just stuffing papers into the bottom of that spiling cabinet, and then just shoving papers on top of it, over and over and over again.
And at some point you think about that filing cabinet is just an absolute shit show, and what you have to do is take it all out, recompartmentalize it, put it all back in order so it's exactly what it is, right. And like you said, now you add in CTE and blast injuries on top of it, and I think, you know, I'm sure we'll talk about the whole tesla cyberchrucking this episode, but I think that was my theory right out the
gate man. It was like, this is a nineteen year old, a nineteen year SF dude, bronze star medals with valor tons of combat deployments, probably been fucked up. Add on top of depression PTSD, a little bit of psychosis, and oh here we are, and.
The problem is, you know, the problem is it also insidious that a person like it's it normally takes somebody outside of us to go you might have a problem right now.
That's my wife for me.
Yeah, Like I remember we had we had Mike Edwards on the show like maybe two or three years ago. The first time he was on, and you know RD Guy or RC and talking about somebody out of their car because they you know, cut them off and you know they were like trying to you know, break check them or whatever. And he's like, and you know, my wife is like, pulling somebody.
Out of their car is not normal behavior.
And at that moment, I go, oh shit, it's not because I thought that was.
That was that was my dad growing up. Yeah, Vietnam era Greenbray, obvious PTSD, completely untreated because none of those got to get treated in multiple times. Seven eight years old, Yeah, same thing, pulling people out of car, beating the shit out of people in middle of the street, getting back in the car and driving off like that was normal
to me. And tell Tell I did the job, and I went through the things I did, and I started to understand like, oh, that wasn't normal, and it's not normal for me to be doing stuff like that either.
And you know, It's interesting because your channel kind of started at the for what you do, like reviewing the life and the lifestyle of special operations.
You started it at the perfect time because it used to.
Just be seals we talked about, Yeah, you know that because they were the most public facing I think, And now we're seeing, you know, we have plenty to talk about, you know, whether it's with Tim Kennedy or.
People like him.
You have too much to talk about in.
And then we have Matt and Matt's situation. As soon as I started, I didn't dive into it for the first couple of days because I I was like, there's so much like smoke out there. I don't I didn't want to get involved. Nobody knows anything and everybody's suspected.
But then as soon as I read sort of what was going on, it reminded me of an article that Jack had written five years ago about Michael Frodi, who was an SMU guy, a SAP guy who started having delusions and you know it ended up taking his own life.
Yeah, And the problem is is that.
You only know you're saying if you're asking yourself if you're crazy, right, Like, when.
You know everything is fact there's no breaks.
Yep. Well, and we're the topic. We're the type of guys that performed at such a high level that we we always think we're right, you know, not that we are, but like we always think we're sort of the most intelligent guy in the room. Like I could be guilty of it too, And I'm not that smart. I'm really not. I'll get around like really smart people and then like get drawn like my Air Force PJ buddies, and then like get drawn back real quick and yeah, you're you're not smart.
I want to express a political opinion that i'm at and then somebody brace it down like they have a background in.
Economics and like, well you're wrong, and I'm like shit.
Yeah, yeah, That's why I stay out of the political arena. I'm just like I'm gonna say some shit that like somebody is gonna do that exact thing, Like I'm gonna like an idiot. I'm going to talk about strictly things. I'm a subject matter expert in yeah, and that's what I do. And also I'm the same way with my content where I do do current events content if it's related to s stuff, but I don't I'm always twenty four to forty eight hours late of everybody else's content.
If you go back and watch my content, I'm always sort of the last one to weigh in, and I do it for that reason. I'm like I it's like always the first story is always almost wrong, and it's like almost always. Like the Mic Glover situation, I covered that. I was the last person into that, and I was the first one to say, Hey, let's pump the brakes right.
Maybe this isn't what it looks like. But had I just been the same way as everybody that was like, oh, here's a plury support, this guy's a domestic abuser, let me do a video, right, I would have got egg on my face too. So that's that's what I try to do, is just I'm always trying to take a tactical pause and sort of let things unfold a little bit before I put myself out there. For self preservation is a lot of it.
Speaking of that, there's like to sort of like preface a bit of this conversation. There's a question that I like to throw to you, Nate and Dave, also based on you know, I with all this stuff going on in the in the vet bros. Cinematic universe right now. You know, we've all been getting a lot of text
messages from friends like what's going on. Yeah, And I had a phone call with an old ranger buddy guy I go way back with, you know, twenty some odd years ago and at this point, and you know, he was asking me about some of this stuff, and I was like, we listen, all that's bullshit. Don't worry about it. It's not true, you know. And he was a little
bit relieved, you know, I think to hear that. But he was also like, Jack, do you ever feel like responsible to use your platform to like correct the record and tell people what.
You know that it's bullshit?
And I was like, oh damn, dude, you had to put me on the spot like that, because I also I'm very allergic to the melodrama. I like, I think it's really silly. And I've been out of the Army fifteen years at this point. It's like, that's like, right, that chapter of my life is kind of closed.
Right, Yeah, I'm twelve months out, So for me, it's like I'm like all my buddies are still teams, right, Yeah, I'm kind of like still in it.
Oh, yeah, yeah, I know, I know.
But so the question I want to ask to you two guys and we to discuss is like, do you think that our responsibility special Ops veterans is to stay out of the mellow drama, not get involved, stay above it, or is there a responsibility at a certain point on certain topics to come forward and say.
I know this isn't true.
No, that's I mean, that's a great question. And I don't know, Dave, if you want me to go.
First, yeah, go ahead, brother.
So here's the deal. It's one of those things of like, I didn't get involved in any of this until the Mic Glover drama, and then it looked bad to me, and he was at Green Beret and I didn't agree with the way it looked, and I wanted to help a dude that I thought was a good dude, and I didn't believe the story. Turns out I was right. I've been riding about almost everything, not going to toot my horn on all these stories, but it turns out
I was right. So I felt good about that. But at the same time, I have used my platform mainly to defend people. Right when Eric Deming came out and did his stuff with Jocko. I did an episode following that I didn't. I actually of you guys credit for being the only ones that like questioned some of the shit he was saying, because everybody else just was like, hey, man, tell us, tell us this all this shit. So I was the first one to sort of like, hey, let's
let's diagnose this. And I defended Jocko. I defend I just depended Andy Stump the other day. So people are like, you always attacking Navy seals. I'm not like I'm always defending other veterans. But the whole Tim Kennedy situation has flipped that on its head for me, and I think one, he's a Green Beret. Two it was the Valor Awards. The lying about the Valor Awards is what did it
for me. That's because I wasn't gonna get involved. Here's the thing, you know, I haven't told anybody this in the entire Tim Kennedy drama, but I like aaron stuff on your guys's channel that I've never said. Right, here's some backstory to the viewers. Okay, I was in business negotiations with sheep Dog Response to become their Pacific Northwest
farms instructor partner our companies together. When this shit happened, when Tim Kennedy was exposed by the Anti Hero podcast, everybody who said to me, you're just in this for the money, for the four hundred dollars a YouTube video, right, No, I gave up a massive, massive financial situation out of integrity from a Green Beret who obviously to me had been committing shit tons of stolen valor that I didn't
want to get involved with anymore. All right, So that's to me, I guess, was like the breakpoint to where I was like, I have I feel like a moral responsibility because, like Jack said, because we have these platforms, and none of my buddies, none of my Green Berets have these platforms. If they're pissed off about Tim Kennedy committing stolen valor, they can't them saying anything's not going
to do anything, right. But because we have these platforms, do I have a responsibility to the regiment, to my fellow Green Berets, to all the veterans who came before me, who earned valor awards and died in the process getting their hearts. I decided in this case, I do have a moral responsibility to use my platform in a way I thought was appropriate to uphold the integrity of the Special Forces regimen. So what I don't want to do going forward is be the guy that's like inserting in
myself into all the fucking drama in the Vetro circle. Right, It's easy to do. But yeah, so that's my answer. Jack is like, this was a very like sensitive personal one to me and that's why I got involved. But again, I did it out of integrity. Man, Like I tell people, I'm like, you know, what had been the smart thing
for me to do. The smart thing for me to do financially would be to come out and defend Tim Kennedy and gut the anti hero podcast credibility and use my platform as the integrity guy to back him, and then find myself into that Tim Kennedy Vetro monetary circle.
But I didn't do that, right because again, to me, you cannot lie about having valor wards and purple hearts, because all of the people that we served with that came before us, that died earning them, it's just a slap in the face to them that I just I wasn't willing to do it. And I said from the very start, even the Anti Hero podcast. I really didn't care about their episode. I didn't care about the book,
I didn't care about the war stories. It was the trigger for me was Tim Kennedy's Facebook post that said I have received valor awards for every combat deployment I have been on. When I saw that and I knew he didn't, That's when I said, now I'm involved in this situation. Sorry, that's long winded.
But before I give my answer, why don't you go ahead and do the copy track and then I'll.
Sure thank you for bearing with us. Folks. I got a shout out for another one of.
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Do you know why I really like using Mando outside of no I mean outside of how effective it is, because every time I use it. I like laugh and think about Star Wars because Mando makes me think a way like an SF guy would talk about if they were like embedded with Mandalorians, like training them, like doing fit for Mandalorence. Maybe hey, the Mando's they got some questions for us. And also Mando Caloresian like Lando's brother
who had an excellent smelling drundle. But yeah, so to to piggyback off what you said, like I don't like the drama, Like I didn't say. I watched some of the stuff going on with the mic glovers and tried to stay up on what the latest reporting was, But I don't like the VET drama.
I don't like vets tearing down other vets.
I also, though, do not think that pointing out veterans lies about their service, even if it's not about valor awards, but pointing out their lies, I don't think that's tearing down other vets. I think that's keeping vets in check because if we don't do it, we who have insider knowledge and know when somebody says they pack a rucksack with fifty grenades, that's not a thing.
You know that you civilians aren't gonna know.
And so for me, it's not so much about who did what to whom.
Or.
You know, stuff that's going on in their person lives or anything like that, because I want to see vets succeed, you know, whether whether it's with a coffee company, a podcast, a T shirt company, I don't care.
You hit them like, go negative, right, And it also seems very caddy, very catty, you know.
Yeah, very caddy, and and I want to see veterans succeed, but I also want to I want them to tell.
I want people to tell the truth.
And for us, you know, when it comes to stuff like this, for people in the Tellivision community, it comes to people like Wayne Simmons.
You know, we're the only people who actually know.
And if we try to play the whole decorum thing and go, well, I know he's full of shit, but I'm not going to say anything, then what you're doing is you were allowing these people to go out there and make a bad name in our name, you know, a bad name for.
Us to caveate off that. So I waited in on the Sean Ryan episode and everybody's you're attacking Sean. I didn't attack Sean. I did the episode about why I thought that email was stupid and why I thought that the dude was suffering from psychosis. Well, they were freaking out about this being like some China New war thing. So my point was and the reason why I felt like I'm going to interject on this is why, like you just said, because I know better. How do I
know better? Because this is a special Active Duty Special Forces eighteen zulu, I intimately know what access to information eight e eight eighteen zulu on an ODA has and it's not Bob Lazar Element one fifteen anti gravitational propulsion systems. Right, Sorry, you know that Zach knows that random Actually.
My team sergeant knew everything, so I don't really.
Know, but you know my point, like the actual access, well, oh well he had a ts SCI so everybody it was in the eighteen course, Like that'll give you anything. And then also he goes into the second section where he talks about the strike the strike targeting war crimes. Right I started, I'm like, I was in Afghanistan in twenty eighteen. I did a lot of strike targeting and
our missions. I know how I think I told the story on our podcast about how we had to do ad mission back to back nights because the two star was asleep and wouldn't sign off on blowing up one building, right, that was full of what sixteen pounds of hm E, I know how hard it is to strike one building, and you're gonna tell me there was some two star in the siege just sod off jock with fifty people watching. That's like, blow up, blow it all.
Up, kill right, kill everybody, Kill everybody.
So the military is my point of Like I read that and go, I know better. Civilians don't know better. Nobody knows bet. They just think this is crazy. But guys like us are like, reread that and they're like, this is fucking dumb. So we do have a responsibility to be like this is dumb. Here's the reason why.
And I think that's like, I think that's totally fair, the idea to take somebody's because, like I said, there are two articles out there that if you guys want.
To understand how bad this gets.
Read Jack's article was in Yahoo News on Michael frodi uh and you know what he went through. And then there's another article in the New York Times about the Marine artillery unit that was in Syria and launched more artillery than I think anybody has since World War Two, maybe even before then. And these guys were coming back and seeing apparitions, seeing demons that the last the blast injuries to them, it had serious effects.
And so so for me, like looking at.
Somebody who is a really tragic story and then and then sort of like building conspiracy off of his own delusions, is just.
It's not right. I love that you brought that up. I was just having a conversation with jameson Travels right before I came on this podcast about how that's the story. The nineteen year g WATT veteran has been fucked up in combat, who's got PTSD, who suffers a psychotic break and doesn't have any fucking support and doesn't have the
mental health support that he needs. That's the story, not that fucking Chinese drone, you know, right, So it's it's it's a it's discrediting the guys you're talking about who have had these issues, right, and and the real the real story here is how fucked up all these g WAT veterans are and how the military that should be the story in the news. Sean Ryan's podcast about aliens.
And shit like that.
Yeah, it's you know, and it's still a serious problem because I just talked to a buddy whose daughter is dating an active duty guy and he's conventional, but he's been in a lot of combat and he's having some serious issues with post traumatic stress and he will not go seek help because the military, the military, the military is still punishing people for it.
The military is still you know, they are still like booting people out for it.
I just I do you guys know who? Ben Pappus is one of the one of the commanders that stood up Marsk. He's on a podcast with me on the War Room sometimes. Awesome dude. But we were talking about the other other day. The question got asked like, if you are suffering PTSD, should you seek help? Will you
be punished? And then he said like, you'll never be punished, YadA, YadA, And I had to stop him as an NCO and say, well, wait, yeah, as long as you report this through the the precise correct channels and do it in the appropriate way, not through don't go to your company commander and say I'm suffering from PTSD or drug use. No, you can't do that. You like the military has these very strict linear paths
of doing this to where you can't be punished. But if you slip up and do this the wrong way and tell the wrong person, you are one hundred percent right the military. I've watched dudes that have self reported in my unit that I am friends with get fried. Yeah fried for self reporting. Yeah, so, I mean you're right, there's huge, huge, there's a huge stigma because that's the truth. Like that that can still happen to dudes if they don't do it the right way. Yeah, it's fucked up
if you think about it. I don't know if I personally not.
I know, no, no, no, you're fine.
The other thing I think that, you know, like people who don't know, like the whole when he mentioned his first car.
And oh yeah, yeah yeah.
And and you know, and then some people says, do some good O scent and they said, oh, well, like it wasn't his first car, like this is his like registration.
It's like understand how an isoprep works.
Sure, when you're a boot and you know, don't know anything, and you go in and you do your isoprep, you answer all the questions honestly, like you're like you're calling your parents hand, you're calling your parents saying.
Hey, what was the first street we lived on?
Right?
Right?
Because you don't remember.
But the thing is is that you don't remember, so you can't call your parents.
So if I would have been a if I would have been a POW in twenty eighteen days and somebody would have showed up and asked me for my isoprep or my keywords, I would have had no fucking clue.
What they were.
Yeah, exactly, because you're right, you fill them out and then like three, four or five years go by, Yeah, and you're like, you don't know what you put in there? Yeah, but yeah, that's a great point.
And so the thing is if you when you do them enough, you're like, what's the thing that stands out?
So it's like, who is your first girlfriend? Well, it's wonder woman, Like that's the first girl I had a question? I don't remember. It was Becky in the third grade. Can you guys explain what is okay? So the ISO prep?
Yeah, the ISO prep is a is a form that you fill out that you know has your fingerprints, has
your photo, probably now has DNA I don't know. But it also has a number of questions that if you are ever captured or if you are like looking for recovery, in order to validate who you are, or in order to validate that it's actually you asking for the pickup from the recovery people, they will use these very detailed questions on your ISO prep to verify that it's you that when they're to talking to or to when they go on target and you know, and bring out all
these people that you know, they'll they'll have you know, people's is of prep questions or whatever.
So it's used in recovery whatever, like pow. What's the idea behind it exactly?
You can kind of think of it like security questions for your bank if you're if you like, forget your password six security questions. That's kind of like that.
And the other problem is is that in today's you know, information environment, the Chinese, the Russian, they know where like any question that's on that I was so propped. They can figure out the same way the same way people on Twitter or x figured out what is vehicles were so a lot of times, like for fate for my first car, I used to put kit from night Rider because that's something that nobody else would know, but.
It's something that would always stick with me.
Right.
It doesn't have to be a true answer, it has to be the answer you know.
You can that you can remember when you need to. It doesn't matter what it is. Like you could ask, you know, what's your favorite car and the answer could be banana, right, but as long as you know the answer and there because for the audience of reference, Like, let's say Delta is coming to hostage rescue you like they have your isopet, yeah, like and they're gonna as they be like, here is a hostage who might be
six ten months later, beard disheveled. They're going to ask you those questions to figure out who you are.
And even and you know, and it can happen in other types of recovery situations where like, you know, you get separated from the unit or you know, you're out there doing whatever and you wander into a town and call them from a phone and you're saying, hey, this is so and so I need to recovery in this location and you know, and they're like, well, how do like, how do we know this is in some elaborate ambush
that we're sending people into. So they'll pull out your isoproup and then ask your questions to verify that this is really you.
On the phone yea or whatever.
Yeah, so you know, so there were things in that email that, like you say.
We know and we know why they you know, we know the deal.
But if you want to, if you want to lead people down a conspiracy road, you can because they don't know better.
That's the problem I have.
I was just gonna I was just gonna say that, you know, I was talking to Dave earlier about this, and I think you nailed it too in some of the videos you made, Nate, that that manifesto really only has one use, uh, and that is to give a little bit of insight into that person's mental state at that time, Right, and I think it clearly shows, as we all know, he was having a mental health crisis.
That manifesto should not be used as a valid source of information about aerospace technology, Chinese drones, war crimes in Afghanistans.
Know that that is not how we use.
I pardon the non clinical term, the ravings of a badman.
Yeah, you know this is that's not You do not go to a manifesto for that type.
Of information, right, And I don't know if you guys saw, but the police department right before we came on just
came out and released a little bit more information. Apparently he had like a ten page manifesto in his phone with more insane rantings and obviously all talking about how he's being followed by the FBI, the d like he was going on and on and on and on and how he was they were tracking him and he could see them and he was tracking their vehicles and all that and now and I don't necessarily trust the intelligence agencies, but like the FBI and everybody's come out and been like, look,
this guy wasn't on any watch list, Like nobody was targeting this dude. He was your typical like no criminal record, active duty Special Forces team sergeant, like nobody, none of us know who this guy is, so like which I kind of believe right like and based off his career, Like you don't make it to be an active duty team sergeant if you're out doing crazy shit and getting
arrested and doing all stuff like that. But that just kind of shows of like this huge manifesto of like like like again psychosis and think you're being tracked and think you're being monitored in this insane paranoia that's just
wasn't happening. And what really and that really pissed me off was the Sean Ryan Live not I don't know if you guys listened to it, not the not the episode, but he had they had like that Twitter live that they did that came out after like the episodes of Me and jameson Travels and everybody that was like, this
is fucking dumb, what are we doing here? And they brought on a bunch of former FBI agents, a bunch of Green berets, Navy seals, and everybody just talked about how this is obviously all true and this is a huge conspiracy and he's still alive and they're tracking him and he's trying to make it to Mexico and it's like, what are you guys fucking doing? None of you know any of this. Wait. First of all, even if this
conspiracy was true, nobody knows what's going on. But like, this is a lot of credible voices to tell the American public like, hey, don't trust what's going on on. You need to listen to this crazy shit. That was super disappointing.
See, there was another one then because I listened to one was it last night or the night before, I can't remember where.
There were a bunch of guys who.
Came on who had been kind of opposing what Sean had said, and they're like.
This was like a big circle jerk session of.
Okay, yeah, I didn't hear that one out and Nate.
That goes back to my earlier comment about like responsibility and you know where where does it lie? So I've never spoken about this publicly for some of the reasons I mentioned previously. But there are certain people I have not booked on this podcast and would not because I think there are credibility issues, And for sure one of them, to tell you the truth is Tim Kennedy. I had an advanced copy of his book. I could not make it past the back cover synopsis.
On you you were the only person that ever read it.
Well, I didn't mean it was just the back cover. I didn't make it through.
The back cover.
We read it and we were like that was enough for me.
I was like, this is this is a no for us, right And when a well known military podcast has a bunch of people like Tim Kennedy, this guy with the conspiracy theories about the cyber trucks and a bunch of other dubious military tales, uh and other weird Well.
I mean, let's let's call spade a spade, like I'll call it for you. We're talking about Sean Ryan, right, And let's be clear. And I said this before. I like Sean Ryan. I like his show, but I watch it for entertainment. I understand. The dude has on a bunch of wazoo fucking UFO alien like reptiles and Antarctica interviews, and he doesn't push back at all, and he lets him spew all their crazy shit. Tim Kennedy, That's fine,
it's entertainment. The problem is is when Sean Ryan decides that he's the bastion of truth for the information that's coming out about a serious domestic terrorist attack, that's when you have to stop and say, Okay, no, that's not what your show is. Okay, no, no, knock on your show again. I like it, but the guy you had on right like came on and peddled a bunch of
crazy bullshit. And and I also think then, and I told people this, this is why I don't beat sewn up for it, because it's like you have these type of people on your show all the time, and that's fine, but like, don't pretend to be something that you're not.
Yeah, I don't.
I don't know the guy personally. I don't have any problem with him personally.
No, I think I think again, I like him, Like I'm not beating him up. I like his show.
I'm glad he's this.
He's as successful as he is, you know, like I love I love to see veterans succeed. But but you're right, But it's but it's weird because he he he has.
This fine line. You know, he has Trump on.
He does have people on who have very real things to say.
It goes back and forth. There's some really great, credible uh sources on there and some great interviews, and then again you'll have the guy who said he was a janitor in Antarctica where there was reptile alien people right right.
Like my favorite was the guy who didn't know if he was in the Special Activities Directorate or Special Activities Division. I was like, that's like saying, like you're you're in the Ranger regiment, but you don't know if it's a regiment or a brigade.
Like I'm not sure if I was in Ranger Batter or r RC, but.
I'm not as you as you put it, Nate. I mean, what are we doing here?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, exactly what are we doing? Yeah? Again, I want to cave out for the viewers before they freak out. I like Sean Ryan Show, I'm not beating him up. I'm just saying, come on, well they can.
There's there's a pile on effect and there are a lot of people out there who really enjoy all the
melodrama and you know, picking a side and fighting. And the reason why I think it's rather silly when you zoom back from all of it is that, like end of the day, like none of these people arguing on the internet, they don't give a shit about your life or you know, your family, and they don't care about me or you know what I have going on, So you have to like take the comments section should be taken with a grain of salt.
That was a learning experience for me over the last twelve months. Jack. I started because I did you know, I was an actual I was an actual, silent professional. I didn't have any social media. I did my job, Like I started these social media channels when I retired, and the first couple of months I was in the comment section maybe like like he like arguing, you know what I mean? And over time I had one one
of my creator buddies that sort of mentored me. I was talking to him about it, and he gave me this quote that's changed my whole perspective ever since. He said, every time you see a comment that pisses you off, I want you to remember fifty percent of Americans read at below an eighth grade comprehension level. And I went, that's the people in the comments. There's no point what am I I'll still, like I say slights back and forth. You know, somebody like tries to say some suit super
insulting stuff. I'll do some witty comebacks. But yeah, like the comment section, you're right, it is a deranged like we've.
We've had people from the same show in comments in our comment sections, both calling us.
Russian like.
Asians and like you and Ukrainian like trolls like.
Like because we tried to both because.
We tried to present like a nuanced view of a situation.
Or you'll have like what one interview we do where they're calling us left wing lunatics and another where they're calling us right wing propagandas it's.
Like, yeah, mega propaganda.
It's like it's like kind of we can be whatever you want us to be, you know, whatever your agenda is.
Well, what did you get?
Sorry, David, I was just gonna ask you, like, what kind of feedback did you get from your review of the Eric Deming claims, Oh.
That's interesting. I don't know if I should. I'll get into this that that didn't stop with that video. I I've talked to Eric personally for a couple hours, one on one. I'll get into that in a second if you guys want to. Yeah, But initially it was really kind of a fifty to fifty man, Like a lot of people wanted Jocko to be a war criminal, which was kind of shocking to me because he isn't like a a Tim Kennedy personality where it's like look at me,
look at me. He seems like a very I like his content, like a very leadership like, build up self accountability type of guy. So it was kind of surprising to me when I came out and defended him, how many people were angry with me for not calling him a war criminal, right, which was weird, but it was a real fifty to fifty split. Just for my initial coverage of that, And again I did a I did a full hour long video I used your guys this episode. Yeah, I went through the whole thing, and I just I
just called balls and strikes, right. I said, these are things that sound really credible my experience of doing this, these are things that don't sound credible. Since then, I talked to Eric one on one, and I don't think Eric's a bad guy, right, And I pressed him very hard on the exact same things I pressed him on, like one of the things where he says he was getting guys killed in Ramadi, And I said, over and over again, Eric, tell me how he was getting guys
killed in Ramadi. They were doing daytime rates. Yeah, so was I in vso man, right, tell me how he was getting people killed. Oh, well, the martial arts gym.
Right.
And it was like and we did this loop back to back to back, and we kind of did it, and I was like, maybe he's right, maybe he's not. After that, I had two of the guys from the team in Ramadi reach out to me. Unhonestly, they didn't want anything to do with it. But I'll tell you from the emails, it's very credible, Like you know when you are talking to someone incredible in an email where
they they've got names, unit names, all that. And they talked about Mike Lee's funeral, right, they were like, we were at Mike Lee's funeral. No one at that funeral said anything about Jocko getting people killed. Nobody at that at that funeral said anything about Jocko being a coward. They were objective. They were like, look, there was some dumb shit Jocko was doing. This, was this, this and this. So it was a pretty fair back and forth. But the and I didn't want to do it. I'm like,
I'm and and again. I also told Eric, I said, Eric, if you can bring me eye witnesses, they don't have to come on the show. They just have to reach out to me. And I just have to find them credible to anything anything firsthand, any of the claims you've made.
A single eyewitness, I will platform you. I haven't heard back from him in two and a half months, so I will just say maybe he doesn't want to get involved, but he came out of doing a lot of accusations, and when I gave him the opportunity to bring receipts, he went silently. So again that's that was long winded. But yeah, I think now that it's kind of died out, people are back to you know, sort of like Jocko
seems like a normal dude. And I'm not excusing and saying Jocko's like some prince I've heard, like the shit in Ramadi sounds pretty sketchy. Yeah, he was probably doing some dumb fucking shit, I'll say that, But but is he this war criminal that was telling Chris Kyle to go kill civilians? I don't know, man, Yeah, that's a tough sell for me.
You're you're you're right that when you know, accusations of murder uh or negligence that's killing.
Soldiers are made.
That does require evidence, uh, you know, extraordinary evidence in some cases.
So I get where you're coming from.
Well, and the thing is is that like in this community, we've all been divorced, so we all know like what it's like to love somebody and what it's like to not love them, and and and then like see like see how our truth is very much informed. Our truth about them is very much informed by our feelings about them and how those change over time.
And like for me, I felt that.
Eric had probably a legitimate CROs right put the whole CQC thing. Yes, it did sound as though there were some shenanigans that went on.
With that, and from what and from what I've heard, credibility wise, like Jocko was banned from any contracts going forward with the Navy. Like those I agree, I called balls and strikes right and stuff sound incredible. But but to me, that's where the problem then became exactly like, oh, he seems like he's so emotionally invested in the slights against him exactly. Maybe it's maybe.
That's what I thought too, And that's why when he was on the show and started saying amazing, it's like, okay, like we need to like did.
You hear this firsthand?
Yea, some of these accusations, because like we don't our show is about giving people a platform, and a lot of times we don't push back.
We don't question a lot of what. We don't have murder accusations every day either. Yeah.
Well, but but you guys did push back on that. I remember Day pushed back on that, like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, you need to tell us did you see this firsthand or did you hear it? And because that's important, right, Like, if you're gonna if you're gonna say these things in public, there's gotta be some context to it, right.
And that's what it felt like to me, is that he had he had a legitimate thing about the CQC stuff, and then that was like then he took that and.
Not smeared it.
Because I don't think that Eric is dishonest or like or whatever, but I do feel like he has a bit of an aster grind and maybe maybe kind of gets a little target fixated in the sense of and I think he's a lovely guy. I think he's a great guy.
Again.
Yeah, for us talking to him one on one, he seemed like it. He seemed like an awesome dude, super fucking nice dude. I just personally when I tried to press him beyond the third hand stories, right, tell me how you know this beyond like rumor mill of the seal teams, Right, I could never get anything beyond of like it's known in the community, right, Yeah, man, But like there's a lot of things there are rumors in the kit.
The thing is you will believe, like you'll believe things about people that you don't like based on past information that you wouldn't go about your best friend.
Right.
So it really a lot of times when you're hearing these rumors.
About people, the context is really important in terms of like what do you think?
What do you already think about this person?
Well, and I also try to tell people and I'm sure Jack and I don't know how bet it's the way and range about as well. But I'm like, do you guys got to understand, like the soft team rooms are fucking like mean girls in the most drama rumor mill bullshit you will ever see. Like the level of rumors and gossip that goes on in like the company
hallway would blow your fucking mind. Right, So it's like rumors and like this type of shit's not like oh so and so was like taking fucking ketymine while he was fucking on target and YadA, YadA, YadA, Like there's so much of that that like you got to take that with a grain of salt if it's the community knows this is true.
On that note, I'd like to ask you this thing about the community because I feel like a lot of the things that we've been talking about, a lot of the things you've been talking about, Jay, Brent Tucker, all those guys, there are things that are actually pretty well
known in the special operations community. Oh yeah, but I found that ten years ago, twelve years ago, fifteen years ago when I would talk to people about, hey man, Marcus Latrell's story doesn't check out, like there's some things wrong there, or you know, Chris Kyle lied.
About some things. Right. People looked at me back then like I was crazy and.
You caveat that. Yeah, because that's the perfect one. Marcus Latreux, lone survivor in the eighteen Echo Course. I can't say I have to be careful about this, right because of where this information comes anyway, Let's just say in the eighteen Echo course before the movie came out, one of our biggest lessons learned in the eighteen Echo course about checking your radios and having crypto in your radios came from that ambition and the failures of that and the
backside of that. And because there's someone potentially over there that was involved in that, that knows that that's what's happened. That was before the movie, that was before the book. It was just known. It was part of the course we taught it as a learning lesson about how dumb this was and how this whole story was bullshit. Right, So like to your point, that was just that was just common knowledge, right, that was fifteen years ago, that that was common Yeah, twelve years ago now that was
common common knowledge. So to your point, like, yeah, and Chris Kyle, right, like all of these things, Rob O'Neil is a great one as well. I don't want to knock the dude, but it was like when that came out, like I had Delta Force buddies who were like, yeah, fucking that didn't happen. Yeah, that was like immediately right now he didn't kill him. Yeah, and you're just like, oh, okay, right, but yeah, and then you just move on with your life because you're active duty and you don't give a
shit nobody and you're not talking about it. Yes, the vast majority of these things are just like they're just common knowledge.
Yeah, why do you think that it's sort of all It's not not only is it all coming out? I mean journalists and other people wrote about this stuff ten years ago. But why do you think it's hitting so hard right now? And it seems like people are are And I got to answer, yeah, they're they're ready to hear it. I mean, is it because the wars are over? I mean, what do you think.
It's No, I think it's societal. I think twenty twenty four, twenty twenty five is where we are in a moment of truth telling and authenticity in everything in society. You look across the board, no matter what it's been over the last years, it's like the Epstein shit, the Ditty shit. It's like all lies are being Kat Williams came out and said it a year ago, all lies will be exposed. In twenty twenty four, everybody thought he was crazy and Kat.
Williams was exposed as had never even been a marine.
Right. So, but my point is, I just think we are in an era of extreme authenticity that people for whatever reason, and Tim Kennedy like the list goes on of just people being exposed out of nowhere. I don't think it's specifically a g I think I think the war ending does have a big part of it. Because people are bored, right, It's like we don't have anything to do, so let's let's talk about drama because there's
no war to talk about. I do think there is a portion of that on top of just the overarching society being like thirsty for truth because we've kind of been living in a disinformation whether I'm not saying like right wing left wing, but just in general, so many people like kind of being like we're just been lied to for so long about everything that people are I don't want to say waking up, but it feels like we're kind of in like, yeah, waking up the time, right. Yeah,
it just kind of feels like that. And I think that that's just part of the way it's going right now, is like people are looking for truth and they're analyzing things a lot closer than we used to. I guess, so that'd be.
That's no, that's a great answer. Yeah. I hadn't even thought of it that way.
So, I, uh, because people send me this stuff, I did watch, uh, well, I watched your video this afternoon, but I also I think last night I watched Brent Tucker and his anti hero podcast. We've had Brent on the show before, h Yeah, with with Tim's teammates, and I have to say that. You know, my my take on the whole thing is like, Okay, if he's making up all these stories, that's bad for a whole series of moral reasons, historical, factual veracity.
There's all sorts of reasons why that's wrong.
But at the end of the day, like I kind of just feel sorry for that person that they're so insecure they're making that stuff up. But you know what, what what kind of asked me up watching Brent's interview with those guys was the way Tim raked his boys over the coals and his book unnecessarily and unjust.
All the time.
And that's that's a really low thing to do, you know, especially over something that's not true.
Yeah, I mean even if it were, but it wasn't true. And so where where does that come? Where does that need to not only prompt on self up with lies?
Well, I gonna tell you where it came from. Do we want to call fucking call spatus babe? Sure, be real, I'll call Spatus babe, be real. Tim Kennedy. Tim Kennedy did what two years on an ODA? He's got two deployments. I know, I've got his official military records. I know I've had him the entire time. That's how I put
all this content out. He's got two deployments. He became a Green Beret, went to Iraq in two thousand and six as part of a sift team that he wasn't so far to qualified for, which means he wouldn't have been allowed to go on any of the fucking missions to begin with. So he didn't do jack shit in that deployment. And then his next deployment, he's a new E six, right, he goes to Afghanistan and he's an LENO for the checksoff which I can tell you this, where do you put your biggest piece of shit in
the company, the leno at Bath. Yeah, that's where you send him because nobody fucking wants him on a team. Like again, I'm just calling a spade of space, right, So he was an le and O for the checksoft working at Bath. Nobody wanted him, and he gets to go out. I'm finally on this one mission, right, which apparently he did a fine job. Like he was just a young new dude on a first kind of like the first time out in Afghanistan. No big deal, that's
actually I'm not criticizing that. He obviously then writes an entire book about how he's like the hero of the entire story. That's that's complete bullshit, But that's like his one mission. So he in combat, like he talks about all these people he killed. I if I had to put like gun to my kid's head, has Tim Kennedy ever killed a human being?
Before?
I would say no, I would say absolutely fucking not. He's never. He hasn't killed nimoy, that would be my guess. So what I mean by that is he's a dude that did two years on the teams. He had two non eventful combat deployments where he barely did anything, and then he went National Garden and got out. Then he
decided he needed to be a war hero. And so he then decides he's so insecure about not having done much, he builds this giant war hero persona where he writes all these books and makes up all these valor awards. That's I think the true story of Tim Kennedy's military. So you think I haven't wanted to beat him up, but I think that's reality because why else would you do this? You aren't that guy bro, Like you just weren't that guy.
So you think that him throwing his boys under the bus like that is basically him putting up a smoke screen, like look at all these pieces of shit on the real hero.
I think it's an insecurity thing. Like you said, I think he looked around like, because I'm not saying I'm not insecure. I'm secured my service had a great career. But I look at some of my teammates that got I have oda teammates that have silver stars, and I look at them and in my own head, I'm like, and I have valor awards in combat wards a lot
more than most people. But I still look at those guys and I'm like, fuck, I didn't do I didn't do shit right, right, And I think what he did is he really didn't do shit, and that he's also insane level egomaniac, narcissist. Right. I don't think he gives a fuck about his teammates. I don't think he cares about anybody but himself. So yes, I think he decided I'm going to put every because this is what a lot of people do. Right, to feel better about myself,
I put others down. That's not a rare thing in society. That's a very normal human behavior, and I think that's what he decided to do. In an era of two thousand and eight to two thousand and nine twenty ten, social media wasn't a big thing, right, you like what people were putting things on the Internet not thinking about them being there were.
A lot of soft guys on social media at that time at all.
That's my point. So I think he just he figured he could say the shit because there was no soft guys on social media and he could just get away with it. And here's the thing he did. Yeah, he got away with it for a long fucking time. And I think once you start lying like that, you don't get caught in two thousand and eight, you don't get
caught in two thousand and nine. You're going on Joe Rogan, You're going like, ten years later, you haven't been caught and no one's called you out at that point, like you believe your own fucking story. But yeah, so that
that would be my guest. Jack. I think it's I think it's utter insecure, which I know people are like so crazy, like how is a fucking Green Bray UFC fighter This insanely insecure, but that doesn't matter for men, right, Like, as men again, you can look at your teammates, who are all these grizzled, fucking combat veterans that did all this fucking badass stuff and you didn't, And that internalizes as I have to get out and make myself feel
like I was that guy. And I think that's what it is for him.
Especially for the types of guys that go into special operations, they are very I think a lot of us are very sort of achievement driven, right, we're as we always want to conquer that next that next challenge, whatever it is. And and for people who don't, this is the thought process because and I'll say this as a peacetime ranger, right, this is the thought process that probably everybody goes through.
Man, I really want to go to combat. I really want to go well, I really want to be a ranger. Okay, all right, I really want to go to combat.
And then like during my time, it didn't happen, but then it goes.
Then you finally go to combat and you're like, well, I really want to get a firefight.
You know, if you did a combat, you get a firefight, and then you get in a firefight. You're like, I don't think I killed somebody, Like I really want to kill somebody. And then you kill somebody, it's like, well it's just one, like maybe that was lucky.
And and then and.
Then it's like, oh, I really like to get you know, an art com with a V device or a Bronze Star with V device.
It's like, oh I got a broad Star with a VD. Well, you know, I don't have.
A Solar Star or I don't have a purple heart, Like there's always something more to look.
At that Dave, you call it, you just called me out because that was me. That was me then chasing like moving my family to Japan to try to get on the next rotation because my buddy former eighteen Delta was the team sergeant go into the next Afghanistan rotation to skipswick like appalling my hire like family to do that just to like, oh I got to get that next one. I get to get that next one. So I dealt with that myself, like internally, so one hundred percent.
And there is that I got to the point where I was just the main element leader literally running combat operations. But you're still like, well, I need to get a little bit higher than that, right, Like, you're right, like I need to get an even bigger near ambush and right like, well my my my buddy next to me's got a silver star and I only have an RCMB, so now I need to b SMB. Right. So that's a really very rare, a very real thing.
And the thing is, there's no real top unless you were like in Delta and got a Medal of Honor with like.
Eight right hearts.
Like that's the only thing because like, I have friends who won valor awards are not purple hearts, and they were confessional, And every time we talk about something practically, they'll they'll say, well, you know, I was never in soft, and I'm like, yes, like we've known each other for years. I know you were never a soft, but you did real Please stop sing everything with I was never in soft. I know it's right, and I still admire like everything you.
Did, you know, yeah, oh yeah for sure. So yeah, no, I was just gonna say, and man, you want to talk, let me do it on a side real quick, because I always love to shout out regular infantry and marines because I don't think they get enough credit for the crazy shit they went through in g Watt, one of my buddies who is a Delta Force legend. He was just inducted into the Oregon Military Hall of Fame. On every like high profile mission that there was in the
first fifteen years of the war. He told a story at his induction ceremony because he was also part of the Delta Force group that went in to save the Marines in Fallujah that were getting basically overrun out of that building where they had to bring the tanks in. If you've heard Cody Alfred's story, he was one of the Delta Fortes. He was the Delta Force medic in that story that Cody Alford actually.
Didn't Hallama get a DSc for that, I believe, so yeah, But anyway, he told that.
He told that story at his induction Hall of Fame induction. That was the war story he decided to tell as the craziest combat that he had ever seen and ever been in in his entire career with regular Fallujah Marines. Right, that was the craziest thing one of the most decorated Delta Force operators had ever been in. So you hear that and you're like, dude, these fucking eighteen nineteen year
old kids. And this was in two thousand and three and two thousand and six, when like we didn't know about CQB, we didn't know shit about urban combat like that. We learned everything that we know now from that shit. And these just eighteen and nineteen year old kids like went in and did that. It blows anything I did in combat so far out of the water that I always looked at those guys in admiration. So when I hear guys be like, oh, I was just a three
eleven marine, and You're like, that's in fallusion. Yeah right, that's not that's not just a bro. That's like, shit, well beyond I ever did when and when you were nineteen.
Yeah, it's to say, like even like the Nasty Guard, right, like you know, before the ge Wat, it was the Nasty Guard. And then you see these kids, these you know Arkansas kids out in the heat in Solder City, like going Winchester in their you know strikers or their Bradley's or whatever in Solder City and getting their A cogs shut off their rifles. It's like, yeah, there's no separation anymore.
Like Yeah, when I tell people, I'm like, hey, man, like and that that blowout near Ambush I was in where my entire team got beall awards from silver Star down. Yeah, I got fucking I got like breakfast the chow hal that morning when I got off the plane at CAF right, right, Like that's a whole different war to be working inn than that early phase of the world. Like I'm not, I don't tell any wise about that, Yeah, I mean just different.
Yeah, I always say that the Soft Mission it was tough, it was dangerous, but it was also pretty guccy for the most part.
Oh yeah, especially especially in the two thousand once we got out of the s O and we went back to the fobs and just operated just doing like halves and gabs out of the fobs. Like, that's a very different, very different war than the first half.
It's not.
Yeah, no, no, yeah, So so what do you think because when it comes, you know, like we see so I'm gonna talk about stolen valor, but not with the capital S, capital V like the federal law of stolen valor, but actually just the idea of stolen valor about lying about.
There and there is there is a difference, right, Like if if you want to tell the audience, like what real stolen valor means?
Valor is a federal crime and a crime in most states I think too. But for the federal statute, in fact, they had to change it.
They had like they had to.
Narrow it down because it did impede on First Amendment rights. But what it is down to now is I I think it was twenty thirteen, is if you lie about purple hearts or valor awards or combat uh car combat actually all the ib ch U c abs and uh what's the other on.
CMB.
So if you lie about those those very narrow things valor awards, purple hearts or combat awards is a federal crime.
Well, but there's even a bigger caveat for specific monetary.
Monetary game for monetary game.
Correct, So somebody walking around saying that they were Delta Force and you know, did all these that's not that's not stolen valor as.
It's labeled as a crime.
We might say it's stolen valor, but but we have to say that it's it's like.
A small S small V stolen valor.
It's not actually like like Tim's entire book, that's a small S small V. Right, like he he made up a bunch of war stories. That's but if he's lying about I call it stolen valor. But I mean, well, he didn't lie about val words in the book that was on his Facebook page and over the place. But like I'm just giving your audience context, like a bunch of made up war stories, like Dave saying, that's not like official stolen ballot.
Right, So a lot of times when we say stolen valor, and I've changed my language a lot, and I rarely say stolen valor now, all like like Tim Waltz, Steve Slayton out of Arizona, the Republican candidate who got torpedoed for lying about being on these secret ops, Tim Waltz about his time in combat, Troy Nels, the Republican who was wearing CIB when all he was authorized was a C A B.
You know, things like.
This, and and again like this isn't political. We should call it out wherever we see.
It, especially with public officials, especially with public officials, Yes, sir, but but the thing is is.
That it so talking about storm dollar.
Like we have the guys in the mall wearing uniforms that they bought at the Army Navy trying to get you know, a starter.
The homeless guy in an army shirt, right, yep.
But what's really weird to me is when we see it inside the service, and we see it two different ways.
I think we see it with people.
Who you know, we're a fuel depot operator and say that you know they were an know three to eleven or that they were s or that they were this or that. Ye, And then we see it in our own right, we see it with like Tim Kennedy and Chris Kyle. There may be another personality out there making the rounds talking about acting his way through Afghan checkpoints, which we all know is not something.
That one is.
Yeah, there's there's somebody on my radar too. I'm not gonna say, but yeah, there's a few more that there's some potential too.
And so you know, I'm curious what you think and both of you, really, where do you are these people just habitual liars and at any point along the way if they hadn't been in the military, where they lie and say they're a military or are they people who are unimpressed by what they did, even if they did great things and always want it to be a little bit more.
Oh, I mean, yeah, I guess I'll take that. I think for one, I want to say what let me say what's worse? Okay, because I think I want people to know this. What's worse? A is a Green Beret lying about having valor awards worse than a homeless guy on the street wearing an armyp T shirt. Kami, Yes, eight million, thousand times percent. Tim Kennedy's stolen valor to me is ten thousand times worse than the marine cook
who said that he was an infantryman. Why, well, because the expectations are a thousand times higher on you for your character, right, Okay, So that's that's where I want to come from from there. Why they do it? Oh my god, that is we're getting it. We need to get a psychiatrist on that, because again, like especially in the soft ranks. Right and let me let me just talk about Rob O'Neil. Okay, as a example, I don't beat Rob O'Neil up because Rob O'Neil is a fucking
war hero. The dude has silver stars, not from that fucking operation. He is well known as a badass, motherfucking warfighter. However, Comma, we also have this other fucking side of the coin, where he very obviously didn't kill Osama bin Lauden and has written books and then made millions of dollars off of those fake stories. How do we get that psychologically?
I have no idea because I can't transplant myself into the brain of that, because I am so hyper careful myself about when I talk about these things to make sure that I don't delineate from the truth at all, that I can't comprehend about how these dudes can just blatantly lie to not only like the American people's faces, but like that's like, we know it's not true, and you're telling us to our faces. We're fucking dumb. So maybe Jack's got a better take that out of me psychologically,
But for me, I don't understand it. I wish I had a better answer for that, but I just I don't know.
Yeah, no, I don't think I have necessarily a good answer or a satisfying answer. I think, yeah, you're right, these people are driven by massive insecurities, and.
We've we've touched upon it a little bit.
I mean, there are a lot of insecurities and special operations. I mean we're oh yeah, We're always testing each other, testing ourselves. Am I good enough? You know the self talk that you mentioned, You know what? I live up to these guys. Am I as good as that guy over there. There's a lot of that, But most of of us have that inner dialogue of like, you know, this is what is real and this is what is not. And some folks, yeah, are just so insecure that they feel they need to do that.
It's sad for me.
I think it's sad, And I actually don't like the term I'm nitpicking stupid stuff. I don't like stolen valor as a term, because nobody can steal whatever you did, Nate, Like, those are your experiences.
Whatever Dave did.
The guy walking around the mall pretending he was a colonel in Delta Force is not taking anything away from the service of any real soldier.
I understand there are real concerns.
Some of these people are like defrauding women and it's terrible stuff. Yeah, sure, but I don't I don't like on a personal level. I don't get jazzed up about that so much. But you are right when it comes to guys within the ranks, the expectation of someone who is a ranger or a seal or a Green Beret is higher, and we expect that you're at least going to make an effort to tell an honest perspective if you decide to.
I do think let's let's be honest. Though, we got to talk about monetary game. Yes, it has been massively lucrative. Millions and millions and millions of dollars that have been made off of guys like Lattrelle and Kennedy and Rob O'Neil so and and Jocko. Not saying I'm not lumping Jocko in with them, but I'm saying there is millions and millions of dollars to be made in this arena, and I do think that we can't discredit that completely as well as a huge portion for some of these guys.
And the reason why I say that the Tim Kennedy debacco, I think is the best case of that because what he decided was when he got caught by the veteran community. Right when we all we saw the anti hero podcast. I put out all the times he's lied about the Valler Woods. He got the veteran community, the soft community. We all said, Okay, he's exposed, he decided to come up with the crazy rebuttals and like try to fight it, do the Lance Armstrong thing, so that he basically said,
I don't give a shit about the veteran community. I don't care about the soft community. I'm going to Playkate to the civilians who don't know better and try to hold on for dear life to that monetary section of my demographic. So I do think millions of dollars in fame I think is enticing right. So I think that does have a big part.
I agree.
And you know, we were kind of talking about this before the show. But when we see people and I'm going to talk about like Wayne Simmons, who was on Fox for a long time during the gy as a CIA, you know, expert former CIA who is never in the CIA.
You know, we talk about Malcolm Nance and a lot of like the lies, you know, the things that he said is getting him the positions, and you know, Tim that that somehow these people who are willing to go out there and say things that can be that can be disproven, but but by the time they catch that momentum, we're just like the people who can disprove it are just like little reedy voices, you know, like they're up there already.
And go to go to Tim Kennedy's Instagram post where he admitted last night that he doesn't have our words and purple hearts, and look at the comment section and look at the twenty thousand likes that are on that video. Yeah, like we we talked about me and the Anti Hero podcast.
My videos have done half a million views on Tim Kennedy. Yeah, I think that's that's baby numbers to compare to the average person that sees him on Fox News that has no fucking clue, right, no clue, and they're not going to right and they can, Like you said, these are just tiny little voices that like the community knows, the
veteran community knows, but like from large scale. Was just on Fox News three days ago talking about the Lisensburger thing, right, So it obviously it's not reaching like what you're talking about. Even with that, And this is the biggest most exposed case of a soft dude being a fraud that we've ever seen. And again he's doing fine, Like.
What do you what can you do?
Like the media, the media complex, you know, and right left, it doesn't matter they're not going to turn their back on the people that they invested in.
No, neither, and here's big let's call it more spades of spade, and neither is the Department of Defense or Special Forces Committment. Right Why because this dude has been an amazing fucking recruiting tool for the last fifteen years. UFC fighter Jason Born, Tim Kennedy, Green Beret. Yeah, they're they're not about to interject themselves into this ship. And now again, I think he's a liability now, and I
think they might realize that. I think we're going to find some things coming out of use in SoC here pretty soon. But to your guys' point, like they like the news media, the apparatus, the DoD like they don't give a shit about our quarrels and exposing stuff.
This is another thing that I wanted to bring up during this show when talking about responsibility.
Do we have a responsibility to speak out?
Do you think the commands have a responsibility to speak out at a certain point, like does it reach a level of let's call it stolen valor that there is a real responsibility for the command to come forward and say, you know, just factually this is what happened.
This is what happened. This is what happened.
Do you think it gets to that point or do you think it gets there?
And when does it get there?
Do they have a responsibility to yes? Will they know why? Because look at Marcus Latrell's story. He just came out on a podcast the other day talking about how the Navy wrote that book for him, sent him on a book tour, gave him all his lawyers, and then send him on his way to so that he could be the great recruiting tool tool for the US Navy for the next fifteen years. The Navy did that. Marcus said that, I'm not saying that I showed that in an episode
on podcast he did. I'm not knocking Marcus for that. I'm saying the Navy did that. So do I have any expectations that command is going to come out and do the right thing?
No?
Could they. The Sergeant major of the Army was just on the Jedburgh podcast. You're telling me you couldn't have the first Special Forces Command commander come on and talk about how we're going to look into the biggest fraud of a Green Beret that's ever existed of course they could. Will they. No, I don't think they're going to touch it with a ten foot pole. I think they're gonna
let him. I think it's it might be getting to the point now I will say this, Tim Kennedy did not come out and admit to all this stuff last night for no reason. Okay, he didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart. Let's leave it at that. We'll see how that plays out over the next week, a couple weeks. He's not a great it's not because he just decided had this moral epiphany that like, oh,
I should probably be honest. Now there's some reasons, so I do think at some point, when it becomes a massive liability to the Special Forces Regiment or the DoD you gotta do something right. But will they. I don't have a whole lot of confidence. I just don't. I've never and and maybe this is biased as an NCO, but I have just never had any faith in the General Officer Corps to do the right thing. I look at guys like General Millie, I look at guys like
General Austin, and I just don't. Man, Like, you haven't produced anything to tell me that you're going to do the right thing. Okay, So that's where I come from on that.
Yeah.
The other thing that was interesting or that is interesting to me and Jack and I were talking about this too, is that these people, like the people that we've talked about, who will go out there and blake me light in a world where people know the truth, in a world like you're not telling some girl in a bar where she has no way of fact checking you. You're not like behind the scenes telling producers the secret things that
you can't say. You're out there. You know people are are going to see through it.
Did you see my video this morning, Tim Kennedy? The the International Sports Hall of Fame induction was introduced as having a bronze star medal with valor in front of Arnold Schwarzenegger. So, like you just said, they like that is is in your face as it gets lies And in twenty nineteen, this wasn't even two thousand and nine.
You can always say, well, I don't know why they said this, Like, no, you gave them your bio to read.
That's your script, right, that's your script, you know? Yeah, of course, And I will say this because the more i've like I've unpackaged this with the Valor Awards statements. What Tim has done other than when he said it on his own Facebook page and he fucked up and he'd put it on his own website. Right, he has specifically done it on his own channels. But what he's been really good about because I showed thirty different times
this has happened. In interviews. He'll get the interviewer to introduce him as someone with a bronze star medal with Valor and he won't refute it. He won't acknowledge it. Yeah, And I've picked it apart and I've been very careful to see how he does it. He doesn't refute it, but he also want to, Like he doesn't acknowledge it, but he also doesn't say hey stop, you know what I mean? So he's very he's very he's not dumb, he's clever, right, but like it's caught up at.
The Yeah, Malcolm Nan says that he does the same thing where when he's shown on like a newscast or whatever, it'll say like naval intelligence officer or counter terrorism intelligence officerare.
It's never intelligence officer. He was a he was a sing guy in the Navy.
Right, and and the thing is like, if he's not saying it, is it his fault?
Well, I say yes, because like, here's the thing. If I came on your Guys' podcast and Jack introduced me as Silver Star recipient Nate Krnakia, and I just sat silently and let the fucking episode go on. No, that is me acknowledging that I have a fucking silver Star period, like it is my duty. And I would I would panic, I would like, oh my god, Jack, please no, like, well, whoa, whoa, whoa,
let's back this up. I do not have right. But no, when you're when you that video, I say, where he he's sitting there like his face getting talked to when it's like Tim Kennedy Valor Award or like Bronzar Medal with b device for Valor under fire and then he stands up and walks to the podium and gives his speech. No, so sorry, so that's a that's a no go.
So the the time to kind of cap off.
Like one of the things I think about these people who like make these things up and then get so much acclaim for it because they're out there, like a lot of them, some of them are running charitable foundations, right like.
But but these people, I think that there's an element.
I don't I don't want to call him narcissist because I'm not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but there has to be an element of narcissism.
There. Are you there, Nate, Yeah, I'm here. Can you guys hear me, We hear you.
We just can't see you.
I might. I might have lost my camera stand by one, Okay, I can I have to switch to the shitty cam for the end of this. Yeah.
So they these people, I think where we see the narcissism on display is they.
Are sorry, guys, we lost the good camera.
I got you.
They are far more successful in the public sphere than people who actually did the jobs they said they were doing, which just goes to show.
It speaks to a sort of corruption of the institutions as a whole, like this media complex and the special forces or I should just say military commands, the CIA in some instances that they're all sort of either turning a blind eye or not doing the right thing, or blatantly doing the wrong thing. That leads to these sorts of some of the worst grossest voices rising to the top.
Right, yes, no, And I've called I've called it kind of like the old guard purge. It's kind of like a purge of the old soft guard. A lot of these guys that they've been the face of the softcomming unity for ten fifteen years and they're being exposed. So the question is is, like what happens next. I think it's good, right, because I just had I would say, three hours ago, a group of dudes from the Q course who were in language school, who reached out to me.
They were like, I love your show, Like, hey, keep doing what you're doing. We love that you're exposing shithead green berets. We all look up to you. YadA, YadA, YadA. What that tells me is like we have, like we have the young generation still coming up, still coming through, and they're still looking up to guys, right, and the
guys that they're looking up to. If there are all these like shithead grifters like that, are that are writing books about carrying rucksacks full of fifty fucking grenades, right, like throwing grenades at women and children, that's the example
that we're setting for that next generation. No, I don't think we can do that and I think again, when you talk about having a responsibility to call these things out, I think that's where the responsibility it also falls is like, I'm not like Jay over at Greenbery Chronicles or Jake's wegg that are like hyper focused on developing the next generation. I don't have the time for it. But I still
try to do mentorship here and there. But I mean like, I'm also still trying to be a good representation for those dudes. And again, I know, I did a whole video about how not to look up to me. I'm not your role model, YadA, YadA, YadA, but as a whole, like the guys that are trying to go into the military, into soft combat, arms, infantry, whatever you're doing, I remember I looked up to those guys too, man, and it's just natural. So having good I've said this from the
start of my channel. Having good representations of what it means to be a soft soldier, I think is hyper important in this social media spage because everybody I get this comment all the time, you should be a silent professional, YadA, YadA, YadA. It's twenty twenty five, right, social media chat GPT. There is no more like while your active duties. Yeah, one
hundred percent. You should not be like, but to tell me as a veteran that that's in twenty twenty five, I can't talk about these things, right, like pound sand Man, Right, But again that that's kind of my take is, like we do kind of have a responsibility to shore up our own make sure our ship bags, because I think about it in the company or in the team room. If I get a ship bag on a team or in the company, we take care of that, right, we take care of that. Dude, he does not. He gets
kicked off the team, He gets sent to the arms room. Right, So why should it be any different when we get out in the veteran community. Why should we stop policing our own. That's kind of my take on it.
I guess, Yeah, where in your mind's eye, if we're to like skip forward a little bit, where do you see this going for Tim Kennedy? Like I think Brent is going to keep making podcasts of every chapter of Tim's book for the.
Yeah, he's only he's only two chapters, like the chapter book.
I mean, where where do you see it going? You know, over the long haul? For for Tim?
So I said for me, I said in this video, he admitted he doesn't have Voer and Combat awards for me. It's done. I've said in every single video that's all I care about. He admitted I was right that his whole Instagram post he acknowledges the things I put out in my video. He didn't say anything about. He wasn't talking about the anti here a podcast. He was talking about the dude that exposed him for lying about val
forwards and priple arts. That was my stuff. I hate the way he did it because I promise you guys, I was still holding out hope for Tim had he come out and said the truth. I do not have these Valor awards. I am sorry. I should not have misled people right and just took full ownership. I had a video already recorded that was going to say, I forgive Tim Kennedy and you should too, And I was going to tell the American people, look, I don't what he did isn't okay, but we can empathize with it.
He's this twenty three year old kid, green beret UFC fighter. He's getting paraded around front a sift company's by generals. He's going on Joe Rogan. He's making millions of dollars, Rifle Coffee Company five to eleven. The fame is intoxicating. He's on Fox News, everybody loves him. He gets introduced as having about our award. He lets it slide once, right, like we as men, we could understand as a twenty three year old man, how that could. Sure. I was
prepared to give him that benefit of the doubt. And his admitting to not having those valor and combat awards was I never said I had them, And it was just like bro I did a whole episode of the twenty five times that you had. Everybody's seen it, so for me, it's over. But to get into where it goes forward, yeah, I don't think. I don't think. I think Brent's a dog with a bum. I think until Tim Kennedy comes on that podcast, on the Anti Hero podcast and admits to all these things, I don't think
he lets it go. And that's his right, you know what I mean. He uncovered this, He can take it as far as he wants to go. I never really cared about the war stories. But what I think is his reputation is forever destroyed in the sfsoft veteran community. His comment section no matter what he posts is destroyed. I do know that he's taking massive hits from sponsors
and companies that have already cut him off. But I do think that again, like we talked about, he has enough of a blind civilian boomer Fox News base that he will be he will be fine to keep peddling bullshit teaching courses to that specific demographic. I don't unless the Department of Defense comes out. You see him, Jay's him, pulls his tab and bray in front of everyone. I think he's gonna keep on keeping on to and Tim Kennedy thinks that's the way I.
Say, and that was the advantage if you were coming out of the GYT before twenty ten, right when everybody else was still.
You were first market.
Yeah you're first to market, and you've got that ground part of it.
Yeah, you got that ground swell.
And now it's it's sort of like I mean, you know, any heroes, A good sized podcast gets a lot of views. Your good sized podcast get a lot of views. But is that going to sway things when Fox has him on?
Probably not?
No, of course, not like my video I do with five hundred views on Tim Kennedy. Again, it's it. It also is just placating to the same people who already know right, right, So it's the same group of veterans, soldiers and also civilians who are you know, into this type of thing. They know already. Nothing I could put out about the dude is going to shock anybody at this point. And the people who blindly support him are going to or they've got no clue. And they didn't
even seen my channel. They didn't even heard of the anti hero podcast, right, they see him on Fox News and whatever, you know at this point, Like I don't I hate to say that, like I want to see the dude lose everything because that's not true. Also, I just I just wanted like, and here's the crazy thing. I've told this before, Like I've got pictures of me and Tim Kennedy together on my Instagram. I actually liked. I was one of the very few and I'm sure
you guys know the back channels. Tim Kennedy has been a joke in the SF regiment for a decade and a half from within, like if you talk to any green Berey, like in the company, what a douche, Right, I was one of the very very few guys that wanted to give this guy the benefit of doubt that you know, was like, ah, yeah, you know he kinda he's you know, over the top, but you know he's
good at recruiting. Like I would always sort of defend him a little bit, right, And so I wasn't a Tim Ken hate Tim Kennedy hater to start, and there's a lot of them in the SF regiment. I could promise you that well before this whole thing happened, and I just wanted to see him have some integrity and apologize. Man, that that was it. I said that from the very
first episode. Had he come out and just said I'm sorry, right the day after the anti Hero podcast came out, if he just came out and said, look, I'm sorry. I was young. I embellished in things. I definitely shouldn't have that book. I embellished it to make it more enjoyable for the reader, and I'm sorry I shouldn't have done that. Guys, boom Clay's closed. I never do a
video anti hero podcast probably never doesn't fall up. Tim Kennedy is doing just fine, right, But it was the narcissistic where he put a middle finger up to everybody else and said, fuck you guys, you're you're the liars, not me. It's it was the Lance Armstrong. Like Lance Armstrong did that same thing right he got caught. What did he do well? He didn't go down quietly. He told everybody else their liars. He called everybody else cheaters.
He attacked, you know, like other teammates, family members. The difference is Lance Armstrong finally came out and came clean. Right, And even then after all of that crazy shit with Lance Armstrong, people forgave him right, they forgave him and he was just fine. So my thing has always been like, who is this dude's PR team? Because they are the worst PR team I have ever seen in my entire life. Because it was so easy to fix this from the start.
And and the thing is so like you say, if you met a coule like you know, we we we see it with politicians, whether it was Waltz or what was Ronnie Uh, who's the who is the admiral who's busted down to captain but still calls himself Ronnie Jackson Republican?
And I think out of floora whatever.
Like he still calls himself like these people were Tim Kennedy or they're always going to have a fan base. Right So even if they were, even if they were say yeah, it was a mistake, I'm sorry, people aren't gonna leave.
Them, right Yeah. And I think I'm fine with that with per Tim. If Tim wants to have his niche fan base, he's got a social media following with a million followers, and and that's it cool because he's not going on any more podcasts and pedaling his stories right like, he can't now, So we're taking that part of it away to where he's not going to be the face of soft He's not going to be the face of green Bereats anymore. And again, I don't look he's he's
I don't think he's a terrible dude. I just think he he's so it's such an egomaniac. He couldn't apologize. I don't want him to like lose his livelihood. Sure, Like, good have your circle, go do it away frombody everybody else. Don't influence the next fucking generation, right, good on you. No problems with that. That That's kind of where I'm at with the whole thing.
Yeah, Nate, what is next for Valhalla VFT?
What's coming up in your future.
Oh god, uh man, I take this one day at a time. Man, I've had no planning. I've had no like path forward the whole way, which people think is crazy of like, you know, for content, I just kind of like I put out the content I want. I think that's what people like about me, is like I'm not. I think that I'm just willing to talk about things that people won't talk about. And I think that's why
people like my channel. I you know, and I've had a lot of my buddies that are like, don't change, man, like, don't take those big brand deals, and then decide like I can't, Like, you can't talk about sensitive topics anymore, right, you can't talk about person X or person Y because now you're in the fold, which I don't think I will. I don't. I don't really give a shit, as you guys can tell, like, I'm not worried about what people think. I just do what I like. I surround myself with
the people I like. I like you guys, I like the other guys I do content with. So for me, I'm just gonna keep doing that type of content. I'm gonna try to get away from. Of course, I'm gonna I'm gonna cover current events if a green Break goes out and blows himself in a Tesla cyber truck in front of my right, like, that's gonna happen on my channel. But I've got a couple ideas going forward. What i
want to do is start. I want to start giving like platforms to sort of young and up and coming soft or even regular infantry military guys that I like that maybe wouldn't have gotten the platform otherwise, much like you guys did with me when I was a brand new channel. I had a few people do that. And then I want to start. I know this is going to sound corny. I want to start the Real War Heroes podcast, where I have on guys I know personally
that are legit, badass war fighters with real stories. Right, whether they are Fallujah Marines or whether they're Delta Force operators does not matter to me. To let the American people hear the stories. I know this is kind of petty, right, but to let the American people hear the stories, the real stories of the dudes who did this for real, instead of a lot of the stories that we've been hearing over the last ten to fifteen.
I mean that's what we try to do on the Team House. I mean, yeah, most of these episodes were trying to find guys who are a good representation from their unit. You know, someone pitches someone to me and they have a bunch of war crimes charges hanging over their head. I'm sort of like, maybe not that guy right now, Like, maybe maybe find someone else from that unit,
who will you know, represent you know what. We hope young people would aspire to be somewhere down the line, and I think we usually succeed in this mission.
Yeah, sometimes we might fall short, but.
Yeah, well well I was just gonna say, like, I like your idea too, especially if it's not really an interval, because there's something fun about sitting around with bros telling dumb ass war stories that.
Well, I think that's that's the idea. I don't want it to be like a real podcast interview, more like like you guys like a team room, Like you sit here and shoot the ship with guys that I know are legit.
Yeah think that's yeah, Yeah, I mean it's just I don't know. There's a lot of funny.
Moments there, a lot of heroing moments, Like the most ridiculous moments that come up. But you know, even when you were carrying a backpack full of fifty grenades that have slightly straightened pins and no safeties.
You know what gets me. What gets me is.
You can tell war stories, and you can tell war stories that would pass muster with us where we'd like where if I wasn't there, I wouldn't know you were lying right right, But then you decided to tell us, Then you.
Must not have seen what I did. And one of the first episodes I did about tim where where I explained how easy it is to lie about war stories. I told this big, elaborate war story about our time in Musiclay and Hellman and how we were working with a Marisak team and we started taking all this fire and we had an Australian peel and like our CCT got shot in the calf and all this shit right, And then at the end of the story, I just say, by the way, that was my best friend in eight
Zulu's story, I was never there. He was making carsok in two thousand and nine. Why because I've heard him tell that story and it's an awesome story, And that's how easy it is for guys like us to tell a story that passes the sniff test, but it's bullshit, you know what I mean. But when you say I think I don't know, I think I'm gonna talked about in the last podcast in twenty eighteen, in rus Gone, we were in a grenade heavy area. My teammates got
fucked up, got fucked up in a grenade battle. From over the top of compound woles. We started carrying way more grenades than most people ever would on a mission. And I tell people, way more grenades than everybody carries. Was like five frags, an incendiary and a thermobarrack, not a fucksack full of rifty grenades. Also, I tell people, I'm like, do you know what it's like to throw to like pull pins, prep grenades and throw them while you're being shot at. This is not like a process.
You're like, oh shit, the pin. But I get this right, the fucking tape right, Like it's sort of throw Like in his book he throws twenty five grenades into a building as they were running up to it.
You know, it's like that, Yeah, it's like an auto He's like an auto launcher. But the thing is like, can you imagine can you imagine at night under noods having fifty loose grenades with their with their pins all tangled, you know, the spoons like oh in a back in a backpack, you pull out one and the entire bag goes off in a truck, just rattling around in like this.
Yeah, oh my god, Yeah, that's that's the insanity.
Did you guys used to you guys, like, I mean, everybody, did you, like you straighten the pins just a little bit to make them easier to pull, right.
We would We would cut one of the pins at the base and then pull the other one off, so all you would have to do is basically unfold one pin and pull because yeah, two pins rolled down like that, the bullets start flying. You got gloves on, Yeah.
Forget about it. You're not pulling it out with your teeth.
Yeah yeah, no, no, no, So yeah, some guys, some guys would do the straighten yea, and but we yeah, that's the way we would do it. We cut one of the pins completely and then just fold the other, so all you got to do is just pull one up and then.
Pull it out.
So for people who don't know what we're talking about on a fried grenade on on you know, Thermo barracks and everything. But they have pins, which is so you have your spoon which leads into the fuse. Uh, and then the pin is what keeps that spoon in place, so you have to pull that pin out.
Well.
The pins when they're when they come.
From the keep talking. I'm just gonna pick something real quick. They come from the factory. The pins are like too pronged, like you know, or it's like a pronged pin like a ring, and then they're folded back up against the spoon, so it it's very tough. It's almost impossible really to just pull the pin without straightening the ends first, so you always kind of pre strate number do something to make them easier to pull under dress.
But who do we have Friday?
Coming up Friday, we have a career CIA officer, someone who actually Rick Prado introduced me to Nice.
I'm so excited to have him back show.
I'm back with the real camera, Nate.
Uh, you know, any final thoughts. I encourage everyone to go check out Valhalla vf T. I love this channel to go subscribe to to Nate's channel. Any final thoughts or anything else you want to talk about before we get going tonight.
Uh, I did have something. There was something I was going to talk about that I wanted to talk about, and I'm trying to think about it, but I can't remember.
Wait did we talk about it before? Did we talk about it before the show?
I think it had to do I think you had to do with Livin's burger.
Maybe not the cyber truck.
Oh yes, the thing I did want to talk about Matt Livins burger. Okay, And I want to get your guys take on this because it is fucking pissing me off the more I see it. What I'm seeing because
he was a Green Beret. When Tim Kennedy comes out on Fox News talking about it, Sean Ryan and sand Shoemaker and all these guys, everybody keeps talking about how what a great guy this is and that like the way he did this, he set this up so that nobody would get injured, and like and all these things about how he was a good person and YadA, YadA, YadA.
I'm not giving this fucking dude a pass, you know why, because he put he basically built a shody asked v Bed, rolled it up in front of a fuck in front of a hotel, which could have had a three year old child and their mom walk out that door the second that the bed went off and killed like six seven people were still seriously injured in that blast. This dude is a domestic terrorist. I don't care that he's
a Green Beret. I actually am more ashamed that he's a Green Beret and that he decided to take his own life by potentially killing American citizens. So I don't know what your guys' take is, but this is all I've heard about, Like what of now again? Mental health? I get it right, I don't want to knock on the family, but like, shouldn't be glorifying this dude is like some mastermind to an exposure plan where he's exposing you know, like CIA secrets and all this crazy shit.
Like that's not what he was, man, He was a mentally ill dude that potentially almost killed six American citizens.
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
I mean I might The one thing I might take exception to is like the actual legal definition of a domestic terrorist. He might not fit into that. But I understand what you're saying that he was terrorizing the American public in a sense by blowing up this truck in public, right, And you're right, I of course we don't want any veteran or soldier to take their own life. That's terrible, But hey man, if you're going to do it, you don't need to take down, you know, a bunch of civilians with you.
Come on.
Yeah.
I would also push back on the domestic terrorism thing, just because I don't think that was really it wasn't. First off, I'm I'm just I'm way I feel bad that he about his mental illness and it wasn't even like depression, Like I don't think I believe that he was at a stage where he could not separate fact from fiction.
Yeah, and yeah, no, I agree. I think I think domestic terrorists was the wrong choice of words. That's not what I was trying to say. What I was really trying to say, of like, he wasn't this like whistleblowing mastermind that was setting up a v bed just in the perfect way to not injure people to send a message.
He was a mental he was a mentally ill person.
He was, Yeah, he was just I just feel I just feel sad for him that, you know, like we talk about we talk about mental health, and we talk about you know, like realizing this not okay to pull people out of their vehicles. But but then when you talk start talking about the Marines, you know, out of Syria seeing demons and seeing ghosts of the people they killed and things like that, that that's not something These people are not questioning their sanity.
These people are not it's real to them.
They're not in a place where they're seeking mental help, right, mental health help.
They they're living in a whole different world.
So I would say that you know that he probably could have built a more efficient v bid with the intention to kill.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was my initial criticism was of like, this was an eighteen Zulu and this was
the best. That was the very first video I did before Sean Ryan, before anybody just covering that, And that was my biggest question was like, how does a ten plus year Green Beret not know how to tamp explose his and do actually right And so I don't think I don't think he was necessarily trying to do as much damn as as possible, right, I'm just getting tired of the narrative that he's this like hero, it's exposing shit, right, sorry, I don't believe.
That, because that carries on, that carries on the whole conspiracy and fails to acknowledge the very real mental health issue, which which I think, honestly, I think the Army is happy to let that happen because the Army does not want to talk about the mental health issues. They would rather, you know, they would rather talk about him being an extremist or him. I mean, I don't think the Army wants to I don't think the Army wants to talk about anything.
I don't they don't want to talk about TBIs and what that means from our soldiers.
I want to retrack that though, because I don't think the Army wants to talk about him being an extremist either, because I don't think the Army wants the publicity of an SF guy going out there and becoming extremes. I think the Army just wants it to go away because no matter how it was framed, dispatch for them, but they.
Definitely and when both terrorist attacks back to back were from active duty Army soldiers, right, that's bad. That's that's not great optics. I mean, I already saw. I don't know if you guys saw the clip on MSNBC, I think was today where they literally ran a whole art, a whole episode. I forget his name, one of the old guys over there. I don't really obviously don't watch the show about how and he literally says it. I'll
send you guys the clip after. It's so gross where he talks about veterans, veterans are the biggest threat to America and that veterans are responsible for more terrorism in this country than anyone else. MSNBC just aired that.
This has been going on for a while though, because the FBI, what was it twenty sixteen, twenty eighteen when the FBI said, you know that veterans are more likely to because you know, homegrown terrorists like like vetters have enough issues.
But there was also some internal stuff going on where they wanted to look at extremism in the res and it got shut down because of political sensitivity.
Is about this, It's well General General Milly was talking about that, yes, with the white rage and figuring out where this all this, you know, potential nationalism is coming from that long ago.
Yeah, so so you know, I'm glad you brought up because we didn't mention that I'm gad, I'm glad you brought up the Nola guy because this is the thing to me that is it's very bothering about Matt's story is that it's a bigger story than the actual terrorist.
Oh yeah in Nola, like that guy wiped out of the news cycle immediately.
Yeah, a guy suffering from mental health issues who did something, who killed himself, you know, and and didn't hurt anybody else, could have but didn't.
A guy. And that was the thing is.
You know, when you talk about his letter and his manifesto, the thing that immediately made me think of Frodi was when he said that the FBI was following him, because once people start getting their paranoid delusions, yeah there, that's when they're sort of they're off the rails, you know, and and you know that's really really where you see
that that mental thing. But so what bothers me is that one we're ignoring his mental health issues, and two we're making him a bigger story than a guy, a radicalized guy by isis who actually killed people, a lot of people, and that's gone, that's out.
Of the story.
But we're all still talking about this mentally unwell as Seff guy.
Yeah, and it's it brings into question of the way news is sort of manipulated and pushed forward of I don't think that's by accident. I don't think the fact that the right the radicalized ISIS dude that killed fifteen people or more, that story disappeared immediately in favor of the active duty green beret who then, you know, potentially
does a terrorist attack. I don't think that's I don't think that's just coincidence that all of media immediately diverted and got that off of why because what they don't want is they don't and MSNBC literally talked about this in that art in that clip that it's not the southern border. It is not the southern border that is
causing anything any of this. Okay, it's domestic veterans, it's all home grown, that's not And I think they want to get the conversation off any potential of like, yes, this was an active duty soldier that was radicalized by ISIS, but how was he radicalized by ISIS? By ISIS potentially
getting into our country somehow. So I think they want to get the conversation away from that as fast as possible and put it on like hey, white nationalists whatever, whatever the maga or because they're saying that too, right, likega, mega this, whatever the buzzword is for the day. I think that's what they want the optics to be on stuff like that instead. And I don't think it's by mistake.
The hypocrisy is just it's so frustrating because you know that they want to come out when it's when it's an Islamic extremists to say not all Muslims. And we've all worked with Muslims. We know it's not all Muslims. We know there are a lot of like stand up, you know, incredible, like courageous, and you know Muslims who love America, you know whatever.
Green Beret. I mean, like vast majority of dudes I fought in combat where we're Muslims, not Americans. That's who I fought with in combat for my career.
So yeah, yeah, absolutely so I don't you know, I don't take offense to when when it's an Islamic extremist. I don't take offense to them going hey it's not all Muslims, but they have no problem saying veterans are an issue. Yep, where's the not all veterans statement, MSNB said.
MSNBC verbatim said that the veterans are the biggest threat to America today. Those they said, that's crazy, like mainstream their main guy, the old the older guy with the gray hair. I forget to say anybody said that. He literally said that in the clip today It's like, okay, man, like we're way off the reservation. Jesus. Yeah, that's that was the That was the last the only thing that I have that I wanted to bring up.
All right, guys, so go check out Valhalla, v F t U and Nate. You know, you're welcome on the show anytime.
Let us know and we will drive you.
And yeah, next time, you know, as there are some sequels in the Veteran Cinematic Universe, we'll have you back to unpack those, uh those, you.
Know, I say, I'm getting out of it. But we're on January seventh. My content since January first. Think about I think like January first was the initial terrorist attack and what we've covered in six days, Joy five, Nate, we're early phase one in this cinematic universe. This, Yeah, I think we are. We're like we're in Iron man two right now, exactly exactly.
We're still getting a feel for it sometimes.
Are you guys, Are you guys going to Shot show? By chance?
I did Shot like maybe seven years in a row. Yeah.
Yeah, it's the same thing every year. Yeah yeah.
I mean it's cool to see some old old Army buddies, but oh man, that stars to wear on you.
Yeah.
But thank you, thank you Nate, and we will see you guys on Friday. Retired CIA officer on the show. Thank you everyone for joining us, and we'll see you guys next time.