← Jocko Podcast
Loading summary
Transcript469 lines
- [00:00]
A
This is Jocko, podcast number 504 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.
- [00:05]
B
Good evening.
- [00:07]
A
The presence of veterans in legislative bodies is not merely symbolic. Veterans bring to politics a distinct understanding of national interest, discipline, and a sense of responsibility shaped by their military service. Their experience instills an ability to deliberate on matters of war and peace, security, and the burdens borne by citizens in uniform when those who have sworn to defend the nation's laws also help make them. The healthy integration of military and civilian spheres is enhanced, strengthening the very fabric of democratic governance. The statesman, who has also been a soldier, is armed not only with theories of national security, but but with the tested realities of service and sacrifice. His judgment about the requirements of policy is tempered by direct knowledge of the costs of war and the limits of force. Military experience does not guarantee wisdom, but it provides an anchor against illusion and an appreciation for the discipline, unity and responsibility that preserve and a free society. And those right. There are some quotes from a book called the Soldier and the State, written by Samuel P. Huntington, who graduated from Yale, served in the army at the tail end of World War II, got a master's degree from the University of Chicago, Ph.D. from Harvard, and eventually became one of America's most influential political scientists and theorists. And his thoughts that I just read about the importance of veterans in our government are just as important then as they are now. Going from the military into the government provides a link between both of those and grounds them both in reality. It's an honor to have one of those veterans leaders here with us tonight to discuss his experiences on the battlefield and now in the political world in the halls of Congress. His name is Wesley Hunt. He's a West Point graduate, Army Apache pilot, Iraq War veteran, and now a Congressman representing the 38th congressional district of Texas, the great state of Texas, as they say. Wesley, thanks for joining us, man. Great to meet you.
- [02:34]
C
Thank you for having me on, brother. Thank you all very much.
- [02:36]
A
Glad we can finally make this happen, man.
- [02:38]
C
For sure.
- [02:39]
A
We it appreciate. Well, you got a lot of stuff, a lot of experiences. Let's get right into it. Let's talk a little bit about your background growing up.
- [02:45]
C
Okay.
- [02:46]
A
What was that all like?
- [02:46]
C
Background growing up? My dad's retired lieutenant colonel in the Army.
- [02:50]
A
What do you do in the Army?
- [02:51]
C
My dad was an adjutant general and so graduated ROTC at Southern University and then was active duty for a little while, then went reserves for a while in Houston, Texas, where my brother and I and sister were basically all born and raised. Okay, so My sister is West Point 93.
- [03:07]
A
Dang.
- [03:08]
C
Okay, so she served 23 years active duty military intelligence officer, deployed multiple times.
- [03:12]
A
And she started. She graduated in 93.
- [03:15]
C
93.
- [03:15]
A
So she's more of my era.
- [03:17]
C
She is your vintage, sir. So. And now, you know, she, she retired. Lives, lives, lives in Houston, is doing awesome. I'm West Point 2004. So finish at West Point. Then did eight years active duty as an Apache driver, deployed to Iraq, flew 55 combat air missions in Baghdad, two tours of duty in Saudi Arabia, and then after that went to grad Cornell University. Earned three master's degrees in four years. So the master's in business, public administration, industrial and labor relations. Moved back home to God's country, that is Texas, sir. And then ran for Congress, and now here I am. And my brother is also West Point graduate. So my brother. My brother is 10 months and eight days my junior. So I always make sure the eight days are always delineated because it's very important to us, very competitive. He is West.05 and then went into the Navy as a service warfare officer. So he was stationed down here in San Diego and then went to Harvard Business School after that. And so he's the only one that defected to the Navy and would give him a really hard time. But then I realized when I was stationed at Fort Hood and I got back from my deployment, he invited me down to San Diego. And this dude pulls up in his BMW convertible, in his uniform, beautiful women, beautiful weather, you name it. And he goes, welcome to San Diego. And I'm like, damn it, you are the smart one. This is ridiculous. Fort Hood, Texas, San Diego. You get it?
- [04:37]
A
That played a role for me joining the Navy. So I was looking at all the different special operations. And I grew up as a kid, I surfed in Maine, which is like, there's not many surfers in Maine, and there definitely wasn't many surfers in the. In Maine in the 80s, right. So I was a surfer and I looked at all the different special operations where I was trying to figure out what to do. And if you're in the SEAL teams, you were either stationed in Virginia beach or San Diego. Each one had surfing, and I looked at all the place. All the other special operations, you weren't surfing. One of the things. And also because I was a water guy, you know, the SEAL teams made sense. But so when you were growing up, like, at what age did you know the path you were going to take?
- [05:16]
C
So we drove my sister up to west point, so she's 10 years older than me. And my brother and I are 10 months apart. 10 and 10. 10 years, 10 months. And so I was about 8, 7 years old when we drove her up to West Point to do her plebe summer. And we drove from Texas, drove all the way up to West Point. And then when you're there and you're a six, seven year old little boy and you see West Point for the first time, something gets locked in.
- [05:38]
A
That's all it took.
- [05:39]
C
That's literally all it took. And we tried to fight it. I mean, we were saying, we're not going to go to West Point. We're going to go to my brother want to go to Harvard for undergrad and I want to go to University of Michigan. We would joke around, but when it came down to it and when the rubber met the actual road, we were all, we were all going to West Point. I mean, it's just kind of what it was.
- [05:53]
A
So knowing though, that at a young age that you wanted to go there, at least you wanted as an option that had to get you focused because you're not getting into West Point without doing the work.
- [06:03]
C
So the good thing is, is that helps focus you. And then I had, I had what I call parent privilege. There aren't. There is no privilege in this country. There's only parent privilege and also the privilege of being an American. Those are only two privileges that I would ever deem in this country today. And so both of my parents didn't play games. You don't have three West Pointers coming from one house, growing up in a soft home. Okay, so my parents were very big on, you're going to serve this country. You're going to figure out how to preserve the lineage that got you here in the first place. You are not going to be a victim. My parents grew up in the Jim Crow era, and they're looking at us and looking at guys like me and their sons and their daughters becoming West Point graduates, United States Congressmen as Republicans in white majority districts. And my parents were like, no, no, we don't play the games of the past. We always look forward. So you find a way to serve this country, which is exactly what we all did. And at one point, we were all in Baghdad at the same time during, in 2006. So I was by far the coolest flying Apaches. That's how.
- [07:02]
A
So as you like, what are you. As you, as you looked at, how did you map out, okay, I'm gonna go to West Point. That means I need to get these kind of grades. That means I need to get this in the SATs. That means I need to get this type of leadership kind of skills. I need to play these sports. Did you just package it up? Was that your focus?
- [07:22]
C
The good thing is, is like, this is what I talk about parents like my dad and my mom, like they were our Sherpas. They were like, look, if you want to go to West Point, you have to do X, Y and Z. But if you want to do anything excellent in this life, even if it's not West Point, this is what's required of you. And so, yes, we had a, we always played a sport. So I did, I went from football to basketball, basketball to run to running track. All of our summers were filled with something spiritual, something physical and something academic every single summer. And so you constantly pushed yourself to be a very well rounded human being. And the one thing about my parents that I really appreciate and one thing that I like about West Point is it's not just one dimensional. You have to be good at everything. Basically, there is a bar that you have to meet, you have to meet a military bar, an academic bar, a physical bar. You can't just max out your sat, but you, but you can't lift your body weight. That's not, that's just, that's just not going to work. And so in areas that you are deficient, you have to work on those areas to get them proficient enough to meet the standard. And that's kind of the house that we grew up in. My brother was definitely more the brainiac, I was more of the physical guy, and my sister was more the personality kind of person. But we were actually pretty decent at everything and being well rounded human beings. And that started in the home with my parents.
- [08:38]
A
Now, a lot of people ask me questions about kids. A lot of, I've written a bunch of kids books. A lot of people ask me questions about kids. And if parents aren't careful, they can push their kids to a point where the kids go in the other direction. Now, part of that, I believe, comes from if you, if you're a do what I say, not what I do type person, there's a higher chance that the kids will push against you. Yes, but is there something that you saw in your parents that you looked and said, oh, yeah, I can see that they're trying to help me? Well, I always think the most important thing is if your parents, if you know your parents care about you. Yes, Then you know that they're pushing you for the right reason. But did you Ever feel. Did you ever get to a point where you're like. Like, hey, man, I. I know it. Hey, dad, it's summer. I get spiritual, I get academic, I get physical. But I also want to, you know, take a break. Did that ever enter your mind? No. And is that just because the environment that your dad showed you, your mom and dad showed you was like, hey, that. We're not doing that.
- [09:41]
C
Yes, sir. And it's all about love, too. And they came from a place of love, and they. We had a good time. They wanted us to have a good time. My parents were. My parents are actually pretty fun people. But when it came time, when it came down to developing children, they had a saying, I'm not your friend. I am your parent. When you are 18 years old, then you can do whatever you want to do. But then by the time you're 18, you grew up in this environment. Well, the cakes already been baked, brother. I mean, you're going to start making decisions based on how you were raised once you become an adult, if they do it the right way. Also, just being present. Like, my mom was the president of the PTL when I was in elementary school. When I was in high school, I drove one hour, one way every single day to attend a private school in Houston, Texas. One hour, one way. My dad would drive us, drop us off on his way to work, and then on his way back home, he would pick us up and take us back home. And every now and again, I would look up on the. I'd be at football practice and I would look up and I would see my dad just standing in the distance watching, just to make sure that we aren't slacking off, to make sure that we are getting treated right. And you realize that he's doing this because he loves us. He's doing this because he cares about us. He's doing this because he wants what's best for his children. So. And then you have to respect the home. And my parents were the kind. My dad especially, were the kind of people that were like, look, you know, if you get locked up or you do something stupid, you get a dui. I'm not getting you out of jail. You're going to stay there. Now, all your little buddies, their dads, their lawyers, they're going to come get it. Get them out the next day. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to stay there for a little while. You're going to remember what you did. And when you think about that and you're like, I don't really want to go to jail because my dad's going to leave me there. And he's not kidding. The Colonel is not playing around. So it's a certain level of fear, but then it manifests itself in a form of respect, especially when it's instilled at a very young age.
- [11:30]
A
And what was the biggest trouble you ever got in with the old man?
- [11:34]
C
Oh, man, there was. I got in a fight. I got in a fight in the sixth grade. And when they found out about the fight, it wasn't my fault. I didn't start the fight. And this was when I was in public school, before I went to private school. And then they kind of found out what happened. And I fought back, but my dad was more upset with me because I had kind of a bloody nose and a busted lip. But the guy just had a busted lip, but he didn't have a bloody nose. He was upset with me because he was like, that guy should also have a bloody nose, like you do. Like you stick up for yourself. You're a good kid, and I'm not condoning fighting, but I'm also condoning, you need to also stick up for yourself, and that kid needs to look as bad as you look. He looked, you know, I roughed him up. I roughed him up a little bit, but it wasn't enough.
- [12:23]
A
And then the application process, getting into West Point, that's rigorous.
- [12:27]
C
Yes.
- [12:28]
A
And as you. As you show up there, you already saw your sister go. You knew what you were in for.
- [12:33]
C
Of course I did. And we have visited, you know, there a lot. And keep in mind, my sister is 10 years older than me. And so there's a saying at West Point, the history that we teach is made by those that we teach. Taught. So my sister, my sophomore, my yuck. In my sophomore and junior year at West Point, she actually went off, Got her master's degree in applied mathematics at post Naval Graduate School, and then was an instructor at West Point as a captain and major while my brother and I were both plebes. We're both freshmen and sophomores at West Point, and so we were all there at the same time. And I had to salute my sister every damn day. It was excruciating because sometimes she would see me, like, across the quad and she would.
- [13:09]
A
She's covering your.
- [13:13]
C
It was actually really hilarious. But we knew what was coming our way, and a lot of her classmates were actually our instructors as well. So it's nice to have that family unit up there to know what you're getting into. But the one thing about us was this. When you start this journey and you start going down this path, you're going to finish it. And my dad said you can't leave once you start because you have to understand that you took the place of somebody that would have died to be in your shoes. So if you quit, you're not quitting on yourself. You're quitting on the person that wanted this slot that didn't get. So guess what? Suck it up. The ups, the downs, the highs, the lows. You're going to walk out of here a much better human being and a much better person, but you're not going to quit. And that, that non stop, like, don't quit attitude is something that my dad instilled in all three of us.
- [14:04]
A
Was there anything that was more than you expected when you got there?
- [14:08]
C
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
- [14:14]
A
One thing I always remember about boot camp, I was going Navy boot camp. And one thing I was not prepared for is the complete nutter. Lack of privacy. Oh yeah. So you, you're going to the bathroom, you sit down on the toilet, and you look to your right and there's a guy sitting there on the toilet next to you. And then look to your left, same thing. Because by the way, you only got 6 minutes to use the head. So, yeah, I was like, okay, I guess that's just the way it is. Like we're just one big happy, real happy, real close family around here. What kind of thing, what, what shocked you, where you kind of go, dang, I didn't know this was happening.
- [14:47]
C
You know, so when you go to West Point, you do an application process. Obviously you're pretty sharp, you know, young man or young woman, at the end of the day, I mean, that's what, that's what's required to get into any academy. And so you think pretty highly of yourself. You know, I was captain of the football team, captain of the basketball team, and I was a class prefect and leader and you know, felt pretty, you know, pretty cool down, pretty cool guy, you know. And you get there, you realize everybody's like that. Like, dude, you're not, you're not special. Like, you're not special. And everyone gets treated the same way that first BLEEP summer. And so it is a reprogramming of the way you view yourself and the breaking down of the individual to realize you are a part of a team and you are not special. I don't care what you did, I don't care how good you were, I don't care how Badass you think you are. You're all pleats. So deal with it. And then, not only that, our summers were the cadre. They were upperclassmen that went through the same kind of program as well. You know, the upperclassmen were also pleased that they did Please summer. And so there's a certain level of respect that you have to deal with of breaking down the individual, humbling the individual, and then realizing that we're all in this together, we better work together, because nobody is special. And that, for me, was the biggest kick in the teeth I thought. I thought I was cool.
- [16:10]
A
So you show up there in 2000, you go through plebe summit freshman year. What's it like on campus on September 11, 2001?
- [16:17]
C
So September 11, 2001, that was my sophomore year at West Point. So keep in mind, at the academies, the first two years are actually free, meaning that you could stay at the academy for the first two years, and if you leave before your first class of your junior year, you don't owe anything back to the military. So first two years, free of charge. 9, 11. Happened in the beginning of my sophomore year. And so during that time, you're like, well, we are now going to war. I remember we're sitting in Eisenhower barracks at West Point watching the planes fly into the twin towers. And we're at West Point just an hour north of New York City. So all this carnage is happening. And I could literally almost feel and sense the negativity in the world in that moment, because, you know, you are very close in proximity to where this is happening, as we live and breathe. There was an upperclassman, got in, full battle rattle, full battle rattle. He got camoed up. He got. He had his N14 camoed up. Put on, put on. Put on his ACUs, you name it, and was knocking on everybody's door saying, we're going to war, boys. We're going to war, boys. We're going to war, boys. Because at that point, we knew it. Everybody knew that we're going to war. One of the most proudest things about my class that I can say is this my sophomore year, we all could have left. Most of us stayed. Only a handful left. So we knew that we were entering West Point during a time of peace. We're exiting at a time of war, and we're all gonna fight, and nobody left. See, a lot of people try to use West Point and use the academy just to get the education and then to move on. They don't realize that, no, we're training, you to be a war fighter. When you enter during a time of peace, a lot of times you kind of go through the mundane stuff. We're gonna go to jrtc, we're gonna go to ntc, or we're going to go to Vicenza, Italy. We're going to go hang out, you know, and when we were coming out, everybody's going to Baghdad. You're going from Fort Hood, and you're going to go to Baghdad. You're going to go from Baghdad to Fort Hood, and then from Fort Hood, you're going to go back to Baghdad. Get your mind right. And most of us stayed. Consequently, we lost 14 of my West Point classmates in a global war on terror. And none of those brave men saw the age of 28 years old. I bring them up frequently because those guys, they're all. By the way, there are 14 white guys. And when they gave their last full measure, they didn't do it for black people or white people or Asian people or Hispanic people. They did it for my fellow Americans. And their deaths is what's actually really helped to shape the way I view the world today. We are Americans first. We all bleed together in this fight. And so when you enter atomic war and you watch the Twin Towers fall and you're like, oh, my gosh, like, this is it. This is where the rubber meets the road. Giddy up, let's go see all the race and all the. All of the division, all of a sudden, that goes away because we're on this fight together. Now, the question for me is, I get asked this frequently. Why did I want to fly Apaches? At the time, you had a choice to fly four aircraft. I knew I wanted to go aviation. So you could fly Chinooks, Blackhawks, Apaches, and Kiowa Warriors. But I knew I was going to go to Baghdad, and it's hot. So which airframe has air conditioning? Just kidding. Well, the Apache does have air conditioning.
- [19:29]
A
But you always knew you wanted to go aviation, though.
- [19:32]
C
Yes, I did. Since my freshman year at West Point.
- [19:34]
A
Did you go on some kind of a tour or something? Did you see the birds?
- [19:37]
C
We did a tour in a Blackhawk. We flew nap of the Earth of the Hudson River.
- [19:42]
A
Oh, that'll do it.
- [19:42]
C
And that's it. And that's it. And I realized, yeah, I'm definitely gonna go aviation. Didn't grow up really wanting to be a pilot, but at that moment, I realized I wanted to do it. And then also, you know, I joked about the air conditioning because it was nice to have an air conditioning in the Apache. But I also realized that if I'm going to go to war, I want to shoot back. I want to shoot back. You know, the Apache is a weapons platform. We don't carry anything, we don't pick up, we don't drop off. We're not a bus. We have hellfire missiles, rockets and 30 millimeter chain gun. And you call us in to destroy the enemy with extreme prejudice. End of discussion. And if I'm going to go get shot at, I want to make sure that I'm shooting back. Literally that was my decision process.
- [20:22]
A
What you end up getting your degree.
- [20:24]
C
In from West Point or from, from West Point. So I got, I got my degree in leadership and management and mechanical engineering.
- [20:31]
A
And as you, as you come out of West Point now, since you're a pilot, you're focused on being a pilot. But still, still you're going to be in a leadership position. Oh yeah, right. What, how did you feel about your leadership, your specific leadership training when you were at West Point?
- [20:47]
C
West Point. When I talk about being a well rounded person, that also what's construed in that as well as being a well rounded leader and they are training you to be a leader, to be an officer in the United States Army. And so the biggest thing is you brought up earlier about, you know, do as I do, not do as I say. No, as a leader you got to do as they do too. So that means you have to be proficient. That means you have to be good at your craft. That means you have to be in shape. That means you have to be able to hang. That means you have to, when they see you, you have to be the first one in the room and the last one to leave. You have to be the last one to eat. You have to be the one that is the leader because you could talk the talk, but if you don't walk the walk well then, well then they're not going to believe it. You know, if you're not going to be the person that's willing to hang in there and stay with your guys and are never ever going to fully trust you. And so what West Point taught us is, look, you can't be a fat leader. I had a, I had a military history teacher and he was a hard charger. And this is at the time before we had a, you know, this is to throw no shade at some, some heavy leaders that have kind of come around. I'm not going to give you names, but at that time, this is, you know, 2002, he said this, I'LL never forget this, brother. He goes, how many fat leaders are there? How many fat heads of state are there? I mean, if you can't take care of yourself and if you can't control your body, you can control what you look like, how can you possibly lead anybody? He goes, how can you lead your family if you're not in good shape? So you need to figure out what kind of regimen that you have to do to stay in shape. Don't eat like a pig. And if you're going to lead, make sure that you look the part, because that's the first impression somebody's going to have of you is, this guy's. This guy's sloppy. This guy's a slop tart. What is he going to. How is he going to tell me what to do? So that physical piece of this is something that's also at West Point. That's why you have a physical grade. You have a PT Grade, you have a military grade, and you have an academic grade. That academic grade is weighted heavily. But the other stuff matters, too, in places to your overall gpa.
- [22:47]
A
Yeah. One of the ways I explain that when I'm talking to young. Young officers especially is I'll tell them, hey, when I was an enlisted guy in the SEAL teams, I was a new guy, didn't know anything, right? But when my leader showed up four minutes late to something, I was taking notes. When my leader forgot a piece of gear, I was taking notes. When my leader didn't do. Didn't know how to properly execute something with a weapon system, I was taking notes. And it was like just a degradation of, you know, look, not disrespectful, but a degradation of respect.
- [23:16]
C
Correct.
- [23:17]
A
So you got to remember that all these people. And what I think really hurts people sometimes is they think people don't notice. They think, oh, you know, no one will notice that. I'm four minutes late. By the way, I'm in charge, so it doesn't really matter. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're taking notes. If you show up late, you go home early. Everybody sees it, and respect levels going down that whole time.
- [23:37]
C
You got it.
- [23:38]
A
I. I went and talked at West Point, and, man, I mean, what an org. What. What a. What an incredible place of. Of tradition.
- [23:48]
C
Yeah.
- [23:48]
A
But I remember walking into the area where they have all the names of all the West Pointers that have been killed in combat. It's just. It takes your breath away going there and talking. And the way that they run their leadership, you know, you can see that such a huge focus because they know leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield. Right. If there's any institution that knows that it's West Point and having those leadership discussions with those, with those young, you know, soon to be officers that are heading out on the battlefield, it's just so important and what they're going to face. And especially, you know, I guess the war is over now, but especially at that time there was. It was on. Yes, that's right. So, so as your did your mindset because you also went through a transition of like you thought you're going to go to whatever you said, Spain and Italy or whatever else before the war started. Did you, did you can kind of connect the dots. Did you know from your dad, from your sister that, hey, listen, there's a lot of stuff on the periphery about being a going to West Point and being an officer, but you're a warrior. You're gonna fight the nation's wars. Had you made that connection and did it just get strengthened by September 11th?
- [24:57]
C
Yes, yes. So I think at some point when you raise your hand and you take that oath, especially your believe summer after going through all of that and then finally you go from a new cadet to a cadet, which is finally when academic year starts and you're done with summer training, you realize that, no, no, this is about the military. This is about military service. All the other lickies and chewies are great, but this is about military service. That's what West Point is. When you stand and when you're standing in the, in a parade in front of Washington statue every single, every single weekend, or when you have breakfast, lunch and dinner and you're standing at formation and you're living in eisenhower Barracks and MacArthur Barracks and Patton statue, which is in front of the library and you're walking past all these landmarks. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're. This is, this is not the University of Texas here. This is going to be a war fighting experience. Now the good thing about it is it's actually very well rounded and so you do get other experiences in academia that I really do appreciate. But just a couple of weeks ago, a couple of months ago, the president, President Trump just appointed me to be on the West Point Border Visitors, which I think which is a great honor. And basically it's basically being on the board of regents and you meet quarterly. You get to kind of see kind of what's going on. You have an inside look on how training is going to be in the future and just kind of you know, to make sure that everything is copacetic. And so I had my 20 year reunion back in November. And to see these young people, to see how sharp they are even in an era that I, you know, we always say the new era is always softer than it was when we went through. Let's get out of here. Right. It's all easy now. But honestly, I was actually, I was actually pleasantly surprised and pleased to see the state of affairs of these young people and how they are going to, how we are morphing, the way we fight battles in the future and how they are going to be a strong part of it and part of that transition that we're watching right now. And I was actually very, very pleased with what I saw.
- [26:55]
A
Yeah, there's going to be some major changes in warfare coming. As much as the machine gun, you know, as much as the tank, these, these drones and the disaggregated battlefield that these are, these are legitimate, real changes that are happening before our very eyes. So the next generation is going to have a, they're going to have, they're going to have it rough and they're going to learn some lessons.
- [27:16]
C
Yes, sir.
- [27:16]
A
But they're proactively leaning into that right now, which they absolutely have to do. Yes. And I'm glad that you're seeing that when, when you, when you meet with them. How's flight school?
- [27:27]
C
Flight school was a good time because I was there with basically 100 of my classmates. So basically 100. I think it was 100 and roughly 100 of them. So about 10% of the class ended up going to aviation. And you go there and you start off learning on what's called a TH67. It's a small turbine engine aircraft. And then you kind of go through flight school with your classmates and you're learning how to fly a helicopter, which is, I mean, come on, man, that's about as cool as it is gets. And then you transition to the aircraft that you're going to fly. So you go from this little, you know, single turbo engine aircraft to an Apache. Dang, bro. It's like, it's like going from a Honda Civic to a Rolls Royce. I mean, like, you first sitting this. I remember the first time of me sitting in the cockpit and you're looking around and looking at this, they think, okay, now I have really truly arrived here. Okay. I felt like a complete badass.
- [28:19]
A
That is absolutely insane.
- [28:22]
C
I'll never forget that moment. But I really appreciated going there with a lot of my classmates and we helped each other out in ways that it's kind of interesting. You forged that bond together and then you're off learning how to fly together. And I remember Adam Smoot was my roommate while I was in flight school. I mean, I love this guy. He's a dear friend of mine to this day. And just, you know, whenever we needed to pick me up or whenever we needed help, he, like, Adam was just always there to help. He's a really smart guy. He was always really there to help me out. And then also, Adam was a big fitness guy too, so he kept us, he kept all of our group accountable to make sure that we also just didn't just hang out. We also worked out, went to the gym. He was a powerlifting champion at West Point and he was a complete stud. And, you know, to have guys like that that were around you, it's like the adage, iron sharpens iron. So one man sharpens another. We were in this fight together and then we also knew that we were all going to deploy together as well. So. Interesting point about when I went to Baghdad, I. I was at. We graduated flight school. And then usually you go to a unit and then you get trained up in the unit and then you go downrange. Well, we had a unit that lost two air crews, one to a midair and one got shot down. And so this unit, a fourth ID was short for pilots. So I got done with flight school and I didn't go to Fort Hood to train up. I went straight to Baghdad.
- [29:51]
A
Damn.
- [29:52]
C
So I went from flight school to Baghdad. I will never forget. Lee Major was my. Was my ip, was my instructor pilot. He goes, wesley, I want to let you know you're getting ready to enter a space now where this range is now two way range. So for you, you need to pay closer attention to what I'm teaching you right now, because you're going right into the fire. Literally. I got trained up in Baghdad flying around Camp Taji, and then I was out flying missions shortly after that. So. Talk about frying, frying pan and fire when I.
- [30:20]
A
How much live fire range time do you get in your training backstage?
- [30:24]
C
Quite a bit. Quite a bit.
- [30:25]
A
So you're quite squared away then?
- [30:27]
C
Quite. I was, absolutely. And they do a pretty good job on that piece of it. But again, nobody's shooting back. So it's all fun. It's all fun and games. Okay. It's all fun and games. You get everything squared up in the sights and you pull the trigger and, you know, you're knocking down targets and everybody's laughing and like, yeah, too close for missiles. I'm switching to guns and it's all funny, you know, and then you're downrange and you realize that that is a Russian made.50 caliber dishka that's trying to take us out the sky and it's one o' clock in the morning and we got to shoot back. That's a whole different conversation.
- [31:01]
A
What year did you go on deployment?
- [31:02]
C
I was in 2006.
- [31:05]
A
What?
- [31:05]
C
Oh, and I was in Baghdad.
- [31:06]
A
What month did you show up?
- [31:08]
C
I showed up in February of that year. Okay, February, March of that year.
- [31:12]
A
I was over. Down the road in, in Ramadi in 2006.
- [31:15]
C
Yeah, I probably flew over you. Yeah, there's a. There's a high likelihood that we had.
- [31:22]
A
We had Apaches roll in a couple times and they got like so much gunfire. It was on Ramadi.
- [31:29]
C
Ramadi was nuts. Yeah.
- [31:30]
A
That they, they left. You know, I actually have. I actually took pictures. I was out. And I was out in an overwatch position or actually I was in a. In a combat outpost that was being built and income the Apaches, because we had briefed them and I'd met the Apache possibly and they were, they said, hey, we're a flying tank. That's what they said. There's gone a lot of. A lot of bad guys out of this. That we're flying tank. I said, hey, oh, man.
- [31:52]
C
Okay, let's go.
- [31:54]
A
So they roll in from the IP and man, when they came in there, it was an ungodly amount of gunfire that lit them up and they rolled back out. It was sketchy.
- [32:08]
C
I remember one night it was so bad. It was right by Solder City. One night it was so bad that for a second in my mind I thought to myself, this reminds me of the Fourth of July. It reminded me of a grand finale of a fourth of July fireworks parade. And at one point I was like, this is. You realize.
- [32:27]
A
Well, I was gonna say, you realize you're the target.
- [32:29]
C
Those are not fireworks. Right. Like, pucker factor increases exponentially. But.
- [32:34]
A
So when you roll into Baghdad, you just get out of flight school, you go straight to Baghdad. And now they're like, okay, dude, welcome aboard. You have cause a normal train up stateside would be another, what, six months to a year worth of training. And that means, you know, you get to go out to the National Training center and fly a bunch of missions and get all kinds of, you know, you get dialed in. It's like going to grad school, you know, like, it's. It's how you get ready for deployment. And you didn't get any of that.
- [32:59]
C
None of it right in combat.
- [33:02]
A
So did the, did the guys take you out and be like, okay, that's what you got to watch out for? Did you, did you get some kind of indoc flights?
- [33:07]
C
Of course we did, of course. So first they put you in a tactical operating center, they put you in a talk and they make you a battle captain so you could figure out what the battle space looks like, you understand kind of the battle rhythm, what's going on. And you're like an assistant battle captain. So you're on the radio, you're talking to the aircraft while they're flying around, all this good stuff. So at least you have an idea on how things work. And so I did that for about a month, month and a half. But in the meantime, we're also doing just training flights around Camp Taji where it was safe, getting your proficient, all that good stuff. And then they just cut you loose. And then at one point, I never forget, this is the most tired I've ever been in my entire life. I flew from 15 days straight. And I'll never forget, finally I got that next day off and I think I slept for 24 hours straight, but I remember just being exhausted. And keep in mind, admission profile for us was about 4 hours, but. But it's 4 hours of concentrated flying. So it's the equivalent to 3x that. Basically the toll that it has on your brain because of the concentration, deconfliction, talking to air traffic control, talking to the other aircraft, talking to the ground units. And it is a flight focused for our mission profile. And by the time you're done, your brain is completely wiped. And then when you throw the stress on being in combat on top of that, I mean, that's what people don't understand. Like, like the mental stress of this might be my last flight. Every time I took off, I said the Lord's prayer in the 2023 song, because I was like, let me get right with God before I take off. Because this actually might be it. Imagine the stressor of this might be it on top of everything that you have to do. And then the most important part of our job is to make sure the ground unit guys got home safely. So if I don't do my job, then some ground guys might die. And that's not gonna. That's unacceptable for us, that's unacceptable for our mission. And even if it means we sacrifice ourselves, it's our job to keep the ground guys safe. Now the cool part about Apache was usually, usually when we showed up on station, like the shooting. Stop. That. That was actually. And the guys loved us just even hovering around. They were kicking down doors. Hey, just, just be in the periphery.
- [35:11]
A
Apache pilot, call it. Troops were in contact.
- [35:14]
C
That's right. Right.
- [35:15]
A
Because when you guys showed up, they weren't in contact anymore because that, that is drop.
- [35:19]
C
They would drop their weapons and be like, yeah, never mind.
- [35:21]
A
We don't want none of that. So you're. Do you remember your first time? You're going out? How'd you feel the first time? You're like, okay, this is. This is it. Go. Go up and go on station and wait for the call to come from the ground.
- [35:34]
C
You know, you're the first person that ever asked me that, actually. And I remember that moment very vividly. And I've never been asked that. Thank you. It's fascinating. I remember it vividly. I remember actually taking off and I remember being like, okay, so now it's real. And you are hyper focused. You are realizing that this is the first time I'm trained up, I'm ready. This is what I've been trained to do. This is what I've been fighting for. I've been a battle captain. Okay, now it's time to actually perform. And so you were on the edge of your. I was on the edge of my seat in the front seat, too. I was on the edge of my seat just trying to get everything right. Didn't want to screw up. Didn't. Didn't want to mess up. And then you also think that every time you go out, you're going to get in a firefight. So you're like, let's go. And then. That's not how it works. So. So you go out and I realized that I came back, I landed. Nothing really happened. It was just a routine, you know. You know, for our QRF mission or whatever. And. And we went out, came back. I was like, okay, that. Okay, okay, that was. I figured it out. I think I'll be all right. And the first, probably five missions, you're very. Just hypersensitive. And then after that, you relax, you settle. You realize that, okay, this is the mission profile. This is what we have to do. We've plotted out a few things. There's gonna be a lot of downtime, but at the end of the day, you have to always be ready. But don't be nervous, because if you're nervous, that's when you make mistakes. Now that's all fine and dandy. And then you have another come to Jesus moment once you get shot at for the first time. So I'll never forget that. I remember the first time. I remember my very first mission. And I remember vividly the first time I got shot at. Because then that's now a whole. That's like a whole nother level of stress that you're adding onto it.
- [37:18]
A
So what, that, what would you see? Muzzle flashes where you get hit, the aircraft get hit, you hit Tink. Tink. Okay.
- [37:24]
C
Tracers.
- [37:24]
A
Tracers, like snaking tracers that'll make you pucker a little bit.
- [37:29]
C
That pucker factor was really big. And then so your first response to that is denial, like, this isn't happening. Right? And your backseater is usually the guy that's more experienced that. I've seen it before, obviously. He's like, well, Captain, we're getting shot at. Lieutenant, we're getting shot at. My main captain, I was there, I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, I. I see it. And for a second you're like, now what do I do? And that five seconds feels like an eternity. And then you settle. You rely back on your training, you rely back on your ttps. And then you get right back into what you're doing. The second time you get shot at. There is no pause. There is no. There is. And by pause, I mean it's very, very quick. The first time it seems like an hour, but literally it's probably like five seconds. You're like, they weren't kidding about the two way range. Like, that's like legit. And I'm here doing this. This is not a video game. This is not a Dr. Not a trail. And then the second time, the third time, then after that, you realize your reaction is taking fire, responding immediately. Immediately. But I. I'll never forget. I will never forget that first time. And it's important to have those kinds of experiences and it's important to always look back on that moment in life, because from then on, nothing is that hard, nothing is that stressful. I tell people all the time, Wesley, you know, you're a congressman, you're in politics. You know, it's pretty rough. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not getting shot at. And I was 24 years old when I was doing that. I mean, keep that in mind. I mean, I am. I am fighting a battle in an Apache at 24, 25 years old. I am deciding who lives and who potentially dies at 24 years old, 25 years old as a Very young man. So from there on, my life is really. Stress in my life is really not that big of a deal. Nothing is that serious now. Much of the chagrin of my wife. Every now and again she kind of gets upset with me because I don't.
- [39:22]
A
You're not getting spun up about something.
- [39:24]
C
I really don't, I really don't get spun up. It's very, it's very easy for me to rely back to those moments. And every now and again we live a good life. You know, I talk about being an American and how blessed that we have it. And every now and again you kind of forget, you know, you kind of get a little soft. And you know, I have two, we talked about, I have two little girls and, and a little boy. And you start going through the day to day of life and you kind of forget those moments where things get hard and you find yourself getting spun up over something that really is not that significant. And then before I go to bed at night, I think back to these two moments when I was 24 years old flying around in an Apache and you're like, you know what it's gonna be, it's gonna be just fine.
- [40:04]
A
Yeah, unique thing about the Apache. And I don't know if this is only the Apache, but so Echo. Like normally when you're calling in aircraft fire, there's a big protocol that you got to follow. If you're calling fast movers overhead, you got to give them a nine line brief. There's a bunch of really specific information that they need. And it can be get pretty complicated, but we get an Apache on the ground or get Apache in the air, over. Like the army guys will just talk to the Apache like they're talking to someone else with a rifle or someone with someone with a machine gun. Like, no, the building to the far left, hit that one. And Apache guys, since they're so close to the ground and they're so in touch with the guys on the ground, it's. It's almost like you have just another part of your infantry unit that's ready to lay it down. And that's why guys love Apaches because they can just make things happen. What, how is it for you? You're in the air, you're in the aircraft, you hear these guys on the ground, that's got to be like tormenting when you know that they're in bad situations and you want to help them and you're trying to understand what's happening. Like what kind of, what kind of mental place were you in when you start getting the call, hey, we need.
- [41:14]
C
We need support now.
- [41:15]
A
What was that, what was that like for you?
- [41:16]
C
First thing, most important, situational awareness. You have to know where the good guys are first and foremost. Because the last thing that we want is fratricide. So when we go weapons hot, you have to understand where the good guys are and where the bad guys are, number one most important thing. And sometimes you could, you could hear the duress. You can hear the sense of urgency that they're like, guys, we really need you on target, like right now.
- [41:40]
A
What was your primary way of identifying friendlies?
- [41:45]
C
They would give us a grid coordinate as to where they were. Eight digit grid coordinate. And then that's how we were usually able to easily identify them. Also sometimes they would use tracer fire. So say I'm shooting right now. Tracer fire. We are here shooting in the direction of the enemy. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You would hear the radio, then you see the tracer fire and be like, okay, Roger, got it. And then we're guns hot. So that's just, you know, a few of the ways. But that's the most important thing is we are here to save friendlies. We are here to make sure that these young men get back to their families alive. We aren't going to be the ones that, that, that eliminate them. We have to be very, very cautious first and foremost. I think that's, that's the first and foremost important thing for any Apache driver was always, who are the good guys? We don't shoot the good guys, we shoot the bad guys. Most important. Yeah, so situational awareness was something that we always had to be very, very mindful of.
- [42:34]
A
Yeah. And it, it's really hard for people that haven't been in combat to understand how confusing the battlefield is. It gets very, it gets chaotic, you know, and I, I wrote about, we, I had, in Ramadi, there was probably one blue on blue reported a week. Reported. Yeah, every week. Yeah. And not all of them had casualties, but you know, like, hey, you were shooting in our direction. We were in this building. Oh the, you know, the army was over here, the Marine Corps is over here. That's how. And there was, there were situations where soldiers shot at Humvees.
- [43:06]
C
Yeah.
- [43:06]
A
Like the Al Qaeda or they didn't have Humvees, you know, and Humvee is a very distinct profile of a vehicle. It's pretty hard to mistake something. Yeah. So that's how stressful it is. That's the kind of decisions people are making and, and how confusing it can be when, when you're out there. And so being in the aircraft overhead and you got these guys panic on the ground, you want to support them as much as you can. At the same time, like rule number one, it's almost like a doctor, do no harm.
- [43:32]
C
That's right.
- [43:33]
A
That's rule number one.
- [43:33]
C
Rule number one, do no harm. And just like you said too, us showing up a lot of times was just, was it just all they needed sometimes, I mean, sometimes we didn't even engage the enemy because they were, it was too close of contact. But the, but the comfort that they had knowing that we were overhead and how that, that shifted the entire battle just, just by, just by our presence being there. You know, I take, I take a lot of pride in that.
- [43:57]
A
So your op tempo, I know you did, you, you said you did 15 days straight and then one day rest. But generally speaking, you're flying every day.
- [44:06]
C
Yeah, usually. What it. I think for us at that time it was like, you know, four to five days on, two days off. Four to five days, one to two days off.
- [44:15]
A
And are you on a cycle flying at night the whole time?
- [44:17]
C
Are you Sometimes at daytime we had like a rotating cycle to roll pilots on and off and we had to get our proper crew rest at least eight hours. All that good stuff.
- [44:25]
A
What's the preferred. It's better go out at night or during the day. Which one do you like?
- [44:30]
C
If you're going to. That's funny, that's actually a really good question too. So at night is when. Nighttime is when you saw the most engagements was at night. The daytime though, you could see everything clearer. Like, like you could, you don't, you don't need envy, you don't need night vision goggles, you don't need flir. You could, I mean, there it is right there. You could see it clear as day. They could also. The enemy could also see you on the horizon during the daytime. So that's when they would drop their weapons and move on. If you're like, yeah, we don't want to deal with that with Khaleesi's dragon at that point. Right. Like, we would not sleep. No part of that. But at night is when you were, you were actually going to see a lot more, a lot more action. So it just kind of, it just kind of depended, kind of depend on the battle rhythm and where you were. But at the end of the day, I mean, everybody at some point is going to, is going to, there's going to be some engagements.
- [45:24]
A
And how long was your Was this deployment in total?
- [45:28]
C
Almost a year. Yeah. Because I got in. I got a little bit late, so it must have been. For me, it was like nine months, nine, ten months. So somewhere around there.
- [45:34]
A
And as you're wrapping up, like, as you're getting towards the end of deployment, are you starting to feel like that little short time disease? Are you starting to, like, well, maybe, you know, I know you're saying the Lord's Prayer, but you've been saying it.
- [45:44]
C
For me, saying it for a very long time.
- [45:48]
A
You know, and at some point, you start thinking, like, I always. I always with my guys, like, I would never tell them that this is the last mission.
- [45:55]
C
Yeah.
- [45:56]
A
Because I always felt like that was a jinx. Like, hey, the guys, this is the last one. So what I did is we kept doing missions. Kept doing missions. And when administratively, we couldn't do it anymore, it's like, all right, hey, remember last night? Yeah. That was it. We're done.
- [46:09]
C
And they're like, wow. Yep.
- [46:11]
A
Because I didn't want anyone going out with, like, this last one to be all paranoid and freaked out. Like, just maybe I'm a superstitious or whatever, but that's kind of the way, like, hey, you know what? Last night, that was it. Did you start to feel any, like, pressure? Like, you know, because you won't look. You're rolling the dice every time.
- [46:27]
C
Every time.
- [46:29]
A
Did you start to think about that?
- [46:30]
C
Of course you do. That is a natural state of being a human being, especially when, you know, like, you know, we're ripping out of here in about two weeks, which means that I have approximately three to four flights left, and I want to go home, and I want to get home in one piece, and I want to get home safely. But the mission is as important now as it was before you first got in country. Like, that hasn't changed, nor can you have a lapse of judgment because you still want people to get home. I mean, people do die on their last missions. That has happened to a few of my classmates. Literally, they were. They were doing left seat, right seat rides. And one of my very dear friends is no longer with us because he was killed on his last mission before he was getting ready to come home. And so how do you train your mind and how do you train your brain in your early 20s on top of that, and have the discipline and the state of mind and the fortitude to say, you have to be as focused right now, knowing that you want to get home and hug your mom and hug your dad and see your dog and do all this good stuff and see your family. But if you screw this up, that ain't gonna happen. In fact, it's even more important to be acutely aware of your surroundings and what's going on, but not to the point that you're nervous. It goes right back to the very beginning. It's like the state of mind in those last few flights is the same state of mind that you kind of have in the very beginning. But you can't allow that to creep in. You can't. Unless you're going to be too nervous, and then something bad is going to happen. And so it's not even about me being able to do this. Also keeping your soldiers focused. I know you want to get home. I know it's time to get home. I know what you want to do. I know we're two weeks out. We're almost there. We're almost there. And fortunately for us, those last few weeks, no one was lost. Everyone went off without a hitch. Everyone performed accordingly. But that's the mental gymnastics that you have to kind of put your mind through to prepare yourself, especially at the end.
- [48:26]
A
And how was coming back to America? So now it might have been 2006 still when you got home?
- [48:31]
C
Yep. Yep, it was. It was the end of 2006 when I got home. And I got home. And for the first two weeks, you're still in combat brain. You know, when we're. When I was in Camp Taji, and so we're far. We're far up north, but every now and again, you know, they would have mortar fire that would come in, you know, and hit our base. And I remember one time, a couple hundred yards away, I mean, there was. It hit a trailer burst into flames, and it woke me up. And then you have to, obviously, you know, put on your flak jacket, then, you know, head to safety, head to shelter, and you're not really asleep at night. You're constantly always worried about something can happen. You know, you're thinking about that mortar fire. You're thinking about the next mission. You get back home for about two weeks, and you're still in that mode. I didn't realize that until my mom and my dad would say something to me like, wesley, you're home. It's okay. You're home. And I remember I didn't completely decompress until two weeks later. I was sitting in church with my family, with my mom and my dad, and I was sitting next to them. And then finally I relaxed. I felt the weight of no longer being in Combat finally released from my body. It was like a spiritual moment almost. And I remember being emotional and being like, I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm safe. I made it home. And then only to do that, to go back to Fort Hood and to get training up for the next one. Like, that hit Justin. Like, that is the rhythm. I thank God every single day for those experiences. In my early 20s. I am so glad that I had to go through that, through those moments in life at a very young age, at a very early point. That's why the military is so important, especially for young men. It's critical. It's critical to train your mind and to hone your craft and to put yourself in an uncomfortable position early on in life, because you get used to being uncomfortable for the rest of your life. And life is hard.
- [50:32]
A
Yeah. And I think I. I realized this a couple months ago. They build that into you by little. They. They do exposure therapy where the first thing you get is yelled at by, you know, a drill instructor or whatever. Okay. Getting yelled at. Okay, well, not too bad. And then, you know, you gotta climb that rope wall, and you're like, oh, that rope ball is a little hard to get over. It's a little scary at the top. And then you go over the cargo net, which is 30ft up. Then you're doing the slide for life. Then you're repelling, and then you're fast roping. And each one of these things is a step into fear. And you're each one of those, you're overcoming. The first. The first bit of fear is tiny, but it gets bigger and bigger. Bigger. You just learn how to overcome it. Learn how to overcome it. Learn how to overcome it. And finally, by the time you're jumping out of an airplane, you're like, oh, I know what this feeling is. It's called fear. I know what to do in response to it. And this is what I'm gonna do. This is how I'm gonna handle it. Now you're in combat, you go, oh, oh, that little thing. Oh, yeah, I know what that is. That's fear. Here's how I overcome it. Don't. I don't back down from it. I don't pretend it's not there. I deal with it, and we go and we execute the mission.
- [51:29]
C
Correct.
- [51:29]
A
So they do a really good job in the military of teaching you how to do that. If you take someone from zero to combat, like, they're not. They're gonna see that big monster fear, and it's gonna freak them Out.
- [51:40]
C
They're not gonna do it.
- [51:41]
A
So you gotta. You gotta get used to it in the military. Does a very good job of doing that. I felt the same thing. It was for me, it was about a month after I got home, and, you know, sitting there on the weekend, and I woke up in the morning and I felt like, good. I felt like, you know, it was a sunny day. I'm in San Diego.
- [51:57]
C
Yeah.
- [51:59]
A
What is. What am I feeling like? Why do I feel good? And I realized I didn't feel good of some because of something that was there. I felt good because of something that wasn't there. And that was being worried about one of my guys getting wounded or killed, which is the worst knot in your stomach. That lasts for months and months and months, and it's just perpetually there. So when you go home and it's gone, you go, wow. Oh, I'm not. I'm not fearing the loss of one of my guys right now. And that's a big weight off the.
- [52:26]
C
Shoulders, you know, you never let those guys go either. You never let the guys that you served with go. So a couple months ago, Brandon Bender is his name. He was my crew chief. He is no longer with us. He passed away a couple months ago. And I'm not. I have a lot to do, a lot going on. I'm very busy. But when I found that out, I went to the services in Georgia because I had to go, because he was. He was one of my guys. He was one of my friends. He was a corporal serving under me, and he's the person that kept me alive. He's the guy that fixed my aircraft. He's the guy that was my confidant. He was a dear, dear friend. And to be full disclosure, you never let him go. And he's not with us anymore. And I'll be the first to admit, I wish I was in contact with him more. I wish I could have said something. I wish as his. As his. You know, as his leader. I wish even this. And we haven't. I haven't seen him in years. We haven't served together in 15 years, but he's still with me. Brandon is still with me. And so when you say somebody that you train with, that you are in combat with, somebody that you are in charge of, it's not just. It's not just them in combat. It's them in life, too. Like. Like, you build these relationships with people literally under fire. I mean, I'll never forget, I landed from a pretty rough mission, and Brandon was there. To bring me in. And I gave him the biggest hug in the world. He looked at me and he goes, I heard on the radio, sir. I'm glad you're back. What's rough? And Brandon, what's the guy that I will never forget looking at? And so that kind of relationship is forged in steel, and it's something that never goes away. And this is not a shout out to Brandon Bender, a shout out to Brandon Bender and his family. But I think of him often. I think of him almost daily to this day, because he's no longer here. But that level of care and that level of, I want to make sure my guys get home, and I want to make sure my guys prosper and that they stay alive. That care becomes a greater feeling than taking care of yourself.
- [54:27]
A
Yeah, no doubt. I realized this years ago. I had a guy named Tom Fife on. On the podcast, and he was in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He's a hard charger, and he got a Purple Heart in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And so we're talking. And we're talking, you know, when he was In World War II, he was like a. You know, he was a private. He didn't know what was going on. By the time he's in Korea, he's now like, a lieutenant, and by the time we get to Vietnam, he's battalion commander of Vietnam. We're having this conversation, you know, and just awesome conversation with this hero. And, you know, we're talking about, you know, kind of like the tactical military stuff, you know, which is. I love talking about it. You know, what was your missions? What were you doing? What was the op Temple like, what. You know, what the techniques were they using, what procedures were having that conversation. And then, you know, I said. I said, you know, how many casualties did you take when you were a battalion commander? And so this is 60 years after the war. Yeah. And he got choked up. And I thought to myself, and I. I realized at that moment that I'm always gonna feel that way about my guys.
- [55:35]
C
Yeah.
- [55:35]
A
And there's nothing wrong with it. And that was a huge lesson learned for me because I've been able to share that with other people. It's like, hey, when you lose your friends, that's gonna leave a mark.
- [55:46]
C
Yeah.
- [55:46]
A
And especially being in the military, you know, you're gonna lose your friends that are 23 years old, 25 years old, 26 years old, that are gonna. They're not gonna get to experience what we get experienced. Maybe they didn't get that chance to have Kids, they didn't get a chance to live the rest of their lives, and so that's gonna hurt.
- [56:02]
C
Yeah.
- [56:03]
A
And the best thing we can do. Look, you're never gonna. It's okay to say, oh, yeah. Oh, I'll freaking shed a tear tonight thinking about my friends. Then. There's nothing wrong with that.
- [56:14]
C
Yeah, it's okay.
- [56:14]
A
It's perfectly okay. And the best thing, you what. What you don't want to do is pretend that that's not there or dwell on it to the point where you're caught in the past and thinking about. Thinking about what woulda, coulda should have been, right? Because you can't change the past. So those are, I think, really important lessons. And. And even what you're saying right now about your buddy, it's like you.
- [56:36]
C
What do you do?
- [56:37]
A
You honor them. That's it.
- [56:38]
C
You live your life for them moving forward. You do what they. What I would want them to do if that were me. I wouldn't want you to mourn me. I would want. Don't feel bad for me. I'm at a better place anyway. Please live your life to the fullest. Just don't. Don't forget it. And understand that there are a lot of people that are no longer here. So we must continue to find ways to serve and live for them in their stead, they pay the ultimate sacrifice in the name of this country, in the name of freedom, in the name of. In the name of growing and making a more. Making a better, more perfect union. That's why they died. So get in the business of doing that. Literally. That's why I got into politics, sir. That's. That's the. One of the biggest reasons why. Look, you may not agree with me politically, this, that, or third, but please know that my heart is in the right place to make a more better union and to continue to serve for those who are no longer here to serve for themselves. That's what this whole thing is about. When you opened up about people that were in the military that serve. Now, no matter how you feel about them personally, keep in mind, we are the ones that said, I'm gonna die for our country. Hold on. Show us a little bit of respect here, because that's actually real to us, and most of you didn't do that. So you may disagree with us politically, but you should respect where our heart is, because we are the ones that are willing to bleed for the country.
- [57:54]
A
So you get home from this deployment, what's. What do you go into a workup preparing to Deploy again. Is that what happened?
- [57:59]
C
Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's kind of, I mean you take, obviously there's, there's some downtime and then there's, you know, some obviously NTC rotations and, and all that kind of good stuff. But then after that I actually didn't deploy the second time. I actually, I actually was on rear detachment. And then I actually, because I was getting out the military, I knew I was getting out the military. And so then I did my last two combat deployments. Actually it was considered to be combat in Saudi Arabia as a diplomatic liaison officer. And so I did the train up, then went to the captain's career course and then from there went to Saudi Arabia for two years. This is where I got the true diplomatic political bug during the last two years in a military station in Saudi Arabia.
- [58:41]
A
So explain what a diplomatic liaison officer is doing.
- [58:43]
C
Okay, so one of the, one of the largest Apache contracts actually goes to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a big purchaser of a lot of our aircraft and a lot of our munitions. And so I was, at that time I was doing foreign military sales for the military in Saudi Arabia. And so we advised them on what they need, what their battle needs were, what their training needs were, coordinating with Boeing to figure out what, what Apache model you need and the specs that you needed on the Apache to best fit your needs in Saudi Arabia as a diplomatic officer. And so that's when I got exposed to the region as a whole. And imagine being able to travel in that region as well as a. Diplomatically.
- [59:24]
A
As an officer, as opposed to flying around Baghdad, as opposed to flying around Baghdad.
- [59:28]
C
The diplomatic quarters and Riyadh are way different than Baghdad.
- [59:32]
A
Are you staying at five star hotel or something?
- [59:34]
C
Every now and again. It wasn't, it wasn't terrible.
- [59:36]
A
Are you wearing.
- [59:36]
C
Well, I was actually stationed on an Air Force base, so yes, it was a five star hotel.
- [59:40]
A
Oh yeah, for sure. They know how to, they know what they're doing. They know how to make those things happen. Are you wearing a uniform?
- [59:48]
C
Yes.
- [59:48]
A
Okay.
- [59:49]
C
Every day, driving down to Riyadh. Every day.
- [59:51]
A
And then you're interacting like with their squadrons of Apaches.
- [59:55]
C
Correct, correct. With their equivalent counterparts. One interesting fact was. So Osama bin Laden was from, to bring this whole thing full circle, he was from Riyadh, from Saudi Arabia. I think 18 or 19 of the 20 plus 9, 11 attackers were Saudi. Keep that in mind. And so the Bin Laden family is a construction family. And then there's also a piece of them that funds terror. So Keep in mind, when I was in Saudi Arabia is when we killed bin Laden. Mm. So I was driving downtown to work with Saudi escorts, and we were armed every single day going into work, because, again, I mean, you don't know who wants to do arm to do harm to American soldiers. And this was also me. It was a diplomatic job. But also every day we drove in with Saudi escorts. Just keep that in mind. So when bin Laden was killed, we didn't go to work for two weeks. We stayed on the base. They shut it down.
- [60:51]
A
Just threat levels too high.
- [60:52]
C
Threat level was way too high. Threat level was too high. What sympathizers are even within the Royal Saudi Land Forces that viewed bin Laden as kind of their hero. And I know we're working together here, but keep in mind, there are a lot of people that don't view us the same way, even though they're wearing the Saudi uniform and we know where the 911 attackers came from. For two weeks, the threat was too high. We didn't go to work. So keep in mind, this is what people have to understand about the world. There are people that want to see the end of us just by virtue of us being Americans, even some of our allies. We have to be vigilant and understand that everybody doesn't want to sing Kumbaya. Everybody doesn't come from America, and everybody doesn't have this Judeo Christian background that believes in the greater good. That's not how a lot of countries work. Keep in mind, when I was in Saudi, they were still doing public behandings and beheadings. Women were not allowed to drive when I was there. They are now. Finally, women were not allowed to operate a motor vehicle. Like, this is. This is happening in the world. And so that perspective that I have in living in another place and living in the Middle east for a prolonged period of time is what gives me the ultimate appreciation for what we have right now. And if anybody asks me why I am a conservative, a big part of that is not just because of my parents. Where I grew up, I've seen the world. We have it pretty good. We have champagne problems in this country. You people don't understand. Like, you really don't get it.
- [62:27]
A
Yeah. And there's. There's. The cultural differences are very, very difficult for people to understand and how dramatic they are.
- [62:39]
C
Yes.
- [62:39]
A
You know, like you said, the handing. You kind of threw that word out there. Like, everybody knows what behanding means. Oh, yeah. Like, oh, you stole something. We're cutting your hand off the discussion. Yeah. Oh, you cheated on your, you know, husband or wife. Okay, you're going to be stoned to death.
- [62:53]
C
You're dead.
- [62:54]
A
Yeah. These are different cultures. Very, very different. And one of the mistakes that we make as Americans is we think we can just, we think if they look at our culture, they're, oh, cool, that's what we want to do. And it just doesn't work that way. It just doesn't work that way. If you're going to change a culture, it takes, it takes generations, generations of persistent effort to change a culture. You know, like generations, three, four, five generations before someone goes, oh, yeah, I guess we're going to start to shift. Yes. But, you know, they've, they've lived the way that they've lived for thousands of years. And you can't change that in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years. It takes generations to make those changes. And, and, and by the way, you might not be successful.
- [63:40]
C
By the way, you probably won't.
- [63:41]
A
And there's a very, you know, there's a high likelihood you won't be successful. So understanding that from the get go is very, very important. And we seem to fantasize. Yeah, that or I shouldn't say we, but yes, we.
- [63:55]
C
America.
- [63:57]
A
Many people in America fantasize that we can change the world and we can change people's cultures and we can change the way that they think. And that's not a, that's not a. It's an arrogant attitude to have. It is, it really is. And it's, it's cost us dearly in, you know, throughout, throughout history.
- [64:13]
C
Cost us a lot of money and a lot of lives.
- [64:14]
A
Yep. Yep. You, you mentioned that you were doing these billets because you had, you were going to get out.
- [64:20]
C
Yes.
- [64:20]
A
What made you make the decision that you were going to move on from the Army?
- [64:23]
C
So, you know, my sister obviously made a career out of it. My dad did 20 plus years. But I was in a place to where especially I think, after the early deployments, I mean, you graduate. You know, my sister. Here's actually what's funny. My sister's 10 years older than me. Graduated West Point, 1993, and I beat her to Baghdad. Cause she entered a time of peace. So she spent a couple of tours in Korea and it kind of bounced around a little bit. I went from West Point, flight school, Baghdad.
- [64:48]
A
Boom.
- [64:49]
C
And I wanted to have a family and I kind of wanted to see what else was out there. And I realized that shortly after that first deployment, I realized, you know, I'm gonna do my job I'd do what I can, serve out my time to the best of my ability. But I'm gonna go do something else also, brother. I always wanted to be a politician in some capacity. I didn't know how or where or when I was gonna get there. But I've always had a political bug. And I've realized that unless you want to be a general, cause no shade on generals, but, you know, they could get pretty political actually. To become a general means you're playing a political game.
- [65:24]
A
Yeah, you have to play some games.
- [65:26]
C
You gotta. And I wasn't. I didn't want to do that within a confines of the military, because I don't like that. But if I'm going to be a politician, you have to get out, go back home, go get some more education, go figure life out, and then see what opportunities present themselves.
- [65:38]
A
Now, as you look at the political landscape and you see the, number one, a lot of people that are in the political landscape. But number two, you see the bad people that are in there and you go, this is my perspective. I'd say, well, I see a bunch of people that seem like disgusting human beings in the political world. And then when I see good human beings in the world, in the political world and I see how they get treated, how they get ripped apart, what part of your freaking mindset, oh, that sounds like a good deal. Let's go sign up for that gig.
- [66:07]
C
This goes awesome. This goes back to, if not me, then who? And this is the problem that we have in politics, that a lot of good guys don't get in it for that very reason. And so at some point, you got to be kind of the beacon of light to others to say, come on in, the water is warm. We need more people like you. We need more veterans, we need more younger people because our system is way too old, brother. I'm 20 years, basically. Basically 20 years below the average age of Congress. And that's. And that's a damn shame. So you have to keep in mind laws are being made by people.
- [66:39]
A
These people want to retire. I know, I see those numbers. You talk about term limits. These people have 30, 40 years in there.
- [66:48]
C
It's ridiculous, believable. Yeah, unbelievable. So keep in mind, you know, if you're 70, 80 years old, you're making laws. But let's be real here. I mean, look, we all die. This is what happens. It's called life. But you're making laws that you're not going to be here for. So you don't give a damn about the Laws you make when you have a 40 year old that's making laws? Oh, no, no, I care because I'm going to be around here in 10, 20 years and my children are going to be around here the next 10, 20 years. So I am fully invested and every vote that I take because I'm going to be around to see it come to fruition. So whenever you have a lot of older guys that aren't bought in, like a lot of military guys as well, well, that have kind of been, you know, very self serving in the, in the political spectrum, guys like me come around and we tend to rub people the wrong way and I'm here for it.
- [67:35]
A
Was there anybody, any specific? Because you said you wanted to be a politician. Yes. Was there any politician that you looked at when you were growing up or at any point in your life? You said, that's a good role model. I like what that person does. I have to follow in their footsteps.
- [67:48]
C
You know, there were, by the way.
- [67:50]
A
I got asked that question the other day. I drew a blank. I was like, no, I got nothing for you. And you know what I did eventually think of later if I had to, if I had to state someone. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
- [68:01]
C
Oh, wow.
- [68:02]
A
Yeah. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who was the governor of Maine. But you know, he was the hero of the battle of Gettysburg. And not just the hero battles gettype. I mean, he was a heroic guy that freaking went back into combat with a leather colostomy bag after he got his freaking guts blown out. What a badass, right?
- [68:21]
C
Yeah.
- [68:21]
A
And just such an eloquent guy. So that if I, if somebody asked me about next time I get asked a question, who's a politician that you admire, I'm gonna say Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. So you can steal that answer or if you got someone, because maybe you do, maybe you got someone. Okay, I do.
- [68:34]
C
So for me it's, it's. He was an abolitionist, not necessarily a politician. It's Frederick Douglass. And what he was able to do during slavery and during that time period and how he was able to get this country not as an elected official per se, but the influence that he had amongst political powers was something that I realized I wanted to be a part of. And I always tell the story too, about my family history. My great, great grandfather was born on a plantation. He was born on Rose down plantation. It's about 30 miles north of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Look up Rose down plantation. It still exists today. So you have a guy who is me, who is the great, great grandson of a slave, literally, and not Just me. But my brother, sister and I all went to West Point, all matriculated through West Point, lived in Robert E. Lee Barracks that we talked about earlier. I lived in Robert E. Lee Barracks. And I was. The guy that lived in Robert Lee Barracks was like, wow, this is. This is one hell of a country that not just me, my brother and sister, we've been black for our entire lives, matriculated through West Point, and I'm living in robbery Lee Barracks. And at no point are we a victim. This is one hell of a country. And then I then go on to become a congressman for a white majority district that Trump would have won by 20 plus points, and I won by 27 points. The great, great grandson of a slave. That is the progress of the greatest nation in the world. Don't let anybody tell you anything different. And so when I go back to thinking about Frederick Douglass and his famous saying, if there is no struggle, there is no progress. We have to live through the struggles, and that's applicable in everything in life. You have to struggle, you have to hurt. It has to suck in order for there to be progress. And we live in a world right now of instant gratification. Everybody wants it right now. Everybody. People have to keep in mind there are people that died for us to be sitting here right now. And there are people that went through a lot for us to be sitting here right now. And as a black man sitting here with the white man having this conversation, do you know that my great, great grandfather would never have the honor and privilege of sitting in a seat just like this? And I soak it up, and I love every second of it, because at the end of the day, we are the progress of this great nation. That is the influence that Frederick Douglass had, I think, during that time period. And I want to make a very similar difference.
- [70:59]
A
So what did that path look like? So you decide you're going to go into politics?
- [71:03]
C
Correct.
- [71:03]
A
And were you in the army, or.
- [71:04]
C
Did you pre army? I was out. So this. I got. I got out the army, went to.
- [71:07]
A
Grad school, I went to grad school.
- [71:09]
C
Got a grad school, moved back home.
- [71:10]
A
You did What? You get 17 masters. Were you still single at that time?
- [71:17]
C
I was still single.
- [71:18]
A
Because I was gonna say no woman would have allowed you to freaking take three classes at a time.
- [71:22]
C
Still single? Yeah, still single. Did three. I did an mba, a Master of Public Administration, and a Master's of Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell. I had a great education, great school, had a really good time there. But here's the funny thing, it's very liberal. As you know, Ithaca, New York is very liberal. So either you go to a school like that, you come out liberal, or you come out as conservative as you could ever imagine because you realize, more conservative. I went, I, I went off the reservation. Like, I left there and realized I left Cornell the most conservative I, I've ever been in my entire life because I realized that I understand the liberal mind. I understand that they live in, in the, in, in the world of sugar plum fairies and, and, and everlasting gostoppers and, and Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. I mean, they live in this, in this fake world that oftentimes can seem to be well intentioned, but that's not the realities of the world. So it's able to learn to see kind of how people think and then realize that, okay, how do I apply some of those adages to real life that I know, that I've experienced, that I can see? And then, how can I then be a vessel to help educate people in a far better way, especially given the conservative leanings that I have? And that's what Cornell did for me.
- [72:35]
A
So you, you're, you're sitting in classes all day long. Did you become a master of, of debating, you know, other people and what, what, what approach was most effective? Because, you know, I'm a huge proponent of the indirect approach. Right. This is BHD Hart. This is, you know, when I go into combat, I don't want to attack you, you know, on your front. I want to come to, from, to the flank and right, you know, not face your defenses. I want to see Cameronville.
- [73:06]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [73:07]
A
And I find that a lot of times when I see people debating politically, they just go, you know, straight at someone. Did you do that? Did you, did you have any success with that? Did you find it was better to, like, have conversations and find out what the common ground was and say, well, you know, oh, yeah, you want health care for people, I want healthcare for people. How do you think we should do it? We'll give it to them for free. Okay, well, where are we gonna get.
- [73:32]
C
How are you gonna pay for that?
- [73:32]
A
Yeah, how are we gonna pay for that? Did you like what approached you? How was it dealing with these people?
- [73:36]
C
So you have to keep in mind, too, the liberal mind sees someone like me, and until you know who I am, and until you've had a discussion with me or until you've talked to me, you have to keep in mind that the assumption for most liberals is that I'm Black. Therefore, I must be a Democrat and I must be liberal. And that, sir, was my advantage. That was always my advantage. Because you're gonna start opening your mouth and making assumptions about me without asking about my background and where I came from and what my dad did. And I suspect that I spent a lot of time in the Baptist church two days, two times a week, and that. Don't get it twisted. I might be black, but, brother, I'm as conservative as it gets. So they open their mouth.
- [74:18]
A
You know who Brian Babin is?
- [74:19]
C
I do know Brian Babbitt.
- [74:21]
A
Well, his. You know, so.
- [74:22]
C
His son.
- [74:22]
A
Yeah, his son Leif.
- [74:23]
C
Yes.
- [74:24]
A
And Blaife got asked one when. When Brian Babin won, you know, his. His election and became a representative down in Texas, Someone asked Leif, you know, hey, do you think that your dad is gonna become more centrist now that he's won the election? And Leif looked at him and said, my dad's a Southern Baptist deacon. That's who he is.
- [74:46]
C
There's no.
- [74:46]
A
Like, that's. That's who he is. That's, you know, that's the guy.
- [74:48]
C
That's.
- [74:49]
A
That's who they elected, and that's who he is as a. As a person. Yeah. So. Yeah. Similar, right?
- [74:52]
C
Very similar. And Brian Bab is such a nice guy.
- [74:56]
A
Oh, for sure.
- [74:57]
C
He's. He's the nicest guy in the world, but he is. He is conservative. Yeah. And so. And also, brother, you got to lead with. You got to lead with humor. You got to have a good time and don't take yourself so seriously and understanding that a lot of people, they have a benevolent mindset, but. But at the end of the day, they haven't had the kind of experiences that we've had. They haven't struggled. They haven't been shot at. They really. They're just trying to figure out how to live a better life without having those very hardcore experiences. So I oftentimes will just let them talk for a little while, and then ultimately I just drop the hammer. Just like, drop the hammer on them. They're like, okay, yeah, like, not. Never mind. Now, today, sir, I don't have that advantage anymore. Everyone pretty knows where I lean, where I lean these days. But here's the best part. And I say this to everybody. I wish everybody could run for office. I wish everyone could be a politician. And here's why. You find out who your friends are. You find out who respects you for who you are, not necessarily your political leanings. You find out who your friends are. You find out who would have conversations with you not based on how they thought you should be in their mind, but who you really are as a human being and who you have always been. And so what I found out very quickly is I've lost family members and I've lost friends, thank God, as you would say. Good. I don't need you in my life anyway. You are a waste of time and a waste of space. You're nothing but a flesh covered doormat as far as I'm concerned. As far as I'm concerned at this point. Don't need you. That's a very good thing. My circle has gotten so small now it's like a dot. And the people that I now have, that I rely on are my closest friends and my closest confidants and everybody else that jettisoned me. Because you don't like my political stances. Well, you never respected me anyway. And I always knew you were a flaming liberal, but I respected you and we were friends.
- [76:53]
A
That's so crazy.
- [76:54]
C
It's crazy.
- [76:55]
A
You know, I grew up, my dad was a very conservative guy and.
- [76:59]
C
Shocker. Yeah.
- [77:01]
A
And well, I mean, actually I grew up in New England. Right. I grew up in Connecticut. Like. Oh yeah, it is a little bit of a shocker.
- [77:08]
C
I get you.
- [77:09]
A
And, but like I remember when I was a kid, you know, we had probably four or five families that were all the big friend group, you know, all the parents were friends and various political leanings in there. But I remember, you know, my dad had a guy, a guy that I grew up with, a guy that I looked at, you know, like, like, like an uncle, you know, like one of those guys. And this guy was far left and my dad and him would sit at the dinner table when we have dinner and they'd argue all night long.
- [77:37]
C
It'd be great.
- [77:38]
A
All night long.
- [77:39]
C
Yes.
- [77:39]
A
And they're still friends to this day. A very, you know, conservative guy with a very liberal guy. Arguing all night long about everything in politics, you know, through the 70s, 80s. While I was there, I would watch them argue and I would leave because I didn't care because I was a little 13 year old. I'm gonna go throw stuff. Throw rocks at trees.
- [77:57]
C
Yeah, right.
- [77:59]
A
But, but it's like, it's sad when I hear you say that someone because of their friends with you. Yes, they're friends with you and then they just, then they see what your political stance is and they decide they're not going to be friends with you anymore.
- [78:13]
C
Unbelievable.
- [78:14]
A
That to me is crazy.
- [78:15]
C
It sucks. It sucks. It's sad. And I'm the first to admit that I remember. I'll never forget. I had a friend. I had a friend of mine. And we were dear friends for a very long time, family friends, even. And I'll never forget. I mean, we would hang out, we were. Gosh, we were very, very close. And then out of the blue, she sends me this text message. Out of the blue. We hadn't spoken in a while, and I can kind of tell why, but I didn't. I didn't really care. I still felt like we were still friends. Out of the blood, get this text message. That's the most demeaning thing I've ever gotten in my entire life. And I was like, who the hell do you think you are? Or you can pick up the phone, we can have a conversation, but you won't even respect me enough to do that. And since that's the last time we ever spoke, I would speak to her again. Because I realized that you never respected me for who I was before. And so for me, I look at it as. I view myself as a very tolerant person. I have absolutely no problem with you being a flaming liberal. In fact, we could be great friends. What I find out from the other side is that they are the ones that are the most rejecting of anything that doesn't fit their paradigm.
- [79:18]
A
Yeah.
- [79:19]
C
Damnedest thing.
- [79:22]
A
So you get done with college, running for. How would you get a job? What did you do?
- [79:27]
C
Yeah, yes. I got out of school, did some real estate stuff, worked for a home builder. And then there was a district in Texas in Houston that opened up. So it was a long term, longtime conservative, been a red seat, George H.W. bush's old seat in Houston, Texas, a congressional district seven. He. It flipped blue in 2018. And I was living at home in Houston, and I was like, with this 20 year incumbent loses. I will never forget looking at my wife and being like, so if this guy loses, honey, I mean, I think we're gonna be running for Congress against the Democrat, because I think we could have a good shot at winning. And so, lo and behold, that night he lost. I remember looking at my wife and being like, well, here we go. I didn't think my first swear way into politics was gonna be United States Congress. I thought it was gonna be, you know, maybe state rep, state senator, you know, county commissioner, something like that.
- [80:22]
A
Pta, pta, pta, pta.
- [80:26]
C
I mean, it goes from like, how.
- [80:28]
A
Did your wife feel about this?
- [80:29]
C
My wife is a beautiful Iowan who is supportive of me no matter what My wife is a pediatric nurse practitioner. She has a doctorate in nursing. She is a caregiver. And she literally said, I'm not ever going to allow you to settle. I'm not ever going to allow you to settle is what she told me. And since then she has had my back and been by my side throughout this entire journey. The entire time. I have a 6, 4 and 2 year old at home and you could imagine, you know, it gets kind of busy when I'm on 130 flights last year. 132 flights last year, brother. I refuse to spend a weekend or spend any time longer in D.C. than I absolutely have to. I'm the first, I'm the last one in, I'm the first one out. And here's why I say that, because I want to be spend as much time in my district as I possibly can. I have a young family, I want them to know who their father is. So I'm going to be there for the critical stuff. But keep in mind my priority is my district and it is my family and it is my country, number one first and foremost. God. Country is very real to me. But family is very important too. I think God smiles on those that are there for their families as well. And so the idea of me being on a flight every weekend, never spending a weekend in D.C. and knowing that on Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays of most weeks of every week, it's just my wife and those three kids, that's a lot. Especially two year old boy, he's a menace. But the fact that she is very supportive, stands by me, allows me to do this, allows me to serve, allows me to spend time away from the family and it's still 100% bought in. It wouldn't work any other way.
- [82:06]
A
So you roger up to say you're gonna run for that seventh. Yes. District and how'd that work out?
- [82:12]
C
I lost.
- [82:12]
A
Mm. Did you. When you say, yup, I'm running like what's the swarm of both praise and attacks that you get? Because I'm, you know, most, some people look at you go, great, we got a veteran here, conservative, we got a good candidate here, let's run him. They're happy. And then the other side looks and you go, I mean are they get private investigators out there digging through your dirt?
- [82:34]
C
Of course you know it.
- [82:35]
A
Looking through your trash, looking see what you're throwing.
- [82:37]
C
I mean they got a pretty clean life, you know, like for the most.
- [82:40]
A
Part they had to go back, they had to go back to sixth grade to where you gave a guy a. Or you didn't give a guy a bloody nose at your biggest crime. You're in a pretty good spot. You're pretty good spot.
- [82:50]
C
You know, we're not perfect, obviously, but I've lived a pretty clean life. I will say that. And. And I will also say that you're right. They come for you. You didn't realize, you don't realize until you actually put your name on that ballot. That's why a lot of people that criticize me or say anything about it, I just kind of laugh and I'll be like, put your name on the ballot and see what happens. But you won't ever do that because you rather sit behind your keyboard and talk a lot of trash. But you're not going to put your name on the ballot. I have the guts to put my name on the ballot. So that says a lot. And that probably that says a lot for any Democrat or Republican. And so got a lot of heat, as you can imagine, from the other side, but ended up getting to the primary without a runoff the first time I ran and then ended up losing that race by about three points. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me, was losing. And this is what I mean by Frederick Douglass. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Because when you get challenged and you lose, you have to realize, how bad do I want this? Do I want to go through this again? Am I going to run again? When I lost, it made me a better father, it made me a better human being, it made me a more humbled person, it made me a better husband, it made me a far better politician because I looked at everything that we did wrong and then I made it right. Lo and behold, as God would have it, two years later, we get two new congressional seats in the state of Texas. It's redistricting. Keep in mind when the first time I ran, I had no idea what the hell redistricting was because I burnt the boats, brother. I'm running for Congress and hell or high water, I'm winning. And there is no backup plan because I don't believe in backup plans. The only backup plan I have is getting up. That's it. That's the only backup plan. So I burned the boats and I. And I was all in and I lost. And I remember being completely rejected.
- [84:28]
A
Did it take you by surprise? Surprise or with a poll showing that you might lose or.
- [84:31]
C
I didn't care about polls. I'm going to win.
- [84:33]
A
You thought you were going to win.
- [84:34]
C
Polls I'm running. I'm not losing, right? Worked my ass off, raised the most money that cycle of any other politician in the entire cycle. Ran hard, worked hard, came up short. Two years later, a new district gets drawn in the greater Houston area. And it just so happens that the precincts that I won in the previous election found them, found their way to this new congressional seat in Houston, Texas, which I ended up running for and winning very handedly. If God would have told me, wesley, it's going to take you four years to get here and not two, I would have never done it. So talk about thank God for unanswered prayers. God doesn't reveal things to you when you want to, it's when you need it. Because if I would have known, I would have had to lose and run again, but I'd have never done it because I got to make money. And I have. I just. Just got married and I got a young family. And I would have made all the excuses as to why I couldn't do what my destiny and what my will was to do. But in working my butt off and losing, I realized that I built a brand and built something that two years later will come to fruition. And that is something that I tell to my children and young people all the time. Losing sometimes is the best, best thing that could ever happen to you. Getting kicked in the teeth sometimes is the best thing that ever happened to you, because either you're going to get up or you're not. And that's the test of a man or a woman, is what you do after you get kicked in the teeth.
- [86:02]
A
When you're putting together that team, how big is the team that's helping you run?
- [86:06]
C
So. So he said, this is really interesting and learning. See, the first time I ran, it was a very robust team with a lot of consultants and a lot of people's hands in the cookie jar. And the second time I ran, there wasn't very many hands in the cookie jar. I found three very competent people. One of them is sitting right here in the back corner right now, who are friends, who are loyal, who work their asses off every single day, who get up and they don't work for another client or they don't work for other people. They work for us in this brand, and we're in this boat together. And I've known this man for almost 20 years. I bring in a young guy to be my chief of staff and run the campaign that is just relentless in everything that he does. And keep in mind, talent is Very hard to find in D.C. good talent is very hard to D.C. because the grift is real. People sit around, do nothing, get a paycheck, but you find two or three people that are all in, that are bought in. They get up every day ready to fight for you and your brand. And these two men love this country, and they love this brand, and they get up with a fire in their ass like you wouldn't believe. Every single day. Well, then you could move mountains, right? It really is.
- [87:14]
A
But the first time you had a bunch of people, they wanted money, they were collecting a paycheck. They were fundraisers and this.
- [87:23]
C
And then the amount of money that gets spent and wasted and the amount of money that. That, that, that. Literally, it's like, it costs that much to make an ad. What? It costs that much to make. It cost that much to shoot a commercial. To shoot a commercial. I mean, I have a guy on my team and a few guys on my team. Matthew Topolski is a guy that can pop in a Zen, pop in a Zen, have a bourbon, and put together an ad that's better than any consulting firm could do. And he's one person because he's motivated and he wants to get it done. It's kind of like you. I see you were on a lean operation.
- [88:03]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [88:03]
C
Well, when you have competent people, you can run a lean operation.
- [88:06]
A
Jack. Little Zinn for Echo. Charles, we're in. So you win. You win. What's it like. What's it like going to D.C. for the first time to get sworn in and whatnot?
- [88:27]
C
It's. It's an honor of a lifetime. It's an honor of a lifetime to represent almost a million people from my hometown that I grew up in. I mean, keep in mind, my district spans about an hour from. From north, from the northern end to the most southern tip of it. The most southern tip of it is where I went to high school. Literally, my high school border is the. Is the southern border where my parents grew up, where I grew up in Spring, Texas. That's the northern border border, basically, of the District. So I have the honor of representing my hometown, the halls of Congress. And what an honor to walk past where Abraham Lincoln sat when he was in Congress every day. What an honor to think about the lineage and the history of this country and our founding fathers and to be a part of the lawmaking process. What an honor to be able to voice my opinions and voice the opinions of the District in front of God and country every single day like there is no greater honor than that for people to vote for you and put you in office to represent them in what is the greatest constitutional republic that's ever existed. Like, that is an honor in spite of our flaws. Keep in mind, too, I had one hell of a freshman run, too, because I was the first person in the country when President Trump ran a second time to endorse him. So keep in mind that was before it was cool. So you want to talk about intestinal fortitude and taking some hits here. I mean, this was the rise of Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley. And I was the person that said, nope, he walked up. President Trump walked off that stage. I was the first person in the country to endorse him. And I stood by him, and I stood by that endorsement, which ended up being a really good bet on my part. So I saw my freshman year of Congress, I'm flying around on Trump Force One with the president. I'm campaigning with him in Iowa multiple times. He came to my wife's hometown. He came to Houston multiple times. I am campaigning who is now the president of the free world. Just this past December, he invited me to the Army Navy game. And I'm sitting there singing the national anthem 20 years removed from when I was on that field 20 years to the year. And I'm looking at J.D. vance, me and the president, and I'm singing the national anthem, and I always. I mean, I'm always fighting back tears. I mean, this is absolutely insanity. And then after that, we see a national anthem. President Trump turns to me and he goes, wesley, what are you doing for the rest of the day? I said, well, Mr. President, I was just gonna. Just gonna go back home. He goes, do you wanna fly back to Mar a Lago with me in Elon? And I'm like.
- [91:01]
A
Yeah, let me check my schedule.
- [91:04]
C
Yeah, you're right. Like, of course. And I'm sitting. So after the game is over, get in the motorcade, get back on his plane. Cause at the time, Air Force One, he was using Air Force One because he was just a candidate at the time who just won it. He just won the election. And I'm sitting on the plane, sitting across from President Trump where you are right now. And Elon Musk is sitting right here. The most powerful man in the world and the richest man in the world. And the only thing I could think about was, I am literally living the dream of my ancestors. I don't care how you feel about politics. This is quite a ride that I have been on. And this is America. Here's the best part about this, about this whole story, brother. The only flight out of Florida, Fort Lauderdale at 11 o' clock at night after a full day of going to the Army Navy game, spending the full day with the President and then landing back in Mar a Lago and trying to find a flight out of Fort Lauderdale to get my butt back home to Houston that same day, the only airline available was Spirit Airlines. Get some, get some. Gets right. I go from Trump Force One to Spirit Airlines. I'm in a three piece suit, I'm in an overcoat. I have pictures of me in the present that he signed on his plane. Two MAGA hats that he signed on his plane with them. I just got off sitting next to, I start the plane sitting next to Elon Musk and President Trump. And then here I am amongst the people and I realize that this is the dichotomy of life. And by the way, no experience was better or worse. They're just different. And then sitting on Spirit Airline flying back and people like, why you dressed up so nice? And where did you come from? I was like, do you want to hear a really wild story?
- [92:56]
A
They're wondering if you're on the wrong.
- [92:57]
C
Right, right.
- [92:59]
A
I was at the Army Navy game too.
- [93:01]
C
You were there?
- [93:02]
A
I saw you guys, I saw you guys, man. I was like, oh, damn, that's pretty cool.
- [93:09]
C
We gotta go this year or next.
- [93:11]
A
Time you go, dude, I'm going. I go with the, the Travis Manion Foundation.
- [93:14]
C
Oh, great.
- [93:15]
A
Yeah, so it's pretty awesome. And we do the whole tailgate thing and, and we get joggle fuel out there and. Yeah, it's awesome. What a, what a proud tradition that is. And I, at halftime, I go down and I like, I see the midshipman and then I go see the, the cadets. I like, go. And it's freaking nuts. Totally nuts, dude. Because, like, I mean, I love the army and I love the Marine Corps and I love the Navy, obviously. And you know, those, there's, they know about me, right? They teach stuff. They, you know, so when I show up there, it's freaking, it's, it's epic. It's just, it's just such an awesome experience seeing all the cadets, seeing all the midshipmen, you know, everyone, you know, who do you think's going to win? I'm like, america's going to win.
- [93:56]
C
America wins that game.
- [93:57]
A
Yeah, America wins.
- [93:58]
C
America with that game. So we got our butts kicked pretty bad that game. But that's always why I tell people too, is like, I had no idea what the score was. Nor did I care. That's like, this is, this is, you know what the saying is, it's the only game that's played that everybody on the field willing to die for everybody watching. And that, that, that means a lot.
- [94:18]
A
Yeah, yeah. So you show up there like, what is it like when you're showing up now you're a congressman, you're elected, you're in, you're getting sworn in. How's that feel?
- [94:29]
C
So you have to keep in mind too. I mean, it's like this is the capital. I mean, this is dc, this is, my office is in Longworth. It's like, you know, it's like a three minute walk away from the Capitol. Like, it's really funny too. You think about all the movies, you know, growing up that you would watch, that you'd see on tv and you look at all the people that played all these political figures.
- [94:48]
A
Now you're one of them and I'm.
- [94:49]
C
Like, one of them. It's like House of Cards, you know, everybody got into House of Cards. And it's not like House of Cards. It's not nearly as salacious as everyone thinks it is, but it's the idea that people have been making movies about the experience that I am having right now. I remember watching Eddie Murphy and the Distinguished Gentleman and I'm like, yo. Like I'm the Distinguished Gentleman now. This is crazy. And this is just the beginning of my political career. Starts here in the halls of the United States Congress. You know, like, this is a story. This is the American story. This is the American dream. This is the quintessential definition of the American spirit. Fire. And so even on days that aren't as great, even though days that are kind of mundane, that are kind of rough, I don't necessarily want to be up there. Certain times, as you could probably imagine, when one of my staffers picks me up and drives me to Capitol Hill every single day, takes us down the street and you could see the Capitol dome, peek through the trees. And every day I tap on the shoulder, I said, we have the honor and privilege of working in that building. Building still to this day, we get to work here. We have the honor of working here. Don't ever forget that. And keep in mind, there's only 435 of us that exist on the planet. It's an honor that's been bestowed upon us by we the people. Don't ever take it for granted. And keep in mind, we work for we the people, not the other way around.
- [96:22]
A
So you're looking at America now. Actually, before I ask you that question, what's Trump like when you're hanging out with him?
- [96:30]
C
He's a stand up comedian. He is the kindest guy. Generosity and kindness is what comes to mind when I think about my personal interactions with President Trump. A lot of people, they see what's on TV and they see what the media says, but it's until you're around him when you realize that now this is a man that really loves this country and is opera, trying to operate in the best interest of the country. End of discussion. The fact of the matter is, is that I'll never forget. I walked on this plane and he was like, I walk. And it's like, hey, Wesley, go fly in the front. Go, go take this thing off. Right? I'm sitting in the cockpit of his, of his plane. It's just like, nicest guy in the world. And of course, there's McDonald's Quarter Pounder with cheeses, pizza, water burger, in n out. It's just all junk food. He looks at me and goes, wesley, you're not gonna eat that, are you? I said, Mr. President, for you, I absolutely am gonna eat every last bit of this. This is my cheat day with you. But my favorite story about President Trump was we were campaigning in Iowa, where my wife is from, and we went to the Iowa State Fair and I had my kiddos with me. And my oldest daughter loves President Trump, and I really wanted her to meet him, and she wanted to meet him as well. And you could imagine flying in on Trump Force one, ascending onto the Iowa State Fair and mean, it's like he's a rock star. It is like the Beatles coming, coming through town. I mean, everybody just, hundreds of people just started running. And so he's in full Trump mode, shaking hands, you know, flipping, you know, going through the flipping burgers and the pork chops, this and that and the bottom. Just doing his thing, just making his rounds around the Iowa State Fair. And finally there was a break in service. There was a break where he was kind of standing there getting ready to go to his next destination. And I tap him on the shoulder, say, hey, Mr. President, real quick, my daughter's here, he wants to meet you. He goes, okay, well, where is she? And I, well, she's right down there because she's five years old. And he looked. Down he goes, his shoulders, his disposition, everything changed. Scoops up. My daughter gives her a hug and says, I'm fighting for you. And so was your daddy. And we're Gonna make sure you have a better future. You're beautiful. Got a picture and set it down. And then he went right back to Trump mode. Like, I mean, it was like. It was like. It was like a machine. But in that moment is when you realize, this man's a father, this man's a grandfather. This man is a human being who is trying to operate in the best interest of the country that made him and his family what he is today. And it only happens in America. And when you see these moments that I've got to experience with President Trump, one on one, it's. It's something that you realize, yeah, we gotta follow this guy. In spite of what other people might say, in spite of all the noise and all the garbage. Yeah, this is definitely the guy. And it made it very easy for me to do that, especially after having those experiences.
- [99:30]
A
I was flipping channels between, like, MSNBC and FOX one time, and it literally is like two different worlds. The way, that, you know, Trump gets portrayed.
- [99:42]
C
Yes.
- [99:44]
A
When you're. When you're. When you see kind of the way he's been, the way he gets treated, what's your. Is it like a disgust? Is it just like, oh, this is just the political. The way the world works.
- [99:55]
C
It's a combination of both. And it is the way the world works, unfortunately. And it is the way politics works. That's why it's a very dirty game. But it also takes very skilled practitioners to be able to be a bridge to those that are willing to want, a bridge for those that are willing to actually hear both sides of the story. And that's what I tried to do. Now everyone knows that I'm in full support of President Trump, but there's also a certain level of complexity that I try to approach this job with. It's not just because I'm MAGA and I like Trump, which I am those things. It's also because here's what makes sense and here's what's in the best interest of this country. One example. I have daughters. You have daughters. We're grown ass men. Men shouldn't be competing. Biological men shouldn't be competing against biological women. This is a sanity check. It's very easy. This is not even a conversation. How are we even debating this right now? Unbelievable. What does President Trump do on day one or one of his first executive orders? I'm in the White House, and he is signing an executive order to not allow biological men to compete against biological women. Therefore, we are protecting our baby girls that you and I would die for and kill for our baby girls. End of discussion. And so when I look at a man that's willing to do that on day one and take all the heat, all the garbage from the left, well, you're not sensitive to the trans movement. You're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We aren't playing these games. That's just the right thing to do because it's simply common sense. Joe Biden was present for four years. He did not defend my baby girl. He didn't do that. A lot of these guys don't have the guts to do just what the right thing is, in spite of what the woke mob and mafia might say. So what? That's just one minuscule example of a lot of examples that I can give of somebody that says, this is what is right. I'm going to take the heat. Let's go.
- [101:52]
A
Have you been a lot of people, myself included, say, you know, if Trump wouldn't have lost in 2020, oh, good. You know, right. Like, I mean, he looked at the world and said, okay, I see how it works now. And you know, the first time around, you know, you were looking at some of the people he was bringing in and you sort of, oh, well, that's an interesting choice. But the second time around, it's like, it kind of was on.
- [102:18]
C
Like, it's on now. I know where the bathrooms are.
- [102:20]
A
Yeah.
- [102:22]
C
And he walked in there guns blazing. He prepared for the previous four years, for the second go round. This goes back to me talking about why it's important to lose sometimes. Because when you lose, you get to regroup, you get to come back stronger and better and badder. And that's exactly what he did. I mean, the first hundred days, it was so funny trying to watch, trying to watch liberals keep up. I mean, hell, bro, I'll be honest with you, brother, I couldn't keep up. I mean, I would go to work the next day and turn on Fox. What are we doing today? It was just, he kept, he's, he's moving, he's going. He's moving, he's going. You look at the tariff war, the tariff war, by the way, this is, this is not a tariff war that President Trump started. We've been in a tariff war for decades. We've just been getting ripped off in this war. And then we would then turn to foreign countries like China and India. Say, yes, please, may I have another? And then now we have a leader that says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to pay you're, you're going to pay for this. You are going to pay to use what is the strongest economic force in the world, and that's the American consumer. You're going to pay for this. So we've always been at war. Now we just have a war fighter. That's one actually do something about it. And now how is that turning out for us later? Working out pretty good for. So imagine if he had lost or if he had won the second time, he wouldn't have cleaned house the way that he did, because he would have done the same thing that got him there. They had a saying, what gets you here is not necessarily what's going to get you there, but if you don't change it, if you don't learn, then you're never going to get there.
- [104:00]
A
So we're seeing obviously Trump making moves, making progress, moving things the way he wants. And what. But.
- [104:09]
C
What.
- [104:10]
A
I guess two part question. What do you think the threats to America are right now? And then what do you think the strength of America that's going to help us overcome these threats?
- [104:23]
C
So the greatest threat to us, to me, is our deficit. And the fact of the matter is we're $36 trillion in debt. We're running a $2 trillion annual deficit deficit. That's unbelievable. And it's not sustainable. And China, those are the greatest existential threats to me, in my opinion, to the country in the future of our babies. And that's what I try to fight against every single day. Now, President Trump is on the right path here. We have to grow our way out of it, and we have to have exponential growth because we can no longer cut our way out of the spending rut that we've put ourselves in. Hence the reason why we have the tariffs, because we have to cut our economy loose. We need to make sure that we have exponential growth. We need to make sure that people are pony up and paying their fair share if they're going to use the American consumer. Because the only way to get us out of this $2 trillion annual deficit is to both cut government bloat, which is what he's trying to do, and on top of that, grow our way out of it. He understands this. And by the way, we can have exponential growth if we are willing to make some difficult decisions now that's going to benefit our future. And then, of course, there's the juggernaut that is China and what they are trying to do in stealing our intellectual property and building up their military. If we're not paying attention we have to be very careful with this. They are building their forces faster than we are building ours. Space Force, that got made fun of when President started it. Well, we're talking about what's going to happen in the future of war. Fighting Space Force is going to be a very serious. Was gonna play a very serious role in how that looks moving forward. And so President Trump has done some things to set us up for the future. We're in the right track now. We have to continue to grow and build on it. It's gonna take leaders like me and many others of my vintage to ensure that we codify this year in and year out, because we're at the point where we cannot go back.
- [106:13]
A
Do you lose sleep at night thinking if we go back in the wrong direction?
- [106:17]
C
Of course I do.
- [106:17]
A
What's gonna happen?
- [106:18]
C
Of course I do. Of course I do. Because we have babies. I have babies, and I know that my life on this Earth is finite. We're not going to be here forever. And so the greatest asset that we do have is our time and our babies. We have got to set up this country for the exact same exponential growth that we have seen in the last few generations and just in my family lineage, and make sure we have that same growth for them so they could have a more perfect union. We're never going to be perfect. We are all flawed. But if you look at this country and look at what we have and what our problems are, comparatively speaking, we're in a very good place. But if we don't fight for the values of this country, every single generation, then we're damned to lose them at some point. So this is why I love what President Trump is doing. We're fighting back. We're fighting back on the culture wars. We're fighting back on Sydney Sweeney. And. And quite frankly, I thought she looked great in those American Eagle jeans, if I'm being honest with you.
- [107:14]
A
Well, I guess they did. But, like, apparently they couldn't get a hold of my wife to do that photo shoot. They used the next best thing.
- [107:21]
C
Of course they did. You margin. I understand. Mine, too. They called mine second. Emily was too busy with the kiddos. But, you know, the fact that we're even having these kinds of conversations, it's kind of tongue in cheek. But this is the kind of stuff that we're actually seriously fighting against. And then also, I will end with this, brother. I'll say this like, you know, the left is constantly trying to divide us along racial lines. And that, to me, is a regression to a Dark past that. The same people that are trying to talk about how they are trying to further people of color and do this and that are the same people that demonize me to no end for being a black Republican. They don't respect my intellect. They don't respect my acumen. They. They look at me and look at the color of my skin and say, well, he needs to think a certain way. And then if he's not, well, then that guy's an Uncle Tom. And I'm like, uncle Tom? I mean, how about a. A cousin once removed or something? Uncle is pretty tight. You know, that.
- [108:22]
B
That's.
- [108:23]
C
That's really close to the root, you know, guys. But when I think about this country and where I am right now and the life that we get to live and the homogenous melting pot that we have as a country and as a union, this is as good as it gets. My dad would always tell me, son, I grew up in the Jim Crow era. I had it difficult. You don't. And what I don't want is. I don't want liberals dividing this country based on that when we have come so far. Yeah.
- [108:53]
A
You know, if you sit there and look at the problems all the time, and you focus on the problems all the time, the time you give the problem life. You know what I mean? They become your problems. And if you. Like you said, if you're looking to the future and looking at where you can go and look at the solutions, those solutions become your life. And it certainly seems like it would be a lot better for all of us if we looked towards the future and towards the solutions instead of continually going back to the past, especially the negative parts of our past, which, you know, you certainly have. It's like I talked earlier about, you know, you lose your friends.
- [109:22]
C
Yeah.
- [109:22]
A
And you remember them. You learn from it. But it makes you cherish what you have now. It should make you cherish what you have now. And it's the same thing with our country. Like, oh, yeah, we can look at the past, we learn from it, but we shouldn't dwell there. We should look to the future, where we can go and what we can do. Yes. Be a beautiful thing if we could move that in that direction.
- [109:41]
C
Well, that's what I'm trying my best. This is what. This is what. This is what I try to get up and do every single day. And I'm the person that's want to be the first person in the door. I'm willing to take the heat rounds. I'm fine with that. I could take it. I can take it. But what I also find out is you should see the direct messages I get. The DMS I get of people, young people that may not have the courage to be as, you know, as at the forefront of this battle as I am. But they say things like, hey, just want to let you know, sir, I got your back. Hey, I feel this way too. Thank you for being a voice for me. You have to ignore a lot of the vitriol that you see on X, which is just, it's a cesspool. It's, it's, it's just, it's just a mess. That's not the reality, though.
- [110:23]
A
It's not.
- [110:24]
C
And so somebody needs examples. We all need role models. And that's what leadership is, is stepping up and saying, you know what, I'm going to be a role model. And it's going to be difficult sometimes and people are going to say some really mean things about you. But like, I mean, let's be real here.
- [110:39]
A
They ain't shooting at you, they ain't.
- [110:41]
C
Shooting at me, brother.
- [110:45]
A
Awesome plans for the future. Keep doing what you're doing.
- [110:49]
C
I'm guessing, keep doing what I'm doing and just staying mentally aware of what's going on, keeping your head on the swivel and doing difficult things every single day just to keep you sharp. So I had an instructor pilot, he said, Wesley, he was the same guy, he was the lead major. He goes, wesley, you know, you got to kill something every day, no matter how small. Just keep the edge. I mean, he would go outside, go kill an ant, Just, just to feel like, okay, I got my killing today. I like this dude, he's hilarious, right? And this kind of goes back to like staying fit, staying being, being an example, being a, being a role model and getting up every day. This, this is, this is where fitness always comes to me too. Like, like staying fit, staying, staying physically fit. So important. It's my favorite saying. It's just, it's from Ronnie Coleman. He's like, everybody want to be your bodybuilder, but don't nobody want to lift no heavy ass weight, right? That's like my favorite, my favorite saying.
- [111:52]
A
We have a similar one in the, in the, in the SEAL teams. Yeah, everybody wants to be a frogman on a sunny day. Because when it's sunny out, you're down in Coronado beach and just go out for a run and it's beautiful. Get your shirt off in cold water, but you fast forward nine hours and it's freezing cold. And it's like, no one wants to be a fan.
- [112:08]
C
Nobody wants to be there.
- [112:09]
A
Yep. So Ronnie Coleman got it right.
- [112:10]
C
Yeah, he did. Yeah, he did. So that's kind of what the future is for me, man. And also, just always keep in mind that the reason why we do this is for the country. It is for we the people. It is for my little babies at home. It is for your little babies at home. It's for. For. It's for the further. It's for the greater good and furthering the will of the greatest nation in the world. I'm not saying that because it's a slogan. I'm saying that because I genuinely believe that. And it's been codified by my. By the blood of many of my classmates that I knew and loved are no longer with us. The second we start forgetting our why is when we go to hell in a hand basket. And that just can't happen because we can't afford it.
- [112:57]
A
No doubt. Awesome stuff. Where can people find you? So you got Wesley for Texas dot com. You got Instagram. You're at Wesley for Texas. Twitter X and YouTube. You're Wesley Hunt. Tx, Facebook, Wesley Hunt. That's. That's where people can find you. Follow you, listen to you, hear you, support you, echo. Charles, what questions you got?
- [113:21]
B
Can you tell me about the sneaker Caucus?
- [113:23]
C
Oh, man. Secret caucus. So one of the. One of the. You know, the things that everybody gets so wrapped around the axle and everything is so serious, especially right now, and everything is very polarizing. You know, the one thing that we could all agree on is that, you know, sneakers are cool. Yes. You know, it's just what it is. And I. And, like. And I'm a big Jordan guy, you know, because I, you know, I'm a. I grew up in 1981. You know, I always tell people, you know, I grew up in an era where cash, money and records was taken over for the 990, the 2000. You know, that's when I was in high school, right? So, like. So, like, in that era, we are talking about J's and Jordans and every now and again, to kind of cut through the mundane monotony of Congress, you know, to have a few, you know, young millennial guys that are like, hey, you know, we're gonna spend a day every now and again, and we're gonna wear some Jordans on the House floor. It kind of breaks things up a little bit, as though levity. It's bipartisan. Who doesn't like Jordans? I'll Never forget what Michael Jordan said. Republicans buy sneakers, too. They kind of add that little flavor to it. And also, being a younger guy, too, you know, one of the more younger guys in my caucus is something that's just fun that we're able to do.
- [114:30]
A
What else? Echo.
- [114:30]
C
Charles.
- [114:31]
B
How much does the campaign ad cost? The inflation, the inflated cost that you're.
- [114:36]
C
Talking about a campaign ad?
- [114:37]
B
Yeah. Remember, you're like, hey, that much for a campaign ad? Like, how much are we. We talking.
- [114:41]
C
We're talking about in upwards of 50 to $100,000 for. And they're not good ads. And I can tell you they're not good ads because turn the TV on and look at any typical ad that you see. It's a cookie cutter, just politician, sleeves rolled up here. Make sure it's a blue shirt.
- [115:01]
B
Yeah. Hell yeah.
- [115:02]
C
With. With. With something superimposed in the background with their arms folded. You're saying, I'm here to fight for America. And it's the most horrible thing you could ever. It's the most inauthentic thing that you could ever imagine. But they print money on this stuff. They print money on it, and then on top of that, then you get paid by doing the ad buy, which is. You get a cut of that. And the ad buy is just scheduling the ads. These people, you are giving away money that can actually go back into your coffers, that could actually be invested back into on tv, furthering your brand. And so my guys have. Have mastered all of the above, and we handle everything in house.
- [115:42]
B
Yeah, that's the move right there.
- [115:44]
C
That is the move.
- [115:44]
A
You had my video guy over here, Ekko, was starting to think about maybe he needs to start making political ads at 50k.
- [115:51]
C
He's like a 50. Because you're why you cut him short, man.
- [115:56]
B
Actually, really, the. It's what you. The point is what you said. It's like. Because I see those political ads and I'm like, bro, that would take me, like, 30 minutes to do this whole thing. You know, it's like. It's just Photoshop and, you know, some other stuff. Yeah, yeah.
- [116:08]
C
They have paid actors. Paid actors are in it. They don't even. They're not even showing the. They're not even showing the politicians some of these ads. It's just paid actors saying. It's a guy dressed up in a fireman suit. Like, well, vote for this guy. Because he's like, dude, that's horrible. So, you know, the first time I ran, I experienced that. Second time I ran, my buddy Matt Said, you know what, Wesley, we're going to let, we're going to let Wesley Hunt be Wesley Hunt. We're going to let you be you.
- [116:36]
A
That's the move.
- [116:36]
C
That is it. Authenticity, your authentic self. It's better that way.
- [116:40]
A
Hey, if you lose that way, you lose that way. If you win that way, you win that way.
- [116:44]
C
Boom.
- [116:44]
A
How it should be.
- [116:45]
C
And that's why I learned from President Trump, too. He's his authentic self.
- [116:49]
A
Yeah, you know, I look at, I used to look at fighters, like MMA fighters, and there would be some fighters that would protect their record, so they would, they'd fight out very, very infrequently, and they'd have a really good record. But then there are other fighters that would just fight all the time and they would have a winning record and you kind of knew who they were.
- [117:08]
C
Right.
- [117:09]
A
And when you see what Trump does, like, who is going to go and just do interviews? I mean, just open session interviews for hours. Like, I'll be like, oh, cool. I'll be like, the White House. I follow the White House on YouTube.
- [117:20]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [117:21]
A
And I'll see the, you know, President Trump takes questions. And I've got a 10 minute drive. I go, I'll listen to it. No, he's on there for an hour and 10 minutes.
- [117:28]
C
Yes, he will be.
- [117:28]
A
It's not, it's not 10 minutes of him answering. It's an hour and 10 minutes of him answering questions. So he's a guy that's just in the ring all the time and, you know, he'll, he'll say something that's. That doesn't make sense, or he'll, you know, quote something wrong and he'll jump all over him. But it doesn't matter because he did. He said 100 things and he got 90 of them right, 96 of them right. People will jump on the four that he got wrong. But everyone's like, hey, dude, you know, like, you talk for an hour, I don't care who you are, you talk for an hour, you're gonna say something. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I got that one wrong. But he's just in the ring all the time. And by the way, when you're in the ring all the time, you get.
- [118:03]
C
Good, you get better, you get really good.
- [118:06]
A
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. What else? Echo? No football questions. Captain or football team?
- [118:11]
B
Okay.
- [118:11]
C
Yeah, I was in high school, back in high school days.
- [118:14]
A
Did you play in college?
- [118:15]
C
I played a little bit at West Point. I played for the first two years at West Point. Then realized I had a Moment at West Point where we were playing Boston College. It was my sophomore year, and they had a running back, Boston College. His name was Willie Green, and Willie Green was 6 foot 1, 230 pounds weight. He got drafted probably 30th first round. He was an animal. Ran a 4, 4 40. I mean, this dude, and he. I mean, he kicked our asses. It was a track meet, and I. And I remember sitting on the sideline, and my neck was just breaking because it was just looking back, this guy was just running up, down the football field. And I looked at Willie Green. I was also running back, and I said, you know, I've always prided myself in being a decent athlete, you know, but at the end of the day, come to Jesus here. I'm not Willie Green, and I'm not going to the league. So it's time for me to focus on what I want to do, which is fly Apaches.
- [119:03]
B
You played running back?
- [119:04]
C
Yeah, I did.
- [119:05]
B
The whole time?
- [119:06]
C
Yeah, my whole life. My whole life running back from. From Pop Warner on up. And the important thing about sports and why my kids will also play sports is it's critical. Sports are very important, especially for young people to learn what it means to play on a team, what it means to understand the difference between being hurt and being injured. Which one are you? And they are very different things. And it also teaches you the discipline of getting up and doing more than everybody else has to do if you want to play this sport. That's the kind of stuff that I see missing in this next generation. And y' all are jiu jitsu guys, too. I mean, young people learn. And that's an individual sport, which is an even. Which is another level, because now it's on you. Now it's mano e mono. It's you versus the other person, which is also a very important lesson to learn about how to prepare yourself to fight the battles, not just in sports and not just in jiu jitsu, but the battles of life that you have to deal with every single day.
- [120:06]
B
Agree. Especially football, where playing on a team, football, like, they have unique positions where the wide receiver, he can't just jump and play, you know, and the running, you know, like, every once in a great while, you'll see a guy who can play two positions or both ways, but everyone's like, whoa, this is a big deal.
- [120:26]
C
Travis Hunter, right? Like. Like, nobody's wanted a generation.
- [120:29]
B
Very uncommon. Yeah. So it's really like, hey, you got to do your job, because, bro, it's not like this other Guy can just jump in and fill your. You know, when you make a mistake, it. It, like, it affects everybody.
- [120:40]
C
It's just like combat. Just like, you know, the guys. We have a mission as an. As the Apache guys, and I can't do what they do, and they can't do what I do.
- [120:47]
B
Yeah.
- [120:47]
C
But we both have to do our jobs. Everybody goes home safe.
- [120:50]
B
Yeah.
- [120:50]
C
You know, you learn these very. It's a very simple value. Very simple value. But you learn. You learn them in sports. Yeah.
- [120:56]
B
Agree.
- [120:56]
A
Do your job.
- [120:57]
C
Do your job.
- [121:01]
A
Good, Echo.
- [121:02]
B
It's all good. Yeah. Good to meet you.
- [121:04]
C
It's been a pleasure, brother. Good meeting you as well.
- [121:06]
A
Any other closing thoughts? Man.
- [121:08]
C
Thank you for all you do. Thank you for your message. Good. Is something that we use in our house frequently. I showed my wife this a long time ago. I've been obsessed with it for a very long time. It's a mantra that we all need to adhere to. And your message is a very strong message. It's a very good message, and it's something that is positive. It's based for who you are, and it's something that we need to hear, something that our world needs to hear. And the fact that you are even willing to have somebody like me on. On your platform. It's an honor to be here and thank you for your service and your continued service in fighting what I think is the war on. Understanding what masculinity means, what it means to be a fighter and what it means to be your best self and the best version of yourself. And to become the best version of yourself ain't easy. It's not easy. But there is no alternative. You have to become that best person of yourself. Thank you for all you do.
- [122:07]
A
Well. I appreciate it. And thanks for joining us. Obviously, thanks for your service to our great nation, not only in the army, but not only protecting those troops on the ground and being there when they need them and scaring the enemy way at a minimum. But thanks for what you're doing now as a member of Congress, putting yourself back in the line of fire. And I know that's what it's like. I see what you. I see from the outside what you guys go through. And thanks for what you're doing to protect our way of life here in America. Thank you.
- [122:32]
C
My honor. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Thank you.
- [122:35]
A
And with that, Congressman Wesley Hunt has left the building. Definitely. Awesome. To sit down and hear his perspective. Got a lot of energy. He's fired up from. Got out of the vehicle. He's fired Up.
- [122:50]
B
He brought me with him, dude. 100.
- [122:51]
A
You were fired up too? We were all fine. Part of that is he's getting after it. Right. Getting after it. Working out. And I understand that you've confirmed a protocol for intra workout scenarios.
- [123:07]
C
Yeah.
- [123:08]
A
So you're doing, you're doing two workouts?
- [123:10]
B
Yeah, in a row. So this is when it counts.
- [123:13]
C
Yep.
- [123:13]
B
Okay, so Jockey fuel. We gotta hydrate and we got creatine.
- [123:18]
C
Right.
- [123:19]
B
Seemingly like, you know, it's nothing new yet we already knew we had hydra. But anyway, if you time it. So here's my routine. Hydrate in the morning. It's just how I drink a thing of water and then I go out on a little ruck, sometimes run. And then if I have. If time is kind of whatever, I'll do the lift right after. Okay, but sometimes.
- [123:39]
A
What do you mean if time is a little whatever? What does that even mean? I know you don't have time.
- [123:44]
B
Yeah, yeah. If you. If I'm like, hey, I'm not. I don't wanna. Look, let's face it. Sometimes you get stuff to do right after that, you know, like today, but sometimes you don't. So I can be like, hey, I'll do the rock or whatever in the morning, and then I'll work out in the afternoon. So I'm full energy. So I can. I can get the most out of each workout.
- [124:02]
C
That's.
- [124:02]
B
That's my routine. I know not everyone's like that, whatever. But if I'm like, I want to get them both done in a row. Sometimes the lift, which I do second, sometimes that suffers performance wise because I went through, you know, but this is what you do. Hydrate during the, during the ruck or right after. Hydrate and creatine mix. Big ass mix, bro. Good as new.
- [124:23]
A
Good as new.
- [124:24]
B
Oh, yeah. I mean, you're still sweating and stuff, but it's like you're good as new.
- [124:28]
A
I like it. Good protocol. If you need to get hydrate or Creatine, go to jockeyfuel.com we also have protein. We got everything that you need. Jockofuel.com Go check it out. We're also in a bunch of stores around the country. You can find it. It's what's good for you. Also Origin, usa. American made clothing. Talk about a lot of sacrifices that get made for America. We talked about those with Wesley Hunt today. But sometimes people forget that the sacrifice were made and go out and buy a pair of freaking pants that were made in China. Which, by the way, Wesley Hunt pointed out as our Biggest threat. And yet we're giving them money. Let's not give them money. Let's keep the money right here in America, go to Origin USA and get a pair of pants. What'd you wear on the. You were saying you. You were saying you were in the comfort zone on your flight to Hawaii.
- [125:19]
C
Hawaii, yes.
- [125:20]
B
Standard.
- [125:21]
A
What was you wearing?
- [125:23]
B
The standard uniform Origin pants all day?
- [125:27]
A
Jeans.
- [125:28]
B
Origin jeans.
- [125:30]
A
Because there's a bunch of different kinds of pants. Now for more.
- [125:32]
C
Yes.
- [125:32]
A
You got the. The GTFO pants. You got the. Those kind of canvas cotton ones. Those are. Those are pretty nice.
- [125:43]
B
Yeah, yeah. Factory jeans.
- [125:45]
A
They have a little bit of stretch them too.
- [125:46]
C
Yeah.
- [125:46]
A
Well the fact the factory jeans definitely have stretch. Yeah, Both jeans have stretch.
- [125:50]
B
Yeah. And they're a little bit thicker. Cuz me like.
- [125:52]
A
Oh, you were wearing the factory jeans.
- [125:53]
B
Yes.
- [125:53]
A
To Hawaii.
- [125:54]
B
To Hawaii.
- [125:55]
A
How come?
- [125:56]
B
Cuz they put. Put on the air conditioning in the plane. You know, to keep it cool. And bro, I'm going for max comfort. I know bro, but sometimes we forget that I'm kind of the connoisseur of comfort. So you do that.
- [126:08]
C
The.
- [126:08]
B
The factory jeans of perfect amount of thickness. So it shields you from the air conditioning. Conditioning. And here's the thing too. So yeah, it's a science. I got it down to a science. So here. And then the other thing I wear is that jacket. You know the. It's like. It's kind of like a windbreak. It's an origin one. That black one, that windbreaker.
- [126:22]
C
Perfect.
- [126:23]
A
The stow jacket.
- [126:23]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [126:24]
A
That thing is good to go.
- [126:25]
C
Yep.
- [126:25]
B
100. And then of course the deaf core socks.
- [126:28]
C
Oh yeah.
- [126:29]
A
Okay.
- [126:30]
B
That's the uniform right there.
- [126:31]
A
Origin USA made in America 100 and then joggle store. You can get some def Core socks if you want.
- [126:36]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [126:37]
C
You available? Got.
- [126:39]
B
We got other stuff on there. So we got the shirt locker which is like as you know, the subscription scenario. Every month you get a new design. So I thought of you for next month. Let's just say it's Celtic in nature.
- [126:52]
A
Okay.
- [126:53]
B
It's a good one also good. So you know, good. Right. This one I'm wearing. Wearing. This is like the second edish. Second version. We'll say. Yeah, I got the third version coming next month.
- [127:03]
C
Month.
- [127:03]
B
So be on the lookout for that one.
- [127:05]
A
And it's a Celtic.
- [127:06]
B
No, that one's not Celtic. Shirt locker for next month is Celtic. But the good just happens to be coming out next month. See what I'm saying? And that one's not Celtic. That's you know, that's the third version, 3.0. Good.
- [127:18]
C
There you go.
- [127:19]
A
Jocastore.com Dave Burke's got a book coming out called need to Lead. Go check that out. Also, we just released Echelon Front. We just released a. A new academy course. It's about the ladder of alignment. That's extreme ownership dot com.
- [127:33]
B
Yeah. That lateral alignment.
- [127:35]
A
Ladder of. Ladder of alignment.
- [127:37]
B
All right. Right.
- [127:38]
C
Yeah.
- [127:38]
B
Yeah. So it's like a comprehensive course then.
- [127:41]
A
Yeah. Because this is one thing that can really jam people up to the parlance of echo, Charles, is if we're not aligned on what we're trying to do, how do we find alignment? How do we confirm our alignment and how do we continue on with alignment? Yeah, but sometimes. Sometimes we aren't aligned. And there's various levels that can happen at. And when you're not aligned at a lower level, guess what you got to do.
- [128:05]
B
Find it.
- [128:06]
A
Climb the ladder of alignment.
- [128:08]
B
So well that. That one.
- [128:10]
A
And there's a skill to that. There's techniques around that.
- [128:13]
B
Well, yeah. And a lot of times you don't. It's the kind where you don't realize that you are aligned. So that's when you got to climb the la. And this is why I know this, because when you explain it at the muster, this is why it comes up, is when it's like, oh, they have like an agenda.
- [128:26]
A
Yeah.
- [128:27]
B
You know, like that. That group or that person that I work with or whatever, they have like this agenda. But then you. You're like, well, who's to say that's always bad? You know, Climb that ladder, you find.
- [128:36]
A
Out maybe that agenda's kind of useful, their agenda. And people can have different competing agendas. And that's actually okay.
- [128:44]
C
Yeah.
- [128:44]
A
As long as we don't start undermining, finding each other. We can have competing agendas on where we're going to have dinner. Like we can go, I want to go here. I want to go there. But we both want to eat.
- [128:52]
C
Yeah.
- [128:52]
A
You see what I'm saying? So let's eat. Ashlandfront.com extreme ownership.com Go check those out. If you need leadership training, also if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. It's got an amazing organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org also check out heroes and horses.org Micah Fink, his program taking vets up into the mountains so they can find their soul. And finally, Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org check all those out if you want to connect. If you want to connect with Wesley Hunt on the Internet, Wesley for Texas.com on Instagram, Wesley for Texas, Twitter X and YouTube Wesley Hunt TX and Facebook. Wesley Hunt for us. I'm@jocko.com and on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. Echoes cocharles Just be careful because you can waste a lot of time on social media if you're not careful and you don't want that to happen. Once again, thanks to Congressman Wesley Hunt for joining us tonight. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Thank you for sharing your lessons learned. Thank you for your service in the army and thank you for your continued service in Congress. It's much appreciated, brother. Thank you. Also thanks to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines right now staged around the world right now as we speak, away from their families, away from their homes in order to protect our safety and our way of lives. Thank you for your service and your sacrifice. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. We are thankful for your service to protect us here on the home front. For everyone else out there, I saw a little comment from Wesley Hunt and he said this, quote, the only thing that's preventing you from being anything you want to be in this country is you. There are people that started off with way less and ended up with way more. The fact that you were born in this country, no matter how hard it might be for you, what's your excuse? And do not allow people to have low expectations of you because you will live up to that. End quote. So there you have it. Set some high expectations and then meet them. And you do that by not making excuses, but instead, as you can probably guess, by taking ownership. That's all I've gotten for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.
- [131:33]
C
Ow.